Shabbat

On Friday we had Shabbat and had a friend over to dinner. Lili did such a great job of planning and helping create a wonderful Shabbat. We had roast chicken. You can find the recipe in one of my previous posts. We cooked two so that I could use the leftovers from one this week.




I roasted aspargus and made an orzo side dish.

Orzo with artichoke hearts and black olives.

Bring 5 quarts of water to a boil and add one box of orzo. It's the 1 lb. box. Cook until the pasta is firm, but not mushy. Drain, rinse with cold water so it doesn't stick together, dress it with some olive oil, and set it aside.

In 2 tbs. of olive saute 1 chopped onion, 1 small can of chopped black olives, I used kalamata olives and chopped them, they were good. Also add 6 diced artichoke hearts that are packed in water. Saute until the onion is translucent and then add the orzo. Cook until the orzo is hot and then top with grated pecorino romano or parmesan cheese.

Easy, and yummy.

Now, Lili is a big fan of lemon bars so she and I went to the food network website and found a recipe from Ina Garten for lemon bars. Check it out at www.foodnetwork.com.




Of course, it was challah day because it was Shabbat.

Fifth Night Passover Seder

Last night we had a seder at the house in Reno. We invited our rabbi and her husband as well as Rob's mom. We had such a good time! It was the fifth night of Passover, and you don't usually have a fifth night seder, but we had a great time. Rob has always wanted to make gefilte fish from scratch, I must explain I guess, about gefilte fish to the non-jew. This is a not really a fish, there is no such thing as a gefilte fish. But, Rob had been listening to NPR last week and found a recipe. It was a little labor intensive, but turned out to be really good. I'm not going to type out the recipe, but if you are interested go to www.npr.org and put in gefilte fish in the search bar. It'll bring up an article about making it or you can go to this web address: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125170590. Here's a picture of what it looks like, maybe not the most appetizing visually, but really tasty.



After the gefilte fish appetizer, I made a salad and forgot to put it on the table. But it was quite tasty, Fennel and Strawberry Salad.

1 fennel bulb chopped roughly,
2 tbs of fennel frond
8 - 10 large strawberries, quartered
1/2 cup of chopped walnuts
3 tbs of balsamic vinegar
2 tbs of olive oil

Mix it all together and it's a very refreshing salad.

We also had roasted red potatoes and roasted asparagus. Check out the blog, there is a recipe for the asparagus.

So totally simple.

1.5 lbs of small red potatoes
a large drizzle of olive oil
3 or 4 sprigs of fresh thyme
3 or 4 spring of fresh rosemary
1 tbs of course kosher salt
1.5 tsp of fresh ground pepper.

Preheat the oven to 450. Cut up the potatoes in to quarters and put on a cookie sheet, drizzle with olive oil, remove the leaves from the herbs and sprinkle on the potatoes, and then salt and pepper. Roast in the oven, turning once for 35 minutes, or until they reach your desired crispness.

We had baked cod as the entree. It was very good. This was a Rob creation and he did well. Put some white wine in the bottom of a pan with onions, lemons, and carrots. It's better if this has been already cooked, so that the onions and carrots are soft. Place the fish on top of this mixture and then sprinkle some thyme, rosemary, and salt and pepper on the fish. Bake at 375 for about 20 minutes. What a flaky, tender fish!

For dessert we had chocolate almond cake. This recipe came from my mom. It's great.



1 cup of almonds toasted for 10 minutes at 375 put through the food processor with 1 tbs of sugar.

5 eggs separated. Mix the yolks with 3/4 cup of sugar until pale yellow in color. Mix the whites with 1/4 cup of sugar and beat until stiff peaks form.

Melt 1 and 1/2 sticks of butter and then add 1/2 cup of cocoa powder. Mix.

Now, grease a springform pan, 8 or 10 inches. Mix the almond mixture into the egg yolks, and then add the chocolate mixture, once you have completed that, add the egg white in two parts, folding so you don't deflate them too much.

Bake for 40 - 45 minutes. I decorate mine with strawberries, but you could put any kind of fruit on it.

Here is a picture of Lili, Rob, Doris and myself at the Seder.

Dinner the Rest of the Week

Tuesday, I didn't want any kind of lasagna for dinner, we had one left over pan, which after dinner on Wednesday, made it's way in individual portions to the freezer. But on Tuesday, I wanted something warm and easy. (Did I mention, we don't have a heater? Our furnace went out while I was gone, and we just got the repair man to fix it on Friday. The coil on the gas valve went out and they have to replace it, tomorrow, Monday.) Any way, I made soup. Eight cups of chicken broth, 1/4 pound of dried ravioli, I get the trader joe kind, and then I added 1 package of chopped frozen spinach, and 1/4 c. parmesan cheese along with one tablespoon of chopped garlic. Let it simmer for 30 minutes or so. We had this with some left over challah. It was really good.

Wednesday, as I mentioned before, I didn't have school and we layed around all day, because I was tired from Monday, and had leftover lasagna with challah and a salad.

Thursday I cooked fish. Took some of the ling cod that Rob caught in August and encrusted it in pepper, garlic, and chopped basil. I cooked it in the broiler for about 12 minutes and it was very moist and tasty. I also took an acorn squash, brushed it with olive oil, placed the flesh side down on a cookie sheet and baked it at 400 for about an hour. I had a can of crescent rolls in the fridge, so I sauteed six mushrooms, 1 onion, 1 tsp of chopped garlic, and 2 tomatoes chopped finely in olive oil.

I left the rolls, which are in triangles together and then placed a good two tablespoons of filling along with 1 tbs. of goat cheese on the rectangle and then folded it into a square, crimped the edges with a fork and then baked at 400 for 8 minutes to 12 minutes, until they were golden. These were yummy. So that was dinner for Thursday.

Friday, we went out to Biltoki with Jeff and Nayil. Basque food. I got Halibut. It was really good, but so much, I took home a whole Halibut steak in a doggy bag. Rob got the family style, so he brought home two lamb steaks, basque chicken, and meatballs.

Saturday, Rob went hunting and brought home a goose. He breasted this one out and we'll have oca amb peres on Tuesday, this week. It's an interesting catalan dish. I'll tell you more on Wednesday. But, he invited some friends to go out to dinner, so we went to Misty's, at the Red Lion, it's kind of a posher place, but the food wasn't as good as normal. I ordered Mediterranean pasta, it was supposed to have sauteed artichoke hearts, carrot, onion, and some kalamata olives in it. It was brown gloop over fettucine noodles. It tasted okay, but looked horrible. Rob had halibut and he said his was over cooked.

Tonight, I wanted to use up as many leftovers as possible, I get tired of them. I cut up the meatballs, because we are never sure if they have pork in them, and gave them to Montse, who has cracked the pad on her left foot while she was hunting, and is limping. She deserved a treat.

Then I took the lamb steak, (Rob ate one for lunch today before he went hunting, as well as the rest of the acorn squash from Thursday's dinner) along with the Halibut steak and put them into a 400 degree oven to warm up. I cooked two large yukon gold potatoes in the microwave for 12 minutes, and then peeled them, mashed them with 1/3 c. plain yogurt, and 1/4 c. parmesan cheese. I then sauteed the same mixture that I filled the crescent rolls with on Thursday and poured it over the mashed potatoes. I got some pencil thin asparagus and roasted it with some olive oil and kosher salt in the oven while I warmed the lamb and the fish.

That was dinner tonight. I've got the rest of the week planned out, so we'll see how it goes tomorrow.