curried hominy yogurt pasta sauce

Just whipped this mexican/indian/italian mash mash-up up.

Ingredients:
Hominy, lemon juice, yogurt, hot curry powder, masa flour, oil, ghee, garlic powder, black pepper, salt, chives

Fry hominy in oil until it is getting crispy. Add all other ingredients and water if necessary. Serve on linguine, next to balsamic baked tofu. 

beet and carrot cake for breakfast

We're generally savory breakfast lovers here at d.i. wine and dine, but we decided to go the sweet route for this week's Dark Days Challenge: Breakfast. But not too sweet. I adapted the recipe from "Kitchen M", who says that "90% of carrot cakes that I've tasted had too much sugar in them." I agree. I also used more beets than carrots, since we found local beets but not carrots. I made the recipe vegan by using egg replacer and soy yogurt. I also used 100% whole wheat flour (local), which I think works really well in this recipe—the beets, carrots, and frosting keep the cake very moist.

Look at those pretty beets; they look like skeleton hands!

There are many non-local ingredients in here, which I'm not very excited about, but most of the bulky ones are local and/or seasonal. In hindsight, I would have tried using honey instead of sugar to make this even more local.


Ingredients:
3 med Beets (local)
2 med Carrots
2 1/2 c. whole wheat Flour (local)
1 tsp Baking Powder
1 tsp Baking Soda
1/4 tsp Ground Cinnamon
1/4 tsp Freshly Ground Nutmeg
1/2 tsp Salt
3 eggs worth of egg replacer
1/4 c. Packed Dark Brown Sugar
3/4 c. Granulated Sugar
3/4 c. Plain Yogurt (dairy or non-dairy)
3/4 c. Vegetable Oil
1/2 c. Coconut Flakes
1/2 c. Chopped Walnuts

Frosting (makes 2/3 cup):
2 Tbsp Butter/Margarine
1 1/2 c. Powdered Sugar, Sifted
2 Tbsp Milk (dairy or non-dairy)
1 tsp  Vanilla
1/2 tsp Almond Extract or Lemon juice

Cook beets in microwave for 3 minutes. Chop beets and carrots into small pieces using food processor and set aside. Mix the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg & salt) and set aside. Mix the egg replacer, sugars, yogurt, and oil. Then add in beets, carrots, coconut flakes and walnuts. Then add in the mixed dry ingredients and mix until evenly wetted. Bake at 350ºF in a greased cake pan (8" diameter by 2.5" tall) for 40-50 minutes, until a toothpick or knife comes out clean.

To make the frosting, melt the butter and beat in the ingredients until smooth.

françois dines

I made Julie these local haystack goat cheese ravioli in sage brown butter with almonds and garlic chips. François decided it was good enough for him and deigned to eat with us.

peanut butter ginger chews

 

We were in Austin last weekend for Eric's birthday, and while I was tempted to see if I could get a birthday cake through airport security, I instead decided to surprise him with a knock-off of his favorite candy these days: Reed's Peanut Butter Ginger Chews.  I thought it would be pretty straight forward since their ingredients are just sugar, peanut butter, tapioca starch, and ginger, but when I looked online for a clone recipe, I couldn't find anything that matched.  I ended up modifying a taffy recipe.  So while these chews do not match Reed's, they are still mighty tasty! 

Ingredients:

2 T. minced ginger

1/4 c. water

- - -

2 c. sugar

1 c. water

3/4 c. brown rice syrup

2 t. olive oil

1 t. salt

 - - -

1/4 c. peanut butter

2 T. vegetable shortening

Cut about 75-3"x3" pieces of wax paper in advance.  Cook the minced ginger in water over medium-low until the water is evaporated.  Then in a large pot cook the sugar, water, brown rice syrup, olive oil, and salt over medium-low until the temperature of the mixture reaches 260° F.  This takes awhile.  When it finally reaches temp, remove from heat and stir in the peanut butter, shortening and cooked ginger.  Then the pushing and pulling begins.  I did my best to follow the directions on eHow. Basically while it is still liquid you pour the mixture onto an oiled sheet and keep pushing the flowing edges to the middle. Once it quits spreading, let it cool until you can touch it.  Then you pull the ball into a rope, fold, pull, fold, pull, until it gets difficult.  Then grab chunks of taffy and wrap up in the wax paper squares.  If you don't plan to eat all of them in the next 2 weeks, you can freeze some.

dilly bean potato salad with garlic miso aioli

This is the best potato salad I've had.  There was recently a dilly bean potato salad recipe in Bon Appetit magazine. However, mayonnaise is pretty gross and I can't bring myself to make it. So I used our recipe for miso mayo (vegan) instead, but used olive oil, lemon juice, and lots of garlic; and then I called it aioli to make it sound fancy.

Even though I think of potato salad as a summer picnic food, our canned dilly beans and local potatoes make this a hearty wintertime treat!

(makes 6-8 servings)

Ingredients:
3 lbs potatoes
1 c. dilly beans 
1 T. brown mustard seeds
few dashes paprika
salt and pepper to taste

Garlic Miso Aioli:
1 c. olive oil
10 T. white/yellow miso
2 T. lemon juice
2-5 cloves garlic
2 t. soy sauce

Boil the potatoes and let them cool to room temperature or colder. Make the aioli by adding all ingredients and mixing with a whisk, fork, food processor, or immersion blender. Add aioli to potatoes until salad is desired consistency. Then mix in cut dilly beans and mustard seeds and add paprika, salt, and pepper.

blue corn tortilla tacos

  

The special Dark Days Challenge this week was to cook a vegetarian meal, but seeing that we are  vegetarians, this challenge was not a big deal for us.  I did end up going out on a limb though by making blue corn tortillas out of local blue corn meal.  I've only made tortillas once before. Despite that, I'd say the tortillas turned out well.  Most of all, I was impressed by how incredibly local the whole meal was and without much effort.  In addition to the local blue corn meal, we had on hand local anasazi beans, potatoes, spinach, and homemade mostly local peach salsa.

Blue Corn Tortilla Ingredients:
blue corn meal
instant masas flour (not local)
salt (not local)
boiling water

Filling Ingredients (inspired by Veganomicon's Potato and Kale Enchiladas):
potatoes
frozen spinach
roasted green chiles
anasazi beans
garlic
salt (not local)
cumin (not local)
lime juice (not local)
peach salsa (inspired by Local Kitchen)

carrot marmalade

 

It's time to start thinking about garden seeds! Having some of last years bounty to ponder over is certainly added encouragement... This carrot marmalade was made from purple carrots that we grew in last year's garden. Good stuff. The recipe is in Ball's "Blue Book of Preserving." Have yourselves a lovely day-dreamy weekend!

homemade peanut butter

 

I made peanut butter for the first time! It wasn't even my idea, it was my friend Julie's. Seeing as we are both named Julie, our future peanut butter business should probably be called PB&J&J.

We roughly followed Alton Brown's recipe: nuts, honey, salt, oil, food processor.  The flavor turned out really good though we had to add quite a bit more oil than the recipe called for to get a decent texture.  Maybe the nuts I chose weren't fatty enough?  Let the experiments begin!

maple caramel corn

Happy Valentine's Day 2 weeks early!!  If you've got a crunchy locavore lover, I'd recommend making them maple caramel corn.  Note: you could also make maple caramel corn any regular day of the week.

I used a recipe that I got in the mail from my friends Kate and Ben.  You'll have to find one on the internet.  My friends' recipe calls for popcorn, maple syrup, honey, butter, vanilla extract, salt, and black pepper.  In terms of local ingredients, I was able to use local popcorn and local honey.  The maple syrup was not local BUT it was connected.  It was harvested from a friend's parent's property back in New Hampshire.  How cool is that?!

pumpkin soup with dollap of refried black beans

 

Here's a soup that is really good for those cold winter dark days! It is a basic pumpkin soup dressed up with a dollop of black beans that I re-fried myself.  The main ingredient was a small "pie pumpkin" that has been sitting on our counter since we got it from our Isabelle Farm CSA in October. Good job holding in there, little pumpkin!  I would also like to note my excitement about getting to use our very own coriander seed that we grew in our garden this past year.

Ingredients:
pumpkin
frozen green chile
frozen corn
onion
coriander (garden!)
carrot (not local)
turmeric (not local)
cumin (not local)
ginger (not local)
black pepper (not local)
salt (not local)
oil (not local)

I roasted the pumpkin in the oven, scraped it out and cooked it with the other ingredients. I like making refried beans from scratch by frying cooked beans in oil with spices and mashing with a potato masher.