Pasta puttanesca with a salad is a delight to look at and to eat. The salty, spicy sauce goes well with the vinegary salad dressing. Here is my recipe for the pasta sauce – https://dininglite.blog/2021/05/06/pasta-puttanesca-5-5-21/
I have been trying to add more vegetables and cut back on carbs at dinner. Since starchy foods are my favs, this move often leaves me grumpy. Tonight’s dinner of three veggies with grilled flank steak left me full and happy tonight.
The hardest part of this dinner is to get all the veg and the steak finished cooking at the same time. I often overestimate how long the grilling will take and end up with underdone vegetables. Tonight I started the Brussel sprouts ahead of John’s grilling of the steak which gave them time to get brown. The broccoli almost got burnt because I was paying too much attention to the sprouts! And the cauliflower rice was just an easy warm up in the microwave.
Poor John, he ended up with only steak, rice, and Brussel sprouts. My plate was much fancier. I did not miss the rice at all!
Our fisherman’s stew was a hit with John but a little less so for me. I think it could be very good with a different fish. We used mahi mahi which is fine in our “fish sticks” preparation but tasted too fishy for me in the stew. I think we will make this again but use swordfish or sea bass or snapper.
Once again we took a recipe that we found online and fashioned it to our own dietary requirements and taste. The original recipe comes from NYT Cooking. Here is my take on it. This makes two hearty dinner servings with enough left over for lunch the next day.
Fisherman’s Stew
2 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 medium onion or 1 leek diced or sliced
6 cloves garlic, sliced thin
1 small head fennel, diced
1/4 teaspoon red chile flakes, or to taste
1 can diced tomatoes
1 teaspoon sea salt, or to taste
1 cup dry white wine, 1 cup water, 12oz.clam juice
14 ounces new potatoes, cut into smallish pieces
Ground black pepper
1 tablespoon lemon juice
10 ounces white fish cut into chunks
6 basil leaves, torn
1 piece orange peel, 1 pinch saffron
Warm oil in a 4-quart saucepan over medium heat. Stir in onion or leek and garlic and cook until soft but not brown. Add fennel and cook a few minutes, until softened. Stir in chile flakes. Add tomatoes and salt, cover and cook on medium about 10 minutes. Soak saffron in white wine.
Stir in wine with saffron, the water, clam juice and orange peel and bring to a simmer, add potatoes and cook another 10 minutes or so, until potatoes are tender. Check seasonings, adding salt and pepper to taste. Add lemon juice.
Season fish pieces with salt and pepper, place them in the stew and simmer on low very briefly until fish is just cooked through,
When fish is done, remove it to the warm soup plates. Garnish the bowl with the basil. Serve with rustic bread.
This week’s menu has a carry-over from last week. We were supposed to be making the Greek fish stew last Thursday but something came up and we ended up with take-out. We will have it on Monday this week instead. This week has 3 seafood meals, 2 vegetarian, 1 chicken, and 1 red meat meal.
I had been looking for a while for some whole grain orecchiette like we had ages ago when we traveled in Italy. The orecchiette pictured above is the kind that you can get at your local supermarket. It is not whole grain.
I once found some made by Delallo at Safeway but it has been discontinued. So I decided to try Amazon which, as it turns out, has several different brands.
I decided on Manta orecchiette because it is artisanal and cut with bronze dies plus it comes from the heart of orecchiette country in the town of Aradeo near Lecce in the province of Apulia. This is where I first had orecchiette with greens.
When John went to cook it, there were no instructions on how long it should be boiled. I guess the people at Manta assume that all Italian cooks would know to cook it until it is done. We started checking it at 8 minutes, then 10, then 11 1/2 minutes. We decided to drain it at that point (reserving a cup of the pasta water) and put it in the already sauteed mushrooms, onions, and garlic.
Long story short, the pasta was not done and even though I kept cooking it in the sauce for another five minutes, it was still not totally merely al dente. I guess we should start checking at 12 minutes and probably cook it for at least 15 minutes. Obviously I am no Italian housewife.
Except for the pasta being undercooked slightly, it was delicious. We each had 3 ounces of pasta and there was plenty of mushrooms and greens to make a really enjoyable sauce enhanced with some EVOO and grated parmesan cheese.
John and I made this recipe last week with salmon and decided to try it again with shrimp. Although I like the salmon rendition better, this shrimp one is very good, quick, and easy.
The shrimp cooks very quickly so it is good to get the rest of the components ready first. We usually have some cooked rice in the refrigerator and I sush-i-fy it by adding some sweetener and rice vinegar.
For the dressing, it is a combination of 1/2 teaspoon of toasted sesame oil, 1/4 cup soy sauce, 3 Tbl white vinegar, 2 Tbl of a neutral oil, 2 Tbl minced fresh ginger, and 2 Tbl of chopped scallions. After you have your “sushi rice” and dressing made then all you need to do is assemble the other ingredients which are shredded cabbage, chopped avocado, and thinly sliced Persian cucumbers.
Now cook the shrimp quickly and put it on top of the rice followed by the cucumbers, avocado, and cabbage. Ladle some of the sauce over everything and dust with sesame seeds or my favorite, furikake.
Note: We usually run out of the dressing so we make a double recipe.
We made a double recipe for the three of us and figured we would have leftovers. It was so good that there was only one little ramekin’s worth left. It is great when you make a dish that is good for you and delicious to eat!
Easy dinner tonight! I roasted the butternut squash after cutting it in half lengthwise, scooping out the seeds, and seasoning it with salt and nutmeg. It cooked in a 425F oven for about 55 minutes. I mashed it up with a little butter.
I used a little butter in the broccoli as well. The orange and green on the plate look so inviting.
John grilled the lamb out back on the patio. It was seasoned with salt, pepper, garlic powder, and cumin. It was rosy pink inside and so good!
Sometimes when you try to adapt a recipe to your heathy eating lifestyle you end up almost ruining it. Here is the original recipe. https://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/roast-chicken-cacciatore-red-wine-butter. We decided not to use a whole chicken roasted in the oven but chicken breasts in the immersion circulator. We put red wine, herbs, and garlic along with a little oil in the bag with the chicken and let it cook to 159F.
Since we needed the herbs and chicken drippings from the sous vide bag, we sat the chicken in a warm oven while I finished making the sauce and reduced it. Then we put the spaghetti and the chicken in sauce. At the end the sauce needed some sriracha to make it spicy and additional salt but it came out pretty okay. The spaghetti was also good. But the chicken had turned into strange, tasteless sponges.
John put a bunch of oil and parmesan cheese on his which helped. If you are planning on making this dish just follow the recipe. Back in my “before” days, I made this chicken cacciatore using the actual recipe. It turned out much better.
While I am not a big fan of a bowl of raw vegetables (salad), I do enjoy a big bowl of cooked vegetables and broth (soup). Now that it is getting chillier and as Standard Time approaches more soups and stews will be in our weekly menu.
This soup starts by sautéing onions, mushrooms, and garlic in olive oil spray. From that point on I add the broth and the vegetables according to hardness— carrots, kale stems, celery, and broccoli. In the last minutes I add the leafy greens and my pre-cooked chicken. Obviously this could be turned into a vegetarian/vegan dish by omitting the chicken and using vegetable stock.
Mmm, soup, so warming and cozy.
Omnivore 