A quick note on our posting frequency of late… we’ve been busy with canning, a few home improvement projects, and lots of work. We hope you’ll bear with us for another week or so. We’ll be back to our three recipes a week very soon!
Tuesdays are my very favorite day of the work week. I spend the day alone, running, working, tackling laundry, and cooking. This is the day I try to make dinner for my husband, and the day I use to try new recipes, like the red wine caramel that went into my coworker’s birthday apple pie.
Tuesdays are the days I often work with the cat purring on my lap, or with Great Big Sea rocking the house.
This Tuesday though, seemed to fly quicker than most. I looked up and the caramel sauce wasn’t done, the squash wasn’t roasted, and John was due home soon. So I got to work. I roasted a kabocha squash, intending to just soften it enough to easily chop it into cubes, but I got busy with the caramel sauce and it ended up about 3/4 of the way cooked. Normally this wouldn’t be an issue, but I was going to chop the squash into chunks and then caramelize it in olive oil, then mix it with some beef and beans we’d had the night before.
Since the squash was getting soft, I should have done something different with it. But tired, hungry, and distracted that I was, I just threw it in a pan with the beef and bean mixture, added some tomatoes, and cooked it until done.
It was ugly.
Seriously ugly.
It was orange, and brown, and very mushy.
But it was also delicious.
Comforting.
Almost exactly what I wanted.
All this is just a long winded way of saying that a delicious, healthy, and local meal doesn’t have to follow a recipe. Sometimes you need to be willing to experiment. Sometimes you’ll fail. But sometimes you’ll succeed. I knew that combining kabocha squash, beef, and beans, all of which are rather simple flavors, would likely work well. I knew that the dish would need some bite to it, so hence, the tomatoes.
But my point is that sometimes you need to experiment. Soups and stews are my preferred experimentation vectors. They are generally very forgiving. Start with three or four ingredients. Simmer for a bit. If it tastes good, stop. If it’s not quite there, try some salt and pepper or some seasonings. Don’t be afraid to fail. There’s always a backup plan, and sometimes that plan is takeout!
Happy experimentation.
 Simple Salmon with Roasted Vegetables This is a simple weeknight meal that we’ve made a couple of times in the past few weeks. It’s flexible, easy, and since most of the time for this recipe is the cooking time, which is largely unattended, it’s the perfect dish for busy nights when you need to do some work or house cleaning (or baseball game watching) while dinner cooks.
A few words about the ingredients for this dish. The must-haves are the salmon, the olive oil, and the cherry tomatoes. Everything else is optional and you should feel free to add other vegetables depending on your preferences. Do you like roasted beets? Add them (but be prepared for a very reddish dish). Hate fennel? Leave it out. Carrots, potatoes, turnips, parsnips, rutabagas, garlic… all good. You could probably even make this dish with extra firm tofu instead of salmon. This dish takes about 10 minutes of active work and 40 minutes for cooking. It’s a one dish, one spoon, and one knife meal, making cleanup a breeze.
Continue reading Salmon with Roasted Vegetables
Wednesday night, I tried a little experiment. I live-tweeted the dinner I made. I did this for a few reasons, but one of them was that I wanted to show that while I don’t believe that everyone can cook every night, I do believe that anyone can cook any night. I know, that’s a little confusing. You see, now and then around the Interwebs, I see folks discussing whether it is possible to cook dinner every night. Some people feel that it is simply a matter of priorities. If you make it a priority to cook healthy delicious meals for your family every day, then you’ll be able to do it. Other people feel that the ability to do this limited to folks with plenty of resources (money and/or time) or those for whom an adult member of the family doesn’t work outside the home. I’m really in a camp halfway between the two.
You see, I’m super busy. I work a full time job (albeit one that allows me to work from home when I want to) and I run a business. Sure, my business is cooking related, but it is very much a second job as I spend anywhere from 8-20 hours a week on it outside of the actual cooking processes. My husband works full time as well. We also work out for between 60 and 90 minutes five days a week and between 2 and 3 hours on day 6. In short, we’re swamped most of the time. Our clean laundry sits in the laundry basket for a week. Our parking strip is full of dandelions. I have a knitting box full of yarn and no time to knit. But on a busy day, one where we arrived home at 6:15pm, I had a healthy, local, and delicious dinner on the table at 7:30, and had plenty of time in between to clean my stove, clean out part of the fridge, harvest some food from our garden, and work for about 20 minutes searching for canning recipes for this coming weekend.
Can I do this every night? Absolutely not. Tomorrow’s dinner is likely going to be leftovers from Tuesday. Reheating will take 10 minutes. Friday, since I’ll be canning in the late afternoon, I’m betting we’re getting takeout. I still haven’t put that laundry away and I have an iPhone development book staring me in the face and mocking me. But given the following assumptions, I can cook a local meal at least 4 days a week.
- I have time on Saturday or Sunday to visit a farmers market.
- I remember to take beef out of the freezer a day in advance of cooking.
- The dishes get done after cooking so that the next day, the kitchen is more or less clean and ready for prep work.
So, no, I don’t think it’s feasible to cook a fresh meal every night, even for me, an experienced cook. Partially because the cooking process isn’t all you have to think about.
You have planning, and shopping, and making sure that the dishes are done so there’s empty counter space for prep, and making sure that you have the necessary pots, pans, and dishes. Then there’s the prep work, and the actual cooking, and then the cleaning up afterwards. So cooking a single meal requires a lot more time than just the time you spend cooking. If you’re not a confident cook, or have dietary restrictions, or your family hates most vegetables, this can be a daunting task.
In order to help folks become comfortable with some easy, healthy, local meals, over the next few months, I’m going to be live tweeting a meal every couple of weeks. This time it was done on a whim, but next time I’ll give you a few days warning and an ingredient list if you want to play along at home. I’ll tweet the steps in real time, with photos. The recipe will be posted the next day. All meals will have a start-to-finish time of less than an hour and will include at least a protein and significant vegetable component. We’ll get to the recipe in the next post, but for now, here’s the twitter stream from Wednesday’s event.
 Live-Tweeting Dinner
 Watermelon Salad with Goat Cheese A few months ago, while we paying our bill at Art Restaurant, the host told us about the Celebrated Chefs program. There didn’t seem to be much of a downside. You register your credit card with them, get a cookbook, and whenever you dine at one of the participating restaurants and use that credit card, 5% of your purchase price is donated to charity. We spent a couple of minutes looking through the cookbook and it sounded good enough. Local chefs from the participating restaurants contributed some of their signature recipes. The photos were lovely and the recipes we perused were well written. Five minutes later we walked out with a cookbook and plans to cook from it very soon.
But, alas, as often happens, the cookbook came home with us and immediately got shelved and forgotten about. I pulled it out a few times, and discovered a fatal flaw (at least for cookbooks). There’s no index. Little known fact about me: in a previous life, I wrote four technical books. I know that an indexer is expensive, and so a missing index in a charity cookbook doesn’t totally surprise me, but it does make the cookbook a little difficult to use. You can’t just pick up the cookbook and see if there are any tomato recipes in it. You need to page through the entire thing to see what recipes use tomatoes. So although the recipes in the cookbook are fabulous, the cookbook is just a bit hard to use.
Oh, and Celebrated Chefs… if you’re listening, I’ll happily index your next cookbook in exchange for a couple of meals at participating restaurants.  Continue reading Watermelon Salad with Goat Cheese
 Ground Cherries Ok. Show of hands. How many of you looked at this recipe and wondered either a) why I’m talking about cherries when cherry season is just about over or b) why I was grinding up cherries before putting them into salsa?
If you didn’t raise your hand because you know I’m talking about a little fruit called the ground cherry, well done! You’re obviously a farmers market shopper. Ground cherries are related to the tomatillo. They are sweet but there’s a hint of savory to them as well. Inside the papery husks, you’ll find sweet, firm orange fruit. What struck me about ground cherries the first time I tried them was how tropical they tasted. Since we can’t get mangoes, papayas, or pineapple here, I’m always looking for ways to replicate those flavors with local ingredients.
Continue reading Ground Cherry Salsa
 Spiced Tomato Pudding - the bits of pink are the fresh currants Before this summer, I’d never have thought about using tomatoes in a dessert. I’m not sure why not. They are a fruit after all, and when you can get them fresh and ripe, they are incredibly sweet. Sungold cherry tomatoes, for example, can have a Brix of 12. Really good peaches have a Brix of 17 or so. Brix is the measure of the sugar content of a fruit, taken with a refractometer. The higher the Brix, the sweeter the fruit. Now here’s where shopping locally and in season is very important. A ripe tomato from a local farmers market vendor can have a Brix of up to 10 or so. The hot house tomatoes you find at the grocery store out of season can have a Brix as low as 2-4. So if you’re going to attempt a tomato dessert, make sure and use fresh, in season tomatoes.
For this recipe, I picked up some nice #2′s from Billy’s at the University District Farmers Market. Since the first step of the recipe is to core, peel, and puree the tomatoes, you don’t have to worry about spending the extra money on the perfect, unblemished higher priced tomatoes. You can make the sweetened tomato puree several days in advance to save on time.
Continue reading Spiced Tomato Pudding
 Farm Fresh Eggs Edited to add: Yes, I know technically these aren’t hard-boiled eggs, but I titled the post as I did so folks could search on hard boiled eggs and actually find it. Really, my version is easy to peel hard cooked eggs.
Eggs, particularly hard cooked eggs, are an easy and convenient way to get some extra protein in your brown-bag lunches. They’re self contained, travel well, and pack a solid 6 grams of protein in their 70 calorie package. I like to have one after a hard workout (another great post workout snack? Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Carbs, protein, and good fats from the nuts make for a great recovery food. Add in some delicious whole grain bread and you’ve got one of the most complete meals you can pack without refrigeration).
But we were talking about eggs, weren’t we?
Continue reading Easy to peel hard boiled eggs
If you’re interested in making jam this year, or canning tomatoes, peppers, salsa, or even drying/dehydrating some fruit for winter, have we got a deal for you. Tonnamaker Family Orchards has a new 10lb club where they’ll sell you (on average) 10 lbs of various fruits and vegetables over the course of the next couple of months at greatly reduced prices.
What sorts of savings can you get? Well, how about 10lbs of peaches for $1.75/lb. 10 lbs of sweet peppers for $2.50/lb. 10lbs of apples for $1.50 and 10lbs of Asian pears for $1.50.
Just download their subscription form (link below), fill out what you want, and return the form and payment to one of Tonnemaker’s booths at the local farmers markets. They’re at the University District Farmers Market, Queen Anne Farmers Market, and West Seattle Farmers Market to name a few.
Subscription Form 2010
While browsing Slashfood today, I came across an alarming story. Pigs, cows, and chickens aren’t the only feedlot residents these days. Bison, the wild meat prized for its lower fat and cholesterol and slightly gamey flavor is now being found in feedlots. When grass-fed bison is compared to traditional feedlot (corn-fed) beef, the numbers are stellar. Bison has fewer calories, fat, saturated fat, and cholesterol. But look at the numbers. Look closely at the chart. That’s grass-fed bison compared to corn-fed beef. So what happens when you start feeding bison corn? Well, I’m not entirely sure actually. I did a few hours of research and I couldn’t find any nutritional information on corn-fed bison.
But let’s consider grass-fed vs corn-fed beef.
According to EatWild, grass fed beef has less than 3 grams of total fat per 3oz serving while grain-fed beef has more than 8 grams. For that same 3oz serving, you can be consuming 50 calories less by choosing grass fed than grain fed.
Now I’m no scientist and I’m no vet. I don’t know how a bison’s meat will react to a diet of corn, but they are ruminants, just like cows. So switching their diet to corn is bound to have some sort of side effects. So if you’re looking at wild game like bison, venison, or elk to lower your carbon footprint or save on some fat and calories, make sure you know that meat was 100% grass fed and is hormone and antibiotic free.
Know where you food comes from.
Well, well, well…. It seems to be bourbon week here at Chez Cook Local, after the Bourbon Vanilla Blueberry Jam that we made to make the Blueberry Sauce, and tonight, a bourbon and cream based smoked salmon sauce.
In a recent fridge cleaning, we came across a slightly older package of smoked salmon from back around Christmas. Now, it was still sealed, and still good, but, it was likely a bit more dried out by now so we wanted to find something else to do with it. I’d normally have just chopped it up and mix it into a egg scramble, maybe with some onions, peppers, carrots, a little dumpling sauce.
But, being a fan of boozy food, I thought a variation of a smoked salmon sauce would be a good idea.
And it was.
Or, at the least, I thought it was. But, on the other hand, I think it could have used a little heat to it. But, I like things like heat. I like boozy food. I like savory desserts. So let’s talk recipe. Continue reading Pasta with Bourbon Smoked Salmon Cream Sauce
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