Lemony Zest :: Kim Lewandowski

Heh, I almost forgot I had a blog I take a lot of pictures, of food and other stuff, and then I don’t get around to posting them here. Going to try to change that.

So here’s my contribution to the Photo Friday photo challenge for this week – Curvature. I took this photo in Pisa, Italy, during our 25th-anniversary trip there in 2009. This is the arch over the main entry door to the Pisa Baptistery, with a statue of the Madonna and child.

The green beans have been quite prolific this year. We have a couple of pounds in the freezer and a couple of pounds in the refrigerator. This is the year I plan to experiment with more food-preserving techniques, so last year, I purchased “Put ‘em Up!: A Comprehensive Home Preserving Guide for the Creative Cook, from Drying and Freezing to Canning and Pickling.” It’s full of wonderful ideas for enjoying fresh garden produce now and later.

Szechuan Pickled Green Beans

This refrigerator-pickle recipe for Szechuan Green Beans intrigued me because it’s so simple. It doesn’t involve the scary-seeming boiling-water method that is generally used for canning vegetables for the relatively long term – a few months to a year. This recipe just requires covering blanched beans with a seasoned vinegary brine and keeping it in the fridge. It will last for a month and the flavor deepens every day. Yum.

Szechuan Green Beans

• 1 pound green beans, washed, topped, and tailed
• 1 cup cider vinegar
• 1/2 cup water
• 1/4 cup soy sauce
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 2 tablespoons dark sesame oil
• 1 tablespoon whole peppercorns, preferably Szechuan
• 1 (1-inch) knob ginger, sliced into coins
• 2 garlic cloves, sliced

Line several baking sheets with dish towels and set aside. Prepare an ice-water bath in a large bowl or clean sink.

Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Drop the beans into the water, no more than 1 pound at a time, and return to a boil. Blanch for 1 minute.

Scoop the beans out with a spider or slotted spoon and plunge them into the ice-water bath. Continue blanching in batches. Remove the beans from the ice bath with a slotted spoon and spread on the towel-covered baking sheets. Blot dry.

To make the pickles, pack the beans vertically in a quart jar.

Combine the remaining ingredients in a medium nonreactive saucepan. Bring to a boil and simmer for 1 minute. Pour the hot brine over the beans to cover by 1/2 inch. Leave 1/2 inch of headspace between the top of the liquid and the lid.

Refrigerate: Cool, cover, and store in the refrigerator for up to 1 month.

There really is nothing like picking vegetables from the backyard garden, preparing them simply and roasting them over flame. Yesterday, we harvested the first what I’m sure will be many more zucchinis, and enough green beans for two servings (there’s lots more out there). A couple weeks ago, we also pulled a couple dozen onions of various types and set them to cure on wire shelves in the sunroom.

Red, yellow and white onions from the garden

There’s really not much to this recipe. I trimmed the zucchini and cut it lengthwise into four planks. I whisked together the juice of one lemon, the same amount of extra-virgin olive oil, a 1/2 tsp. of Penzey’s Minced Garlic, a pinch of cayenne, a big pinch of sugar, and salt and pepper for a quick marinade. I also sliced a small homegrown red onion and trimmed the green beans.

Dan sprinkled Paul Prudhomme’s Blackened Redfish Seasoning on two tuna steaks and took everything out to the grill. We have this handy grilling wok that makes it easy to grill small pieces of food like cut vegetables.

After everything was grilled, we tossed the vegetables with the rest of the marinade.

The first zucchini of 2011!

Garden-fresh green beans

Grilled veggies, grilled tuna and remoulade sauce

Last week, Dan and I prepared a Mexican feast for 26 teachers during the annual capstone event for the graduate professional development class he teaches along with colleagues Dan B. and Richard.

I was so busy making sure everything was done and we hadn’t forgotten anything that I forgot to take pictures of everything when we were done with each dish. But here are a few to accompany the recipes we used.

Appetizers, all by Rick Bayless, served with toasted sliced baguette and tortilla chips

• Roasted Garlic Guacamole
• Crab Salpicon
• Chipotle Peanut Salsa
• Fire-Roasted Tomato Salsa

Prep for Fire-Roasted Tomato Salsa

Dinner

• Classic Red Mole, used in Lacquered Chicken, by Rick Bayless
• Lacquered Chicken, by Rick Bayless
• Easy Corn Tamales, by Marcela Valladolid
• Grilled Corn on the Cob with Garlic Butter, Fresh Lime and Cotija Cheese (but I forgot to bring the cheese), by Bobby Flay
• Classic Mexican White Rice with Sweet Plantains, by Rick Bayless

Mole ingredients

Corn tamales stuffed with chicken (left) or cheese right)

Dessert was a trifle layered with cubed angel-food cake, lemon pudding and fresh strawberries, blackberries and raspberries. I tried making a tres leches cake for this, but it was flat and heavy, so I went with store-bought angel food.

Lessons Learned

• When making tamales, test the batter by checking to see whether a handful sticks to itself; if not, it’s too wet, so add a bit more corn flour
• I need a Kitchen Aid mixer if I’m going to try a tres leches cake; I didn’t fluff up the butter enough, so the cake was short and heavy rather than tall and light
• When I’m cooking for a crowd, delegate the camera work to someone else!

Our veggies are coming right along, and we have some good garden critters making a home in it, too.

Tomato blossom

Baby celery

Mesclun mix and parsley in a terra cotta pot

Tiny swallowtail caterpillars love the fennel

Medium swallowtail caterpillar in the fennel

We have lots going on in the garden this spring. The romaine, red leaf and green leaf lettuces I thought for sure were frozen to death during the winter came back beautifully and we’ve been munching on salad from the garden for a few weeks now.

Red leaf lettuce

Mixed lettuces – red leaf, green leaf and romaine

We also have a couple rows of English peas coming up.

English peas

And I’m really happy that the parsley made it through the winter, too.

Parsley

We’re trying a new vegetable this year: celery! They’re little babies right now – Dan started them from seed in the sunroom.

Baby celery

We have lots more to come – several kinds of tomatoes, hot and bell peppers, and purple tomatillos are growing from seeds in the sunroom, and we’re going to try Brussels sprouts again, too. Should be a fun summer!