February 2008 Archives

So what do you do when you're 10 minutes away from leaving work and you have no idea what to make for dinner? You go to the web and do a quick search. Tonight I came up with a simple tasty recipe for any broiled white fish. Add a little rice or Emmer and you've got yourself a complete meal.

Ingredients

• Olive oil
• 2 teaspoons minced, peeled fresh ginger
• 2 minced garlic cloves
• 1 minced red bell pepper
• 1 bunch chopped green onions
• 1 teaspoon curry powder
• 2 teaspoons red curry paste
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
• 4 teaspoons soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon brown sugar
• 1 can coconut milk
• 1 pound white fish (cod, tilapia, sole)
• Rice or Emmer

Directions

First, the prep work. Mince the ginger, garlic, and red pepper. I did this by combining all of these ingredients in a food processor. Get the curry powder, red curry paste, and cumin ready and shake the coconut milk can.

Heat some oil in a saucepan over medium heat. Add the minced pepper, ginger, and garlic mixture. Stir for a good 5 minutes and then add the onions.

After another minute, add the curry powder, curry paste, and cumin. Stir for one minute and then add the soy sauce, brown sugar, and coconut milk.

Heat until simmering, but don't let it come to a boil. Turn off the heat and cover to keep warm.

Preheat the broiler. On a greased cookie sheet, lay the fish and drizzle with oil and sprinkle with salt.

Broil for 7 minutes or until the fish is flaky.

Serve over rice or emmer and top with sauce.

We really enjoyed this dish. The fish was tender and an excellent conveyance for the spicy, somewhat sweet sauce. Next time I might back off on the red curry paste just a bit as I think I'd like to savor the flavor a bit more.

I was reading blogs today, as I am wont to do, and I came across a post from one of my favorite food writers, Matthew, from Roots and Grubs. In his post, he talks about choosing eggs at the supermarket. He didn't see much difference in taste between the non-organic supermarket eggs and the fortified or organic eggs. Well, he is probably right about the taste, but there are other differences to consider.

We buy all of our eggs from the farmers market. Specifically, we try to get eggs from Skagit River Ranch. We're not always successful because Skagit's eggs are very popular and if you don't get to the market early, you won't be able to get their eggs.

Skagit had their eggs tested recently (well, 2007) and the results might surprise you. I encourage you to read the entire study, here, but to summarize, here is how Skagit's eggs compared to your average supermarket egg.

• 4 times the amount of Vitamin E
• Double the Vitamin A
• 10 times the amount of Beta Carotene
• 3 times the amount of Omega-3 Fatty Acids
• 100 mg less Cholesterol
• 1/2 gram less Saturated Fat

Pastured eggs really are better for you. We eat a lot of eggs, using them for our breakfast frittatas every week. So the composition of our eggs is very important to us. We'll continue to use pastured eggs as much as we can (which is to say exclusively, unless something very important prevents us from attending a farmers market).

Unfortunately, it isn't enough to look for "free range" eggs in your local supermarket. The USDA's definition of "free range" states that the chickens must have access to the outdoors. This can be as little as a door in their chicken coop that allows them to leave. Most chickens in commercial egg facilities are not acclimated to the outside and don't even realize they can go outside. Not to mention the fact that they are fed only commercial grain. A true pastured chicken needs to forage for food in order to produce eggs with the above benefits.

For information on where to find pastured eggs in your vicinity, check out www.eatwild.com.

Everyone gets into a rut sometimes. Whether it's a workout rut, a house rut, or a cooking rut, they exist and they can be pretty deep and hard to escape from. I can't say that our cooking was in a deep rut, but I have been wanting to branch out lately and try a few new things. To that end, one of my goals this year is to try more of my own recipes. I have a good sense of what types of flavors go together, so I should be able to create the occasional winner and the more than occasional second place meal.

One of my first experiments was with a food I know I can cook well: risotto.

There are very few secrets to a good risotto. You start with rice (or in our case, Emmer Farro) cook it long and slow by adding a small amount of heated broth at a time, and then finish it off with some cheese. There are lots of other things you can do to it, but those few steps are all that's basically required.

We knew we had some dried mushrooms at home, but we wanted some other flavor to add to the risotto. John suggested fig. I was skeptical. Figs? Really? With mushrooms? But the more I thought about it, the better it sounded.

So here is our recipe for Wild Mushroom and Fig Risotto.

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups Emmer farro or rice
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 2 cups mushroom broth
• 2 cups water
• 2 ounces dried mushrooms
• 1-2 cups dried figs
• 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese

Directions

Heat 2 cups of water to just below boiling.

In a heat-proof bowl, pour the hot water over the dried mushrooms. Let sit for at least half an hour.

With a slotted spoon, remove the mushrooms, but reserve the liquid. It should have a lovely brown color.

Roughly chop the soft mushrooms and set aside.

Chop the figs into quarters.

In a saucepan, add the 2 cups of mushroom broth and the mushroom water. Heat on low.

In a large pot, melt the butter over medium heat. Add the Emmer or rice and stir to coat.

Add the heated broth, a half cup to a cup at a time to the Emmer. You should only add the next half cup of broth when the previous half cup has nearly cooked off.

When you are down to the last half cup of broth, add the chopped mushrooms and chopped figs. Once the broth has nearly cooked off, add the Parmesan cheese and serve.

Many months ago we told you about our new breakfast experiment: mini frittatas. Ever since then we have been constantly refining the recipe.  We've played around with a number of different variations and this is what we've come up with.

Ingredients

• 8 organic, free range eggs *
• a generous splash of fresh cream
• 2-3 tablespoons of pureed chipotle chilies in adobo sauce
• 5 slices of bacon, cooked and crumbled
• 1 bell pepper, preferably purple, diced and cooked
• 4-5 ounces of low fat feta cheese
• 1 tablespoon of flour
• 1/4 teaspoon of baking powder

*If you have been using the older recipe, you'll notice that I'm using full eggs now, rather than mostly egg whites. Well, there are two reasons for that. First, it was just a hassle to separate out the eggs. I did it because we both have cholesterol issues and I wanted to be as healthy as possible. However, then I found out something very interesting about our eggs. The eggs we buy have significantly less cholesterol than normal supermarket eggs. The chickens eat a varied diet and run around outside all day long. Skagit River Ranch had the eggs tested and the levels of Omega 3 fats in the eggs were high and the levels of Omega 6 fats (the bad ones) were very low. So I've given up separating the eggs and just started using the whole thing.

Directions

Chop the bacon and fry it until it is crispy.

Chop the bell pepper and fry it in the bacon fat. Yes, really.

Set both aside to cool.

(We tend to make the bacon and peppers around 3 and we don't make the frittatas until after dinner. We've found that having cold ingredients to start with actually does help the consistency of the frittatas.)

In a large mixing bowl (or a kitchenaid) beat the eggs into oblivion. The eggs should be foamy and bubbly before you add a splash or two of cream. Beat for another 2 minutes at least (longer is better).

Add in 2-3 tablespoons of pureed chipotle.

Add in a tablespoon of flour and a little bit of baking powder. This serves to make the frittatas just slightly dryer and fluffier. We got this little tip from a bed and breakfast we stayed at in Hawaii.

Add the bacon and the bell pepper and stir to combine.

Divide among 10 muffin cups and bake at 375 for 7 minutes.

Remove from the oven and distribute the feta evenly over the 10 muffins.

Return to the oven and bake for another 25 minutes.

Cool and place in a ziplock bag with 2 paper towels. These will last in the refrigerator for a week if you replace the paper towels midweek.

This winter was especially brutal in Seattle. We had more days below 40 than above, the winds were stingingly cold, and the air was quite dry. I wore my heavy wool coat and gloves nearly every day and I was still freezing every time I had to venture outside. We had snow that stuck around for a few days (a rarity here) and numerous fires in the fireplace.

What better meal to come home to on a day like this than a hearty winter soup?

This recipe couldn't have been much easier. All of the vegetables were either local or organic. Usually we would use Skagit River Ranch sausage, however since they were on vacation, we ended up at Whole Foods instead. Next time I make this (and I will make it again) I'll use mushrooms from Foraged and Found and Skagit's hot Italian sausage.

Ingredients

• 3 carrots
• 3 stalks of celery
• 1 medium onion
• 4 cloves of garlic
• 8 ounces Italian sausage
• 8 ounces mushrooms
• 1 can diced tomatoes
• 1 cup red wine
• 2 1/2 cups beef broth
• 2 1/2 cups mushroom broth
• Crushed red pepper
• Sea salt
• Pepper
• 3 tablespoons fresh thyme
• 7 ounces farro
• Olive oil

Directions

First, the prep work.

Chop the carrots, celery, and onion.

Mince the garlic.

Slice the mushrooms.

Cut the sausages into pieces.

Mince the thyme.

Now onto the recipe. In a large soup pot, heat the oil over medium high heat. Add the carrots, onion, celery, and garlic and saute until the onions are soft.

Add the sausage and cook until slightly browned.

Add the mushrooms. They will start to release water into the pot. When they have released most of their water, add the tomatoes (and their juice), red wine, both broths, salt, pepper, crushed red pepper, thyme, and farro.

Cover the pot and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for about 40 minutes, or until the farro is tender.

Serve topped with Parmesan cheese.

Well, we're more or less back. It's been a while since we posted here on Cook Local. We have a good excuse... we got married! So now that the wedding is over and we're back from the honeymoon and we're back cooking. So I promise we'll be back to posting recipes very soon. In the mean time, enjoy a picture of one of our favorite meals from our honeymoon.