Red Snapper with Romesco

Breakfast

Arugula. Potato Pancakes. Coddled Eggs. Fresh Basil.

Yumm.

Pasta Primavera

I am a gluten free girl so I use brown rice pasta but you can use any you like. It is listed as vegan but can add pecorino at the end.

This is the perfect time of year to find all the fabulous fresh veggies at your local farmer's market. Take advantage of it and make the recipe this weekend.

You won't regret it.

Salmon Cakes

This is a recipe that was sent out today for Naturopath I do marketing for. It is an anti-inflammatory recipe (no gluten, no cow's dairy etc. more on that another day). You can use regular bread crumbs instead of rice cracker crumbs if you can tolerate wheat.

Enjoy.

Click on image to view larger.

Get to know your CSA

There are times that I feel über privileged to live in Portland. Researching our local CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture) is one of those times.

A quick zip code search on Local Harvest pulls up six pages within the vicinity. There are farms that are basic full / half share vegetables, more specialty locations with heirloom varieties, berries, meats, egg shares, honey shares, etc.

I have been assessing my needs and determined that heirloom varietals of fruits and veggies are a necessity along with the option of an egg share and convenient pick up.

I am leaning towards Viridian Farms mostly because they do fresh herbs along with fruits and veggies including squash blossoms, radicchio, cardoon. mmmm.

Others I considered are:

Winter Green Farm

Dancing Roots Farm

Pumpkin Ridge Gardens - Year Round

Love Farm Organics

I recommend this as a way to indulge in locally grown produce. Local Harvest is a great resource and has lists of CSAs across the US.

Something weird has happened...

I, the queen of breakfast, have lost my appetite.

Long gone are the days where I lovingly sip coffee and relax with a stack of whole wheat waffles with fresh fruit or a seasonal veggie frittata.

Everything seems bland and there is no joie de vivre in my mornings anymore. I hope it comes back! It used to be my favorite part of the day.

My waffles taste dry. My eggs are uninspiring. I think this has absolutely nothing to do with breakfast itself but more to do with my lack of time.

Must. Find. Time. And. Love. Again.

Onion Galettes

I first moved into my own apartment about 3 years ago. It is the apartment right next door to where I live now. I had just broken up with a guy I dated for 2 years. About a month earlier we bought a cute bungalo under the premise that having an extra bedroom would help solve our (ahem) problems. I don't know who thought that sounded like a good idea. And I hope we never said that aloud to anyone outside of the relationship. That was like a $190,000 band-aid that was applied too tightly and cut off my circulation. So I fled while E was on a business trip to Tokyo. To the closest thing I could find. A cute little one bedroom apartment in a newly renovated, 1920's, 4-plex.

Then a year later I moved next door because of the better kitchen.

When I moved I had nothing. No bed, no table, no sofa well no furniture. Maybe a bookcase, blanket and a stereo. You know, basic necessities.

The first thing I went out to buy was a nice set of stainless steel pots and pans and my kitchen table. I was broke, bored and lonely. After work each night I would come home and cook for one. One night I made a whole wheat pie crust with the intention of making a full sized quiche but decided like with most other things in life, it would be cuter (and therefor better) in small, individual servings. It was also a chance for me to experiment with creating a free form pie, quite possibly the most beautiful thing ever. I caramelized some onions, grated gruyere, pressed out mini crusts with my hands, minced some fresh tarragon and put it all together.

Then I waited. Patiently, impatient. For my mini galettes to be finished cooking. And I ate. And I loved. And I have been lovingly eating ever since.

Onion Galettes

1 lb onions of your choice, sliced
4 tbsp butter
1 cup grated gruyere
2 tbsp fresh minced tarragon
1 egg white
s&p

Whole Wheat Paté Brisee

1 cup whole wheat flour
6 tbsp butter
1/2 tsp salt
2 tbsp ice cold water

Pulse flour, salt and butter together in food processor. Add water until dough forms a ball. Chill until ready to assemble.

Melt butter in a skillet over medium and add the onions, s&p and cook until they begin to brown. Remove from heat and cool slightly.

Portion the dough into six equal pieces. Roll each piece out to a 6" circle. Fill each circle with some gruyere, onions and fresh tarragon and fold the sides up. Place the galettes on a baking sheet and brush the crusts with the egg white. Bake in a 400 degree oven for 12-15 minutes or until the galettes are browned on top.

Weekly Menu 1.12

Split pea soup.
Boeuf Bourgignon
Ratatouille
Roasted Salmon and Winter veggies with Salsa Verde.
Onion Galettes

Split Pea Soup

Olive oil
1 onion, diced
4 carrots, diced
3 celery stalks, diced
5 sprigs of fresh thyme
3 bay leaves
2 cups chicken broth
1 lb green split peas, picked over and rinsed
Ham bone
2 tbsp fresh lemon juice

Heat oil over medium in a soup pot. Add onion, carrots, celery, and thyme; season with salt and pepper. Cook until vegetables begin to soften about 5 minutes.

Add broth, split peas, ham bone, and 5 cups water. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to medium-low, and partially cover; simmer until peas are soft, 30 to 45 minutes.

Remove bone, cut any remaining meat off and add to the soup. Simmer until heated through. If necessary, thin with water. Add salt, pepper, and lemon juice to taste.

Salmon Amendment

I realized after posting the menu that I was out of parchment. I had to substitute with what i had on had so I decided to do roasted Salmon with pesto and couscous instead.

This is one of the easiest, fastest week night meals. I like it in the summer better when I can get fresh heirloom tomatoes to stir into the couscous.

I like to add a pinch of cayenne to my pesto. I started doing this about 5 years ago when I wanted to fake the spicy-ness of garlic. I really loved the outcome and still do it everytime.

Roast Salmon with Pesto and Couscous

1 lb Salmon Fillets
1 1/2 cup fresh basil leaves torn
1/3 cup olive oil
1/2 cup roasted walnuts
3 cloves garlic
pinch of cayenne
1 cup Israeli Couscous
3 chopped roma tomatoes
Romano
salt and pepper

Roast the salmon in a 450 degree oven until cooked through. about 12 minutes

To prepare the pesto place olive oil, basil, garlic, walnuts, cayenne and salt into a food processor and mix to desired consistency. I like mine a little chunkier than some.

Cook the couscous in 1 1/2 cups of water until soft about 15 minutes. After it is cooked stir in a little bit of the prepared pesto and fresh tomatoes.

Place on piece of salmon on each plate and top with pesto. Serve with some couscous and top all with fresh romano to taste.

Turkey Meatballs with Spicy Serrano Sauce

This time I made my meatballs with turkey instead of buffalo. I served them with whole wheat spaghetti and roasted squash.

(Princess Fussy Face helped...)

Quinoa Stuffed Peppers

Quinoa Stuffed Red Peppers

4- large red peppers
1- red onion, diced
2- cloves of garlic, minced
1 1/2 cup quinoa
1 tsp cumin
1 1/2 cup broth
1/2 cup pepitas
1 cup provolone piccante, grated
s & p to taste

1.) Clean out pepper seeds and prepare them to be stuffed. Cut away the remaining red pepper pieces from around the stem and dice.

2.) Saute red pepper dice, onion and garlic in olive oil over medium heat until soft, about 7 minutes. Add the quinoa and the cumin and saute until fragrant, about 2 minutes.

3.) Add the broth, lower heat and cover until quinoa is completely cooked, 10-15 minutes.

4.) Stir in pepitas, provolone piccante and salt & pepper to taste. Stuff peppers with mixture, grate more cheese on top and bake in a 40o degree oven until peppers are soft, about 10-15 minutes.

I like to serve this with one of my favorite salads. I blanch green beans and toss a whole lot of them on a bed of arugula. The dressing I use is a basic vinaigrette of olive oil, white wine vinegar, minced shallot, salt and lots of fresh black pepper.

Enjoy!

Recipe adapted from a Martha Stewart Food recipe.

Menu

Meatballs with Spicy Serrano Sauce and Winter Squash
Quinoa Stuffed Red Peppers with Provolone Piccante
Miso Salmon Packets with Braised Baby Bok Choy
Pork Chops with Apricot Chutney and Hazelnut Couscous
Roasted Veggie and Pesto Pizza with Spinach Salad

Mmmm. Can't wait!

Roasted Veggie and Pesto Pizza

1 prepared whole wheat pizza crust
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 small red onion, sliced
1/2 eggplant, cubed
1 zucchini, cubed
4 roma tomatoes sliced
2 portobellos, sliced
1/2 cup pesto
s&p
1 cup shredded fontina
1/2 cup crumbled feta
1/2 cup romano
red pepper flakes

Place all veggies in a bowl and toss with olive oil and s&p. Lay on a baking sheet in one layer and roast in a 450 degree oven for 15 minutes until all are soft.

Roll out pizza dough to desired shaped. Spread dough with pesto and and roasted veggies. Use a slotted spoon to transfer veggies onto the dough so you get the veggies but not all the liquids released. Top with the grated cheeses and hot pepper flakes.

Bake in the oven for 15 minutes until the crust is browned.

Food Pairings

I found this handy little site last weekend in my laying-in-bed-for-12-hours phase of being sick

Enjoy!

Breakie...

This is my first breakfast in weeks. I have been ill and time crunched between trying to get enough sleep, working and hanging with my sista who is in from out of town.

I had hot barley cereal with walnuts and carmelized apples. A stand by for winter.

We are cooking on sunday though so expect the menu for the week.

Hello Again!

I got lost there for a moment. I am trying to simplify my crazy new schedule. I have just taken on a couple more personal chef jobs and am finding absolutely no time to post, cook for myself, eat and enjoy food. I mean my favorite cooking holidays passed with nary a post! I catered desserts for 300 and you get nothing. They were quite delicious.

I figure I just need to implement a system and stick to it. So here it is, I am going to start listing the menus for the week, my shopping list and the recipes each day of the week. Starting next Sunday. I think.

Until then I leave you with this. I am sick and sore-throated so today is a soup & ginger tea-while-I-cook-day.

Coconut Curry Squash Soup

1- butternut squash, cut into 1" pieces
1- onion diced
2- tbsp olive oil
1- tbsp red curry paste
1- can coconut milk, regular or light, your pref.
4- cups broth, i used chicken
cilantro
salt to taste

Heat the oil in a soup pot. Add the onion and cook until tender about 5 minutes. Add the curry paste and stir until fragrant about 1 minute. Add coconut milk, squash and broth. Cook until squash is tender. Cool slightly and puree soup in a blender in batches until all is smooth.

Serve soup topped with fresh cilantro.

Option: I hate cutting and peeling squash. One way around this is to roast the squash until tender and then scoop out the flesh and add to the soup. You won't need to cook the soup as long if you do this because the squash is already cooked.

I will roast and puree squashes and pumpkins in large batches and freeze the puree to just have on hand. It is great to stir into polenta, risotto, serve as a side or use for soups.

To roast squash:
Heat oven to 350°F. Quarter squash and scoop out the seeds; drizzle with 1 olive oil, and season with salt and pepper. Wrap in foil, and place on baking sheet. Bake 1 hour, or until squash is soft. Cool 20 minutes, or until easy to handle.

Sweets for 50

I filled 50 of these tiny boxes with Peppermint Dark Chocolate Truffles and Rosemary Scented Pinenut Tartlets. Then I gave them to my A&P classmates to celebrate the end of the long nine months of physiology hell.

I had to test recipes for a dessert buffet I am making for Portland Art Center's artist reception this Friday night. I was not super pleased with the results but they will do for classmate gifts.

I'll post the recipes when I have tweaked them more.

Pappardelle with Pancetta, Rapini, and Pine Nuts

This recipe is for my good friend Justin who is cooking for a lady friend tonight. He needed something with pork in it. This is a favorite dish of mine. It is quick, sophisticated and makes use of extraordinary ingredients in a very simple way.

I like to finish the meal with some fresh sliced pears and a glass of light-ish red wine like a pinot noir.

Pappardelle with Pancetta, Rapini, and Pine Nuts

4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, divided
3 garlic cloves, peeled, flattened
1 medium onion, chopped
3 ounces thinly sliced pancetta, chopped
1 teaspoon fennel seeds, crushed
1/4 teaspoon dried crushed red pepper
1 large bunch broccoli rabe (also called rapini; generous 1 pound), stems sliced 1/2 inch thick, tops cut into 2-inch pieces
1 cup water

1 8.8-ounce package dried pappardelle pasta

1 cup freshly grated Pecorino Romano cheese, plus additional for serving
1/2 cup pine nuts, toasted

Heat 2 tablespoons oil in heavy large skillet over medium-high heat. Add garlic and cook until golden brown, stirring frequently, about 3 minutes. Discard garlic. Add onion, pancetta, and fennel seeds to skillet; sauté until onion is tender and pancetta begins to brown, about 8 minutes. Add dried crushed red pepper, then broccoli rabe stems and cook 4 minutes to soften slightly, stirring occasionally. Stir in broccoli rabe tops, sprinkle with salt, and add 1 cup water. Cover and cook until stems and tops are tender, about 5 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Meanwhile, cook pasta in large pot of boiling salted water until just tender but still firm to bite. Drain pasta, reserving 1 cup cooking liquid.

Add pasta to skillet with broccoli rabe and stir over low heat to combine, adding reserved cooking liquid by tablespoonfuls to moisten if necessary. Stir in remaining 2 tablespoons oil and 1 cup cheese. Season to taste with salt and generous amount of pepper. Transfer to shallow bowl. Sprinkle with pine nuts and serve, passing additional cheese separately.

(recipe via bon appetit)

Dinner tonight.

Dinner tonight. I can't wait.

Food for thought...

This is a different kind of post. I had to read this article for my environment and nutrition course last night and thought everyone should read this.

Here 'tis:
______

The SUV in the Pantry
Adapted from an article by Thomas Starrs
Courtesy of SustainableBusiness.com

I spend a fair amount of time thinking about how to reduce my family's dependence on energy, particularly energy derived from fossil fuels. I commute to work by bicycle or bus, install compact fluorescents when light bulbs burn out, replace major appliances with the most efficient ones I can afford, and cast jealous glances at my friends who drive hybrids or alternative-fueled vehicles. But until recently, I didn't think of myself as an energy glutton because of the food I eat.

Then I read an astonishing statistic: It takes about 10 fossil fuel calories to produce each food calorie in the average American diet. So if your daily food intake is 2,000 calories, then it took 20,000 calories to grow that food and get it to you. In more familiar units, this means that growing, processing and delivering the food consumed by a family of four each year requires the equivalent of almost 34,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of energy, or more than 930 gallons of gasoline (for comparison, the average U.S. household annually consumes about 10,800 kWh of electricity, or about 1,070 gallons of gasoline).

In other words, we use about as much energy to grow our food as to power our homes or fuel our cars.

Overall, about 15% OF U.S. energy goes to supplying Americans with food, split roughly equally between the production of crops and livestock, and food processing and packaging. David Pimentel, a professor of ecology and agricultural science at Cornell University, has estimated that if all humanity ate the way Americans eat, we would exhaust all known fossil fuel reserves in just seven years.

The implications of agricultural energy use for the environment are disturbing. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, agriculture contributes over 20% of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, including more than 20% CO2, 55% of methane and 65% of nitrous oxide. In addition, our energy-intensive agriculture industry contributes substantially to soil erosion, loss of wildlife habitat, degradation of water quality from chemical runoff and causes other adverse environmental impacts.

Much of the energy embedded in our food comes from growing grains that require further processing to be eaten. Producing a 2-pound box of breakfast cereal, for example, requires the equivalent of burning half a gallon of gasoline.

Eating high on the food chain is even worse. Eating a carrot or an apple gives the diner all the caloric energy in those foods, but feeding these foods to a pig reduces the energy available by a factor of 10. That's because the pig uses most of the energy just staying alive, and stores only a fraction of the energy in the parts we eat. All told, it takes 68 calories of fossil fuel to produce one calorie of pork, and 35 calories of fuel to make one calorie of beef.

Interestingly, the path to reducing the energy intensity of the food system dovetails nicely with the path to a healthy and nutritious diet. It can be summarized in three simple suggestions.

In my hometown of Portland, Oregon, individuals and businesses alike are starting to recognize and respond to the public's concerns about fossil food. Grocery stores featuring locally grown and organic products are common. Farm stands, farmer's markets and community-supported agriculture operations are thriving. Here, even fast food restaurants are using local and organic ingredients.

For instance, Burgerville is a local chain that buys exclusively Oregon Country Beef, the branded product of 40 family ranches in the region that produce an all-natural product made without hormones, genetically modified grain or any animal byproducts. Burgerville promotes the fact that customers can trace the source of their food from ranch to table - and play a role in sustaining the local agricultural economy. Another local company, Hot Lips Pizza, worked with a group of Northwest farmers to create a Food Alliance-certified local market for organic wheat and flour, providing customers with pizza that is sustainably grown. It also is really, really tasty.

After all, you are what you eat.

Take Action!

Identify farmers and producers in your area and look for their products when you shop. You might be surprised at what you'll find! Producers, farmers, markets, and locally-minded businesses can be found online at www.localharvest.org.

Take Food Routes' "Buy Local Challenge" by pledging to spend at least $10 a week on local food. Visit www.foodroutes.org to sign up.

Roast Salmon, Lentils and Chard

mmmm.

make it piece by piece by piece