Fish with Leeks and Tomatoes

We're still traveling, and won't be home for a couple of weeks. Here's a recipe from the archives to keep you busy and happy till we get back. Bon Appetit!

Growing up in an Irish Catholic family meant that we ate fish on friday. Every friday, without fail. 

Actually, as Catholics, we weren’t obliged to eat fish. We just couldn’t eat meat. At our house, though, 'no meat' meant fish. So we ate fish every Friday. We didn’t live especially close to the sea (Atlanta), and the selection of fresh fish at that time wasn’t great. We were also a large family (Irish Catholic, remember?). All of this meant that we ate a lot of the dreaded Tuna Noodle Casserole. With potato chips on top. No peas. We also ate a lot of salmon patties made from canned salmon. I still like these. I haven’t made them in a long time, though. Hmmm....

Mayo Clinic

Let's face it: no matter how much we love our favorite ones, sometimes we feel the need to spice things up. I get bored with the same old thing. Come on, admit it—you do too. I mean, we've all tried to make it more exciting, haven't we? A little spice helps a lot, I think. I've been playing around lately, going farther than ever before, and I think I've found some tricks. So if you're tired of plain old mayonnaise, why not send your mayonnaise to the Mayo Clinic for a little lift?

New Year's Traditions: Hoppin John

I have a confession to make. I really don’t like New Year’s. To me, it’s an artificial thing. Don’t get me  wrong, I love the IDEA of it--a new start, wipe the slate clean and begin anew. What’s better than that?

The problem is that we seem to take all our problems, resentments, wounds into the new year. We can’t seem to leave them behind. We try to feel as if it’s a brand new year, but if we’re honest with ourselves, nothing is different, is it? At midnight we say HAPPY NEW YEAR! and we pop corks and throw confetti and set off fireworks and we try to feel as if something is different, something is new. But it really isn’t. At least for me.

Katrin's Summer Beans

No, I haven't disappeared. I've not been cooking much, since I've been on this diet. Roast chicken, grilled steak, fish with leeks and tomatoes. You've either seen these recipes or you don't need them. So I haven't been posting. MISTAKE! Because we've been travelling....

CARDAMOM LIME TEA CAKE

I have been trying to figure out how to bake with gluten-free flours. I have quite a collection: brown rice, white rice, corn (fine and coarse), buckwheat, almond, oat. But wait, there's more! Teff, millet, quinoa, chestnut, chickpea, coconut. I keep thinking that I have to 'know' each one before I know how to combine them. I've been a little discouraged, to be honest.

As I read more and more about gluten- and wheat- free baking, I see similar recipes with different flours and I don't understand why they used one as opposed to another. I don't like it when I don't understand...

Rabbit and Merguez Tagine

I have two tagines, those lovely Moroccan cooking dishes. The big one is a traditional cone-shaped one, made from glazed terra cotta. I bought it from a Moroccan shop in our town not long after we moved here. I fell in love with it when I first saw it--it’s old, a little wonky, a little chipped. It wasn’t new when I bought it. The shop owner tried to talk me out of that particular one, pointing out that there were new, colorful ones available. I can only use it for serving, not for cooking. It’s too big for my oven, and I can’t use it on the stovetop because the bottom’s not exactly flat. But I love it.

Lemon Curd

What's in a name? I mean, Shakespeare said it, didn't he? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. This is the kind of statement that makes me want to push the concept. I mean, what if we take a lovely rose and call it a booger. Will we want to stick our noses in it and breathe deeply? I'm not so sure.

Take lemon curd. I mean, let's face it: curd is not a pretty word. It brings up images of Miss Muffet and spiders. Altogether too icky a name for this lovely stuff. It's like somebody boogered my rose. I think we should call it something else. What, though? Lemon roses? Lemon velvet? No, that sounds like chewing tobacco. Lemon sauce? Too liquid. Lemon jam? Close, but how to distinguish it from marmalade?

Oven Roasted Ribs

Someone recently remarked that we must only eat desserts at our house, judging by my blog. It’s not really true that we only eat desserts. It’s just that they’re so pretty! Really, don’t you think so? They’re like the cheerleaders of the table, jumping up and shouting “me! me! look at me!” “take MY picture!” Ahem. Maybe they don’t really do that--maybe it’s just me.

Crème Fraiche Verrines

I've written before about some of my language adventures at the supermarket in our town. I told you about the preservatives and the cuisses de canard. But I haven't yet told you about the incident of the crème fraiche. When we first moved here, I went to the supermarket one day looking for whipping cream. All I could find was crème fraiche. Everywhere I looked—crème fraiche. I didn't want thickened, cultured cream, I wanted whipping cream. And there was none to be seen. 

Lemon Polenta Cake

Cooking without wheat is presenting me some challenges, some of which are difficult, and some of which are very enjoyable. One of the benefits of this way of eating (I don't like to use the word 'diet', because that makes me want to break it!) is that I get to explore other grains. I find foods that I wouldn't have found otherwise.

Bagna Cauda and a Winner!

Bagna Cauda means 'hot bath' in Italian. Why are we talking about hot baths? Because we have about 6 inches of snow on the ground here and a hot bath sounds pretty nice right now? Nah, it's because this specialty of Torino is the perfect thing for a cold snowy day.

If you're thinking apres-ski, you're in the right ball park. If you're like me, though, you're probably just thinking instead-of-ski. Heh, I went skiing once. It took me about 5 minutes to tear up my knee. That was my ski career. Whenever I see those amazing athletes barreling downhill, I head to the apres-ski zone toute de suite. Just watching them makes my knee hurt!

Oat Shortbread Cookies and Vitamin O

Many years ago, when I was in Grad school, some friends and I began to think seriously about nutrition. Grad students on the whole aren’t known for their interest in nutrition, but we discovered a vitamin that’s not very well known: vitamin O. Vitamin O deficiencies are pretty common, and can have serious affects on your social life. Your body can’t store it, and so you need some every day. Jogging or other strenuous exercise completely strips your body of it, as do exams. Vitamin O is very important for mental health. And we WERE studying Psychology, after all!

Oven Braised Pork and Winter Vegetables

The weather here has been very wintery—it's put the BRR in NovemBRR! Rain, cold, fog. Perfect weather to hunker down and stay home with something warm and hearty for dinner. Me, I also want something easy. Something that I can stick in the oven and not think about. This is the perfect thing! 

Transit Problems

Indigestion. Heartburn. Nausea. Insomnia. Headaches. Stomach cramps. (I'll stop there) Welcome to my world. For the past few months I've been having a lot of problems with indigestion and with what in French we call le transit. 

Needless to say, I haven't been cooking a lot of new and exciting things. I've just been trying to 'deal with' some pretty bland and uninteresting food. And we've been doing a lot of tests to figure out what the problem is. Or what the problems are. 

Spiced Nuts

One of the lovely customs here in Belgium is that whenever you're invited to someone's house for dinner, you take a gift. Nobody ever shows up empty-handed. This gift can be flowers, a plant, a bottle of wine, or something else that you know the host/hostess will like. Often it's chocolate.

When we go to someone's house, we normally bring chocolates. This past weekend, however, we were invited for dinner and we couldn't take chocolates--we were going to the home of our chocolatier! He certainly had enough of his own chocolates to satisfy him, and taking chocolates from a rival wouldn't have been very nice. So...what?

What's better than something from the kitchen? Pillsbury's jingle aside, there is (for me) something special about a gift from the kitchen. No, not wooden spoons...

Spicy Cheesy Lamburgers

My friend Françoise is the source of many good things for us. She's brought us friendship, good advice, English novels, the odd vocabulary lesson, and lots of good food tips. Recently, she shared with us some cheese that a friend had brought her from Turkey. We don't know the name of the cheese, but it was a hard, crumbly, salty cheese—sort of like Feta but with a more buttery flavor. At my house we just called it Turkish Cheese.

At the same time that we received this wonderful cheese, I found some lovely ground lamb. I wanted to make some lamb-burgers, and I was thinking of the wonderful spices in some of the Moroccan dishes we can find here. I wanted something a little hot, a little exotic. This buttery, salty cheese fit right in with what I had in mind.

Mirabelle Crumble

One of the joys of late summer here is the fruit. I love the peaches, nectarines, raspberries and of course the blackberries. One fruit I didn't appreciate till we moved here are plums. There are so many types: Red ones, purple ones with yellow flesh, the green Reine Claudes, and the tiny yellow Mirabelles. 

I love it that fruit and vegetables here have proper names. I used to just buy plums. What kind? Uh, purple ones. Here, we call them by their names. Reine Claude in French means Queen Claude. Don't ask me why you'd name a Queen Claude, but I guess someone did. In any case, she turned out to be agreeable enough that they named a lovely little green plum after her. I like the name Mirabelle better, I think. Not so royal but veryvery pretty. Like the plums themselves, tiny bundles of sunshine. 

Too Hot to Cook: Gazpacho

One of the (many) reasons we moved to Belgium was the climate. I grew up in Atlanta, where it's hot and sticky for at least 6 months of the year. Dan and I lived in DC, where it's stinkin' hot. AND humid. (Though we used to say that in Washington, it wasn't the heat that would kill you, it was the stupidity, heh.) Belgium, however, is on the same latitude as the southern tip of Hudson's bay. Yesss! Cool in the summer. We checked—not much is air conditioned here. No need! Double Yesss! We almost didn't need the enticement of languages, culture, travel opportunities, chocolate. Cool summers, yessirree. That was it for us.

Olive Pesto

This month’s issue of La Cucina Italiana has an article on pesto, and recipes for lots of different kinds. When we think of pesto, we normally think of basil, pine nuts, garlic, olive oil and parmesan. Those are the ingredients for the classic pesto, Pesto alla Genovese. But pesto can be made with any number of ingredients. The name ‘pesto’ comes from the tool traditionally used to make it: a pestle (and mortar too). In Italian, the word ‘pesto’ means ‘to pound’, which is what you do with a mortar and pestle.

STUFFED ZUCCHINI

Note: We're still on holiday. This is the last of my pre-programmed posts. I'll be home soon with fresh ones!

Do you see these things? Aren't they adorable? I love it when I find these in the market. They're perfect for stuffing. They're also perfect for playing zucchini bowling, but that's another story. Today we'll just stuff them. Not in the rude way, of course.

This is a great weeknight dish. It's not too hard to prepare and it uses up leftovers. Perfect for when you're getting ready to leave on a trip and you need to clean out the fridge. Or just when you have some leftover rice and sausage.

I used a sausage that we have here that has swiss cheese in it. Any fresh sausage that you like can be used. Italian Sausage would be very good in this. Merguez would be awesome.

If you can't find these round zucchini, you can make these with the long ones. Just cut them in half, hollow them out, and stuff them. Not in the rude way, of course. If you use the long ones, you won't have the cute little hats to put on them, but you could top them with some grated cheese. I think grated cheese makes up for a lot of things.

Stuffed Zucchini

8 round zucchini or 4 long ones

350 g / 12 oz sausage

1 medium onion

1 large tomato

1 ½ cups cooked rice

• Preheat oven to 160 C / 350 F
• Cut the tops off the zucchinis and hollow them out with a spoon. I used a grapefruit spoon because it has those little teeth to help scrape the insides out.
• Crumble the sausage into a pan and cook over medium heat till it releases some of its fat.
• Chop the onion and put it in with the sausage, cooking till the sausage is beginning to brown and the onion is soft and translucent.
• Chop the tomato and add to the pan with the rice. Cook till the tomato releases its juice and the mixture is moist, about 1-2 minutes. Don't worry if the sausage isn't fully cooked—this is going in the oven to cook some more.
• Stuff the zucchini with the mixture (not in the rude way, of course) and put it in the oven for 40-45 minutes, until the zucchini are soft.

Serves 4 if they like it and 10 if they don't.

NOTES:

• I think if you put these in the oven in a dish with a cover they would probably take less time to cook and they wouldn't risk drying out. I'll have to try that next time and let you know.
• Obviously, you can add anything you like to this mixture. Peas, cut up green beans, leeks, bell peppers. If you want a little crunch, you could add pine nuts. If you want it spicier, you can add some chili peppers. Just remember that when you put it in the oven it will dry out, so you want the mixture to be really moist when you put it in the zucchini.
• If the mixture is dry, you can moisten it with stock or wine or tomato juice.
• Pasta would substitute nicely for the rice.

What would you put in it?