Sunday, October 04, 2009
green salad with roasted beet slices, toasted sunflower seeds and a mustard-dill vinaigrette
an embarrassment of riches
On Friday I went to the Bear Tooth’s Food & Film Festival and saw Food, Inc. The movie was fantastic… touching and inspiring and tragic and hopeful all at the same time. It’s showing again on Thursday, so you still have a chance to see if it you like. Along with the movie, I had an amazing meal of local food! Both the Grill side and the TheatrePub side are doing special Alaskan menus! It was hard to decide what to order—so many amazing choices for the local food fanatic! Luckily I’m going back tomorrow to see another food movie, Fresh, so I knew I would have another chance to order the things that I couldn’t try on Friday. Otherwise, it really would have been embarrassing—I would have had to order everything on the menu!
To start, I had the highbush cranberry vinaigrette salad, with beets, kohlrabi, marinated cheese curds, and heirloom tomatoes. Beautiful with the golden beets and their concentric circles… and YUMMY! Then I had the seared barley cake with roasted root vegetables and honey herb drizzle. The barley cake was tender but toothsome; rich, savory and delicious, with little nuggets of mushrooms in it. And of course the roasted vegetables alongside were sweet and wonderful! Then I was extremely lucky that my friends Susanne and Thomas both ordered the Alaskan carnita plate. It was made with Alaskan pork, and served with whole beans, tomato-cumin brown rice and tortillas, salsa, and sour cream… I got to try their pork, and it was fantastic: crispy and perfect on the outside, tender and moist on the inside. The Grill has really got it figured out!
So, are you dying to know what I’m ordering tomorrow? Maybe not, but I’ll tell you anyway. I’m definitely going to try the roasted carrot soup, and I think I might try the blackened salmon lettuce wraps (with cabbage, sprouts, carrots and green onions) off the TheatrePub menu… (Did I mention that you can order either the TheatrePub food OR the Grill food when you eat in the movie? Just order from the “to go” desk.) But the Grill’s halibut with birch glaze looks so yummy, too… Hmm. This might get embarrassing after all.
In honor of the Bear Tooth’s wonderful effort to promote and provide local food for us, along with the Alaska Center for the Environment’s hard work to make this fun film & food event happen, I invented a new salad tonight. Since it’s using ingredients that I had hanging around the house (so what’s new?), I’m hoping that trying this recipe is easy for you, too.
We had Alaskan beets from our Alaskan Glacier Valley Farm CSA box, and Dan sliced and roasted them up a couple of days ago (am I well-married, or what?). We also had some beautiful Alaskan green & red leaf lettuce left over from last week’s box (have you ever noticed how long lettuce lasts when you get it in a CSA box or from the farmers market?). I almost always have at least a drizzle of my mustardy, garlicky red wine vinaigrette in the fridge, and tonight was no exception. I remembered reading in my rebar: modern food cookbook about the author’s Polish heritage, and how beets, sunflower seeds and dill are familiar flavors. So I sprinkled some dried dill into my vinaigrette (what the heck, why not?) and toasted up some sunflower seeds.
We served it up with grilled salmon (Alaskan, of course, out of the freezer) that Dan rubbed with Halibut Cove Dill Rub from Summit Spice & Tea Co. I don’t know what else is in the rub other than dill, but it’s salty and tasty! Clearly, this is no traditional Polish meal, but it was fun to take some of the flavors and go with them. They were great!
green salad with roasted beet slices, toasted sunflower seeds and a mustard-dill vinaigrette
I make a lot of this dressing at once, without the dill, and then keep it 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 with a variety of different salads.
dressing
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
pinches of dried dill (or, even better, fresh dill, if you have it)
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.
Take out several spoons-full of the dressing and add a couple of pinches of dried dill, or big pinches of fresh dill, chopped. Stir it in and let it sit and let the dill flavor the dressing while you make the rest of the salad.
oven-roasted beet slices
Even if you’re not a beet fan, I think you’ll love these slices. If you’ve been wondering what to do with the beets in your CSA box, here’s the ticket!
1 pound of Alaskan beets—the biggest you can find.
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
½ teaspoon sea salt or kosher salt
1. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.
2. Peel the beets and slice them into thin slices—I did about 1/8-inch slices in my food processor, but do whatever you like.
4. Coat a large baking sheet with non-stick spray or oil. (This makes clean-up a lot easier.)
5. Toss the beet slices with olive oil and salt.
6. Spread the beet slices out in a single layer on the baking sheets. Roast for about 30 minutes, or until they are cooked and tender when you stab them with a fork.
salad
1 large head of leaf lettuce, washed, dried, and torn into bite-sized pieces, or a large bowl of baby salad greens or stemmed baby spinach
mustardy-dill dressing
¼ cup sunflower seeds, toasted in a skillet until golden and fragrant
roasted beet slices
Toss the salad greens with dressing to your taste. Put a big pile of salad on a plate and top with the beet slices. Sprinkle toasted sunflower seeds over the salad and serve.
To see an easy recipe for grilled salmon, check out this link for grilled southwestern salmon. Just substitute the dill rub or just use salt and pepper instead of the southwestern spice rub.
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Monday, June 22, 2009
grilled southwestern salmon with guacamole on crispy toast
EAT WILD SALMON!
You probably already know that I sell my Rise & Shine Bakery bread at the South Anchorage Farmers’ Market during the summer. As the farmers’ market reporter, I also write the weekly email newsletter that gets posted on our website.
A couple of weeks ago two women from Trout Unlimited contacted me about holding an event to promote Bristol Bay salmon at our farmers’ market. The event, “Eat Wild!,” is to be held this Saturday, June 27, and is designed to build consumer demand for wild salmon. By building support for the fishery, they hope to help protect Southwest Alaska’s Bristol Bay watershed from the threat of large-scale mining. Trout Unlimited, partnering with our Arctic Choice Seafoods, will be giving away free samples of grilled Bristol Bay sockeye salmon along with recipes and information about Bristol Bay and the risks this fishery faces.
They asked me if I wanted to submit a recipe for their event—and I just happened to have a great recipe ready! At the market last weekend I picked up a glorious sockeye salmon filet so I could make it again and take a photo for you. YUM! I’m definitely planning to pick up another salmon filet this Saturday! You can feed yourself like a King (pun intended) and get yourself on the moral high ground—just by buying wild Alaskan salmon!
The event is from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Arctic Choice Seafood booth at the South Anchorage Farmers Market, at the Subway/Cellular One Sports Centre near the corner of Old Seward Highway and O’Malley Road. More information is available at www.whywild.org.
grilled southwestern salmon with guacamole on crispy toast
This recipe is inspired by the wonderful fresh local salmon at the market! You grill the salmon with a yummy southwestern rub, then toast a slice of hearty whole-grain bread until crisp. Spread the toast with a thick layer of guacamole, stack the salmon on top, and sprinkle with a little garnish of red onions. Serve with a simple green salad, topped with toasted green pumpkin seeds. And wouldn’t a margarita taste good with this meal? Especially if we have a sunny day and you can eat it outside on the deck!
Even if you have your own guacamole recipe already, you might want to give this one a try—it’s modified from a recipe from a Cook’s Illustrated magazine from several years ago, and I really do think it’s a good one.
For the southwestern spice rub, I really like the choices at Summit Spice & Tea Co. (at 1120 E. Huffman Road). I’d recommend their southwestern blend, or the Slammin’ Salmon, or the Coho Mojo. You could also just use prepared chili powder if you don’t have any of these blends handy.
1 large filet salmon
southwestern spice rub
canola oil (for the grill)
1 small red onion, minced
guacamole (recipe follows)
4 slices hearty whole-grain bread
1. Make the guacamole, cover it with plastic wrap (pressed directly onto the surface to keep it from browning) and refrigerate.
2. Skin the salmon filet and sprinkle it all over with the spice rub, rubbing it on to cover all surfaces.
3. Heat your grill on high heat, and when the grill racks are very hot, scrub them clean with your grill brush. Just before you’re going to grill the salmon, fold a paper towel into a 3” square, and soak this pad in a small dish of canola oil. Swab the grill racks thoroughly with the oil-soaked pad, then immediately set the filet on the hot, oiled rack with the skinned side up (pretty side down).
4. Turn the heat down to medium and cover the grill. Cook the salmon on that side until it has nice grill marks and will release from the grill without sticking, about 4 minutes.
5. While the salmon is grilling, toast the bread on the grill or in your toaster.
6. Use the same paper towel to oil the nearby grill space, and then carefully flip the salmon onto the newly oiled patch. Cook for another couple of minutes until it’s done to your liking. We like it pretty rare, but keep in mind that the thinner tail section will cook faster than the thicker sections. You can either cut the tail off when it’s cooked and let the rest of the salmon cook a bit more, cut the tail section off before you grill it and cook it separately, or just let the tail part get more well-done than the rest of the filet for those in your family who prefer it that way.
7. Remove the salmon from the grill to a plate while you prepare the sandwiches.
8. Spread each slice of toast with a thick layer of guacamole, top with the salmon, and sprinkle with red onions. Serve immediately with a margarita or a cold beer!
guacamole
I buy bags of avocados all year ‘round at Costco. Here’s how to ripen and store the avocados from Costco so they don’t get overripe and go to waste. Buy a bag of them when they are rock-hard, and set them on your counter. Every day (you must be vigilant), squeeze them very gently to see how soft they are getting. When they have just begun to get soft (don’t wait until they are squishy), put them in the refrigerator RIGHT AWAY—this will more or less arrest their further ripening, and you will have a treasure trove of perfectly ripe avocados for a week or more.
¼ to ½ cup minced onion (to your taste)
2 garlic cloves, minced
1-2 jalepeno peppers, seeded with a spoon and minced
¼ cup minced fresh cilantro (optional)
¼ to ½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon ground cumin (optional)
3 ripe avocados
2-3 tablespoons fresh lime juice
1. After mincing the onion, scoop it into a glass or bowl and cover with cold water and let it soak while you prepare the rest of the ingredients. (This takes away some of the bite of the raw onion.)
2. Put the garlic, jalepeno, cilantro, salt, and cumin in a medium bowl.
3. Halve, pit, and peel the avocados.
4. Drain the onion well in a sieve and add to the bowl, stir with a fork. Put one avocado into the bowl and mash the flesh with the onion mixture.
5. Cube the remaining 2 avocados into ½” pieces and put the pieces into the bowl. Sprinkle the lime juice over the diced avocado and mix entire contents of bowl lightly with a fork until combined but still chunky. Adjust seasoning with salt and lime juice. Try not to eat the entire bowl while you’re testing it.
6. You can cover it with plastic wrap, pressed directly onto surface of guacamole, and refrigerate it for a few hours before serving, if you like.
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Thursday, May 28, 2009
green salad with smoked salmon, avocados, & garlicky red wine mustard vinaigrette
Camping on Memorial Day
Many weeks ago we made a plan with Margo and her husband Andy to go camping together on Memorial Day weekend. They planned to go to Eklutna, and we were excited to join them, especially since our four-year-old daughters are great friends. The two girls together are as self-entertaining as you could hope, and Margo and I regularly exploit this phenomenon.
Anyway, Eklutna is a beautiful spot, not very far from Anchorage, with huge Lake Eklutna ringed with steep, snow-capped mountains, and lots of trails for hiking and biking. The weather lately has been glorious, and we hoped for nice weather for the weekend. We brought bikes for the kids and for the grownups, the canoe, and hiking and running gear. We figured that if we left on Friday morning, we’d have plenty of time to get a campsite.
We figured wrong, though. Every campsite was occupied, and we were crushed! We’d been looking forward to this little adventure for so long, and didn’t just want to go home! We guessed that if we tried another campground farther north, like Nancy Lakes, it would also be completely full.
We didn’t know what to do! Even as I was feeling terribly disappointed, I was thinking about the fact that I was in this predicament not just as a potential camper, but also as a parent. I had to keep it together and try and stay positive—at least on the outside. When Meredith was asking me “what are we going to do, Mom?” I didn’t know what we were going to do, but I desperately wanted to think of SOMETHING to do! I had blown it not just for myself, but for her, as well! She and I had made homemade graham crackers for s’mores, and an apple pie. We’d cooked and prepared and packed all our stuff for the whole long weekend…
But we had to stay at Eklutna for the day at least, until Andy could finish his work day and drive up to meet us in the afternoon. So Dan went for a bike ride, I went for a run, and Margo graciously stayed with the girls while they sped around the campground on their bikes.
I needn’t have worried… when Andy arrived, he had a great idea! We could drive north toward Talkeetna and stay on Margo’s sister’s cabin property! We couldn’t get into the cabin, but we didn’t need to! We had a great time camping in the woods alongside their driveway, sunning ourselves on the dock on the little lake next to their cabin, roasting marshmallows in a firepit that the menfolk constructed, and biking on the beautiful new paved trail along the road to Talkeetna, admiring the views of Denali.
One of the meals we ate was this succulent and hearty salad. OK, so it’s not exactly typical camping food—but it was a car-camping trip, after all!
green salad with smoked salmon, avocados, and garlicky red wine mustard 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 with a variety of different salads.
dressing
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.
salad
1 large head lettuce, washed, dried, and torn into bite-sized pieces, or a large bowl of baby salad greens or stemmed baby spinach
½ cup pepitas (green pumpkin seeds), toasted in a skillet until puffed and golden
1 avocado, peeled and cut into cubes
1-2 cups kippered salmon, flaked (I love to use buttery-rich Alaskan king salmon)
1. Toss the salad greens with dressing to your taste, then add the avocado and salmon. Toss again.
2. Sprinkle toasted pumpkin seeds over the salad and serve.
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Wednesday, May 06, 2009
spaghetti with garlicky white wine clam sauce
Mother’s Day
This time of year I always think a lot about my mom, not just because it’s Mother’s Day, but because it’s springtime, and time to be planting seeds and getting the garden ready. My mom was an amazing vegetable gardener, and this time of year you could usually find her in the greenhouse. I remember the smell of the greenhouse—the rich smell of the dark earth in the big raised beds on each side. In the spring there was usually a faint scent of fish fertilizer, and later in the season, my nose would be filled with the rich aroma of tomato plants. My mom would spend hours each day after teaching school, planting seeds and transplanting little seedlings into bigger pots. She would talk to her little babies, encouraging them to thrive. Later, when school was out, she would spend much of her free time in the garden: weeding, watering, and harvesting, and chatting with the chickens in the yard next to the garden.
On Mother’s Day, though, the focus was on flowers, not on vegetables. Every year we’d get up and make breakfast for her (although she never liked to eat it in bed). After presenting her with our gifts, we’d hop in the car for a tour of the plant nurseries in town. Mid-May in Anchorage is still fairly cool, and it was so pleasant to browse through the huge, humid and fragrantly warm greenhouses, admiring the beautiful varieties of annual flowers and hanging baskets. My brother and I were always allowed to pick out a couple of six-packs of annuals to plant in our own little flower gardens. Even though our little flower patches would get rather weedy toward the end of the summer (we were sick of working in the vegetable garden by that time, too), each spring brought new excitement for our little gardens. Ben usually picked impatiens of some kind—the neon pink or orange varieties, and would then plant lots of nasturtiums from seed. My mom loved when I picked allysum, those mounds of tiny white flowers that smell much more beautiful than they look. We thought it was neat that their name was like mine, and I would usually get some pansies to plant along with them. Of course my mom would always plant lots of flowers from seed, too—cosmos and snapdragons, lobelia and marigolds to fill hanging baskets and planter boxes. And when she would inevitably have many more seedlings to transplant than she could possibly use, she could never throw them away, but distributed them to her friends and neighbors.
While I don’t plant many annuals (and Dan is in charge of our small vegetable garden), I do love my perennial garden. Some of the flowers are already beginning to show some buds! I’ll write more about that later, though. For now, I’m wishing you and your mothers a very Happy Mother’s Day!
spaghetti with garlicky white wine clam sauce
This is one of my favorite recipes of my mom’s. It’s garlicky and complex from the wine, but it’s not overly rich, since there isn’t any cream in the sauce. My mom used to make it with her home-made canned clams, even though she didn’t particularly care for clams! Is that true love, or what? I’ve never made it with commercially canned clams, but it’s wonderful with fresh or frozen clams, as well as with home-canned.
Even though I’m not a fan of clam chowder or fried clams, I love this recipe. I’ve served this dish to several clam skeptics with great success! I think you’ll really enjoy it! To complete the meal, just add a simple green salad.
I have a meat grinder attachment on my KitchenAid mixer that I sometimes use to grind the clams if I’m doing a lot of them at once after a successful clam-digging expedition. I don’t have the patience or the huge pressure-cooker to can the clams like my mom did, but it works just fine to freeze them instead if you have more than you’ll eat all at once. If we don’t come home with many clams, sometimes I just freeze the clams shucked and whole. In that case, I chop them by hand just before I make this dish, when they are still partially frozen, and then when I add the white wine to the clams in the saucepan, I blender them up finely with an immersion blender. You could also do this step in a regular blender.
½ pound spaghetti (I like to use whole-wheat, but white is fine, too)
1 pint of ground clams, cleaned—either fresh or home-canned. (We grind butter clams or razor clams and either can them or freeze them in pint amounts for this recipe.)
2 tablespoons olive oil
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons dried oregano
1-2 cups dry white wine
fresh-ground pepper
1 or 2 bunches flat-leaf parsley, chopped
Parmesan cheese, freshly grated
1. Boil a large pot of water for the pasta.
2. Heat the olive oil in a large frying pan. Saute the garlic over medium heat until golden brown.
3. Add the clams and their liquid (if the clams are raw, there won’t be any liquid), the oregano (pulverize it between your palms as you add it), and the white wine. If you haven’t ground the clams finely yet, do this now with an immersion blender or regular blender. Cook over medium-high heat until the wine is thickened and reduced and the clams are nicely saucy, but not too runny.
4. When the water boils, add salt and put the pasta in to boil.
5. When the pasta is cooked, drain it and pour it into a large bowl. Pour the clam sauce over the top of the pasta, more or less covering the center part of the platter. Sprinkle the parsley all around the edges of the pasta to make a thick moat, and cover the clams in the middle with Parmesan cheese. Grind pepper over the top of the clams.
6. Serve immediately, tossing the pasta at the table, making sure each person gets lots of parsley and clams. Pass additional Parmesan cheese at the table.
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