Recipes by Ingredient + Prep – Page 44 – Writing With My Mouth Full

Melon Prosciutto Mozarella Salad

I’m spending the last weekend of the summer in Montauk and I wanted to make a salad last night that evoked that warm-but-chilly late afternoon air. We opened a bottle of wine and divided the duties in the kitchen: the Dr. cranked up the grill while I stayed indoors to prepare the side dishes. Earlier in the day, we stopped by the Amagansett vegetable stand to buy fresh produce. I was inspired by the fresh mozarella and the fragrant melons, as well as the spicy arugula and extra large parsley leaves. A quick stop at the deli got me some prosciutto to add.

Ingredients:
a small chunk of a melon, sliced in slightly larger pieces than the mozarella
a few pieces of prosciutto, torn
fresh mozarella, sliced in small pieces
a handful of parsley, roughly chopped
a handful of arugula, roughly chopped
juice from half a lemon
oil, salt, pepper

1. In a small bowl, make the dressing. Whisk in lemon juice with the olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Set aside.
2. In a salad bowl, toss in the melon cubes with the mozarella. Add in prosciutto and the greens. Gently dress with lemon juice and olive oil mixture so that the salad doesn’t muddle.

Related post/s:
Try bresaola if you don’t like pork

Tomato Preserve

I couldn’t ignore the beautiful photograph that accompanied Amanda Hesser’s recreation of a 1948 tomato preserve recipe in The New York Times Magazine last month. I cut the recipe short and marinated the tomatoes in sugar for only a few hours instead of overnight. I didn’t seed the tomatoes either, nor did I remove the lemon slices when I stored the finished product in a glass jar. My version still came out nice enough to spread in toasted baguettes and crackers.

Ingredients:
8 plum tomatoes
3/4 cup sugar
3 cloves
1 stick cinnamon
a small knob of ginger, peeled, sliced
1/4 of a lemon, thinly sliced, seeded

1. Boil some water in a small pot. Skin tomatoes by cutting a shallow X in their rounded end. Add tomatoes in the boiling water for 30 seconds. Remove the tomatoes using a slotted spoon and let cool. When cool enough to handle, peel off tomato skins.
2. Layer the tomatoes and sugar in a small Dutch oven. Cover and refrigerate for a couple of hours.
3. When ready to cook, put all the spices in a cheesecloth and add to the tomatoes along with the sliced lemon. Place over medium heat and bring to a simmer. Cook, stirring and gently crushing often, until the tomatoes have become slightly translucent and the syrup is thick and begins to gel. Don’t boil the syrup, or the tomatoes will fall apart.
4. Remove the spice bag. Remove Dutch oven from heat and let tomato preserve cool before transferring to a resealable glass jar.

Related post/s:
Tomatillos are related to tomatoes

Crispy Vegetable Rolls

It felt great to be cooking in the kitchen again. After a summer hiatus, I signed the usual group up again for my omakase bento lunches. A day out in New Jersey playing $40 buy-in volleyball with some friends got me a slightly twisted ankle, so I couldn’t really stand too long to cook something elaborate. I did most of the work here sitting down. My legs also hurt from too much exercise in one day, so I ended up using my entire CSA share from last Thursday instead of going out to shop for more ingredients.

Ask any non-Filipino out there about Filipino food and they’ll most likely tell you about lumpiang Shanghai, or the fried egg rolls we adapted from the Chinese. Like any traditional recipe, this not only involves a lot of preparation, but also an almost precise way of frying to get them crispy. Wrapping them is a whole other business I’ve learned from my mother and from rolling other things–it takes practice.

To cut down on chopping and cooking time, I used a peeler to get the vegetable meat as thin as possible. When ready to serve, all I had to do was fry them in medium-low heat to brown the wrapper since everything inside is already cooked. You can make these ahead of time and they keep in the freezer, stored in a Tupperware, for up to two weeks.

You can find spring roll wrappers or “shells” in the frozen section of any Asian grocery store. I like the Wei-Chuan brand because they’re springy enough to make the rolling easy, but also thin enough to brown quicker.

Ingredients:
spring roll wrappers, thawed and kept moist by covering with a wet paper towel while wrapping
1 pound of green beans, stringed, finely chopped
2 medium carrots, peeled, and then shaved using a peeler
2 kohlrabis, peeled, and then shaved using a peeler
2 potatoes, half-boiled, peeled, and then shaved using a peeler
1 red bell pepper, seeded, finely chopped
3 cloves of garlic, minced
red pepper flakes
oil, salt, pepper

1. Heat some oil in a large skillet. Sauté the garlic until light brown. Sauté all the vegetables, adding the ones that take longer to cook. In this case, green beans first, then kohlrabi, followed by the carrots and the red bell pepper. Add in the cooked potatoes 2 minutes before turning the heat off. Season with chili flakes, salt and pepper. Set aside.
2. Wrap and roll. On a chopping block, lay out one of the wrappers flat. Spoon a little bit of the vegetable mix onto the bottom end of the wrapper. Fold that end over to cover the stuffing and then fold half an inch from the left and the right over to seal the sides. Continue to fold over the bottom until you make a roll. Set aside with the opening side down to keep it closed until ready to fry. Do this until you’re out of vegetable mixture or wrappers.
3. When ready to fry, heat some oil in a shallow skillet. When oil is almost smoking, slowly add each roll to fry with the opening side down to keep them closed. Using tongs, gently turn each roll over to cook the other side. Both sides should only be a lightly toasted color.
4. Remove each roll to a stainless steel colander. They will sweat and lose crispiness if you put them on paper towel right away.

Tomato- and Ricotta-Stuffed Squash Blossoms

I’ve stuffed goat cheese in squash blossoms before but we want to be more creative and adventurous with our Supper with Strangers. When Cameron and I sit down (and drink) to plan our monthly menu, we immediately think of the more well known dishes and try to cross them off our list. When we came up with August’s tomato theme, I begged that please, please, no caprese salad.

We could have saved squash blossoms for autumn but a light, almost foamy texture with a thin crisp of a vegetable flower, was just perfect to start off a summer meal. I tried this recipe the only way I know how: coating the blossoms with flour before frying. But the flour only weighed down the delicate blossoms so I ended up skipping the batter. One of those Asian strainer ladles is useful to fry them quickly and remove them from the hot oil.

Ingredients:
12 fresh squash blossoms, stamens removed
5 tbsps ricotta
1 heirloom yellow or orange tomato, pulped removed and set aside, diced
juice from a small lemon
oil, salt, pepper

1. In a small bowl, combine ricotta and tomatoes. Season with salt and pepper.
2. Gently stuff the squash blossoms by spooning half a dollop of the ricotta-tomato mixture inside. Do not overstuff. Lightly twist the blossom ends to shut close.
3. When ready to fry, heat some oil in a deep skillet. Before the oil starts to smoke, Fry up to 3 blossoms at a time using a strainer ladle. Try to swish the pot so that the entire blossom gets some of the hot oil. When they start to brown, remove to a stainless steel colander. They will sweat and lose crispiness if you put them on paper towel right away. When cool enough to handle, then you can transfer them to a plate lined with paper towel until ready to serve.
4. Serve with some of the tomato pulp and season with salt, pepper and a squirt of lemon juice.

Tomato Paella

Paella seems to be in the news lately. Mark Bittman featured this vegetarian-friendly recipe a few weeks ago and I took note to recreate it for our August Supper with Strangers. Over the long weekend, a grilled version was featured in the Sunday Times Magazine.

I had time to test Bittman’s recipe, but I found it hard to cook the rice in under 30 minutes. I tried his way the first round using the oven but some parts remained undercooked. I felt like there was so much maintenance to make sure the rice was evenly cooked. For my second try, I left it on top of the stove but it still needed so much attention I just had no patience for it.

So for Supper, I committed the worst paella sin there could be and used a rice cooker to make sure the dish went well for six guests. It did: the rice was fluffy, not sticky, and I didn’t have to keep adding vegetable broth. The initial few cups I used kept it cooking with just a simmer. It’s almost blasphemous, I know, but the paella turned out well. I grilled some lamb chorizo to go with the dish and some thinly-sliced aubergines as a vegetarian alternate. I topped both versions with grilled tomato slices and poured over salted tomato pulp to make it moist.

Ingredients:
4 cups of short-grain rice
1 pack of vegetable broth
1 large heirloom tomato, thinly sliced
1 onion, finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic, minced
2 tbsps paprika
1 tbsp tomato paste
half a bunch of parsley, finely chopped
oil, salt, pepper

If using:
1 eggplant, thinly sliced, seasoned with salt and pepper, grilled
1 rope of lamb chorizo, grilled, and then sliced

1. Heat a skillet and add some oil. Sauté garlic until golden brown. Add onions and cook until translucent. Season with salt and pepper. Stir in tomato paste and paprika and cook for another minute. Add rice, stirring constantly, making sure everything is well-combined.
2. Transfer everything to a rice cooker and add vegetable broth. Cook like you do white rice.
3. Five minutes from being done, when the rice has settled but there is still some broth simmering, top with tomato slices to cook in the remaining steam.
4. When cooked, turn off the rice cooker, stir the rice and sprinkle with parsley. Let sit in the cooker until ready to serve. Served with grilled chorizo or eggplants.