A Change of Heart

Fennel. Ugh. How did this become such a trendy ingredient? Were there fennel lobbyists somewhere fighting to get more fennel inclusion in Top Chef recipes? Into the pages of magazines? All over the damn place? Well...I have a vague memory of trying fennel once. I couldn't even tell you what I ate. Not even venture a guess. All I know is that fennel is described as having an anise flavor. Anise as in licorice. And not Twizzlers. So I was not a fan.

But alas, it seems the imaginary fennel advocates have beaten me down, and recently I decided to give in and give fennel another shot. I had heard that when roasted it loses most of its "licorice-y" flavor. So I searched for a recipe that allowed for that preparation and kept my fingers crossed.

The outcome? I got another easy fish recipe to add to my repertoire (I can ALWAYS use more fool-proof fish recipes). And for the fennel? Well, lets just say I can't remember what all my fuss was about in the first place!!

Roasted Salmon with Red Onion, Fennel and Tomatoes (adapted from Real Simple, October 2005)
Serves 2

Ingredients:

2 6-8 oz fillets of salmon, skin on
1 red onion, cut into wedges (I did sixths)
1 medium fennel bulb, cut into 1 inch wedges
1/2 pint grape tomatoes
5-6 sprigs fresh thyme
6 garlic cloves, peel removed and smashed
1 lemon, quartered
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon sea salt
1/2-1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Preparation:

Toss the onion, fennel, tomatoes, garlic and thyme in 2 teaspoons of olive oil, as well as half of the salt and pepper. Spread evenly on a baking sheet and place in a 400 degree oven for 20 minutes.


Once the veggies have roasted, remove the tray and clear some spots for the salmon fillets.


Drizzle the remaining teaspoon of olive oil over the salmon, sprinkle it with the remaining salt and pepper, and squeeze 1/4 to 1/2 of the lemon over each fillet. Toss the leftover lemon onto the sheet to go back into the oven - roasting the lemons brings out a great flavor.


Stick everything back into the 400 degree oven for around 12 minutes or until the salmon flakes easily and is an even color throughout. If your fillets are thicker than an inch to inch & quarter, add a few minutes. If you have thinner fillets, shave off a minute or two.

We served the roasted salmon and veggies with our simple side of Israeli cous cous.


This was truly a "set it and forget it" type of meal that required little prep or attention to detail. Everything from start to finish took about 35 minutes. Guess I'll have to re-visit my list of banned foods and see what else I can offer a second chance!

We're All a Little Irish

I've worn green. I've tried green beer (ick). Heck, I am more Irish than I am anything else. But until now, I've never prepared or eaten a "traditional" Irish meal for St. Patrick's Day. Disclaimer: I may be wrong about this...and my mom will read it and want to correct me. Except she seems to have errors when trying to comment on my posts. So she can't. Ha! (Seriously though I don't remember ever having this...)

So now that I'm officially a grown up I decided to take the celebration beyond the tired old green shirt (and certainly no green beer).

Irish Ale Corned Beef with Cabbage, Potatoes and Onions
Serves 4

Ingredients:

3-4 lb corned beef brisket
6-8 petite redskin potatoes, halved
1 large onion, cut into 1 inch wedges
4-6 carrots, cut into 2 inch chunks
1 small head green cabbage, quartered
1 12-oz Irish Ale (such as Killian's or Smithwick's)
2-3 cups water
4 cloves garlic, peeled and smashed
1 teaspoon black pepper corns
1 teaspoon coriander seeds
1 teaspoon mustard seed
1 teaspoon sea salt

Preparation:

This is about as easy as it gets. Put the brisket, fat side up, along with the potatoes, onion, garlic and carrots into a slow-cooker with the juices from the corned beef, 1 bottle of beer, and enough water to cover everything. Add the peppercorns, mustard and coriander seed, and salt to the top of the brisket. Cook everything on high for 5 hours. After 5 hours are up, quarter the cabbage, removing the core and add it to the slow-cooker for one more hour.


Once you've cooked everything for around 6 hours, remove the corned beef and slice it. Yummmmmy.


In case your husband feels like you may not have enough potatoes, boil a few more, drain, and toss with butter and fresh parsley.


Anecdote: we though we wanted to try Irish Soda Bread as well with dinner but didn't have this revelation until about 2 hours before dinner time. Due to our lack of planning, I ran to the supermarket to pick some up as we wouldn't be cooking any. Little did we know it had fruitcake type stuff in it. Strange. Not bad, just strange.


Our Irish feast! Serve the corned beef with stone ground mustard and horseradish.


Sláinte!!!

Salad - on a grill!

I went through a phase when I was younger when I "hated" lettuce. I mean, I literally decided that I despised it and argued to my parents that I had always hated it. Always. I'm not sure what poor lettuce ever did to me, but I've since come to my senses and realize that lettuce is my friend. In fact, I like my friend lettuce so much that I decided I needed to bring some excitement into its life. Who wants to be cold ALL the time? Not me. So I introduced my friend lettuce to my other friend, the grill. And a beautiful relationship formed...

Nowadays at our house, when we are having salad, it's often grilled. If you've never stuck lettuce on your grill, you're probably not alone. But you should really consider it. The heat of the grill brings out a new flavor that totally lets the lettuce shine! (Not to mention, the recipe couldn't be simpler and requires very little chopping and prepping)

Sara & Jon's Grilled Salad

Ingredients:

Romaine hearts (1 heart usually serves 2 people)
1 head radicchio
Garlic (1 clove, minced per head of lettuce)
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Sea salt
Cracked black pepper
White wine vinegar

Preparation:

I love to make this salad with a combination of both romaine and radicchio for the contrast in color as well as flavor. However, we've made this plenty of times with just romaine and it is still wonderful! If you've never used radicchio, it is a small and compact head of lettuce that by first glance may look like a tiny red cabbage. It has a stronger flavor than romaine or iceburg lettuce - with slightly spicy and bitter hints.



To prep the lettuce, simply half the romaine, leaving the core intact. Because the radicchio is so dense, I typically quarter it.

Important note: these lettuces retain A LOT of moisture. A lot. But because you need the halves or quarters to stay intact to grill them, you can't send them for a ride through the salad spinner. To wash, I usually rinse and place cut-side down on a clean kitchen towel or stack of paper towels and leave them for 30 minutes to an hour. And just before grilling I will blot them again to make sure I get any excess moisture out. Cooked wet lettuce is mushy lettuce. Just say no.

Once my lettuce is sparkly clean and dry, I drizzle it will olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper and squish my minced garlic into its little nooks and crannies.

Then place your lettuce on your selected grill surface. We have made this on our grills (charcoal and gas), in our grill pan on the stove and even in our George Foreman grill (just don't close the lid). Because it happened to be raining outside, this lettuce was cooked in the grill pan. I started with the radicchio and placed it into the grill pan cut-side down for 3-4 minutes or until it got grill marks and the edges just started to cook/wilt.

Next was the romaine. This takes only 2-3 minutes to "cook". Obviously if you're doing this on your grill it can happen simultaneously, just put the radicchio on a minute or two earlier.

Here's what you're aiming for on the lettuce. You want to tell it's been on the grill but you still want it to retain its texture and crunch.

All that's left to do is chopping it into bite-sized pieces (removing the cores)

And tossing it into a bowl with a few splashes of white wine vinegar, another drizzle of olive oil and an extra sprinkling of salt and pepper, if you're so inclined.

Another easy way to add a little variety to your veggies!

This bark has bite

Being that I am seriously baking-averse, it becomes somewhat of a challenge for me to find recipes for sweets that I'll actually make. Don't get me wrong...I come across dessert recipes all the time that I flag or save, but the times I actually follow through and bake them are few and far between. So when I stumbled across this recipe whose only oven-action is to toast some nuts, I knew we had a promising future together! (It also doesn't hurt that it's not totally overloaded with fat and calories so that I can actually enjoy eating it rather than feeling pangs of guilt with every scrumptious bite.)

Cherry Almond Chocolate Bark (adapted from Cooking Light September 2009)

Ingredients:

8 oz bittersweet chocolate (I used 2 4-oz 60% cacao bittersweet chocolate baking bars)
1/3 cup almonds, toasted and chopped
1/3 cup dried cherries, chopped
3 tablespoons crystallized ginger, chopped

Preparation:

Here is the chocolate I used for this recipe but you can use what is available or sounds good. I wouldn't recommend using milk chocolate - you'll want to at least use semi-sweet. If you don't make this as soon as you get home from the grocery store, I recommend putting the chocolate out of sight so you don't devour it before getting to the recipe.


If you've never used crystallized ginger before, here's what mine looks like. It is in the Asian foods section of the international aisle at the supermarket. You certainly don't HAVE to have it for the recipe, but it adds a special something.

To get things going, put 1/3 cup of whole (unsalted or otherwise flavored) almonds into a 350 degree oven. Leave them in for about 10 minutes just so they get nice and toasty and the flavor enhances. Then, while the chocolate is still in the wrappers, break it into chunks with your hands. Open the packages into a microwave safe bowl.

And here's why I really like this recipe - you melt the chocolate in the microwave! Yahoo! Cook it at 20 second intervals for a total of 1-2 minutes - depending on how strong your microwave is - stirring it between each cooking interval.

Once the almonds are nice and toasty, remove them from the oven and coursely chop them along with the dried cherries and crystallized ginger.

Mix all the goodies into your melted chocolate.

Then pour the mixture onto a foil-lined sheet tray.

And stick the tray into the freezer for at least an hour. Once it has hardened, break it into several pieces and enjoy! I usually keep mine in the fridge in a ziploc bag for the few days (or day) before it's all eaten!

After making this the other day, I shared some with a friend who commented "huh, it's kind of messy". I had no clue what she was talking about. She thinks I've actually held on to the stuff long enough to let some melt before stuffing it in my mouth! Ha!

Green beans....again???

I really love vegetables. A lot. There are very few I can think of that I don't love. In fact, one time, at a get-together of family friends my mom said to me (in a very matter-of-fact, stern and embarrassing way), "Sara, back away from the food," as I hovered over the veggie tray. True story. In my defense, at least it was veggies and not nachos, meatballs, or any other food item that may make me seem like more of an oinker than I already am. Moral of that story is - I love vegetables.

But for some reason, when it comes to dinner time, it seems like we always have the same old things! Green beans, asparagus, zucchini, and occasionally a salad. I absolutely adore the way I typically make green beans (blanch green beans, drain from water, throw into saute pan with olive oil, garlic, and sometimes a guest appearance by shallots) - the trick is taking the green beans from the boiling water once they change color to that really vibrant green. I need my veggies tender with a tiny bit of crunch still in them. But despite how well these turn out each time, a girl needs some variety in her life. And so I concocted a new method for preparing my beloved green beans.

Sara's Green Bean Salad

Ingredients:

Fresh green beans (enough for however many you're serving...I eat tons of them so I probably get close to a half pound just for 2 of us!)
Half pint of grape, cherry or Campari tomatoes
1/3 medium sweet onion, thinly sliced
1 1/2 tbsp dijon mustard
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
~1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
sea salt & cracked black pepper to taste

Preparation:

First snap the ends off of your green beans. They really should be fresh. I suppose you could use frozen, if you had to, but they get watery and just don't have the same texture or flavor. While I acknowledge that fresh produce can sometimes be more expensive than frozen, green beans don't typically have a high price per pound and are very affordable. Also worth noting: if you even considered using canned green beans for this recipe - we can't be friends. I don't do canned green beans. Ick.

Toss the beans into a pot of salted boiling water. They should take only a few minutes to cook. Once they turn a really bright green, I usually snatch one from the water (carefully - it's boiling!) and take a nibble off the end to check for doneness.

While the water is boiling or green beans are cooking, prep the other veggies. If you're using grape or cherry tomatoes, halving them is sufficient. Because we had Campari tomatoes, I cut mine into quarters or sixths, depending on their size. Mmmm Campari tomatoes (drool)


You should also slice your onions at this time. For the record, I almost always buy sweet onions, unless a recipe specifically calls for red onion. When Vidalia onions are in season I go for those, but my supermarket carries just plain "sweet" onions from Peru year round. I like their flavor both raw and cooked and truth be told, they don't make my eyes water when I cut them! Win-win situation!

To make the "dressing" for this salad, you'll combine the dijon mustard, balsamic vinegar and extra virgin olive oil. Start with a good squirt of mustard in the bottom of a bowl. Another confession: I am horrible at measuring (probably why I'm horrible at baking) - I eyeball everything...but I'd say about a tablespoon of mustard. Err on the low side to start because you can always add more. As you make this vinaigrette more and more, you'll get a sense of the proportions you like. Then add a few shakes of balsamic vinegar.


It is important that you save the oil for last so that the dressing mixes properly.


You will want to whisk the ingredients in one hand while you drizzle the oil with the other. This happens to be a difficult process to capture on camera for those of us who don't have three hands.


Your dressing will end up looking like this.


Once the vinaigrette is made and the green beans are through cooking and have been removed from the water, toss the veggies in there and refrigerate it for a few minutes. It doesn't have to be served cold, but I like it better when the beans aren't steaming hot!


Now no more excuses for boring green beans!