Baked Fish Fillets in a Herb Marinade (p. 382) with Garbonzos kon Spinaka (p. 334)

It seems like it's been a little while since I've done a full dinner -- between the holidays and being out of town and working, the months have been flying by quickly. Luckily, I had a three day weekend this past weekend, so last night I felt rejuvenated and ready to do some real cooking.

I always like fish (or any meats, really) in a marinade and this was no exception. Plus, the marinade was so simple that it only took a couple of minutes to make. Just chop together parsley, a bay leaf, garlic, and a yellow onion very finely. Stir in harissa to create a paste.

This gets spread over the fish and set aside in the fridge for at least an hour.

Cook for 15 minutes and then serve.

This was great, as anything with harissa in it proves to be. It wasn't overpoweringly spicy, it just had a nice heat.


Garbonzos kon Spinaka is Sephardic Spinach with Chickpeas from Greece, and I made it to accompany the fish. Since I didn't soak my chickpeas over night, I decided to do a quick soak method that is recommended in the book. You just cover the dried chickpeas with water in a pan, boil the water for about 2 minutes, cover, and remove the dish from the heat. Then leave the pan, still covered, for a couple of hours.

The actual dish comes together pretty easily -- sauté onions and add the chickpeas and some water.

Simmer for about 40 minutes until the peas are tender. Then just add in spinach and dill and cook until the spinach is tender -- about 10 minutes.

Pour in lemon juice and add salt and pepper.

This was pretty good, though I think I'll go back to soaking my chickpeas overnight instead of quick soaking them. They definitely could have been more tender. The dish is pretty lemony, which made it pair really nicely with the fish.

tilapia -- $6.11

onion -- $.34

Total Cost of Baked Fish Fillets in a Herb Marinade: $6.45

($1.61 per serving)

lemon -- $.58

dill -- $.99 (about half left)

spinach -- $3.09

chickpeas -- $1.69 (it was time to stock up, plenty is left)

Total Cost of Garbonzos kon Spinaka: $6.35

($1.27 per serving)

Spinach with an Andalucian Sauce (p. 336)

I've started to really enjoy cooked spinach, especially if it has some kind of kick to it, like this one does.

This recipe only took me a few minutes to make -- it's just cooked spinach combined with an Andalucian sauce made of the innards of soaked red chili peppers, olive oil, garlic, stale toasted bread crumbs, and paprika. Just blend them together in a food processor until they've created a paste and then stir the paste in to a hot skillet with the cooked spinach. Leave on low heat for about 10 minutes, covered, and then serve immediately!

I really liked this and ate pretty much the whole thing for lunch yesterday. The bread in the sauce makes the dish pretty filling and the heat from the peppers was just my style.

spinach -- 1.99 (on sale!)

Total Cost of Spinach with an Andalucian Sauce: $1.99

($1.99 per serving)

Gratin of Fish and Spinach (p. 376)

I'm starting to run out of regular main course recipes in my cookbook, which is making me nervous. Pretty soon all I'm going to have left are veggies and desserts.

But it hasn't happened yet, and last night I made this lovely gratin which has just a few ingredients -- my perfect recipe!

Sauté freshly-washed spinach using only the water clinging to its leaves.

Separately, sauté garlic and chopped onion in olive oil until they have softened. When the spinach is tender, chop it coarsely and add it to the onion mixture along with salt and pepper and a little bit of Dijon mustard.

Make a little bed of this combination in the bottom of an oven-safe dish and then layer in your fish (I used a beautiful tuna steak.) Top with more of the spinach/onion and bread crumbs, and cook until the fish is done.

I liked the simplicity of this meal and would definitely eat it again. It came together in less than an hour (which is rare for recipes from The New Mediterranean Diet Cookbook) so I was a happy camper! More time for bananagrams with Matt.

spinach -- $3.99

tuna steak -- $6.19

Total Cost of Gratin of Fish and Spinach: $10.18

($5.09 per serving)

Double-Crusted Pizza from Southern Italy (p. 184)

This was my last recipe of the old year (I made it for NYE dinner), and also the last pizza recipe in the book. Sad! The recipes are starting to dwindle!

A double-crusted pizza is more like a savory pie than a pizza, because it has crust on both the bottom and the top, with the pizza deliciousness housed between the two layers. I was inspired by a recent pizza I had from Capital Creations that had a cornmeal crust (that, and the fact that I'm low on regular flour) so I made The New Mediterranean Diet Cookbook's Basic Pizza Dough but used cornmeal instead of whole wheat flour. It turned out nicely.

The innards of the pizza came together quickly -- sauté yellow onion and smooshed garlic cloves in olive oil until soft and then add in your washed greens (I used spinach) until they're nice and soft.

Then add in chopped olives (kalamata -- yum!), plumped golden raisins, and pine nuts and cook for just a few minutes. Flavor with salt and pepper. The recipe also called for anchovies but knowing Matt wouldn't love them I left those out.

Once the pizza dough was ready, I lined a pie dish with about half of it and then filled it up with everything in my skillet. I formed a circle with the rest of the dough and placed it over the top of the pie, brushed it with a beaten egg and cut some slices in it it so that it wouldn't all explode in the oven.

And then into the oven, and out it came, perfect and beautiful.

We liked this. I think I prefer a single-crusted pizza, but this was definitely enjoyable.

Very filling, but enjoyable.

spinach -- $3.29

yellow onion -- $1.00

olives -- $3.90 (some left)

golden raisins -- $3.15 (tons left)

pine nuts -- $4.20 (about half left)

Total Cost of Double-Crusted Pizza from Southern Italy: $15.54

($1.94 per serving)

Roasted Chicken with a Middle Eastern Stuffing (p. 406) and Spinach with Onions and Black Olives (p. 309)

It's been over a week since I've last posted -- the holidays make for a busy time! I've done very little cooking over that week, but I did make a big Christmas dinner for me, Matt, and my dad. I wanted to do something semi-traditional, so a roasted chicken seemed the perfect thing.

On  Christmas Eve my dad and I hit up the Fresh Market in Asheville to get all the necessities. The recipe calls for a 5 pound chicken but all the was left was 3.5 pounds, so I had to make do. I think the guy who helped me was just filling in at the counter, because the chicken was wrapped ridiculously.

Also, when I unwrapped it, the giblets were nowhere to be found. No giblets? What's up with that? They were supposed to be cooked down to become part of the stuffing, but I had to skip that step.

I rubbed down the bird with a mixture of garlic, salt, olive oil, and lemon juice and let it marinate in the fridge for a few hours.

While the bird was getting itself all juicy and flavorful in the fridge, I made the stuffing -- sauteed onions, toasted pine nuts, ground beef, pepper, cooked rice, currants, cinnamon, cumin, and saffron sounded like it would make for a pretty amazing combination. I filled the bird up and cooked her for about an hour and a half altogether, adjusting the oven temperature and basting as needed.

The chicken was amazingly moist and delicious.

We all really enjoyed it, especially the crispy skin that the marinade had coated. I was kind of bummed about the stuffing, though. It was good, but with all that stuff in it I had thought it was going to be the best part of the meal. Maybe it was the lack of the giblets?

With this, I prepared a simple spinach side. Just steam down the spinach until it is super tender and then chop it up. In a skillet, sauté sliced scallions in olive oil until soft and then stir in chopped olives and add the spinach back in.

Add black pepper and red wine vinegar, keep over the heat until the vinegar has mostly cooked away, and then serve.

Matt and my dad were kind of dreading this because neither loves cooked spinach, but this dish was surprisingly good -- I think olives can make pretty much anything delicious. This was actually the first part of the meal to disappear.

All in all, a very successful Christmas dinner.

chicken -- $6.59

lemon -- $.89

onion -- $1.20

ground beef -- $2.59

currants -- $2.75 (only used 2 tablespoons of a bulk container)

saffron -- $7.40 (used a large pinch, still plenty leftover)

Total Cost of Roasted Chicken with a Middle Eastern Stuffing: $21.42

($4.28 per serving)

spinach -- $2.50

scallions -- $.88

olives -- $3.30

Total Cost of Spinach with Onions and Black Olives: $6.68

($1.33 per serving)

Spicy Greens and Sweet Cheese in a Greek Savory Pie (p. 185)

Or, as you know it, Spanakopita. A coworker of mine brought some for our holiday potluck last week and it made me excited to try my own hand at it. I've always loved the flaky filo crust and the spinach and feta filling, so I figured this recipe couldn't go wrong.

First, steam the spinach (as well as other greens, if you like) in their own water. Mine took about 15 minutes for the spinach to get super tender, and then I put it in a colander and squeezed all the excess water out.

Next, sauté minced onions and scallions until soft and add them to the bowl of spinach.

Add in minced dill and parsley, eggs, feta, ricotta, parmigiano reggiano, and dry bread crumbs, stirring thoroughly between each ingredient.

The assembly of the individual pies was the hardest part. I read the directions twice, but still managed to assemble them incorrectly for my first batch. They were a little funny looking.

The second time around I got it pretty much right -- lightly oil the sheet of filo, fold it in half lengthwise, and then add a blob of the mixture into one corner and fold it up like a flag. Paint each triangle down with a little more olive oil.

Tada!

Bake for 20 minutes, until lightly brown, and then enjoy!

These were perfect. I'll make them again, for you.

spinach -- $2.50

scallions -- $.88

onion -- $1.21 (only used half)

frozen filo dough package -- $3.69 (only used half)

ricotta -- $2.59

dill -- $1.99

Total Cost of Spicy Greens and Sweet Cheese in a Greek Savory Pie: $12.86

($.86 per serving with 1 per serving)

Kousbariya (p. 370) and Ligurian Spinach with Golden Raisins and Pine Nuts (p. 335)

Kousbariya is Lebanese Fish Baked in a Tomato-Cilantro Sauce, and was the perfect chance for me to use the grouper fillets that I cut on Friday. I lightly dusted the fish with flour and placed them into a skillet that had been pre-heated with olive oil, so that the oil was almost steaming.  I fried the fish for a couple of minutes on each side and then removed it from the oil.

I wiped the frying oil out of the pan and added in fresh oil  to sauté the onion and garlic in. Once they were soft, I added in tomatoes that had been seeded and chopped, and continued to simmer until the sauce had thickened. Then I just stirred in cumin, cilantro, and salt and pepper.

The fish went into an oven dish and I poured the sauce on top of it to cook for about 20 minutes.

I loved that the fish was both lightly fried and baked; it was perfectly flaky and delicious. I had this for lunch yesterday and loved it.

With this, I made a spinach side. I've never cooked spinach before -- I always just eat in raw in a salad. Luckily, it's super easy to cook. Wash it thoroughly and then put it in a pan with only the water clinging to the leaves. This took 5 to 10 minutes before my spinach had cooked down, at which point I drained the spinach and chopped it coarsely.

Cover the golden raisins in very hot water to plump them up. Sauté pine nuts in olive oil until they are light brown and then remove them with a slotted spoon. Add in the garlic and onion and sauté them until they're soft. Then toss all your ingredients together into the pan -- the spinach, drained raisins, and pine nuts. Add in salt, pepper, and a little nutmeg, stir everything together, and serve. 

I still prefer raw spinach, but this was good, mostly because it just tastes like pine nuts and golden raisins, both of which I love.

onion -- $1.24

tomato -- $1.23

Total Cost of Kousbariya: $2.47 (the cost of the grouper fillets is reflected in the fish stock I made earlier this week)

spinach -- $2.99

golden raisins -- $2.99

Total Cost of Ligurian Spinach with Golden Raisins and Pine Nuts: $5.98