Happy Birthday 100th Julia Child!

I adore Julia Child.  Today would have been her 100th birthday.  So, celebrate by eating something delicious or even better COOKING something delicious.

Grilled Nectarine and Tomatillo Salsa

Last week's CSA box was FULL of tomatoes!  This meant that it was time to make some salsa.  Sunday night, I brought my CSA goods over to my parents house and we made the following salsa to go with our fish tacos.  The salsa was fruity, spicy and delicious with tortilla chips and on top of the fish.

Ingredients:

1 Nectarine

2 Tomatillos

2-4 tomatoes (depending on size)

2 cloves of garlic

1/2 onion or more to taste

1 jalapeño (remove seeds and be careful not to touch them!)
1 green pepper
1 lime

a bunch of cilantro

Salt/pepper

Chili powder

Cumin

Directions:

Fire up the grill, cut nectarine in half and grill until soft and charred.  (About 5-8 minutes)  

Place the tomatillo on the grill, whole for about 8 minutes

Once grilled, let cool and chop.

While that is on the grill, chop up everything else into salsa size pieces.

Place everything in a bowl.

Cut lime in half and squeeze the juice over the ingredients.

Add spices to taste

Salsa is delicious served with tortilla chips, on fish tacos, or over grilled chicken breast.  If you have any leftover it should keep for about a week in the fridge.

Enjoy!

MN Food Truck FAIL

As I mentioned last week, I was really excited for this new event called the MN Food Truck Fair.  It was promoted as a festival of all the food trucks in the metro and a sampling of over 25 different craft breweries.  My friends Joe and Jackie and I had purchased a groupon for $25 which was get us into the event, unlimited craft brew samples and a juicy lucy from the Blue Door Pub.  So, it was in great anticipation that we headed downtown on a beautiful August afternoon.  Little did we know we were heading into a maze of chaos, disappointment and hunger.

We approached the event site and were immediately met with a huge, winding, dense line of people.   This caused a little confusion because it was 12:45 and the fair was to open at 12:30.  Turns out, the organizers were not prepared to open on top so wait we did- for about 30 minutes.  Hungry and thirsty and already frustrated.

Just part of the massive line..

Once we got into the fair we were met with about 12 different truck choices.  Not much of a festival in my opinion.  Also, every truck had about a 20 to 30 minute wait to get any kind of food.  Therefore, we made the quick decision to head for the beer tent first to start sampling.  We were met with another long line.  Once we got up to the front the choices were actually really good (they even had an Octoberfest!) but everyone was only allowed a dixie cup sized portion and only one at a time.  After a 20 minute wait, getting a dixie cup of beer was like a slap in the face.  The entire time we were there we only got 2 cups of beer.

Jackie, Joe and our serving of beer :(

After our stop at the beer tent we went to claim our Juicy Lucy from the Blue Door Pub tent.  The Blue Door was really the one bright spot of the entire fair.  They were turning out sliders really quickly and making sure everyone was taken care of at their tent.  The Blucy (blue cheese and garlic stuffed inside a burger) was phenomenal!

Blue Door Pub- workin' it!

After our sliders we were still hungry so we all split up and jumped into different lines with the plan of meeting back up and sharing what we had.  I went to Chef Shack, Joe went to Twisted Sister and Jackie went to Stanley's.  Joe came back with some decent pulled pork carnitas.  After realizing that Chef Shack only had three options left (many trucks ran out of food 2 hours into the event) I came back with some good pulled pork Nachos.  And Jackie, well, Jackie never made it to the truck at Stanley's.  After waiting in line for over 25 minutes we decided to leave.

The fair was a total bust.  We will never go back. Ever.  The organizer was poorly organized, unprepared for the crowd and did not appear to communicate the number of attendees to any of the vendors.  The day was just a total and complete mess and we definitely did not get our money's worth.

We ended the day drinking away our sorrows at the Monte Carlo. The bartender said they had been overwhelmed by the number of disgruntled fair goers who waltzed in to finally get some food and drinks.

MN Food Truck Fair

I am pretty excited about this weekend.  Sunday is the MN Food Truck Fair in downtown Minneapolis.     The food truck scene in the Twin Cities is big and continues to grow.  However, unless you work downtown it can be difficult to catch up to one of these trucks.  Most trucks will set up shop downtown for the lunch rush and maybe hit a farmer's market on the weekend.

For the fair, we purchased VIP passes (thank you groupon) which will give us access to unlimited craft beer samplings (and there are a LOT of vendors: Breweries), live jazz music and a juicy lucy.  In addition to that I am looking forward to trying food from:

• Chef Shack
• Foxy Falafel
• Hola Arepa

I'm headed down there on Sunday with my friends Jackie and Joe.  Both have promised to wear their fat girl pants and share.  Check back next week for all the details.

Midwestern Nicoise Salad

Every Tuesday I get a little anxious as the anticipation of trying to eat up another box of vegetables from our CSA rolls around.  I have been getting more and more creative and feel less overwhelmed now but it is still quite an effort.  This Midwestern Nicoise salad is a collaboration between me and my mom.  We put it together after I brought over a bag of veggies for our weekly Sunday night dinner.  This is a pretty vague recipe because well, it is a salad so feel free to improvise.

• Ingredients for vinaigrette:
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 3 teaspoon Dijon mustard
• 3 tablespoons red wine vinegar
• 1/2 lemon, juiced
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
• 2 tablespoons minced fresh tarragon
• Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil

Directions for vinaigrette:

• To make the vinaigrette: combine all ingredients in a bowl.  Whisk vigorously to emulsify. Set the dressing aside while preparing the salad so the flavors can marry.

Ingredients for the salad:
2 Grilled chicken breast
1/2 of an avocado
A bunch of green beans
A bunch of snap peas (we left them in the pea pods)
2 large tomatoes
3-5 baby new potatoes
Salad greens
Parsley
Chives
Maybe some mint


Directions for Salad:

• Grill chicken breast.  You may add BBQ sauce if you wish. Cut into bite size pieces
• Slice avocado
• Boil green beans and snap peas for about 4 minutes and then immediately run under cold water to stop the cooking process.  
• Boil potatoes until soft and slice into discs
• Slice tomatoes
• Chop parsley, chives and mint and use as a garnish over the salad
• Combine all ingredients and dress with the vinaigrette.  Sprinkle with a little pepper and enjoy!

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Caramelized Onions

Image: Simply Recipes

Caramelized onions are my new favorite thing to have on hand.  They are incredibly easy to make, keep fairly well in the fridge and are a delicious topping for so many things.  This week our CSA basket delivered 2 large onions so I caramelized a big batch and plan on eating them through out the week on:
- sandwiches
- salads
- in skillets with potatoes, eggs, and tomatoes
- on top of flatbread
- in bruschetta
- warmed over brie cheese as an appetizer with some good crackers


Ingredients:
- onion
- olive oil

Directions:
- slice an onion into discs and use your fingers to separate them out into individual pieces
- heat a non-stick pan on high for about 1 minute
- add a couple teaspoons of olive oil and turn the heat down to low
- cook the onions on low until they turn a light brown color.  By this time they will have reduced down in size and their flavor will condensed to be sweet and mild.
- eat warm from the pan or store in the fridge to be reheated throughout the week

Enjoy!

Cookie Dough

Next Saturday July 28, 2012 is a very big day.   Two of my very best friends will get married to each other.  I have been counting down the days to this wedding for what feels like years!  There are a lot of great things happening at this wedding: a bowling party, live band, really thoughtful decor and the best part a soft serve ice cream machine for dessert.  In an effort to be just a little bit helpful, I offered to make/bake whatever was needed for this eventful weekend.  My friend requested cookie dough to go with the soft serve ice cream sundae bar.


So, I went online and searched for a good tasting, eggless, safe to eat raw cookie dough recipe.  I found one that is meant for cookie dough truffles and modified it slightly for my use.  Pulling this dough together was a little too easy.  I need to be careful that I don't turn cookie dough making into a habit...


Here is the recipe which was adapted from Bakerella.com


Ingredients:

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature

1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup packed dark brown sugar
2 tablespoons milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup good quality chocolate chips ( I used Ghirardelli)

Directions:

• In a large bowl, beat butter and sugars with an electric mixer until light and fluffy (about 3 minutes)

• Mix in milk and vanilla

• Add flour and salt and mix on low until combined

• With a wooden spoon or spatula stir in chocolate chips

• Chill dough in refrigerator for about 30 minutes until firm enough to roll or scoop into bite size pieces.  Freeze until ready to serve.

Enjoy! I know I will.