Salmon and tomatoes en papillote

I know it's been a while since I last blogged... this week has been very busy and very exciting. I got a job!!! I am now the assistant to the chair of the chemistry department at Florida State, and Andrew's building is right by mine, and everyone seems really nice, and I have a pretty office with a big window. It's been a bit of a shift to start waking up at 6:30 and run out the door, but it is so nice to have something to do besides obsessively clean the house and watch TLC. On the food side, I'm going to start experimenting with dinners that can do double-duty in my Snow White lunchbox the next day. Wish me luck!

Today I'm sharing a recipe that I actually made last week. It takes literally about half an hour to throw together, has next to no cleanup and is knock-your-socks-off delicious. It's easy enough for a quick meal at home, but yummy enough for a dinner party. I have dreams about this meal sometimes. Plus, it is just about as healthy as you can get. The proportions I'm sharing here are for four people; you could halve it for two, but I love having the leftovers. It has all the Provençal flavors I miss from last summer, and it's just so pretty! It's like a little garden wrapped up in foil.

The instructions look complicated, but once you've made it once you'll be able to improvise pretty easily. This recipe comes almost exactly from my French cookbook, Around my French Table by Dorie Greenspan. I moved the basil on top of the salmon because I think you can taste it more that way; if your salmon is skinless, you can put the basil underneath. Both times I've made it, I haven't had cherry tomatoes, so I cut up two tomatoes into bite-sized pieces and divided them among the packets. You can use foil (easier to wrap up, but less pretty) or parchment paper, depending on who you're trying to impress.

Salmon and tomatoes en papillote

Preheat the oven to 475 degrees. Cut four 12-inch squares of foil or parchment paper, depending on who you're trying to impress. Cut 28 ounces of salmon into four equal portions (7 or 8 ounces each).

If you want to sear the tomatoes to intensify their flavor, heat some olive oil in a skillet over medium-high heat and cook 16 cherry tomatoes for a few minutes until their skins are wrinkled and bubbly.

In the center of each piece of foil, drizzle a little olive oil, sprinkle it with some salt and white pepper, and top with a piece of salmon. Put the tomatoes on one side and about 5 basil leaves on the other. Grate zest from one lemon over everything. Chop 4 scallions (or 2 spring onions) and scatter them over the fish and tomatoes. Cut the lemon into 8 slices, putting two slices over each piece of fish. Top with a sprig of thyme or rosemary and another drizzle of olive oil.

Seal the packets, making sure they are airtight and that there's puff space between the fish and the top of its cocoon. Put the packets on the baking sheet, slide the setup into the oven, and bake for 10-12 minutes.

(The packets can be assembled up to 6 hours ahead and refrigerated; remove from the refrigerator 30 minutes before baking. If the packets still feel cold when you're ready to slide them into the oven, add a minute to the baking time.)

Update:

My mom made this salmon for her and Daddy and sent me a picture! Look how beautiful! They ate it with a salad, green beans and Provencal rosé.

Roasted tomatoes provençales

This is one of the great summer side dishes: easy, forgiving, delicious and incredibly good for you. It's good as leftovers, served hot or cold. I think it would even make less-great tomatoes taste amazing, so I actually plan on making it year-round. Andrew says that this is his favorite way to eat tomatoes. I first made it to go with a roasted chicken, and this weekend I pulled it out again to go with my coconut chicken. It's a colorful way to add more vegetables to your menu.

A lot of recipes are going around Pinterest these days for stuffed tomatoes with a kind of garlic or parmesan breading. This is the same idea, but way better because you still get all the tomato goodness and you aren't adding any soggy mush. You can mix it up by altering the herbs you use. Dried would be okay, but fresh from the garden is amazing. You can change the proportions and cooking time however you would like, depending on what else is in your oven at what temperature! One final note: cut the tomatoes in half by turning them upside down, so you go through the core. You won't cut through as many juice pockets, which means that they retain more juices while they cook. Plus, less mess!

Roasted tomatoes provençales
Finely chop two cloves of garlic and a teaspoon or two of other herbs--I use rosemary, thyme and basil. Cut six medium tomatoes in half and arrange them on a baking sheet. Drizzle some olive oil over each half, and top with the garlic-herb mixture. Bake at 375 degrees for half an hour.

Count on about one tomato per person--but of course, you will want your leftovers!

Beef empanadas

What a busy week coming off of a busy weekend! I have Pi Phi stuff tonight, Thursday and Friday--mostly helping FL Beta with recruitment, which should be wonderful--and Saturday is a biology department party. I predict that a lot of this week's dinners will be leftovers, so when I woke up craving empanadas yesterday I went ahead and made them. I served them with fried plantains and a mango salsa. How tropical!

I had never made empanadas before--Andrew claims he had never even tried them--but they were yummy! Full disclosure: the dough recipe I found online wasn't so great. You can try it here, but I don't feel comfortable endorsing it since it was a little dry. It also didn't make enough for the massive amount of filling I ended up with. Next time, I'm going to try them with just storebought pie dough, like another website recommended. But the filling was delicious. I adapted this recipe. It made a ton--I made six and a half empanadas, which was the amount of dough I had, and almost half the filling was still left over. I would halve it next time, since the two of us can only eat so much.

 
Beef empanadas
Chop two small potatoes into small pieces and boil until soft. Hard-boil two eggs and coarsely chop them when cool.

Chop one small onion and mince 5 cloves of garlic. Sauté the onion in a little vegetable oil, then add the garlic. Add 1.5 pounds ground beef. When the beef is browned and mixed in with the onions and garlic, pour in 1 cup beef broth. Let it simmer until the liquid is gone. Fold in the potatoes and eggs, and let the stuff cool.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Cut your dough into circles and spoon the filling into the center of each circle. Fold them in half and crimp the edges. Arrange the empanadas on a greased baking sheet and brush them with a little beaten egg. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes.

Fried plantains
Peel two or three ripe plantains and cut into good-sized pieces. Fry them in butter and a little sugar. Drain on paper towels before serving.

Mango salsa
Chop 2 mangos, 1 cucumber and some green onion. Mix together with some lime juice.

Bran muffins

Company is coming! Andrew's dad and his fiancée are coming up tonight to move her daughter in at FSU. They are going to be our first guests in our cute little house, so I have turned into a cleaning whirlwind machine this past week. Now is as good a time as any to mention my favorite housekeeping tool, a blog called Unfuck Your Habitat. The woman who runs the blog just came out with an app, and I can't fully express why but it is incredibly motivating and encouraging. I started following it in college and it literally changed my apartment--probably my life as well. It emphasizes doing what you can to keep your space clean, when you can do it. This means taking 20 minutes to clean in your day, rather than letting it build up. These are elementary tactics I know, but as someone who's trying to be a grownup...

Now that the house is spotless, I have been spending today cooking! The spinach-artichoke dip is waiting in the fridge; I'll serve it with tortilla chips and daquiris when they get in around 9 tonight. Next I'll make another batch of my famous chocolate-chip cookies for Stephanie to take to college. My best friend Cat's parents sent me cookies when I started at W&L, and it was wonderful. More food = more opportunities to make friends! (That is a universal truth up there with the Golden Rule and measuring brown sugar by packing it in to the cup as much as you can.) Anyway, tomorrow's breakfast is already mostly made and I am putting off washing dishes by introducing you to my famous bran muffins!

I first started making this recipe sophomore year of college. I had just been assigned my little sisters in Pi Phi (I love them so much!) and I was SO EXCITED. Big sis week is essentially an opportunity to sneak into your little's room every day and shower her with presents and balloons and candy, and at the end of the week there is a big reveal at the srat house with the whole family in matching PJs. Claire and Tania maintain they knew it was me because they got a different kind of cookie every day. But Wednesday is traditionally breakfast day--you get a guy to deliver breakfast in bed to your beautiful little! Tania put on her sheet that she loves French toast, so that was set, but Claire just said she wanted fruit. Silly little! I want to make you something! So my mom dug out this classic and Claire loved them!

My amazing littles at their big sis reveal! Yay PINK family!

The best part about this recipe is that the batter keeps for up to six weeks. This is revolutionary. I can fill a couple of the muffin tin wells with batter when I get up in the morning, and by the time I'm running out the door they are ready to go. Instant breakfast. They were amazing in college, when I often didn't budget enough time to sit down with a bowl of cereal before class. Plus, they are super-good. They don't dry out, and they taste amazing. And they could not be easier! My only warning with making these muffins is that you need a couple of big bowls. You end up with about 6 cups of batter, and since you want extra space to mix without the batter flying out... just plan ahead, that's all. Even the "medium bowl" in the recipe should be, well, pretty big. You can modify the bowl system that the recipe uses, but I find it's the easiest way to go.

This is the largest bowl I used; it holds 5 quarts.

Bran Muffins from Grandmama and John Russell
Use 3 mixing bowls. In the largest bowl, combine:

1 cup All-Bran cereal

1 cup boiling water

1/2 cup vegetable oil

Mix well and set aside.

Delicious! As it sits, it settles a little

In the medium bowl, combine:

2 1/2 cups flour

1 tsp. salt

1 1/2 cup sugar

2 1/2 tsp baking soda

2 cups All-Bran

In the small bowl, beat 2 eggs, add 2 cups buttermilk and mix well.
Add the contents of the small bowl to the dry ingredients in the medium bowl and mix well. Add medium bowl to largest bowl and mix thoroughly.

All done!

To bake: Spoon batter into well-greased muffin tins until 3/4 full. Bake 30 minutes at 400 degrees. Makes 30 muffins.
Note: If some muffin wells are empty, fill them with water. Seriously.
Covered batter can be stored in a refrigerator for up to 6 weeks.

The best chocolate chip cookies ever

This is one of my favorite recipes. These are the cookies I grew up with; Mommy rightly believed that no other cookies are as good, so why bother? When I stress-baked in high school and in college, I always made these cookies. I have the necessary ingredients on hand at all times, and I genuinely have the recipe memorized. These cookies have gone to French club bake sales, to copy editing nights at the Hi's Eye and the Ring-tum Phi and, perhaps most importantly, to Andrew's roommates his senior year. I don't think Ned would like me as much if I hadn't constantly supplied him with cookies; he even mentioned them in his best man speech at our wedding. Little did he know that he'd those exact cookies after the bouquet toss! Mom and I baked about 30 dozen in February--and Andrew had no idea--and froze them until June. They were still just as good!

Some of the cookie dough for the wedding...

I creamed the butter by hand until Andrew bought a hand mixer halfway through his senior year, but with a mixer they come together in no time at all. The trick to this recipe is the oatmeal. Do not leave it out! That's what makes these cookies so chewy and delicious. Chocolate chip cookies are often too dry or crunchy; the oatmeal makes the difference. I find that smaller cookies--about the amount of dough that fits into a spoon--tend to come out better. Plus, smaller cookies are easier to share. I cook them for about 7-8 minutes (Fannie Farmer calls for 8-10 but I know better), until they're browned on the bottom but not necessarily on the top. Then I take them out and let them sit for a few minutes before moving them to the cooling rack. This is a good trick to keep them from overcooking; they bake a little more on the cookie sheet when they're out of the oven, and letting them sit makes them come up more easily without falling apart.

Try to go for about this size--they spread out so much!

I could keep talking up this recipe forever. I've made it a bajillion times, and I genuinely have it memorized. (Yes, I double-checked before posting.) These are the best cookies you will ever eat. Ever. So here you go, and get baking!

Chocolate chip cookies
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Cream 1/4 pound butter (1 stick). Gradually add 1/2 cup dark brown sugar and 1/2 cup granulated sugar until they are will mixed and light. Next, add 1 egg and 3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract. Add 1 & 1/8 cup flour, 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1/2 teaspoon baking soda. Mix in 1/2 cup uncooked oatmeal, then 1 cup chocolate chips (semisweet is best, but milk chocolate is fine).

Drop onto cookie sheets and bake about 8 minutes. Let sit before transferring to cooling racks. Makes 2 to 3 dozen cookies. Serve with a huge glass of milk.

Spinach quiche and (bonus!) an Old-Fashioned

Neville has been complaining that he can't cook curtains, so we're back with food this time! Maybe it's the French major in me, but I have always loved a good quiche. Served with greens drizzled in balsamic vinaigrette, it is a surprisingly filling meal. One of the coffeeshops in Westfield, New Jersey, where I went to high school, has a different type of quiche every day, which I would often get for lunch as long as it didn't contain asparagus. When I lived in Aix-en-Provence last summer, I would often grab a tartelette aux épinards for a quick lunch in town. My spinach quiche still brings back memories of strolling through downtown Aix with my friends, getting fresh peaches at the market and speaking nothing but French.

Lavender fields from Haute-Provence to get you in a French mood

I started developing this recipe when I was living on $11 a day in Richmond for my poverty minor. It is quick, easy and incredibly forgiving. If you go with a pre-made crust, you can get it in the oven in less than half an hour. It calls for yogurt instead of sour cream, so it's very good for you but still has that nice tartness in the center. I use plain, fat-free yogurt; vanilla has a lot of extra sweetener added, which could throw off the flavors. The recipe is super-flexible: you can add just about whatever vegetables you feel like to it. I saw a beautiful quiche on Pinterest that had sliced tomatoes on top. When I get to it, I'm going to experiment with a quiche Lorraine (ham and cheese) like my host mom made in France, but I think that would call for nicer cheese. If you're adding a lot more stuff, cut out an egg or two so the crust doesn't overflow.

The quiches I made tonight were a little different. Andrew asked me not to use onion this time (dislike of onion is his only flaw, I promise), so I used these cute mini-tart pans to make six mini-quiches. Three had onion, three didn't. The extras will be great for lunch the next couple of days! I kept the whole process separate but equal, so his portions wouldn't be tainted with delicious sauteed onion. However, this is the regular recipe. If you're making it with the two regular crusts, I would freeze one for later once it's partially baked. As my family likes to say, it's money in the bank.

Spinach Quiche
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Prick your crust (1 deep-dish unbaked pie crust, 2 regular crusts or 6 mini-tarts) with a fork and bake for 5 minutes.

Thaw 10 oz frozen chopped spinach by running water over it in a colander or microwaving it. Squeeze out as much excess water as you can. Meanwhile, chop one small onion and 3 cloves of garlic, and sautee them in a little olive oil. Add spinach and cook until dry. Make sure to break up any clumps. If you're adding other vegetables that want to be precooked, toss them in with the spinach.

Here we have one wife working two skillets for one onion-averse husband

Beat together 5 eggs, 1 cup plain yogurt and 1/4 teaspoon black pepper. Stir in 4 ounces shredded cheddar cheese and the spinach mixture. Pour into the pie crust.

Bake in preheated oven for 15 minutes. Then decrease the temperature to 350 degrees and bake for 30 more minutes. Let cool before serving.

The cheese makes a delicious golden topping...

As I said above, normally I use a pie crust from the grocery store, but I was inspired to make my own for almost literally the first time ever. Fans may recall from my first post that I made pie crust by hand in home ec in eighth grade. It was unpleasant, and the ensuing apple pie was nowhere as good as ones I have made following my grandmama's recipe--with storebought crust. (My family has a thing about apple pie, but this is not the time.) Anyway, my experience with the chocolate tart and my food processor taught me that pie dough does not have to be terrifying. So I tested out this recipe, which was given to me by my BFF, bridesmaid and notorious pie lover, Eleanor! This made more dough than I needed for my mini-pans, so I will be creating a pie sometime soon...

Look how cute they are!

Pie dough from Eleanor
Mix together 4 cups flour, 1 tablespoon sugar and 2 teaspoons salt. Cut in 1 3/4 cups shortening or butter. Separately, mix 1 tablespoon vinegar, 1 large egg and 1/2 cup cold water. Add this mixture to the flour and shortening. Chill. Roll into desired shapes. May be frozen. Makes enough for 1 and a half pies.

Finally, I have a bonus recipe that comes from my very tall husband. We procured bitters this afternoon and he made my new favorite drink for me! I first tried it at the Southern Inn in Lexington after graduation. Tonight, it helped motivate me while I quiched. This old-fashioned is pictured next to a scarf-in-progress with the Trident, the symbol of W&L, knitted into it. Andrew has so many talents!

Andrew's Old-fashioneds
Put 2 maraschino cherries and a slice of orange in the bottom of a glass. (An old-fashioned glass is best, but do we need to say it?) Add 1 teaspoon sugar and a splash of club soda. Muddle everything together into a paste. Add 2 ounces of bourbon. Mix together and add several ice cubes.