Lemony Zest :: Kim Lewandowski

Posts Tagged ‘recipe’

I just love ceviche. For years, I was afraid to try it – I was concerned about getting sick somehow from eating raw fish or shellfish, even though it’s “cooked” in acid (lemon and lime juice), which probably kills pretty much all the pathogens that might be on it.

Then a couple of years ago, my friend Barbara and I went to visit our friend Liz in Colorado. Of course, Mexican food is very popular there, and we ordered ceviche one night at dinner. It was great! Tangy, spicy, with the sweet shrimp and savory cilantro. I fell in love. There’s a Peruvian restaurant in Norfolk called Imperio Inca that has some delicious ceviche, as an appetizer and a couple of dinner platters. I tried making it myself once, but we weren’t crazy about how it turned out.

Then last month, Liz had a gallery opening at the d’Art Center and a party at her house afterward, where she served homemade ceviche, which was fabulous. Well, now I had to try it again. After looking through my cookbooks, I found a wonderful recipe for it in Cook’s Illustrated’s The Best International Recipe. So I made it again, and it was deee-lish! I bought a bag of lemons and limes so I can make it again!

Shrimp Ceviche

1 lb. large or extra-large shrimp, large sea scallops, fish fillets or a combination
1 tsp. grated zest of 1 lime
1/2 cup juice from 4 limes
1/2 cup juice from 4 lemons
1 small red bell pepper, stemmed, seeded and chopped fine (I used a red pimento pepper)
1 small jalapeno chile, stemmed, seeded and minced
1 medium garlic clove, minced
Salt
1/4 cup olive oil
4 scallions, sliced thin
3 tbsp. cilantro, minced
1/2 tsp. sugar
Ground black pepper

If using shrimp, peel, devein and slice in half lengthwise (I also cut them into thirds). If using scallops, remove the side tendon and slice into 1/3-inch-thick rounds. If using fish, remove any bones and slice into 1-inch squares about 1/3 inch thick.

Stir the lime zest, lime and lemon juices, bell pepper, jalapeno, garlic and 1/2 tsp. salt together in a bowl. Gently stir in the seafood, cover with plastic, and refrigerate until seafood is firm, opaque and appears cooked, 45-60 minutes (mine took about 75 minutes – the shrimp should be pink). Stir about halfway through marinating.

Place the mixture in a fine-mesh strainer, leaving it a little wet, then return it to the bowl. Gently stir in oil, scallions, cilantro and sugar. Season with salt and pepper to taste and serve with tortilla chips.

This is another entry for Grow Your Own, the twice-monthly food blogging event started by Andrea of Andrea’s Recipes about a year ago, and hosted this month by Noob Cook. GYO celebrates the food we grow ourselves. The red pimento and jalapeno peppers came from our garden. And check out the tomato jam, also from our garden!

The heirloom and roma tomatoes we planted this year are going gangbusters now, so I’ve had to become creative about preserving them. A few weeks ago, Dan and I went to the Seawall Art Show in downtown Portsmouth. On our way home we stopped at Bowman’s Garden Center, looking for onion sets for the garden, and instead we found a variety of organic, homemade dips and spreads for sale, along with samples.

So we tried tomato jam for the first time, and it was surprisingly good. The flavor made me think of strawberry jam, although it doesn’t really taste like strawberries – just something about it was reminiscent of them. The label said it contained tomatoes, sugar, citric acid and salt. Too easy, I thought, I can make that. So we came home and I Googled around for a while, and, after reading several recipes, came up with the following one. I added a tsp. or so of vinegar at the end, because it tasted a bit too sweet to me.

I also found a great alternative to blanching tomatoes for peeling them – grating them with the big holes on a box grater! It was so easy, I could hardly believe it, and took only a few minutes to make tomato puree out of about 12 roma tomatoes. The seeds are still there, but that doesn’t bother me; according to Cook’s Illustrated, much of the tomato flavor is in the seeds and surrounding “jelly.”

Tomato Jam

1 1/2 pounds good ripe tomatoes (Roma are best), cut in half crosswise and grated
1 cup sugar
2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 jalapeno pepper, finely minced (forgot about this till after I first posted – see below)
1 teaspoon salt

Combine all ingredients in a heavy medium saucepan. Bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring often. Reduce heat and simmer, stirring occasionally, until mixture has consistency of thick jam, about 1 hour 15 minutes. Taste and adjust seasoning, then cool and refrigerate. This will keep at least a week. Makes about 2 cups.

This is my contribution to Grow Your Own, the twice-monthly blogging event created by Andrea of Andrea’s Recipes, hosted this time by Noob Cook.

ETA: Today, I took some of the tomato jam with fresh-baked biscuits to work and a co-worker asked me if there was anything hot in it. I completely forgot until that moment that Dan had suggested I chop up a jalapeno pepper from the garden and add it in for some more flavor. It’s not enough to make you go Ow, but enough to make you say, Hm, what’s in there?

Last Christmas, my mother-in-law, Barb, gave me a paella kit, among other lovely gifts. She knows how much I love to cook and have people over to cook for, so it was a really cool present It came with a bottle of Spanish extra-virgin olive oil, a bag of calasparra rice, a half gram of saffron, a paella pan and a recipe. So we just had to buy the meats, seafood and some of the veggies, since we used some tomatoes and onions from the garden.

We had two couples over for dinner last night and made the paella, and it was just delicious. I’m going to add to this post later, but I just wanted to get this photo up and show it to my MIL. Thanks, Barb

I love this time of year My basil is just out of control and the roma tomatoes are finally coming in strong, so it’s caprese salad or something with pesto regularly now. I also need to get some pesto frozen for the winter. I like to put a tablespoon or so into marinara sauce and this recipe works even with thawed frozen pesto.

This is a really simple recipe, though. Everyone has their own basil pesto recipe, I’m sure, so I’m going beyond that to one of my favorite side dishes featuring pesto – pesto pasta. If your favorite pesto uses an herb other than basil, or cheese other than Parmesan, you can substitute those for the garnish. I like to use rotini pasta, because the crevices catch the pesto and you get a lot in each bite.

Pesto Pasta

1 lb. rotini pasta or other small pasta shape
1 cup basil pesto
1-2 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil if needed
1/2 cup diced tomatoes
3 tbsp. grated Parmesan cheese
basil leaves

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil; cook pasta till al dente, 8-10 minutes. Drain and rinse under cold water to cool; remove to a large bowl. Using a large spatula, mix pasta and pesto together, adding 1-2 tbsp. olive oil if needed to loosen up the pesto. Garnish with diced tomatoes, Parmesan cheese and basil leaves.

This is my entry in the food blogging event Grow Your Own, begun by Andrea of Andrea’s Recipes and hosted this month by Jessica of Finny Knits.

Joelen of Joelen’s Culinary Adventures has an unbelievable array of food blogging events going – don’t know how she keeps up with the round-ups. There are lots of tasty-looking recipes from previous events to read about and maybe try.

Right now, at the height of the summer, the event she has going on is Summer Produce, and we have lots. The basil and roma tomatoes are really coming in now, and the cucumbers are catching up. So I made a sort of caprese salad over greens for dinner one night. I know, using vinegar isn’t traditional, but I just love red-wine vinegar with this, so that’s what I use

Fresh basil, cucumber and roma tomato from the garden

Caprese-inspired Green Salad

3 cups chopped romaine
1 small cucumber, chopped
2 roma tomatoes, chopped
1/2 cup fresh mozzarella cheese, diced
1/4 cup fresh basil, julienned
3 tbsp. red wine vinegar
3 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Layer half of romaine, cucumber, tomatoes, cheese and basil in each of two bowls. Whisk together vinegar, oil, salt and pepper and drizzle over salads.

We had a really delicious dinner last weekend – grilled romaine, tuna and peaches. Yum, yum and yum

It fits in perfectly with Joelen’s food blogging event Tasty Tools – the theme this month is Basting Brush, and of course, you need to oil up most foods before grilling them, so they don’t burn or stick to the grill grates. So here’s Dan ready to take the food out to the grill:

And, not my best photo, but here’s the tasty result:

This really doesn’t even require a recipe. For two servings, cut one romaine heart in half, keeping the root end intact, to prevent it from falling apart. Cut a ripe peach in half and remove the pit. Sprinkle the about 8 oz. of fresh tuna with Paul Prudhomme’s Blackening Seasoning (we didn’t really have enough – time to get some more), and brush it and the romaine and peaches with olive oil. Then, while Dan was grilling, I made a balsamic vinegar reduction – took about 1/3 cup balsamic vinegar, brought it to a boil in a small saucepan, and simmered till it was reduced by half.

Then we cut up the tuna, put it on top of the romaine and topped that with salad dressing – Italian for me and bleu cheese for Dan. We drizzled the balsamic reduction over the peaches and that was dinner. As I said – yum, yum and yum