Matt Makes Dinner: Salmon with Apples and Pickle/Carrot Slaw

I mentioned that these days my cooking life usually starts around 9 pm. Some days, I just can't take it, and I need some greasy Chinese food to make it through a writers' meeting. Usually, that's a great idea, and preserves my sanity, if not my solvency. Last Wednesday, it wasn't the greatest idea, because I came home to find Matt making something delicious. He broiled salmon in a glaze of agave and butter and lemon juice (I think), sprinkled it with a crust of almonds and pine nuts, and surrounded it with apples, which gave it moisture and a faint apple aura.
For a salad, he improvised with our limited vegetable stock, and came up with a carrot and pickle coleslaw type thing--let no one say the man doesn't know his way around the improvisational possibilities of the back to the refrigerator.

It was all excellent, and I could only eat a tiny tiny plate of it. Luckily, I got stuffed mushrooms on Friday, so I suppose I've done all right.

L'Shanah Tovah

I'm going with h's this year. Next year, in Jerusalem, it may be spelt L'shana Tova. Or I might have a Hebrew keyboard. If I were in Jerusalem, where the felafel may or may not be made by Jews.

While I'm here in Brooklyn, though, my plan is to stop with the spelling and just have a lot of people over to dinner to eat sweet things and round things and start 5759 together. So that's what we did.

The dinner menu was a little unorthodox, but there were plenty of sweet things and plenty of round, for a sweet year come full circle. For those wondering why certain foods are traditional on Rosh Hashanah, and even those who think they know, there's a great post about holiday foods usual and unusual here.

Appetizers:
Stuffed Mushrooms (Bittman)
Olive Tapanade (Bittman)
Lupini Beans
Cornichons
Brightly colored olives
Cucumbers and Radish and Tomato, sliced by the lovely Nicola
Meal:
Amanda Hesser's grandmother's macaroni and cheese, with tomato, from Cooking for Mr. Latte
Portuguese Fisherman's Stew, from Jasper White's Summer Shack book
Challah and Pane Genzanese
Desert:
Aunt Ida's Honeycake, by Jessica
Haagen-Daz Honeybee Ice Cream, which is delicious and may save all fruit on earth
Apples and Pears and honey

For the first time, I managed to invite more people than the table can hold, so it was a spread out affair. I loved that everyone was gleefully comfortable and made themselves very very at home, but next time I'd like to make sure that everyone can eat at the table together, it feels nicer. So if somehow you don't get invited to the next dinner party and you find out and feel left out, know that you'll be coming over soon, or just invite yourself the next day. We will make you sweet and round. And Matt's been muttering about tapenade-filled grilled squid, so don't miss out.

Assistant Avi Steps Out From the Shadows…

...and up to the cutting board.

One of the things you should expect to receive if you get a CSA share - in addition to a couple of sacks of fresh-from-the-soil fruits and vegetables each week – is a good hearty sense of guilt when a) your goods go bad before you get around to using them or b) you eat a meal that is comprised completely of non-CSA share items. That’s why, when asked to make dinner by your girlfriend, you desperately scrounge for ideas to utilize the freakishly small watermelon and two strangely small and flat bulbs of fennel that sit sadly in your fridge. Luckily, inspiration struck and, having wanted to do a savory watermelon item for a while (since it is actually a relative of the squash – look it up!), I whipped up the following tasty watermelon fennel salsa that looked like this:
Kind of tricks the eye how it looks like tomato and onion, but you eat it and…Jesus Christ! Is that watermelon? It was so fresh and tasty that Stacey thought I should set it down in perpetuity (at least as long as this here internet thing lasts) for all to read and utilize on the good ole’ Second Dinner blog if Katya would be good enough to allow me, which she did. So….

This is what I used, but you can mess with the proportions, depending on what you have. The flavor is what counts:

1 tiny watermelon (about 2 cups), skinned, chopped, and seeded
1 normal bulb of fennel, finely chopped (I used 2, but they were really small and weirdly flat, so…)
½ of a yellow bell pepper, chopped
Fresh kernels from one corn cob (about ½ cup – I didn’t have to cook them at all, but you can also blanch the kernels in boiling water first or use frozen corn. However, I have to say that the uncooked fresh corn adds a really nice, fresh pop to it)
1 red Holland chili pepper, seeded & chopped
Cilantro, chopped (to taste, but I used maybe a medium handful)
Zest of 1 lime
Juice of ½ lime
Salt & Pepper to taste

Mix all of the above ingredients in a bowl. Taste. Does it taste good? No? Add more of something. After getting the right flavor, I gave the mixture a gentle little squeeze, releasing some of the liquid from the watermelon but not breaking it down completely).

We used it to top some nice hake (a tasty and affordable white fish sometimes called whiting), which I seasoned with salt, pepper and a little olive oil and baked in a little tent of foil with lemon and sprigs of thyme at 325 degrees until flaky. That fish looked like this.
Finally, we had some nice potatoes (also of CSA share fame). I seasoned them with olive oil, salt, pepper, and fresh chopped sage leaves and roasted them in the oven at 325 until tender and golden and…damn, I have to go shop for more potatoes. Look at them!
As you might have guessed, I was really happy with this meal. Seriously. Really happy. Ask Stacey. I think she wants to slap me. I won’t shut up about it.

Ok. Thanks, Katya. You can have your blog back now.

Thanks Avi. That sounds incredible. The other thing that CSA shares sometimes make you do is go out and buy a whole additional pile of groceries just so that you can have that perfect meal that someone else's CSA share provided. I'll be making that salsa as soon as I get my hands on some watermelon and corn, and maybe white fish. But for now, I have an appointment with some wilting basil and too many peppers. One step ahead of the guilt.

Friend Stacey Sends You a Savory

As I fully suspected, the first new voice belongs to Stacey. You may remember Stacey from such posts as CSA Pickup #2, where she and her assistant Avi swooped in and made off with all of the Second Dinner home's produce. Stacey is a veteran producer, mover and shaker, odd puppet maker, and root vegetable enthusiast. She loves to get her hands dirty and to collect more people around her kitchen table than it can hold. Here she is:

Hello Second Dinner! Katya has invited me to guest post, and so I think I shall. Camera was on the fritz last night, so no photos to go with this one, but I thought I would start out by blogging a regular Sunday night dinner in my house.

Firstly: Pesto potato salad.
New potatoes from my CSA - yummy and tiny and sweet
Basil (bunch, also from the CSA, leaves removed from stalks)
Green onion (2)
Garlic (2 cloves, also from farm)
Walnuts (about 10)
Olive oil (half a cup)
Balsalmic Vinegar (1/4 cup)
Black pepper (lots)
Salt (to taste)

Make the potatoes all about the same size, which is to say, cut up the big ones, halve the medium ones, leave the little ones whole. Helps with even cooking time. Boil em, oh, say, 20 minutes. In the meantime, put all the other stuff in the food processor and grind up into a lovely nice paste. Moosh paste on potatoes after they have cooled, and eat with fishes below. I know maybe some purists would say that it isn't a pesto because there is no cheese, but I was thinking of the Italian prohibition against cheese with fish.

And next: Roasted Brook Trout.
Rode the old bicycle to Fairway, crazy on a Sunday afternoon, and picked up two good-sized whole brook trout (1/2 pund each or so), cleaned and scaled, for about nine bucks. Tied the bag to my handlebars and pedaled home. This is really simple - roll the fishes around in some salt, pepper and olive oil. Put them on a roasting rack of some kind (mine was a cooling rack on top of a sheet pan) and put them in a really hot oven (450 or so) for 20 minutes. You will hear them drip and sizzle, and when they come out you will be rewarded with delicious brown crispy fish skin, which is better than potato chips. Serve with potatoes above and salad below. They have some small bones, but it is worth it to look at their little fishy faces while you eat them.

And Lastly:
Stacey Signature Salad.
Everybody loves my salad dressing, even though it is not the same all of the time. The basics are as follows:

A tablespoon of olive oil for each two people eating salad
A teaspoon of acid for each tablespoon of oil - this could be lemon juice, balsalmic or sherry vinegar, white or rice wine vinegar, or even lime or orange juice if you're feeling fiesty
A teaspoon of something else - my favorite is Maille dijon mustard. You could also have tomato paste (this is particularly good with balsalmic vinegar), mashed up garlic (for a nice spicy dressing), a little bit of feta cheese (nice for a greek salad) or any old thing you think might be tasty. This generally emulsifies the vinaigrette and makes it thick and creamy.
Lots of pepper, and a pinch of salt (except if you are using mustard or something else that is salty already, in which case you can omit the salt)
Blend the whole thing together with a spoon or whisk and toss with well-washed and completely dried salad of any kind. Arugula is nice with mustard. With the fishes we had a mustard-lemon dressing on Romaine lettuce.

So that's it, the first post, now to see if I can figure out how to get the photo of Avi with a fish skeleton off of his cell phone and on to the blog...