Repurposing Leftovers: Chef Salad

Here's another main dish salad strategy, with vegetables from our CSA and some leftover grilled chicken and ham.

Simply top a bed of lettuce with assorted vegetables (radishes, tomato, cucumber, scallions, and sugar snap peas, here), a boiled egg, some sliced chicken, ham, and Cheddar cheese.  I love Ranch dressing on these.

There are people in the world who make their livings as salad stylists, did you know that?

Clearly I am not one of them.

It sure tasted good, though.

Recipe: Gumbo

It's perverse, making gumbo in the summer, but the local grocery store happened to have frozen okra in stock.  You never know when they're going to have it so if you see it, it's prudent to grab a couple of bags.

I like okra.  I like it fried; I like it in soups; and I even liked it boiled, back in the day when my paternal grandmother's domestic Julia Mae (who called my grandmother her "white Mammy") was cooking for the family.  My husband's only exposure to okra prior to my appearing on the scene, however, was in college and involved West African students and a goat; it did not go well.

Between that traumatic event and the fact that the stores only rarely stock it (once in a blue moon you might find it in the fresh produce section, but by the time it's gotten here it's "fresh" solely in the sense that it is only partially desiccated), our okra consumption is limited to the occasional Cajun dish.  This week Shaw's has okra so we has gumbo.

Bad food photography alert.  

The recipe I use borrows heavily from one that came to me a couple of years ago through the Cook's Country recipe-testing process; it's the source of the innovative, hands-free oven roux I've since adapted to, oh, just about everything.  I simplified a couple of the fussier steps, removed some chicken and added okra and shrimp.  Other than that it's pretty much theirs. 

Gumbo

¾ cup flour
½ cup vegetable oil
4 bone-in chicken thighs (about 4 pounds), skin removed
1 onion, chopped
1 green bell pepper, seeded and chopped
1 celery rib, finely chopped
A healthy dollop of minced garlic (from a jar; I'm not proud)
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 (14.5-ounce) can diced tomatoes, drained
1 (32-ounce) box chicken broth

1 lb frozen sliced okra
¼ cup fish sauce (not a typo)
8 ounces andouille sausage, halved lengthwise and sliced thin

1 lb peeled, deveined shrimp

Adjust oven rack to lowest position and heat oven to 350 degrees. Toast ¾ cup flour in Dutch oven over medium heat, stirring constantly, until just beginning to brown.  In my experience this takes exactly 5 minutes. Remove from heat and whisk in oil until smooth. Cover, transfer pot to oven, and cook 45 minutes. 

Pat chicken dry and season with pepper. 

Transfer Dutch oven to stovetop and whisk roux to combine. Add onion, bell pepper, celery, garlic, thyme, and cayenne and cook over medium heat about 10 minutes, until the vegetables start to soften, stirring frequently.  It will be very thick and gloppy.  Add tomatoes, then slowly stir in broth and fish sauce, whisking until smooth. Add chicken and okra and bring to boil.

Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer, covered, until chicken is tender, about 30 minutes. Transfer chicken to plate and allow to cool; debone and chop the meat into bite-sized pieces.  Return the meat to the pot (discard the bones). Add sausage and shrimp and simmer, uncovered, until heated through and the shrimp are opaque, about 10 minutes.  Correct seasonings and serve over hot cooked white rice and lashings of Tabasco. Gets better if you let it set a while and then reheat.

Serves 6 to 8

Company Picnic

Maine is in the grips of that heatwave which is causing havoc along the east coast.  It rarely gets this hot here, and almost never this early, but here we are not even at the end of July and we're already gone two rounds with the sort of temperatures that leave the HVAC units at my office gasping for mercy.

The next time I hear "I just shoveled eight inches of global warming off my driveway" from some ffffidiot who can't comprehend the correlation between rising ocean temperatures and increased snowfall, I am going to smack him with my windshield scraper.

Anyhoo.  My company's annual summer picnic happened to take place this weekend, down at FunTown/SplashTown.  We were fortunate that it was held Saturday and not Friday, because Friday was even hotter and the entire city of Saco was blacked out, so the busload of kiddies from the local Y's day camp drove for two hours only to find the park closed, and on the way back one of the bus' tires exploded from the heat.

That was Friday.  Saturday it was merely 99 degrees.

It stands to reason that in the middle of a heat wave, if you live in a part of the country where no one's house is air conditioned, you go to the water. 

Or the water park. 

The place was mobbed.

I am of the opinion that had there been water parks in Dante's day and he had visited one on a peak summer weekend during a record-breaking heat wave, his imagination of the sixth circle of hell might have taken a slightly different tack.

Don't get me wrong.  It's a great place for kids.  In fact, Thing Two and the friend she brought along plunged enthusiastically into the throngs the second we were inside the gates (the inscription over which did indeed read "Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate").  I have no pictures of them because we never saw them until it was time to leave; they tell us they had a perfectly wonderful, marvelous time. 

Introverted, fair-skinned grownups who aren't particularly enamored of crowds or rides and whose children are of an age where they filch the last $20 from your wallet and then happily abandon you so that you find yourself sweating in the sun for hours on industrial vinyl chaise lounge chairs where thousands of people have sweated before you...  yeah, not so much. 

I'm just sayin'.

Recipe: Linguini with Fennel, Spicy Sausage and Clams

The CSA share this week had another fennel bulb in it, and in the course of poking around the interweb I found a recipe that looked like fun (Thing One is off boating again, which means the rest of us can enjoy clams for dinner).  I tweaked it just a bit; the original is here.





Linguini with Fennel, Spicy Sausage and Clams

2 tablespoons (1/4 stick) butter
2 tablespoons minced garlic
1 yellow onion, chopped
1 fennel bulb, cored and chopped
1 teaspoon fennel seeds, crushed
1/2 pound spicy Italian sausages, casings removed
1 tablespoon chopped fresh oregano
1 14.5-ounce can diced tomatoes, undrained
1 cup dry white wine
2 pounds littleneck clams, scrubbed
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
3/4 lb. linguini, cooked and drained

Melt butter in heavy large skillet over medium heat. Add garlic, onion, fennel, and fennel seeds; sauté until vegetables begin to soften, about 5 minutes. Add sausage and cook until browned, breaking up lumps with back of spoon and stirring frequently, about 5 minutes. Stir in oregano, tomatoes with juice, and wine; increase heat and bring to boil. Add clams, cover skillet, and cook until clams open (discard any that do not open), about 5 minutes. Serve over linguini, garnished with parsley.

Just being kids

Thing One's good friend is off to MSSM in a few weeks.  Doesn't seem possible...

We had a little going-away 'do at our house for the gang.  It's a good group of kids.

The Gang

They're growing up fast.  So independent in some ways; but get them together and they are still a bunch of kids who fill an afternoon with games...

...and music...

...and campfires...

...and friendship.

This is just the beginning; the first one of the bunch to leave the nest.  The rest will follow, too quickly.

Dammit.

Then and now

These guys have been buds since second grade.

Then:

Now:

Matinicus, again

A while back I posted a Shameless Plug for a book I was enjoying at the time - Well Out to Sea, by Eva Murray, which is a collection of her columns about living year-round on a remote island. 

Three of the recurring themes in her work:

First, the challenges of getting oneself and assorted stuff - groceries, vehicles, garbage, mail - on and off Matinicus.  Options are limited when the weather is nice; options are nil when the weather is not, which is a lot of the time.  Besides the ferry, which runs once a month, you have your neighbors with boats who might or might not be making a trip to the mainland, and Penobscot Island Air, which runs Cessnas between here and there.  Fog, wind, high seas, malfunctions, miscommunications, storms, your neighbor's change of plans - any one of these can mean your kids don't get home from college for Thanksgiving dinner or, worse, your Thanksgiving turkey doesn't get delivered in time.

Second, how islanders pull together to help each other in times of need.  Regardless of whether in real life the people involved actually like each other, when there is a crisis, it is all hands to the rescue, sometimes at great personal risk.  Look up the Harkness tugboat rescue sometime.

Third, the danger.  She tends to downplay it but it's a constant, steady undercurrent in her stories.  It's not the lobster wars (she doesn't write about that, because that's not what defines Matinicus, despite the place's reputation for lawlessness).  Rather, it's the daily reality of living twenty-some miles off shore and making a living from the ocean.  Buildings catch on fire; boats sink; men are lost overboard; planes crash.

All three came into play yesterday with the news that a Penobscot Island Air Cessna had crashed 200 yards off the Matinicus shore.  It lost power shortly after takeoff and ditched in the North Atlantic. There were four people on board, including the pilot. 

People on the island saw the crash and called 911. 

Fishermen on their vessels heard the emergency radio traffic and raced to the site. 

It was the fishermen who found four survivors, with injuries ranging from moderate to critical, clinging to the sinking wreckage, and hauled them out of the 60-degree water to safety. 

The outcome should have been much worse.  The pilot was able to level out before the crash and then was able to assist the injured passengers out of plane before it sank; the guys in their boats were able to get to the site within 20 minutes, before hypothermia set in.  As of this evening, local news is reporting that the three passengers are in hospitals in serious or fair condition and the pilot was treated and released. 

Eva Murray was one of the passengers.  All these years she's witnessed, and written about, stuff like this from the point of view of a participant, not a recipient.  I hope she is able to come home soon and start writing again, now that she's seen it from the other side.

To the pilot whose experience and quick thinking are credited with saving four lives, the people on the island who reported the crash, and the as-yet unnamed fishermen, my profound admiration and respect. 

And to the injured passengers, a speedy recovery.  Many thoughts are with you.