The best smell in the world

Is there anything better than walking into a house and smelling something delicious cooking? It may sound a little June Cleaver-y, but I feel all warm and fuzzy inside when my husband, my girls, or a guest walks into my kitchen and says "Something smells great in here!"

Plenty of foods can inspire that sentiment...cookies in the oven...pasta sauce bubbling on the stove. But of all of the food scents out there, nothing does it for me like the smell of garlic, olive oil, and white wine simmering together. It transports me to my happy place, where I'm sitting on a lovely deck overlooking Napa Valley vineyards, a cool glass of chardonnay in hand, reading a cooking magazine while soft jazz plays in the background.

Any time I see a recipe that involves simmering garlic in white wine, I know it's going to be a winner. And when you throw in some shrimp, tomatoes, lemon zest, and fresh parsley, it would be pretty impossible to go wrong.

This recipe was largely inspired by Ina Garten's "Roasted shrimp with feta," but since I omitted quite a few things, and adjusted the presentation, I thought I'd rewrite my version of the recipe here. I went for a simpler approach, eliminating things like Pernod (who has Pernod on hand?) and fennel, and forgoing the breadcrumb topping in favor of serving the dish alongside my favorite thing in the world: crusty bread.

"Roasted shrimp with feta" (or, as I like to call it: "Roasted shrimp in garlic, tomato and white wine broth") Recipe semi-stolen from Ina Garten.

Ingredients:

Several tbsps of good olive oil
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1/4 cup dry white wine
1 can diced tomatoes (or use fresh)
2 tsp tomato paste
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp freshly ground pepper
1 1/2 lbs shrimp (peeled and deveined, with tails on)
5 ounces feta cheese, crumbled
2 tbsp minced Italian parsley
2 lemons (plus the zest from one of them)

Directions:

Pre-heat the oven to 400 degrees. Heat the olive oil in a large skillet that can be safely transferred to the oven. Add the garlic and saute over medium-low heat for one minute. Add the wine and bring to a boil. Cook for 2 to 3 minutes, until the liquid is reduced. Add the tomatoes with liquid, tomato paste, and oregano. Add salt & pepper to taste. Simmer over medium-low heat for 10-15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Arrange the shrimp, tails up, in one layer over the tomato mixture in the skillet.* Scatter the feta evenly on top. In a small bowl, combine the lemon zest and parsley with 2 tbsp of olive oil. Sprinkle over the shrimp. Bake for 15 minutes, until the shrimp are opaque and tender. Remove from oven and sprinkle the juice of one lemon on top.

*I have to admit that I struggled with the whole "arranging the shrimp artfully" thing. My shrimp didn't really stand up in the pan...they kind of just fell over on top of one another. So when I removed the dish from the oven, I ended up dumping everything into a big bowl and serving it like that. I actually think it came out kind of better that way, since we could just dish the shrimp and tomato mixture into individual bowls, and then sop up the juices with that crusty bread I was talking about earlier.

Next time I make this, I might leave out the oven altogether, and just saute the shrimp right in the pan. I think the only real reason to bake it was to brown the breadcrumbs, but since the breadcrumbs are excluded in my version, the oven is probably unnecessary.

No matter how you end up cooking the shrimp, you can't really go wrong with this recipe. It's great for  entertaining, and--like so many of my favorite recipes--it can work as either an appetizer or a light dinner. It could also be served over pasta if you're looking for a heftier meal. And it would work perfectly fine without the feta, if you don't feel like buying it, or want to go dairy-free.

Shrimp and avocado tostadas & pulled pork tacos with fennel slaw

I have quite a few strengths as a cook, but timing is not one of them. I am at my best when I am making a dish that I can ease into, adjusting seasonings as I go, hovering and poking to test doneness. Or I enjoy things that I can make ahead and either serve cold, room temperature or reheated.

Meals that need to be carefully orchestrated, with several components being finished at exactly the same time, really stress me out. Take, for example, my husband's father's day request: surf and turf. There's nothing spectacularly difficult about this dish...no fancy ingredients or complex preparations. But the simple fact that I had to serve a perfectly cooked filet, perfectly cooked lobster tail, roasted potatoes, and broccoli, all steaming hot, ALL AT THE SAME TIME... Well, it gave me an anxiety attack. Yet, I managed to pull it off:

Anyway, the point of this post wasn't to brag about my surf and turf (although my husband did say it was delicious), it was to talk about the type of dish I prefer to make. The first is Shrimp and Avocado Tostadas. This dish makes a perfect appetizer, lunch, or light dinner. It's served cold or room temperature which means it's great to make ahead or to serve on a hot summer night. Here's how to make it:

Shrimp and Avocado Tostadas

Ingredients:

1 lb shrimp, cooked, peeled, deveined, and chopped
1 or 2 limes
1 or 2 ripe avocados, chopped
a few handfuls of grape tomatoes or small cherry tomatoes, halved
minced red onion
chopped cilantro
salt

Directions:

Once the shrimp have cooled, mix them in a bowl with the avocado and tomato. Squeeze in some lime juice. Add the onion, cilantro, and salt to taste. Mix together gently and serve atop crispy tortillas, or with tortilla chips. **If you want to make this a "make ahead" dish, wait to chop and add the avocado until just before you're ready to serve; otherwise it will turn brown.

The second dish I have to recommend is Melissa D'Arabian's "Pulled Pork Tacos with Fennel Slaw." This dish is definitely a bit labor-intensive, and has quite a few ingredients. But, it is a delicious recipe, and a perfect thing to make on a leisurely weekend afternoon. The pork cooks for three hours, so you can make it at lunch time, shred the pork in the late afternoon, and have it sitting on the stove ready to serve at dinner time and/or when your guests arrive. Click above for Melissa's recipe. I followed it pretty much exactly, except that I left out the sour cream and parmesan to make it dairy-free.

One dish fish

You've gotta love one-dish meals. First, clean-up is easy. Second, it's easy on the brain since you're not required to think up a complete meal with complimentary side dishes. Third, you don't have to perfectly time the different components of the meal (how annoying is it when your meat is steaming hot and ready to serve, but the potatoes are still hard as rocks?).

The problem I have with most one-dish recipes is that they almost always contain cheese or cream of some sort, which means I can't serve them to my whole family. And in this same vein, many one-dish meals are also supremely unhealthy (like the zillion casserole recipes that call for "cream of something" soup).

So I thought it was too good to be true when I saw *this* recipe for Tilapia with Hash Browns in my Food Network Magazine. It had the yum factor (hash browns), the healthy factor (fish & veggies), AND it was dairy-free!

I followed the recipe exactly, except for two things. I didn't add the garlic to the hash browns, since I was going to serve it to my semi-garlic-averse kids. And I only used a little bit of chopped olives because I pretty much hate olives. Get this - I really wish I had used more olives because the olives were my favorite part about the dish! I used manzanillo olives, and they were fantastic - they added a nice briny freshness to the dish, and as I was eating it I kept cursing myself for not putting in the full amount. So next time I'll know...

My girls ate at least 1/2 to 3/4 of the serving I gave them, which was more than I was banking on. I don't know if I would label it as kid-friendly for the 4 and under set, but older children should like it for sure. I mean, it has hash browns in it! And I recommend over-browning the hash browns a little bit to make them extra crispy.

Tuna steaks, heirloom tomato salad, and herbed green beans & potatoes

I have a love/hate relationship with food magazines. I get so excited when I see a new one on the newsstand or in my mailbox, with its glossy cover photos of delectable and artfully arranged dishes, and promises of “easy, fresh meals in under 20 minutes” or “10 spinach dishes you are guaranteed to love.” But inevitably I end up dog-earing maybe one recipe out of 100, and never get around to making that recipe anyway.

That changed when I picked up the August issue of Food & Wine magazine last week. About 90% of the recipes look amazing to me, and while they’re a little fancier than what I might whip up on a typical weeknight, they all use easy-to-find ingredients and simple cooking techniques. The recipes contain a lot of fresh summer produce, and the dishes seem light without being “lite” (ie: healthy, but bland and unsatisfying). I don’t know whether Food & Wine is always this good, or I just happened across a particularly great issue, but I plan on subscribing to find out.

I decided to use three of the recipes in a belated birthday dinner I made for my sis-in-law, Lauren, this past weekend. Usually I hesitate to make untested recipes for a special occasion dinner, but I just had a hunch that these would all turn out great.

Here’s what was on the menu:

Mustard-Seared Tuna with Shallot Cream
http://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/mustard-seared-tuna-with-shallot-cream

Potato Salad with Green Beans and Salsa Verde
http://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/potato-salad-with-green-beans-and-salsa-verde

Tomato Salad with Bacon, Blue Cheese and Basil
http://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/tomato-salad-with-bacon-blue-cheese-and-basil

I pretty much followed the recipes exactly, and everything was delicious. For the tomato salad I used heirloom tomatoes from a local farmer’s market, just to give it a little more exciting color. I was always scared of heirloom tomatoes until I realized they’re not really any different from regular tomatoes with the exception of their color.

Making all three of these dishes was fairly labor intensive, and it was only possible because I had four people to entertain my wild children while I chopped, pureed, roasted, and sautéed. But each dish on its own would not be overwhelming at all.

So if you come across the August issue of Food & Wine, I highly recommend picking it up. Or just poke around on their website – I think they post almost all of their recipes online.

An ode to pesto

Pesto is a fairly new addition to our eating repertoire, yet it's recently come to be a staple in our house. It's just such an easy and nutritious way to add flavor to food - it tastes really fresh and flavorful, and it's full of good stuff (there are different ways to make it, but traditional ingredients include fresh basil, olive oil, garlic, lemon juice, pine nuts, and parmesan cheese).

I've started making my own so that I can leave out the cheese and make a dairy-free version, but I've had tons of delicious store-made pesto as well. Anyway, since we've been eating so much pesto lately, I thought I'd dedicate a post to it. Here are just some of the ways I've used it recently.

1) Mixed with pasta, either hot or cold.

2) Mixed with mayo and spread on sandwiches. One of my favorites is a panini made with turkey, pesto mayo, and tomato on sourdough bread).

3) To season a caprese salad (Spread pesto on top of a sliced tomato and top with fresh mozzarella and balsamic vinaigrette)

4) In meatballs (I mix ground beef or ground turkey with one egg, some breadcrumbs, and some pesto)

5) My pesto, chicken & sausage-stuffed shells I posted about here

6) "Linda's pesto cod"

My mother-in-law is visiting and she made a delicious pesto-topped cod dish the other night. I made her cough up the recipe, and here it is....I love how simple it is, and it tastes fantastic!

sprinkle cod fillets with salt & pepper
spread pesto on top of each fillet
sprinkle chopped pistachios on top of the pesto

Bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes

7) Spread on bruschetta or pizza. Sadly, I learned the hard way that pesto is sometimes made with walnuts. My poor step-father-in-law (is that a term?) is currently lying in bed sick because the Trader Joe's pesto, mozzarella & tomato flatbread I made for dinner contained walnuts, which he is allergic to. Sorry Mike!!