 Watermelon Gazpacho I’m not sure there are two fruits more indicative of summer than watermelon and tomatoes. Is there anything better on a hot summer day than cracking open a watermelon and eating slices of it over the sink? Juice dripping down your chin, the crystals of sweet sugar bursting on your tongue, pausing only to dispatch seeds. Ah, summer. Unfortunately, it appears we just might be done with summer around here these days. The weather forecast for the next ten days doesn’t show one day over 70. We can pretend it’s summer a little while longer though by having watermelon gazpacho for lunch, even if we have to have it while wearing wool socks.
Continue reading Watermelon and Tomato Gazpacho
 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
 Corn Fritters Normally, I prefer to eat my corn gently steamed, with a little butter and Secret Stash Salt. If I want to get really fancy, I’ll peel back the husks and slather some butter and seasonings on it, put the husks back, and then grill the whole ears for a bit. But that’s about it. Well, other than the corn and blueberry salad. But that’s it. Really! Even though I wouldn’t be sharing this recipe if it wasn’t a success, I can’t say it’s tempted me away from my old standbys. What it is good for though, is for those ears of corn that aren’t quite up to par. Maybe you forgot them in the back of the fridge for a few days or maybe you just peeled back the husks and the kernels were a little softer than you’d like. Or maybe you’re growing sweet corn and you’ve got so much that you just need some variety.
Continue reading Corn Fritters
Fava Bean and Basil Pesto (on a cracker because pesto pasta just wasn't photogenic)
You can get a lot more at your local farmers markets than just fresh produce. You can also get new and interesting ways of cooking all that produce. Just this last weekend, we were wandering the University District Farmers Market and stopped in at Nash’s Organic Produce to see what was new this week. I exclaimed “look, Fava beans are back” and almost immediately, John groaned in protest. Favas are typically a bear to cook. Typically, you’ll find instructions that call for a [...]
A few weeks ago now, we invited Cynthia Nims (and her husband) over for a few reasons. First, we wanted to celebrate her new book, Gourmet Game Night. Second, we wanted to teach her how to play Settlers of Catan (purchase). Third, … well, I’m sure there was a third reason, but I’ll be darned if I can remember what it was.
The whole idea behind Gourmet Game Night is food designed to be eaten on small plates with minimal fuss, although I’m sure Cynthia will correct me if I’m wrong. That’s what I understood the idea of the book was.
I had thought about making a dish from the book, but there were two problems in the way.
We didn’t have the book and, as the Mrs. pointed out, they were likely tired of taste testing all the recipes.
So, I went the opposite route. Let’s try to make something in the spirit of the book and, at the same time, in the spirit of the game.
If you’ve never played Settlers of Catan, know that it is, at heart, a resource management game. You get sheep, ore, wheat, brick and wood and use it to build villages, roads, and cities. Trading is encouraged, leading to the inevitable call of ‘Who has wood for sheep.’ I had forgotten a lot of the mechanics of the game, but did remember strategy. Unfortunately, four players on basic basic board makes normal strategy a little tricky.
But, like I said, I wanted to make something that was in tune with the game, or at the least a bit of a play on the game itself. My dream would have been a brick roast smoked lamb (like the chicken under brick type recipes) which would get the wood, lamb, and brick. Serve it with pita and a short metal skewer as a utensil, and you’ve got all five resources right there, all in one, easy to eat meal. Continue reading Lamb Meatball Kebabs with Yogurt Mint Sauce
 Quick Pickled Vegetables I don’t know why, but this weekend I had a hankering (yes, a real, honest-to-goodness hankering) for pickled vegetables. On the rare occasions when I get a bahn-mi for lunch, my very favorite part of the whole thing is the pickled vegetables. I always want double or triple the amount on the sandwich. Oh, and don’t even get me started on the salads at Green Leaf in the ID. I always ask for double the pickled vegetables.
Continue reading Quick Pickled Vegetables
 Simple Spinach Soup with Parmesan Some nights, it’s all I can do to turn on the stove and heat something up. After working a full time job, and training for our marathon next month, some evenings I just don’t have the energy for anything else. However I still want something delicious, healthy, and local. So, what’s a girl to do? Well, this week our fridge forced our hand. We bought a bag of spinach from Alm Hill this weekend and since our garden has grown so well and so quickly, we had a huge surplus of spinach leftover. So, I decided to do a little Internet research to see what sort of spinach soup recipes were out there.
Turns out, there are a lot. John found two in our cookbooks, but both contained lentils and since it was a beautiful sunny day, lentils felt way too heavy. So I decided to branch out on my own and use an Italian technique I’d learned about recently – that of adding a Parmesan cheese rind to a soup to add depth of flavor. This soup is simple, takes less than ten minutes of active work, and less than 30 minutes of cooking time. It’s light enough for warm days in spring when a heavy soup would be too much.
Continue reading Simple Spinach Soup
 Crunchy and delicious As the wife of a diabetic, a marathoner, and a fitness fiend, I’m always looking for healthy snacks. I also love salt. So when I first had roasted edamame, I was hooked. Salty, crunchy, and packed with protein and fiber, they were the perfect snack. They have this vague meaty texture, particularly after a solid handful. Unfortunately, as much as I love roasted edamame, we don’t have it too often because the fresh beans are very rarely available. Sometimes we can get them for a week or two, but most of the time, sadly not.
Chickpeas, however, are widely available all summer long. Alvarez Farms sells all sorts of dried beans: black beans, red kidney beans, cranberry beans, and chickpeas (garbanzo beans). Before I had my first cooked from dried chickpea, I thought I hated them. The only exposure I had to them as a kid was out of a can. Slimy little balls of mush on salads were not my idea of a good snack. But now that I have access to freshly dried chickpeas (as well as fresh chickpeas for a few weeks a year), I love them. They make excellent hummus (see our Fresh Chickpea Hummus recipe for a truly fabulous snack).
Continue reading Roasted Chickpeas
We have a love/hate affair with scallops in our house.
I love them, based on growing up in New England and plentiful fried seafood (even if I didn’t start eating said seafood until I was in my twenties.)
Patricia, on the other hand, doesn’t, for her own rhymes and reasons.
But she’s warming up to them. Slowly but surely.
There isn’t much to say about this recipe. As opposed to the previous one, where the fish was an after thought, the scallops aren’t unimportant, aren’t important. The sabayon would be just as good on a clam, or a mussel, but the scallops do have this … well, if you love scallops, they have this scallop-ness, a scallop-osity.
A little on ‘sabayon’. If you’re looking at that not knowing what it is and thinking ‘I want to say zabaglione,’ I don’t blame you one bit. It’s damn fun to say. Come on, say it with me!
Zaaaaa-bag-leeeeee-owwwwwwwwwwwwwn. Continue reading Scallops with Muscat Sabayon
 Seared Scallops with Nettle Mint Pesto I never liked scallops. Of course, now I realize that a big part of why I never liked them was that they were usually overcooked. Scallops should be very lightly cooked, seared, sauteed, or grilled. If you overcook them, you end up with something akin to shoe leather. But even when I started dating Mr. Cook Local, and he’d bring me to Bob’s Clam Hut in Maine, home of some of the best fried seafood in the country, I’d skip the scallops and go for the fried clam strips.
In my defense, the clam strips (and the clam bellies) are fantastic, but still, I never realized how much I loved scallops until we started buying them from Taylor Shellfish and cooking them ourselves. One of the things I really like about Taylor Shellfish’s scallops is that they’re pretty dryly packed. So you can be sure that your scallops are actually all meat and not a lot of injected water.
Continue reading Seared Scallops with Nettle Pesto
|
|
