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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This is what we’ll do with our CSA beets 
Also in our CSA box was celery root. Never had it before, so we just resorted to roasting it--it was MAGICALLY delicious!
Hey there, I’m an Ohio native who’s enjoyed reading your blog for almost a year now. I found it while searching for good gingerbread recipes last christmas, and, foodie that I am, just kept coming back. I’ve been living in China since June, and while I really do enjoy the food here I can’t tell you how much your writing makes me long for my own kitchen, to do with as I wish.
I have greater access to a wider range of produce here, but much less equipment to cook it with (they don’t really do ovens over here) and no background in the seasonings available to me.
I’m a little homesick for fall right now, and even though Alaska climate isn’t much at all like Ohio’s, reading about tasty meals well-prepared with local root vegetables makes me wistful.
I always look forward to your new recipes, even when I can’t try them, and when I’m back somewhere I can know that my salmon is intelligently produced, I’ll definitely give another of your recipes a shot.
It look delicious and healthy. I am going to try this.
This kitchen is a good compromise between smaller tabletop and one-piece kitchens and the larger multi-component ones.
I grew wonderful sunflowers. Last fall, I kept many heads in order to use the seeds to grow them again this year. As I wasn’t sure about the quality of the seeds I kept, I also bought new ones from the store. Unfortunately, only the new seeds from the store actually grow.
flowers
* 1/4 cup vegetable oil
* 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
* 1 1/2 teaspoons white sugar
* 1/2 teaspoon dried dill weed
* 1/8 teaspoon salt
* 1/8 teaspoon onion powder
* 1/8 teaspoon garlic powder
* 1/8 teaspoon dry mustard
* 1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper
Directions
In a blender, combine the oil, vinegar, sugar, dill weed, salt, onion powder, garlic powder, dry mustard and pepper. Blend until smooth, cover and refrigerate until chilled.
I want to use roses for the wedding party’s bouquets and boutonnieres.I found some of the connotations of the different colors,
Not only a delicious recipe, but very healthy too. We need this kind of food especially now that fastfoods are becoming an alternative to home cook meals. Which should not be.
Nice recipe thanks for sharing it with us . i am gonna do it in my home.
Very timely for this chaotic times. We need healthy stuff like this.
We need this kind of food especially now that fastfoods are becoming an alternative to home cook meals.
This sumptuous meal is great for this coming valentines day. I’m sure its unique features make it the center of attraction for dining out lovers.
Great to serve because of its health benefit which for sure is good for the heart.
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.
I can’t imagine how yummy it will be if you will incorporate your great recipe with pizza. How about featuring one someday.
Roasted carrot soup is very healthy. The mere fact that its main ingredient is carrots: make it more appealing. Health-wise, it’s superb. Love the way you showed your recipe, it’s easy to follow and fun to do.
The earliest cookbooks on record seem to be mainly lists of recipes for what would now be called haute cuisine, and were often written primarily to either.
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Yummy, it’s looks delicious. I have to try this recipe.