lemons – Page 2 – The Kitchen Illiterate

Blackberry Vanilla Syrup

For reasons I can’t quite identify, I’ve become a little obsessed with fizzy water this summer. In my efforts to drink less beer, it tends to be a better substitute than non-fizzy water. And my fizzy water of choice, Perrier, comes in wonderfully shaped, curvy green bottles that make my packaging-obsessed self happy. I prefer the non-flavored variety, and I often drink it on its own, but sometimes I feel the need for something a little fancier. And with berries and stone fruits galore in season right now, it seemed the ideal time to make some fruit syrups to add to my sparkling beverages.

This blackberry syrup isn’t just good for fizzy water, though. It makes a great topping for ice cream or yogurt, and would be terrific stirred into oatmeal, if I ever felt like eating oatmeal in the summer. Supposedly, it can last for up to six months in the refrigerator, so if I can make it last until the weather cools down, I’ll be able to find out. That’s a pretty big if, though.
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Grilled Salmon and Potato Salad

Last summer, when I packed up my stuff in Boston and moved it all out to Walla Walla, I brought along the mystery grill. The grill showed up a few years back, on a rainy Fourth of July, but for whatever reason was never even unpacked from the box. It first saw the light of day in Walla Walla, when I used it to cook the first meal I made in my new house. I intended to use it often last summer, but instead, I found myself intimidated by it, and uninterested in spending the time and energy required to start a fire when I was cooking for myself alone.

The grill is a tiny thing, a little Smokey Joe. And last week I decided to get over my fear of fire-starting, pull it out of the shed, and give it back its rightful place on my porch. And despite the freezer full of beef waiting to be eaten, I once again decided to cook some salmon on my little grill.
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Wild Rice Salad with Peppers and Carrots

I spent the first 10 days of July back in Boston, the land of steamy air, unexpected thunderstorms, sticky skin, and at least for me on this vacation, no cooking. We ate nearly all of our meals in restaurants or at friends’ houses, and while it was certainly a treat (Indian food! My favorite pasta at Delfino! Pizza!) it was awfully nice to get back into my kitchen last night. It’s been pretty hot here in Walla Walla, although the lack of humidity is a vast improvement on the Northeast right now. Still, I wasn’t feeling a strong inclination to stand over a stove for too long, or eat anything too hot. And I felt a pretty desperate need for vegetables after all that pizza and pasta and grilled meat in Boston.

This Wild Rice salad is perfect for that kind of evening, and is even better the next day, straight out of the fridge cold, when all the flavors have had a chance to get better acquainted. It does involve a fair amount of vegetable chopping, and unless you think to cook the rice ahead of time, there is some stove time required, too, but it’s nice, hands-off stove time, for the most part. And the mix of cooked and uncooked ingredients is surprising and lends some good variety to this salad.
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Soba Noodles with Bok Choy and Tahini

When I got my first bundle of bok choy from my CSA, I started searching around for new ways to prepare this Asian green. I must admit, I’ve been getting a wee bit tired of garlic-sauteed greens and rice, so I wanted something unique. Unfortunately, the Great Google turned up many, many of the same recipe: bok choy sauteed or steamed, and seasoned with toasted sesame oil and soy sauce, with some ginger thrown in for extra flavor. Of course, that sounds delicious, and I made it once or twice, but when I wanted to branch out, it took me awhile to find something different.

I’m glad I searched so diligently, because this Tahini sauce has become one of my new favorites. It’s reminiscent of a peanut sauce, but a little more bitter. It’s easy as heck, but could probably be fancied up, too. And it is filling and delicious.
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Mediterranean Braised Chard with Farro

The last half of April ended up slipping by in a blur of airplane travel and hot barbecue: I spent a good portion of the end of the month in South Dakota, where my family gathered to mourn the loss of both my Grandma and Grandpa within six days of each other. It was an exceedingly difficult time for all of us, but it was tempered by the joy we found in being together. Having grown up in California, far away from my mother’s side of the family, this was the first time I’d seen some of my cousins in many, many years, and being together, remembering our childhoods visiting Grandma’s house and laughing about our parents’ stories of their wayward youths made the sadness we all felt a little lighter.

One thing that didn’t make anyone feel a little lighter, however, were the dozens and dozens of hot dishes, meat platters, dips and chips and beans and cookies and bars that I think every single person in my Grandparents’ small town brought to the house. It was amazing to see the outpouring of care that came from neighbors, church members, and old high school friends, and they all came with comfort in the form of food. And what was a little challenging for me was that almost all of that food had meat in it! The pinnacle of meat-laden hilarity came when I opened up a tray of raw vegetables with a dish of vegetable dip in the center, after a week of craving something green, and discovered that the dip was full of bacon. I mean, it was delicious, don’t get me wrong, but I would not want to attempt to be vegan in Madison, South Dakota.
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Spicy Citrus Shrimp and Spinach

I don’t use a lot of citrus in the kitchen, though I have been eating clementines nearly every day this winter. I don’t actually use a lot of fruit in my cooking at all. Fruit is sweet and therefore my savory-loving self has a hard time intuitively understanding how it fits into dinner. But when I saw this recipe for Grilled Shrimp with Citrus-Sambal-Oelek dressing in April’s Food & Wine, I was intrigued. The idea of something bright and spicy is very appealing this time of year, when summer taunts at every turn. What I ended up with was slightly different from the original recipe, based on what I had in the kitchen, but holy moly, it was so good I think I’m going to try introducing citrus to my pots and pans more often.
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Spicy Spaghetti with Fennel

From the moment I saw this recipe in January’s issue of Bon Appetit it went on my list. I don’t usually eat a lot of fennel. It doesn’t occur to me to pick it up. But the photo was so alluring, and I’m a sucker for a big ol’ bowl of pasta. It sounded different from my normal cream-heavy pasta dishes, so I had to try it. And wowza, it was amazing. A touch of thick-cut bacon, fennel braised long enough to become silky and rich, and just enough spice to keep things interesting, and I was hooked. You probably will be, too.
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Chicken Piccata Pasta

Man, I love pasta. I eat pasta at least three times a week, and not just with red sauce. I can take anything in my refrigerator and make some kind of pasta-based dinner around it. And recently, while flipping through Giada De Laurentiis’s Everyday Italian, I decided that nearly all of the recipes in this book would be more interesting if they were turned into pasta dishes. So I decided to start with Chicken Piccata.

Giada’s Chicken Piccata recipe is in the chapter on Cutlets. I’m assuming it’s meant to be served as a big slab of meat, maybe with a side of polenta and some kind of vegetable. But as you can probably tell if you’ve been following this blog for any length of time, I’m not really a big-slab-of-meat kind of girl. I tend to prefer meals in which all of the important food components can be mixed together and served in a bowl, which is probably why pasta is such a favorite. So I decided to add some zucchini to the mix and turn this big-slab-of-meat meal into a quick, easy, and tasty pasta dinner.
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Simple Fresh Tomato Pasta

This summer is flying by, so quickly it’s kind of nerve-wracking. And it has been an extremely full one, what with moving across country, starting a new job, being visited by friends, traveling for work, and spending a glorious week on Puget Sound with a group of some of my favorite people. I have been neglecting this blog, and I have been neglecting my new garden. The lawn is definitely overgrown, but at least it’s still alive. And I’m learning that there is truth in the statement that things in Walla Walla pretty much grow themselves: my tomatoes are thriving through no work of my own.

So what do you do with tons of cherry tomatoes? You make very simple and summery pasta dishes.
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Lobster Risotto

It is amazing how fast time is passing these days. I do believe I promised to share this lobster risotto a few days ago, but suddenly the weekend was over and I still hadn’t posted this recipe. Doh. My apologies.

I was dreaming of lobster risotto for a long time. Over a year, in fact. But cooking lobster always seemed so decadent, so difficult, so expensive…it was one of those things I just kept putting off. Which is silly, because it’s really none of those things, and lobster risotto is so wonderful, it’s worth boiling up a lobster just for this dish alone. Though if you’re lucky, you can have a lobster dinner one night, and lobster risotto with the leftovers the next.
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