Memorial Day, May 25, 2009

We had a Memorial Day cookout for some friends yesterday, one day early.  It was good timing, since the backyard looked pretty good.  The climbing rose and clematis got their act together and started blooming at the same time, which has not always been the case.  Some bearded iris also decided to open up, and the weeds had not really taken over yet.  Give them time, though.

I did a couple of chickens on the grill (the Sicilian Grill-Roasted Chicken from the July 2008 Bon Appetit, which is available at epicurious.com).  We briefly contemplated buying a gas grill, but we cheaped out and I think that I am glad that we did.  Charcoal is just way better.  The chickens came out moist and very flavorful, and the skin was absolutely delicious.  I threw both carcasses in a pot later that evening and made a quart of nice stock.  That will be a nice risotto, I think.

We also grilled some flank steaks and had them with a roasted bell pepper relish, and I made the potato salad with gremolata from the Martha Stewart Living Cookbook.  To round things out we had a lentil salad (in case of vegetarians) and I grilled some rapini.  We had ordered grilled rapini at Buck's Fishing and Camping a while back, so I decided to try it at home.  I blanched it first and then tossed it on the grill, which I think was a little too hot.  It just tasted a little too smoky for me.  Next time I think I'll try to wait until the fire has burned down a little more.

I was excited to find sugar snaps on the vine down at the vegetable patch.  I think that this will be the big week for them, which is pretty exciting.  We still haven't eaten that much out of the garden other than onions and radishes, but this week we will get some rapini and arugula also, and I should harvest the tatsoi.  Maybe I'll add that to a risotto and we can have a fusion Asian-Italian dinner.  I was also excited to find the pole beans starting to vine up the bean tower.  In about a month they will be pretty impressive.  Hopefully we will get beans before the arrival of the bean beetles!

O.K., time to go nose around the leftovers...

May 17, 2009

Well, the tandoori chicken was pretty good, even if it was not exactly what a person would find at a fine Indian restaurant. Without the clay oven it is probably not possible to achieve the ideal, but good enough sometimes is just that. The marinade was very simple: yogurt, lemon juice, coriander, turmeric, cumin, chili powder, salt and pepper. I took the skin off of all of the chicken except for the wings, which are my favorite piece. The salad featured grated carrots, homegrown radishes, homegrown baby Walla Walla onions, grape tomatoes, and homegrown lettuce, and I decided to add an avocado at the last minute. The dressing was just some lime juice that I added to everything but the lettuce for marinating purposes. With dinner we had a nice dry Riesling from Washington State. All in all, a very tasty Sunday night dinner.

And tomorrow we will be having a very special salad...

May 16, 2009

So I have been feeling like I am in a bit of a cooking rut, making the same old stuff every week.  That's not true, of course, but most of my food is Mediterranean influenced, French and Italian, with occasional forays into the Middle East.  I love to eat Asian food, but I do not feel like I have a good intuitive sense of how the spices and herbs work, so I tend not to cook that way.  Well, I have resolved to do something about that.  My goal is to do one Asian dinner a week.  Last week I made a basic Indian meal with dal, rice, an egg curry, and sauteed okra.  Tomorrow night we are going to have a tandoor chicken (already marinating) with rice and a radish and carrot salad.  We'll see how it works.  I have just ordered the book 660 Indian Curries, which will no doubt give me some ideas for the future.  Perhaps my goal of one dinner a week is insufficiently ambitious...

Things look pretty good in the garden.  The squash and cucumbers are all coming up, and I will pick some radishes and lettuce for the salad tomorrow.  Some of the greens (arugula, spinach) are growing very slowly.  I am wondering if the problem is the growing medium.  A friend gave us some horse manure last year that we spread on the beds, but there were a lot of wood shavings in there that have not really decayed.  I'm not sure if that makes the best growing medium.  I did fertilize with some Plant-tone, so I guess we will see if that does anything.  It just would be really nice to have a fresh arugula salad...

May 15, 2009

Springtime has come again to DC, and the garden is growing once more.  Things are a little late this year, due both to some cool weather and a late start because of a spring break trip to Hawaii.  (Now that would be a great place to garden!)  But the potatoes and onions are looking quite robust.  This year I am following some companion planting suggestions from the book "Great Garden Companions," by Sally Jean Cunningham.  She suggests planting green beans and potatoes together, along with some salvia and marigolds.  It is an attractive combination.  I just hope that the beens grow up enough to get some sun...

So far all we have eaten from the garden are some radishes and one green onion, but hopefully that will change soon.  Lettuce, arugula, and rapini are on the horizon.  The sugar snaps may be a little late this year, so hopefully the hot weather will hold off for a bit.

This past weekend I decided to have fun with a duck.  One of my pet peeves is how hard it is to find duck in the grocery store.  Whole Foods used to carry duck breasts and duck confit, but now they carry only whole ducks.  And I have never been able to find duck legs sold separately.  So, I decided to go ahead and buy a whole duck.  We had the breasts seared on Sunday night.  I pounded them out a bit and marinated them with some shallots, olive oil, and crushed peppercorns (black, white, green, and pink).  A quick pan saute and they were ready to go, along with a wild rice pilaf and a beet and watercress salad.  The next night I roasted the leg quarters, which I had rubbed with a mixture of cumin, a bit of coriander, pepper, cinnamon, and nutmeg (easy on the last two).  We had it with cous cous and roasted carrots.  And then I made some stock out of the miscellaneous carcass parts, along with other duck and chicken parts I had in the freezer.  I used a bit of the stock in a lentil-mushroom-and chard pasta, but I have frozen the rest.  It might be a good base for a really savory risotto.  Ultimately, I was pretty pleased with all of the mileage I got out of that duck.  Maybe I'll be inspired to make my own confit...