Monthly Archives: September 2015

Main Course: Fish

End-of-Summer Squid Salad with Potatoes & Green Beans

My mom usually served her seafood salads with a side of boiled potatoes: the brininess of the lemony dressing from the seafood gave the potatoes a delicious flavor. So when I make a seafood salad, I usually boil a few potatoes to drag through the lemony dressing. The salad I made last week is much simpler than my mother’s (no mussels, shrimp, or octopus), and comes together in minutes.

If you can find small squid, it will be much more tender than larger squid. Most seafood salads call for cooking the seafood in white wine; my trick is to boil the squid in the water from the potatoes after I pull out the potatoes. It not only saves a pot, it gives the squid a sweeter flavor and helps it emerge extra-moist. Remember that with squid, you can either flash-cook it until it just curls and turns opaque, or you can slow-cook it for about 45 minutes until it becomes super-soft. Anything in between yields tough, rubbery squid. This recipe is of the flash-cook variety.


Serves 2 as a main course, 4 as an appetizer

  • 1/2 pound young boiling potatoes, scrubbed (a variety of colors is fine)
  • 1 tablespoon plus 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 pound green beans, ends trimmed
  • 1 pound baby squid, tubes cut into thin rings
  • juice of 1 lemon
  • 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
  • 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
  • 1/8 teaspoon chili flakes
  • 1 garlic clove, minced
  • 1 tablespoon minced Italian parsley

Place the potatoes in a 3-quart pot. Cover with cool water and add 1 tablespoon of the salt. Bring to a boil and cook until tender when pierced with a knife, about 20 minutes for small potatoes and 40 minutes for larger potatoes. Remove from the pot and reserve the boiling water. Slice the potatoes in half and place on a platter, cut side facing up.

Return the potato boiling water to a boil. Add the beans to the boiling water and cook 5 minutes, or until crisp-tender. Remove from the pot and reserve the boiling water. Shock the beans under cool water and drain; blot dry and place next to the potatoes on the platter.

Return the potato boiling water to a boil. Add the squid and cook 1 minute, or until the tentacles curl and the squid rings turn opaque. Drain and place on the platter next to the potatoes and green beans.

In a small bowl, whisk together the lemon juice, olive oil, pepper, chili flakes, garlic, and parsley. Stir in the remaining 1/2 teaspoon of salt. Pour over the potatoes, green beans, and squid. Toss gently and serve warm, cutting the potatoes and beans on your plate into bite-size pieces as you eat.

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Fresh Pasta

Stringozzi with Roasted Poblanos, Corn, & Chorizo

The ingredients for this pasta sauce are hardly Italian, but the concept (clean, bright flavors) is very much Italian in spirit. As often happens in summer, there are so many vegetables to use up, and a pasta sauce is a great way to transform summer’s bounty into a memorable meal in relatively little time. Poblanos mellow when roasted, their smoky heat perfectly offset by corn’s sweetness and chorizo’s bold, porky taste. We love the Palacios brand of chorizo imported from Spain, and a little goes a very long way.

Stringozzi are a thick cousin of tagliatelle, made in Umbria and sauced with grated black truffles, fresh tomatoes, or whatever inspires the cook at the moment. To make stringozzi, we roll out our all-purpose semolina flour and egg pasta into sheets, stopping at the third setting on the pasta machine so the sheets are nice and thick, then cut the sheets into noodles with the linguine attachment; the result is a resilient, toothsome noodle very much like stringozzi. If you don’t have fresh pasta on hand, or don’t feel like making your own, opt for a chewy, ridged noodle like rigatoni or penne rigate instead.

Serves 2 as a main course, 4 as an appetizer

  • 2 poblano peppers, halved and seeded
  • 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
  • 2 garlic cloves, minced
  • 1 ounce chorizo imported from Spain, casings removed, minced
  • 1 ear fresh corn, shucked, kernels scraped off
  • 2 tablespoons plus 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
  • 1/2 cup water
  • 1/2 pound stringozzi or other pasta
  • 1/2 cup freshly grated Pecorino Romano

Make the sauce: Preheat the broiler. Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil and place the pepper halves, cut side down, on the foil. Slip under the broiler and broil 5 to 8 minutes, or just until starting to blacken; don’t overdo it or you will have a really tough time peeling off the skins, as poblanos are very thin-skinned. Wrap in the foil and set aside until cooled. Unwrap, slip off the skins, and cut into fine dice.

Place 1 tablespoon of the olive oil in a deep, wide skillet large enough to accommodate the pasta later. Add the garlic, chorizo, corn, and poblanos. Set over medium heat and cook, stirring once in a while, until the corn is soft and the chorizo has rendered its fat and turned the sauce orange, about 5 minutes. Season with 1/4 teaspoon of the salt and all the pepper, and splash in 1/2 cup of water; cook another 3 minutes, or until the water has reduced by half. Remove from the heat.

Meanwhile, bring 3 quarts of water to a boil. Add the remaining 2 tablespoons of salt. Drop in the pasta and cook until al dente, reserving about 1 cup of the pasta cooking water.

Add the pasta to the skillet. Saute over high heat for 1 minute, stirring in the Pecorino and thinning out the sauce as needed with some of the reserved pasta cooking water. Stir in the remaining 2 tablespoons of olive oil, adjust the seasoning, and serve hot.

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