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Olive, Lemon, and Herb-Stuffed Sole

5 Jul

Like most people, I find it frustratingly easy to get stuck in a cooking rut.  While I still find appealing the meals I tend to cart out on a regular basis, I do get a bit tired looking at the same presentations.  I could blame this on my child, and the fact that he is not blessed with the most adventurous of palates, but the truth is, my child’s pickiness is only partly to blame.  The rest of the blame lies with all the usual suspects: time (or lack thereof), forgetfulness (I was supposed to buy what at the store?), and, occasionally, laziness (we just spent two hours biking around the city and now I have to make dinner? Watch me as I head to the cupboard that contains all the take out menus).

In order to alleviate this rather common problem of constantly repeating dinners, I have decided that, instead of reverting to the usual meals several times a month, I will instead lay out all my usual dinner suspects, then attempt to mix and match them as I see fit.  Essentially, I can use many of the same ingredients, but I will have to use them in a different fashion, and in a way that deems the meal to be a distant relation of the original meal, but in no way the same animal.  Well, unless, of course, it really is the same animal, as in the case of this stuffed sole.

My inspiration dish is this wonderful and simple panko-crusted sole dinner that is a summer staple for us.  Though I like it a great deal, I have definitely been feeling as though I could stand to see this fish presented in a different way.  Taking cues from the panko and lemon I normally use in the dish, I grabbed an onion, some herbs, and an almost empty jar of Kalamata olives, and, with no real end point in mind, started to fiddle around.  The end result, so varied in texture and flavors, with great zing from the herbs and lemon and a wonderful burst of fruitiness and saltiness from the olives, was a delight.  Though I am sure that most of my meal reformations will not go as smoothly as this one, I can at least squeeze a bit of comfort out of knowing that my experiment is not one of total lunacy.  I managed to make at least one standard meal into something new and appealing, which, if nothing else, managed to feed not only us, but also my creative confidence.

Last Year: Rhubarb Bread Pudding

Olive, Lemon, and Herb-Stuffed Sole Recipe

1 ¼ to 1 ½ pounds thin sole filets

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 cup finely diced onion

1 cup panko breadcrumbs

¼ cup finely chopped Kalamata olives

¼ cup pine nuts, lightly toasted

1 teaspoon chopped fresh mint

2 tablespoons chopped Italian parsley

1 small lemon, zested and then sliced into thin rounds

salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.  Lightly oil a small baking dish and set aside.

In a medium skillet, heat olive oil over medium heat, then add onions, reduce heat to low, and sauté gently for about 10 minutes, until onions are soft and just starting to turn golden at the edges.  Turn off the heat under the pan, and stir in panko bread crumbs, olives, pine nuts, mint, Italian parsley, and lemon zest.  Stir to combine thoroughly, then add salt and pepper to taste.

Season sole filets with salt and pepper.  Place 1 to 2 tablespoons of panko mixture on one end of a filet, then carefully roll up the filet, encasing the mixture inside.  It is all right if some of the filling escapes, as it inevitably will.  Place the rolled filet in the prepared baking dish.  Continue filling all the filets in this manner, placing each one in the baking dish.  When all the filets have been filled and rolled, place a slice of lemon on top of each roll, then sprinkle the remaining panko mixture on top of and around the rolled filets.

Bake the fish in the center of the oven for 20 to 25 minutes, until the fish is opaque and the middles of each roll have warmed through.  The panko on top of the fish should just be starting to turn golden.

Serves 4.

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Spinach, Fennel, and Pear Salad with Brown Butter Hazelnuts

3 May

Do you ever wonder what makes the perfect salad?  Not really?  Just me?  I’ve thought long and hard about this—because that’s what I do, my friends, I think about salad—and I have to say that the elements that make a perfect salad, though constantly evolving, are almost always related to one magical element: texture.

Sure, flavor counts (obviously), but I think a salad’s texture will make or break it faster than the time it takes to swallow your first bite.  No matter how good a salad might taste, I find that, if the greens are soggy, the vegetables limp, or the various add-ons mushy or pasty, it takes a bit of effort to make each bite go down.  This is, of course, no scientific study I am undertaking here, but just a very personal observation.  And since I eat a lot of salad, I’d like to think that my established findings on the quality of salad-making hold at least a bit of weight.  Even if they don’t, I have good news for you.  I think I just made a salad with the most pleasing texture I have ever encountered.

Crisp spinach paired with crunchy-thin slices of fresh fennel provide a lovely base.  Perfectly ripe pears, so juicy and perfumed, counter the crispness of the spinach and fennel.  Toasted hazlenuts, flavored with a smidge of sea salt and brown butter to make their nuttiness even more forward, accent the crunch of the salad, but also pair perfectly with the pears.  A light vinaigrette drizzled over everything provides a punch of fruity acidity and, though I am aware that I have now started naming attributes that don’t concern texture, I don’t even know how to stop talking about how much I love this salad.  Sure, it’s true that I like almost all salad, but this salad?  This is a salad that everyone will like.

Last Year: Ya Hala’s Hummus This is, hands down, the best hummus you’ll ever eat

Spinach, Fennel, and Pear Salad with Brown Butter Hazelnuts Recipe

½ cup whole hazelnuts

1 large fennel bulb, green fronds and core removed

juice of 1 lemon

1 tablespoon unsalted butter

large pinch of coarse sea salt

5 ounces spinach leaves, washed and dried

1 large ripe pear

Apple Cider Vinaigrette

juice of ½ a lemon

1 tablespoon white wine vinegar

1 tablespoon unfiltered apple cider

3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.  Arrange hazelnuts on a baking sheet, then toast in oven for 10 to 15 minutes, until the skins of the nuts begin to peel loose and the nuts appear dark golden brown.  Remove the nuts to a clean dishtowel, then wrap the towel around the nuts and allow to sit for a couple of minutes.  Then, with your hands, vigorously rub the hazelnuts in the dishtowel to remove the hazelnut skins.  Coarsely chop the de-skinned nuts (cutting them in half is just fine—you want nice big bites here), then set aside.

Slice the fennel to be as thin as possible, using either a mandoline or an extremely sharp knife.  In a medium bowl, combine the fennel slices and the lemon juice, tossing to coat all the fennel in the lemon juice.  Set aside.

In a small pan, heat the butter over medium heat.  Allow the butter to melt, then foam, then begin to sputter.  Stirring and watching the butter the whole time, allow it to turn a nutty dark brown.  Immediately pour the browned butter into a small bowl, then add the hazelnuts and toss to combine.  Add the pinch of sea salt and toss some more.

To make the dressing, whisk together the lemon juice, vinegar, and apple cider.  Drizzle in the olive oil, whisking all the while to combine until the dressing is thick and emulsified.  Add salt and pepper to taste.

Place the spinach in a large bowl.  Core and slice the pear into thin slices, then add the pears to the spinach.  Pour the fennel, with any lemon juice remaining in the bowl, on top of the pears.  Give the hazelnuts in brown butter a bit of a stir, then add half of the nuts to the salad.  Pour half of the dressing over the salad, then toss to combine evenly.  Taste the salad to see if you desire more dressing.  Add as much dressing as you deem fit (some people like more dressing, some like less, so I am leaving the finished amount up to personal taste).  Serve the salad with the remaining hazelnuts sprinkled over the top of each serving.

Makes 4 very large servings, or 8 side salads.

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Double Chocolate Walnut Cookies

5 Apr

I’ve had these cookies in mind for a while.  The problem was, that was the only place the cookies could be found: in my mind.  There was no recipe I could dig up in a book, no bakery I could run to in order to hunt down the cookie.  The existence of the cookie—perhaps originating in a dream, because I simply refuse to believe that I am the only person on earth who dreams of cookies—was nowhere to be found.

Maybe that was a blessing.  Because I had only an imagined notion of what sort of cookie I wanted to eat—and yet I also somehow knew exactly what it was I wanted in the mythical cookie, that being lots of chocolate, a chewy middle, and big bites of walnuts—there was very little holding me back in the way of experimentation.  It was a golden opportunity, really.  I was going to create a cookie and there was nothing stopping me.

Except, of course, the unforeseen development of actually somehow nailing the cookie recipe on the first try.  No joke.  When I set out to make this cookie, I was envisioning days upon days of rejected cookie batches.  I was imagining myself eating cookie after cookie, faced with the fact that one batch was too crisp, or maybe not chocolaty enough.  What to do?  Well, I guess I’ll just have to get back to the drawing board.  Time to make and sample more cookies.

But no.  Here they are, the first batch I auditioned, and they are perfect in every way.  Practically bursting with chunks of bittersweet chocolate, the cookies are crisp at the edges and wonderfully soft in the middle.  Chunks of toasted walnuts invade every bite, and, dare I say it, the sweetness level is spot on.  I don’t know how it happened.  I only had to make one batch of cookies, which meant I only had to taste one batch of cookies.  Setting aside the fact that I somehow just satisfied a hazy cookie dream, I somehow feel as though I have made a mistake.  I promise to do worse next time.  You know.  So there will be more samples.

Last year: Roasted Poblano Johnnycakes

Double Chocolate Walnut Cookies Recipe

1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour

½ cup Dutch process cocoa powder

1 teaspoon espresso powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

1 stick (8 tablespoons) unsalted butter, melted

½ cup gently packed light brown sugar

¼ cup granulated sugar

2 large eggs

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

8 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped into medium chunks (about ¼-inch chunks at the largest)

1 cup (about 4 ounces) walnut pieces, toasted until browned and aromatic

Preheat oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit.  Line two baking sheets with parchment paper and set aside.

In a large bowl, combine the flour, cocoa powder, espresso powder, baking soda, and salt.  Whisk together, then set aside.

In a medium bowl, combine the melted butter, light brown sugar, granulated sugar, eggs, and vanilla.  Whisk for 1 or 2 minutes to combine thoroughly.

Gently fold the flour mixture into the sugar mixture until the two are completely combined.  Stir in the chocolate chunks and toasted walnuts.  The batter will be extremely stiff and it should seem like there is a disturbingly high chunk-to-batter ratio.  This is a good thing.

Scoop the batter in heaping tablespoons (if your tablespoons are very heaping, you should end up with about a 2 tablespoon-sized scoop, which is perfect) onto a prepared baking sheet.  Space the scoops at least two inches apart.  I was able to fit 8 cookies on 1 large baking sheet.

Bake the cookies, one sheet at a time, in the center of the oven for 10-13 minutes, until the edges of the cookies are just starting to look dry but the centers still appear soft.  Remove from oven and allow the cookies to rest on the baking sheet for about 2 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool.

Depending on the size of your scoops, you should end up with around 24 cookies, maybe more.

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