Orzo with Goat Cheese, Peas and Mint

Usually, I make a big deal of Eating Dinner Together At The Dining Room Table As a Family.  Especially on Sundays.  There's just something about being at the table, with placemats and candles and fabric napkins that makes me feel like all is right with the world.  And now that my teenager is leaving for college in a matter of days, I've gotten even more, shall we say, insistent?  I'm trying to memorize every last detail of her sunny face across the table from me.  Somehow I don't think gazing into this face across the table is going to be the same.

Although I'm thinking I am going to miss the teenager so incredibly much that I might actually break down and let the dog sit in her chair, just so it's not so, well, EMPTY.

Anyway.  Family dinners are great, but every once in a while there is nothing like eating supper out of mis-matched bowls on the sofa in front of a movie, with the dog curled up at your feet looking pleadingly at whatever you are eating.   And this is one of those meals - a warm, comforting, cheesy bowl of easy to eat orzo mixed up with just enough wonderful and comforting things to make it both interesting and scrumptious.

And putting it together could not be easier.  Cook up some orzo, which is rice-shaped pasta and one of the world's best comfort foods.  Once it is done and drained, pour it into a bowl and stir it up with a little olive oil and lemon zest, and then toss in some peas (fresh are fabulous if you can find them, but frozen cooked peas will work just fine), some crumbled goat cheese, a little fresh chopped mint and some salt and pepper.  Voila!  Instant comforting coziness...it's great warm, warm temperature or even as a chilled pasta salad kind of dish.

Personally, I plan to eat mine at all different temperatures curled up on the coach until my baby comes home for Thanksgiving break.  I hope the orzo supply holds out!

Orzo with Goat Cheese, Peas and Mint

• 1 pound orzo, cooked
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1/4 teaspoon lemon zest
• I cup peas, fresh or frozen and thawed
• 6 ounces crumbled goat cheese
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh mint
• Coarse salt and fresh ground pepper

1. Combine hot cooked orzo with olive oil and lemon zest.

2. Stir in remaining ingredients.  Can be served warm or cold!

Print this!

Herbs From The Aerogarden!

I love cooking with fresh herbs.  Not that my spice cabinet isn't a hazard to anyone who opens it up and thereby puts themselves in serious danger of being bonked on the head by a bottle of star anise...but there is nothing like a nice big aromatic bunch of the real thing to make any recipe sing.  So all through the summer I grow big wooden barrel-fuls of parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme right outside my back door.  Along with mint and tarragon and lots and lots of basil.  The basil gets its own personal barrel.  

And I merrily cook all summer long with the fresh herbs right outside my back door.  And then sooner or later comes this.

And not only are my herbs not growing happily in my barrels anymore, I can't even SEE my barrels.  So from about November until late May, there I am paying for outrageously priced limp bunches of herbs in the supermarket.  This year, I decided to take matters into my own hands and give  myself a birthday present of one of these:

This is an Aerogarden, and this seems like a good place to say that the Aerogarden people have never heard of me or my blog and that I bought and paid for my Aerogarden my own self.  So you know that the story you are about to hear is true and unbiased.

The Aerogarden basically works like this: that top part has special lights in it that are on a timer so they know when to come on and off.  The bottom part you fill with water and a packet of "nutrient liquid" that comes with your seeds.  There are 7 little holes in the center of the Aerogarden, and you pop whatever seed pods you ordered into these little holes.  I ordered the herb package.  The pods are filled with the seeds and a tiny amount of dirt, all pressed into a little plastic holder.  When the pods are in place, all you can see is the label on the top - everything else is in the water, and there is a little pump swirling it all around.  This all took me about 10 minutes to set up.

After about 2 weeks, my little herbs were springing up.  Here is my 2 week old thyme.

 And here is my two week old basil.  Isn't it adorable?  It's about one inch high.

It is now four weeks after I set the whole thing up - four weeks, mind you - and that cute little basil now looks like this:

The mint is very pushy and taking over the joint.  Which is slightly problematic, since I don't really have many mint recipes.

Hello, mint.

The dill is much more dignified.  Tall, but dignified.  I have plans for this dill in a chicken fricassee later this week.

This is globe basil.  I have no idea what globe basil is.  If any does, please tell me because it is getting bigger by the second.

And here's the thyme.  Also four weeks old, and this is after "harvesting" it twice.  (Harvesting is what the Aerogarden brochure calls it.  I feel very farmer-ish.)

And just to give you the full sense of how the whole thing fits so adorably on my counter, here's a picture of the full 4 week old Aerogarden. 

I'd like to say that water bottle is in the shot to give you a sense of perspective as to the size of the thing, but honestly, it's there because people leave half-full water bottles all over the dang house.

Anyway, I'm an Aerogarden groupie now, and as a result am planning to make something that involves fresh pesto in the middle of February.  Just because I can. 

Peppermint Brownies

Here's one that was inspired by my friends at the Fat Witch Bakery, who despite their name have you covered through all the holidays, not just Halloween.  I have made their S'mores Brownies about one million times (I am an honorary member of the teenager's posse purely on the basis of making them S'Mores Brownies over and over and over again.  Not that they let me actually hang out with them or anything, but they love me from afar.)

Anyway, here's the next one that I tried from the Fat Witch Brownies cookbook, and to be completely honest, I followed the directions for the brownie part to the letter, but then ran totally amuck on the topping.  Fat Witch called for the topping to be made with a mixture of white chocolate and confectioner's sugar and chopped peppermint, and I just...couldn't...do it.  It just seemed like a little too much chocolate to me (I know!  What is wrong with me???) so I went for a more traditional vanilla buttercream frosting, which came together in a jiff, and I did use the chopped peppermint.  Obviously.  It's still puh-lenty sweet, but the consistency is just a little bit lighter than the white chocolate would have been.  I hope the Fat Witch will still love me, and no hexes will be coming my way.

By the way, since it is the holiday season and I am feeling very generous and like I need to give credit where credit is due, I would like to go on record as saying that these little candy canes that I used for this recipe?  They were individually wrapped (AAAARRRGGGHHH!) and my dashing Southern husband unwrapped them all for me so I didn't lose my mind.

That is what you call true love and devotion.  Peppermint Brownies...make them for someone YOU truly love this Christmas.

Peppermint Brownies, inspired by Fat Witch Bakery

• 1 3/4 sticks unsalted butter
• 1/2 cup bittersweet chocolate chips
• 3 large eggs
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon peppermint extract
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup unbleached flour
• Pinch of salt
• 1/2 cup white chocolate chips

• 1/3 cup butter
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 pound (3 1/2 cups) sifted confectioners sugar (powdered sugar)
• 3 to 4 tablespoons milk or light cream, or to make smooth and spreadable
• 1/2 cup chopped candy canes

1. Line 9x9 inch baking pan with foil and spray with Pam.  Preheat oven to 350.

2. Mlet the butter and the bittersweet chocolate together in a small saucepan over low heat, stirring frequently.  Remove from heat and set aside to cool.

3. Beat together eggs, sugar and both extracts until smooth.  Add cooled chocolate mixture and mix until well blended.  

4. Sift flour and salt together directly into the batter and stir until well-combined.  Stir in white chocolate.  Spread into pan and bake until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean or with crumbs, not batter.  Cool on rack until completely cool.

5. Cream butter, salt, and vanilla, beating with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Add the confectioners' sugar gradually, beating after each addition. Add 3 tablespoons milk or light cream, beating until smooth. Beat in more milk until desired spreading consistency is reached and the frosting is spreadable.

6. Spread over cooled brownies and sprinkle chopped candy canes on top.  Using sides of foil, lift brownies out of pan and on to cutting surface.  Cut into small pieces.

Click here for printable recipe

Watermelon and Cheese Bites

Once a year, we gather with some of our very best friends at their beautiful lake house. We go to the state fair, we play badminton, we watch movies, we sit around the campfire and we lounge around and talk and laugh and sing and dance.

And we eat. Oh, do we eat. A couple of weeks beforehand, we plan out the weekend menu, which is a conglomeration of traditional items that we have every year without fail (grilled pizza!) along with some new recipes that we are trying out. That's one of the great things about hanging out with old friends - you can test out brand-new things with nothing to fear...they are always up for adventure.

That is where these scrumptious little nibbles come from. You skewer mozzarella, watermelon chunks, a little bit of prosciutto and a mint leaf (do not even THINK about skipping the mint leaf. It is the part that makes this baby just perfect.) Drizzle the cheese with a little balsamic vinegar mixed with olive oil, and that's it! Until you start debating the order of ingredients on the toothpick.

And then have to go outside and photograph the dang thing all over again. Just remember, as long as the mint leaf still ends up on the top, you're golden!

Watermelon and Cheese Bites, adapted from one of my favorite blogs, Cook Eat Love

• Cubed watermelon
• Mozzarella - either the small round variety, or regular fresh mozzarella cut into cubes
• Very thin sliced prosciutto
• Small fresh mint leaves
• Olive oil
• Balsamic vinegar
• Toothpicks

1. Mix equal parts oil and vinegar - about 1/8 cup of each to start and increase depending on how many you are making.  Mix cheese and vinegar mixture until cheese is lightly coated.

2. Assemble watermelon, cheese, small folded pieces of prosciutto and mint leaves in whatever order you like.  Serve at once. 

and a mint leaf!

Click here for printable recipe

Lemonade Mint Iced Tea

This one is going to be short and sweet, but I needed to get this up here before summer starts in earnest, because everyone needs to have a good, dependable iced tea recipe in their back pocket.

Now, I am a big fan of something called the Arnold Palmer, which is basically a mixture of half iced tea and half lemonade. The problem is, not everyone knows that a drink that is half iced tea and half lemonade is called an Arnold Palmer. So sometimes I order it when I am at a restaurant and they write it down like it is a perfectly normal thing to order, and sometimes they look at me like I have a screw loose somewhere. I have no earthly idea why this is called an Arnold Palmer, although I think a safe bet is that Arnold Palmer used to drink glasses of half lemonade and half iced tea?

And now that you know all that helpful background, here's a great version of this iced tea, and adding mint into the mix makes it just about perfect. Happy lazy summer days to you.

Lemonade Mint Iced Tea, adapted from Taste of the South

• 10 cups boiling water
• 10 tea bags
• 4 sprigs fresh mint
• 1 twelve ounce can frozen lemonade concentrate, thawed
• Sugar for sweetening (optional)

1. Combine water, teabads and mint in large pot and let steep for 5-10 minutes, depending on how strong you like your tea. Remove tea bags.

2. Stir in concentrate. At this point you should taste and see if you think you need some sugar. The lemonade will sweeten it somewhat, but if you like your tea pretty sweet you might need to add in some sugar.

3. Refrigerate about one hour, or until ready to serve.

Click here for printable recipe

Asian Shrimp, Pineapple and Peanut Salad

Here's the back story on this one. (You know I love the backstory).

Here are the main loves of my life.



Aren't they the sweetest?

And this, God help me, is the other love of my life.

And I was pretty much living happily ever after with all three of them, thinking life couldn't be much better.

Until this came along.

Yes, I know it is not right to fall in love with inanimate objects. But it plays all my favorite songs. It plays all my favorite movies. It lets me read all my favorite books...with a backlight!!! It shows off all my nine million pictures of chocolate chip cookies. And you can jazz it up with apps that tell you everything from where you parked your car at the mall to what to make for dinner when you have shrimp, pineapple and peanuts on hand and you just KNOW there's a good recipe in there somewhere.

For those of you who have one of these babies, there is an app called EPICURIOUS that is in the App Store for the low, low price of $Free. And for those of you who don't have one, as far as I can tell all the recipes are also available on www.epicurious.com. Anyway, one of the first delectable recipes that caught my eye was this one for a salad of shrimp, pineapple, avocado and peanuts, with a jalepeno lime mint dressing. Yes please, and thank you. It was quick and easy and delicious in a fun, tropical, summer-is-almost-here kind of way.

Asian Shrimp, Pineapple, and Peanut Salad, from Epicurious

Dressing:
2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
2 tablespoons fish sauce (such as nam pla or nuoc nam)
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 cup thinly sliced shallots (about 2 large)
1 small jalapeño chile, thinly sliced
3 tablespoons (packed) fresh mint leaves

Salad:
16 peeled deveined cooked large shrimp with tails intact
6 ounces fresh pineapple, peeled, cut into 2x1/4-inch spears (about 1 1/4 cups)
1 large avocado, halved, pitted, peeled, coarsely chopped
2 tablespoons salted peanuts
1 lime, cut into 8 wedges (for garnish)

For dressing:
Whisk lime juice, fish sauce, oil, and sugar in small bowl until sugar dissolves. Stir in shallots, chile, and mint.

For salad:
Toss shrimp with salt and pepper in bowl. Add pineapple, avocado, and dressing; toss to coat. Divide among plates, top with nuts, and garnish with lime wedges.

Click here for printable recipe

The Way Life Should Be

 

I really wish I had kept the original New York Times article that this recipe is based on. It went something along these lines: the writer had a summer house somewhere in New England, probably Maine, and had lots of summertime houseguests, many of whom had their hearts set on a lobster dinner. So they had many a suppertime filled with lobsters being boiled and cracked, with all the stuff that goes with that (pieces of errant shell flying all over the place, lobster juice drenching everything, etc, etc.). And the point of the article was, wouldn't life be wonderful if you could make a meal that included all of the lazy, delicious, summertime taste of lobster without all the shell-cracking, juice-flying, sticky drama?

At least I think that is how it went. It's been a while, and my brain isn't what it used to be.

In any event, I did keep the recipe, which is wonderfully and perfectly entitled "The Way Life Should Be." And when it comes to eating lobster, the way life should be is that the lobster is out of the shell, cut or torn into delectable bite-sized pieces, and marinated in a glorious bath of olive oil, fresh lemon juice, chopped garlic and a heaping amount of chopped up fresh mint, parsley and basil. (Very Important Note: the original recipe says these herbs are optional. They are NOT. They are MANDATORY. Otherwise the recipe is automatically retitled, "The Way Life Kinda Should Be.")

Anyway. You leave the lobster in this lovely marinade for 60 minutes, then you cook up some spaghetti, drain it, put in in a bowl and pour the whole lemony, lobstery, herby, garlicky concoction over the pasta. Toss it around a little and there you have it -- a summery lobster dinner that smells incredible and tastes even better.

We had this for dinner a few days ago, and it was a work day for me. When I got home, my hearthrob of a Southern husband had already put the lobster into the marinade and it was waiting on the kitchen counter. The kitchen smelled incredible -- all mint and basil and lemon and garlic and lobster -- and all I had to do was make the pasta, mix it up and not mess up the picture.

Now THAT is the way life should be.

THE WAY LIFE SHOULD BE, adapted from The New York Times

Six lobsters, cooked, shelled and chopped into bite size pieces

1/3 cup lemon juice (from 2 lemons)

1/2 cup olive oil

2 minced garlic cloves

1/4 cup chopped parsley and basil

1/4 cup mint

Pinch of salt

1 pound cooked spaghetti

1. Combine lemon juice, olive oil, garlic, herbs and salt. Add lobster and let sit at room temperature for an hour.

2. Cook pasta until al dente. Drain and return to pot. Pour lobster mixture onto pasta and toss.

Print this!

Chicken Salad with Apple and Basil

Chicken salad is one of those recipes like meatloaf, or macaroni and cheese, where I always think there might be a better version out there. So whenever I run across another one I try it, because you never know if the grass might be greener on the other side of the chicken salad fence.

This particular version is adapted from one of my other favorite magazines (and the only other one that I have a subscription to), and that is REAL SIMPLE. If my life as I fantasize about it could be turned into a magazine it would be this one. "Simplify," one of the most beautiful words in a working mother's life. For me it ranks up there with the words "nap" and "summer Friday." Anyway, this recipe is a nice light mayo-free chicken salad that has the extra added attraction of having a lot of basil as one of the ingredients. I love basil, and I plant it every spring, and it starts out looking all nice and well behaved, like this:

And several weeks later it is 15 feet tall and threatening to move into the house.

Anyway, this nice recipe calls for poaching the chicken, and I've included that part in the directions below, but my usual approach to chicken salad is to make grilled chicken with something else earlier in the week and to throw a few extra chicken breasts on the grill. Pop them in the fridge and then this recipe will go even faster a couple of days later.

So for those of you, like me, who never met a chicken salad recipe you didn't like, here's another good one for your collection.

CHICKEN SALAD WITH APPLE AND BASIL

• 4 boneless skinless chicken breasts
• 4 teaspoons coarse salt
• 1 teaspoon black pepper
• 1/2 cup fresh lime juice (from 2-3 limes)
• 1 tablespoon white wine vinegar
• 2 tablespoons light brown sugar
• 4 scallions, thinly sliced
• 2 Granny Smith apples, cored and diced
• 1/2 cup chopped peanuts
• 2 tablespoons sliced mint
• 1/2 cup chopped basil
• 
  

1. Pound chicken thin, place in saucepan and cover with water. Add 3 teaspoons salt and 1/2 teaspoon pepper and bring to low boil. Cook until cooked through, about 10 minutes. Transfer to bowl of ice water for 5 minutes.

2. Meanwhile, combine lime juice, vinegar and sugar in large bowl and stir until sugar is dissolved. Add scallions and apples and toss.

3. Dry chicken and shred into bite size pieces. Add to bowl with peanuts, mint and basil, along with remaining salt and pepper. Toss and serve.