DINNER FOR THE EXTENDED FAMILY

The Szlams really enjoy Easter with the CT family, luckily for us! They spent a week with us and a little tradition has started that Dave cooks supper one night, with me as sous chef and voyeur.  Regular readers will laugh, he decided to do chicken!

OK, I'll grant you that it does not look like any chicken I have ever served up, but it really has a lot to do with the presentation.  The tower is make up of:
Sauted and roasted slices of potato.
Sauted and roasted chicken thighs in a lemon and thyme butter.
Garnish is sauted scallions and mushrooms.
The piece de la resistance was the sauce, Pea and spinach and here is the recipe:

Blanche half a bag of baby spinach. Remove to an ice bath and reserve the water.  Once cooled remove the spinach and squeeze out as much water as possible.  saute/sweat a couple of cloves of chopped garlic in a splash of olive oil, then add about 3 inch part of the middle of the scallions. Add the liquid from the spinach and bring to a boil.  Put about half a pound of peas in a blender add the garlic/scallion water til it just covers peas and blend til smooth.  Add the spinach and blend again.  Put into small saucepan to reheat before serving, season to taste and add at least 2 TBSPS of butter.

I did this a couple of weeks later with salmon, it was delicious and looked wonderful of course, the pink fish with the bright green sauce - sadly didn't photograph it - next time!

Perfect summer evening, Julia, Peas and Halibut!

Alan and Joseph are at a regatta for some of the weekend so Julia and I are having a girlie evening.  Started with a movie, plan was to come back to my place for margaritas and dinner.  Had to serve something that we could cook pretty quickly.  I cut this recipe, Peas with Halibut, out of the NY Times back in 2004 and have made it several times since.  The peas part is a great side dish, apparently cooking peas with lettuce and mint goes way back,  I was first served this by my oldest foodie friend, Jock, yonks ago!
Anyway, did small amount of prep before we went out, sliced the scallions and diced the bacon, and cooked it up whilst finishing the last few sips of Julia's most delicious margaritas.
One note, if you want a more healthy dish you can omit the bacon, I have never done that so cannot vouch for it!  I usually use the largest scallions I can find. Only thing I change is that I do not add any oil to the pan before I fry the bacon, it is not necessary, and I do pour out some of the bacon fat, leaving just enough to fry the onions in, honest!