food transparency makes us happy

The calendar says summer is officially underway and farmers markets across the country are once again lively and bustling places—now more than ever, apparently. According to the USDA, farmers markets have grown 17 percent in the last two years.

One major reason why: people like the idea of eating local, and perhaps more importantly, knowing where, exactly, the food comes from that they’re going to be putting on the family table. This concept of knowing where one’s food comes from is becoming known as “transparency,” and more consumers today are demanding it from their food sources—in both grocery stores and restaurants.

The recent food contamination outbreak in Europe has undoubtedly helped to further ratchet up people’s desire to know as much as possible about what they’re putting inside their bodies.

hmmm cooking :-)

pasta made easy...

garlic scape pesto, make some today!

Ingredients

6 garlic scapes, chopped
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
1/2 cup freshly grated Asiago cheese
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1/4 cup pine nuts
3/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Directions

Place the garlic scapes, Parmesan cheese, Asiago cheese, lemon juice, and pine nuts in the bowl of a food processor. Drizzle the olive oil over the mixture. Blend until the pesto is a brilliant green color and smooth in texture. Season with salt and pepper.

I like it on homemade raviolis... like these:

Mushroom Ravioli Filling

3 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup onion, chopped
1 garlic clove, minced
2 cups mushrooms, chopped
1/4 cup prosciutto, chopped
4 tablespoons Parmesan cheese, grated
2 ounces mozzarella cheese, shredded
1 egg
Salt and pepper


Saute onion and garlic in butter 2-3 minutes.
Add mushrooms and sauté until brown and most of the liquid has evaporated.
Add prosciutto and cook 1 more minute just to heat through.
Remove from heat and add remaining ingredients. Fill ravioli.

use store bought wonton wrappers or make your own pasta from scratch, its fun and easier than you think :-)

Homemade beef ravioli recipe

INGREDIENTS:

***Filling***
1/2 pound ground beef
1 small onion, minced
1 clove garlic, minced
1/4 cup minced parsley
2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese
salt
1 egg
water

***Ravioli Dough***
2 1/4 cups flour
2 eggs
1/4 cup water
1 tablespoon olive or salad oil
1 teaspoon salt

***Marinara Sauce***
2 tablespoons olive or salad oil
1 small onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tablespoon sugar
2 teaspoons basil
1 teaspoon salt
1 can (16 ounce size) tomatoes
1 can (6 ounce size) tomato paste



PREPARATION:

FILLING: In 10-inch skillet over medium-high heat, cook beef, onion, and garlic until all pan juices evaporate, onion is tender, and meat is browned. Remove skillet from heat; stir in parsley, cheese, and 1/2 ts salt, then egg. Cover and refrigerate ground beef filling.

RAVIOLI DOUGH: In large bowl, stir 2-1/4 cups flour with remaining ingredients to make a stiff dough. On well-floured surface, knead dough until smooth and not sticky, about 20 times. Cover dough with plastic wrap and let rest 30 minutes for easier rolling.

Cut dough into 4 pieces. On floured surface with floured rolling pin, roll 1 piece into 12 by 8 rectangle. With dull edge of knife, lightly mark dough into twenty four 2-inch squares. Place a scant teaspoon of ground beef filling in center of each square.

Roll second piece of dough into 12 by 8 rectangle; place over filling. Press around filling and along edges. With cutter or knife, cut into 24 ravioli; place in single layer on floured, clean cloth towel. Repeat with remaining dough and filling. Let ravioli dry 30 minutes.

In 8 quart saucepan over high heat, heat 6 quarts water and 2 teaspoons salt to boiling. Add ravioli, stirring gently to separate pieces so they do not stick together; heat to boiling. Reduce heat to medium; cook until tender but firm. About 5 minutes. Drain ravioli; serve with sauce.

MARINARA SAUCE: In 2 quart saucepan over medium-low heat, in hot oil, cook onion and garlic until tender. Stir in sugar, basil, salt, tomatoes with their liquid, and tomato paste; heat mixture to boiling, stirring to break up tomatoes. Reduce heat to low; cover saucepan and simmer 20 minutes to blend flavors, stirring occasionally.

Grilled Beef and Mushroom Burger Recipe

"Hey dad, wanna come over for lunch? We're making mushroom burgers." Radio silence. That's weird. Usually an invitation for free food and the company of his firstborn is met with gleeful enthusiasm. "Don't worry, it's a beef burger, with lots of mushrooms, you'll love it." Bingo, that was it. "Okay, sure! We'll be right over." It used to be, "mushroom burger" just meant a hamburger with lots of mushrooms piled on top. These days it usually refers to a burger in which a portobello mushroom takes the place of the patty. Nothing wrong with that, but it wasn't what my father wanted. A grilled beef patty with melted Swiss, and slathered with sautéed shiitakes and onions? Hard to resist.

So, this one was a big hit with my dad, and with my mom too, for that matter. The things that make it a step up from your typical retro mushroom burger are the dried mushroom powder mixed into the ground meat, intensifying the mushroom taste, and using shiitakes for the topping, which are highly flavorful mushrooms. You can easily skip the dried mushroom bit it you don't have any on hand, and you can easily sub button mushrooms, or any other mushrooms, for the shiitakes if you want.
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Grilled Beef and Mushroom Burger Recipe

Prep time: 15 minutes
Cook time: 15 minutes

We call for fresh shiitake mushrooms, but only because they are so much more flavorful than regular button mushrooms. Feel free to use whatever mushroom you want, buttons, cremini, morels, etc. Although this recipe calls for using a grill, you can easily pan fry them on your stovetop. I would recommend using a large cast iron pan for pan frying.
Ingredients

1 pound ground beef
A 1-ounce package of dried mushrooms (porcini, morels or other mushrooms)
2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt (add more if you like burgers a little saltier)
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/2 pound fresh shiitake mushrooms (can substitute button or cremini), sliced
1 large onion, sliced thin (about 2 cups)
2 Tbsp olive oil
Salt
4-6 slices of Swiss cheese
Burger buns

Method

1 Process the dried mushrooms in a food processor, or a clean coffee grinder (grind some raw rice to clean out coffee grinds), until ground into a powder. Remove any large mushroom pieces that didn't grind down, a few small pieces will be fine.

2 In a large bowl, use your clean hands to gently mix together the meat, salt, mushroom powder, black pepper and Worcestershire sauce. Mix just until everything is mostly combined, a minute or two. Do not overwork the meat mixture or it will become tough and meatloaf-like. Shape the meat into 3-4 patties, using about a quarter to a third of a pound per patty, creating a slight indentation at the centers of the patties (this will help keep the patties fairly flat when they cook, as the sides tend to contract more than the center).

3 Prepare your grill for high, direct heat. While the grill is heating up, heat a large sauté pan over high heat for 1 minute. Add the mushrooms and dry-sauté them until they release their water, about 2-3 minutes. Add the onions and the olive oil, toss to combine and continue to sauté over high heat 1 minute. Add salt to taste and cook until the onions soften and begin to brown. Turn off the heat and place in a bowl.

4 Grill the burgers to the desired doneness, between 5-8 minutes per side, depending on the thickness of the burgers and how hot your grill is.

5 When the burgers are almost done, lay the Swiss cheese over them and allow the cheese to melt. Paint the burger buns with a little olive oil and toast them on the griddle or grill grates. To assemble, put a burger on the bun and top with the sauteed onions and mushroom mixture.

Yield: Serves 3-4.

Chef Ramsey's Heart

I have been watching the most recent season of kitchen nightmares. I am so impressed with his heart. He has a rough exterior, but he gets through to peoples hearts and passions. Some real tough cookies he has gotten through to this season. I wish all of those eateries all the best. Watch and see what I am saying here:

Grilled Peas - Eat them like edamame

Are you familiar with edamame, the salty soybeans often served at Japanese restaurants? I became addicted to them when I lived in Japan years ago; they're the Japanese version of bar nuts, almost always served at bars there, with beer. You eat them by putting the pod in your mouth, closing your teeth, and pulling out the pod which releases the salty beans to eat. (Trader Joe's carries them, by the way.) This recipe is sort of like an English pea version of edamame, that you grill. Okay, yeah it's a stretch, but you eat them like edamame. You take fresh English peas, toss them with olive oil and salt, and then grill them until they are lightly charred on the outside and steamy soft on the inside. Then when you eat them, you scrape up some of that smokey, charred, salty flavor, while the peas pop into your mouth. If you want to add to this symphony of flavors, you can sprinkle some balsamic and chopped mint on the peas before eating.

The trick is to make sure you are starting out with fresh, relatively young peas, the kind that would cook up in a couple of minutes if you boiled them. The first time I made these I used what turned out to be tough old peas. Even when I tried boiling them for 20 minutes they were still tough. Grilling for a few minutes obviously didn't work any better than boiling them. The next time I tried this I used greener, fresher, apparently younger peas. They grilled up perfectly. I grilled a half pound of peas and ate them all happily, by myself. Could easily have eaten another half pound.

got all the tools you need?

You can help decide what we eat for dinner!

But alas we have no funds, you can help with that right here:

leave suggestions and I will blog about it each step of the way :-)

Go cast iron for life :-)

I own three pieces of cast iron cookware, and this item is one of them... and among my favorite cooking implements, period. In fact, I use this skillet most of all, and it doesn't even have a place in a cabinet! I keep it on the stove permanently, for that is how often I use it.

Beware that cast iron is not a quickie-cooking component (it takes time for the iron to heat, and it takes experience to gauge the iron's "perfect temperature" for sensitive dishes), but for dishes requiring steady, even heat and for cooks who require durable cookware with easy clean-up, cast iron CANNOT be beat!

This skillet is going to last forever. Its care is easy: I scrub it with hot water only, and dry it with an old rag and apply a thin layer of vegetable oil while the iron is still hot... a year and a half later, it's still rust-free and delivering the reliable service I have come to expect and admire. No scratches interfere with its performance, as is the case with my allegedly-long-lasting Wearever nonstick cookware set (what a waste of money THAT was!). Heck, I even use my cast-iron skillet for CREPES, and that's saying something! Despite the pan's weight, it's an immeasurably better nonstick crepe-cooker than teflon. In fact, I use my cast iron cookware for everything from french fries to spaghetti sauce to eggs and bacon to french toast! It's a dependable griddle, skillet, grill, and pot, and it goes right from the stovetop and into the oven for maximum versatility.

I am an avid home-chef, and I can say without exception that my cast-iron cookware is the best kitchen investment I've ever made.

apricot chicken

Apricot Chicken Recipe

If you don't have fresh apricots, you can use a combo of dried pitted apricots and apricot jam. Chop up about a dozen dried apricots and add them, with a half cup of apricot jam, to the stock in step 4 (skipping steps 1 and 5).
Ingredients

1 1/2 pounds apricots, roughly chopped, pits removed and discarded
1/4 cup sugar
2 Tbsp cider vinegar
2 pounds skinless chicken breasts, cut into 1 to 2-inch pieces
Salt
1 Tbsp unsalted butter (can sub olive oil)
3 Tbsp olive oil
1 chopped onion
2 cups chicken stock or broth (use gluten-free stock if you are cooking gluten-free)
1 Tbsp chopped fresh rosemary
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 teaspoons Tabasco or other hot sauce (you can add more if you like)
Black pepper

Method

1 Place the chopped apricots in a large bowl. Stir in the sugar and the vinegar. Let sit while you brown the chicken in the next step.

2 In a large sauté pan, heat 1 tablespoon of the butter and 1 tablespoon of olive oil over medium-high heat. Working in batches, place chicken pieces in the pan, without crowding the pan, and brown them on each side. As the chicken cooks, sprinkle salt over it. Once the chicken is browned, remove the pieces from the pan to a bowl and set aside.

3 Add the remaining oil to the pan and sauté the onion until it begins to brown. As the onion cooks and releases moisture, use a flat edged spatula or wooden spoon to scrape off the browned bits from the chicken (called fond) from the bottom of the pan.

4 Once the onions have browned a bit, add the chicken stock and lower the heat to medium.

5 Put about 2/3 of the apricots, along with any juice they have given up, into a blender and blend into a purée. Pour the purée into the pan with the chicken stock and onions.

6 Add the cinnamon, rosemary and Tabasco and taste. You may need to add some salt. Bring to a simmer, then lower the heat and gently simmer for 10-20 minutes.

7 When you are ready to serve, put the chicken and the remaining apricot pieces into the pan and simmer gently for 5 minutes.

Serve hot with rice.

Yield: Serves 6.