(Photo: Ann Grummon, www.6acrestudio.com)
I volunteered to test this recipe for Arugula Pesto for the great website FOOD52, and they published my testing notes with the recipe at the link below:
Arugula Pesto recipe from food52.
Go check out the recipe, and the rest of the site, and congratulations, community member cristinasciarra at FOOD52, on a most tasty recipe, and being a community pick!
Posted by realfoodroad on September 30, 2012
http://realfoodroad.com/2012/09/30/arugula-pesto-recipe-from-food52/
Rhubarb and strawberries are soulmates, and they’re in season right now in New England. Both of their seasons are short, so don’t wait. Get out there and get yours. Strawberries that are local and in season taste nothing like their flavor-pale cousins shipped into your grocery store at all times of the year. Local strawberries are a true local delicacy. The strawberries grown in New Hampshire taste entirely differently than the strawberries grown in California (I know, I taste-tested them last year on our family trip), even when the Cali strawberries are eaten fresh-picked and local. The soil and water matter.
Typically, even though it’s botanically a vegetable, rhubarb is used as a fruit, in desserts and jams, and strawberries come along for that ride, because they bring needed sweetness and juiciness to the party. I wanted to shake that up a little bit this week, and find some savory ways to play with both of these lovely, pretty-in-pink-and-red beauties.
Posted by realfoodroad on June 2, 2012
http://realfoodroad.com/2012/06/02/rhubarb-and-strawberries/
Ok, so I didn’t think I had anything to say about this, but I realized I actually do have a lot to say, because I understand what living with diabetes is like, and because I just really dislike mean people.
You may be aware that Paula Deen recently shared her diagnosis of diabetes with the viewing and eating public. She may have timed it poorly by also announcing her partnership with Novo Nordisk, a maker of diabetic supplies. She and her sons are developing recipes for the Novo Nordisk website, as well as endorsing their products. Well, you may also be aware that, because she didn’t mention her diagnosis for three years (and why it’s any of our business still eludes me), lots of stuff hit the fan, with folks all over the web blaming Paula Deen for how other grownup people who can cook and eat whatever they want, cook and eat her fine, fine Southern recipes. Somehow, Paula Deen is at fault for all those grownup people who chose, of their own free will, to try out some of her unabashedly full-octane fat/sugar/flour delectables.
What you may not know, is that there is this bizzare, on-again, off-again, feud going on between Deen and another food personality, chef Anthony Bourdain. He has no problem being publicly rude to her on social media and in print. Well, in what I can only call an effort to attract attention to himself, Bourdain tweeted another completely unnecessary rude remark about Deen this week.
Posted by realfoodroad on February 26, 2012
http://realfoodroad.com/2012/02/26/anthony-bourdain-im-calling-you-out/
This week’s share of produce was understandably small, considering how early it is in the growing season here in NH. We received 1 1/2 lbs swiss chard, 1/2 lb salad mix, 1/2 lb mesclun, 1/2 lb arugula, 10 radishes (3 different kinds; even white ones), and herbs (parsley, mint, rosemary, basil). Peas will be next week, but they are in at other farms, so one of this week’s recipes features mint and peas. It’s a tasty variation on Carbonara Sauce for pasta, from Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution. We are also eating lots of salads with our meals, now that we have lovely greens all washed and ready in the spinner in the refrigerator, so I also have a basic recipe from Jamie for a chopped salad. Start keeping your eyes open for local farmstands and Farmers’ Markets opening up, and taste some of the freshest fruits and veggies available in your area.
Oh, strawberries are in season here too, and are they great. We had Strawberry Shortcake this week, with Buttermilk Cake from my mom’s recipe. I think it’s almost a perfect dessert, because it combines so many flavors and textures in each bite, but is never overwhelming.
So on to the recipes!
Posted by realfoodroad on June 17, 2010
http://realfoodroad.com/2010/06/17/week-1-csa-pick-ups-have-begun/
February’s Hero is none other than my son. He nearly single-handedly prepared this week’s recipe, and it was delicious. If my 9-year-old son can do it, you can too!
Asian-Style Steamed Salmon-Jamie Oliver (Jamie’s Food Revolution)
Serves 2
a large handful of broccolini or broccoli rabe
1 x 8-ounce can of water chestnuts
a large handful of sugar snap peas
2 salmon fillets, skin on, scaled and bones removed (about 7 oz each)
For the dressing
a thumb-sized piece of fresh root ginger
1 clove of garlic
1/2 a fresh red chile
1 scallion
2 T soy sauce
3 T extra virgin olive oil
1 lemon
Notes:
We doubled this recipe to serve 4; not the dressing, the recipe makes plenty for 4 servings.
We used an electric steamer/cooker with a steamer basket, but the saucepan/colander method works, too.
We used broccoli spears cut thin, much the same as broccolini.
We reduced the size of the salmon servings to 3 or 4 oz-less expensive, and 7 oz servings are a bit large for us.
We left the red chile out of the dressing, and it was still tasty. (I chopped the chile for my husband and I to top our servings separately.)
We served Asian noodles alongside the salmon, topped with seaweed salad. Rice would also be great.
To prepare your salmon:
Fill a saucepan halfway up with water and put it on a high heat to boil. Trim the ends off the broccolini stalks. Drain your water chestnuts in a colander. Add the sugar snaps.
Lay the salmon fillets, skin side down, on top of them, then scatter the broccoli over. Cover the colander with aluminum foil and scrunch it tightly around the edges to seal the steam in.
To cook your salmon and make your dressing:
Put the aluminum foil-covered colander over your pan of boiling water and let it steam for 8 to 10 minutes. While that’s happening, peel and grate the ginger and half your clove of garlic into a small bowl. Finely slice your chile and scallion and add them to the bowl with the soy sauce and extra virgin olive oil. Squeeze the juice from half the lemon into the bowl. Mix everything together well with a spoon and put to one side.
After your salmon and vegetables have been steaming for 8 minutes, peel back the foil and check the fish is cooked through-it should flake apart.
To serve your salmon:
Divide the salmon, water chestnuts, and veggies between your serving plates or bowls. Give the dressing a quick stir and drizzle it over. Serve with the remaining lemon half, cut into wedges, for squeezing over.
Again, Oliver has presented a recipe that could work with other ingredients. As long as the fish and veggies will steam done at about the same time, you could substitute all kinds of ingredients here. The sauce is lightly flavored, slightly salty, and would top any fish or veggie combo well.
My son was very proud of this dish, and I am proud of him.
Posted by realfoodroad on March 4, 2010
http://realfoodroad.com/2010/03/04/real-food-road-hero-of-the-monthfood-revolution-recipe-3-asian-style-steamed-salmon/
This recipe comes together screamingly fast, so have everything else done and ready before you heat your pan to cook your shrimp. Shrimp cook quickly, and overcooked shrimp are little bites of rubbery non-goodness, so don’t leave them alone once in the pan. Oh, and this is a fabulous, delicious meal.
A quick rant on shrimp size labeling: the words “large”, “medium”, “jumbo”, etc., are very fluid in the shrimp-labeling world; I look for count per pound instead. This recipe calls for “large” shrimp; when I used my “large” shrimp, they took longer to cook and were bigger than the ones in the picture. The “large” shrimp Oliver uses appear to be 31-40 per pound, which I have found labeled “medium” or “large”, depending on the brand.
Recipe Notes:
I doubled the recipe to serve 4.
I used pea sprouts, instead of alfalfa (couldn’t find cress). Microgreens would also work, as would just plain shredded lettuce. Ooh, if you felt like it, you could make a cole slaw using the Marie Rose sauce as dressing, that would be good too.
I left the whiskey out of the sauce, because I don’t have it in the house. The sauce was still delicious. I am going to try it with vodka the next time, thinking “Bloody Mary” here. I’ll let you know how it is.
I was able to find frozen, pre-cleaned shrimp at the grocery store over by the fish counter. Saved a lot of work not having to peel and devein them myself, the tiny buggers.
Here is a link to some pictures of Oliver cooking this recipe: Jamie Oliver Prawns Recipe in Daily Mail UK
Shrimp and Avocado with an Old-School Marie Rose Sauce-Jamie Oliver
Serves 2
1 or 2 ripe avocados
1 or 2 large handfuls of sprouted cress or alfalfa
all-purpose flour
1/2 pound shrimp, 31-40/lb, peeled and cleaned
olive oil
2 cloves garlic
1 heaped tsp paprika
Marie Rose Sauce: (I didn’t double this, it made enough for us)
1/4 C mayonnaise
2 tsp tomato ketchup
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp whiskey
1 lemon
salt and pepper
Cut your avocados into halves; carefully remove the pits and the skins, so your halves stay pretty. Discard pits and skins. Give your sprouts a chop or two, to make them easier to eat.
Put a handful or two of flour into a big bowl. Drop your shrimp into the flour (they should be pretty dry first, or you’ll make a yucky pasty mess, just paper towel them a bit), and toss them to completely coat.
Make your sauce: put your mayonnaise in a bowl with the ketchup, Worcestershire, and the whiskey. Cut your lemon in half and squeeze one of the halves over the bowl. Cut the other half into wedges for serving. Add a wee bit of salt and pepper to the bowl, and mix well. Taste and add salt/pepper/lemon juice if you think it needs it.
Put a large frying pan over med-high heat. When the pan is hot, pour in a couple good glugs of olive oil. Smash your garlic cloves (no need to peel them), and add them to the hot oil, followed by the shrimp. Toss them to coat with oil, count to ten, and add a bit of salt and pepper (remember that shrimp can be salty all by themselves), and evenly sprinkle the paprika over them. Keep tossing the shrimp to cook them evenly, keeping them in a single layer as much as possible. They should be crisp and golden when they’re done, no more than 3-4 minutes. They will curl and turn pink, don’t overcook them :).
Take the shrimp off the heat, and set up your plates:
Place an avocado half on each plate, place your sprouts over each avocado half, and place the shrimp on the plate next to the avocado. Drizzle Marie Rose sauce over avocado/sprouts, drizzle some olive oil over it all, with a sprinkle of paprika for color, and a wedge of lemon for squeezing over.
This was a huge hit with my family, and it is so fast and easy I can see it being a great summertime meal when it’s just too hot to spend any time in front of the stove at all. I served it the first time with some toasted french bread, it would be great with rice, or couscous. I am planning on serving it this week with some hash brown pancakes.
Enjoy this quick, easy recipe! Yum. See you next week, when a new Real Food Hero will be crowned.
Posted by realfoodroad on February 18, 2010
http://realfoodroad.com/2010/02/18/food-revolution-recipe-2-shrimp-and-avocado-with-an-old-school-marie-rose-sauce/
This recipe is from “Jamie’s Food Revolution”, by Jamie Oliver. It’s basically an open-faced sandwich, but it is one of the prettiest, tastiest open-faced sandwiches I’ve ever had. It comes together very quickly, and the whole family loves it. I’ve made it twice, first as Oliver outlines it, then my own variation; it is a great technique recipe, or as Julia Child would call it, “master recipe”, because with just a little imagination you can substitute almost any meat, bread, and leafy green and it works. I’ll give you Oliver’s version straight up first, then the variation I cooked up last night for dinner, which my son devoured, and about which my husband declared, and I quote: “This Meal Rocks!”
(click on Read More)
Butterflied Steak Sarnie-Jamie Oliver
serves 2
2 large portobello mushrooms
2 x 7-ounce filet mignon steaks
a sprig of fresh rosemary
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
olive oil
1 ciabatta loaf
extra virgin olive oil
juice of 1/2 a lemon
a small handful of watercress
Dijon mustard
Notes:
I doubled this to make 4 servings; I used 1 1/4 in. thick sirloin steaks cut in half to resemble filet mignon steaks, because they cost less; I reduced the serving size of the meat to about 4 oz, as 7 oz of meat is quite a lot; I only used one type of olive oil, it doesn’t matter; check the bakery at your supermarket for ciabatta; my supermarket didn’t have any watercress the day I shopped, so I bought baby spinach instead, and it worked fine.
I used a grill pan over med-high heat. Clean the mushrooms and slice across the bottom of them so they will lay flat in the pan. While the pan’s warming up, lay the mushrooms bottom down, and press down on them, to char them. Turn them over, and press on them again (I used a heavy pan to do this so I could get the steaks ready).
Dry the steaks with a paper towel, so they will brown. Butterfly your steaks: with a good, sharp knife, carefully slice horizontally through the middle of each one, using long, slow slicing movements, and open each one out like a book (don’t cut all the way through the other side!).
Remove the rosemary leaves from the sprig, and finely chop. Mix the rosemary with a good pinch of salt and pepper on a cutting board, place your open steaks on top, patting them down so the seasonings stick. Drizzle with olive oil, turn over and repeat. Rub them a little with your hands if you want to spread the seasonings more evenly.
Remember the mushrooms? Remove them from the grill pan to a plate. Place the steaks in the pan, pressing down on them briefly. Cook to desired doneness, turning every minute. (Oliver’s recipe says 4 min. total for a medium steak, but this obviously will depend on your steak. Keep an eye on them, they cook quickly-don’t overcook them or they’ll be tough and juiceless.) Remove the steaks from the pan to rest with the mushrooms. Cut ciabatta into desired serving-size pieces, on an angle, and place in the pan. Press them down with a heavy pan (flat-bottomed cast iron pan is perfect). Toast for a couple minutes a side, to get grill marks on the bread. To finish, drizzle the steaks and mushrooms with a little olive oil, a squeeze of lemon juice, and a pinch of salt and pepper.
Assemble your plates: Place a piece of ciabatta on the plate; top with a steak, a bit of watercress, and a mushroom, then drizzle some of the juices from the resting plate over the whole sandwich. Serve with a jar of Dijon mustard on the table.
For my variation, I went with a couple 1 1/2 in. thick boneless pork loin chops, cut into four pieces, then butterflied. I used arugula in place of watercress, and slices of crusty french bread in place of ciabatta. The execution was exactly the same, and as I mentioned, a screaming success.
If you don’t have knives you trust with your fingers, I suggest buying thin steaks or pork chops so you don’t have to butterfly; it’s just a fun technique, it doesn’t change the flavor of the meat. This could easily be a chicken breast recipe as well. Try it with shredded lettuce or cabbage as the greens. You really need a sturdy bread for the grill pan, so nothing squishy will work there.
Now, try this recipe out if it sounds good to you, and then, well. Pass. It. On. Bon Appetit!
Posted by realfoodroad on February 3, 2010
http://realfoodroad.com/2010/02/03/food-revolution-recipe-1-butterflied-steak-sarnie/
New year, new features on the blog. Introducing “Real Food Hero of the Month”, where I will heap praise on someone I feel is leading the way forward for the real, local, sustainable food movement.
As the title indicates, my first hero is British chef Jamie Oliver. Jamie Oliver’s cooking style is very rustic and simple: let the ingredients speak for themselves. He has had several shows on Food Network, and published a pile of cookbooks. He is an avid home gardener, as well as an advocate for eating local, seasonal, sustainable foods. And, well, darnit he’s a cutie too. ;) (click on “Read More” to read the rest of this post)
You may know him as “The Naked Chef”, the name of his first American cooking show on Food Network. However, across Britain he is known also for his nearly one-man quest to completely revamp British childrens’ school lunches. British school lunches were no better than some of those here in the US; lots of fast, fried, fat-laden food, not much fruit or veggies, nothing fresh, just cans and boxes, junk food and soda machines all around. Not surprisingly, the obesity epidemic is just as bad there as it is here. Oliver set out to change all that, one school at a time. As a result of his hard work, British school lunch nutrition policies are changing to include more fresh foods, less fatty food, and no vending machines.
He also ran into parental resistance. In one town, Rotherham, mums were actually passing fast-food take out to their children through the school gates, so they wouldn’t have to eat healthy food if they didn’t want to! That got Oliver’s attention, and when he began his latest food movement, “pass it on”, he chose to start off in Rotherham.
In Rotherham, Oliver noticed that, like in much of the UK, people just didn’t like to cook anymore. They didn’t have time, or couldn’t afford it, or didn’t know how. Cooking skills and recipes weren’t being passed on. Take-out and processed boxed foods were the norm. He wanted to change that, to show people directly that there is time to cook simple, delicious, economical meals, and he wanted to show them how. He set up a kitchen in Rotherham, and convinced some of the people in town to learn to cook with him, under one condition; they each had to pass on the recipes they learned from Jamie to a friend or family member, and that person had to pass it on, and so on.
Oliver’s “pass it on” campaign is outlined in his new book, “Jamie’s Food Revolution”, or as it’s titled in Britain/Canada, “Jamie’s Ministry of Food” (titles often change when books are published first in UK and later here; the word “ministry” in America brings religion to mind, where “Ministry” in UK is just an office of the government). During WWII, the British people were struggling with food shortages, so the government set up a Ministry of Food, to send cooks from town to town, teaching people how to make the best meals with what little they had. Oliver’s campaign is similar to this, but the reason behind it is different. Oliver blames the health and obesity problems in the UK on what they are feeding themselves. So he has set out to change how the country feeds itself, one town at a time. He has also brought his campaign to the US, to Huntington, WV. The results of this will be aired on ABC in March. Don’t miss it.
Real Food Road has signed Jamie’s petition to “pass it on”. Here on the blog I will present recipes from “Jamie’s Food Revolution” that I have cooked and fed to my family successfully. I would like to promise photos, but we’ll see how that goes… ;) Then you, my far-flung readers, need to promise me that you will try a recipe or two yourselves, and then…pass it on. If you would like to sign the petition, on the left side of this page there is a Jamie Oliver button. Click on it, and you will be taken to his website.
If you have ideas for future Real Food Heroes, leave them in the comments! If When you try a recipe, leave a comment on how it went. If you want more info on Jamie Oliver or his books/shows, the highlighted text in this post links to many things Jamie Oliver. Just click on them.
See you next week! Pass it on! :)
Posted by realfoodroad on January 27, 2010
http://realfoodroad.com/2010/01/27/real-food-hero-of-the-month-jamie-oliver/
