Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Farmer's Market Sunday Dinner*


I love the farmer's market and Sunday is the perfect day to go. It leaves you with plenty of time to make an early Sunday supper. This particular Sunday was spent at the Beverly Hills Farmer's Market. Much milder than you'd expect and it came with a pony ride.

So the starter course was the salad made of shaved fennel, red onions, blood oranges, and I used the fennel fronds to make a creamy green salad dressing. The cheese on top is a mild brie. It was all I had otherwise I would have used something a little goopier.

Since there was time, and I had extra fennel, I made a fennel gratin. Just blanche the gratin for 5 minutes, salt and pepper, place in the ramekin, pour in enough cream to just coat the bottom and fill the ramekin by 20%. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes, then add your cheese and bake for another 3 minutes. It's so easy. And delicious. The cheese here was shredded stuff I had in my fridge but I'd obviously recommend a gruyere or something else rich and flavorful.

These are smoked-salt shrimp grilled in the cast iron skillet with various seasonings. My favorite trio for shrimp is salt, pepper, and turmeric. The yellow adds color as well.

My personal favorite of the night was the chicken with roasted vegetables. I bought handfuls of tiny little carrots and potatoes (dollhouse size) at the farmer's market and roasted them all in the oven with olive oil, salt, and pepper.

For the chicken, I got a cast iron skillet really hot with oil, and placed the boneless chicken breast skin side down and applied pressure to the top. I never eat the skin of chicken for obvious reasons but I just had a craving for it done this way. If you really cook it down enough, most of the fat is out of there. By this time the sides of the chicken have cooked too so I added some of the roasted potatoes, a few sprigs of thyme, and some organic pork chorizo. Once everything had time to brown together, I put it in the oven to finish off cooking.

It was my favorite meal in a long time and I can't wait for this Sunday when I can do it all over again!


*gluten free



3 comments:

Michael Stabile said...

All it's missing is some fiddlehead ferns.

The Jerkey said...

Except they're not in season and I've only once seen them at farwestfungi.com in San Francisco.

The Jerkey said...

OMG I JUST got this!! Mike Stabile!!!