An amazingly simple and flavorful treatment for an inexpensive steak cut - thin-sliced and cooked in a pungent tomato sauce. Sometimes on Fridays I see steaks marked down so I grab one for lunch. One little steak makes two lunches, and it's so easy that it doesn't disrupt my day.
There are, of course, a thousand variations on this, some quite fancy, but from my reading this seems a common way, and I like it best.
The taste of late summer, to me, is that of very fresh tomatoes from the farm, tomatoes that never saw the inside of a refrigerator or rode on a tractor-trailer across state lines.
If you can't make this with farmer's market fresh tomatoes, don't use supermarket tomatoes! Canned tomatoes were at peak freshness when they went into the can, but supermarket tomatoes are bred for shippability and picked unripe, then artificially "ripened" in the truck with ethylene gas. Of course, artificial ripening is artificial, away from the sun, and it's the sunshine that the plant uses to make the fruit sweet.
We got lucky a couple of times this summer when our favorite fish market got in some fresh trout. Here is an Umbrian recipe for trout cooked in the simple style of the anglers who pull them from the tumbling mountain waters of the River Nera and grill them with fresh rosemary and parsley over a campfire.
In my dreams, there's a bottle of Frascati chilling in a quiet pool of the river, and a few branches of dried old rosemary in the fire!
I got this recipe from a delightful blog out of Genoa, but of course I had to substitute cod for sea bream, and I used my braising pan instead of the somewhat messier parchment because it does almost the same thing.
The key thing, in any event, is the seasonings. That's what makes this a Ligurian-style recipe: fish cooked with capers, pine nuts, olives, and plenty of fresh herbs all feature prominently in the cuisine of this little northwestern-most coastal province, home of Genoa.
This is one of those homey recipes that can be great for kids but that is also easy to dress up for company.
When I was a kid, my mom used to put peas in everything, I suppose as a way to get us to eat a green vegetable. To this day I am still suspicious when I see a perfectly good dinner with peas lurking inside... But this really is a good recipe.
This is also traditionally made with salmon, and of course salmon and peas are a famous combination, but it takes a little more care to cube the salmon and cook it without breaking it all to pieces, so I like this version for a weekday night.
Here's a delicious way to serve sole, one of my favorite fish!
The fish is dressed with a fine egg-yolk-thickened sauce and served over sauteed mushrooms.
If you have never tried an egg yolk thickened sauce, there's nothing to be afraid of, and this is a good recipe to practice on because even if it goes badly you still have the sole and mushrooms for dinner!
This is another simple 30-minute dinner that relies upon top-quality ingredients that are, fortunately, readily available in coastal New England for most of the year.
The original for this recipe calls for hake, a different flaky white fish, but haddock cooks the same way and the flavor goes very well with the shallots and lemon juice. So this is an Italian preparation made with local New England fish. It's not that hake is not local to our waters; you can sometimes find hake at bigger fish markets, but it's not nearly as popular as haddock, which you can get everywhere around here and it's every bit as good as or even better than hake in this preparation, in my opinion.
This is a classic simple side dish from Calabria, traditionally made with the oblong sweet red onions of Tropea, on the southwest coast not too far from the Straits of Messina.
The onions are sliced thinly and then braised in a mix of red wine and red wine vinegar with water until they are soft and mild.
This was yummy and simple, just pan-fried fish served with tender cooked thinly-sliced leeks. The mild flavors complemented each other nicely.
In the photo here, the leeks are closer to you, and the red onion beyond is Cipollata Calabrese, which made a nice contrast both visually and in flavor, while staying in harmony.
Here's a wonderful dish suitable for company and a beautiful table. The halibut sits on a bed of pureed seasoned potatoes and is surrounded by littlenecks and dressed with a savory saffron sauce. It's exquisite!
There's a lot to this recipe, both ingredients and steps, but none of it is particularly rare or difficult; you can make this any time that halibut is available, and after the first time it is really not hard.
