Avocado Toast - 100 Days of Recipes: Day 39

Avocado Toast

I can almost see some eyes rolling with the announcement of another Avocado Toast, and here's what I have to say about that:

I have been eating mashed or sliced avocado on toast for years. Until the 'fad' of Avocado Toast appeared, I just called it avocado on toast. Sometimes alone, sometimes with other stuff on it. Then it became a 'thing', and now, apparently, it's a 'passing thing'. Well I still love it, so maybe I'll just go back to calling it Avocado on Toast. And if you're over it, then don't eat it!

Not that I don't pay attention to fads, sometimes - I wouldn't have thought of using sweet potatoes as a 'toast' if it weren't also 'a thing', and I make my avocado toast that way often. Let's go to today's recipe now, because I'm tired of 'words in quotes'. :)

Avocado toast, on small stoneware plate with white salt glaze.

Avocado Toast

The truly wonderful thing about avocado toast is that the only real requirements are avocado and toast. Beyond that, it's up to you and your tastes. Today's 'recipe' (oops, I did it again) is simply:

Toasted whole grain bread
1/2 avocado, mashed with salt and pepper
1/2 hard boiled egg, lightly sprinkled with salt/pepper
a generous squirt of Sriracha

In that order, refer to the image if you need additional instruction. 

Beet Greens Soup: 100 Days of Recipes, Day 38

It's been a good while since I've done weekend shopping and cooked from that all week - it seems that in the past couple of years, it's been a day to day pondering, with the exception of making a large batch of something that lasts 2-3 days. "The Pleasures of Cooking for One", my current cookbook muse, is motivating me to create meals that feed into other meals, and is reminding me to think differently about all parts of the foods I'm using.  Today's "recipe" will take you through what I did yesterday, and while I am not writing this out in recipe form, if you read it all, the recipe is in there!

I'm a huge fan of leftovers and throwing things together with 'scraps', and reading this book in combination with recently discovering the Instagram feed called 'cookscraps' is giving me all kinds of great ideas!

All the bits and ends from weekend cooking and prep - soon to be a yummy stock!

Over the weekend, I started by preparing some salads for the week, and I tossed all the stems, peelings, ends and little bits left over into a stock pot with some water and a few herbs, and simmered a lovely veggie stock throughout an evening. I took that to the studio yesterday, with the rest of my beets, kale, garlic scapes, some onions, sweet potatoes, a random few mushrooms and carrot.

Note: Beet leaves are also great added to other greens in saute,
or even thinly sliced and added to other soups

I chopped up the beet stems and kale bones and softened them in a bit of the stock with a small spoon of coconut oil, adding more stock as I kept chopping stems and the liquid reduced. I also chopped up the onion, bulbs and greens of the garlic scapes and added that. And I finely chopped up about 2" of ginger and added that with about 1 tsp each of cumin, cayenne, smoked paprika, and turmeric. While that simmered away, I cut down the beet greens and kale, then added that to the pot with the rest of the stock (I had 2 quarts total), put a lid on it, reduced the heat to a high simmer, and let it do its thing until the greens and stems were completely tender. While that was happening, I peeled and cut 2 small sweet potatoes into cubes, peeled the beets, cutting the larger ones into smaller pieces, and cut the mushrooms into quarters. Those were tossed with a slight drizzle of olive oil and seasoned with salt, pepper, and smoked paprika, and roasted in a 400 degree oven until tender, but not overly soft. 

Green soup: pre-blend. I had gallery activity during the blending, so didn't photograph that part.

I forgot my immersion blender at home, but we have a small blender at the studio, so I did a few batches of the soup in the blender to get it all smoothed out (*tip: when pureeing hot soup in a blender, don't fill it all the way up, and drape a kitchen towel over the top before you go - the heat will expand out when you do, and if you're not holding on and/or if your lid isn't tight, it will pop off and shower you with hot soup. I did not find this out the hard way, I witnessed it years ago in a kitchen and never forgot!)

The pureed soup was returned to the stock pot, but it was thinner than I had hoped. We didn't have much for thickening, but luckily I had been busy enough that I never got around to my own breakfast, so I harvested some uncooked oats and walnuts, tossed them in the blender with a cup of the puree, and created a nice thickener to add back to the pot, along with the roasted veggies.

What resulted was a lovely, thick, maybe not velvety but smooth enough, green soup with a delightful depth of flavor.

Sexy, velvety soup with roasted vegetables over soft vegetable polenta.

As I was cooking at the studio, I was cooking for more than one, and we wanted to stretch the soup a bit more (and add a starch for those who wanted it). I hadn't planned for that, so another quick tour of the studio kitchen cupboards gave us our solution: a bag of grits and a can of vegan vegetable soup. I brought the soup, plus two cans of water to a simmer in a small pot. Meanwhile, we picked a casserole pan out of the backstock inventory (a beautiful piece by my studio mate Sarah Wells Rolland - we were all so hungry by the time this was done, it wasn't until later that I realized we never took a picture of that!). It got a quick 'greasing' with coconut oil, then 2 cups of grits, salt and pepper and mixed that together. The simmered soup/sauce was poured on top, mixed well, and the casserole was placed in the cold oven. We set that to 350, and about 35 minutes later, the grit/polenta was stirred up, then baked another 10-15 minutes. 

The result: a nicely seasoned soft polenta under the velvety, green soup. SO. GOOD. Note to self: I wish I had brought a lemon with me - it would have added even a touch more brightness, but I'm certainly not sad about it being left out!


PS - I ended up with yet MORE scraps that went into a bag. When the bag is full of other bits and ends, I'll start another round of stock. And so it goes on...

Salad Days Continue! 100 Days of Recipes: Day 37

Salad Days Continue!

A quickie post today, because when you have great, fresh salad ingredients, and you have delicious roast chicken in the fridge, you have lunch - all the things from the jar in my previous post, plus strawberries, and the leftover roast chicken. Mixed up a quick balsamic vinaigrette to lightly dress, and served it up in one of my 'big salad' bowls. Bon Appetit!

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!

It's Salad Season! 100 Days of Recipes: Day 35

It's Salad Season!

Salads of some sort are in season year-round, but in my area, the Tailgate Markets are starting to overflow with wonderful greens and veggies, as well as similar bounties from farmers bringing eggs, cheeses, poultry, meat, and fish. Omnivores and vegans alike will find endless options!

As noted in yesterday's blog, I loaded up on good salad fixings to add to the goodies I get from Mudluscious Gardens every week. I'm also trying to better prepare myself for studio workdays - as much as I love having 12 Bones BBQ and a daily food truck behind our studio, I love cooking and preparing my own meals, too!

Two days of salad yumminess!

Today's lunchbox will include a lovely jar o' salad: salad greens, walnuts, mushrooms, carrots, roasted sweet potatoes, baby turnips, baby beets, and kale. I also have some of the garlic scapes and spring onions finely sliced in some balsamic vinegar and salt, a nice 6 minute egg, and some avocado. I've got a nice dinner planned for tonight inspired by the book I mentioned yesterday, and leftovers from that will no doubt find a place on tomorrow's salad!

Farmer's Market and Weekly Prep - 100 Days of Recipes: Day 34

Not only did I come home from 90 degree Florida with a bit of a late Spring cold, I came home to true Spring weather - rainy, colder, and rainy. I hear lots of moans around me, but I LOVE it! I love all four seasons, but my favorites are those that really have a little of everything. Well maybe not everything, but the cool nights and early mornings and breezy, warm but not too warm days that come in early Spring and late Fall are my favorites.

Yesterday I bundled up to hit my favorite Tailgate Market, and it did not disappoint! My lingering cold slowed me down from getting there when they opened, and I thought the cold might slow others down, but it was packed when I arrived, and my favorite mushrooms were already sold out. I did, however, find lots of early spring greens, veggies, and ALL the strawberries! 

The salad greens came in my weekly Mudluscious Farms delivery, and I found baby beets
and turnips, garlic scapes, spring onions, kale, and strawberries at the North Asheville Tailgate
(along with a yummy vegan scone and coffee that didn't last to make the picture!)

There was no cooking yesterday - it was first day back in the studio, finishing up some packing from the last kiln, a bit of studio organization, and some warm up platters at the wheel before joining studio mates with a bit of gallery re-arranging. Taco Billy sustained me at the studio, and nibbling on my market finds with leftover mac & cashew cheese became dinner.

My fridge and pantry have been filled, from Mudluscious, the Tailgate, and a quick stop at Hopey & Co. for fill-ins, and I'll start prepping ingredients and planning meals today to take me through the week.

A side note on an unintentional, yet lately acknowledged, tradition of sorts. Every year at Christmas, good friends come to stay, and one of our regular traditions is to make pilgrimage to Mr. K's Bookstore. We have a leisurely visit, and I try to limit myself but always walk out with a small armload of books. These books, it seems, are what I go to when I travel. I don't have as many long, uninterrupted periods of time to read as I'd like, but between getting to the airport early enough to navigate a long tsa line to layovers and delays, traveling by air is a great time to read. I've traveled to Florida several times this year, and I noticed on this trip that I was going to my "Mr. K's" stack of books each time for my reading companion.

Current reading...

So when I was preparing to leave for the most recent trip, I grabbed the book at the top of the stack, and it was "The Pleasures of Cooking for One" by Judith Jones. Anyone who knows me knows that I love cooking for others, so the title wasn't the immediate draw! What caught my eye in the bookstore was the author, Judith Jones - a name I immediately recognized as the editor for many cookbooks I owned, by Julia Child, James Beard, and others. I knew immediately I'd love to read her perspective on cooking, and even though I love to cook for the leftovers, I figured it never hurts to have new tricks and tips for putting together quick meals for one.

I read the introduction waiting for my first flight out, and by the time I finished that one section, I knew I would savor every word on every page of this book - I'll be sharing some morsels with you in the coming posts to be sure, but for now I'm off to take inspiration from this passage from her introduction:

"...there is something about going home at the end of the day or giving over a quiet Sunday afternoon to cooking - smashing the garlic, chopping an onion, getting all those good cooking smells going, stirring, and tasting mindfully, and then adjusting the seasonings - that makes us feel creative." (The Pleasures of Cooking for One, Introduction, by Judith Jones)

Mac and Cashew Cheese. 100 Days of Recipes: Day 32

I thought I'd get further in than 21 days before a major gap occurred in my 100 days, but I'm glad it's happened so I don't have to fret it! 

The past 11 days, some of which you'll find on the Instagram account, have included the frantic finish of production into a glazing and firing cycle, followed by unloading, sorting, packing, delivering, and shipping pots. That was followed by a trip to Florida to see my folks and help them with a yard sale, returning late Tuesday of this week, bringing with me a lovely summer cold. The cold kept me home yesterday and today, but today at least included taking care of the travel laundry, so I'll be ready to get back to the studio tomorrow!

I haven't been out to get fresh fruits/veg since I've been back, so all my comfort cooking this week has come from the fridge and pantry (I can't wait to get to the farmer's market tomorrow!). Today's recipe may have already appeared in the blog, but it's been a perfect comfort lunch on a slightly cooler, rainy day.

Sick Day Comfort Food: Mac & cashew cheese, with peas
& finely crumbled turkey bacon

Cashew Cheese Sauce (for mac & cheese)

This cashew based 'cheese' sauce is great to sauce your mac, or to use as you would any light cheese sauce. You can make it more hollandaise-like with a bit more lemon, or cheese it up even more by adding more nutritional yeast. 

1 1/2 cups raw cashews
3 TBSP fresh lemon juice
3/4 cup water
1 1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
1/2 tsp. chili powder (or cayenne)
1/2 clove garlic, smashed
1/2 tsp. mustard

(this makes enough to dress 16 oz. pasta)

Process the cashews in a food processor. First they will chop up, then as they continue to process, it will ball up, then get more paste-y. That's where you want it to be.

Add the rest of the ingredients and process to blend well. 

If you're making 'mac & cheese', cook 16 oz. of pasta to your 'dente' choice. Drain and return to the pan, adding the sauce and stirring to blend and heat.