When I experimented with the Crab-Crusted Ling Cod last week, I had extra roasted red pepper sauce left over (bottom of that post). And really, extra roasted red pepper sauce literally screams, “pasta! Use me with pasta!” Really, it does — I heard it.

So, I answered the call. I used the leftover sauce to make yet another sauce with some canned plum tomatoes, an eggplant, a zucchini and some mushrooms.

Penne with Red Pepper, Eggplant & Zucchini
1/2 cup leftover roasted red pepper sauce (or 2 red peppers, roasted, peeled and pureed)
2 tbsp olive oil
1 medium eggplant, peeled and cubed
1 medium zucchini, diced
2 cloves of garlic, minced
salt & pepper to taste
8-10 button mushrooms, sliced
1 28-oz can whole plum tomatoes
1/4 cup red wine
Garnishes:
1/4 cup fresh basil leaves, sliced into thin strips (chiffonadded, if you will)
1/4 cup pine nuts, toasted
1/4 cup goat cheese

Liberally salt eggplant cubes in a colander and let sit for 30 minutes. Rinse well and set aside.

Heat a pan over medium heat. Add olive oil and sauté the mushrooms, zucchini and garlic for about 5 minutes. Add eggplant and let everything cook down for about 30 minutes over medium-low heat. Let the eggplant really break down and get all golden. If you are not using leftover sauce with onion in it, you may want to sauté some onion with everything else too.

Next, add the canned tomatoes and their sauce, squishing each tomato in your hand before you add it. The red peppers are next. If you don’t have leftover sauce just used pureed roasted red peppers. Whichever route you take, add the wine and then let the sauce simmer for about 5 minutes. Taste and adjust seasonings (salt & pepper) as you see fit. This is also where I add a few red pepper flakes just for fun.

Toss the sauce with cooked wheat penne or any other pasta you have on hand. I typically add the pasta into the sauce, rather than the other way around.

Garnish each bowl with the basil, pine nuts and goat cheese. I have a very small ice cream scoop (about the size of a melon baller) and I used that to make little goat cheese scoops for the top of each serving. So cute! I knew that gadget would come in handy one day, because really, who eats little, tiny balls of ice cream? Oh, not I (nor jwa).

Now get a glass of red wine, some Daily Show on the TV and dig in!

The recipe I chose for this fabulous incarnation of IMBB is from the Rhone-Alps region of France (near Grenoble) and comes from the French Farmhouse Cookbook by Susan Hermann Loomis, which is a cookbook that I enthusiastically recommend. It was also very useful for this event as she says exactly where she got each recipe, so I knew the region of Poulet aux Noix without much sleuthing. Perhaps this is why I ended up making so much food.

Idle hands and all that, I guess…

Anyway, this area of France is walnut growing country, which is reflected in this meal. This leads me to the chicken. Oh my, the chicken. It was so amazingly good but really very simple to prepare. The walnuts soak up chicken juices and garlic and wine and lemon and almost caramelize with flavor. I suggest a baguette for sopping up all the garlicky-chickeny-lemony juices. I also suggest using more than 12 cloves of garlic — hell, use a whole bulb. You will not be sorry!

And, before I forget, thank you to Cucina Testa Rossa for hosting IMBB23 and for picking such a wonderful theme. I think that this is one of the best (and most fun to plan) meals I have made for any cooking event since I’ve had my blog.

Poulet aux Noix (Chicken with Walnuts)
2 tbsp olive oil
1 chicken (3-1/2 to 4 pounds), cut into 8 pieces (2 breast pieces, 2 wings with portion of breast attached, 2 legs, 2 thighs), giblets reserved
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
1/2 cup plus 2 tbsp dry white wine (I used Vouvray, which is what it suggested in the cookbook. I was just walking around Cost Plus and happened upon a bottle. I took it as a sign)
12 cloves garlic, (the recipe says unpeeled, but I peeled mine by accident but was very pleased with the results)
1-1/4 cups walnut halves or large pieces

Heat the oil in a large heavy skillet over medium-high heat. When the oil is hot but not smoking, brown the chicken pieces, seasoning them liberally with salt and pepper, until they are golden, about 5 minutes per side. I just used two breast pieces (with skin and bones) and two whole leg pieces, I didn’t bother with buying wings. As I bought my chicken already in parts, I had no giblets. I’m kind of sad about that as I can only imagine how tasty those would have been in the pan. I think it may even be worth just throwing caution to the wind and hacking up your own bird.

Add the lemon juice, 2 tablespoons of the wine, and the garlic cloves to the skillet. Reduce the heat to medium, cover, and cook until the chicken is nearly cooked through, about 15 minutes. Then stir the walnuts into the skillet, along with the giblets, cover, and continue cooking for about 8 minutes.

Remove the cover from the skillet and continue cooking, stirring occasionally, until all the pan juices have evaporated and the chicken, walnuts, and garlic are golden, 5 to 8 minutes. My juices didn’t really evaporate — the chicken was done in about 8 more minutes so I just removed it and went from there. Be sure to watch the walnuts, for they tend to brown easily. If they are getting too brown at any point in the cooking, remove and reserve them, returning them to the pan just before serving. Mine actually started to get a bit dark so I scooped them all out and set them aside.

Transfer the chicken, garlic and walnuts to a warmed serving platter and deglaze the skillet with the remaining 1/2 cup white wine, scraping the bottom to loosen any browned bits.

Cook until reduced by half, about 4 minutes. It says to pour the sauce over the chicken to serve, but I actually added the chicken and walnuts back into the pan and served it from that right on the table, where we greedily dished a breast each onto our plates.

One of the steps for this event was to pair the dish with a regional wine. After some online investigation, I decided to go with a Côtes du Rhônes but I ended up finding this Côtes du Ventoux Rogue, from Orange, France instead. Orange (the OF?) is about a two hour drive away from the Grenoble area, so I figured this was close enough to be regional. Mainly, I really liked the poultry drawing on the bottle — after that won me over, there was no going back to the Côtes du Rhônes idea. I really am a pick-a-bottle-by-the-label kind of girl.

So, you might have noticed more items on the plate than just the poulet aux noix — well, I kind of went crazy. I was just so inspired by this theme that I also made two other regional dishes — warm green beans in walnut oil and Alps-favorite, Gratin Dauphinoise (potatoes). For it is cold there I suppose and the people need their butterfat to keep them warm!

Haricots verts a l’huile de noix (Warm green beans in walnut oil)
(also from the French Farmhouse Cookbook)
1 tbsp red wine vinegar
2 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
sea salt and freshly ground pepper
3 tbsp good quality walnut oil (tore in refrigerator after opening)
1 lb green beans, trimmed and washed
1/2 cup walnut pieces

Whisk together vinegar, garlic, salt & pepper. Add the oil in a thin stream, whisking constantly and set aside.

Add the beans to a large pot of boiling, salted water. Cook until crisp tender — about 5 minutes.

Whisk the dressing again and add the hot beans, along with walnut pieces. Toss and serve immediately.

Gratin Dauphinoise
2 cups half and half
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
2 cloves garlic
5-6 Yukon gold potatoes, peeled or unpeeled (depending on your preference) and sliced thinly
Optional: 1/4 cup grated Gruyere cheese
1 tsp unsalted butter

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Split one of the garlic cloves and rub it along the inside of the baking dish you’ll be using for the potatoes. Then, mince both cloves of garlic. Heat the half and half, salt, pepper and minced garlic until simmering is achieved. Remove from heat and keep warm.

Layer about half of the potato slices in the baking dish, overlapping slightly in concentric circles. Pour half of your warm half and half mixture on top of the potatoes. Then layer the remaining slices, topping with the rest of the half and half to finish. If you are going the non-traditional route like I did, finish with a sprinkle of Gruyere and dot the top with about 1 tsp of butter, broken up into small pieces.

Bake in bottom third of the oven for about 20 minutes or until he half and half mixture starts to bubble up sides. Move baking dish to the top part of the oven and continue baking for about 25 minutes longer or until potatoes are tender and top is golden brown. Let stand for 15 minutes before devouring.

After our journey to the French Alps with this dinner and wine, jwa had to do some work, which was really too bad as I sat on the couch and then went to Caprica — watching the best episode of Battlestar Galactica ever. Ever! But, being sweet, I saved it for him and we watched it together Saturday afternoon. Awwwwww…

Tagged with: IMBB23 + French

Art Bar
SW Broadway and Main
Portland, OR 97205
503-432-2905

Last weekend we went downtown to Portland Center Stage to see Drunk Puppet Night at the Winningstad Theatre. It was very entertaining and a nice evening out. There were big puppets, little puppets, a whole alien/ufo/puppet/mini-series and an odd yet very humorous performance art piece involving rubber chickens, a hula skirt, a George W. Bush mask, sex toys and a big inflatable globe (I bet you can guess kind of how that went…) Anyway, before all that wackiness ensued — there were the salad rolls.

First off, I love the image with the woman and the martini and the little animated bubbles here. So much fun. While at the Art Bar, I had a couple of cosmopolitans and although I had no little animated bubbles in mine, I enjoyed it.

The menu is small with just a few appetizers: Thai Salad Roll, Garlic Hummus with warm pita and Bruschetta. We split the salad rolls.

The image above is after we had eaten about two of them — is was quite a full plate, not bad for $7. And they were tasty. There are also some salads on the menu and just a few entrees:

Antipasto Platter
Proscuitto, Cappocollo, Salami, assorted cheeses, greek olives, roasted vegetables, sun dried tomato pesto.

Smoked Salmon Fettuccini
With vodka cream sauce, fresh herbs, shaved Asiago.

Fettuccini Ilissio
Smoked tomatoes, artichoke hearts, mushrooms, peppers and pine nuts tossed with basil infused oil and fresh herbs.

Grilled Prawn & Andouille Sausage Brochettes
Mesclun greens, sweet chili sauce, red pepper coulis.

ArtBar Burger
1/2 pound ground sirloin on ciabatta roll, blue cheese aioli, white balsamic glazed red onions, butter lettuce, tomatoes and crisp fries.

They also have a Happy Hour Menu from 4-6 that has a lot of assorted snacks on it.

At $14, the smoked salmon pasta is the most expensive thing on the menu — that’s what I got and I really liked it. It reminded me of this smoked salmon and wasabi cream pasta I used to make when we lived in Sunnyvale. Hmmm, I should look for the recipe, I think it was from Sunset Magazine. Oh, okay, I’m digressing here. jwa got the Fettuccini Ilissio and he seemed to enjoy his meal quite a bit.

The atmosphere is a little dark and candlelit. White tablecloths, mirrors. There’s also bar seating out under the rotunda.

Granted the convenience of eating there before the show might be the main reason we gave Art Bar a try, but I really enjoyed it! I’ll definitely want to go again the next time we see a play. Maybe even if we’re just walking around downtown and I suddenly feel the need for a cosmo — which could certainly happen.

Art Bar get three weird little puppets out of four.

So, this is the last birthday post I will be making (well, this year). Relief all around, I know. It’s a birthday post because it’s a recipe from a book that I received for my birthday, from jwa’s parents (thanks, Jim & Edie!). It’s Ocean Friendly Cuisine by James O. Fraioli and it’s a beautiful book. I almost hate to cook with it, as I inevitably will plaster crustacean pieces, fish juice and who knows what the hell else all over it. Oh well, I will just have to take that chance I guess.

The first recipe I tried out of it was for Crab Crusted White Sea Bass with Green Onion Mashed Potatoes, Asparagus and Sweet Red Pepper Sauce. There’s quite a nice picture in the book that won me over — well that and the cream cheese. It’s really like tasty crab dip slathered on top of a nice piece of fish. How can I person not be tempted to try that?

Oh, as you’ll notice in the title, I did have to substitute Ling Cod for Sea Bass. According to my handy Seafood Watch card enclosed in the book, I was able to ascertain that Ling Cod was indeed an Ocean Friendly Substitution, since New Seasons had no Sea Bass when I was there.

Crab-Crusted Ling Cod:
for the 2 of us, I made two fillets, and used a bit less than half the crab topping ingredients, saving extra crab mixture for snacking

6 ling cod fillets
1 pound lump crab meat, picked and cleaned
8 oz cream cheese
1 tbsp seafood seasoning (such as Old Bay)
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1 tbsp Dijon Mustard
1 tbsp powdered sugar
1 tsp onion juice (I used grated onion and juice)
1/2 cup sherry
salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 375. Combine the cream cheese, mayonnaise, mustard, powdered sugar, onion and seafood seasoning. Now, the actual directions say to mix the ingredients in a double boiler until smooth and slightly warm, but honestly, I just whisked them on the counter top, as you had to let it cool before adding the crab anyway. Lazy, I am! Add the sherry and then salt & pepper to taste. Blend well and then fold in crab. Set aside.

Season fish with salt and pepper and spread a liberal layer of your tasty crab mixture on top of each fillet. Bake for about 20-30 minutes, depending on the thickness of your fish. There’s no shame in using a knife to take a peek inside to see if it’s done. Just spread the cream cheese back on top. Now, if you’re using the sea bass, check after 15 minutes as it may cook a bit quicker than my ling cod did (they were huge fillets).

The original directions didn’t say to do this, but when my fish was about done, I turned on the broiler and let the top get a bit golden — this took about 1 minute or so. Serve your fish with the suggested green onion mashed potatoes or perhaps some rice pilaf, as well as sauteed asparagus spears, with or without the following red pepper sauce.

Red Pepper Sauce:
1 cup roasted red peppers (about 2-3 big peppers)
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp garlic, chopped
1 tbsp parsley
1/4 cup sautéed onions

Combine all ingredients in a food processor and puree until smooth. That’s it. Serve atop asparagus.

We both really liked this dish and I am looking forward to trying it with sea bass, as well as any other fish I can think to cover with the crab crust. And really, what in life isn’t better with a little tasty crab crust?

In addition to the tasty dinner jwa made me last Friday, he also bought me a very nice present — an ice cream maker. It’s only been on my wish list for about three years, so I was quite ecstatic to finally get one. It’s a Cuisinart and it’s red and it’s oh so pretty!

In addition, I also received an ice cream recipe book from my witty wordsmith of a life partner. It was aptly titled, The Ultimate Ice Cream Book. I perused it over the weekend deciding what to try first — pine nut ice cream, lavender ice cream, coffee ice cream, corn ice cream… Okay, no, not the corn ice cream. That just seems kind of weird but the recipe is in the book, so I could make it if I wanted to. Finally I decided on mango ice cream. Why? Well, I had two sitting on the counter that were getting riper by the minute — mango it is then!

I played with the recipe a bit, adding a little vanilla, fresh orange juice and a dash of nutmeg.

Mango Ice Cream:
2 large, ripe mangoes
1 tbsp fresh orange juice (about 1/2 an orange)
1 tbsp fresh lime juice (about 1 lime)
1/4 cup light corn syrup
1/2 tsp vanilla
dash of nutmeg
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 cup sugar
2 large egg yolks
1 tbsp cornstarch
1 cup milk
1 cup heavy cream

Peel the mangoes and cut the flesh from the cheeks. Dice and combine mango chunks, orange & lime juice, vanilla, nutmeg, corn syrup and salt in a food processor. Process until smooth, scraping down bowl as needed. Pour the puree through a strainer. There should be about 1 3/4 cups of mango puree. I didn’t measure it — I just assumed this was the case and put my faith in the kitchen witch hanging from the ceiling. Set aside.

In a medium mixing bowl, beat the sugar into the egg yolks. The directions say this will become thickened and pale. But, as I did this, the yolk/sugar ratio was such that I just got crumbly, pale sugar. shrugs. Seemed to work, though. Anyway, then add the cornstarch and mix in to the crumbles. Set alongside the mango.

Next (for this is a multi-step process), bring the milk to a simmer in a sauce pan. I used 2% milk instead of full-on, all fat milk. This seemed to work fine, but do as you’d like. Slowly beat the hot milk into the yolk/sugar mixture, whisking constantly. When it is all incorporated, pour the entire mess back into the pot and whisk over low heat. You want the custard to thicken slightly but not boil so that you scramble the eggs.

When thickened a bit, remove from the heat and pour into a clean bowl. Let cool slightly and then add the mango and heavy cream. Blend. Refrigerate until chilled (overnight or a few hours).

Hopefully, you have the ice cream making canister thingie frozen in your freezer like I did. Excellent. The next day when everything is cold and/or frozen, pour the chilled custard into the ice cream maker. Mine was pretty easy to put together as it all just sort of balances on the base and then slightly locks into place.

After about 20-30 minutes you will have soft serve consistency ice cream.

After some Asian Chicken Salad, jwa and I each enjoyed a bowl of my mango concoction. He was tentative at first but it really grew on him. As I had actually licked the spoon and eaten all the ice cream left stuck to the sides of the maker (after dishing it out to be further frozen in the freezer) well, I knew I already liked it a lot.