Food & Spirits
CLAM-UP
June 2nd, 2011 | Comments
Tags: budget, Food & Spirits, Health & Fitness, recipes
Guess what we did over the weekend?
Then we made:
Clams on the half-shell.
Rhode Island Clam Chowder.
Pasta with clam sauce.
Grilled clams with herbs.
Cheap and yummy.
If you’re minding your budget and live to eat there is nothing smarter than being a back to nature DIYer. Whether you’re growing your own fruits and veggies, raising your own chickens or catching fish, the end result is far tastier than anything money can buy.
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Sunday Brunch: Poached Eggs on a Stew of Seasonal Veggies over Whole Grains
May 15th, 2011 | Comments
Tags: Food & Spirits
Start the week with a healthy brunch.
Mix up a stew of fresh seasonal vegetables. Cook up a batch of whole grains. Top it off with poached eggs and fresh herbs. Serve with bowls of fresh seasonal fruit, a big pot of freshly brewed coffee and the Sunday paper.
Saute in olive oil a big pile of seasonal vegetables. (We just used 2 sliced peppers, 3 diced tomatoes, 2 sliced zucchini and 1 chopped onion.) Cook them slowly until tender and they release their juices into a yummy ‘soupy’ mix.
Cook 1 cup of wheatberries in four cups of boiling water for approximately 1 hour or until tender
Poach two eggs.
The rest is simple.
Place a layer of wheatberries in the bottom of a soup bowl. Cover with a ladleful of veggies with their juices. Then top with
the poached eggs and shaved Parmesan or Manchego cheese. Finish with a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil, fresh herbs and salt and pepper.
Experiment with different vegetable, herb or cheese combinations!
No Recipe Pesto
May 2nd, 2011 | 1 Comment
Tags: Food & Spirits, Health & Fitness, recipes
We’re not good with rules. You know the ones like: Only tall girls should wear skinny jeans. No white after Labor Day. Never wear navy and black.
So, it should come as no surprise we almost never use a recipe when we cook. They are rules, right?
As we head into summer with the promise of plentiful fresh herbs from the garden and affordable bunches of greens popping up at roadside markets we’re thinking of all the ways we can incorporate them into our daily meals.
We want you to think about how you can use them without being bound to any hard and fast recipe rule. So we’re offering up our no-recipe-recipe for pesto. (Yeah, it’s an oxymoron)
No Recipe Pesto
A bunch of fresh herbs.
Extra Virgin Olive oil.
A big handful of nuts.
A clove of garlic.
Freshly grated Parmesan (or other hard) cheese.
Kosher salt.
Lots of freshly ground pepper.
A Cuisinart or blender.
Wash and dry the herbs thoroughly. Put the garlic, herbs and nuts into the food processor. Pulse a few times or roughly grind the mixture in the blender. Slowly add olive oil through the feed tube in a steady stream (Ok, we’ll give you some help here, if you’ve used a full bunch of herbs and say 1/2 cup of nuts, you’ll be using about 1 cup of oil-but find the consistency you like.) At this point you can freeze the mixture for later use. A tip: place in freezer trays and defrost individual pesto cubes for use.
Right before serving mix in cheese.
Vague, to be sure, but think of all the ways you can use this guideline: spearmint and hazelnuts; walnuts and basil; arugula and pine nuts. Think of all the things you can spread your pesto on: bruschetta; peppers; pasta; tomatoes and mozzarella; grilled fish or chicken…
Grind It Yourself
April 5th, 2011 | 20 Comments
Tags: budget, Food & Spirits, Health & Fitness
Grind your own meats. It’s cheap. It’s better for you. It’s better tasting. When you buy your own cuts, you get to select the best quality pieces and have control over the freshness of the product.
While we’re not big meat eaters, on occasion we make homemade meatballs, turkeyballs (that just sounds wrong, doesn’t it?), turkey/meatloaf, and ravioli stuffings. We always buy a fresh cut from the butcher, bring it home and grind it ourselves. The end-product more flavorful and lighter than store bought pre-ground.
Too much work you say? Not really. It’s remarkably easy. We use our grandmother’s old hand grinder. Simple to set-up. Easy to clean.
Look, the bottom line is when you grind it yourself you have CONTROL over the quality of what you eat and quality control over the sanitary conditions that go into the grind. Think about this, most ground meat and pre-made patties sold in stores are made from the trimmings and ends of cuts from multiple animals. Yuck. Grind it yourself and avoid having to worry every time there is a recall of pre-made patties or bulk ground meat. (For example, the one this week that recalled 55,000 pounds of Salmonella tainted ground turkey.)
Give it a crank.
Homemade Granola
March 24th, 2011 | 2 Comments
Tags: Food & Spirits, Health & Fitness, recipes
Make your own granola. It’s easy. It’s cost effective and way tastier than anything you’ll buy in the store. Go to the bulk section in your grocer for the ingredients.
Ingredients
-3 cups of rolled oats
-1/2 cup walnuts
-1 cup whole cashews
-1/2 cup shredded coconut
-1/4 cup dark brown sugar
-1/3 cup maple syrup
-3 tblsp safflower oil
-1/2 teaspoon salt
-1 1/2 cups dried fruit (cherries, raisins, apricots-your choice)
Preheat oven to 250 degrees.
Take the oil and maple syrup and mix in a small bowl. In another bowl mix the oats, nuts, coconut sugar and salt. Pour the liquid over the dry ingredients and stir to evenly coat. Take two large sheet pans cover the bottom with parchment or wax paper. Lay the ingredients in an even layer and place in the oven for approximately 1 to 1/2 hours stirring every twenty minutes. The granola is cooked when it turns a warm golden brown color. Remove and mix in the dried fruits.
Ebelskivers
March 20th, 2011 | 2 Comments
Tags: Food & Spirits
We’ll be honest, we never heard of “Ebelskivers” before someone gave us a pan to cook them in. We experimented this morning and all we can say is “WOW”.
Pouring the right amount of batter into the pan was a little tricky, but after a few tries we figured it out. Inventing filling combinations was the best part–honey, peanut butter and jelly, peanut butter and honey, lemon curd, homemade plum jam.
Served warm with powdered sugar,they’re like a cross between a pancake and a hot beignet.
Mm. Wonderful!
An update: the recipe we used:
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 large eggs
1 1/4 cup buttermilk
2 tablespoons melted butter
Separate eggs. Beat whites stiff. In bowl sift together dry ingredients. Whisk egg yolks and vanilla add to buttermilk and butter. Pour liquid into dry ingredients use spoon to mix together until well stirred. (Will have lumps). Fold in egg whites.
Put ebelskiver pan over medium low flame, use brush and butter individual wells. Pour in 1 1/2 tablespoon of batter and 1/2 teaspoon of filling then cover with another 1 1/2 tablespoon of batter. Cook until golden and flip and cook on other side until golden. The flipping is the tricky part.
Pears!
March 16th, 2011 | Comments
Tags: bargains, Food & Spirits, recipes
We stumbled on beautiful organic Anjou pears on sale last week and scooped up half a dozen. We had no plan. At the time we thought they’d be a perfect accompaniment to goat cheese and walnuts for a satisfying quick lunch, or we’d munch on them as they ripened for an afternoon snack. Who knew we’d end up making a last minute dinner party and be in need of a dessert?
Remember our post Old Wine Rewind, about poaching dried fruits in leftover wine? In it, we sing a song about the wonder of leftover spirits, yes, sometimes there are leftovers, and we just happened to have a nearly full bottle of Spanish red wine on hand. So, our plan was to apply the same principle to poaching the pears as we do to poaching dried fruits. While this sounds like a lot of work. It wasn’t. We were in the kitchen cooking, writing, talking, eating all day anyway, so minding the wine m
ixture and poaching the fruit was not heavy lifting. It filled the house with delicious smells and we felt like mad scientists adjusting and minding our brew and pears.
Poached Pears in Red Wine
Into a deep pot we poured the wine, 3/4 cup of water, 3/4 cup sugar, a stick of cinnamon, 2 star anise, 3 pods of green cardamom, 3 cloves, 6 black peppercorns, the juice and zest of an orange (that’s what we had, you could easily use a tangerine), a pinch of kosher salt, 1/2 cup dried cherries (again because we had them on hand you could use craisins, raisins or nothing at all). We brought it to a boil, then turned the heat down to medium.Our goal? To cook it down a bit to concentrate the flavors. (more…)
The Skinny on Starbuck’s New Pops
March 10th, 2011 | Comments
Tags: Food & Spirits, Health & Fitness
Aren’t these Starbuck’s cupcakes, pops and other treats cute?
Who wouldn’t be attracted to a smart little petit four at around that time in the afternoon?
Starbucks is stepping out today with a new line of “minis” that they are giving away for free—if you buy a drink, that is. (Wait, is that free or more like a gift with purchase?)
No matter. What we’re wondering about is how is that we see these as minis?
What’s the deal with portion sizing anyway? Look at this piece from The Center for Science in the Public Interest contrasting recommended USDA serving sizes with the serving sizes that chain food and fast food restaurants sell.
Scary. Right?
It got us to thinking about what our expectations are when it comes to food and portion sizing. How is that we’ve become such a nation of gluttons? How is it that we’ve substituted quantity for quality?
Our favorite restaurant, the special occasion place that’s too pricy for anything but a birthday or anniversary dinner, is owned by one of the best cooks in the world. For years, we’d go and friends would complain that the portions were small for the money. Huh? The food was local, fresh, fabulous and we always left satisfied—not stuffed, but happily sated.
Is more always better? No. Why do people complain in restaurants when their plates aren’t heaped high?
We believe super-sized servings have distorted our perspective on value–just because something is bigger doesn’t mean it’s better. It’s also distorted our perspective on what is a reasonable amount to eat at any meal.
Maybe now that they have to put the calorie count on their baked goods, Starbuck’s is finally wising up. But, we want to know why they need to call these new confections “petite” or “mini”, because at roughly 200 calories a pop (sorry) they sound ‘right-sized’ to us.
Ingredients for Meatless Monday: Tofu, Peanuts, Curry, Coconut, Sweet Potatoes, Chinese Broccoli, Jasmine Rice. Yum.
March 7th, 2011 | 17 Comments
Tags: Food & Spirits, Health & Fitness, healthy food, recipes
We love tofu. We love curry. We love coconut milk. It doesn’t get better.
This recipe is simple to prepare, forgiving, and full of flavor. Tofu is a great choice for ‘meatless’ Monday: protein packed, easy to prepare, and a wonderful cypher for picking up the flavor of any great sauce or interesting seasoning. This dish served over coconut scented jasmine rice and accompanied by a flavor packed dark green leafy vegetable is addicting.
As far as the curry goes, we’re fans of Maesri brand, and have had good luck finding this at local Asian markets and on occasion at Whole Foods (you do remember the section in the book about the price savings and joys of shopping at Asian markets, right?). Coconut milk, again, we’re Whole Food fanatics and love their store brand organic, but are equally happy with Thai Kitchens or other high quality brands.
Start with the basic ingredients and add/subtract to please your palate. We’re spicy gals and love the heat the curry brings and are heavy handed. You may just want a hint of flavor. You may have a bit of a sweet tooth and want to jack up the brown sugar, your teeth may chatter just hearing the word cilantro, or you may be an addict. If you can find Thai basil, great, if not any garden variety basil will do. Skip the peanuts or double the amount. If you don’t have salted peanuts, crush the unsalted ones. Try carrots instead of sweet potatoes or add them to the sweet potatoes. If you can’t find brown jasmine rice, use white. …etc.etc.etc.
Our point? Cooking is a creative art. Have fun.
Tofu in Massaman Curry. Brown Jasmine Rice. Chinese Broccoli
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A Crunchy Radish and Celery Salad
March 1st, 2011 | Comments
Tags: Food & Spirits, Health & Fitness, healthy food, recipes
Last week, we found ourselves home alone, hungry and dying for a salad. We opened the veggie bin and found only two things: celery and radishes. In the fridge was a mustard tarragon vinaigrette made a few days earlier. Hm. We rummaged the cupboard and pulled out homemade whole wheat bread crumbs and a tin of anchovies. We got to work.
Using the mandoline we turned out thin slices of radishes and thicker slices of celery. Several anchovy fillets got mashed into the leftover vinaigrette. In a serving bowl, we layered radishes onto celery and sprinkled on a generous handful of bread crumbs.
The cool crunchy ingredients topped by the slightly thick, warm to the senses, anchovy tarragon vinaigrette was divine. Whenever we create a new dish we ask this question: Is it good enough for the menu in our fantasy restaurant?
This one makes the cut.
Mustard Tarragon Vinaigrette
3 tblsp high quality extra virgin olive oil
1 tblsp aged sherry wine vinegar
1 tbsp minced tarragon
1 tsp dijon mustard
salt and pepper to taste
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