Tomato Salad and Roasted Root Vegetables

We’ve got an odd assortment of things in the gastronomic kitchen right now, and so for dinner tonight we had two very good, though oddly paired, dishes: a tomato salad and roasted root vegetables.

Yesterday morning we disovered, to our dismay, that our tomato plants have the dreaded blight.  They grew so well (7 feet tall!!), but will not be yielding any edible fruit.  So when we  went to the farmers market with our friends Caly and Steve later in the day we were on the hunt for some non-blighted tomatoes.

 

Cheesy Zucchini and Squash Casserole

We’re still working our way through a big pile of zucchini and squash here at the Gastrono-kitchen.  Gastronomike and I have been talking lately about how we just don’t seem to have a store of zucchini recipes to draw on, which is odd, because everyone with a garden grows, and is innundated with, zucchini and summer squash.  So why is it that we don’t seem to have a big cultural cache of zucchini and summer squash recipes?

Anyway, tonight’s zucchini dish is total comfort food, and was pretty delicious.  Served alongside grilled chicken and steamed yellow wax beans.

 

Potato-Leek Soup and Parmesan-Chard Bread

It’s been so cool and rainy out that a nice hot bowl of soup and chunk of homemade bread sounded perfect.

I’d say that both of these recipes were pretty big successes, though there are definitely tweaks Gastronomike and I want to make for next time.

 

Zucchini Pizza

This “pizza” has a crust that is made out of grated zucchini.  It was really unusual and kind of interesting to eat.  It’s not a favorite meal for either one of us by any means, but it was a totally solid meal and an unusual way to use up the many, many, many zucchini that are sitting around our kitchen right now.

 

How does your garden grow?

No meal, just some garden photos here.  Gastronomike and I are tending to a small garden in the back yard this summer.  It’s been so gray and wet that I’m surprised anything has grown at all, but we’re starting to harvest just a few small things that we are inordinately proud of.

Behold, our harvest so far (minus one cherry tomato which I popped into my mouth before Gastronomike could snap a photo):

You can see a few little tooth-marks on one of the cucumbers.  At the beginning of the season I built a cage to fit over the top of the garden to keep nibblers away.  Two days ago we took the cage off.  And tooth-marks appeared.  So after we harvested this little crop the cage went back over the garden.

 

Meal Roundup

We usually take our food photos with Mike’s camera, so I was surprised to find a bunch of meal photos on my camera when I plugged it into the computer a few minutes ago.  I wish I had documented these meals when we ate them, but as I neglected to do so, we’ll all have to be content with a quick overview of what the posts would have been.

First, here is an oddly focused photo of Mujadarrah made from a recipe Gastronomike’s friend sent us.

We really like this dish and make it every so often.  It’s warm, and yet feels like a cool meal on a hot summer evening.

Speed Recipe: boil a cup of lentils and 2/3 cup rice with a tbsp of cumin, and spread on lipped baking sheet.  Saute an onion (throw in some pine nuts at the end, too) and spread on lentil/rice mixture along with some chopped tomatoes.  Use pitas to scoop up bites, and eat with cucumber-yogurt sauce (chop a cucumber, a pinch of salt, and a few cloves garlic into plain yogurt and squeeze a lemon over it).

Next, here’s a photo of a steak/potato/salad meal I had while Mike was travelling with his grandmother earlier in the summer.

 

Pan Seared Pork Loin with Coconut-Tomato-Chile Salad

When R. and I were on a road trip last month, we stayed at her aunt’s house and enjoyed some cable television (a rare luxury!).  We happened to catch “All Star Grillfest” on the Food Network, which caught my eye since it was at my old stomping grounds on South Beach.  Since I am a huge fan of pork tenderloin, this recipe stuck in the back of my mind.  We did a little adaptation, substituting this and that, and it was still tremendous.  I just had some leftovers and I repeatedly exclaimed to myself over how delicious it is.  We had a few snags making it, but expect it will go much smoother next time, and it should only take about 30-40 minutes! We’ll definitely make this again.

 

Summer Rolls

 

We had been planning to take a picnic dinner over to campus and watch the movie on the quad tonight with all the Summer Start students.  We’ve done that every year since we’ve been here and always really enjoyed it (despite the run of terrible movies they’ve chosen in recent years).  But today it’s cold and has been raining all day.  The university obviously has an alternate rain location and the event is going on as planned, but for us most of the fun is in watching the movie en plein air.  So instead, we stayed home and ate our picnic dinner at the kitchen table.  Here you see a combination of rice-paper rolls with veggies and noodles inside, and collard leaf rolls with spiced chicken inside, along with peanut sauce for dipping.  We still have about half of this meal left in the fridge right now– I guess that’s what happens when you don’t slowly munch on it for the duration of a movie.  I’m looking forward to finishing it tomorrow for lunch.

 

Zucchini/Summer Squash Curry

We’ve only made curries from scratch a few times, and I think this was the biggest success.  R absolutely loved it, I think I would add half cashews or maybe even raisins in the last 5-10 minutes when we make it again.  But make no mistake, that’s “when” and not “if.”  Recipe via Epicurious.

 

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie = best!!!

I have never had a rhubarb pie before, so when R. spontaneously decided to make one the other day, I was BLOWN AWAY with how good it is.  The strange thing is, I remember feeling the same way whenever I had rhubarb for the first time, in a rhubarb chicken we made one or two summers ago.  From these two encounters I currently cannot fathom how rhubarb isn’t the #1 best-selling bit of produce in these great United States.  Fast food restaurants should have rhubarb sides, there should be Rhubarb Now & Laters, etc.  So weird that rhubarb is both extremely delicious, easy to cook with, and yet still fairly obscure as a foodstuff.  Bogus.