Carrot-Top Gremolata Pt. 2: 100 Days of Recipes, Day 54

A 'leftover' follow up to my carrot top gremolata on fish recipe - I had some leftovers, and my original plan for them before the gremolata was to make tacos for lunch at the studio. That didn't change, but the tasty gremolata inspired a 'gremolata slaw' of sorts for the tacos. By the way, kind of on the run this morning, so the recipe is in the descriptions. :)

Gremolata Slaw: Carrot tops, kale, carrots, red cabbage,
lime peel, roasted garlic, and salt

I had a tiny bit of the gremolata left, and I used it to start my slaw, adding some thinly sliced red cabbage, kale, more carrot shavings, a bit of lime zest, and roasted garlic. A sprinkle of salt and a squeeze of lime juice finished it off, and I had a nice, bright slaw that was the perfect accompaniment to my leftover fish in a taco.

I had some new test plates out of a kiln, so lunch was the perfect time to try them out.

I don't use my copper glaze on food surfaces, so the center of this plate is glazed with
my new black satin matte glaze, with just enough 'crazy green' to make a beautiful frame. 

It's always nice to have enough to share with a friend, and to test another new form and glaze!

The tacos were filled out with Gremolata Slaw, leftover cod, some avocado, and a 'crema' I made by thinning out some hummus with a little hot sauce and a splash of cashew milk.

And like a good recipe should, there was a bit of the slaw leftover, which extended my Carrot-Top love one more day when I blended it with some almost too-ripe avocado to make another condiment to go with sweet potatoes I had roasted with olive oil, salt, turmeric, and smoked paprika. That made another tasty taco lunch, and a chance to try out another test from the last kiln.

A final hurrah for the carrot-top gremolata, now in an 'avocado slaw' with roasted sweet potatoes.
A sprinkle of nutritional yeast and a dash of hot sauce were the only other condiments
in this quick studio lunch, but every bite very tasty!

All in all, very happy to say that carrot tops will no longer be relegated solely to the stock pot!

Luscious Stack o' Leftovers: 100 Days of Recipes, Day 47

Or, fun with a canape cutter.

From the Sweet Potato Polenta, and a flattened version of Mom's Meatballs comes this lovely way of playing with my food:

So much fun playing with leftovers - I also had fun playing with my plates.

I took my trusty little canape cutter, and cut rounds of the leftover polenta. For each serving, a round of polenta and a round of meatball were heated on my Foreman Grill. Meanwhile, I cooked down some onions in herbed butter, then some spinach, also with light seasoning. While a sunny-side up egg slowly cooked, I started playing with the elements. A bed of spinach, then the polenta, some of the onions... When the egg was just right, I hit it with the cutter, and placed the cut parts of the whites on top of the polenta and onions. Next was the flat meatball, more onions, the egg, and a garnish of garlic chives (that had been in the onion saute). 

It's still rainy, but I'm ready to move back into the fresh foods of the season. This has been some comfort food fun, though!

Roasted Chicken Thighs. 100 Days of Recipes: Day 36

Roasted Chicken Thighs

current reading

I'm not really intending to just cook my way through "The Pleasures of Cooking for One" from start to finish, but as it happens, I picked up some lovely chicken thighs at the Tailgate Market, and her very first recipe is for a Broiled or Roasted Chicken that just hit the spot. Actually, it's the first formal recipe, as the introductory writing in the first chapter is a recipe of sorts on general kitchen preparation. I was pleased to read a lot of what I already have and do, and that we share the belief that cooking is "an ongoing process, one dish leading to another," (Pleasures of Cooking for One, p.4) and she has a lot of lovely, handmade pottery throughout her images, which makes Judith Jones my kitchen BFF. I also got a giggle out of this section:

fresh garlic scapes and young onions were my substitutions 

It wasn't in the list of essential equipment, but I thought a
mezzaluna would have been great to mince up these aromatics.
Then again, I do love my kitchen knives of all sorts!

"... If you don't happen to have an ingredient that I suggest, try a likely substitute - a shallot for a small onion, some fennel instead of celery, a different root vegetable to replace the ubiquitous carrot, dried mushrooms for fresh. Above all, don't throw away those few tablespoons of cooked spinach, or the three or four extra spears of asparagus you couldn't quite finish, and particularly the little bit of precious juice left in the pan - all these can be used in myriad ways and offer the single home cook some creative challenges." (Pleasures of Cooking for One, p5)

It tickles me because so often when I'm sharing recipes, I'm usually sharing lists of optional replacements, and a friend recently noted the extreme number of "small jars" in my fridge - all with bits of this and that leftover from some previous meal.

I digress - so the first recipe I come to in the book is for Broiled Chicken, and in what I think is the very spirit intended, I immediately see how I can change it up to suit my ingredients. Here's what I did:

Roast Chicken

4 Bone-in, Skin-on Chicken Thighs

for the Herbal Undercoating:
1 Garlic Scape bulb, peeled and cleaned
Salt
1 good size, or two small spring onion bulbs, with about 3-4 inches of the greens, too
2 strips of lemon peel
handful of parsley leaves
fresh ground pepper
2 TBSP olive oil

Accompanying Veg:
1 small Sweet potato, cut into wedges
3-4 med/large mushrooms, cleaned and cut in half or quarters
3-4 baby turnips, cleaned and trimmed and cut in half
1 small carrot, in thick slices across the round
salt and pepper

I prepped and cooked this dish in one of my ceramic pie plates, so I did not pre-heat the oven, but put it in cold and then set it to 375. More on that later, but if you're not cooking in handmade ceramic, you can pre-heat your oven to 375 and use a roasting pan.

Rinse and pat dry the thighs, and place them skin-side up in the pie plate. 

Prep the Undercoating*:
Finely chop the garlic scape, onion bulb, and green onion with a good sprinkle of salt to a coarse paste texture. Chop up the lemon peel and parsley, and add it to the other and chop/mince it all together with the olive oil. Add a generous amount of fresh ground pepper. Divide out the mixture in four parts, and after creating an opening and separation of the skin on the thigh, push 1/4 of the undercoating mix under the skin of each thigh, pressing on the top of the skin to help spread it evenly. Salt and pepper the skin side, then flip them over and salt and pepper the other side (leave skin side down). 

You may most certainly bake/roast in handmade ceramic -
Just heat the dish with the oven. There are very few recipes that
truly require a 'pre-heated' oven. The flavors develop beautifully.
It's kind of like chicken pot pie - the extreme 'gluten-free' version!

When you cut your accompanying veg, place them all in a bowl, and give a very slight drizzle of olive oil over them, tossing them to get them all coated. Salt and pepper them, and then add them to the pie plate with the chicken.

Place the pie plate in a cold oven, then set it to 375 degrees. In a pre-heated oven, you might roast the chicken 20-25 minutes, then flip them skin side up and roast for another 10 minutes. Starting in a cold oven, you will have to adjust that a bit, maybe just adding another 5-10 minutes for the warm up. I flipped the chicken after about 35 minutes, and the skin was nicely done, but I worried about over cooking, so decided to re-crisp the skin under the broiler. That was a great idea, but a slight distraction caused me to check it about 3-4 minutes later than intended. Everything was still DELICIOUS, if not a bit charred here and there. Extra flavor.

Roasted in handmade, served on handmade, and delicious!

*I'm sharing my take on this wonderful recipe, and I don't know how available or hard to find this book is, but I highly recommend seeking it out if you don't have it, because her own style of describing a process, along with some other very cook tips and tricks that I didn't include, are in the book. Get the book.

Another good thing to come out of prepping this meal, and as encouraged in the book, I had a good bit of vegetable bits and ends, and I brewed up a nice pot of veggie stock that will become a soup later this week. Stay tuned!

If you love it, put an Egg on it! 100 Days of Recipes: Day 13

If you love it, put an Egg on it!


Most times, when I'm planning a recipe or a meal, I'm thinking ahead to the leftovers - how the flavors will continue to develop in the second or third serving, and what else I might do with the original meal or element. And if I've made something that really makes my mouth and soul sing, one of my favorite ways to enjoy it again is under an over-easy egg. Breakfast, lunch, or dinner - it's a winner!

My handbuilt bowl is the perfect vessel for my
leftover lamb tagine (that will be in a future recipe posting)
with all it's warming spicy goodness, under a velvety egg. dang.

That's today's recipe - if you have leftovers from a meal that made you happy, put an egg on it! 

Scraps Soup. 100 Days of Recipes: Day 6

Finishing up what was started last night, and a lovely, therapeutic morning puttering in the kitchen. Here's what became of my pot full of scraps:

I think I'll just call it "Scraps Soup", as I doubt it will ever be the same twice, and I think that may be what I like most about it! Because this is intended to be 100 days of recipes, here it is, more or less:

Scraps Soup

In my large stock pot, I tossed leftover scraps of cauliflower stalks, bits of sweet potatoes, onions, fennel bulb,and a few cloves of garlic. I covered it in some open containers of vegetable and chicken stock from the fridge, threw in a handful of crushed thyme leaves (dried out from last year's herb garden), a generous toss of salt, and several grinds of pepper.

That simmered, covered, on a med/low heat for several hours. That's probably not necessary, but I fell asleep watching a movie. Luckily there was enough liquid, and the heat was low enough, that it didn't dry up and burn off. I turned it off and left it to finish this morning, when I put it back on that heat to warm it while I scoured the kitchen for any more scraps. I found two little ends of fresh-but-drying-out turmeric and ginger, so they were grated into the pot along with a bit more salt after tasting. In the fridge, I found the leftovers of a small tin of chopped up mushrooms and truffles*- in they went. I picked up some ramps at my favorite tailgate market yesterday, and added the tender leaves to the pot as well.

As it heated up under cover again, I saute-ed the ramp bottoms with some trumpet mushrooms, also collected at the tailgate, in a bit of olive oil.

Once the goodness in the stock pot was heated again, I went at it with the immersion blender, melding all the good flavors into a velvety, thick soup. 

The result - a soul-warming soup base to hold the seasonal goodness of the ramp/mushroom saute. And plenty in jars, ready to nourish throughout the week!


*I love shopping at Hopey & Company! It's on my daily route, great selection of organic produce, lots of local products, and then the occasional, random find that pops up. The little tin of chopped truffles and mushrooms in oil was one such find - I grabbed it on a whim to top some of the sweet potato toasts at the annual meeting. The finishing flavor on this soup is a nice blend of the ramps, melting into a soft truffle sweetness. 

Soup, Part 1. 100 Days of Recipes: Day 5

I started today's recipe late, so it will finish tomorrow -  here's part 1:

Other than 'Soup' there is no name for this creation as of yet, but by the slow-simmering aroma wafting from the kitchen, I think it will be a good one! The ingredients are mostly the scraps from cooking earlier in the week: cauliflower stalks, bits of sweet potato, fennel bulb, onion, and stock. That's my starting point, tune in tomorrow and see what it becomes!