Weekend pause (mid-day)

Greg Turner — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 15:00:04 +0000

Weekends are tough. Not for dinner. There’s time for dinner. And certainly time for breakfast. Weekend mornings are great for breakfast. A slow prep in a well-lighted kitchen, the house waking into itself. We enjoy the scent of freshly brewed coffee and have time enough to pause and enjoy it. Eggs or oatmeal, French toast or fruit. Lunches, however, are another matter.

In my house we sit down together for dinner nearly every evening, even weekends. In fact, Sunday dinners are one of my favorites; I have time enough in the kitchen to really cook. But lunch is often a solitary affair, each of us cobbling together nourishment from a hodge-podge of ingredients and scarfing it down between morning laundry and afternoon errands.

I think it might be time to stop the rush, to pause a moment and enjoy the mid-day meal. To make something worth eating. Worth enjoying. It doesn’t have to be complicated or fancy, and it doesn’t have to take forever. Indeed, it can’t. It just has to be good. Sunday’s lunch fit the bill nicely, based on a Rocco recipe (I know, right?).

Grilled cheese and roasted red pepper sandwich with fennel salad

Ingredients (serves 4):
8 slices of delicious bread
2 red peppers, roasted and peeled
Provolone cheese, sliced thin

2 medium fennel bulbs, shaved
Fennel greens, plucked and sorted
2.5 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
kosher salt
ground black pepper

Techniques
shave
slice

Method
grill

Begin by placing a pan over medium heat. While the pan heats, cut the fennel. Halve the bulbs, remove the stalks. From the stalks, pick the tender greens. They look like dill. Use a mandolin to shave the fennel bulbs, then mix in the greens.

Make sandwiches using a half a pepper and two slices of provolone for each one. Swirl a pat of butter in the heated pan and lay in the sandwich, cheese side down. Let it grill for about three minutes, flip, then three minutes more.

During the final three minutes, toss the fennel and greens with the olive oil and vinegar. Add a couple pinches of salt and a dash of the black pepper.

The mid-day break was fantastic. Home from grocery shopping I sat in the living room with my son perched in his bouncy chair on the coffee table. He watched me eat and drink and I watched him laugh and play with a plastic bee. Would that all weekends could contain such pause.

For simplicity’s sake

Greg Turner — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 10:32:54 +0000

Fresh citrus fennel salad

Ingredients (serves 4)
2 medium fennel bulbs, greens attached
4 teaspoons lemon juice
8 teaspoons extra virgin olive oil
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1 + 1 teaspoons orange zest

Technique
shave
mix

Shave the fennel using a mandolin or other slicer. Trim the fennel greens and give them a fine chop. Stir together in a large bowl.

In a small bowl, mix together the lemon juice, olive oil and salt.

Using a micro-planer, zest several oranges, until you have the 2 teaspoons of orange zest. Set half aside.

Pour the dressing over the fennel mixture and add a teaspoon of the orange zest. Mix everything together. Your hands are the best tools for the job. Don’t worry. You can always wash them.

To serve, separate into four bowls and top each with a bit of the remaining orange zest.

Kitchen Sojourn » fennel

Weekend pause (mid-day)

For simplicity’s sake