Ever get a craving? This was what I wanted – chicken with rice and lots of lemon. Yum.

So, the news from my end of the world is that I’ve been down with Covid-19 for almost 3 weeks. I thought all I had was a cold (odd, to get one in the middle of the summer . . . ) but days went by, with the worst sore throat I think I’ve ever had. Now I hear, in Covid terms, it’s called razor-blade sore throat. Yup, that’s what I had. The first week was just awful with the cold symptoms. Once I realized that after 7 days I still couldn’t taste or smell, that’s when I had an ah-ha moment – oh, maybe I’d better test for Covid. Positive. I still have laryngitis, a cough, and the worst part is fatigue. And no taste or smell. I didn’t test myself early enough to get Paxlovid for it – I had no idea I had Covid! Anyway, I’m better, but I’m not back to normal, by any stretch. This was my first episode of having Covid.

Meanwhile, I needed to eat, so I made two soups in the early days, still eating one of them, chicken Harira, a hearty soup with plenty of zip and healthy ingredients. Finding the energy to even make soup was a challenge – I merely went from bed to recliner, to the kitchen, to recliner and back to bed at night. I’m so tired of daytime TV! But on one of my better days I made the soup and have been eating it ever since. Several soup pouches from the freezer got me through the first days.

As the more recent days went by, I got a craving for chicken with kind of soupy lemony rice. I try not to eat rice, but I couldn’t get that out of my head, so decided I’d make it anyway. I placed an order at a local grocery store and they put everything I needed in my trunk, so I wasn’t around people. Even a few days ago I was still testing positive for Covid. Anyway, I researched a bunch of different recipes and finally settled on one, but with some changes.

Knowing that chicken has better flavor if you use the bones, I bought chicken breasts. You could use chicken thighs – I just wanted the extra flavor boost from using bone-in chicken, and I wanted the nice color of the browned skin. I used my big Dutch oven (Le Creuset). After browning the chicken (I cut the large breasts in half crosswise) I sauteed the onion, then added the garlic at the last minute.  Chicken broth, rice, lemon zest and juice, oregano AND some lemon juice powder were added, with a bit of crumbled Feta cheese, then I nestled the chicken into the simmering liquid (see photo). Then it went into the oven, covered.

You don’t want the chicken to get dry and over-done, so test it – but you do want the rice to be cooked through. There’s a fine line there. If the chicken is done and the rice isn’t, remove the chicken and tent the platter and continue cooking the rice. You could do all of this dish on the stovetop – it’s just that baking gives a gentler heat source to the rice. Sometimes on the stovetop it’s hard to find that just-right temp to keep the liquid barely bubbling.

Test after 20 minutes. Ideally the chicken is perfectly done, the rice is just right, and there’s just a bit of liquid in the pot. When serving, add chopped Italian parsley, more Feta cheese, lemon slices and capers.  Serve in a wide bowl if possible to contain the soupy rice, if it is soupy!

What’s GOOD: even though my sense of taste and smell isn’t working right, I could tell it was lemony – that’s what I was looking for and craving. My roommate Liv (have I mentioned a bestie of one of my granddaughters is living with me while she attends nursing school?) had some and thought it was wonderful. Loved the capers – somehow I could taste them, although perhaps it was sourness that I could taste!

What’s NOT: nothing that I can think of – it does take about an hour of time to fix this, including the baking time.

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There’s the finished product, a green salad with this unusual sauce on it, standing in as a salad dressing.

This post has a back story – but before you dismiss this recipe without knowing, this ubiquitous Italian sauce traditionally is lapped over thin slices of a veal roast, and contains canned (jarred) tuna. Don’t ewww over it. It’s quite amazing.

Suffer along with me as I jump back in time to the late 1980s, I think. My DH (dear husband Dave) and I were on a wonderful vacation in Europe. He’d gotten acquainted with Simone, his sales counterpart in Paris. She had stayed with us when she was here in California, and on more than one occasion she issued us an invitation for us to stay with her if we wanted to visit Paris for a few days. Well, sure we would!

A year or so later, after taking a lovely, long weekend driving trip visiting wineries and castles SW of Paris with her as our tour guide, we returned to her apartment (which had a lovely view of the Eiffel Tower, by the way) and I offered to prepare a meal the following evening. She begged me to make vitello tonnato, and she wanted to invite some American friends of hers who were living for a year in Paris. I hadn’t a clue what the dish was, but she had a recipe.

It’s available at amazon.

She went off to work and Dave and I went out to buy all the ingredients. One of her caveats was to be sure to use the leaves of her basil plant, a pitiful dried-up thing she had in a window in her rather bleak kitchen. Bear with me, here, but back in the late 80s I don’t think we Americans knew much about live basil. It wasn’t available except in dried form. Vitello Tonnato, as I mentioned above, is a very classic Italian dish of a veal roast, roasted ahead, cooled, then sliced thinly, plated decoratively on a platter, then this tuna sauce is poured over it. In her recipe, she wanted the sauce poured over whole room temp roast, and then garnished with basil. It all went well – except I forgot the basil. Let’s just say, she was upset. Such an important aspect of the recipe, she felt, and I’d forgotten to garnish the dish correctly. Lesson learned.

I vaguely remembered this sauce, but because we abhor eating veal here in the U.S., it never occurred to me it would be just as tasty served on a turkey breast, or even pork tenderloin, perhaps. Or to be used as a dip for raw veggies. A week or so ago I was reading a blog post from a foodie someone who has a pretty good following, and was quite unhappy when she said in order to see the recipe, I’d need to upgrade my subscription to paid. Nope, not doing that. So I researched, and found several recipes, and utilized the few clues that blogger had mentioned.

So there is the sauce, whizzled up in a food processor. Obviously, it’s messy. It takes awhile to puree this as the tuna is a meat. You do want it to be a sauce that is smooth.

Since I eat salad a LOT, it was the sauce used as a salad dressing that intrigued me. As I write this, I’ve just about finished the jar (above), having mixed it with a variety of salad greens and raw veggies.

Some of the recipes do use canned (not imported Italian) tuna, but I had one of those jars on my pantry shelf (picture above). Perhaps you don’t have to use the Italian, but for sure use oil-packed. Tuna here that’s dry packed, is so very dry.

Interestingly enough, none of the recipes I perused contained basil. Simone had insisted it was an important aspect. After that trip, we lost touch with Simone as she retired and moved to her home in Belgium. I’m glad I remembered about tonnato, however!

What’s GOOD: I just love this sauce. For me, it became the protein and dressing for my salad. It is reminiscent of a Caesar dressing. It has tons of flavor – and unless you know it’s tuna, you might not be able to figure it out.

What’s NOT: only if you don’t have some of that good jarred tuna (it’s available on amazon, BTW). I’ll be making this again, for sure.

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I know, I know, that doesn’t look like risotto. But it – sort of – is.

One of the benefits of having your own food blog is that when you’re not at your computer, or at grocery store, or in this case, reading a magazine, your memory is jogged – hmmm – have I made this before? Reading a recipe for mushroom and cauliflower (rice) risotto made me go to the blog and sure enough, I posted this recipe about 9 years ago. I hadn’t made it in the interim. It was good then, and it’s still good! I bought a whole cauliflower and a bunch of mushrooms and decided I’d make this for myself.

What I remembered was the delicious umami flavors (in this case it’s the low-sodium soy sauce – and the mushrooms also – which give it that unctuous flavor). I made it just a bit differently this time – all of the flavor profiles are the same – it’s just that I chopped up the mushrooms (whole, fresh) and the cauliflower (whole, fresh) in the food processor. I did that separately because you cook the mushrooms longer than the cauliflower. The shallot and garlic enhanced the flavors as they’re added in with the mushrooms, plus a bunch of dried thyme. I love thyme. My favorite herb, I do believe.

There’s the pot-full of the mixture in the photo at right. Since it had been awhile since I made it, I couldn’t remember if I needed to stir it all the time (like you do with risotto). I didn’t, but I did stir it frequently as it gently simmered. I kept a spoon handy because I had to taste it frequently so I took it off the heat when it was JUST done, not over-done. You still want some texture. Of course, cauliflower doesn’t have the texture of rice, but it was close enough. Mushrooms have tons of flavor. As I added the soy sauce I thought – 4 tablespoons – wow, that might be too much. Looking at the recipe again, nope, it’s correct. Poured it in. Cream is added and some broth toward the end. When done, you need to be ready to serve it immediately. This takes about half the time as real rice risotto. Have all the ingredients ready and it goes together very quickly.

For myself, I ate it as my lunch. My complete lunch, and surprisingly, with looking at the low calorie count, it was quite satisfying. The recipe says it serves 6, but that’s as a side dish. As a main event, probably 3 servings. Nuts aren’t commonly on risotto, but you could easily add some pine nuts, perhaps. That would give the risotto some added texture.

What’s GOOD: the overall taste is really fabulous. Hard to believe the mushrooms – and the soy sauce – can make the dish so very tasty. Easy and quick to make. Leftovers need just a jot more liquid (broth, water or cream).

What’s NOT: a bit of prep with the mushrooms and cauliflower in the food processor, but once that’s done it’s easy. No other challenges.

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Surely what you’re thinking is that this is a beach read, a summer read, something light and romancy, or just plain “light.” Nope. Altogether different. If you read the Mediterranean Summer cover’s fine print, it indicates a story about the Med’s coastal destinations. Travel book, maybe? Nope. It’s a memoir and a fascinating one. About David Shalleck, an accomplished chef already, after doing a bunch of stages in Europe (where chefs work for short stints in well known restaurants, to gain experience), decides to accept a job working as the chef on a mega-yacht, cruising around the Med for a summer.

Not wanting to give away the story, I’m just going to say that IF you’re interested in food, cooking (sometimes very difficult under sail), a bit of coastal travel thrown in, and enjoy reading about the interior running of a mega-yacht, you might be interested to read this book. Once on board, the owners (wealthy couple from Italy, but the wife did all the talking) gave him direction. Always the best quality. Always fresh food. Almost everything fish and shellfish, maybe a bit of poultry. No red meat. Use inspiration from whatever seaport we’re in. Make the meals different – i.e., never serve the same thing twice. That last one would have slayed me! And to be prepared to serve a large crowd at a moment’s notice. At one of their ports he had to prepare lavish food for 100 people. That took some creativity and planning including storing some of the food in the anchor well. I laughed a bit over that!

This isn’t a cookbook, although there are a few recipes at the end – including one chocolate cake that the owner (the wife) said yes, he could make that again – but I’ll just say I didn’t copy out the recipe because it looks to be an enormous amount of work! There are recipes for some varieties of fish not available in the U.S., although I suppose you could substitute.

It’s a charming story. Zero romance. But a very interesting read. As many of you readers know, my DH (dear husband, who passed away 11 years ago) was a sailor at heart and he hoped when we got together in 1961, that we’d sail around the world together someday. I get very seasick, so that never happened. But having spent many an hour trying to cook in the tiny galley aboard our 37-foot sailboat, always on inland waters and bays, I can certainly identify with the author about the issues regarding cooking on board a boat. After Shalleck’s stint on the yacht, he returned to the U.S. and worked with Jacque Pepin for years, and with Joanne Weir, for both, though, in the background. And I was pleased to read that he’s married, with two children, and lives in the Bay Area.

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So flavorful with lamb chunks, onions and tomato in a coconut milk based “gravy” or sauce or “curry.” 

Scrolling through my to-try soup recipes I was bored with chicken, chicken, and more chicken. I just made a fish soup a week or two ago. I’d made a ground beef soup as well. And more than one chicken rendition of some kind of soup. I’d defrosted half a dozen different ziploc bags of various soups with vegetables. The soups were good, but I wanted something different. Then I saw this recipe with lamb. I don’t cook lamb very often. When my DH (dear husband) was alive, he grilled a leg of lamb every so often; occasionally I’ll fix those tiny little lamb chops for myself. I decided to give this one a go.

The recipe came from James Peterson, from his cookbook called Splendid Soups. I think I’d borrowed the book from the library some years ago. There’s no turmeric in this soup – so really, it’s not a curry flavored soup at all. There are a myriad of spices, however, many of which go into a curry powder mix. In India, a curry just means meat (or even a vegetable) fixed in a sauce. Curry = Sauce. So this recipe is a lovely, flavorful lamb with a ton of onions and some canned tomatoes, pulled together in a gravy type soup. I made it slightly differently than James Peterson did, with only one significant change – I used coconut milk instead of heavy cream at the end. I also used less cayenne as I guessed it would be too hot, even for me with double the amount you’ll see listed below.

When I made it, I used a 2 1/4-lb leg of lamb, so I approximately doubled the recipe. It took about 1-1/4 hours for the lamb to get tender. Just remember, if you use lamb shoulder, it’ll take longer to get it to a tender state. After I’ve had 3-4 servings of this soup, I will likely freeze the rest for another day.

What’s GOOD: lovely, flavorful soup, good lamb-y notes, kind of a thickened gravy because of all the onions in it. Filling, delicious. Loved the spice flavorings in it.

What’s NOT: there is a bit of chopping here, and cutting up the lamb, made a bunch of dirty dishes, but that’s part of the deal if you want to make a soup with lots of flavor.

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Oh my – this is so gosh-darned delicious. No leftovers, so will have to make it again really soon.

Love those sheetpan dinners. This one is no exception. This one came from America’s Test Kitchen. First, the sweet potatoes are cut in 3/4″ chunks (rounds) and roasted at a high oven temp for about 20 minutes with oil, salt and pepper. Meanwhile,  gather all the other ingredients (fish sauce, red curry paste, coconut milk, lime juice and sugar – if using). Do buy thick salmon if at all possible. I used Costco’s farm raised here – the piece I bought was $48 (wow) but I cut it into a lot of servings and vacuum sealed more than half of it and froze it. The salmon is coated with a little slurry of red curry paste and coconut milk. Once the potatoes are mostly cooked, you move them to one side of the sheetpan and place the salmon fillets on the pan. Back into that hot oven to finish cooking.

The sauce is made in a skillet by mixing more of that red curry paste and a little oil, cooking that just a little, then adding in fish sauce and the remainder of the can of coconut milk. The original recipe calls for adding a tablespoon of sugar. I tasted the sauce and didn’t think it needed it, but it might have something to do with the sweetness of the coconut milk (what I used was quite sweet already). Let it simmer a bit to reduce down and get thick. This can be made ahead – the sauce – and let sit. Just reheat when you’re finishing up the pan roasting. At right is the red curry paste I use – it’s on amazon. It does need refrigeration after opening. I’ve had that container for at least 2 years or more and it’s still fine. Tasted great, even though it was past the expiration date.

Use an instant read thermometer to verify the temp, then remove the salmon when it reaches that magic 125°F number. Let the pan rest a couple of minutes, then plate and pour the red curry sauce over the top of each serving of salmon.

What’s GOOD: Oh my goodness! So amazing. This recipe is going into my regular rotation of salmon. It’s not hard to make, although there are a couple of steps to making it all come together. The sweet potatoes are a nice complement. I served it with a watermelon salad (with feta cheese and fresh mint). The sauce is mildly spicy and hot, just so you know. Not into burning lips territory, however. And serve with some naan if you’d like (and not forget it in the oven like I did until we smelled something burning).

What’s NOT: only that there are a few sous cheffy duties, cutting and mixing. But really, it’s easy. So worth it.

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Have  you had peaches yet this year? They’re magnificent!

Both peaches and nectarines are just the best fruit this year. Not so much apricots (the ones I’ve purchased were flavorless, even from a high-end grocery store), so I’ve been sticking to peaches and nectarines to add to my morning yogurt. I needed a dessert to take to dinner with friends. And it happened they made a recipe from my blog for the entree – I gave the recipe to them a couple of years ago and they just love it. Not my own recipe, but one I posted here from Smitten Kitchen. Schmaltzy Chicken; They made it with just cabbage and onions (no Brussels Sprouts). So good. I haven’t made it in a long time. Such an easy recipe.

Anyway, I had some peaches on hand, so I made this cobbler. I adjusted the recipe from 101 Cookbooks just a little bit. Very little  – I added some vanilla. Next time I will try it with a bit of almond extract.

The peaches are tossed with just a bit of sugar, cornstarch and lemon juice – to which I added the vanilla. A lemon is zested (the kind that makes little strings) and that’s put into the bottom of a buttered 9×9 glass Pyrex. Don’t use a smaller size as the topping won’t get done.

It’s always perplexed me that when I try to use my old tried-and-true apple crisp recipe, adapted for peaches, it doesn’t work. Now that I see this recipe I realize why. Peaches are too tender for long cooking, and you need to adjust the heat up a lot to get the topping to cook through quickly and not to turn the peaches to mush. So, a thick layer of peaches, then the topping is added on top. It’s a bit different – the dry ingredients are mixed up with nuts – then you add a slurry of yogurt and egg, then butter, and mix that into the flour just until it’s mixed through, not any further. Then you have to use your fingers to drop little nuggets of this dough on top of the peaches. Big pieces won’t cook through, hence small little drops all over. That does take a few extra minutes to manipulate the little nuggets. Into a 425 oven it goes – it took 20 minutes. I served it at room temp with vanilla ice cream, but you could also pour heavy cream on top, or whipped cream.

What’s GOOD: it was just delicious. Loved the crunchy topping. I had a hard time deciding between calling it a crust or crisp. It’s both. I prefer a flour-based crust rather than oat-centric one. This is a keeper.

What’s NOT: well, you do have to cut the juicy peaches or nectarines, and there is a bit of mixing, but overall it’s pretty easy. Nothing wrong with it at all; as I said, it’s a keeper.

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Such a colorful and tasty recipe. But then, all of Ina Garten’s usually are.

Another one of Ina’s fabulous recipes. This is so very umami-good. It was a warm summer evening, but outside on the patio it was about 73° so very comfortable/cool enough to enjoy a hearty chicken dish.

Ina’s recipe starts with a whole chicken. I did have one in the freezer, but decided to use chicken pieces – so I bought a package of 4 chicken legs and two very large chicken breast halves. I cut those latter ones in half just because they were so large.

First, the chicken needs to be browned, to get that fond flavoring so necessary to this kind of dish. Once that was done I added in all the veggies – fennel, carrots, celery and leeks. Garlic, thyme, parsley, saffron (yum) and dill were added, some fresh some dried. That’s where I veered off Ina’s recipe just a bit. The chicken was nestled back into the pot (I used my large Le Creuset Dutch oven), with the already-simmering chicken broth, pot was covered and put into the oven. Ina’s recipe calls for 1 1/4 hours in the oven, using a whole chicken. For mine, I used chicken pieces, so if you’re starting with a simmering pot already, 45 minutes should be time to cook the chicken through.

I love this next part – once out of the oven you add 3/4 cup of dried orzo. Stir it around so there won’t be any clumps of pasta (I had a couple, hence I add in that little tip), put the lid back on and set it off heat for 25 minutes. The orzo I used was larger than some, so it took the full 25 minutes. Smaller orzo might take 20.

Scoop everything out onto a large rimmed platter or bowl and serve with some dill fronds on top. So very pretty. After dinner I scooped some to give to my friend Liv to take home, saved another serving or two for myself and even then I ended up with about 2 cups of very flavorful veggie-laden broth at the bottom of the pot. I think it will make a great base for some added vegetables and maybe a few bite-sized pieces of that chicken to make a serving or two of soup.

What’s GOOD: I loved the flavors here. The broth turns a lovely dark golden color from the saffron and I added a bit more than Ina suggested. I could taste the subtle saffron flavor. So good. It’s a complete meal as is, but I served it with a small green salad. If you’re into bread, this would be a perfect complement to use to soak up some of the liquid-y sauce. You could almost say this dish is a soup as there is plenty of chunky liquid to go with the chicken. But Ina doesn’t call it a soup.

What’s NOT: nothing really, but it does take some prep (all that chopping) and baking time too. Altogether worth the trouble, though. A keeper.

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As I mentioned recently, there are all kinds of things, code and such, that run the background of a blog. One of them is a forwarding service, meaning once I press the button to “publish,” the system sees it and grabs it and sends it via email to everyone on the subscriber list. I ran into a problem with FollowIt, the service I’d been using – they began showing advertising that implied I was endorsing their [advertised] products. You probably got one or more of those. I had some “words” with the people at that webmail forwarding customer service! Not okay in my book!

So now I have paid for a different service. Probably this post will come via that new forwarder – I’m not sure exactly how it will show up at your end, but it might say DadaMail. I’m hoping it will go smoothly. Thanks for all of  you, the subscribers to TastingSpoons all these years. .  . Because of this problem I haven’t been sending any posts, but I do have about 5 posts in the queue to send in the next week or so, so stay tuned. . . . Carolyn T

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Such an easy way to cook rhubarb and with tons of lovely flavors.

There are a couple of rhubarb recipes here on the blog. I love rhubarb. As I’m sure I mentioned before, my mom cooked rhubarb as we grew it in our backyard. My mother never did anything fancy with it – just stewed it with water, sugar and cinnamon, I think. If you’re lucky enough to have rhubarb growing, count yourself lucky. This is rhubarb season, and I went to a more high-end grocery store to find it, to the tune of $8.99/pound. Yikes. I bought almost 2 pounds. Valuable stuff!

Anyway, I had found this recipe from Southern Living and knew I wanted to try it. This recipe has you use the peel of an orange, star anise and cinnamon sticks – in addition to sugar. It went into a glass Pyrex dish (about 10×12), covered with foil, roasted at 400°F for about 15 minutes, then you remove the foil and roast a bit longer until the rhubarb is tender. Let it cool in the dish then serve or put into a container (not metal) and refrigerate.

What’s GOOD: loved the subtle flavors of the star anise and orange peel. Altogether loved it all. Can’t wait to make more. As I write this I’ve found rhubarb at my local grocery for half the price I paid last week. More of this coming up for me! A keeper of a recipe.
What’s NOT: nothing really, easy, very tasty.
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