Grape Tomatoes ripening in my garden

This week’s Menu-Swap is being hosted by Natalie at Gluten Free Mommy.  (Be sure to check out her page for a round-up of lots of great menus!)  She chose peaches as the ingredient for the week.  Both peaches and nectarines are in season right now, and when you walk into the grocery store or into the farmers’ market, you are assaulted by their wonderful aroma.  You can’t help but take some home with you.  I actually have nectarines, not peaches, this week, but I’m sure Natalie will forgive me. 

Last week I made a great nectarine salsa/relish for pork chops.  It involved grilled nectarines, red onions, basil, honey, and balsamic vinegar.  Yum!  I highly recommend it.  This week, I might try making nectarine tarts, as I have some extra pastry dough in the freezer. 

Here’s my menu for the week:

Sunday:
Natalie’s Sesame Chicken (Chinese)
Snap Peas
(I didn’t get to make this last week)
This was really good. Since I never get Chinese out in restaurants any more, it’s nice to have some easy recipes to make at home. And it was great to have as leftovers.

Monday:
Lemony Shrimp Salad (Mediterranean?)
I love this salad. It’s bright and crisp, yet filling enough for dinner. It’s also easy and quick.

Tuesday:
Sandwich on my way to cooking class
(more on that later)
Cooking class got cancelled (I’ve rescheduled for later in the month). I still didn’t feel like cooking, so dinner was leftover sesame chicken with vegetables.

Wednesday:
Beef Satays over Thai Salad (Thai)
This is getting moved to Thursday for when my husband gets back into town. Tonight I’m having pasta with fresh tomatoes from the garden with fresh herbs. yum!

Thursday:
Out to Dinner
We had the Thai Salad with grilled beef. I stuck to the recipe from Food & Wine. I was a little dubious of the dressing when I first made it because the fish sauce has such a strong flavor. However, once it was tossed with the lettuce and veggies, it was really good.

Friday:
Chicken in Tarragon-Mustard Cream Sauce (French)
(I have a lot of tarragon in the garden that I need to use)
I altered this recipe a bit, but not much. It was interesting — my husband thought it tasted a little bit like a Thai green curry. The tarragon provided a really strong flavor to the sauce. It’s not a flavor that I’m used to (a little bit like licorice), but I liked it.
    

Our local cook shop has cooking classes on a regular basis (nothing GF, unfortunately), and on Tuesday, and am volunteering I’m volunteering later in the month. That means I get to go for free and help out with prep work, clean up, etc. Tuesday’s class is on French Cooking, and they are making Coq au Vin, Vichyssois, and Creme Brulee. The class is going to focus on seafood of all kinds. While I might not be able to eat much, I will get to watch and learn the technique for use at home. So I’m quite excited about it.

Due to the overgrowth of basil in my garden, I had to make pesto.  Such a shame to have to make something so tasty.  I’ll probably make more later in the week to freeze, but this was just enough for dinner.  I wanted to try something different this time.  I’d read a recipe on 101 Cookbooks called “How to Make Pesto Like an Italian Grandmother.”  Needless to say, I had to try it.  Unfortunately, Italian grandmothers did not use food processors or blenders — oh no — they chopped everything by hand.  I really needed a mezzaluna for chopping, but tried to make due with a really sharp chef’s knife. 

(I’ll go back to using my blender next time.  Chopping by hand left bigger chunks of nuts and garlic than I would have liked.  Probably because I wasn’t patient enough to keep chopping.)

A basic pesto recipe consists of basil, garlic, pine nuts (or walnuts), freshly grated Parmesan cheese, and a little olive oil.  No added salt is necessary because of the saltiness of the cheese and because you are supposed to remember to salt your pasta water.

The amounts are rough estimates.  They can be altered to taste.

2 Cups fresh basil leaves, packed
3 garlic cloves
1/4 cup pine nuts or walnuts
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan-Reggiano cheese
1/2 cup olive oil (or a little less)

Combine basil, garlic, and nuts in a food processor (or a blender) and chop until finely minced. Add in cheese. Slowly add olive oil until it is just wet through. You really don’t want this runny, or the oil just separates out. You can always add more oil later.

This could have used more basil for the amount of other ingredients.

I also had some ripe grape tomatoes in the garden that went well with the pesto.

I tend not to bake much. I never have. To be honest, I’m not really much of a dessert person. Growing up, we always had icecream, and occasionally homemade cookies, but that’s it. No cakes, or pies, or anything like that, unless it was a special occasion. So for me, dessert really isn’t something I think about.

But as with most things in life, there are exceptions. And this is one.

This is probably my favorite dessert.  I used to have the hardest time trying to make it. But I think I finally found a recipe that I like. I even have the propane torch to cook the sugar on the top. (It really does work better that way.)

It conveniently requires 4 egg yolks while my pizza dough recipes requires 4 egg whites.  So when I make one, I make the other.

There are two ways to make creme brulee. The more common way involves mixes the ingredients and then cooking it in a bain-marie (water bath) in the oven until the custard sets. This gives you a creme brulee that is more firmly set, and in my opinion, too “eggy.” The way I make it gives you a softer, creamier creme brulee.

Ingredients:

4 Egg Yolks
1/3 Cup Sugar
2 Cups Heavy Whipping Cream
1 Vanilla Bean (or vanilla extract)

1/4 Cup Raw Sugar (or regular)
optional garnish of blackberries, raspberries or strawberries

Directions:

- Beat Egg Yolks well.
- Prepare Vanilla Bean by splitting in half and scraping out seeds; save seeds and pod.
- Put Cream, Sugar and Vanilla seeds and bean into a pot and bring to a slow boil over medium heat.
- After boiling Cream, Sugar, and Vanilla for 1 Minute, pour 1/3 of mixture into Eggs, a little at a time to temper the Eggs.
- Whisk Egg and Cream Mixture together and return to pot.
- Whisk mixture in pot over medium low heat for 2 minutes.
- Strain mixture into individual serving cups. Refrigerate for at least 4 hours.

- Sprinkle Raw Sugar over top of each cup so that there is a thin coat on top of each cup.
- Use hand held propane torch to brown the top.  Alternatively, place in Broiler Maximum heat and keep turning so as not to burn the top. Do this until the top is golden brown. This should only take a minute or two.
- Refrigerate for another 4 Hours, Garnish with Berries. Serve Chilled.

This week’s Menu-Swap is being hosted by Cheryl at GF and Healthy.  The ingredient for the week is raspberries.  Our farmers’ market has been featuring blackberries, so I’m using those instead. I’ve also been eating tons of blueberries lately while they are in season. Nothing more complicated then a handful on top of my cereal (Rice Chex) in the morning, but I like them that way.

This weekend I made Creme Brulee — my favorite dessert, which conveniently happens to be GF — and topped it with blackberries. I’ll try to post about it. This is a great way to use up egg yolks. The recipe calls for 4 egg yolks, while my pizza dough recipe calls for 4 egg whites. What a happy coincidence!

I never manage to stick to my menu, but here’s the general idea for the week.

Sunday:
Smoked Salmon Pizza

Monday:
Grilled Pork Chops with Nectarine Relish 
Potatoes in some form
Grilled Vegetables

Tuesday:
Natalie’s Sesame Chicken
Stir-Fried Broccoli

Wednesday:
Out to dinner

Thursday:
Seared Tuna
Asian Slaw

Friday:
to be determined…

This post is being guest-written by my friend Tori.  My husband and I eat dinner with her and her husband most weekends, alternating between their house and ours.  They are great about making sure I can eat safely at their house.

Karen and I have been friends for several years now and our friendship has always been grounded in good food, good wine, and shopping.  When Karen was first exploring her gluten free way of life as her friend I was sad for her having to give up beer. Then as the absence of gluten became permanent I started to worry about our social life.  In a normal week we (with the husbands) were sharing Tuesdays and Fridays out at local brew pubs and eating at least one home-cooked meal together a week and I like bread and pasta!

Initially Karen would bring special foods to our house when we invited her to dinner (I really like rice crackers).  Karen has been known to bring her own food and make whole meals at our house (I try to plan this because I really like her cooking).   Now there is Woodchuck in our fridge and we call and read the labels of our ingredients to Karen before she comes over.  The other night was one such night.  My husband, the cook in our house, was making a meal out of Cooking Light and when we realized it was gluten free we quickly called Karen and invited her over. 

The meal was excellent, as was the company.  (And it was really easy to make, since it was all in one pan!)

Roasted Salmon with Fresh Vegetables

This week’s Menu-Swap is being hosted by M-Elle at Cooking & UNCooking.  She chose watercress as her ingredient for the week.  I wasn’t even sure was watercress was, other than a green of some sort.  But I have heard of it, and I’m sure I’ve eaten it — I’ve just never bought it or done anything with it.  Always enjoying new things, I searched Food & Wine Magazine’s website and found a nice looking salad featuring watercress and grilled chicken (and bacon - everything’s better with bacon!).  That sounded good for all this hot weather we’ve been having.  (I’m really not cut out to be a Southern girl.)

My menu is a little vague at this point.  I’ll try to update it as the week progresses.

Sunday:
Grilled Lamb
Garlic Mashed Potatoes
Grilled Asparagus

Monday:
TBD, because I don’t know if husband will be home for dinner

Tuesday:
Out to dinner
(I convinced the local brewpub to at least carry Woodchuck Cider for me)

Wednesday:
I might try making crab cakes
Second choice - Quiche

Thursday:
Grilled Chicken and Watercress Salad

Friday:
Probably a holiday cookout here or at a friend’s
Burgers, Sausage, Potato Salad, Slaw, etc.