I am a big fan of new traditions. And I am even a bigger fan of Sunday dinner. So why not make Sunday dinner a tradition again??

Making a huge Sunday dinner was what cultivated my love for cooking. When I lived in Atlanta is 2005, we would spend the better part of the day after my long runs in the kitchen getting a fantastic dinner together for family and friends. I learned all sorts of culinary skills, developed my palate and enjoyed some seriously good eats. When I moved away, Sunday dinners ceased to be something that I routinely did. It downright sucked. I have longed to be in a place for long enough to resurrect it.

Recently, I finally got my wish. The Baker (enter stage right) and I, decided that we should start making Sunday dinners on a regular basis. The idea developed when I mentioned that we had received our shipment of wine from Italy and insisted The Baker experience they profoundness that is Vin Santo. We started with the dessert wine and worked backwards to develop a menu. Italian was a must, to go with the Italian dessert wine. Biscotti for dipping in the Vin Santo as they do in Italy. I let The Baker cover dessert since well, just seems a little obvious…. I decided to consult the family collection of cookbooks here and stumbled upon load of delicious recipes that would have worked. One that stood out to me was Braised Tun with Tomato, Garlic and Mint in Italian Slow and Savory by Joyce Goldstein. I had never braised tuna, so I was absolutely taken with the recipe.

We converged at the house on a Sunday afternoon and put our culinary brains, skills and taste buds to work. Though a multitude of culinary sins were committed between the two of us for a whole host of reasons (I blame the bottle of Grgich we opened up while cooking), the outcome was absolutely delicious. We ended up with incredibly flavorful and perfectly cooked tuna. The quick tomato sauce I made to braise the tuna in was chunky and the mint, garlic combination provided a powerfully complex combination. I was delightfully surprised. The Baker took lead on the sides and made a herb salad with homemade green goddess dressing and roasted and stuffed red bell peppers, filled with wild rice and Italian goat blue cheese. My job felt easy once the tuna was in and braising away.

We plated up everything, poured more crisp Grgich Chardonnay and I grabbed my camera for a few shots. The Baker didn’t even flinch at my desire to photograph my food and even expertly held the plate with just the right light. He explained he had “a little” experience with people taking food photography and I laughed. Once the food hit our taste buds we were not disappointed. It looked, smelled and tasted delicious.

Dessert was an experience. He brought both “real” and gluten free biscotti and as good our meal was, the Vin Santo was definitely the star of the show. Not to sweet, very complex, absolutely delightful.

Sunday dinners make me happy. It is a nice way to end the weekend, cooking at home for family and friends. I hope to continue the tradition as often as possible.

As for the recipe I tried, I recommend you go grab yourself a copy of Italian Slow and Savory. I have now made several recipes from this book and it absolutely doesn’t disappoint!

Maybe its because I was thinking about my good friend Alison Hanks who lives up in Winthrop, who happens to like tuna casserole. Or maybe I had taboo foods on the brain because of Karina’s blog about garden loaf. But for whatever reason, I had the strangest desire last night to make something inspired by traditional tuna casserole. Now, let me get two things straight: I have never liked tuna casserole and I don’t really like pasta, at all. In my house growing up, tuna casserole and green jello were outlawed as my dad had bad childhood memories about those items. Even though my parents divorced when I was quite young, neither of these items were resurrected to the menu. As for the pasta, I ate it growing up pretty regularly but neither my sister nor I really enjoy it that much, in fact I think both my sister and I have an aversion to it because it has always made us have digestive issues (wheat-duh!).

Dijon & chive spiked tuna ready to meet pasta!

But there I was, last night and what did I want? Tuna casserole. Ok, that is not exactly true. I was really dreaming of a tuna melt. My mom makes those all the time- simple: tuna, tomato, melted cheese. I thought about making that but it was lacking creativity and more importantly a predominance of vegetables which is how I like pretty much every meal to be. That is when tuna casserole popped into my head. And the pasta part even sounded appealing. I am talking brown rice pasta here of course. No tuna casserole is worth a massive stomach ache and digestive issues for days.

I began with some trepidation. While the recipe that was in my head was vaguely based on a traditional tuna casserole: tuna and pasta (no cream of anything soup is going anywhere near me!), I wasn’t quite sure where I wanted to go from there or how I would incorporate all the elements in my head and make a delicious, healthy and still light meal. I knew I wanted there to be tuna (and I always mix Dijon with my tuna), I knew I wanted there to be a sharp tangy cheddar (inspired from the tuna melt). I also knew I really wanted to have not only a bunch of roast veg but also a big whack of cherry tomatoes (again from the tuna melt). But I figured I would just prepare the individual elements, combine, hope for the best and adjust from there. And what turned out was magical. Sometimes I surprise myself with my own innate ability to understand flavor and work things together in a way that just simply works. It was a well rounded flavor, each element complementing the next, the texture was perfect and unlike every tuna casserole known to mankind it was both light and healthy. So come of over, try tuna casserole again for the first time. I already convinced you that brussel sprouts are a fast foodie’s best friend, so you can trust me. I am in no ways going to develop an obsession with tuna casserole, but this one in particular seems a particular triumph over the old standard of a heavy, unhealthy blob of cream of mushroom soup, unflavored tuna and boring pasta. Enjoy!

Tuna Casserole

Ingredients:

2 cups broccoli & cauliflower
2 medium carrot
½ tbsp. olive oil
1 can tuna, water packed
1 tbsp. Dijon mustard
1 scallion, diced
2 tbsp. chives, minced
1 serving brown rice pasta
1 cup cherry tomatoes
2 ounces raw sharp cheddar, shredded
salt
pepper
cayenne

Directions:

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Cut broccoli, cauliflower and carrots into bite size chunks, toss with just a splash of olive oil, salt and pepper and spread on baking sheet in a single layer. Bake for 20-25 minutes until the edges of the vegetables are golden and crisp. Remove from oven and set aside.

Meanwhile in a small bowl, mix tuna, Dijon, scallions and most of the chives, retaining some for garnish. Salt and pepper to taste, a small dash of cayenne.

Boil water. Cook pasta according to package. Once pasta is cooked, drain pasta water retaining 1-2 tbsp of pasta cooking water. Add cheese (retain a few tbsp for garnish),roast vegetables, cherry tomatoes and tuna mixture into cooking pan and toss together, allowing cheese to melt and flavors to incorporate. Warm over low heat. Plate in a medium size bowl, salt and pepper to taste. Garnish with remaining cheese and chives and put a dash of cayenne pepper over top.

Serves one as a main, two if complemented by a nice mixed green salad with a lemony dressing.

I am once again about to head out on the road for a bit to San Francisco, DC, San Diego and Belgium, so I decided that last night I wanted to actually spend sometime in the kitchen cooking a nice farewell dinner for my mom. I had to cook a meal to hold her over for a month or two of my cooking. I needed to make something that was not super time intensive, but also didn’t want it to be too easy. I like to exercise my skills in the kitchen just the same as any other skills. I had enough things rattling around in my brain however that I was not able to go strictly original recipes. Instead, I thumbed through the Food and Wine Annual Cookbook 2009 and selected a few for inspiration. Turned out that I only actually followed one recipe strictly, one similar but using a few exchanges and one using elements from several different dishes from the massive 440 page compendium.

It was truly a beautiful spring day yesterday. Like most years, Seattle went from the dark murky depths of winter to a bright brilliant spring, practically overnight. I swear it was snowing last week (ok maybe two weeks ago) and now the sun is shining, the birds are chirping happily outside my window in the morning and the sun comes up early, early, early. Spring makes me carve light and fresh ingredients. Spring makes you lighten up, I always can tell when spring is coming as I stop craving winter veggies and heartier preparations. The roast vegetables of yesterday become the steamed crisp veggies of today. For my salad course, I decided to make Food and Wine’s Green Bean and Tomato Salad with Tarragon Dressing. I halved the recipe actually, though I found it entertaining that that still made a supposed 6 servings. I guess I forget that I eat about 10x more vegetables than the general population. 1 serving under that auspice would have amounted to about 3 green beans, 4 cherry tomatoes and a 1/2 tsp dressing. Ok maybe I am exaggerating but still. I made the 6 servings and that was the perfect amount of food for two people with the rest of the items I prepared. To accompany the salad I also made a Broccoli Soup with Cheddar Crisps, which is a vegan soup (without the cheddar crisps of course) and is incredibly light. The creaminess comes from pureeing instead of cream, so the soup itself is very healthy and light. Even the Cheddar Crisps are surprisingly light and pack a huge amount of flavor in a small package, so you get an intense (and crunchy) cheddar flavor in the soup, without infinitely decreasingly the health value. I made the Broccoli Soup recipe very much my own, but kept the Cheddar Crisps as Food and Wine suggested. Though admittedly, it is hard to change a recipe that has 1 ingredient! Finally, I made a Dijon & Horseradish encrusted Salmon, which was tangy and moist. The soup was definitely the favorite item of the meal and I am looking forward to the leftovers today.

All in all, it felt so great to be in the kitchen. I miss it, I miss my kitchen, my tools. I love spending a good 4 hours a day in the kitchen, thoughtfully making each of my meals, but it is just not a reality right now for my day to day life. Someday, when my job is to cook, write, eat, share and enjoy (and run, of course) then perhaps I will have that opportunity. I hope that happens, I plan on making it so somehow! In the meantime, enjoy these recipes and happy Spring!

Dijon-Horseradish Encrusted Salmon

Directions

1. Preheat the broiler and line a baking sheet with foil. Place the oven rack 4-5 inches from the broiler.
2. In a small bowl, blend the horseradish with the salt, Dijon mustard, italian herbs, ground pepper, sugar and sherry vinegar to form a paste. Slather the paste all over the top of the salmon filets and place skin side down on the foil covered baking sheet.
3. Broil salmon for 6-8 minutes, until the top starts to get golden. Turn the oven down to 375 and bake for an additional 6-8 minutes until the salmon is opaque.

Broccoli Soup

Directions

1. In a large saucepan, heat the olive oil. Add the leeks, celery and garlic and cook over moderately low heat, stirring occasionally, until softened, about 7 minutes.
2. Add the broccoli and stock to the saucepan and bring to a boil. Simmer over moderate heat until the broccoli is tender, about 10 minutes.
3. Transfer the contents of the saucepan to a blender and puree until smooth. Season the soup with paprika, cumin, chili powder, salt and pepper and serve with the Cheddar Crisps.