Bluefish Cakes with Sun Dried Tomatoes

I only know one other person besides me who likes bluefish. And he only likes it because he goes fishing for them and he likes the fishing so he tolerates the eating part.

My husband Ed, who rarely complains about anything I cook and will eat almost everything I cook, complains about bluefish and won’t eat it. So I make some for myself sometimes when he is out at dinnertime.

Then, if there are any leftovers I make those into something for myself too because Ed won’t eat any of the leftovers either.

Obviously people do eat bluefish because it’s always for sale at the fish store at this time of year. Granted  this fish is relatively cheap but you don’t eat food just because it’s cheap. Not bluefish anyway; there are other, more popular choices in the inexpensive category.

For all of you out there, unknown to me, I know you’re there, loving bluefish as much as I do — here’s what I did recently with some of the leftovers: I made them into fishcakes with sun dried tomatoes and potatoes.

They were spectacular. Soft inside, with crispy crusts, and that tangy taste from the tomatoes. I used bluefish of course but any leftover fish would do.

Bluefish Cakes with Sun Dried Tomatoes

2 medium Yukon gold potatoes

2 cups crumbled cooked bluefish (or any leftover fish)

1 large egg

1 thick scallion, finely chopped

1/4 cup chopped black imported olives

1/4 cup chopped sun dried tomatoes

3 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

1 tablespoon Dijon mustard

salt and pepper to taste

all-purpose flour for dredging, about 1/4 cup

2 tablespoon butter

2 tablespoon olive oil

lemon quarters

Cut the potatoes into large chunks and cook them in lightly salted water for 12-15 minutes or until tender. Drain under cold water and peel. Mash the potatoes and place them in a bowl. Add the fish, egg, scallion, olives, tomatoes, parsley, mustard and salt and pepper to taste. Mix the ingredients to distribute them evenly. Shape portions of the mixture into 4 patties about 1/2-thick. Dredge the patties in the flour and shake off excess. Heat the butter and olive oil in a sauté pan over medium heat. When the butter has melted and looks foamy, add the patties and cook for about 3 minutes per side or until hot, crispy and golden brown. Serve garnished with lemon quarters. Makes 4 servings

I’m good at indoor plants. Phalaenopsis love me. My Christmas Cactus flowers every year on schedule. The Ivy is thriving. I even grew new Croton from branch roots.

Outdoors? Not so much. 

Whatever I’m doing is not the right thing to do. Every year I plant tomato plants. I get one or two tomatoes at the end of the season.

Like the one in the photo (of two in my garden). 

It’s probably because I plant them too late. I buy them early but I really hate gardening so the plants sit on my kitchen counter for a couple of weeks and they are already in a sad state by the time I get them outdoors.

In any event, two green tomatoes aren’t enough for pie or chutney. And I have enough red tomatoes from someone else’s garden. So I decided to make fried green tomatoes as a side dish. Only I didn’t want to fry, so I baked them instead.

Quite yummy.

Baked Green Tomatoes

2 medium to large green tomatoes

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

salt, freshly ground black pepper, garlic powder to taste

1 large egg, beaten

1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon Sriracha

1-1/2 cups Panko or corn meal

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Lightly grease a cookie sheet. Slice the tomatoes about 1/8-inch thick. Place the flour in a shallow dish. Add the salt, pepper and garlic powder and mix to distribute the ingredients thoroughly. Coat the tomato slices with the flour mixture. Shake off the excess. Beat the egg and Sriracha in a dish. Dip the coated slices in the beaten egg mixture, covering the slices completely. Coat the slices with the Panko or corn meal. Place the tomato slices on the cookie sheet. Bake for 10 minutes. Turn the tomatoes over and bake for another 10 minutes or until golden brown and crispy. Makes 4 servings

Chick Pea and Carrot Salad

Chick Pea and Carrot Salad

I’ve learned that if you serve salads that are colorful, that don’t have the same-old, same-old greens but do contain some interesting ingredients, even people who say they hate salads will eat them. Or at least try them.

A few days ago I posted a recipe for a cauliflower salad that I served at a party recently and was a big hit. So was this one. Lots of people remarked about how bright the orange was and how they liked the bumpy look of carrots and chick peas.

It was intriguing so they tried it. And liked it.

Chick Pea and Carrot Salad

• 1 15-ounce can chickpeas

• 4 medium carrots, sliced thin

• 1/2 chopped red onion

• 1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley

• 1/4 cup chopped fresh mint

• 1 teaspoon ground cumin

• 1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper

• 1/4 cup olive oil

• 3 tablespoons lemon juice

• salt to taste

Rinse the chickpeas under cold running water; let drain and place in a bowl. Add the carrots, onion, parsley, mint, cumin and cayenne pepper and toss to distribute the ingredients evenly. Pour in the olive oil and lemon juice. Toss to coat the ingredients evenly. Taste for seasoning and add salt to taste.

Makes 6 servings

Cauliflower Salad with Olives, Sun Dried Tomatoes and Peas

I like the old favorites: cole slaw, potato salad and so on. But after a couple of months of summer, the same old grilled food accompaniments get a bit boring, so I begin to make more vegetable salads instead.

Ages ago I discovered that cauliflower is one of the good vegetable choices for salad. I love cauliflower hot, any way at all: plain old steamed or roasted with herbs or sprinkled with cheese. But the cauliflowers have been so especially good this year that I’ve experimented using them in whole grain salads and even as the main salad item itself. 

I served this cauliflower salad at a party recently and it went over very well.

Cauliflower Salad with Olives, Sun Dried Tomatoes and Peas

1 head cauliflower

1/2 cup chopped imported olives

1/4 cup chopped sun dried tomatoes

1/2 cup thawed frozen peas

3 scallions, chopped

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 tablespoons lemon juice

2 teaspoons chopped fresh oregano

salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

toasted pignoli nuts, optional

Trim the cauliflower and cut the florets into bite size pieces. Wash and place in a saucepan, covered with water. Bring to a boil, cover the pan, lower the heat and cook for about 6 minutes or until tender but still crispy. Drain and place the pieces in a bowl. Add the olives, sun dried tomatoes, peas and scallions. Pour the olive oil over the vegetables and toss. Pour in the lemon juice and sprinkle in the oregano. Toss ingredients to distribute them evenly. Sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste. Mix in pignoli nuts if desired. Let rest for at least 15 minutes before serving. Makes 6 servings

Grilled Sardines

Kids grow up believing all sorts of stuff. Like my niece, who thought french fried potatoes came from a box in the freezer.

Okay, she was only 6 years old. She stayed over at my house and I made french fries for dinner. From potatoes. And when her Mom and Dad came to pick her up one of the first things she told them was that “Aunt Ronnie makes french fries from a potato.”

It was an understandable mistake and I made a similar one when I was a kid.

I thought sardines came from a can. My mother, who loved sardines, ate them once or twice a week. I remember she made a big deal about opening the can, which had a thin metal top that you had to use a key to roll open. 

I didn’t realize then that there were real sardines, in the fish store, that you could cook and eat. But after I did, and grilled a few, I understood that they were a completely different item than canned sardines.

I like canned sardines.

But I love fresh sardines. 

Grilling sardines couldn’t be easier. We eat them as an appetizer, but you could certainly make more and have them for dinner.

By the way, fresh fish is monumentally expensive these days. But not sardines.

Grilled Sardines

8 fresh whole sardines

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 teaspoon dried oregano

salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste.

one lemon, cut in half

Preheat an outdoor grill or oven broiler to medium. Coat the fish with the olive oil. Sprinkle with oregano, salt and pepper. Grill the fish for 2-3 minutes per side or until crispy and cooked through. Squeeze the fish with fresh lemon juice and serve. Makes 4 appetizer servings

Blueberry Crumb Cake

Blueberry Crumb Cake

The blueberries are so fat and gorgeous now that last week I baked a Blueberry Crumble Pie and this weekend I had to bake this Blueberry Crumb Cake.

My Dad once planted a blueberry bush in our backyard and we were all thrilled the first summer we saw those little fruit things thriving, somehow escaping that rabbit, the one who nibbled all my parents’ strawberries. Those blueberries had that grayish-sheen skin and kiwi green inside that tells of great fruit. They were plump and sweet but also tart.

Perfect for cake. Which my mother made. Like this one, only she used a traditional streusel top and I changed that to get a more crumbly crust-type top.

Blueberry Crumb Cake

Crumb Layer:

• 1/2 cup unsalted butter

• 3/4 cup all-purpose flour

• 1/2 cup brown sugar

• 1/3 cup quick oats

• 1/2 cup finely chopped nuts

• 1 teaspoon cinnamon

• 1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

Melt the butter and set it aside to cool. Place the flour, brown sugar, oats, nuts, cinnamon and nutmeg in a bowl and mix until well blended. Pour in the butter and blend it in. Let cool for 4-5 minutes, then crumble the mixture using your fingers. Set aside.

Cake:

• 1/2 cup unsalted butter

• 2 cups flour

• 1/2 cup sugar

• 1 tablespoon baking powder

• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda

• 1 teaspoon salt

• 2 large eggs

• 1 cup milk

• 1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

• 2 cups blueberries

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease a 9-1/2-inch springform pan. Melt the butter and set it aside to cool. Combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt in the bowl of an electric mixer. In another bowl, combine the eggs, milk, vanilla extract and melted butter. Pour the liquid ingredients into the dry ones and stir only to combine: do not overbeat. Turn the batter into the prepared pan. Top with the berries and press them down into the batter gently. Cover with the crumb layer. Bake for about 50 minutes or until a cake tester inserted into the center comes out clean.

Makes one cake serving 8-10

Blueberry Pie with Oat-Coconut Streusel

I find this very difficult to believe, but there are actually some people in my family who don’t like pie.

Huh?

For me, pie is the ultimate dessert. Tender, crumbly golden brown crust. Just a little sweet and with enough salt, fresh fruit and maybe a hint of seasoning. Pie isn’t fancy and doesn’t need to be.

So who could not like it?

Once I asked my husband Ed why he didn’t eat my pie. I thought maybe it was because he grew up in a cake-and-canned-fruit-for-dessert house.

But he told me that he doesn’t like the top crust. He would eat pie if it had a streusel top.

I made those of course, but the problem with a standard, flour-based streusel top is that if you don’t eat the pie right away — like in my case, I bake a half dozen at a time when I can get good fruit — and you freeze it, then the streusel gets all soggy. And unlike regular pie-crust pie, it never bakes back crumbly and crispy. It looks awful too.

Recently I figured out a way to make a pie with a streusel type top that you can actually refrigerate or freeze and it will stay (or reheat to) crisp and crumbly: use a mixture designed for a fruit crisp. These bake properly because they usually contain ingredients (like nuts and oats) that create a firm texture.

As this one did.

I made this blueberry pie with a top crust that I’ve used for fruit crisp. This pie is the best of both worlds: a bottom crust and pie shape for those of us who adore real pie and a top crunchy streusel crust that stays crispy for those who prefer fruit crisp.

Blueberry Pie with Oat-Coconut Streusel

• 1 recipe Oat-Coconut Streusel (see below)

• 5 cups blueberries

• 1/2 cup sugar

• 5 tablespoons flour

• 3/4 teaspoon cinnamon

• 1/4 teaspoon salt

• 2 tablespoons lemon juice

• 1 9-inch unbaked pie crust

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Prepare the Oat-Coconut Streusel and set aside. Mix the blueberries, sugar, flour, cinnamon, salt, and lemon juice in a large bowl. Pour the blueberry filling into the pie crust. Cover with the streusel. Bake about one hour or until top is golden brown.

Oat-Coconut Streusel

• 1/2 cup flour

• 1/2 cup grated coconut

• 1/2 cup old fashioned oats

• 1/2 cup chopped nuts

• 1/4 cup brown sugar

• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

• 6 tablespoons melted butter 

Place the flour, coconut, oats, nuts, brown sugar and cinnamon in a bowl and toss ingredients to distribute them evenly. Pour in the melted butter. Mix until the dry the ingredients are covered with the melted butter. 

Watermelon Granita

I never would have made watermelon granita, not in my entire life.

BUT, when the Kosher Connection group of bloggers decided to do a recipe swap — prepare a recipe from someone else’s site — and some automatic machine or other chose whose site we had to get the recipe from, it turned out that the pick for me was Tribes-A-Dozen, run by the very talented Leah Hadad, whose specialty is baking.

In fact, her site promises (and delivers) recipes for “the kind of bread your great-grandmother used to make (she of the handed down recipe).”

Not only does Leah have some awesome recipes on her site, she now sells Voila! Hallah bread mixes.

I bake sometimes, usually pie or banana bread or muffins. Not yeast breads. That takes a special talent and time and I don’t have either. Except for maybe challah, which is also Leah’s ultimate specialty. 

My grandma did hand down a great, award-winning recipe for challah and frankly I can’t imagine making a different one. And I couldn’t make and match the other breads on her blog. So I searched around for something else and found her recipe for Watermelon Granita, which is not only lightly sweet and great tasting, it is also perfectly refreshing on a hot summer day, and if you live near me in the northeast and living it out in one of the worst heat waves ever, is a splendiferous thing to eat.

I followed Leah’s recipe for Watermelon Granita, but I changed her call for some vanilla sugar into a small amount of extract. I am also presenting it here edited in the style I use. This stuff is really a terrific treat, a summertime special and I’m kind of glad I went through this process to find, make and enjoy a recipe that I never otherwise would have made.

The recipe is below. And btw, if you want to enter a contest to win a beautiful and useful Emile Henry product (Bread Cloche OR Dutch Oven) that goes hand in hand with our recipe swap, click here.

Watermelon Granita (from Leah Hadad at Tribes-A-Dozen)

10 cups cubed watermelon (about 1-inch cubes)

2/3 cup sugar

2/3 cup water

1/4 cup lemon or lime juice

pinch kosher salt

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Place the watermelon cubes in a food processor (you may have to do this in parts) and process until the fruit is pureed. Strain the puree through a sieve into a non-reactive bowl, pressing down to extract as much pulp as possible. Place the sugar and water in a saucepan, bring to a boil and stir to dissolve the sugar. Remove the pan from the heat. Stir in the juice and salt. Let cool and stir in the vanilla extract. Mix the watermelon and sugar mixture and pour into a pan about 14”x10”. Place the pan in the freezer. After 30 minutes, scrape the sides that have frozen slightly, to crush the ice particles. Repeat this every 30 minutes another 5-6 times or until the mixture is completely frozen into particles. Makes 12 servings

An InLinkz Link-up

Ataulfo Mango Ice Cream

Quick, before the ataulfo mangoes disappear until next year, get yourself to a market and get some! These are too juicy and sweet to miss. And they aren’t fibrous and stringy like the more common Tommy Atkins mangoes. The flesh is like butter.

If you don’t know what they are, or maybe you’ve been wondering what those small, flat, yellow and sort of oblong things in the bin are (the ones near the other, larger, green and red mangoes) — those are the Ataulfos. They turn from green to yellow as they ripen.

They are so worth buying. As anyone who has ever tasted one knows. 

Don’t waste these mangoes on chutney or pie. They are too delicious to combine with too many other textures and flavors or bury under a crust. Ataulfos (also called “champagne” mangoes because they are suitable for a celebration) should be eaten as is, peeled and nibbled out of hand like a ripe summer peach. Just as is, as they say.

Or in the simplest preparations, like mixed with plain yogurt for a smoothie. Or sprinkled with lime juice and and pinch of cayenne, mint or ginger for a refreshing treat.

Or made into ice cream. Can there be anything better on a hot summer day?

 Ataulfo Mango Ice Cream

2 ripe ataulfo mangoes

2-1/2 cups half and half

1/2 cup sugar

pinch of salt

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Peel the mangoes and cut off as much flesh as possible. Place the mango flesh in a food processor and puree (it’s okay to leave small bits of pulp). Set it aside. Cook the cream and sugar together in a saucepan over medium heat, stirring constantly, for about 2 minutes or until the sugar has dissolved. Let cool. Add the mango puree, salt and vanilla extract. Refrigerate until thoroughly chilled. Mix in a commercial ice cream freezer according to manufacturer’s directions. Makes 5-6 cups

Frittata with Onions, Potatoes, Spinach and Cheese

Eggs are underrated as a dinner item. You really can’t get a better bargain in terms of nutritional value. They’re also easy to make. Most people always have some in the fridge. They’re filling. They’re tasty. They’re versatile — not only can you make them several different ways all by themselves, but you can add a lot of stuff to them for omelets, frittatas and fancy things like Eggs Benedict.

Eggs are also a good go-to food if you are going to be fasting or going on a diet. Because they satisfy but don’t make you feel overstuffed and thinking about your stomach.

Ed and I have eggs occasionally for dinner. Recently I had a leftover baked potato and some spinach that was just about to wilt in the refrigerator, so I used them to make a frittata. I toasted some bread to go with it. I served some mango juice. In less than 30 minutes dinner was ready.

Frittata with Onions, Potatoes, Spinach and Cheese

1 medium baking potato

5 large eggs

3 tablespoons milk, cream or dairy sour cream

1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley

salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

1-1/2 tablespoons butter

1 medium onion, chopped

1/2 cup chopped fresh spinach

1/2 cup grated cheese such as Swiss, Cheddar, Mozzarella, Parmesan or a combination

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Bake the potato for about one hour or until tender. Remove the inside flesh to a bowl, crumble it slightly with a fork and set it aside to let cool slightly (or let the potato cool, peel and dice the insides). Lower the oven heat to 375 degrees. Beat the eggs and milk together, stir in the parsley and sprinkle in some salt and pepper. Set aside. Heat the butter in a sauté pan over medium heat. When the butter has melted and looks foamy, add the onion and cook for 2 minutes or until it has softened. Add the potato and cook for about 5 minutes or until they are lightly crispy, stirring occasionally. Add the spinach and cook for another minute, stirring occasionally. Pour in the eggs and turn the heat to low. Scatter the cheese on top. Stir once or twice, then cook undisturbed for 8-10 minutes, or until the bottom has set. Place the pan in the oven and bake for 8-10 minutes, until the eggs are set.

Makes 2-3 servings