What’s Cooking? (and changes to come)

09. February 2012 · 16 comments · Categories: Cooking, Weblogs · Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Takeoutcontainer

I haven’t cooked much since Richard died. I’ve always loved to experiment with fresh food and make up new dishes, but the truth is, it’s just not as interesting cooking for one. Furthermore, my neighborhood grocer, Ploughboy Local Market, now carries delicious deli items and soup made fresh in their kitchen from local foods (along with fresh-baked Salida Bread Company bread and rolls). The prices are reasonable, and I can even bring my own to-go container. It’s just too easy to just walk down the block and come home bearing dinner in my stylin’ and sustainable glass container.

I miss cooking though. So I’m starting to invite friends over for dinner to give myself the motivation to cook. I started with Dave and Kerry from Ploughboy. And then I worried that my cooking mojo might be out of shape. Nope! I enjoyed preparing a whole meal, and even invented a citrus, hard-boiled egg and avocado salad that’s simple, healthy, and delicious. It’s great counterpoint to a spicy main dish for dinner, or, mounded on whole leaves of crisp butter lettuce, a yummy lunch in itself. Of course, neither grapefruit nor avocado are local, but I did buy organic, and the eggs were uber-local, from friends’ hens just a few blocks away. (Thanks, Maggie and Tony!)

So here’s what’s cooking:

Salad

Winter-bright Citrus salad

1 ruby-red grapefruit
1 ripe avocado
2 hard-boiled eggs
2 T walnut oil (if you don’t have walnut oil, a very light olive oil would work, but you’d miss the lovely nutty flavor, which adds a savory note to the salad)
¼ tsp salt
fresh-ground pepper to taste

Cut grapefruit in half midway between the poles. Using a serrated spoon or grapefruit knife, cut sections from membranes and put into a medium mixing bowl. Pour in juice. Halve avocado, and cut into chunks; slip chunks off peel and add chunks to bowl. Peel and chunk hard-boiled eggs. Add to bowl along with walnut oil and salt. Stir gently, and add fresh-ground pepper. Chill or serve at room temperature. (Makes four small servings or two larger ones.)

Ingredients Chunks

I served this bright and smooth salad with steamed vegetables frozen from last summer’s garden over brown rice, topped by spicy Southeast Asian peanut sauce. I was so busy serving and eating I forgot to take a photo, but here’s the peanut sauce recipe:

Easy Southeast Asian Peanut Sauce

1 T vegetable oil (I use olive oil)
4 cloves garlic minced
1-½ T chopped fresh green chile
1 ½ cups water
⅔ cup peanut butter, preferably fresh-ground and not salted or sweetened
2 T low-sodium soy sauce
2 tsp brown sugar
2 tsp red chile powder
2 T chopped fresh mint leaves

Saute garlic and green chile just until fragrant, and then add water (turn heat down at first so it doesn’t splatter!), soy sauce, peanut butter, brown sugar and red chile powder. Stir thoroughly to integrate peanut butter, and simmer for four or five minutes or until it thickens slightly. Serve warm over chicken, fish, shrimp, and/or vegetables and brown rice or quinoa. Top with fresh mint leaves. (Serves 4-6.)

The combination of spicy sauce and pungent fresh mint is just delicious.

For dessert? Double-chocolate gelato (I bought this) topped with my own port-sweetened sour cherries, warmed. Yum!

Port-sweetened Sour Cherries

3/4 cup pitted sour cherries (I pitted and froze these local cherries last summer)
1/2 cup ruby port
1 T honey

Combine cherries (frozen is fine), port, and honey in a small, thick-bottomed saucepan. Simmer on a low flame for at least half an hour to give cherries a chance to thaw and absorb port flavor. (Make sure liquid doesn’t simmer away.) Spoon warm over gelato. Heavenly!

Explodingdawn

The changes to come? Not that I need another project right now, but I can’t put this one off any longer. So I’m diving into a long-overdue redesign of my website, and also of this blog. I’m still in the sketching-it-on paper stage (I know, so old-school, but I’m a visual thinker). In a month or so, I’ll have something to show you. If you have comments, complaints or requests related to this blog and my website (susanjtweit.com), let me know… As always, thank you for your support and your thoughtfulness.

What’s Cooking? Almost-spring dinner

18. March 2011 · 11 comments · Categories: Cooking, Gardening, Health · Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Last night we had friends over for dinner for the first time in, well, months. It was a lovely sign that we're recovering some normal in this journey with Richard's brain cancer, or if not normal (whatever that means in these days of nuclear disaster in Japan and bloody revolution in Libya), at least the ordinary pleasures of cooking together.

The latter is no small thing. As I began prep cooking late in the afternoon while Richard napped, I tried to remember the last time Richard's brain was up for the task of collaborating on a meal. I couldn't. I'm guessing sometime before my mom's downhill slide around the holidays.

But last night, he was on task. He checked the barbecue and cleaned off the grill, made the guacamole , and grilled the lovely whole salmon filet I had scored on sale at the grocery store (wild Alaskan salmon, thank you very much, caught in FAO Area 67).

I made the quinoa salad, picked fresh greens from the garden for garnish, prepared and baked the apple-nectarine crisp, and plated the meals. (They were pretty, as in the photo below.)

Plate

Here's the menu, which uses as many local foods as possible:

Almost-Spring Dinner (in honor of John and SueEllen's visit)

Organic yellow corn tortilla chips with freshly-made guacamole (the chips are from Colorado, the rest, no)
Grilled salmon brushed with blood-orange-infused organic California olive oil (nothing local there, but quite yummy!)
Quinoa Loves Lemon salad with fresh spinach and chervil garnish (all local but the olives)
Whole wheat boule (fresh-baked at Salida Bread Company from local organic wheat)
Apple & Nectarine Crisp with vanilla and lemon ice cream (the crisp is all-local, the ice cream not at all)

Quinoaclose

Quinoa Loves Lemon Salad
1 clove garlic, minced
1 T olive oil
1 cup rinsed quinoa (I substituted a third-cup of bulgur for a third-cup of the quinoa just for variety)
juice of one small Meyer lemon (about 1.5 T), in this case from our own dwarf tree
2 cups water
pinch salt
1/2 cup chopped broccoli, steamed
1/2 cup Greek or Spanish mixed olives, pitted
1 T lemon-infused olive oil
greens to garnish (I picked spinach and chervil out of our winter greens bed–sweet and fresh!)

Mince garlic and sauté in olive oil until just beginning to brow. Stir in quinoa (and bulgur, if substituting) and saute for two to three minutes. Add lemon juice, salt and water and bring to a boil, then simmer for 15 minutes or until water is absorbed. While grain is still warm, stir in broccoli, olives, and olive oil. Mound atop fresh greens. Delicious warm or chilled. (Makes 4-6 servings.)

Fruitcrisp

Nectarine & Apple Crisp
1 quart frozen nectarine slices (I freeze them ripe with a dash of citric acid and sugar to preserve their color)
6 apples (I used last fall's local Sungolds–they're a mite withered, but they still have great flavor)
1 T apple brandy
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
2 T oat bran
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup roasted pecans
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 stick (8 T) unsalted butter (chilled or frozen)

Heat oven to 375 degrees. Core apples and chop into one-inch chunks. Spread evenly into a 6- by 10-inch glass or ceramic baking pan. Top with nectarine slices (I like to arrange them prettily as in the photo above, even though they disappear under the crisp topping), sprinkle with apple brandy and set aside. Put flour, oat bran, sugar, pecans and spices into food processor and whirl to combine. Cut butter into chunks, add to food processor and pulse until butter-flour mixture is the texture of coarse cornmeal. Pour mixture over fruit, level out, and tap pan a few times to settle. Put pan in oven and bake for 55 minutes or until crisp top is browned slightly. Cool before serving with ice cream. (Makes 6-8 servings.)

Crispwicecream

Delicious food, much of it local and organic, good friends, wonderful conversation–all in all, a great evening. Best of all though, was the sweet realization that Richard and I can collaborate in the kitchen again. An absolutely ordinary miracle!

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