Monday, November 29, 2010

basil butternut squash green chili enchiladas

Are you sick of turkey sandwiches yet? Here is a dish that will bring a little life back to your palate. Thanksgiving has never been a favorite meal of mine unless I have a say in the ingredients (see title of blog for more insight) so I usually push around a small piece of mystery-“turkey” and build mini sandwiches of rolls, mashed potatoes, and green beans, saving plenty of room for pumpkin pie and just enjoying being with friends and family. If you are anything like me, you have been eating (and celebrating) the Thanksgiving feast for over a week. (Yikes for my waistline...) Of course I did traditional Thanksgiving with the family, but then I also baked and sampled pies with friends, tested stuffing recipes and this year there was even a Bobby Flay style throwdown of the Thanksgiving feast along with 20 of my most type-A friends. It was legit; we split into teams, presented our meals and had a (relatively unbiased) judging panel. Thankfully I can report as your esteemed food blogger, my team, “the outliers”, won but it was a strong showing from both teams, and everyone seemed to have won since there were two separate enormous meals. It was a delicious feast!
Speaking of yum: basil butternut squash green chili enchiladas. It’s quite a mouthful but without one of the three things, I am afraid the title would be understated. These are adapted from my mother’s fantastic chicken enchiladas. And, of course you could use chicken in place of the butternut squash, but I find the heat of chilies paired with the sweetness of the squash to be quite delicious, but feel free to experiment! I grew up eating the chicken enchiladas at least couple times a month and they are fantastic as is. :)

Basil Butternut Squash Green Chili Enchiladas
Makes about 2 pans of enchiladas
1. In a large bowl add and let sit:
  • 3-4 oz. of cream cheese
  • 1 chopped onion 
  • 1 c. of your favorite sharper cheese, shredded. I used the Beecher’s raw variety.
  • 2-3 T. of dried basil (you can use fresh, but I actually prefer dried here)
  • 4-6 oz. of sour cream
  • 1 finely chopped poblano chili
  • 1 c. of roasted green chilies (you can either do this yourself by roasting several green chilies, letting them cool, removing the skins and dicing, or using a can of diced green chilies. The Hatch brand is one I have used in the past, but this time I roasted the chilies which was super easy. If you do roast the green chilies yourself, make a fair amount, because about half will be used to go in the enchiladas and the other half will be blended for the sauce that goes on top.) 

    Cubed Butternut Squash (pre-cooking)
    
2. Peel and cube 1 butternut squash and place in a oven pan, seasoning with salt, pepper and a little dried basil. Bake at 350 for 30-40 or roast, whichever you prefer. You just want to cook until the butternut squash is al dente, meaning you can stick a fork it somewhat easily, but not to the point of it being mushy. Let this cool for about 10 min.


Mixture of butternut squash, basil, chilies etc.

3. Add butternut squash to the mixture in the large bowl. Season with some cayenne, salt and pepper to taste.

 4. Fill each tortilla (you will need about 10-12 tortillas, so plan accordingly) with an ample helping of the mixture, roll up and place in an oiled baking dish.


Filing size

 5. Once filled pour 1-2 c. of blended green chili sauce over the top. (You can make the sauce yourself, like mentioned above, or you can “cheat” with a can of green chili sauce. No judgment, which method you use, just know that there are some additives to the chilies and the enchilada sauce that I would not know how to cook with.)

 6. Bake at 350 for an hour. About 10 min. before they are done, sprinkle a little leftover cheese, or if you have a cotija, use a little to melt on top.

Pan #1 of said delicious enchiladas
 Bon Appétit!

Tastes: The competing flavors balance nicely with the heat and sweetness.
Total Prep/Cooking Time: 45 min to roast the green chilies, remove the skins and either dice or blend; 30-40 min for the butternut squash to cook (which could be cooked at the same time as the chilies); 15 min to chop, mix and assemble the enchiladas and 1 hour to cook. Perfect for a dinner when you have other things you are trying to get done around the house.
Total Cost: Exactly $33.71.

As I sat down to write this entry, I realized it has been over a month since I last wrote. For those that are interested in my life outside of writing about, shopping for, cooking, and consuming food, I am happy to report that I landed a new job at the end of October with a small hedge fund here in Seattle. While no job is ideal (because let’s be honest, I don’t know many people actually interested in sitting in an office for 12+ hours a day), it is pretty much exactly the job I wanted when I made the decision to go back to graduate school. It wasn’t wrapped in the beautiful bow that I envisioned and lusted after, but here I am doing what I set out to do. I am hoping I can survive for the time being, learn a ton and eventually see myself going into business independently- rather it will be in food or finance, or potentially both. It has been a really interesting month adjusting to the position, the pace of the office and finding balance in my new life. Because learning about, writing about and cooking food are incredibly important to me, I am going to try and write as much as I can and if there is anything you are interested in learning about or wanting me to test out, please let me know. :) Until next time, happy eating (and investing)!

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

oatmeal buttermilk waffles

oatmeal buttermilk waffle topped with a fresh pluot & real maple syrup
I love lazy Sunday mornings, or for that matter, lazy Saturday mornings as well. Sleeping in and making a delicious brunch are the little pleasures in life that I relish. As I am personally getting ready to switch back into the corporate lifestyle of 5:30am start times, 12+ hour days and high stress environments, I am trying to cherish every moment I have left of being a lady of leisure. Because this change might happen as soon as the end of the week, this morning I treated myself to one of my favorite weekend standby brunches. I got this recipe (and modified it a bit, of course) from an old issue of health magazine. In highschool my mom and I would make these pancakes or waffles on Sundays and load them with fresh fruit and maple syrup. When I made these this morning, memories of being at home with my parents flooded back and made me a bit nostalgic to be with my mom, dad and our charming dog, Trixi.
 
For this recipe, make sure and get real oatmeal . I prefer to pick up old-fashioned rolled oats in the bulk section at whole foods. It is usually pretty cheap and very minimally processed. The instant stuff in often highly sweetened and processed, which lowers the vast health benefits of the oats. And what health benefits you ask? Oatmeal is loaded fiber (55/45 soluble to insoluble), has a ton of heart-hearty antioxidants and even stuff that helps out your immune system.
 
Is that enough to sell you on some oatmeal waffles, or did you happen to see that there is buttermilk involved too?? Buttermilk is one of those things that I have in my fridge every so once in awhile. I made some red velvet cupcakes this past weekend that called for it so I was excited to have some leftovers for my beloved waffles. No matter if you want to impress your soon-to-be inlaws or potentially even an overnight date, this is something that is super easy, tastes great and looks beautiful. :P

Oatmeal Buttermilk Waffles (or Pancakes)

1. Combine 1 ½ c of rolled oats with 2 c of low-fat organic buttermilk (I love the organic valley brand, but use what you like best). Let this sit for 20 min and set aside

Pre- 20 min soak.
Post 20-min soak. Notice how the oats soaked up the buttermilk.
2. In another large bowl, sift 2 T brown sugar, ½ t salt, ½ c flour, ¼ t grated nutmeg, and ½ t baking soda. Sometimes the brown sugar will not sift through, but this is not necessary a bad thing. You basically just want it to stick to the flour and not clump with itself. So if it is still sitting in the sifter once everything else has gone through, feel free to just throw it in the bowl as long as it dried out a bit with the flour.
3. Add 2 large eggs, 1 t vanilla, 3 T canola oil. Mix this all together well.

slowly folding in buttermilk & oats
4. Now fold in rolled oats mixture. DO NOT OVER MIX. I have screwed this up before and my pancakes/waffles had no lift in them. I would say it takes no more than 5-6 folds to get the two mixtures combined.
5. Now either use your waffle maker or skillet for pancakes (I prefer a non-stick or even a castiron). I like to spray the pan or waffle maker with a little canola spray to get the crisp on the outside, but I don’t think it is at all necessary if the surface is nonstick.
Makes: about 8 waffles


any waffle iron will do!
I like to top these guys with fresh fruit and real maple syrup. I also love a little greek yogurt on there too with perhaps a little honey and some sliced almonds. In the summer, if you get fresh berries, these are always great, and beautiful to boot. If you are feeling like something for sweet and decadent, nutella and bananas are always a great option, just warm the nutella up a bit and drizzle on some sliced bananas over the waffles or pancakes.

waffles with fresh blueberries
Bon Appétit!

Tastes: Very light and wholesome with a slightly nutty taste from the nutmeg. Yum.

Total Prep/Cooking Time: 30 min, including 20 minutes of the rolled oats sitting when I got the other stuff ready.
Total Cost: Exactly $5.47. As suggested by one of my readers, I have put together an spreadsheet to track the exact expenditure based on ingredients I buy down to the unit of measurement. When I figure out to upload excel files, I will show you the method to my madness. :)

Monday, October 18, 2010

two in a bowl

Two in a Bowl: Pumpkin & Potato Leek Soup
What’s better than one soup? That’s right. Two soups… in the same bowl. For some, this might just be the adventure you need to take. It’s kind of amazing. The night after I made pumpkin soup, I decided to make another batch of it (because it was just that good) and also give AW’s potato leek recipe another go. The last time I made it, it turned out a bit thick as I think my potato-to-leek ratio was a bit off. This time though I think I got it just right, and am excited to share it with you all!

When it comes to cooking with leeks, I think it is all about having enough leeks (which I have often not gotten enough of) and being able to pick out good ones at the market. If you are new to cooking with leeks, don’t be scared of them, they are really just a sweeter version of an onion. When you go shopping for them, aim to pick out the ones with the longest white stalk, because this is part you are going to cook with. All the green leafy-sides can be put aside for vegetable stock, but when a recipe calls for leeks, more often than not, it is calling mostly for the white part. (Check out the link to the magic leek soup below to see how to properly cut and wash leeks.)

I think of leeks as a bit of a superfood. Besides being the only ingredient in the magic leek soup of Mireille Guiliano’s “French Women Don’t Get Fat” book (also great when you are in the need of a little detox), they are also loaded in nutrients. (On a personal note I will be resorting to this detox soup after the upcoming Seattle Restaurant week where I plan to eat my way around the city.) From a nutritional perspective, leeks contain active substances (allyl sulfides) which block the action of hormones and chemical pathways within the body that promote cancer. Regular consumption of allium vegetables (onions, garlic, shallots, leeks etc.) are also associated with a reduced risk of both prostate and colon cancers, decreased tendencies for blood clots to form and lower levels of LDL (the bad) cholesterol. Leeks are also a good source of the most important carotenoids for eye health (lutein and zeazanthin)… so basically, eat your leeks…

Potato & Leek Soup

1. Trim off the root end and the upper greens of the leeks (see picture) and quarter halfway down the leek so in order to wash off any dirt from the outside and inner leek sections.
2. Wash off the leeks in water
3. Cut up about 3 pounds of leeks (I purchased 3.15 lbs and somewhere between 4-5 medium width leeks) which should amount to about 4-5 full cups of thinly sliced leeks. Set aside.
4. In a heavy-bottomed pot (I used my dutch oven), melt 3 T. of butter. (You can use unsalted or salted here, not an issue).
5. Add 4-6 springs of fresh thyme (if possible) removing the leaves by moving your fingers backwards down the bark. Also add 3-4 bay leaves. (Remember how many bay leaves you put in, because you will need to fish these out later.) Let these mix up with the butter for a minute or two, then add leeks.

6. Cook for about 10 min. Then add about 4 cups of coarsely diced yellow potatoes (about 1 pound). AW says to peel them, but when you do you lose a lot of interesting texture to the soup, not to mention a lot of nutritional value.So I leave the skins on...
7. Cook for about 4 min, then add about 5 cups of water, bring the soup up to a boil, then turn down to a simmer for about 30 min, or until vegetables are tender. Fish out bay leaves after the 30 min.
8. Once done, use a hand blender (or normal blender in batches) to puree the soup to your desired consistency, then season with lots of good salt and cracked pepper.
9. Some people suggest adding a 1/3 of crème fraiche or heavy cream, but I have tried it like this and don’t think it makes a difference. I suggest not using any cream the first time making it.

You can serve this as a “two-in-a-bowl” as previously suggested or perhaps on its own. While it is an excellent soup to take to work as leftovers, or just to have for dinner, I would suggest if you are feeling sassy, you should jazz it up with some white truffle oil. You don’t need much at all, but a drizzle on the top of the soup just adds that some extra, and might make you fall in love with white truffle oil forever. I use the Bartolini brand that I get down at La Buona Travola in Pike’s Place.

Potato Leek Soup with White Truffle Oil

Bon Appétit!

Tastes: Amazingly rich despite no addition of cream. I think the three keys to this soup are your potato to leek ratio (more leeks, more flavor I find), lots of salt and cracked pepper and heavy pureement of soup with the blender. Yum.

Total Prep/Cooking Time: 55 min, including 30 minutes of it just simmering
Total Cost: Exactly $9.45 + bay leaves & thyme (both of which I grow) but I would assume perhaps another $5 for these and you will likely be left with extras.

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

fall in love with fall

Fall is a magical time of year. The weather changes in such a romantic way that all I want to do is go for long walks in my fleece embracing the crisp breeze and later cozy up with a blanket and a good book at night. As traditionally a creature of summer, complete with fresh berry picking and lazy days on the lake lounging with coronas, fall this year has presented a fun challenge for me. Since I have always favored summer berries, tomatoes and whatever bounty has risen from the garden, this year I have been trying to get to know all the wonderful things coming into the farmers market this time of year: all sorts of root vegetables, squashes, pumpkins etc. This has led me to literally been falling in love with the autumn harvest. Today, being that pumpkin might just be my new single favorite vegetable, I am going to share with you this fabulously delicious and easy recipe for pumpkin soup.
A few words about cooking with pumpkins, make sure to buy the “sugar pie” variety. Any farmers market will be selling these ones, but just don’t expect to go to the store and use the same ones that we carve crazy faces and designs into. It won’t taste very good. It would be like the time I was trying to make mojitos and accidentally picked grass that looked like mint. The resulting mojito ended up resembling something close to an alcoholic wheat grass drink. Lesson learned!

Pumpkin Soup with Sage & Gruyere Croutons

1. Melt 2.T of unsalted butter in a heavy-duty pan over medium heat (I used a dutch oven).
2. Add 1 medium chopped onion, and stir around, cooking until tender. About 6-8 minutes.
3. Add 6 cups of diced, peeled and seeded pumpkin (no need to roast), 4 cloves of minced garlic and cook for another minute or so.
4. Add 1. cup of a dry white wine (I used a Reisling), but don’t open something new unless you need to, and if you need to, pour yourself a glass while you are at it! Also add 8-12 minced sage leaves.
5. Once the wine has evaporated, add a about 3 cups of broth. I prefer a homemade vegetable or chicken broth, but the easiest thing is probably one of the cartons.
6. Cover and keep soup at a simmer for about 25 min, or until the pumpkin is tender.
7. Once done, add ½ c. (more or less) of some shredded Gruyere cheese.
8. Using a hand blender (ideal) or blender, puree the soup (doing this in batches if using a blender; also, don’t completely fill the blender because with a warm soup, you could end up in a world of hurt).
9. Return soup to a simmer, and depending on your taste, add more broth if you like your soup thinner. Add any salt and cracked pepper to taste (I added a lot).
10. Turn on your broiler and position a few slices of bread (depending on how many you are serving) on a baking sheet, turning every 1-2 min to toast, then adding some of the leftover shredded Gruyere cheese and a few leaves of minced sage. Season with a little salt and pepper and broil until cheese is bubbly.
11. Serve in bowls with a slice of the crouton.

Bon Appetit!


Total Prep/Cooking Time: 35-40 min
Total Cost: roughly $10-$15
This recipe is an adaptation of one feautured in fine cooking No. 107.


Stay tuned for whatever else my love affair with fall leads me to!

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

milk and cookies

After an invigorating yoga class tonight, I found myself craving something sweet. I tried to think what I wanted that wouldn’t be a sugar rush to be followed by a later headache, and something mildly good for me. My favorite dessert in the world is Tiramisu (hello cream) and someday I will teach myself how to make a fabulous one, but today was not that day. Actually two of my favorite friends have attempted this fabulous dessert recently, and both have turned out incredibly boozy. While I would never complain about such offenses, every bite felt like I was taking a shot, and that’s not really what I was looking for tonight, or willing to take a chance on.
What better to go with my already published raw-milk-soapbox-rant earlier today than cookies?! Yum :) In college, while I was busy not-studying, I developed my own recipe for chocolate chip cookies. My boyfriend at the time was a bit of a cookie fiend and being the cutsie girlfriend that I was, I wanted to impress him with the best chocolate chip cookies he had ever had. (Somewhat ridiculous now thinking about it…) Nevertheless, they were full of refined white sugar, excessive butter and bleached flour. Don’t get me wrong, they were fantastic but as I was sitting down trying to think of what to make tonight, it dawned on me: a slow cookie, or one that meets most, if not all of the requirements of the slow food movement (ie. what this blog is supposed to be doing in the first place!) would be fantastic to have on hand.
 So I scoured the interwebs looking for cookie recipes that were low in sugar, used natural (and local) ingredients and looked delicious. I modeled my recipe after the one I found at peace, love and muesli (fantastic blog), and used some cookie techniques I learned when I was on my cookie conquest in college. Here is what I came up with:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F
2. Cream 1 cup of unsalted butter in an electric mixer
3. Add 1 ½ cups of brown sugar and mix until fluffy
4. Add 4 eggs, then 2 ts. of vanilla, while mixer is running on low.
5. In a separate bowl combine and mix together:
  • 2 ts. of baking soda
  • 2 ts. of baking powder 
  • 1 ts. of salt 
  • 3 ½ cups of whole wheat pastry flour (see later blog-soapbox-rant on flour) 
  • ½ c of ground flaxseed meal 
  • 3 c. of raw oatmeal 
  • 1 c. of coconut flakes
6. Now slowly add this mixture to the electric mixer
7. Add in about 8-10 oz of dark chocolate chunks. I broke up a Theo chocolate bar (some of the best chocolate around and conveniently less than a mile away) with 70% cacao. Then also add a few handfuls of semisweet chips or pieces of a broken up bar, maybe 4-5 oz.
8. I scooped them onto my baking pans then pressed them down a little since it is a pretty thick batter and I wanted a flatter cookie.
9. Cook for 10-12 min or until very lightly brown.

So there you have it, a cookie that is delicious, nutritious and relatively “slow”. Looks like I will be enjoying a midnight milk and cookies snack!

Bon Appetite!

Total Prep/Cooking Time: Mixing dough: 20 min & baking: appx 1 hr, but it depends on how many cookies you get on your baking sheets, and how many baking sheets you have.
Total Cost: roughly $10-$15

Monday, October 4, 2010

got raw milk?

Do you ever look at the vast choices of milk options and are TOTALLY confused?? Which is best? Organic vs. non-organic? Local vs. mass producer? Do you know what is in (or not in) the milk that you eventually choose? Having faced my own confusion in the dairy section, I put together what I think are the most important factors when making my milk decision (after much research of course). You might not think you drink much milk, but it can add up quickly (morning latte, soup for lunch, various sauces, ice cream, etc.) Hopefully you find this as helpful as I did learning about it…
  • If you drink any milk at all, it likely comes off of a factory farm like we have all seen in Food Inc. The cows being milked there are feed a diet full of corn, causing them to often get incredibly sick, as their bodies are not designed to ingest a diet full of corn. Awhile ago, the food scientists in our country figured out that if we gave them certain types and amount of antibiotics, they would get sick less often. Further they figured out too that if we injected them with various hormones, they could produce 2x and 3x even more milk than what their bodies were built for. It seemed fine to everyone at the time. The demand for massive qualities of milk, cream and butter was there, and being the resourceful and capitalist Americans we are, we found a way to make something more efficient. But what are the consequences of such antibiotic and hormone supplements? They wind up in our bodies, because after all we are what we eat. There have been studies that have linked cases of certain cancers, early puberty, testicle shrinkage, sterility, liver damage and even fetus damage with the hormones and antibiotics in our meat. And the kicker is, there is no regulation that lets us know how much in being pumped into the cattle. Think of this the next time you pick out that $2.99 gallon of milk at WalMart, Costco or Safeway…
  • The grass-fed diet for cattle is incredibly important from a nutrient perspective. Milk from grass-feed cows contains higher levels of cancer-fighting CLA (conjugated linoleic acid), vitally important vitamins like A & D, and healthy enzymes designed to help the body assimilate all the nutrients, predominately calcium. These enzymes found in raw milk are critically important for preventing and recovering from disease for people of all ages. Further the omega-3 fat content of grass-fed, pasture-roaming cows has been found to be as high as 50% (it’s virtually nonexistent in factory-farmed, corn-fed animals).
  • What about organic milk? As defined by the USDA, milk and milk products can be labeled "organic" if the milk is from cows that have been exclusively fed organic feed, are kept in pens with adequate space, are allowed periodic access to the outdoors and direct sunlight, are not treated with synthetic hormones and are not given certain medications to treat illness. As you can see, there is a lot of wiggle-room here. The cows can be fed organic corn, not be squeezed SO tightly together and live in an indoor pen with perhaps a small door letting cows go outside that the cows choose never to use. That doesn't seem much different that the factory-farm to me... Organic for dairy is a lot of fancy marketing to charge a much higher dollar for an item that is only so-so better for you, and sometimes it might be worse (see below on ultra-pasteurization).
  • Pasteurization is basically the process of heating the milk to high temperatures (appx. 160 degrees F or higher), aimed to eliminate “harmful pathogens, enzymes and bacteria” in the milk and extend the shelf life. But along the way of killing potential harmful bacteria etc, most, if not all of the good stuff is destroyed as well.
  • Do you ever sit at the grocery store and notice the massive difference in “fresh-dates” on organic vs. non-organic milk? Because of the likely massive production of the milk, the producers often pasteurize at a much higher temperature (often twice as high), which eliminates literally ALL of the good bacteria and enzymes, but significantly extends the shelf life. You can read about ultra-pasteurization here.
  • Homogenization on the other hand is just the distribution of cream throughout the milk, making sure that the cream does not rise to the top, and that the milk is consistent throughout. This process is also done at high temperatures and is consistently thought to increase heart disease in addition to being completely unnecessary. You can weigh the pros and cons here. I like the guy’s article title of the pro stance: “Homogenized Milk: Rocket Fuel for Cancer”…
  • While it’s always possible to get sick from any contaminated food, raw milk seems to be unfairly singled out as a health risk. According to the Weston A. Price Foundation (very cool organization), although raw milk has always been for sale in California, except for a brief period in 1900, there has NEVER been any issue, while there have been numerous instances of contamination of the pasteurized style. The health regulators have followed it incredibly closely (as most of their interested are aligned with major dairy companies) and not even a signal incident was reported, this is literally millions and millions of gallons of consumed raw milk. I do understand that comparatively, there are like 1000x more non-raw drinkers over this time period, but don’t you think its kinda amazing that there was NEVER any issue? There are numerous other studies with the same findings.
  • And local is not always better. I called up a local creamery a few months ago that frequents the local farmers markets to learn that they fed their cows a considerable about of corn and further reserved the right to administer antibiotics if they their cows got sick. I wanted to ask them if they had ever stopped feeding the cows corn, but I resisted the urge to be a complete brat. ;)
So what to do now? I strongly believe that raw, organic, unpasteurized and unhomogenized milk is one of the best health foods out there that we can put in our bodies, so much so that I am starting a trial period of this type. See, I have been using raw milk from Sea Breeze Farm lately to make my own yogurt which has turned out to be quite delicious. So I am going to try out a full switch. Yes, I will be using raw milk in my other culinary adventures and morning latte, which has traditionally been non-fat organic milk. Wish me luck! I have to say, that this morning's latte turned out quite well... :)

Cheers to raw milk!

 
If you would like to read more about raw milk, check out these sites:
http://www.raw-milk-facts.com/
http://www.realmilk.com/

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Peace Through Pesto Pappardelle

It’s been a little while, well about 2 weeks to be exact, since I last wrote. To get a little personal here, my mind has been absolutely consumed by the sheer thought of moving away from Seattle, (where I would live, how I would live etc.) and at the time the idea of sitting down to write about slow food and cooking was like pulling teeth. See, I was really upset about it all and couldn’t figure out why, until I realized last week that I actually don’t have to move if I don’t want to. I know that sounds a bit crazy with how simple it is, but I never really gave myself that option. The truth is, is that I have been working so hard for the past two years to elevate my career and “make something of myself”, but along the way I lost sight a bit of my personal priorities and suddenly my career objectives became bigger and bigger, and morphed into something was definitely not me. Anyway, long soul searching story short, I have basically taken the past few weeks to concentrate on what makes me happy, one of which is cooking (I think the full list is cooking, yoga, friends/family and love, but that is a blog post for another day). So I have cooked, and cooked, and then cooked some more, some nights until the early hours of the morning. (Seriously, I was up until past 2am the other night roasting tomatoes, ridiculous!) I have made salmon, scallops, crab cakes, homemade pasta, tomato sauce, pesto, scones, quiches, crepes, frittatas, jam, jellies, cookies and ice cream, as well as pickling fresh beets, carrots, onions and zucchini. I even revived my herb garden and planted a fig tree! Cooking and all the steps leading up to cooking (sourcing, shopping etc.) is like a form of mediation for me. In a way, my personal mini-crisis is your gain and I am so happy to share all the tips and ideas with you! I have also thought a lot about what I want to do with this blog. I would like to continue to share recipes but also I would love to share also some of the interesting things I have been learning more about, like, how safe is raw milk? And what are the health benefits? And is the type of milk that is sold in the stores actually good for us? Anyway, l have learned that I have some very serious “hippie-tendencies” (as a few girlfriends like to tell me) and I will write about them here if you are game. But for today, pesto and pasta….

First up,

Pesto Pappardelle

I honestly do not know how Alice Waters does it. She lives without a food processor, mortar and pestle only. When I read this, being the AW devotee that I am, I thought, well if Alice can make delicious and amazing food with only a mortar and pestle, so can I. So I bought a beautiful mortar and pestle and was excited to try my hand at it with pesto, a la AW.

It did not go as well as planned. Pesto is NOT a hard thing to make. You have 6 basic ingredients (or 5 if you omit the pine nuts): Basil, garlic, salt, pine nuts, parmesan cheese and extra-virgin olive oil, and it is all about getting these things in the right proportions. (I am a firm believer in the fact too that if you grind garlic too long in the food processor, it can become bitter, so watch out for that.) However, my end product using the mortar and pestle seemed to resemble some sort of dark fern smoothie.

Alice’s recipe goes like this:

1. Grind 1 garlic clove and some salt together in the mortar and pestle
2. Add ¼ c. pine nuts and continue to pound
3. Add ¼ c. of parmesan cheese and pound
4. Transfer this mixture to another bowl
5. Take 1 c. of lightly packed basil leaves and coarsely chop
6. Put basil leaves in mortar and pestle and pound to a paste.
7. Add back pine nut mixture and gradually pour in ½ c. of extra virgin olive oil
8. Taste, and add more salt if necessary.

This might sound easy enough, but let me assure you, it is not. Step six of grinding the pesto leaves to a paste did not work out so well for me. Maybe I am just weak and Alice has more upper body strength than me, but I found this impossible. Everything else worked well though. I added about 4 garlic cloves instead of just 1, and I doubled the amount of parmesan cheese (bc, why not?).

Later when I made a second attempt at this pesto, I used a food processor for step 6, along with the substitutions I mentioned and the pesto turned out as pesto should! Beautiful and bright green (I swear its much brighter, the right side one that is, than this picture shows!) Not, some crazy mixture of dying basil leaves…

 And clearly, what better to eat with fresh pesto? Uhh.. but fresh pasta of course!! And this is an easy-as-pie recipe that I think we have mentioned before of simply flour and eggs. I mixed up 2 whole eggs and 2 egg yolks (all room temperature, very important) and basically added bit by bit of to 2 c. of white unbleached flour that I had mixing in my handy-dandy mixer, until everything was incorporated. Once incorporated, I kneaded the dough a few times on a floured surface and set aside in plastic wrap for an hour or so.

Later I rolled out the dough, separated it into 3 or 4 long rectangular strips and used my new pasta maker to roll out some lasagna sheet and cut them into long large noodles (which were borderline too big), but nonetheless, they turned out beautifully and I ate a batch with both the sad basil-death pesto, and the beautifully crisp and fresh basil. You can make your choice as to which one looks more appetizing!





Bon Appetite!







Total Prep/Cooking Time: Pesto: 15-20 min & Pasta: 10 min + 1 hour of pasta sitting + pasta kneading/rolling/cutting and cooking 30 min

Total Cost: roughly $15-20

Thursday, September 9, 2010

quazi-vegetarianism, complete with a burger

I certainly don’t claim to be a full on vegetarian, but for all intensive purposes I am one, in theory. I basically reserve the right not to eat food that I don’t know where it came from and for me, meat is the scariest. See, I have done a lot of reading over the past few years about the food industry in this country (notably: Omnivore’s Dilemma, Animal Vegetable Miracle, Slow Food Nation, In Defense of Food, & Eating Animals). All touch on various aspects of factory-farming and the awful resulting consequences. It was Omnivore’s Dilemmas that taught me all about what was in the vast majority of the meat is in the US (corn & oil) and because after all, we are what we eat, animals too are what they eat, and when we eat animals, we are what they eat; and I certainly I have no interest in being any part oil or hybrid corn.
Eating Animals was the last book that I read and the one that really set me over the edge as the book really got down to the way the animals were grown, treated and processed. But let’s get something straight, I am not really the type to think hunting is murder, but I do care about the way we treat them. I think that even though we might just be raising cattle, hogs and chickens on farms for the sole purpose of food, they deserve a respectful life. We treat them as a commodity now in this country, and their environments and ways of life that have been drastically altered over the past 50 years. Did you know that the largest contributor to environmental pollution and climate change are the factory farms where cattle/chickens/hogs are stuffed with hybrid-corn (not the corn that is sold fresh in stores, but the type that is inedible to us and raised in the Midwest on mostly oil & pesticides), and injected with hormones to grow faster and fatter? This meat is the stuff for sale at Costco, Safeway, QFC, Kroger and Whole Foods- most of the places that we traditionally have bought food and in most of the places we eat out, unless otherwise noted.

This begs the question, what happened to cattle that feed on grass (which their bodies are designed by nature to do), the chickens that were able to roam and develop the use of their legs, or the hogs that were able to play in the mud and lead active lives? We made them go away. We have basically demanded the factory-farms into existence because as Americans we have wanted more meat and at lower prices. This country eats more meat than any civilization, ever, and weird too that our generation might be the first to have a lower life expectancy than our parents or grandparents. I am not saying that meat is the only concern, but it’s time that we became responsible and know what’s in our food.

So that is basically a snidbit of why I claim quazi-vegetarian status. I just have to know what is in my food and where it comes from. I want to be able to respectfully decline food if I can’t figure out what’s in it. This somewhat infuriated my parents when I first announced it since they interpreted it as some food not being good enough for me (I believe the term they used was “snob”). But the more we have talked about the more they have become interested in it, enough so that the other day they announced that they were buying ½ cow (slaughtered) from some friends up the road who raised their cattle solely on grass. :) Change is happening... I just love chatting with people at farmers markets about how they raise and produce their food. That being said, I love me some tasty meat, if I know where it comes from and what it has been fed. I had the opportunity once to go down to Argentina, where the meat there is all literally free-range and grass feed. It was amazingly delicious and had more favor than anything I had ever had in the states (go figure).

So last week, in my relatively new state of quazi-vegetarianism, I was craving a burger. I believe cravings too are some sort of barometer of what your body needs, and sometime we all need a burger! Granted I perhaps would not give in to every ice cream/chocolate/cake craving I have, I try and give into what feels right, and at this point, for whatever reason, I was absolutely CRAVING a burger.

So I set out to the Queen Anne farmers market and there found some fresh meat, cheese, lettuce and bread, all of which are critical ingredients for what I was craving. The meat was from a farmer up in Skagit valley whose cattle ate grass all year round, never any corn, and never any hormones or antibiotics. The cheese was also from there and I sampled about ten of her cheese before I found just the right one. :) Then the lettuce was just romaine from a local organic farmer, and the bread was from a local bakery.

I don’t feel like I need to go through the steps of making a burger here as I feel this is somewhat common knowledge (but let me know if you need help). I basically grilled the burger for about 4 minutes each side on an outdoor grill (about medium-rare), toasted the bread on the stove in a pan, ripped apart some lettuce, coated one side of the bread with some leftover aioli and the other with some HFCS-free ketchup (because let’s face-it, what’s a burger without ketchup?). There you have it, that easy. And you know what? It was simply fantastic.

Total Prep/Cooking Time: 5-10min

Total Cost: $20 (with enough for about 2-3 burgers or more)

Funny story: Last weekend I was at a new restaurant in Ballard whose head chef is fairly famous and was working the kitchen that night. I wanted to know where the chicken came from for a certain dish so our waiter went and asked him. He didn’t know. I thought: "Interesting, he should know" and respectfully declined ordering the dish. But then I don’t think the situation was helped when Tracy asked if the chickens also played Sudoku when and if they were roaming freely… way, to mock me T!

So yes, I might be annoying with my "I gotta know where the food comes from", but I believe that by asking it will help make it clearer to shopkeepers and food providers that more and more people care, and this will help change the way food is produced in this country. And if you haven't seen it already, please stop whatever you are doing and go watch Food Inc (you can rent it on itunes)...

Next up on the blog: Back to the basics with Alice.

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

bringing the cooking class home, day two

What do you do when you realize that you accidentally planned two separate birthday/dinner parties on different nights instead of one big one? First, pretend to be slightly annoying that you have to cook again and have no plan in place, but then, get excited because you can just try a bunch of new recipes and won’t be forced to eat the leftovers for the whole next week! SCORE! See, I was originally planning for only one party for my mother’s birthday this year but then I realized some guests had been invited over one night and some over another night (thanks dad) so I had to get a plan together, and fast. Luckily I was armed with AW so she was able to rescue me.

After the massive Asian feast the night before, I wanted to make another favorite food type of my mother’s – Italian, and wouldn’t you have it, AW is a bit of a pro the Italian food space. Here is the menu I derived, with which I felt for once I was truly going to test how large in fact my stomach was.

-Squid (Calamari) w/ homemade Aioli
-Tomato Flatbread/Focaccia
-Spinach Lasagna


Squid (Calamari) w/ homemade Aioli

First mistake: do not go specialty food shopping at 7pm on a Friday because chances are people are starting to close up for the evening and have sold out of most of their fresh items. I had the (not so) bright idea of going to yoga before food shopping, so I ended up rolling into to this particular store around 7pm only to find they have very little options left for squid: frozen and uncleaned. Frozen was out of the question for me, so I kept hearing the words of a close friend repeat over and over again in my head: “whatever you do, don’t get un-cleaned squid; it is a mess, and disaster to work with”. Shit. As I was awkwardly deliberating about the purchase in front of the seafood counter, secretly hoping that the fish mongers would somehow stumble on some cleaned squid in the backroom, a lovely gentlemen struck up a conversation with me and we talked about my fears of cleaning squid (this means removing all the guts and insides etc). He walked me through the process and told me it was not too bad. Once I had thoroughly annoyed the fish monger behind the counter and there was no hope for that secret stash, somehow I found my confidence inspired by my new friend and made the purchase. And can you guess how much I paid for 10 whole squids? $2.50. Win.
Turns out, cleaning a squid is not as gross and disastrous as my friend warned me (whose reaction to my enjoyment of cleaning squid was: “Whaaaaat?! You have too much time on your hands.” Which is probably true…). Nonetheless, this is how I would recommend cleaning squid:

First, get some nice kitchen shears, rinse all of the squid, put in the bottom of your sink and have a gut-bag ready for the scraps. Grab the squid right in-line with the eyes (see pic to left) and cutoff the tentacles in one cut, keeping the tentacles in one piece. Once removed you should see a small black V-shaped thing still connected to the side with the eyes- this is the beak of squid. (This is how the animal eats! Cool, right?) Next, you need to remove the body. Take a strong hold of the top portion of the body with the eyes and while slowly twisting the remainder of the body cavity with the other hand, you should be able to pull out the insiders of the squid. (I can email a picture of squid guts to those that are interested.) They should come out easily if you do not tug and just simply twist. If you are too rough and rowdy with these delicate creatures, you might just rupture the ink sack, and then you will be in big trouble!
You want to make sure the remaining piece has no guts left, so I would also recommend snipping off a section at the tail and making sure water can easily run through the remaining body cavity. Next you will need to remove the feather-like bone that is still holding the body together. At end where it was closest to the eyes, there should be a point where you can bend back the skin a bit and grab the bone/cartlidge to pull out carefully. It literally looks like a feather…
Now all you need to do is slice the body cavities into rings and decide how you want to prepare the squid. Because I had never made this before, I wanted to be a bit more traditional and make a fried calamari appetizer, unlike what AW suggests. (I promise Alice, I will make grilled calamari soon!)
We breaded it lightly in just some breadcrumbs and Italian seasoning. My mother made the exceptionally brilliant decision to use the outdoor burner on the BBQ, which I would suggest, because frying this stuff can be a mess (and the hot oil can hurt!). I used canola oil and made sure the oil was super hot before putting anything in. The rings really only need to be in the oil for a few minutes, or until lightly brown, with the tentacle pieces taking longer than the rings.
We served the hot calamari with fresh Aioli from AW (pg. 47). I used my new mortar and pestle to grind up 3 cloves of garlic with a dash of sea salt until it is somewhat like a paste. Then separated 1 egg yolk and added that and ½ teaspoon of water to the garlic-paste. Mixed that well with a whisk. Then slowly added 1 cup of olive oil, whisking constantly. As the egg yolk absorbs the oil, the sauce will thicken and turn a light yellow color. I think I was whisking for about ten minutes, or until thick.
I would recommend using a mortar and pestle here if you have one, over using a food processor because a food processor has a tendency to make garlic very bitter. (I heard a chef say it once; it’s something about the chemistry properties of metal vs. garlic, clearly not my specialty, but bitter often happens). Also, there are a TON of variations you can do here with the addition of herbs or roasting juices of meat or seafood into the finished aioli. I think next time I will add some finely minced basil to my finished aioli.

Total Prep/Cooking Time for Squid & Aioli: 15 min for the aioli + 15 min squid prep + 10 min cook = 40 min total
Total Cost: $5-$7

Tomato Flatbread/Focaccia

I finally got this recipe right, though I overcooked it slightly (see slightly more brown Focaccia picture below). See, I tried to make it for my friend last week, but a) I screwed up bubbly yeast mixture by over mixing it and b) I missed a step further down in the recipe where you needed to set the Focaccia aside AGAIN for ANOTHER 2 hours. Oops. Sometimes, well, most of the time I am an impossibly impatient person so when I realized I had messed up, the whole elaborate flatbread I was planning on serving as a lovely appetizer just ended up being an extra pizza, in addition the pizza I had already made for dinner. A bit of a letdown, but my friend was a good sport about it and told me it was delicious regardless. You need these people in your life. I’m serious, I am all for people being direct and really honest about their feelings, but I swear I would have given up cooking had people truly told me what they thought of a certain dish. Coming to mind right now was that time I decided to make empanadas for the first time. It happened that I measured the flour and sugar wrong so the shitake mushrooms were instead surrounded by a sugar cookie. I found this depressing, but my lovely friends laughed at first but still ate them and even took a few home for lunch the next day…. that’s what I call good friends. :) Anyway, I warn you that this one takes a bit of a scheduling commitment, but really too not much of your actual time in the kitchen. Most of time is spent either mixing a few basic things together or letting the dough rise. Because baking is MUCH more a science than cooking, here are the more detailed steps:

1. Stir together 2 teaspoons of dry yeast & ½ c lukewarm water
2. Add & mix well (but not too well) with ¼ c unbleached white flour & ¼ c. rye flour (found in most natural food stores). Allow this mixture to sit for about 30 minutes or until quite bubbly.
3. In a separate bowl mix together 3 & ¼ c of unbleached white flour and 1 teaspoon of salt
4. Stir the flour mixture into the yeast with ¾ c. cold water and ¼ c. olive oil
5. I put all this into my electric mixer for about 5 minutes, or until soft and elastic. You can also knead by hand on a floured surface.
6. Put the dough into a large bowl, cover with a towel (preferably not saran wrap) and let sit for 2 hours. You can also let it rise overnight in the refrigerator.
7. Once dough is ready (or 2 hours or overnight has passed), generously oil a 10 x 15.5 inch rimmed baking sheet.
8. Gently remove the room temperature dough from bowl and flatten on the sheet. Try to even out the height of the dough, but don’t rip it or be too crazy about it. Try not to deflate the air as you are shaping.
9. Dimple the surface with your fingertips and drizzle with 2 T. of olive oil.
10. Cover and let rinse for an ADDITIONAL 2 hours.
11. Preheat oven to 450 and if you have a baking stone put that in the olive for 30 minutes prior to putting the flat bread in.
12. Right before baking I put a few sliced fresh heirloom tomatoes, salt, pepper and some garlic powder.
13. Bake for 20-25 min and if you have a baking stone, put the pan directly on the baking stone. It should be lightly golden brown when you take the focaccia out.

Yum! This is a great little appetizer or lovely complement to a dish that has a lot of juice! There are lot of liberties here too that you can take by adding herbs to the dough with oil, or using other onions, greens etc to the flatbread before baking. The possibilities are really endless.

Total Prep/Cooking Time for Flatbread: 4.5 hours total
Total Cost: $10 (if that)

Spinach Lasagna

Because when Tracy made this a few weeks ago and it was so delicious, I wanted to try my hand at it and recreate it with my mother. (AW pg. 270). I won’t go through the entire process with you, because Tracy has already talked about it in detail, but I must say, this was delicious once again. We did make a few adjustments from the way Tracy prepared it (some I would not do again) but all-in-all a great learning experience to make 1) fresh pasta (see rolled out on left), 2)more tomato sauce and 3)béchamel sauce (which I think I could actually eat all by itself).

The main thing that we did differently was that instead of cooking the pasta before layering it in the dish, we did not cook beforehand and instead added extra tomato sauce to the layered (but not yet cooked) lasagna and simply cooked it for about 3x longer. It was much chewier than the butter-like pasta that Tracy made, but it was still quite good. I think it really just depends on personal taste and I think if I had to make it next time, I would cook the pasta before putting it in the pan. For me, it seems that if we are going to go to all of the trouble of making the pasta fresh, we should showcase it.
Of course, if anyone would like the full recipe, please let us know :)
Total Prep/Cooking Time for Spinach Lasagna: appx. 2.5 hours total
Total Cost: $35-40

Make it all again? Yes, everything! Enjoy :)

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

bringing the cooking class home, day one

I have grown up cooking and baking because my mother is truly an amazing chef. From being that little kid with an easy-bake oven (and eating the strange things that came out of it) to nowadays cooking with my mom and making her teach me the nuances of cooking, such as getting “stiff peaks” out of egg whites, I have always been trying to be emulate her. Last year I gave her a “coupon” for a cooking class in Seattle as a birthday present (coupon giving is family tradition- side note: I once got a “coupon” for a radio-controlled airplane as a kid for Christmas. Luckily for my parents I lost interest in the endeavor and never “cashed it in”. Given the deep frugality of my father, I’d like to think that coupons were his idea as some sort of an insurance policy against my changing interests as a child… smart). Since getting my parents to leave their lake house and come to Seattle is similar to pulling teeth, and combining that with my awful graduate school schedule for the past year, the coupon for the cooking class in Seattle has gone unused. So this year I wanted to bring the cooking class to my mom for her birthday. My goal: make some of my mother’s favorite food that she does not traditionally make herself.


First night: Asian Food

So I know that these recipes are not from AW or the other books that I have mentioned before but they are inspired from a few restaurant recipes we love, as well as our favorite cooking magazine: Cuisine, which my mom has every published issue. Of course I have taken a few liberties with the food we made since I am quasi-vegetarian (more on this in a future blog) and even made up one of my own, but everything seemed to be a hit with the guests we had over, as evident with little to no leftovers. I am aimed for all local & chemical-free food, but there were a few things that I wasn’t willing to make from scratch right-away, like the wonton wrappers I used. Anyway, here comes the spread, get ready to salivate…

Spinach & Shitake Mushroom Wontons

This was the recipe I basically made up. I wanted to make little Wonton appetizers but because I didn’t have a definite plan on what to stuff them with, I went into my mother’s refrigerator in search of inspiration. There I found a bunch of spinach that would happily serve as my base. I then looked around in the pantry and found some dried shiitake mushrooms which I thought would complement the spinach well and have an interesting textural difference from the spinach. Here are the steps that I went through:

1. Take out wonton wrappers from fridge so that they can get to room temperature. I bought the Sunluck brand and they seemed to be just fine. Don’t open package yet or they will dry out.
2. Sauté the spinach (around a bunch) in a little extra virgin olive oil (about a T.), some garlic (2-3 cloves) and red chili flakes (roughly less than ½ teaspoon) for just a few minutes, or until cooked down.
3. Transfer to a colander to cool.
4. Rehydrated the dried shitake mushrooms (I used about 10 medium-large mushrooms) in a pan of boiling water for about 5 min, or until plump again. (Or even better if you have fresh shitakes, use those instead and no need to boil.)
5. Once those have cooled, sliced them up and put them in a bowl.
6. Then wring out the spinach/garlic mixture to it and combine with the mushrooms.
7. Preheat the oven to 325.
8. Foil and oil a baking sheet for the finished wontons.
9. Set yourself up with a little wonton-making-station with a nice working surface including a small bowl of water and pastry brush to moisten wraps (think about it as if you are moving the moistened brush around an inch border of the wrapper), a knife to lift wontons up from working surface, and of course the bowl of wonton filling.
10. Once you have everything set, the process is easy. Just put a spoonful of the spinach/mushroom filling in the middle of the wrap, moisten all the sides with the brush and then flip over diagonally (using the knife to lift it up) to create a three dimensional triangle. Then press down with your fingers to seal the wonton and transfer to the baking sheet.
11. When all the wontons are complete, bake for roughly 15-20 min or until lightly golden brown.

For a dipping sauce, we made a little apricot sauce (but you could make an orange one too like the wonton wrapper package says) by bringing the following ingredients to boil, simmering for a minute, then cooling.
3/4 c. of broth (either chicken or vegetable)
1/3 c. of apricot or orange marmalade
3 T. of apple cider vinegar
1 T. of cornstarch, (which admittedly, I am little ashamed of using, but I am sure flour or another thickening agent could have been used here instead)

When you serve these, just make sure that they are warm.


Total Prep/Cooking Time for Wontons: 5 min for the sauce + 30 min prep + 15 min cook = 60 min total
Total Cost: $10-$15 depending on what you already have in your fridge

Next up…….

Vietnamese Fresh Spring Rolls

Although the possibilities are endless with the types of spring rolls you can make, I have come to like wrappers made from rice paper instead of wheat flour, and prefer them served “fresh” instead of fried like egg rolls. As far as ingredients, I think it’s good to have some elements each for 1)crunch, 2)substance & 3) texture. For ours, we used carrots and jicama for crunch, noodles, leeks and shiitake mushrooms for substance and wild uncooked shrimp for texture. This is a SUPER easy thing to make, since it just takes time to chop everything up… so setting up a good assembly station is key. I like to have everything in a line so that I don’t forget any element (which I did several times during this endeavor until I rearranged my setup) This is what I did:

1. Cook your (hopefully wild) shrimp or whatever texture-type element you want. You can use pork, tofu or maybe even a steamed vegetable.
2. We prepared ours by plunging them into boiling water for a minute or two, followed by cooling and peeling them, removing the veins and slicing them in half.
3. Next we submerged some small diameter dried rice noodles into water and set aside. We didn't even use 1/3 of a pkg.
4. Then the chopping began. Everything needs to be roughly about 4 inches (or smaller, but think about trying to julienne the vegetables into slender sticks). We chopped: carrots, jicama, leeks, shiitake mushrooms and pulled off a couple dozen cilantro leaves. You roughly want about a 1/2 cereal bowl size amout of each minus the cilantro. (We also peeled the carrots and jicama before chopping.)
5. Once that is done, grab a large bowl and fill it with warm water & some cider vinegar (about two tablespoons for each cup of water), as that will be your rice paper soaking bowl. The thought is that as you pull one out, you want to put another one in there so that it will be moistened by the time you are done assembling that roll.
6. Also grab damp towel to assemble the rolls on and place it in the center of your station.
7. You start the process by taking the rice paper skins and soaking one at a time in the water/vinegar mixture for a couple minutes, or until soft. Then take out the soft paper, place on the damp cloth, and start adding the veggies: a couple sticks of carrots, jicama, leeks, shitake and mushrooms. Then roll rice paper once over and add the shrimp in the middle alongside two leaves of cilantro. Fold in the ends and the roll the rest up. The first one may not be beautiful (and might in fact fall apart or be totally ugly), but you will get the hang of it after a couple tries.
8. I just kept rolling until I ran out of vegetables.

For the dipping sauce, and being as obsessed about the thai-peanut sauce as both my mom and I are, we made quite a delicious one to accompany the rolls (and actually used the same sauce for the spring rolls below). I would say too that most of the ingredients are Asian-cooking staples (like: hoisin, oyster, sweet chili, Sriracha etc.), but I would advise that if you are picking anything up for the first time watch out for varieties with HFCS (high fructose corn syrup) and excessive corn by-products. You gotta look around, but at your better stores (and specialty Asian stores) you can find mostly natural products, though your mainstream grocers will often carry the chemical-laden, hfcs-type varieties. Stay away from those if you can.

Semi-Spicy Peanut Dressing
½ c. smooth peanut butter
• ½ c. hoisin sauce
• 2 T. water
• 1 T. oyster sauce
• 2 ts. Red wine vinegar
• 1 ts. Sriracha sauce
2 ts. minced or grated fresh ginger (be careful not to grate your finger like I did)
2 ts. toasted sesame oil
• 2 ts. soy sauce
• 1 ts. sweet chili sauce

You simply combine all these things in a small saucepan, bring up to a boil, simmer for a minute, then remove from heat, stirring constantly so there is no burning etc.
These were absolutely amazing. I think these will be my go-to easy/crowd-pleasing appetizer. So YUM! (and healthy!)

Total Prep/Cooking Time for Vietnamese Fresh Rolls: 15 min for the sauce + 45 min prep = 60 min total
Total Cost: $25-$35 depending on how deep your oil, vinegar and Asian food pantry is (sauce is the critical piece)

For the last appetizer…

Thai Tortilla Spring Rolls

These are absolutely delicious and a version with chicken is actually served at California Pizza Kitchen, which is where we found the recipe. Back when I was a mainstream-meat-eater, no matter where my mom and I were living around the country (Hawaii, San Diego, Ft. Lauderdale, Phoenix, Seattle etc.) we always had mom/daughter dates at CPK and ordered these, because did I mention that these were amazing?

Steps:
1. Preheat the oven to 500
2. Use a pastry brush to lightly & evenly coat one side of each tortilla (preferably large ones around 8in and you will need about 6 in total) with softened butter
3. Turn tortillas over and evenly distribute the following ingredients over a 1-2 inch wide strip on the unbuttered side, starting about an two inches from one side of the tortilla:
spicy peanut sauce (same as above. new batch needed for this recipe)
• ½ c shredded mozzarella
• ¾ c. shredded carrots
• ¼ c. sliced green onions
• ½ c. fresh bean sprouts
• 2 T. finely chopped roasted peanuts
• 2 T. minced fresh cilantro
4. When finished with each roll, roll it up and place on a baking sheet, about 1 inch apart.
5. Sprinkle with 2 T. of freshly grated parmesan and bake 5-6 min and let cool for a few after
6. Slice diagonally into 3 equal pieces and garish with 1 T. of freshly chopped Italian parsley

Serve these with the leftover peanut sauce not used in the assembly process and they will be sure to be a hit! Although I am a Thai-food convert now and could eat it all day long, embarrassingly I think these were my first glimpse into Thai food... in other words, if you are trying to convince your friend/sig o/dog to go eat Thai food with you more often, I would make these as a lovely segway to get them excited about the fabulous Thai cuisine (and you can make what’s next as a sequel to boot!)

Total Prep/Cooking Time for Thai Tortilla Spring Rolls: 15 min for the sauce + 15 min prep + 10 min cook = 40 min total
Total Cost: $20-$30 depending on how deep your oil, vinegar and Asian food pantry since we used the same sauce

Finally for the main course…

Phad Thai

I have to say, I love Phad Thai, but have definitely had some bad Phai Thai in my life, usually because somehow it is too creamy (which I am not sure where that comes from) and/or too peanutty. However, this recipe somehow ended up just riiiight (insert bad goldilocks and the three bears joke here). I would suggest following the steps below and then just adjusting the amount of red chili flakes you put in for later iterations. Being the notorious non-recipe follower (because clearly I am a seriously cool-rebel-chick type), I accidently added too many red pepper flakes, so our main course was a bit warm. However, I did stumble on an amazing remedy: pairing white wine with the dish. I am sure Tracy could comment more on this but I drank a lovely Sauvignon Blanc, but had I been in possession of a Riesling it would have been opened in a second. I also left out any meat or tofu as I find it unnecessary, but if you wanted to add this to your dish, I would simply add them to the “Thai-sauce” I mention below for a quick marinade and cook separately, then set aside. Onward:

1. Soften ½ lb. of dry rice noodles in boiling water for 10-15 min. I would get wide ones if you can find them. Also, this might be the only time you will ever hear me say this but, don’t buy the fresh ones. I mistakenly bought them and boy was that a mistake! They were impossible to separate (even in hot water) and just ended up breaking… talk about a headache. Buy dry ones, let them soak for a bit, drain and set aside.
2. Slice about 2-4 peeled carrots to yield somewhere around 1 c. of julienned carrots. I also added the leftover leeks and jicama from the fresh rolls in this mix too.
3. In a small separate bowl, combine the garish ingredients:
• ½ c. unsalted, dry roasted peanuts, coarsely chopped
• ¼ c. green onions
• ¼ c. coarsely chopped cilantro
4. Combine in a separate bowl and mix the Thai sauce together:
¼ c. broth (vegetable or chicken)
¼ c. fish sauce
• ¼ c. ketchup (don’t you dare use anything with HFCS, but if you don’t have ketchup on hand like me, you can just combine a tomato, a lil flour and a dash of sugar together if needed)
¼ c. fresh lime juice (preferably from fresh limes and not from that “Real Lime” lime juice sold in stores, which is actually just chemicals and lime juice concentrate)
• 2 T. brown sugar
1 T. Sriracha sauce, which in moderation, is actually not as bad for you and loaded with chemicals like I had thought before
5. In another separate bowl combine the aromatics:
¼ c. minced garlic (I think I might have used 10 cloves?)
• 2 T. fresh ginger, minced or grated
• ¼ t. red pepper flakes (I might have used closer to ½ ts or even a full ts, and I would rate it as edible, but a bit hotter than my taste. Even my father, who normally adds a spoonful of Tabasco to his eggs said it was warm.)
6. In a wok (if you got one), or any large sauté pan, add 1 T. canola oil and the aromatics. Let that mix together over medium-high heat until sizzling then add another T. of oil and the carrots/vegetables. Let cook for about 2 min.
7. Now add the noodles and Thai sauce to the wok. (This is where you would add some cooked meat or tofu in that you marinated in the Thai sauce, sautéed and then set aside).
8. Toss all together for a few minutes, then turn off the heat and add a couple cups of bean sprouts.
9. Transfer the Phad Thai to a serving platter and garish with mixture in step 3.

Now I apologize, but I forgot to take a picture of the final product, but I’d like to think that it looked/smelled/tasted so delicious that food-blog-picture-taking was not really on my mind at the time. 

This recipe was enough for 5 people post-excessive apps (we had all three above), and I was left with only a little bit for a lunch snack the following day.

Total Prep/Cooking Time for Phad Thai: 30 min prep + 15 min cook = 45 min total
Total Cost: $20 (mostly because I already had some of the essentials like fish sauce & Sriracha)

There you have it, Food-Fest, Day One, check! Make it all again? Phad Thai, Thai Tortilla Spring Rolls, & Vietnamese Fresh Rolls – Definitely yes. Won-tons – Probably yes, but I think I will make my own wrapper from scratch next time. Also, I think I want to experiment a bit with finding another sauce for the fresh rolls, maybe something with coconut milk in it… I will brainstorm, so check back if you are interested.

Any questions or comments?? Let me know!