Bass in artichoke and tomato broth over mashed butternutty potatoes

 

I love, love this recipe from an old issue of Gourmet. The combination of flavors is not unexpected, but rather simple and classic: tomatoes, artichokes, wine, garlic, olives. Yet it still comes together as much more than the sum of its parts. It's crazy easy and delicious, another excellent recipe staple for the weeknight repertoire. Sure, it might seem a little winter-y, being basically a stew, but it's actually quite light.

This is best served atop soft mashed potatoes to sop up all the sauce and avoid challenging the delicate texture of the fish. If I have any butternut squash laying around such as today, I like to use half squash to make it a little more nutritious and interesting (and fabulously colored). I've used all kinds of white fish and can confirm that anything firm and relatively mild will do nicely.

Linguine sugo di olive verdi

So, I have like 900 salted anchovies in my fridge. I need to start using these suckers. The other night during my routine bedtime viewing of Molto Mario reruns, Mr. Batali whipped this up. And it had my name aaaaaaall over it.

If you are an extreme olive-phile such as myself, this will tickle you in all the right places. The anchovy lends a richness, a roundness of flavor that you wouldn't experience if you used olives alone. Without the anchovy, it would be pretty flat, one-dimensional. Like the spaghetti with anchovy carbonara I made the other month, the addition of one little salt-cured anchovy elevates something quite ordinary to complex, interesting, delicious places. Also, don't skip the bread crumbs. I've seen Mario Batali sprinkle them over dozens of fairly austere pasta dishes and always thought, what the hell? Now I get it. The texture makes this a lot of fun to eat, but they're also like concentrated little bombs of the olive oil you cook them in, too. The result is just really delicious and interesting.

Mustard and dill-glazed salmon with cauliflower and green olive pasta

Apologies for the lack of posts, we had wonderful back-to-back weddings of good friends the past two weekends. We're finally home, settled, and tractor shopping so we can get this farm show on the road. Squee!

A quick post to get things moving again. Tonight I made my awesomely delicious cauliflower and green olive pasta with a really quick mustard and dill glazed salmon. The magic of the whole dish is a generous squeeze of fresh lemon juice atop each serving. It's a dish I make frequently that always leaves us happy.

Swordfish Involtini alla Siciliana with whole-wheat fettucini and wilted spinach

Olives. Capers. Pine nuts. Currants. Chili flakes. Mario Batali whipped this up a week or two ago on "Molto Mario", my favorite bedtime cooking show of late. Well, it was almost 10 years ago that he actually whipped it up, but it only entered my consciousness a week or two ago. I found myself sitting more and more upright watching as he grabbed so many of my favorite things, one after another and put them all together!! Apparently I should have been born Sicilian. I had to have it. 

These are salt-packed capers. They're purported to have more of an actual caper flavor, as the ones in brine are essentially pickled. I actually had a hell of a time finding them - they were not at Central Market (the fellow helping me claimed they were out, but they haven't been there any time I've looked over the past several weeks) nor Whole Foods. But they were at the extremely awesome Jimmy's Food Store, conveniently located a few blocks from my yoga studio. There were several brands to choose from, even! And they have salt-packed anchovies too! Now I just need to get the balls to buy some!! Anyway, the capers were great, very caper-y. I do recommend trying to find them.

Buy local!