{daring cooks: pierogi}

The August 2010 Daring Cooks’ Challenge was hosted by LizG of Bits n’ Bites and Anula of Anula’s Kitchen. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make pierogi from scratch and an optional challenge to provide one filling that best represents their locale.

One of my good friends has been raving about how awesome pierogi are ever since I met her and introduced her to climbing. It seemed like after each climb night she said she was going home to eat pierogi. She was astonished that I had never heard of them or had them before and stated that she had to make them for me. Sadly, I moved before we could set that up so, you can imagine how happy and excited I was to see this months challenge. Finally, I'd get to have pierogi! (kface I've been dying to tell you that it was this months challenge!)

So, what is a pierogi? It is basically a dumpling filled with deliciousness. For the challenge, we had to make the dough and filling from scratch. Pierogi can be either savory or sweet so I chose to lean more to the savory side of things for John's sake. LizG provided a few recipes but said that we should adjust our fillings to include something that represented where we are from. So, my fillings ended up being: twice baked potato, chicken basil pesto and sweet potato. I did manage to sneak in a little sweetness on the last one, but still served it as part of our dinner, not dessert. After all, sweet potato soufflé is usually served as one of the many sides my family consumes during the holidays, even though its sweet enough to be a dessert. I chose these because here in North Carolina, sweet potatoes are a big agriculture product, chicken (which is usually fried in the south) is loved down here, and well, potatoes are just good.

I made a few adjustments to the recipes provided based on what I had on hand and what I could get locally. For the dough, all-purpose is called for but I got away with using whole wheat pastry flour and it came out just fine. I did a double batch of the dough recipe since I wanted to try several different fillings and still had filling left over! Thankfully, this dish is easily frozen and we now have a few bags of pierogi awaiting a night I don't feel like cooking.

In filling them, I found that the potato versions were very easy to do. The chicken version however liked to poke through the dough and cause problems so just a note if you choose to make these with some sort of solid filling. I'd just roll your dough a little thicker to protect it.

Since the recipe made so many, it took a while to fill them all up. I ended up filling what we were eating that night and cooking those first. While they were boiling, I worked on filling the rest. It takes a little time, but for the amount you get, its worth it.

I tried to keep all of the varieties separate from each other so I'd know what I was serving, but after the boiling step they got all mixed together. After boiling them I popped them in a little olive oil and sauteed them up to brown them a bit. This also warmed the ones that had boiled first. I had no sour cream or any idea of what kind of sauce to put them in so we enjoyed these plain. They were delicious! It was kind of like a treasure hunt since we didn't know what we were going to be biting into. John's favorites ended up being the twice baked potato and chicken basil pesto versions. I loved them all.

See more pics and the recipe after the jump. See what other Daring Cooks did here.

{daring cooks: nut butter}

The July 2010 Daring Cooks’ Challenge was hosted by Margie of More Please and Natashya of Living in the Kitchen with Puppies. They chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make their own nut butter from scratch, and use the nut butter in a recipe. Their sources include Better with Nut Butter by Cooking Light Magazine, Asian Noodles by Nina Simonds, and Food Network online.

I was really looking forward to this months challenge of making a nut butter and then using it in an entree So was John. He was ready for a daring cooks challenge that was super savory and this one was it. The challengers gave us several recipe options to use our nut butters in. The nut butters could be made of peanuts, cashews, almonds or whatever nut we wanted. I had just made some peanut butter and as peanuts are easy to get locally, I went with that for my nut butter. You can check out my previous post on making peanut butter here. For my entree, I chose to go with the Asian Noodle Salad with Peanut Dressing recipe. Let me tell you, I could eat that dressing by the spoonful! It was absolutely one of the best things I've ever tasted and paired with the rest of the ingredients, it was wonderful. I highly recommend making this sauce and just spooning it over everything you eat. The recipe made more dressing than was necessary for the dish but it refrigerates well and can be used in a variety of other dishes.

In order to make this dish entirely local, I switched up some of the ingredients to make my own version. I loved how easy it was to make it from all local and fresh ingredients...it really added to the scrumptiousness of it all. The sauce would not have been easy to make using all local ingredients except that I already had the soy sauce, sesame oil, sugar and ground ginger on hand.

Since beginning our locavore challenge, we have run out of noodles so, for the first time in my life, I made from scratch pasta!  I was super excited to give this a try and found a simple recipe over at the Food Network website. It required a good bit of kneading with gave my forearms a workout. I'm sad to say they were even sore the following day! I am so happy I'm climbing again now that we've moved one mile from the climbing gym. I will no longer be shamed by making pasta again. Anyway, I have no pasta roller so this stuff had to be rolled out with my awesome long rolling pin. I think it needed to be a little thinner but my arms were done. The pasta on its own was pretty delicious and a lot of fun to make. I did a half recipe of the pasta since that was all the flour I had left. It made plenty to serve us four times.

To get the original recipe and other options we had, check out The Daring Kitchen.

See my version of the recipe after the jump

{vegetable + meatball soup}

This is my second attempt at a vegetable soup and I think I finally got it right. This soup was absolutely delicious and I think one of the best things I've ever made. Since I had ground beef I decided to add a few meatballs to the mix but you could easily leave them out and sub a vegetable stock for the chicken stock to make this vegan. You could really put any veggies you have on hand into this and it will come out good.

Recipe and pics after the jump

{local pops}

Summer is here and with that comes the lovely days of 90 and 100º weather. Blech. Thankfully, I found some recipes out there to make fruit popsicles that are both healthy and refreshing. I was inspired by these delicious looking treats and decided to use the raspberries and blueberries I'd picked up at the market to try my own version. You could make these without adding any sweetener but I had some local honey on hand and decided to add in just enough to take out the bite...especially with the raspberries. I highly recommend using molds that have no funky shapes or dips like I did with my raspberry molds...it made it terribly difficult to get out of the glass after it had frozen. My favorite was the blueberry version...perfectly refreshing and scrumptious. The raspberry version ended up not having quite enough honey in it so it had a little bit of a bite. If you make these, just taste them once its all mixed up before putting into the molds to make sure the sweetness factor is to your liking. As we are moving south this week, these will definitely become a staple in our freezer to help us survive the hot summer months.

Recipe and pics after the jump

{june daring bakers: blueberry pavlovas}

The June 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Dawn of Doable and Delicious. Dawn challenged the Daring Bakers’ to make Chocolate Pavlovas and Chocolate Mascarpone Mousse. The challenge recipe is based on a recipe from the book Chocolate Epiphany by Francois Payard

This months challenge was to make chocolate pavlovas and chocolate mascarpone mousse. As I am trying to make each challenge using as local of ingredients as possible, I am happy to say that I only had to go out and buy the heavy cream and mascarpone cheese. Granted, we did make mascarpone cheese in the Tiramisu daring bakers challenge back in February, but I really didn't want to go through the trouble and end up with butter again so I bought it instead. I discovered that yes indeed, I had made it incorrectly during that challenge...oh well. So, getting back to this challenge, at the market last Saturday I discovered that blueberries had come into season. I was so excited that I bought several pints...these have to be the best blueberries I've ever eaten in my life. For the challenge I decided to use them to make a blueberry meringue, blueberry mouse and the mascarpone cream drizzle.

I decided to do a half recipe since it was going to only be John and I eating this. Sadly, we still had too much. My changes to the original recipe were basically doing a straight substitute of the chocolate for the blueberries. To prepare them, I simply pureed them in my tiny food processor so that they would mix well with all of the other ingredients. The nice thing about this dessert was that it was fairly easy to make and put together. The longest portion was waiting on the merengues to cook but let me tell you, crispy blueberry merengues absolutely melt in your mouth. It was like cotton candy in crunch form. I would have been fine just making and eating those! The mouse was also pretty delicious and the blueberys flavor came through nicely. It all combined to make an absolute delight in the mouth. John, who doesn't usually enjoy sugary sweets, LOVED these.

Check out the pics and recipe after the jump

{potato, squash and goat cheese gratin}

As more items are becoming available at our local farmers market, I'm having to stretch my imagination further to figure out what to make with it all. Its not that there are no recipes out there, on the contrary, there are too many and I can't choose. The other issue I've been having is in trying to stretch our meat supply since it tends to be the more expensive portion of our weekly food budget. I've been able to successfully make a couple vegetarian dishes a week that John approves of and fills us up adequately. However, since we are not vegetarians and I've never done much vegetarian cooking, I'm having a difficult time knowing where to look and knowing if the dish will be filling enough. Thankfully, the other day as I was surfing around on The Kitchen, I found this delicious looking vegetarian dish using ingredients I had picked up from the market. I decided to add some onions into the mix and only used about one third of the cheese it called for since I was saving the rest for the summer pizza. Served with a salad, the meal ended up being quite filling and we were able to get 3 servings out of it. It would work great as a side dish as well, but we were both pleased with it as the main course. I would add all of the cheese it calls for though as it will only make it taste better.

Recipe and pics after the jump

{summer pizza}

We are a huge fan of pizza. Me even more so because its one of the simplest things to put together for dinner and it usually comes out tasting quite delicious. Also, I can usually make it entirely vegetarian and John doesn't complain. I call this one the summer pizza because it uses delicious ingredients that are in season during the summer (creative, I know): yellow squash, tomatoes + onions. Paired with some fresh basil and goat cheese this pizza will just melt in your mouth. Since I'm more a fan of thin crust I found a recipe that required no yeast and no rising time and adapted it to what I had on hand. The original recipe can be found here. I'm not entirely sure what salad oil is so I used olive oil instead. Below the jump is my version of the pizza crust recipe and pizza.

Pics and recipe after the jump

{stuffed yellow squash}

Yellow squash is in season! Yay for color and something new! I've seen several stuffed squash recipes that looked delicious so I figured it would be easy to mix up something on my own. I have to say that this recipe turned out just wonderfully. In fact, we have now added it to our list of favorites. We ate this on its own and it was just barely filling enough. Next time I think I'll add in a side of veggies or a salad to help complete the meal even more.

The goat cheese added a nice flavor to the overal taste but when I try this again, I think adding in even more goat cheese and/or sour cream will help keep the meat a little more moist. Once I had combined all of the ingredients, I realized that I could have gotten away with using even less than 1/4 lb of beef since there were so many other things going into the mix. As the summer veggies continue to come into season, I think we will be trying several different variations of this...I could see using chicken, tomatoes, zucchini and peppers with some italian spices. mmmm, I'm hungry.

Recipe after the jump

{ketchup}

Ketchup is a staple ingredient in our household. As we began the locavore challenge, one of our rules was that we would not go to the store before hand to stock up on anything...we would just continue on with what we had on hand and when it ran out either make it or do without. Well, last week we ran out of ketchup and now that potatoes are coming into season, well, we must have ketchup. John has taken on the responsibility to create any condiments or staple items that we might need such as chicken stock and in this case ketchup. So, on Saturday we drove out to a nearby market located on the side of the road that had plenty of delicious looking red tomatoes. Granted, it is not quite tomato season up here, but this farmer uses a hothouse to grow them during the off-season. We bought 10 tomatoes and headed home to test out our new recipe.

We chose to cut the original recipe into thirds and saw in some other recipes that people had added in some sweetness so we did a hybrid of recipes. We forgot to time how long it took to reduce the mixture a ketchup consistency but it was a while. It was definitely cool to see it go from liquid to a nice thickness. The smells from the spices filled our house with deliciousness. Unfortunately, since we only used one cup of the vinegar it evaporated within the 30 minutes of simmering so, we recommend only simmering it for about 15 minutes. Since the vinegar disappeared, we thought we could just adding another cup into the spice mixture and it would be okay...well once that was added to the tomatoes lets just say that the ketchup had a nice bite of vinegar. Thats when we saw that other people's recipes added in brown sugar or maple syrup so, we decided to give it a try thinking that it might help out with the overpowering of the vinegar. It definitely helped but there is still a strong vinegar taste to it.

The original recipe called for a tablespoons of paprika which we didn't have. We did have cayenne and thought it would be a good substitution for the paprika. We put in a couple teaspoons of cayenne and whew!! spicey! Next time, we will just add a couple dashes.

All in all, it was a fun experiment and we will definitely use the ketchup we made until its gone. Next time I believe we will try a different recipe.

Recipe and pics after the jump

{may daring bakers: piece montée}

The May 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Cat of Little Miss Cupcake. Cat challenged everyone to make a piece montée, or croquembouche, based on recipes from Peter Kump’s Baking School in Manhattan and Nick Malgieri.

This months challenge at first glance was very intimidating. First of all, the title of the recipe was french and then a little googling of what piece montée (aka. croquembouche "crunch in the mouth") looks like revealed these towering masterpieces of puff pastries. The requirements of the challenge were that we had to make our own pate a choux (puff pastry) and crème patissiere (filling). We were allowed to experiment with the flavors of the filling.  Thankfully it was actually a relatively simple process to create the puff pastries and fillings. I say relatively simple because not everything puffed like it was supposed to...I think it had something to do with the humidity in the air today with all the rain we've been having. In the end I was fairly pleased with how everything turned out. I chose to try a few flavors: vanilla, chocolate and rum. My favorite was the chocolate.

Now, my boyfriend and I are continuing our efforts to source everything we eat from within a 100 mile radius, as well as, use up any leftover pantry items we might have had before beginning this locavore challenge. For the challenges of daring bakers, I have decided that I will do my very best to continue using local ingredients, but if I must purchase an item or two from the store, well then I must. For this challenge the only things I had to get as extra were the soy milk and chocolate. My boyfriend pointed out after the fact that we did have cocoa powder that I could have used, but I forgot about it and bought semisweet chocolate chips instead. Other than that, the eggs, flour, butter were all local and all other ingredients I had in my pantry.

It took me a while to find a flour mill that was local, but Virginia happens to have a few of them. Wades Mill is a stone ground flour mill that is a little less than an hour away from our home. Its a lovely drive down a skinny road that passes a winery and several other farms all with green rolling hills. I could totally live out there! (after the jump I've shared a few pictures from the mill and the drive) As I pulled up I saw a large water wheel that I learned is a working power source for grinding some of the flour with the rest being electrically powered. The woman I met in the little shop was very passionate informative of all sorts of issues facing the local farmers. Having worked in the farming industry the majority of her life, she had a lot to say about the issues they face with the term organic. I won't go into it here, but it was really a great experience getting to chat with her. I think thats become one of my favorite things about doing the locavore challenge; getting to speak with the farmers themselves. Anyway, I digress, back to the flour. They have a wide variety of flours you can purchase either online or at the store. Since shipping is almost more than the cost of the flour and I was driving that direction anyway, I chose to stop by. I picked up whole wheat bread flour and whole wheat pastry flour which I used for this month's challenge. So far its been very tasty! I'm still learning the proportion of flour to liquid so that what I make doesn't come out too dense, but I can honestly say its pretty freakin delicious.

Recipe and pics after the jump

{strawberry limeade}

Okay, I realize this beverage is not entirely a locavore recipe. We splurged and bought limes to make margaritas the other week and I had some leftover that needed to be used soon. On Tuesday I picked up some deliciously fresh strawberries, so I chose to pair the two and create this refreshing drink. I absolutely loved the color and the flavor was incredible. So light and refreshing. Now, it wouldn't be us if I didn't add a little rum to the mix! It is perfect on its own if you would rather have it non-alcoholic, but the rum doesn't hurt. It also would have been just fine to leave out the limes or exchange them for lemons. As long as you've got strawberries, you can't go wrong.

Recipe after the jump

{strawberry rhubarb pie}

FINALLY!! Strawberries are beginning to appear in our farmers market! I cannot tell you how excited I am about this. For two months of seeing only green items, I am thrilled to have some color on my plate. In honor of our first strawberries, I chose to make a dessert. Rhubarb is also in season right now so at the farmers market we picked up a couple pints of strawberries and a bunch of rhubarb to make a pie.


Recipe and pics after the jump

{sausage, tomato and goat cheese pizza}

So, it has been a little over two weeks of doing the locavore challenge. We have really enjoyed taking the steps to eat locally grown foods and have learned a few things in doing so. First of all, forget about meal planning for the week when heading to the market. I am hoping this will change as the harvest comes in and the weather gets warmer, but so far our options have been very limited. What we've had to do is basically take stock of what we have on hand and then while at the market plan our meals. Its been fun and challenging as we are not entirely sure what will be on the menu.

Another thing that has happened as a result of the challenge is that we really have discovered whats been hiding in our freezer and pantry. Everything in there is down to slim pickings as I've used most of it to make or supplement our meals. It will at least make moving a lot simpler!

In doing all of this, we have actually been less tempted to eat out because the meals that we do end up making always sound so delicious. Also by eating locally we've decreased the amount of money we've spent on both groceries and eating out. It will be interesting to see if that continues as more fruits and veggies become available. We have found that the most expensive items to buy are the locally grown, grass fed meat products. It makes complete sense and we are happy to spend the money knowing that the animals have been treated like they are supposed to be and they haven't been pumped full of hormones. It has also caused us to get more creative in how we might stretch the use of that meat. All in all, its been exciting so far and I can't wait to have more options than lettuce and butternut squash...although I do heart the butternut squash.

Pizza recipe and pics after the jump

{how to make: peanut butter}

Since starting the locavore challenge I have been eating a lot more peanut butter. I get tired of eggs every morning and haven't found a place to buy oats locally. I could use some advice on other tasty/healthy breakfasts if you've got any! My breakfasts have consisted of toast with peanut butter and honey or strawberry marmalade for the past couple weeks. As a result, I quickly used up all the peanut butter I had on hand. Since we live in Virginia which is known for peanuts I went on the hunt for some. I found my recipe off of wiki and gave it a go. My sad little food processor, which I had been so happy to buy, did not enjoy the process of chopping up the nuts. I was only able to make about 1/3rd of a jar per batch in the processor. The processor needed a few breaks as did my ears during the 5-10 minutes it took.

Recipe and pics after the jump

{stuffed beef burgers}

Inspired by the Mozzerella Stuffed Turkey Burgers I made a couple months ago I decided to give it a go with the beef I had in the freezer. We had no buns or the ingredients to make them so these were bunless burgers that I topped with a tomato sauce made from the tomatoes I bought at the market. We used up the last of the asparagus and potatoes to finish up the meal. Deliciousness.

More pics and recipe after the jump

{butternut squash, steak + sweet potato pasta}

At the market on Tuesday I found the vendor Nellies Noodles. They were selling a few varieties of handmade pastas so I picked up the sweet potato one to try out. Since I'm still using what is on hand and the few things I picked up from the market, I chose to pair it with some roasted butternut squash and pieces of steak cooked with some stubbs marinade. It couldn't have tasted more delicious. The textures were very smooth and it was incredibly savory.


More pics and recipe after the jump

{asparagus, steak, oven fries + turnips}

At the market on Tuesday I found one vendor who had asparagus. It was going quickly since it is just coming into season so I bought one of his last few bags. I think every meal during the spring should be served with fresh asparagus as it is one of the most delicious vegetables out there. I cooked mine by sautéing it in a pan with a little olive oil, salt and pepper until they were soft but still had a little crunch. Asparagus is even better grilled, but since we don't have an outdoor space at the moment, the stove top worked just fine.

Recipe and more pics after the jump

{windowsill gardening}

Inspired by the warming weather and our new challenge of becoming locavores we decided to try our hand at starting our own window garden. We have no outdoor space where we currently live, but we do have large windows with decent light. We bought the book Grow Great Grub: Organic Food from Small Spaces by Gayla Trail and have used it as our instruction manual. It has a lot of great information and once we move to a place with a balcony hopefully we will be able to expand what we can grow. Gayla also has a great blog with plenty of information on getting your own garden started.

We started by planting a variety of sprouts to be added to sandwhiches, salads and soups for seasoning. The sprouts: sunflower, broccoli, radish, onion, black seeded simpson lettuce, spinach, mustard and beet. For our herb garden we are trying tarragon, oregano, thyme, basil, cilantro, rosemary, sage and parsley. We also planted a couple lettuce heads, green onions, jalapeno and sweet banana peppers to grow fully.

So far, most have sprouted and are looking lovely. I can't wait for the herbs to grow in so I can start using them to cook with! I'm not too sure how the lettuce, peppers or green onions are going to hold up, but we will see.

More pics after the jump

{the challenge of a locavore}

In an effort to eat healthier, fresher foods my boyfriend and I have decided to become locavores. Our goal is to eat locally grown foods within a 100 mile radius of where we live during the months of April to November (prime farmer's market months!). We wanted to do this for several reasons: 1) to eat fresh foods only 2) reduce the distance our food has traveled 3) support the local economy and 4) reduce/eliminate the amount of pesticides and hormonally treated food that we consume. We are allowing ourselves to clean out the pantry and use whatever foods we already have on hand. That's down to mostly condiments at this point because we weren't able to make it to the market this past Saturday. We do plan to support our local wineries, breweries and any local restaurant that also uses local ingredients. We will also have a few ingredients that will be allowed. At this point we are going allow olive oil, salt + pepper, orange juice and rum :D. If and when we do buy those items, they will be organic (except for the rum - that just needs to be alcoholic). We are still figuring out how eating when traveling will work, but so far we are planning to try and eat within 100 miles of wherever we are. If there are no locavore restaurants then we will at least support the local restaurants.

Recipe and more after the jump