April 2007 Archives

It's not a big secret - I'm not a vegetable fan. Don't get me wrong... some green beans fresh from the garden cooked with some melted butter over them are one of life's great pleasures. Corn-on-the-cob from a road side stand is also pretty darn good. Boil it for 5 minutes and brush melted butter and a little salt over it. But other than those two vegetables, I've never been a big fan of green stuff.

As we were paging through one of the Barefoot Contessa cookbooks, we saw a picture of roasted asparagus.

Let me ask you? Doesn't this look good?

That's freshly grated parmesan cheese over the top of the asparagus.

This is one of the simplest recipes we'll ever post. (* = organic, & = local)

Ingredients:

• Asparagus *&
• Salt and Pepper
• Olive Oil *
• Parmesan cheese &

Preheat the oven to 400.

Now, I'll let you in on a little trick. There's a simple way to ensure that your entire asparagus spear is edible. Take the spear in both hands, fingers at each end. Bend and the spear will snap off where it becomes inedible. Do this for each spear and place it in a glass baking dish. Drizzle olive oil over the spears and top with salt and pepper to taste.

Bake in the oven for 20 minutes. While the asparagus is baking, grate some fresh parmesan cheese. (Do yourself a favor - don't use the pre-grated parmesan. A small block of parmesan cheese looks expensive at first blush, but it lasts forever and the taste doesn't compare.)

When the asparagus is done, pull it out and sprinkle the parmesan over the hot asparagus. Slide the dish back into the oven and let it cook another 2 minutes.

That's it! Less than five minutes of preparation and 22 minutes of cooking.

It's not often I find a dessert recipe that really calls to me. After all, we have so many good places to eat in Seattle. Two different cupcake places, several excellent bakeries, and a whole host of restaurants that serve almost any type of dessert you can think of. But when I saw these cupcakes on Slashfood, I knew I had to try them. I made the curd and cupcakes on Saturday and assembled everything on Sunday.

Now, I could have just followed the recipe to the letter, but J's diabetic. So I wanted to see if I could adapt these to be low sugar. If that wasn't enough of a challenge, these were a test for a party we're going to next weekend. The additional catch? The hostess is allergic to wheat. So I also needed to make these without flour.

So... do you think I did it? Well, here's a picture of the result.

Without further adieu... onto the recipe. I'll separate the recipe in to the three parts (lemon curd, cupcakes, and meringue). All organic ingredients will be marked with a *. All local ingredients will be marked with a &.  

Lemon Curd

Ingredients:

• 1/3 cup fresh lemon juice *
• 3 large eggs *&
• 1 large egg yolk *&
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1/4 cup Splenda
• 8 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1 teaspoon lemon zest *

NOTES: I should have used organic butter, but I was weak. Tillamook butter was on a fantastic sale at our local market, so I bought a pound. The eggs were local, from Skagit River Ranch.

Directions:

Put a couple cups of water into a saucepan over medium heat until the water is simmering. In a glass bowl that will sit nicely over the saucepan, whisk the lemon juice, eggs, egg yolk and sugar until smooth. Cut the butter into chunks and add it to the bowl. Place the bowl on the saucepan and whisk gently. Cook the curd until it thickens and you can see a ribbon of curd hang off the whisk.

In my case, this took about 25 minutes, but it could take as few as 10. Remove the bowl and strain mixture through a fine mesh strainer. Add lemon zest, stirring gently to fold. Cover and chil thoroughly.

Cupcakes

Ingredients:

• 2 cups rice flour *
• 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon lemon zest *
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 2/3 cup Splenda
• 6 tablespoons unsalted butter *
• 1 large egg *&
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 cup milk *&

Directions:

After preheating the oven to 375, combine flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium sized bowl. In a large bowl, rub the lemon zest, sugar, and Splenda together with your fingers to combine. When you're done, the sugar mixture should have a yellowish tint.

Add the softened butter and cream together until light and fluffy. Or... that's what is supposed to happen. When you're using Splenda, light and fluffy is sort of wishful thinking. Add the egg and vanilla and beat for another minute. Now, alternate the flour mixture and the milk a little bit at a time. Begin and end with the flour mixture.

When you're done, the batter will be a bit like cream of wheat. At this point, I don't mind telling you, I was worried. Cupcake batter should be smooth and thin. Or at least that's what it's always looked like to me when I used one of those box mixes. I persevered through my fear however, and lined 18 muffin cups with foil. I filled them about half full and slid them into the oven.

20 minutes later I had cupcakes.

Fast forward 24 hours and it's Sunday!

Meringue

Ingredients:

• 3 large egg whites *&
• 1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
• 1/4 cup sugar

Directions:

Beat egg whites and cream of tartar until just before the soft peak stage. Add the sugar a little bit at a time until the meringue has reached stiff peak stage.

Assembly

I took a paring knife and started carving up the cupcakes. I carved a cone shape out of each one. Oh! The horror! It's a cupcake massacre.

The casualties of war were tasty though...

I took a dollop of lemon curd (about a tablespoon and a half) and placed it in the hollowed out cupcake. I topped each cupcake with meringue.

After preheating the oven to 400, I put the topped cupcakes on a cookie sheet and baked them until the meringue was just browned. This took about 6-7 minutes.

Ta-da! Cupcakes!

So.......... how did they taste?

Overall, I give these a 7. When I asked J for his rating, he gave them 7.5. The flavor was very good. I really couldn't tell that they were gluten/wheat free or had very little sugar. There wasn't an aftertaste as some Splenda baked goods can have. The meringue was light and fluffy and the lemon curd had a nice tang to it. But... the cupcakes were a little dry and the lemon curd could have been just a tad bit firmer.

I'm going to make these again on Friday for the party we're attending next weekend. I'll hope that the lemon curd gets a bit thicker and I'll bake the cupcakes for a minute or two less.

Overall, these were a success.

Skagit River Ranch has more than excellent beef, pork, chicken, and eggs. They also have a wide variety of recipes using their products. Tonight's recipe: beef stew with bacon. Mmmmm. Bacon. Everything is better with bacon. (NOTE: as a general rule, I'll * the ingredients that are either local or organic.)

First, the ingredients:

• 4 oz thick cut bacon *
• 3 tablespoons flour
• Salt and pepper
• 3 pounds of boneless beef chuck or beef stew chunks *
• 3/4 pound cremini mushrooms *
• 1/2 pound baby carrots *
• 1/2 pound frozen pearl onions
• 3 cloves chopped garlic *
• 1 cup dry red wine
• 1 cup beef broth *
• 2 tablespoons tomato paste *
• 1 tablespoon minced fresh rosemary *

So how'd we do on the local/organic purchasing this week? Very well. We bought a pound of bacon from Skagit on Saturday. Unfortunately, we ended up burning most of it, so the bacon we actually used for this was bacon from the local butcher's shop. The beef was from Skagit, and the garlic and carrots were from the local farmer's market. We picked up organic cremini mushrooms and tomato paste at our local supermarket. The rosemary came from our own garden.

The onions... well, a word about the onions. The recipe calls for a bag of frozen pearl onions. I just don't like frozen pearl onions. When they cook, they end up a soggy mess. Instead, we used cocktail onions in vermouth. These onions cook up crunchy, with just a bit of tang.

So now... onto the cooking!

J actually made this while I was at work, so I'll turn it over to him.

Ok, J here.

The recipe itself is pretty easy.  Chop up the bacon, cook it until it's crisp, something I've started to fail at recently.  Oh, no, it isn't what you think.  If it was that, I'd just cook it longer thus making it crispy.  No, I've been discovering how to make charcoal (albeit bacon scented) in the cast iron pan.  I was a bit worried that it was too burnt.  But, well, it was going to end up in a stew, I figured it might be ok.  We'll ask P what she thought after this.

Once the bacon is all crispified, remove most of the drippings, leaving a tablespoon or so in the pan.  Obviously, you'll wait for it to cool a bit.

While that's combining, take the flour, some salt and some pepper and mix it in a bag.  Then, throw the beef in and shake to coat.  Or, at least, that's what the recipe says.  3 pounds of beef is alot when put in a bag.  So, I actually recommend doubling the amount of flour and splitting it over three bags and splitting the beef up.  Half of the beef for ours wasn't coated in flour, or even touched by it. 

Pop the frying pan back up the medium high and brown the beef in shifts. 

Well, unless you have a gigantic pan, in which case, you can put it all in the single pan.  But, barring that, brown beef, put in slow cooker, brown beef, put in slow cooker, lather, rinse, repeat.

It'll probably take 5 minutes a side, and you only need to flip them once.  Remember, you aren't cooking the beef, you're just browning it.

Once all the beef is in the cooker, throw the mushrooms, carrots, onions and garlic on top.

Back to the frying pan, pour in the wine, beef broth and tomato paste, mix, boil, deglaze, scrape crunchy bits into the sauce and then pour over the stuff in the crockpot.

And, if you're like me, you can throw in a splash of bourbon at this point too.

Cook on high for 4-5, or low for 8-9 (hours, natch, it is called a slow cooker for a reason).

When it is done, pull off the top, mix in the bacon (remember the bacon?) and rosemary and cook on high for 10-20 minutes and serve it up, fresh and hot, with a nice piece of bread.

Or, if you're like us, end up with tons of plans and throw it in the fridge for a couple days and reheat a couple servings when you're finally ready to eat.

All this said, if this is the last stew of the season (and the weather is looking nicer day by day), it was an excellent choice.

So, I'll had this back over for P to give her opinion on how it was, but me, I liked it.  P?

Meyephonshrumf mrnosh ruwosh. Oh, sorry everyone. My mouth was full of yummy stew. I've liked this recipe both times we've made it. I think it could have used a few sprinkles of salt, but then again, I like salt on a lot of things. Once the beef has cooked for 8-9 hours it practically falls apart at the mere sight of a fork.

I wasn't a fan of the bacon, but it wasn't due to its bad charcoal imitation. I can really tell a difference between Skagit's bacon and the bacon from our local butcher shop. They are both good, but Skagit's bacon just seems more flavorful. I think next time we make this dish, I also want to double the carrots. Though it's likely that'll be sometime next winter.

J and I are spoiled. We've managed to create this wonderful and fulfilling relationship. We not only love each other, we like each other. We can see Puget Sound from our living room. We have both committed to living a greener lifestyle. We both enjoy cooking. We both enjoy food. And we live in an area with such amazing farmer's markets that we can support these habits.

We visit at least one farmer's market every week. Most weeks, we visit two: the University District Farmer's Market and the Ballard Farmer's Market. During the summer, we buy enough at the markets to need two large canvas bags every week.

One of our favorite market vendors is Skagit River Ranch. They sell organic grass-fed beef and pork, as well as pastured chicken and eggs. Eating locally (and organic) is more expensive than shopping at the mega-supermarkets, but we've decided it's definitely worth it.

I'm going to get onto a short soapbox here for just a bit and talk about a few differences between grass-fed beef and grain-fed beef. I've compiled this information from the book The Omnivore's Dilemma as well as my own research and information from Skagit's website.

Cows have evolved to eat grass. It's why they have those ruminating stomachs. Much of the beef sold today however, is grain-fed beef. Grain-fed cows grow faster. A grain-fed cow can reach a weight for slaughter in a year. Grass-fed beef often takes two years. So a farmer's return on investment is quicker for grain-fed beef. Unfortunately, feeding a cow grain - a food for which its body was not designed, presents a few problems. The cows often suffer from health problems, including bloat and infection. Grain increases the acidity of the cows' stomachs and digestive track which can foster the growth of E.coli. This requires the cows be dosed with antibiotics along with their food. I'll skip further gory details, but I encourage you to read The Omnivore's Dilemma. Just don't read the first few chapters right before dinner out at McDonald's.

Feeding a cow grass instead of grain, helps maintain the health of the cow. This should be pretty obvious. Cows evolved to eat grass. Cows eat grass. Cows are happy (at least, as happy as a cow can be). The amount of saturated fat in grass-fed beef can be as low as 10%. Grain-fed beef can contain up to 20% saturated fat! In addition, grass-fed beef contains almost 6 times more Omega-3 fatty acids than grain-fed or grain-finished beef. Omega-3 fatty acids are the same fatty acids found in salmon. Grass-fed beef also contains higher levels of beta-carotene and CLA (both anti-oxidants).

The end result of these differences is that grass-fed beef cooks and tastes differently. If you typically buy grain-fed beef, try a taste test for yourself. The grass-fed beef should taste cleaner, with less pasty mouth feel. That pasty feel is from the saturated fat in the grain-fed beef. Make a note of how the beef smells when you cook it. Even the smell should be cleaner and meatier.

Now, off the soapbox and back to Skagit River Ranch.

We've bought a wide variety of beef and pork from Skagit and one thing we've always noticed is that there's very little fat when the beef is cooked. If we're making a recipe that calls for us to "drain off any excess fat", there is usually no excess fat to drain. The beef also cooks faster. This can be a bit tricky as we've overcooked their beef more than once. Even overcooked, though, their beef is still tender and flavorful.

They sell more than beef and pork. They also sell whole chickens and eggs as well. If you want eggs during the summer, you'd better get to the farmer's market early (like possibly right when they open) as there's always a line for Skagit's eggs.

This year, we're planning on buying beef bones from them as well to make beef stock.

If you live in Seattle and have access to the University District Farmer's market, the Ballard Farmer's market, the West Seattle Farmer's market, or Madison Market, I highly recommend you pick up some of their beef, pork, chicken, or eggs.

If you live elsewhere, look for grass-fed beef in your area. It's well worth it.

Pulled Pork is one of those dishes that I never thought I could replicate well. I'm not sure why I held this belief. After all, it should just be pork and spices, right? I think it was more the fact that I've had good Pulled Pork at restaurants and I was worried that if I tried it at home, it would end up being a miserable failure. When we saw this recipe from Skagit River Ranch, however, we decided to give it a try.

First the Ingredients:

• 3 tablespoons canola oil
• 4 lbs of boneless pork shoulder
• 1 yellow onion, finely chopped
• 3/4 cup cider vinegar
• 3/4 cup catsup
• 1/3 cup brown sugar (firmly packed)
• 1/4 cup light molasses
• 2 teaspoons red pepper flakes
• 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
• 1 teaspoon dry mustard
• salt and pepper

So how did we do on our goal to use local ingredients? Not very well, I'm afraid. We used olive oil from Napa and the cider vinegar, catsup, brown sugar, molasses, red pepper flakes, Worcestershire sauce, dry mustard, salt, and pepper were all purchased from the local grocery store. At least the catsup was organic. The yellow onion came from the Ballard Farmer's Market and the pork shoulder was from Skagit River Ranch. Well, I guess 2 out of 12 isn't as bad as 0 out of 12.

Now the process:

Cut the pork into several equal pieces. We had to use two pieces of pork shoulder in order to get 4 pounds, so I took the larger piece and cut it in half first. Head the oil over medium high heat. Brown the pork on all sides, about 10-12 minutes. Transfer the pork to the slow cooker.

Pour off all but 1 tablespoon of fat from the frying pan. Note: We had to skip this step. There was almost no fat in the frying pan. Oh how we love Skagit's meat. Return the pan to medium-high heat and add the onion. Saute for about 5 minutes until the onions are golden in color. Add the vinegar and use it to deglaze the pan, scraping up any browned bits of meat. Add the catsup, brown sugar, molasses, red pepper flakes, Worcestershire sauce, dry mustard, and some salt and pepper. Cook until the mixture begins to bubble, stirring occasionally.

Pour the sauce over the pork, cover, and cook on high 4-5 hours or on low for 8-10 hours.

When the slow cooker is done, transfer the pork to a dish and shred the pork using a pair of forks. Discard any large pieces of fat. Skim off any excess fat from the sauce (we had none). Return the pork to the sauce and stir.

We decided that next time we made this, we would add some bourbon to the sauce as well. The recipe encourages you to serve this over rolls, but we usually just pick up a loaf of bread from Tall Grass Bakery and have that on the side. The pork is also excellent cold, on a salad the next day.

We got this recipe from a post on Roots and Grubs, but the original recipe comes from the January edition of Fine Living Magazine. If you haven't checked out Roots and Grubs yet, run, don't walk there. Matthew is entertaining and the recipes he posts always sound great.

Anyway, onto the recipe. Basically, boil some small potatoes. You can use new potatoes, but we bought 50 pounds of potatoes from the farmer's market back in December and have been grabbing a handfull or two every few days.

Once the potatoes are mostly cooked (they should be fork tender, but not so tender that they fall apart), remove them from the water and let them cool slightly. If you can, let them cool a couple of hours. Drizzle some olive oil onti a cookie sheet. Place each potato on the sheet and with the heel of your hand, smash each potato on the cookie sheet.

When you're ready to cook them, preheat the oven to 450. Drizzle the potatoes with olive oil (don't skimp) and sprinkle some kosher salt on them. Roast them for 30-45 minutes until they turn this reddish color.

Enjoy!

Notes: The actual recipe said you should cool the potatoes thoroughly. They even suggested you boil the potatoes up to 8 hours ahead. We don't usually have time for that. But, we found that boiling them, smashing them, and roasting them all within the same hour didn't produce quite as crunchy results.

These potatoes are also great cold.

(AKA Pecan Crusted Salmon)

This recipe has made it into the category of "one of our standby recipes". The only problem is that we rarely make it. I'm not sure why, except for the fact that shortly after we discovered it, we bought a grill and started cooking almost all of our meals on that. Mmmmm, BBQ. But when it's cold and rainy outside, you don't want to spend any more time outside than you absolutely have to.

Ingredients:

• 3 tablespoons Dijon mustard (Moutarde de Dijon)
• 3 tablespoons butter, melted
• 5 teaspoons honey (we use Agave nectar for a lower glycemic index)
• 1/2 cup fresh bread crumbs
• 1/2 cup finely chopped pecans
• 3 teaspoons chopped fresh parsley
• 6 fillets of salmon (4 oz each)
• Salt and Pepper
• Lemon wedges (optional)

So examining our success at local shopping... it seems that we were quite unsuccessful today. The Dijon mustard is from France. The only organic and local ingredient is the butter. But, you could make this recipe with more local and organic ingredients, especially in the spring and summer when salmon is fresh.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. In one bowl, mix the mustard, melted butter, and honey. In a second bowl, mix the bread crumbs, pecans, and the parsley.

(Here are the chopped pecans and our Alaskan ULU)

Place the salmon fillets in a greased baking dish. Season them with salt and pepper. Don't these fillets look good? I did give a quick thought to scraping the recipe and just cooking the salmon plain.

But, a calmer head prevailed as J started brushing the salmon with the mustard/honey/butter mixture.

Cover the top of each fillet with the bread crumb mixture.

Bake for 10 minutes or until salmon is done. A good guideline is for every inch of thickness, bake the salmon for 10 minutes.

We served this with a side of roasted hazelnut squash. We bought the squash from the University District Farmer's Market. We quartered it, scraped out the seeds, and roasted it for about an hour at 400 degrees.

Our plan was to take the squash out of the oven and cut it out of it's peel. Once I picked up a piece of the squash however, that plan flew out the window. I basically had to scrape the squash out as best I could. We brushed it with melted butter.

By then the salmon was ready. Here's our out of focus dinner! Look Mom! I ate squash. Willingly!

Hi everyone....

This is the other half of Cook Local (I guess you can call me Local, and she's Cook ) here and, as you may know, I recently came into a whole bunch of free time by way of the early ending of a contract gig I was working at Microsoft.

So, since I'm at home, I figure I should be doing some cooking and, in doing so, expand some of my horizons.
Cue up the way too many blogs I read, most notably, What We're Eating and their particularly scrumptious looking Chipotle and Blue Cheese Souffle.

Patricia and I have been on a bit of a blue cheese kick lately, so this recipe seemed right up our alley (or down our gullet, as the case may be).

This recipe is not without its hurdles for me, most namely that I really don't work well with eggs.  And I'd never made a souffle before.  And I'm not much of a baker.

Making this dish, which calls for 4 eggs total, I used 6.  First one I crushed in my own hands trying to bread, the fourth or fifth I managed to tear the yolk wide open.  That isn't to say the others were 100% either.  I managed to rip two of the yolks and my egg whites were a little yolky, and I'm sure my yolky was a little white.

All in all, tho, it seemed to work out in the end, but before we go to the digital proof...

Lets look at the local-ness of the ingredients.

Butter - Organic Valley, like Horizon, does get some bad press for being such a large organic farm and being too corporate.  I half agree with it and generally try to buy some other brand... Mother's Choice I think.  But overall, I just keep getting tempted to make my own butter.  It seems pretty easy, really.  Here, go see for yourself:  http://www.cookingforengineers.com/article.php?id=113&title=Making+Butter. 

Milk - Sea Breeze Farm, Vashon Island.  Local and Raw.

Sharp Cheddar - Tillamook Cheese, Tillamook County Oregon.  We generally like much less mass produced cheese, but, sometimes cost comes into play.  At least Tilamook is right down the road, more or less.

Blue Cheese - Wisconsin.  No, it isn't local.  Which is sad, since Oregon has such a nice selection of blue cheeses, but 2/3rds of a cup is a pricey proposition, and it might be a waste of a good cheese.  But, on the other hand, for some recipes, the quality of ingredients make for a much better dish.

Pureed Chipotle in Adobo - Ok, this was really not local, it was from a can.  If we end up needing more of this, we'll learn how to make our own.  Peppers are pretty plentiful over the summer at the farmer's market.

Green Onions, Cilantro - Organic, yes.  Local, not a clue.

Parmigiana - I wonder if there is even a local source for parmigiana.

Eggs - Skagit River Ranch.  They sell us meat, they sell us eggs.  Luckily, during the winter, the eggs are plentiful.  Over the summer, you need to get there and line up before the market opens to get the eggs.

Flour, Cream of Tartar, Salt and Pepper - Not a clue.

Now, all that said, lets look at the photographic evidence of my souffle mastery.  Unfortunately, I didn't actually do photographs for the whole process.  I was a bit rushed and nervous.  Next time I won't be cooking it alone and I'll have some help... and a new camera.

Before we put it in the oven:

And lo, they are risen!

First, the 'in the oven' shot.  We were a bit worried they'd fall fast, so P grabbed a shot before even pulling it out.

But the fears were unfounded, they lasted to the stove-top:

Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close ups!

That second one was one of my favorites, along with the other back one which looked similarly craggy, but the front one looks..... well, it looks like a biscuit topped pot pie, funny enough.

You know, I wrote this entire post and never even stopped to think about talking about how they tasted.  They weren't 'Oh. My. God.' level, but, they were good.  The insides are... well, I'll be honest, this is the second souffle I've eaten in my life, and the first was a dessert, so I wasn't sure what to expect.  The insides are... well, if you would almost think it wasn't cooked, it isn't exactly soupy, it isn't solid.  It is almost like oatmeal, but a little thicker.

But, over all.  It was good.  We will make these again.

Breakfast is supposed to be the most important meal of the day. Yet we rarely eat it. Our schedules just don't allow it. When you get up and immediately go to the gym, you don't want a heavy breakfast and when you go from the gym to work, you can't really take along scrambled eggs or oatmeal. So I've been pondering what I could make for breakfast that would be portable, have a good mix of protein and carbs, and would work for J. Hence... frittata-a-go-go, or Muffin MacEggs, or OmFins, or Scrambled Quickfins, or Atkins Muffins (we had trouble coming up with a name).

Ingredients

• 5 eggs
• 2 egg whites
• 4 oz reduced fat feta cheese
• 4 slices of bacon, cooked and crumbled 
• 1/4 cup heavy cream
• 1 diced red bell pepper, sauteed
• 1 bunch green onions, sauteed
• Salt and Pepper (to taste)
• Crushed red pepper (to taste)

The eggs were local, from Skagit River Ranch. If you're in the Seattle area and want eggs from Skagit, you need to get to the farmers markets early, especially in the summer. There is usually a line for their eggs. During the winter though, they can usually be had relatively easily. The bell pepper was organic, but not local. The green onions were local (from the Ballard farmer's market). The crushed red pepper that we used was actually a locally grown and dried purple cayanne pepper. We used a mortar and pestle to pulverize it. The bacon was also from Skagit. We bought the heavy cream from Sea Breeze Farms. The cheese was from the grocery store and I doubt it was anywhere near local.

As I pulled this recipe out of thin air, I didn't have any instructions and had no idea if these would even work. The first time we made this recipe, we also used mushrooms, though we felt that these made the frittatas a little too watery. J cooked up the diced peppers and onions and I handled the bacon. When everything was cooked, I started beating the eggs. I beat the living hell out of those eggs. Seriously, the beating lasted 7 or 8 minutes. Then I added the cream and repeated the excessive beating procedure. I added all of the other ingredients and mixed for another couple of minutes. I then filled our greased muffin tin with the result. This recipe made 10 muffins.

We baked them for about 25 minutes at 375. Here's the result.

So, how did they taste?

These were a success. We eat them for breakfast every day during the week after our workout. J doesn't like eggs, but even he was willing to eat these. We have been making them weekly for over a month and have tweaked them slightly every time. I rarely measure the crushed peppers so the spice level varies slightly. One interesting variation that I discovered completely by accident went a little something like this.

I slide the muffin tin into the oven, set the timer, and go sit down on the couch. Five minutes later I leap up, utter an expletive, and run to the kitchen. I'd forgotten the cheese! I pulled the muffin tin out of the oven and started hastily spooning cheese into the partially cooked frittatas. This produced a very interesting result. The cheese ended up hovering near the top of the cooked frittata. Every bite produced a concentrated burst of feta that gave the frittata a bit more substance. Since then I've started mixing in half of the cheese in the KitchenAid and then leaving the other half to be spooned into the partially cooked frittatas.

Nutritional Information

• Calories: 143
• Fat: 9 grams
• Carbohydrates: 2 grams
• Protein: 9 grams
• Sugar: 1.3 grams

Are you afraid of chickens? I don't mean the squawking, feathered, alive variety, I mean the whole, ready-to-cook variety.

I was afraid of chickens. Well, to be fair, I probably would have backed slowly away from the live variety too, but for years I've been wary of cooking a whole chicken.

I can hear you now. "But... you cooked a whole turkey for Thanksgiving! How can you be afraid of chicken?"

The short answer is that I don't know. It's poultry, not four pounds of nuclear waste. The first time I tried using a whole chicken after moving to Seattle, it was a catastrophic failure. I attempted to make some sort of Orange Chicken in the crock pot. It was almost inedible. In fact, I think we threw the whole thing out. So you can imagine my trepidation when I saw this post by The Amateur Gourmet.  

The chicken was beautiful. What's more, it required only the barest minimum of preparation. What could be easier than rubbing some spices over a bird and throwing it in the oven?

The answer? Not much.

The recipe called for 1 teaspoon crushed fennel seeds, 1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes, 1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt, and 1/2 teaspoon ground pepper. We rubbed the spices over the chicken and stuck it in the oven for an hour at 400 degrees.

The result? Well, here's the visual proof. (Since this is a local blog, I should mention that the mug in the background is from Fuel Coffee. They're a great local coffee shop with two locations. If you're in Seattle, I highly recommend them.)

So, on to the local part of our program.

The chicken came from Sea Breeze Farms. We've been thinking about trying their chicken for a few months. We picked it up at the University District Farmer's Market. It was fresh (not frozen) and weighed about 4 pounds. It was a little pricey ($20), but well worth it for a cage free, organic bird. Since it was fresh, we could buy it and cook it the same day. That was an added bonus.

If I've held your interest this far, you know that the chicken was easy, appears very appetizing, and local. But how did it taste?

I have a confession to make. I don't like chicken skin. This isn't all bad, as chicken skin is primarily fat. I don't much care for the taste, and I hate the fatty mouth feel. About the only time I like it is on Kentucky Fried Chicken. I love the very edges of the crunchy fried skin. Seriously, don't get in between me and the edges of KFC chicken skin. But otherwise? Not-so-much. Since this chicken looked so crispy and tasty, I had to try a bit of skin. It was good. I only had about half the top skin on the drumstick, but it was crispy, salty, and relatively thin (so not overly fatty).

The rest of the chicken was excellent. The meat was moist and had a decent texture. The drumstick was very good, but the breast was better. Of course, I've always liked light meat over dark, but even the dark meat on this bird was very good.

We'll definitely make this again.

If you made it here from the old Cook Local blog, congratulations! We've only been up and running for a couple months and we've already moved! We've also been remiss in posting lately. I'm sorry for that, but sometimes life just gets in the way.

If you're just finding your way here from a link or word or mouth or web search, welcome! Let me introduce myself and tell you a little bit about this blog.

I'm P and he's J. Or as he writes in one of his posts, I'm Cook and he's Local. We're in love, so just as fair warning, there might be the occasional bit of sappy commentary here and there. We're like that, or at least, I'm like that.

I'm a writer by trade, but I think he's a better writer. He's currently between jobs at the moment, so he's doing more of the cooking, which I love. Let me tell you... there's little better than coming home after a long day and finding out that your love has cooked you a great dinner! Well, ok, the only better thing is finding out that your love has not only cooked you a great dinner but has also cleaned the entire house. Or maybe finding out that we won the lottery.

I started this blog because we're on a mission to cook more and use as many fresh, local, and organic ingredients as possible. This often means that we spend a bit more, but the taste and the benefits to the environment are worth it to us.

J's diabetic, so many of these recipes will also be low carb and low sugar. I'll be migrating the old posts over to the new site over the next few days. I hope you enjoy our postings. Feel free to let us know what you think!

-P