Easy Meals

Pearl couscous browned in olive oil, then simmered with preserved lemon, cayenne, water. Mixed with toasted pistachios, parsley, mint.

I impulsively picked up some grass-fed korean-style shortribs at Olivier’s Butchery, marinated them in a mix of shoyu, toasted sesame oil, red chiles, and crushed garlic for a few hours, then cooked them on a hot dry cast iron skillet (3 minutes each side) and tossed them on a bed of rice and toasted nori. Note a bad dinner for 20 minutes of actual work and $6.

A quick, satisfying dinner during minimal-starch month (and after a weekend of salt-depleting exercise). I’d shopped with Niçoise salad on the brain, but ended up making: salmon rubbed with salt, white pepper, and sesame seeds, broiled for 8 minutes skin-side-up, on a bed of butter-sauteed lettuce, celery, and black olives, topped with chopped up crispy salmon skin and a poached egg.

A quick salad-as-mostly-healthy-meal for visiting family: kale (salted raw, let sit, then rinsed), celeriac, smoked salmon, broccoli, lemon-garlic-olive oil dressing (using a smokier heirloom garlic with less bite raw), and grilled haloumi cheese. It worked. (Campari-soda with meyer lemon as apertif, and the still-amazing Dandelion Madagascar chocolate for dessert)

Quick dinner a week ago: A salad of arugula, watermelon radishes, endive, kumquats, a little olive oil. Tart / colorful. Spaghetti with homemade sauce (shallots and garlic sauteed in olive oil, oyster mushrooms cut coarse and cooked down, sliced zucchini, summer-canned Juliet tomatoes, fresh oregano, a little crushed red pepper and salt).

I have no photos (though maybe a fellow camper will dig one up). So I’ll just say: making grilled cheese over charcoal turns out well. Especially if you use three cheeses, good bread, heirloom tomatoes, and avocados, and brush the bread with huge amounts of melted butter and then grill until crisp.

Using nearly the same ingredients as Tuesday’s dinner, something simpler (about 20 minutes from start to finish, 2 pans) and still tasty: The sauce was a shallot and a huge pile of minced garlic (about half a head), sauteed in olive oil for maybe 5 minutes until golden brown, plus cherry tomatoes, a little chicken stock, olives, black pepper, and red pepper flakes, simmered for another 10+ minutes. The nearly-done bowtie pasta was then finished in the sauce for another 2 minutes. Plus parsley and haloumi. ...

What I ate for dinner: fresh mozzarella (not made by me), the first dry-farmed tomatoes I’d seen this season (sweet and intense), basil, olive oil, salt, pepper.

Hey, this was a more successful than usual “leftovers hash”, and only 20 minutes. (cue typical low-light cell phone photo:) Some good pancetta fried at low heat. A little water added to deglaze the pan and get the crusty bits off the bottom. A minced shallot sauteed in the fat. Then a few brussels sprouts I had (sliced thin), a coarsely chopped head of broccolini, and a few big pinches of white pepper, for variety. With the pan covered, fried/steamed on medium-low heat (stirring occasionally) for about 10 minutes. ...

Helping a friend work through his CSA on a cold and somewhat gloomy evening: Soup of sauteed onions/garlic/carrots, kidney beans (white and black, half mashed), chicken broth, sage, parsley, and roasted garlic precooked sausage, simmered together for 10-15 minutes. Then a full head of shredded escarole was added for another 5 minutes (covered). And hey, the rest of the soup actually managed to keep the escarole in check and mask the bitterness. ...

The CSA box this week was potatoes, onions, celery root, beets, sprouts, and kiwis, so continuing my CSA-inspired-dinner-with-one-or-more-friends Tuesdays: Shepherd’s Pie! Potatoes and celery root diced and boiled until soft, mashed with some butter, salt and white pepper and some cheese. Diced onions, garlic, and golden beets (since I had no carrots or celery) sauteed until soft, then ground lamb and some spices added to them, and a little red wine. The potatoes layered on top of the meat in the same cast iron skillet, topped with grated cheddar, and broiled in the oven a few minutes to brown the top. Pea shoots and broccoli on the side (with a sesame oil & sriracha sauce– nothing to do with the rest of the meal) I’ve always been a sucker for shepherd’s pie, and this was a very simple version, but it turned out especially well. The bits of diced beet were a nice touch. ...

Apparently I’ve been on a steak-cooking kick-- three times in three weeks? I shopped at Olivier’s Butchery for the first time today, and picked up a grass-fed filet mignon. Sure, not cheap per pound… but $9 for what ended up being one of the better steaks of my life isn’t bad compared to going out… Prep counter: steak covered in black pepper and a little salt on both sides, green beans, baby broccoli, sunflower sprouts (all from the CSA box), and shallots. ...

CSA Week Two, a recent trip to City Beer, and a friend visiting from Boston inspired another little dinner party: Deviled eggs (perhaps the best variant I’ve made: hard boiled eggs, the yolks mashed with quite a bit of olive oil (and no mayo!) and a little mustard, salt, and pepper, sprinkled with smoked paprika, and topped with crispy-fried capers, a crowning touch inspired by this printer & piemaker post). ...

I had dried fava beans, so for an afternoon snack made ful medames: soak the beans overnight, then boil them in a fresh set of water for about three hours until soft, adding enough water to keep them covered, they boiling it down and mashing them into a paste, with lemon juice, olive oil, fresh garlic, and a bit of salt. Like hummus, but earthier. Served with crumbled feta, fresh parsley, some sliced crabapples, and toasted pita bread. This was good– I’d make it again. ...

Continuing to work through my first CSA box (which was kale, three artichokes, an acorn squash, a butternut squash, romano beans, sunchokes, and good eggs):