Cold watermelon + Hot day
Food process enough day-old country bread into a cup of breadcrumbs. Mix with three cloves of minced garlic and a 1/4 cup of light olive oil. Sauteé until golden brown. Meanwhile cook a 1 lb. of farfelle pasta al dente. Mix in the breadcrumbs and serve with fresh ground Parmigiano-Reggiano.
Enjoy!
Chicken, roasted with nothing more than a little salt rubbed under the skin.
Hint: take some of the fat from the tail end and shove it under the skin of the breast before roasting. It renders down into the white meat.
Hint # 2: lay some slices of crusty bread in the bottom of the pan as the chicken is roasting. The bread soaks up all the drippings and turns into this amazing chicken-flavored yumminess.
(Good God, am I hungry now…)
My mom raises chickens. My best friend works at a local natural foods store. I sometimes will get a gift of fresh eggs from one and delicious, local cheeses from the other on the same day. At those times, I make what I call my $15 egg scramble. Eggs, cheese (anything from Sweetgrass Dairy is a major plus), salt, black pepper, all scrambled together and cooked in a little butter in my cast iron skillet.
I am not a fancy man, but I do know quality when I taste it.
This may be just a tad over five ingredients, but it’s damned simple, and damned tasty:
Caprese Salad
- Fresh tomatoes from the garden, sliced into fairly thick slices
- Fresh whole milk Buffalo mozzarella, sliced the same thickness as the tomatoes
- Fresh, bright green basil leaves
- Generous drizzling of top quality extra virgin olive oil (I like A L’Olivier)
- Add some good kosher sea salt (course grind, naturally) and fresh ground black pepper, and you’re in heaven. (You could also add a good quality balsamic vinegar, but I rarely find it nece.)
Cold watermelon + hot day + roll kuchen (a deep fried rolled bread from the Mennonite culture) - oh, yeah.
Simple fresh tomato, cucumber, feta, olive and olive oil salad sprinkled with fresh picked wild greek oregano and some soft white Greek taverna bread. Kind of a Greek staple.
kind of an arranged salad. A slice or two of fresh Sheep’s milk feta is the centerpiece, with the salad composed over or around, very simply and unceremoniously comprised… probably one of the quickest salads, too.
Step 1:
Gather - baguette, dijon mustard, roquefort, prosciutto
Step 2:
Assemble
Step 3:
See God
a chicken and jam sandwich is just a lesser, bastardized version of turkey/cranberry sammich, no?
Or peel and slice potatoes and put them in the bottom of the pan. Also, I peel (if necessary) and quarter onions, carrots, and celery. Put this in the cavities of the bird, and around it.
My favorite easy food is roasted red peppers. Char the skin, seal in a bowl to steam the skin off, scrape off the blackened skin, save the juice, add to sandwiches or salads or anything, awesome! Add salt and olive oil.
DIY Lentil Gumbo
- Saute a chopped onion in a saucepan with butter or oil
- Add half a bag of frozen, uncooked shrimp (keep 'em in the freezer for this type of use - easy to defrost and de-tail) - I will also use other leftover meats…
- Add a veggie if you want - okra, zucchini, green beans
- Poor in a can of Progresso Lentil soup
- Add some left over rice - maybe 3/4 cup
I sometimes add some cumin, cayenne and paprika.
Fake Gumbo-licious!
10 minutes, tops.