Monday, August 04, 2008

Another Recipe

This is a pretty weird blog, isn't it? Over the past couple of months, I've gone from nonstop gloom and doom to nonstop berry recipes, with one chick-flick post in between. Pretty soon, I expect to post some more gloom and doom of a seasonally appropriate variety, but first I have a recipe for fish.

The fish recipe is actually seasonally appropriate, too, although that is strictly a coincidence. This week, many observant Jewish carnivores are taking a break from red meat and poultry in commemoration of the destruction of the Temple. DH and I rarely eat meat on weekdays, anyway (and meat is permitted during the Nine Days on Shabbat), but we happen to have tried a particularly good fish recipe tonight, so I thought I'd share it. (See this post for one take on the propriety of eating "gourmet" meatless dishes during the Nine Days.) We started with this recipe, but we used tilapia rather than trout (it was on sale), replaced the half cup of fresh tomatoes with a 14.5-ounce can of fire-roasted tomatoes, and increased the number of shiitake mushrooms. (It's hard to go wrong with shiitakes.) Here's the result:

Fish With Shitake Mushrooms, Ginger, and Tomatoes


1 lb fillet of trout or tilapia, or a similar thin, mild-tasting fish (maybe sole?)*
Salt and pepper
2 green onions, chopped
4 large fresh shiitake mushrooms, stemmed, caps thinly sliced
1 14.5-ounce can diced tomatoes, preferably fire-roasted
2 teaspoons minced peeled fresh ginger
2 garlic cloves, minced
4 teaspoons soy sauce
2 teaspoons toasted sesame oil

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Grease a baking sheet or coat with nonstick spray. Rinse fish, pat dry, and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Place fish on baking sheet.

Combine remaining ingredients in a medium bowl and mix. Spoon over fish. Bake uncovered until fish is just cooked through, about 20 minutes.

*You can also use whole trout, cleaned, boned, and butterflied and baked skin-side down, as per the original recipe.

Two years ago, I posted nine other simple meatless recipes for the Nine Days on the Kosher Blog and rounded them up here. Some of the posts have more than one recipe in them, so you have to scroll down to see them all.

Sunday, August 03, 2008

SHF #45: Berries!



It's been a while since I've participated in Sugar High Friday, but when I saw this round's theme, I had to jump in. Berries have become a minor obsession with me lately (possibly because I was allergic to them as a child). Since early June, I've been eating berries nearly every day—often two or three times—which you might think would have dampened my enthusiasm somewhat, but you'd be wrong. Actually, it would be convenient if something did dampen my enthusiasm a bit. Strawberry season is long over, and the local blueberries are pretty much gone, too; even New Jersey blueberries have been hard to come by as of about a week ago. I bought some raspberries and gooseberries at the farmer's market on Tuesday, but they were gone by lunchtime on Wednesday (a situation that I can't blame on DH, who had exactly one berry), so this recipe is made with strawberries from California and blueberries from Michigan. I'm all for eating local, if you live someplace with a growing season longer than ten seconds.

But enough of that. On to the sugar. We weren't having guests, so I knew I'd be eating most (or, as it turned out, all) of this dessert on my own, so I wanted something light and easy. This recipe fit the bill: it's mostly fruit, and it took all of five minutes to assemble. Another perk: I already had all the ingredients (except the berries, which I'd planned on buying anyway; see above). Taste-wise, there are no surprises: if you like berries, orange, and ricotta (as dessert—this seems to have been a turn-off for DH), then this is for you. Personally, I loved it. As I said, no surprises :)

Berries With Ricotta Cream


adapted from Epicurious
Serves 4 (or 1, if you're me)

1 cup whole-milk ricotta cheese
1 tablespoon orange liqueur [I used Carmel orange brandy, and it was good anyway!]
1 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon grated orange peel
berries [the original calls for 1 pint strawberries and 1.5 pints raspberries; I used strawberries and blueberries] combined with 1 tablespoon sugar and 1 tablespoon orange liqueur [or not]

Combine ricotta, liqueur, honey, and sugar. Let stand 30 minutes (or longer). Top with berries and eat.

Visit Food Blogga in the next few days for lots more berry recipes!

(In case you're wondering: DH managed to get the camera working by some method he read about on the Internet that seemed to involve a lot of smacking. Maybe he'll post something about it on that nerdy blog of his. Anyway, I'm very grateful, but it seems to me that the picture quality has deteriorated somewhat, so if those berries look kind of blurry, that's probably why.)

More berry recipes on this blog:
Berry Sorbet
Vegan Blueberry Ice Cream
Strawberry Shortcake
Strawberry Frozen Yogurt (the recipe is actually here)
Strawberry Cheesecake Ice Cream
Strawberry Rhubarb Crisp
Raspberry Ice Cream