I’m really behind on my bloggery. I’ve been running around doing stuff rather than running around, doing stuff and then telling you about it. Sorry! I know you need some good food!
(See! We’ve been making things like smoked brisket – I just haven’t been writing about them.)
Spring has finally hit our little corner of the tundra. (Yea!) So, now we get to go out and get things that were grown here and cook them up. To that end I invited a special guest, Michelle Licata, a chef and teacher who shares her philosophy of good food and healthy eating with her eight-week wellness program, “Inspired Wellness,” upcoming cookbook, “Olives and Pearls,” and classes around Minneapolis.
This particular event happened almost a month ago, so there was very little available at the farmers market for us. But, what there wasn’t in variety, there was in flavor. Everything was beautifully fresh. We had chicken, trout, eggs, radishes, greens, grains and amazing artisnal sheep’s milk blue and fresh cheese. So we were forced to make due with just that. (Can I get any pity out there? Hm. No, eh?)
Alright, fine. The food was excellent. Michelle was an amazing and vibrant guide through a world of fresh and healthful eating choices. If you ever have the opportunity to take a class from her, I’d highly recommend it and I think anyone who was with me would as well.
Michele dazzling us with her charm and knowledge.
Linda starts to work on the roasted chicken. She decided on butterflying the chicken and dousing it with a mixture of olive oil, fresh squeezed lemon juice with thyme, salt and pepper.
Naomi is getting instruction while working on the radishes. (I think.)
Michele overseeing the risotto.
Ah, the fritatta needs some seasoning.
Meeting over the trout. Turns out the trout wants to be dipped in beaten egg, rolled in some panko and spices and then baked until done.
Michelle wokrs on panko/trout construction.
Frittata construction. Oh yes.
Linda carves up her chicken.
The finished frittata. (It was as good as it looks.)
‘
This salad of greens, arugula, radish and northern lights blue cheese is good, but not quite done. It needs a vinegarette.
Ava looks on.
Michele demonstrates how to drizzle in the appropriate amount of olive oil for the emulsion of a proper vinegarette to take place.
Trout breaded in Panko & Herbs with Honey Dipping Sauce
trout, cut into bite sized pieces
1 egg, wisked
pinch of salt
1/2 t ginger
sauce
2 T honey
1 T white wine
1 t sirracha
pinch salt
Preheat oven to 375°f;.
Whisk egg in a bowl. Place panko, salt and ginger in another bowl. Take pieces of trout douse them completely in egg and then coat in panko. Place on a baking sheet.
Put the baking sheet in the oven and bake for 12 – 15 minutes or until fish feels firm.
While fish is cooking bring dipping sauce together over low-ish heat.
Serve fish with sauce.
Fritatta
4 radishes, sliced thinly
radish greens, ripped
1 T butter
6 oz fresh cheese
6 eggs
3 T cream
1/4 parmesan
oregano
salt
pepper
Preheat oven to 375°f.
Saute radish in 1 T of butter over medium high heat until translucent. Toss into frittata dishes with greens and cheese.
Whisk together eggs, cream parmesan and spices and pour over radish stuffs. Put onto a cookie sheet and bake for 45 to 60 minutes. Frittata is set when you press on the middle and it fights back.
Quinoua & Lentil Salad
Quinoua is not an ingredient that I’ve done much with – but as Michele pointed out it’s very easy, light and nutritious.
1 c quinoua
1 c water
salt
1/2 c lentils
1 1/2 c water
1 t salt
1 sprig rosemary
1 sprig thyme
juice of 1 lemon
1T honey
1Tmustard
salt to taste
Boil quinoua in water until done. Boil lentils in water with sprigs until done.
Put both into bowls and add in lemon, honey, mustard and salt to taste. Serve. People will be happy.
Lemon Thyme Roasted Chicken
1 chicken
juice from one lemon
2 T olive oil
2 t thyme
1 t salt
1 t pepper
Preheat oven to 400 °f
Butterfly chicken by cutting out the backbone and bending the chicken so that it is flat, breast side up. Put into baking pan.
Whisk together the rest of the ingredients and liberally cover the chicken. Put into oven and cook until chicken is browned and reads 160°f on a quick read thermometer. Cover and let sit until it comes up to 165°f. It will be perfect. Enjoy!
Blackberry Lovin’ (recipes for berry crumble\sauce)
April 23, 2009
I love blackberries. I’ve been a little bit obsessed by them since visiting Portland last summer and eating them growing wild straight off the bush. It was so perfect. (Insert big sigh here.)
It just so happens that I have some blackberries. I have quite a lot of them. Oh gosh, I get to play. Crumble. I want crumble. Doesn’t blackberry crumble just sound beautiful?
A funny thing happened while I was making the crumble though. At the time, I was also making cheese. I’d been wanting to make fresh cheese and turn it into cheesecake for awhile. I decided that now was the time. (That was a really awkward sentence. Sorry for inflicting that on you.) And really – if the blackberry crumble happened to be as good as it turned out to be then why not re-create it as a sauce for the cheesecakes? Oh many x yum.
So that’s what I did.
Blackberry Crumble
2 – 3 T butter, very soft
1/3 c flour
1/3 c brown sugar
1/3 c oats
pinch salt
1 pt blackberries, room temp
1 t vanilla
1/3 c sugar
1/4 c wine jelly *
1 – 2 t corn starch
1/2 pt blackberries, frozen (keeps them whole through cooking)
vanilla ice cream
Preheat oven to 350°f.
Pinch together crumble ingredients with your fingers and set aside.
Mix together vanilla, sugar wine jelly and cor starch. Add to the berries and toss gently until berries are coated. Divide them into ramekins and top with the crumble.
Put them in the oven and bake for 25 – 35 minutes, until berry mixture is bubbling and topping is browned. Let cool for a few minutes, topped with some vanilla ice cream and enjoy the heck out of it.
Sauce Version
1 1/2 pt blackberries
1 t vanilla
1/3 c sugar
1/4 c wine jelly *
1 – 2 t corn starch
Combine all ingredients except blackberries in a saucepan over medium heat. Heat until all ingredients are liquid and combined. Lower heat and fold in blackberries. Let simmer gently until sauce thickens up. Cool and top something with it.
* Wine Jelly
4c wine
2c sugar
juice from one lemon
1 packet low sugar pectin
Cook sugar, lemon and wine together over medium heat until sugar is dissolved. Remove from heat. Add pectin and stir to dissolve. Ladle into jars, seal and refrigerate. (You can also prepare the jars for canning, but storing them in the refrigerator or freezer is just fine.)
As for the cheesecake, you’re just going to have to wait for that.
xoxo
- Kris
Cooking MN: It ain’t all hot dish and lutefisk up here.
March 10, 2009
Hi.
I’m so impressed with my cooks that I have to share. I’m sorry if you don’t care, but we are doing some good cookery up in this tundra, pardon-my-french, please.
First off, in case you don’t know, I have a group now. (Hello group!) They can cook. (I love that they can cook!) So I set them up with Scott Pampuch at Corner Table, who happens to be able to cook as well, in fact he’s a James Beard semi-finalist-for-best-chef-in-the-Midwest-cook. And then he and my cooks went to town making a really nice meal.
We divided them up – color circles on name tags mean something sometimes. They were given leaders and joined; team meat, team starch, team veggie, team dessert and team egg. (Once the people knew what was going on… they couldn’t help but make a team egg to be coached by Chef Pampuch. The man knows his way around an egg.)
And this is what happened (approximately) – recipes (not even close) for apple caramel bread pudding and eggs on toast to follow.
Leftover Biscuit Pudding
December 8, 2008
It never happens. There are never leftover biscuits. Never. And yet there they are: stale biscuits. In my defense, I’ve been alone in the house, and really not home much so there were almost a dozen biscuits that went uneaten. I figured I’d just take them to my meetup group and something would happen to them then. But no. So they came back home with me. ”Screw it,” I thought to myself, “I’ll just make bread pudding with them.” By golly it was tasty.
It might even be worth, dare I say it, letting biscuits go stale. (Huh, lightning actually didn’t strike me dead just then.)
Biscuit Bread Pudding
9 small biscuits, broken up
1/3 c dried fruit – apricots, chopped or golden raisins (if you got them/want them)
2 eggs, beaten
1/2 c sugar
1/2 c cream
2 c milk
1 T vanilla
2 T brandy
1/2 t cinnamon
1/2 cream
1 1/2 T sugar
maple syrup
Preheat oven to 325°f.
Put biscuits with dried fruit mixed in in a loaf pan. Mix together the rest of the ingredients in a bowl. Pour over the biscuits and dunk down the pieces that are sticking up. Place pan into a larger pan. Put into oven, pour enough water into the larger pan to make it half way up the bread pan.
Cook for 45 min to 1 hour, pudding is done when liquid stuff has solidified and looses it’s shine. When it’s done, take bread pan out of the water and place it on a wire rack. Let cool for 30 minutes to an hour. Whip cream and sugar together until the cream stands in hard peaks. Slice up slices of the pudding, drizzle with maple syrup and dollop with whipped cream. Enjoy!
Love always,
MrsMarv
Wildpepper Salsa 3 ways
September 7, 2008
Harvest time around here means that it’s the perfect time to make up some Wildpepper salsa. We use it in a bunch of different ways – and since it is so perfect for harvest time I figure I may as well share with you. (Aren’t you glad you’re you? If you were anyone else, I totally wouldn’t do it!)
I’ll warn you straight off, I don’t really remember what was in the original recipe. Which is to say – that this salsa has become such a staple in our house that I can’t be sure where it started (nor can I seem to find it on my computer – but I’m sure you could find it online.) I do know it was a recipe posted by Jim Campbell of Mild to Wild Pepper and Herb company. If you’ve never tried his bbq or hot sauces I highly recommend them. They’re really good and he seems like a really good guy.
Salsa
6 tomatillos
4 roma tomatoes
4 jalepeno peppers
3 aniheim peppers
2 yellow onions, quartered
2 ears corn
juice from 1 lime
1 bunch cilantro, coarsely chopped
salt to taste
Put all ingredients except lime, cilantro and salt on the smoker or grill. Grill over medium heat until veggies are tender, pulling them off the heat as they’re done. Deseeded remove stems and outer skins of all veggies. Put all veggies except corn in the blender. Blend until they’re the consistency you want. Cut kernals off corn. Put in a large container. Add in the blended veggies. Add in lime, cilantro and salt.
Confetti Nachos
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Lemon Blueberry Bubble Bread
June 30, 2008
I love creating something out of nothing. It’s funny, because one could reasonably argue that my life is about creating nothing out of nothing. When the power goes out, my work no longer exists. Perhaps that’s why I’m so partial to baking bread. It’s something out of nothing – that brings people joy. You don’t need much in the way of resources. Bit of flour, water, heat and time and you’re good to go. I’m convinced that if you have a warm loaf of bread all is right with the world.
It’s love… really.
Um, yeah. This worked quite well.
So, perhaps my work is not nothing out of nothing. If (by incredibly abstract extension from bread-making) it’s love, then it transcends medium. A case that may prove this point is Figs With Bri creator and author, Bri Brownlow. She is one of the many kindly people who has invited the world into her life through the words that she writes and the food that she eats. The grateful people who read what she writes have answered back. When Bri wrote about her recurrence of cancer they arose out of the nothing to help. Which means that, while all is not right with the world, it’s not crap either.
Along with the fundraiser there’s a CLICK photo contest, in honor of Bri. Photos are to feature the color yellow which made me think of my chubble bread. Bri made this recipe of mine (with her own modifications) a few months ago and talked about making a sweet version. I’ve thought about this as well and while a most appropriate version would have featured figs and brie, I chose to go with lemon, blueberry, pecan and mascarpone cheese. (It’s decidedly lighter and healthier than it’s predecessor.)
CLICK – that’s the zest. Zest is good.
The bread worked well. When it was done, we (Marv and I) decided it was good, but needed a bit of glaze to polish it off. Yeah… that was more good.
Please, join me in sending your best wishes to Bri and eating good bread.
Love, always.
MrsMarv
That’s right, when life gives you lemons – make bread.
Sponge:
1 t active dry yeast
1/2 c warm water 105°f to 115°f
3/4 c unbleached all-purpose flour
Sprinkle yeast over the warm water in a large bowl, whisk it in, and let stand until creamy, about 10 minutes. Stir in the flour. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise until very bubbly and doubled, about 45 minutes.
Dough:
1 t active dry yeast
1 c warm water, 105°f to 115°f
3 T olive oil
Sponge, above
1/4 c honey
1/4 c dried milk
3 1/2 – 3 3/4 c unbleached all purpose flour
2 t kosher salt
Sprinkle yeast over the warm water in a small bowl, whisk it in, and let stand until creamy, about 5 to 10 minutes. Using a heavy-duty mixer, add the dissolved yeast, honey, dried milk and olive oil to the sponge in the mixer bowl; mix in with the paddle attachment until well blended. Add in salt. Add in flour 1/4 c at a time – when you get to 3 cups add flour slower checking it until dough stops being very sticky and is only slightly sticky.
Change to the dough hook and knead at medium speed until the dough is soft, velvety and slightly sticky, 3 to 4 minutes. At this point you will be able to pull the dough up into peaks with your fingers. Finish by sprinkling 1 T of flour on your work surface and kneading the dough briefly. Transfer to a bowl lightly coated with olive oil and cover with plastic wrap and let rise until doubled 1 1/2 hours, or so.
Stuffs:
6 oz marscapone cheese, frozen then cut into small chunks
1 c pecans
1c blueberries
1/3 c sugar
zest from 2 – 3 lemons
3 T olive oil
1/4 t salt
Just before the rise is done, prep and toss together all stuffs ingredients in a large bowl. Coat the mixture with oil.
Stuffs & Second Rise:
Put a coating of stuffs in an empty wide bowl. Empty out bread on a non-sick surface. Shape into an flat rectangle, approximately 1/2″ – 1″ thick. Using a pizza wheel, cut loaf into inch wide strips. They do not need to be uniform. Then cut off one inch ends and put them into the stuffs bowl. Toss dough cubes into the stuffs mixture and gently coat them. Add in more stuffs periodically so that they stay separate.
Divide mixture into your baking pans. I generally do two pie plates but you can do loaves, cake pans or even muffin tins. Once you have dough in pans cover with plastic wrap and leave for second rise in a warm area. Let rise until doubled, about 1 hour.
Baking:
Preheat oven to 400°f. Brush top with olive oil and bake for 25-35 minutes or until golden brown. (If top starts to brown too much, place on top shelf of your oven.
Glaze
1/4 c powdered sugar
2 oz marscapone cheese, melted
1 T lemon juice
Whisk all together and drizzle over bread. Enjoy!
Makin’ Other People’s Stuff
May 28, 2008
Several weeks ago, Marv made the observation that we never had a wedding cake. I really couldn’t believe that he didn’t remember the cake that he made, considering I clearly remember looking up to see the top layers slowly gaining speed as they slid off their base. Doing the whole wedding reception ourselves had seemed like a good idea. (We tend to do things like this.) For some reason, we also wanted to have it where we lived, in an illegal loft space in ghetto central, with bullet holes through the windows, prostitutes on the street and whatnot. We even briefly considered having a bbq out on the roof but there was no telling who or what would be wandering through the alley so we decided to have Sunday brunch inside. (Prostitutes, pushers and pimps generally sleep in on Sundays. Preachers have somewhere else to be. The street would be relatively hassle free for our people.)
Yep, this sign was in the alley. It is my all time favorite handmade sign. (This one is a close second.)
Regardless of our highly questionable logic, we did have the skills to pull this off. Marv had recently retired (at age 27) from being a chef. At his last cooking job he worked 80 – 100 hour weeks for almost a year at a bakery/cafe and had proven that he could cook brunch in his sleep – with a crazy woman screaming at him if need be. But not this crazy woman. I was running around getting everything else but food done. Oh, and it was 105°f out. I was having problems just wearing clothes, therefore generating more heat by screaming was absolutely out of the question.
Marv was a rock. Not only did he crank out a half dozen different kinds of muffins, several salads and sandwiches (on bread he baked, of course) but he also took on making a flourless almond cake he was going to make for a wedding while at the bakery. The wedding got called off, so he never made it and when we decided to do the reception ourselves, he said he wanted to make the cake that got away. My response was, “Dude, you’re doing the baking, make what you want.” Little did I know that chocolate ganache + 105°f = very slidey cake.
What’s the best thing about cooking in Florida?
April 11, 2008
Answer: my brother.
See that bottle there poking it’s spicy little head out from my mother’s refrigerator? That’s my brother’s doing. And even though he’s cheffing all the way on the other side of the state, his influence on my mom’s kitchen is seen and appreciated.
The second best thing about cooking in Florida is walking into markets and smelling the sweet smell of calico scallops fresh from the gulf singing out to you like little crazed sirens while you’re still 20′ away. They smelled like dinner to me. I decided to combine them with some pasta, asparagus, parmesan shavings and a burre blanc sauce.
Burre Blanc sauce is one of them classic French sauces, basically you cook some shallots in some wine (+citrus) until it reduces a lot and then you whisk in butter (a lot of butter) one lump at a time until you have sauce. The only problem there was to how to make sure my mom didn’t know how much butter I was sticking in the sauce.
The upside of all that butter is that a little goes a long way, and then you have what is essentially flavored butter you can use for other things. One look at the sauce the next morning and I figured I now had breakfast too. Scrambled eggs using the sauce and parmesan, with a side of the leftover asparagus tossed in orange juice and some nice sourdough toast drizzled with truffle oil suited me just fine.
So, for any who know me and are startled by the fact that I’m eating eggs, by themselves, yeah, you’re right, I don’t like them. But then again, then you also know that I’m (almost) always up for proving myself wrong. It’s entirely possible that I’ve only had scrambled eggs made by substandard cooks. (Although, this isn’t actually the case.) My deal with eggs (and nearly everything else I don’t like to eat) is the texture. If they’re cooked so that… uh, curds(?) don’t form I’m all good. Watch this clip of Gordon Ramsay from The F Word if you want to see the basic method (although I tend to take a slower boat to get there), you even get to see him burn toast.
Scallops with Pasta and Burre Blanc Sauce
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Eggnog Pancakes with Pear & Walnut Compote
December 22, 2007
There is a Harkni, who will remain nameless, that believes that the breakfast the day after a holiday is just as important if not more important than the holiday meal. He is very impassioned on the matter. He doesn’t even make it to the big holiday meal before starting to plan breakfast the next day. You can see it in his eyes, as he’s finishing his dinner, that he is already tasting breakfast the next morning.
Me, I just want to get the whole thing done and gone. Well, and to eat leftovers. Ah, leftovers. I love leftovers. There’s something that I just love about being able to make new things out of things I’ve already enjoyed.
If I was going to reference 2 red chairs in a pear recipe, this is how I would do it.
But there are also the leftovers that aren’t ever going to get eaten. Fruit baskets filled with more oranges and pears than can be eaten, bowls filled with walnuts quickly going stale and eggnog that lost it’s charm two parties ago. I think I have the perfect solution, and they’re delicious enough to warrant the Harkni trying to taste them in his head while eating another meal. Silly, silly Harkni.
(The best part is, you don’t even have to wait until the day after – you can just make them anyway!)
Egg Nog Pancakes
Cranberry Orange Bread (Oh! with Toasted Almonds Too)
October 29, 2007
I’ve been wanting to play with fresh cranberries for awhile now. But it seems like by the time I get to it the season is over and they’re nowhere to be seen. So the second I saw them in the store this year, I jumped on them. I’m playing with fresh cranberries this year and nobody is going to stop me! (I have a bit of the over-dramatic in me today.) I’ve always liked cranberry things but I’ve never cooked with them. Decided to change that. Decided to start with figuring out how cranberries work. And decided to taste one raw. That was a mistake. They’re awful. (Or at least the one I tried was.)
I decided to proceed by making things that are known to work before I go getting all weird on the cranberries. (Seemed prudent, but the wierdness tends to leak anyway.) I started with cranberry orange bread. The first try was pretty good but there was too much contrast between the sweet and the tart of the cranberries. So, I upped the zest and added in some almond extract with the vanilla and Grand Marnier. That did the trick.
Zesty.
It seems, and please do correct me if I’m way off base here, that cranberries have an extremely tart bordering on bitter outer shell with a fibrous inside, which is not so appealing raw but when prepared in certain ways, the flavor from the outside leaches into the fibrous middle making them soft, tart and quite nice. So, baked goods will work, next I’m going to play with raw goods. If anyone has any suggestions, do let me know.
Cranberry Orange Bread
Feed me! 
