Fresh Tart

Hey all, I'm still kicking around.  I spent last weekend in Madison, having a grand old time with my college girlfriends Cami and Michelle.  We did the usual - stayed out too late Friday night, went to a Badger football game on Saturday, walked all over gorgeous downtown Madison and the UW-Madison campus, consumed the Wisconsin trifecta (brats, beer, and cheese) after the game (with Michelle's very kind family, who generously hosted us with a serious tailgate spread), then went to bed early Saturday night.  Yeah, not quite the same insanity we threw at a weekend back in the day.  Thank goodness, say my liver, stomach, and the bags under my eyes.  Yeesh.

Back home, I'm putting together simple, light meals, like this late summer soup I made up today.  I had lots of grilled pork tenderloin leftover from last night, as well as a boatload of ripe tomatoes, so I decided to cook ahead a bit and make a brothy-yet-hearty soup for the freezer.  I started with onions, carrots, and garlic sauteed in ollve oil.  In went a couple of chopped tomatoes, some white wine, a handful of chopped herbs (rosemary, thyme, sage), a can of white beans, and chicken broth.  After that simmered for 20 minutes or so, I added a handful of whole-wheat elbow macaroni and the pork tenderloin, diced fine.  When the pasta was just tender, I turned off the heat and stirred in several tablespoons of freshly grated Parmesan cheese and salt and pepper to taste (the cheese just melts into the broth, adding a layer of richness to the flavor).  Spinach would have been a nice addition, but I didn't have any.  Zucchini would have be nice too, especially if you're trying to use up the stash that seems to reproduce in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator.  I love soups like this - with a simple broth base - to which you can add this and that and create something healthy and delicious.

To freeze, cool the soup to room temperature, then ladle into freezer bags or tupperware.  Make sure to write the date on the container - you'll be very glad when you pull it out in January and think, what IS this?  Oooh, yay, it's the yummy soup I made in October.  Nice.

A bit of pesto is a nice stir-in to finish, as is a drizzle of best quality olive oil, or a handful of croutons, or a sprinkle of cheese.  And always a pass of the pepper grinder.  Enjoy!

Disjointed food preparation this last week, although not completely unsuccessful.  I don't think I planned one meal ahead, which is not my usual, and actually makes me feel completely whacked out.  Even if I take two minutes with my calendar before I head to bed, it makes me feel like I know where the next day is going.  For some reason, I completely lost my groove last week, and we ate all over the board.  And much less healthfully, no surprise there - healthy eating requires planning.  There are only so many egg-with-salad dinners (my last-minute, go-to healthy din) that I can eat in one week!

The week's hightlight was, once again, the lounge at La Belle Vie, this time with Suz to celebrate her birthday.  Perfection, as always, sigh.  Those damn lamb burgers, I truly crave them.  Juicy/greasy, thankfully small, with yogurt sauce and a slice of spicy pepper, piled on a pillowy little homemade bun, argh.  So good.  But equally as good is the mache/artichoke salad, the greens served atop a pool of Moroccan-seasoned yogurt, studded with salty olives, and perhaps crispy lemon rind (?) - it's to die for.  Suz and I even had a couple of gentlemen send us a drink.  Do I have to admit that the dudes were portly and 70-something?  Fine, the dudes were portly and 70-something.  To their credit, one also sent his card, which simply said, "Just Say Maybe."  I laughed, it was very good, and they didn't bug us, so it all worked out just fine.  Except, as my sister noted, there used to be a day when dudes of that age wouldn't bother sending a drink, cuz they didn't think they had a chance.  Right.

Last night, after chuckling at this article in the Sunday NYTimes, and given the frozen pork tenderloin in my freezer, and given my no-dinner-plan dinner plan, I made these Restaurant-Style Chops (albeit with, er, pork tenderloin).  I didn't do the polenta, since no one else in the house likes polenta (ugh), but made risotto instead.  The pork was tasty - a little over-the-top perhaps, with maple-glazed pork AND maple-glazed nuts AND maple-glazed apples AND candied ginger (OK, that's very over-the-top), but the maple glaze is actually rather subtle, so it works.  But honestly, the risotto stole the show.  I just made a basic version, with a bit of cream stirred in with the cheese and butter, and please.  I remembered quite quickly why I never make risotto - moderate it is not.  But it sure is tasty...

Tonight, we're off to Brasa (my first trip) for Andrew Zimmern's book launch party.  Stay tuned...

Image: http://www.bctree.com/images/photos/summer-peaches.jpg

It's cloyingly, annoyingly humid here in Minnesota this week.  It's like the summer we didn't have finally settled in, now that it's September.  Hmmm.  But despite a constitution that despises humidity, it's all OK - it gives me a chance to enjoy the last-gasp treats of summer, to really dig in to tomatoes (do you think I've been eating enough tomatoes lately?  I swear, this post won't be about tomatoes...), corn on the cob, and peaches.  Oh, peaches, how I will miss thee.  I'm eating them any way that I can - as is, of course, but also sliced with a teeny guilding of sugar and cream (1/2 tsp. each, that's all it takes).  To go all out, check out this beautiful recipe for peach cobbler from The Kitchen Sink blog.  Oh yes, that would be a lovely way to enjoy the last peaches of the season.  (Or plums.  Or blueberries.  Mmmm.)

On a separate note, if you're in a bit of a healthy eating slump, and looking for some yummy recipes, check out this 9 Foods You Should Be Eating post on www.eatingwell.com (great publication and website).  I wish my veggie share included broccoli rabe, but no.  I love it chopped, sauteed in olive oil with lots of garlic and red pepper flakes, and tossed with pasta.  Luckily I'm getting loads of broccoli, which is almost as good (same seasonings) tossed with ziti or rigatoni and showered with freshly grated Parm to finish.

So, as I mentioned below, BIG food weekend.  John and I kicked it off all by our lonesome with another killicious din in the lounge at La Belle Vie.  If you go, order a cocktail (with alcohol or no) - they're all gorgeous and tasty.  And then, feeling jazzy and chic, with ice cubes clinking merrily in a graceful glass, order the lamb burgers, pommes frites, the mache salad with artichokes and yogurt, and perhaps a tasty off the restaurant menu (you are presented with three menus in the lounge - the famous dining room tasting menu, the dining room a la carte menu, and the lounge menu; all rock).  Sit back, enjoy the elegant room, stare inconspicuously at people closing their eyes and moaning as they eat (the food is that good), and be grateful to be in such a pretty spot on a Friday night.

Sunday afternoon, John, Nathan, and I attended a neighborhood pig roast, put on by the Bennett's and Anderson's.  We arrived just as the 100-lb. pig was laid out on a big table, crisp and glistening, apple in mouth (but of course), looking very, graphically porcine.

I admit, I winced a bit as Ed and Bob sliced into the beast, but my guilt melted away as I was presented with a bite of crisp skin.  Holy Porky Cow, so intensely good.  Soon the roast was pulled into pieces and presented alongside soft buns and several different styles of barbecue sauce.  With a 1/2-block long table groaning with potluck sides (salads, bars, cookies, cakes), we definitely made ourselves a meal.  (Thanks Pam Van Ert for the pics!)

And last night, night of the tomato tart with Parmesan crust (below), we were invited to dinner at Sue & Louis Ainsworth's for a Summer's A-Wastin' Party, along with Ana Scofield & Rudy Maxa, Genie & Joe Dixon, and Debbie & Stu Williams.  We drank beautiful wine and ate gorgeous food - gougere, grilled shrimps, boned leg of lamb, ratatouille, salad, olive bread, cheeses, and raspberry cake for dessert.  What a way to end a beautiful Labor Day weekend!  (Pics here are from the party.)

And today....  Kind of a bust, today.  Due to an irrigation system malfunction, part of our back yard is not just wet, it's basically a swamp.  A puppy-loving, dig-30-second-holes-in-the-mud kind of swamp.  Bad.  So, I drove all over the metro area to find a temporary fence, and installed said fence with Nathan (no easy task, 75 feet of fencing!), only to discover that even more of the yard is seriously wet than I realized, and Louis just dug a new mudhole on this side of the fence instead.  Sigh.

Good thing he's so cute...  Anyhow, we weren't done with the (useless) fence until almost 6 pm, ack, so dinner, which was going to be post-shower veggie share new potatoes in some sort of yummy hash, was instead...sweaty Domino's pizza.  Ah well.

And now - bedtime.  Sleep tight, y'all.

Great food weekend, wow.  More details later, but for now I'm posting a recipe for the easy tomato tart I made and brought to a dinner last night at Louis & Sue Ainsworth's lovely home.  I found the recipe on the excellent 101 Cookbooks blog and it's a big, big winner.  The Parmesan crust is tender and cheesy, the tomatoes, cleverly drained of excess juice, are gorgeous and flavorful without turning the crisp crust to mush.  The two together are summer perfection.

Stay tuned for details and pics from the dinner party.  Wish I had pics from the pig roast we went to on Sunday, very dramatic (and delicious).  Back in a bit.

Well, John and I abandoned moderation yesterday in the name of Julia Child crêpes stuffed with ham and mushrooms, napped in sauce Mornay, and run under the broiler.  I came to the idea in my typical way - I, er, stole it.  We had a version of a similar dish the night before, at Bar La Belle Vie, which planted a little craving in my brain, and as luck would have it we had some good ham in the cooler...and crêpes are really so easy to make...  So voila, crêpes with ham.  A little paging through Mastering the Art of French Cooking got me thinking mushrooms too, as well as sauce Mornay (cheese sauce made with a roux), and pretty soon restraint flew out the window, the butter was on my cutting board, and the blender was whirring away (crêpe batter is a cinch in a blender).

The only actual recipes I used were for the crêpes and sauce Mornay; the ham and mushroom filling, I just winged.  I sauted a small, minced clove of garlic in some melted butter for a few minutes, then stirred in about 3 oz. of thinly sliced wild mushrooms.  When they were tender and starting to brown, I add about 6 ounces of chopped, shaved ham and stirred until warmed through.  By then I had also made the sauce Mornay, so I stirred in a generous spoonful or two to bind the filling, seasoned the whole with salt and pepper, and was ready to roll (literally).

After prepping the crêpes (I made six and saved the remaining batter for later - it keeps perfectly in the fridge for a few days, ready to go, a rather dangerous convenience), I put 2-3 Tbsp. of warm filling on each crêpe, rolled them up, and laid them out in a buttered casserole dish.  To finish, I topped the rolled crêpes with sauce Mornay and ran the pan under a moderate broiler until lightly browned.  We ate them - tender, salty, lightly cheesy - with a glass of champagne and felt fine.  And full.  Salut!

From Mastering the Art of French Cooking, re: Crêpes Farcies et Roulées:

Every French household makes use of crepes, not only as a festive dessert for Mardi Gras and Candlemas Day, but as an attractive way to turn leftovers or simple ingredients into a nourishing main-course dish.  Crêpes may be rolled around a filling of fish, meat, or vegetables, spread with sauce, and browned under the broiler.  More spectacular is a gâteau de crêpes in which the pancakes are piled upon each other in a stack of 24, each spread with a filling. This is then heated in the oven and gratinéed with a good sauce.  Or the crêpes may be piled into a soufflé mold with alternating layers of filling, heated in the oven, unmolded, and coated with sauce.  Whatever system you decide upon, including rolled crêpes, the dish may be prepared in advance and heated up when you are ready to serve.

I forget about crab cakes, which is too bad, given how easy they are to make and how delicious they are to eat.  I was prompted to remember them by the okra I picked up, I just love crab and okra together.  And I was prompted to pick up the okra, which I also tend to forget about, by the glut of very ripe cherry tomatoes I had sitting on the window sill (don't refrigerate tomatoes, ever, it makes them mealy), I just love tomatoes and okra together (particularly sauteed with bacon and sweet onions).

I had a piece of leftover corn in the cooler, so that went in too, for a pretty succotash-like pan of sauteed vegetables, just perfect alongside a crispy crab cake.

Recipes for crab cakes here, and for okra here.