I love colorful food. Food, specifically fruits and vegetables, that are rich in color are healthy and delicious. I wanted to make sure that each dish in my meal tonight had a color that popped.
Tonight I made lamb burgers with sweet potato fries and salad. Truth be told, I don't like lamb very much. I will never order it in a restaurant and I have cooked with lamb maybe twice before: once a rack of lamb and once lamb and Guinness stew. Both were at the request of Mr. NC. We bought ground lamb last weekend, so I decided to do something different and make a burger. I do this thing once every few months called "fancy burgers", which involve a lot of fun additions to ground meat. Since I am not as familiar with lamb pairings, I got a recipe out of The Joy of Cooking. I altered it somewhat. With the exception of baking, I don't usually follow recipes exactly. I prefer to adjust to my tastes.
For the burgers, use about a pound of ground lamb (I used about 1.15 lbs and this yielded 5 medium size patties). In a bowl, add the lamb, the zest and juice of one lemon (the color pop for this part of the meal), fresh minced garlic (recipe called for one clove, but I love garlic and used three), two teaspoons each of soy sauce and sherry (I added a little extra of both), and one teaspoon each of salt, pepper and dried thyme. You can also add a couple splashes of hot sauce.
I loved that pop of yellow from the lemon, and this mixture was wonderfully fragrant. Mix everything with your hands and form into patties. Cook the burgers however you like, but if on the stove, definitely use a little olive oil. I cooked mine in a cast iron skillet, about 5 min per side. I love my cast iron skillet for its versatility. It is fun to experiment with.
For the starch, I made sweet potato fries. Super simple to make. Peel and cut sweet potato into fry size. Be prepared to put a little effort into this as sweet potatoes are hard to slice. Foil and spray a baking sheet with cooking spray (I like olive oil spray). Arrange the fries on the sheet, spray again and sprinkle with salt (I use kosher). Bake at 400 until the fries are browned and tender. I love the orange color!!
Finally, I made a salad.While I wish there was some strategy behind this, I was really just using whatever veggies were in the fridge before they went bad. The salad consisted of mixed greens, sugar snap peas, grape tomatoes and cauliflower. Of course the red of the tomatoes pops, but I was also struck by how beautiful the white of the cauliflower was.
The finished products together on one plate (Yes, paper. I am hungover and tired today. Fewer dishes the better.) were wonderfully colorful. I haven't studied nutrition, and I have no proof other than intuition and what I read from time to time, but I think everyone should have REAL color in their diet. Pure and un-processed, colorful food is just so healthy and delicious. My advice is to always make sure that each dish has that one pop of color to ensure you are getting the nutrients you need.
My favorite kind of food to cook is seafood. I love to eat it as well, which makes my time in the kitchen with the creatures of the sea quite enjoyable. Besides the fact that seafood is relatively low in calories and good for you, it is delicious and versatile. Seafood can be cooked SO many ways: sauteed, steamed, grilled, baked, you name it. I decided to mix up some of those methods tonight. I made baked trout with tomatoes and lemon, pan seared scallops in a white wine sauce over linguini and brussel sprouts with toasted bread crumbs.
I am picky when it comes to buying seafood. Ironic as it may be, the worst thing your fish can be is fishy. I usually buy my seafood from either Whole Foods or Chinatown (Chinatown seafood is really fresh. When I make paella, I go nuts in Chinatown: baby scallops, mussels, squid, even lobster). Today was at Whole Foods (interesting side note, Justin Long was also shopping there - Houston and Bowery - today. He is surpisingly tall, wore headphones the entire time, and pondered salad dressing for a peculiarly long time). The seafood department there is great. The variety of fresh fish is wonderful (salmon, chilean sea bass, whole branzino, catfish, etc), plus there are tasty prepared dishes (crab cakes, stuffed fish, seasoned shrimp) along with pretty good frozen fish as well (shrimp, scallops). Today I went with the scallops and trout, and the brussel sprouts looked great, so even though I have never made them before I decide to try them out.
I started with the trout. I wanted it to have a very simple, clean taste. I seasoned it with kosher salt (Mr. Needy Chef and I went to a cooking demonstation with Bobby Flay last fall and he said to always use kosher salt when you cook. And so it shall be.), pepper, garlic and some ginger. Squeezed some fresh lemon juice on top, sliced additional lemon slices and scattered them around along with halved grape tomatoes. I baked it at 350 for about 15-20 minutes.
I always pan sear scallops first. I like that little bit of crust on the outside. I decided to use olive oil cooking spray, seasoned them with salt and pepper and seared on each side for about 2 minutes.
I then decided to add some white wine that was in the fridge (Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc) and brought to a boil. I cooked some linguini and added the white wine sauce to the pasta.
As I mentioned, I had never made brussel sprouts but it was so easy and I am definitely going to find more creative ways to make them. You cut off the stems and boil for about 10 minutes. That's all there is to cooking them. I decided to toast some breadcrumbs in olive oil, and once browned added the brussel sprouts and coated them in the breadcrumbs.
I would say that I use recipes about 50% of the time when cooking. Tonight was a great example of the delicious meals you can make using simple ingredients, and cooking just what you think will taste good.
