Stuffin' Things

*** HAPPY 38TH ANNIVERSARY TO MY WONDERFUL PARENTS!!! ***

 Note:  We're posting this several days after it was written - we've been busy!

Pomegranates make you work for their yummy
goodness, but they are worth the work.

Hethyr:  I have been so busy with clients over the last few weeks that I’ve barely had time to cook for Jon and myself at home.  He’s made grilled cheese or quesadillas a few times this week, which is great, but we’ve run out of some of our basics and I think we’ve both been craving something a little more “classy.”  So, from Friday night until now, I’ve been cooking up a storm.  Sometimes, that’s just the way it goes at our house.  I have to catch up whenever I can and that often means on the weekends.  Last weekend was grocery shopping and this weekend has been cooking.  I picked up a couple of special Fall items from Whole Foods last weekend, including a couple of pomegranates and some clementines, to use in the recipe for this blog post.

After cooking for a client on Friday, I made barbecue chicken and smoked mozzarella pizza for dinner.  It was so loaded with goodies, we could each only eat one piece, so we had the rest for lunch the next day.  Saturday, starting around the ass-crack of dawn, I made yogurt starter (so I can keep making new batches of yogurt without having to buy new cultures), yogurt (from an entire gallon of milk!), four loaves of whole-wheat sandwich bread (using the whey drained off of a previous batch of yogurt) and stuffed winter squash for dinner (see recipe below!).  This morning I started a huge batch of chicken and andouille sausage gumbo (which took most of the day to cook and about which we’ll blog in the near future), then moved on to a batch of chicken stock (from the leftover chicken bones and scraps), a couple of dozen hard-boiled eggs (to serve with the gumbo) and eight loaves of artisan bread (which Jon calls “nipple bread” due to the shape and which I’m still in the process of baking).  Man, I’m a masochist.  But what else are a couple of busy foodies to do?

It made me laugh out loud yesterday when my dad responded to the picture of the sandwich bread that I posted on Facebook (see picture at left) with “I expect this for Christmas now.”  He’ll probably get it, too.  For now, we’ll freeze most of our bread, gumbo and stock since I only get occasional chances to cook for us, but we’ll eat some of the gumbo and fresh bread for dinner tonight.  Yum!

Between cooking for clients and cooking for us, I’ve been in the kitchen nearly non-stop since last Monday.  So tomorrow, I’m taking the day off from cooking.  I’m going to balance out with some a.m. yoga, volunteer in Jon’s classroom in the afternoon and, to treat him for his birthday later this week (and to treat myself for all of the hard work that I’ve put in this weekend!), we’re going out for sushi tomorrow night.

POM-a-POM-a-POM-a-POM-a-POM-a-POM-eleon Stuffed Squash

Serves 3 to 6 (depending on the size of your appetite!)

• 6 small winter squash (I used Gold Nugget), halved and seeded
• ¾ cup honey
• ¼ cup pomegranate juice
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 2 small cippolini onions (or shallots), sliced
• 2 tablespoons mixed herbs (I used thyme, rosemary and sage), minced
• 2 cups cooked brown rice
• 1 cup cooked, shredded chicken
• ¾ cup toasted walnuts, chopped, divided use
• ¾ cup pomegranate arils (from 1 pomegranate), divided use
• 2 small clementines, peeled and pieces separated and halved
• 1/2 cup Gorgonzola cheese, crumbled
• Salt and pepper

1.  Preheat oven to 375°F; place squash halves cut-side-down in a 13- x 9-inch baking dish and add about 1-inch of water to the pan.  Bake for 30 minutes, then remove from oven.

2.  Meanwhile, combine honey and pomegranate juice in a small saucepan and bring to a boil over medium heat.  Reduce heat and simmer for 10 to 15 minutes or until slightly thickened.  Set aside.

3.  Melt butter in a small skillet over medium heat.  Add sliced cippolini onions and chopped herbs and cook until onions are translucent, about 4 to 5 minutes.

4.  In a large bowl, combine onion-herb mixture with cooked rice, cooked and shredded chicken, ½ cup chopped walnuts, ½ cup pomegranate arils, clementine pieces, Gorgonzola cheese and ¼ cup pomegranate honey.  Season with salt and pepper.

5.  Stuff squash halves with equal amounts of filling and place back in the baking dish (stuffed-side-up).  With about 1-inch of water in the bottom of the dish, place it back in the oven and bake at 375°F for another 30 minutes.

6.  Place squash on plates, drizzle with remaining pomegranate honey and top with remaining walnuts and pomegranate arils.

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Instead of a snowman,
we built a squashman.

Jon:  We swim in a deep sea of squash this time of year.  All different sizes, various shapes, random colors, miscellaneous degrees of lumpiness... I rarely even know what kind of squash any of them are.  Currently our squash inventory includes Yugoslavian Finger, Jarrahdale, pumpkin, Chirimen, Gold Nugget, and Hubbard.  I don't even understand what most of those words mean.  We have so many and we eat them often enough that even I have cooked more of them than I can count.  Although admittedly I deal with them slightly less frequently since inadvertently blowing one up in the microwave.

I love eating things stuffed inside of other things, and squash is no exception.  When Hethyr told me her plan for putting pomegranate, honey, rice, onions, nuts, clementines, chicken, and cheese inside of a squash, I gave her a resounding "huh?"  I can't even begin to understand the intricacies of concocting such a dish.  I can, however, understand the process of eating it, and I ate the hell out of this one.  It was sweet and savory and sour all at the same time.  The pomegranate seeds and walnuts gave it a nice crunch.  This was one seriously intense dish.  Did I mention I ate the hell out of it?  It was delicious.

The pomegranate is a common symbol of prosperity and fertility in many ancient cultures and religions.  If you have the skills to do it, I highly recommend making this recipe.  May it bring you infinite wealth and piles of babies.

Man with One Chopstick Go Hungry

Pretty sure this is NOT
the name of the place
where we ate!
Pic from everfunny.com.

Hethyr:  As I mentioned in the last post, my mom and dad were pretty adventurous eaters when I was a kid and my sisters and I were exposed to a variety of different cuisines.  Our family frequented this one particular Chinese restaurant a couple of blocks away from our house and the food was always good, but the house dessert left a lot to be desired.  The server would bring each of us a deep-fried banana and all six of us would giggle uncontrollably as soon as he or she left the table.  I don’t know what it was about those bananas, but they were absolutely disgusting.  I think maybe it was because the batter was really bitter-tasting and not at all sweet.  It somehow became our “thing” to try to hide the bananas in our uneaten food (which we usually didn’t take home for some reason) without the staff finding them.  It never worked.  They always found the bananas and put them in take-home containers for us.  I guess they had their own little joke.

Although I don’t torture Jon with deep-fried bananas (maybe I'll start), I often subject him to Asian food, which I love.  Luckily he loves it, too.  We still have a lot of great produce on hand, so last night I made a stir-fry to use up some of the veggies.  The “recipe” was so easy that it actually took longer to prep the veggies than it did to cook the food.  The whole meal took less time than it would have to run out for Asian take-out.  Honestly.  It really wasn’t a recipe, though... it was just me throwing a bunch of stuff in a pan at a fairly high temperature, adding a super-simple sauce and throwing it all on top of some brown rice.  That’s actually my usual stir-fry “recipe” and no two stir-fries have ever been the same.

I'm wokkin' broccol-ay-ay!

As usual with my recipes, don’t let the ingredients list scare you.  I always find ways to make things more difficult on myself, so I used every vegetable we had.  You can use just two or three and it will still be delicious.  You can add meat, seafood, tofu, beans, etc. for protein.  The sauce is so amazingly easy, but it is my absolute favorite stir-fry sauce.  Sweet, spicy and salty all at the same time.  A damn party in my mouth.  For a splash of brightness at the end, I garnish it with cilantro and for a nutty crunch, sesame seeds top it all off.  Hope you enjoy this as much as we did.  I ate a super-sized serving and thought about going back for seconds, but decided I'd let Jon eat lunch today.

Love You Long Time Stir-Fry

Serves 6

-1/4 cup soy sauce

-1/4 cup honey

-1/4 cup sweet chili sauce (such as Mae Ploy)

-2 tablespoons oil (I used coconut oil)

-1 teaspoon sesame oil

-2-inch piece ginger root, peeled and minced

-1 teaspoon garlic, minced

-2 scallions, sliced

-Approximately 6 cups fresh vegetables:

       1 pound broccoli florets, cut small

       1 pound cauliflower florets, cut small

       1 medium kohlrabi, peeled and diced

       1 medium turnip, peeled and julienned

       2 medium carrots, peeled and sliced

       1/2 small red cabbage, coarsely chopped

       1 medium zucchini, quartered and sliced

-1/4 cup fresh cilantro, chopped, for garnish

-3 tablespoons sesame seeds (toasted if desired)

1.  In a glass measuring cup or small bowl, combine soy sauce, honey and sweet chili sauce.  Set aside.

2.  Heat oils in a large skillet or wok over medium-high heat.  Add ginger, garlic and scallions and stir-fry for 30 seconds or until fragrant.

3.  Add broccoli, cauliflower, kohlrabi, turnip and carrots and stir-fry for 3 to 4 minutes or until broccoli is starting to turn bright green.  Add cabbage and zucchini and continue to stir-fry until vegetables are crisp-tender, about 2 to 3 more minutes.

4.  Remove skillet or wok from heat and stir in sauce.

5.  If desired, spoon stir-fry over prepared rice in a serving dish and top with chopped cilantro and sesame seeds.

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Jon:  There is something very satisfying about eating Asian food.  A rice and veggie meal digests like a champ.  Anytime I eat a stir-fry, I feel like I just did my body a favor.  It's no random unexplainable occurrence that most Asians are thin and most Americans are fat.  Swapping some meat and potatoes for some rice and veggies is good for the body and the soul.

I'm not sure, however, that I've experienced the pleasure of the deep-fried banana.  Dunking a banana in a fryer seems to me like a great way to ruin a perfectly good piece of fruit.  Actually, most Asians desserts freak me out a bit.  But maybe that's another important key to Asian thinness... if we had unappealing desserts in this country, maybe we wouldn't choose to inhale an extra thousand calories and quarter cup of sugar immediately following a full meal.  While a fortune cookie might look and taste like thin cardboard, it sure isn't going to add any new layers to your muffin top.

This stir fry felt a little like the grand finale send-off of some of our summer veggies.  Broccoli, cauliflower, zucchini, kohlrabi, cabbage... see ya again in June.  Swimming in a sea of soy sauce, honey, and chili sauce and floating on a bed of rice is a noble way for any vegetable to transition into winter hibernation.

Curry Me to Warmer Climes

Hethyr:  Just a couple of days ago, I was in warm, sunny Florida visiting my family.  Outdoor festivals, swimming, bike rides, long walks on the beach, baseball/softball games, boating, dinner and drinks on the patio.  The weather was about as perfect as it gets… 80s and sunny with low humidity.

Tuesday in Florida

Yesterday, reality slapped me in the face when it snowed in Colorado Springs.  Meh.  I am not a cold-weather person, to say the very least.  I am rendered completely useless by the slightest chill in the air.  You may think that I’m a total idiot for living in Colorado since I don’t like the cold.  You may be right.

Saturday in Colorado

The freezing temperatures and rain/snow put me in the mood for comfort food.  I gave Jon a few options for dinner and we actually had a lot of trouble deciding on what we wanted because everything sounded so good.  This time of year is great for produce here.  We have the last of summer’s tomatoes, zucchini, green peppers and eggplant and the first of fall’s carrots, onions, potatoes and turnips.  This makes for a cornucopia of choices when it comes to planning meals.  Yeah, I just said cornucopia.  Sometimes we end up with such a variety of produce in our fridge that I like to use a bunch of it up at once.  Last night was one of those nights.

We ended up deciding on a curry, which was absolutely delicious.  We are going to work our way through the other options over the next couple of days since we really wanted to have all of them.  Today’s menu will consist of breakfast burritos with lots of veggies and beef chorizo, leftover curry for lunch and stuffed bell peppers for dinner.  Tomorrow we’ll have a veggie frittata for lunch and eggplant parmigiano for dinner.  Jon is one lucky man-guy this week!

When people ask me about my favorite things to cook, I always reply “ethnic foods.”  I grew up in an Italian family, so Italian food is second-nature to me and I still love it.  My parents were pretty adventurous eaters when we were kids, so I grew to love foods from other cultures as well.  Although I thoroughly enjoy simply prepared dishes which highlight foods’ natural flavors, I also adore using herbs and spices to complement those same foods.

I have cabinets, drawers and bins full of spices and am constantly adding new and exotic items.  My most recent gift from Jon was a collection of 12 salts from around the world.  It is one of the best gifts I’ve ever received and I use the salts every single day.  Um, I’m starting to get a little off the subject...

Anyway, when I was craving comfort food yesterday, I kept thinking about curry and that’s eventually what we ended up having.  To me, the warm spiciness of curry was the perfect antidote to a cold and dreary day.  I’ll give you the recipe for the version I made, but feel free to substitute any vegetables that you have on hand.  And I realize that my ingredients list is lengthy, but I was just using things from my fridge – you don’t have to make yours this complicated.  I served mine over brown basmati rice with saffron.

Mixed Vegetable Curry

Serves 6

• 2 tablespoons oil
• 2 tablespoons curry powder (your favorite blend)
• 1 tablespoon fresh ginger root, minced
• 1 teaspoon garlic, minced
• 1/2 small onion, diced into 1/2-inch pieces
• 2 small carrots, sliced 1/4-inch
• 2 small green peppers, seeded, ribbed and diced into 1/2-inch pieces
• 1 small turnip, quartered, then sliced 1/4-inch
• 1 1/2 cups coconut milk
• 1 cup chicken or vegetable stock or water
• 1 small kohlrabi, peeled and julienned 1/4-inch
• 2 small potatoes, cubed 3/4-inch
• 1 medium zucchini, cubed 3/4-inch
• 1 medium eggplant, cubed 3/4-inch
• 1/2 small red cabbage, chopped coarse
• Cilantro, chopped for garnish
• Crushed red pepper flakes (optional)

1.  Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat.  Add curry powder, ginger and garlic and cook, stirring, for 2 minutes or until fragrant.

2.  Add onion, green bell peppers, carrots and turnips and cook, stirring, for 5 minutes.

3.  Add coconut milk and stock and bring to a boil.  Add kohlrabi and potatoes and cook over medium heat for 10 minutes.  Add stock or water a little at a time if sauce becomes too thick.

4.  Add zucchini, eggplant and cabbage and cook for 5 more minutes or until vegetables are fork-tender.

5.  Serve over rice and garnish with cilantro and red pepper flakes.

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Jon:  Fall has always been my favorite time of year.  I love the cool weather, the changing leaves, football, and even the start of school.  Living in Colorado, the one major thing I miss during fall is the changing leaves.  Yes, we have some colorful deciduous trees and tons of Aspens that transform to yellow prior to shedding their canopy, but it is nothing like what we experienced when living in the Midwest, and nothing even close to the visual ecstasy of our autumn in Boston.  But one thing that I love about this time of year in Colorado is the unpredictable weather.  I love the fact that we've had beautiful, cool, sunny weather for two weeks straight... then woke up to a cold, snowy Saturday morning.

The timing sucked for Hethyr, however.  The cold weather hit just as I picked her up at the airport.  As she mentioned, she can't handle the cold.   Garr, our fat-free fourteen-year-old dog, is the only other creature I've met who shivers when it's 68 degrees.  Hethyr and Garr spend most of the non-summer months wrapped up in blankets on the couch.  They morph into two big frozen burritos, hibernating until the summer sun heats them back up sometime around June.

Garr-ito

While I'm ready for "comfort food" any time of year, it definitely tastes best when it is cold outside.  The curry last night (and the monster burrito this morning) did, in fact, succeed in raising my comfort level.  I love meals that can fill you up to the brink of bursting but still allow you to feel satisfied because it is all healthy veggies and grains.  It's good food for the body, mind, and soul.

So the real question remains... when Hethyr ate the breakfast burrito this morning, was it cannibalism?  Fortunately for her it will be warm again this upcoming week, so maybe she can shed her outer tortilla.

It's Not About Who Wins or Loses, It's All About Who Has the Best Darth Vader Mug

Hethyr:  As Jon put it in a prior post, I’ve got mad skills.  MAD skills.  Like the kind of mad skills it takes to lose a cooking competition to a competitor who didn’t actually cook anything.  These are the same kind of mad skills it takes to hit the mat out from under the ball while playing putt-putt.  There are just so few people who can actually pull off something like that!

Anyway, at the competition this past weekend, the judges' taste buds were a little too "sensitive" for my flavorful dish.  Their spokesman told me it was too sweet.  Honey can be a little overwhelming!  (Sarcasm thoroughly intended.)  If it’s too sweet for you, you’ll probably want to go and put on you big girl panties!  The other chef’s raw watermelon gazpacho was good, but a touch too bland for my wild taste buds.  Hey, what can I say?  I represent the Dark Side.  I need a little excitement in my life!

"Perhaps I can find new
ways to motivate them."

Knowing Heather's angelic ways, I figured she would make something ultra-healthy with vegetables and/or fruit.  I did want to include some produce, but I wanted to show that there are other great foods available at the farmers’ market as well.  We were allowed a few additional items other that what we purchased at the market and I chose raw cream, homemade butter and a couple of spices.  I skimmed the cream off of our raw milk and I made the butter from some of the cream.  We pick our milk up from the Wednesday farmers’ market, so I figured it was the next best thing to actually purchasing it at the market where the "cook-off" was held.

The competition started, yada, yada, yada...  

Chopping peaches

The He*th*rs in action

There was quite the crowd
at the market that day!

Plating my creation

Handing over my masterpiece for judgement

...she won.

After the judges tasted my creation and moved onto Heather’s, the crowd became a flock of vultures, devouring what was left, so at least I know their taste buds were working!  

The vultures moving in

Teresa Farney from the Gazette asks
questions as we clean up our messes

Without further ado, here is the recipe for my not-so-award-winning…

Cardamom French Toast with Lavender-Peach Honey

Serves 4

Photo by Kathya Ethington

• 2 large ripe peaches, pitted
• 1 cup raw unfiltered honey, local if possible
• 1 1/2 teaspoons dried lavender
• 4 large farm-fresh eggs
• 1/4 cup cream, raw if possible *
• 1/2 to 1 teaspoon ground cardamom
• 8 to 12 slices of sturdy bread (I used ciabatta), cut 3/4-inch thick
• 2 tablespoons butter plus additional for buttering toast (homemade is best but not required)
• Whipped cream, homemade from raw cream if possible *

* Note:  Raw milk is not legal in all states... don't even get me started.

1.  Cut one peach into large chunks and thinly slice the other; set aside the slices.

2.  Purée the peach chunks in a food processor and combine with the honey and lavender in a medium saucepan.  Place over medium-low to medium heat and simmer while preparing the toast.

3.  Combine the eggs, cream and cardamom in a flat shallow dish and whisk until well mixed.

4.  Working in batches if necessary, melt butter in a large skillet over medium heat.  Dip bread slices into egg mixture and coat well on both sides.  Place into the skillet and cook until first side is golden-brown.

5.  While toast is cooking, strain the honey mixture through a fine mesh sieve into a medium bowl.  Discard the remaining solids, add reserved peach slices to the honey and stir to coat.

6.  Flip bread and cook until second side is golden brown.  Remove from skillet and plate.

7.  Butter French toast slices, then top with honey and peaches.  Finish with a dollop of whipped cream.

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Jon:  Ahhhhh, big fat pieces of French toast with a peachy topping and fresh whipped cream on a cool September morning at the farmer’s market.  What could be more satisfying?  For the audience of the chef challenge, apparently nothing.  You should have seen the crowd swarm like vultures on those breakfast plates.  The toast never stood a chance.

The best thing about this whole deal for me was the practice round.  A few days before the contest, Hethyr tried out the recipe on me.  As I stuffed my gullet with a mountain of French toast with that luscious peach sauce, I knew that it was a recipe that would beat the crap out of anything the opponent was making.  And it sure did.  This stuff was amazing, and even more incredible that it was made with fresh, local ingredients.

So don’t worry, it always appears at first as if the Dark Side has been defeated… but I think we’ve all seen enough Star Wars movies and Futurama episodes to know better.  The mug knows best…

Dueling Chef Challenge and Local Food Week

It's Local Food Week from September 17th through September 25th and I'm helping to kick off events by participating in a farmers' market shopping and cooking challenge this coming Saturday (9/17/11) beginning at 9:30am at the Colorado Farm and Art Market which takes place at The Margarita at Pine Creek.  I'll be taking on Chef Heather from Change Personal Chef Service...  Hethyr vs. Heather!  Jon and I get a kick out of this for several reasons.  The similarities/differences don't end with our profession and names.  We're both pretty tiny and around the same age.  I have dark curly hair and she has blond curly hair.  I have a black chef coat, she has a white chef coat.  Sort of reminds me of the concept of yin yang.  Or the movie Black Swan...  MWAHAHAHA!  ;)

Chef Hethyr Pletsch of
Everyday Gourmet Colorado

Chef Heather Mitchell of
Change Personal Chef Service

VS.

I'm sure we'd both appreciate all of the support we can get, but since you're a reader of my blog, please come out and cheer on the Dark Side!!!


What:  Dueling Chef Challenge with Chef Hethyr of Everyday Gourmet Colorado and Chef Heather of Change Personal Chef Service
When:  Saturday, September 17th at 9:30am
Where:  Colorado Farm and Art Market at The Margarita at Pine Creek, 7350 Pine Creek Rd., Colorado Springs (map)


And don't forget to check out the other Local Food Week events taking place in Colorado Springs!

Local Food Week Events Calendar