Rosemary Roasted Rainbow Carrots

There are a precious few local ingredients that remain on the shelves (or in the cellars) in the depths of January, but carrots are one of them. I made an effort to find some rainbow carrots recently, for their vibrant hues and visual appeal. Bonus: varied colors offer a wider spectrum of antioxidants on one plate. Perfect for this heavy-hitting cold season.

Remember my post about preserving the herb harvest? In this recipe, I used whole frozen rosemary, simply stripped from the stalk and chopped. It is as good as fresh!

In my opinion, the best way to prepare your winter roots in roasting, however, I caution you against super high oven temperatures. The rich sugar content of the vegetables can easily burn. The trick is to get a nice browning, without burning the outside before the middle is cooked. My preferred temperature is 375 with the convection fan running.

Rosemary Roasted Rainbow Carrots

Serves 2

Ingredients

1 lb. rainbow carrots (about 6 medium)
1 tbs. grapeseed oil
1 tbs. honey
1 tbs. rosemary
1/4- 1/2 tsp. salt


Directions

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Scrub carrots well and cut lengthwise into 4-6 long sticks. Place in a large bowl and toss with oil, honey, rosemary and salt.

Spread on to a large parchment paper lined baking sheet in a single layer. Roast for 10 minutes, rotate pan and continue to cook another 10 minutes, until tender and beginning to brown on the edges.

Relax. Eat Well.

Pumpkin Mac and Cheese with Toasted Breadcrumbs

This is pure comfort food. Since it is April and still feels like winter, I'm allowing it. 

Finding a love for whole foods can be a journey, which sometimes takes years to develop and cement. It's a transition, and like any other transition, baby steps are often necessary. This is a great recipe for a transitional kitchen, one that helps convince skeptics that whole foods and healthier ingredients can still be delicious and satisfying. And so the momentum builds. And bellies are warmed.

For the deepest flavor, I highly recommend roasting a pumpkin (or any winter squash) and scooping out the inside to be used in this recipe. If you are short on time or energy, canned pumpkin puree can be used, and will still be delicious (just not as delicious!). So no excuses.

This recipe can be made vegan by simply omitting the cheddar cheese. Or you can swing the other way and increase the dairy by using cow's milk in place of soy milk. Either way, I promise you'll love it. 

You can even make a double batch, and freeze the second one in lunch size portions. One of our secrets to weekday success is having a stocked freezer from past meals. I chill the second one, cut it into desired portions, place those on a parchment paper lined baking sheet to freeze, and then move each one into a labeled quart sized freezer bag. 

Pumpkin Mac and Cheese with Toasted Breadcrumbs

Serves 4-6

Ingredients

3 Tbs. olive oil

1 medium onion, diced

1/4 cup whole wheat flour

2 1/2 cups soy milk

1 cup pumpkin puree

1 cup sharp cheddar cheese, shredded

1/2 tsp. salt 

pinch of nutmeg

1/4 tsp. freshly ground black pepper

a dash of turmeric, optional

Additional salt and pepper, as needed

1/2 lb. whole wheat pasta shells, cooked

1/2 cup breadcrumbs

2 tbs. sage leaves, sliced thinly

Directions

Cook shells al dente, according to package directions. Drain and set aside.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Heat olive oil over low-medium heat in a medium pot. Add diced onions and cook until translucent. Sprinkle in flour and stir constantly for one minute, to toast slightly. Slowly pour in soy milk, a half cup or so at a time, stirring with a whisk to prevent clumping. Once incorporated, add pumpkin and continue to cook for 15-20 minutes, stirring often, or until thickened. Add shredded cheese, salt, nutmeg, black pepper and dash of turmeric. Taste and season with additional salt if needed (don't under-salt!)

Mix pumpkin cheese sauce with cooked pasta shells and pour into a oiled baking pan. Top with breadcrumbs. Bake in 350 degree oven for 25 minutes, or until sides are bubbling and breadcrumbs are toasty. Serve garnished with sage. 

Relax. Eat Well.

Rosemary Pesto

On the first day that truly feels like winter, I have a little throwback to summer for you. 

Remember those herbs we talked about preserving at the end of the harvest this year? Dig those rosemary sprigs out of the freezer and let's get started. 

If starting with frozen sprigs, simply let them sit out at room temperature for 30 minutes or so, until they are easy to strip off the stem. 

Pesto can be the basis for so many wonderful dishes- I love to have a few different types in my freezer, ready to be pulled out for a quick dinner. Trying varying the herbs for some new twists.

Try this one instead of tomato sauce on a flatbread, with caramelized onions, fresh chèvre, and a sharp cheddar. Or tossed with some pappardelle noodles with blanched broccoli and toasted pine nuts. Or folded into a quick frittata with sun-dried tomatoes and mushrooms.

Rosemary Pesto

Ingredients

2 garlic cloves
1 cup packed rosemary leaves- from fresh or frozen
1 1/4 cup toasted walnuts
1/2 tsp. freshly ground pepper
1 1/2 tsp. sea salt
Zest of one lemon
2 tsp. lemon juice
1 cup extra-virgin olive oil

Directions

Peel garlic, and mince in food processor. Add rosemary through lemon juice and continue to puree, drizzling olive oil and scraping down as needed in to achieve desired consistency.

Store fresh in the refrigerator, or freeze in ice cube trays to be used later.

Relax. Eat Well.

Curried Coconut Squash Soup

As the weather continues to turn towards fall, I have been getting back into soups and stews, and it was one such craving that inspired this Curried Coconut Squash Soup. Simple, with a creamy decadence from coconut milk and flavor-bursts from curry spices, it is my ideal weekend lunch.

I happen to know that it freezes well, as I made a big batch to hand out to a few friends who could use the spare time these days.

Side note: did you know that grilled cheese freezes well too? I gifted the soup with a bag of frozen Grilled Cheese Croutons (grilled cheese smothered with scape pesto and cut into bite sized cubes). Pop the thawed soup in a pot and the croutons on a baking sheet, and you have a comforting meal ready in no time flat.

Curried Coconut Squash Soup
Serves 6

Ingredients

1 tbs. coconut oil
1 small onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 tbs. fresh ginger, minced
1 tbs. curry powder
1 tsp. cumin
1/2 tsp coriander
2 carrots, sliced in half moons
1 medium red kuri squash, unpeeled, cubed (mine was about 3.5 pounds whole, 10 cups cubed)
1 can coconut milk
3 cups vegetable stock
2 tbs. tamari
1/4 tsp. cayenne (optional, for heat)
1/2-1 tsp salt (optional, to taste)

Directions

No need to peel the squash- it will puree smooth and you will benefit from the added fiber and time on your hands.

Heat coconut oil in a medium pot over medium heat. Add chopped onion and sauté until translucent. Add minced ginger, garlic, curry powder, cumin and coriander and continue to cook, stirring often, for 1 minutes, making sure not to burn spices. Add carrot and squash cubes, as well as coconut milk and vegetable stock. Turn up heat and bring to a boil, and then down to a simmer for 20 minutes. Check to make sure squash cubes are completely cooked. Remove from heat, add tamari and blend with an immersion blender. Once smooth, taste and adjust seasonings by adding more salt and/or cayenne pepper for heat.

Notes: Other winter squash varieties would work here as well- try buttercup, butternut or blue hubbard.

Fiddleheads Cuisine Kitchen Tour and Open-Faced Egg Sandwich

This week I thought I would give you a behind the scenes tour of the backstage of Fiddleheads Cuisine: the KITCHEN.

My trusty camera, while perfect for the up close food art I normally practice, is less apt at capturing wide angle shots of larger spaces. So you will have to be happy with the details- my favorite nooks and cranny's, worn wood from daily chopping, and colorful accents that warm the space. Hopefully you'll enjoy piecing it all together in your head- or be inspired to come visit for a cooking class soon, to see it all in action.

I love old wood, repurposed and salvaged finds, white mixed with brights, and a touch of industrial.

A cobblers shelf holds my catering platters, evening wine, a touch of living green, and last season's garlic harvest.

I tried not to clean up too much before taking these shots- instead opting to show you a glimpse of my lived-in kitchen: aprons stained with chocolate, wood turmeric-yellow from last week's curry, chalk faded and smudged from wet hands.

The way light catches the glass, feeds the succulents on the windowsill and brings me out of my dream-state each morning over a mug of coffee.

And because I have never left you without a recipe to share, I'll end this post with a glimpse at today's lunch. Nothing fancy or time-consuming, just simple flavors and fresh ingredients. I wasn't feeling particularly vegan or gluten-free today, so I assembled a few of my favorite ingredients and threw them together, open-face style: eggs from the backyard, kale from there too, creamy avocado, chèvre, whisper-thin red onion and a half of my favorite bagel, Myer's Montreal Spice. Made in Burlington, these bagels are wood-fired, doughy but small and slathered thick with peppery spices and herbs.

Open-Faced Egg Sandwich

Serves 1

Ingredients

1/2 a bagel- my favorite is Myer's Montreal Spice

1 tsp. butter

1 farm-fresh egg

a handful of kale, chopped

Sea Salt

1/2 oz chèvre

1/4 of an avocado, sliced thinly

a few uber-thin slivers of red onion

Directions

Set your bagel half to toast. Heat a cast-iron pan over medium heat, with a teaspoon of butter. When hot enough to sizzle when spritzed with water, add kale and cracked egg. Sprinkle with a touch of sea salt. Cover and let cook for a few minutes. Flip egg (breaking yolk if desired) and stirring kale. Continue to cook until egg is done and kale is beginning to crisp. Add chèvre to kale and stir to incorporate.

To assemble sandwich, top toasted bagel with the egg, then chevre-spiked kale and finish with onion slivers and sliced avocado.

Relax. Eat Well.

Roasted Beet Salad with Maple Miso Balsamic Dressing

It is pretty hard these days to feel inspired by the few local ingredients that are left. Mostly roots, maybe some cabbage. It has been a long hard winter and we are OH SO close to greens popping up for spring, but just not quite there.

Here is the last of my homegrown garlic - scraping the bottom of the bin.

But on to beets- one of the few roots I have yet to satiate on this winter. I'm not going to dive into the nutrition world today- because, well, I just don't feel like it. Instead, let's just drool over some pictures...

Roasty, toasty, cozy…...

Roasted Beet Salad with Maple Miso Balsamic Dressing
Serves 6

Ingredients

4 large beets, ruby red, golden (pictured) or bullseye chioggia
1 tbs. grape seed oil
2 tsp. maple syrup
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 lb. baby spinach
1/4 cup crystallized ginger, minced.
1/2 cup raw walnuts

1 garlic clove
½ cup olive oil
½ cup balsamic vinegar
1 tsp. mustard
2 tbs. miso
1 tbs. maple syrup
½ tsp sea salt

Directions

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Wash beets well and slice of ends. Slice into 1/4 inch thick rounds, unpeeled. Toss with grape seed oil, syrup and salt, and place on baking sheet in a single layer.

Roast for 15 minutes, check and flip if beginning to get golden. Continue to roast for another 10-15 minutes, or until fork tender and beginning to caramelize. Remove from oven and set aside.

Turn oven down to 325 degrees and toast walnuts on a baking sheet for 5-10 minutes, until fragrant and just beginning to brown. Watch carefully- they have a propensity to burn! Remove and cool.

To make dressing, combine garlic through sea salt in a blender and process until smooth.

Just before serving, toss spinach with dressing and place in a large bowl. Top with minced crystallized ginger, roasted beets and toasted walnuts.
Relax. Eat Well.

Jamaican Jerk Tempeh

Inspired by our trip to the tropics of Panama earlier this month, I prepared this Jamaican Jerk Tempeh for the CSK last week. I received so many notes of enthusiasm that I decided it deserved a blog post of it's own so it could be shared with our cyber world friends. 

I'll be the first to admit, tempeh is not the easiest ingredient to make exciting. In fact, it always requires a bit of finesse. I love it for many reasons- it's hearty, nutty flavor, nutritional profile and protein prowess, but it can often end up dried-out and less than appetizing. For that reason, I have a few rules when cooking tempeh. I don't dry grill it. No matter how nice your spice rub is, tempeh needs ample liquid to come to life. 

I prefer to cook tempeh in a liquid marinade, either in a skillet or in the oven. Once it has absorbed the flavors and hydration, then it is possible to get some dry heat going to give the edges a bit of a char- either on the grill, broiler or convection oven. 

I aim for marinades with loads of flavor- this jamaican jerk sauce is a perfect example. If the sauce itself doesn't have a significant sweet component, I end the cooking process with a drizzle of honey or maple syrup and a touch of oil to achieve the golden caramelization that really brings tempeh into the winners circle.

Of course I have to leave you with a tiny nutrition lesson before I can move on. Tempeh is a fermented soybean product, originating from Indonesia. It uses whole, unrefined edamame which is fermented and pressed to produce a firm patty. Rich in high-quality amino-acids and friendly bacteria, tempeh is a nutritious vegetarian protein source. I buy Rhapsody Tempeh, which is produced in Cabot, Vermont using organic soybeans grown in Quebec. As with all soybean products, I recommend doing some research on your brand and buying organic to avoid GMO-laden soy.

Try serving this with a side of smashed yams and a tender green salad tossed with sesame dressing. The perfect lunch or light dinner. 

Jamaican Jerk Tempeh

Serves 4 as main component

Ingredients

1/2 cup fresh orange juice

1/4 cup rice vinegar


2 tbs. olive oil


2 tbs. tamari soy sauce


1 tbs. Worcestershire sauce (use vegetarian version if vegetarian)

1 tbs. brown sugar


2 tsp. allspice


1/2 tsp. sea salt


1 tsp. cinnamon

1/4 tsp. nutmeg

1 tbs. fresh minced ginger


2 cloves garlic, minced


1/2 tsp. chili flakes, or to taste (optional)

4 chopped scallions

8 oz tempeh, sliced thickness in half and then into 8 triangles

Cilantro, chopped, for garnish

Instructions

In a medium bowl, combine all the marinade ingredients and stir well (if you aren’t into mincing, you can alternatively add everything to a blender and process until smooth). Add the tempeh triangles and ensure all of the tempeh is coated. Let rest for 30-45 minutes.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Line a 9x13 baking pan with parchment paper, trying to insure that the paper curves up the sides and ends a few inches, for easy clean-up. Place tempeh in a single layer, sprinkle with scallions and pour remaining marinade on top. Bake for 30 minutes, or until most of the marinade has absorbed and bottoms are beginning to brown. Garnish with cilantro to serve.

Relax. Eat Well. 

Sweet Potato Bisque

Two soup recipes in a row? WHAT?

Blogger faux pas? Arguably. Case of the "I can't believe it is still 5 degrees out and need fire inside me now"? Most definitely.

A dangerous outcome of the practice of blogging what I cook, in a fairly 1:1 ratio.

I've been working on a project lately that requires developing recipes that are shelf stable. This has proven to be quite a challenging project for a natural chef, who bases most recipes on the fresh and the raw.

The good news is that it inspired this cashew cream powder, which I have incorporated into a sweet potato version of the potato chowder I was originally developing.



The cashew powder that you create in the first step of this recipe can be kept in an airtight container, preferably somewhere cool and dark, for a few weeks. It can then be mixed with 1 1/2 cups of water and brought to a simmer, to thicken into a luscious cashew cream. At this point, you have a versatile sauce for a variety of dishes - as an alfredo sauce mixed with whole wheat pasta, over steamed broccoli, or as the "cream" in a vegan chowder, such as we find here.





The beauty of using it in a soup is that you can cut out the step of thickening it in simmering water, and simply add the cashew powder to the soup in the last few minutes of cooking. You'll notice a quick thickening effect, and after a few minutes with the immersion blender, you have a beautiful chowder or bisque.

Wow, that got a bit detailed- hope I didn't lose any of you yet.

In short: this cashew powder is fun to play with and can easily be made ahead and transported to be used over camp stoves in the woods, while traveling to remote destinations, or to throw together a quick week night meal.

Like most soups, this one requires a decent amount of chopping, resulting in some valuable ends and pieces. DON'T YOU DARE THROW THIS IN THE COMPOST. This is the start of your next soup- save them for your next batch of vegetable stock.

Vegan Sweet Potato Bisque

Serves 4-6

Ingredients

1 cup ground raw cashews, room temperature

1 tbs. nutritional yeast

1/2 tsp. garlic granules

1 ½ tsp. salt

½ tsp. rosemary

1 tsp. coconut oil

1 small onion, minced

2 celery ribs, diced

2 garlic cloves, minced

2 large yams, diced (5 cups)

4 cups vegetable stock

1 tbs. cooking sherry

¼ tsp. freshly ground pepper

Salt to taste

Optional additions: a dash of red pepper flakes, a handful of fresh herbs- basil, sage, scallions or parsley

Directions

In a food processor, pulse the first 5 ingredients, cashews through rosemary, until you reach a granular consistency, similar to that of sand. The more powdered the better, but don’t go too far- it will try to turn into cashew butter. Set aside.

Heat the coconut oil in a medium pot over low-medium heat. Add onions and cook until translucent. Add celery and continue to cook for 5 minutes, until softened. Add garlic, cook for 1 minute, then add yam and vegetable stock. Bring up to a boil and down to a simmer. Simmer for 10 minutes, or until yams are very soft. Uncover, add cashew powder and continue to cook for 5 minutes.

Turn off heat, add cooking sherry and ground pepper. With an immersion blender, puree until very smooth. Taste, and adjust with salt. Add additional spices and herbs if using, and pulse to combine.