Really tasty red pepper soup (there’s no cream IN the soup, just drizzled on top) that’s very easy to make, and it’s topped with fresh basil shreds, some fresh corn, and then the drizzle of crème fraîche.

Sometimes when I’ve made a red pepper soup, the pepper part was just too acidic, or on the bitter side. It’s not the capsaicin, since that’s the hot factor, and bell peppers have just about nil of that. I don’t know what it is. But THIS soup didn’t have that, which was a good thing! Maybe it was the peppers themselves – their source, the soil, the time of year? Anybody an expert on bell peppers?

Well, that got me to thinking about a book I have that is a wealth of information about fruit and veggies. I’ll do a write-up on Tuesday about peppers in general. Glancing at the chapter on peppers I see 4 recipes: roasted red peppers stuffed with tuna, salad of roasted peppers and ricotta salata, peperonata (a kind of bell pepper sauce), and chile and zucchini braised in cream. I’ll make one of those. The author recommends the first recipe.

Back to the soup. It was so easy, except for roasting the red peppers and jalapeno. If you want to make it easier, cut the peppers into flat-type pieces, lay on foil, oil them a bit and bake them at 400° for 20-30 minutes, turning them a couple of times. Let them cool so you can handle them, then peel off the skins and trim the ribs off, plus discarding the seeds if there are any remaining.

While the peppers are roasting start the soup: sauté the onions, adding the garlic toward the end, then add the seasonings. You can use fresh tomatoes if they’re really in season – otherwise use super-tasty canned tomatoes (I like San Marzano, Muir Glen or Cento from Italy). The soup is simmered for a short time (30 minutes) then pureed in the blender. Reheat it, taste for seasoning, then pour out into serving bowls. The best part about this soup is the garnish – fresh corn cut off the cobb, fresh basil shreds and a drizzle of crème fraîche.  This recipe came from a cooking class with Tarla Fallgatter.

What’s GOOD: the fresh taste from the red bells and the garnishes. Loved the corn. Also the little bit of heat from the jalapeno pepper. Altogether delicious.
What’s NOT: absolutely nothing.

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Love rhubarb, like I do? You’ll want to try this biscuit-style upside down cake that’s as easy as can be to make. You’ll just need fresh rhubarb and everything else is likely in your pantry.

My latest issue of Saveur Magazine arrived recently and I read it cover-to-cover. An article about rhubarb captured my interest, though, when I saw some of the photos. With rhubarb in season, I decided to make this recipe first. They explained that this method of making an upside down cake is more reminiscent of an apple tarte tatin since you cook the juicy rhubarb in a cast iron skillet as you would with a tarte tatin (photo at left), then add the biscuit batter on top (see photo at right below) and bake it. As soon as you take it out of the oven you place a plate on top of the iron skillet and very carefully and quickly turn it upside down and plot, it all comes out as you see above. I used hot pads and was very quick about turning it over. There wasn’t any liquid to spill out, fortunately, or it could burn you. It’s all absorbed by the biscuit batter.

We ate it warm, which is the best way, I think. And since the cake part is more biscuit than it is cake, it’s most likely best eaten the day it’s made. I ended up with left overs which I portioned out into 3” wedges, wrapped in plastic, then in foil. If I find out it’s not good defrosted I’ll add a note here later.

Do serve it with ice cream or whipped cream, as the mixture needs something to cut the sweet of the rhubarb and moisten the biscuit cake. It’s not overly dry – that isn’t what I mean – but left more than a day, I’d think it might. Biscuits don’t keep well.

What’s GOOD: the rhubarb, for sure. But then, I love rhubarb in most of its guises. The cake wasn’t my favorite part, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t good. It was. It was a light dessert, I thought, although the calorie count doesn’t indicate so. Very tasty and a lovely presentation.

What’s NOT: really nothing except that you probably should eat this up the day you bake it.

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Make this. Oh yes, make this! It’s healthy, relatively simple to prepare, and it’s just loaded with flavor. You need to like chiles, however, and spicy food.

Many years ago I must have gotten the original of this recipe from Phillis Carey. My old print-out says it’s hers, but I didn’t find the recipe in any of her 3 cookbooks. And actually, the original was for Cornish game hens, not chicken. But my notes about this recipe said it was really delicious, so I made some changes to it, decided to grill the chicken rather than bake it, and I changed-up the sauce to serve with it too. So let’s just say the recipe was inspired by Phillis!

The photo above shows a half of a chicken breast – bone in – in its finished form. The chicken was marinated for awhile in an orange juice, oil and chipotle mixture, seared on the grill, moved to indirect heat to cook through, then served with a quick sweet salsa at the end.  The salsa was the royal crown of the dish, I’d say. I bought fresh salsa and after melting a little bit of red jalapeno jelly on the range, and allowing it to cool, I added it to the chilled salsa and it was spooned over the top. I wanted to lick the plate – and it’s not that there’s anything so unusual in it – except that you don’t expect salsa to be sweet. Yet it is, and it’s just perfect on the chicken!

What’s GOOD: it’s a really different taste – the chicken is moist, since you take it off the grill when it just reaches 155°. And the salsa. Well, that’s the best part.

What’s NOT: nothing for me – I liked it, but you do need to appreciate a bit of heat and sweet with the chicken to enjoy it fully!

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Love trout? If so, you’ll enjoy this unusual sauce. Bacon, yes. Onions, yes. But raisins and trout? Really different, but somehow they’re perfect too.

This is only the 2nd trout recipe here on my blog. It’s not something I ever seek out, and even though I see them at the markets frequently enough, I breeze on by. There’s a reason. Reasons. I hate bones. Really I do. I’ll avoid eating any kind of fish that has a high risk of bones. Not that I’ve ever swallowed one. I haven’t. But I hate picking bones out of my mouthful of fish. And if there are 4 fish portions on a platter, with just one of them with some accidental bones, guess who will get that serving? Always me. And this filleted trout – sure enough – I did get one bite with bones. It didn’t exactly ruin it for me, but it made me sigh. Of course, I’d get bones. And these were the little itty-bitty tiny ones, so I had to spit out the whole bite. The other reason is that as a child, I had to eat a lot of trout, caught by my Dad when we’d go camping every year in the California Sierra mountains. My dad was an avid fisherman, but only for freshwater trout. Rainbow, Dolly Varden mostly.

When I wrote up my other post about trout I told the story about our camping trips when I was a youngster. They were our annual vacation when I was about age 5-12. At age 14 we moved for a few years to Newport, Rhode Island, so no fishing trips during that time. Back in California once again, and after I left for college, my parents continued to go camping, but I think they bought a trailer then. Prior to that it was tent camping, always alongside a stream. I do have fond memories of a couple of the campgrounds, some on the west slope of the Sierras, near Sonora, and some on the eastern slope NW of Bishop at Virginia Lakes.

I liked to read even then, and usually my Mom brought along several new magazines, like McCalls, Ladies Home Journal, and always the Reader’s Digest and I read those cover to cover. I remember reading a few paperback books back then too. Occasionally I’d go fishing with my Dad. My Mom did fish a little bit, but it was my Dad’s passion, not my mother’s. And it certainly wasn’t mine, either. I didn’t catch many, and it seemed so tedious from the vantage point of a youngster, to stand on the shore of a lake or stream and keep casting out into the water and slowly, sometimes jerkily (on purpose) reeling in the hook and line.

My Dad made his own lures for several years. On a whim I just now went to the ‘net and sure enough, the lures my dad used to make, called super-dupers, are still made and still sold. Back in the late 40’s and early 50’s they were expensive – and new. If you’re a fisherman, you know that if fish are biting on some new fangled lure, then you’d better have some. I helped my dad make dozens and dozens of these lures and he gave them to old friends and new fishing friends he’d meet beside the lakes and streams.

Anyway, since many of you may have read about this story before, my Dad was happiest when he came back to camp in the mornings, before breakfast, with a creel full of trout. There was a limit of how many he could catch (I don’t recall what it was) and it was always my Dad’s goal to catch “the limit.” He’d dutifully clean them and they’d go into a separate ice chest in our camp. And then we’d eat breakfast. Usually pan fried trout coated in cornmeal and fried in bacon grease, along with eggs and toast. Lunch, maybe something else, but trout was always on the menu for dinner. My mother and I got very tired of trout, and truly, so did my Dad. Finally my mother would issue an edict – my Dad couldn’t catch any more trout until we’d eaten up all the fish we had. That was a tall order since my Mom and I had stopped eating them. So my Dad would reluctantly give them away. Oh, it pained him to give them away. But what was even funnier, to me, was that most other campers, strangers and friends alike, all had more than enough fish themselves. Only people who were new arrivals didn’t have any – yet.

Obviously it was on these camping trips, eating trout morning and night, that I developed my aversion to bones. And I can’t say that trout is something I ever order, hardly. Yet it’s a very delicate flavored fish, and there’s nothing wrong with trout. It’s just not a favorite for me. But if you like trout, you’ll surely like this recipe.  Tarla Fallgatter prepared it at a cooking class recently. I found the recipe (Tarla made a few changes to it) online, as it was printed in Gourmet, in March of 2007. The sauce is the best part of it – I think trout and bacon do go together somehow. The sauce is very easy to make – bacon, onion, raisins, wine vinegar, sugar and salt. The trout is filleted, hopefully, and it’s drizzled with a little oil and given a rub-dub with some kind of Creole or spicy spice rub and broiled. It’s done in no time flat, then serve with the sauce and some Italian parsley on top.

What’s GOOD: the delicacy of the trout flesh, and the combo with the bacon/raisin sauce. It’s really very tasty with trout. This recipe is also very easy.

What’s NOT: actually nothing, unless you have an aversion to bones too. Did I mention that I hate fish bones? Tee-hee. The sauce is really, really good.

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If you haven’t figured it out by now, I like lemony food. Lemon in salad dressings, lemon in chicken and fish, lemon in desserts, lemon in vegetables, lemon in sauces, and lemon in rice. It helps that we have 2 lemon trees!

This recipe has been in my to-try file for a few years. It’s from Cooking Light, from July 2010. Not all that long ago. And I’d clipped it out because I like Southwest food and as I scanned the list of ingredients, I knew I’d like the flavors (leeks, garlic, lemon juice – yea – coriander, saffron, cilantro and chopped green chiles). Oh yes, some lemon zest too. I adapted the recipe only insofar as making it in my rice cooker rather than on the stovetop, but it’s really no different, so I’ve left the recipe as-is below for cooking on top of the stove.

Making it for guests, I prepared the entire recipe, which serves 8. After eating 2 dinners with it I packaged up the remaining in ziploc plastic baggies and they went into the freezer for some night when I think we should have some carbs. There is very little fat (2 T. butter only), and the recipe is very low in sodium too. I liked it.

What’s GOOD: it’s fairly easy, although it’s certainly not like just boiling some rice – it has lots of other stuff in it – note the color from the saffron, although I really couldn’t taste it at all. Sometimes it seems a waste to use saffron if you can’t taste it. Oh well. I liked all the various textures in it – I love cilantro too.

What’s NOT: nothing really – not a “wow” recipe, but it was good.

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Is it about this time of year when we get tired of the same-old veggies? We’ve done broccoli, onions, cabbage umpteen times. And potatoes in so many forms. Here’s a new combination – nothing new about the ingredients, but it’s the putting them together that makes the difference.

Actually, as you’ve probably read here many times, I don’t make potatoes (of any variety) much. I never keep them on hand because we do try to limit carbs. We do eat them, but not at every dinner meal for sure. Mostly I make 2 veggies or a veg and a salad rather than make a carb. Not that we don’t love them – oh, we do – but we think it’s better for us. When we go out to eat I usually order 2 vegetables and eliminate the carb. If I can. Of course, if it’s served to me, I do dive right in. That’s the problem!

But when Phillis Carey made this Yukon Gold and sweet potato mixture at a class some weeks ago, I was quite taken with the flavors. Not only did it taste good, but the color combination added a nice look to the plate. Usually these different types of potatoes cook at different times (sweet potatoes take less time to bake) but Phillis said it was just easier to do them all together. Indeed! The peeled and cubed veggies are tossed with some olive oil and salt, roasted for about 30-40 minutes along with fresh sage leaves and it’s done. How easy is that, as Ina would say?

What’s GOOD: the flavors, absolutely! The ease of making, for sure. And I loved how they look on the plate. If you like carbs and don’t mind the calories, try this!

What’s not: nothing. I can’t say this is a “wow” kind of dish, but it’s tasty and easy. What more could you want?

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Oh my goodness is this stuff fantastic. But then, I love tiramisu – if it’s made with the right proportions of liquor/syrup/coffee and a creamy filling. This one contains no coffee – just orange, a Grand Marnier orange syrup, mascarpone, whipped cream and pistachios.

This is going to be one of those “trust me – you’ll like it” kind of recommendations. This dessert is SO delicious, and you’ll be glad when you taste it. It’s not hard to make – really it’s not – and the results, after 6-8 hours of chilling is worthy of any company meal.

When Phillis Carey made this at a class a few weeks ago, I took a bite and swooned. We’d watched her make it – it seemed really quite simple. She explained that when she can find ladyfingers in the grocery store – these are the moist ones usually right next to fresh strawberries (not the dried Italian type) – she buys a couple of packages of them and always keeps a pair in her freezer. No extra packaging required, she said. Just stick them in the freezer. Whenever she uses them, she just stocks up again, so she’ll always have some on hand. Obviously Phillis likes tiramisu as I’ve attended at least 2 other classes where she’s made different variations on a tiramisu theme.

You make an orange scented simple syrup with Grand Marnier and that is brushed on the ladyfingers and they’re layered with a creamy orange mixture. That’s done twice and chilled for several hours. Toasted pistachios are chopped and sprinkled on top – on top of a layer of whipped cream that’s scented with some of the Grand Marnier simple syrup.

A few nights later my friend Cherrie made this (her big baking dish is shown at top) and everybody went nuts over the dessert. I brought some home and enjoyed every little tiny morsel of it. So, if that’s not enough testimony that you need to make this, I don’t know what is!

What’s good: just everything about it – the orange flavor, the Grand Marnier, the creamy texture, the comfort aspect of a soft and very tasty pudding dessert. Fabulous.

What’s not: nothing – just plan ahead. Can’t be made the day before (although the left overs I tasted 2 days later were just fine to me, but Phillis cautioned us that the cream would begin to separate).

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Ultra-lemony chicken soup. All the descriptors are present for Avgolemono (a Greek lemon and egg soup) but with added vegetables and this time with pasta, not rice, which is more traditional.

What I had was about 3-4 cups of cubed chicken from a store-bought one some days ago, and I sure needed a chicken soup that would use it all up. With lemons on our trees, what better combo could there be but Avgolemono, an egg-lemon soup. It’s probably common on Greek-American menus, and it’s really very simple to make. Since I don’t often follow a recipe exactly, sure enough, I decided to take a slight fork in the road. I wanted to eat all the vegetables, not just use it for flavorings and then throw them out. Checking on wikipedia, I discovered that my desire to enjoy all the vegetables is not all that unusual in Avgolemono.

First I went to my one and only Greek cookbook, Festival of Greek Flavors; A Mediterranean Culinary Adventure and used that as a guide. It’s just that the recipe I consulted had you strain out all the vegetables – therefore it only contained the pasta. Period. Too boring for me! Its recipe also called for starting with a whole, raw chicken, and obviously I wasn’t doing that, so I had to make a variation, but I kept true to nearly all of the rest of it. I sautéed onion and celery in olive oil, then added bay leaves, dried dill, chicken broth and let that simmer for awhile. Then I added small pieces of thin capellini pasta and cooked it until barely tender. Meanwhile I started on the egg-lemon sauce. This is essential to the soup, and really gives it its true lemony flavor. In a blender I combined fresh squeezed lemon juice, whole eggs (I had very small eggs, so I used 4 instead of 3) and whizzed it up until it was very, very frothy. That’s an essential part of this soup too – once you combine it in the soup pot, you want to retain some of that eggy froth. By the time I took a picture of it, though (above) the froth had all disappeared. Anyway, you add some cornstarch dissolved in a little bit of water and lastly a cup or so of the hot broth out of the soup pot – this is done to temper the eggs – otherwise you’d have cooked eggs in the soup. Not good! The lemon-egg mixture is poured into the soup and brought to JUST below a simmer. I added in the chicken and allowed it to heat up very gently and then scooped about 1 3/4 cups into each serving bowl. It looks like there is cream in this soup, but there is none at all – it’s the egg mixture that gives it that creamy look.

Just as added information, the cookbook had 3 different egg and lemon sauce variations – one using whole eggs (the one I used), one calling for dividing the eggs and whipping up the egg whites, which would definitely keep some of that frothy meringue kind of quality to the soup once combined; and thirdly a sauce made only with egg yolks. I was into making it easy for myself, so did the first option. Such a sauce is used in various ways in Greek cuisine – as a sauce on fish (that would be delicious with its lemony flavors) or vegetables.

What’s GOOD: everything about it. A definite make-again soup. I liked the texture of the barely cooked carrots (I added those later just so they’d be that way). The flavor – wow – so very lemony and creamy. But there isn’t a speck of cream in it. Altogether delicious and EASY.

What’s NOT: nothing, really.

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A quick and easy dip or spread made with canned salmon, some cream cheese (light would be okay), a little butter to help smooth it, lemon juice, Kalamata olives and a bit of anchovies to give it some flavor depth. Serve with baguette slices or crackers.

The basis for this recipe came from The Wednesday Chef blog, way back in 2008. Luisa made this, but hers was with tuna. Now, I have canned tuna, but it’s really expensive stuff that I have shipped a couple of times a year from Washington, young tuna that don’t contain so much mercury, and I just didn’t feel like using my pricey can of tuna on this in case I didn’t like it. I needn’t have worried – I loved it, and I’d guess the tuna version would be just as tasty as the salmon one. I have 6-ounce cans of salmon too – from the same purveyor – but I don’t seem to use the canned salmon very often, so for this I decided to try the salmon.

This pate – or tapenade – that’s what Luisa recipe called it – named so probably because it has olives in it, and tapenades DO contain mostly olives. This concoction isn’t olive-centric – it’s salmon and cream cheese centric, but with all these other added flavors that do everything to enhance the salmon. Things like lemon juice, the anchovies, lemon juice, pepper and the butter. There is a short discussion on Luisa’s blog about leaving out the butter – the original recipe (click on the blog link above if you’d like to make Luisa’s version) called for more butter, more anchovies, more olives too (and the recipe didn’t specify Kalamata, just “black olives,” but I just couldn’t quite see a ripe black olive doing a thing for this mixture). I keep pitted Kalamata olives in my refrigerator at all times. And I buy a little bitty jar of anchovies once or twice a year – I buy the most expensive one I can find at my local Italian deli – and use a few, then refrigerate it. It keeps nigh on forever as long as it’s covered in olive oil. I thought the butter was needed, but I didn’t use as much as the original called for.

Everything except the chives is whizzed up in the food processor until it’s super-smooth, then spooned into ramekins, or some kind of serving bowls. The recipe makes about 3 ramekins worth. The recipe indicates you can use it right away, but I think the flavor is better once it chills overnight. Besides, it’s something you can make the day before a dinner party if that’s what you’re making it for. This recipe makes quite a bit, and it’s rather difficult to make half a recipe, what with salmon or tuna cans at about 6 ounces. IF you have some leftover tuna or salmon, by all means make a half a recipe!

When I made it we were having dinner guests, so I toasted a baguette slices for it, but this would be just dandy with crackers, or toast for that matter. It’s probably fine with celery sticks too. Sprinkle chopped chives on top if you have them – don’t go buy chives just to put on it – some minced parsley would be fine. Even some fresh dill would work too.

What’s GOOD: I loved the stuff – but it does have a definite fishy taste – a good kind of fishy taste if you get my drift. The anchovies add depth of flavor and you really can’t taste them. I used ample lemon juice which was really good in it. It’s also EASY!
What’s NOT: nothing whatsoever. I’d definitely make this again.

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Need a new idea for pork tenderloin? That pork tenderloin that is such a lean piece of meat which doesn’t have all that much flavor to start or to end with, but is redeemed if it’s baked to a deep pink and served with a nice sauce?

What you’ll need to make this pork dish is a whole lotta mushrooms. About a pound, give or take. One of the really interesting things Phillis Carey did during the class where this was prepared, was show us 2 piles of mushrooms – one was shiitake and one button. They were approximately equal size – the piles – but one weighed half as much as the other. If you’ve ever picked up shiitakes and considered their weight, well, they’re quite light. Since they’re so darned expensive it’s really helpful that you use half as much weight of them as the button mushrooms. The shiitakes not only add flavor, but a very different texture to this sauce, so do seek them out.

The pork tenderloin must be trimmed well – of any visible fat. Well, not every speck, but at least remove as much as possible. And most often the tenderloins have a layer of silverskin on one side and end which should be removed. Not only is it tough and not really edible, but it’s presence means the pork won’t pick up any particular flavoring. Even though you may brown it, that caramelization (Maillard effect) won’t be effective if silverskin is in the way. So do take the time with a small and very sharp paring knife and cut away that silverskin.

Once it’s trimmed and ready, put it on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Or use a Silpat if you have one. Once you put the tenderloin in the oven you’re about 25 minutes from being ready to slice and serve the meat, so have the sauce ingredients all prepped before you start. Don’t start cleaning mushrooms after you’ve put the meat in the oven, okay? And do have the rest of your dinner all ready to go – the pork will need to rest for a few minutes, but it will hold the heat and re-absorb all those good juices.

Meanwhile, whip up the sauce. Clean the mushrooms – I keep hearing some experts say that mushrooms don’t absorb much, if any, water if you wash them. Phillis absolutely says wipe them with a paper towel – her perspective is that all mushrooms we buy at grocery stores are raised in indoor beds anyway, so all we’re wiping off is the specialized (almost fake) soil. It’s not like dirt from your backyard. And she definitely feels that mushrooms absorb liquid because she watches how much longer it takes to cook out any fluid in them. So anyway, whichever way you clean them, slice them up. Melt butter, cook the mushrooms until all that liquid has evaporated, then add wine. Chicken broth is next, the little bit of cream (well, 1/2 cup!) and bourbon.

Bourbon – well – it has a kind of earthiness to the flavor – if you’re not a fan, use brandy instead. But this sauce was really nice with bourbon, I must say. Most of the liquor is added in during the cooking, but one more T. is added at the end to give a little jolt of extra flavor.

Once the pork is ready, slice on the diagonal – take a look at the grain of the pork – it sort of curves like wrapping around on the diagonal . . . you want to slice it across that grain if possible. Serve with the sauce.

What’s GOOD: how easy this meal is to put together – and it’s very worthy of a company dinner, but easy enough for a weeknight dinner too. Loved the sauce and the heft of it. Full of flavor.

What’s NOT: really nothing at all.

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