Why have I never discovered this before?

So the Saturday Market is overflowing with radishes - red, French breakfast, and Easter egg ones. This week we bought beautiful French breakfast and Easter egg ones. Honestly I had been spoiled with the year-round farmers markets in California. Now that the Eugene Saturday Market has opened, I realize how much fresher and better the produce is than from the regular grocery store (organic or not). You can only eat so many fresh, raw radishes then I discovered butter glazed radishes. Where have they been all my life? So easy, tasty and a great way to eat up radishes. An excellent vegetable side dish to grilled salmon and some kind of grain pilaf (rice, quinoa, bulghur, couscous).

Butter glazed radishes (Molly Stevens, All About Braising)

1 bunch of radishes, trimmed, washed and scrubbed

1 tbsp butter

1/4 c water or stock

pinch of sugar

salt and pepper

Place it all in a skillet and heat on medium. Once boiling, cover and reduce heat to low. Simmer for 20-25 minutes or until radish is easily pierced with a knife. Uncover, shake the pan and continue cooking until the moisture has reduced into a glaze.  Sprinkle more freshly ground pepper to taste. Serve immediately. 

Breaducation

My breaducation started about a year ago. I decided that I needed to learn how to make bread. I thought that the kneading the dough would be meditative. Wrong! Besides that I still wanted to make a good loaf. There is something so elegant and simple about bread. So much complexity in taste with using only 3 ingredients. After a few one tonne bricks, 1 dutch oven and a stand mixer later, I have been able to make some decent loaves of bread. From hearth bread to no-knead to sandwich loaf. Funnily enough, the family favorite loaf is the plain ol' white sandwich loaf. Fluffy, rich and so delicious. The best first kind of bread to try is the no-knead as long as you have the patience.
http://www.sullivanstreetbakery.com/recipes/noknead.html. It's surprisingly easy and yields fantastic results.

Nothing says spring like pink duckies

My daughter and I baked some butter cookies today. We called them spring cookies to welcome back all the birds and the ducks that show up in the weirdest places. Of course they had to be frosted with pink icing. I'm not much of a cookie baker especially cut cookies. I was surprised how difficult it was to manage the dough and producing good looking cookies. What's the secret? colder dough? more patience than a 4 year old? Maybe I'll stick with the drop cookies. 

GO DUCKS!

Another grilling day

The beautiful weather continues and so is our grilling menu. Tonight was skewers of orange-ginger tofu and cumin shrimp with asparagus. The orange-soy marinade was tasty and probably would've gone well with the shrimp too. 

Orange-ginger-soy marinade

1/4 c freshly squeezed orange juice

1/4 c soy sauce

1 tbsp minced ginger

1 tbsp toasted sesame oil

zest of 1 orange

2 tbsp vegetable oil

pinch of chili flakes

Whisk together the ingredients. Pour over cubed tofu (~1 lb), marinate for a few hours in the fridge. Skewer tofu. Grill.

There's not much of a recipe for the shrimp. I just salt and pepper the shrimp and add a pinch (or 2) of ground cumin. Then stir in some oil. You can add some minced jalapeño for some heat.

Mmmm.

Burger, potato salad, beer, the ultimate trio

It was a hot, hot weekend! If this is spring, I'm liking it. My husband promptly went out and bought a new gas barbeque. We have never owned one before and the last bbq was a mini charcoal one about 3 years ago. Needless to say our grilling technique is a bit rusty. Since I don't cook meat too often, I am always paranoid of under cooking meat. The second photo is my sad burger after multiple cuts to see if it was done. Yes I do have a meat thermometer but somehow I don't fully put my trust into it yet.  I've noticed many restaurants serving their burgers medium rare. Now I love a medium-rare steak that's fine. But medium rare ground meat is another thing. I trust that searing the surface of a steak will get rid of E. coli and other nasties but you never know about the condition of pre-ground ground beef. Last summer I got take out from a BBQ joint down the street from my home. It was completely pink and raw on the inside! Ew. And I was 8 months pregnant at the time. Double Ew.

I tried a new salad today, it was a non-mayo potato salad with radishes, red onion and capers with a dijon-white wine vinaigrette. Pretty tasty but not quite enough oomph in the dressing. I'll have to tinker with it and post the recipe in the future.

ps. I had sparkling apple juice instead of beer and it was almost as good.

Small bites

So I had extra shrimp left over this week so in a rush, I threw together some shrimp wontons for dinner. They are surprisingly fast and simple to make and most delicious to eat. So good that we immediately dug into dinner and I forgot to take a picture. I served about 6 wontons per bowl with noodles and baby bok choy in a brothy soup. Ok so they were instant sichuan noodles from a package with shrimp soup flavouring! But I did add the wontons and bok choy to make it somewhat more nutritionally redeeming.

Shrimp wontons (adapted from K. Kwong, Simple Chinese Cooking)

~3/4 lb peeled, deveined shrimp, cut into 4 pieces

1 tbsp green onions, minced

1 1/2 tsp ginger, minced

1 tsp dry sherry (optional)

1 tsp soy sauce

1 tsp oyster sauce

1/4 tsp white sugar

1/4 tsp sesame oil

wonton wrappers

Mix together the above ingredients (except the wonton wrappers)

Put about a teaspoon of filling in the middle of the wrapper

Using your fingers, wet edges of wrapper with water

Fold wonton wrapper in half forming a triangle

Press edges firmly then take two ends of the triangle and bring them together, dab with water to seal shut.

The wonton will kind of look like a tortellini. If you are in a super rush and don't care terribly about how it looks, you can shape the wontons by pinching up the edges and sealing it shut. They'll look like little balls with a squishy top. 

Drop wontons into boiling water for about 4 minutes, lift out with slotted spoon and serve immediately in noodle soup. Or serve as a starter with soy-chili sauce.

If you make more than you can eat, you can place them on a cookie sheet and freeze them. Transfer into a freezer bag once they're frozen. 

Comfort foods

The cold/flu has descended on the family like the plague this past week so I was in desperate need of some comfort food. There's nothing like a hot, steamy bowl of brothy noodles to satisfy the soul. Throw in some shrimp and tofu and it's like heaven. I don't have a written recipe for this but the main idea is below. Most of the prep is done in advance so you can throw it together really quick whenever hunger strikes.

Tofu, shrimp and vegetable noodle bowl with soy-ginger broth

Udon noodles

Extra firm tofu, sliced

Peeled, deveined shrimp

Broccoli, cut into florets

Carrots, sliced 

Chicken broth

Soya sauce

Ginger

Green onions, sliced

- Boil udon noodles for 4 minutes. Set aside.

- Pan fry tofu slices

- Steam broccoli florets and carrot slices

- Fill pot with chicken broth (or water), add a dash of soy sauce, a knob of ginger and let it boil

- Add peeled, deveined raw shrimp to boiling broth and cook until done (about 4 minutes)

- If eating right away, add all the other cooked ingredients and give it a whirl. Taste broth, add more soy sauce if needed

- Garnish with sliced green onions and a drizzle of toasted sesame oil

What's your comfort food?

Mmmmm tacos

It's been a while since I had a really good burrito, not since living in California! So I try my best at cooking Mexican at home. Tonight's dinner really hit the spot: soyrizo, mushroom and potato soft tacos (adapted from Rick Bayless). Saute soyrizo (vegetarian chorizo, yes it exists! and no I am not a vegetarian) until nicely browned, toss in sliced onions and mushrooms and continue sauteeing until soft. Add grated potatoes and cook until soft. Tonight I served it with soft flour tortillas, topped with mozzarella and cheddar cheese, arugula, avocado and fresh tomato salsa. 

My new farmer's market

 In my quest for good simple food, I am also trying to live and eat sustainably and locally. Being recent newcomers to Oregon, I finally had the opportunity to hit up the Saturday Farmer's Market. This summer I will try to see how much I can stretch $20 at our local farmer's market each week and what delicious things I can make. This week I got 1 lb of rosemary garlic lamb sausage, arugula, rainbow chard, and red radishes - all for $18. So far I've kept the menu pretty easy: radishes on buttered bread, arugula bianca pizza and soyrizo, mushroom and potato soft tacos topped with arugula. Just thinking about it makes me hungry!