Going French

After a quick workout last night, I convinced Joe that we had enough ingredients at home to bypass an expensive dinner splurge at Whole Foods. (Poor guy. I could see him salivating just thinking about fresh salmon).

Turns out, I think we did QUITE well for creating an ad hoc menu with random produce leftover from Sunday's farmer's market. For starters, I took our four-day old baguette and sliced in half lengthwise. I set the oven to Broil and then sliced up red peppers, tomatoes, white onions and eggplant. I layered each vegetable across the baguette halves and drizzled olive oil, balsamic vinaigrette, basil and parmesan cheese. I put these bad boys on a cookie sheet and broiled for 8 minutes - just enough to soften the crunchy bread and blacken the tops of the veggies.

Meanwhile, Joe was manning the stovetop. He broke down whole yellow squash, zucchini and eggplant into a hearty soup seasoned with salt and fresh tarragon. Now here comes the French part. He served the soup in small bowls and placed one fried egg on top of each soup. The yolks were slightly undercooked, so they oozed when we cut into the egg. A really interesting combination of textures - pureed vegetable soup and chewy egg whites.

On a side note, I'd never paid close attention to how tarragon tastes independent of other flavors. To me, it was like eating licorice! I looked up how to make licorice in countries all over the world, but tarragon is no where to be found. I thought for sure they had to be cousins.

For a hastily compiled meal of straggling market produce, we were quite pleased with the results. Granted, we didn't start eating until 10pm, but isn't that what the French do anyway?

Cantaloupe soup with chives

We tend to blow out the cooking on one major meal per week. The rest of the nights are pretty simple recipes that have fallen into our "go to" file for quick fixes.

But last night was a blow-out night. The clock was ticking on some produce bought Saturday at the market. We had a bunch of veggies and fruit, but no standard starch to act as a foundation. Not that you always need a starch, but I wasn't in the mood for a standard stir-fry.

So we made cantaloupe soup with fresh chives as the appetizer, and a mushroom, basil and red wine sauce served over sweet white corn cut off the cob. We paired this with a bottle of Jack Merlot, which wasn't too bad for only $7!

Cantaloupe soup for 2:

• Slice one half of a ripe cantaloupe into chunks.
• Puree in a food processor with a splash of lime juice until all lumps have disappeared.
• Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.
• Serve chilled with minced chives and ground pepper sprinkled on top.

Goes great with French bread for dipping! I loved the final result. The soup was so light and fresh, and not too sweet with the pepper and chives on top to add some contrasting flavors.

Maybe next time I puree cantaloupe, I'll add a little milk and make a milkshake. I could also picture adding green peppers and maybe even tiny diced tomatoes to the cantaloupe soup to make it a more formal evening course.