Wedding Favors

So I'm getting married! Wow. I haven't written about this on my blog yet; sadly, I've been spending all of my blogging time on another site, the Off Beat Bride Tribe. I keep a running journal of wedding planning updates there, but the last update overlaps with this blog, so here you have it.

The only person who will truly know what I went through to create my wedding favors will be my BFF/maid of honor, and who I call my Top Chick, but for here will be referred to as M. I had 160 little jars shipped to her place because there's no room for them in my apartment in Brooklyn, and I drove myself, 75 hot peppers, and a food processor to her house this weekend to make my favors. We got up early to go to the green market near her house for 30 bell peppers (I didn't get them at home at my own green market on Saturday because I was afraid they wouldn't keep all week), ran some errands, and I got started chopping at around noon. I was committed to using local ingredients, so everything that went into these little buggers came from either my green market at Grand Army Plaza or her green market in Phoenixville, PA. I was going to use the peppers that are growing on my back balcony, but I didn't get a bumper crop this season, so I had to settle for someone else's.

I chopped half of the hot and bell peppers by hand so that the relish wouldn't be too mushy, and chopped up the other half in the food processor. I was chopping for FIVE STRAIGHT HOURS! Tomatillos go in the recipe, too, and I ran into a huge problem when the tomatillo skins got stuck in her garbage disposal unit. I had to fish around in there with my bare hands to clear it up, and even then, I had to use some Liquid Plummer. By 5:30, the relish was brining and my hands were burning like a &$((##@. I consulted an article on Chow about how to soothe burning hands after cutting chiles (Avoiding Chile Eyeball), and jumped in the car to buy some lemons, lemon juice, and yogurt.

You should have seen me at Target wheeling around a cart resting my hands on two frozen bags of edamame, and then in the parking lot pouring lemon juice over my hands.

It took me from about 8 pm until 11:30 to rinse the brine, drain the relish, wash the little jars, spoon in about 5 teaspoons into each jar, and then pour boiling hot vinegar syrup in each little jar. By the time Saturday Night Live came on, I was sitting on the floor with a glass of wine and each hand dunked into a big bowl of yogurt. Quite a sight (and very difficult to drink the wine). I was only able to do about 115--I ran out of relish. So I'll do the remaining 50 or so as sweet pepper relish this weekend. I don't think I can handle another batch of the hot anytime soon. I guess that answers my question about switching careers.

Lemon Pepper Chicken on Shitake Farro

I've been looking all over for farro for about a year. None of my usual spots carries it.

I read about it on someone else's blog, and I had to travel all the way to San Francisco to find it. Everytime I visit my friends in San Francisco, I visit the Rainbow Grocery Cooperative, and I always find stuff that I can't find back East. I usually pack an extra bag so that I can bring back groceries from this place. http://www.rainbow.coop The last time I was there, I brought back heirloom beans, three different kinds of salt, and mission burrito shells. This time I got the farro, blue cornmeal, and orecchiette (literally, "little ears," or "lambs ears pasta"). We cooked the orecchiette with homemade pesto, inspired by our lunch at Chez Panisse which we visited while in the Bay Area.

I finally made the faro last week, which is actually spelt. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farro I cooked it with shitake mushrooms from the green market, topped with lemon pepper chicken breast strips and lemon-butter sauce with thyme. It was a delicious meal.

Shitake Farro

3 T olive oil
2 cloves garlic. each cut in half lengthwise
1/2 cup diced red onions
1 cup sliced shitake mushrooms
1/4 cup marsala wine
1 Tbsp chopped fresh thyme
3 cups cooked farro

To make 3 cups cooked Farro:
1 cup farro
1 3/4 cups water
pinch salt

First, boil your water so that you're ready to use it in the faro, which you'll toast next. Place farro in a dry, cast iron pan and heat it until it starts to smell roasted, maybe 3-4 minutes. Shift the farro around with a wooden spoon or other cooking implement. Turn off the heat, and then carefully pour the boiling water over the farro. Add salt, simmer and cover and cook until the farro is tender and chewy. This may take 20-30 minutes and you may have to add a bit more water.

Heat oil in another cast iron pan, add the onion and garlic and saute until onions are starting to soften, about 3 minutes. Add sliced mushrooms and stems, season with salt, and saute over medium high heat until mushrooms have released their liquid and are well browned, about 5 minutes or longer.

Stir in the marsala/water mixture and cook until liquid is mostly evaporated, about 2 minutes. Add chopped thyme, and then add thecooked farro and heat 2-3 minutes, stirring gently. You may need to add some water to keep the farro moist. Heat through and you'll be ready to serve.

Lemon-Pepper Chicken
This is the simplest part of the whole dish. You can prepare the chicken en paillard, in strips, chunks, or as whole or half breasts--on the bone or off.

Chicken (enough for your guests, plus some for lunch!)
Lemons
Salt
Peppers
Olive oil

Heat the oil in a pan until it's smokin' hot. Add the chicken, season with salt and pepper, then squeeze the lemon(s) over the chicken when it's just starting to brown. You can throw the lemon (in slices, or chunks) right into the pan with the chicken. Brown the chicken until it's cooked, and until it's cooked to your liking.

Lemon-Thyme Butter Sauce

2 tbsp. ghee (or clarified butter)
(if you're making it from scratch, you'll need abt 1/2 stick butter)
2 tbsp finely-minced yellow onion
2 tbsp finely-minced garlic
6 tbsp fresh lemon juice
2 tbsp dry white wine
Kosher salt to taste
Freshly-grnd white pepper to taste
2 tbsp cool butter

To clarify butter: Heat 1/2 stick butter over low heat. When melted, remove from heat and set aside for several min to allow the lowfat milk solids to settle to the bottom. Skim the clear (clarified) butter from the top and throw away sediment. (This can be done ahead.)

To make sauce: Heat clarified butter, add in onion and garlic and saute/fry till transparent. Add in lemon juice and white wine and season to taste with salt and pepper. Simmer 2 to 3 min to reduce liquid. Remove from heat and swirl in cool butter till sauce is smooth and emulsified.

Food on the West Coast Road Trip

A relative recently asked me why I hadn't posted in so long.....well, D and I got engaged! And I recently became a replacement for my boss who went out on maternity leave! So I've been busy...and not paying attention to the blog. But D and I are on a trip from Laguna Beach to San Francisco, and we've had an interesting culinary experience along the way:

Plane Food

Korean BBQ

Chinese Food--LA Chinatown

Hawai'ian Restaurant in Pasadena

Laguna Beach

In "n Out Burger

Wahoo's

Clam Chowder, salad, and Calamari

Frank and ....whatsername?


Half Moon Bay


Peets....


Alcatraz


Dinner with Friends--Artichoke, pasta, local, bio-dynamic wine


Rainbow Grocery


Chez Panisse


Home


Brunch in the Mission

Denver-inspired Sweet Potato Pancakes with Honey-Cinnamon Butter and Pecans

I was in Denver, Colorado last week to watch D play a frisbee tournament, but ended up not watching too much frisbee. Another of the players had a 6-year old daughter who kindly accompanied me to some Denver-area restaurants. We joined another friend there for Saturday brunch at a restaurant called Snooze on the recommendation of a co-worker in New York who used to work there. She said, "You simply must try the sweet potato pancakes." So we did. The entire meal was delicious (we all shared the sweet potato pancakes, chocolate chip pancakes, and poached eggs with hash and English muffins--the best I've ever had in my life, and discussed in a separate blog entry here). But I was underwhelmed by the sweet potato pancakes, so I just had to try my hand at them.

This weekend, we went to our friend's country house in Pennsylvania and spent time with a mutual friend who was up from Florida. D thought the sweet potato pancakes would be too heavy for a summer morning, but I was determined to make them better than Snooze did. They turned out really well, and we couldn't have asked for better company or a setting--at a lovely table on a porch by a noisy river. I served them with sweet chicken and roast pepper sausage, honey-cinnamon butter, pecans, and maple syrup.

Sweet Potato Pancakes

2 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup white flour
3 tsp baking soda
6 tbsp brown sugar
3 tsp cinnamon, 2 tsp nutmeg
3 cups milk, 3 eggs, 5 tbsp butter
1 1/2 cup boiled or roasted mashed sweet potatoes
1/2 cup chopped pecans

Mix dry ingredients together (you can even do this days ahead of time, or before a trip to impress a host if you go visiting). Stir in the moist ingredients until well-blended. Ensure that the batter is drippy enough, but not too drippy. Heat a generous amount of oil in a pan and drop in approximately 1/4 cup or 3 tbsp of the batter until browned on either side. Serve with honey-cinnamon butter, a sprinkling of chopped pecans, and heated maple syrup.

Frisbee Kirbys

D has been playing frisbee since he was like 12 years old. He's been to both national and international championships multiple times. This summer, he joined a Grand Masters team--men over 40--in a tournament in Denver, Colorado. I wanted to do something special to support the new team. A few times, I've brought out big containers of cookies or brownies that they guys munched up after their last game. I wanted to do something healthier this time.

For the past few years, from the sidelines I've seen the guys chugging pickle juice from big jars of Vlasic pickles that they kept in coolers. Apparently, pickle juice helps with muscle cramping in athletes. I don't know if it's the vinegar, or a complex interaction of the ingredients, but I knew what I had to do. (info about the benefits of pickle juice in muscles here). So I made a big batch of kirby dills a few weeks before the tournament, and then packed them very carefully in a big plastic container, quadruple wrapped them, and put them in my checked luggage. I had a lot to think about before this trip--a lot of work stuff going on, things to do....but the safety and security of the pickles on the plane was really my biggest concern. They arrived safely with a very minimal amount of leakage and I brought them out during their second day of play. I think they liked them, though I regret not getting a picture of them digging in to the jar from the sidelines.

D's master's team made it to nationals in Sarasota, Florida this year, and I wanted to send him down with another batch of pickles. I bought about 24 persian cucumbers and socked them in ice water for two days, but then I found myself too busy to finish the picklemaking in time enough for me to be confident in their taste to send them down for the team. I cut them up, packed them in a big glass jar, and they stayed behind when D boarded the plane for Florida.


I wish I would have sent them because they were delicious, and they would have been fine after sitting for a few days in his hotel room. Oh well. Now we have a big old jar of pickles to eat ourselves!

Naturally Occurring Salad Greens

Last year, my friend took me to a swanky localvore joint just North of the meatpacking district in Manhattan called The Cook Shop (http://www.cookshopny.com) and we had a purslane, goat cheese, and blueberry salad. When the waiter put the plate in front of me, I recognized the greens: I had pulled up and disposed of every single one of them from my balcony garden in Brooklyn because I wrote them off as weeds. I vowed to bring them back and cultivate them this year, and it's working. Just the other day, I was able to harvest a handful and toss them in our salad. Delicious. Check out the nutrition benefits of purslane:

http://landscaping.about.com/cs/weedsdiseases/a/purslane.htm.

This experience definitely made me rethink an article that a friend wrote when we were in college called: Why is a Weed a Weed? I can't wait to have enough purslane on the porch to make my own blueberry and goat cheese salad. I'll be sure to post a photo.

Now that's camping!

camping

Blog-productivity has suffered this summer because D and I have been traveling so much. There's not much to say about this meal in terms of preparation, but it can't go unrecorded. We drove to Letchworth State Park a few weeks ago--about an 8-hour drive from Brooklyn. I was on a work trip and D came to meet me on the train. We drove from where I was staying about 3 hours to Letchworth, and then broke the trip up on the way back by stopping at my parents. Letchworth is known as the Grand Canyon of the East, and it was simply beautiful.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letchworth_State_Park

On the way to the campground, we stopped at a supermarket and picked up a grass-fed beef steak, fresh ears of corn, asparagus, and heirloom tomatoes. When we got to the campsite, we set up the tent, made some margaritas, and chopped up some garlic and spices to marinate the steak in (with olive oil, salt, and pepper). A friend brought back some spices in a little decorative container from Zanzibar, and we just used those--saffron, sesame, cumin, and I think some sort of red pepper spice. We put the marinating steak in a plastic bag and tucked it away in the cooler and headed off for a hike.

When we returned, D sparked up the fire, set up the grill, and we laid it all out. One flip on the grill, and voila. Shortly before sundown, we were enjoying this lovely meal under the trees.

Roofkebabs

We spent a beautiful day in the park and decided to extend the day outdoors and barbeque on the roof for the first time this season. I had marinated some buffalo sirloin cubes earlier in the day so when we got home, we just soaked some bamboo skewers and arranged red pepper, tomato, pineapple chunks, and the sirloin cubes. We invited a friend over at the last minute, and she contributed some tomatillos and green peppers to the mix. We added some fresh local asparagus from the farmer's market and it was a feast.

Buffalo Roofkebabs

1 lb sirloin cubes (you can use beef, we used buffalo)
1 tbsp honey
1 tbsp tamari
1 tbsp olive oil
3 minced garlic cloves
3 tsp minced ginger
salt, pepper, drops of sriracha sauce
1 green pepper, cut into squarish pieces
1 cup cubed pineapple
1 red pepper, cut into large squarish pieces
3 tomatillos and one large red tomato, cut into chunks

Marinate the meat cubes in all of the ingredients mixed to the green pepper for the day (at least two hours). Arrange pieces of each ingredient on bamboo skewers and cook over grill until meat is seared and vegetable/fruit browned. Serve with some veggies or over rice, we served our kebabs with asparagus.

When in doubt...

...or when creativity eludes, we opt for burgers. We always use local and/or grassfed beef or buffalo. Very little fat, and the taste is so much different (and better) than cheaper burgers. A pound of ground sirloin is around $6, and you get at least four meals of out it (you figure, 1/4 pound burgers, plus we add in a lot of stuff). The mixture is always a little different, but in general, this is how we make it. We had mini-burgers with broccoli, mushrooms, and green peppers on the side.

Simple Grass-Fed Burgers

1 lb ground sirloin
1 medium onion, chopped
3 cloves of garlic, diced
splash of soy sauce or tamari
squeeze of barbeque sauce
splash of steak sauce
squeeze of sriracha sauce
chopped green pepper
chopped mushrooms
breadcrumbs (optional)
salt, pepper, paprika

Form into burger-sized patties, cook in olive oil in a cast iron skillet. Serve with veggies and splashes of hot sauce (chipotle and green tobasco sauce pictured here).