This is one of those meals that is so simple yet so good, that you can’t believe you didn’t make it before or that you don’t have it for dinner a few nights per week. It’s from The New Spanish Table and I promise, the next few posts WILL NOT be from that cookbook. Really. But, it’s such a wonderful cookbook! But no. I will restrain myself.

Here, I had just scored some figs from Limbo and was needing something to do with them. This was the perfect solution!

Grilled Chicken with Fresh Fig Salsita
Pollo a la Brasa con Salsita de Higos
8 to 9 smallish ripe but firm fresh figs, trimmed and cut into thin wedges
1/2 small red onion, thinly sliced (I used a sweet onion instead)
3 tsbp medium-dry sherry
2 tbsp sherry vinegar
3 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
3 large garlic cloves, minced
1 tbsp chopped fresh rosemary
kosher or sea salt
freshly ground black pepper
4 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves, rinsed and patted dry
1/4 cup lightly toasted slivered almonds
1/4 cup finely sliced fresh mint
Salt

Place figs, onion, sherry, vinegar and olive oil in a bowl; toss to mix. Let stand for 30 minutes.

Get your grill ready or heat up a grill pan.

Mix the minced garlic, rosemary, 1 teaspoon of salt and pepper and then add 2 tablespoons of olive oil to make a paste. You can also crush all of this up in a mortar and pestle. Or use a knife and crush it into a cutting board to form the paste.

Brush the chicken with the paste. Grill the chicken until lightly charred and cooked thoroughly, 6-8 minutes per side. Brush a few times with remaining paste while cooking.

Transfer chicken to a cutting board and let rest for 5 minutes. You can either slice the chicken breasts on the diagonal for serving or leave whole. When ready to serve, add almonds and mint to the salsita, toss to mix, and add salt to taste.

Plate a chicken breast and top with some of the salsita. I would feel remiss here, if I didn’t say that you could add some cheese, just as a garnish if you will. I think a little goat cheese would be amazing with this!

Okay, next, my new favorite granola recipe! Also, in house news — the siding is completely done and the paint prepping has begun. Hopefully, we’re looking at the whole project being done no later than next week. We’ve also changed weather patterns just in time for the painting and now we are getting rain. So, we’ll see…

I combined a couple of recipes here — one of the Paella recipes in the (awesome) New Spanish Table cookbook, a paella recipe from Tyler Florence and I also used the meat I wanted to — chicken thighs, chorizo and shrimp, rather than the exact ones in either recipe. You could throw all manner of meat and seafood in here, but I stuck to those three.

This makes a ton of paella! A. Ton. Of. Paella. It would be great to make for a dinner party or of you want to make something for dinner, have lunch the next day, and then be able to freeze a couple more lunches.

You will need a huge skillet or an actual paella pan here. Do not underestimate the amount of room you need in your cooking vessel or you will cry into your overflowing pan of Spanish tastiness.

Aside from the simmering stock, this all happens in one pan!

Lots of pictures in this post…

Paella for a Crowd
This will easily serve 8 as a main course.
1 tbsp smoked paprika
2 tsp dried oregano
1 lb chicken thighs
2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
2 Spanish chorizo sausages, thickly sliced
Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
1 white onion, diced
6 garlic cloves, sliced
1 bunch parsley, chopped
1 yellow bell pepper, seeded, cored and diced
1 (15-ounce) can whole tomatoes, drained and roughly chopped, or 1.5 cups chopped fresh tomatoes
2 cups short grain Spanish rice
6 cups chicken stock
Generous pinch saffron threads
1 pound jumbo shrimp, peeled and de-veined
1 cup green beans, trimmed and cut into 1.5 inch pieces
1 roasted red bell pepper, cut into strips
Optional: 1 long strip of orange zest

Paella rice

Roasted red bell pepper

Roasted red bell pepper strips

Sliced chorizo

Okay, here are the directions!

Combine the paprika and oregano and rub the spice mix all over the chicken and marinate chicken for 1 hour in the refrigerator.

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Heat oil in a paella pan over medium-high heat.

Saute the chorizo until browned, remove and reserve.

Salt and pepper the chicken and add chicken and brown on all sides, turning with tongs.

Remove from pan and set aside. When cool enough to handle, slice into thick strips.

In the second pot, heat up the chicken stock and add the saffron. Keep at a very low simmer.

Next, in your paella pan, saute the onions, garlic, yellow bell pepper, and parsley in all the chorizo-y/chicken-y olive oil. Cook for 2 or 3 minutes on medium heat. Then, add tomatoes and cook until the flavors meld, about 5-6 minutes.

Fold in the rice and stir to coat the grains.

Now, this is where you need to decide if your pan is big enough. There’s no going back. Ready? Okay!

Pour the hot saffron-stock into the paella and simmer for 10 minutes, gently stirring occasionally so that the rice cooks evenly and starts to absorb the liquid.

Next, add the chicken, chorizo, then the green beans and shrimp. Try to tuck the chicken and shrimp under the rice. If you are using it, add the orange zest strip in there too. Put a lid on the pan and put in the oven for 15 minutes.

Remove from the oven, check the rice for doneness — you can always stick it back in for a minute or two. If it’s good, uncover and rest for 5-10 minutes. Garnish with the roasted red bell pepper strips.

Leftovers will keep the fridge a few days, then freeze as needed!

Mostly all pictures from our trip to Roslyn, WA. We stayed at Huckleberry House, right near downtown. We were in the Cicely Suite. Breakfast was delicious — smoked salmon and vegetable egg scramble, pepper-honey bacon, huckleberry pancakes and fruit. If you are looking for a place to stay in Roslyn, this was very nice. We aren’t normally B&B kind of people, but we enjoyed it.

Okay, now the pictures.

The drive there, along 84/30.

Where we stayed.

The Cicley Suite.

The B&B’s library.

Northern Exposure location guide!

A poster from MooseFest, a NoEx convention kind of thing.

The Brick Tavern!

Dr. Fleischman’s office. Now it’s a gift store, but his name is still there.

The Roslyn(’s) Cafe mural. They’ve taken out the ’s.

Me by the mural!

The door to KBHR. The text is still up! Minnifield Communications Network! This is a 2nd door to a furniture store. You can’t go in this way, but they’ve kept the DJ area intact too.

KBHR from a distance and a mining statue.

The DJ area, without Chris waxing all philosophical.

Records!

Totem pole in town that was used in the show. We just re-watched the episode where that guy died in Joel’s waiting room. They put the body out by this totem pole and then people walked by to see if any one recognized him. No one did…

Looking down the main street.

Another view of the familiar buildings.

Ruth-Anne’s store (Sundries).

Maggie O’Connell’s house (the first one).

The building that was used as the church. I read that the crew constructed it just for the show. It’s abandoned now.

Watch that first step.

Part of the Roslyn Museum’s coal mining exhibit.

An outhouse in the exhibit.

Huckleberries?

Just an arty shot in town, outside an art gallery.

More arty.

The Brick at night.

Roslyn(’s) Cafe mural at night.

Columbia Gorge area, on the drive home.

Okay, here is where I admit my love of Northern Exposure, at least until that other doctor came to town and Joel moved into the woods or whatever the hell that was. And, do you believe it — Portland is only a 4.5 4 hour drive from Roslyn, WA, where Northern Exposure was filmed?! And also, most of the buildings and stuff are all still there. I’ve actually wanted to drive to Roslyn since we moved here and I realized how close it was. It’s only taken nine years, but we’re actually going this month!

So, to get ready, we’ve been speeding through the dvd’s (we’re on season 3 now) and I took out my The Northern Exposure Cookbook: A Community Cookbook from the Heart of the Alaskan Riviera to create a feast for episode watching last weekend. Now, I will be the first to admit that cookbooks based on TV shows seem kind of silly, but this one I love, not that I have much experience with TV show cookbooks, of course…

The Northern Exposure Cookbook is written by the character of Ruth-Anne Miller, as a community cookbook from Cicely, and most all the recipes have an intro from the character that is providing the recipe. Also, and I thought this was pretty clever, there is an index in back which lists which episode each recipe was referenced in. Neat! Since I made this meal when the weather was a bit warm, I chose Adam’s Walnut Toast with Warm Goat Cheese and The Brick’s Caesar Salad. I’m going to copy the introduction for the walnut bread as written because it is awesome — I hope no one sues me.

Adam’s Walnut Toast with Warm Goat Cheese
I asked Adam how something this rich and sweet could qualify as an appetizer. I’ll spare you his reply.

I don’t expect you to make bread properly. I don’t expect you to have fresh thyme. I don’t expect you to do the right thing, which is prepare your own bread crumbs from day-old french bread. I don’t expect you to use fresh, unshelled walnuts instead of those pre-chopped, bag-wrapped objects.

All I ask is that once you put the bread and the cheese under the broiler, you watch it with undistracted concentration, so that the cheese doesn’t run or burn. If you can’t do that much, then do me a favor. Make something else. Better yet, stick your head in the oven and keep broiling. Are you still with me, Miller?

Walnut Bread:
1 tablespoon unsalted butter (or non-stick spray)
2 cups AP flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 large egg
3/4 cup milk
1/4 cup maple syrup
2 tbsp unsalted butter, melted
3/4 cup chopped walnuts

Cheese topping:
1 cup bread crumbs (panko work well)
1 tbsp chopped fresh thyme or 1 teaspoon dried thyme, crushed
1 (8-ounce) log goat cheese

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Butter (or spray) a 9 1/4 inch loaf pan with the 1 tbsp of butter or your non-stick spray.

Mix flour, baking powder and salt together in a large bowl. Add the egg, milk, maple syrup and melted butter; mix until thoroughly blended.

Stir in walnuts and pour batter into the prepared loaf pan.

Bake for 45-50 minutes, until loaf begins to separate from the edges of the pan and a toothpick inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean. Remove the loaf from the pan and let cool completely.

In a shallow bowl combine the bread crumbs and thyme. Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil. Cut the goat cheese into 12 pieces.

Now Adam, made little goat cheese rounds coated them in the bread crumbs, and broiled those alongside the toasts. Me? I just slathered the goat cheese on the bread, topped with breadcrumbs and broiled.

Cut 12 slices of the walnut bread. Place on the baking sheet and spread a piece of goat cheese on each piece. Sprinkle with the bread crumb-thyme mixture. Put under a hot broiler for a few minutes until the bread crumbs on the goat cheese starts to turn golden. From Episode - Dateline: Cicely

This was really good. I was surprised by how much I liked the bread — a very nice, flavorful quick bread! And warm goat cheese, thyme & breadcrumbs? Yeah, that was good too.

The Brick’s Caesar Salad
This one has a long introduction — I’ll recap. It’s Holling’s recipe but he got it from Maurice. *wink* *wink* Anyway, he called it a Roman Salad for a bit, because people at The Brick didn’t want any fancy pants “Caesar Salad.” But now, after all these years, he just calls it “Caesar Salad” again because no one really notices the name anymore. They just love it.

I’ve never made Caesar dressing from scratch before, and I liked this one. You cook the egg yolks here a little bit (I don’t think that’s standard), but what the hell. Spoiler alert: use a double boiler type set up (mine was simply a metal bowl over a pot of simmering water), or you may well scramble your first attempt. You may actually scramble your first attempt anyway. Try again and pull them off a second or two before you think you should.

Next time, I may just use the yolks raw. Also, anchovy paste is your friend.

Dressing:
2 egg yolks
1 tbsp white wine vinegar
1 tbsp water
2 tbsp lemon juice
1/4 tsp dry mustard
1/8 tsp Worcestershire sauce
2 cloves garlic, minced
3 anchovy fillets (or 1/2 tsp anchovy paste — or more, to taste)
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil

Salad:
1 head Romaine lettuce
2 cups croutons
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
I also added about a handful of cherry tomatoes from the garden

In your double boiler contraption, combine egg yolks, vinegar, water lemon juice, mustard and Worcestershire sauce.

Cook over gentle heat, stirring constantly, until mixture thickens. remove from heat and allow to cool.

Tear or chop lettuce into bite-sized pieces and add to a salad bowl. Transfer cooled yolk mixture to a blender. Add garlic and anchovy paste. Blend until smooth. Pour in olive oil and continue to blend until emulsified.

Pour dressing over lettuce and toss, making sure all lettuce is coated. Add croutons, Parmesan and cherry tomatoes and toss again. From Episode: Ill Wind.

Adam on Salad Dressing
It’s called “dressing”, all right? Not “swaddling,” not “suffocating.” You dress the ingredients the way you dress yourself: just enough but not too much. To flatter. Not to conceal or drown. You’re not making an ice cream sundae. WHY do I have to say this? If you don’t — never mind. Turn the tape off.

Part II: The pictures of Roslyn, WA — coming next!

It was Fall here in Portland…for about a weekend. Really! It was cold and we had a high of only 60 degrees F and quite honestly I loved it. Now, we are back to the sunny and the 80’s nonsense but when it was nice and Fall-like, I made this soup. It was delicious!

Instead of kielbasa, I used that age-old tradition of going through the freezer, seeing what was in there, and using that. It was sweet Italian sausage (2) and some chorizo (1) the uncooked kind, so I thawed it all and browned that up first. You can also use cooked kielbasa (what the original recipe called for) or even Spanish chorizo. I am thinking about giving that a try next time.

Let’s see, I also added some harissa (because I had some) and I opted to add both some red wine and red wine vinegar. You could also just pick one and use two tablespoons of whichever one you choose.

Green Lentil & Sausage Soup
Adapted from a recipe by Ina Garten, in the cookbook, Barefoot in Paris
1 pound French green lentils (recommended: du Puy)
2 tbsp cup olive oil, plus extra for serving
4 cups diced yellow onions (3 large)
4 cups chopped leeks, white and light green parts only (2 leeks)
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 tbsp kosher salt
1 1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 tsp dried thyme leaves
1 tsp ground cumin
3 cups medium diced carrots (4 to 6 carrots)
3 quarts Chicken Stock, homemade or good quality store bought
1/4 cup tomato paste
1 tbsp harissa
1/2 pound kielbasa, cut in 1/2 lengthwise and sliced 1/3-inch thick, or 2-3 sausages (raw), removed from casings
2 tbsp dry red wine
Optional: 1 tbsp red wine vinegar
Freshly grated Parmesan, more olive oil and chopped cilantro leaves for garnish

In a large bowl, cover the lentils with boiling water and allow to sit for 15 minutes. Drain.

If you are using uncooked Italian sausage, brown it in a large stock pot in the olive oil. When it is done, remove with a slotted spoon to a bowl and set aside. Return pot to heat and add more olive oil if needed, then saute the onions, leeks, garlic, salt, pepper, thyme, and cumin for 20 minutes, or until the vegetables are translucent and tender.

Add the carrots and saute for another 10 minutes. Add the drained lentils, tomato paste, harissa, chicken stock and cover, and bring to a boil.

Reduce the heat and simmer uncovered for 1 - 1.5 hours, or until the lentils are cooked through and tender. Check the seasonings.

Add the cooked sausage or the kielbasa and red wine and simmer until the sausage is heated through. If using, add the vinegar before serving.

Serve drizzled with olive oil, some shaved Parmesan and cilantro leaves.