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What ethnic food have you guys been making?
I just had my first fantastic tomato of the season, and celebrated by making some less-known Italian salad out of Against The Grain, a Mediterranean low-carb cookbook (awesome book, terrible title). There's an wide array of interesting salads in that book, I"m really looking forward to exploring the antipasti and other salad/appetizer options.
I'm also trying to make half-sour dill pickles, an Eastern European thing, and had to scramble around to find some grape leaves to stick into the crock. The brine water tastes heavenly, just a couple of days into the pickling process so far.
I just had my first fantastic tomato of the season, and celebrated by making some less-known Italian salad out of Against The Grain, a Mediterranean low-carb cookbook (awesome book, terrible title). There's an wide array of interesting salads in that book, I"m really looking forward to exploring the antipasti and other salad/appetizer options.
I'm also trying to make half-sour dill pickles, an Eastern European thing, and had to scramble around to find some grape leaves to stick into the crock. The brine water tastes heavenly, just a couple of days into the pickling process so far.
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North Carolina
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Re: Summertime- what's cooking?
Wed, July 29, 2009 - 9:14 PMIt was 103 degrees in Seattle today, so mostly what's cooking is pork butt on the sofa...
Ceviche for dinner tonight. Pea salad last night. Hot weather stuff.
I've been pickling a lot, too. If you don't have a Harsch crock yet, it's worth saving up for one. They are wonderful for pickles, sauerkraut, kim chee.... -
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Re: Summertime- what's cooking?
Wed, July 29, 2009 - 9:33 PMI just use various crocks with either a plate in them, or, in a pinch, a plastic bag filled with water. Yeah, I know, plastic- this isn't my usual practice, I'm away from home.
I actually got a $20 2-gallon glass cookie jar from WalMart (horrors) along with a much smaller glass cookie jar that fit inside it, and together they make a really nice crock, especially for colorful foods. I wish I could see my cukes right now since they're so bright green and pretty while fermenting, but mine are not in a glass container sadly.
Post a ceviche recipe? -
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Re: Summertime- what's cooking?
Wed, July 29, 2009 - 9:34 PMAlso, its gazpacho season. I haven't made any yet but I think peppers are starting to happen and cukes and tomatoes are coming out of the ground like they grow on plants or something. Time to make cold soup. -
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Re: Summertime- what's cooking?
Thu, July 30, 2009 - 5:25 AMWe've been making a lot of granita... watermelon is especially good. Espresso granita too!
I've been wanting to start some pickles too with zucchini, anyone tried that before?
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Re: Summertime- what's cooking?
Thu, July 30, 2009 - 6:47 AMHere's the ceviche I made:
1 lb. fish (snapper or something light)
1/2 C. lime juice
1/2 C. orange juice
1/2 C. chopped onion
1/2 C. chopped red or yellow pepper
1/2 C. cucumber, seeded, quartered and sliced
3 radishes, sliced
1/4 C. chopped cilantro
1 clove garlic, minced
1 T. pickled green peppercorns
1/2 t. sea salt
1/8 - 1/4 t. cayenne
Slice fish into strips 1/4" thick. Combine the fish and juices in a
non-reactive dish and let marinate, refrigerated, for 6-8 hours.
Combine with remaining ingredients. Refrigerate for 1 hour.
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Re: Summertime- what's cooking?
Thu, July 30, 2009 - 7:48 AMdamn you all it's not even 8am and all I want for breakfast now is
a pulled pork butt sandwich, ceviche, nana's half-sour pickles,
and watermelon granita for dessert!!!
grrrrrrrrr!
so girlmark -- my mom just made nana's half-sour pickles the "old russian way" which involved packing a bunch of caraway-seeded rye bread into the top of the fermenting jar, and then letting it all turn blue and moldy. then the pickles are done! I told her about the grape leaves, so next time we'll try them out since I have some lovely grape vines (that usually bear yummy concord grapes, or so the raccoons say) that escape over the fence from the neighbors....crunch test coming up!
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Re: Summertime- what's cooking?
Thu, July 30, 2009 - 8:42 AMwe made black raspberry jam last week with berries from the garden. The weather has been very strange here... not to hot, not rainy enough. My garden is meh at the moment. Tomorrow I'm going to bake some spelt challah for a bunch of anarcho queer jews.
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Re: Summertime- what's cooking?
Thu, July 30, 2009 - 10:04 AMI made an awesome dinner salad the other day...it's not really "ethnic" but it's not "white" food either! ;-)
thinly shredded fennel root and a bit of tips (fennel is also called Anise in the US I think...)
sliced radish
thinly sliced cucumber (the ones from my CSA basket are incredible this year....like no cucumber I've tasted before...they're actually kind of sweet!
mixed up and dressed with lime with a piece of cold leftover rainbow trout (cooked in a spicy Asian marinade with lots of lemongrass)...all topped with a bit of Wafu dressing (a creamy Japanese soy dressing)...it was so good I couldn't concentrate on someone talking to me! I'm going to have to make this "left over" salad from scratch next time!
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Re: Summertime- what's cooking?
Thu, July 30, 2009 - 1:19 PMI guess I'm the odd one out: I've been eating a lot of ramen (lucky enough to have a real ramen house in my neighborhood) and spicy food, like Thai. I find it comforts me in the heat to eat warm soups and spicy things. They have to be light, though. I couldn't do clam chowder.
I love making pasta primavera in any permutation in the summer. Aside from cooking the pasta, I just warm the veggies enough to make them tender. I like warmed tomatoes and freshly shelled peas, olive oil, garlic... you can throw almost anything in.
I also recently had wonderful "fresh" olives in Seattle on a trip... they were unbrined, and I really enjoyed them. They tasted mostly like olive oil, with a hint of smokiness. I am currently trying to find them in Sacramento! -
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Re: Summertime- what's cooking?
Thu, July 30, 2009 - 1:26 PMperhaps you had dry- or oil-cured olives Bo?
"fresh" olives are virtually uneatable due to their astringency. -
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Re: Summertime- what's cooking?
Thu, July 30, 2009 - 3:15 PMHence the "fresh" in quotations, yeah. The waiter at the restaurant couldn't describe them to me very well, but he did say they were marinated (he might have meant something else). But yeah, not absolutely fresh. -
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Re: Summertime- what's cooking?
Thu, July 30, 2009 - 3:39 PMAny place with an olive bar should have them... whole foods?
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Re: Summertime- what's cooking?
Fri, July 31, 2009 - 8:09 AMBo - Sounds tasty! I totally agree that light and spicy food and summertime go together very well! I've been growing Thai basil this year so we've been experimenting with that. We've actually been eating a lot of curries but we always do since my roommate is Indian (is it "ethnic" if it's one's own ethnicity? ;-). We don't really eat a lot of "American" food now that I think about it! Last night I had a veggie/pumpkin roti - mmmm, Jamaican food...
Oh, the other thing I've been enjoying this summer is duck - it's fantastic cold in a salad. -
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Re: Summertime- what's cooking?
Fri, July 31, 2009 - 11:20 AMooh, that reminds me of some pumpkin curry I once had that was made by a Tamil lady. Not sure if that's traditional at all but it was such an amazingly good combo- spicy over a sweet vegetable. -
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Re: Summertime- what's cooking?
Fri, July 31, 2009 - 12:41 PMCurried pumpkin is food of the gods! (In Australia "pumpkin" often means other squashes than what we consider to be pumpkin in North America - which isn't really the nicest of the squash family...though great for carving up :-) I have a huge - seriously huge, you could use this thing as a weapon or baseball bat if it wasn't so heavy - butternut squash that I'm intending to turn into a curried pumpkin soup AND roasting the rest to use in salads (also a very Australian thing to do). Does Australian count as an ethnicity? ;-) -
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Re: Summertime- what's cooking?
Fri, July 31, 2009 - 1:25 PMwell, I had mine in Fiji and my host is Tamil- which means her famly had been there for 100 years or something like that. Going to the marketplace with her and her cousin-housekeeper was a LOT of fun. They were so excited that an American was into their Indian food.
We have these enormous butternut-squash things here that are actually something else. I was unable to find the real name by doing a search, not looking for the right term I guess. Sounds a lot like what you're describing.
I agree that squash is better than pumpkin for these kinds of dishes, especially if you want cooked cubes to stay separate and not turn into mush. -
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Re: Summertime- what's cooking?
Fri, July 31, 2009 - 1:34 PMThat sounds like all kinds of fun girlmark!
I'm pretty sure the monster squash I got is a butternut since it was in with a lot of much smaller butternuts. It's been very, very rainy here so far this summer - with not a lot of sun - so some things are growing huge while others are very late or small. The cucumbers in our CSA basket have been normal size but almost sweet in taste...delicious but slightly unexpected!
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