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!
Simple Spinach Meal (or Appetizer)
March 25, 2009
It’s rainy. It’s cold. We’ve both got this stupid flu that keeps coming and going and I really just want it to go away now. Had big plans to make dinner. The mind is willing the body is not. Gotta just try to make something simple, healthy and good. Gotta try to melt the crust on my mood. I thought about it for a bit and then I made this.
It would be very easy to change this around to whatever flavor profile you were looking for. A bit of crispy bread, fresh greens, creamy cheese, something sweet, crunchy and acidic and you’ve got a combo that will (more than likely) work. And of course if you blend it all up, you’ve got a dip.
Oh, and it takes about 7 minutes to make, total.
Spinach & Chevre on Crusty Bread with Balsamic Reduction
Balsamic Reduction
(Take 1 1/4 c red wine and 1/4 c balsamic vinegar and bring to just boiling. Reduce heat and simmer until liquid is reduced by at least half around 1/2 – 2/3 c. Cool and store until needed. Keeps forever in the refrigerator.)
1 baguette, sliced
You can just slice up the baguette and serve on that, or brush slices with olive oil and brown in a 400°f oven until browned. This is the best option if they’re going to sit around for awhile.
2 – 3 T apple juice
1 bag spinach (or similar amount)
1 – 2 oz chevre, crumbled
2 T lightly roasted almonds, chopped
salt, pepper & cayenne pepper to taste
Heat juice in pan until boiling. Toss in spinach, cover and pan steam until dark green and wilted.
Turn off heat. Let cool down. Drain out extra liquids. Mix in chevre, almonds and spices and stir until mixed in with some lumps. Top baguette slices with a couple of tablespoons of spinach mixture. Drizzle with balsamic reduction.
Serve with some fresh berries.
Jamnation: you too, can can.
October 10, 2008
I grew up in the age when Grandmas were magic.
You would travel great distances (any distance is great when you’re 4), then you get to play on tractors and sing to pigs (you were told to stay away from them because they were mean, so you would sing to them to try to make them happier so they wouldn’t be so mean) until cousins come to visit and made fun of you so you had to hide in the kitchen with Grandma. She’d give you a cookie or two in an empty bakelite powder case and you’d play a game of making up what magic potions could be in all the the different colored jars in the pantry and take little bites all the way around the cookie in a circle putting it back in the bakelite case after each bite all while humming to yourself and swinging your legs out as far as you could.
Well, maybe this was just me. Yeah, lets just say that was me. I sang to pigs. So…
Later, when I was a starving art student. I’d visit and as I was leaving Grandma’d grab me, take me down to the basement and load me up with frozen mini-loaves of quick breads and random other foods she had preserved and stashed away for later.
Putting up food. It’s such a good phrase. It means that starving art students get to eat. And frankly, bad economy or good, there’s few things cheerier in the middle of winter then opening up a can of something you made when there were big puffy clouds in a cyan blue sky. So yum!
Once again, sometimes the old ways are the best ways. It really just makes sense to make the most of the food you’ve grown yourself or bought locally from people who are growing really good stuff while it’s the best it can be. Enter the art of canning.
Canning – you probably have an opinion about it. Perhaps you love it. Or perhaps you think it’s too old fashioned, too much work or just too scary. Scary, it kinda is. If do something careless or are just plain old unlucky botulism can occur. Now to put those chances into perspective, Wikipedia says that in the US there is, “An average of 110 cases of botulism are reported each year in the United States. Of these, approximately, 72% are infant botulism, and 3% are wound botulism.” This means that there are 28 cases a year in adults who aren’t black tar heroin users. (I’m just going to assume you aren’t.) It goes on to say that the mortality rate is now down 2%. (It does have to be treated though, or you’re more likely to die than live.)
So, there are rules. There are always rules. It happens. Rule #1: pay attention to your ph level! Things that are higher in acid don’t need to be canned with as stringent resources as those that aren’t. (For a little fun fact, pumpkins vary in ph level from pumpkin to pumpkin so you won’t find people willing to tell you that you can can it safely.) Never fear, there is a guide, a book, promptly dubbed the ‘blue ball book’ in my house has a chart (I’m sure you can also find them online) of what foods have a higher ph level than others. Things like lemons, rhubarb and plums have a high ph level and need less help in keeping bad bacteria out.
Rule #2: practice safe can! Clean your cans and then submerge them in simmering water until you use them. This has the benefit of warming up cans so that a warm liquid won’t crack them and killing of little bacterium.
Now you have a few different choices of how technical you would like to get in your canning. You can refrigerate, freeze or seal your cans. If you refrigerate, just stick your stuff in a prepared can (you really should clean and simmer) seal them up – your jam should last a few weeks. Freezer jam is just what you think it is, fill up a container and stick it in the freezer, when you want to use it just defrost it.
For more information on canning just go to freshpreserving.com and they’ll hook you up.
That’s about it. The only other technical thing you need to know (for jams only) is about pectin (as well as the whole canning process thing.) Pectin is a naturally occurring chemical in most plants. It’s a fibrous part of the cell walls which helps bind cells together and regulate water. Most commercially available pectins are derived from orange peels and apple skins. You can find pectin in the canning section of grocery stores. I’m still playing with pectin in my jam recipes to figure out just how solid I want to make the, hence the pectin I’m saying to put in is super subjective and you might want to play on your own.
Spring & Fall Applesauce
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.
Tuna Noodle Casserole… Rethunk
May 18, 2008
I missed the one bit of competitive cooking I do every year… but I still couldn’t get it out of my system. Hence, the overwhelming desire to dork around with a tuna noodle casserole. I could not resist. (Frankly, I don’t think you should either.)
I’ve changed it up from “tuna surprise,” to nice big chunks of tuna paired with edamame and bacon. The sauce is a bit sweet with the addition of some corn and topped with a bit of bacon grease tossed breadcrumbs for a nice crunch. And while it does take more work than the whole mix random stuff together and stick it in a pan bit, I think you will like it.
Tuna Noodle Casserole
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Can we start the New Year’s diet now, please?
December 27, 2007
Cuz this is yummy. And good for you. And doesn’t take more than 15 minutes to make. I think we can all get behind that.
Salmon with Corn Salsa
(enough for 2 servings)
some fish – you want a firm fish without a huge amount of flavor
salt, cumin, chipotle powder, spike
olive oil
1 c frozen organic corn, thawed
1/2 small yellow onion, chopped
1 yellow (or red) tomato, chopped
cilantro leaves, coarsely chopped
juice from half a lime
salt
Heat olive oil over medium high heat until shimmery. While oil is heating prep fish by sprinkling with spices and rubbing them into the fleshy side of the fish. Put the fish skin side down in the olive oil and reduce heat to medium-low and cover.
While fish is cooking cut up veggies for salsa and toss them together with the cilantro, lime juice and salt.
The fish is done when it is firm to the touch and flakes easily. Mound some salsa on a plate and place piece of fish on top. Douse with more lime or
Cotija cheese if you like.
Stealthy Healthy(ish) Mac & Cheese
September 28, 2007
Crikey. Did I just write those words? I did, didn’t I? Well, nothing can be done about it now. Kinda gotta keep moving from here.
I don’t much like light food. Or rather, food that is supposed to be a light version of another food. Generally, this only means that it’s substandard. Seriously, if you’re going to do that and it’s not going to be good enough to please people – why not just give it a new name?
But I digress. It always sorta astounds me to realize just how fatty real mac & cheese is. A better way is certainly called for. I figured there are a couple of ways that I could get the thickness and body that the sauce would have if it was loaded down with cheese. Beans, like a soy or northern would both work, but there wouldn’t be much of a flavor gain from it. So, I turned to root veggies, like sweet potato or turnip. Finally, I decided to go with roasted butternut squash because of the flavor kick it would give the sauce. At this point, I’ve decided it’s actually better. My first real surprise in doing this was how much the squash roasting smelled like cheddar cheese. Oh, hell yeah, this is good.
Who can argue with butternut squash with blue and cheddar cheeses? (And they’re made in or near MN.)
There are a couple of different choices you can make for the cheese. You can go with cheeses that really stand out in their own right or a lighter flavored cheese like gruyere to deepen the flavor of the butternut squash. Tis your choice. For the meat product I sauteed some prosciutto until it was crispish and then I tore it into bite sized pieces
Mac & Cheese
1 butternut squash
6 cloves garlic
1/2 c cottage cheese
1 c milk
2 T rice flour
2 shallots, sliced thinly
(6 oz aged extra sharp cheddar cheese, shredded – 4oz cheese curds (or big cubes of cheddar) 2 oz Parmesan finely grated or blue cheese, crumbled) or
(10 oz gruyere 3/4 shredded, 1/4 chunkily cubed)
2 oz parmesan, finely shredded & divided in half
salt & pepper
1 lb elbow macaroni
4oz salty cured meat product, (or faux pork product) cubed or sliced
Cut the squash in half and roast face down on a cookie sheet in a preheated 450°f oven for 35 minutes or so, until you can side a knife into it. Just toss the garlic cloves in husks on the sheet as well.
Let the squash cool for awhile and then peel off the skins. Cook the macaroni until it’s cooked through but still tough. Strain and set aside. Squish the garlic cloves out of their husks and into a new bowl. Mash in the squash. Add in the cottage cheese and mix until combined.
Preheat the oven to 400°f.
Put the rice flour in a small saucepan over low heat. Whisk in small amounts of the milk until it forms a paste. Whisk in the rest of the milk. Add in shallot and some salt and pepper. Let simmer for 10 minutes or so. If it gets too thick add in some more milk. Pour into the butternut squash mixture and combine. Add in half the shredded cheese and all the parmesan or blue. Spice to taste. Fold in the macaroni.
Transfer to a baking dish, or several individual dishes. Strategically place gruyere cubes or cheese curds on the dish and sink them into the center of the dish with your fingers. Re-spread the macaroni over the holes. Sprinkle the top with the rest of the shredded cheese.
Bake until the top is browned and bubbly. Sprinkle with a bit more salt & pepper and serve. (Near as I can figure with my loosey goosey math if this is divided into 10 servings it comes to a bit under 330 calories. And even folks who don’t care about eating the light stuff can’t get enough.)
Everybody’s doing it…
September 18, 2007
Yes, folks it’s the ubiquitious crusted goat cheese salad. I know – it’s pretty much a culinary cliche at this point – but it’s yummy, so who cares? Not me!
I did switch things up a little bit though. I decided to turn a little Japanese. I used panko for the crusting material and created a wasabi vinaigrette to contrast with the goat cheese.
Crusted Goat Cheese Salad with Wasabi Vinaigrette
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Carrot Soup for Jodie Rose
September 5, 2007
In the backlog that is my life, this one has been the blinking turn signal on a car driving in front of me for the past 100 miles. Two months ago, I figured I’d post this recipe because Jodie asked me about it. I thought well, that’s an easy one – slow cook, dump in a blender – photograph and *poof* post done. Clearly – this didn’t happen.
Until now! Brace yourselves people – carrot soup is here. Or rather, in my fridge. It’s tasty, healthy and freaky low cal. Almost gets me a little pissed off at it – but there it is. It’s perfect. (Grumble. Grumble. I know, I know – let’s kick it’s ass!)
Carrot Soup with Caramelized Onion and Ginger
Thank you Ms. Judy French Toast.
August 26, 2007
Ms. Judy came over for dinner and she knew that we would have more than enough food for dinner so she brought us the prettiest bread I ever did see for our breakfast the next day. Ms. Judy is an excellent dinner guest.
See? It is pretty bread, isn’t it? I sliced it on up.
Mixed a lightly beaten egg with 3 T milk, 1 T Kahlua (I know, boozing before noon, can’t be helped, I’m afraid,), 1 t cinnamon and a pinch of salt. Dunked the bread in it.
Tossed the bread on to a hot griddle. Cooked it until it was brown.
Then served it up with some of the blueberry compote that went with the lemon sorbet I’d made for dinner the night before. (You’re going to have to wait a couple days for that recipe.)
It was super yum! Thank you, Judy!
Feed me! 
