I'm Going to Hide the Leftovers from David So I Can Take Them for Lunch: Glazed Swordfish Kebabs

I'm a bit of a recipe junkie. I have at least a hundred cookbooks and a box of hanging file folders that are bursting at the seams, plus I subscribe to several recipe email lists. I usually glance at the titles and delete the emails, since we can't eat most recipes off mainstream sites, but this recipe from cooking.com completely knocked my socks off. The sauce looks fussy but I put it together in under 5 minutes - the time from printing the recipe to sitting down to dinner was about 20 minutes, not counting however long it took to heat up the grill (this was David's contribution so I don't feel obligated to include it in the total time). I served it with steamed snow peas and white rice tossed with a little olive oil and rice wine vinegar, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to wake up before David leaves for work tomorrow morning to hide the leftovers so I can take them for lunch.   I sometimes feel that the number of vinegars (8) and oils (11) we have are a bit... excessive... but this whole dinner pretty much came from ingredients we had in the pantry or fridge, except for the fish. I'm glad we could do this without completely breaking the bank - imagine my happiness to find that Holiday Market sells single-serving bottles of sake that are just the right size for this! Now that we've made this I think I'll go buy a bottle to have on hand; the swordfish makes it a little expensive for a weekly dish or we'd be eating this *all the time.* Glazed Swordfish Kebabs  1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon sake

1/2 cup GF tamari soy sauce

1/4 cup dark brown sugar

2 1/2 tablespoons grated peeled fresh ginger (I cheat and use the pre-grated stuff for sauces)

3 cloves garlic, crushed (see above re: cheating)

Grated zest of 1 orange

1 tablespoon rice vinegar

1/2 teaspoon sesame oil (the dark Asian kind)

2 teaspoons cornstarch (you can also substitute tapioca or sweet potato flour if you're avoiding corn)

1 1/2 lbs. swordfish steaks  3-4 small zucchini

Combine 1/2 cup sake, soy sauce, sugar, ginger, garlic, orange zest, vinegar, and sesame oil in a small saucepan. Bring to a simmer over medium heat, stirring.  Stir the remaining sake and cornstarch (or substitute flour) together in a small bowl, then whisk into the soy sauce mixture. Simmer about 30 seconds and remove from heat. The sauce will be more glaze-y if you let it cool to room temperature; the original recipe says you can do this step up to 3 days in advance.   Start the grill.

Trim the skin and any dark-colored flesh from the swordfish, then cut into square or rectangular pieces of roughly equal size (1 1/2 pounds - 2 steaks - gave us nearly 30 cubes). Chop the zucchini into thick chunks. Thread onto metal skewers, alternating between the fish and the zucchini.

Brush the glaze over one side of the skewers and put them sauce side-down on the grill. Cover and grill about 2 minutes. Brush with the glaze, turn the skewers over, and grill another 2 minutes. Continue to grill and turn kebabs until all the sides are cooked, about 8 minutes total.

Dinner for an overambitious day: Chicken with Sumac

I can tell that autumn is approaching because we've started cooking ambitious meals again. During the summer dinner tends to be pretty minimalist and involve the grill, and most of my creativity goes into creating new drinks to sip while I sit on the deck watching my husband cook (don't give me that look - the shoe fits on the other foot plenty of times, I assure you!).

I'm cooking a pretty significant dinner later this fall so I've been spending a lot of time with my cookbooks, including a bargain-bin gem called The Food and Cooking of the Middle East that I picked up on a whim at Barnes & Noble earlier this year. This particular cookbook has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the upcoming dinner, but I love it because it's full of recipes for food that I've never heard of. I really like Middle Eastern food but many of the cookbooks I come across - like many restaurant menus - seem to cover a fairly limited range of recipes. When I picked this up in the store, I'd never heard of the first 3 recipes I saw. Sold! And it has not disappointed; this may be the first cookbook I make cover-to-cover.

The mad genius I married also loves Middle Eastern food and has really missed the bread. He's been working on a recipe that makes a really fine approximation of a thick, chewy pita so it only makes sense go cook dinners that go with it (and give him an excuse to keep making it - this is not going to be for special occasions only). The first time he made pita we wildly underestimated the amount of time/energy/mess this would require; we looked at the flour coating every single surface in our kitchen and decided that the dinner part of dinner needed to be a lot less ambitious. Chicken to the rescue! This recipe calls for wrapping the bread around the chicken and eating it like a sandwich, but the GF pita isn't quite as pliable as the wheat kind so we just piled everything on it and ate it like a pizza.

We went from Hungry Panic Mode to sitting at the table in just about 25 minutes - highly recommended for those times when your ambition has exceeded your limits and everybody just wants to eat.

Chicken with Sumac 

 2 tbsp olive oil
2 onions, sliced
3 cloves garlic, crushed
1 lb boneless skinless chicken, cut into thin strips
2-3 tsp sumac (bought at our local Middle Eastern grocery' I don't think you're likely to find this in the spice aisle of Kroger. But I could be wrong.)
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground allspice
1 lemon, juiced
salt and pepper
1 small bunch parsley, chopped
pita
plain Greek yogurt for serving (optional but tasty)

Heat the olive oil in a large skillet and add the onions. When they start to soften, add the garlic and continue cooking until the onions are very soft and golden brown, about 10 minutes. Add the chicken and sumac to the pan and cook, stirring constantly, about 2-3 minutes. Season with salt and pepper and add the cinnamon, allspice, and lemon juice; cook another 5-10 minutes until the chicken is completely cooked (this goes faster if you've cut the chicken into thinner strips).

Serve the chicken on or next to your pita bread; you may want to warm the bread in the oven while the chicken is cooking. Garnish with the parsley and a dollop of yogurt.

Breakfast for the Health-Challenged: Scrapple That Won't Gross You Out

We spent last week at my parents' cottage up north, in a teeny little cabin with a teeny little kitchen. It's right on a lake and there is really nothing quite like sitting in the early-morning quiet, sipping a cup of coffee and watching the sun rise while the kids sleep off the previous day's epic playground session. I love mornings like that. They always make me think that the maid will be around shortly with my breakfast tray. 

Alas, this is my *actual* life, so breakfast was up to me. Breakfast is the hardest meal of the day in our gluten-free, dairy-free, nightshade-free house - no toast, no pancakes, no waffles, no hash brown, no tomatoes, no cheese, no milk.....it's a bummer. I usually end up eating leftovers from dinner sometime mid-morning (though I'll eat any breakfast that's put in front of me. I just don't want to go through the effort of producing it). 

I vaguely recalled reading a recipe for scrapple some time ago and thinking it sounded tasty. In doing a spot of research for this blog, I looked up scrapple and was promptly grossed out (seriously, don't look at the Wikipedia entry. Eeew. I assure you, I would not serve hog offal under even the most post-apocalyptic circumstances). 

There are a few more-complicated versions of this that I'd be happy to try some weekend when I have a full-size kitchen to play around in; for the time being, this is my Cheater's Scrapple, which takes an absolute minimum of time and attention in the morning and makes my kids think I'm a breakfast superhero. I think there are some variations on this particular theme coming up - maybe some chopped sauteed onions, or a bit of cheese, or polenta in place of grits. 

Cheater's Scrapple

1 cup quick-cooking grits

3 cups water

1/2 lb. good-quality bulk breakfast sausage 

Salt and pepper

Olive oil (for frying)

Maple syrup (optional, for serving) 

Bring the water to a boil in a medium saucepan and stir in the grits. Cook about 5 minutes, stirring frequently so it doesn't get lumpy. Brown 1/2 lb. good-quality pork breakfast sausage in a skillet. 

Combine the cooked grits and the sausage, season with salt and pepper, and pour into a loaf pan. Refrigerate overnight. 

In the morning, cut the loaf into 1/2-inch thick slices and fry in olive oil until lightly browned and crispy (this is also good cooked in bacon fat). Fantastic served with a drizzle of maple syrup, and also very tasty with a poached egg on top.