Puttanesca!
And some other things
Sophie and I had our good friends Hunter and Berin over for dinner last night. After confirming these plans earlier in the week, Sophie and I also bought tickets to see the US Women’s team play Colombia in the She Believes Cup. The game was at 3:30pm in New Jersey, and dinner was at 7. This took some planning to pull off. Here’s what I put together:
Roasted nuts w/ paprika + honey — homemade from earlier in the week!
Fancy potato chips — from Caputo’s
Jamon Serrano — thinly sliced from Caputo’s
Pacific halibut, puttanesca, green olive salsa verde, chickpeas
Simple green salad with parsley and dill, mustard vinaigrette — I love this guy!
Italian Cookies — from Caputo’s
I love to poach white fish in tomato sauces, the cooking method is forgiving and flavorful, and you can do most of the work ahead of time. This is what I did before the game:
Made a puttanesca — a style of tomato sauce that I make all the time, and always with a few tweaks. Similarly to how I make Vongole, I don’t really follow a recipe. Yesterday I added some spicy Moroccan olives and smoked red pepper. It was nice!
Filleted a piece of halibut that I had sitting in my freezer. I always enjoy that obnoxious part of the evening where I say… and you know… I actually caught that fish myself!
Made a salsa verde — this time with parsley, basil, green onion, and green olive
I turned the heat off, and left the tomato sauce on the stove while we left for the game, knowing that I’d simply have to poach the fish once my guests arrived. It’s the perfect amount of cooking to do in front of a crowd. Low stress, no mess.
But now I am stressed, because I forgot to take a picture of the final thing!
How could I forget to take a picture? I need to distract myself from the fear of being a bad food-influencer-soccer-journalist-fashion-icon-in-the-making, so I’m going to leave you with ten items I might purchase online while I’m unable to fall asleep later tonight. Enjoy.
Lobster ash tray: A ton of these are available on Ebay. If/when I open a bar of my own, these will be on the outdoor tables.
2. A different lobster ash tray.
3. One more lobster ash tray: These are also widely available. At my eventual bar I’ll serve nuts and olives out of these, to go along with your lobster martini.
4. Here is a picture of a lobster martini. This is not for sale online. I am breaking the rules, but this is my blog! Simon and I look very happy together.
5. Fish trays forever, to hold my keys, my oyster knife, etc
6. While we’re on the subject… this one feels particularly melancholy, but I think it has good bones. Don’t be so sad!
7. Changing gears here, I desperately need a reason to buy one of these.
And I think these full-kits would pair well with a nice hat. I need something like this for the summer anyways.
But I think this is my favorite. Someone please buy this hat! It’s the cutest.
