Fish Tacos

Here in Seattle, we have a great restaurant along Portage Bay - Agua Verde. Not only do they have great fish tacos, delicious margaritas and killer key lime pie, they also have kayaks that you can take out and paddle around the bay and into Lake Union and Lake Washington. However, when the weather gets nice, they get packed, and it can be an hour or more to get a table for dinner. The weekend before last was downright hot in Seattle, especially since air conditioning isn't really something that is done here, particularly in houses, and fish tacos sounded like the right thing to do, but without the silly long wait.

I didn't really follow a recipe for this, and just made use of what I had on hand, and it was the perfect amount for two people. I chilled a bottle of Rose to serve with it, and it was just right - not very sweet, and it went with the spice pretty well.

I chose radicchio because it was so pretty - it has a bit of a bitter taste, that I think plays well off the other flavors. If you're not into that, I'd go for some cabbage or some other crisp leafy thing. As for the radishes, they got added to the mix because they were getting bored in my fridge, and I wanted something to go with the peppers. Do what you want!

Fish Tacos
Serves 2

1 fillet of halibut, cod, snapper, etc (I used snapper), washed and patted dry
2-4 corn or flour tortillas
Roughly 3/4 cup of radicchio or cabbage, chopped roughly
5-6 radishes, sliced thinly
1/2 jalapeño (or to taste - I like spicy), diced
Juice from 1/2 lime

Garnishes: sour cream, guacamole, salsa, etc

1. Heat a small pan to medium-high heat with some oil. When the oil is hot, sear the fillet on both sides for 2-3 minutes or until it is done (it should flake easily). Set the fish aside to cool for a few minutes, and then flake the fish into pieces and season with salt, pepper and some of the lime juice.

2. Combine the radishes and jalapeño and cook in the same pan as the fish, adding a little oil if necessary and seasoning with salt and pepper.

3. Combine the radicchio with the remaining lime juice and some salt and pepper.

4. Serve the fish on the tortilla with the radicchio, and add the radish mixture to taste. Top with garnishes as desired, and serve with additional lime slices.

Fool!

Majuer Dilemma, guys. Our oven has broken! Our stove is fine, but for those of you who know my other half, you know that missing an oven is a big deal. How will we get our emergency cookies? Make cupcakes for our friends? Prepare our muffin-y breakfasts? While we don't have dessert every night, or even the majority of nights, the lack of an oven makes me crave basically everything that I can't have right now, including most of our typical desserts.

Dinner the other night called for a little somethin-somethin afterwards, and I refused to be thwarted by the lack of an oven. You all may remember Brian's attempt at Rhubarb Fool at St. Patrick's Day, and after that, the idea of fool had a bit of a taint to it around here. However, we had some whipped cream leftover from... whatever use whipped cream for, and some raspberries that were meant for some not-meant-to-be raspberry bars (no oven, you know?). So - to fool we go. A fool is basically a dessert with fruit puree and whipped cream. Or, basically - whipped cream.

Raspberry Fool

1 pint raspberries
1/4-1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 cup whipping cream

1. Take 1/3 of raspberries and 1-2 tablespoons of powdered sugar and mix in food processor or blender. The mixture should be sweet, so add more sugar if necessary.

2. Press the blended raspberry mixture through a sieve to remove the seeds. You won't get all the juice off the seeds, but you'll get a lot of it.

3. Whip the cream with a tablespoon of the sugar until it forms soft peaks. Add the raspberry puree and blend until incorporated.

4. Toss the remaining raspberries with a bit of the sugar, and then fold into the whipped cream.

5. Serve in custard bowls and garnish with a mint leaf if you'd like to be fancy.

Cauliflower Head!

For the past few weeks, we've been getting a produce box from New Roots Organics, which comes every other week, filled with greens, fruits and vegetables. As a result, I've been trying to use more of our new found produce in our meals. Happy kale, tons of arugula, delicious apples... but then we get something like.... cauliflower. Cauliflower. It's white, without nutrients, without flavor... what's the point? Under normal circumstances, I would never buy cauliflower... order cauliflower... I might use it as an insult. You cauliflower head! But now, it's here, waiting in my kitchen. Looking all white, and broccoli-like. It needs to be something - mashed? In a soup? Roasted? In a gratin?

So - I made some Asian-inspired (Asia, you inspire you me!) tofu for dinner, and decided to roast the cauliflower with some spicy spices. I enjoyed it, but if you don't like spicy things, you might just want to stick to the salt and pepper.

Spicy Roasted Cauliflower
1 head of cauliflower, broken into florets
2 tablespoons of olive oil
2 tsp. crushed red pepper
1 tsp. ground cumin
salt and pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 400º. Toss the ingredients together, and spread onto a baking sheet. Roast for about 25-30 minutes or until soft.

So long, winter?

I've put away the scarves, stowed the down comforter and bought my spring and summer herbs for planting. The sun is shining, the grass is being mowed, I'm wearing flip flops. However, the tease that is Seattle spring will be plunging back into sloppy cold this next week, but for now we have a little taste of what summer is like - remember it?

In honor of Seattle's finickiness, I will write about one more late winter dish - something warm and filling that will maybe remind you of the summer flavors to come. Also, I've been meaning to write up this recipe for about a month now, and I never got around to it.

Squash and Kale Lasagna

Under normal conditions, I'm no fan of normal lasagna - something about the combination of ground beef and ricotta doesn't do it for me. However, vegetarian and vegan lasagnas have a special place in my heart. I remember the first time I had pumpkin lasagna - what, you mean lasagna doesn't need ground beef and tons of cheese? My heavens!

Don't worry, this one has tons of cheese. I made this after seeing a recipe in a magazine in a waiting room and because some of my non-meat-eating friends were coming over for dinner. Fortunately for me, and for them, I ended up prepping this the night before and baking it the day of - it was a time-consuming pain in the arse, but quite tasty, which is why its here and not on But I Suck At Cooking. Though, I certainly did try.

Adapted from Sunset Magazine

Ingredients
4 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium red onion, peeled and sliced
3 peeled garlic cloves (1 minced, 2 left whole)
2 cans (14 oz. each) crushed tomatoes
1 teaspoon dried oregano
Salt and Pepper
6 cups (about 2 lbs.) butternut or acorn squash, peeled and cut into 1/2-in. cubes
1/2 tsp. dried thyme
1 pound dinosaur kale, torn from stem
9 lasagna noodles
1 container (15 oz.) part-skim-milk ricotta cheese
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese, divided

1. Assemble ingredients in front of you. Lasagna noodles. Check. Dinosaur kale. check. Tomatoes. Check. Peeled, seeded butternut squash. Crap - mine's not peeled - why did I pay extra for squash that's only seeded. That's what I get for going for convenience. Whatever.

2. Ignore recipe and stick squash in 450º oven without peeling it or cutting into cubes. Hopefully, it'll scoop out after being roasted, because peeling butternut squash is a pain.

3. Make sauce - saute onions and garlic, and then add tomatoes and spices. Simmer forever until it's "thick."

4. Boil water and put kale leaves in for about 5 minutes. Forget about them and overboil. Forget to salt the water. Drain kale, chop, and then add some salt.

5. Boil more water. Add lasagna noodles. Remember to salt the water this time. Realize pot isn't big enough for lasagna noodles. Poke noodles until they relinquish their stiffness and fall into the menacingly hot water. Laugh evilly. Burn self with water accidently. Ow.

6. Remember butternut squash! Look in oven - parts are starting to singe. Realize that said squash is not squashy yet. Poke with form, splash some oil on it. Stare at it for another 20 minutes whiel sauce continues to simmer and you drain the defeated lasagna noodles.

7. Squish together ricott cheese, 1 cup of shredded mozzerella, the nutmeg and some salt.

8. Decide itse times to do something about the squash. Remove from oven. Its hot - try to remove from peel anyways. Burn self. Many times. Some parts are squishy. Some are rock hard, all are stringy. Make huge mess. Realize that even if you got all the squash out, there wouldn't be enough for the recipe. Remember leftover acorn squash from that weekend's dinner! Saved. Remove that from fridge and mash with the pitiful butternut squash. Acorn squash > Butternut squash.

9. finally, everything can be put together. Start spooning sauce onto bottom of 9x13 pan = there not going to be enough to fit. Grab smaller 7x11 pan. Sauce, noodles, squash, kale, ricotta mixture... wait... there's too much to fit!

10. Through fancy maneuvering and someone else's help, flip half-assembled lasagna into 10x14 pan. Way too big. Whatever.

11. Continue assembling. Whatever order, as long as there's lot of cheese on top.

12. Realize that this all took about 2 hours and hope that it doesn't suck.

13. Bake at 350º till its done. However long that takes.

Result: It doesn't suck! It's very tasty, in fact. You should probably follow the original directions, and not mine, but I would recommend the acorn squash over butternut.

Also, you may have noticed that the site has a somewhat fancy new look - still in tweak mode. Though, I'm guessing most of you read this in Google Reader anyway... oh well.

Food Resolutions

I'm just back from traveling (Texas, North Carolina), and I'm working through the backlog of things that have accumulated in my absence. I do have some recipes that might be of interest to you, my faithful readers, but I first wanted to take a step back and look at the big picture.

I believe that food and cooking is a constant education - those who think they know it all probably make boring food. I think those who are interested in cooking (and... it's okay if not everyone is. Really.) should be always trying new things. It's too easy to just make the same dishes over and over again, but then you don't learn new skills, figure out that you may love certain flavor combinations, realize that you actually do like that food that you've been eschewing since youth, or learn that you really have no idea how and where pickled things come from.

So! Maybe it's March, but that's okay - it's time for some food resolutions for the year.

I will attempt to make the following this year:

Pickled things! Pickled cucumbers, sauerkraut, pickled beets, etc...

Sourdough Bread/Wild Yeast Bread

Sausage. Hey, I have a meat grinder now.

Soufflé. Chocolate. Cheese? Something.

Yogurt. Without a yogurt maker.

I will figure out more places where I might like... broccoli. And... is that really the only food I hate?

Finally, I will make a concerted effort to shop more locally for produce, dairy and meat.

Am I the only one making food resolutions this year?

Banana My Bread

It was National Banana Bread Day sometime this weekend. Saturday? I don't remember. I can't say that I crave banana bread like some people, but there were some renegade bananas that we bought last week that went straight from green to brown, and they had to be taught a lesson. Onward!

Now, as some of you may know, I haven officially given up refined sugar until, say, March 23 (a.k.a. Easter). So, I set off on Sunday to make a banana bread that was without refined sugar, and somewhat healthy AND TASTY. Crazy you say? I think I succeeded, so there. I adapted my recipe from this one from Simply Recipes and made them into muffin form. Half were in muffin papers and half weren't, and I think the ones without the paper were a little better; they got a nice crust around the edge and didn't have any annoying paper sticking to them.

Friggin' Healthy Banana Bread
4 ripe bananas
1/2 cup honey
2 tablespoons oil
1/4 cup plain yogurt
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 egg
1 teaspoon baking soda
pinch salt
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon flaxseed (for that kick - optional)

Preheat the oven to 350º

Mash the bananas, honey, oil and yogurt together.

Add the vanilla and egg and stir with a wooden spoon.

Sprinkle the baking soda and salt across the dough, and then stir in the flours just until mixed.

Add that optional flaxseed, dontcha know.

Bake in a greased loaf pan or greased muffin tins for about 1 hour or 35 minutes, respectively, or until a toothpick comes out clean.

"What's for Dinner?"

This is a delayed response to Penney's question of "How do you decide what to eat?"

Living with Brian, the first question to answer in our household is "Who will cook?" (We do not cook well together - too alpha). After our first few months of living together, Brian and I realized that deciding the answer to that question the night of dinner would probably mean that we were
(a) eating cereal for dinner,
(b) going out to eat, or
(c) not getting dinner until 10 or so.

So, I started "assigning" mealtimes for the week on Sundays, based on how busy we each are and what else is going on. For example, last week, Brian made dinner Monday and Wednesday, and I made dinner Tuesday and Friday, while Thursday we went to a friend's house for dinner. Since Brian will be pretty busy with a paper this week, I'll be cooking some days, and we'll probably go out to eat and eat leftovers as well. We've talked about planning meals on Sundays, but neither of us feels inspired enough to do that, so we each plan our meals separately.

Ok, then what? In my parents house, there weren't many "new" things for dinner - there was more a rotation of meals that my mom pulled from. And can you blame her? With kids, job, dog, husband, who wants to think of new things to cook, especially if you don't know how they'll turn out? Here, we're still building the rotation - that is, thing we're willing to cook over and over and have. In fact, the only things I can think of that's in our rotation are beef stroganoff (for wintertime) and turkey meatballs (in summertime).

For ideas of what to cook: We get two cooking magazines right now - Fine Cooking and Bon Appetit. Fine Cooking is a little more approachable and has more recipes, while Bon Appetit focuses on food in general, and has fewer recipes, though I have gotten some killer ideas from it (nom, Cinnamon Rolls. I subscribe to a number of food blogs - I will usually add one I come across and follow it for a few weeks and then unsubscribe if I don't feel inspired by the recipes or the writer. These are the ones that have had staying power:

• Simply Recipes: This is the first food blog I started reading regularly, and I really enjoy it her style of writing and variety of recipes - most are pretty approachable, but she's not afraid of trying new things.
  
• Chocolate & Zucchini: I love this site - it's written by a French woman who lived in California for many years, and her recipes are always inspiring. When summer comes, check out her Zucchini Chocolate Cake, which is the best chocolate cake, hands down, that I've ever had.
  
• Lunch in a Box: This is less a recipe site and more lunch/bento site. I've gotten some good ideas of things to take for lunch, since sandwiches bore me and there's nothing good to eat around my office.
  
• Epicurious: I get a daily recipe on my feed reader from Epicurious - they span a whole range of food-making abilities and genres, so it can be a good source of inspiration.
  
• Bitten: This is Mark Bittman's blog on the NY Times. Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything was the first real cookbook I owned, and I enjoy his minimalist style of cooking.
  
• Slashfood: This more just a deluge of foodie-related information, but I occasionally find inspiration (for example, yesterday was National Banana Bread Day. So I made Banana Bread. How cliche.)
  
• And of course, all my friend's food blogs! Make Things Tasty, Ellie May, Recipes from the Peapod, Penney's Palate, Traditional Cake, But I Suck At Cooking (oh, the inspiration).

Since I've started working full time, I'm especially on the look out for recipes that are quick to make after I get home from work, or will allow me to do most of the prep work the morning or night before. For example, crock pot recipes can be prepared the morning of, and lasagne can be assembled the night before, to be merely popped into the oven. On the weekends, I'm more willing to do something more time-consuming. I usually don't scale what I'm making to two people, because I like leftovers for lunch (goal: make my lunch as cool as possible). And I'm always on the look out for something that will be healthy or vegetarian but still taste good. If I know what I basically want to make, I use epicurious's search feature, and occasionally Allrecipes, though they can be more inconsistent since they are user-submitted.

And then we eat dinner. And then someone needs to take care of dishes. Brian and I had been going under the "If you didn't make dinner, you have to do dishes" game plan, but since Brian creates tons of dishes, and I create many fewer, this isn't totally fair. We're trying out flipping-a-coin during dinner to see who does dishes, which could be a mildly interesting decision-analysis case study. Only mildly interesting.

Ok, now: Food/Recipe blogs you love?