He Cooks, She Cooks

Call this my California comeback meal.

I cooked very differently in Argentina. I used almost exclusively Argentine products, except some spices I brought with me. I was cooking meals for me and only me, so I was less adventurous, plus my kitchen was less stocked. (Ask Marissa, who said she’d never seen a fridge of mine so empty.) And when I went out for meals, it was mostly for Argentine or Italian, nothing with much spice. So I looked forward to the flavors I’d return to in Los Angeles.

Cilantro, lime and chilies — one of my favorite combinations, common in Mexican and Indian cuisine — came together in two components of this fish. First, a salsa verde, which cooks with the fish, then a pineapple and roasted poblano salsa served on top.
Does it need both? Maybe not, but we had produce to use up, and the two salsas work together nicely. The tomatillo sauce keeps the fish moist while baking, and I loved the sweet, sour and spicy addition of chunky pineapple-poblano salsa.

We served the fish with cilantro rice, quesadillas and a salad with my cilantro-lime dressing (used before on an Ahi Tuna Tostada and Fiesta Quinoa). The meal was very California, and I liked it.

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The great thing about empanadas is that anything goes. Whatever you have in the kitchen can be sealed in dough, then baked or fried. It’s a fun way to play with flavor combinations.

I knew I wanted swiss chard and ricotta together. I had some shallots, so in those went. Some salt, pepper and lemon juice to bring out the taste of everything. I found the chard to be a little bitter still, so I diced some red bell pepper and added that for sweetness. It worked! Flavor and color balance with one addition.

But even if you end up with a tasty but monochromatic empanada filling, it doesn’t matter because it all gets wrapped up anyway. (I’ve been working on my empanada sealing technique. It’s not quite there, but I have a few weeks left to master it before I leave Buenos Aires.)

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This dish started because I wanted to do something with polenta. I turned to Plate Online, which has recipes from many well-known chefs and restaurants. I saw a recipe for goat cheese polenta fries and another for soft polenta with jalapeños and bleu cheese. I had goat cheese in the fridge, and I don’t care for bleu cheese unless it is with something really sweet, so I combined the two ideas.

Then I remembered I had black beans soaking in water already (As my friend Kat noted, of course that would be something I would do, start soaking dried beans one night for no particular reason).

I googled polenta and black beans and saw an idea to put a black bean salad on top of creamy polenta. So that was it, I bought a bell pepper and lime, then made do with everything else I already had.

The result was very satisfying. I loved the flavor of the polenta. The beans and bell pepper offered contrasting texture, and the guacamole was a cool balance to the spice of the jalapeños. I would have liked some fresh cilantro but the store didn’t have it. I used a good amount of ground coriander in the salad, though.

All in all, a tasty dish, and a nice alternative to rice and beans.

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With an eggplant, zucchini and bell pepper in the fridge the other day, I couldn’t help but think of ratatouille. Since I couldn’t justify another trip to the market, canned tomato sauce would have to suffice to complete the traditional four-fecta of produce in the dish.

I wanted to make a meal of it, so I opented up the pantry. Hmm polenta…That sounds a big bowl of mush, unless…yes, I could make some firm squares and pan-fry the outsides. Althought I didn’t have success in my first crisp polenta attempt this summer…

I’ve since found the proper 3-1 ratio of liquid to dry polenta, and I haven’t had any similar fails. (I’ll note that the polenta in that photo, while melted out of its square shapes, ended up with a most pleasant grill flavor.)

Serving an untraditional ratatouille with polenta, of all things, is a departure from the French spirit of honoring culinary tradition, but a Google search shows I’m not the first to have bastardized a classic in this way. Yet when it works so deliciously, why fight it?

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Merguez is a spicy African sausage usually made with lamb. It’s one of my favorites, and I wanted to suggest our school meat market start making it, but then I found a New York Times recipe that could be recreated at home without sausage casings. I didn’t think the recipe called for enough spice, so I added more paprika and cayenne.

Kat found a recipe for an herbed couscous salad with harissa and cherry tomatoes. It was the perfect side with the sausage, plus it used the harvest off my cherry tomato plant, my box of couscous and the can of harissa I bought at the eastern market a while ago. I am moving very soon and so every day is an effort to use up the goods that I have and not buy anything extra. The salad is supposed to have a lot more fresh herbs, but we weren’t about to go to the store, so we used the mint and cinnamon basil we could get off Kat’s plants.

I served the whole thing with a little plain yogurt since the sausage and couscous both had a lot of heat.

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When I was home for spring break, I got a few free issues of Edible Los Angeles, a small magazine I believe in its second year. If you’re not in LA, there are several other Edible cities magazines worth checking out.

I found an amazing-sounding recipe for shrimp and bacon skewers with apricot-ancho barbecue sauce that, you can ask Michael or Kat, I mentioned roughly every time someone said bbq for the next four months.

Though I still haven’t made the skewers, I made a variation of the sauce to marinate and serve with a barbecued pork loin. The spicy apricot glaze was meant to match the flavors of the spice-rubbed spare ribs that were routinely doused in an apricot ale. (I had early trouble with the grill so they came out much too charred, at no fault of the recipe. We’ve had previous success with it, but cooking three big racks of ribs on one temperamental grill was just too much for me.)

The pork loin, though, was able to cook with indirect heat once the ribs were off, so it came out much more succulent. The barbecue sauce was a hit, but of course, there was bacon in it, and let’s be honest, pork on pork is a winning combination.

Although, I imagine it would also be magical on shrimp and chicken, too.

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