About this Blog Portland, Oregon food blog with over seven years worth of recipes, restaurant features and food photos. Dig in!
|
By mlb, on April 20th, 2013%
This week’s French Fridays with Dorie was a very interesting thing indeed — so interesting, in fact, that I am a day late in getting the post up.
Cod and Spinach Roulades — a spinach and onion filling, wrapped up in fish mousse, steamed and served with tomato sauce and pesto. Kind of like an Italian-French fish tamale?
I don’t see the recipe officially online, so I can’t link to it, but it can be found in the cookbook, Around my French Table by Dorie Greenspan.
Notes:
1. I did not use plastic wrap. I know that it is probably fine, but I just don’t like the idea of wrapping plastic around food and then heating it. So…I used parchment paper. And it was moderately successful. It did let some steam/condensation in while steaming, but the fish still held together fine.
2. No cream on hand and didn’t want to go buy some for such a small amount, so I used a mixture of full-fat Greek yogurt and non-fat milk for a substitute. It seemed to work. I also substituted some plain lemon zest for the preserved lemon zest.
3. Plating was not as . . . → Read More: FFwD: Cod and Spinach Roulades
By mlb, on April 17th, 2013%
If you’ve ever made paneer, ricotta is a lot like that, except even easier as you don’t have to weight it down. It’s actually so easy that I don’t see how anyone could read through a recipe for it and continue to buy tubs of ricotta at the store. This is so much better! And, I know it’s not true ricotta (I think that’s made with just whey and not milk?) but this will do for any ricotta-like purpose that you want to use it for.
You can use lemon juice to make the curds, but I found that I really like to use white balsamic vinegar.
A portion of my homemade ricotta was mixed with lemon zest, garlic, fresh herbs and parmesan and stuffed into mushroom caps. Honestly, the ricotta, herbs, lemon zest and Parmesan was quite good just on its own. I mean, if you have mushrooms definitely give it a try as a stuffing, but otherwise, you know, use the ricotta-lemon-herbs mixture for crackers. Or just eat it with a spoon…that works too.
Also, you have a few more days to try to win some freekeh! Just leave . . . → Read More: Homemade Ricotta & Baked Mushrooms Stuffed with Ricotta (Funghi al forno ripieni di ricotta)
By mlb, on April 15th, 2013%
Recently, Freekehlicious offered to send me some Freekeh from to try, which was very exciting, as I had heard of the grain before and had wanted to experiment with it for awhile.
So, what is freekeh, you ask? Well, freekeh is a grain that I think looks a little like spelt. “Young roasted green wheat is harvested while still young and green, then parched, roasted and dried. The process captures and retains the grains at the state of peak taste and nutrition.” And besides that, it’s just a really tasty whole grain and a healthier replacement for rice (or even pasta).
The cooking time is about what you would expect — 20-30 minutes. For the sake of experiment, I tried soaking it for 8 hours, while I was as work, before cooking and was able to then cook it in about 10 minutes (this was the cracked freekeh, but I’m sure that would work with the whole grain freekeh as well).
When looking for inspiration for freekeh, I turned to one of the cookbooks that I usually look to first when I need some ideas on what to do with . . . → Read More: Freekeh with Green Onion Sauce, Toasted Walnuts, Asparagus and Tuna + a Giveaway
By mlb, on March 13th, 2013%
As promised, here’s another St. Patrick’s Day recipe (although it’s about a day later than I was hoping to post it). Luckily, there’s still plenty of time to plan on making a risotto like this for Friday’s (or Saturday’s, Sunday’s) dinner. If you are really smart, you will get a little extra corned beef and make yourself a sandwich at a later date — I was not smart. Learn from my mistake.
This is the second time I’ve used cabbage in risotto and I think it works very well — especially if you let it get a little color before you start adding broth.
On the side, we had a large arugula salad and, although we didn’t have any, some crusty bread or even Irish Soda Bread would be great too. Erin Go Bragh.
Corned Beef and Cabbage Risotto
Serves 3-4
4 cups vegetable broth
2 . . . → Read More: Corned Beef and Cabbage Risotto for St. Patrick’s Day
By mlb, on March 6th, 2013%
This is a hearty bowl of soup. Spelt replaces the pasta for a healthy, toothsome addition. Sometimes referred to as spelt berries, they aren’t berries at all, but rather Spelt is an ancient whole grain related to modern day wheat. It’s high in magnesium, fiber, phosphorus and vitamin B3 and provides a pleasingly chewey texturehsome chew. Use it in salads, soups, and baked good. It can also be ground and used as flour. In fact, my new bread obsession is the Spelt Bread from Dave’s Killer Bread.
This is also the bowl of soup you want whether you are house-bound right now in the snowy Midwest, DC or even watching the rain fall in the gray winter of Portland. So comforting and filling. You probably even have a lot of the items you need to make it right now. Just go get some spelt. It’s okay, I’ll wait.
Note: for a summer version, replace butternut squash with zucchini and the kale with trimmed green beans and/or baby spinach and add in the last 15 minutes of cooking time.
![]() . . . → Read More: A Soup for Cold Weather: Winter Spelt Minestrone
|
|
