Chunky Guacamole

One of the things I'll miss most when we  move back to Romania is Hass avocado. No other avocado has the wonderful nutty flavor and soft, creamy texture that Hass avocado has... And it follows that for a really flavorful guacamole you need Hass avocado...

Here's a traditional guacamole recipe I've been making for years.

Ingredients:

1 large ripe Hass avocado

1/2 Serrano pepper, finely chopped (more if you like your guacamole spicier)

1 shallot, finely chopped

1 ripe flavorful tomato, chopped

one big handful of cilantro, chopped

1-2 cloves garlic, minced

juice of 1/2 lime (to taste)

salt and pepper to taste

Preparation:

Finely chop the tomato, Serrano peppers, garlic, onion and cilantro. Halve and pit the avocado, scoop out the flesh into a small bowl and mash with a fork, making sure to leave it a bit chunky. Add the chopped ingredients, fold them in, then season with lime, salt and pepper. Serve with tortillas of your choice.

Some kind of Château...

Central Market had a French Festival recently, which included - among other things - a French wine sale: 20% off for six bottles or up...

We couldn't resist the temptation (not that we tried very hard). Here's our proud acquisition:

We've already tried two of them. Posting photos here, because they are really, really worth the price (below the $15 mark:

Goat Cheese Baked in Tomato Sauce

This is one of our favorite dishes, if not THE absolute favorite... We first served it at a tapas restaurant here in Houston, and after our friend Aniko recreated it successfully at home, we decided to try it ourselves... It's been a permanent presence on our dinner table ever since. It's a fairly easy dish to make, perfect for a quick casual dinner for guests, too: it's quite presentable without having to spend hours in the kitchen, it only takes half an hour to make, using ingredients that I usually have lying around in the fridge and the "pantry". After experimenting for a while with different kinds of prepared tomato sauces, I chose the most basic tomato basil sauce, this is what I always go back to: Monte Bene Tomato Basil Sauce, available at Central Market. You can prepare your own tomato sauce if you like, but for a quick dinner it's better to have a jar of prepared tomato sauce on hand.

As usual, I tweaked the basic recipe just a tiny bit, to make it my own, by adding sun-dried tomatoes to the tomato sauce. Here's how I make it:

Ingredients (for 2):
12 oz prepared tomato sauce of your choice (Marinara, Tomato Basil, Roasted Garlic, etc.)
4 oz goat cheese (Chevre)
8 sun-dried tomato halves, diced

4 cloves of garlic, crushed (3 will go on the garlic toasts, 1 in the salad)
1 baguette, sliced or  8-10 Ciabatta slices
4 tablespoons olive oil
1 handful of basil leaves
mixed salad for serving.

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Chop the sun-dried tomatoes, then form the goat cheese into a ball, and place it in the middle of a small round oven safe baking dish. Ladle the prepared tomato sauce around the cheese, making sure that the cheese doesn't get covered with the sauce. Mix the sun-dried tomatoes into the tomato sauce, and pop it in the oven, for 20-25 minutes.

While the sauce is baking, prepare the toasted garlic bread. In a small bowl mix together the crushed garlic and the olive oil. Place the bread slices on a baking sheet and brush them with the olive oil and garlic mixture.

Bake the garlic bread for 10 minutes: just slide it next tot he sauce in the last 10 minutes of baking.

When both the sauce and the toast are ready (25 minutes total), remove them from the oven and serve the sauce on the toast with chopped basil and a nice mixed salad: I usually make a garlic vinaigrette adding 1 tablespoon of balsamic vinegar and a pinch of sugar or 1/4 teaspoon honey to the remaining garlic-olive oil mixture.

Serving suggestions:

Asparagus and Chicken with Whole Wheat Orzo

It's asparagus season! And as a fairly newly converted fan I can't resist the temptation, and on every Saturday, when we do our weekly grocery shopping I pick up a bunch from the store.

I've been quite busy lately, so dinner has to be quick and easy... Last night I threw together this light asparagus-orzo pasta (as you can see, I'm now a fan of orzo, too): it's much the same as the mushroom-asparagus orzo I made a few weeks ago, it just uses chicken instead of the portobello mushrooms. I omitted the shallots (truth be told, I completely forgot about them), and added some cherry tomatoes in the mix. Let me tell you, it was delicious!

I'm writing down the recipe quickly before I forget.

Ingredients (3 servings):

0.5 lb chicken breast fillets, cubed
1 lb fresh asparagus spears, trimmed and cut in 1 inch pieces
5 garlic cloves (yes, I know, we love garlic. Amount can be adjusted to taste)
8-10 pieces sun dried tomatoes, sliced
10 cherry tomatoes, halved
1 cup whole wheat orzo pasta
2.5 cups water or chicken broth
0.5 cups dry white wine
1 tablespoon Herbes de Provence
1 cube chicken bouillon (optional)
3 tbs olive oil

Note made on June 29th: last time I made it I used 1 lb chicken and 1 lb asparagus, and 1.5 cups orzo for 4 servings. I left out the cherry tomatoes as I didn't have any, and they turned out perfect that way too, it was a really nice variation.

Preparation:

In a large skillet heat 1 tbs olive oil, add chicken, season with salt and pepper and cook on medium until chicken pieces are no longer pink in the inside (5-7 minutes). Add the wine, bring to a boil, and cook the chicken one minute longer before adding the orzo pasta. Add 2-2.5 cups water or chicken broth, bring to a boil, add chicken bouillon if using, 1/3 of the garlic (optional - I only added them to the pasta because I realized I chopped up too much garlic for the asparagus, but eventually it turned out to be a good idea), and half of the Herbes de Provence. Cook uncovered until pasta is ready, 8-10 minutes, stirring frequently. Meanwhile, in a separate frying pan heat the remaining olive oil, add the rest of the garlic and the sun dried tomato strips, and cook for 2-3 minutes, being careful not to brown the garlic. Add the asparagus spears, season with salt, pepper and the remaining Herbes de Provence, and saute on medium to high until asparagus is softened but still firm and bright green (5-7 minutes, at the most). For the last 2 minutes of cooking, add the halved cherry tomatoes to the asparagus. When then pasta is ready, mix in the asparagus and tomatoes, and serve with freshly grated Parmesan and a green salad. Enjoy your quick dinner!

Chicken Meatball Soup

This is a variation on the Romanian Meatball Soup (ciorba de perisoare), usually made as a sour vegetable soup (chorba) with pork meatballs. Hungarians in Transylvania will tell you that the sweet version of this soup is a traditional Hungarian dish... They're quite similar, but I bet every Central European nation has their own "traditional" version of meatball soup. And who can really say which nation invented it in the culinary melting pot of that region?
 

This is my first attempt at adapting this recipe to our needs: we try to avoid pork and beef in our diet, so I made it with chicken.

I've always loved my mother's version, which uses pork, of course, but I'd have a hard time replicating it here in the States without the home canned vegetables she uses for her chorbas. Admittedly, substituting chicken for pork makes this variation a little less flavorful, but you can compensate for that by adding more spices to the chicken meatballs, maybe using thigh meat instead of chicken breasts.

As always, I don't seem to be able to make a thin soup, I always keep adding and adding ingredients, until one pot can't hold everything, and I need to cook the soup in two pots.
 

Ingredients:

For the meatball:

1 lb minced chicken or turkey or pork or beef or any combination (I used minced chicken breasts)

0.25 cups white long-grain rice

1 large egg

salt and pepper

2 garlic cloves, crushed

1 teaspoon marjoram (optional)

1 teaspoon sweet paprika

1 tablespoon breadcrumbs (optional)

For the soup:

1 medium yellow onion, finely chopped

3-4 carrots thinly sliced or cubed

2 celery stalks (if you can't find celery root/celeriac), cubed

2 parsley roots, cubed or sliced

1 bell pepper (any color will do, I used 1 green and a quarter red, leftover from a salad), cubed

3-4 flavorful tomatoes, skin removed and chopped, or 1 14oz can chopped tomatoes

3-4 yellow potatoes, cubed

1/2 cup frozen green peas (optional)

Optionally, any other vegetable you have in the fridge (such as green beans, white cabbage, zucchini). Chorba is not a very restrictive recipe, feel free to be creative.

1 handful fresh  lovage, finely chopped, or 1 tablespoon dry lovage (don't skip this, this will give the Chorba it's unmistakable flavor). If you really can't find it, use chopped Italian parsley instead, but it will not be as good. 

Juice of 1 lemon (ideally one should use Romanian "borsch", but here in the US you'll have to substitute lemon for it) 

64 oz chicken broth, and extra water if the soup is too thick

1 tbsp vegetable oil (for soups, I prefer sunflower oil, whenever I can get it)

Sour cream, chili peppers, garlic and extra lemon juice for serving (optional)

Method: First prepare the meatball mixture, by working together all ingredients (if you can spare the time, put the mixture in the fridge for a couple of hours, this way the flavors will come nicely together). When you're ready to prepare the soup, first chop all vegetables, then make little, smaller than walnut-sized meatballs out of the meat mixture and set aside. In a large soup pot heat the sunflower oil and saute the onions on medium high heat, until they become translucent (3 min.), add carrots, celery, parsley root and bell pepper. Saute the vegetables about 5 minutes, until they soften slightly, add the chicken broth, bring to a boil, then add the chopped tomatoes and cook for about five minutes. Add the meatballs to the boiling soup. Cook for 10 minutes, then add the potatoes and cook the soup until the vegetables and the meatballs are fully cooked. In the last few minutes of cooking, add the green peas. Just before removing the soup from the heat, add the chopped or dry lovage and the lemon juice. Serve with bread, a teaspoon of sour cream, chili peppers, crushed garlic and 1 teaspoon of lemon or white wine vinegar (only if needed).