Monday Market Haul - 2/9/2015

Again with the snow on Saturdays! It was surprisingly not as frigid as it has been though. It’s pretty sad when 30 degrees doesn't feel so bad. Some vendors that had stayed away due to the cold were back this week and that was pretty sweet. I love the produce at Lani’s farm and I was so happy to see them again. They have wonderful greens. I got the nicest batch of baby kales that worked themselves into the loveliest of light salads this weekend.

Do you see how many butternut squash I lugged all the way home? Guys, I am bursting at the seams to tell you what I made with those babies. I guess I’ll just have to show you one day soon.

I ended up with some extra squash and I roasted some of it in cubes for the first time and geez, what a revelation! They were like roasty and crispy on the outside, then all kinds of mush on the inside and then with the salt and the sweet. And the, and the! Oh man! What took me so long!?! I also had so many squash butts leftover. So I just scooped those out and roasted whole. I then scraped out all that roasty flesh and made squash hummus. Because, common sense.

Happy Monday all!

Kale & Sausage Dinner Tart with Cheesy Rice Crust

So, it’s Saturday. Not Friday, when this post was supposed to go up. And I have no excuse really. I just suck. But let’s not focus on that right now, let’s focus on this tart, pie thing.

Pie. This was Sausage Pie. And it was glorious.

I’m using the past tense here, because that beautiful thang is long since gone, and I may or may not be still mourning it’s end. The lovely smell of sausage filled my kitchen for the better part of a day and it was heaven. Heaven, I tell you.

I can not take full credit for the ideas, I found both recipes at different times on Food52. But then I had the "genius" (um, common sense) idea to put them together. So la di da. I adapted lightly here and there to adjust for what I had on hand. Most especially there is a lot more sausage in here than the original recipe which I like to think is an improvement. I carnivore, therefore, I am. I am also not the type of person who typically has wine on hand for throwing into recipes. Do you think of me differently now? Chicken stock (from da freezer!) sufficed.

What is actually genius is the vision to smash leftover rice into a crust for a flawless gluten free alternative to tart dough. So thanks for that, Food52. Writing about this makes me want to make it all over again. Next time, I’d go all out and use hot italian sausage instead. Nice and sassy like.

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Kale & Sausage Dinner Tart with Cheesy Rice Crust

Ingredients:

Crust:

lightly adapted from this recipe at Food52

1 ½ cups cooked rice

¼ cup shredded parmesan

¼ cup white cheddar

1 egg white

salt and pepper to taste

Tart filling:

lightly adapted from this recipe at Food52

1 pound sweet italian sausage

1 onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 bunch kale, cut into 1 inch pieces

¼ cup chicken stock

¼ cup ricotta

2 eggs beaten

salt and pepper to taste

shredded parmesan for sprinkling (optional)

Directions:

Heat oven to 425 degrees

In a large mixing bowl, mix together rice, cheeses, egg white, and salt & pepper until well combined. Mixture should be sticky enough to hold together if you squeeze it lightly in hands.

Press mixture evenly into a 9-inch pie pan. Par bake in oven for 10 to 12 minutes. Remove from oven and cool slightly.

Lower heat to 400 degrees.

Brown sausage in a large skillet over medium heat. Once cooked, remove from pan and set aside in a large mixing bowl. In the fat from the sausage, add onion to the pan and saute until translucent and beginning to caramelize. Add garlic to pan and cook just until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Add kale to pan and cook until wilted, 5 to 10 minutes. Add chicken stock to pan and cook until reduced just slightly, scraping up any brown bits from the bottom of the pan as you go. Remove from heat and add to bowl with sausage. Stir to combine. Allow to cool slightly.

Once cooled, about 5 minutes, add ricotta, eggs, and salt & pepper. Stir to combine well and then pour into prepared crust. Spread out evenly. Sprinkle top with shredded parmesan if desired.

Bake in oven for about 15 to 20 minutes or until crust has browned a bit on the edges.

Once removed from oven, leave to cool a bit and set.

Serves 8

What I Really Eat: Kitchen Sink Salad Winter Edition

"What I really eat" are my "Iron Chef" meals. My pantry meals. Shit, my fridge is empty meals. The things that come out of necessity and lack of time. The ingredient list will usually be small and the execution usually simple. Something that is less of a recipe and more of a guideline. If something exceptionally awesome comes out of my Sunday night scramble, it will get posted as a “What I Really Eat” and probably be accompanied with a not-my-best photo.

Following a Saturday night of indulging in after-midnight pizza in a cathedral after seeing possibly the coolest broadway show ever (Hedwig). Then a hella busy Sunday of recipe testing, I was super in the mood for a salad dinner. My feeling towards salads are that they’re only boring if you let them be. For real, let your freak flag fly. Although, I will admit, my creativity can get the best of me when I hit up those city chopped salad bars. SO MANY CHOICES. I get overwhelmed and always end up with the most confusing salad. Womp, womp.

BUT, at home, with a more limited selection, that’s where I shine. A handful of this and pinch of that, toast these, throw that in, this can’t be a bad idea - in it goes! Even the boyfriend, who doesn’t really believe in salads as meals, could get behind this one. Or really any Kitchen Sink Salad I throw together. I’ve found that my winter salads have been the most inventive. In the summer, it’s so easy to rely on those perfect summer tomatoes, juicy cukes, crisp peppers but you end up with such a typical salad. But in the winter, you have to get creative with what’s available, I always end up with something outta this world.

Don’t feel limited by my ingredients below, GO NUTS, that’s what Kitchen Sink Salads are all about. Gather a base (lettuce, kale, cabbage, brussel sprouts), add whatever other veggies you have on hand (carrots, red onions), next up your add ins -- something spicy maybe like pepperoncinis (personal fave) or pickled jalapeños, something crunchy - sunflower seeds or pepitas, a funky cheese - feta, parm, pecorino or bleu, something sweet -- citrus segments or pomegranate seeds, and maybe some creamy avocado. Top it all off with a simple dressing, something punchy with a lot of acid. Just add protein for a full meal. Big bang boom, you’re done.

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Kitchen Sink Salad

Ingredients:

1 head romaine lettuce, chopped in 1-inch pieces

½ bunch kale (I used curly purple kale), destemmed and torn into 1-inch pieces

1 carrot, shredded

3 pepperoncini, sliced

1 cara cara orange, segmented

1 avocado sliced

handful of sunflower seeds

handful of crumbled feta cheese

handful of pomegranate seeds

juice of half a lemon

good drizzle of olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Add all ingredients to a large bowl, ending with the squeeze of lemon, drizzle of olive oil and seasoning.

Toss to combine. Adjust seasoning as needed. Serve.

Eat the entire bowl with a side of cooked chicken breast while watching Six Feet Under (optional) a.k.a. serves 2 as a meal with added protein.

Serves 4 as a starter or side.

Monday Market Haul - 2/2/2015

Monday means Monday Market Haul!!

So for the once in in a blue moon situation where I want some jam on toast, I stopped by Beth’s Farm Kitchen jam stand. It was pretty awesome there. After trying nearly every jam they had, I finally settled on one jar of black raspberry. The moment I tasted that one, it brought me straight back to Connecticut summers where my mother has wild black raspberry bushes all over the property.

A whole nother discussion in itself is the fact that food and memory is a pretty profound thing. I swear, even though Saturday was a bitter cold January day in the middle of New York City and I was covered from head to toe in winter weather wear, it was like the second it hit my tongue, I’m seven years old, dripping wet fresh out the pool on a hot July day, sun warming my back, grass between my toes, and I’m feasting, popping one by one tiny black raspberries into my mouth.

picking berries this summer from around the yard

Anyways, back to Beth and her jam, I can get behind anywhere that has a frequent “jammer” card. To top it off she served me a tiny cup of homemade squash soup and a two-bite sample of a grilled cheese sandwich that had some of her jam on it with the cheese. Genius. It really sorta made my day.

It still astounds me what I can get on my weekly market run --- jam, wine, short ribs, sausage, and all the seasonal veggies and fruits I could want, all the while supporting small, local businesses and farmers.

I’m pretty excited about those short ribs. Are you?

Spinach Artichoke Mashed Potatoes + Friday Faves!

Because, Super Bowl.

While these aren’t something you would necessarily "dip" into since piling carbs on top of more carbs seems a smidge excessive. But, seriously though, YOU DO YOU. I won't slap a tortilla chip outta your hand or anything. But, if any of you plan on tucking into a more traditional dinner while watching the game this Sunday these are damn near perfect for the occasion.

Oh man, these are so freaking tasty. They taste so similar to that famous dip, but don’t have the globs and globs of mayonnaise and sour cream most recipes call for. The potatoes provide the entire base, I just added some cheese sauce to make them creamy and taste closer to the traditional dip.

They’re best paired with a simple main, since they’re on the richer side. But let’s be real, Superbowl Sunday isn’t one of those diet days.

Here are the Friday Faves for this week:

this is how sassy i *wish* my blog was

seven vegetables that are in season now

to add to my to do list

this reminds me, I have to start composting!

cauliflower, not carbs!

also on my to do list

PREACH!

my generation

oh and p.s. anyone want a bean-free hummus recipe?

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Spinach Artichoke Mashed Potatoes

Ingredients:

1 pound potatoes, peeled and chopped into 1-inch chunks

1 tablespoon butter

2 garlic cloves, minced

8 ounces spinach

1 can artichokes, drained

1 cup heavy cream

¾ cup shredded cheddar

cayenne, to taste

salt and pepper to taste

additional ½ cup shredded cheddar for sprinkling on top

Directions:

In a medium sauce pan, cover potatoes with cold water. Bring to a boil over medium heat then reduce to a simmer until potatoes are soft when pierced with a fork, about 15 to 20 minutes.

Heat oven to 375 degrees.

While potatoes are cooking, melt down half the butter in a saucepan over medium heat and then add the garlic. Saute garlic until fragrant and then add the spinach. Cook spinach until wilted, less than 5 minutes. Remove spinach and garlic from pan and set aside. In the same pan, melt down the last half of butter. Add artichokes to pan. Cook artichokes just until heated and beginning to caramelize a bit.

Meanwhile in a small saucepan, heat your heavy cream over a medium-low heat. Season with salt and pepper. Heat only until just hot enough to melt shredded cheddar cheese.

Once your potatoes are done, drain the water from them and then mash them best as possible, you may need to add a splash or two of cream to get them going. Once mashed, transfer them to a casserole dish.

Stir the spinach, artichokes, and cheese sauce into the potatoes until combined well.

Sprinkle remaining cheddar on the top and throw into the oven until golden brown, about 30 minutes.

Serves 6 to 8 as a side

Winter Chipotle Chicken Soup

Remember when you roasted that Cowboy Chicken? Did you roast that Cowboy Chicken? Well, you should have because then you would have Cowboy Chicken remains on hand for making the stock for this INSANE soup.

This is a winter soup if there ever was one. Spicy and warming, full of good for you bone broth and vegetables --- it’s chicken soup who made friends with some sassy smoked jalapeños. The chipotles warm the chilliest of souls and bones.

Pro tip: freeze everything.

When thinking about this soup, the immediate thought is to go straight to traditional mexican/latin vegetables and flavors. But as mentioned on Monday, my cooking is now much more controlled by the seasons. This meant --- no fresh peppers, no fresh tomatoes, no fresh corn. While it seems inhibitive, cooking with the seasons only makes me feel more creative. So I embraced the winter season and went with onions, carrots, delicata squash, and kale for my vegetables. 

I’m cheating a little bit with the avocado for garnish as it is for sure not local, but I’ve professed my undying love for them before, so you understand, yes?

As with most soups, it’s better the next day, surprisingly I found that the chipotle mellows out a bit. 

Lastly! I’ve realized that I’ve really only been posting chicken after chicken after chicken mains for months. About to get some variety up in here so soon!

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Winter Chipotle Chicken Soup

Ingredients:

olive oil

1 onion, chopped

2 carrots, sliced

1 delicata squash, cubed into 1-inch pieces (could also sub in sweet potato or butternut squash or acorn squash)

3 cloves garlic, minced

2 chipotles, minced

3 tablespoons tomato paste

2 to 3 tablespoons of chipotle sauce (in the can with the peppers) or to taste

6 cups chicken stock**

2 cups cooked chicken**

1 cup lacinato kale torn into 1-inch pieces

1 avocado, sliced (for garnish)

Directions:

Drizzle olive oil in the bottom of a large stock pot. Over medium heat, saute onions, carrots, and squash chunks. Cook until onions are translucent and beginning to get caramelized. Add in garlic and minced chipotles and saute just until garlic becomes fragrant, about 30 seconds.

Add in the tomato paste and chipotle sauce, and stir into the vegetables. You want to begin to brown the tomato paste/sauce. Let it start to caramelize. Have your stock at the ready. It will start to brown and get stuck to the bottom of the pot. Don’t fret! Do this until you just can’t stand it anymore and then splash a smidge of chicken stock in and deglaze the pan. It will sizzle and cook off and while it does this take your wooden spoon and begin to scrape up all that browned goodness from the bottom of the pot. Deglaze a bit more as needed to scrape up all brown bits and then add in the full amount of stock.

Add in the chicken and bring soup to a boil. Lower heat to a simmer and then add in the kale. Simmer until the kale is tender to the bite, about 10 minutes.

Remove from heat and serve soup with sliced avocado on top. A squeeze of lime wouldn’t hurt if you had it. If you can stand cilantro, go for it. These pickled red onions would not be out of place. Um, sour cream? Cause why the hell not. You know?

Yield: about 8 cups

**Note: I made my own chicken stock and used the meat from the carcass. Here’s how I did it: Throw that sucker, roasted (or raw) chicken in a stock pot with some carrots, a halved onion, some smashed garlic cloves, whole peppercorns and a bay leaf, cover it all with cold water, bring to a boil, then simmer away for a couple hours. Strain the broth and set aside, pick off the meat that’s left on the carcass and set that aside to use for the soup. Ta-da! Stock!

Monday Market Haul - 1/26/2015

Sweet italian sausage, eggs, honeycrisp apples, bosc pears, yellow onion, yellow and orange carrots, ricotta (not pictured)

It’s Monday!

And for that you get a Monday Market Haul! Guys, the things I had to do to get this haul this weekend.

While Saturday was not, ahem, a "snowpocalypse" or anything (which I am experiencing currently.) It was still bitter cold and on top of that raining. What I coulda done was slept in, stayed in my pajams, made some coffee, and tucked in to a new book (Cat’s Cradle.) But what I did was --- head to the farmer’s market. Because if I didn’t, there would be nothing to blog about or eat for the week!

I don’t know if it comes across, but I’d say 90% of all the food that I create for this blog as well as what I consume on a daily basis comes directly from the farmer’s market. That's why I show my Market Haul on Mondays. It's important for me to show that I do my best to practice what I preach and that I am committed to my local, seasonal eating mission. Obviously here and there, I purchase things through regular means -- citrus is anything but local and I don’t always buy my meat from the market. But overall I’ve found it’s a very important part of my life now -- it gets me out of the house even in the middle of winter, it forces creativity in the kitchen as I am forced to cook only with what’s available in the season, and I’ve learned how important it is to support local sustainable farming when at all possible. 

So many farmers were so appreciative for the people that came out this past weekend. It’s important to support their hard work and presence at the market especially on a cold rainy day. As a creature of habit, I’d gotten used to going to the same vendors all the time for the same things. This past weekend, not all the farmers could make it into the city because up North it was snowing and icy. I had to broaden my search for what I was looking for and I found some different farmers and producers I hadn’t met yet.

p.s. how cool is that cutting board?! many thanks to mah girl, Jack!

Spinach Salad with Grapes & Olives

So this one time I made this chicken and then had a ridiculous amount of grapes and olives left over. After the chicken was long gone, I still had to come up with some sort of lunch for work, you know, all adult-like. I stole some baby spinach from the boyfriend and a salad was born. Paired it with some hard boiled eggs for the protein factor and voila! Lunch! I wish it was always that easy.

We’ve got punchy, salty, fermenty olives, sweet black grapes, spicy pepperoncinis, more salty but creamy feta, crunchy toasted sunflower seeds, and a hefty squeeze of puckery lemon.

You couldn’t have more flavors and textures going on at once, and it is damn pleasing.

Being both a supertaster and a recovering sectional eater, I never would have thought that a salad such as this would ever grace my plate.

Supertaster? Huh? Yea, it totally exists and helped to explain much of my life prior to learning about it. Over the years, I’ve been able to train my palate to be more accepting of overpowering flavors --- anything fermented, vinegar, red onion, any and all things anise flavored, bitter, sour, sweet, salty --- everything is just more intense. I’m better with textures than I used to be, but I didn’t eat avocado for the better part of two decades because I couldn’t get over the weird butteriness of it. And until I was about 21, nothing . could . touch . I was a big fan of things “on the side.”

While I am still able to find that ONE piece of stray arugula that snuck it’s way into my salad bar romaine, LOATHE, I’ve gotten better! I could drink my homemade vinegar based dressings, I pickled red onions this summer, and I’ve come a long way in the mixing and matching of meals. You can look for no further proof than this salad.

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Spinach Salad with Grapes & Olives

Ingredients:

8 ounces spinach

1 cup mixed pitted olives, halved

1 cup red or black seedless grapes, halved

¼ cup crumbled feta

¼ cup sunflower seeds

2 to 3 pepperoncini peppers, sliced

juice of half a lemon

good drizzle of olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Assemble spinach, olives, grapes, feta, sunflower seeds, and pepperoncinis in a large serving bowl.

Squeeze the half of the lemon over the top of the salad (or like, be responsible, and do this in separate bowl to avoid rogue seeds), give a good drizzle of olive oil over top, and then do salt and pepper to taste. Go light on the salt at first due to the feta and olives, don’t want it to get too salty.

Toss all ingredients until well combined.

Serves 6 as a starter or side