Wednesday, September 24, 2008
strawberry & mint salad with honey-balsamic dressing (with pear and peach variations)
late-season laissez-faire gardening
By the end of the summer, the Alaskan produce is finally coming on like gangbusters! Were eating lots of greens from my husband Dan’s small but nevertheless chickweed-choked vegetable patch. The garden is surprisingly productive, considering that we never seem to be able to keep ahead of the weeds during the late summer. I guess it’s a combination of the extra rain helping the weeds, and our reduced gardening motivation. We’re always on top of it in the early summer, providing a healthy environment for the little seedlings to grow—weeding, thinning, watering obsessively. Then, as the months go by, and the plants are growing nicely, a more laissez-faire attitude sets in—I imagine it’s like parents with grown children. Watering is rarely, if ever needed, and we’re just harvesting at this point—not doing much tending. “Come on, you great, lazy heads of lettuce! You’re big boys now! You can compete with that hedge of chickweed!”
In honor of those giant heads of lettuce, that somehow do overcome the encroaching weeds, I’m sharing a recipe for our favorite salad that we love to eat all summer. You can use different fruits throughout the summer, but the funny thing about strawberries here in Alaska is that we can get great ones even into September if the weather has been cool like this summer! You can substitute ripe peaches for the strawberries, or ripe pears in the fall; in that case, top with toasted almonds and omit the mint. It’s wonderful, too!
strawberry & mint salad with honey-balsamic dressing (with pear and peach variations)
This recipe is a variation on a recipe in Audrey Alsterberg and Wanda Urbanowicz’s Rebar: Modern Food Cookbook
When the strawberries run out, use peaches and pears, as the season changes. Just omit the mint and add a generous garnish of toasted almonds. (Toast them for 15 minutes in a 350 degree oven.)
If you want to serve this salad with something else, try it with any kind of a sandwich or toast with a topping. I tend to like eating so much of this salad for dinner that a nice fat slice of whole grain sourdough toast drizzled with olive oil is all I really need.
dressing
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
2 tablespoons honey
1/3 cup balsamic vinegar
½ large white or red onion, minced very fine
¼ teaspoon sea salt or kosher salt
¼ teaspoon pepper
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1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
Whisk all the dressing ingredients together, except the oil. Slowly drizzle in the oil while whisking. Season with more salt and/or honey to taste. I usually make a double batch of this and keep it in the refrigerator—it lasts quite well. If the dressing separates, just bring it to room temperature and whisk it back up to combine.
strawberry salad
3-4 cups ripe, fragrant strawberries
2-3 stalks fresh mint
10-12 cups of leaf lettuce or baby greens, washed, dried and torn into bite-sized pieces
1. Cut strawberries into slices.
2. Pick the leaves off the mint, wash them, and just before serving, chop them finely.
3. Fill a big salad bowl with the greens. Toss with dressing to your taste, add the mint and strawberries, toss once more, and serve immediately.
pear or peach salad variation
I eat this salad with pears throughout the fall, so I toast trays-full of almonds at once, and make double batches of the dressing to store in the refrigerator.
3 ripe, fragrant pears or peaches
1/2 cup whole almonds
10-12 cups of leaf lettuce or baby greens, washed, dried and torn into bite-sized pieces
1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Toast the almonds for for 15-20 minutes, until fragrant and perfectly golden-brown inside. (Bite one in half to check!) Chop the nuts coarsely.
2. Core fruit and cut into slices.
3. Fill a big salad bowl with the greens. Toss with dressing to your taste, add the pear or peach slices. Toss once more, top with almonds, and serve immediately.
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Monday, September 22, 2008
garlicky, mustardy red wine vinaigrette
This dressing is one that I make a lot of at once, and then keep in the refrigerator to use all the time. It keeps really well, is yummy and creamy without any eggs or cream in it (mustard is the emulsifying agent), and is great on salad greens. It’s also fantastic on broccoli, or green beans, or other veggies. Top the veggies with toasted green pumpkin seeds or other nuts if you like. The dressing is based on a recipe from Annie Somerville’s Everyday Greens
I’ve added the recipe to my blog because last night I made a salad with the oven-roasted carrot slices--I dumped a pile of these bright little coins into a salad of green lettuce, this vinaigrette, and chopped pistachios. Oooh, it was awfully good!
6 tablespoons red wine vinegar
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
4 medium cloves garlic, chopped coarsely
1 teaspoon sea salt or kosher salt
1-2 tablespoons honey
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½ cup extra-virgin olive oil
Put first 5 ingredients in a blender and blend until completely smooth. Slowly pour in oil to make a creamy emulsion. Taste and season with more salt or honey if it needs it.
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oven-roasted carrot slices
brain candy
Lately I’ve loved several books about eating locally. Topping my list is Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
Admittedly not that recently (I read it two summers ago) I read Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma
Pollan’s followup book, In Defense of Food
I enjoyed Plenty: Eating Locally on the 100-Mile Diet
M.F.K. Fisher’s essays are always so wonderful, too… I’ve just read an assortment of her short works called A Stew or a Story
But I crave more of these books! I’m sad when I finish them. I love the day-to-day stories of people’s finding, cooking, and eating food. Especially with the added challenge of searching out local sources!! Reading these books is like brain candy! But wait! It’s not really like candy—it’s more healthy that that! It’s more like snacky, delicious roasted carrots for the brain, browned and crispy and redolent with their own caramelized sugars, eaten right off the baking sheet before I can even get them to the table.
So, there you have it—the perfect fall dish to snack on while curled up with a book about local food. Nothing more local, or sweet and flavorful, than Alaskan carrots in September! Yum.
Can you help me find more great books about cooking and eating great local food? Have you read any that you’d recommend? What about blogs about eating locally that you’d like to share? Please add your suggestions to the “comments” field!!
oven-roasted carrot slices
I love roasting carrots like this. The sugars in the carrots caramelize, and because they are cut into small pieces, there is a lot of surface area to brown and get yummy and toasty. They cook quickly, too. They are wonderful for snacking on, serving as part of an array of party snacks, eating as a side dish, or tossing into a salad. Last night I dumped a pile of these bright little coins into a salad with green lettuce, my mustardy garlicky red-wine vinaigrette, and chopped pistachios. Oooh, it was awfully good!
I love having a container in the ‘fridge so I can munch on them when I get hungry. If you want, you can add a teaspoon of chopped thyme when you toss the carrots with their olive oil and salt.
1 pound of Alaskan carrots—the biggest you can find.
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
½ teaspoon sea salt or kosher salt
1. Preheat your oven to 450 degrees.
2. If the peels seem tough, peel the carrots, but in the summertime you don’t have to peel Alaskan carrots. Just wash them well.
3. Slice the carrots into 1/4” slices (a Cuisinart is nice for this—just cut the stem end off and shoot them, one at a time, down the narrow feed tube, pushing them with the pusher cup to ensure even slices).
4. Coat a large baking sheet with non-stick spray or oil. (This makes clean-up a lot easier.)
5. Toss the carrot slices with olive oil and salt.
6. Spread the carrots out in a single layer on the baking sheets. Roast for 20-25 minutes, or until they start to get brown and they are cooked and tender when you stab them with a fork. Check the underside to make sure they aren’t getting too dark on the bottom. You want them golden-brown in spots, but not too dark.
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Sunday, September 21, 2008
roasted broccoli with garlic
A few weeks ago, my friend Arthur called. He’s my farmers’ market manager, and we work together on all kinds of projects. My main responsibility, though, is to write email newsletters to remind people to come to the market, and to help them cook their fresh produce by sending them recipes tailored to the week’s harvest. I’ve also written a farmers’ market cookbook, featuring all those great vegetables. The goal is to get people to eat their vegetables without sounding like a nagging mother.
Arthur loves my food, but only recently has he started cooking regularly for his family—and I’m thrilled that he’s using recipes out of my cookbook! Even so, I’m unprepared for his phone call. He’s just made my garlic-roasted broccoli, Arthur tells me, and they love it! He continues,“This recipe has changed the way I think about vegetables! I love our broccoli! It’s SO GOOD!” I reply, pretending to be annoyed: “Arthur, I’ve been telling you that for three years.” I’m grinning from ear to ear, so happy he’s excited. Then he tells me how Wade, his six-year-old vegetable-phobic son, reacted.
The piping-hot pans of crispy broccoli come out of the oven, redolent with garlic. Arthur and Michelle are snacking away, eating the broccoli right off the tray, and Wade appears. Wade, while not a connoisseur of vegetables, does like money, and Arthur makes him a deal. “OK, Wade. I’ll give you a dollar if you eat just one piece of this broccoli. But… if you eat ANOTHER piece of broccoli, you have to give me the dollar back.” Wade thinks this through, then agrees. He takes his dollar and his floret, and slowly nibbles the dreaded vegetable. Completely poker-faced, he sits quietly for a couple of minutes, then finally slouches up to Arthur. He doesn’t say a word, but tilts his head to the side, looks sideways up at his dad, and returns the dollar to Arthur. Those trays of broccoli never make it to the dinner table.
Give this recipe a try! If you haven’t roasted broccoli yet, this will definitely change your attitude about broccoli, and it may just change your life.
roasted broccoli with garlic
This is a really easy recipe, but it’s one of my absolute favorites. It’s yummier than French fries! The broccoli makes such a nice side dish, a great snack, a fantastic pizza topping… that is, if you can resist eating the whole batch straight off the baking sheet. I’ve been known to roast six baking sheets of broccoli in an evening, eat it for dinner one day, lunch the next, and then make pizza with it the following day.
I find that it’s easy to eat lots of vegetables and resist snacking on unhealthy food as long as I have plenty of ready-to-eat vegetable dishes like this hanging around in the refrigerator.
2 pounds broccoli
4 (or more) cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
1 teaspoon sea salt or kosher salt
2 to 3 tablespoons olive oil
1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. If the skins are tough, peel the broccoli stalks, starting from the bottom, using a paring knife—the thick skin will peel away from the stalk. Then slice the stalks into coins less than ¼” thick. Keep them separate from the florets. Cut the florets into bite-sized pieces.
3. Coat 1 or 2 large baking sheets with non-stick spray or oil. (This makes clean-up a lot easier.)
4. Toss the broccoli stalks with half the oil, garlic and salt in a bowl until evenly coated with oil. Spread the broccoli stalks out into a single layer. Roast until the stalks are tender and beginning to brown, about 20 minutes.
5. Toss the broccoli florets with the remaining oil, garlic and salt, and roast them like the broccoli stalks until tender and beginning to brown. That will take less time—more like 12-15 minutes. Eat and enjoy!
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Saturday, September 20, 2008
toast with almond butter and peaches
I admit, I have a weakness for peaches. Born and raised here in Anchorage, I grew up eating a fairly limited selection of fruit: apples, bananas, and oranges. The annual grapefruit in the toe of my stocking at Christmas was cause for celebration.
I’ve only lived near peach country once in my life, when I spent four years in graduate school at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Toward the end of my degree, I was disillusioned and depressed; I no longer wanted to be a college professor (the reason I’d gone to Ph.D. school for Geography in the first place), and I was sick to death of academia.
However, there were two things I knew to be positive beyond doubt that came out of the grinding, belittling experience that was Ph.D. school. First, I met my one true love: my husband Dan, who had escaped from his own academic hell (his was in biochemistry in New York City). Second, I ate a LOT of peaches.
Not owning a car then, I would ride my bike to my local King Soopers and load a huge paper bag with enough Colorado peaches to fill the middle section of my backpack. My other groceries stashed as best they could beneath and atop my motherlode of the fragrant stone fruits, the full extension of my ski pack towered over my head as I wobbled up the hill toward home. I would eat peaches for every meal, plus snacks. Consuming six peaches a day was not unusual.
Now that I’m back in Anchorage, I’m far from those Colorado peaches, but I do have access to some remarkably good ones at Costco. Maybe they aren’t tree-ripened (they certainly aren’t local), but they taste pretty dang good to me. I can never understand my friends who lament “I just can’t get through a Costco case of peaches!” I buy two cases at a time, and let them finish ripening while I’m busy consuming the previous two cases.
How can I eat so many peaches? Usually I have two slices of almond-buttered, peach-piled toast for breakfast on summer mornings. The photograph isn’t completely accurate, because I pile the peaches on higher, and then eat them alongside, as well… So before 9am I’ve already pounded two peaches. Then I might eat a peach for a snack, and for dessert? Well, let’s just say I don’t always stop at one.
toast with almond butter and peaches
This is hardly a recipe… it’s just a description of the finest breakfast known to humankind. Also it’s a fabulous snack, if you need a little pick-me-up in the afternoon. Of course we always use our Rise & Shine bakery whole grain sourdough pan loaves for the toast, but any full-flavored, whole-grain bread will be fine.
And here’s my deal with almond butter. I love roasted almond butter (not raw), and I like it a little bit salty, like peanut butter. Most almond butters don’t come salted—but it’s easy to mix in salt when you’re stirring in the separated oil when you first open the jar. I scrape the whole mess into a mixing bowl, add salt (I use about ½ teaspoon sea salt for a 16-ounce jar), and whisk it all together. It makes a couple more dishes to wash, but it’s WAY easier and much less messy than trying to stir it up in the jar without getting oil everywhere.
If you don’t prefer almond butter, you could use peanut butter, but almonds are extraordinarily good with peaches. You might want to give it a try!
slices of whole wheat sourdough bread (thick or thin, as you prefer)
almond butter (I prefer roasted and salted)
perfectly ripe peaches, washed, pitted, and sliced
Toast the bread, and spread it with almond butter. Cover the nut butter with peach slices. Eat more peach slices alongside your toast. Sip tea or coffee between bites. Enjoy pure bliss.
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Thursday, September 18, 2008
bubble & squeak, deconstructed (savory sauteed cabbage with roasted potatoes)
my competitive nature
So my friend sends me the link to this foodie blog with luscious photos of her recipes, veganyumyum.com and says “check out the bubble & squeak cakes recipe! Have you tried it? It looks interesting!” (Bubble & squeak is a British dish of mashed potatoes and leftover cooked cabbage, fried up in a pan until browned.) Now that my own blog is up and running, I have a whole new attitude, checking out veganyumyum—kind of a competitive edge there, I have to admit. OK, so she’s won awards and stuff, and god knows her photos are beautiful. It’s very nicely done.
But a lot of her recipes are a little more involved than I’m willing to consider. You know, cute little individual-sized portions of desserts, stacked and layered appetizers, recipes that require a pastry bag and such things. I’m into delicious, super healthy, and EFFICIENT vegetable cookery. Yeah, maybe you have to soak beans overnight for some of my recipes, but it’s not like you have to monitor them while they’re rehydrating. You know what I mean—give me a big bang for my buck. I want great flavor for time spent prepping and firing those veggies.
I email my friend back and tell her to try my Savoy cabbage and potatoes with pesto recipe. That doesn’t involve mashing potatoes, shaping anything into patties, coating them with flour, or pan-frying them in margarine (isn’t this a non-food item?). “Yeah, yeah…” she says. I can tell, she’s not convinced. She’s still drawn inexorably toward the allure of the little browned patties in the (admittedly lovely) photos. I’d like to tell her about the spattering grease all over her kitchen, and that shaping those patties may not be as fun as it looks in the photo. But I resist. She’s a big girl; she can make her own decisions.
So then I go out for my afternoon run and I’m slogging along the muddy trail in the pouring-down-freezing-cold-rain, thinking about what to make for dinner tonight. From the farmers’ market, I have cabbage, onions and new potatoes. And I picked up a carton of those baby portabella mushrooms from Costco last week, intending to make cabbage & mushrooms with dill on toast. But then I remembered that I had forgotten to thaw out a loaf of our sourdough bread for the toast. And then I thought—BUBBLE & SQUEAK, DECONSTRUCTED! YES! I’ll cook the cabbage, onions & mushrooms as intended, and serve it up with garlic-roasted potatoes instead of toast! And this recipe was born. I hope my friend likes it. I sure do!
I wonder what vegan yum-yum will think of it?
bubble & squeak, deconstructed
“Bubble & squeak” is a British dish made of mashed potatoes and leftover cabbage, fried in a skillet until browned. Here’s my version, using different cooking methods for each of the two components, to bring out the best qualities of each vegetable. My version, though, is easier than pan-frying the original recipe! I made it with local onions, local cabbage, and local new potatoes! I think the cabbage part of this dish tastes even better the day after you make it (but of course the potatoes are never as good as they are right out of the oven!).
The cabbage part of the recipe is based on a galette filling recipe in Deborah Madison’s Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone
1-2 tablespoons olive oil
1 large onion, finely diced
sea salt or kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
4-8 ounces mushrooms, thinly sliced (optional—fine if you don’t have them)
4 cloves garlic, minced
½ teaspoon dried thyme
1 teaspoon dried dill
6-8 cups thinly sliced green cabbage (Savoy or regular green cabbage)
¼ cup chopped parsley
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garlic-roasted potatoes (recipe below)
1. Chop all your vegetables for the cabbage while you’re preheating the oven for the potatoes. Then dice the potatoes and get them into the oven (as per instructions, below).
2. Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the onion and ½ teaspoon salt and sauté until golden, about 10 minutes. Then add the mushrooms, garlic, and herbs and cook until softened, about 10 minutes.
3. Add the cabbage, another ½ teaspoon salt, and ½ cup water. Cover and cook slowly until the cabbage is tender, about 15 to 20 minutes, turning it occasionally. Add more liquid as necessary. When tender, uncover and raise the heat to evaporate some excess moisture, but it’s OK if it’s a little soupy.
4. Stir in the parsley and season with salt and pepper.
5. Serve alongside the roasted potatoes!
garlic-roasted potatoes
2 pounds waxy potatoes (such as Butterball, Yukon Gold, or Purple Viking)
garlic oil (recipe follows, in Step 1.)
sea salt or kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
1. Make garlic oil: Mash or mince 3 or 4 garlic cloves and cover with ½ cup extra-virgin olive oil. Let steep for 30 minutes if you have time. Strain out the garlic and store the oil in the refrigerator.
2. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Cut the potatoes into small bite-sized pieces. Toss them in a bowl with a few spoonfuls of garlic oil, then sprinkle with 1 teaspoon of salt and toss well.
3. Lightly oil a large baking dish or sheet pan, and transfer the potatoes onto it, making sure that a cut side of each potato is touching the pan. (The side touching the pan will brown nicely). Roast the potatoes until tender and browned, 35 to 40 minutes. Scrape and toss the potatoes after 25 minutes or so to brown more than one side.
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Tuesday, September 16, 2008
broccoli with golden raisins
air-fresh Alaskan broccoli
We’ve had broccoli on the brain these days, at the South Anchorage Farmers’ Market. You just can’t beat Alaska-grown for sweet and tender broccoli! And there’s so much of it! To try and create a bigger market for that proverbial powerhouse of nutrition, I started promoting it in earnest!
First I loaded a bunch of new broccoli recipes and photos on our website. Then Dan helped me make a YouTube video about processing broccoli for the winter. And just a couple of weeks ago, we had a special event at the farmers’ market where you could clip a coupon for three heads of FREE broccoli. Meanwhile, I’ve been promoting the broccoli mania in my weekly South Anchorage Farmers’ Market email newsletter.
But my newsletter doesn’t just go to folks here in Anchorage. I have plenty of subscribers all around Alaska, including my friend Roselynn, in Fairbanks. Recently, she emailed to tell me that she’s coming to town for a work trip, and she can spend the night with us! Now, many of my friends from Fairbanks head straight for Nordstrom when they come to the big city. But not Roselynn! She’s caught the broccoli bug, and she wants to head straight to the Wednesday Farmers’ Market to fill her bags with big heads of bargain broccoli to freeze for the winter!
She’s bringing her biggest suitcase, and we’ll see how much broccoli we can stuff into her Samsonite for the trip back to Fairbanks!
broccoli with golden raisins
I love this broccoli recipe—it’s great hot on toast, or warm or at room temperature as a salad, or as a side dish to almost anything! I love it as a snack. It’s loosely based on a recipe in Peter Berley’s Fresh Food Fast
1 ½ pounds broccoli, tops cut into bite-sized florets, and stems sliced into ¼” slices (peel the stems first if the skin is tough)
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
4 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
½ cup golden raisins
¼ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
sea salt or kosher salt
optional toast:
4 slices thick whole-wheat bread
extra olive oil for the toast
1. Put about an inch of water in the bottom of a pot that you can put a steamer basket in. Cover the pot and bring the water to a boil. When the water boils, put the golden raisins in the steamer basket and steam for 5 minutes. Remove the raisins, but keep the water in the steamer.
2. Put the broccoli stems into the steamer basket, and steam for 4-6 minutes until barely tender. Check them every minute after 4 minutes, poking with a sharp paring knife. Remove the stems, drain them, and immediately spread them out in a single layer on a baking sheet spread with a dishtowel. (This cools the broccoli quickly and allows it to dry out.)
3. Put the florets in the steamer, and steam for 3-5 minutes until barely tender, keeping a close eye on them. Remove the florets and spread them out on a dishtowel as with the stems. When they are cool enough to handle, chop the florets and stems a bit finer with a large chef’s knife.
4. In a large skillet over high heat, warm the oil. Add the garlic and cook for 1 minute. Add the broccoli, stems, raisins, and red pepper flakes and sauté until the broccoli is quite tender, and the flavors are nicely combined—about 5 minutes. Season with plenty of salt—it will need quite a bit.
5. If you want to serve the broccoli on toast, toast the slices of bread until golden, and drizzle with olive oil. Pile the broccoli on top.
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Monday, September 15, 2008
beet salad with horseradish dressing
lunch with taughnee
I brought lunch to Taughnee today, my amazing friend and web designer, while she finished up the details on my blog! We even made a vlog while we ate lunch! (A vlog, I learned, is a video-blog!) I didn’t talk with my mouth full, though, promise. I brought this great beet salad, which is guaranteed to keep the vampires away all day (love that garlic breath!).
Taughnee has designed two amazing websites for me already--this one, and the South Anchorage Farmers’ Market website, and we’re working on finishing my bread bakery website. I just love her work, and I love working with her! Somehow, she just knows what I want even before I know what I want. This world of the internet is pretty new to me, and she’s held my hand and led me into the world of Twitter, Flickr, and blogging. Next I’ll be exploring Digg and Mixx and and and…
“Must… blog!! Must… tweet!!” I’d better keep eating my vegetables to keep my strength up!
Motto for today: Eat beet salad with people you love so they won’t mind kissing you later.
beet salad with horseradish dressing
If you’re thinking “Horseradish? With beets?” I don’t blame you. It may sound a bit strange, but I’m not kidding you, this recipe is great. The red wine vinegar and the sharp horseradish contrast really well with the sweet, earthy taste of beets. This recipe is adapted from one in Madhur Jaffrey’s World Vegetarian
12 ounces beets, washed
8 ounces beet greens, chard, or other greens
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1 teaspoon olive oil
2 teaspoons red wine vinegar
2 teaspoons prepared horseradish
¼ teaspoon sea salt or kosher salt, or to taste
1 garlic clove, crushed in a garlic press or finely minced
1. Put whole, unpeeled beets in a baking dish or dutch oven and put ¼” of water in the dish. Cover tightly with foil or the lid of the dutch oven and bake them until tender when stabbed with a paring knife. Usually they take 40 minutes or longer, but young beets might be quicker, depending on their size. In the fall, when the beets are bigger, they may take much longer—up to an hour and a half.
2. Remove from the oven and let them cool.
3. While the beets are roasting and then cooling, wash the greens and cut the stems off the greens. If the stems look good (and are edible—for example, beet greens and chard stems are edible, but collard stems are not), chop the stems into ½” pieces. Steam the chopped stems in a steamer until they are tender. Remove them from the steamer and then steam the greens until tender. Drain the greens and chop them up a bit.
4. When the beets are cool enough to handle, slip their skins off. Cut in halves lengthwise and then crosswise into ¼”-thick slices, or in wedges—as you prefer. Put them in a bowl with the greens and stems.
5. Mix up the remaining ingredients, pour the dressing over the beets and greens, and toss. Adjust the seasonings with more vinegar, salt, and/or horseradish. Serve warm or at room temperature.
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