G'Day Donna Hay! Pucker up for Lemon Marinated Artichoke Salad

Welcome to Donna Hay! She is the featured chef at I ♥ Cooking Club from now until the end of March 2014! The traditional welcome post is like a potluck...you may bring whatever you fancy for this party, as long as it's representative of the featured chef. For me, a salad is nice ice breaker at a social event. You can cart your plate around, pull up a chair and socialize with like minded folks.

I loved this salad. It was a meal all on it's own. Unfortunately I didn't check the cheese drawer before prepping the recipe and turns out, I was out of feta. It was delicious with a mozzarella substitute but I will be making this one again (and again) and certainly will compare the results with feta.

The grilled zucchini was a nice touch


Would you like the recipe? Sure, I knew you would. It's simple, healthy and so flavorful.

Lemon Marinated Artichoke Salad
From The Instant Cook

Ingredients

8 marinated artichoke hearts, drained and halved
2 TB lemon juice
2 TB olive oil
2 zucchinis, sliced
Olive oil for brushing
Sea salt and cracked black pepper
3 ½ ounces baby spinach leaves
8 ounce yellow pear tomatoes, halved
4 slices feta cheese (I used mozzarella)
¼ cup chopped flat leaf parsley



Combine artichokes, lemon juice and olive oil in a bowl; set aside.

Brush the zucchini slices with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper.
Cook on preheated hot grill (broiler) for one minute each side.
Drain artichokes, reserving lemon juice and olive oil.

Place spinach, tomatoes and zucchinis on plates and top with feta, artichokes and parsley.
Spoon over reserved lemon and oil as a dressing.



Serves 4 or 2 very hungry people.

Please visit me and IHCC next week ( Oct. 7th-13th) for the theme Pantry Magic: Dishes made using ingredients from your pantry/cupboard.

I am linking this up to Kahakai Kitchen for Souper Sunday and I ♥ Cooking Club.

Toast is being served at Food 'n Flix

The September movie at Food 'n Flix is Toast. The very name grabbed my attention. The bonus was learning it was about Nigel Slater.

Our host this month is Anne-Marie from This Mama Cooks. Her announcement post may be found HERE



“No matter how bad things get, it’s impossible not to love someone who made you toast. Once you’ve bitten through that crusty surface to the soft dough underneath and tasted the warm salty butter, you’re lost forever.”

I LOVE toast. I think my heart did a flip flop when Nigel said that. Some may say, “Oh c’mon, it’s just toast after all.”

But for me, toast is a special treat. It’s a symbol of childhood, visual memories of toast being made and eaten that are so vivid they are almost tangible. My Nana Pierce would slip a slice of thick toasting bread into the toaster and we’d have great gobs of jam spread over it while it was hot.

My Nana Jackson toasted the bread under the broiler, flipping it to ensure good browning on each side, then smeared a thick slab of butter across the browned bread, but not all at once. A thin slathering first so the butter would melt into the ridges, and holes. The creamy yellow butter would glisten on the browned landscape that was transformed from a mere slice of bread to a warm slab of sustenance.

The sort of bread you use to make toast matters a great deal if you want to see a proper browning and actual texture. It was homemade bread or toasting bread that made all the difference. Not a soft loaf from the chain grocery shelf which may be filled with preservatives.

Early on the story depicted Nigel trying to get his mother more interested in cooking. He was a natural, but his mother was not all that interested in cooking.



In school while most of the other boys are getting into woodworking, Nigel asks to be placed in Home Economics. He's teased by the girls at first but they all love him when he turns out culinary masterpieces.



There certainly were many food scenes in Toast. There was of course..toast. There was also a variety of sumptuous dishes to select from for this month’s movie.

First off, I HAD to make fresh bread and it had to be toasting bread!



The recipe for this bread may be found at the King Arthur site HERE. But there was so much more inspiration in the food department.

There was also the Bolognese, scones, the pork pie top share with the gardener, fresh veggies and of course, the lemon meringue pie. How did they get that pie so large? It looked like a cake.

The broiled haddock with butter was one of my favorites because he was trying so hard to win his father’s approval. Young Nigel kept running from the oven to the door looking for his Dad to return home. Eventually it was ruined, overcooked, because he tried keeping it warm too long. I like that his father came home and ate it anyway, commenting that it was perfect.



We tried to find Haddock because I really did want to prepare that for this movie. After an amusing communication problem at the fish market, I settled on another sturdy white fish - grouper. :-)

There is still time to join in the fun. Check out Anne-Marie's site and also hop over to Food 'n Flix for details. Looking forward to the roundup!

Now, this inspired me to read Slater's memoir Toast so my review of the book may be found at Novel Meals HERE. Check it out for comparison if you'd like.



Next month I am hosting with the movie (and book) A Good Year by Peter Mayle. More on that in October...which is nipping at our heels!

Cheers!

5 Humble Ingredients = Feast of a Meal......What is good for us on a rainy afternoon

So…..when we have a hectic drive home, dodging texting drivers whose vehicle slips into our lane, plus it started raining….again…..all I want for dinner is comfort food. Now, on the drive home, we are also mindful of racing against the clock as to how long a stubborn shiba inu’s bladder can hold out. They brilliantly decided to hide from us early this morning so, no walk. Please add a glass of wine to my comfort food dinner requirement now.

Five simple ingredients is all I need. I can have a beautiful dinner on the table with minimal hands on time. I ask you, what’s not to love about that?



Doug takes the dogs outside in the yard. Girl dog is resisting getting her princess feet wet and stands under the covered patio. While he is standing outside getting mosquito bitten and encouraging the little darlings to attend to business, I am in the kitchen setting the oven to preheat (Convection at 375 F). Go to the fridge and get a 4 ½ pound chicken out.

Yeeesssss…the butter is out and softened! Chop 2 tablespoons and fling into food processor. I now dump in about 2 tablespoons of olive oil and several garlic cloves. Pulse to blend. You are now rewarded with a rich garlic butter which is easy to insert under the chicken breast skin. You know that little hollow just at the top? Gently pull it open and using a mini spatula, smear a good tablespoon of garlicky butter in that tunnel.



Situating the chicken in a roasting pan I smear the rest of the butter mixture over the bird. Sea salt and ground pepper it, insert a lemon in the cavity....now pop in the oven. I now have about an hour and 45 minutes of free time.

Girl dog still hasn’t ventured from the patio. So….what else is to be done but drive them to the park and walk on concrete and asphalted paths. This is evidently acceptable to Aja. The very nice benefit of this is you walk back into the house smelling the aroma of a roasted bird. Instant tummy grumblings!



While the chicken is resting (prior to carving) toss some fat asparagus on a cookie sheet for roasting. The oven is already hot.

Lemon, butter, garlic, olive oil plus a 5 pound roasting hen = a feast of a meal.



Coming up is Food 'n Flix. The movie is Toast.

Albariño Burgans - Weekend Wine Review

Albariño Burgans



Our favorite Albariño has always been Nora but we aren’t finding it in local liquor or wine shops these days. A kindly employee, who is also a fan of Albariño, suggested we try this Albariño Burgans. It’s Spanish but the label always makes me think of Ireland…and I am pretty darn sure a great wine doesn’t originate from Éire. The terroir just isn’t conducive for grapes.

Albariño Burgans gets its name from the Burgans hills in N.W. Spain. It’s tropical, traces of lemon and zest and has a very nice texture. It went so very well with crab cakes.

12.5% alcohol and doesn’t break the budget with a price if $13.99. Highly recommended.

Birthday fun

Birthdays. Dreaded by some, joyously anticipated by others and then there are those who don’t care one way or another.

Me? I never dread it. I celebrate every year and am happy to be around. But it’s usually low key and I like staying at home. It’s fun to go out for appetizers - but having a meal on the patio and knowing you can ( if you’d like) indulge in an extra glass of wine or whatever you are imbibing without the worry of the drive home; well that’s total relaxation there!

While I am blathering on about birthdays it would seem important to point out that I did not celebrate one recently. Mine was in June. But we did celebrate Doug’s birthday recently. He is also laid back about it and decided he would also like a meal at home.

Birthday weekend consisted of doing things he enjoyed such as range time, seafood at Panacea and the aforementioned meal.

The starter: thinly sliced rare tuna and garlic shrimp for appetizers served with a Vermouth cocktail. I always put a cherry in mine, even though it’s not called for. Love those tiny cherries.



Crab Cakes using a knock off recipe from the Cheesecake Factory. Served with homemade remoulade sauce and a good Spanish Albariño.



We wanted to eat outside but about a half hour before dinner would be ready, a wicked storm blew in with tropical tendencies. It was wild. The wind just picked up and was blowing placemats off the table, knocking things over and showering the front yard with loose branches. We had water standing around the porch within minutes.

Eating inside didn’t hamper the mood at all. Kobe donned his Thundershirt and we had a perfectly good time sitting inside.

Damn...I need to vacuum the den!



The day before we had gone shooting and enjoyed seafood at Panacea.




And shooting at Wakulla range.....



Overall, a great birthday weekend! I always enjoy our time out together, no matter what we do.

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

My first experience with quail. Yep, back to Climax..........worth the 40 minute trip

Honestly, I don't work at Jones Country Meats or own stock in the business. It's just that we are so thrilled to have a place to buy some fresh meat and produce that I needed to share photos of the goods...yet again :-)

It's a great drive. All rural back roads with hardly any traffic. You will see the occasional tractor tooling around and fields of cows, goats and vegetables. Very peaceful.



This time we tried the smoked pork chops. They were a bit too salty for our taste but will go well in a stew. I will just chop up those other two chops.



I tried their biscuits and wow, very good....they were so good that I don't want to make biscuits now. We used their brand of cane syrup too.



A new thing for me - Roasted Quail. Easy to prepare with a lemon and oil basting mixture.

They look odd, compared to Nigella's quail as hers look more like cornish hens. But these little beggars were quite tasty.



Juice of 1 lemon
1 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup olive oil
2 teaspoons honey
½ teaspoon dried mint

Shake this up in a jar and pour a little better than half of it over the quail.

Heat oven to 450 F and baste the quail with juice, cooking for a half hour. Use the remainder of the oil and lemon mixture to pour over salad.

This was a good dressing not just for the quail but the salad too. It's one I would make again just for salad.


Lastly, and this happened a few weeks ago but I forgot to show you.....we had a visitor on the patio.



This is a tenacious snake. Having said that, I can’t honestly tell you if this is the same snake who slithered up on Doug’s Road King a while back ….but it looked the same size. We are probably crawling with oak snakes and I think I see the same one all the time. I just want it to stay off our patio.

Trying to move it with a broom handle didn't work out as hoped....he just coiled.




Eventually it left on it's own so, that's good. The dogs don't need that excitement!

Food 'n Flix post upcoming. In the meantime we are just looking forward to some cooler temperatures arriving. Hope all is well in your part of the world.