Lamb and lettuce stew with Avgolemono sauce

I'm so impressionable that as I was reading Murder in Mykonos I was getting "homesick" for Greece. Granted, my five-week visit to the Peloponnese and several islands decades ago hardly makes Greece a second home, but it left a powerful impression on me. In any case, author Jeffrey Siger's great descriptions took me back and prompted me to break out the ouzo for an aperitif and rummage through Andy Harris's Modern Greek for this recipe. It's very simple, ideal for a weekday and delicious. The lamb is a bit of a splurge, but it's still cheaper than going out for a burger these days.

You take 3 lbs. of boned leg of lamb, trimmed and cubed and brown it in 3 Tbl. of olive oil for 10 min. Then you add 2 "heads" of Romaine lettuce (I used 2 of the Romaine hearts that are now sold in packages), finely shredded; 2 bunches of green onions, finely chopped; and a small bunch of dill, finely chopped, and cook, stirring, for another 10 min., until the greens are thoroughly wilted. Then you add salt and pepper, and water to cover (I only needed 2 c.) and simmer for 1 to 1-1/2 hours, until meat is tender (only took an hour).

You let it cool some before whipping up the Avgolemono sauce. Now Andrea rolled out that word like she was born in Greece, though she admitted she'd never made it, but while I'm pretty sure I've had it in Greek dishes, I'd never encountered it in a recipe before. Anyway, very simple. You lightly beat two eggs, whisk in the juice of 1-1/2 lemon, whisk in a ladleful of the broth from the stew, and then stir it all into the stew and cook over low heat a few minutes for it to thicken. Serve with bread (I used ciabatta in the absence of a decent hard-crust bread).

The lettuce had disintegrated to the point that Andrea asked whether the sauce had been purreed. Nope. A nice, different flavor and a great light stew.

Risotto with caramelized onions and gorgonzola

This was another recipe from The Italian Farmer's Table, also simple enough for a weekday. It is a rich risotto and very tasty. The trick is to caramelize red onions by taking 3 thinly sliced red onions and putting them into a skillet with 3 Tbl melted butter, coating them and letting soften over medium heat for 5 min. Then you add a pinch of salt, reduce the heat to low, cover and cook for about 30 min., stirring occasionally. Then you raise the heat to medium high, add 1 c. ruby port and let the onions simmer for another 25 min. They reduce quite a bit in volume and the liquid completely evaporates.

During this last part, make the risotto. This recipe has you saute 1 finely "diced" medium yellow onion in 2 Tbl of butter in a 12-in. saute pan for 8 to 10 min., then add 2 c. arborio rice and cook for another 2 to 3 min. You then pour in 1/2 c. dry vermouth and let that evaporate before you start to add the 1 qu. chicken broth, ladle by ladle. I don't do risotto often enough and my technique still needs some work. The rice was cooked al dente but too dry; I needed to add more liquid to keep it creamy at the end.

To finish, you stir in 1 more Tbl butter, 1/4 c. parmesan and the caramelized onions. You serve and top with 4 oz. crumbled gorgonzola. It's a great dish if you like caramelized onions and risotto (and gorgonzola!) as much as we do.

Roasted pork tenderloin with grape sauce

Pork tenderloin has got to be one of the easiest, best-tasting cuts of meat to cook, but acquiring it has become something of an art here. Whole Foods gets its delivery on Wednesday, but, as one of their butchers patiently explained to me some time ago, the relatively small shipment of pork tenderloin has to be allocated among all the WF stores in the city.

As a result, the tenderloin is almost always gone by the weekend. This effectively means that if you want tenderloin, you have to shop for it on Wednesday or Thursday. Last weekend, for instance, our first choice was tenderloin, but no dice, so we had to settle for rack of lamb (sigh).

So when I was shopping Thursday I got a single tenderloin for us and tried a simple little recipe from The Italian Farmer's Table by Matthew Scialabba and Melissa Pellegrino, which purports to have gathered home recipes from farms in Northern Italy that host paying guests.

I actually used the roasting technique from Molly Stevens' Roasting, which is the recipe that caught my eye last weekend. She browns the tenderloin on all 4 sides over 8 minutes and puts on a sheet pan to roast at 350 degrees for 15 to 20 min (she actually says 13 to 18) or to 140 to 145 degrees. The other book has you brown it on one side, then turn over, put two pats of butter on the cooked side, and stick the skillet in the oven. Six of one, etc., but I liked the idea of actually browning it on all sides. Scialabba and Pellegrino specify grapeseed oil for the browning and since we had a small bottle tucked away in the pantry, I used that.

In both cases, you salt and pepper beforehand. Stevens even recommends seasoning several hours beforehand, but I didn't manage to do that. Let me parenthetically add that I've become a true believer in sea salt (as opposed to kosher salt) and believe it truly does enhance the flavor. It was Sara Jenkins who made this point forcefully in Olives and Oranges. There are some people who think it doesn't make any difference, but I'm pretty sold on it.

What I liked about the Farmer's Table recipe was the grape sauce. You take 1 c. of grapes (red, green or mix) and put them in the skillet with a little salt for 3 to 5 min., until they start to give up their juices, then you swirl in 1 Tbl honey mustard, 1 Tbl warm water and 1 Tbl chopped thyme and cook together for 1 min. When the tenderloin is done, you let it rest a few minutes, then slice and spoon the sauce over the slices.

The photo in the book (I often start using a new cookbook by taking the ones that are photographed first) showed what looked like sauteed apple wedges on the plate as well. I could have just sauteed some apple wedges but I sneaked a quick peek at a tenderloin recipe in Anne Willan's Regional French Cooking, which she accompanies with caramelized apple rings. You don't peel the apples, but just core them and slice into thick rings. You dip one side in 2 Tbl of sugar and put into a skillet with 2 Tbl butter, cover and cook at high heat for 3 to 5 min., then sprinkle the top side with more sugar, turn over, cover and cook (be careful, the second side cooks much faster and mine got a little dark).

We had with a green salad and a Mondavi fume blanc.

Chicken baked in yogurt with spinach

I haven't done too many specifically Greek dishes and I'm not sure Modern Greek by Andy Harris is as kitchen-tested as some of the bigger names in cookbook writing, but this was a pretty good recipe.

It calls for 4 bone-in chicken breasts (meaning halves of course) that you brown in a skillet where you have sauteed 2 sliced onions in 2 Tbl. olive oil and removed them with a slotted spoon. You put the browned chicken breasts with the onions into an oven proof dish and cover that with a yogurt mix.

Now Harris either has runnier Greek yogurt that I got at Whole Foods or he has cheesecloth that's much more porous, because I got nowhere with his direction to strain 2 lbs (4 c.) of Greek yogurt through a cheesecloth. I don't think a steamroller could have gotten that stiff yogurt through the cheesecloth. I finally was able to strain it through a sieve (and not my finest sieve), though since he gives no explanation of why you strain it I'm not sure what it achieved. Just beating it would have smoothed it and made it more fluid, if that was the objective.

So anyway you add 2 cloves finely chopped garlic, 3 Tbl. all-purpose flour, 2 tsp. dried mint, 1 tsp. ground cumin, salt, pepper, and 2 lightly beaten eggs to the yogurt and mix well. This is the mix you spread over the chicken and onions. You sprinkle 2 Tbl. of grated parmesan (or kefalotiri if you happen to have that) and pop it into a 350-degree oven for 40 min.

As always, these breasts from WF were huge, so I left the chicken in the oven nearly an hour and the yogurt mix was just set and browned. I could only guess how much salt to use in the yogurt mix and I erred on the low side; next time I think I would just salt and pepper the chicken directly after browning. My mint flakes were evidently 10 years old because they contributed nothing.

The recipe also calls for 2 bunches of steamed fresh spinach as an accompaniment. This was great and we had a green salad, too.

Roasted rack of lamb with spiced honey glaze

What a special treat! We liked the double rack pork rib roast so much we wanted to try another recipe from Molly Stevens' new book, Roasting.

For this one, you combine 1/4 c. honey, 2 Tbl. butter, 1 tsp. paprika, 1 tsp. cumin seed (toasted and ground), 1/4 tsp. ground ginger and a pinch of cayenne. You sprinkle the 2 1 to 1-1/2 lb. racks (8 ribs each) with salt and pepper, brush half the glaze onto the racks and put into a 425-degree oven. After 10 min. baste with the drips of glaze and check temperature every 5 min. to get to about 135 for medium rare.

Add 3 Tbl. lemon juice and 2 minced garlic cloves to the remaining glaze in a saucepan, bring to a simmer and reduce to a syrup, season. Rest the racks of lamb then carve and dribble with glaze syrup and sprinkle with chopped mint. I carved double chops and used chopped parsley because I couldn't find mint.

This was a very special meal, which we paired with her vegetable suggestion, quick-roasted sugar snap peas with sesame salt.  You take 1 lb of the sugar snap peas, pull of strings as necessary, spread on sheet pan and toss in olive oil. You roast them about 12 min. in a 475-degree oven, until blistered and blackened in part. You prepare the sesame salt by toasting 2 Tbl. of sesame seeds in a skillet, mixing with 1/4 tsp. sea salt and grinding to a coarse mixture. When peas are ready, put them in bowl and sprinkle with the sesame salt.

For wine, we had a very nice Bordeaux I had been saving for a special occasion.

Broiled salmon with bacon and peas

From Jenkins' Olive and Oranges: Her tip is to broil the salmon fillet skin side up after salt and pepper on flesh side and then brushing skin with olive oil and lightly salt and pepper that side too. It takes about 10 min. until skin is blistered and black in parts and flesh is done through.

For the accompaniment, you render three strips of thick cut bacon at low temperature (in what seems to be a rare mistake, Jenkins gives no direction to cut the bacon cross-wise into strips, though this would be the only sensible way to do it for this dish). After 10 min. add 1/3 c. minced onion and render it for 10 min. You can stop here. When ready to broil fish, add 1/2 c. water, bring to a boil and add 1 lb. sugar snap peas (snow peas) and cook until tender, about 8 min. Stir in 1 Tbl. butter and 1/4 c. chopped mint (I used parsley). Spoon over pieces of broiled fillet.

This was totally delicious and easy to fix for a weekday. You can also use regular fresh peas and I was ready to use frozen peas.

Mediterranean Diet

I'm using diet not in sense of a weight-loss program but in the more general sense of a type of eating. Inspired by the virtues of olive oil extolled in Extra Virginity, and author Tom Mueller's general remarks about the healthfulness of the Mediterranean diet, I thought I would make an effort to focus on this cuisine in the next couple of months.

Not surprisingly, I have a couple dozen cookbooks on Mediterranean cuisine from all the leading authors -- Paula Wolfert, Joyce Goldstein, Claudia Roden, et al. The books range from general "Mediterranean" to Jewish to Middle Eastern and to specific national cuisines like Italian, Spanish, Greek, Moroccan, Turkish. I'm not sure how much of French cooking belongs in this category. And of course there are a number of other trendy cookbooks with Mediterranean-inspired dishes.

I won't be too strict about it anyway. I'll also be doing dishes from other types of books. But I will post these dishes under the "Meddiet" label just to keep track of them.