Gazpacho

With the sudden appearance of sweltering summer days in the city, I’m finding it really hard to motivate myself to turn on the stove. Add to that a huge pile of work plus the adventure of trying to sell my car (long story short: it’s sold. And I even managed to not sell it to this crew of ‘2 Fast 2 Furious’ kids who kept offering me $2100 when another guy already told me he’ll pay me $2200), and you’ve got one not-very-active blogger!

But now that the car’s sold and I’m sitting at home drinking echinacea tea while recovering from a cold (oh the irony!) and thus, not feeling too guilty about not doing actual school work, it’s time to share with you a recipe. This one doesn’t even require turning on the stove!

If you’ve been going to farmer’s markets lately, I’m sure you’ve been noticing the mountains of beautiful tomatoes everywhere. As we’re nearing the end of tomato season, Nathan and I have officially begun our annual quest to eat as many tomatoes as possible before they disappear from the markets. Orangette, in an article in Bon Appetit magazine, gave a recipe for oven-roasted tomatoes that I’ve been dying to try. But I’m going to wait until we get some proper San Francisco summer days again (read: foggy, windy, and chilly) before turning on the oven for multiple hours.

In the meantime, an icy cold gazpacho sounds like the perfect way to fulfill our tomato quota. When I did my gazpacho research, some recipes recommended using a food mill instead of a blender because you supposedly lose the bright red color if you use a blender. But if you know me, you know that I hate buying a piece of equipment just for a single purpose, so I decided to ignore all the warnings, pull out our trusty blender, and risk a not-so-red gazpacho. To help rescue the color a bit, I blended only half of the tomatoes and finely chopped the rest.

So what do you think? Is my food-mill-less gazpacho a red-enough gazpacho?

 

Vietnamese Summer Rolls

I’ve been making these Vietnamese summer rolls (or spring rolls, whichever you prefer) a lot lately. I first had a craving for them on a particularly hot day since it requires minimal stove time and makes for a refreshing light dinner. Besides, Nathan had bought a bag of frozen shrimps for a Thai curry or something, so I saw it as my duty to help clean out the freezer.

Then just last week, my lab was treated to a celebration dinner at Incanto, one of my favorite restaurants in the city, where we got to partake in a Whole Beast Feast. The whole beast in question was an 85 lb piggie and needless to say, it was both delicious and unforgettable. But as it turned out, our lab eyes were way bigger than our lab stomachs, leaving us with box after box of leftover roast pork. Vietnamese spring rolls come to the rescue again, as I substituted shredded roast pork for shrimp.

Finally, just today while looking for a snack during housecleaning, I stared into a fridge that I’m trying to clear out before our Boston trip next week. I spotted a random piece of fried tofu left over from a round of sandwich making, and that became Vietnamese summer rolls round #3.

Before I forget, thank you to my former roomie Kim for teaching me how to make these!

 

Panzanella

You may have noticed that when you mention ’summer’ to us San Franciscans, we like nothing more than to complain about how our summers are freezing. Woe to us who have to live with foggy, misty days and frigid, windy nights! This summer, though, we’ve been getting more than our fair share of sweaty summer days so we (at least, I) haven’t been complaining as much. At first glance, it’s pretty awesome to not have to bundle up in sweaters in the middle of July and actually be able to wear those cute summer skirts hiding in the closet. But then when you realize the randomly hot and dry weather is literally burning up our state, being able to wear cute summer skirts hardly seems worth it.

Honestly, who needs really hot weather when there are plenty of other signs of summer around us? I’m talking, of course, about those summer fruits and vegetables! These days, even a salad quickly turns into a hugely colorful affair, because who can resist throwing in handfuls of sweet corn, green beans, and radishes? And I, for one, cannot bear to let our apartment be tomato-free even for a day. Oh, and we mustn’t forget the giant piles of berries, peaches, and apricots practically begging to be eaten! Speaking of which, I need to finish this entry stat because there’s a bowl of Royal Blenheim apricots calling my name.

This bread salad (call it ‘Panzanella’ to impress your friends or if you’re Alex Trebek) is one of the simplest, easiest, and summer-iest salads ever. And the extra good news? It lets you use that stale half-loaf of bread that’s been hanging out in your kitchen for days!

 

Baby Spinach Salad with Persimmons, Blue Cheese, and Candied Walnuts

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!!

Since Thanksgiving is probably my favorite holiday (how can I not love a day all about cooking, eating, and hanging out??), I always get very excited when the end of November rolls around. With most of my friends being foodies also, the last few Thanksgivings have ended up being cooking marathons, when we try out as many cool recipes as possible.

This year, however, I celebrated a quieter Thanksgiving with my sister. With just the two of us, I vetoed the idea of buying a turkey (much to her dismay) and instead we made Zuni Cafe’s Roasted Chicken instead. That recipe is truly amazing! Ok, so you do need to plan ahead and salt the chicken (use the term “dry brine” to impress your friends) two days in advance, but the resulting product is more than worth it. Juicy, flavorful, with a super-crispy skin - basically, everything you want your roast chicken to be.

As for sides, we went with a spinach salad with persimmons+blue cheese+candied walnuts (recipe follows), some beautiful golden-crusted brussel sprouts a la Heidi of 101 Cookbooks (although we did put in less cheese, opting for a lighter side dish since we had so much chicken to deal with), and a chestnut and wild mushroom stuffing a la Jardinière (to which we added a bit of sausage).

(Unfortunately, I had high hopes for the chestnuts in the stuffing and while the dish tasted great, the chestnuts didn’t really add much so I would probably skip the chestnuts next time. As long as you have a good selection of wild mushrooms - we combined cheap non-wild creminis with dried porcinis and a couple of chantrelles - the stuffing will taste amazing anyway.)

 

Umeshiso Maki

For a while now, every time I would open the freezer, there would be a few tubs of this pork broth I made a few months ago, taunting me to find a use for them. Honestly, I can’t even remember exactly why I had pork bones to make broth from - I guess we took the meat off for some other use? Anyway, what can you do with pork broth? I toyed around with the idea for a pork pho for a bit, but having never made regular beef pho before, I was hesitant to attempt my first pho with an alternate meat. Then, in a moment of revelation, I finally figured out where in the noodle world pork broth fits… Ramen! (duh)

Although my broth was also made from pork bones, it was much lighter and clearer than my favorite milky-white tonkotsu broth. I heated it up with the white parts of some scallions, ladled it on top of some fresh ramen, and garnished with the green parts of scallions plus a hard-boiled egg (from Devil’s Gulch Ranch - I’m currently obsessed with finding really good farm eggs). Speaking of ramen, why won’t Japanese stores sell just fresh ramen without seasoning packets?!

To go with the simplistic bowls of noodles, I made some umeshiso maki. Mine all came out pretty sad-looking with rips and tears in places, but as my mom likes to say, “It all ends up looking the same in your stomach anyway.”