Cooking from Scratch
We’ve gotten a number of cabbages from our CSA this year, and, for the most part, we turned them into our Light Coleslaw. It’s easy, cool for summer, and it uses a lot of cabbage, making it great to put together for a lunch or dinner side dish. But, after making Light Coleslaw three or four times, it’s time for a change. So, we came up with this Asian-insipred version of coleslaw. Try it and let us know what you think.
Continue reading “Asian Peanut Slaw”
Sometimes we get green tomatoes in our weekly CSA share. Having grown tomatoes, we know that’s just the way tomatoes grow. They keep producing tomatoes, and some of them don’t get the time to ripen. Perhaps they’re knocked off the vines while harvesting ripe tomatoes, or, more likely, the season’s coming to an end and there are still a lot of tomatoes of varying ripeness on the vines, so you pick them before the first frost.
So, we know why we get green tomatoes, but we haven’t found a great way to eat green tomatoes. Sure, we’ve tried fried green tomatoes, and slipped a few green tomatoes into sauces to use them, and we’ve even made green tomato relish, but nothing stands out as a great way to eat green tomatoes.
Continue reading “Quick-Cured Green Tomatoes with Fried Pecans”
Whew! After all that cake last week, we need something light, like a salad. We often have salads and generally don’t write them up because they’re basically wash, chop, and add dressing, but this salad tasted so good that we thought that we’d share it with you.
Continue reading “Arugula, Pomegranate, and Goat Cheese Salad”
For the last week or so, we’ve had lighter lunches, mainly consisting of a bit of bread, some cheese, vegetables, and fruit — the fruit we’ve been getting has been so good lately that we’ve made a concerted effort to make sure that we get our five-a-day. These lunches have been just perfect: the bread is always homemade, but, then, all our bread is; the cheese varies from day-to-day, and the vegetables have been things like broccoli florets, cucumber slices, and carrot sticks. Nothing exotic, just whatever has looked fresh and tasty.
Also, last week, we checked out a book from the public library (perhaps the greatest human institution ever) filled with recipes and ideas specifically for lunch: Continue reading “Carrot and Poppy Seed Salad with Rye Bread”
On returning from vacation, we basically had three potatoes in the house. Just three medium purple potatoes, which doesn’t seem like enough to turn into any sort of interesting meal. Oh, sure, we could just microwave and eat them. Tasty, to be sure, but we thought that we could do better. Maybe try something new (to one of us) with these purple potatoes. What do you think? Up for scratchin’ out a new potato dish? We thought so. Us, too.
Continue reading “German Potato Salad”
First, there’s no trout in this salad, angry or otherwise. The name comes from one of the best restaurants up along the North Shore. What, you don’t know where the North Shore is? All right, the North Shore is along Lake Superior in Minnesota. A beautiful area that we love to visit and drive. And, every time we do, we spend a night in Grand Marais, so we can walk down and have dinner at the Angry Trout Cafe.
We found the restaurant’s website the first time we were traveling the North Shore, and we really liked their commitment to their neighbors and to sustainability. That was enough to get us in the door. Of course, their food is so good, it’s our number one rated restaurant in the area. And now, fellow scratchers, you can see why.
Ingredient discussion.
Wild rice is not actually rice. Technically, it’s the seed of a grass. And, yes, we know that wild rice is expensive in the stores, but if you really like it, you might try finding it online and in bulk. Tamari sauce, what’s that? It’s basically a soy sauce made from real soy beans, not like the popular brands on most store shelves which are made from salty brown water (read the ingredients list so you know what you’re buying). Different brands have different flavors; the one we like is San-J Organic Tamari. We like it and it’s widely available. For the shiitakes, we used dried mushrooms that we rehydrated, about 8 medium caps total.
Procedure in detail.
Cook wild rice. Wild rice takes longer to cook that regular rice; we’ll give you our method that seems to work pretty well. Rinse the rice once or twice, then put it in a large saucepan with 4 cups of water. Bring it to a boil, reduce heat to a simmer, cover, and simmer for about 40 minutes. Turn off heat and let rice stand for about 30 minutes more. The grains will have burst open, but will still retain some chewiness. Finally, drain off excess water and place rice in a serving bowl.
Cook celery and onion. In a small skillet over medium-high heat, cook the onion and celery, along with a teaspoon of the oil, until tender and just beginning to brown. Add to wild rice.
Cook mushrooms. Return the skillet to the stove, add the remaining tsp of oil, and turn the heat to high. We want to sear those mushrooms to bring out the flavor. Let the oil get nice and hot, then add the mushrooms. Spread them out in a single layer and let them sizzle away, undisturbed, for 2 to 3 minutes. Stir to turn over the mushrooms, and again let them sizzle for another 2 to 3 minutes. Add to wild rice.
Add everything else. Add the peas, cranberries, salt, and tamari to the wild rice and stir to combine.
Serve. You can serve this dish hot, room temperature, or cold. It’s an all-purpose side.
We made this side for a party and selected it for four reasons. One, no one else is likely to bring a wild rice salad, at least not in Tucson. Two, it’s gluten-free, so those who avoid gluten can eat it. Three, it tastes good even if it has warmed up. And, four, you can make it ahead of time. We think this is one of the best ways to have wild rice, so, if you have a box in the cupboard that you just don’t know what to do with, consider making wild rice salad, the Angry Trout way (stop in next time you’re in Grand Marais, MN; we think you’ll enjoy your meal). Five stars.
Years ago, before we became dedicated scratchers, we would try different Caesar salad dressings from the store, but we could never find one with which we were entirely happy. Most were just plain bad: too much salt, too much garlic, too bland, and so on. The least bad of those we tried was supposedly the original Cardini’s Caesar dressing, and we got our Caesar salad fix from that for a number of years. But, one thing bothered us: the ingredients list. We knew that the salad was invented sometime in the 1920s, but the ingredients list had items that wouldn’t have been available. Things like: soybean oil, xanthan gum, corn syrup, caramel color, rosemary extract. This could not be Caesar Cardini’s original recipe.
Continue reading “Caesar Salad”
