Yesterday afternoon, I got home from work, took a long walk with Chance, and sat on the screened-in porch.  With a good glass of bourbon in one hand and the Steve Jobs biography in the other, I took in the lush green and bright blooms all around.  Yesterday was a particularly good time to be in Atlanta, with some of the early spring heat relenting to mild, low 70s perfection.

One of our joys with food is the seasonal aspect, and that’s why you frequently see us posting a change-of-pace menu item to welcome new seasons on 2frugalfoodies.  We didn’t really get a chance to post much in Spring, but hopefully this bright, cheerful, light and refreshing fish preparation can bridge the gap between Spring and Summer.  The flavors go really well together, and the effect on the plate is really beautiful with contrasting green and orange.

The best of the peaches still haven’t come in yet, but maybe you could cheat and make this a little early.  To be fair, we actually made this last summer, but we’re excited to post it here in anticipation of more good things to come!

Recipe:  Pan Roasted Cod with Peach and Mint Puree

We don’t have extensive pickling experience.  It wasn’t part of childhood traditions to pickle fresh food at the end of the summer and then rely on it all winter.  Though we have become acquainted with mason jars in the jelly making process,  we haven’t really done much pickling of our own, either.

That said, the whole idea and process seems like a wonderful tradition of American agriculture that should be, and is to some extent, making a comeback.  Growing crops all summer, and then taking the fresh, bright, summer produce and preserving it, sounds wonderful.  Even without a garden, the idea just sounds great.  It goes well with seasonal eating patterns, sustainability, and tasty food.

Not only do we like the theoretical idea of pickling, we love pickles.  We’ve talked about Fried Pickles before, and a plain old dill pickle out of the jar makes a great snack.  But pickles don’t have to be limited to cucumbers.  One of our favorite small plates at The Family Dog is a pickle plate, comprised mostly of root vegetables with  bell peppers and other veggies thrown in here and there.  Pickled watermelon rind is a Southern favorite – and though a bit funky at first, thoroughly enjoyable.  Pickles are everywhere – and we love trying new varieties (except, maybe, for pickled pigs feet).

So – when were making pulled pork a few weeks ago, and were looking for accompaniments beyond the typical slaw n sauce, we turned to pickling.  We found a simple and delicious recipe from Thomas Keller’s Ad Hoc Cookbook, and it added just the right briny, yet sweet & oniony flavor to the pork.  We think the recipe is a great starter for pickling, and we hope to do much more in the coming months.

Recipe: Pickled Red Onions

We challenged ourselves to post every day because we are usually very sporadic bloggers. We were curious what would happen if we succeeded – would the number of visitors to our blog increase? Would we get more comments or more subscribers to our blog?

One thing’s for sure: we had more views on our blog in February 2012 than any other month since the blog was created in March 2009.

To celebrate, here’s some Foie Gras:

We couldn’t exactly add the recipe for this to our 2frugalfoodies repertoire, but we can at least share some celebratory food pictures.  (By the way: take 2 1/2 inch slices of foie gras, score them, season with salt and pepper, and sear 1.5 mins per side.  Top with diced apples, sauteed in butter and finished with cinnamon and ginger ale.)

Now that we haven’t shared any absurdly expensive food recipes, we hope you’ve had a great February, a great leap day, and that your Spring is fantastic.  We promise to post again soon, though it may not be every day!

When we went there for Gardner’s birthday dinner, we ordered the five-course tasting menu. After the second course, our waitress brought us a little “taste” of “Watermelon pearls, Mascarpone, Cyprus Black Lava Salt.” It was beautiful. Just looking at it made me smile – they took an itty-bitty melon baller and made “pearls” of watermelon. (If you know me well, you know that I love all things miniature, well, except for when it comes to dogs.) When the little pearls were piled together, it kind of reminded me of salmon roe. Just genius, right?

Is there are part of you that’s thinking, “whoop-ti-do – that’s a pile of watermelon with a dollop of mascarpone cheese – what’s the big deal?”

Little bites like this are why food will never get old, cooking will never get boring, and I will never go hungry. I think this was my favorite part of that amazing meal. The black lava salt, which we substituted with chardonnay oak-smoked salt, adds just the right kick to the melon, and the cheese adds a subtle little tartness that pairs so well with the sweet melon.

I searched this whole city for an itty-bitty melon baller. No dice. But I did find these:

a Dash, a Smidgen, and a Pinch

How adorable are these? Lord knows I would never measure a pinch, but the Smidgen one was a perfect mini-melon baller. This isn’t the kind of thing that I think a bunch of you are going to go make, so I didn’t make a recipe page, but if you want to make it: mini-melon piled up, dollop of mascarpone, and a little pinch of fancy salt on each. DE-lish.

Thanks for reading the marathon post. Hope things are happy and fun in your life, too.

What goes great with a burger? Fries! What about a corndog? Fries! What about a steak?! Fries!

We’ve made fries before (thanks to our more than awesome FryDaddy – if you don’t have a deep fryer, we think you need one), but added a little garlic this time to make it super delicious. Give them a try this weekend with a yummy burger, and sprinkle some parsley on top for good measure.

Recipe: Garlic Fries

We had these fries with homemade corndogs and a side salad – we’re trying to get some color in there, too!

We had these for Mary Katherine’s birthday dinner this past weekend.  Seared steak, cracked white peppercorns, and mushroom stock are the key ingredients, and we decided to serve it chilled instead of hot.  The flavor was great and would probably be good for a full plate appetizer course or maybe even an entree.

Mary Katherine got me asian-style soup spoons from a market in New York when she was there, and those spoons were the inspiration for this recipe.

We also recently bought little rectangular dishes at Pier 1, and I tried using those too:

Recipe: Seared Delmonico Steak and Mushroom Amuse Bouche

Now that we like French food and are learning a lot more about it, I understand that there’s a history and a reason behind the name.  Real french fries actually are French, and they are really, really delicious.  Our recipe for cooking fries comes directly from Anthony Bourdain, which shouldn’t be a surprise.   Check out the recipe below for our paraphrase of his great recipe, but really, you should just go buy The Les Halles Cookbook.

That’s the frites part of the recipe, but we also include information on the steak part of the recipe when you click the link below.  We went to Belmont Butchery and got these incredible new york strip steaks… the regular grocery store just isn’t the same anymore.

Summer comes into this dinner through the watermelon salad inspired by Real Simple that we’ve posted before.  The recipe is real simple: watermelon, onion, and torn mint leaves.  And it’s delicious.  I guess that why they named the magazine the way they did…!

Recipe: Summer Steak Frites

This time, we’re not venturing very far in the world like he does on each episode. What we’ve cooked tonight is commonplace in many southern gas stations at 99 cents per bag. Admittedly, we’re not huge fans of the from-the-bag-pork-rinds… so this is somewhat of a bold move for us. Results? Porky, crispy, salty and delicious! The recipe couldn’t be simpler and the taste is wonderful.

While we hope to make this again, part of the deliciousness of this preparation might come from the kind of pork rind we used, which is from an Ossabaw pig. You might remember when we made cassoulet and needed pork rind? We saved some of the good stuff for another pork rind special occasion and here it is!

Recipe: Homemade Pork Rinds

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We posted a caprese salad before in the heat of summer, so if you want the original recipe, you can follow this link. That salad was made with traditional summer tomatoes from our local produce stand and it was delicious. The green tomatoes on this new are called Green Zebra Tomatoes, and we really recommend using those sometimes too.

Recipe: (Original) Caprese Salad

Recipe: Frugal Corona