Deconstructed Ratatouille

This medley of roasted vegetables is easy to make and tastes just like summer to me. It gets its name and flavor inspirations from the classic French dish, but instead of the Julia Childs casserole approach, this version goes for a fast and laid-back chunky style that makes for a no-fuss side dish with tons of flavor. You can play with what vegetables and herbs you add here; I didn't use any eggplant because I dislike the texture, but half an eggplant with the seeds removed would fit in just fine. I used rosemary because I have a huge rosemary plant next to my kitchen door, but if you've got fresh basil or marjoram or parsley or thyme those would work also. The key for both vegetables and herbs is fresh. This dish is supposed to taste like it just walked out of the garden, dusted off its pants, and sat down at your dinner table.



Deconstructed Ratatouille

1 squash
1 zucchini
1/2 sweet onion
6 oz white mushrooms
1/2 pint cherry tomatoes
1 1/2 tsp fresh rosemary, very finely chopped
Olive oil
Salt
Pepper


Preheat the oven to 350F.

Begin by chopping the squash, zucchini, onion, and mushrooms into approximate 1/2 inch cubes. It doesn't have to be perfect, you're just going for bite-sized chunks. Dump them all into a bowl and pour a little less than a tbsp of olive oil over them, just enough to coat all the veggies when you stir them around well. Line a 13x9 baking pan with tin foil, and spread the vegetables into a layer on top. Sprinkle rosemary, salt, and pepper evenly over the veggies.

Cook for 1 hr uncovered, stirring every 20 minutes. When you take it out to stir at the 40 minute mark, add the tomatoes so that they only cook the final 20 minutes (tomatoes don't take nearly as long as the other veggies to roast). The roasting time here is flexible depending on how big your vegetables were and how you cut them, so just use your best judgement. The juices at the bottom of the dish should be mostly evaporated and the veggies should be soft and have that characteristic roasted look to them. Remove from oven and serve.

Serves: 3-4

Stuffed Tilapia Florentine in Mornay Sauce

Wow, doesn't that title sound all fancy? I was in the mood to make something a little more involved for dinner tonight, and my refrigerator contained a lot of fish thanks to a buy-one-get-one sale, so I went searching for a recipe that would dress up the fish into something upscale. This recipe (which combines beautifully with my Deconstructed Ratatouille for a loosely French meal theme) was the result. The fish is flaky and light, and the Mornay sauce really set off the spinach and cheese stuffing. You could do this recipe with most white fishes, I imagine: flounder would probably be great here too. This recipe takes a little more time and fuss than a lot of what I post here, but the taste and presentation is restaurant-worthy, and very worthwhile!



Stuffed Tilapia Florentine in Mornay Sauce

Stuffed Tilapia:
4 tilapia fillets
1 bag baby spinach (12 oz bag, and make sure it's baby spinach instead of the large kind)
1/4 red bell pepper, finely minced
1/4 sweet onion, finely minced
4 oz shredded mozzarella cheese
2 oz feta cheese
1/4 cup veloute sauce (see below)
Olive oil

Mornay Sauce:
1/4 cup butter
1/4 cup flour
1 cup chicken stock, heated
1/2 cup milk (heavy cream is also acceptable)
1/2 cup grated cheddar cheese
Salt
Pepper


Preheat the oven to 350F.

Start by making the stuffing mix, so that it has time to cool while you do other things. Heat a dash of olive oil in a nonstick pan, and add the onion and red bell pepper. Cook for about 2 minutes over medium high heat, then add the spinach and cook, stirring occasionally, until the spinach is completely wilted. Remove from heat and pour into a colander, to help start getting the water out of the spinach. Set aside for the moment and let the spinach cool a bit in the colander.

Next, start on your sauce. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat and add the flour a little at a time, stirring until it's smooth, to make a roux. Let the roux simmer over LOW heat (not high, or you'll overcook the roux and your sauce will end up strangely dark colored) for about 5 minutes to thicken and cook the flour. Add the heated chicken stock to the roux, still stirring to keep things smooth. At this point, your sauce is a bechamel. Add the milk to the bechamel, and let it cook for a few more minutes (more stirring!) until it thickens a bit. Your sauce is now a veloute sauce.

Reserve 1/4 cup of the veloute to use in your stuffing mix. Add the cheddar cheese to your sauce, stir until melted, add salt and pepper to taste, and you've got a Mornay sauce. Set it aside and let it cool.

By now the spinach should be cool enough to handle, so use the colander and folded paper towels to press as much water out of the spinach mixture as you can. Moist is okay, but wet is not. Transfer the spinach to a bowl and mix in the mozzarella and feta. Add the veloute sauce you reserved earlier, and mix the whole thing up until homogenous. This is your stuffing; it should be soft but not runny. If it's too dry, add a little more sauce.

Finally we can begin assembly! Divide the stuffing between your four fillets. Make a rough 'ball' of stuffing to place in the middle of each fillet, then roll the ends of the fillet up around the ball of stuffing like an envelope. Place your fillets, seam side down so that they don't open back up, in a baking dish. You want to use a dish that will hold all four fillets closely, without a lot of room left over for them to move around. Add about 2 tbsp water to the dish, then stick it in the oven and cook for 15 minutes at 350F.

At this point, remove the dish from the oven and carefully drain off as much water and juices from the dish as you can. Add the Mornay sauce until it comes about 3/4 the way up the fish rolls. Depending on the size of your baking dish, this may or may not require all the sauce. Return the dish to the oven to cook a further 10 minutes.

Remove from oven and serve immediately.

Serves: 4

Cast Iron Roasted Chicken

A very simple recipe, but it yields a really moist chicken with great flavor and pretty brown crispy skin. Serve it alongside some fresh vegetables like corn and green beans, and this makes for a simple, satisfying summer meal. Plus it's great for leftovers, since you can pick the leftover meat off for chicken salad and boil the bones to make chicken stock for future recipes.



Cast Iron Roasted Chicken

1 whole chicken, thawed (4-5 lbs)
1 russet potato, sliced into thick chunks
Salt
Olive Oil

Preheat the oven to 425F.

Rinse and dry your chicken thoroughly, removing the innards. The chicken should be as dry as possible so that the skin will crisp up nicely. Salt the chicken liberally all over. Use more salt than you think you'll need, especially on the breast regions where the salt will have to penetrate through a lot of meat. If you think you've salted enough, add a little more just to be sure. Place chicken in a cast-iron dutch oven.

Pour 1 tbsp olive oil into a bowl with the potato slices and stir so that the slices get coated. Place potato slices in dutch oven around chicken, poking them down to get them as close to the bottom of the pot as possible.

Cook for 1 hr 15 minutes UNCOVERED, then check the chicken. Return to oven and cook for between 5 and 30 minutes more as necessary (mine usually take about 1 1/2 hrs all told). Before serving, check the meat temperature of the chicken to make sure it's above 160F.

To serve, lift the chicken out of the dutch oven and arrange on a platter, surrounded by the potatoes.

Serves: 6-8 if you intend to eat all the chicken in one sitting. I make this one for 4 though, then use the leftover meat for a quick meal the next day.

Chicken With Bacon And Honey-Balsamic Vinegar Sauce

This recipe is adapted from a description my father gave me of a dish he'd eaten at Outback Steakhouse. Apparently they do a salmon dish involving a honey-balsamic vinegar glaze, and he wondered if I could do something like that at home. This was a twist on what I imagined that recipe would have tasted like, though I used chicken since it was what I had in the freezer and added bacon because everything is better with bacon. Fast, simple to make, and really good flavors here.


Chicken With Bacon And Honey-Balsamic Vinegar Sauce

4 thin sliced chicken breasts (what I actually do here is take 2 whole chicken breasts and butterfly them)
4 slices of bacon
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
2 Tbsp honey
1/2 inch piece fresh ginger, very finely minced
1/2 tsp fresh rosemary, very finely diced
Olive oil
Salt
Pepper

To make the sauce, measure out the balsamic vinegar then add the honey, ginger, rosemary, and 2-3 Tbsp water to the measuring cup. Whisk thoroughly to incorporate the honey, then set sauce aside for a moment.

Slice a shallow cut down the center of each chicken breast. Lay a slice of bacon on top of this little channel for each breast. Heat a non-stick pan with just a very small dash of olive oil -- you won't need a lot, since the bacon will contribute its own fat to the process. When the oil is hot, lay the chicken breasts in the pan bacon side down and turn the heat on the pan down to medium. Salt and pepper the exposed non-bacon sides of the chicken. Shake the pan occasionally to make sure that nothing sticks, and allow the chicken to cook until there's a nice sear on that side and the bacon has cooked through and started to crisp at the edges. Flip the chicken breasts, and give them another 3-4 minutes to cook through. Remove to a plate and pat with a paper towel to take off any excess fat or oil.

Drain the grease from the pan you cooked the chicken in, and set it back on medium-high heat. Whisk the sauce again to make sure that the honey hasn't settled to the bottom, then pour it into the pan. Reduce for 3-4 minutes or until sauce thickens somewhat, then pour sauce over the chicken. Serve immediately.

Serves: 4

Blackened Tilapia and Creamy Grits

This is my take on a Southern staple concept: you mix spicy fish or seafood with creamy grits, and trust the grits to cut the spice on the meat and turn the whole thing into something flavorful and delightful. It's down-home cooking at its simplest and best.

The blackening mix is what I call my "teaspoon of everything" mix. You take one teaspoon, and then add about half your spice cabinet to the bowl. Amazingly enough, it's really tasty and doesn't overwhelm the fish. This is not a burn-your-mouth-out hot blackening mix, you're still going to get the fish flavor in here nicely with this recipe. I'm more about the flavors than I am about dead heat, so it's meant to be flavorful with a definite kick, but not kill-your-tastebuds hot. If you like things hotter, add a tsp or two of cayenne or even a tsp of dried ghost peppers to the mix to kick up the pepper-heat on it.

I served this with slow-cooked collard greens for an AMAZING meal. No really, this one will make your tastebuds stand up and shout. Just fantastic flavors. The only thing I'd caution is that if anyone among your diners doesn't like spicy or hot foods, then blackening is not for them. Just hold a piece of fish in reserve and simply salt and pepper it before pan frying, so that they can have the fish with none of the spices. I personally think they'd be missing out, but to each his own, and this is an easy compromise to make. Blackened fish and grits, though. Trust me, it's MM-mm good.

I should also note: this makes for really spectacular leftovers. So if you're the type with a family that can eat the same meal twice in one week, it's worth doubling this. The fish and grits get better with age, and if you serve them with collards, the collards will too.


Blackened Fish

Blackening Mix:

1 tsp paprika
1 tsp salt
1 tsp onion powder
1 tsp ancho chile powder

1 tsp ground white pepper
1 tsp ground black pepper
1 tsp dried oregano leaves
1 tsp dried thyme leaves

Fish Fillets:
4 tilapia fillets. completely thawed (Any white fish will do, here. Catfish is great, flounder would be fantastic, whiting would be fine, you could even use salmon or swordfish if you adjust the cooking times for a thicker fish. Tilapia, catfish, or flounder would be my go-to fish for this one, though.)
1 1/2 tbsp olive oil

Mix all the blackening mix spices together in a small bowl, stirring thoroughly. Yes, it looks like a lot for only 4 tilapia fillets. It's not. Trust me on this. In a wide but shallow dish, coat the tilapia fillets with at least 1 tbsp of the mixture per fillet. Rub it in on both sides. You want a generous coating here, the fish should look like it's turned dark red. Let the fillets sit for 15 minutes while coated as you do other things (like mix up the grits).

After 15 minutes is up, heat the olive oil in a non-stick pan until the oil is hot but not smoking. Drop in two or three fillets (depending on the size of your skillet, don't crowd them), and cook 2-3 minutes per side, or until the fish is white and flaky. The blackening seasonings should turn dark and look a little charred; it's okay, this is desirable. When the fish is finished, use a spatula to remove it from the skillet and sit it on paper towels to absorb any oil, then drop in the next batch of fillets to cook. Tip: if you have someone who doesn't want their fish spicy, cook the non-blackened fillets in the first batch so that the oil won't have seasonings mixed up in it.

When all fish is cooked, serve immediately with creamy grits.

Serves: 4




The creamy grits aren't just good for serving with fish. This is my personal favorite way of making grits, and it's really flexible. If you don't have heavy cream on hand, substitute milk. If you want a little more flavor, grate some cheddar cheese to melt in or add a teaspoon or so of dried basil. This is a really good staple grits recipe, thick and delicious and not-quite-sweet when you taste it. Plus, it goes with EVERYTHING. Collards, spicy stuff, black bean soup, cheese, omelettes, bacon, shrimp, hot hamburger steaks, grilled corn. You really can't go wrong here, it's the kind of 'momma cooked like this' recipe that makes everything good.


Creamy Grits

2 cups heavy cream
1 cup water
1 1/4 cups quick grits
2 tbsp unsalted sweet cream butter
Salt
Pepper

Mix the cream and the water, then bring the mixture to a slow boil. Add the grits slowly, stirring to avoid lumps. Add the butter. Turn the heat down to very low (below a simmer), and stir frequently for 10-15 minutes to allow the grits to thicken. Taste, then season to taste with salt and pepper. Add a little milk if the grits are too stiff when you go to serve them, you want these fairly creamy.

Serves: 4

Collard Greens

Collards are a staple of the South. Unlike kale or more delicate greens, these stand up well to the long-low-slow cooking mantra that permeates much of staple Southern cooking. Here's the recipe for collards that works for me. One thing to note: with collards, you want to go from field to pot as quickly as possible. If you're buying them out of somebody's truck because they picked them that day and you'll cook them that night, you're doing it right.


Collard Greens

1 medium videlia onion
2 cloves garlic, peeled and smashed
2 tbsp olive oil
1 smoked hamhock
1 qt. low-sodium chicken stock 
3-4 lbs collards with stems included (after the stems are removed and the greens are chopped, these will reduce down to about 2 lbs of raw greens for the recipe)
1/4 -1/2 cup apple cider vinegar (Eyeball it.)
2 tbsp sugar
Pickled whole jalapeno (more peppers if you like more heat to your greens)
Salt
Pepper


Begin by heating the olive oil in a 4 qt or larger pot over medium-high heat (I use a 4 qt cast iron dutch oven, but a large stock pot will do just as well, you'll just have to stir more often to keep things from sticking). Slice the onion in half from root to tip, then into thin half-rounds. Add the onion to the warm oil. Smash the garlic, then add that too. Saute, stirring occasionally, until the onions are soft and translucent.

Add the hamhock, the chicken stock, and 2 cups water. Stir, and leave over medium-high heat until the stock begins to simmer. Turn the heat down until the whole thing is just at the edge of a boil, then cover the pot and let simmer covered for 45 minutes. Stir it once or twice, but in general just leave it alone.

In the meantime, you can be prepping the collards. Collards often are quite dirty, which means you need to wash them. I like to rinse them under water, then cut the thick stems out of the large leafs. Slice the leafs into 1 1/2 inch ribbons, and then further into fork-manageable pieces. After slicing, run a decent quantity of water into a large bowl or a sink and dunk your collard pieces. The collards will float, the dirt will sink. Leave them to sit for a few minutes, stirring very gently. This will get the rest of the dirt possibly left over from the fields off your collard leaves, and keep your dish from feeling gritty. After a few minutes, skim the collard leaves off the top of the water, leaving the dirt and grit on the bottom of your sink/bowl. Place your clean leaves in a colander to drain while they wait for the hamhock to simmer.

After 45 minutes, add the collard greens to the hamhock and stock mixture. Pour in the sugar, the vinegar, and a little salt (I usually go for about a generous teaspoon here. Don't oversalt it, you can correct the seasonings later). Add a pickled whole jalapeno or two depending on how much bite you like with your greens. DO NOT COVER THE POT. You want some of that liquid to evaporate, to concentrate the pot liquor. Wait until the mixture resumes a low boil, and leave it at that temperature for at least an hour. The timing here is not precise, you can go for up to two or even more hours depending on how large/old your greens were, how much greens you're cooking, how tender you like your collards, etc. Cook them for at the very least an hour, though, until the stems are tender and melting and there's no trace of bitterness in the greens. Taste, and adjust for salt and pepper about ten minutes before you intend to serve. You can add more vinegar or sugar here too, if the tang of the greens needs adjusting.

To serve, fish the hamhock out of the pot and pull the meat off it with a fork, throwing the ham in small chunks back into the greens. Discard the rest of the hamhock. Stir to mix the ham bits evenly with the greens, then use a slotted spoon to fish the ham-and-greens out of the pot liquor and into a serving dish. Serve with a bottle of pepper vinegar and hot sauce on the table, so that diners can adjust their collards to their preferred tang and heat.

Serves: 4-5

Roasted Okra

Okra is a wonderful veggie. If you've never had good fried okra, your life is less for the experience. In soups and stews, okra is a fantastic thickener that's still a veggie. Okra is a great, great summer veggie for the South, don't get me wrong.

There's only one problem: when cooked the wrong way, okra is slimy. REALLY slimy. I've read bits where it gets compared to cooked mucus. Which, let's face it is gross, but there is a key thing here that needs to be said: the South loves okra because it's tasty. As in, it's very easy to cook okra in a way that isn't slimy, and isn't gross, and tastes amazing and summer-y and really really good.

This is one way to do okra right.

Before the recipe, some criteria. When you buy okra, buy the shortest, smallest pods possible. Large okra are bad, because they get woody. So try to buy the smallest okra you can. Also, before you cook your okra, rinse it first. Not because it will affect the slime factor, but because it often is planted in fields that border cotton or corn or soy that get sprayed with other pesticides, so it never hurts to rinse those off. Remember: small okra, and rinse the okra. 


Roasted Okra

1 or 1 1/2 lbs okra (Smallest you can find, freshest you can find)
1 tbsp olive oil
Salt
Pepper

Preheat oven to 400F.

Rinse your okra, then cut the stem end off all okra. Slice the okra pods in half vertically down the middle to expose the seeds on both sides, and place okra in a medium mixing bowl. THIS IS KEY: if the okra pods are longer than 2 inches, slice the pods into shorter parts before slicing them down the middle. This helps the longer pods, which are potentially woody, roast more effectively.

Once you've got the okra sliced into no longer than 2 1/2 inch bits and chucked into a medium mixing bowl, pour the tbsp of olive oil over the whole thing. Mix until all the okra is oiled (trust me, a bit of oil goes a long way. Just stir it around a bit, and 1 tbsp will coat all that okra fine).

Cover a baking sheet with tin foil for easy cleanup, then spray the tinfoil with non-stick baking spray. Spread the okra on the tray evenly, doesn't matter whether it's the inner or the outer side facing up.. Sprinkle salt and pepper over okra to season gently. DO NO OVER-SALT, you don't want your salt to drown out the taste of the okra itself.

Place baking sheet in oven and roast okra for 15-20 minutes. Stir/turn the okra halfway through. Serve immediately.

Serves: 3