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Recipes at Sound Food
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Here's the place to post, share, tweak and discuss recipes. Do you have a seasonal favorite? A good way to use garden produce? A special holiday or family dish? Send your recipes to
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, and post what worked for you in "Comments."
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Refresh your recipe repertoire |
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Written by Carolyn Goodwin
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Thursday, 28 January 2010 09:43 |
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If your winter cooking rotation is stuck in a rut, it's time to dig yourself out by finding a few new recipes.
The other night I was looking at a huge butternut squash left over from the last Farmers' Market, and thinking it would be a good partner for the farro in my pantry. So I typed "farro butternut" into Google and at the top of the list appeared "Farro and Roasted Butternut Squash" from Heidi Swanson's 101 Cookbooks blog. She added thyme, walnuts and goat cheese to the squash and grain. The result was a tasty, toothsome dish that was good hot or at room temperature. It's a great new addition to my winter recipe rotation.
Here are a few tips for a successful recipe hunt:
Stick to the recipe the first time
First, and this may seem obvious, make sure you choose recipes that have ingredients you like and that are easily obtainable. Not to say that you can't substitute, but if you start swapping out every other ingredient because you don't like it or can't find it you'll usually end up unhappy. I cringe when I read comments that begin "I really didn't like this recipe, even though I swapped out ingredient X because I really hate that, and I left out Ingredient Y because I couldn't get it." Um, if you didn't follow the recipe please don't comment, and don't complain.
Be particular about your sources
Always consider the source. Reputable sites test their recipes. Epicurious, Cookstr, Food Network, Simply Recipes and Star Chefs are a few examples of sites that can be counted on to measure the ingredients right and clearly outline the steps. Many of the foodie blogs are good sources as well. But I usually shy away from sites that feature |
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Shake 'n make your own butter |
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Written by Carolyn Goodwin
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Friday, 11 September 2009 16:28 |
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Making butter is something that women did on farms long ago, using a mysterious contraption called a butter churn. At least that’s what I thought until recently, when I discovered that velvety homemade butter could be mine in less than an hour, with just a jar and some store-bought whipping cream.
My quest began as a search for butter made out of cream from pasture-raised local cows, because of its health benefits and fresh taste. There was nothing like that on store shelves, or at the Farmers Market.
I knew that butter started out as cream. And that Town & Country Market on Bainbridge carried Fresh Breeze Heavy Whipping Cream. Fresh Breeze Organic Dairy in Lynden, Washington (near Bellingham) was recently rated among the Top 10 organic dairies in the country by the Cornucopia Institute, based on their organic farming practices and ethics, receiving 1195 poi nts out of a possible 1200. Some of the large national producers didn’t fare nearly so well – Horizon Organic got 0 points. Yes, zero. You can read the whole survey here. Fresh Breeze milk products are small batch-pasteurized, a process that leaves more of the good proteins and flavor than higher temperature constant-flow processes used by most commercial dairies. I’m not sure if ultra-pasteurized cream would ever make the leap to butter.
So I bought a pint of Fresh Breeze whipping cream. Then I went online to find out what I needed to do to complete the transformation. Less than an hour later I had butter.
First I let the cream sit out on the counter until it was at room temperature. This dramatically reduces the amount of shaking required.
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Leek tart, a most delicious appetizer |
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Written by Anne Willhoit
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Friday, 11 September 2009 11:25 |
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Reprinted from Eating Small Potatoes
This is my absolute favorite thing to bring to a party or put out before a dinner. It’s simple to make up ahead of time and so delicious that no one can resist it. If you’re someone who has never had a leek, this dish will convert you to an instant fan – I’m sure of it. The recipe is adapted from Alice Waters’ Vegetables. Serve warm or room temperature.
Tart dough, makes enough for one large, free-form tart or two 10-inch tarts:
2 cups flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. sugar
10 tbls. butter
1/3 c. ice water
- Fill a measuring cup to 1/3 with water and add ice cubes. Set aside.
- In a medium bowl, mix dry ingredients.
- Cut in butter with a pastry blender. (I highly recommend that you get one of these, if you don’t have one. I lived for so long without one and now realize how faster everything becomes with one. You can use a butter knife to cut small pieces and then squish with your fingers. It’s therapeutic, but not necessarily efficient.)
- Fork in water.
- Use hands to bring the dough together into a ball.
Filling:
large bunch of small leeks, or about 3 big ones
1 tbls. butter
about 4 sprigs of fresh thyme
2 tbls. flour
salt, pepper
optional finish: cream, kosher salt
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The perfect summer dinner |
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Written by Drew Hansen and Julie Cooper
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Sunday, 30 August 2009 17:31 |
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Like most people, we’re strapped for time when it comes to meal planning and preparation. This year, with a newborn, a toddler, and plenty of cherry tomatoes underfoot, we’ve found ourselves enjoying many variations on that old summer standby, fresh tomato pasta sauce. Everyone has their favorite version. Here’s ours, adapted from Guiliano Bugialli’s The Fine Art of Italian Cooking. The unusual feature of this recipe is that you chill the tomato mixture (if you’re really in a hurry you can stick it in the freezer for the time it takes to cook the pasta) and then toss with the pasta as soon as the pasta comes out of the water. As Bugialli says, “The contact of the very hot with the very cold releases an unforgettable flavor.” Yep.
Uncooked Tomato Pasta Sauce
Ingredients
1.5 lbs cherry tomatoes (more or less), rinsed and stemmed.
4 medium garlic cloves, peeled
25 large leaves fresh basil
½ cup best extra virgin olive oil
Salt
Generous amount of freshly ground pepper
1 lb penne pasta
Preparation
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Written by Drew Hansen
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Wednesday, 12 August 2009 16:38 |
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It’s high summer, which means it’s salad time. All the local farmers have beautiful lettuces, and what better way than a salad for dinner to support local produce, eat healthy, and keep the oven off?
Here’s the salad “recipe” we use at our house. (You’ll see that it doesn’t really deserve the name “recipe”—it’s just some easy principles.) It basically follows Marcella Hazan’s Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking.
First, figure out how much lettuce you think you need for just that meal. (There’s no sense making extra salad, the greens get slimy from cooking in the vinegar overnight.) If we’re having a salad as a main course we generally need one big head for two people; if it’s a side dish then it’s usually 1/3 head. (In fairness, we are big eaters—our heads of lettuce come from Farmhouse Organics, which means they’re about the size of basketballs—so you might want to drop the quantity a little bit.)
Second, wash it and—this is the important part—get it really dry. We do a few rounds in the salad spinner, followed by wrapping the greens up in a kitchen towel as if you’re folding a present, putting another kitchen towel on top, then grabbing the ends and whirling the whole package around Step outside to do this, otherwise you’ll spatter cold water all over your kitchen. (Yes, you’ll spatter some water on yourself when you do it, even if it’s outside, but hey, it’s summer, so who cares.) Then unwrap your package, pat the lettuce dry with another kitchen towel, and if it still looks wet do the whole package wrap/spin cycle again. I don’t know why dry lettuce matters so much, but it does. The dressing coats it better and there’s no dilution of flavor from residual water.
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