recipes – Page 5 – Peaceful Reader

Weekend Cooking; I love tofu and you can too!

I love transforming this basic square of protein into delicious dishes. I fell in love with tofu soon after leaving college and exploring my own vegetarian choices after spending my college years eating mostly from the salad bar and well, mashed potatoes!

Tofu is so easy to cook and add to recipes but I run into many people, including vegetarians, who just don’t like tofu. I generally think it is because they haven’t experimented with it on a deeper level. Last week I made baked tofu with coconut rice and we ate it all up. If you’ve wanted to experiment with tofu give it a try.

This is what the tofu looks like after you cut it out of the plastic container and dice it into bite-sized squares. With other tofu recipes you often need to drain some of the water out of the tofu by wrapping it in a dish cloth and setting a plate on top. This recipe didn’t request that but it is good to know that you should squeeze water out first before cooking, which will help the tofu take on flavor better.

Gather the tamari or soy sauce, organic ketchup and sesame oil together to create the sauce.

Happily drizzle it over all that tofu. Yum.

Stop to read the recipe again and have a sip of wine.

Start the coconut rice (recipe to follow)

Add the coconut milk after rice has had a chance to toast a bit with spices.

Sadly, once I plated this whole deal up and we sat to eat, we were all too busy eating to snap any final pictures. There are mixed feelings about soy but my motto is “moderation is the key” and it is fun to experiment with and will pick up flavor from what you cook it with. Groovy Girl’s favorite tofu is stir fried with just honey and tamari sauce. I buy wheat-free, low-salt tamari from the bulk section of my organic store.

Both of these recipes are from Moosewood Restaurant; Cooking for Health.

Any Easy Baked Tofu

1 cake tofu, 16-oz firm

2 T. dark sesame oil

2 T. soy sauce

2 T. organic ketchup

Cut the tofu into bite-sized squares and place in an un-oiled baking dish large enough to hold a single layer. Stir together next 3 ingredients and drizzle over tofu squares. With a rubber spatula, gently turn to coat. In a 400* oven, bake uncovered for 30-40 minutes, stirring once or twice until tofu is browned and firm. Serve hot or at room temperature. Serve over rice or noodles and add a sauce ( like Trader Joe’s wonderful simmer sauces.)

Basic Brown Rice

1 cup rinsed organic brown rice

2 tsp olive oil

scant 1/2 tsp sea salt

1 1/2 cups water

In a saucepan or skillet on high heat, stir together the rice, oil, and salt for one minute, stirring constantly. Add the water and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to very low, stir once and simmer covered until tender, about 45 minutes. If you like a softer rice add 1/4 to 1/2 cup more water.

Coconut Rice

Replace 1/2 the water with unsweetened coconut milk or dried, unsweetened coconut with the raw rice. For a golden hue, add ground tumeric (1/2 tsp)

The baked tofu did not get as crispy on the outside as I was expecting. The kids didn’t seem to notice or care. The rice was mellow and yummy and I liked cooking it this way instead of in a big pot of water.

I served the rice and tofu separately as all three of my children are not big fans of “mixed” food and this way they could add as much or as little of the tofu as they wanted. I did add several shakes of curry powder to my husband and my plates of mixed rice and tofu to spice ours up.

This post is linked to Beth Fish Reads Weekend Cooking!

Happy Eating.

Weekend Cooking Love

I live a rich life although I am far from wealthy and I’ve recently realized how much joy I get from participating in Weekend Cooking, the one meme I participate in all week. Sometimes on busy weeks it is the ONLY post I make. Like this week. I’ve had many inspirations for posts but no spare time.

I love the community of Weekend Cooking~I love trying out their recipes, I love reading their cookbook recommendations, their inspirations and menu plans. I’ve learned a lot about cooking and baking and I’ve had fun experimenting with recipes I might not have tried otherwise. It’s like going to church for me. I can find God everywhere in my life but the community of people I have a church is support network for me. I feel that way about weekend cooking and blogging in general because it makes my life richer. I like being part of a community of readers and eaters.

We had a church Christmas bazaar today and I made 6 loaves of bread and 12 peppermint whoopie pies. Yum. I’ve made the bread many times but the whoopie pies was a new attempt. I know, risky, right to try something new for an event but seriously I can’t have 12 whoopie pies sitting around my house-I would eat them. This way I got to share one with my family-yes, we split it three ways (Groovy Girl was at a sleep over and thus was excluded from the tasting). I got the recipe from So Sweet! a cookbook from Sur La Table I discovered from a Bermuda Onion’s Weekend Cooking post. Of course. I bought the cookbook as a Christmas present for Groovy Girl. It’s been tucked away for a few weeks and luckily she was at that sleepover so she didn’t notice me using it last night. This compact cookbook is adorable with delectable pies, doughnuts, cookies, and cupcakes.

Here’s the recipe.

Chocolate Whoopie Pies
makes about 20 pies (It only made 12 for me; maybe I made the cookie part two big.)

Cake Ingredients
2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 cup Dutch process cocoa
1 1/4 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 cup buttermilk
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/4 cup vegetable shortening
1 cup brown sugar, packed
1 large egg, lightly beaten

1. Preheat oven to 425* F and position an oven rack in the center. Lay 1 nonstick silicone baking mat or a piece of parchment each baking sheet.
2. In a medium mixing bowl, mix the flour, cocoa, baking soda, and salt together and set aside.
3. Combine the buttermilk and vanilla in a small bowl. (Or leave it in the measuring cup like I did)
4. Cream the butter with the shortening in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment on low speed until completely mixed. Scrape the sides of the bowl well with a rubber spatula. Add the brown sugar and continue mixing on high speed for about 3 minutes until mixture is light brown and fluffy. Add the egg and mix. Scrape the sides of the bowl again.
5. Turn the mixer on low and begin adding the flour mixture and buttermilk in two alternating batches, beginning and ending with the flour mixture.
6. Scoop the batter into tablespoon-sized balls using a spring-loaded cookie scoop or a spoon and place about 2 inches apart on the prepared pan. Bake the cakes one sheet at a time for 8 minutes, until cakes are puffed. Transfer to a cooking rack and let cool completely.

Peppermint Filling

1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, at room temp.
1/3 cup vegetable shortening
1 cup marshmallow creme
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 T. peppermint schnapps
1/2 cup crushed peppermint candies

1. Place the butter and vegetable shortening in a medium mixing bowl of a stand mixer, and beat on low speed with a paddle attachment. Add the marshmallow cream and increase the speed to medium. Beat for 3 minutes.
2. Add the powdered sugar and continue beating on medium speed for an additional 3 minutes.
3. Add the peppermint schnapps, beating on low speed for 1 minute. Pipe the filling between two cakes as directed.
4. Place the crushed peppermint candies on a plate. After assembling the pies, gently roll the edges along the crushed candies to coat. Store as directed.

The array of whoopie pie flavors is spectacular. Key lime, bananas foster, Kahlua and cream, black forest…Wow. I would like to play with the filling to leave out the shortening which is a fake almost plastic flavor for me and I could taste it. I think if I added more butter and marshmallow cream it could even it out.

Thank you to Candace at Beth Fish Reads for linking together all our food-related posts.

In other cooking news I have an 11 pound locally raised turkey soaking in brine in my grandmother’s extra large crock. We are celebrating T.giving tomorrow as a family. I’ve also spent the week trying to go gluten-free. It makes me stop and read the labels even more than I used to and I’m becoming educated on gluten and wheat. I’m gaining empathy for people who really have to avoid these two ingredients.

Weekend Cooking; Happy the weekend is over (did I say that?!) with recipe

Little Women; The Musical was the play this
weekend but keep reading for what I cooked…

It’s been a busy week with a full rehearsal schedule and opening night was Friday. I went to all three shows as I don’t know when I’ll have the pleasure to watch Teenage Boy on stage; he is an excellent actor but dislikes being in plays.

I cooked this week. I think the zucchini pizza from last Sunday night kick started me off creatively and the rest of the week followed through.

I made this potato soup from Lynn’s Cooking Adventures-I found it using the scientific method of googling “creamy potato soup” and then picking the 1 of 5 recipes that matched what I was dreaming of eating. How many of you use this simple technique to find a recipe?

Someone at school left two Real Simple magazines in the lounge and I paged through one of them while waiting for my lunch to heat in the microwave. I found this Broccoli-Quinoa Pilaf recipe-I did not make the cod but used it two days in a row for my lunch. Heidi at 101 Cookbooks has lots of recipes listed for this power grain. It is one of the grains I purchase from the bulk section of my local organic store, making it always available in my pantry.

I have more chickens and a turkey coming from Tim, my local farmer/meat man so I decided to make one of the last chickens from my freezer. While I made this recipe I pondered just how I came to cook meat in my kitchen, which for years, had been vegetarian-but that’s a whole ‘nother post. I wanted to make a BBQ chicken from homemade sauce someone gave me when I found this recipe instead as I paged through Not Your Mother’s Casseroles by Faith Durand and found Pot Chicken and Potatoes Baked in Cinnamon-Saffron Milk. Her recipe is adapted from a Jamie Oliver recipe.

To finish the weekend off we had a potluck at church today and I wanted to bring a side dish-this one is from Durand’s casserole book. The pan was cleaned out before I made it through the food line-I was toward the end after cleaning up the nursery-other people told me it was good though. One grandmother even said it was her grandson’s favorite dish. A success at the church potluck does not always happen for me!!

I had to hunt down the chef’s of two dishes that I loved (one of the great things about a potluck-trying new dishes)-one was a heavenly caramel brownie dessert served in a trifle bowl and the other was a 3-squash bake, this one was made by a friend and she shared some of the leftovers with me (hello, Monday lunch!) but the guy who made that amazing caramel dish did not share the leftover layer at the bottom. I’m just sure he took that dish home and licked it clean! I’ve asked for both recipes and will pass them on as I get them.

Luscious Oven Creamed Corn
(110)
casserole dish: 9 x 13-in baking dish
bake time: 45 minutes

2 T. unsalted butter
1 small onion, diced
4 1/2 cups frozen corn kernels (about 26 ozs), thawed
1 tsp salt
1 T. sugar
1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 cup milk
1/2 cup heavy cream
2 T. all-purpose (unbleached) flour
1/4 cup minced fresh chives
1/2 cup coarse yellow cornmeal
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese

1. Preheat the oven to 350. (I never do this step at the beginning to save energy unless I’m baking) Lightly grease the baking dish with nonstick cooking spray or butter.
2. In a large skillet, heat the butter over medium heat. When it foams, add the onion and cook for 5 minutes, stirring frequently. Stir in the corn and cook just until the corn is hot. Stir in the sugar, salt, and pepper.
3. Stir in the milk and cream and bring to a simmer. Whisk in the flour and cook, stirring constantly, until the mixture thickens slightly, about 5 minutes. Remove from the heat and stir in the chives and cornmeal. Spread in the prepared baking dish and sprinkle with the Parmesan cheese. Casserole at this point could be covered and refrigerated for up to 24 hours.
4. Bake, uncovered, for 45 minutes, or until the top is golden. Let stand for 10 minutes before serving.

Click on all the recipe titles to find their links. Happy cooking!
This post is linked to Weekend Cooking hosted by Candace at Beth Fish Reads. Click her link to find many delicious food-related posts.

Weekend Cooking; Shaking things up with a new pizza recipe

(Our zucchini pizza straight out of the oven)

My husband has been very tied up this week both at work and directing a high school production of Little Women; The Musical. He was called in to save the play when the directer originally hired for the position up and quit. She deserted right after she’d picked the play and cast it! Then zip, gone! Our son is a student at the school and they’ve asked handsome husband to direct before but it’s never worked out. This time he said yes.

What does all that have to do with my cooking week? Our schedule has been off. He and my son, who he sweet talked into playing an old man, have been busy with rehearsals making this week an easy cooking week, filled with leftovers and warmed up pasta. I did make patty melts one night with some brat burgers I found at Hansen’s, my around-the-corner dairy/local food selling utopia. Last night we had a classic go-to comfort food dinner of refried bean burritos adding in roasted cubed eggplant to spice it up.

Earlier in the week I’d clicked on one of Janssen’s posts at Everyday Reading to see her menu line-up and found a recipe for zucchini pizza she shared from Perry’s Plate. I love making pizza and find it far superior to any pie purchased over the counter. Yes, I am a pizza snob, even shredding my own mozzarella. I have two round stones, a great pizza wheel and a recipe for dough from an old Rodale cookbook that I’ve used for years.

After reading the zucchini recipe I knew I had to try it. It is my new favorite! My husband and I ate all of it-I saved out one square to share with my amazing library volunteer. She and I love trading recipes and this will be good for her to try. My kids hated it though so it is not necessarily kid-friendly. Luckily the dough makes two pies and the second one I just tossed sauce and cheese on top and they ate it and smiled big pizza-smiles. What they did love though was smell of the kitchen during the pie-making and baking process! What a great tradition to pass on.

Enjoy!

Other baking news:

Perry’s Plate (at the Tasty Kitchen) has a gluten-free apple, ginger, and spice scones which uses almond flour. I’m going to make these soon just to experiment with gluten-free.

I signed up to bake whoopie pies for our church bazaar-something Christmas-y. Maybe a peppermint/chocolate combo.

Weekend Cooking is a weekly meme hosted by Beth Fish Reads. Click there for many more food-related posts.

Weekend Cooking;The yumminess that is Bread Pudding w/ Whiskey Sauce

Teenage Son wrapped in new quilt made by
amazingly talented mother-in-law!

This is one of my husband’s favorite desserts and so I whipped it up to celebrate our anniversary. I like bread pudding but the pull for me is the sauce! This recipe is from an old Vegetarian Times (Feb, 2009) and its been written in my favorite recipes book ever since.

(Image from VT)

Bread Pudding with Whiskey Sauce

3 large eggs

2 egg whites

1 cup skim milk

3/4 cup maple syrup

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp freshly ground nutmeg

5 cups cubed day old whole wheat bread, cut or torn into 1/2 in-cubes

1/2 cup raisins

1/2 cup dried cranberries

Whisk together first 7 ingredients. Fold in cubed bread, raisins and cranberries. Let stand 5 minutes for bread to absorb custard. Set oven to 350 degrees. Coat 9-in square baking pan with spray and spread bread mixture into pan. Bake 35-40 minutes until no egg mixture is bubbling up.

Whiskey Sauce:

1 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup water

1/4 cup whiskey

Add water and brown sugar to small saucepan. Bring to a boil on med-high and let boil for 2 minutes. Remove from heat and add whiskey. Boil 2 more minutes and then transfer to small pitcher. Let cool just a bit and serve warm over individual bowls of bread pudding. Add flavored whipped cream to top of bowl.

This is such an easy recipe for the delicious “ooohs” and “aahhhs” you will get when you serve it!

Weekend Cooking is a regular meme hosted by Beth Fish Reads-click to her link to find many more food-related posts and recipes.

Happy Cooking!!

Weekend Cooking; Mouth-watering Vegan Chocolate Pudding

My stepdaughter, Kaylee, has been here all week and anytime she is here I step up my cooking. This week I tried three new recipes; one from my Sept. Vegetarian Times and two from Alice Waters’ In the Green Kitchen. All were delicious but the most adored recipe was a Vegan Chocolate Pudding from VT. It was completely unfair to pit this mouth-watering chocolate recipe against two other very good choices so you can find their recipes at the end of this post. Several of us dreamed about the pudding that night after eating it and talked about it the next day.

(image courtesy of Seraphic Singles)

Velvet Smooth Dark Chocolate Pudding (Sept, 2011)

This warm stove-top pudding packs a punch of deep chocolate flavor. It’s the perfect recipe for a quick company dessert or a simple nighttime treat.

3/4 cup packed light or dark brown sugar
3 T cornstarch
2 1/4 cups unsweetened hazelnut or almond milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
8 oz vegan semisweet chocolate, chopped

Whisk together brown sugar and cornstarch in medium saucepan. Gradually stir in hazelnut milk, whisking constantly to combine. Bring mixture to a boil over medium-high heat, or until mixture thickens. Stir in vanilla, and remove from heat. Add chopped chocolate, and let stand for 1 minute. Stir until smooth.

Mine didn’t thicken as much as I thought it should. We called it chocolate soup but licked our bowls anyway. Now I have to try, try, try to make this again and see if I can perfect it! Oh, the tribulations!

Here is the Lentil Soup recipe.
Here is the Apple Galette recipe.

I’ve loved paging through In The Green Kitchen and am thinking I might have to buy it. Waters’ has it set up with an informative opening about what a green kitchen is and how to stock a green pantry with a great list. Each featured chef has their own section, with their green cooking tip; something like David Tanis’ Simmering Beans advice followed by his recipe for White Beans with Garlic and Herbs, which I plan to make this week.

Weekend Cooking is a weekend meme hosted by Beth Fish Reads. Any food related post can join in-click on her link and take a look at all the other foodie-posts!

Winning Recipe of the Week

(Food Network Image)

Menu planning has been chaotic this summer but I’m still working at it. My friend, Verda, sent me this recipe to try. One week I purchased some of the ingredients at the farmer’s market but then that week I didn’t have time to make an actual recipe-it was a lot of noodle soup and cold sandwiches. Yesterday I had the time and my ingredients were still good. Oh, and the results were so delicious and luckily there are leftovers.
Thank you for sharing Verda!

Lemon Rice and Eggplant-Chickpea Curry

3 T. olive oil, divided
1/1/2 cups basmati rice
4 cups chicken stock, divided (I used veggie stock)
1 bay leaf
1 lemon, zested
1 tsp ground tumeric
2 tsp ground coriander
2 tsp ground cumin

1/2 tsp ground cardamon, optional (i didn’t have this)

1 T. butter

1 med. onion, thinly sliced

3 cloves garlic, chopped

1 medium eggplant, peeled and chopped (I used two baby eggplants and didn’t peel)
1 red bell pepper, seeded and chopped
1 14-oz can fire-roasted diced tomatoes, drained
1 15-oz can of chick peas, drained
salt and pepper
2 rounded T. mild or hot curry paste
2 scallions, chopped
1/4 cup chopped roasted cashews (I used sliced almonds because they were already in my cupboard, begging to be used)

Directions:
Heat a med. pot over med. heat with extra virgin olive oil. Add rice and toast for 1-2 minutes. Add 3 cups stock and the bay leaf, lemon zest, tumeric, coriander, cumin and dardamon. Cover pot and bring rice to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer rice for 18 minutes. Fluff rice with a fork, remove bay leaf and add butter. Toss to coat the rice evenly.

While the rice cooks, make the vegetables. Heat a deep non-stick skillet over med. heat with 2 T olive oil. Add onion, garlic, eggplant and bell pepper. Cover and cook stirring occasionally 7-8 minutes. Uncover and add the tomatoes, chick peas, salt, pepper, curry paste and remaining 1 cup stock. Simmer 6-7 minutes longer. MIx scallions into rice and top with vegetable mixture. Garnish with roasted cashews (or almonds in my case).

The spices were wonderful and Groovy Girl walked through the kitchen at one point and said “something smells really good!”

This recipe is from Rachel Ray and the Food Network.
Linked to Beth Fish Reads Weekend Cooking meme-anyone can play along with a food-related post.

Weekend Cooking; Salman Rushdie's Lamb Korma

Sunday Parade photo of Lamb Korma

My husband loves to read the newspaper, which is a good thing. I like to read certain parts but it usually depresses me so he reads and shares things with me and that way I don’t have to get bogged down by all the bad news. He found this Salman Rushdie’s recipe at the back of the Sunday Parade Magazine and said that it sounded good. He loves Indian food and with his birthday right around the corner I decided this would be my special dinner for him.

I bought local lamb at my organic store where I also found the cardamon pods. I’ve never been able to buy safron here so that was the only ingredient I didn’t have. It was delicious and I loved crushing the cardamon pods in my mortal and pestle which looks a lot like this one….

The recipe was a huge hit even with my daugher who didn’t eat the meat but loved the gravy and the jasmine rice. We had some frozen naan from an Indian store in Arkansas to add to the fun!

Lamb Korma

Servings: 8

Ingredients:

1½ cups chopped onion
1 cup clarified butter (melted and skimmed of milk solids)
4 to 5 large cardamom pods (available in the spice section)
10 to 12 small cardamom pods
2 lb lamb, cubed
6 to 8 garlic cloves, crushed
½ inch fresh ginger, peeled and finely grated
1½ Tbsp ground coriander
1 tsp red chili powder

1½ tsp salt

8 oz plain yogurt, lightly whisked

Pinch of saffron

Directions:

1. Brown onions in butter until deep golden. Remove with a slotted spoon and pulse in a blender to form a paste. Crush cardamom; mix into paste.

2. Add meat to pan; stir over medium-high. After a few minutes, add garlic, ginger, coriander, chili powder, and salt. Stir for a couple of minutes. Mix in yogurt. Cover and cook over very low heat, 1 to 1½ hours.

3. About 5 minutes before korma is ready, add onion-cardamom paste and saffron so it can be absorbed by the meat and gravy.

Mine didn’t look like the picture above at all-I didn’t have those tiny peas and carrot cubes and mine had more gravy (I added extra yogurt)-otherwise I thought it would be dry. We loved it and I would make this again.

This post is linked to Beth Fish Reads’ Weekend Cooking meme. Click over to see her post-she’s making (my heavens) chocolate-ginger cake! It looks yummy.

Salman Rushdie’s Parade magazine’s article.

Weekend Cooking; Recipes for friends

Friends of ours came to visit for the weekend. They live in Indiana, own a bakery and are food lovers like we are. My friendship with Barb predates husbands and children, when her and I waited tables together in Denver, CO. Eventually we both married, had children, she and her husband moved back to Chicago and eventually her hometown in Indiana. She is the one friend who’s visited me anywhere I’ve moved and the year we lived in Chicago she drove in often to visit and helped me find local great stores like Stanley’s for produce. Both of us were vegetarians for years (and years)and moved back into eating meat as local options came available. Now she’s added yoga to her morning routine so we sought out a Saturday morning yoga class at a nearby wellness center as my favorite studio held a pregnancy workshop this weekend.

Friday night after school I grocery shopped for two recipes I planned to make, came home and frantically vacuumed (vacuuming is the one thing I do to make my house presentable) the house (with Groovy Girl and Teenage Boy’s help). After cleaning for about an hour (moving piles around) I poured a glass of wine and started cooking, which is truly the *second best reason for having guests over. I picked two interesting recipes that we would eat on Saturday afternoon that wouldn’t involve me being in the kitchen all Saturday afternoon-the easy place to look for a recipe like that is in my Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker book by Robin Robertson. I wanted a recipe I hadn’t made before and the Pintos Picadillos list of ingredients appealed to me. On Saturday right before dinner I also whipped up this Couscous Salad recipe from Super Suppers Cookbook 2 by Judie Byrd-I talked about this cookbook and the Angel Biscuit recipe in another Weekend Cooking post.

We ate both recipes last night with some spring salad greens and a Newman’s Own ginger dressing, which was delicious!!
Everything tasted amazing and all the adults had second helpings. My kids love Pearl Couscous but didn’t love it mixed with all the veggies. Conversation and wine flowed freely as we discussed a variety of topics and played several board games with our children. They headed home this morning and the house is quiet.

Other food-related news: April’s Vegetarian Times magazine arived in my mailbox on Friday and with all the vacuuming, cooking and hanging out I haven’t cracked the cover but I look forward to paging through it today. I checked out two awesome library books the other day…Earth to Table; Seasonal Recipes from an Organic Farm by Jeff Crump and Bettina Schormann and Reducing Your Foodprint; Farming, Cooking, and Eating for a Healthy Planet by Ellen Rodger. I will be reading these this week and I’m shocked that March is almost finished and April is right around the corner!! Hopefully, warmer weather is just as close cuz I’m still freezing here.

Two upcoming Weekend Cooking posts just waiting in my brain…My husband’s birthday was this week and I cooked several of his favorite meals, including Lamb Korma using an expensive cut of (local) lamb from our small organic store and I made Angel biscuits with a group of students after school one day last week. Oh, and I have to make a coconut pudding for a Haitian dinner on Wednesday!

Enjoy a pleasant and peaceful week…
*The number one reason for having houseguests is the shared conversation~sometimes lively, sometimes filled with laughter and sometimes in stillness.

Namaste~

Weekend Cooking is hosted by Beth Fish Reads-stop over and see what she has to say about pressure cookers and Lorna Sass!

Weekend Cooking with Slow Food

Come To The Table; The Slow Food Way of Living edited by Katrina Heron with a foreward by Alice Waters presented by Slow Food Nation easily caught my eye as I browsed the new nonfiction at the public library. This book, filled with 12 California farm stories and a section of delicious sounding recipes, is packed full of information-all that and sage bits of wisdom from Alice to open the book. Heaven.

I’ve enjoyed paging through this book, looking at the earthy photographs of farming people, animals, and the fruits/vegetables of their labor. In each section I’ve found pearls of wisdom that I’m taking to heart. Sometimes it seems when our heart is into something we feel we know all about it. Reading this book made me realize I have so much more to learn about “organic” and sustainable-living. In “How-to: Store it/Saving from Scratch” I read this bit ” It seems obvious, but people forget: You can save a lot of money if you buy food you can store and use over time. For example, beans. Dried beans are far cheaper than the canned ones.”(11)

Reading about the 12 farms was enriching and made me ready to sow some seeds of my own. I can’t have chickens where I live but we do garden and these stories inspired me to try some new plants, to reach farther in my gardening quest. I read about Jennifer Greene, a grain specialist, who decided to see how many people one woman could feed…she says about 100. She grows grains the old-fashioned way in northern California in an idyllic setting. Now I like King Arthur Flour myself but I can only imagine what it would be like to buy flour from a woman farmer just down the road. That would truly be cool. Each farm family has an story worth telling and many have taken over family farms and turned them back to what they were years, and years ago. Funny that a big handful of people knew that what was once tradition would now be new.

At the tail end of the book live many slow food recipes I plan to try over time but not this weekend as Groovy Girl are on our own and we had take- out Chinese last night that did not muster up to what we can make ourselves. I was just trying not to have to cook after a very long day. Hmmmph.

Here is a short list of recipes titles that I’m interested in making:

Paul’s Best Biscuit Recipe (Sweet Home Ranch)
Spearmint-Stuffed Artichokes (Full Belly Farm)
Jennifer’s Chickpea Puree (Windborne Farm)
Battered Fried Zucchini (J & P Organics)
Pastaless Vegetable Lasagna (Tierra Miguel Farm)
Bean and Barley Stew (Redwood Roots Farm)
Eggplant Curry Soup (Vang Family Farm)
Okay, that recipe looks just so easy to type I’m going to share just this one:

Eggplant Curry Stew
2 or 3 Chinese eggplants, thinly sliced
1 T yellow curry paste
1 can coconut milk
3/4 cup sliced bamboo shoots
3/4 pound chicken breast and thigh, cubed in 1/2 pieces
3 or 4 lemon tree leaves or 1 stalk lemongrass can be substituted
Salt to taste
Place all ingredients in a medium saucepan and add cold water to cover. Bring the mixture to a low boil, then simmer until chicken is cooked to your preference. Add salt to taste. This thick stew can be served over rice.
Makes 4 servings(130)
[unless i’ ve recently cooked one of the few organic/local chickens from my freezer i would substitute tofu for chicken]

I’ve never read a recipe for Suckling Pig (Clark Summit Farm) but there is one listed and for dessert, let’s all have California Cloverleaf Farms Organic Cheesecake (Burroughs Family Farm).

Thank you to the library for such a feast of cookbookery!!
This post is linked to Beth Fish Reads Weekend Cooking meme. Click to her to find a whole slew of other foodie folks blogging about what they’re cooking up.

Look for it at in IndieBound bookstore near you by clicking on the title/link:

Come To The Table; The Slow Food Way of Living

This book counts toward my Foodie’s Reading Challenge.