Cucumber Mint Martini

Cucumber, mint, gin, lime juice, simple syrup.. mmm.  Tim made this martini, AKA "The Ellison," minus the bitters (because we didn't have any), last week.  Fresh and tasty!

Salmon with Guava BBQ Sauce

Mmmm... guava BBQ sauce. So good.  Made with my guava jam and caramelized on top of a nice piece of salmon, quite tasty.

I used this recipe, although I added a liberal squirt of Sriracha for extra spice to balance the sweetness in the sauce.  I plopped the salmon atop this bell pepper free mango and cucumber salsa recipe from Simply Recipes, mixed with a can of black beans.  Good stuff.

Vietnamese Pomelo Salad

Tim and I have been craving some of the awesome dishes we had while traveling around Vietnam... we decided we would give one of their super fresh, spicy, salty, sweet and crunchy salads a go.  I found local (well, local-ish; from Aceh) pomelos at the grocery store and thus pomelo salad it was.  

Pomelos are massive; I think the one I bought was about 2 lbs.  They have a super thick rind and pith, over an inch in most places.  The flesh is pretty great, too... like a mild grapefruit (not as puckeringly tart), and although quite juicy, the little sacs don't break when you pull it apart, so, as you can see from my photo, the juice doesn't get all over everything.

Strangely the cookbook we bought from Morning Glory restaurant in Hoi An didn't have a pomelo salad recipe, but the internet was full of options.  I decided to go with this one from Appetite for China, supplemented with some sauteed shrimp, briefly marinated in fish sauce per Steamy Kitchen's directions.

An awesome dish, perfect for a hot summer night (or any night here, as they are all hot).  Crunchy from the carrots and roasted peanuts, salty from the fish sauce, spicy from the chili, sweet/tart from the pomelo and fragrant from the mint.

Baby Shower Goodies: The Savory Stuff

Liz, Joanne and I hosted a 25-person baby shower this past weekend in honor of Barbara and baby... based on the reactions we got it seemed to have been quite a success!!

We decided to go all finger foods for simplicity- no forks. We stuck with some pretty traditional shower fare and sprinkled in some less typical treats, too. Here's the run down of the savory part of the party!
1. Open-face cucumber and lemon dill cream cheese tea sandwiches: These traditional little sandwiches were great- the cream cheese was totally addictive!2. Curried chicken salad sandwiches: Made with rotisserie chicken to save time, shredded for spreadability... this recipe was super flavorful and relatively healthy since it used some yogurt rather than straight mayo. Really nice on thinly sliced whole wheat bread with a few leaves of spinach.3. Egg salad sandwiches: Like their chicken cousins above, these were made on thinly sliced whole wheat bread and topped with spinach. More egg whites than yolks, a little mayo, a little mustard, minced green onions, salt and pepper, done.4. Smoked salmon and herbed butter sandwiches: smoked salmon, lemony herbed butter, pumpernickel bread. So simple.

5. Tabouleh and hummus rolls: Taking a cue from the Other Martha, I made these little rolls- some tabbouleh (loosely based on this recipe), stuck to the wrap with some hummus, rolled in a log and then sliced into cute little spirals. 6. Crostini with black olive tapenade, roasted tomatoes and mozzarella: Based on a recipe that Liz found, we thinly sliced a baguette and topped it with this black olive tapenade (minus the ancovies), cute little mozzarella balls and a strip of roasted red pepper.

Horovatz in Mer Nation's Capital

As I said last week, Tim hosted a mini Peace Corps Armenia reunion this weekend in mer nation's capital (i.e. DC)... having practiced some Armenian-style cooking last week, we were pretty well prepared to host the metz kev (big party) for a horovatz (BBQ).

Still using "Simply Armenian" by Barbara Ghazarian as the basis for our meal, we repeated the beet salad and minted cucumber and yogurt soup, improved upon the lamehjun by cooking it on a pre-heated baking stone at 500 degrees for about 10 minutes so it crisped up evenly all around, and made a couple new dishes to make sure everybody got enough to eat: grilled lamb skewers and pilaf. Recipes after the jump!

Sunday Dinner: Armenian Meal

Tim's friends from Peace Corps Armenia are coming into town next weekend, so he wanted to cook an Armenian meal for them. But he wanted to practice first, which is where we came in. This week's Sunday dinner was an Armenian feast: minted cucumber and yogurt soup, beet and walnut salad, lahmahjoon/lamejun (basically Armenian lamb pizzas), and apricot cake. We based all of the recipes off of a cookbook Andrea gave Tim for Christmas: Simply Armenian, by Barbara Ghazarian. Recipes after the jump!

Greek Style Meatballs, Homemade Pita, Lemon Dill Hummus, and Cucumber Yogurt Dipping Sauce

Since Chuck moved out, we've been doing alternating Sunday "family dinners" (a la The Jersey Shore). So far we've avoided chicken parm and sausage n' peppers, focusing on more interesting, yet equally comforting culinary endeavors. We also avoid Ron Ron Juice, leopard print, and fist pumping, mostly. Mostly.

A couple weeks ago, Tony made a great slow-cooker chicken curry. This week, I tackled a Greek/Middle Eastern meal: feta and dill meatballs, lemon dill hummus, homemade pita bread, and a cucumber yogurt sauce. All parts of the meal came out really awesome...Here's how I did it:

I used this feta meatball recipe from The Other Martha, but made it my own by substituting the oregano with a generous handful of fresh dill, some minced parsley and a sprinkling of lemon zest. Plus, since ground pork was conspicuously absent from 2 of my local grocery haunts, I ended up using half ground chuck (not to be confused with Chuck) and half ground turkey. Despite my liberal mutilation of the recipe, they came out pretty awesome. Dipped them in the sauce recommended by The Other Martha, to which I also threw in some fresh dill.

The hummus was basically my usual recipe, care of Ina Garten, with extra lemon juice and zest, as well as, you guessed it, more fresh dill.

I made the pita by thinly rolling out the extra dough from my whey bread, using this technique from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. Soooo easy and soooo good. I loved watching the little pitas poof in the oven. Delicious!

Panzanella

Made this panzanella salad with cukes and mini-tomatoes from the CSA- yum! Very summery and delicious. I used a combination of the ingredients in this recipe and Ina's methodology and vinaigrette.
Awesome- it was a hit.I plan to try other panzanellas in the future... maybe in the fall I'll try a winter panzanella with butternut squash and brussel sprouts.

Indian-esque Feast

Grilled tandoori-style chicken with raita, oven-roasted Indian-spiced okra, and some faux naan (i.e. I made it with leftover pizza dough), cooked in the cast iron pan.

Pretty good! The okra came out a lot spicier than I thought... a slow burn. The chicken was good, but nothin' special. It made great chicken salad for lunch the next day, though.

Sesame Soba Noodles with Baby Bok Choy...

...and cucumber and mixed greens and cilantro and mint and peanuts and shrimp (my addition to the recipe!).

This stuff was really good. Light and refreshing, crunchy and earthy- it's more of an Asian salad with soba noodles (Japanese buckwheat spaghetti) on top as an afterthought. All of it, salad and noodles, is covered in a citrusy/peanuty dressing. I added the shrimp, marinated in fish sauce and lemon zest then quickly sauteed, like the shrimp in the summer rolls I made a few months ago.

I will definitely make this again next time I get bok choy in my CSA share!

Summer Rolls with Spicy Peanut Sauce

Another Steamy Kitchen recipe... this time a Vietnamese summer rolls with a spicy peanut dipping sauce. I always wanted to try my hand at making these, and this week I had mint, a cucumber, and Bibb lettuce from my CSA. I had the rice noodles and rice wrappers from a trip to Eden Center with Jennifer many months ago.

These were delicious. I added some basil in there, and used lemon zest in place of lemongrass for marinating the shrimp, as Jaden recommends. I omitted the mango because the ones I saw in the store weren't really ripe yet. I considered adding nectarine or peach instead for a little bit of a sweet factor, but the peach just turned into a pile of mush when I tried to make it into matchsticks with the mandoline. We didn't miss it, though.

Warning: these things are very hard to wrap! Mine were pretty messy looking. My lack of skills may have been due to the 3 margaritas and hookah full of cinnamon tobacco I had on Amy's roof just prior to making these, though.