Sangria & Ceviche

Whether or not you actually do get a kick from Champagne, enjoy sippin’ on gin and juice, or simply prefer wasting away in Margaritaville, a good sangria full of ice and fresh fruit is perhaps the best way to drink up summer. Add a ceviche to the mix and you’ve got not only dinner and drinks, but a seasonal celebration of flavor as well.

The sangria recipe below is courtesy of Martha Stewart, but the ceviche comes from an Ecuadoran woman who works with my husband and often shares her delicious homemade dish with the office!

Sangria
Adapted from marthastewart.com
Serves 6-8

Ingredients
1 ripe Peach, pitted and sliced
1 red apricot, pitted and sliced
5 strawberries, sliced into thirds, new line 1 seedless orange, sliced in rounds
1/4 cup brandy, Grand Marnier, or Cointreau
Pinch of granulated sugar
1 bottle dry red or white wine, such as Spanish Rioja or Bordeaux
2 tablespoons superfine sugar
2 cups freshly squeezed orange juice

Method

Macerate the fruit: soak peach, apricot, strawberries, and orange in brandy, Grand Marnier, or Cointreau and a pinch of sugar for up to one hour. And a pitcher with some ice combine the macerated fruit and liqueur with the remaining ingredients. Mix well, and serve.  


Shrimp Ceviche
Ingredients
1 lb shrimp
1 red onion
1 green onion
4 to 5 lemons
1 orange
Cilantro
1 tomato
1 teaspoon each cumin and oregano
1 celery stalk
Extra virgin olive oil
1 1/2 cups water
Pinch of salt

Method
1. Cut off the shrimp heads and put them to boil with the water. After they boil, add cumin and oregano into the water with a little bit of salt. Cut up cilantro and green onion and add this to the boiling water as well.

2. Proceed to clean the rest of the shrimp with lemon. Devein shrimp by cutting down the middle of the shrimp’s backs and put the clean shrimp to the side.

3. Take off the heads of the shrimp and add the clean shrimp into the boiling water for 10 seconds and quickly take out before they overcook. Leave these to the side.

4. Turn off the heat for the boiling water and add the water to a blender and add the shrimp heads only as well. Pulse this until everything is just liquefied. After, strain the mixture into a bowl, only liquid in the bowl.

5. Afterwards, cut the red onion in fine slices and tomatoes and squares. Put it in a large bowl and add your pinch of salt and lemon juice and the strained mixture from the previous step. Mix these all together well.

6. Once mixed, add in a little bit of orange juice to the mixture. Lastly, add your shrimp into the mixture and mix until well combined.

7. Serve with rice to enjoy (or any side dish you wish to accompany) and—this is essential—top with corn nuts!

BOOK/A TABLE - A Perfectly Eggsecuted Omelette!

 

While visiting family in New Hampshire, I discovered Brandmoore Farm down the road a piece from my cousin’s house. They had, among other things (such as furls of garlic scapes, steaks and fresh ground meats, as well as chunky cheese curds, and ruby kraut), these gorgeous fresh eggs!

My hubs and I safely carted them back to a steamy Manhattan (unbroken) and as the eggs sat in their glistening shells on the kitchen counter, I quickly set forth to undo our careful packing by cracking a few of them open to make omelettes.

My thoughts had turned to Karen Pierce’s excellent cookbook Recipes for Murder (previously mentioned here), which features 66 delicious dishes devised from Agatha Christie’s mysteries. I seemed to remember something about an omelette...to wit, A Perfect Omelette pulled from the pages of Christie’s Mrs. McGinty’s Dead.

In the midst of figuring out how Mrs. McGinty’s demise was executed, the famous Belgian detective Hercule Poirot must also contend with the perilous kitchen of his hostess:

“I have given Mrs. Summerhayes a cookery book and have also taught her personally how to make an omelette. Bon Dieu, what I suffered in that house!”

The wonderful thing about omelettes is that they can be served day or night. An omelette with toast and orange juice—breakfast! An elegant chive omelette served with crusty peasant bread and a sturdy red wine—dinner! By the glow of candlelight, of course...perhaps with a mystery novel in hand?

A Perfect Omelette
Adapted from Recipes for Murder by Karen Pierce

Ingredients

2 tablespoons salted butter
Two large eggs
2 tablespoons whole milk
Salt and pepper
Mushrooms, grated cheddar cheese, fine herbs, or seafood for filling (optional)

Method
1. In a medium frying pan over medium heat, melt the butter.
2. In a small bowl, crack the eggs and beat well.
3. Add the milk to the eggs and salt and pepper to taste. Mix well.
4. When the pan becomes hot enough to make a drop of water hiss, pour into the egg mixture. Do not stir. Cook for one minute, cover, and cook for three more minutes. (I love the idea of covering the eggs and will always cook omelettes this way! No fussy tilting of the pan; the eggs steam up nice and fluffy.) 
5. When the center has set firmly, turn the omelette over and cook for one more minute.
6. Add filling of choice down the center of the eggs, then gently fold half the omelette over, lining up the edges.
7. Cook for one more minute until the filling warms.
8. Slide the omelette onto a plate and serve.

Look to the Rainbow (Salad)

Please forgive if you received an email from me that you couldn’t open! Something zigged when it should have zagged and a post went out in error.

In other news, Happy Pride! 

To honor the month of Pride and all its colors, Baked by Melissa created a Rainbow Kale Salad in an exciting collab with Royal Greens and online site Wonder, the self-proclaimed “new kind of food hall.”  Wonder is a genius idea, gathering a host of restaurants together in one place. Order a steak from Bobby Flay and finish it off with a cheesecake from Junior's!

Wonder offers food delivery in locations across the country, but I thought to throw open the net so you could try the Rainbow Kale Salad wherever you happen to be. 

Collect your ingredients! You’ll need chopped red bell peppers and tomatoes, shredded carrots, roasted corn and broccoli, sliced cucumbers and purple cabbage, and crispy quinoa. Arrange beautifully on a bed of roughly chopped kale and drizzle with Melissa’s miso vinaigrette, below. 

Miso Vinaigrette
Ingredients
1/3 cup olive oil
2 lemons, juiced
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1/4 cup white miso paste
1/3 cup nutritional yeast
1 tablespoon dried oregano
2 garlic cloves, grated with a microplane
1/2 teaspoon salt

Method

Whisk together all ingredients in a jar or bowl until emulsified. 

 

Fried Chicken Salad

 

I suppose I could have stood over a spluttering, scalding pot of oil and fried my own chicken, but who has the summer time? I hightailed it to Popeye’s instead, chopped up a bunch of their crispy boneless tenders and added them to this immensely satisfying salad courtesy of the Food Network Kitchen. Then I served the whole thing to a few friends on our rooftop sundeck, alongside some tomato and biscuit sandwiches. Divine!  

Fried Chicken Salad
Yield: 6 servings

Ingredients
6 pieces cold fried chicken
2 stalks celery, finely chopped
2 scallions, thinly sliced
1 medium dill pickle, finely chopped, plus 1/3 cup plus 2 tablespoons dill pickle brine
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/4 cup buttermilk
1 tablespoon yellow mustard
Hot sauce, for seasoning
Kosher salt
Potato rolls, for serving

Directions
Remove and discard the bones from the chicken. Chop up the meat, with the fried skin, into small pieces (you should have about 6 cups).

Set aside 1 tablespoon each of the celery, scallions and pickle.

Whisk together the mayonnaise, pickle brine, buttermilk, yellow mustard and a couple dashes hot sauce in a large bowl. Stir in the remaining celery, scallion and pickle.

Add the chopped chicken to the bowl and stir gently to combine. Season with salt and more hot sauce if you’d like. Transfer to a large serving bowl and sprinkle with the reserved celery, scallion and pickle. Serve on potato rolls with a few dashes of hot sauce.

COOKBOOK/A TABLE - Cool as a Cucumber

This cooling Couscous and Crab Salad with Cucumber and Mint has been one of my summer go-tos for years, thanks to the brilliant former New York Times food columnist Molly O’Neill (who we sadly lost in 2019) and her cookbook A Well-Seasoned Appetite. As you might guess, the cookbook is divided by season, but also includes superb essays celebrating the virtues of eating well, as informed by O’Neill’s conviction that “cooking should nourish life...”  

Do enjoy!

Couscous And Crab Salad With Cucumber Juice And Mint
By Molly O’Neill

Ingredients
Yield: Four servings

1 cup cucumber juice* 
½ cup uncooked instant couscous
2 cups lump crab meat, picked over for shells
15 small cherry tomatoes, quartered
1 small red onion, halved and thinly sliced
1 tablespoon chopped fresh mint
½ teaspoon grated lemon rind
½ teaspoon grated lime rind
1 teaspoon salt
Freshly ground pepper to taste

Preparation
Step 1
Place ¾ cup of the cucumber juice in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Add the couscous, cover and remove from heat. Let stand for 5 minutes. Uncover and stir with a fork. Place in a bowl and set aside to cool.

Step 2
Add the crab meat, cherry tomatoes, onion, mint and lemon and lime rinds and toss to coat. Toss in the remaining cucumber juice. Season with the salt and pepper. Divide among 4 plates and serve immediately.



*If you have a juice extractor...to make one cup of cucumber juice, pass one large peeled cucumber through a juice extractor. OR—cut to the chase, as I do, and pick up a brand of cold pressed juice that contains cucumber, such as Suja. You may also puree a few peeled, seeded cucumbers and squeeze the pulp through cheese cloth for your juice!

BOOK/A TABLE - Tomato Flan in Florence

I brought E.M. Forster’s A Room with a View with me to Florence as the first part of the novel takes place there. What a thrill to read this upon waking, my first morning in town...

“It was pleasant to wake up in Florence, to open the eyes upon a bright bare room...it was pleasant, too, to fling wide the windows, pinching the fingers in the unfamiliar fastenings, to lean out into sunshine with beautiful hills and trees and marble churches opposite...”

And fling wide the windows I did as well that morning, breathing in all the gorgeous Florentine air, ripe with spring jasmine!

We knew we had to return to Florence’s celebrated Cibreo, one of my favorite restaurants in the world that I know. In particular, I was really looking forward to the simple, luxurious tomato flan (a savory spread similar in consistency to the Spanish dessert flan) meant to be slathered on toasted country bread. Alas, I discovered they only serve it during the summertime, when tomatoes are at their best. 

However, fate intervened when a dear friend took us to Osteria della Tre Panche tucked away in The Hermitage Hotel, a few steps away from the Ponte Vecchio. There I spied Il Budino di Pomodoro on the menu, which translates to “tomato pudding.” Served as an accompaniment to sumptuous chicken with truffled cream sauce, mozzarella in corrozza, and pappardelle with boar ragu, the budino turned out to be more than an ample subsitute for the flan. It was terrific!     

A Room with a View asks a question of its young heroine Lucy Honeychurch, who arrives home to England with a greatly changed perspective—what did you bring back from Italy? 

For me, I returned feeling the sunshine over the Piazza di Signorina still streaming on my face and the lingering scent of jasmine everywhere...I snipped a fragrant blossom and pressed it between the pages of Forster’s beautful novel. 

And oh yes, I brought back a recipe for tomato flan!

Tomato Flan
Ingredients
1 8-ounce can Del Monte or other tomato sauce
12 large basil leaves
2 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
¼ cup extra virgin olive oil, plus extra for garnish
4 teaspoons unflavored gelatin (about 1 1/3 envelopes)
Salt and fresh black pepper to taste
Vegetable oil
12 slices country bread

Method

In a blender or food processor, combine tomato sauce, 6 leaves basil, garlic, ¼ cup olive oil, gelatin and salt and pepper to taste. Blend at high speed for 2 minutes.
Lightly oil 6 small cappuccino or other cups. Divide tomato mixture among cups. Refrigerate 20 minutes.
To serve, dip bottom of each cup in hot water to loosen flan. Unmold onto 6 plates. Garnish with a basil leaf and a drop of olive oil. Place 2 slices bread on each plate.

Yield: 6 servings.

BOOK/A TABLE - Lemon Sandwich Pie Cookies

 

Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself...

So famously begins Virginia Woolf’s visionary novel Mrs. Dalloway, about a single day (in June!) in the life of a woman as she plans a party and falls into memories of a love from long ago. 

But what if Mrs. Dalloway BAKED the flowers herself? That might be a very different story indeed—and the flowers might be a blooming bunch of these Lemon Sandwich Pie cookies that look like daisies and taste like little lemon meringue pies.

Whenever I’m visiting my family in New Hampshire, I like to pick up a copy of fresh magazine at Hannaford, the New England chain of supermarkets. There’s alway something delicious to be found in the pages such as quiche or cassoulet, or these cookies! Perhaps we can call them Dalloways?

Lemon Sandwich Pie Cookies

Adapted from fresh magazine

Makes 12 to 14

Ingredients
All-purpose flour, as needed
1 (15 oz) package rolled pie crust, at room temperature
½ cup marshmallow fluff
¼  cup store-bought lemon curd
2 TB confectioners’ sugar (optional)

Method

1. Preheat oven to 350°F. Lightly dust work surface and a rolling pin with flour. Gently roll one pie crust, soothing out any creases. Using a 2” flower-shaped cookie cutter, cut out 12 to 14 cookies. Repeat with second pie crust.

2. Transfer cookies to parchment-lined baking sheets. Using a round cookie cutter ( 3/4” or smaller), cut out the centers from half of the cookies. Bake until cookies are golden, 10 to 12 minutes. Let cookies cool completely.

3. Spread 2 teaspoons marshmallow fluff into an even layer on each whole cookie. Add ½ teaspoon lemon curd to center a fluff on each cookie. Top with remaining cut out cookies. Dust with confectioners’ sugar, if desired.

MY SUGGESTION: Using a sifter, sift confectioners’ sugar over top cookie layer before placing them on each bottom whole cookie.

God bless Mrs. Dalloway—and Hannaford as well! Happy June, everybody!