Asian Pear, Almond and Farro Salad with Sesame Sichuan Pepper Dressing

At Christmas, we received a lovely gift of gorgeous Asian Pears.  Other than peeling and eating as is, I was looking for a fun way to incorporate them into a dish.  It's been such a mild winter, we figured we might as well keep grilling. After perusing Matt's new grill cookbook, we settled on grilling Sichuan-spiced loin lamb chops (we have amazing local lamb in our freezer, having shared a whole lamb with my mom this fall).  Needing a side dish for the chops, I put together this salad, which is tangy, sweet, savory, and refreshing all at once.  Definitely be sure to use canola or another neutral oil in addition to the sesame oil in the dressing.  Sesame oil is so potent if you use all sesame, you won't taste anything else.  Sichuan pepper isn't a pepper at all, but the husk of a teensy tiny fruit.  Buy it whole and grind it yourself, its aroma dissipates quickly.  If you don't have any, you can use fresh ground black pepper or Aleppo pepper, which will alter the flavor a bit, but still be tasty.  I buy slivered almonds already toasted from Trader Joe's, and keep them in the freezer to prevent them going rancid.  They warm up within about 5 minutes, and make a great crunchy addition to the salad.  Don't combine the sriracha with the dressing ingredients, or it will over power it.  Stir in the sriracha at the end.  The amount does not make the salad too spicy, but if spicy isn't an option for your family, you may want to grate some garlic into the dressing and add a squeeze of lime juice to perk up the dish.

This will serve 2-4 people as a side dish.

Ingredients

• 1 cup dry farro
• 1 asian pear, peeled and cored, 1/4" dice
• 1 small stalk celery, thinly sliced, and a few celery heart leaves, chopped
• 2 scallions, white and green parts, thinly sliced
• 1/4 cup toasted slivered almonds
• 2 TBS champagne vinegar (or rice wine vinegar)
• 1 TBS sesame oil
• 3 TBS canola oil
• 1/2 TBS grated shallot
• 1/2 tsp honey
• 1/4 tsp ground Sichuan pepper
• pinch of kosher salt
• 1/2-1 1/2 tsp sriracha or other chili-garlic sauce

Process

• Cook farro as per package instructions (pearled and semi-pearled varieties cook faster), drain and let cool for a few minutes.
• In a small bowl, combine vinegar, oils, shallot, honey, Sichuan pepper and salt and whisk until emulsified.
• Combine farro, asian pear, celery, scallions and almonds in a large bowl and toss together with dressing.
• Stir in sriracha and serve.

Lentil and Sausage Salad

What does a good Italian girl do when there's a Patriots game on at 1:00 on New Year's Day, thus throwing a wrench into the traditional lentil and sausage meal to start the New Year?  Improvise and create a game-friendly-on-the-couch munchie with the necessary components.  You can make this salad without making the game-friendly version, or, with very little extra effort create a single-bite game-friendly munchie that will achieve the goal of lentils and sausage on New Year's Day.  The salad is dressed exquisitely with a gentle, but tasty dressing, and the sausage, whether you use hot or sweet is cooked to minimize greasiness and maximize flavor.  The prep on the lentils may seem onerous, but I have never cooked lentils in a manner other than this that will create tender, buttery and wholly intact lentils (thanks to Cook's Illustrated for the method).  You can do the brining step up two days in advance, refrigerating lentils after draining the brine.

For the Lentils:
Preliminary Brine:

• 1 cup lentils, picked over
• 4 cups warm water (110 degrees)
• 1 teaspoon salt

Cooking:

• 5 garlic cloves, whacked with knife to loosen skin, and peeled
• 1 bay leaf
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 cups chicken stock (homemade or low sodium)
• 2 cups water

To brine:

• Combine lentils, salt and water in a bowl and let sit for an hour.
• Drain

To cook:

• Preheat oven to 325
• Combine lentils, garlic, bay leaf, water and chicken stock in a small dutch oven or medium sauce pan.  Cover and place in the oven for 40-60 minutes, until lentils are tender.  Drain and toss with dressing and vegetables immediately.
• While lentils are cooking, sauté carrots and onions in a little olive oil until softened.  Toss with dressing and drained lentils.

For dressing:

• 1 TBS balsamic vinegar
• 2 tsp whole grain mustard
• 1 TBS grated shallot
• pinch kosher salt
• few grinds black pepper
• 1/4 extra virgin olive oil

For sausages:

• 1/2 pound sausage links, hot or sweet
• 1/2 cup beer

To cook sausages:

• Prick sausages all over with a fork and place in a pan with beer and cover.  Heat over medium heat until simmering, and simmer for about 10 minutes.
• Drain sausage of all liquid and fat, place back in pan over medium heat and brown slightly on both sides until cooked through, about 5 minutes total.

To finish as one-bite munchies:

• Fill pre-baked phyllo cups (available in freezer section of grocery store) with a TBS of lentil salad.
• Top each cup with a 1/4" disk of sausage
• Heat in a 350 oven for about 5 minutes and then serve.

To finish as a salad and/or with leftovers from one-bite munchies:

• Chop sausage into bite-sized pieces and toss with lentil salad.

Serve warm or room temperature.  If you have fresh thyme or tarragon, chop up a TBS or so and add, but the salad will be just as tasty without.  Will make great leftovers, stored in an airtight container in the fridge for a few days.

Shrimp and Garden Salsa Tacos

Walked out to the garden this morning and came back in with a couple handfuls of cherry tomatoes, a small zucchini, and a serrano pepper. After some brief thought, I remembered that I had corn tortillas and cilantro in the fridge, and shrimp in the freezer. I didn't have any great expectations of this dish, figured it is the beginning of many this-is-what-got-out-of-the-garden today meals now that August is here and the garden is pumping out abundance. However, Matt and I inhaled these so quickly I had to be very proactive to get a photo taken! The garden salsa is so simple, it is elegant. The dish altogether is fresh, light and very fast to put together. There's no cheese, no sour cream, no lime juice. And guess what...it doesn't need any of those. I kept thinking there was going to be something missing, but with every bite I took I tasted shrimp and the bounty from my garden. Which is exactly what I wanted this dish to be.

Makes 2 servings of 3 tacos each.

To make Garden Salsa, toss together following and let sit for 5 minutes:

• 10-15 cherry tomatoes, yellow pear tomatoes, grape tomatoes or combo, sliced in halves and/or quarters
• half a medium/small zucchini, soft center and seed removed, roughly diced
• half a serrano pepper, stemmed and seeded, minced
• 1 TBS chopped cilantro
• 1/2 tsp kosher salt
• few grinds of fresh black pepper

Ingredients for Shrimp Tacos:

• 12 oz. raw, shelled and deveined 31-40 count (medium) shrimp
• 1 TBS olive oil
• 2 whole cloves garlic, peeled
• 1/2 tsp chopped fresh oregano or 1/4 tsp dried
• 1/4 tsp Aleppo Pepper (or smoked paprika, or red hot pepper flake)
• 1/4 tsp kosher salt
• a few grinds of fresh black pepper
• 6 corn tortillas

Process:

• Heat olive oil over medium-high heat.
• Add garlic, and cook garlic until lightly browned all over, turning as needed, then discard garlic
• Add shrimp all at once.
• Add seasonings.
• Cook over medium heat, turning once or twice for 3 or 4 minutes, or until shrimp are cooked through.
• Using a slotted spoon put shrimp into a bowl.
• Heat tortillas in microwave or regular oven until pliable
• Serve shrimp and garden salsa in tortillas

Vindaloo Lamb and Farro Salad

I picked up some Vindaloo Seasoning awhile back and thus far had only used it in some stirfries. I also was in possession of some high quality ground lamb from Brookfield Farm in Walpole, NH thanks to Mom. I was looking for something to do with the ground lamb that wasn't meatballs and wasn't saucy (i.e. requiring one to be at the table with a napkin). The dish I've created here is a one dish meal, something you can eat in comfort on the couch without worry about a mess, or in Matt's case today, munch on while brewing beer.  In terms of this being a dish with a traditional Indian seasoning, this dish is in no way traditional, however I used some classic combinations to piece it together, lamb and farro pair well, as do lamb and mint, and the almonds and golden raisins align nicely with the vindaloo seasoning.  The dish is good for leftovers if heated up slightly (cold ground lamb can get a bit greasy), and this is also super fast.  If you use pearled farro, you can have this dish ready in about 20 minutes.The quantities below create about 4 servings.

Ingredients

• 1 1/4 cup farro
• olive oil
• 3/4 pound ground lamb, preferably local and sustainable
• 1 TBS Vindaloo Seasoning (I like Penzeys)
• 1 cup celery, diced
• 1/2 cup red onion, small dice
• 1/2 cup golden raisins
• 1/2 cup slivered toasted almonds
• 6-8 leaves of fresh mint, sliced into thin ribbons (aka...chiffonade)
• 1/2 tsp kosher salt

Process

• Cook your farro according to package instructions to a doneness of al dente, adding a teaspoon of salt to the water.  Depending on what sort of farro you have (regular, pearled, semi-pearled), this could take between 15 and 30 minutes of cooking time.
• When farro is cooked, drain and place in a bowl, add a TBS of olive oil and toss.
• Meanwhile, while farro is cooking, brown the ground lamb over medium high heat in a little bit of olive oil.  Half way through browning, mix in the vindaloo seasoning.
• Combine lamb, farro, celery, red onion, golden raisins, almonds, mint and salt and toss well.
• Serve warm, or refrigerate and reheat slowly in microwave before serving.

Pasilla Chile, Pork and Mushroom Tacos

As it seems to be lately...the dishes aren't always the prettiest, but oh the flavor is amazing. Rich, bold, layered with earthy flavor, you'll wonder why you haven't been eating tacos like these for years.  Just enough heat to know you're eating chile-infused pork and mushrooms, but not so much that you can't taste all the other components. Don't forget the sweet onion and cilantro as garnishes, those two touches really bring the dish together. This is not a quick dinner, except that it makes great leftovers which make a super fast meal, so if you invest a little time when you can, you'll be reaping the benefits for a few meals. You can also stop after making the pasilla paste, refrigerate and then continue making the tacos anytime during the next week. I created this recipe by adapting and combining a couple Rick Bayless methods and recipes. This recipe now rivals a beer braised turkey (I subsitute 2 pounds chicken thighs) taco recipe for our favorite tacos.

Recipe makes enough for 12 tacos, serving 4-6 people

For the pasilla paste:

Ingredients

• 12 good-sized garlic cloves, skin on
• 4 ounces dried Pasilla chiles, stemmed, seeded and cut open
• 2 tsp Mexican oregano
• 1/4 tsp ground cumin
• 1/2 tsp fresh ground black pepper

Process

• Heat a dry cast iron pan to medium heat, place garlic cloves in pan and dry toast for about 15 or 20 minutes, turning a few times, until soft, fragrant and blackened in spots.  Set aside to cool, remove skins, and roughly chop.
• Using same cast iron, toast chiles a couple seconds per side, pressing down with a potato masher or flat metal spatula, then add to a bowl of hot water.  Continue toasting all chiles until done.  Then let chiles sit in hot water for 30 minutes, and then drain chiles, reserving 2/3 cup of liquid
• Put chiles, garlic, spices and reserved soaking liquid into food processor (or blender).  Process until you get a smooth puree (you'll have to scrape down the sides a few times).
• With a rubber spatula, work puree through a size to remove any bits of skin or seeds.
• At this point, you can continue to make the tacos, or seal the paste in a container and refrigerate up to a week.

For Tacos

Ingredients:

• 1 TBS olive oil
• 1 1/2 pounds boneless pork shoulder/butt, cut into 1/2 inch pieces, seasoned with salt and freshly ground black pepper
• Pasilla Paste from recipe above
• 1 1/4 cups beef broth, low sodium
• 8 ounces white button mushrooms, sliced
• 1/3 cup cilantro, chopped
• corn tortillas

For Garnish

• sweet onion, very thinly sliced
• chopped cilantro

Process

• Heat olive oil in deep saute pan or dutch oven over medium high heat.
• Brown pork pieces in 2 or 3 batches so you don't crowd the pan.
• Set aside browned pork.
• Add Pasilla Paste to hot oil, and cook for 5 minutes or so over medium high heat, stirring regularly, until pasilla paste is reduced and thickened.
• Add beef broth and stir in.
• Add mushrooms, pork and cilantro.
• Simmer for 45 minutes to an hour, until sauce is thickened to a degree where it won't be sloppy in tacos, and the pork is tender.
• Check for seasoning.  Likely you will not need to add salt, but if you used homemade beef broth, you might.
• Serve in corn tortillas with plenty of sweet onion and cilantro.