quick

Tonight was not a good night. The straw that broke the camel’s back was when I received a bill for over $6,000, because the hospital accidentally sent my amnio to an out of network lab. I know it’s just money and who cares, really. But I was already at my limit.

Shane is still in bed, after nearly two weeks, several doctors, and a dope-peddler’s-fantasy worth of prescription narcotics.

What to make for dinner when you seem to be paying back a lifetime’s-worth of karmic debt, all at once? Corn, baby. Corn makes me happy. Pump up the joy with perfectly in-season heirloom cherry tomatoes, butter, pasta, cheese and scallions. Well, it’s almost enough to make a girl feel better.

A bottle of wine would have been nice, but of course I’m not allowed to drink (much) wine, that would make life too easy.

I can’t get enough cucumber salad these days, so we had that too. Chicken for Rose and Shane was seasoned with Penzey’s Mural of Flavor and salt (of course), and sautéed in butter and olive oil.

Raise a virtual glass, y’all, to better days.

My dad would have some potentially offensive names for this meal. Despite the fact that I reluctantly list foot-in-mouth as one of my specialties, I won’t use those names here. Scratch that, Dad says it looks good, especially knowing there is sausage involved.

Instead, let’s call it a polite meal, and just what the doctor ordered. It required very little time spent on my feet, was quick to prepare, and couldn’t have been easier.

Cherry tomatoes, halved, with chunks of bufala mozzarella, olive oil and salt. Sugar snap peas, a baguette, and a couple of sweet Italian sausage for Rose and Shane. Done!

Now this is a casserole I can really get behind. Tortilla pie, yummy, easy, quick.

I’ve been thinking over the past few days, perhaps because of the cooler weather, that I need an arsenal of casserole recipes. The fact that my nesting instinct has kicked in way prematurely, is probably also responsible, at least in part, for me having casseroles on the brain.

Five year old Rose, pointed out that I really don’t need to start freezing meals until September or October. But I can’t help it. It’s biological.

As with pasta salad, my conundrum was that I’d fixated on a type of dish that I am not generally a fan of. When I think of casserole, I think of something involving soggy egg noodles, cooked, canned tuna and possibly cream of mushroom soup – ew!

The last time I made a casserole, it was very tasty, but not quite my-kind-of-dinner enough for me to want to make again, unless I was invited to a football party.

There had to be something better out there, I put a request for ideas out on facebook. Good folks posted some great looking recipes.

Tortilla pie comes from the wonderful blog Dinner A Love Story. I have to admit, I was doubtful about the whole wheat tortillas, shouldn’t they be corn? But I trusted DALS, and I’m glad I did. The pie was delicious.

Nice, fresh, CSA zucchini, sliced and sauteed in olive oil with slivered fresh basil and a sprinkling of sea salt, was the perfect accompaniment.

• Tortilla Pie •
from Dinner A Love Story, original recipe here

vegetable oil
1 large onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
1 jalapeno, minced (optional)
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
salt and pepper
a 12oz bottle of beer
2 cans black beans, drained and rinsed
about 1 scallion, chopped
1 package frozen corn (about 10oz)
3 cups grated cheddar cheese
about 4 whole wheat tortillas

Heat oven to 400 degrees. Saute the onion, garlic, jalapeno and cumin in some vegetable oil in a skillet until the onion is soft and translucent. Add the beans and the beer, and season with salt and pepper to taste. Simmer until the liquid is almost all gone. Add the scallion and corn, stir to combine and remove from heat.

Grease one large (or two medium – see note below*) pie plates with oil. Place a tortilla in the bottom of the pie plate. Top with about 1/2 cup of cheese and 1 cup of the bean and corn mixture. Continue layering, tortilla, cheese, bean/corn, about 4 times total, until everything is used up. The top layer should be bean and corn mixture topped with about a cup of cheese. 

Bake for 20-25 minutes until the cheese on top is  melted and a little bit browned. Serve with sour cream and salsa.

*I used two medium-ish-small pie plates and split the ingredients equally in half. Half a recipe was enough to feed our family of three with some left over. The other half went into the freezer!

This looks awfully fancy, doesn’t it? I assure you it’s not.

We’re all exhausted today and I wanted to make the easiest thing, besides takeout. This usually means ravioli with faux penne alla vodka sauce, which is the world’s easiest sauce to make. There was no cheese ravioli to be had at Italian Farms, so we got stuffed rigatoni.

The salad was simply cukes and yellow peppers with lemon and lime juice, a splash of rice vinegar and a glug of olive oil.

See, not fancy. Just looks that way.

In case you missed the previous posts (here and here), we love this dish! So quick, so easy, so good! With a teeny salad on the side, you’ve got a well rounded meal.

If you keep shrimp in your freezer and canned beans & tomatoes in your pantry, this is the kind of meal you can whip up without a trip to the store. Which is exactly what I did today.

• Shrimp & White Beans •
from Bon Appetit, recipe here, reproduced below for your convenience

6 tablespoons olive oil, divided
3 garlic cloves, minced, divided
2 dried chiles de árbol (I skip these because of the kid)
1 bay leaf, preferably fresh
1 1/4 cups chopped tomato (I use San Marzano from a can)
Kosher salt, freshly ground pepper
1 tablespoon tomato paste
2 15-ounce cans white beans (such as cannellini), rinsed, drained
1 cup low-sodium chicken broth
1 pound medium shrimp, peeled, deveined
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
2 tablespoons chopped flat-leaf parsley
Grilled bread (optional)

Preheat broiler. Heat 2 Tbsp. oil in a large, heavy, ovenproof skillet over medium heat. Add 1 garlic clove, chiles, and bay leaf and cook, stirring constantly, just until fragrant, 1–2 minutes (do not allow garlic to burn). Add tomato; season with salt and pepper. Cook, stirring and smashing tomato with the back of a wooden spoon, until tomato is completely broken down, about 5 minutes.

Add tomato paste and cook, stirring constantly, until paste is deep red and caramelized, 3–4 minutes. Stir in beans and broth. Bring to a brisk simmer and cook until juices are slightly reduced and thickened, 3–4 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Combine remaining 2 garlic cloves, 2 Tbsp. oil, shrimp, and paprika in a medium bowl; season with salt and pepper and toss to evenly coat shrimp. Scatter shrimp over beans in an even layer.

Broil until shrimp are golden and cooked through, about 3 minutes. Drizzle remaining 2 Tbsp. oil over shrimp and beans; garnish with parsley. Serve with bread, if desired

It seemed like pasta salad would be a good thing to have for dinner tonight on this 4th (or 5th?) day of swampy, oppressive, heat. The thing is, I really don’t like most pasta salad. I don’t like cold pasta, mushy pasta, mayonnaise with pasta, or vinegar on pasta*.

I posted my thoughts on pasta salad, as well as some of the contents of today’s CSA box, to The Steady Table’s facebook page. Readers replied with some lovely suggestions, which I compiled into something good: warm macaroni salad with zucchini, corn & goat cheese (recipe below).

After dinner, Rose got a big bowl of cold water, dissolved some scented bath confetti into it, and proceeded to massage it into Shane’s hair while he sat by the A/C. Shane then reciprocated by pouring the entire bowl of scented water over Rose’s head (in the tub). Not a bad way to cool down after a dinner. Here’s a video that you may or may not find amusing.

*The vinegar exception is this meal, which I wish I had remembered earlier in the day.

Thursdays are a bit tricky around here because of CSA pickup, which messes with our dinner timing. Since I’m back to working from home, I did a little bit of advance planning and made Marcella Hazan’s famous tomato sauce during the afternoon. It’s a delicious sauce and couldn’t be easier to make, but it does take 45 minutes (mostly hands-off) to cook.

When we got home from Farm Spot, I made some penne and tossed it with the tomato sauce and little cubes of fresh mozzarella. With a simple salad, it was perfect for a quick, weeknight meal. Rose chose to have only salad and cheese, which I thought was a very mature choice. Perhaps it has something to do with today’s outfit.

• Marcella Hazan’s Famous Tomato Sauce •
from Marcella Hazan via Smitten Kitchen

A 28oz can whole peeled San Marzano tomatoes, I like this brand
5 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 medium yellow onion, peeled and halved
Salt to taste (pepper too, if you like)

Put the tomatoes, onion and butter in a heavy saucepan over medium heat. You don’t need to cut the butter into pieces, just cut 5 tablespoons of butter off of a stick and bung it in the pot. Bring the sauce to a simmer then lower the heat to keep the sauce at a slow, steady simmer for about 45 minutes. Stir occasionally, crushing the tomatoes against the side of the pot with a wooden spoon. Remove from heat, discard the onion, add salt to taste. That’s it! 

If you want, you can toss with about a cup of little cubes of fresh mozzarella and top with some grated pecorino or parmesan too.

Dinner without cooking was my goal on this first too-hot-to-use-the-stove night of 2013.

We had shrimp salad with capers and lemon, white bean spread & bread, charcuterie, and a cucumber salad. Hardly one to write home about, but at least we didn’t have to feel any hotter than we already were.

Happy summer!