Week Six: The Story

I know, I know, I know. It's the start of week seven.

BACK OFF ALREADY!

That was me, honing Chris Farley, by the way. I'm not even sure what skit or what movie but I felt very Chris Farley-ish typing it all angrily, in caps, like some modern day technological yell of frustration in the nooks and crannies of the blogosphere ethernet.

Something like that.

Stressed out fat-guy-in-a-little-coat fit of rage aside, I'll confess that last week's meal was a total farmer's market geek out. I truly felt like the parodied couple on Portlandia, the one at Gilt Club ordering chicken, going to great, great lengths to ensure it was raised local and humanely.

Mmm Chicory. Just like endive and
choke (frisee) lettuce.

That's because at least one component of each piece of the meal, save for the avocado, came from the Hillsdale Farmer's Market.

Sidebar -- I'm a bit distraught; I don't get to go to the farmer's market for another FOUR WHOLE WEEKS thanks to this weekend's Landmark Education forum in Seattle and then a much-needed vacation to the coast with Jason two weekends after that.  -- End sidebar.

Make sure to get your oil hot enough
before dropping these in.

Anyway. Dinner was more like a savory, comfort food brunch meal. I called back to my Southern roots, frying up a yellow heirloom tomato in bread crumbs seasoned with paprika, salt and pepper. That little fried baby sat as the boat (a raft if you will) for the farmer's market egg that Jason poached (Really...the suggestion that poaching a fresh egg is much easier than an older egg isn't a wives tail...it's WAY easier).

Who ever thought comfort food and
salad couldn't be one in the same?

The bacony cornbread, warm and perfectly moist, combined with the sweetness of the balsamic was a savory version of pancakes and syrup while the egg, with its broken yellow yoke, combined with the creamy avocado and salty hot tomato and crunch of spicy arugula for a salad that wasn't as healthy as could be but really, with the combined texture and tastes, it just really didn't matter.

The only thing that was missing was a glass of perspiring sweet tea.

Local, Portland tea, of course.

Culinary Concoctions Week Six: Balsamic Chicory Salad with Farmer's Market Bacon Cornbread and Poached Eggs

Woowee it's been a week which means, unfortunately -- or maybe fortunately, who knows...depends if you're the type of person who hates that I separate my recipe blog from my here's-how-it-went-down blog -- both blog posts are coming up today.

That's gonna affect my stats damn it.

Not that I geek out about the stats or anything.

Ahem. Anyway.

This week's recipe is in theme with how I've been eating lately: Entree salads (I mean, I've got to combat all the bacon fat somehow, right?). So here goes:

Balsamic Chicory Salad
Ingredients:
4 bunches chicory, peeled into individual leaves or stalks
2 cloves garlic, thinly sliced.
2 TBSP balsamic vinegar
1 TBSP olive oil
salt and pepper
3-4 cups spinach/arugula, washed

Directions:
Heat oil in large saute pan over medium heat. Salt and pepper it. When hot, add garlic. Be careful not to let it burn! If you find your garlic is burning, lift the pan off of the heater and let it cool down a bit, constantly moving the pan around so the oil and garlic don't sit in one place. Add chicory. VERY quickly sprinkle with balsamic. Chicory only needs about 1-2 minutes, TOPS in pan. Remove, drain.

Add to spinach/arugula (Dressing optional; the balsamic drizzle adds enough moisture to the leaves as well as the soon-to-follow egg).

Ayers Creek Farm = The Bomb.
That's right, I said The Bomb.

Bacony Cornbread
Ingredients:
2 TBSP bacon fat or 6 pieces bacon, chopped
1 1/2 cups medium grind cornmeal
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1 1/4 cups buttermilk or milk substitute (go for something super creamy here)
1 TBSP sugar
1/2 TSPN salt
1 egg

Directions:
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Whisk all dry ingredients together in medium sized bowl. Don't forget to sift your flour! Heat fat and/or fry bacon in a 10 inch ovenproof skillet. Beat egg with milk in small bowl. Add milk and egg to dry ingredients. Fold together then pour into the hot skillet. Make sure to mix well with bacon grease and/or bacon. Bake in over for 25-30 minutes. Enjoy the heck out  of it after!

And to put it all together:
Slice cornbread and put it on the bottom of the plate. Top with spinach followed by chicory. Finish with poached egg, salt and pepper to taste.

Culinary Concoctions Week Six: The Ingredient

So...math equation for you all:

(Work Stress + Life Stress) (Lack of sleep + Middle-of-the-week Tummy Woes)  = Me cooking, but not writing about it.

I can't believe how I've fallen behind with blogging this week! Dang it!

So...with that, a brief on this week's ingredient, chicory.

Jason and I went to (surprise, surprise) the Hillsdale Farmer's Market on Sunday and raided Ayer Creek Farm's stand, meddling our way in between women stockpiled with parsnips, salad greens and slices of winter squash boasting the boldest orange hue I've ever seen, to pick up a few bunches of chicory.

"I have no idea what to do with these," I confessed to Jason, whose eye was wandering to the one pound bag of ground cornmeal (that yes, he subsequently purchased).

So, come Sunday night, I did my research:

Chicory, a/k/a blue sailors, coffee weed and succory, is a bushy perennial herbaceous plants that's cultivate for salad leaves. However, it's roots are also used, baked then ground and used as a coffee substitute.

In the US, real chicory is often confused as curly endive. They're not one in the same. However, chicory leaves also include raddichio (a/k/a choke lettuce), sugarleaf and Belgian endives.

Ahhhh it all makes sense now.

To really geek out with ingredient research...I found that the chicory plant is one of the earliest plants cited in recorded literature. Horace mentions it in his own diet: "As for me, olives, endives and mallows provide substance." While I loathe olives, at least that gives me a starting point for creating a recipe.

Moreover, Lord Monboddo described the plant in 1779 as the 'chicoree,' which the French cultivated as a pot herb (No, fellow Portlanders, not a pot pot herb). Rather, chicory is, and has been since the Napoleanic Era, used in coffee or as a coffee substitute. And of course, even the Egyptians used it for the same purpose.

Recipe starting point number two...complete.

More about the recipe tomorrow!

Week Five: The Story

Nuts + Food Processor= My new best friend.

I'm not even kidding.

Salt and peppered peppers

Last night's Romesco sauce -- with hazelnuts in lieu of almonds -- was de-lish-us (Yes, that's the phonetic spelling of delicious; don't even get the idea that I'm all-of-a-suddenly spelling words incorrectly. Sheesh!)

I mean, I would have spent HOURS slicing and dicing and mincing to get the kind of consistency that the food processor gave me for the Romesco sauce. Sometimes technology really is a great addition in our lives.

What was supposed to be a lazy Saturday was, well...exactly that. After all, I didn't actually get out of bed until well after ten a.m. and -- believe it or not -- didn't actually caffeinate my body until nearly noon (Which, occurred at Water Avenue coffee --- HANDS DOWN the best latte I've ever had. The aroma...taste...texture...body...rose...all absolutely gorgeous and delicious). Still, despite an ungodly sleep-in, I did manage to gather myself to the grocery store and pick up ingredients for this week's Romesco sauce.

It was (and still is!) fantastic!

Roasted bell peppers!

I, unfortunately, had to recall the list of ingredients from my end-of-the-week mind, which means I totally forgot sherry vinegar. That said, after pureeing all the ingredients up and tasting it's richness, I added a relatively healthy dose of balsamic vinegar for some acidic relief. The roasted red peppers added a great paprika-ish flavor (BTW, make sure when you're roasting bell peppers -- or really, any vegetable for that matter -- to line your baking pan with aluminum foil; it'll save you a couple hours of pan-saving scrubbing) and the hazelnuts...oh man, oh man...they gave the smoky, acidic, peppery base a sweet, garlicky (Because yes, I toasted the hazelnuts for about eight minutes in olive oil and garlic before hand), fatty mouth and flavor that was just...to...die...for.

Seriously, kind of a bitch
to peel. Note: Toast 15 min.

Word of the wise: When you're toasting hazelnuts via saute, make sure to give them a good fifteen minutes; the longer they go, the easier the papery film will be to peel; Jason and I spent a comical twenty minutes trying every which way to peel the outside coating of the toasted hazelnuts --- rubbing them with our fingers, rubbing them in our palms with each other, etc. --- only to have a handful land on the floor (as well as into our mouths; but I mean, who can really resist a toasted hazelnut, especially one who bathed in hot olive oil with slices of fresh garlic, right?).

Dinner! I just wish the sauce
didn't look like cat food

The great thing about this sauce was it's thickness; while I'm sure I needed to add more olive oil (I probably only used 1/4 cup, instead of the called for-1/2 cup, I was really happy with the consistency, which turned out to be more hummus-like and less pesto-ish. I pan-fried the remainder of our New Year's weekend halibut fillet which I plated atop a salad of arugula, avocado, grapefruit and homemade croutons and carefully spooned a heaping tablespoon of Romesco sauce -- okay...Romesco dip -- on top of the lemony halibut for a light, but filling Saturday evening meal.

It really was the perfect way to end a very, VERY lazy Saturday.

Culinary Concoctions Week Five: Romesco Sauce

It's been a while since I've made a good pasta. Considering how unbelievably cold it is here in Portland (Which I say, knowing that the rest of the country is in far, far worse shape than us. I spoke with a client this morning who said Houston is rocking a tepid 28 degrees. My sister in Butte told me not to complain, too; Western Montana is enjoying a brisk NEGATIVE 10 degrees.), I figured a nice steaming pasta would work as a great end-of-the-week tuck in.

While I first imagined making a kind of pesto sauce with the hazelnuts, I decided to head more North in my Mediterranean inspired sauce and land in Spain for Romesco sauce. Although it's usually made with almonds, many recipe variations -- including one from Portland's very beloved Vitaly Paley of, you guessed it, Paley's Place -- swap out almonds with hazelnuts.

So...recipe as follows:

Romesco with Hazelnuts (Thanks Vitaly Paley!)


Ingredients
8 Nyora Chiles
2 large red bell peppers
3/4 cups plus 2 TBSP extra virgin olive oil (See Clara? I didn't go all [ugh] Rachel Ray and evoo it there)
1/2 cup raw hazelnuts
2 TBSP fine breadcrumbs
2 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
1 medium tomato peeled and deseeded (Or if you're super mature like me, dejizzed)
2 TBSP sherry vinegar
Coarse salt and freshly ground black pepper (But come on, it's me, those go without saying)

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 450.
2. Snap the stems of the Nyora peppers. Shake out and discard seeds. Like any pepper, DON'T GET THE SEEDS IN YOUR EYES PEOPLE! (Also, if you're like me, don't cut yourself while chopping them.) Put the peppers in a heatproof bowl and cover with 2 cups of boiling water. Cover the bowl with a plate and the peppers soften for about 20 minutes. CAREFULLY pour the liquid out and dry the peppers on a paper towel.
3. While the Nyora peppers are soaking, roast red bell peppers, for about 30 minutes on a roasting pan. Make sure to turn them every 10 minutes or so. Place in paper bag, close bag and let cool.
4. Heat 2 TBSP olive oil in small skillet over medium heat. Add hazelnuts and cook, shaking the pan, until browned; about 4 minutes. Drain hazelnuts and let cool. Remove as much of the outside paper coating as possible.
5. Combine Nyoras, roasted bell peppers, hazelnuts, breadcrumbs, garlic, tomatoes, sherry vinegar and 1/2 cup olive oil in food processor. Season with salt and pepper. Pulse until completely purees.

The good thing about the Romesco sauce is that it can be made the day before. While it'll go well with homemade pasta, it'd also serve well as a sauce for a mild white fish, prawns, chicken or eggplant stack.

Story to follow...

Week Five: The Ingredient

I'm steering away from vegetables. Sure, the USDA just came out with new dietary suggestions (again?) that say, surprise surprise, we need to eat more vegetables and less processed food but it's not like I'm saying adios to vegetables all together, just as my current theme of ingredients-yet-to-be-cooked-with.

That prologue aside, I'm happy to pay homage this week to Oregon's state nut (Yes, we have one and yes, we're the only state to claim an official state nut -- not even Hawaii, with its obsession with the Macadamia nut, touts an official state nut): The hazelnut.

Though its also called a cobnut and a hazelnut, the two aliases boast different shapes -- the cobnut rounder; the filbert longer. In our great state of Oregon, we're more used to the filberts. Of French origin, the term filbert refers to both the tree and the nut (Though great debates in the nut world ensue that maybe...just maybe...that's not true). Like many of the great things in Oregon, the French brought the filbert here. In 1981 however (Hundreds of years after the filbert's introduction, of course), the Oregon Filbert Commission (Bet you didn't think that'd exist, eh?) conformed to the rest of the national marketing scheme and renamed the filbert to the hazelnut we now hold near and dear to our hearts.

And why wouldn't we love the hazelnut? Not only is it tasty -- delicious in both desserts and coffee (Though if we're talking Torani hazelnut-flavored syrup, I'll pass, acknowledging my nose stuck snobbily up in the air) -- but it is also ridiculously good for you. Rich in protein and unsaturated fat, the hazelnut is also high in vitamins B1 and B6. With such health benefits, it's no wonder (GAH! "No wonder" = a total AV scripting phrase. Oh well) the Chinese, in 2838 BC, believed the filbert took its place among the five sacred nourishments that God bestowed upon human beings (God, of course, being a term of relativity). What's more, the Greek physician Dioscorodes said of the hazelnut:

"It cures chronic coughing if pounded filbert is eaten with honey. Cooked filbert with black pepper cures the cold. And ointment of mashed burnt filbert shells and suet smeared on a head reverts baldness."

I'm neither bald nor experiencing a cough right now but still, I say, bring on the filbert.