Open Face

Summertime is sandwich-time around here. With big, juicy tomatoes hanging off the vines, what more do you need? A slice of bread, some light mayo and horseradish . . . that's that!

Today for lunch I did a variation on my classic tomato sandwich. Remember the walnut pesto I made two days ago? After all the work that went into it, I felt the individual ingredients got a little lost on the pasta. So I tried spreading some on a slice of toast and throwing it in the toaster oven for a few seconds. Y.U.M. You can see where this is going . . . add a slice or two of tomato . . .

And another open-faced sandwich from this week. Venison sloppy joes with another round of Sweet Zingy Slaw.

Got any great summertime sandwich ideas to share?

Sweet Zingy Slaw

Quite a supper tonight. After a weekend away (and very little cooking on my part) I was ready to get creative in my kitchen again. Before we'd left for our trip, I preemptively whacked the basil way back to prevent it from flowering while we were gone. They look a little sad. BUT, I've got this mound of basil all bagged up in the fridge, so pesto-something was in order.

We were also gifted recently with some lovely summer squash, and I'd bought a bag of shiitake mushrooms from Mom and Dad. Now how to get all these foods to the table . . .

The pesto was pretty straight forward. I used this recipe (1 cup basil leaves, 1/4 cup walnuts, 2 garlic cloves, olive oil, and a squeeze of lemon), whirring each ingredient separately in my mini-chopper and then stirring them all together with the oil and lemon juice. I added the Parmesan cheese right to the spaghetti when I stirred the pesto into it.

Next, mushrooms. I had some Stilton cheese leftover from a splurge purchase, so I combined that with some oatmeal, ground flax seed, and the mushroom stems (chopped fine) as a stuffing for the caps. Nice flavor, but a little dry.

And finally, the squash. This turned out to be my favorite dish of the meal, so I'm including the recipe (I actually measured all the ingredients this time!). Each bite was initially sweet, followed by the delicious burn of cayenne pepper.





Sweet Zingy Slaw

1 medium-sized summer squash
1 carrot
2 TBSP virgin olive oil
2 TBSP white vinegar
1 TBSP brown sugar
I tsp minced fresh dill
1 cayenne pepper, minced*
salt to taste (a few dashes for me)


Shred the summer squash and carrot into a bowl. Mix the remaining ingredients and pour over the veggies. That's all! The "*" is because this was quite spicy. I threw in the whole pepper, seeds and all. I suggest starting with maybe a 1/2 pepper or discarding the seeds if you don't like that much bite. Alternatively, you could probably leave the pepper out altogether and cut the brown sugar in half for a sweet/tangy vibe.

Pan-bagnat

A fabulous summer evening meal! Pronounced "pahn banYAHT" (apparently) this sandwich originally comes from the region of Nice, France. You can find all this information on the web (I first encountered it here). Far from its origins, what I made probably should not be called pan-bagnat. Maybe just "Squashed Loaf Sandwich".

Basically, you take a loaf of bread, stuff it with fresh veggies, and then squash it so that the juices soak into the bread. Some instructions say to hollow out the loaf; I left mine intact.

After cutting the loaf, I drizzled both sides with olive oil, then layered on the following veggies: slices of tomato (thanks, Bek!), mushroom slices, green peppers, purple onion, and torn basil leaves. I gave the pile of veggies a good dash of salt and pepper then closed the loaf, wrapped it in saran wrap, and squashed it under an upside-down chair and a planter (see black and white picture below). After about two and a half hours, I unwrapped the deflated sandwich sliced it, and served it up with a bowl of olives and glasses of lemonade. Bon apetit!

Anniversary Fare

The Uncensored Chef is back from a 1st Anniversary getaway! It was nice to take a little break from the computer. =)

Since we didn't leave for our trip until a few days after our actual anniversary, I made my husband a nice dinner at home. My mom said that we should go out since it was a celebration for both of us, but I love to cook and had such a fun afternoon cooking up this meal (see the menu below)!

Appetizer
Bagel with Cream Cheese, Basil, and Golden Nugget Tomatoes


Salads
Green Salad with Cranberry Stilton Cheese
Basil and Bacon Potato Salad


Entree
Teriyaki Venison Oven Kebab over Brown Rice


Dessert
Rustic Shoofly Tart
Chocolate-dipped Strawberries

I really did spend the whole afternoon cooking! We were both hungry before dinner was ready, so I made the quick little bagel appetizers between chopping and baking . . . toasted bagel spread with cream cheese, topped with fresh, torn basil leaves and sliced golden nugget tomatoes. I added a dash of salt and pepper to complete it.

The venison "oven kebabs" (we don't have a grill) were great fun to do. I found a teriyaki marinade over at allrecipes.com that was meant for beef kebabs. I marinated the venison chunks in the fridge overnight. Prior to baking I added halved mushrooms, thick onion slices, and halved golden nugget tomatoes (our one plant is very productive right now!). I baked it all at 425F for about 20 minutes. Delicious served over brown rice!

For dessert, I wanted to make pie, because we had homemade pies at our wedding instead of cake. One of our favorites: shoofly. I also wanted to do chocolate-dipped strawberries since I'd just found some nice-looking strawberries for a good price. My dilemma: too much dessert. To solve the problem, I made a shoofly tart, using just half a recipe for the filling (we joked that it was a half-calorie pie!). I rolled the crust into a rough circle, big enough to fill a 9-inch pie plate to the rim. I put some of the crumbs onto the crust, ladled in the "wet" filling, dumped the rest of the crumbs on top, and gently folded the pie crust over the edge. I was nervous that the filling would bubble up over the crust, but it baked beautifully at 350F for about 20 minutes. It had a nice, moist bottom that night and turned cakier the next day, which made it perfect for an alfresco dessert downtown! The strawberries were yummy too!

Taste-tester spouts off effusively when asked for a comment. I think he's glad he married me.

A New Kitchen

No, we're not renovating our small kitchen. I want to write about the kitchen I joined for today. Now that I'm only working three days a week, I've got some free time that I can do various things with. One of my goals was to go down to the OCP to hang out with my sister-in-law who is the kitchen manager there. Every day she sorts through an array of donated food items and turns them into warm, filling and delicious meals for anyone in town who wants to stop by for lunch.

When I got there at about 10:00 today, a group of women were already snapping yellow beans for lunch. My job assignment was to attack the mounds of squash and make squash cake. I didn't do a whole lot of attacking; the recipe only needed three medium-sized squash. This first assignment progressed slowly as I stopped every few moments to ask where such-and-such was located. My second cake--plum--went a lot faster. While the cakes baked a few of us decided to try making plum jam. We should have asked Sadie before cutting back on the sugar, because we actually ended up with plum syrup. We also drank plum smoothies while we worked and considered what a squash smoothie might taste like. Desperate ideas for desperate mounds of squash.

Before serving lunch, the community circled up and each person shared what he/she was thankful for. When it came my turn, I had to say I was thankful for my sister-in-law and all the hard work she does every day. And although I didn't add it, I was also thankful to get out of my little two-person kitchen for a morning and become part of a team, cooking for a whole community of people.

Apple-Wineberry Jam

It's high berry season in our neck of the woods. We went wineberry picking again (remember the tarts?). This time I was determined to do something with more of a future. Jam.

I scoured the internet for good jam recipes, searching for raspberry jam since wineberry is a little less common. I found this recipe for raspberry apple jam which looked good to me since I had apples on hand, it didn't take pectin, and the apples would add some volume as the berries cooked down.


Anita's Apple-Wineberry Jam

4 cups wineberries
2 cups peeled, chopped apples (basically two apples)
2 cups sugar


Pretty simple. Just put everything into a pan over medium heat and cook until it's thick! I ended up using my stick blender towards the end to smooth out the apple chunks. I think I cooked it for about 50 minutes.

Of course, we had to try some right away!

The rest was ladled into jars and sealed. I processed them in a hot water bath for 10 minutes. Meet the Jam Family below (I was seriously hoping they'd have more children!).

Beans & Rice 1

I call this Beans & Rice 1 because I have so many variations on this theme! Tonight I just needed something fast and easy. It's too hot to cook for long. My beans and rice always include the following: oil, onions, garlic, canned chili's or hot pepper, cumin, salt, and cooked/canned beans. That's the basic, and it goes from there depending on how creative I'm feeling or what else I have on hand. Tonight I added tomato sauce for something different.

Beans & Rice 1

2 TBSP vegetable oil
1/2 med. onion, diced
1 large clove garlic, crushed and roughly chopped
few pieces canned chili's
1 tsp. cumin
1 (15 oz.) can red beans
1/2 (15 oz.) can crushed tomatoes
1 chicken bullion cube
dash of brown sugar (maybe 1/2 tsp?)
salt to taste

Heat the oil in a pan over medium heat. Add onions and garlic and saute until translucent. Add the chili's and crush with stirring utensil. Add cumin, stir, and let cook a minute or so. Add beans,crushed tomatoes, chicken bullion, and about a 1/4 cup water and simmer until heated through. Eat over rice.

Tonight I topped my beans and rice with some raw shredded cabbage, diced golden nugget tomatoes, a drizzle of olive oil, and a squeeze of lime juice. Fresh mango slices sprinkled with cayenne pepper on the side. Cook's Word? Mmmmmmm . . . add some fresh cilantro and take it to another level of delish.