Green Curry Broth

While scrolling through my Pinterest app, I saw that Heidi from 101 Cookbooks had posted an older recipe from her site - Green Curry Broth.  I can't explain why, but it really appealed to me at that moment and I made it for dinner not too long after that.

First, you chop and chop and slice and dice and chop some more to create the foundation for the delicious green curry broth.  This is the longest part of the recipe.  After all of this cooks down to impart its flavor, you strain it out and throw it away.  At first I was sad about this, but then I tasted the broth - it was amazing.  Next time, I would not bother with all the fine dicing and such - you can get this done much faster with bigger chunks and since you're straining it, you probably won't even notice a difference.  I also wouldn't hesitate to make this broth with the intention of freezing it, without any add-ins, to enjoy on a rainy day.

Once the broth has been made, you can put pretty much whatever you want in it.  We opted for rice noodles, shredded cabbage, broccoli, frozen corn and green beans, and I saved the tops of the scallions (used in the broth) and added those in too.  I chopped handfuls of mint, basil, and cilantro from my balcony and mixed those in at the very end.  I topped off my own bowl with a little swirl of coconut milk.  This was a good combination of things, but I would break the noodles in half next time, and I had also intended to add cubes of tofu, but things got away from me.

Hard-Cooked Eggs with Dukkah

The phase has passed by now, but when I made this recipe a few weeks ago, I was eating hard boiled eggs almost every day as a snack.  The dukkah recipe from Super Natural Every Day seemed like a great way to spice it up (accidental pun!).  The fragrant mixture of nuts, seeds, and spices is not as strong in taste as it is in smell, but as I write this I find myself craving the flavor.  The dukkah could also be used to flavor dipping oil for bread, and I intend to try it crusted on salmon.  Hopefully I'll be reporting back on that soon.  I'm intending to post more - just need to get my ducks in a row over here...

2012 Whole Living Healthy Detox: Week 1

I'm doing the 2012 Whole Living Action Plan, which is kind of a healthy 3-week detox.  This first week, I ate only fruits, veggies, nuts, and plant based oils.  It was hard at times, because I was seriously craving sweets from the holiday season, but we made it through the cravings and I even dropped a pound or two of unwanted weight!  We cut this week short to 5 days instead of 7 because we have another family Christmas gathering to attend and we wanted to have more options than just the veggie tray.  I'll write more about week 2 next week.  I've been too busy during the week to post, so while I'm doing this detox, I'll do a summary at the end of the week.  Hopefully when I'm done I'll be craving nutritious foods instead of all the sugar I've been craving.

Here are some of the foods I've eaten this week...

Fruit Salad Smoothie - from the Vitamix cookbook, which came with my Christmas gift :) and this was the first smoothie I tried with the Vitamix.  It was delicious.  It had a bunch of different fruits along with carrot and cucumber.

Berry Delicious Smoothie - also from the Vitamix cookbook, some pineapple and berries, including cranberries, which provided a really nice flavor.  I plan to make this again this week.

Orange-Berry Smoothie - This one was pretty good, kind of tangy from all the orange juice. I would make it again.

Beet and Carrot Smoothie - This was my least favorite. I couldn't even force myself to eat it. I don't like beets, so I thought this would make them easier for me to stomach so that I could get all their nutrients without the flavor and texture I don't like, but the beet overpowered the smoothie and the ginger didn't help either.

Carrot, Mango, and Herb Smoothie - I'm drinking this one right now and it's one of my favorites from the week, probably because it doesn't have any veggies in it... just carrot juice, orange juice, mango chunks, and mint.  I put about half the amount of mint in because it can be overpowering, and I just get a slight refreshing coolness from it.

Kale Slaw with Red Cabbage and Carrots - I had this for lunch a few times, and I really liked the tangy dressing and the crunchy pepita seeds and the hemp seeds were good too.  I liked the refreshing bite of parsley though toward the end of the week I got lazy and it was just kale, cabbage, the nuts, and dressing.

Steamed Broccoli and Squash with Tahini Dressing - We had this for dinner one night and it was one of our least favorites of the week.  The broccoli with the tahini sauce was the best part.  I definitely wouldn't make this one again.

Roasted Peppers, Cauliflower, and Almonds - This one was pretty good.  I liked the roasted peppers and the saltiness from the kalamata olives.  One thing I would do differently is to make a better dressing, since this one was mainly just lemon and oil.  This would also be really good with feta.  Boy do I miss cheese.

I've already started week 2, and I've moved on to making mostly my own recipes either improvised or from other sources.  One in particular deserves its own post, and if time allows, I will share it this week.

Watermelon Mojitos

Summer is officially over.  On Labor Day we made these Watermelon Mojitos, a fairly successful experiment.

Spiced Eggplant Stew

If you came into my living room right now, the first thing you would notice is the stack of books on my living room table.  From the bottom up: Heirloom Beans, Cooking from the Farmers' Market, Edible, Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, Super Natural Cooking, How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, and on top of the pile is Tender, open to this Spiced Eggplant Stew.  I've been turning to this book fairly often lately after neglecting it when it was the featured cookbook last month.

This recipe contains the flavors of cardamom, coriander, black pepper, garlic, ginger, turmeric, mint, and cilantro - quite a few flavors, and they all combine with the heat from the chile and the creaminess of the coconut milk to make a really delicious meal.  The tomatoes and eggplant go well together, and the eggplant is smooth and soft.  I served this over brown basmati rice.  The leftovers were delicious as well, and I put some in the freezer to enjoy when the weather cools down.  I'm not certain it will defrost well, but here's hoping.

"Mojito" Iced Tea

This recipe for "Mojito" Iced Tea caught my eye when I was reading an article about cold-brew coffees and teas not too long ago.  I was waiting to get some of the components to try it out, but I gave up and substituted instead.  I could not get full-leaf oolong tea, so I used the Tazo China Green Tips, which I think were the only plain green tea we had in the house.  I also didn't measure the mint and lemon balm, which might have thrown it off a little.  Was I supposed to halve that peach?  I don't think so, but it looks pretty, so whatever.

This was a bit bitter on its own, perhaps from being tea and steeping for hours and hours, but it was actually really good in iced tea lemonade (our lemonade used a variation of Martha Stewart's classic lemonade recipe, most notably that we used HALF the sugar and it's still too sweet for us).  I won't make this again anytime soon... maybe when I get the right tea?

Green-Packed Stir-Fry

This tasty Green-Packed Stir-Fry from Super Natural Cooking uses asparagus and spinach, two things I have had a lot of lately, and so I picked it out of a bunch of recipes that I was considering.  I also added snow peas, since I had them - they only added to the green.  I can see this being easily adaptable to whatever veggies are around.  I left out the tofu and used red pepper flakes in place of the red chiles - just sprinkled them in, no measurement.  Otherwise I mostly followed the recipe.  I loved the taste of the sauce.  I have never used hoisin sauce before but I really like it!  It's easy enough to change the vegetable ingredients - I'm sure I can find something to use this tasty sauce in every season.  The beige in the picture is cashews - they added an almost meaty texture to the stir fry.  We ate it with a small portion of short grain brown rice.

Shrimp in Tomatillo and Herb Sauce

This picture may look gross, but don't let it fool you.  It tasted amazing.  (Well, the shrimp and sauce were amazing.  The rice and squash, well, I guess you can't just eat shrimp by itself for dinner.)

I recently got a new phone.  I don't know how to use it but Ken set some stuff up for me.  One of the things now on one of my 20394899 home screens is a little feed of NY Times articles - I specifically requested the food section, of course.  On the first day I had this, I saw that they were featuring tomatillos along with several recipes.  All I had been able to find up to this point was salsa verde!  Naturally, I was thrilled.  I chose to make Shrimp in Tomatillo and Herb Sauce. 

As I said, this was delicious, but we did run into a problem.  This is the first year I have ever (knowingly) eaten tomatillos, and I've been getting them from our CSA.  On the pick-your-own board every week it says "poor quality" next to the tomatillos.  This may or may not have been a factor in our problem.

What was this problem?  (I've been building it up a little too much.)  According to the recipe directions, you are supposed to puree the tomatillos and herbs in a blender, then simmer the sauce on the stove with the shrimp in it.  Maybe it was our tomatillos, but we had next to no liquid in our sauce.  The blender wouldn't even work - we had to get the food processor dirty as well too.  (Next time I'll use my judgment, though, and go with the food processor the first time.)  We tried adding oil and water in small amounts but it wasn't doing any good.  We briefly heated the sauce in a skillet, added the shrimp, and miraculously we were able to coat them without any problems.  The sauce stuck to them like glue.  In the end, it was more of a pesto, but it was certainly delicious.  Another note to myself: picking the two largest serranos for this tiny amount of sauce was not necessarily the best idea you've ever had.  Next time, go with the two smallest instead.

Zucchini Bread

It is obvious by now that I am trying to cook my way through Kim Boyce's Good to the Grain.  There are some things in there that don't appeal to me all that much right now, but since I haven't set a time limit on working my way through the book, I'm sure I'll eventually try them.  Every recipe I've made has been delicious (even the aesthetic failures).

I've got zucchini in my fridge.  It's not that I don't like zucchini... but it's not my favorite, and it never has been.  When we get zucchini in our CSA, I usually just leave it all with my mom - she and my sister love it.  But somehow it's snuck into my home via my Nonna and her garden.  She asked me if I wanted zucchini, and I, unable to refuse fresh local produce of any kind, said sure, I can take one, I'll make zucchini bread.  She came back with this beastly monster - over a pound, maybe a pound and a half - so I made two batches of zucchini bread, and still haven't finished that one zucchini.

The zucchini bread from Good to the Grain is not your average zucchini bread.  It uses mint and basil, infused into butter, and rye flour instead of your typical wheat.  Most of my test subjects loved it - my mom and sister complained about the rye and said they wanted "normal" zucchini bread.  (Make it yourself!)  That did get me thinking, though, about possible variations - more about that later.

I truly love this bread.  I think it's amazing.  I wouldn't think of using rye flour in zucchini bread - but that's why I bought this book.  I'm almost hesitant to even change the recipe - the whole book, organized by flour, already provides the best matches of flours to other ingredients.  My first batch of this bread was a little minty - I measured more loosely in my second batch and it was just right.  The headnotes suggest having a slice with a cup of mint tea, which sounds absolutely perfect to me.  It's great to just have it around for a snack.  I expect a loaf (or half a loaf) might freeze nicely as well, if tightly wrapped.

There is so much I want to do with this recipe.  Leave it the same, but add walnuts.  Sub some white whole wheat in for part or all of the all purpose flour (being cautious about the assertive taste wheat flour can bring to a recipe).  An all whole wheat version.  Bits of different flour.  Multigrain flour mix instead of rye.  The same basic structure, but with banana and walnuts instead of zucchini and herbs.  There are so many possibilities...

CSA: May 2010

My family joined an organic CSA this year.  I had been looking into doing this anyway, but I don't like doing things all by myself, especially when they involve waking up early and driving long distances weekly and having to cook more food than I can eat without really knowing what it will be until I get it.  So since my family has been going organic and trying to eat more healthy foods (thanks to my influence, although I haven't been able to blockade the house from Oreos and such) I talked to my mom about it and she signed us up.  She wasn't (and still isn't) quite as excited about it as I am, and probably isn't pleased with the flood of emails I am sending her every time the farm updates its website showing what is available this week, or the fact that I try to confirm our departure time (8:30AM, right? right? will you be ready?) every time we speak.  But we have had a good time so far, especially with the pick-your-own strawberries :)

I thought it might be nice, and probably helpful to us or someone else later on, if I document what we've been getting in our share and how we used it.  I figure I'll keep it to a monthly update so as not to bore you TOO much.

Week 1 (5/13/2010)
- 1 quart strawberries (PYO)
- a handful of mint
- 1/2 lb arugula

Week 2 (5/20/2010)
- 1 pint strawberries (PYO)
- a few sprigs of mint, thyme, oregano, catnip
- a bunch of chives with purple flowers :)  (see photo)
- 1 lb arugula
- 6 heads (!) green leaf lettuce

Week 3 (5/27/2010)
- 1/2 lb arugula
- 2 lbs spinach
- 6 heads of lettuce (2 green, 4 red)
- a few sprigs of mint and rosemary
- a bunch of chives
- 2 quarts strawberries (PYO)
- 1 pint snap peas (PYO)
- 1 bunch kale
- 1 bunch radishes
- 2 heads of bok choy

The strawberries have been eaten out of hand.  There haven't been enough so far to frustrate us into doing anything else with them.  Jersey strawberries are notably different from the giant monster California strawberries in the supermarket in that they are vine-ripened by the sun.  How can you tell?  That white core in the middle of your supermarket strawberries shouldn't be there.  You should have a red berry all the way through.  Those berries are picked white in California or Florida and shipped over to you, ripening in the truck on the way and sitting in the back of the store if they're not ripe enough.  Just another reason to choose local foods whenever possible.  Now that I've said my piece, I am hoping the strawberries will be around for another few weeks in copious amounts so that I can try my hand at canning in a hot water bath to preserve some of these delicious treats for the winter.

I happen to love arugula and its peppery flavor so I was THRILLED when I saw it in the farm stand.  In the beginning of the season, there usually isn't much down there, and you mostly go for the PYO stuff.  I was so excited to see something down there!  I first reached for one of my favorite recipes, Ottolenghi Red Rice and Quinoa, which is meant to be served over arugula.  The recipe makes quite a bit and I was able to eat this several times over the next few days.  This was awesome because I got to really taste the arugula - it was the BEST arugula I have ever had, hands down.  What a difference it makes to eat fresh greens the very day they were picked.  The following week I made an arugula pesto using a recipe from my mom's new Cooking Light book (one of my new favorites) which is organized by season.  By week 3 I was getting sick of it, since apparently I'm the only one who wants to eat arugula.  I ended up making another pesto from a neat book I got as a gift called New Flavors for Vegetables.  It's a Williams-Sonoma book.  It's meant for a recipe where you saute little yellow pear tomatoes and toss them with the pesto and feta cheese, but I just stuck it in the freezer (tomatoes aren't here yet).  I did taste a bit and it was delicious - I liked it better than the first pesto I made.  (You can read more about my arugula pesto in my post about it - when I get to posting it!)

The herbs are such a departure from those sold in the supermarket and even in our local farm markets.  It is amazing what a difference it makes!  The thyme was used in another recipe from the above mentioned Cooking Light book, a chicken breast stuffed with caramelized scallions, thyme and goat cheese with a delicious pan sauce poured over top.  The chives were served at the same meal, in another dish from the same book, sprinkled atop balsamic roasted spring vegetables.  The mint was used in mojitos, a zucchini fritatta, and cucumber and mint tea sandwiches for Mom's reading group.  The oregano was substituted for dried in our Four-Cheese Baked Penne (from Ellie Krieger's So Easy).  And of course Chipotle got the catnip :)

What do you do with 6 heads of lettuce?  Eat a LOT of salad.  Luckily, with 7 people down the shore we were able to finish off a big bowl of it.  I made a delicious balsamic vinaigrette from Clean Food, where I replaced the agave nectar with dijon mustard and emulsified it in a blender.  My little sister loved it so much she actually took home the tiny bit that was left over.  The great thing about freshly picked lettuce such as this is that it keeps longer than the lettuce you see in the store, so we weren't rushing to finish it and even after a few days it still looked much fresher than the storebought lettuce I had gotten a few days earlier (before I knew we would soon be swimming in greens).  By the second week of lettuce, I was doing mental calculations about how much we would each have to eat to get rid of all this lettuce by the next week - as a family, we would have to eat a head per day.  One woman in the farm stand said she was eating lettuce for breakfast, lunch and dinner!  I am glad we didn't take it quite that far.

I made a wrap on lavash bread using some of the lettuce, a few leaves of spinach, feta, roasted red peppers, and hummus.  It was pretty yummy.  The greens tasted really fresh.  I used only 3 or 4 leaves of the spinach, though.  Luckily, 2 lbs of spinach may sound like a lot, but it cooks down substantially! We had it cooked with garlic and olive oil with steak and potatoes.

I made the bok choy according to a recipe from New Flavors for Vegetables.  The recipe has you sautee the bok choy with sliced garlic and red pepper flakes and tosses it with toasted sesame seeds.  It was too spicy, so next time I would use less for sure, but I might make it again.  It would be nice with a drizzle of sesame oil to finish as well. 

Snap peas were much more fun to pick than strawberries!  Less leaves, less bugs, easier to reach.  We used them in one of our current favorite recipes for a Pork and Mango Stir Fry from So Easy.  (Someone has posted the recipe here.)

There were two types of radishes available - regular red ones and French breakfast - and we selected the more interesting bunch.  The week before, we had purchased regular radishes for a roasted baby spring vegetable recipe from the seasonal Cooking Light book, so we tried it again with these.  They were a bit more bitter.  I would probably choose the regular type next time.  None of us like raw radishes, but they are yummy when roasted.

We forgot about our little bunch of kale -- we were only reminded by two new bunches from the first June pickup.  We plan to use the older bunch to make kale chips.

Tabbouleh

The only tabbouleh I have ever had was storebought and I didn't like it. I liked the look of the ingredient list of the Tabbouleh in Food Matters - Mark Bittman's "way." He adds many more vegetables than are traditional.

One fun part of this recipe was that it called for fava beans. It took me forever to find these dried. I looked at every grocery store and farmers' market. Ken finally found them for me in the Mexican section at Whole Foods. But I walked over to the farmers' market the other day for some fruit and other ingredients, and I noticed while walking up and down the aisles that they had fresh fava beans. Some of them looked really good, but some were kind of browning and weird looking. I didn't know how to choose fresh fava beans but I figured they should be bright and plump looking. Lucky for me, I later found a website showing how to choose and prepare fresh fava beans, which assured me that I had been looking for the right qualities. When it came time to prepare them, I took the beans out of the pods, steamed them, then popped the edible part out of their little waxy shell. You have to shell these beans twice! But they were pretty good - I am not a big bean fan, but I liked them in the tabbouleh. The fresh beans were a little agonizing to prepare though, so next time I might try frozen or make the dried ones if I have enough time.

The recipe also calls for a lot of parsley and mint. Since I had a lot going on, Ken chopped it up for me. The recipe says "roughly chopped," but it was a little too roughly chopped so we decided that "roughly chopped" was not the best instrution and next time we will chop them more finely. Another change I would make from the recipe is the bulgur. With all the chunky vegetables, I think coarser bulgur should be used rather than the fine bulgur that is called for. I used coarse because that's what we had on hand, and I thought it was great. Because of the large amount of vegetables there isn't much grain in each bite anyway, so I think it would get lost with a fine bulgur.

We really liked the tabbouleh and I particularly love the lemon juice, and that it is packed with a variety of veggies. It is also suited well to adaptations, so you can probably change it up based on what you have on hand. I hope the leftovers are just as good tomorrow and I will definitely be making this again - I think it would be a great picnic salad!