I have a wonderful friend named Linda who happens to have a Meyer lemon tree in her yard, and who very generously shares them with me.  When she brought a bag to choir a few weeks ago, I was thinking of making scones out of them.  Then I decided to combine with something else I love: rhubarb.  Meyer lemons are a cross between a lemon and a mandarin orange, so they’re sweeter than a normal lemon.  They also have a thinner and less bitter peel, which has a nice floral aroma that went really well with the rhubarb.  I based these scones on a recipe from Baking Bites, but added a filling of the rhubarb, which I just stewed with a bit of sugar until it was falling apart.

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My younger brother, John, asked me a couple days ago for the address for our blog. I’m pretty excited when anyone shows interest in what we’re writing, and I’m also always trying to make the blog better and more usable, so I asked him for his input. The first response I got (via Google chat) was this:

1:15 PM John: ok

im real gald you put the carrot recipe up

im going to make a vat of them

Score! Something I wrote was actually helpful to someone else! I’m not just typing off into the ether! What else you got?

1:24 PM John: you need more entrees

that i can afford

1:25 PM i dont care what kind of experimentation you want to do i just need ideas for meals i can afford that taste real good and are real easy to make and are really cheap

if it doesnt fit that criteria then dont put it up

that is all

Ok, well that one’s a little more of a bummer. But, he makes a good point. (I should probably mention that my brother and I were taught from a young age to tease each other incessantly, so while that might come across as an insult to the untrained ear, to me it sounds like bother … err … brotherly love. And yes, I said taught — you know who you are.)

Anyway, I’m not going to stop my “experimentation,” but the idea of posting (and cooking/eating) more affordable, quick and easy meals sounds like a worthy goal to me. As a junior in college, I can certainly understand why John wants to do that, and it’s probably a good target for me, too, before I bankrupt us with my foodie habit.

Sooooo, I’m starting a new category called “Just for John” (though honestly, I’ll let anyone read it, even if you’re name isn’t John) that includes “meals i can afford that taste real good and are real easy to make and are really cheap.” And I’m going to try to add “and are reasonably healthy” to that list too, before someone starts thinking we should add French Bread pizzas or Cook Out to the category. I’ll also try to include an estimate of how much I spent on the groceries (per serving) and how much time it took to prepare.

The first installment will be this recipe for trout, inspired by recent recipes from Cooking Light and from The Wednesday Chef. We served it with creamed spinach, but in a hurry, just sauteed spinach or a salad would be good, too. The sauce is somewhat like that used in Chicken or Veal Piccatta. You could easily leave out the prosciutto for a crowd that doesn’t eat pork, or just to make things a bit healthier. If you’re really in a hurry, the fish is flavorful enough by itself you could even leave off the sauce entirely, in which case this meal takes no time at all to prepare.

Lemony Trout with Prosciutto, Caper, and Lemon

Sauce:
olive oil
1/4 c of finely chopped onion or shallots
a couple slices of prosciutto, pancetta, or bacon, chopped
juice from 1/2 a lemon
a couple forkfuls of capers

Fish:
whole boned trout, head and tail removed (depending on the size, 1 trout per 1-2 people; we were able to split a large one and had plenty of food)
1/2 lemon, sliced thinly
olive oil
salt and pepper

Preheat the broiler. Heat a tablespoon or so of olive oil in a small skillet over medium heat. Add the onions and saute until soft. Add the prosciutto and saute until it’s a little bit crispy. Add lemon juice and capers. Turn the heat down and simmer until most of the liquid is reduced away, and there’s just enough left to hold the sauce together a bit. Remove from heat and put the lid on to keep warm.

Brush the skin side of the fish with olive oil. Place on a greased broiler pan, or just a greased pan. Brush the inside of the fish with oil and season with salt and pepper. Stuff the inside of the fish with 3 or 4 slices of lemon and fold the fish closed. Broil about 4 minutes on a side, until the fish is opaque and flakes when tested with a fork. Open up the fish and top with the sauce.

Total time: about half an hour
Total cost:
(I forgot to save my receipt from Safeway, so I’m guessing on most of the produce, and probably overestimating)
Trout: $3.85
Lemon: $0.85
1/3 onion: $0.50
2 slices of prosciutto: $1
1 T capers: $0.50
1 bunch of spinach (for side dish): $2

Total: $8.70 for 2 servings, or $4.35 per meal

My mom finally got tired of me stealing borrowing her Cooking Light magazines every time I came over to her house, so she bought me my own subscription a few months back. (Thanks, Mom!) I’m not sure that was the right lesson to teach me, but I’m enjoying the magazine. I’m not so convinced of the “Light” part of many of their recipes, though that’s partly my own fault since I tend to ignore the “reduced-fat” or “fat-free” components to many of their ingredients. But I enjoy the magazine because it gives me new ideas each month and helps keep me out of a rut.

This time, I adapted their recipe for Cardamon-Lime Sweet Rolls into these Lemon Ginger Sweet Rolls. If you believe, as I do, that sweet rolls can only appropriately be eaten fresh for breakfast (unless, of course, there are leftovers), then they do require a bit of advanced planning, since the yeast dough has to rise for a couple hours. But they last just fine ovenight in the fridge after the second rise, and can be popped in the oven the next morning. Makes for a nice twist from the cinnamon rolls from a can we have every now and then (though I’ll admit that, in my opinion, Pillsbury makes a pretty mean sweet roll, too!).

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This month’s Daring Bakers challenge was hosted by Morven at Food Art and Random Thoughts. It was another wonderful Dorie Greenspan recipe — I’m seeing a lot of these lately. Baking from My Home to Yours is definitely on my wish list. I served Dorie’s “Perfect Party Cake” for our Easter lunch with my parents. This is a lemon flavored cake topped with a lemon meringue buttercream (also called Swiss buttercream) frosting and raspberry jam filling. I followed the recipe pretty much as directed, though it was supposed to be topped with coconut and I left that out. I don’t know, maybe it would be good, but coconut just doesn’t really go with lemon and raspberries to me. So I garnished it with lemon slices instead. If I’d had a tad yellow food coloring I probably would’ve added it to the frosting, too.

Anyway the cake was delicious, especially the frosting. It didn’t really rise that much, but it was plenty tall enough anyway. Someone apparently leaked to Dorie that we were making her cake, and so she got a message to us that some people had told her they’d had problems with the cake not rising, and she thought it might have to do with the flour. She thus recommended substituting 1 C minus 2 T all purpose flour for the cake flour, which I did. So I don’t know, it still didn’t rise much, but I thought it had a very nice texture anyway. It was really moist and pretty light.

The buttercream is rich, but I thought it nicely balanced the cake. (Mom thought it was a bit too heavy and that I should’ve been a bit lighter on the butter, and of course mother always knows best…) To make a Swiss buttercream frosting, you first cook the meringue (egg whites and sugar) over a pot of simmering water, and then beat it until very stiff before beating in the butter, and then, in this case, lemon juice. I will definitely be trying this again!

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I’ve decided to add a new category — recipes I’ve found somewhere, have made pretty much as described, and recommend to you! The first is the Gingerbread Pancakes I made last weekend from Tea and Cookies, who in turn apparently adapted them from a restaurant called La Note. Anyway, they were absolutely delicious, and, even better, I already had all the ingredients on hand.

They make a pretty thick, gingerbread-spiced batter, but the pancakes aren’t too heavy. I sometimes have trouble with thick pancakes cooking unevenly, but these were done all the way through and had a texture I very much enjoyed. I’m not a huge fan of plain pancakes, so these were a nice departure from the usual. I served them with a lemon curd and pears as Tea suggested on her post (curd from this recipe from Joy of Baking). The lemon flavor added a nice zing to the spice of the pancakes, and pears went very nicely as well. Overall, a very tasty and comforting breakfast for a chilly and damp January morning.

As you can see, we could hardly stand to finish them off!

Other ideas:

• I often like chunks of things in my pancakes, especially in thick ones like these. I think chopping up fresh pears would make a nice addition, or maybe some chopped walnuts or pecans.
• Orange would also go nicely with the gingerbread flavor I believe. I thought about making the curd with orange juice instead of lemon; I might try that next time. Also, a little orange zest in the pancake batter might be good.
• Tea suggested poaching or roasting the pears. I think this would be very tasty, although I didn’t bother with it.
• Leftover lemon curd (that recipe will probably make more than you need) is also delicious on shortbread, biscuits, or in scones (try these from Heidi at 101 cookbooks). I’ve also been eating the lemon curd on vanilla ice cream with some toasted hazelnuts.