Rice Salad

I'm known for my Mediterranean cooking and it's what I know best, the flavors are in my bones and my cooking is unthinking and instinctual with  Mediterranean ingredients.  My guilty secret is my equal love of Asian flavors particularly South East Asia.  It doesn't really make any sense because for the two years I lived in Hong Kong as a child I turned my nose up at Chinese food.  It's not something I know in my bones at all.  Still I like to cook with asian flavors at home whenever I can get away with it.  I make sure to always have ginger and fish sauce on hand.  Toasted sesame oil is good.  Then many of the North African ingredients we always have work as well, cilantro, lime, hot chilies.  Todays lunch was inspired by a salad I read about in The Seductions of Rice a wonderful book of recipes involving rice supposedly from around the world but the passion is all in Asia.  The book describes a South East Asian salad of vegetables, fresh herbs, cold rice and lime juice.  I took some leftover fish and added it to the rice, sliced cucumbers and radishes.  Used whole leaves of mint, cilantro and basil as my salad greens.  I made what I consider a basic Vietnamese dressing of pounded ginger, garlic and chili.  A little sugar, lime and fish sauce.  I let it macerate and the sugar dissolve then poured it over the salad, added some toasted sesame oil and there it was a perfect hot weather dish.

Blackfish

Blackfish or Tautog is a delicious firm fleshed slightly pink fish that swims off the Atlantic.  It feeds on tiny sea urchin and crab giving the flesh a sweet almost shellfish like flavor.  So far it's not overfished although it's hard to find outside of the farmers market or Chinatown.  I snap it up whenever I come across it as I think it's really fine eating.  In a restaurant I would probably pan sear the fish in extra virgin olive oil but at home I prefer to broil my fish.  I smear a little olive oil over the top and salt and pepper the filet, flesh side up if its been skinned, skin side up if the skin is still on.  The old adage ten minutes an inch seems to work well.  The top gets nice and brown and crispy and the bottom stays moist and tender.  When fish is fresh I don't really like to add much to it.  Here I plated it over some baby Romaine lettuce and added a couple of spoonfuls of Moroccan style eggplant, a drizzle of Teverina olive oil and a squirt of lemon. 

Bread Salads

the Cretan Salad at the restaurant near my house
the home made version with better Feta, better tomatoes and fresh oregano
Lebanese Fattouche 

Bread salad are pretty common in the Mediterranean,  Tuscan Panzanella with tomatoes, cucumbers, red onions and basil dressed with olive oil and vinegar or Lebanese Fattouche with romaine, cucumbers, radishes, pickles, mint and Sumac dressed with garlic and lemon .  Recently I was introduced to a Cretan version with barley rusks and Feta and capers and olives at my local Greek restaurant.  Of course I wanted to make it better with farmers market tomatoes and fresh oregano instead of dried.  Now I'm on a bread salad frenzy.  I made Fattouche with vegetables from the farmers market.

strawberries

I'm always excited when ramps and asparagus shows up at the market but nothing really compares to the joy I feel when strawberries arrive.  I like to eat them Italian style with a sprinkling of sugar and a squeeze of lemon.

Summer Lunch

I bought too much skate on Friday, so today I made a salad of poached skate, grape tomatoes, celery, Persian Cucumbers and Kalamata Olives.