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Sunday, July 11, 2010

Summer Sunday Brunch

And we're back! Sorry for the lack of posts lately - unfortunately my real work has not left me with much time for cooking fun meals. That's why it felt like the perfect time to throw a brunch! I had my family come over for frittata with corn, pancetta, and red peppers, cantaloupe salad, and sweet olive oil bread with fresh blueberry sauce. Doesn't that just scream summer?


Frittatas are a perfect one dish main course for a brunch. A frittata is just a method - almost any mix of vegetables, meat, and cheese work well in it. Corn immediately sounded delicious and I'm on a huge kick right now. My original thought was prosciutto but I spotted pancetta and went for it instead. I melted shredded mozzarella cheese on the top after adding garlic, red peppers, and scallions to the dish.

The cantaloupe salad was wonderful. I tossed cubes of cantaloupe with lime zest, lime juice, sugar, and honey. Mint was meant to be added but I was unable to find mint at the store (isn't that ridiculous?). It was unexpectedly delicious.

Finally, I made this interesting sweet olive oil quick bread. I've been dying to try an olive oil cake for a while now and I was drawn in by the ease of doing it as a quick bread (think banana bread). You don't even need two bowls to make this bread! There is no butter at all - only a 1/2 cup of olive oil - though I might add a bit more oil next time to make it just the slightest bit more moist. My only change was to top the bread with crushed almonds rather than pine nuts.


It baked up puffy and golden brown and was quite good. It was similar to a pound cake and lightly lemon scented. The blueberry sauce really took it over the top. For that I used Barefoot Contessa's Blueberry Sauce recipe, using just regular sugar and a touch of vanilla extract instead of vanilla sugar. As I mentioned, the bread was a little bit on the dry side so the sauce was a perfect additive. Sweet and a little tangy with lemon juice. How I love berry season!

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Summer Garden Salad with Chili Garlic Shrimp

We made a really interesting salad this week. Totally different from the types of salad we usually make based on this recipe called Summer Garden Salad with Chili Garlic Shrimp. It started with shrimp, tossed lightly in hot sauce and cumin. Alongside chunks of tomato, avocado, and cucumber, I added papaya, which added a welcome sweetness to the light salad.

In the dressing, I used half lemon and half lime juice because that's what I had, but it was still quite delicious. The sesame oil was the dominant flavor but went really well with the clean flavors of the rest of the ingredients. I also subsitituted basil for mint because frankly, I don't really enjoy raw mint in savory dishes.

In the end, the alterations I made pushed it toward something very Thai - ever had papaya salad? This had a similar theme. It was incredibly light and healthy - there are about 2 entire tablespoons of oil in the whole thing. We made this on a 90 degree day and it was exactly what we wanted to eat!