Saturday, September 17, 2011
Ratatouille as Pasta Sauce . . Who Knew?
I head to Chicago tomorrow for 5 days so the cupboards are a little bare. After several hours of packing I needed something comforting - I hate packing! Pasta is always easy to whip up with some canned tomatoes to make a quick sauce. When I was looking in the fridge for some veggies I saw the rest ratatouille I had turned into dip. Heck that has lots of veggies in it and great flavour. I cooked up some pasta - a new type for me - trottole by Archer Farms that I got at Target. And heated the ratatouille in a saute pan. When the pasta was done I added it to the sauce and used some of the pasta cooking water to loosen the sauce a bit. Sprinkle with Parmesan and a quick, delicious dinner!
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Ratatouille!!!
I have been itching to make ratatouille for several weeks now ever since I got my first eggplant from the CSA. Tonight was the night! Ratatouille is a traditional, French Provencal stewed vegetable dish. Julia Child's recipe called for individually saute the vegetables and then layering. I have mixed the vegetables in an aluminum pouch and steamed them on the grill before for a quick ratatouille. Tonight I took the more traditional approach and sauteed them in a huge pan with lots of olive oil. I also used almost every fresh herb I still had in the garden but I did add a pinch of dried, herbes d'provence because quite a few recipes called for it and it includes fennel, lavender and savory.
I served the ratatouille with a roasted, rosemary chicken and it was a delicious dinner! I had a second serving of ratatouille. I think I am going to take the leftover and pulse it in a food processor and serve it with some pita chips as a dip. Or I may just eat it midnight . it was that good!
RATATOUILLE
Olive Oil
1 large vidalia onion, diced
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1 red bell pepper, diced
1 yellow bell, diced
1 small green bell pepper, diced
1 yellow squash, diced
1 zucchini, diced
1 medium eggplant, diced
5 plum tomatoes, diced
Salt
Crushed Red Pepper
2 sprigs of rosemary, minced
3 sprigs thyme, minced
1 sprig green oregano. minced
Pinch dried herbes d'provence
10 mint leaves, minced
Handful parsley, minced
Handful of basil, minced
Pour enough olive oil to coat the bottom of a large pan. Add the onions with a little salt and start sweating them for 3-5 mins over medium high heat. Add garlic and cook for 1-2 minutes. Then add all 3 peppers - I don't typically like green bell pepper but I got a small one my CSA this week so I used it here. I also seasoned again with salt and added some crushed red pepper. After letting the pepper cook down a little I added the squash & zucchini and cooked for 3 minutes or so. Then added the eggplant and seasoned again with salt & crushed pepper. Add the tomatoes with the rosemary, thyme, oregano and herbes d'provence. Reduce the heat to medium and simmer. You also might have to add more olive oil as you add vegetables since they do tend to soak up the oil. However long you cook it at this point is entirely up to you but I do add the rest of the fresh herbs at least a few minutes before you serve. And of course taste and adjust salt & red pepper. Enjoy!
I served the ratatouille with a roasted, rosemary chicken and it was a delicious dinner! I had a second serving of ratatouille. I think I am going to take the leftover and pulse it in a food processor and serve it with some pita chips as a dip. Or I may just eat it midnight . it was that good!
RATATOUILLE
Olive Oil
1 large vidalia onion, diced
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1 red bell pepper, diced
1 yellow bell, diced
1 small green bell pepper, diced
1 yellow squash, diced
1 zucchini, diced
1 medium eggplant, diced
5 plum tomatoes, diced
Salt
Crushed Red Pepper
2 sprigs of rosemary, minced
3 sprigs thyme, minced
1 sprig green oregano. minced
Pinch dried herbes d'provence
10 mint leaves, minced
Handful parsley, minced
Handful of basil, minced
Pour enough olive oil to coat the bottom of a large pan. Add the onions with a little salt and start sweating them for 3-5 mins over medium high heat. Add garlic and cook for 1-2 minutes. Then add all 3 peppers - I don't typically like green bell pepper but I got a small one my CSA this week so I used it here. I also seasoned again with salt and added some crushed red pepper. After letting the pepper cook down a little I added the squash & zucchini and cooked for 3 minutes or so. Then added the eggplant and seasoned again with salt & crushed pepper. Add the tomatoes with the rosemary, thyme, oregano and herbes d'provence. Reduce the heat to medium and simmer. You also might have to add more olive oil as you add vegetables since they do tend to soak up the oil. However long you cook it at this point is entirely up to you but I do add the rest of the fresh herbs at least a few minutes before you serve. And of course taste and adjust salt & red pepper. Enjoy!
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
We All Scream for Ice Cream!!!
Ok so this isn't really about vegetables . . although if I needed a technicality the lavender I used was from my garden. In any event I just had to share. I have been obsessed with trying Lavender Honey Ice Cream ever since I saw the movie It's Complicated. It was a big reason I bought the ice cream maker in the first place. But late the Friday night before Hurricane Irene was to hit was the first time I'd found the time to make it. I had bought organic cream and organic whole milk the week before and at the risk of it going bad if I lost power I wanted to use it up. Oh and the idea that I could control the quality of the ingredients was one of the many justifications I had for buying the machine. Somehow if I use organic milk and cream isn't that better for you?? Anyway I used Martha Stewart's recipe - you can find it here.
I'm not going to mince words . . it was terrible, it tasted like potpourri. I barely ate one tiny serving of it and when the power went out I didn't care that it was going to melt in the freezer. I might try to make it one more time because I'm wondering if perhaps mine had too much of the lavender. I would cut back a little and I think I may have brought the milk to too much of a boil so it may have drawn out too much lavender essence. I don't know and I won't be trying it anytime soon but I thought I'd share. Anyone ever had Honey Lavender Ice Cream and enjoy it??
The rest of my forays into making homemade ice cream have gone much better or not as dreadful. Here is a quick run down:
Mexican Chocolate Ice Cream - this is another ice cream I've heard about but couldn't find around here so was eager to make myself. I used a recipe similar to this one here but I added ancho chili powder in addition to the cayenne. This was a terrific first homemade ice cream and I will be making it again.
Coconut Sorbet - my mother was a big fan of this. I enjoyed it but I have to admit not as much as the coconut ice cream I made later (see below). This was very refreshing and not real sweet. But for some reason it seemed to coat my palate a little too much. In small servings though, which I guess is how sorbet should be served, it is good. Here is the recipe I used.
Mango Frozen Yogurt - this was another not terribly successful attempt. I'm pretty sure I know why though - the mangoes were not as ripe as they should have been and I didn't measure the lime juice so I think I used too much. In the end it was too sour but I will certainly try again with really, ripe mangoes. The recipe I used was yogurt, sugar, mangoes and lime juice.
Chocolate Chip Ice Cream - This was pretty close to a home run! My Mom grew up in Manchester, CT and until I was in high school we spent lots of holidays and weekends visiting. One of the treats was chocolate chip ice cream at Shady Glenn. In the last 15 years I have been known to bring a cooler with me if I was driving anywhere near Manchester to bring home a gallon. It's creamy lovely vanilla ice cream with shavings of chocolate in it - I've never had it like that anywhere else. So with my ice cream maker in hand I thought let me see if I can get close . . and close I did! Click here to see the recipe I used. I used Hershey's Milk Chocolate and put the bar in the freezer overnight. I then dropped it into a food processor just as the ice cream was thickening so I could get the grated chocolate into the mixture as cold as possible. Even doing that my ice cream had a chocolate tint instead of the crisp white of Shady Glenn's but the taste was pretty damn close. I will certainly be experimenting with this one in the future. My mother gave this one rave reviews as well and rationed her share of it over many, many nights.
Coconut Ice Cream - This one was tied with the Mexican Chocolate as my most successful. The only issue was I didn't make enough. It was creamy and tasted so much like coconut plus with the bits of coconut in it . .oh god so yummy! Here is the recipe I used and will be using again very soon.
I'm not going to mince words . . it was terrible, it tasted like potpourri. I barely ate one tiny serving of it and when the power went out I didn't care that it was going to melt in the freezer. I might try to make it one more time because I'm wondering if perhaps mine had too much of the lavender. I would cut back a little and I think I may have brought the milk to too much of a boil so it may have drawn out too much lavender essence. I don't know and I won't be trying it anytime soon but I thought I'd share. Anyone ever had Honey Lavender Ice Cream and enjoy it??
The rest of my forays into making homemade ice cream have gone much better or not as dreadful. Here is a quick run down:
Mexican Chocolate Ice Cream - this is another ice cream I've heard about but couldn't find around here so was eager to make myself. I used a recipe similar to this one here but I added ancho chili powder in addition to the cayenne. This was a terrific first homemade ice cream and I will be making it again.
Coconut Sorbet - my mother was a big fan of this. I enjoyed it but I have to admit not as much as the coconut ice cream I made later (see below). This was very refreshing and not real sweet. But for some reason it seemed to coat my palate a little too much. In small servings though, which I guess is how sorbet should be served, it is good. Here is the recipe I used.
Mango Frozen Yogurt - this was another not terribly successful attempt. I'm pretty sure I know why though - the mangoes were not as ripe as they should have been and I didn't measure the lime juice so I think I used too much. In the end it was too sour but I will certainly try again with really, ripe mangoes. The recipe I used was yogurt, sugar, mangoes and lime juice.
Chocolate Chip Ice Cream - This was pretty close to a home run! My Mom grew up in Manchester, CT and until I was in high school we spent lots of holidays and weekends visiting. One of the treats was chocolate chip ice cream at Shady Glenn. In the last 15 years I have been known to bring a cooler with me if I was driving anywhere near Manchester to bring home a gallon. It's creamy lovely vanilla ice cream with shavings of chocolate in it - I've never had it like that anywhere else. So with my ice cream maker in hand I thought let me see if I can get close . . and close I did! Click here to see the recipe I used. I used Hershey's Milk Chocolate and put the bar in the freezer overnight. I then dropped it into a food processor just as the ice cream was thickening so I could get the grated chocolate into the mixture as cold as possible. Even doing that my ice cream had a chocolate tint instead of the crisp white of Shady Glenn's but the taste was pretty damn close. I will certainly be experimenting with this one in the future. My mother gave this one rave reviews as well and rationed her share of it over many, many nights.
Coconut Ice Cream - This one was tied with the Mexican Chocolate as my most successful. The only issue was I didn't make enough. It was creamy and tasted so much like coconut plus with the bits of coconut in it . .oh god so yummy! Here is the recipe I used and will be using again very soon.
Oh Hurricane Irene!
Well just when I thought I was back to regularly posting Hurricane Irene blew into town which required two days of preparing, one of enduring (which wasn't that bad) and then 5 really, really long days of no power!!! Since I work from home that meant no work, no play, no hot shower, no cooking - well I did use the gas grill one night. Which meant that all last week was lots of making up for lost time. So I will again post a list of what I've been up to . . and once again promise to get back to posting more regularly. Oh wait I'm out of town all next week :) But we already got the first of fall vegetables in last week's haul - delicata squash - and I LOVE fall and all those flavours so I'll be cooking up a storm.
Oh and one of these days I'll have to take some time and make batches of pesto. My basil is still looking beautiful and I have a huge bush. I also have lots of parsley, mint, rosemary, thyme and Greek oregano. Most should last into the fall but the basil needs to be used sooner rather than later.
For lunch last week I had a slice of turkey and a slice of bread so I made a delicious open faced sandwich. I used thick slices of green heirloom tomatoes, big leaves of basil, smooth slices of avocado and some slices of American cheese over everything. Then put it under the broiler for a few minutes. So yummy!!
Last night we had some of the last sweet corn of the summer with ribs and the kohlrabi slaw. So tonight I wanted to use the rest of the corn to make a corn salad to accompany our skirt steak tacos. I ended up surprising myself with the corn salad. After I added the other vegetables and I included cucumber which wasn't in my original plans, I was about to add cilantro but decided against it. Since I use cilantro so liberally in my tacos (in place of lettuce) I wanted the salad to have a a different flavour profile. With the abundance of herbs I still I have I used a mixture of basil, mint and parsley. Part of the vegetables I used was a jalapeno pepper. The combination of the heat of the pepper with cooling cucumber and the sweet corn highlighted with the sweet mint and basil made for a great, complex mouthful. And it was a great compliment to the skirt steak taco that I had marinated in lots of ancho chili powder. I also used thick, peels of the red carrot for crunch along with creamy avocado and cilantro with a squeeze of lime to finish it off. Yum, yum, yum!
KOHLRABI & FENNEL SLAW
1 kohlrabi, sliced into thin strips
1 fennel bulb, core removed & sliced into thin strips (reserving some of the frowns)
3 red carrots, peeled & grated into long strips
Olive oil
Tarragon Vinegar
1 T of Dijon Mustard
Salt & Pepper
Handful of fresh parsley, rough chopped
Fennel frowns, chopped
Combine kohlrabi, fennel and carrots and toss. Make a vinaigrette using dijon mustard, vinegar and olive oil and season with salt & pepper. Toss the herbs into the salad mixture and add vinaigrette until coated. Taste and season with salt & pepper.
SWEET CORN SALAD
4 ears of corn, cooked and the kernels cut off
1/4 jalapeno pepper, finely chopped
1/2 of red bell pepper, diced
Handful of grape cherry tomatoes, cut into quarters
1/4 English Cucumber, peeled and diced
Good handful of parsley, basil and mint; finely chopped
Olive Oil
1 lime, zested and juiced
Combine corn, both peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers and herbs. I typically like things rustic and wouldn't ask you to chop grape tomatoes but in this case I wanted everything the same size as the corn kernels so I diced everything to just the same size. Add zest and juice of lime and then olive oil to coat. Let salad sit a bit before serving so flavours can blend.
Oh and one of these days I'll have to take some time and make batches of pesto. My basil is still looking beautiful and I have a huge bush. I also have lots of parsley, mint, rosemary, thyme and Greek oregano. Most should last into the fall but the basil needs to be used sooner rather than later.
For lunch last week I had a slice of turkey and a slice of bread so I made a delicious open faced sandwich. I used thick slices of green heirloom tomatoes, big leaves of basil, smooth slices of avocado and some slices of American cheese over everything. Then put it under the broiler for a few minutes. So yummy!!
 |
| OPEN FACED TURKEY SANDWICH |
We have got kohlrabi the last two weeks so the other night I made a slaw using the kohlrabi, fennel and red carrots - it was super crunchy and fresh. Check out the recipe at the bottom of the blog.
 |
| KOHLRABI & FENNEL SLAW |
Last night we had some of the last sweet corn of the summer with ribs and the kohlrabi slaw. So tonight I wanted to use the rest of the corn to make a corn salad to accompany our skirt steak tacos. I ended up surprising myself with the corn salad. After I added the other vegetables and I included cucumber which wasn't in my original plans, I was about to add cilantro but decided against it. Since I use cilantro so liberally in my tacos (in place of lettuce) I wanted the salad to have a a different flavour profile. With the abundance of herbs I still I have I used a mixture of basil, mint and parsley. Part of the vegetables I used was a jalapeno pepper. The combination of the heat of the pepper with cooling cucumber and the sweet corn highlighted with the sweet mint and basil made for a great, complex mouthful. And it was a great compliment to the skirt steak taco that I had marinated in lots of ancho chili powder. I also used thick, peels of the red carrot for crunch along with creamy avocado and cilantro with a squeeze of lime to finish it off. Yum, yum, yum!
 |
| SWEET CORN SALAD |
1 kohlrabi, sliced into thin strips
1 fennel bulb, core removed & sliced into thin strips (reserving some of the frowns)
3 red carrots, peeled & grated into long strips
Olive oil
Tarragon Vinegar
1 T of Dijon Mustard
Salt & Pepper
Handful of fresh parsley, rough chopped
Fennel frowns, chopped
Combine kohlrabi, fennel and carrots and toss. Make a vinaigrette using dijon mustard, vinegar and olive oil and season with salt & pepper. Toss the herbs into the salad mixture and add vinaigrette until coated. Taste and season with salt & pepper.
SWEET CORN SALAD
4 ears of corn, cooked and the kernels cut off
1/4 jalapeno pepper, finely chopped
1/2 of red bell pepper, diced
Handful of grape cherry tomatoes, cut into quarters
1/4 English Cucumber, peeled and diced
Good handful of parsley, basil and mint; finely chopped
Olive Oil
1 lime, zested and juiced
Combine corn, both peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers and herbs. I typically like things rustic and wouldn't ask you to chop grape tomatoes but in this case I wanted everything the same size as the corn kernels so I diced everything to just the same size. Add zest and juice of lime and then olive oil to coat. Let salad sit a bit before serving so flavours can blend.
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