Fez-Style Baked Fish

It's summer, which means on any given day, we're likely to be out playing right up until dinnertime.  So I try to get everything ready for dinner in the morning or the night before so that the most I have to do at dinnertime is stick a prepared casserole in the oven, dump a bunch of stuff into a skillet or even less if possible. 

This is a new twist (for me) on flavors for fish...I love the combination of tomatoes and olives, potatoes and saffron, garlic and cumin but I've never applied it to fish.  The original recipe calls for cilantro along with parsley, but I'm one of those people to whom cilantro tastes weird so I substituted garden mint (read: I can't remember what variety of mint it is anymore) for the cilantro.  I also didn't have cherry tomatoes on hand, so I used a 15 oz. can of cut-up, drained whole tomatoes instead. 

Here's what I did this morning...I mixed up the marinade for the fish (which is still thawing a leetle), parboiled the potatoes and put them in my baking dish, and sliced/assembled the rest of the veggies.  I put the fish in the marinade (even if it's not totally thawed) later in the afternoon before we went out.  When we got home, I put the 3 components together in the baking dish while the oven preheated and baked 30 minutes while wrestling the kiddos into a dinner-appropriate state of cleanliness.  If I had been prepping the night before because I'd be gone all day, I'd go ahead and marinate the fish starting in the morning but not overnight due to the acid content of the marinade.


Another make-ahead thought...if you have leftover boiled potatoes from another meal, use those in this dish!  A single layer of pre-cooked taters in a square baking dish will do you.

One more note...my husband liked this very well as a fish dish, but also thought it would rock as a chicken dish.  Just bake 30-40 minutes for chicken breasts, until they're cooked through.
Adapted from http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/09/dining/baked-fish-fez-style-recipe.html



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Prep-ahead Plan for Salad Nicoise

I love, love, love salad nicoise with all its little components...marinated olives, hard-boiled eggs, steamed green beans, boiled new potatoes, roasted fish and citrusy-garlicky vinaigrette...but it's kind of a pain to make from Step Zero.  That is, if you have to make each of those individual components just for the salad, that's a lot of steps and a lot of work. 

Despite the hoity reputation of French cuisine, I think most French dishes originated with busy housewives who had more pressing things to do than sit around pitting gourmet olives, shelling hard-boiled eggs and quartering green beans lengthwise each day for dinner.  I'll bet the first Nicoise woman to make this salad had a bunch of stuff leftover from other meals, and put it all together for dinner before it got barmy.


I think the best way to make this is to plan ahead and make extras of the things you'll need for the salad as meal components the day or two before...if you want to serve salad nicoise on Wednesday, boil eggs for snacks and breakfast on Sunday and set aside 3; serve boiled potatoes with dinner on Monday, and fish/steamed green beans on Tuesday and make make twice as much to set aside half for the salad; and on Wednesday make vinaigrette and wash lettuce.  Easy-peasy.

The traditional components of salad nicoise happen to show up at a lot of holiday meals, too...olives from the relish tray, deviled eggs (they're basically hard boiled eggs with a little mayo), green beans and baked or boiled potatoes as side dishes.  Why not throw those leftovers together to make a salad nicoise, holiday-leftover-style?  With Easter coming in just over a month, I'm keeping this idea on the back burner.

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Make ahead Wheat Berry Salad

This salad is one of my top 10 favorite recipes.  The whole wheat kernel base is layered with artichokes, bitter greens, peppers and olives and finished with the classically Greek lemon-olive oil-feta flavor party.  Once you've got the wheat berries prepared, it goes together quickly and only gets better over the course of a couple days in the fridge...read: it *likes* to be made ahead and the leftovers are delicious!  It can stand to be out of the fridge for awhile (and tastes better served at room temp anyway) so it's suitable for picnics or dinner at your kids' Little League games. 

It's also a recipe that I never quite make the same way twice...it depends on what I have on hand and how willing I am to have 1/2 a can of something hanging around after I finish the recipe.  It's not so much a recipe anymore as guidelines :D  Originally, it was a recipe from the Washington Post food section.  They recommended serving this as a side dish with grilled fish or chicken, but I serve it most often as a vegetarian main dish.

Wheat berries

Wheat berries are the whole kernel of wheat, what comes off the plant before it gets flattened into cereal or ground into flour.  When cooked, the  individual kernels are chewy and toothsome.  They pop between your teeth like caviar or grapes.  They have a nutty, grainy flavor and make a much more flavorful salad base than rice (the usual grain-and-vegetable salad suspect) in my opinion.

Top Row: Red bell pepper, black olives, radicchio
Middle Row: Feta, chickpeas, lemon
Bottom Row: Radicchio, cherry tomatoes, artichokes

Cooking the wheat berries is a lot like cooking dry beans.  Some folks say they can be cooked without soaking first, but I prefer the results from soaking then cooking.  You can do either the overnight soak, then cook them, or do a "quick soak"...just like for beans!  Here is how I put together this salad last night for dinner tonight...I put the wheat berries in a saucepan covered with 1" of water and brought it to a boil.  I boiled for 2 minutes, then turned off the heat and covered the pan.  I let them stand for 1 hour (this is the "quick soak" method) while we put the kids to bed.  Then I drained them, rinsed them, covered them again with water, brought to a boil, reduced the heat, covered and simmered for 50 minutes while I zoned out and watched TV.  Drain.  Ta-dah!  Cooked wheat berries!  I measured and chopped the remaining ingredients this morning, but I could have done that while the wheat berries were cooking for 100% Dinner Done Yesterday ;)

This recipe lends itself to tweaking...use regular black olives or the fancy marinated olive bar ones, use fresh red bell pepper or roasted red pepper, use radicchio or arugula or a handful of salad from a bag of spring mix, whatever you have on hand!

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Easy-Easier-Easiest: Celery Root

Celery root, or celeriac, is one of my favorite autumn veggies.  It's only available at this time of year, so I eagerly await it.  The edible root is covered in a nobbly, creviced peel that must be cut away with a knife...no veggie peelers here!...and has the grassy, bright aroma of celery married to the creamy, crunchy goodness of a root vegetable. 

It can be eaten raw or cooked, depending on how much time you want to spend with it.  Celery root is a happy participant in any root veggie ensemble, whether roasted alongside sweet potatoes and turnips or mashed with potatoes, or is particularly delicate on its own as a side dish.

Like apples and potatoes, cut celeriac will begin to brown so if you cut it ahead of time, be sure to toss it with something acidic like salad dressing or store it submerged in lemon water.

NOTE: While not evenly remotely related to celeriac, jerusalem artichokes (or sunchokes) are low-glycemic impact tubers harvested in the fall that you can also prepare in the following ways.
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Pantry Puttanesca

This is one for which you can have all the ingredients lounging in your pantry/freezer any time, or at least until the canned goods expire.  The only need-to-shop-now, fresh additions might be a handful of chopped fresh herbs or a couple cups of leftover roasted/grilled/sauteed veggies.  I wouldn't go out of my way to cook anything special for this recipe, but if you've got some leftover zucchini or eggplant, this is a great way to use it up.

A traditional puttanesca sauce uses anchovies, black olives, capers and tomatoes for its base.  If you think you don't like anchovies, think again.  Anchovies are the major flavor ingredient in Worcestershire sauce, giving it the full, rich, salty, umami quality that Worcestershire sauce brings to your favorite marinade (which makes Worcestershire sauce not vegetarian, for anyone who cooks for vegetarian types). 

I choose to use sardines here because I'm currently hot for them, dietarily speaking, for the reasons outlined here.  You can use tuna or the traditional anchovies, if you prefer.  If using tuna or sardines, you can choose to leave them quite chunky (so as to be easily picked around) or flake them up quite a bit before adding to the sauce so they become more of a flavorful ghost in the machine rather than an upfront protein.

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Chicken Francese cookery pictures

Pictures courtesy of Darling Hubbie!  I almost forgot to document the cooking of this dish.  It's been a long week.

Cutlets crammed into skillet...you'll space yours out more...do as I say, not as I do!

Browned cutlets, ready to wipe extra oil out of pan and add lemon juice-olive sauce to deglaze



Ready to serve

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Chicken Francese

This is a quick and easy way to do chicken, unless you are starting with chicken breasts and have to pound them into cutlets.  Even then it's not too bad, but cutlet-making is definitely a prep-ahead chore for me.  I evidently didn't take any pictures of this one in prep-ahead process (oops), but I'll update with cookery pics when I make this dish.

If you've never done it, you take a chicken breast and cut it in half lengthwise.  Put one half in a quart-size ziptop bag and press all the air out.  Tip #1: Use the flat side of a meat mallet to pound...if you use the spiky part of the mallet or you'll puncture the plastic bag and it will be beyond messy.  Tip #2: Pound the chicken from the side the skin used to be on, not the "meaty" side.  Pound until the cutlet is about 1/4" thick.  Set aside to fridge or freeze, and repeat until all your chicken is nice and thin.

If you're making a freezer kit, you can get one of the small cans of sliced olives, label and store it in the pantry as part of the kit, or you can freeze a large handful of chopped olives with the rest of the ingredients.
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Eat it the way you found it: 2 Chickens 4 Ways

Don't they look jaunty?

It's amazing how much mileage you can get out of a modest frying chicken--breasts, legs, carcasses, giblets, fat, it all gets used.  Whole chickens were on great sale at the grocery store, so I stocked up.  I'm turning two of them (~ 4 lbs. each) into four separate meals big enough for 2 adults and 2 kids, plus leftovers.
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Beer marinated olives



Savory, dried and bundled

A twist on olives marinated in oil and red wine.  Great make-ahead party apps.
 

I use savory in this recipe, which is an herb not often found at the local supermarket but with a flavor similar to rosemary in my oh-pinion.  I've put this herb in my herb garden rotation instead of rosemary for its small leaves (no chopping necessary, unlike rosemary), its propensity for reseeding itself and its capacity for dried storage.  At the end of summer, I tie several stems into a bundle with kitchen twine and store in the pantry in an open plastic bag.  When you need to use some, you just shake the bundle over a cutting board until you have the desired amount.  Easy-peasy!  If you don't have savory, sub in rosemary.

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Muffaletta, or Really? You don't have time to make a sandwich?

If I think back 2 1/2 years, I know that's the question I would have asked after reading what I am about to write.  How can you possibly be so tired, so disorganized, so worn-out that you can't make one little sandwich?  Any soon-to-be first-time parents who are reading and wondering the same thing, please take note of the response I have for my pre-baby self...HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!  Call me back in 3 months and let me know how that "sleeping through the night" thing is going.

Anyway...freezing sandwich fixings is mostly about having something in the freezer so that you don't have to go grocery shopping and possibly snagging a good sale on deli meat.  But deli meat, sliced cheese and rolls do freeze really well (provided you've packaged them airtight), so put an easy-peasy dinner in your back pocket for those days when even take-out is too hard. 

Hummus is a good veggie sandwich option that freezes nicely, too.  You can even assemble some cheese sandwiches for grilling (go ahead and butter the bread) and wrap them invidually in plastic wrap to freeze.  Total lifesaver when there's a screaming baby, a hungry toddler and no lunch plan.

For something a little more interesting than a plain ol' bologna sandwich, I love muffaletta.  Love the New Orleans Central Grocery muffaletta, love this one too.  It's adapted from Emeril Lagasse's muffaletta recipe.  I double the amount of olive relish since the giardiniera called for only comes in containers twice the size required by the recipe at my local stores.  Work once, eat twice.  I also hate standing in line at the deli counter -- Publix...Boca Raton...Parkinsonian retiree with half a loaf of bread stashed in her purse wanting "samples"...'nuff said -- so I'd rather buy twice as much deli meat and freeze it so that I've got all the making for TWO of these delectable sandwiches on deck.  You can make this ahead the night before even, so it's a shop-ahead, prep-ahead and make-ahead meal...fabulous for parties, too.

Emeril calls for some authentic Italian-type deli meats that we just don't get in my neck of the woods, so I sub out a spicy ham for capicolla and P&P loaf for mortadella.

Muffaletta (makes 2 sandwiches, each serves 8)

Olive Relish:
2 cups pimento-stuffed olives, plus 1/4 cup of liquid from the jar
2 cups giardiniera (pickled Italian vegetables), plus 2 tablespoons of liquid from the jar (a 16-oz jar is about 2 cups)
1/4 cup drained capers, plus 4 teaspoons of liquid from the jar
1 cup pitted black olives
4 cloves garlic
1 small minced shallot
2 teaspoons dried oregano
2 teaspoons dried parsley
Pinch of dried thyme
Pinch of crushed red pepper
3/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

Pulse the garlic cloves and shallots in a food processor until finely chopped.  Add the olives, giardiniera, capers in the processor and pulse several times until coarsely chopped.  It's ok if there are some big chunks left. 

Combine the brines, olive oil and herbs and spices in a medium bowl.  Add the chopped vegetables and stir well.  Divide into two zip-top bags.

Deli Meats/Cheeses:
1/2 pound sliced fresh mozzarella
1/2 pound sliced capicollo or prosciutto (or spicy ham)
1/2 pound sliced Genoa salami
1/2 pound sliced mortadella (or P&P or bologna)
1/2 pound sliced mild provolone cheese

Divide each type of meat and cheese in half and put them in zip-top bags.

To serve:
for each sandwich, one large round loaf (10"-12") of sourdough or Italian bread, split lengthwise

When you're ready to make the sandwich, thaw all your fixings.  Cut the bread in half and scoop out some of the crumb from the top and bottom halves of the bread. 

Fill the scooped out part with olive relish. 

Cover each half with slices of cheese.  Arrange each type of meat in a layer over the cheese.  CAREFULLY close the halves together.  Wrap in plastic wrap and put this in the fridge for at least a couple of hours, if you have time.  To serve, cut into wedges.

FYI...if you want to make your own bread for this sandwich, I made a half recipe of the Pain Ordinaire Carême from Bernard Clayton's New Complete Book of Breads. Pin It