Dave was up and out early (5:30AM) this morning for military duty. The dogs decided that I should get up too. No sense going back to sleep, right? I fought them off until almost 6 and raised the white flag. At least I wouldn't have to fight for a parking spot at Farmer's market.
I needed the usual things, eggs, potatoes and veggies (asparagus today) and I picked up some chicken from Otis Family Farm while I was there. In addition, I found two very nice surprises.
The first was farm raised rainbow trout. Dave really likes trout. Any time it is the special at the Officer's Club that's what he has. Todd Thomas from Brook Park Fish Farm had already marinated the fish in olive oil, basil and roasted garlic. He told me I wouldn't be disappointed! So now I knew what we were having for dinner.
The other very nice surprise was strawberries! I couldn't believe there were strawberries already! They smelled so good. Yes, you could actually smell them, unlike the strawberry shaped things you can get in the grocery store. I had to have some and I knew exactly what I was going to do with them!
But no dessert before dinner so let's start with dinner.
First the fish. I simply seared the top of it in a hot pan with some olive oil then threw it in the oven to finish.
While the fish was cooking I started the potatoes. Potatoes I bought at Farmer's Market of course. I've been craving sage so I decided I would make range roasted potatoes with sage. I boiled the potatoes in my big frying pan until they were creamy, evaporated off the rest of the water, added some olive oil and the star of this dish, fresh sage out of my herb garden!
Finally I sauteed up some fresh asparagus, also from Farmer's Market in some basil infused olive oil and voila, dinner!
Everything was delicious. I'm still not a huge fan of trout. Don't get me wrong, it was very good. It almost tasted like salmon! Maybe that's because it looked so much like salmon? In any case the fish was good but the potatoes were the best! I'm not sure what I did differently tonight. I've made potatoes that way many, many times before but they were so creamy inside and perfectly crunchy outside and there is almost nothing better than crispy sage! And how can you go wrong with fresh asparagus?
How do you top that dinner? Well, turns out that was pretty easy tonight! I've mentioned the Noble Pig blog before. If you haven't checked it out I highly encourage you to do so. It's been remodeled and is beautiful and very easy to navigate and there are some fabulous recipes!
I've had the "Individual Puff Pastry Apple Tarts with Almond and Cinnamon" on my list of things to try for a while now. When I saw the strawberries this morning I knew this was the way I was going to use them. These little tarts were so simple to put together and would be good with any fruit filling. You just cut puff pastry sheets into squares, add almond paste, a little sour cream, fruit and bake. How easy is that?
I made mine pretty by using my pastry cutter. They are pretty, don't you think? Instead of the cinnamon sugar apples I just macerated those yummy strawberries in a little vanilla sugar then placed them in the tarts.
They bake for about 20 minutes. Served with a little vanilla ice cream they were the perfect end to our Farmer's Market dinner!
No comments:
Post a Comment