{pretty, happy, funny, real}
~ Capturing the context of contentment in everyday life ~
Every Thursday, here at Like Mother, Like Daughter!
{pretty, happy}
I really love it when my cooking groove is on. Grilling definitely helps. Somehow, the simplest thing is a lot more fun when it’s grilled — and you can eat what you’ve grilled outside!
It also doesn’t hurt to have a few things to get from the garden, although I have to say, this has been the slowest year ever. I really have to figure out some way to beat Mother Nature at this snow-and-ice gig she has going on. It’s August and we are only now juuuuuust starting to have some reliance on garden produce, which is somewhat pathetic.
For this particular supper, I had bought four kosher chickens in my favorite mode, that is, “manager’s special.” I’ve been pulling them out of the freezer one by one, but if more people had been around, I probably would have just cooked them all up, as they are petite.
With the addition of some really tasty Italian sausage, potatoes, and onions, it made a nice meal that served us for several nights. (I added water in the pan periodically to keep the potatoes and onions from burning.) Grilling it all was, as I say, adding some fantastic to the whole operation.
Since I have a gas grill but like the smoky flavor of wood, I wrap sticks from the yard up in tin foil, after “marinating” them in water for about 15 minutes (or using wet wood after the rain!) and put the packet right on the burner caps if caps is their name. It smokes up nicely and my food tastes like it’s been cooked outdoors for real.
This is important, because while I love the convenience of a gas grill, it’s a bit disappointing when the food tastes just like you cooked it in the oven but just looks, well, dirtier.
I also just wish that I had a lot more surface area, but since I don’t, I sometimes stack the pans to get it all done. (I grilled with the cover down for this particular meal.)
The eggplant, green beans, green pepper, mint, and basil are from the garden. I made them according to recipes in Jerusalem: A Cookbook
, thoughtfully provided for me by my brother-in-law, just because he knew I’d be inspired by it.*
I think I did pretty well! I did not (of course) follow the green bean salad recipe (“Mixed bean salad”) fully, as it calls for some herbs I don’t have (and one I don’t like — tarragon, ugh). But mint and basil are preferable to me anyway, so that’s what I used. I had everything else on hand, so I went for it. So tasty!
The basic recipe for this salad is to boil the amount of beans you like to serve 4-6 people (10 oz according to the cookbook but as these are from the garden you can hardly weigh them — you know how much you usually make) until just tender and refresh under cool water. Set aside.
Roast or grill two red (or one red and one green) peppers (and I added onion) until just cooked.
Add to beans.
Saute about 6 tablespoons rinsed and dried capers, 2 or 3 cloves of garlic, thinly sliced, and a teaspoon each of cumin and coriander in a saucepan in about 3 tablespoons of olive oil. When the garlic is just golden, add to the beans.
Toss about 4 green onions, sliced, and a cup of mixed mint, parsley, and basil, coarsely chopped. Sprinkle with lemon juice and a little lemon zest. Let it sit for a while to mellow all the flavors together. Don’t add salt until you taste it — capers are salty, especially if you space on the “rinsing and draining”!
The eggplants are split and grilled with a spread described in the book — very simple, actually. My eggplants are so small at this point that it was almost not worth it. Almost, but not quite! Tasty! The recipe is called “Chermoula eggplant with bulgur & yogurt” — but I left out the bulgur and its yummy-looking additions, because I was already getting a bit complicated with this “simple weeknight supper.”
Basically you cross-hatch the flesh and spread olive oil mixed with some spices and chopped garlic over the top. Then you roast or grill (I grilled, obvi).
On the plate I served it with yogurt mixed with a little feta cheese.
Besides grilling and getting excited about suddenly having made a really tasty dinner, we have had some Weather.
Hail just isn’t something that happens often here, nor are tornadoes! So yesterday was quite the adventure in crazy weather for us! Fortunately nothing was damaged and we made it through, but the sky certainly looked ominous.
We had friends visiting from Missouri who are perhaps more tornado-aware than we are. “Do you have a cellar?” Well, yes. But we really, REALLY don’t want to go down into our dirt and stone cellar unless absolutely necessary!
*Full disclosure about this cookbook, and maybe I’ve said this before: I think it’s fun, with really inspiring pictures (until there is a recipe or two that you would love pictures of and instead there’s just an undoubtedly photogenic something that is not the dish, and then that’s frustrating). The methodology is odd. I’m not sure that I understand where the ideas for the dishes are coming from. Some are quite random. Tarragon is not an herb that I would ever associate with Middle Eastern cooking, for instance. Many of the recipes seem over-complicated. But then it will surprise me with some really great ideas and information. So my head spins with this cookbook but I keep pulling it out!
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