Zesty

Both tonight's dinner and dessert involved lemon zest. Hence the title.

Tonight we used up almost everything left in our basket for the week (good thing, cause we get a new one tomorrow!) for dinner. We had salad, the above mentioned leek, onion, and fennel gratin, rosemary sourdough bread we got at central market, and salad for dinner.

The gratin came from the newsletter that came with our basket. The recipe is:

3 large leeks, (white part only)

2 fennel bulbs

salt and pepper

1 1/2 tablespoon butter (unsalted)

1 bunch scallions (or green garlic, which we were out of, so we used onion)

1/4 cup chopped fennel greens

1 tsp lemon zest

2 eggs (as usual, we used egg beaters)

1 1/2 cup milk (skim)

1/2 grated parmesan

Preheat oven to 375. Butter gratin dish. Chop leeks into 1/2 inch pieces and wash, separating the rings. Let them soak while you trim fennel. Slice fennel very thinly, including the core. Bring skillet of water to boil, add fennel and pinch of salt. Simmer about 2 min. until fennel is transluscent, drain.

Melt butter in wide skillet. Remove leeks from soaking water and add to pan with fennel. Season with tsp salt and cook for 5 minutes over medium heat stirring frequently. Add onions (scallions, etc) and cook for antoerh 5 minutes. Add fennel greens and lemon zest and  salt and pepper to taste.

Scrape veggies into prepared dish.

Beat eggs and milk together and add 1/2 tsp salt plus cheese. Pour over veggies. Bake until top is browning, about 40 min. Let rest then serve.

And dessert. For dessert I decided to make Lemon cornmeal pound cakes with berry coulis.

3 tbsp unsalted butter

1/2 cup all purpose flour (I mixed ap with some whole wheat pastry flour to get in some whole grain)

1/4 cup whole milk (I used skim)

1 medium egg (egg substitute, as usual)

1/2 tsp vanilla

1 tsp lemon zest

1/2 cup sugar (I used splenda)

1/4 cup cornmeal

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/4 salt

Preheat oven to 350

It goes into this whole thing about using individual rings, but I basically took two souffle dishes (individual sized) and used those. Grease them.

Combine milk, egg, vanilla, and lemon zest and beat

Mix dry ingredients.

Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients and the butter. Mix at slow until everything is wet, then mix at medium until batter is lightened and increased in volume.

Put batter in dishes (two).

Bake for 25 min. or until testing stick comes out clean.

Cool for 15 min in dish and then on wire rack.

The berry mixture Eric prepared a while back, so I'm not sure what was in it. It seemed like smashed up berries and lemon juice, to be honest.

The end result? The gratin was quite good as a side dish. Dessert was tasty, though needing some whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.