Last week fall was in the air and Boston, along with most of the East Coast, was drizzly and chilly. With a number of fresh corn cobs on my hands, I turned to corn chowder to bridge the late summer veggies and the early fall chill. This recipe is also one of my own creations. There are a million chowder recipes out there, so it’s not crazy original, but it’s so easy to fall back on heavy cream and bacon and let them do the heavy lifting. Here, I wanted the vegetables to bring most of the flavor. I got the idea to add garlic from one of my favorite recipes off Smitten Kitchen’s website.
Monthly Archives: September 2011
Roasted Garlic and Corn Chowder
Filed under Healthy, Vegetarian
Zucchini Cornbread Muffins
These originally started as corn fritters and kind of morphed from there. I made these for picnic of dietetic students this last weekend. I was assigned to make an appetizer for the potluck and was intrigued by the idea of a corn fritter and hush puppies recipe I saw in an old cookbook. They obviously wouldn’t work for this exact occasion (they need to be hot, and I wasn’t really cooking for a fried food audience), but they got me thinking about flavors and ingredients. Continue reading
Goat Cheese, Tomato, and Basil Panini
This was a before-book club dinner that David and I had last week. We’re usually late eaters (like 9 or 10-o’clock at night), so getting out the door for a 7:30 book club meant very little time for prep, and even less time for cooking. It was a Tuesday, so the farmer’s market at Copley Square was open, and I stopped by after my last class. I picked up some cute small tomatoes and a 4-oz. container of goat cheese. The basil came from the plant I have growing in a pot on the window sill. This was quick & easy and fit the bill perfectly. Even when I have to eat or cook in a short amount of time, having a hot meal still makes it feel like a nice dinner. Continue reading
Filed under Quick & Easy
Caramelized Onion and Tomato Tart
On to the second week of school, and I had to give an in-class presentation worth 25% of my total grade. Oof. And then head to Joslin for a few hours of data analysis. And then head home and make… a tart dough. Uff da. But I’m the kind of person who volunteers to go first for these kind of projects (now I don’t have to worry about it again).
And the crust was a press-in.
Filed under Healthy, Vegetarian
Penne with Peppers and Anchovies
As delicious as the swordfish was, it’s expensive and it doesn’t usually find its way into my cooking repertoire. My usual seafood picks are salmon and shrimp. While those are great choices (and there will be plenty of posts with recipes), I was also curious to branch out and try something new. There’s been a lot of buzz recently in some dietitian circles about the high cost of eating well, in particular, eating seafood. Anchovies are usually touted as a good choice to fit the bill. I made my first foray into the world of these hairy little things last week with the Nicoise salad, but what really motivated me to get going on this ingredient was a recipe I saw in Domencia Marchetti’s The Glorious Pasta of Italy cookbook.
I can’t remember the last time I bought a cookbook at full price – especially on a student’s budget and with Border’s going-out-of-business sale going on – but I picked this one up, sans discount or coupon, when I saw it at a boutique store in the neighborhood. Part of what attracted me to it was it’s accessible-looking penne and pepper dish in an anchovy sauce. Continue reading
Filed under Healthy, Pasta, Quick & Easy
Nicoise Salad
The new semester started this week, and this was the last dinner I cooked over my summer vacation. It was delicious, but was pretty involved. It really felt like I spent all day in the kitchen cooking in order to prep all the various ingredients and wait for the salad flavors to blend (it needs 4 hours of refrigeration before eating). I was excited to make it because I’m starting to experiment with anchovies, an ingredient I’ve never used before. Although all this work was worth it, I might stick to ordering this in restaurants next time. Continue reading
Figs and Goat Cheese Crostini with Port Reduction
One of things that is sometimes hard when you blog what you cook is the fact that you have to snap a few photos of the finished project before digging in. Sometimes this doesn’t happen, and the post gets lost altogether, which is what happened last weekend when it was dark and stormy in Boston and I made the Cook’s Illustrated version of Pad Thai. Today I made these goat cheese and roasted figs on baguette, drizzled with a port wine reduction. It was a light and quick lunch, and I really couldn’t spend the time getting the just-so photos because the food was hot, and it looked delicious, and it needed to be eaten. Continue reading
Filed under Quick & Easy
Swordfish with Corn & Pancetta
Leftover ingredients can sometimes take you to an unexpected dish. I already had pancetta on hand, and a bunch of chives were starting to go bad in the fridge. Based on this pairing, I searched the web for a recipe that would help me use up a lot the chives before they went to waste, and I found this dish. Despite trying to use up the food I already had in my fridge, I brought home nearly a pound of swordfish. 
The recipe is called oil-poached swordfish, which makes little sense to me. Poaching involves using a moderately low temperature “bath” to cook delicate meats like fish. The original recipe called for a lot of oil (4 cups!) – although the fish won’t absorb all that oil (over 7,000 calories), it will absorb some. I made a couple of changes to this recipe to simplify it, starting with searing and pan-frying the swordfish. Swordfish is a meaty fish, and it doesn’t need the delicate treatment of poaching. I’m also a fan of using (and washing) as few dishes as possible, so instead of making a chive oil suspension, I muddled the herbs in the oil for a chunkier dressing.
