Sort of Stroganoff

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One of the downfalls of loving to cook and eat is getting into bad habits of having too much of our favorite foods, too often.  Like many concerned eaters, we’ve recently watched the documentary, Forks Over Knives, and what we took away was a desire to go “Plant Strong” in our diet.  To us, going Plant Strong means that meat (for Bjorn), complex carbohydrates and processed foods (for both of us) are playing a smaller role in our meals.  We’re also aiming for scaled back portions when we do use these ingredients.  We want to do this for our health, to shake off some bad habits we’ve acquired and to shed what we carry that comes along with those bad habits.  We’re trying to put whole fruits and vegetables the center of more of our meals.  We’re gardeners, veggie lovers and avid Farmer’s Market shoppers, so this isn’t new.  We have just renewed our focus on putting the nutrient dense, delicious natural foods in the starring role they are meant to play in our diet.  I am also trying to take little shortcuts and make substitutions to reduce the fat and salt used in our cooking, without sparing flavour.  So far, we’re feeling good about the changes and I think we’re enjoying more variety and creativity in making a shift away from our pizza-pasta-burger routine we fell into over the summer.  I love pasta a lot so we will still eat it, but a smaller amount, and prepared in a more thoughtful way.  Tonight, our supper took the form of a lightened up, veggied-up, cobbled-together concoction with some characteristics that harken back to a traditional tangy and rich Russian-style Mushroom Stroganoff.

The recipe was simple, and came together quickly.  I started by sautéing two small yellow onions with non-fat cooking spray, and just a little bit of olive oil.  Then, I added chopped button and cremini mushrooms.  I love mushrooms and can hardly resist adding them to every pasta meal I make, along with peas and spinach.  They go with practically every sauce, and taste great together!  Bjorn, being pleasantly open-minded as an omnivore has no problem foregoing the traditional beef in the stroganoff on a run-of-the-mill Tuesday night.  To make the sauce, I loosely followed a Beef Stroganoff recipe, minus the beef from on of favorite my blog-haunts,  Skinnytaste, using a can of tomato soup.  We didn’t have Worcestershire Sauce in the cupboard, but after a quick Google search, Bjorn informed me that soy sauce with a shot of hot sauce would do the trick as a stand-in for Worcestershire Sauce.  I used Braggs Liquid Aminos and Sriracha, aka, Rooster Sauce.  We like deeply flavored sauce, so I added a healthy shake of paprika and some crushed garlic and let the sauce cook a bit.  After cooking the onions and mushrooms and adding tomato soup the sauce was pretty thick, so I used some low sodium vegetable broth to thin it out a little.  I cooked egg noodles separately in lightly salted water and when they were well on their way to al dente, I added peas to the sauce pan.  When the noodles were nearly cooked, I stirred in some low-fat Buttermilk and a few generous handfuls of fresh spinach leaves into the sauce.  Buttermilk gives the creaminess and tang of sour cream you want with a Stroganoff, but is low in fat.  I had it on hand because I am planning to make another recipe that subbed buttermilk for a higher fat dairy product, so that is what I used, but low-fat sour cream would have been fine as well.  The spinach and peas don’t belong in a traditional stroganoff, but they sure taste good!  We enjoyed this cozy, richly flavored, savory dish with a little shaved parmesan and we both found the supper to be tasty and satisfying.  With a few little tweaks to our cooking and eating habits, in time, we will see a positive result, I think.  I also think we’ll enjoy some delicious suppers in the meantime.

Beans for Breakfast

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My first memory of black beans showing up on my plate at breakfast was in Boise, Idaho in the summer of 2008.  We were in Boise for a wedding, we traveled all the way for Minnesota to be there.  It was very nice to get to meet up with the newlyweds for breakfast the morning after their wedding.  I am not certain of the name of the restaurant that we went to, but it was downtown on the cool pedestrian-only street, it had a Southwestern vibe, and we sat outside on tall patio tables.  If you might know the place I’m talking about, feel free to let me know.  I don’t remember much about the meal, other than loving the black beans, and learning from the bride that a very good Eggs Benedict has a tinge of lemon in the hollandaise.  For a vegetarian, breakfast is an easy meal out.  There are tons of vegetarian options that are made easily by a typical meat and potatoes greasy spoon.  The downside of breakfast is, because it is so easy to throw a veggie and cheese omelet on a menu and call it good, the average breakfast joint can run a little short on excitement for a vegetarian.  Black beans for breakfast in Boise were a revelation to me. Over in England, I’ve eaten a traditional English Breakfast in which kidney beans are a crucial element, but probably because I live in the Midwest, black beans, or beans of any kind are not a frequent accompaniment to my toast and eggs.  I thoroughly enjoyed them that morning in Boise.*

Back in Minnesota a few weeks later we went to the Mill City Café for breakfast.  We don’t venture all over town to go out to eat as often as we did when we were newly dating with students’ schedules, and without the possession of a respectable kitchen.  Even though Mill City Cafe is clear across the river and a ways North, we return to the Mill City Cafe  now and then for sentimental reasons.**  I was delighted to see black beans listed on the menu as a side dish.  I ordered them and happily gobbled them up with the American Breakfast, giving the choice of bacon or sausage included with my entrée to Bjorn.  After these two tasty introductions to beans for breakfast, I have been including black beans in our breakfasts at home whenever I have a hankering for them.  They are a great vegetarian protein, and work especially well when you are heading toward the brunch hours, or when you have a taste for a savory breakfast, which I so often do.

Black Bean Hash is simple, especially when you start with leftover potatoes, which is the only way potatoes make it to the breakfast table in my house.  I start by frying some diced onions in a little olive oil, depending on my mood, I toss in a little minced garlic, then I add potatoes which are chopped into cubes if they weren’t already cubed in their previous incarnation.  I use canned beans.  I think about switching to dry beans because there are so many good reasons to use them, but so far I haven’t made the move.  My holdup is, takes too long to soak them, and doesn’t work well for me because I like to make last-minute decisions about a meal.  I drain and rinse the beans, add some corn that is either thawed frozen corn, or fresh corn cut off the cob***.  I usually add some chili pepper flakes, and dump in some salsa to pull it all together.  In another pan I started some water to simmer to poach eggs.  I was in the mood for a poached egg for this meal, but the egg would be just as good or better fried, or baked directly in the hash in the oven.

One my favorite things about Southwestern and Mexican cooking is all of the delicious accompaniments that these cuisines invite.  Today, I sliced some avocado, and doused it with a lime juice to keep it fresh and bright, and sprinkled it with sea salt, cracked pepper and some chopped fresh dill from the garden.  I also fried some tortillas to add the lovely, salty crunchy carbohydrate to the meal.  To prepare the tortillas, I sliced them into strips and fried them in a little oil, and then dusted them with some spicy seasonings and a little salt and a squeeze of lime juice to help the seasonings adhere.  Finally, and most importantly for my Tex-Mex accompaniments:  cheese and hot sauce.  I keep several different brands of sauce on hand, and today, I also had some mild and slightly salty Cotija cheese to crumble over the hash.  This meal is quick to make as long as you use leftover potatoes, and it is hearty enough to satisfy for hours.  It is a great weekend breakfast or brunch, but would work equally well for dinner at night.

*Boise is pronounced Boyseee by the locals, FYI.

**We’ve seen a few of our favorite local bands play at the Mill City Café over the years, and we had a very nice Valentine’s Day prix fixe multi-course dinner there on our second Valentines Day together.

***The addition of corn to the beans is a combination that provides an essential Amino Acid.  This is important for me as a vegetarian or any person whose diet is light on meat who needs to try a little bit harder to make sure their diet includes the essential combinations of nutrients.  Bodies cannot produce essential amino acids on their own, and need them to synthesize proteins.

Taco Salad – Mac and Cheese Mashup

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For a person who loves to cook, I sure do struggle to do it sometimes.  The problem isn’t a lack of ingredients.  We keep our fridge, pantry and freezer well-stocked with all of the staples I need to make a healthy and delicious bean and vegetable soup; a roast beef dinner with all of the trimmings or even a simple salad or plate of pasta.  The problem also isn’t a lack of inspiration.  I read enough food magazines and blogs to have enough under 30 minute meals in mind to feed us for months.  The issue is, without a huge amount of free time, and so many tasty restaurants nearby, it is easy to cave in on a night when we’re tired, and go out and relax over a restaurant meal rather than prepare it, and have to clean up afterwards. There is nothing wrong with those relaxing dinners out.  I am so glad to have the freedom to do this sometimes, but we go out more than I’d like to admit, and more than realistically we should on our budget.  Every now and then on those tired days, inspiration strikes, and leftovers pair with an easy pantry staple, and we surprise ourselves by pulling together a quick, easy satisfying meal.  The rules on these nights are:

1.  Use whatever needs using;

2.  Make something yummy that makes you glad you are eating at home;

3.  Make it quickly and with as little mess as possible; and

4.  Work together.  Many hands make light work.

Tonight, the stars aligned over our kitchen, and a very easy, very craveable meal was born, which is best described as a Taco Salad – Mac and Cheese Mashup.  Pictured below, is the vegetarian version.  It was darned good.

Before I go further, let me say a few words about Macaroni and Cheese.  Boxed Macaroni and Cheese, specifically, Kraft Dinner is my ultimate comfort food.  To me, Kraft Dinner is one thing, and Macaroni and Cheese is completely something else.  I really like traditional casserole-style macaroni and cheese made with real cheese now and then, but it is Kraft Dinner that is my true favorite.  I have been making it since I was very very little, and no matter what anyone tells me about preservatives, or orange powdered sauce mix, I don’t care.  I’m always going to eat it.  I love it so much that I wrote a paper in my college composition class called The Kraft Dinner Connoisseur.*  Both Kraft Dinner, and a traditional, from scratch Macaroni and Cheese have a solid place in my recipe repertoire.  Tonight, it is Mac and Cheese, out of a box, yes, but Kraft Dinner, no.  I keep a box of 2% Velveeta Shells and Cheese in the cupboard.  It is a nice portion for two, with some leftovers.  It might be a teeny bit healthier, being that it uses 2% milk fat instead of whole milk fat in the cheese sauce.  And another plus, you can make it even when you have no milk or butter on hand, since all you do is stir the pre-mixed cheese sauce into boiled noodles.   Pictured here is the omnivore version…

I made the Mac and Cheese and added a a nice creamy scoop to our bowls, the rest was leftovers.  Leftover magic!  We had tacos last night, and so we reheated the ground beef taco meat, and the vegetarian Taco Filling by Fantastic Foods** and added a scoop to our respective bowls. Bjorn assembled the fresh taco fixings:  Chopped tomatoes, and avocado, cucumber, chopped green lettuce and radicchio, chopped green onions, salsa, a sprinkle of Monterey Jack cheese and a few crumbled chips.  It was GREAT.  And by great I mean yummy, creamy, and indulgent, and I dare say, somewhat complex, since the meal consisted of two distinct dishes that usually only end up on the same plate at a pot luck.   It met requirements for a meal that needs to satisfy, be quick, use what we have, and require very little cleanup and make us happy to eat at home.  And now, I even crave it when we aren’t in need of a quick fix.  If you aren’t  morally opposed to eating Velveeta 2% Shells and Cheese, and you need a quick and tasty supper, give this mashup a try.

*If a person who wrote a paper in college entitled The Kraft Dinner Connoisseur wasn’t destined to be a food blogger, I don’t know who is.  I got an A.

**Yowza.  For a person who believes in the health benefits of from-scratch home-cooking and avoiding preservatives and commercial foods, I’m really showing my convenience food-using stripes in this post.  I stock a few convenience foods that we eat purposefully because they are delicious and they make life easier.

Caprese Sandwich– the Best Sandwich of the Summer

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Summer is over when I say it is!  Or at least when the weather starts behaving as though autumn has arrived.  As long as I am picking delicious tomatoes from our garden daily, and walking outside comfortably in flip flops at 5 p.m., it is still summer in my books.  No matter what people say, I am not going to yank out the perennials and I’m going to keep watering our vegetable garden until it frosts.   I am not going to eat like it is October yet either.  I’ve got months and months of soups and roasted vegetables ahead of me, and so for this week, while tomatoes are still bountiful, I’m going to live it up, and enjoy the last precious days of delicious tomato season.  A tomato may just be the most tasty and versatile of all of the summer fruits.  I made myself a Toasted Caprese Sandwich that I ate for lunch when I was home alone.  Since I was home alone, there is no meat-eaters counterpart to the sandwich in this post.

If it isn’t obvious, a meat eater would probably enjoy this sandwich just as I did, or with the addition of crispy bacon, and perhaps mayonnaise instead of basil and mozzarella if that person is a BLT purist.

A sandwich that starts with a tomato like this is impossible to mess up.  This one came from our square foot garden in the back yard.   I see some amazing heirloom tomatoes at the Saint Paul Farmer’s Market, which we check out most weekends.  We just walked right by them this year because we have had a regular supply of our own.  To start with, I assembled all of all of the elements of a caprese.  I sliced up the tomato and some fresh mozzarella and coarsely chopped some basil, also just-picked from our garden.  I toasted the bread only slightly.  I like to pile on the toppings, and so I needed the bread to have a little bit of give to keep it all together.  I think any version of a tomato sandwich should be eaten on either really fresh bread or toasted bread.  Without bacon, all of the sandwich elements are cold, and that little bit of heat from the toasted bread lets everything get cozy and comfy and meld together rather than being one ingredient stacked on top of the next.  In addition to the delicious sandwich fillings being a sure win, this sandwich was destined to succeed because it is made on City Rye.  City Bread is my favorite bread in the whole world.  It is made in Winnipeg, Manitoba, where I grew up.  I stock up on Rye and Pumpernickel every time I am there, and when the freezer is empty of City Bread, it is time to go back, or to entice friends down to Minnesota for a visit.*  I don’t think the people of Winnipeg know how lucky they are to have such a prevalence of wonderful bread available in almost all of their grocery stores.  I think it has something to do with the large Ukrainian population in the city.  When the Ukrainians immigrated to Winnipeg, they brought with them wonderful bread baking which is now engrained in the city’s dietary culture.   I am certain that there are other great breads like this in the world, but in Winnipeg, there is no searching.  City Bread is available almost everywhere.  There are even a few other brands of bread that are quite good available in Winnipeg grocery stores.  I grew up with City Bread, so I am partial to that particular bakery, and I accept no substitutes.

I dressed the sandwich with a olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper.  I used a silicon pastry brush to lightly brush the toasted bread and mozzarella with oil and balsamic vinegar.  You only need a touch.

I ate my sandwich with a cup of coffee.  Kind of an odd beverage pairing, I know.  The sandwich was my breakfast and my lunch.  A cold Diet Coke, or a glass of milk would have been a much more appealing option.  This sandwich was the summer’s best.

*Please come, and kindly bring bread.

Linguine with Chunky Vegetable Sauce – A Simple Monday Night Supper

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So many Mondays, we come home and feel too wiped out to cook.  We tend to cook a lot over the weekend.  On Monday we both come home tired, hungry and wanting to relax instead of preparing and cleaning up after a meal.  The obvious result is, many Mondays we go out to eat.  We tend not to plan ahead which leads us to pick a place we know well.  We often issue last-minute invites to family members in the neighbourhood who might want to join us in making the transition back into the weekday grind a little kinder to our weary souls.  The Groveland Tap is right up the street, and it has been a go-to place to meet up for a burger and a tasty beer on these lazy nights.  They have great happy hour specials on beer and appetizers that seem always to be going whenever we’re there.  The Nook is also becoming a regular in the Monday night rotation.  The Nook has a long wait most nights of the week because their burgers are the best.  Monday nights they run a $1.25 mini-burger special after 8:30 p.m., but if we arrive a little earlier than that, we’ve managed to sneak right in before the rush for cheap burgers starts.  We are lucky to have these friendly, casual spots close home to lean on, and especially grateful that we have friends nearby to join us.   The downside is that it becomes a little too easy to get into the habit of never cooking on a Monday.   Lately, we’ve been trying to eat a little healthier, and to eat out a little less to help us stick to our budget.  This is certainly no Nook burger and fries, but it still hits the spot.  It is a simple pasta dish with a chunky vegetable sauce that I’m posting as a reminder to myself that there are some meals that are so quick and consistently delicious that I can even tackle cooking them any night, even on a Monday.

This is a meal that comes together up in 15 minutes or less.  A pasta with a simple sauce can go any direction that our appetites desire.  I grab whatever vegetables I have on hand or that need to be used up.   I almost always have fresh mushrooms in the fridge, peas in the freezer because these are staples in my diet, and favorites that are easy to use in many meals.  There is alway an onion, some sort of pasta and usually a can of good tomatoes in the cupboard too.  If Bjorn is in the mood, it is easy to add chicken or a few frozen meatballs to his plate.  Fortunately, Bjorn is happy enough to go without meat fairly often which makes meal preparation even easier.  I gather, wash and chop the veggies and get some olive oil heating in a pan.  As soon as I remember, I start boiling water for the pasta.  Today I opted for Linguine noodles.  They cook quickly, and they must be al dente to be any good, so I get the sauce almost ready before starting the pasta.  The sauce is simply sautéed onions and mushrooms, depending on mood, garlic.  Once those are cooked, I add a can of San Marzano tomatoes and chop them to manageable chunks in the pan.  For a canned tomato, San Marzano tomatoes are a little spendy, but they are special, as far as canned tomatoes go.  They are only grown in one region of Italy where they get their distinct flavor from volcanic ash present in the soil.  They make pasta with tomato sauce more of a taste treat than a simple, plain tomato sauce straight from the jar.  There is nothing wrong with sauce from the jar, but ever since I discovered San Marzano tomatoes when I have pasta with tomato sauce, it is what I want to taste.  When the sauce is good and bubbly, I salt the pasta water, add the noodles and start a timer.  A few minutes later, I add a few handfuls of peas to the sauce.  I like to drain the linguine out a little short of boiling time and finish cooking it in the sauce.  When I remember to, I reserve a little pasta water to loosen the sauce if I’ve made it too chunky.

If the sauce is chunky enough to count as a serving or two of vegetables, I don’t even make a salad.  I top the pasta with some cheese and a small handful of fresh basil leaves from our garden.  The cheese can be anything from grated Grana Padano to shredded cheddar, although fresh mozzarella is definitely my go-to when it is in the fridge.  This meal is so simple, and so delicious.  Even on Mondays, I’m running out of excuses not to cook.

A Tale of Three Salads…

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I like making a foods that are a concept more than a recipe.  A concept dish has a central idea to it, that you can run with in any direction that you please.  Dishes in this category include pizza, many pasta dishes, a stir fry, a sandwich, many soups and stews, pasta salad, or any salad for that matter.  The structure of a concept dish is based on a few central and necessary components.  For a pizza, this would include a crust and toppings.  It can go anywhere from a traditional tomato sauce/cheese/pepperoni to topping a gluten free pizza crust, vegan “renotta*” and roasted red peppers.   Foods like these accommodate my cooking style.  They allow for imprecision, experimentation, and using whatever is fresh from the garden or farmer’s market.  A conceptual recipe can be influenced by a certain cuisine, or an ingredient in the fridge that needs to get used up.  They can even have multiple influences, such as the salad I’m about to share; one of the most enjoyed meals of the summer which had no less than 3 sources of inspiration.   The first inspiration is the Cobb Salad at Salut in Saint Paul.  I ate this salad several times a week in the count-down days leading up to our wedding when our nightly meal had an agenda and was a business meeting more than a relaxing al fresco dinner at a bustling brassiere across the street from my apartment.  The Salut Cobb salad was a great supper for me in the days leading up to our wedding.  It was a salad, but it was hearty, and it was huge.  I ordered the Cobb with the chicken and bacon on the side, which we took home and added to Bjorn’s lunch the next day.  I also had enough salad left over for my own lunch at work even after being totally satisfied by my supper**.  The Salut Cobb is was a pretty standard Cobb, ingredients-wise:  romaine lettuce, grape tomatoes, avocado, hard-cooked egg, blue cheese and garnished with toasted parmesan crisps.  The salad comes dressed, but the dressing is light.  Still, the salad is rich because of the avocado, blue cheese and eggs.  The salad I made contained the tomato, avocado and egg elements, but the Salut’s main influence on my salad was the fact that I made a salad for supper.  After living on the salad for 2 meals a day for the months of May and June 2009, I became a believer that a salad can be supper.  The second source of inspiration for my salad was a traditional Salad Niçoise.  I don’t eat tuna and anchovy which are central elements of this salad, but I planned to use green beans, eggs, and potatoes (in addition to the already mentioned tomato) and the Niçoise is a salad that says “yes you can” to these ingredients in a cold salad.  The third and most influential inspiration for my salad was the Ensalada Mixta pictured in Summer Made Easy Special Issue of Everyday Food Magazine in an article called Bask Country with food prepared by Aran Goyoaga.  I have already mentioned, this article inspired me to return to blogging after 3 month hiatus earlier this summer.  Aran Goyoaga prepared an Ensalada Mixta for a tapas party featured in the article.  An Ensalada Mixta is a traditional Spanish salad.  Aran Goyoaga served hers stylishly deconstructed, and allured me with its casual elegance and its peeled, soft cooked eggs with their tops cut off.  A behind the scenes photo-journal appears on Aran’s blog, and the salad is pictured, in the center of the first photo, and then again, larger, toward the end of article.  With elements of all of these salads in mind, I made a salad supper we loved with veggies from our backyard square foot garden and the Saint Paul Farmer’s Market which were fresh and lovely and crying to be a part of an uncomplicated summer meal.

I arranged all of the elements of the of Cobb/Niçoise/Ensalada Mixta-influenced salad deconstructed, on a large platter that we were given as a wedding present.  The preparation was extremely simple.  I boiled and then roasted fingerling potatoes from the farmer’s market with olive oil, crushed garlic and chopped rosemary from our garden and sprinkled a little champagne vinegar at the end to make their flavor bright***.  I boiled and peeled eggs, but didn’t manage to get them off of heat in time to make the lovely soft-cooked eggs from the Ensalada Mixta.  I picked and rinsed green and Bibb lettuces and frisée from the garden, and sliced garden tomatoes and fresh mozzarella.  I sprinkled a little salt and fresh-ground pepper to the potatoes, eggs and tomatoes.

I blanched green beans from our garden and corn from the farmer’s market corn and cut it off the cob.

For a dressing, I blended avocado with parsley, salt and pepper and light mayonnaise in the food processor.

I was aiming for a Green Goddess-type dressing.  The avocado concoction began with great ingredients, but turned out heavy with too much mayo, and missed the mark.  I put Olive Oil, Balsamic Vinegar, salt and pepper on the table to allow us to dress our salads to taste on our plates.

There are great salads that contain a set list of vegetables and proteins that are dressed in a particular way, such as a Cobb, a Niçoise, or a Caesar.  My salad was a concept; a sum of it parts –the ideas and ingredients that influenced its creation.  In spite of a less than exceptional dressing, and hard, instead of soft-boiled eggs, it worked out.  We enjoyed its simplicity, and were satisfied by it because so many of its elements were hearty.  Bjorn commented that the meal had a European feel to it, which makes sense in light of elements being inspired by salads native to France and Spain, both cuisines that prize great ingredients, and prepare them without excess complication.   It has its American note to it also, in the Cobb ingredients, avocado and square foot garden-raised vegetables.  I am slowly learning that great ingredients, prepared without unnecessary complication and served simply have such a refreshing and satisfying result.

*I don’t think I can be convinced that a pizza is a Pizza without cheese.  I guess if it became medically necessary for me to eat pizza without cheese due to sudden, extreme lactose intolerance, a pizza like the one I recently read about on the Food in my Beard could perhaps, fill the sad, cheeseless void in my belly.

**I won’t lie.  I always ate the salad with a hunk of Salut’s bread and some cold salty butter that they bring out to start your meal.  This was totally justified, by my choice of a salad as entree, right?  I’m sure the chewy bread and butter helped make a salad so satisfying.

***Thank you to our friends Jenny and Ben for introducing us to this wonderful way to prepare potatoes, based on a recipe by Jamie Oliver.

Existential Crisis and Caprese

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Eggs and toast are a common weekend breakfast at our house.  During the work week we both end up eating a granola bar in the car or when we arrive to our desks most days.  A hot breakfast at home welcomes the weekend.  Eggs and toast is still a quick meal, and the very slight effort it takes to make it yields the satisfying nourishment to remind you it is Saturday and give you the energy to have great day.  Making eggs and toast for breakfast is about as simple as it gets, except if you are me.  I am going through the process of re-learning how to scramble an egg.  I have been scrambling eggs since I was 5 years old, and I thought I had it mastered.   I cracked eggs into a bowl, and mixed them up with chunks of cheese, and cooked them in a frying pan with oil or butter, stirring them occasionally until solid.  I lived under the illusion that cheesy eggs was the only way to eat scrambled eggs until I ate the Simply Scrambled breakfast at the Birchwood Cafe.  In Birchwoods’ Simply Scrambled breakfast, there is no cheese in the eggs!  The eggs are super fresh and a lot creamier and less solid than the eggs I’ve been scrambling for over 25 years.  And they are so good!  I could tell that this is partly due to using extremely fresh eggs which is something I’ve already been using for several years.  These delicious, creamy, plain eggs were a mysterious new experience for me.   I asked a foodie friend for his thoughts about the Birchwood’s egg scrambling technique over a year ago, and he suggested something about only having the eggs on heat for a while, then taking the pan off of the heat letting them cook themselves.  I tried it, and the result was plain, unevenly cooked, verging-on-runny eggs.   Next, I watched Gordon Ramsey do a demo.  When Gordon Ramsey says “every time we get a new cook in the kitchen, we always asked them to make scrambled egg.  If they know how to make perfect scrambled egg, you know they know how to cook properly”  I am sure he is right.  I don’t know how to cook properly.  Since watching this demo, I’ve been undercooking eggs left and right, but using butter and a little milk or sour cream* and finishing them with fresh chives to make them “sexy.”  It might be a patience issue.  I’m not sure.  The good news for us is, Bjorn has not had an existential crisis about scrambled egg preparation.  As in most areas requiring confidence and skill, if I can do it well, Bjorn can do it better; and with a lot less effort.  So we are still eating delicious eggs, scrambled by Bjorn, while I limp along re-learning out how to Properly cook something I’ve been cooking and happily eating since I was a very little kid. 

There are parts of the egg and toast breakfast that I prepare that have not been called on to the carpet for re-evaluation.  I have discovered that eggs and toast is another meal that a slice of tomato makes better.  If you have a decent grocery store tomato, all you have to do is throw a few slices in the frying pan toward the end of cooking the eggs.  The tomato gets a little softer and sweeter and picks up just enough butter or oil from the pan to make it extra luscious.  All it needs is a little pepper and salt.  At the height of tomato and basil season, there is always fresh mozzarella in our fridge, and so fresh, just-sliced garden tomatoes inevitably are paired with fresh mozzarella and basil, a touch of olive oil, balsamic vinegar and the usual salt and pepper.  A caprese is tomato’s perfect foil.  I have mentioned my love of a caprese salad and the fact that I could happily eat them as a part of three meals a day at this time of year.  I wasn’t kidding.   Even for breakfast.  How can I resist with tomatoes like this:

It is our second year with a Square Foot Garden.  Last year we planted 6 tomato plants , and enjoyed tomatoes from our garden into December.  This year we expanded the garden and planted 12 different varieties.  We are luxuriating in an abundance of tomatoes of all shapes, colours and sizes**.  We also have 4 square feet devoted to basil.  I am serious when I say I love this flavour/texture combination.  It is truly a luxury to be able to walk out the back door and pick a medley of herbs to season our breakfast.  This morning I picked Italian Flat Leaf Parsley, Chives, and a little dill in addition to basil.

As a nod to Gordon Ramsey and the Birchwood’s perfect eggs, today our eggs are plain, but ready to be dressed up to taste with a little grated manchego cheese and garden herbs waiting on the side of the plate***.  Having both manchego and fresh mozzarella on the same plate tips the scales towards indulgence, but after a pious week of granola bar breakfasts, perfect scrambled eggs, toast, fresh herbs and a caprese with basil and tomatoes from the garden is an indulgence we can afford.

Then, there is of course, the toast.  The bread today is a dense Italian loaf from the bakery at Cosetta’s Italian Market in Saint Paul.

*Sorry Gordon; we don’t stock crème fraiche in our kitchen.

**Grey squirrels have also been picking our tomatoes and eating just a few bites, much to our frustration and disgust.  We’ve resorted to garden warfare.  Each of the raised beds is surrounded by chicken wire.  We’re using smelly garlic and peppermint squirrel deterrent sprays, and we’re both pretty good aim when we throw a shoe, but we don’t seem to be able to get the squirrels under control.  If there is some kind of a secret weapon against these greedy creatures, I’d love to know about it.

***Maybe I’m not so convinced about the perfection of cheese-less scrambled eggs?!?

Inspired by… Summer Soba

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I am a follower of an ever-growing list of blogs.  If I let myself, I would probably be able to add a new blog to my Favorites every week*.  Most of the blogs I follow are food-related, a few focus on lifestyle, decor or fashion, but mostly, cooking, restaurants and the like.   There are so many creative and fascinating people out there blogging, it humbles a person who is just starting out.  A lot of these fantastic bloggers have better cameras, and more technical agility and more honed culinary skills than I do.  Some of them have even contracted with a web designer.  But this doesn’t deter me, because this is just for fun.  The way I look at it,  if I keep coming back every day to see what these internet personas are doing in their little corner of the world, maybe someone will stumble upon our blog and come back to see what we’re eating and what is inspiring us.   Since I spend a few of my free moments virtually lurking around kitchens of some serious foodies and great chefs, now and then I am inspired to try a recipe, or more even often, create a dish inspired by something delicious-looking I’ve found in a blog.  Hence, a new, soon-to-be recurring feature, Inspired by… which will feature a dish I make that is based on Another Blogger’s Creation**.  I encourage readers to follow the link back to the original blogger’s post.  When I say, my dish is Inspired by… something I don’t mean I’m going to even attempt to recreate exactly what the original blogger did, or show how to make the dish step-by-step.  It is more likely to be a riff on the original.  I like to play fast and loose with recipes, and I am not a Parisienne daily grocery shopper, so I’ll be using what I have on hand.  So, here it goes.  My first Inspired by… begins, where my blog following began, an easy Summer Soba supper, inspired by Macheesmo.

Macheesmo is the first blog I ever followed.  I was googling a recipe for some ingredient I needed to use up, and landed on his site.  Macheesmo is an informational blog written by a guy named Nick, and typically shows a recipe step-by-step.  He has a few recurring features, such as a weekly poll to determine a recipe he’ll make and blog about, and “Homemade Trials” where he attempts to make something from scratch that you’d otherwise buy.  I think he even does research.  As is typical for me, I followed the recipe loosely.  I stir-fried green onions, carrots and button mushroom with a few Thai chilis and green beans from the garden.  The sauce contained soy sauce an sesame oil, but substituted ginger from the spice cupboard for the fresh ginger and champagne vinegar for the mirin.  The Macheesmo recipe contains corn, which sounds great, but wasn’t in my refrigerator.  I topped mine with toasted black sesame seeds and fresh basil from the back yard.

As promised by Macheesmo, the result was a tasty and healthy supper, and an even more delicious cold lunch at work the next day.  It was far tastier than a frozen microwaveable meal which are a noontime standard in the office lunch scene.  Ironically, a co-worker commented “that doesn’t look very appetizing!” when she observed my plate.   The dark colour of the soba noodles, combined with the soy sauce sesame seeds must have thrown her off the trail, because it actually was the best lunch I’ve had in a while.   To each his or her own.  I recommend checking out Macheesmo, and giving the Summer Soba a spin.

*I did in fact just add about 5 to my links, Blogs To Get You Through The Day list.

**Yes, Another Blogger’s Creation purposefully harkens back to Another Bad Creation, (ABC), the 1990’s R&B group from my youth.

Perfect Summer Snack Times Two

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What do you do when you are hungry for a snack and you have a fresh baguette and all of the ingredients for the two perfect summer salads to go with it?  Well if you are almost incapable of avoiding complication in the creation of even the simplest of summer snacks (like me), you make both.

Today’s summer afternoon snack started with a caprese.  I think an insalata caprese would be in the top 3 contenders of foods that I’d want to have to eat on a desert island.  I love them so much that when our garden is kicking out tomatoes and basil like mad, I’m eating them in as many as three meals a day.  They are summer’s loveliest flavour and texture combination.  A luscious tomato, cut thick, with generous slices of fresh mozzarella and just-picked basil leaves floated down upon them; finished with the lightest drizzle of balsamic vinegar and olive oil, salt and maybe a little pepper.  I’m no stickler, but I will mention that these things taste like a million bucks if you’ve grown your own tomatoes and basil, or bought them very fresh from friendly farmer who has.  And the mozzarella-it must be very fresh, milky and on the watery and porous side.  I think the cryo-packed balls can often be as good as the packed-in-water in plastic containers from the grocery store.  So many people love good fresh mozzarella that it is becoming very easy to find and cheap to buy.  Enough about my caprese obsession.  How about a picture of the golden tomato caprese that launched a thousand word paragraph?

This on its own is the perfect summer snack, but there are two hungry people in this house,  and, I’ve also got some lovely dill, fresh eggs and lettuce, so I can’t stop with just the caprese.  I boiled the eggs, or, if you are a student of Martha Stewart –hard cooked them.

Check out these gorgeous fresh eggs that I bought from a man named Fernando who raises them in the little town where I work.

For egg salad, eggs are boiled, peeled, sliced in half and ready to be chopped and combined with a little light mayonnaise, mustard, diced onion and celery and a little pepper and salt to taste, then piled on top of some lettuce and garnished with dill, both from the garden.

There isn’t much more to do then to place the plate between two hungry people to eat with baguette, or on their own.  I put salt and pepper, olive oil and vinegar on the table, to adjust flavours, as needed.  We dove in.  It was fresh, flavourful and satisfying; the perfect summer snack.

Chicago Dog Days of Summer

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If I were a followed blogger, I’d have to apologize for the long silence.  Some day!  For now, it’s a good thing to have zero followers.  Summer arrived, and I started filling my free moments with being outside, gardening, cookouts, trips to the lake and general summer fun and relaxation.  I got re-inspired to return to our blog by an article I read recently in the Summer Made Easy Special Issue of Everyday Food Magazine called Bask Country about a tapas party with food prepared by Aran Goyoaga, a pastry chef, blogger and cookbook author, written by Jean Lear, photographed by John Kernick.  I read the lines “She started blogging as a way to keep track of the baking she was doing at home….Soon her serene, light-filled aesthetic–captured by her photographs as well as her prose found a loyal readership.”  Now, that is what I was thinking of when I started this blog.  I immediately jumped up and grabbed my camera and my laptop.  And then I encountered a bunch of boring computer and camera problems and had to save this post for another day.  Problems solved…  Here is my first attempt at recreating a close approximation of an authentic Chicago-style hotdog.

First, I had a little shopping to do in order to top the dogs properly.  Chicago dogs come with sliced tomatoes, mustard, onions, a dill pickle spear, a funny little pepper called a Sport Pepper, and a sprinkling of celery salt on a poppy seed bun.

Its been a hot summer, so an advantage to the Chicago dog is that it can be made on the grill.  I brushed the buns lightly with butter in order to help adhere poppy seeds to the top.

The meat version, served with a side of grilled sweet corn, with butter, pepper and salt, of course, and a few strips of bacon, for good measure.

The veggie version, is a close approximation of the classic chicago dog, except with with a vegetarian dog, and of course, all of the essential chicago dog fixings.  I enjoyed mine with a cob of grilled corn, a slice of watermelon and cukes & onions with dill, vinegar with salt, pepper.  A tasty escape to the Windy City!