“molly Watson” | sfgirlbybay

friday food files with molly watson: Summer Lake Fish.

For most people, summer eating is defined by sweet corn and tomatoes, peaches and melons, hot dogs and hamburgers, ice cream and ice pops.

For me, though, nothing, absolutely nothing, says “it’s summer” quite like pan-fried lake fish. I get it a few times a year while I’m in Minnesota visiting my family (walleye!), but lake fish isn’t so easy to come by in San Francisco. What is easy to find are sanddabs – flat, small, ocean fish with flesh that takes remarkably like the fresh, light, flaky white fish pulled from Minnesotan lakes that I grew up eating.

Whatever delicate white-fleshed fish you have on hand, my favorite way to prepare it is to pan-fry it, but you can always dot it with a bit of butter and broil it, too.

If you’re looking for something to do this weekend, I’ll be reading at the Eat Real Lit Fest. Saturday, between 4 and 5, off Jack London Square in Oakland. Come by and say hi – it’s always nice to meet a friendly face!

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Each week, the Friday Food Files are deliciously brought to you by Molly Watson. For more on Molly and her delicious recipes, you can visit her in one of many wonderful places:
Writer: mollywatsonwrites
Blogger: the dinner files
Recipe Wizard: localfoods.about.com
Radio Girl: eat that radio
tweeter: twitter.com/mollywatson
teacher: mediabistro.com/courses/cache/instr404.as

[ Photos courtesy of Molly Watson. ]

by victoria | posted in guest blogs, you gotta eat | tagged "molly watson", "Summer Lake Fish", "summer meals", pan-fry, recipe, sandabs | comments (3)

friday food files with molly watson: Grilled Halloumi.

Yes, Virginia, there is cheese you can grill.

Of course, it burns a bit easily and will stick like the dickens to the grill if you don’t 1) work on a clean, well oiled grill and 2) oil the cheese itself, but you can grill it! It’s Greek and called Halloumi and I’ve been seeing it all over the place – regular supermarkets and all that.

I had the chance to really get into it with Halloumi this summer when my mom mistook my request for three packages as one for three pounds. I discovered it’s best to grill it in larger pieces you can move and turn with tongs instead of cutting it up and threading it onto skewers (a process that tends to split the bite-size chunk you’re trying to skewer in half). Use a clean grill, brush the cheese with plenty of olive oil, and grill it over a medium fire, if you can.

With grilled vegetables and a side of simple couscous or some orzo tossed with olive oil, lemon zest, and lemon juice, or even this lemon orzo pasta salad you have a lovely, summery, easy, breezy dinner. A sauce of some sort is nice, too. Bottled hot sauce works, as does a simple lemon vinaigrette, yogurt mint dressing, or pesto, but my favorite is an Indian-style mint chutney.

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Each week, the Friday Food Files are deliciously brought to you by Molly Watson. For more on Molly and her delicious recipes, you can visit her in one of many wonderful places:
Writer: mollywatsonwrites
Blogger: the dinner files
Recipe Wizard: localfoods.about.com
Radio Girl: eat that radio
tweeter: twitter.com/mollywatson
teacher: mediabistro.com/courses/cache/instr404.as

[ Photos courtesy of Molly Watson. ]

by victoria | posted in guest blogs, you gotta eat | tagged "Grilled Halloumi", "molly watson", cheese, grilling, recipe, vegetables | comments (5)

friday food files with molly watson: blueberry ice cream.

The best thing about blueberry ice cream is that is it actually blue. Not purple, not gray, but a lovely mid-hued blue.

The other best thing about this blueberry ice cream is how insanely easy it is to make. If you have an ice cream maker it’s literally a dump-and-freeze operation, but even if you don’t own a cupboard-space-eating contraption, it’s just a question of a few whisks of the mixture every 30 minutes or so as it freezes to end up with honest-to-goodness homemade ice cream (see how to make ice cream without an ice cream maker for specifics).

Unlike plenty of fruit ice creams it’s not just fruit and sugar and cream – those ice creams always lack the umph and rich mouth-feel (as we say in the food world) of ice cream made with eggs (which need to be cooked into a custard before being frozen into ice cream… which, if I’m honest, is a slight hassle). I have solved that problem (and am by no means the first to do so) by using sweetened condensed milk instead of sugar to sweeten the pot. Rich taste and texture, no cooking. Go ahead, give it a try – and stir in whatever fruit or chocolate chips or sweet treat that catches your fancy.

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Each week, the Friday Food Files are deliciously brought to you by Molly Watson. For more on Molly and her delicious recipes, you can visit her in one of many wonderful places:
Writer: mollywatsonwrites
Blogger: the dinner files
Recipe Wizard: localfoods.about.com
Radio Girl: eat that radio
tweeter: twitter.com/mollywatson
teacher: mediabistro.com/courses/cache/instr404.as

[ Photos courtesy of Molly Watson and happyaccidents. ]

by victoria | posted in guest blogs, you gotta eat | tagged "blueberry ice cream", "molly watson", recipe | comments (11)

friday food files with molly watson: grilled mussels.

Do I date myself too much by confessing that mussels always make be think of Squeeze and the song “Pulling Mussels (From the Shell)”? They do this despite being one of my big-time food memory foods, you know, those foods that food folks remember vividly form childhood, those eating moments on which we look back and realize that our lives in food were, perhaps, a bit set in stone before we even knew it.

Mussels are almost always – I’m going to say nine times out of ten? – steamed. Steaming is a great way to cook mussels, no doubt. Grilling mussels, however, is even easier, less messy, and about a thousand times more fun. Throw them on the grill, leave them on until they open and cook, then eat them. Seriously, grilling mussels is just that easy.

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Each week, the Friday Food Files are deliciously brought to you by Molly Watson. For more on Molly and her delicious recipes, you can visit her in one of many wonderful places:
Writer: mollywatsonwrites.com
Blogger: thedinnerfiles.com
Recipe Wizard: localfoods.about.com
Radio Girl: eatthatradio.wordpress.com
tweeter: twitter.com/mollywatson
teacher: mediabistro.com/courses/cache/instr404.as

[ Photos courtesy of Molly Watson. ]

by victoria | posted in guest blogs, you gotta eat | tagged "molly watson", grilling, mussels, recipes, seafood | comments (7)

friday food files with molly watson: Wild berries.

I’ve been a bit obsessed with wild berries these last two weeks. I’m in Northern Minnesota. The raspberries are ripe and the blueberries are working on it. The problem is that the deer are working on them. While I check the woods daily in hopes of finding a patch of ripe blueberries the deer haven’t hit, I buy cultivated berries like everyone else.

Whatever berries you may have at hand, they will be greatly improved when served alongside a buttermilk panna cotta – an easy, elegant dessert that my dad called “white stuff” and could be described as “milk Jell-O” but is a lovely gelatin-thickened custard that is pure perfection with berries of any kind.