Pasta of the Gods

And so the voyage continues. Tonight's Farmer's Market Bag creation is zucchini and summer squash pasta with mint. This dish can be summed up in one word- yum. I can hardly describe how good this was, but if a pasta dish can make a grown person purr, this is it. While this dish is super tasty, it is ridiculously easy to make. If you so desire (and you should), this is how to do it: After slicing the squash into coins, I patted them dry with a paper towel, seasoned them with some salt and pepper, lightly dusted them with flour and cooked them in batches in some olive oil until golden brown. After all the squash had been cooked, I added the garlic and red pepper flakes and cooked until the garlic just started to brown then added in the pasta, along with some of the cooking liquid, and a couple handfuls of Parmesan cheese. Now here is where some magic happens- as you vigorously shake the pan and toss the pasta, the starchy water, olive oil, and Parmesan cheese emulsifies to create a creamy sauce. Once this happens add the mint, adjust the seasoning with salt and pepper, and dig in. Trust me, you won't be able to refrain from going back for seconds.

Zucchini and Summer Squash Past with Mint

2 Zucchini, cut into disks
2 Crockneck squash, cut into disks
2 garlic cloves, pealed and thinly sliced
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
2 tablespoons minced mint (or basil would be good here too)
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese, grated
1-lb pasta of choice, cooked until al dente (save about a cup of the starchy cooking liquid)
1/2 cup Olive Oil
Flour, as needed for dusting squash

Farmer's Market Bag 4-8-11

I am big fan of supporting local growers and small artisnal producers. That said, I am not a big fan of CSA (community supported agriculture) boxes. I signed-up for one a year or so back and I soon became bored with the contents of my box. I understand that one small farm cannot grow everything, but I'm a gal who needs variety in her life. Since then I have periodically visited the farmers market to purchase my produce directly, but with the hectic turn my life has taken I rarely find the time to support our community's farmers. That is until now...

I was recently introduced to Specialty Produce, a warehouse produce distributor and the best kept secret in San Diego. This place is my new Mecca. I am happy just walking through the plastic flap door. They have everything you could ever want and then some. While they do get their produce from sources World-wide, they also do quite a bit of purchasing from local growers and have started selling a "Farmers Market Bag". Each week they hand select produce from local farms, so you're able to support multiple growers as well as getting variety of produce each week. In addition to this bounty of produce, Specialty also provides add-ons to your bag from local artisnal companies. This week my bag of goodies included green spring garlic & all red potatoes from Weiser Farms, baby green zucchini from Tutti Fruitti, mint, Italian parsley, and rosemary from Ruitz Farms, arugula from Coastal Organics, Lyon artichokes from Life's a Choke, dandelion greens from McGrath Family Farms, baby yellow crookneck squash from Beylik Farms, Hass avocados and Eureka lemons from Stehly Farm Organics, Moro blood oranges from Pomack Farms, some Irish soda bread from Sadie Rose Bakery, Cypress Grove Purple Haze, Chuao Chocolatier Spicy Mayan chocolate bar, and two pounds of fresh caught yellow tail from Catalina Offshore (and some rhubarb that I couldn't help but get).

One of the challenges (and joys) of getting the Farmers Market Bag, or any CSA for that matter, is coming up with creative ways to utilize the ingredients and Saturday night dinner with a friend was a perfect place to start. The Lyon artichoke is unique in that the long stem, once trimmed, is fully edible and just as tasty as the heart. Armed with my chef's knife, I attacked the artichoke, trimming it down to just the heart and stalk. After steaming, I buzzed it in the food processor with some juice from the Eureka lemons, olive oil, and voila, Lyon artichoke puree was born. To go with my Kermit colored puree of awesomeness, I roasted some root vegetables, and served it all alongside pan roasted yellow tail topped with a wonderfully bright relish made with the mint and parsley, along with some capers, golden raisins, olive oil and a touch of lemon juice. So good! I also dressed the arugula simply with a little olive oil, lemon juice, and garnished it with Parmesan shavings. As for dessert, well that is a story that started out good, but took a tragic turn in the end. I love strawberries, so naturally my favorite pie is strawberry rhubarb. I had some left-over sweet dough stashed in the freezer from Baking and Pastry, so I thought now would be the perfect time to make pie. I put a lot of love in this pie- I stewed the strawberries and rhubarb in a little simple syrup and a touch of Bonny Doon Rose, I lovingly topped the pie with an oatmeal crumb, and baked it to a golden perfection. But unfortunately while cooling on the counter it picked a fight with a falling bag of sugar and lost horribly. In less than ten seconds my beautiful pie was reduced to a cratered mishmash of sugary goodness. While it looked like a meteor had landed in it's center, it still tasted pretty good.

All in a Day's Work

Welcome one and all to the wonderful World of Cuisine III, where every night is a food filled extravaganza! No longer are we putzing around the kitchen, composing a dish or two. Now, for every two sessions we are preparing a four course meal, including a soup, a hot appetizer, an entree, and a dessert. The first night of each menu is spent doing all the prep work, and the next is all of the final cooking and plating. While this is a lot of work to undertake after a full day of work, one of the great things about being at this stage in our education is that we can finally do our own plate designs. Before, we had to hang back and see what the chef was going to do and then try to mimic him (which some of my cohorts still do), but now we are given free reign.

The soup du jour for this particular session was a cream of asparagus soup. The recipe was pretty basic, but turned out to be a mine field of mistakes. Even though I followed the recipe to a tee, I needed double the amount of stock to get it to the right consitency. You think someone would have caught that mistake by now- sheesh! We were left on our own to decide the garnish, so I went with a puff pastry round, which was supose to be a raft of sorts for the asparagus saute I was trying to place on top. Unfortunately it failed as a raft, but it still looked good and tasted good. Add a few dots of sour cream and you have a bowl of asparagusy goodness.

The next course was crab cakes, and I mean hello!... you had me at crab. While these crab cakes were perfectly lovely, what truly rocked my word was the roasted tomato vinaigrette that we made to dress the mixed greens. It was sublime! That with the tarragon aioli (tarragon + mayonnaise = yum!) and parmesan cheese cup pushed me over the limits of blissfulness.

The next course was a beef tenderloin en croute, which was kinda a throwaway in my book. Why take a perectly good piece of beef, wrap it in crepes, mushroom duxelles, and puff pastry? The only thing that saved it was the absolutely delicious roasted garlic demi-glace. It was so good you could have eaten it by the spoon full (which now that I'm writing this, I'm recalling that that is precisely what I did.)

To round out the meal we totally needed something sweet, but not too rich after that mammoth piece of meat (which was destined for Kiari's kong). What better than a trio of strawberries? Ah, NOTHING! Anyone who knows anything about me knows about my profound love of strawberries. If I am going to die tomorrow and I can only have one last thing, it would be a pint of plump sun warmed strawberries. To start our strawberry tasting was a strawberry shortcake speckled with orange zest, filled with a strawberry/mint/balsamic salad (a Jamie creation), and whipped cream. Next on our strawberry voyage was a perfectly lovely strawberry sorbet, made by yours truly, spiked with just a touch of booze, followed by a chocolate dipped strawberry injected with, you guessed it, more booze! Can life get any better?

Back in the dirt again!

I've decided it's time to get some dirt under my nails again, it's time to garden! A couple things have lead me to this realization, and none of them have to do with an over abundance of time on my hands. I've found that when you're as busy as I am it becomes almost imperative to set aside some time just for you. And what better way to spend that time than playing in a giant sandbox, nurturing along little seedlings, and soaking up some vitamin D. That and the fact that Kairi (aka the Pooch) has taken to digging up my plants at home to hide her bones. Not only did I find a plot for my tinkerings, I found a wonderful community garden in Ocean beach, where raised beds were already provides (yippe!), had communial fruit trees, and chickens! I don't know why but I love the chickens. And the icing on the cake... the previous owner of my plot had planted peas, so already I have lovely plump peas from my table. Win win.

Sugar Shock

"Who can take a sunrise, sprinkle it in dew, cover it in chocolate and a miracle or two? The candyman; the candyman can, the candyman can cause he mixes it with love and makes the world taste good." You guessed it, it's time for baking and pastry! Or was... since this post is late in coming, baking and pastry has come an gone and I for one am happy to say goodbye. Don't get me wrong, desserts are great, but after three weeks of nothing but sugar sugar sugar I am SO happy to be back in the savory kitchen!

And now time for the postmortem. In our short tenure as "pastry chefs" we made lots of what I would classify as cooks desserts- something fairly simple to make, hard to screw up, and looks good on a plate. Since we made nothing mind blowing I'll just give you a recap of my final exam. Plate one, Creme Brulee. I love creme brulee; it's sweet, but not too sweet, rich, and I can't get enough of the crunchy sugar top. And my plate that I presented was by far my favorite of the night. I used melted finishing chocolate to draw the outline for the design on the plate, as well as draw a small latice heart for garnish. Once the chocolate on the plate hardened, which was no time flat, I was able to fill in the design with some fruit coulis. My only real mess up was the bruleeing of the sugar on top- apparently not bruleed enough.

The next plate of the exam was a fruit tart. Generally I am not a fan of fruit tarts. I like fruit, and I like tarts, but whenever people try to put the two together the results are far from great. Most fruit tarts I have been served have a pastry cream as the base, which in my opinion is a watered down vanilla pudding- not good. But in this fruit tart we filled the sugar dough crust with an almond cream, baked it to set it, topped it with a cornucopia of fruit, and it was o so yummy. While my tart looked great, the very center was slightly undercooked, which unfortunately I didn't realize until I cut into the bad boy. Oops! And then I tried to do a nifty design with the plating, but the coulis kept running, giving it an uneven look.

The final plate of the night was by far the biggest pain in the ass- the raspberry charlotte. The charlotte is what you would call an "ice-box"cake. You have layers of biscuit cuillere (or lady fingers), sandwiched between a raspberry mousse, topped with a raspberry gelee. There are so many ways that this dessert can go wrong, and you will never know if catastrophe has struck until you cut into it. As you can tell from mine, it was doin' the wave, which resulted from an inconsistency in piping the cookie dough, but in my defense that dough is so runny that it is difficult to get an even layer. Something to strive for next time.

Next post, tales from Cuisine III...

Mmmmm, meat!

It's official, I have completely OD'd on meat. After some yummy, although fat laden veggies, we entered into the wonderful world of meat cookery. While at first I was excited to actually cook composed dishes, this quickly turned to an aversion so strong that my stomach would begin to turn at the thought of eating any more meat. Don't get me wrong, we made some tasty dishes, from bacon wrapped filet mignon to herb crusted lamb chops, but after three weeks of non-stop meat (at least two different meat dishes a night) I am so ready for a meat-free vacation. Kairi (the pooch) on the other had has been loving it. While I have no desire to eat all this meat (beyond tasting the dish), I am nothing if not frugal- so I packed up as much of this stuff as I could get my hands on and took it home to my loving dog who was patiently awaiting my arrival . I would walk in my door each night, kick off my shoes as fast as possible, and relieve my weary shoulders of my meat-ladden booty. Kairi would immediately jump from the bed, although she had been in a deep sleep only a moment before, to start stiffing her way through my (large) bag off goodies. While you may balk at me feeding my dog bacon wrapped filet mignon, by the end of this section not only was I packing up my food to take home for Kairi but so was everyone else!

When Life Gives You Lemons...

After three long days of Cuisine I finals, we are ready to embark on Cuisine II. Week one- vegetables! After spending a good chunk of my adolescence as a vegetarian I have a profound love of veggies. Unfortunately, day one and two of Cuisine II-Vegetables was spent playing hide the vegetable. From drowning cauliflower in mornay sauce and blanketing it in gruyere, to breading and frying eggplant, we managed mask any and all vegetable flavor and obliterate all nutrients from the dish. So sad. Fortunately, day three and four highlighted techniques that emphasized how wonderful vegetables can really be. My favorite dish was created somewhat on the fly. It was Thursday night and we were roasting squash, yippee! We spiced up some butternut squash with cinnamon, cardamom, and brown sugar (how good does that sound), and roasted it along side some kabocha squash. While the butternut squash came out beautifully, when I was scooping out the kabocha it became a crumbly mess. What to do? Puree that sucker! And what goes better with pureed squash than some coconut milk and Thai red curry paste? Ahhh....nothing! There is something about the earthiness of the squash that pairs beautifully with the sweetness of the coconut milk and the spiciness of the curry paste. Pull it all together with a hint of fish sauce, top it with our spiced butternut squash and some cilantro, and you have the best squash dish in the WORLD. It was bangin'!

Happy New Year!

Wishing everyone a wonderful New Year, filled with good health and much happiness!