What to Do with Herbs vol 2

Fish Veracruz Style

Taste & See: Like the most recent post, here's another simple dish full of complex, rich flavors you can make almost entirely with stuff in the pantry, plus a jolt of fresh herbs.

What do you have in your pantry?

You have pungent, flavorful, long-lasting things. Things that you can add in small doses to de-borify basic staples. Things that keep for ages. (To be fair, some of the below should be refrigerated.) Things that don't cost much, at least not for the work they do. Things like:

• A good array of spices, dried herbs & dried chilies. What is a good array? It depends on what you like to cook, duh. But it's also not a bad idea to just buy something and learn how to use it. I never used Aleppo Pepper until this awesome cookbook inspired me to shell out a few bucks for something I've since come to love and sprinkle on EVERYTHING.
• Olives, capers, anchovies, preserved lemon : Last forever, a little goes a long way.
• Canned tomato, tomato paste, sundried tomato: Do you see a theme?
• Roasted red peppers: The miracle jar that makes you feel like you actually do eat more than just carbs and cheese.
• Garlic, ginger, onions: Great in everything. Just keep on hand. Being without garlic when you need some is like having to read a whole lecture on your pantry before getting to the recipe .  .  . uh, er . . .

I could continue but hopefully these suggestions give you an idea. 

What's the point?

Let me spell it out: pantry + fresh herbs = blah weeknight evening when you're tired and hungry but don't have much on hand, you can still eat a decent dinner without ordering in or working hard. 

This is pretty much why this site exists, but I feel a mild need to remind you since I'm just now coming back from a hiatus, lest you're here looking for something super fancy. This blog is about faking fancy. Are we on the same page?

Alright, lecture over. On to the recipe.

Baseline Recipe: Red Snapper, Veracruz Style, from Epicurious / Bon Appetit.

This is an adaptation. I'll just tell you what I did - I didn't have everything on hand & didn't feel like measuring precisely.

I wasn't expecting much - I just needed to use up the fish. But even though it took just minutes to throw together and didn't use anything fancy, this dish was so flavorful and satisfying. I actually wished I had company so I could show it off. And PS, the sauce would be fantastic even without the fish.

What You Need:
Jar of home preserved tomatoes. (Oh, you don't preserve your own tomatoes? Kidding! Just keep some cans of diced tomatoes on hand, like I said!)
Olive oil
Small onion (+ half a leftover shallot I needed to use up) 
Garlic
Bay leaf
A few tablespoons chopped fresh oregano and parsley
Raisins
Capers 
Fillet of porgy (a fish similar to Red Snapper available at a budget price at my farmers' market)

What to Do: Preheat oven to 425. Chop garlic, onion & shallot in food processor; saute briefly in olive oil. Meanwhile, put a colander over a bowl and dump in tomatoes. Press down with a potato masher or spoon, reserving the drained liquid. Add (what is now) tomato puree to onion mixture, allowing to thicken (about 1 minute). Add bay leaf, chopped herbs, handful of raisins, spoonful of capers, and tomato sauce. Simmer until it thickens.

Put about a half cup sauce in a shallow baking dish (I used a pie pan), add fish fillet, and top with remaining sauce. Bake about 15 minutes or until fish is just opaque in center. Garnish with more chopped parsley. Serve over rice.

What to Do with Herbs vol 1

Single Serving Pasta with Mussels

Taste & See:  If you're anything like me you are (a) often cooking for 1 (b) often looking for half-decent meals you can make with what you already have on hand and (c) stoked about your herb garden but often unsure what to do with your beautiful greenery.

But even if all of the above don't apply, you probably appreciate easy recipes that taste like you cooked without requiring much planning. Potted herbs are great for that - they give a nice fresh zing to whatever you pull out of the pantry, and you can just snip whatever you need as you go, without worrying about using up a whole bunch of herbs. Moral of the story: grow herbs.

Here's a simple dish in that vein. You can make this in about 15 minutes for one or more people. 

What you need: 
Herbs of various kinds
Dried pasta
Salt
Garlic
Steamed mussels: garlic, ginger, dried pepper, white wine
 
Note: Mussels are ridiculously cheap and easy to cook. At my bougie Brooklyn farmers' market, they're $3/lb, and a half pound feeds me for at least 2 meals. Everything else falls in the "keep on hand" category.
 
To cook mussels: Add a splash of white wine + about a tablespoon of roughly chopped garlic, 1 dried pepper broken in half, 2 chopped cloves of garlic and a half pound of mussels to a big pot. (Any of these ingredients can be omitted if you don't have it.) Cover and turn on medium heat for about 10 minutes, or until mussels open. Keeps a few days.
 
To make pasta:  Make pasta according to directions on the box. I like this with angel hair. While pasta cooks, take about 20 mussels per person out of the shells and, if cold, briefly reheat (~20 seconds in microwave). For each serving, chop about 3 tablespoons worth of assorted herbs -- I like oregano, thyme, and parsley -- and a clove or two of garlic. Mix herbs and mussels into pasta and sprinkle with salt.

The Bounty of My Garden

From seed to plant: pure magic

Taste & See:  This is the bounty of my garden!

Some of it anyway. I have officially planted kale from seed and grown enough for Hana & me to eat a meal's worth. Well, a meal if you add the pesto I made from my Italian basil plants, fat with drooping leaves; the roasted CSA tomatoes with garden rosemary and fistfuls of holy basil from plants so full it doesn't look like I've trimmed a thing; slices of baguette and glasses of Alexandria Nicole's Shepherds' Mark.


I don't know why my basil is so beautiful when my thyme and oregano, sharing a pot, dried out completely. And I'm tempted to be frustrated that of all those seeds I so carefully patted into trim rows of earth around Easter, only the kale took root, and even that has only grown enough to fill this small bowl.

But I'm delighted. I grew something from seed! This kale used to be a little brown ball in my hand, barely big enough to see. Now I'm eating it for dinner.


Isn't that a miracle?

***

Note - this is a repost of a post on a new project where I post a little of this and that, whatever inspires me. Which is a spin-off of a less new project where I post stories about interacting with and observing people in the city. You're welcome to take a peek at & amuse yourself with both. In fact, I hope you amuse your heart out.


I hope to post consistently here again soon, but in the mean time, thanks for being patient as I come and go in between other work. 

Dogmatic Evangelist

They're dogmatic about good food.

Taste & See: I'm sort of on indefinite hiatus while I work on a few intense writing projects elsewhere (sorry) but wanted to give you all an FYI: one of my fave cheap eats, former street food cart Dogmatic, has redesigned their menu yet again and is now offering, in addition to the sausages, sides, salads, and homemade sodas ...

Energy shakes & SLIDERS! Yes, Dogmatic has entered the game. And not only are the sliders paired with the same delightful sauce already used on the sausages (truffle gourmet, swoon), they have a BISON BURGER. Swoon again. As if I needed another reason to visit.

Dogmatic is on the NW corner of Union Square, just to the left, on your left. Enjoy!

Day in the Life of a Faux Gourmet

See how this Faux Gourmet keeps it real

Taste & See:  You know how some times your fridge is just kind of sad?  Not empty, per se, but the ingredients in it don't naturally lend themselves to concoting a meal?  Mine has things like: caramel sauce, fudge sauce, pickled radishes, chutney, soy milk, chicken broth, sourdough starter, corn tortillas, curry paste, and about 30 kinds of sauces in various jars and bottles. Yu-ummmmy. Um, OK.  

Never fear.  There's no need to skip breakfast, go out for lunch & order take-out for dinner (you know who you are...).  Not when you're a faux gourmet.  A Faux Gourmet, mon cherie, beholds an empty fridge and sees an opportunity.  I mean, how else do you think I came upon my classic, much beloved "Tortilla PBJ Crepes?" [On a similar note, see here:]  Yeah. That's what I thought.

Breakfast:  No photo, but it was a sight to behold.  First, the starting ingredients:  

• Old ketchup from Pomme de Terre that I kept after throwing away the leftover fries because it was Just That Good. 
• End of a loaf of bread from a party almost 2 weeks ago. Yeah. I kept it. I've been dutifully eating as much bread as I can to slog through my overactive bread supply but there you have it; I can only eat so much toast. 
• Beautiful Feather Ridge Farm eggs, purchased at Northern Spy Food Co. (the restaurant has a little market in back). 
• Leftover cheeses from said party. 
• Leftover guacamole, from a different party.  I host lots of gatherings, which leaves me with lots of random foods.   It's what I do.
  

Nothing to eat? No sir. In fact, this Faux Gourmet made a ... Mexican-American Eggs Benedict. Or something like that.  Start an egg a-poaching.  Toast slice of bread, spread ketchup & add cheese, toast some more.  Top with egg.  Top that with a dollop of guacamole. Voila!  It helps that the egg is a beautiful, beautiful egg.  The uber-yellow runny yolk over the guacamole is kind of heavenly, you heard it here first.

Lunch: 99 cent Paneer Makhani, procured from Jackson Heights grocery store.  I've had this box in my desk drawer at work for a while, waiting for "one of those days."  It's one of those days.  

I've had this box in my desk drawer at work for a while, waiting for "one of those days."  It's one of those days.  But want to know what 99 cents bought me?

"The simple splendor of Indian cottage cheese in a creamy tomato sauce romanced with a light bouquet herb, kasuri methi, works wonders.  Relish with Tandoori naan bread."

Romanced with??? How do they afford to sell for 99 cents when they pay writers like that? I present for your romancing pleasure, my 99 cent  Paneer Makhani.

Pretty good deal! Really tasty and flavorful, exactly as you'd expect with all that romancing going on.  Paneer texture a bit rubbery but it did come in a box.  Also not the most filling of lunches (there are about 5 paneer cubes & I didn't have the foresight to bring rice), but that's OK; I have leftover eggplant bruschetta from a recent picnic...

Dinner:  "Crashing" reception at a law school reunion reception.  Not really crashing, since I'm invited, but let's be honest:  I'm going for the free cheap wine & canapes before dashing off for more free wine at an art school show.  Here I'm actually going for the show; the free wine is just a side benefit.  Win-win!