Weekday Vegetarian

Homemade pasta with Brussels sprouts and toasted pecans.

I’ve always wanted to be a vegetarian, but I just can’t picture myself having my last cheeseburger ever. A few weeks ago, Trevor shared the concept of a TED talk he’d heard. Basically, you become a weekday vegetarian, but still eat meat on the weekends. He said he wanted to try it. And it was something I could get behind, too. We’d be eating more healthfully, saving money, reducing our environmental impact and giving way less money to companies that treat animals inhumanely. And I’d never have to completely give up cheeseburgers.

Spicy cauliflower pasta

We had already incorporated many vegetarian dinners into our repertoire, but it’s been a challenge to find more tasty meatless meals. The Moosewood New Classics cookbook has been our go-to book. But I was getting a little tired of it, so I started looking through my other cookbooks that weren’t necessarily vegetarian. In our giant Pasta cookbook, I found a spicy cauliflower pasta. With homemade noodles and Persephone golden cauliflower, it was a keeper.

My Martha Stewart New Classics cookbook had a section on meatless main dishes and number of tasty soups and pastas that fit into our weekday needs. Trevor filled in at Hollywood Farmers’ Market on Saturday, so we’re stocked with lovely fall produce from Persephone, including my favorite, Brussels sprouts. Martha had a wonderful recipe for Brussels sprouts with walnuts and pasta. Since Trevor can’t eat walnuts we used toasted pecans instead. And I out Martha-ed Martha by using homemade fettuccine instead of store-bought, dried pasta.

For the pasta, the Brussels sprouts are cored and then the leaves are pulled off. They are sautéed in butter with red onion and garlic. Fresh sage and thyme added even more fall flavors to the mix. Then the pasta is added to the Brussels sprouts and it’s topped with browned butter, pecans and grated cheese. (I used less butter than called for – ½ cup plus 3 tablespoons.) We used Parrano cheese instead of Parm. I served it slices of wheat baguette, roasted Persephone delicata squash, and Trevor’s Persephone mixed greens. It was unbelievably good. Probably one of the best meals we’ve had lately — vegetarian or not.

Link:

http://www.ted.com/talks/graham_hill_weekday_vegetarian.html

Canning Roundup

Dilly Beans!, Bread & Butter Pickles and Kosher Dills.

After trying out several recipes from Canning for a New Generation last summer and fall, Trevor and I decided to do even more canning in the following year. We’ve made good on the promise and we’re running out of room for all of our beautifully filled glass jars.

Trevor is not working for Persephone Farm this season, but does occasionally fill in when someone needs a day off. Last Saturday was one of those days, so we stocked up on a boatload of veggies while he was at the Hollywood Farmers’ Market, especially tomatillos for Salsa Verde and the last of the season’s tomatoes.

Our friends Paul and Meredith mentioned they’d tried the ketchup recipe from Canning for a New Generation and that it was unbelievable. I decide try it with the Persephone tomatoes. They did mention that they’d cut back on the allspice, so I omitted it and I added a little extra apple cider vinegar for more tang. I also reduced the amount of cinnamon. Even though it took a couple of hours for the seven pounds of tomatoes to cook down to three cups, I think store-bought ketchup is ruined for me now.

Green tomatoes soaking in lime.

We also tried Green Pickled Tomatoes for the first time. I had a slew of green tomatoes still on my plants and decided to not let them go to waste. The sliced tomatoes are soaked in a pickling lime solution overnight, rinsed and rinsed and rinsed, topped with brine and canned. The result is firm, sweet and tangy pickles delectable on grilled cheese or a turkey sandwich. Pickling lime was a little hard to find, but I eventually found it at a wonderful new store in Sellwood called Portland Homestead Supply Co. It takes a lot of self-control for me to not buy everything in that store! Earlier in the summer, I was able to can a batch of Crushed Tomatoes from our garden, too. I found citric acid at Portland Homestead Supply, too.

Pear-applesauce, Plum Filling,Spicy Carrots,
Green Tomato Pickles and Ketchup.

We also made two batches of Spicy Carrots that remind me of the giant crock of pickled carrots, jalapeños and onions my grandfather used to make. One bite of our carrots thoroughly clears your sinuses. These might be the prettiest jars in our collection. The thyme sprigs and dried red chiles stand out against the bright carrots.

Zucchini pickles are really good on
ham-and-cheese sandwiches.

Earlier in the summer, we made bread and butter pickles from homegrown zucchini. They tasted just as good as the cucumber version we made last summer. And it was a great way to use up a lot of zucchini. And we canned four batches of Dilly Beans!, probably our favorite canning project from last summer.

Brandied cherries, yum!

Disappointingly, our all the apples on our apple tree had worms. We had to get apples from the Fruit Loop in Hood River to get our applesauce fix. We got a great deal on pears, too. So this year we canned chunky pear-applesauce. But the good news is we discovered that our plum tree gives an incredible amount of fruit. We canned pie/cobbler filling. I used the first jars of filling this week and it hasn’t taken long for us to finish off the plum cobbler with fluffy biscuit topping. We also canned Brandied Cherries made partially with cherries from our tree. We spoon the cherries over vanilla ice cream or toss them into Sidecar cocktails.

Our cupboards also hold Charred Tomato Salsa, Peach Cilantro Salsa and Quickest Kosher Dills. Our extra work will pay off when we’ll be enjoying green enchiladas made from Salsa Verde, crisp Dilly Beans! and plum cobbler for the rest of fall and winter.

Plum cobbler with biscuit topping.

Links:

http://www.homesteadsupplyco.com

Green Eggs

Weekday breakfasts usually mean a quick egg-and-cheese burrito for me and a bowl of Kashi GoLean! for Trevor. But Sundays are a different story. Sometimes I’ll mix up pancakes from scratch. But Trevor usually makes a big feast that involves Huevos Rancheros or fried potatoes. A couple of weeks ago he started morphing the two with really good results. Instead of frying up some flour tortillas and placing salsa, poached eggs and cheese on top, he piled up the toppings on fried potatoes from Persephone Farm. Since we used green salsa made from Persephone tomatillos and onions, we gave the dish the Seussian title of Huevos Verdes, which translates to green eggs.

When the poached eggs are broken and mixed into the piping hot potatoes it thickens up the salsa into a silky sauce. When Trevor first sets a heaping plate in front of me, I usually think there’s no way I can possibly eat it all. Five minutes later the plate contains only a little smear of yolk and a couple strands of grated cheese.

Recently Trevor made a roasted veggie version. He placed a poblano chile, the last of our garden’s ripe tomatoes and chopped onion in the oven to roast and char lightly. He put the veggies on top of the crispy potatoes and poached eggs, and grated some pepperjack cheese on top. It looked so good I forgot to take a picture of it! The roasting brought out the sweetness of the tomatoes and onions. And the poblano was just slightly spicy. Again, nothing was left on either of our plates.

Hitting up the Pantry

After mimicking the menus of pricey restaurants in Portland, we needed to cook some meals that were a little easier on the wallet. Since we cook so much, we have a small arsenal of spices and condiments and an assortment of grains. So I took stock of what we already had in our cupboards and garden and planned some tasty, cheap meals.

Since we had rice wrappers, thin rice noodles, fresh herbs, daikon and carrots we made Vietnamese Summer Rolls with a tangy soy dipping sauce from a Martha Stewart recipe. The Zucchini Pizza we made from the Moosewood New Classics cookbook is now one of our favorite easy summer meals. But my very favorite meal was a recipe also from the Moosewood New Classics cookbook for Red Risotto. It called for Arborio rice, stock, wine, tomato paste and radicchio, all things we has on hand. I ended up buying a can of small red beans, but that was a very economical addition.

Risotto is a comforting and creamy dish. With the red beans, it became even more filling and homey. Below is a link to a similar risotto recipe. To make it more closely resemble the Moosewood recipe, add 2 tablespoons tomato paste, a pinch of thyme and a can of rinsed and drained small red beans with the last ladleful of broth. The wine, slightly bitter radicchio and flavorful stock give this risotto a lot of depth. And the cheese and beans add a creamy softness. We’ll be making this risotto many more times.

Links:

Red Risotto

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Radicchio-Risotto-1232

Menu Mimicry, part 2

Roasted beet salad with candied pecans and blue cheese

Last week I mentioned some of the dishes we recreated from reading menus of the best restaurants in Portland. We finished out the week with some outstanding salads. I feel like I did a good job of recreating the Insalata Nostrana’s creamy Caesar dressing and Trevor made a really good version of clarklewis’ roasted beet salad. We used Persephone Farm fennel, beets and radicchio. Here’s how we did it.

Radicchio Caesar salad with herbed croutons

Please be aware that this recipe uses a raw egg yolk, so eat at your own risk. Pregnant women and people with compromised immune systems definitely shouldn’t consume raw eggs.

Serves 6 to 8

1 head radicchio (preferably from Persephone Farm), halved

6 to 8 slices of day-old white bread

6 fresh sage leaves

1 teaspoon fresh rosemary, finely chopped

cooking spray or olive oil

1 egg yolk

¼ to ½ cup grated or shaved Parmesan cheese

1 to 2 garlic cloves, minced

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

4 tablespoons lemon juice

½ cup to ¾ cup olive oil

salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Place radicchio in a large bowl of cold water and allow to soak for about an hour.

Preheat oven to 400˚. Rub 4 sage leaves on the bread slices. Cut bread into small cubes, spray with cooking spray or brush lightly with olive oil. Finely chop 2 remaining sage leaves. Place bread cubes on a baking sheet coated with cooking spray or brushed with olive oil. Sprinkle sage and rosemary over bread cubes. Season lightly with salt. Bake for 5 minutes, toss bread cubes and bake for another 5 minutes until cubes are lightly browned and crunchy. Cool and set aside.

To make dressing, place egg yolk, garlic, lemon juice, 1 tablespoon grated Parmesan cheese and Dijon in a food processor or blender. Turn on food processor and slowly drizzle in olive oil. Once dressing becomes thick and creamy (almost like mayonnaise), you can stop adding olive oil and stop the food processor. Season with salt and pepper. Taste and add more garlic, Dijon or lemon juice if desired and pulse a few more times.

Rinse radicchio, chop and spin to dry. Place in a large serving bowl. Add enough dressing to lightly coat the radicchio and toss. Top with Parmesan and croutons.

Roasted beet salad with candied pecans and blue cheese

We used a sweet (dolce) Italian Gorgonzola, but you can use whatever kind of blue cheese you like. Oregonzola blue cheese, is also a great choice.

Serves 4

1 bunch beets, (preferably from Persephone Farm) stems and roots cut off

1 bunch arugula, washed and dried with stems cut off

1 cup of fennel, (preferably from Persephone Farm) very thinly sliced

½ cup pecan halves

2 tablespoons brown sugar

2 tablespoons water

sherry vinegar

olive oil

salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

4 ounces of Gorgonzola or other blue cheese, crumbled into small pieces

Preheat oven to 425˚. Place beets in squares of aluminum foil, sprinkle with olive oil and wrap up tightly. Bake for 1 hour 15 minutes, until fork tender. Allow beets to cool enough to handle, then slip skins off using paper towels to keep your hands from turning red. Chop beets into bite-size pieces.

While beets are cooking, mix together brown sugar and water. Toss mixture with pecans making sure each piece is coated. Spray a piece of foil with cooking spray, place pecans on foil, sprinkle lightly with salt, and bake on a baking sheet in a small toaster oven at 350˚ for 6 to 10 minutes. Check on the pecans after 5 minutes, toss and allow to bake until a pecan piece broken in half is golden brown. (You can also bake the pecans in the oven with the beets, but you will need to cook them for less time and watch them more carefully. Pecans and other nuts can go from not quite done to blackened very quickly.)

Assemble salad by tossing arugula and fennel with sherry vinegar and olive oil and seasoning lightly with salt and pepper. Divide arugula and fennel into bowls, top with beets, pecans and cheese. Enjoy.

Links:

Clarklewispdx.com

Nostrana.com

Menu Mimicry

Rock fish with braised fennel and potatoes

Last Saturday we had an amazing dinner at Nostrana in SE Portland with our friends Sara and Courtland. It was the first time we’d eaten there and everything was delicious. The food was simple, but what made it memorable were the choice ingredients and inventive combinations. For example we started with pizza topped with shiitake mushrooms, arugula, house mozzarella, lemon oil and pecorino cheese. The Insalata Nostrana was an interesting twist on a Caesar salad — it featured just slightly bitter radicchio instead of romaine lettuce.

Between all the food and the wine, we had quite a hefty bill, which was somewhat alleviated by a $50 coupon and some well-spent roulette winnings. Still, it was a splurge and the kind of dining experience we could not replicate every night. Until Trevor had an idea. We’d scour the menus of the best restaurants in Portland and try to create dishes based on the brief descriptions in the menus.

This has been our first week of cooking off the menus without any sort of recipe. And so far, we’re four for four. We look at the ingredients and descriptions (braised, crisp, roasted) and try to imagine how the chefs would prepare them.

We started with halibut with braised fennel, green garlic and gold potatoes from the clarklewis menu. We substituted rock fish for halibut, since halibut was $20.99 a pound at the farmers’ market. Trevor’s not working for Persephone Farm this season, but we always stop there first to load up on organic vegetables when we hit the PSU farmers’ market. We got our fennel there. Trevor followed Martha Stewart’s Cooking School directions for braising fennel and potatoes. It came out silky and creamy. We dredged the fish in flour and pan fried it. The slightly crisp exterior played off the creaminess of the rest of the dish. I also made a little kale on the side.

Next we made a roast chicken salad with peppered bacon and avocado from the menu of Bunk, our favorite sandwich joint. We cheated and bought a rotisserie chicken for the salad, which we shredded and mixed with mayo and some fresh rosemary. Then we fried up thick-cut pepper bacon and sliced the avocado our neighbors had given us. We threw a little Persephone speckled lettuce on there for good measure. It was a big, delicious sandwich.

As I was shelling the fava beans I thought
of that line from Silence of the
Lambs, "I ate his liver with
fava beans and a nice chianti."

The next dish was a real stretch because neither one of us has ever eaten or prepared fava beans. I’ve seen several cooking shows that showed how to prepare them, so I knew it was an involved process. We were going off the Nostrana menu, which listed a fava bean salad with prosciutto, lemon and pecorino. Fava beans are in season and cheap at the farmers’ market. To prepare them, you shell the beans from the pod, then boil them for about 10 minutes. Then you remove the tough outer shells from the beans. We may have overcooked the beans slightly, because we had to remove the skins very carefully or the beans turned to mush. Then we tossed the beans with lemon juice, olive oil and grated Parmesan cheese (We were buying lots of pricey specialty cheese for this experiment, so we decide to swap good imported Parm for pecorino.) Then we topped the beans with crumbled pan-fried prosciutto. Yum.

Orecchiette with polpetinne and arugula

Last night we made orecchiette, a small ear-shaped pasta, from scratch just like they do at clarklewis. (We tried a new recipe for the pasta, and weren’t completely happy with it. The pasta was a little too chewy.) We also made pork polpetinne (tiny meatballs) to throw in the pasta. For the meatballs, I put one boneless, country-style pork rib in the food processor to grind it up. To that I added the little bit of ground beef we had in the fridge, dried breadcrumbs, grated Parmesan, minced fresh sage and parsley, one egg, salt and pepper, and some water. We made tiny little meatballs and cooked them in a pan with a little olive oil. I also sautéed some shallots. We mixed the hot pasta, shallots and meatballs with arugula, grated taleggio cheese, parm and some pasta cooking liquid. The taleggio is a really good melting cheese, so it blended with everything and made a thick cheesy sauce.

Despite a few smushed fava beans and not-to-tender orecchiette, we’ve considered our menu mimicry a success. By trying to think like the top chefs in Portland we’ve tried new foods, learned new techniques (braising fennel), and picked up great ideas for simple quick dinners (store-bought pasta mixed with taleggio will make a fast, satisfying weeknight dinner).

Links:

Clarklewispdx.com

Nostrana.com

Bunksandwiches.com

St. Patrick's Feast

Slow-cooked, beer-braised corned beef and vegetables.

Nothing says “Happy St. Paddy’s Day” like corned beef and cabbage. Except for maybe green beer. I did a test-run corned beef in the slow cooker last week and it was delicious — tender and salty with flavorful braised veggies. Trevor was so excited about it, we bought two more corned beef roasts when they went on sale. This St. Patrick’s Day, this is what we’ll be eating for dinner.

I love my slow cooker!

And the best part is the slow cooker does all the work, which is especially nice since I just got a job as an editor for a Web site. But working outside the home doesn’t mean we’ll be doing lots of fast food. We’re already getting good at making quick meals such as stir-frys. And with some night-before prep, the Crock Pot has been cooking up some really great roasts, chili and soups.

Persephone Farm potatoes and
onions with corned beef.

Actually the best part may be having leftovers for corned beef hash. We had a little trouble with the recipe from The Breakfast Book, but on the second try the next day the hash was crispy and not burned. It may have had something to do with the fact that we halved the recipe. I’m sure we’ll get around to perfecting the hash this weekend with our leftovers.

Links:

Slow Cooker Corned Beef

http://community.cookinglight.com/showthread.php?t=65440