recipe

Simple Sustenance: Kale Power — Kale and Sunflower Seed Pesto

Published by Renu-Chhabra + Tuesday, August 7, 2012 Permalink 0

“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” Michael Pollan

This one is for kale lovers. I know. I am one of them. Until not too long ago, I did not have the slightest idea of its existence; or let’s just say, it did not visit my produce bag. But once I tasted it, I was hooked on the amazing wonders of kale like most health enthusiasts.

Kale is known by several flattering names — Queen of Greens, Powerhouse of Nutrients, King of Greens. These days kale is one of the most talked about super foods. From soups and stews to salads and stir fries, it has found its way in every possible form of cooking. Kale juice anyone? How about kale chips for a healthy snack? And if that’s not enough, just puree these hearty leaves to transform them into pesto. Now that opens up several more ways to enjoy its versatility. Stir it in pasta, spread it on breads and crackers, or thin it a little to make dressings. If none of those options are appealing to you, a few spoonfuls as is works for me.

Speaking of pesto, I made this recipe with sunflower seeds instead of nuts. Sunflower seeds provide fair share of good fats, and they also give it a rustic texture. I left cheese out making thus making it an option for vegans. But if you prefer a cheesy flavor, add some pecorino or parmigiano. Good olive oil, lemon, and garlic with a few grinds of sea salt make it absolutely delicious. Store in refrigerator and enjoy.

1 medium bunch kale, stems removed
1 large clove of garlic
½ cup unsalted roasted sunflower seeds
Juice of one large lemon
Sea salt to taste
Freshly ground pepper (optional)
½ cup olive oil

Instructions

Put kale leaves in boiling water for 30 seconds. Drain in a colander, and run cold water over to stop the cooking process. Squeeze kale to remove water completely.

In a food processor, pulse garlic a couple times. Add sunflower seeds and pulse again 2-3 times. Add kale, lemon juice, salt, pepper and puree. Drizzle oil while the machine is running. Puree it to desired consistency.

Adjust lemon and salt to taste. If the pesto is too thick for your taste, add a little water.

In a food processor, pulse garlic a couple times. Add sunflower seeds and pulse again 2-3 times. Add kale, lemon juice, salt, pepper and puree. Drizzle oil while the machine is running. Puree it to desired consistency.

Adjust lemon and salt to taste. If the pesto is too thick for your taste, add a little water.

Simple Sustenance: Summer in a Bowl — Honey-Ginger Papaya Salad

Published by Renu-Chhabra + Thursday, August 2, 2012 Permalink 0

by Renu Chhabra

One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well. —Virginia Woolf

Sunshine and outdoors! Summer is in full swing. We have been experiencing beautiful warm days — some warmer than others. But that’s the beauty of this season.

Farmers markets are exploding with seasonal produce and an abundance of flower power. And local honey farms are showcasing their products with great pride. In fact, I recently attended a lecture about bee pollination at our local Whole Foods Market. It is amazing how these tiny bees create something so rewarding, one bit at a time. It definitely makes me respect every drop of honey I use. Especially at a time when there is quite a buzz about honey among health-conscious people like me who try to avoid refined sugars, and want to preserve this precious commodity. So I say, love our honey bees and respect their hard work.

Switzerland: Fresh Fruit Séré/Quark Cheese Mousse

Published by Jonell Galloway + Wednesday, August 1, 2012 Permalink 0

by Jonell Galloway

In Switzerland, séré, as it is called in the French-speaking part of the country, or quark, as it is called in the German-speaking part, is a fresh cheese similar to curd cheese or cottage cheese and to ricotta, but the process of making it differs somewhat. Milk is first soured, then warmed until the desired degree of denaturation of milk proteins is met. It is then strained, so that it is smooth in consistency.

It is good eaten simply, with fresh fruit and a touch of sugar, but it can also be used for cooking.

When summer fruit is so abundant, this fresh fruit mousse makes for a different way of eating it.

You can buy either the full-fat version or a low-fat one. The full-fat version will be marked séré de crème in supermarkets; the full-fat version will be marked séré maigre or quark “maigre,” meaning low-fat. For this recipe, it’s best to buy it homemade from the cheesemonger or the full-fat version.

If séré is not available in your area, follow this easy recipe to make it yourself.

Part 4: Step-by-step Fermentation – How to Ferment Vegetables

Published by Diana Zahuranec + Wednesday, August 1, 2012 Permalink 0

Part 4: Step-by-step Fermentation

by Diana Zahuranec

How to Ferment Your Own Vegetables

I said in my first fermentation post that I found a couple of particularly helpful websites:

Sandor Ellix Katz, “Making Sauerkraut”
Mary N. Mennes, “Make Your Own Sauerkraut”
Recipes from a German Grandma, “Make Your Own Sauerkraut”

Katz’s was detailed and informative, and I completely trusted his judgment because he is the undisputed wild fermentation expert. Also, he helped my friends and I make cheese, which turned out edible, if squeaky. The unnamed German Grandma had pictures, which I took too and I’ll provide them here for you fermentin’ folks.

Equipment used:

2 big glass bowls
2 freezer bags
Saran wrap
Big plastic tray

Ingredients used:

Click here for French/British/American converter

1 head of cabbage
1 onion
2-3 hot peppers
2 carrots
Stems from a bunch of catalogna (chicory (or a type of), a leafy green with tough stems that I didn’t want to throw out)
1/3 C mildly spicy coarse hot pepper
Salt, water: 3 T salt per 5 pounds of vegetables
Whey from yogurt

Procedure:

Note: This outlines what I did, and might not be the ultimate, end-all-be-all way to ferment; I’m just sharing the experience and knowledge I gained along the way!

(chicory (or a type of), a leafy green with tough stems that I didn’t want to throw out)
1/3 C mildly spicy coarse hot pepper
Salt, water: 3 T salt per 5 pounds of vegetables
Whey from yogurt

Procedure:

Note: This outlines what I did, and might not be the ultimate, end-all-be-all way to ferment; I’m just sharing the experience and knowledge I gained along the way!

[caption id="attachment_27484" align="alignleft" width="319"]

Chopped vegetables

Rosa’s Musings: In Sync with the Seasons: Baked Apricots Stuffed with Almond Paste

Published by Jonell Galloway + Tuesday, July 17, 2012 Permalink 0

by Rosa Mayland

INCREASE YOUR GASTRONOMIC EXPERIENCE BY EATING IN SYNC WITH THE SEASONS

With the arrival of hotter weather, I am thrilled that some of my favorite fruits are starting to grace (super)market stalls. They are so fabulous that I can never get enough of them. Not one week goes by without me making either pies, pastries, cakes, trifles, crumbles, clafoutis or cobblers in my itsy-bitsy apartment kitchen.

Switzerland: Cucumber and Tarragon Salad Recipe

Published by Jonell Galloway + Monday, July 16, 2012 Permalink 0

Switzerland: Cucumber and Tarragon Salad Recipe

by Jonell Galloway

Spontaneous Cuisine: A Swiss Recipe

When the days are hot and sultry, few things can be as refreshing as a cold cucumber salad, especially this classic cucumber and tarragon salad. In Switzerland, we make it with sour cream and tarragon, while in France they cook the cucumbers slightly and then add crème fraîche and chives.

This salad goes perfectly with a grilled chicken breast or any white fish. It also goes perfectly with smoked or natural salmon, in which case you might want to replace the tarragon with fresh dill or dill seeds.

Continue Reading…

A Sausage Walks in to a Bar…..

Published by Alice + Monday, July 16, 2012 Permalink 0

by Alice DeLuca

A story for carnivores

Assador

This whole adventure started with a search for the perfect sausage to use in a recipe for pork with clams, which led to a little ceramic pig, and ended up with a truly excellent party. This cute little piece of specialty cookware, which looks like footwear for some impossible outer-space monster, is in fact designed for brazing sausages over flaming, hi-octane Portuguese liquor. As we learned the purpose and the method for using this device, we became completely distracted from our original mission and found ourselves planning a sausage-roast.

Linguica roasting - Alice DeLuca 2012 digimarc

Sausages roasting over flaming Aguardente

First, we had to obtain the little pig dishes from Portugal – that was easy and took only a few weeks. As soon as the dishes arrived we set about making home-smoked sausages and invited some guests to come over and roast them with us – RSVPs were instantaneous and none declined the invitation.

Simple Sustenance: Simple and Refreshing — Cold Cucumber Yogurt Soup with Mint Oil

Published by Renu-Chhabra + Wednesday, July 11, 2012 Permalink 0

by Renu Chhabra

Let food be thy medicine, and let thy medicine be food.–Hippocrates

On warm days we crave cool and refreshing dishes; recipes that require minimum or no cooking to avoid heating up the kitchen seem most desirable. Salads, smoothies, cold soups, and sandwiches take center stage to make our lives a little easier.

One such recipe I enjoy a lot on warm days is cold yogurt soup. With the possibility of several variations, it is always a welcome relief to beat the heat. It is simple and refreshing with no cooking at all, which is always an added bonus when temperatures soar. Moreover, the health benefits of yogurt make it even more worthwhile. It’s good for digestion, and is a powerhouse of beneficial bacteria. But I say it is a “do-good” friend, and I enjoy it everyday.

Down Under: Cultured butter from South Australia’s Woodside Cheese Wrights

Published by Amanda McInerney + Tuesday, July 10, 2012 Permalink 0

by Amanda McInerney

There’s butter, and then there’s butter

Whenever anyone asks me what were the high points of our recent trip to Europe I always answer with two simple words: the food. We happily indulged ourselves whenever possible, knowing we would be walking it all off within days, and I was pleased to note that I came home carrying no extra baggage except for my shopping.

I was having a conversation about our foodie finds with my friend Kris Lloyd, the cheese-making talent behind South Australia’s multi-award winning Woodside Cheese Wrights, not long after we got back and was waxing lyrical about some butter made from clotted cream (cultured butter) which we had bought on our last day in London. It was part of a significant haul that we took home from London’s Borough Markets for a final feeding frenzy before we flew home and had made quite an impression. Kris commented that she had recently been “playing around” (her words) with cultured butter, including one which she had washed in whiskey. With the taste of the delicious, golden London lipids still lingering, to say I was eager to try Kris’ efforts would be something of an understatement.

Cultured butter is something of a recent discovery for many Australians, but has been in use for hundreds of years in Europe. The butter we are used to is what Europeans refer to as “sweet cream butter” — delicious, but lacking the depth of flavour of cultured butter. Cultured butter is made in exactly the same way as ordinary butter, but a live culture is added to the cream which is allowed to ripen for some time before being churned, salted (or not) and rinsed. Kris adds the culture to her cream 24 hours before she uses it to make butter, giving the cream time to “clot”. Cultured butter has a richer, deeper flavour, which some find somewhat tangy, and also comes with a little probiotic boost from the addition of the live culture.

Kris gave me three different batches to play around with — an almost unsalted butter, salted butter and the remarkable whiskey-washed version — and I’ve had a very happy day or two getting to know them. They are all truly delicious and definitely add an extra facet to the dishes I used them in: a Mushroom and Almond Bruschetta with Chèvre and Vanilla-Poached Oranges with Pikelets. I kept these recipes fairly simple in order to let the ingredients do the talking. There’s no point in using outstanding produce and then smothering it with other flavours and fancy techniques; good food doesn’t need to be tricky. The mushrooms I used came from Marco the Mushroom Man in the Adelaide Central Market and the sublime oranges were in our CSA box from Jupiter Creek Farm, all fresh, local and fabulous. I couldn’t help adding some wonderful Beerenberg Caramelised Onions to the mushroom dish. They finished it off perfectly.

Recipe

Mushroom and Almond Bruschetta with Chèvre

Prep time: 5 mins
Cooking time: 10 mins
Total time: 15 mins
Serves: 2
This made a good lunch for 2, but would also make an entrée for 4.

Click here for metric-Imperial conversions.

Ingredients

500 gms Portobello mushrooms, sliced
30 gms toasted almonds, ground as fine as your food processor will allow
100 gms Woodside Cheesewright chèvre
80 gms cultured butter
1 tbsp chopped thyme
1 good pinch of salt
Beerenberg Caramelised Onions or ones you make yourself
2 large slices sourdough bread

Instructions

Melt the butter in moderately hot pan, add mushrooms and salt. Cook on low heat.
When mushrooms begin to soften, add the ground nuts and the thyme. Continue cooking until mushrooms are cooked to taste.
Slice bread and toast. (At this point you may/may not choose to butter it with more of the cultured butter. I’ll leave you to guess what I did.)
Pile the cooked mushrooms on the toasts, sprinkle each with a teaspoon or two of the caramelised onions, then crumble the chèvre over the top. Serve.

The whiskey-washed butter was used in an even simpler dish of pikelets (small bite-sized pancakes) with vanilla-poached oranges, but the combination was absolutely stunning and much appreciated by the guests to whom I served it yesterday for afternoon tea. My good friend Meg is very partial to a wee dram or two of whiskey and her eyes glazed over just a little while eating these.

I’m sure everyone can work out how to make basic pikelets.

As for the vanilla-poached oranges: the oranges were simply peeled, making sure all of the pith was removed, sliced about 10mm thick and gently poached for ten minutes in a syrup made of 1 1/2 cups of white sugar, 1/2 cup of water and one vanilla bean, split open and scraped – hardly a recipe at all! I cooled them slightly in the syrup, buttered the hot pikelets with the whiskey-washed butter and layered the oranges and pikelets, topping with a dab of the precious butter. Eat, then swoon.

Tasting Australia: The Internationally Recognised Aussie Food Fest

Sustainable Sustenance: Fragrant Comfort — Indian Chai

Published by Renu-Chhabra + Thursday, July 5, 2012 Permalink 0

by Renu Chhabra

“There is something in the nature of tea that leads us into a world of quiet contemplation of life.”― Yutang Lin, The Importance Of Living

Drinking chai is a way of life in India. Mornings start with a cup of chai, and it finds its way into people’s lives throughout the day. It is an expression to take a break, and calm your senses, one sip at a time — like punctuation is to pauses — and then move ahead.

Chai is the Hindi term for tea itself in India, where this wonderful beverage comes from. In fact, masala chai means the spiced tea that we know as chai tea or chai in the West. Masala means spice and chai means tea, hence “spiced tea”.

Chai, an everyday beverage in the East has gained enormous popularity in the West. From coffee shops to gourmet restaurants, it has found a trendy platform where it is star. We find this fragrant flavor in lattés, ice creams, truffles, cookies, brownies, and cakes. A basic Eastern spice blend has been given a very sophisticated Western face. Another Western twist is the addition of vanilla at times, which is not part of the traditional blend.

Aromatic spices give chai its distinct character. Their oils are extracted when cooked and steeped in hot water giving chai its fragrant foundation. Then black tea leaves, whole milk, and sugar are added to it. And you have a cup of warm comfort, perfect for any time of the day. Whole milk gives it richness and body, and sweetener brings out the flavor of the spices even more.

Chai spices can be combined in so many different ways. Every family has its own recipe — just like chili recipes. Make it as simple or as complex as you like, depending on the number and types of spices you like or have on hand. The usual spices that are used in chai are cardamom, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, fennel, and black pepper. Some are warm and some are sweet, but they all lend a fragrant note. Try new combinations to discover your favorite.

I usually like to keep chai simple with just one or two spices. My favorite spice combination is sweet cardamom and ginger; they go well together. Sometimes too many spices overlap each other’s distinct flavors and lose their individual personalities — not a good thing, I say. My philosophy is to keep it simple and clean. Chai can be tea leaves with just one spice of your choice, which I often do, or it can be with as many as your heart desires. Make your own concoction. After all, it’s your cup of tea. Take a break and savor it.

The first cup moistens my lips and throat. The second cup breaks my loneliness. The third cup searches my barren entrails, but to find therein some thousand volumes of odd ideograms. The fourth cup raises a slight perspiration — all the wrongs of life seep out through my pores. At the fifth cup I am purified. The sixth cup calls me to the realms of the immortals. The seventh cup — ah, but I could take no more! I only feel the breath of the cool wind that raises in my sleeves. Where is Elysium? Let me ride on this sweet breeze and waft away thither.–Lu Tung, “Tea-Drinking“

This recipe has three spices: cardamom, ginger, and fennel. Cardamom and fennel give sweetness, whereas ginger gives warmth to this chai. If you are craving spicy flavors, add a small cinnamon stick, 2-3 cloves, and 3-4 peppercorns.

Recipe

Ingredients

2 cups water
4 cardamom pods, crushed
1/2-inch piece of ginger, grated
1/4 teaspoon fennel seeds
2 teaspoon black tea leaves
1/3-1/2 cup whole milk
Raw sugar or honey to taste

Click here for metric converter.