Craving A BLT

The warmer weather here in New England is making me crave BLT's but there aren't any good garden tomatoes around!

If you're like me and won't buy off season tomatoes from the grocery store, but can't wait any longer for a decent traditional BLT, try this idea.

Blend a handful of organic grape tomatoes (they have a nice sweet tomato flavor and aren't mealy) in a food processor with a large basil leaf (or a few small ones), one small garlic clove, one very small shallot, and a pinch of salt and pepper. 

Spread that tomato mixture on your BLT and enjoy with other organic fillings or goodies from local farmers. 

Can't wait for this to open so we can enjoy fresh garden tomatoes again! 

Franklin Community Farm and Homestead

Roasted Butternut Squash And Cauliflower

Roast these winter vegetables together for ease. 

Store them separately in the fridge. 

Enjoy them in your meals all week. 

~ * ~

The butternut squash tasted great with organic chicken and apple sausage. These pea tendrils I picked up at the farmers' market were very versatile - we've had them in salads and sandwiches, with fish tacos and cod cakes. The butternut squash was handy to have on hand and a nice side dish all week.

Here is roasted cauliflower reheated with some goat cheese as a side dish to roasted pork and carrots. Feta cheese would be a good alternative.

For another side dish, I added walnuts to the roasted garlic with goat cheese.

To roast butternut squash and cauliflower, I placed them in a baking sheet with a touch of olive oil, another healthy high heat oil would be fine, and some seasoning. This time I used just a little salt and pepper and also added some garlic cloves so I'd have them ready to use during the week as well. I roasted everything at 400 degrees in a pre-heated oven. Once the cauliflower started to look golden brown, everything else was done, maybe 15 to 20 minutes. I like the squash soft but not mushy.

Then I stored the roasted vegetables in separate containers until ready to use. I froze the roasted garlic in a small herb jar for later use.

~ * ~

Cod Cakes With Bechamel | Cod Cake Burger With Remoulade

Cod Cakes

I was planning on making dinner by cooking cod fillets from The Local Catch in a skillet but they were thin and broke apart too much when I flipped them. So I stopped cooking and quickly searched for a recipe online and found a nice potato based cod cake recipe from Saveur.

The cod cake recipe can be found here. I made adjustments to the ingredients that suited my portion of fish. I didn't serve the cod cakes with a chow chow as recommended because I didn't have those ingredients. Rather, I made a quick Béchamel sauce.

Béchamel, lactose-free
For the Béchamel, I made this quick version because I didn't have a lot of time:

For the roux, I combined 1 tablespoon butter (I used organic lactose-free Earth Balance Buttery Spread, I read that olive oil can also be substituted) with 1 tablespoon flour until well blended in a small sauce pan over medium-low heat.

Then I added 1 1/2 cups milk (I used Organic Valley lactose-free), 1 bay leaf, a little onion powder,  sea salt, and fresh ground pepper to taste. I omitted the traditional clove-stuck onion and nutmeg for this sauce but it could be made that way.

I cooked the sauce on medium-low, whisking until the flour flavor was gone and it coated the bay leaf, like below. Then I discarded the bay leaf and sprinkled in some Old Bay seasoning to taste. I thought of Old Bay seasoning because it's what my father uses often when he makes seafood meals. 

I topped the cod cakes with the savory Béchamel and we ate them with leftover roasted vegetables. Cheese can be added to the sauce, but I liked it just like this and wanted to keep it lactose-free.

Cod Cake Burgers

I made burgers with the leftover cod cakes. The Remoulade was a nice condiment by itself but I would have also liked a slice of tomato. However, it's winter and I stay away from grocery store tomatoes -- they are no substitute for a fresh summer garden tomato!

Quick And Easy Remoulade

To 1 cup of mayonnaise (I used the Just Mayo brand I talked about in the previous post), I added 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard, 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice, 1 teaspoon paprika, 1 teaspoon tabasco/hot sauce, and minced 4 very small sweet gherkins. 

I served the cod cakes on local Portuguese sweet bread rolls that I toasted.

And if that isn't enough carbs, why not have a nice local craft beer with the cod cake burger! This light tasting Rhode Scholar is my favorite.

"Rhode Scholar"
from the Bucket Brewery, Pawtucket, RI

Don't want all the carbs (or the lactose from the milk in Portuguese sweet bread)? A cod cake with Remoulade tastes great with these pea greens. 

Local Fish Tacos

I saw a notice on Instagram about the fresh pollock that The Local Catch was going to have at the farmers' market with a suggestion for fish tacos. The idea piqued my interest and taste buds!

So I made the trip to the winter farmers' market that weekend and picked up two large fillets of pollock. I was told by a couple of people that Cilantro Mexican Grill uses pollock in their tacos and how wonderful they are. Well, I haven't eaten at Cilantro but it sounded good to me!

On my way out, these pea greens caught my eye. I thought they'd taste great in the fish tacos and grabbed two bags.

Here's the spread:

To make the tacos, I roasted the pollock with simple seasonings and high heat sunflower seed oil on a baking sheet in the oven at 400 degrees for about 10 minutes. (Timing depends on the thickness of the fish. I took out the thinner pieces and finished cooking the thicker pieces a few more minutes).

Seasonings were a "spicy seasoning" (a salt-free mix I found at Whole Foods) and a little fresh ground pepper. By roasting, the fish was flavorful, gluten-free, and lower in calories and fat than fried batter.

While the fish roasted, my hands were free to prepare the taco fixings:

~ Homemade lactose-free Baja sauce (sort of)
1/4 cup lactose-free sour cream, 1/4 cup mayonnaise*, 1 tablespoon chopped cilantro, juice from half a lime, a little "spicy seasoning" to taste. After mixing it all together and putting it in a small serving bowl, I sprinkled some smoked paprika on top.

~ Sliced fennel for some crunch and nice flavor

~ Shaved curly carrots because there were plenty available at the farmers' market

~ Pea greens, another great farmers' market find

~ Minced shallots

~ Fresh lime

I used organic whole-wheat tortillas instead of corn tortillas simply because I like the flavor better. To make this dish entirely gluten-free, use gluten-free tortillas/tacos.

And, by the way, fresh pollock tastes amazing in tacos!

~ * ~

*For the mayonnaise I used Just Mayo. It's non-GMO certified, vegan, and is awesome.

~ * ~

Photos of the Port of Galilee in Rhode Island I took this past summer, 2013:

Fishing trawler heading out to sea from the Port of Galilee

No compensation was received. These are products I love and want to share.

Spinach And Walnut Pesto For Dinner And Lunch

When not in season, fresh basil is pricey so spinach is a really good and nutritious alternative to use when making pesto. We had a lot of leftover spinach from a large container we had bought and I thought making spinach pesto would be a great fresh way to use it up. Walnuts are also a nice alternative to pricey pine nuts usually used in making pesto.

Pesto
I often make batches of pesto from my garden basil at the end of summer and freeze it for winter. This past summer, a pest ate all the basil and I couldn't control it. So, unfortunately, there was no basil to harvest.

Since I've been making pesto for years, I don't need to pre-measure the ingredients. My spinach pesto recipe is much like the recipes that can be found on the internet or in cookbooks. So if this post inspires you to make some nutritious spinach pesto for your family one night, great! You can either work from my general instructions or try another recipe that sounds good to you.

Method
For this pesto, all I did was stuff a bunch of washed baby spinach into my small 2-cup food processor, plopped in two peeled garlic cloves, a handful of walnuts, juice from half a lemon, a little sea salt, and some freshly ground pepper. When it was time to blend the ingredients, I poured in some extra virgin olive oil (somewhere around 3 tablespoons to 1/4 cup), enough to make the mixture move around and blend and until it looked like the right texture. When it was almost done, I added another bunch of spinach and finished blending. For a larger food processor, all the spinach (a total of about 3-4 cups or whatever you want, just adjust the other ingredients to taste), should fit in one batch.

When the spaghetti was done cooking, I scooped out some of the pasta water before draining to use for extra moisture in the finished dish as needed. I probably used 1/2 cup of pasta water to 1 pound of pasta.

Pesto usually has some parmesan cheese. I left it out so I could avoid lactose on my portion (the combination of gluten and lactose can be too much for me). Then, whoever wanted cheese could add it to their dish at the dinner table. The pasta is organic but not gluten-free and not whole wheat. I haven't found a gluten-free spaghetti I like yet. And my family doesn't like whole wheat pasta, although, I think it would have tasted fine with this pesto.

~ * ~

Spinach And Walnut Pesto With Goat Cheese ~ Lunch or Appetizer

The rest of the pesto that didn't get used for dinner was saved for lunch another day.

I spread the spinach pesto on top of two toasted multi-grain gluten-free bread slices and cut them into four bite-sized pieces. In a separate dish, I poured some local honey and leftover crumbled walnuts over goat cheese. For an appetizer, I'd just trim off the crust for a nicer presentation.

Then I put it all together for a nice lunch during a sewing project. Oh, look! I couldn't wait to eat some before taking a photo: 

And while enjoying lunch, I heard the loud cawing of crows outside . . .

Crow and branch silhouettes on a gray winter's day

~ * ~

The delicious bread I used for the snack is a gluten, dairy, and nut free multi-grain bread is from a local bakery, A&J Bakery, in Rhode Island. We don't have allergies, but I like to buy gluten-free bread sometimes just to take a break from eating gluten and this bread just happens to also be dairy and nut free.

No compensation was received. This is just a product I love and want to share.

Four Fresh Ideas For Watermelon Radish and Purple Kohlrabi

Vegetables at the farmers' markets this time of year can start looking pretty ugly. But don't judge a vegetable by its skin! They still taste great. Here are a few fresh ideas.

Salad

Here is a pretty salad with shaved watermelon radish and purple kohlrabi over organic romaine lettuce. The skin of both vegetables can be eaten. Wash and trim off the bad spots. If the skin on the kohlrabi is tough, just peel it all off. We'll eat this salad as is or add other toppings and finish it off with our favorite dressing. 

The other night we had a spinach salad with shaved kohlrabi and watermelon radish topped with crumbled leftover salmon and local honey balsamic vinaigrette*.

~ * ~

Carrots
These carrots aren't the most attractive looking but they taste just fine. Clean them, keep skins on for more nutrition and trim off whatever looks bad. Taste. If sweet, the carrots are fine to cook or eat raw in a salad or dip (below), etc. If bitter, they're good to make a vegetable stock.

~ * ~

Snack
Look how beautiful this snack looks. These vegetables make a lovely snack with hummus.

Side Dish
Here is a side dish made by combining the sweet tasting carrots with watermelon radish and purple kohlrabi. I used the wide blade on my shredder to slice them. A mandolin would slice them up very nicely as well. The salad was dressed with rice vinegar, freshly ground pepper, and celery seeds.

Salsa or Relish
Lastly, below is a salsa or relish made with a handful each of watermelon radish and purple kohlrabi, two green apples, a shallot, and a lime. I finely minced the vegetables and shallot together in a small food processor, finely chopped green apples, added cider vinegar, honey and a little sugar, celery seeds, freshly ground pepper, a little salt, and juice from one lime. I used amounts I thought was appropriate and adjusted to taste. I suppose cilantro would taste good here, but I didn't have any.

The salsa/relish made a nice after school snack for the boys with organic non-GMO corn chips.

~ * ~

*The local Honey Balsamic Vinaigrette Salad Dressing is made by D.E. Vine Foods in Warwick, RI. This is just something I love and want to share. No compensation was received.

Watermelon radish is milder in flavor than the cherry bomb variety. For a good description of its flavor, click here.

Watermelon radish, purple kohlrabi, and carrots were purchased from Freedom Food Farm at the Hope Artiste Village winter farmers' market.