The Highs and Lows of Dinner
As I was preparing my shopping list earlier this week, I made a small blunder. I selected the recipe but forgot to list the ingredients I needed, so when it came time to cook it, I was out of luck. I could have called Joe to bring home a pizza, but that would have been cheating, you know? There was plenty of food in the freezer just waiting for a little creativity.
So I turned to my trusty computer and threw a few ingredients into search to see what I came up with. I wanted to use up some tater tots that were sitting around in the freezer, some fresh peppers in the produce drawer, and a bag of frozen shrimp. I really didn’t like the casserole dishes that popped up, but I did like this sophisticated, tasty recipe for shrimp with almonds and amaretto.
Turning back to the tater tots and peppers, I decided it was unnecessary to use a recipe for these ingredients. So I sauteed chopped onion in olive oil, added the chopped peppers until they softened, and mixed in a bunch of tater tots, seasoning with salt and pepper. I covered them and popped them in the baking oven to soften up. Once they were heated through and soft, I mashed them all together, for this very down home side dish that received more attention and yums than the shrimp.
Spontaneity can be a good thing.
Browned Butter
You can tell I’ve made a vegetarian dinner when Joe sits down to the table, and with a forced cheerfulness proclaims, “What a nice, healthy-looking dinner.” Wow, the magic words to kill the kids’ appetites. I even went out of my way to alter the recipe, just a tiny bit, by swapping out the always rejected butternut squash for sweet potato which Louisa suddenly likes. The greens in the dish are escarole, a family favorite while I was growing up, that has never been popular at our table. Oh, and on top you see ricotta cheese, the freshly made variety which is so superior to the commercially prepared variety. Did I tell you, Louisa isn’t terribly fond of ricotta cheese? But a mom’s gotta please herself sometimes, and this recipe looked good to me!
But as we began to eat, this dish moved from nice and healthy to, wow, what is that incredible flavor that makes this dish irresistible, at least for me. You see, the dish really wasn’t that healthy at its core. That’s because there was an incredible amount of butter in the dish. Not just any butter, but browned butter. You take your butter and melt it and let it cook until it just begins to brown, but before it burns. It develops an intensity of flavor, some would describe as a nuttiness, that’s like a French pastry. There was a lot of browned butter added to this dish at the very end. It wasn’t about the spaghetti or the vegetables after all, it was all about the browned butter. Whoa.
And I won’t keep saying to you, readers, “browned butter, yum,” “browned butter, yum,” “browned butter, yum” as I did throughout dinner, because Louisa will tell me to stop it like she did the other night.
Browned butter, yum.
Quote of the Week – September 28, 2011 – Vegetables
“The secret is to use vegetables as inspired ingredients, not something you have to serve for the sake of colour and good health – even though they rate highly on both.”
- Donna Hay in “Modern Classics, Book 1″