Just settling in to our new home...and Sandy strikes. After preparing all day Saturday (And by "preparing", I mean shopping at the Park Slope Farmer's Market and hauling a small mountain of groceries home from the Red Hook Fairway. Candles and flashlights were only an after thought. The ideas of sand bags and generators seemed foreign and unnerving to both of us.), there was nothing to do on Sunday but to ride it out.
Wide swaths of undefined time usually means cooking at our house and that is what we did, all day. We conserved most of of our focus and energy for dinner: roasted, whole black sea bass basted with soy, ginger, sesame oil and cilantro with a side of sautéed tatsoi. For lunch, we settled for a mishmash of leftovers (roasted chicken and butternut squash stew for the kid and pasta schiutta with beef ribs from the night before) and some first-time sides made with scraps of fennel and red pepper sitting around from the night before.
This is a close-up of the my take on Julia Child's "Legumes a la Greque" with peppers...
...and with fennel...
Both are riffs on the same process, essentially braising the vegetables slowly over low heat with olive oil, lemon juice, celery, aromatics, herbs and spices. Julia suggests serving it cold. We ate it at room temperature and it was divine, perfect palate cleansers after the rich mains. The recipe will definitely get added to the repertoire because it is simple, satisfying and a great way to use odds and ends before they go bad.
A couple of naps, some TV and an early turn-in defined the rest of the stormy night. Lights flickered once or twice, but by God's grace we never lost power or cable. With the worst behind us, I'm grateful for our private holiday.
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