Egg Addiction...first step is acceptance

If any one's reading, I was just curious your favorite accompaniment to eggs is? how you like them? etc.

I adore over easy eggs. The center silently bursts, the warm golden yolk deluges across the plate and melts me into a puddle of joy. Mushrooms and eggs are like bffs. They complement each other so grandly. Sometimes eggs have an affair with caramelized onions, almost as delicious, they meld together beautifully. When this trio converges, pure and simple magic, ymmmmmm.

So here is what I made the other day: Cut some fingerling potatoes into thin discs, goldened then up on the skillet and sauteed mushrooms with onion. I then cooked some frozen spinach with red pepper flakes and placed the delicate over-easy egg on top.

So please, comment and share your magic egg dishes (ps check out my Gourmet Egg Muffin recipe too)

The secret to Curry....

We ventured to one of our last trips to the Farmer's Market (frowny face). School is weighing heavy on my schedule and life running away from the carefree daze of summer.
On this last adventure to the market, prices were high and tomatoes were scarce but determined to reap the benefits of the escapade we found some key wonders: sharp bitter Arugula, green and purple string beans, stunning-ly yellow sweet corn, spaghetti squash, delicate little potatoes and creamy Gouda goat cheese (more for my parents then for me).

On this day I finally ventured into my Bon Appetit magazine and was inspired by this recipe: http://www.bonappetit.com/recipes/2010/09/summer_vegetable_ragout_with_exotic_curry_sauce

I was thrilled, I could use some of our over abundance of zucchini and yellow squash, almost everything we got at market, our nice curry power-wait...no carrot juice...what if...yes...it could work....The secret to a grand curry:

 that's right baby food.

Okay so the recipe:

• 1 onion, chopped
• 1 carrot, peeled and cubed chuck-il-ly
• 1 stalk lemon grass, cut into large pieces so you can remove before serving
• 1 tbsp diced fresh ginger (more or less)
• 1 diced green apple (something more tart than sweet), diced
• 1 1/2 tbsp curry powder (Madras is a good quality)
• Not quite a tbsp of flour and oil (for a rue)
• 3 jars pure carrot baby food, plus additional water to get everything our of jar

Saute the onion and carrot with some olive oil until onion is almost clear, add ginger, lemon grass and green apple. Cook until carrot tender. Saute curry powder and then add oil and flour, stir. Add baby food and water, bring to a boil and simmer until the sauce is thick. Set aside.

Now the veggies:

• 1 medium-Small zucchini, diced chunky
• 1 medium-small yellow squash, diced chunky
• 1 medium-small eggplant, diced chunky
• 1 cup of frozen corn
• 1 cup or so green beans
• 1/2 16oz can garbanzo beans 

In another pan, heat the oil and saute the squash, zucchini and eggplant. Add corn and beans, cook until tender. Add chickpeas.

Combine sauce and veggie saute in one pan and bring back to a simmer.

Serve with a garnish of arugula and basil (the basil is a must, sooooo awesome!)

The combination of flavors is so abundantly thrilling, the sauce is a great standard to come back to and make curries with what ever veg is available for the season. I think in the winter I'll do a sweet potatoes curry.....*melting into a puddle of joyous*

Asian Food is the Ultimate!

Right here, right now, I am admitting to you all, I am an Asian food junkie. Acceptance is the first step... but I am not planning on giving up this addiction, sorry its way to scrumptious.
So to feed my hunger, we made a Stir-fry with pot stickers for dinner. We used deep purple bitter cabbage, crisp bean sprouts, earthy mushrooms, delicate green peas, crunchy carrots, the powers of garlic and magical ginger........................pardon me, my mouth was watering.

Cabbage Stir-Fry with Pot Stickers
serves 4-6

• 1/2 of a purple onion, diced
• 2 large heads of garlic
• 1 tbsp diced fresh ginger
• 1 cup of match-stick baby carrots
• Some mushrooms (optional, we had some from the market we needed to use)
• 1/2 a medium purple cabbage, sliced into ribbons
• 1 cup bean sprouts
• 1 cup frozen peas
• Sauce (recipe below)
• Desired amount of frozen pot stickers (we use Ling Ling)

Prepare your pot stickers according to the package and keep in the oven on warm while you prepare the stir-fry.

Heat a wok or large skillet with some oil over high heat. Sauteing the onions until clear and add the ginger along with the garlic. Cook until the garlic has a slight gold colour (if you begin to experience to much sticking to the point of burning, add water/ adjust heat).

If using mushrooms, add them now and saute until golden.Now add the carrots, allow them to stir-fry until they are tender yet still retain bite/snap. 

Next the cabbage and bean sprouts go in, cover the pot with a lid at this point until the cabbage has slightly wilted down (a few minutes). Lastly stir in your peas and sauce (recipe below). Cover and wait a few moments for the sauce to thicken and the peas/cabbage are cooked through.

Serve with pot-stickers and a cilantro garnish.

Sauce

 Mix the following:

• 
  
  1/4 cup soy sauce
• 
  
  Garlic Chili Paste (to taste) (Huey Fong Chili Garlic Sauce 8 Oz)
• 
  
  Pepper (to taste)
• 
  
  Scarce dribble of toasted sesame oil (this is very strong to be careful)

Arugala Salad

A delicately wonderful salad to pair with fish, chicken or beef or double the recipe for a main dish. I am posting this to go along with the hamburger post I wrote about earlier.

Arugula Salad

pre heat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit

Serves 3 side servings

• 1/2 lb potatoes (Yukon gold, Red, Idaho, most any variety should work)
• Less than a tbsp Olive Oil
• 1 tsp red pepper flakes (or to taste)
• Salt and Pepper
• 3 cups Arugula
• 5 cups Spring Mix
• Dijon Mustard dressing

Cut away the ugly parts of the potato and slice into 1/4 - 1/2 inch discs. Line a cookie sheet with foil and toss the potatoes with the olive oil, red pepper flakes, salt and pepper. Lay out the potatoes across the cookie sheet and bake in the oven for 30 minutes, or until one side is golden brown. Once they have reached their caramelized perfection flip them over and allow them to bake another 10 minutes.

Place a bed of spring mix on each plate, top with arugula and some potatoes, drizzle desired dressing and serve.

The bitter peppery arugula plays well with the spicy warm mustard and potatoes, leaving a very interesting balance of flavors.

The Timeless Famous Hamburger

School has officially begun, yet our household is refusing to let go. In one of our last testaments to the jovial season my dad demanded to grill. My mom and I did not refuse him, we had fresh tomato and onion smiling at us from the table wanting to be used. Pure and straightforward is the way to go: salt, pepper and ground beef. Let the smoke of the grill speak for itself and vegetables will only encourage this phenomenon.

The hamburger has become one of the icons of American culture. Endless TV shows, books, magazines and restaurants have devoted themselves to ground beef and its condiments. The United States holds that our ancestors were the fist to combine steak with bread, yet the two have been around for a majority of human history and surely someone had munched on a hamburger in their cave or farmhouse. I found that ground meat originated with the warrior Mongols who would place filets of meat under their saddles as they rode allowing it to crumble and cook. Not very yummy sounding but I guess if you are a macho solider it was a grand meal and the ultimate of fast food. They then dropped this culinary tip in the Russian culture who developed steak tar tare. The port city of Hamburg was introduced to minced meat by the Russians and these German immigrants brought it to the States.
Okay so now we understand the history of the meat but what about the bread? Well the official sandwich wasn't developed until the 1765 when the Earl of Sandwich requested a snack he could eat without getting his fingers dirty as he played cards. In 1904, at the St. Louis Fair, two different men are attributed to selling hamburgers, but there is also accounts that two men from Hamburg, New York were at the Erie County Fair in 1892 and ran out of sausages and instead put ground beef on the bread. An yet another tale of a young teen, Charles Nagreen, made sandwiches with meatballs and sold them at the Seymour fair in 1885, so people could snack as they walked. Numerous tales attribute the founding of the hamburger to a variety of different businesses and people but all in all, we have the sandwich, we enjoy the sandwich, we eat the sandwich.

From A Teen Foodie

Here are a few tips on the "perfect burger", allowing a clean palette for you to paint -urrr-cook upon.

• To keep it healthy we use 93% lean ground beef
• A good portion size is about 4oz
• Insuring a flat patty as the end result, intend the middle
• Don't press on the beef while cooking, you will dry it out
• When the burgers are finishing add cheese and the bun so they are both nice and warm

Test Cook #1

As a result of my "library funtime", I had an intense list of new recipes to try. This has lead me to a new series, Test Cook. Every once in a while, along with our own home developed recipes, I will post my adventures with others' food concoctions. From cookbooks, to TV shows, Internet creativity to magazines, no one is safe! I shall be testing (and taking requests if people want me to test a recipe and it appeals to me I may try it out).

But the first order of business was The Flexitarian Table by Peter Berley (The Flexitarian Table: Inspired, Flexible Meals for Vegetarians, Meat Lovers, and Everyone inBetween). I kinda fell in love with this book yet this admiration must first be proven and confirmed that it had the caliber to be a part of my Christmas list.
The recipe I first tried was Grilled Shrimp in Harissa with Fresh Corn Polenta and Cherry Tomatoes (pg 113-115 in the book). I wrote a list for the few items we had yet to acquire, the most important of which was polenta meal. I waited until Saturday (the day of the farmer's market) when my parents would follow me on an escapade to capture any and all ingredients we saw fit to accumulate (put simply: we went grocery shopping).
 After a long day's massive quest for ingredients and produce whilst visiting Lawrence and the farmer's market there, we were still lift polenta-less. We went to Walmart, the Mercantile, Aldi's, another Walmart, and not until this morning did we manage to find the infamous medium ground grits aka polenta. This scouring had put me in an unpleasant mood, my enthusiasm the recipe was almost lost but once we unearthed it, the gorgeous wonderful phenomenal staggering corn meal - okay, I may be exaggerating quite a bit about its beauty, but after such the search and finally discovering it, I was once again keen to cook.

It turned out lovely, only a few changes to the original due to our family taste and the fact that cooking is an art, and whatever happens in the heat of the moment happens. My dad (the grill master, as most fathers are) grilled the shrimp and delivered them to the table with much pride. The Harissa (the marinade for the shrimp) was scrumptious, and according to Peter Berley's book originates in northern Africa. Its quick to concoct and tasted of warmth, of sun rays dripping over your tongue, of laying on the grass in mid-July heat...yummmm. And the polenta, oh my the polenta! It was magical, well worth all the toil and struggle to find. Its our home's new comfort food, balmy and smooth yet still retaining bite, the addition of fresh bits of corn brought out a whisper of sweetness while a dash of salt and butter complemented its corny elements. The only draw back was the tomatoes, they were by no means bad but unnecessary, they didn't add anything the dish needed and felt a tad akward with the other flavors.

In the end it was a grand undertaking, allowing my parents and I to savor the flavors even more.

To market to market...

There are no words to characterize my adoration of farmer's markets. The bounty of vibrant colours, laughing and twittering people, scents of grass, herbs, bread, bouquets of flowers and freshly brewed coffee encompass every step one takes. I look forward to early rising and making the long quite drive down dusty gravel roads, past attentive dairy cows munching on dewy grass, and finally cramming into a munchkin sized parking spot. It takes discipline not to buy from every stand, or else the heaping bounty of goods purchased could not be consumed within a descent time. Once all is done a feeling of contentment consumes me on the drive back home.

Here are some pictures I took: