Just in Time for Summer. Zucchini Butter!

No butter needed.

This is a great quick preparation for carnivores, pescatarians, vegetarians and vegans. Gluten free. Dairy free. And in the next month or so, they will be everywhere! Can go on toast, pasta, fish, meat, in eggs….getting the picture? 4 ingredients unless you really want to jazz it up. I bring you ZUCCHINI BUTTER. To make, you will need

Note. One of the ingredients is a piece of equipment. That everyone has. In some way, shape or form.

To make. Grate your zucchini on your box grater using the largest holes. If you want to break out the food processor, just pulse a few times to get the size shown below. Do not over process, you are not making soup, you are making butter. It should be mentioned that any color of zucchini or summer squash can be used. I think, as the product arrives at markets or in stores, the smaller varieties would be better because they are sweeter but do not let lack of small vegetables deter you from making this. Your grated product should look like this.

Chop shallot and add to zucchini bowl. No shallots? Use onion. Use scallion. Use garlic, but sparingly. You want to taste zucchini.

Heat your pan, and after heated, add olive oil. If you are using non stick, add olive oil and heat pan at the same time. Toss in zucchini and shallots, salt and pepper and let cook down. This is halfway through the process.

The water from the zucchini will cook out and the zucchini will soften. The edges may get a bit brown just continue to toss, the whole process will not take more than 15 minutes.

This is the finished product. Allow to cool and you will see that your zucchini has become spreadable, you get it, just like butter! And that’s all there is to it. If it needs more salt, add salt. If you like it a bit more fiery, add red pepper flakes or my favorite Calabrian Chili past. Want basil? Just throw it in. More acidic? A squeeze of lemon. The world is your zucchini!

Now what? Below is the simplest way to use. Toast a piece of bread and spread the butter. Eat.

I made breakfast with some leftover pasta and threw a bit of the butter in the eggs and I give you this.

And there you have it. Keep it in the fridge and remove just before spreading. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

PAN TOMATE

A variation on a theme

After spending a wonderful and food filled 10 days in Spain, I find that I am drawn more than ever to small bites. Not that I needed that much in the way of encouragement, but the Spanish seem to have developed the final word on yumminess in small plates. So with that in mind, I give you my spin on Pan Tomate. Normally, Pan Tomate is a piece of toast rubbed with some tomato and topped with something. This is an upgraded riff on that-easy, involves no cooking unless you call toasting bread cooking, only a bit of hands on time (think less than 5 minutes) and can be used in a myriad of ways. Perfect for your next happy hour nibble. What you need are these items:

Notice, two of the 6 items are “utensils”. I had a beefsteak tomato that was sitting unused and decided to employ it for this appetizer. Also shown are salt, bread, and oil. I am using Spanish olive oil, use what you want or what you have. The bread is an olive loaf, again, use what you want or have. For you gluten free folks, substitute the olive bread with your gluten free fave. Grate the tomato on the largest holes of the box grater. It may smush if you have an overly ripe tomato, if that occurs, you can chop down the larger pieces, but by and large the tomato will grate easily and you will end up with this.

Pour your what is now tomato puree into a strainer placed over a bowl , salt lightly, and allow the tomato to drain. Like so.

The more liquid part of the puree will seep into the bowl below and you will be left with a spreadable product. Don’t worry about the seeds. In Spain, I saw seeds everywhere, even in a 2 Michelin Star restaurant surrounded by the gelatin which holds the seeds in place. They are delicious. A bit tangy.

Now the fun part. Take your bread, toast it slightly, and and then “butter it” with the tomato. I will show you two different iterations. The first was part of a tapas dinner on a Sunday night. The second was a breakfast toast with avocado.

In Madrid, they call this a matrimonio. A combination of white and grey anchovies for anchovy lovers. I love anchovies, but admit that there are haters out there. Maybe you should give them another go??

This is tamer. Both were delicious. Topped with a bit of salt and a drizzle of olive oil. Pepper if you want. Parsley or cilantro.

So what else can you use? Top with thinly sliced manchego. Top with tinned tuna or another tinned fish. Top with a slice of sweet onion. You can even top with a fried egg. You are only limited by your imagination!

Now what to do with the tomato water that filtered out. Martini lovers, I am looking at you! Add to some chilled Vodka, skewer a small piece of Mozzarella and a leaf of basil. Not your grandmother’s Caprese!

I hope you make this. Like I said it is so easy to prepare, inexpensive, and so many ways to enjoy!

RICE PAPER TREATS

A twist on Spanakopita

I am currently visiting family in Chicago. This visit always turns into a food-a-thon, and that is great fun. While going through the pantry looking for something, I happened upon a sleeve of large rice paper wrappers which had seen better days. We had had a salad the night before and there was some fresh spinach left. I had to do a run to the grocery store and picked up some curly kale for another salad. While putting things away into the fridge, I saw a half block of feta and some unopened dill and realized that there was enough of everything to make filling for spanakopita and figured I would try it with the rice paper bits for Happy Hour nibbles. It worked. Lo and behold, I give you rice paper treats.

The fixings. This made 12 squares.

First, I chopped the spinach and kale really finely. You can probably do the same in a food processor, but I didn’t want to take out another appliance. Get the greens as fine as you can and then squeeze out as much liquid as you can to get a dry mix.

Chop the scallion, garlic, and dill and add to the spinach/kale bowl. Season with salt and pepper to taste and mix.

Add the egg and stir all together.

Crumble the feta (use as much as you want, I used about 1/4 block) and add to the entire mix. Stir to combine. If you want to taste, make a small patty and cook to make sure you have all the seasonings ok. A grate or two of nutmeg would go really well with the greens, I forgot to add but you will do better.

Now, set a dinner plate aside and add some water. Take a second dinner plate or a tray and spray or brush with oil. Take a rice paper sheet and place on the water plate for a few seconds. Flip the sheet and let sit for another few seconds. Take out and place on your board. Add a spoonful of the mix to the part of the sheet closest to you like so.

You can see that the paper is damp. That is what you want. The damper it is, the easier it is to roll. Starting at the bottom, fold the paper over the mix, then fold the two sides over and roll and flatten, much like you would do with a burrito. Place on the oil plate. Repeat until you have finished the filling or run out of paper. I forgot to take a foto of the wrapped square, but you will see in the finished product below.

Oil a non stick pan and place the squares over medium heat. They will get crispy and the interior will cook. Flip after a few minutes, that depends on how brown you want the exterior or how many people are hovering over you as you cook. I made 12. As I was taking them out of the pan, they were eaten. I had to move fast to get a finished picture!

I made a quick dip with some yogurt and the scallion tops that were left and that was it!

Why do I love this and why will I make it again? It’s easy. It tastes good. I always have rice paper sheets and you should too, they can be used for so many things, cooked and uncooked! Everyone loves hot crispy things. And it is so much easier than making with phyllo because you do not have to wait 24-48 hours for the phyllo to defrost. You don’t have to keep the rice paper sheets covered while you work. It’s gluten free for your gluten free friends. It took about 15 minutes to put the whole thing together including taking fotos to show you. Did I say it tastes good? I hope you try it. If you do, let me know how it goes!

It’s Back!

After a bit of a hiatus, you know, Covid (blame everything on Covid), life, laziness, the usual, I am restarting my bitty blog about nibbles. Those of you who subscribe may be happy (I hope so), hopefully some new followers may appear. With a New Year and resolutions pushing at me, the time seems right. So without further ado, let’s get started

RED WINE MUSHROOM RAGOUT.

This will be an easy start. I made this mushroom ragout with an excess of what I purchased for my duxelles for Christmas Beef Wellington (another post). Fairly simple, but so delicious, I served it along with chicken cutlets coated with garlic breadcrumbs which were made with leftover bread for the same holiday. You can serve it on toasts, topped with an egg for a Sunday brunch , or toss in pasta. The world is your mushroom!

Back to the mushrooms. I had an assortment. In addition to chopped and shredded mushrooms, I minced a garlic clove and a scallion. You can use shallot or onion, I had some scallions left so I used them before I lost them. A sprig of rosemary or thyme A bit of chicken stock or just water and 1/2 cup red wine whatever you have. I had some Beaujolais and I used that. Salt and pepper to taste.

Heat skillet over medium high and then add some neutral oil along with some butter (you can use any fat, but add a bit of neutral oil like grapeseed or canola to raise the heating point). Toss in the mushrooms taking care not to crowd. If you can see some space between the shrooms, you are ok. Otherwise, they will steam and not brown (thank you Julia Child).

As soon as the mushrooms start to brown (about 5 minutes or so) add the garlic and scallion. Waiting after the cooking process has started will prevent the garlic from burning. Allow the scallion and garlic to soften and flavor the mushrooms. Toss in the chicken stock or water to deglaze and then add the red wine and the rosemary. It should look like this.

Let the red wine cook down until the sauce becomes a purple color and thickens the dish. Salt and pepper to taste and that’s it.

Not the best photo but you can see the purple hue of the finished product. The wine has cooked off and all you have is the flavor.

So there you have it. Nibbles and Bits.2 for 2025.

3 January 2025

Say Ciao To Summer Tomatoes? Not yet!

In my never-ending attempts to connect with my Italian roots, and in my continued efforts to be a good citizen and not waste anything, I have concocted this recipe after looking at several sites to come up something doable. It is a bit time consuming but read on, it will be so worth it, I promise. Besides, what else are you going to do? Binge watch yet another series on MHZ? Clean another closet? And the beauty of this project is that has a real Zen effect, for me anyway. When was the last time closet cleaning had that effect?

Back a bit ago (September 2018, I guess more than a bit), I did a post on making tomato sauce from scratch using the end of summer greenmarket bounty. This is a kind of an epilogue to that post. I have taken to removing the skins from the tomatoes before actually cooking them down to make the sauce because after doing the pureeing, there was a big mess of skin and seeds and it became sort of a PITA to clean up. The last few times I made sauce this summer, I sliced a cross in the end of the tomato and removed the core at the top and blanched them in boiling water for 10-15 seconds. After that time seconds, I removed the tomatoes and placed them in a bowl of ice water to cool. The skins came off without an iota of trouble, and my cleaning mess was halved.

after blanching, skins on pan ready to cook, dried product

But then I started thinking, there must be a use for those skins. So searched the web and found a myriad of ideas. This encapsulates all of them. After removing the skins, place them on a sheet pan covered either with parchment paper or a Silpat. Try to keep them as separated as possible. If you have blanched them right, the skins will come off in sheets and that will make it easier for you. Place the pan in a 250 degree oven and let them dry completely (the whole process will take 45 minutes to an hour (if you use a convection oven, slightly shorter). The skins will shrink, check them periodically so that they do not burn and rotate the pan occasionally (Some suggested to use the microwave, that procedure did not work for me). Make sure the skins are dried, think Cape Cod Kettle Chip dry. When completely dessicated, let them cool and put them into a food grinder, or use a mortar and pestle to grind. Add a touch of salt if you want. There you have it, powdered tomato topping. With the dregs of the tomato made by your own hands, and the satisfaction that comes from doing good for the earth. Plus the added benefit of sauce which you can freeze for those cold months to come.

Its uses? It is a seasoning. Sprinkle it atop of linguine with white clam sauce for a touch of color. Sprinkle atop sliced mozzarella with a bit of oil, cheater Caprese. Sprinkle in eggs to add zing to omelets.

Or……rim glasses for Bloody Mary’s. Your guests will thank you!

Everything Old Is New Again

Back before the great flood when I was in grammar school, Meatless Monday was actually Meatless Friday. While my classmates were all eating tuna salad sandwiches, my very (as it turns out) forward thinking mother would make us sardine (from a tin) sandwiches with slice a slice of onion on white toast. Needless to say, not everyone was a fan of sardines, plus they looked so weird and had their own, shall we say, fragrance. Didn’t matter to me, I loved them.

Fast forward to current times. One cannot swing a yoga mat today without seeing a story in food magazines, on TV or on line about the huge plusses of sustainable seafood. Guess what? “Tinned fish” are in and in a huge way and fall into that very category. According to an article I just read, those tins that carry products from Spain and Portugal are packed right out of the water and the contents are among the healthiest fast foods to consume. The packaging is irrestible, almost centerpiece worthy for a casual tapas dinner. Finally, you are doing your part to partake of items that won’t destroy the oceans. So here are some ideas to use those products in some cool and delicious (and easy to prepare) ways and still feel virtuous in their consumption.

Some of what I have in my pantry. Back a bit, I posted a recipe for Sardine butter, puree a tin of sardines with a stick of butter and spread on toast or crackers. The same can be done with mackerel. These two fish are not only delicious, but also good for you (hello Omega 3). The tinned octopus and or squid can just be served on a pretty plate with a toothpick inserted for easy eating. Squeeze a bit of lemon juice on top because, why not? My new favorite is that cod liver stuff. Nobu served monkfish liver and the world craved it. This is much cheaper and easier to find and work with. It is almost like a pate. I serve it with a simple salsa verde (parsley leaf, capers, lemon zest, chopped olives if you like, a bit of olive oil and salt and pepper to taste). Spread on a plain cracker. A quick, easy, and fancy bite.

If you want something more substantial, open a tin of your choosing, chop the contents and toss all with pasta. Instant sauce. Want to dress up a salad? Same thing, and the dressing is already made for you, just a squeeze of lemon juice or a splash of vinegar to cut some of the richness.

So where do you find this magical stuff? Pretty much at any supermarket. Check the international aisles not for the products from Spain or Portugal because those countries provide the best of these items. WWW.tienda.com carries many more specialty items from Spain which might not be available at the supermarket. Uber Chef Jose Andres has a line of products as well. Check the web, and you will come up with more purveyors. Search specialty markets in Europe if you happen to be there, you will find these goodies in their aisles as well. I was fortunate enough to have friends bring back a few items for me just recently, God bless them.

At the end of the day, keep a few tins around, and the next time Meatless Monday (or any day) rolls around and you are hungry, break out a two slices of bread, toast them, add a slice of onion and thank my mom. Like I said at the outset, everything old is new again.

Too many onions.

So you finished the holidays, everything put away, and now you have too much of everything including the onions you forgot to use. You could make onion soup, but if you are married to a man who doesn’t really care for it, you have to think of something else before they go bad.

Simple and easy way to use them up that doesn’t include kimchi or pickling. Slice them as thinly as possible and put into a pot with about a tablespoon of butter and a tablespoon of a neutral oil. Add about 1/2 cup water and a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar. Wait on the salt and pepper, their time will come later. Put the pot on a medium low heat and let the water melt the onions without browning them. Eventually all the water will dissipate (thank you for this great trick Jacques Pepin), and the onions will begin to caramelize a bit. Don’t let them brown. Taste for salt and pepper at this point and season to your liking.

Let them cool, put them in a jar, and serve with sandwiches (for the pesky, non onion soup liking hubby) or on toast with or without avocado, on eggs, on burgers, or however you want. Chop and mix with sour cream and make a grown up version of onion dip to serve with chips (Super Bowl coming!). Takes all of 15-20 minutes to make and works with any color onion. Freeze for later works too!

LAZY LINGUINE VONGOLE

Unbeknownst to me, my fish market closed for good and I promised Linguine Vongole for dinner. So no vongole to be had. What to do? Buy the best canned clams you can find and make the recipe without the shells. Here is what you need for two people: 1/2 pound linguine; 2 cloves garlic, thinly sliced; pinch red pepper; 1-2 cans best chopped clams you can find-drain the juices and reserve; 1-2 tablespoons white wine; handful of arugula; 2 tablespoons butter to finish the sauce.

Set a large pot of water on high heat and when it comes to a boil salt to bring taste of the water to the taste of seawater. Meanwhile, thinly slice the garlic, drain the clams (reserving the juices) and rinse them thoroughly to remove any tinny taste. 2 minutes before the pasta is done, in a separate pan, heat a tablespoon or two of olive oil over medium heat and add the sliced garlic. Add a bit of the reserved clam juices (or water if not using the clams, more on that later) to the pan and allow the garlic to steep a bit. This process slows the cooking of the garlic and ensures that it will not burn while you are preparing the rest of the sauce. When the water comes to a boil, add the linguine and cook it to within 2 minutes of the recommended cooking time. Back to the pan for the sauce, add a pinch of red pepper flakes (or to your taste for heat) and stir. When the pasta is done, drain it reserving a cup of the pasta water for use if needed. Add the white wine to the sauce pan and and cook for a few seconds to remove the alcohol taste. Add the clams and their reserved juices to the sauce pan and warm through, no more than a minute, you don’t want to overcook the clams. Toss in the pasta and give everything a good stir. If the sauce looks dry, add a bit of the pasta water. Finish cooking everything together, about another minute or so and taste for seasoning. Add a handful of arugula and the butter and stir, emulsifying the sauce and melting the arugula.

If you don’t eat clams, you can make the sauce the same way just omit the clams. You will need to use more of the pasta water to create the sauce but it will taste just as good. Instead of Linguine Vongole, you will have made Linguine Aglio. If you add a splash of oil to the finished Linguine Aglio, you will have Linguine Aglio ed Olio.

Pour into a warm bowl. Serve with some good bread to soak up the juices. That’s it. It took longer to type this up than it will take to cook! 10 minutes start to finish. Not even enough time to finish a glass of wine! And you won’t miss the clam shells.

Love Apple Confit

Did you know that tomatoes are called love apples in some circles? What better day for this great recipe that is a riff on something I saw in Milk Street Magazine, and it comes together in under an hour. It is perfect for your pre Valentine’s Day dinner aperitivi. It utilizes those pint sized containers of grape or cherry tomatoes that are always around and gives them an elevated status beyond a toss in for a salad. For one pint of tomatoes (a container), you will need 2 cloves of peeled and smashed garlic, 4 Tablespoons of olive oil, a pinch of salt, 1/4 teaspoon sugar, a bay leaf, and 1/2 cup of water. In a heavy duty pot, heat the olive oil over medium high heat and add the garlic. Cook until the garlic is golden, about a minute. Add the remainder of the ingredients and bring the mixture to a boil. Reduce the heat to medium and cook until all the tomatoes have burst, about 15-20 minutes. Stir occasionally to prevent the tomatoes from sticking. After all have burst, reduce heat and continue to cook another 15-20 minutes until the mixture resembles a thick sauce. The oil will come to the top and at that point the mixture is cooked. Set aside to cool. It will continue to thicken. Serve on a slice of good toasted bread for a take on bruschetta with a bit of basil and there you have it. Gluten Free? Just use your favorite gluten free loaf. Or add to an endive leaf. Don’t forget the champagne and a kiss. Happy Valentine’s Day!