Feeling Veggie

My favorite, all time summer food is grilled veggies. If you serve it with a side of roasted red pepper dip, I don't need another thing. Well, maybe a glass of wine to help wash it down. I don't think I've ever shared this recipe (from an old Bon Appetit), so here goes:

Roasted Red Pepper Dip

2 large garlic gloves 1/2 cup diced drained roasted red pepper from jar (or your own roasted ones)1/2 teaspoon red wine vinegar 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper 1/2 cup mayonnaise

With processor running, drop garlic through feed tube and mince. Scrape down sides of bowl. Add roasted pepper, vinegar and cayenne and process until mixture is almost a smooth purée. Add 1/4 cup mayonnaise and process using on/off turns just until combined. Transfer sauce to a small bowl; mix in remaining 1/4 cup mayonnaise. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Cover and refrigerate at 30 minutes. (Can be prepared 1 day ahead. Keep refrigerated.)
Place dip in center of platter. Arrange vegetables around dip and serve. The dip is great with cold crudite or warm grilled veggies.

(If you've never grilled your own veggies, it is time to get started! Just choose some good ones, prepare by peeling, chopping or slicing, then drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with coarse salt and pepper, then grill on a medium temperature grill until they have the right amount of grill marks and appear soft. Be careful with mushrooms and asparagus... they go fast!)

Boys in the Kitchen

We harvested our first ever cabbage from our garden last week and declared that a big bowl of coleslaw was in order to celebrate.
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The boys hauled up the food processer from the basement (an old-school one that once belonged to my grandma) and tried to patiently take turns running it.
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We're really into making our own salad dressing, but there is no better coleslaw sauce than Rudolph's.

Using up the Veggies

My dear friend Stephanie came to visit last week with her boyfriend Rolf. They live in Angola (in SW Africa where they speak Portuguese) and she visits the midwest once a year. Minneapolis and Iowa are always her stopovers to see friends and family and we happily play hosts for as many days as she allows us. We had a lovely time hanging out... cooking, eating, drinking, playing with the kids, remembering old times, taking a cooking class at Cook's of Crocus Hill, going to the cabin and more. We had a few friends over for a last minute barbeque, or as Rolf calls it, "a brai." I think that is the S. African way of saying "amazing BBQ."
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Ron and Rolf were in charge of all-things-grill and meat while Stef and I took over the crisper drawer and its overabundance of vegetables from several CSA shipments that hadn't been completely used up. Our goal was to use as many of those veggies as we could. I think we did pretty well: roasted vegetables with sundried tomato dip, refrigerator pickles with radishes and cucumbers and fresh dill, a Swedish beet salad with apples, onions, sour cream, a bit of lemon juice and s/p, and then a salad we had noticed at Whole Foods and tried to replicate with beet greens, swiss chard, shredded carrots, sesame oil and ginger. The steaks and chicken legs were amazing, but I found myself more impressed with the potatoes and onions individually wrapped and placed in the coals in the bottom of the wood-fired grill. I don't know if the men were more excited to eat it that night while it was fresh, or the next morning heated up for breakfast. Mmmm.

Summer Is: Homemade Pizza

There's nothing like discovering there's nothing that looks good for dinner... and then rallying with something that everyone loves. This time it was pizza. I remembered about 20 minutes before Ron came home that I had a bucket of Artisan Bread in Five dough in the basement fridge. Shredded mozz from the freezer, a can of stewed tomatoes from the cupboard and a few bits of this and that. Mmmmm. Just add a cold beverage and your loved ones. Welcome to summer.

Smokin' and Grillin'

Ron and his friend Pat are going to be in a Barbeque contest this summer. To prepare for it and to enhance his techniques, Ron recently acquired a very cool new addition to our entertaining palate. A smoker. A very big, sturdy, serious smoker.
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This weekend he went to the store and bought a little bit of everything, from a whole chicken to peaches, in order to give the smoker its maiden voyage on our driveway. I don't know who had more fun... Ron and his glass of scotch, thermometer and tongs, or me, watching him on the driveway totally immersed in his element.
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I'm looking forward to many, many more afternoons of the same this summer. Bon appetit!

Summer Cooking Begins

We had some friends over for dinner this weekend. We may have finally perfected carnitas, the tasty, tender and stringy pork that is served in Mexican restaurants around the world. Ron and I have both tried our hand at figuring it out.... inventions, recipes, tips... but nothing matches the stuff at real Mexican joints.
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Finally, we got an insider tip. A friend of Ron's lives by the owner of a local Mexican favorite. Ron mentioned his love of carnitas and our eternal dilemma in preparing them. He received a phone call a few days later wondering if he could hop over to the restaurant because they were working on the big batch for the week. The secret recipe? We couldn't believe it. A marinade/sauce that contains whole milk, coke, beer, garlic paste and three oranges. 450 degrees for 4 hours in a tightly sealed pan. What? It is enough to make my stomach curdle, but the results were quite tasty.

The corn here is our favorite from Rick Bayless, a chef now made famous by the Obamas and their love for his Chicago restaurant Topolobambo. You use fresh corn cut off the cob, then roasted in a hot cast iron pan without any oil or butter, add some finely chopped serrano peppers, then once they are lightly charred, add salt that has been dissolved in water and some lime juice, along with a handful of chopped cilantro. Mmmm. It even tastes good the next day served cold.

Gotta love guacamole. Even the kids like to eat it. Mmmm, good. Wanna come over for dinner soon?

Dinner with old friends

Last week a dear old friend from college came to town with her family. They live in Virginia and have lived in many far-away locations since they were married 11 years ago. Suffice it to say, we don't see eachother very often. Julie and I were thrilled to be able to get our families together for a few sweet hours. My new favorite style of salad. Greens from the yard, fresh shucked corn, tomatoes, chopped fresh mozzarella (wish I could say that I made it... not yet!) and a splash of olive oil and red wine vinegar, some s & p. I used to fret a lot over dressings because I don't care for the bottle variety very much. Every salad dressing I made was painstakingly researched and usually good, but not worth making again. I was never quite happy... until now. Go figure..I just toss in a few good ingredients, no measuring... and it is perfect!
Re-visiting the mushroom risotto we invented this summer. Three kinds of mushrooms. Yum!
A quick trip to the farmer's market for local veggies... and my own red onions saved from the garden.
A fruit tart with the last of the red and yellow raspberries fom our garden.

Four boys and a girl... imagine the wild evening we had! Thankfully our husbands took care of the kids for a while in the yard while we sipped wine and finished making dinner in the kitchen.

Summer Cooking:: part 3

Another summery salad. This time it is "tomate con choclo" or tomatoes with corn, easily the most popular salad in Chile. Throughout the year I lived in Chile, I'm sure I ate this once a week. Fresh corn, boiled and cut off the cob, chopped tomatoes and fresh basil from our garden, some s&p, and a little oil. Mmmm. So summery!

Here is the rest of the meal. Ron's homemade mac & cheese with a crunchy bread crumb topping and salmon sandwiches. Actually, the salmon was baked with a few spices on it, then put on a fresh, soft bun with ample mayonaise and a fistfull of chopped cilantro. Summer on a bun.

Every one loves a little watermelon with their meal!

And here's Aren, enjoying our new summer fun, the kegerator that will eventually be brought to the farm. In the meantime, it sits in the garage with a keg of Premium. Ahhh, summer.

Summer Cooking:: part 2

Another summer salad, compliments of a perfect issue of Bon Appetit last summer. This one is called Farmer's Market Salad with Spiced Goat Cheese Rounds. I made it the first time last summer when my mom, sister and I took our kids to my parents' cabin for "Grandma Camp." Just moms and kids and lots of fun. After the kiddies went to bed, we heated things up in the kitchen. Well, my salad wasn't exactly heating up the kitchen, as the cooked ingredients can be prepared ahead of time and tossed at the last minute. A perfect salad to use the fresh ingredients coming in from the market or your garden. Don't have a few of these things? Just improvise. I added a little bit of crumbled bacon instead of olives and tomato wedges instead of cherry tomatoes. The greens were from our garden. Of course, we found a few blades of grass, but that adds to the experience, right?

We fed the kids first, then set up our little dinner-for-two in the yard while the kids rode their bikes up and down the driveway and sidewalk. Louise mostly tried to eat dirt, but rode her bike a little. Check out the HUGE blackberry bush behind me. It has been the most prolific plant in our yard, all thanks to a little bird or squirrel who planted the original seed. Thank you, who ever you were! Carl and Gus thank you for their purple fingers and happy bellies every night.

Mmm... yummy new-to-me goat cheese. Ever tried Ile-de-France goat? Tangy and soft, just the slightest bit dry to please your palate. It held up quite well with my recipe when I sliced it and rolled it in spices. I love that it comes in a large portion, not just the stingy small rolls I most often find at the grocery store. When I buy goat cheese, I want it to be around for a little while so I can use it in a few recipes, or sneak into it when no one is looking. Although I tend to look for local cheeses, I would definitely recommend Ile de France for cooking. Notice the thyme flowers? I dig the way they look on a plate, so I added them to our salads for a garnish.

Summer cooking:: part 1

I love summer food. The ingredients coming out of my yard and local farmer's markets are so inspiring. We had some mushrooms leftover from another recipe and I decided to figure out how to do a mushroom risotto.

I have a standard recipe from Moosewood Low-Fat Favorites that I can make in my sleep with my eyes closed (well, not really...) but I had never tried it with mushrooms. I couldn't figure out how to incorporate the mushrooms in the steps with sauteing the onions, then adding the rice to the oil, then adding the wine, then the broth... how was I supposed to get those mushrooms to release their delicious flavors? I frantically called a few of my foodie friends who would have known the scoop... but no one answered! I punted, and just sauteed them in a separate pan til they were soft and dreamy, then deglazed the pan with a little of the broth for the risotto, resulting in a dark, rich mushroomy liquid that I added to the risotto a few minutes before it was done. The results? A big thumbs up from Ron. And Louise. The boys? Not so much. A shave of fresh romano to the top, and voila... a delicious, beautiful summer dinner.

The salad is one from a Bon Appetit magazine a while back, with grape seed oil and white balsamic vinegar in the dressing, along with a shallot and some spices. Light and perfect. Added a few broken up pieces of bacon and almonds sauteed in the bacon grease (because I didn't have the pancetta it called for on hand)... a complex flavored salad. The other side dish has sugar snap peas, green beans and mushrooms along with basil and mint from the garden. What a flavor! Another dish from Moosewood Low Fat.