fenchurch | Recipes and a Helicopter Non-Update

We stumbled across two very yummy dishes recently... the first has become my new favorite sandwich. I read about it over on

kehf's LJ a week or so ago (she'd had it over at

genebreshears and

miertam's house): a Bacon, Lettuce and Mango sandwich (with sour cream as a dressing). Seriously, it's an absolutely inspired combination... I recommend very lightly toasting the bread first, so it'll hold up a bit better with the juiciness of the mango. But wow... yum!

The second came to us in a slightly odd way. The local Fred Meyer grocery store has taken to having employees randomly hand out cards with recipes (weirdly, it seems to mostly be elderly men who will walk up to you and say they have something for you... which just seems, well, kinda wrong). But we tried this one earlier this week as a side dish with some grilled salmon and it was incredibly good. Oh! And I got to do my first basil chiffonade! Okay, so it's not really exciting or anything, but it was pretty neat how it turned out!

Grilled Sweet Onion & Tomato Salad

2 Walla Walla Sweet Onions, halved and slab cut (I suspect any sweet onion will do)
3 Tablespoons Extra Virgin Olive Oil, divided
1 pint grape tomatoes, halved
12 fresh basil leaves, cut into match-like strips
3 Tablespoons Balsamic Vinegar (when it comes to this, buy the good stuff. You won't regret it)
Salt and pepper to taste
Garnish with grated parmesan cheese

Pre-heat grill on medium heat (we used the outdoor grill, but a grillpan would work well too). Brush or rub cut onions with 1 1/2 Tablespoons of olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper on both sides. Grill 10-12 minutes, turning once, until tender with grill marks. Remove to cutting board and allow to cool slightly; cut into large dice, add tomatoes, vinegar, oil and basil. Adjust salt and pepper to taste and garnish with cheese. Serves four.

We had enough left over that the next day we boiled up some penne (since it's what we had handy) and tossed it with the remaining salad and a little more balsamic vinegar and olive oil, then topped it off with a bit more grated parmesan... it turned out REALLY well! We'll be doing this one again.

As for the helicopter, I'm still clueless as to what was going on. A training run for the helicopter pilot? I guess there could have been some sort of police raid nearby... We live in a pretty good neighborhood, but from what I understand, that doesn't always mean anything when it comes to stuff like meth. On the plus side, if that's what was happening, it wasn't actually all that close, except as the crow flies... the helicopter would have been circling the area just east of the park (a neighborhood that's actually about a mile or so away by surface streets, since there's no direct route there). Still, very weird... the helicopter buzzed over the house about ten times in twenty minutes or so. It was just above the tree-line (which is, admittedly, fairly high here). I guess I'll probably never find out.