Who's Crabby?

Dinner doesn’t get much simpler than homemade crab dip, sliced baguette and a lightly dressed green salad. That’s what Trevor and I had over the weekend. But if the crab is from Linda Brand Crab sold at the PSU Farmers’ Market and there’s a bottle of Veuve Clicquot, it’s a pretty remarkable dinner.

I didn’t think I liked crab until I tasted this dip. It’s our variation of Trevor’s mom’s recipe. If you want to make this dip truly decadent, use Jacobs Creamery cream cheese instead of the foil-wrapped block you’d find at the grocery store. The photo above shows a small serving of dip. And it’s in no way representative of the amount I actually ate! Try it and you’ll understand why.

Crab Dip

Serve with sliced baguette or crackers.

8 ounces cream cheese

a few dashes of Tabasco sauce

dash of Worcestershire sauce

¼ teaspoon Old Bay seasoning

1 tablespoon diced shallot

½ cup mayonnaise

1 teaspoon flour

12 ounces crab meat

Slivered almonds

Preheat oven to 325˚ F. Spray a glass pie plate or 8-inch square casserole dish with cooking spray.

Mix first seven ingredients together (cream cheese through flour). Gently fold the crab into the cream cheese mixture. Spread mixture into prepared pie plate. (It will only be 1 to 2 inches deep.) Sprinkle with almonds. Bake for 30 minutes.

Links:

Linda Brand Crab

http://marketnavigators.com/

Jacobs Creamery

http://jacobscreamery.com/find-us.html

Sausage in Salad?

On a recent trip to the Hillsdale Farmers’ Market, Trevor and I picked up some delicious German sausage from Sweet Briar Farms. Slathered with grainy mustard, they made excellent sausage sandwiches. I stuck the remaining two sausages in freezer.

Later in the week we were given some tender, red-speckled butter lettuce and tasty yellow-fleshed potatoes from our friend Paul who runs an amazing CSA program at a local high school. I knew we could make an excellent salad with these ingredients.

Trevor and I had prepared Cooking Light’s Chicken, Red Potato and Green Bean Salad many times before. It’s like a German Potato Salad on top of greens. And it’s dressed with a tangy whole-grain Dijon vinaigrette. But this time I decided we’d swap out the chicken for one of those Sweet Briar sausages we had tucked away. And it was phenomenal! The mustard in the vinaigrette was so good with the salty sausage.

It was a quick-to-prepare, hearty meal perfect for a warm evening. And the next morning, Trevor pan-fried some of the leftover cooked potatoes with a little dried rosemary. Then he topped them with poached eggs and sliced up sausage. The slightly runny yoke became a silky sauce when mixed with the hot potatoes. We first named it “German Farmhouse Breakfast,” then we decided we liked the name “Hausenfrites” even better. Either way, it was a keeper.

Links:

Chicken, Red Potato and Green Bean Salad http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=630132

Sweet Briar Farms, Eugene, Ore.

http://www.sweet-briar-farms.com/

Whaddya Do with Parsnips?

Portland has been keeping the weather weird. Rain, sun, thundershowers, hail, rainbows – all in a single day. And today’s high promises to be a record setter –  for the coldest May 4.

So the early spring we saw in March is long gone. And it’s time to get back to casseroles. Before Persephone Farms’ last day at the Farmers’ Market until July, Trevor brought home some potatoes, parsnips and rapini – a slightly bitter green. We used the root vegetables for one of our favorite recipes from the Moosewood New Classics cookbook, Potato Parsnip Gratin. This cheesy dish is perfect for cold winter – or spring – nights.

The trick to making this gratin is to slice the potatoes and parsnips as thinly as possible. You can use a mandoline or really sharp knife. Trevor does a much better job of making really thin slices than I do with his Victorinox /Forschner Chef’s knife. We’re always fighting over who gets to use that knife.

The other trick is adding about 1 cup of cubed ham steak to the gratin. It’s not needed, but it sure is good!

This recipe also calls for thyme, which we have in our herb garden, and shallots and garlic, which still have in our root cellar. When we last made this recipe we used some pink-fleshed potatoes along with Yellow Finn and I think it made the casserole prettier.

We also lightly sautéed some rapini and garlic to eat with the gratin. It’s important not to cook the rapini for too long otherwise it will become bitter. While I love casseroles, I’m definitely looking forward to warmer weather and eating more spring vegetables. Since Persephone won’t be at the market until the summer, we’ll be shopping at other stands. And reporting in on what we make.

Links:

Crispy Cravings

As I was out running errands today I had a huge craving for McDonald’s. The more I eat healthy organic produce, the less and less I crave overly processed fast food. But today for, some reason, it just sounded so good. Then I thought about it for a little while and realized what I really was craving was some French fries. So I decided to bypass the drive-thru at the Golden Arches and make some fries when I got home.

We have a few Persephone potatoes from last season, so I sliced them up and heated up some olive oil in a small skillet. I’d made Mushroom Pecan Burgers from Moosewood’s New Classics cookbook for dinner last night and had a cooked patty ready to be heated up. I’d used Persephone onions and shallots for the veggie burger mix.

The Mushroom Pecan burgers taste nothing like beef burgers, but are delicious in their own right. The mushrooms are nice and earthy, and the pecans add a hint of toastiness. And with oatmeal and brown rice used to bind everything together, they’re also packed with fiber.

The Yellow Finn and rose-fleshed potatoes I used fried up beautifully. I sprinkled them with a bit of kosher salt after I took them out of the skillet. A little bit of work and I had a lunch that satisfied my craving and was much more healthful than a Big Mac and fries.

P.S. I've added an Amazon tab to my blog. If you want to purchase one of the cookbooks or kitchen tools I frequently use and mention, you'll have easy access to it. And I'll get a percentage of the sale. Win-win. 

Spring Forward

This Saturday was the first day of the 2010 Portland Farmers’ Market in the South Park Blocks. And the weather couldn’t have been more gorgeous. Trevor is back at the Persephone Farm stand and that means more fresh veggies for us. It is still a little early in the season, so all the Persephone greens were snapped up pretty quickly. But there were plenty of leeks and a few heads of cabbage, so I threw them in my market bag with a Lidia Bastianich recipe in mind: Whole Wheat Pasta with Sausage, Leeks and Fontina.

It’s a wonderfully flavorful vegetable-packed pasta dish. If you love pasta, but get tired of tomato sauce, give this a try. Leeks and shredded cabbage cook down to an almost silky texture. The sausage adds some heat and the whole-wheat pasta is really filling.

This recipe was published in Lidia’s Italian-American Kitchen and Cooking Light magazine. I’ve included the link to the Cooking Light version since it’s available. The recipe in her book calls for more olive oil and three links of sausage instead of one, and more cheese. I used the version in her cookbook and chose leaner turkey sausage instead of pork. Either way, the dish is delicious.

Links:

Whole Wheat Pasta with Sausage, Leeks and Fontina

http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=833349

Good Garnish

While I grew up in a Mexican-American family, Tortilla Soup was never on menu at my house. I first had it at the chain restaurant El Torito. And I’ve liked it ever since. I found a great recipe for it in the Los Angeles Times, but lost it years ago. So when I was craving a rich, steaming bowl of tortilla soup I had to develop my own recipe.

I know red bell peppers aren’t in season, but I was able to make good use of the Persephone Farm onions, shallot and garlic I had in the “root cellar.” Plus, I had some delicious corn tortillas freshly made at the Mexican bakery in my neighborhood. Nothing beats a good fresh corn tortilla. When I was little my dad would only eat tortillas from La Central bakery. Sometimes my Aunt Esther would make them at home and that was even better. So I never ate the pale imitations of corn tortillas sold at the grocery store until I was an adult and didn’t make the extra trip to the panadería. I’m so happy I live close to one now!

The ingredients that make this soup subtly smoky are the roasted red peppers, cumin and pimentón — a specialty Spanish paprika. It’s so flavorful you only need a little. Don’t try to swap it for regular paprika; it just won’t taste the same.

The fun of tortilla soup is the garnishes. I love to add Cotija cheese (a crumbly cow’s milk cheese) for the saltiness, avocado for it’s silky texture, tortilla chips for crunch, and cilantro for a hit of freshness. But you can play around and add other toppers such as sour cream or leftover roast chicken.

Tortilla Soup

Serves 6 or more

Soup

2 red bell peppers, roasted with blackened skin, seeds and stem removed (see link below for instructions)

3 tablespoons olive oil

2 cloves garlic, smashed

¼ cup shallot, chopped

1 cup red onion, chopped

1 cup yellow onion, chopped

1 bay leaf

1 teaspoon ground cumin

½ teaspoon dried oregano

¼ teaspoon pimentón, Spanish smoked paprika (I used sweet pimentón)

1 14.5-ounce can chopped tomatoes

6 cups homemade chicken stock

4 corn tortillas, torn into pieces

Optional garnishes

Cotija cheese, crumbled

Tortilla chips, store bought or homemade

Cilantro, chopped

Avocado, sliced

Sour cream

Heat olive oil in large stockpot or Dutch oven over medium heat. Add garlic, shallot, onions and bay leaf. Cook, stirring frequently until tender and lightly browned, about 10 minutes. Add cumin, oregano and pimentón, stirring for about 30 seconds. Add tomatoes, roasted red peppers and chicken stock. Bring to a boil. Stir in tortillas. Reduce heat to simmer. Simmer partially covered for 30 minutes.

Remove pot from heat. Fish out the bay leaf and discard. Allow to cool just slightly, and then use an immersion blender to blend soup until it is smooth. Return pot to heat to bring back to desired temperature.

Garnish each serving with your choice of toppings. Enjoy!

Links:

How to Roast Red Peppers

http://allrecipes.com/HowTo/Roasting-Peppers/Detail.aspx

Eat Like the Irish

I spent a good part of my 20s frequenting an Irish pub walking distance from my apartment building. When it was that lean time right before paydays, my neighbor Kathy and I would scavenge in coat pockets, raid our laundry funds and check the couch for spare change so we could walk down for a pint of Harp or Newcastle, some live music and a chat with some Irishmen. As a result, I have an affinity for all things Irish.

With St. Patrick’s Day coming up (which was the only day of the year my neighbors and I ever ventured to English pub across the street), I was happy to find a fine Irish recipe for soda bread in this month’s issue of Cooking Light. This is a real thick, dense bread delicious slathered with butter. It has great texture from the steel-cut oats and whole-wheat flour. (I used locally milled Bob’s Red Mill flours.) It’s the kind of bread I picture Frank McCourt drooling for in the book Angela’s Ashes.

And even better, the issue contains a recipe for a Ploughman’s Lunch Platter. This was on the menu back at Irelands 32. Admittedly, the only time I really ate at Irelands was when my friends and I could talk Kevin the bartender/cook into making us “chips” after the kitchen was closed. But seeing the recipe made me want to try it with my freshly baked Brown Soda Bread.

The Ploughman’s Platter ended up being an economical use of odds and ends in the fridge. The recipe called for homemade tomato chutney. I swapped it for some mango chutney I had. (Even if you don’t make a platter I highly recommend eating the soda bread with Cheddar and chutney. It’s unbelievably good.) We almost always have sharp Cheddar on hand as well as some salad greens and pickles. I happened to have some chicken sausage in the freezer. You could always use a couple of hard-boiled eggs instead. It was a tasy and filling lunch. I can see why Irish wives fed this to their hungry farmer husbands. It’s cheap, healthy and fortifying.

Links:

Brown Soda Bread

http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=1963985

Ploughman’s Lunch Platter

http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=1963986