http://www.myluscious.com

Simple, right? AND YUMMY. Come on over….

Still, I’ve come to learn that other people eat it with biscuit topping. I don’t get it, it seems so wrong, but I live with a biscuit-topping cobbler fan so here I am making a Wrong Blueberry Cobbler. (Also, blueberries? In cobbler? Cobbler = peaches! But I digress.) He ran to the market this morning and brought home some pints of fresh blueberries, so I turned to the wonder of The Pioneer Woman and found her blackberry cobbler recipe, which I modified. By cleverly and creatively using blueberries instead of blackberries.

The recipe is so simple – I’m not retyping it here, you can just click the link above and get it, if you’re interested. It smells really good while it’s baking!

6c fresh blueberries, sugar, fresh lemon juice, and lotsa fresh lemon zest

the 'cobbler,' ready to pop into the oven for 30 mins

Afterwards?

looks like the photo from the recipe I used - guess it's right? it IS golden and bubbly

And this cobbler is served:

hahaha! Picture to come when it’s cooled! You’ll have to come back!

Today’s booty included thick halibut steaks – two of them. Since we really love hot and spicy food, he came up with a mouth-stinging delicious sauce to spoon over the deep-fried halibut. Photos first, then recipe after!

covered in fresh cilantro and topped with a spicy sauce containing crunchy water chestnuts and bean sprouts

Asian halibut, courtesy of my husband the chef

the wonderful interior of halibut

RECIPE

2 1-lb halibut steaks
1 egg with an equal amount of water, stirred together
all-purpose flour for dredging the halibut steaks

1/4 cup Korean barbecue sauce (do not substitute other barbecue sauces!)
2-3T vegetable oil
1-1/2 T hoisin sauce
1-1/2 c chicken or fish stock
2 t sesame oil
1/2 t hot chili oil
1 T soy sauce
1 can water chestnuts
1 bunch scallions, sliced into 1/2″ pieces
2-1/2″ piece of ginger, peeled and chopped
5 cloves of garlic, crushed and chopped
1 t red pepper flakes
2/3 lb bean sprouts
2 t cornstarch, stirred into water to form a slurry

garnish: 2 T chopped fresh cilantro

First, make the sauce:  Mix the liquids together in a large measuring cup (Korean barbecue sauce, hoisin sauce, chicken stock, sesame oil, chili oil, and soy sauce). Adjust seasonings to taste – you want a deep rich flavor. In a large saucepan, heat the vegetable oil. Add the garlic, ginger, scallions, water chestnuts, and red pepper flakes. Sautee them quickly at high heat. Pour in the liquids and bring to a rapid boil. Add the cornstarch slurry in a slow stream; you don’t necessarily need the whole amount, just stop when the sauce is a desirable thickness. Set it on a very low burner, to keep warm.

Prepare the fish by dipping them in the egg mixture and then dredging them in flour. You can also shake them in a paper bag with the flour; that makes a nice even coating. Heat a lot of vegetable oil in a pot deep enough to deep-fry the steaks; heat the oil until a small bit of the flour coating bubbles and pops up immediately when dropped into the oil. Carefully place the steaks into the hot oil and cook approximately 8 minutes, until golden brown. Remove from the oil and drain on paper towels.

While the fish is frying, put the bean sprouts in the sauce; return to high heat and cook until the bean sprouts are just barely wilting but still have crunch. Remove from heat.

Plating:  Place the fried halibut steaks on plates. Spoon the sauce over them, and then sprinkle the fresh cilantro on top.

Enough words. Here you go:

look at that sauce....that tangy, spicy, piquant sauce...

...drool....

Yeah, that’s right. It was amazing.

2 large eggs
1 1/3 c cold heavy cream
4 cups all-purpose flour
8T sugar (plus extra for sprinkling on top)
2T baking powder
1/2 t salt
10T unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
1 pint of blueberries
orange zest

Preheat the oven to 400. Line a baking sheet with a silicone mat, or with parchment paper.

Stir the eggs and cream together, and set aside.

Whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Drop in the butter and toss to coat it with flour. Using your fingertips, rub the butter into the flour mixture. Keep at it until the mixture is kind of pebbly – you’ll have bits of butter the size of peas, flakes of oatmeal, and everything in between.

Pour the eggs and cream over the dry ingredients and stir it with a fork until it all comes together. Pour in the blueberries and orange zest (I use a couple tablespoons of zest, use whatever you like….lemon zest is good too) and, with a spatula, stir gently to incorporate the blueberries throughout the dough.

On a floured surface, dump half the dough and gently press it into the shape of a large disk. Sprinkle a little flour on top, and gently move the disk around to be sure it’s not stuck to your countertop. Cut the disk into 8 pie-shaped pieces, and arrange them on your baking sheet. Do the same with the remaining dough. Sprinkle sugar on top of the scones, and a little extra zest if you like.

Bake the scones for 20-25 minutes, until the tops are golden brown and kind of firm. Transfer them to a rack, cool for 10 minutes at least. Eat and enjoy! We freeze them in a large ziplock bag; they’re not quite as good as they are when they’re freshly made, but they’re still awfully dang good.

the dressing, being made in his giant mortar and pestle

You don’t have to have a mortar and pestle, of course (but if you’re in the market for one, this is the one we have), but he always makes this dressing in his. He hand grinds the garlic and anchovies, then pours everything else in and mixes it with a fork (recipe after the photos). That’s fresh ground Parmesan cheese ready to be mixed in.

it just doesn't get better than this. unless you have homemade croutons.

He usually puts croutons on the salad – traditional – but of course he has his own way of doing them. You know how you stab a crouton and it shatters, or you try to scoop it up with your fork and it falls off on the way to your mouth? Well. He rough crushes the croutons and pours olive oil that has been infused with pressed garlic over them, to cover. Then, when they’re sprinkled over the salad you get crunchy bites of crouton with your bites of salad, just the right size.

tangy sharp amazing deliciousness, with the bread too? speechless.

We had a small dish of olive oil we brought home from Croatia for dipping our crusty bread in. If you’d been a fly on our wall, you’d have heard my nonstop moaning about how wonderful this meal was. Every bite, every crunchy tangy bite, I couldn’t help but moan just a little bit. It was SO SO GOOD.

Here’s how you make his dressing:

1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 cup fresh lemon juice
1 can anchovies
4-6 cloves garlic
1/2 tsp worcestershire sauce (optional)
1 egg, coddled
fresh grated parmesan cheese

Crush the garlic and anchovies in a mortar and pestle (or a large wooden salad bowl). Add the lemon juice, olive oil, worcestershire sauce (if desired) and coddled egg. Stir to thoroughly blend. Sprinkle several tablespoons of grated cheese over the dressing, and stir it in very well. You want enough cheese to make the dressing a reasonable consistency – thickened, but not gooey. Add fresh ground black pepper to taste.

Wash and completely dry your romaine leaves, and tear them roughly; thoroughly toss the romaine in the dressing until the leaves are evenly coated. This step is important! You don’t pour dressing over the salad on your plate, you really need to toss all the leaves in the dressing to give them a good coat. We always have extra parmesan on the table to sprinkle over the tossed salad.

Now, you’re ready to enjoy the best Caesar salad you’ll ever have. You’ll be spoiled from here on – don’t say I didn’t warn you.

lemon garlic shrimp

Tonight, for an appetizer we had his delicious gazpacho soup, which he continually refers to as gestapo soup (recipe below, at the bottom).

i love my gazpacho kind of chunky, so - as always - he accommodates me

And kofta, which he called kafka….so now they’re kafkabobs forever, in my mind.

it'll always be kafkabob for me. full of fresh dill - YUM.

And this nice cold barley, shrimp and corn salad:

shrimp, barley, and corn - plus other yummy things

Here’s how he makes the gazpacho soup (his first attempt at telling the recipe was “you just get a lot of vegetables and chop them up….I got him to be a bit more specific, in case you wanted to make it too):

• 2lbs kirby cucumbers, cut in pieces (peel strips off the cucumber so it’s about halfway peeled)
• 2lbs fresh tomatoes, cut in pieces
• 1 medium onion, cut in pieces
• 1 bunch of scallions, roughly chopped
• 2 jalapeno peppers, seeded, cut in very small dice
• 6 cloves of garlic, pressed
• 2 cups tomato juice
• basil
• salt and pepper to taste
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar, or more to taste
• 1/2 teaspoon worcestershire sauce

If you have a heavy-duty and large blender, you can put everything in the blender and pulse it until it’s the consistency you like. If your blender is smaller, you should do it in parts, 1/4 to 1/3, depending on the size of your blender. You can also use a food processor, of course; pulse pulse pulse it until you like it. You can always add more tomato juice if it’s too thick. This isn’t a precise kind of thing to make – it’s a make-it-to-suit-yourself kind of thing.

Finally I found this recipe and as long as you just trust it and follow along (you can shake your head all you want and mutter under your breath that it must work for everyone else but surely their dough isn’t as runny as yours)… it’ll work. The worst part of making it is how loud the mixer is at high speed, for ~20 minutes. I have to hold onto mine to keep it from running all over the countertop – also a bit of a pain. But not really. Those are very small prices to pay for the wonder that is this bread. Here, I’ll show you how runny mine is:

i just finished beating the hell out of it for 20 minutes. it's PERFECT.

see how it pours? don't make the mistake of touching it with your hands; it's extremely sticky. use a spatula to guide the pour.

and now it looks like a puddle, doesn't it. it has to triple - ~2.5 hours. trust the dough.

A couple of hours later, the dough was bulging at the top of the bowl; I had luckily remembered to oil the plastic wrap so it didn’t get murderously stuck and thus cause me to curse. That’s never fun.

So I put a good layer of flour down on the counter, and poured the blob of dough out.

yep - that's a big blob of dough.

i used a bench scraper to cut the dough into three bits - and tossed flour all over them before patting them roughly into shape

heavily floured, I cover them with a clean cloth for the final rise, ~45 minutes. Meanwhile, the oven is cranking up to 500 degrees.

The pizza stone is on the 2nd to bottom rack so it’ll get screaming hot, too. I always place a sheet of parchment paper on the peel just to make the process a bit simpler.

A quick 18-20 minutes later? You’re dehydrated from all the drool induced by the smell of bread baking, and you have this:

captivating, crusty, golden, and holes inside.

And here it is, full o’ holes.

well now, THAT is a hole.

a tub o' pickles, plus a pickled pepper or two

I’ve been eating pickles like there’s no tomorrow. Lucky for me, there is a tomorrow, and it is also filled with pickles. These are just great – crunchy, spicy, garlicky, and there are more so I can be a pickle pig. He pulled the first big batch out of the brine when they were just right, then he added another round of cucumbers.

If you’ve just swung by this old blog and want to make these wonderful pickles yourself, I posted a how-to a few posts below. Here, I’ll make it easy for you.

I’m about to make my mother-in-law’s blueberry coffee cake, so I’ll be back in a while.

oh…and btw, here’s my husband’s website! he’s pretty amazing at what he does.