What to Do With Those Preserved Lemons

I was recently speaking to a fellow food blogger about preserved lemons. Not usually a topic of conversation with friends, but it seemed perfectly normal with a foodie friend. We discovered that we had both made 2 quarts over the winter and neither of us had used them yet. Preserved lemons are a specialty item that most of you will never desire and never miss, but if you ever have a good one quietly mixed into a dish, you'll notice a more concentrated essence of lemony flavor than even fresh zest can provide.

I had also preserved two quarts last year, but had to throw them out after we had an extended power outage. Although the lemons are preserved in a ton of salt, the recipe I used specified to keep them refrigerated, and I just wasn't sure they were still OK after a being unrefrigerated for so long in the summer heat. This year, I vowed not to waste these golden orbs a second time. Like last year, I used Meyer lemons from California, which are a little sweeter than the usual lemon we get around here. They are actually a hybrid between a lemon and an orange or tangerine.

I hadn't had home preserved lemons before, just packaged ones from the specialty store, so I wasn't completely sure how they would taste. Some of the jarred ones I'd had before were rather bitter and not particularly appealing.

I am happy to report that mine are delicious and I can now imagine a myriad of uses for them.

The first taste test occured when I made this recipe using a really fresh piece of wild Alaskan halibut that I lucked in to at Costco, of all places. I adapted what Goin calls the "salsa," really more of a vinaigrette, and got creative with the leftover vinaigrette the next day. I had a couple of cups of cannellini beans I'd cooked from dried a few days earlier, and some beautiful French green beans or haricots verts from the farm market. I also added some yellow grape tomatoes and some thinly sliced, red cippolini onion. I didn't add any other herbs as I wanted to be able to really taste the lemon vinaigrette.

So while I realize that many of you will never make this recipe, I'm posting it for those of you still hoarding quarts of preserved lemons in your fridge. I'm talking to you, Kim! Even if beans are not your thing, if you've got the lemons, try this on fish, pork, beef, chicken, or even vegetables such as spinach and peas.


Bean Salad in Preserved Lemon Vinaigrette

vinaigrette adapted from Suzanne Goin

(serves 4)

For the vinaigrette:

1 Tablespoon finely chopped shallot
1 Tablespoon red wine vinegar
1 preserved lemon, lightly rinsed and flesh discarded, rind thinly sliced
1/2 teaspoon agave nectar
1/3 cup olive oil
freshly ground pepper

For the salad:
2 cups cannellini beans, either cooked from dried or from one can of no sodium added beans
1 dry pint French green beans (haricots verts), stem ends trimmed and cut in two
a handful or two of yellow or red cherry or grape tomatoes, halved lengthwise
3 Tablespoons thinly sliced red onion

1. To prepare the vinaigrette, place the shallot and vinegar in a bowl and let sit for about 5 minutes. Whisk in the agave nectar, and then the oil. Add in the preserved lemon rind and a couple of grinds of pepper. Set aside

2. Combine the two kinds of beans, the tomatoes and onions in a serving bowl. Spoon about half the dressing over top and mix gently to combine. Add more Tablespoon by Tablespoon until you achieve a balance you like. You might not use it all and can save the rest in a tightly sealed container in the refrigerator for a couple of days.

Time Well Spent

Sometimes you do things you don't expect to find yourself doing, and which virtually nothing in your life suggests you'll either be good at or even enjoy, just to spend time with your teenager. I'm not talking about skydiving here, just making a cooking video, but still.

Making the video was my son, Ted's, idea. He is a musician (and college student), who not only writes his own music, but performs it, records it, mixes many tracks of himself playing multiple instruments, films video, and puts the finished products up on his You Tube channel. Working with a bare bones set-up in our house, and sometimes with a band he put together this summer, he has created a body of steadily improving works. While he is a great guitarist, singing is only a relative strength (think Bob Dylan or Neil Young) of his. Yet, he continues to record, finding songs that he can cover in his range and writing others that play to his strengths. He's always improving and just doesn't let his singing hold him back.

His idea was to film me cooking and put it up on You Tube and then here, on my blog. He suggested that this would be a good tie-in with my recipes and blog and make me more marketable. Since I'm a little camera shy, I was hesitant about a video. I worried that I'd be nervous, speak too fast and look completely ridiculous. I finally went ahead with the idea not because I think my future is in tv cooking, but because it was a great opportunity to work on a creative project with my son as his peer, rather than as his parent.

Our first attempt was not quite a polished Food Network product, but not completely horrible either. My eyes darted frantically from side to side as I improvised the opening lines and then there was the nervous shoulder-shake and hair flip, which we have, thankfully, removed. On Ted's end, he found that filming a subject not anchored in front of a mike was somewhat more challenging than filming himself sitting on a stool in front of a strategically placed camera tripod. We've decided to make another video together before he goes back to school, to work out some of the kinks in the first, sort of practice video.

So, while he works on camera angles, moving with me, close-ups that don't make me look ten years older and ten pounds fatter, and smooth transitions, I'll be learning to keeping my eyes steady and not smack the cutting board with a knife while I'm talking, and not to care that I look my age and not 25. Most importantly, I'll be appreciating what I can learn something from my amazing, creative son.

So, here is the result of our collaboration. I hope you'll take it for what it is and know that we spent some quality time together filming it.

You can find the recipe on which I based this summery pasta with fresh tomatoes here. Just add the kernels of two ears of corn if you like.

Also, since the margins on blogspot seem to cut off the right side of the video, just double click on the video to watch it in full screen.

Don't Fear the Sardine

I am here to tell you that you, too can eat these little fish so rich in Omega-3s! I have long known that sardines are wildly good for you and are neither high in mercury nor over fished, to boot. I've even eaten them in restaurants, in Spain and here in DC, at a Portuguese restaurant. Nonetheless, those little tins that I bought with the best of intentions have been lurking in the pantry simultaneously scaring the hell out of me and chastising me as I reach in for a can of tuna.

No more! Even after a recent winning recipe on Food52 featured a recipe for sardines and fennel with tomato, I was still skeptical about how such a recipe would be received by my family. Then I sampled a pasta with sardines in a tomato sauce at our local organic market, offered to entice shoppers to purchase Wild Planet sardines in olive oil for $2 and change per tin. One quick taste made me realize that this was much milder than I ever imagined. I bought two tins to add to my collection and grabbed a copy of the recipe the store was offering. I left the store unsure if or when I'd use them and wondered if those cans would turn in additional pantry hobgoblins.

Well, opportunity knocked that very night. The timing for driving Maddy home from a party, and our desire to watch our Netflix movie instead of letting it sit around for the usual month or two led us to decide that we should eat in. Pantry dinner to the rescue! I quickly came up with a recipe building on those Fortuna (please, please, let someone get this reference) had bestowed on me, but staying true to neither. Both Paul and I liked this one, really. It wasn't as fishy or as salty as he feared.

This is a sort of quickie version of a popular Sicilian dish. This time, due to the last minute nature of my decision to make this, the only fresh ingredients I added were some lemon, garlic and a little parsley for color. A glass of wine, some salad and this pasta was a perfect last minute dinner.

Sicilian Style Pasta con Sarde (serves 4 - 6)

1 pound fusilli or casarecce pasta (whole wheat would work well here)
2 tins sardines in olive oil (I actually used one oil packed and one tin of water packed which worked well and reduced the oil)
1 -2 tablespoons olive oil
3 - 4 fat cloves garlic, roughly chopped
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon dried basil
1/4 teaspoon Aleppo pepper
2 cups no salt added, strained tomatoes (I use Pomi or bionaturae)
2 tablespoons sun dried tomatoes, diced ( I had some slow roasted cherry tomatoes I'd made for another dish which I used instead - if you'd like to make some, halve the cherry tomatoes and place on a baking sheet. Sprinkle a pinch of salt and pepper over all of the them and throw a couple of springs of fresh thyme over top. Roast at 225 degrees for about three hours. You want them somewhat dry but not completely desiccated)
juice of 1/2 medium to large lemon
salt, to taste
3 tablespoons breadcrumbs (I use whole wheat, usually homemade which I keep stored in a Ziploc in the freezer)
2 -3 tablespoons fresh parsley, chopped

1. Put up water for the pasta and when boiling, prepare pasta according to package directions. When you drain the pasta, reserve about 1/2 cup to use in the sauce.
2. While pasta cooks, heat a high sided saute pan or Dutch oven large enough to hold all the ingredients, over medium heat. Add a tablespoon or two of the oil from one of the tins as well as 1 - 2 tablespoons olive oil. Add the garlic and let it soften but not brown.
3. Once the garlic has softened, about a minute or two, add the rest of the oil and sardines from first tin to pan. Drain the second tin and add that those sardines as well. Break up the sardines a bit.
4. Add the tomato paste and mix it in. Add the oregano, basil and Aleppo pepper as well, and let the mixture cook for another minute or two.
5. Add in the strained tomatoes, sun dried tomatoes and lemon juice and let mixture simmer for about 10 - 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Taste sauce for salt and add a couple of pinches, if needed.
6. In a small skillet, toast breadcrumbs in 1 tablespoon olive oil until lightly browned. mixing often. Set aside.
7. When pasta is cooked and drained (and you've reserved 1/2 cup of cooking water), add pasta to pan with sauce. Mix so that all the pasta is well coated. If it seems dry, add some of the cooking water, a little at a time until you like the consistency.
8. Off the heat, mix in the bread crumbs and parsley and serve with parmesan cheese.

Vegetarian Week

The house is empty, suddenly, as Ted has gone back to college and Paul is in New York all week. It's just Maddy and me this week, so we're indulging in dinners designed more for the two of us. It's vegetarian week around here, a great opportunity to make Maddy happy and to experiment with some new recipes and some lighter dinners.

First off, I have to thank Maddy for the photo above. I'm still hobbling along with my old point and shoot although I did go in halvsies with Maddy on a Nikon dSLR that I have yet to use. Maybe experimenting with that camera should be my New Year's resolution. She took this photo on my old camera after I unsuccessfully attempted a few shots myself in the darkness that accompanies a winter dinner. My camera (and I) seem only to do well with lots of natural light.

I started out with a bang on Monday night, in part to cheer us up after everyone departed. I created a version of pasta alla Norma, or, generally, pasta with roasted eggplant, tomatoes and ricotta cheese. This turned out to be the richest meal we had all week. The recipe for this is below. I had a frozen bag of slow oven roasted tomatoes I'd made in October with the last of the local plum tomatoes so I used those instead of canned tomatoes this time.

Tuesday night we had a dinner I don't think I've had since I was married. Baked potato stuffed with sauteed (very) garlicky spinach, mushroom and onions and about a tablespoon of leftover ricotta cheese and a sprinkle of parmigiano. With all the controversy over white carbs, I sometimes forget about potatoes, but this is a delicious and very light vegetarian dinner that is simple to prepare.

Last night we enjoyed last week's winning recipe from food52, Rivka's Mujaddara, which is a blend of lentils, rice and caramelized onions. Rivka also provides the recipe for an accompanying spiced yogurt. It was terrific last night, and I expect it will be even better for lunch today!

Tonight we will be enjoying this soba which I blogged about last year for Gourmet, Unbound, topped with vegetables and perhaps, a small piece of salmon for me. If you check my notes in that blog post, you'll see what I altered in that recipe.

Oh, and before you start cooking, I just wanted to alert you to something I read in Cooking Light this month. For those of us buying chicken directly from farmers, it's not so much of an issue, but if you buy your chicken in a grocery store, be aware that some chicken, particularly boneless breasts, are injected with a saline solution to plump them. This can add an enormous amount of sodium to a 4 ounce serving. According to Cooking Light, chicken altered in this way can still be labeled "natural" under current USDA labeling policies. Not only does this process add hidden sodium, you are paying for more chicken than you're getting. The injected water will cook out of the chicken leaving you a smaller yield than unenhanced chicken.

Processors must disclose the injections, but they sometimes hide the disclosure with small lettering and inconspicuous location. Look for language like "contains up to 15% chicken broth" in fine print. Also, check the Nutrition Facts label - natural chicken should have only about 70 mg. of sodium which occurs naturally in many foods. "Enhanced" chicken might have 440 mg. in a 4 ounce serving.

While that might not seem like a lot of sodium, it is a completely unnecessary one-fifth (and almost one-third of the amount the American Heart Association and the Center for Science in the Public Interest are urging the USDA to adopt as the new daily amount - a decrease from 2300 mg. per day to 1500) of the daily recommended amount before the chicken has even been put into a recipe that might contain salt. Buy it or don't, but at least be aware it's there.

Penne with Roasted Eggplant, Tomatoes and Ricotta Cheese

(serves 3 - 4)

1 eggplant, diced into about 1/2 inch pieces
3 - 4 tablespoons olive oil
3 fat cloves garlic, peeled and cut into pieces about the size of the eggplant chunks
1 small to medium onion, peeled and diced
1/2 teaspoon Aleppo pepper or 1/4 teaspoon cayenne
14 ounce can of no sodium added San Marzano tomatoes (or about a cup to a cup and a half of slow roasted - not sun dried! - tomatoes if you have them)
8 ounces (half package) penne rigate - I used Garofalo whole wheat penne and it was fine in this dish
1/2 cup torn basil leaves
1 cup fresh ricotta cheese
salt and pepper to taste
Parmigiano Reggiano cheese, shredded or grated to sprinkle on top
.

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

2. Put up a pot of water to boil for the pasta.

3. Drizzle about 1 tablespoon of the olive oil onto a half sheet pan or low sided roasting pan and spread around. Add the eggplant pieces and another tablespoon or two of olive oil and toss well. Roast in oven for about 15 - 20 minutes, stirring a couple of times, until soft and slightly caramelized but not crispy.

4. In a saute pan over medium heat, sweat the onions in 1 tablespoon olive oil. Sprinkle a pinch or two of salt and some black pepper over top. Once the onions are translucent, add the garlic and Aleppo pepper or cayenne. After about two minutes, add the tomatoes, breaking them up with your hands or a spoon. Let the tomatoes simmer with the onion and garlic for about five minutes. You can throw in a pinch or two of thyme leaves if you have some. If you're using slow roasted tomatoes, put them into the pan with the olive oil they are in, but don't let them simmer, just move on to the next step.

5. Once the water boils, prepare pasta according to package directions. When the penne is cooked and drained, place it into a large bowl.

6. Add the tomato sauce, roasted eggplant and the basil to the pasta, reserving a pinch of basil for garnish if you like. Add the ricotta cheese. Mix well.

7. Taste for salt and pepper and add more if needed. Garnish with a bit of basil and Parmigiano Reggiano.

Not Terribly New, But So What?

There is a time and place for everything and the time for this pasta is now!

Actually, it's good for another couple of months unless this drought completely wipes out all tomato plants in the mid-Atlantic. This is not even a recipe but a very forgiving method. Only caveat is that you like tomatoes. I know this knocks a few readers out here, but for anyone who even tolerates tomatoes this is the perfect, quick, hot weather meal.

I made this last week when I realized both that I had half of an extra large ball of mozzarella cheese and several beautiful tomatoes left over from a Caprese salad earlier in the week and that we'd be gone for the weekend. Not wanting to waste either component, this was our dinner the night before we left town.

The ingredient list is short: tomatoes, olive oil, salt and pepper, pasta or another grain, basil and mozzarella cheese. What makes this dish sing the Star Spangled Banner is the quality of the ingredients. Here is where you use those garden tomatoes you get to pick from your neighbors garden while they're on vacation and you're watering their plants, or if you don't have your own garden or a generous neighbor, buy them from a farmstand. You really want the flavor of field grown and ripened tomatoes here. Grocery store tomatoes just don't ripen to the same flavor. That said, type of tomato is completely flexible. You can use regular old beefsteak tomatoes, heirloom tomatoes, yellow or green zebra tomatoes, grape or cherry tomatoes of different colors, or mix of any of these. In the photo below, you can see (I hope) that I've used red and yellow tomatoes cut into chunks, as well as some really beautiful dark red grape tomatoes with a pale yellow striation. I probably used three large tomatoes and then about half a pint of the grape tomatoes. I really like using a mix of colors.


Once you've cut the tomatoes into basically same sized pieces - I cut the large tomatoes into bite-sized chunks first and then halved and sometimes quartered the grape tomatoes to match - put them into a bowl and pour about three tablespoons of great olive oil over top. This is the time to pull out the good stuff. Sprinkle with a little kosher or sea salt and a couple of grinds of black pepper. Give it a quick mix and let it sit for 15 or 20 minutes. Meantime, put up some water for the pasta or farro or even quinoa. If you choose to use one of these other grains, I recommend cutting the tomatoes into a smaller dice so the large chunks don't overwhelm the smaller grains. You can even use the tomatoes done this way as a bruschetta topping.

Once the tomatoes have had some time to marinate or macerate, actually, they should produce a good bit of liquid for a sauce. Add the pasta or other grain when ready and mix well. If it seems a little dry, just add a touch more olive oil. Chiffonade (cut into thin slivers) or gently tear some fresh basil leaves, maybe ten or so large leaves, over top and mix. At this point, I like to let the pasta sit for a few minutes to cool slightly before adding the mozzarella cheese. I prefer the cheese to remain in chunks rather than getting melty and stringy. Here too, use some good, fresh mozzarella in a large ball, and cut it into small chunks. If short on time, you can also buy the little tiny balls of fresh mozzarella and you don't have to cut them. Mix and taste for salt and you're ready to eat!