What better way to celebrate the birth of a new year than by baking layers of veggies and watching Pixar? For us, the first day of the new year was spent relaxing in jammies, and Ratatouille – the dish and the movie!
This is the first of my New Year’s resolutions to be completed. Continue reading Ratatouille New Year
Yes, today I am the Goddess of Anchovies! As a part of One Hot Stove’s Blog Bites 7 : The Iron Chef Edition, I put on the crown and try using anchovies in two different dishes. Again, I’m tying together the Blog Bites entry with my ongoing love of referring to other blogs, as seen in my earlier “Blog Love” posts.
It all started when I found a blog post with a recipe for Orecchiette with Broccoli and Mushrooms on What You Having for Your Tea, a blog I subscribed to recently. We weren’t eating much pasta at the time, and this dish looked really good and fast. There was just one wee bony ingredient that I was both unsure of and intrigued by – the anchovy.
I didn’t change the recipe much – I just tossed in a few halved grape tomatoes and garlic scapes. It was incredible, and the anchovy was subtle and really interesting. It’s one of those ingredients that seems a little weird, and you figure you can make the recipe without it… which you probably could, but you’d be missing out.
I made this dish twice, and really hoped that I could use it for an upcoming Blog Bites, since the whole point is to highlight recipes from other blogs.
As it happens, this blog bites requires that we choose an ingredient and use it in two different recipes. I added to my personal challenge by requiring that I find recipes on different blogs. In fact, I’m highlighting THREE blogs today, because I took inspiration from one blog and part of the recipe from another blog.
Let me explain.
In the last few weeks, I came across this blog post on Kalyn’s Kitchen, showing a stack of green zebra tomatoes and fresh mozzarella drizzled in Green Goddess dressing. At the time, I was more drawn to the zebra tomatoes, because I love them and hadn’t seen ANY this year (still haven’t).
Jump ahead about a week, and I decide to use anchovy as my BB7 ingredient. I do a quick search of some of the blogs I frequent, and I come across another, totally unrelated blog post highlighting Green Goddess dip, on Morsels & Musings.
Taking the Green Goddess dip recipe and combining it with the inspiration to stack stuff and top it with the goodness of the Goddess, you have my second dish. I stacked grilled yellow and green zucchini, sliced tomatoes and a bit of bocconcini cheese and poured some Green Goddess sauce over the top.
So good!
The moral of the story is that anchovies aren’t only Fry’s favourite extinct pizza topping, they’re also a way to add a special zip to a sauce or a simple pasta dish. Weird, but nice!
My adaptation of the Green Goddess sauce after the jump.