Pickled Veggie Relish

Have you ever been to a really good Mexican restaurant where they bring you those amazing pickled carrots with jalapenos?  Yeah, they’re pretty amazing.  We’ve even posted on this before from our good friend and chef Alejandro!  We had a bunch of veggies that were getting pretty sad, so instead of being wasteful we re-purposed them in to this incredible relish.  We tossed this in to a fresh salad in lou of dressing, topped it on to some baked cod and added it like giardinera to a sandwich!  It’s very versatile and packed with flavor.  The recipe below is a loose version of what we did, use what you have on hand for vegetables- we used carrots, celery, onion, sweet mixed peppers and cilantro.

Recipe/ Directions

2-3 cups vegetables, carrots/ celery/ onion/ peppers

4-6 garlic cloves, rough chop or whole

1/2 cup chopped cilantro, optional

1/2 cup apple cider vinegar

1/2 cup rice wine vinegar

1-2 cups water

1 teaspoon coriander seeds

1/2 tsp salt and pepper, to taste

1.) Chop your vegetables to bite size or relish size pieces ( however you’d like to eat them!)

2.) Place all vegetables, garlic, cilantro, vinegars and coriander, salt and pepper in to a large saucepan, add enough water to cover everything.

3.) Bring the pan to a boil, then reduce heat and cook for about 5 more minutes.

4.) Once cooled slightly, put in to Ball jars to store in the refrigerator, And they’ll keep for about 3 months.

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Baby Food | how to

This blog is about food, pictures of beautiful food, for food, and all things food- enter BABY FOOD.  Knox has been eating solids for 2 months now, and if you know us at all, I hope you know we have been making everything he eats at home.  Jason and I don’t eat every meal out of a jar, so why would we feed our baby out of a jar, am I right?  I was pretty excited to start making this little guy’s food, he was practically begging for each bite we put in our mouths when we were eating in front of him- poor guy!  I can’t wait till we can just serve him what we’re eating each night, for now we make him his own fruit and veggies purees and combos!  He’s actually inspired us to eat better again, I swear since pregnancy we’ve been spoiling our sweet tooth and ourselves with decadent meals, pizza and the like.  This week we made a great meal plan and have stuck to it.  We do a Sunday food prep as long as we’re home, where I baked sweet potatoes, regular potatoes, roasted acorn squash, washed and packed baggies of grapes, boiled chicken for southwest style wraps ( packaged beans/ shredded cheese/ avocado/ made brown rice with Salsa), baked bacon ( for loaded potatoes), boiled whole wheat pasta and threw together a backed ziti with zucchini slices, and of course made some fruits for Knox.

I do mega batches 1-2 times per month and so far he’s had: apples, pears, acorn squash, butternut squash, cantaloupe, peas, green beans, avocado, sweet potato, parsnips, prunes.  It’s been pretty easy, I’ll do 2 fruits and 2 veggies all at the same time by steaming the sliced fruits in a saucepan with a touch of water and a lid at the same time the squash or potatoes are cooking/ roasting in the oven.  As one item finishes cooking I toss it in the food processor.  For the apple and pears, I remove the skin after it’s steamed and cool- it’s just easier and you don’t lose as much fruit.   Once each item is blended, I pour/ plop it in to an ice cube tray, cover with plastic wrap and freeze.  Once frozen I transfer the cubes to a labelled bag and store in the freezer.  To serve, I place 1-2 cubes ( mix and match!) and microwave in a small bowl with 10-20 second intervals till just warm and smooth.  I’ll stir in some milk to thin it out if necessary, add in rice powder for extra calories.

photo source

Knox’s favorite, as an example Acorn Squash!

2 acorn squash

Directions

To start, wash the acorns, cut in half then place face down in a rimmed pan lined with foil ( I drizzle with EVOO), bake for 35 minutes @400 degrees.  When cool, scoop out soft flesh in to your food processor and blend until smooth, adding liquid gradually (and adding more if needed to purée). Then pour into freezer cubes and store in freezer.

 

Suggested Combos:
Sweet Potato and Apple

Apple and Cinnamon

Pear and Parsnips

Acorn Squash and Rice

Peas and Sweet Potato

Cantaloupe and Yogurt

Peaches and Cream ( mommy’s milk)

 

Mexican Style Mussels

Happy Cinco de Mayo!  We should’ve grilled out buuuuuut instead we spent the afternoon planting our raised garden beds and wanted to keep it simple for dinner- enter Mexican Mussels!  Perfect fast easy dinner, delicious served with very good sliced bread.  Mussels were $4.99/ lb ( at WHOLE FOODS!) so these are also budget friendly.  Here is a great link on how to clean your mussels and also make sure that you aren’t eating bad ones.  This recipe is an original so let us know what you think- we loved every last slurped soaked bead bite.

1.25 lbs mussels, cleaned and sorted

1/2 cup chopped shallots

4 cloves garlic, minced

1/2 sup chopped red pepper

4 tablespoons butter

1.5 cups dry white wine

1/4 cup cream

2 tablespoons lemon juice

salt and pepper to taste

4 ounces chorizo

1/2 cup cilantro, chopped

1 baguette, sliced

Avocado for the side

In a large dutch oven style pan, heat your butter over medium high heat.  Saute the shallots, garlic and red pepper for about 5 minutes.  Add in the wine and let cook for about 6 minutes.  While that cooks, in another pan cook your chorizo through breaking it up in to bits.  Transfer to a paper towel lined plate and set aside.  Once the wine is cooked out, add in the mussels, chorizo, 1/4 cup of the cilantro and salt and pepper.  Place the lid on your pan and cook mussels gently shaking the pan to coat with the sauce.  They are cooked fully when they pop open; about 4-5 minutes total.  Remove from heat, squeeze lemon juice on top, the cream ( if desired) and the rest of the cilantro, season with more salt to taste.  Serve hot with sliced baguette and avocado.

Beautiful Day, Beautiful Food

Look who got Instagram!  The filters and quality of images is a lot of fun to do quick pictures of our food on the fly rather than setting up a studio every time we want to document.  Obviously those pictures are much better, but then we blog less!  There’s no real recipe here, just inspiration to get outside and grill.  We made guacamole  fresh salsa and grilled chicken tacos with fresh cilantro and green onion.  Check out this post for fresh salsa with the grill

 

Latin Spiced Chicken in Lettuce Cups

In our new issue of Food and Wine, they had top chefs contribute their all time favorite recipes.  Asian lettuce wraps are pretty incredible so when we saw Bill Telepan’s Latin spiced chicken, which marinates for 4 hours with some of our very favorites spices, then it is served in perfect portion sized lettuce cups with a crunchy and fresh slaw, we gave it a try! The down point where this recipes loses that umf is removing all the great flavors with the skin… but you also don’t want to have hunks of chicken leg skin in your light fresh cups.  So what we did is added a little extra salt and pepper to the shredded chicken to make up for he loss.  You can also squeeze more fresh lime juice over your cups before serving.  Enjoy

Contributed by Bill Telepan

INGREDIENTS

1. 1 tablespoon chile powder
2. 1 tablespoon dried oregano
3. 3 garlic cloves, minced
4. 2 tablespoons fresh orange juice
5. 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
6. 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
7. 6 whole chicken legs (about 4 1/2 pounds)—excess fat trimmed, skin scored
8. 1 pound Savoy cabbage, finely shredded (8 cups)
9. 1/2 small red onion, very thinly sliced
10. 2 jalapeños, seeded and minced
11. 3 tablespoons chopped cilantro
12. 16 large Boston lettuce leaves

Directions:

In a small bowl, combine 1 tablespoon each of salt and pepper with the chile powder, oregano, garlic, orange juice and 2 tablespoons each of the lime juice and olive oil. Put the chicken legs on a large rimmed baking sheet and coat all over with the spiced oil. Cover and refrigerate for 4 hours.

Meanwhile, in a large bowl, combine the remaining 1/4 cup each of lime juice and olive oil. Add the cabbage, onion, jalapeños and cilantro. Season the slaw with salt and pepper and refrigerate for at least 2 hours and up to 5 hours, tossing occasionally.

Preheat the oven to 400°. Roast the chicken legs skin side up for about 40 minutes, until browned and cooked through. When cool enough to handle, discard the skin and bones and shred the chicken.

Arrange the lettuce on a platter and fill with the chicken; top with the slaw and serve.

Roasted Tomato Salsa

6 Plum Tomatoes
2 Garlic Cloves
1 bunch of Cilantro
2 Limes
1 Small Red Onion (or whatever onion you have)
2 Serrano Peppers
1 tbs EVOO
2tsp Kosher salt
a few cracks of fresh ground pepper

Place the tomatoes in an oven safe dish and place in the broiler.  Broil until blackened and soft.  Quarter when done.
Roughly chop the onion and the peppers, crush and peel the garlic.  Then add all three to a hot pan with the EVOO.  Saute just until soft and fragrant.
Add all of the ingredients together in a good blender or food processor and pulse until combined.  Add extra salt and lime to taste.

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Flank Steak Taco Dinner with Friends

How can you not love summer- grilling out, warm sunshiny days and eating outside with good friends and good food after a day at the beach?  We had picked up a really nice looking flank steak at the butcher and decided it would be perfect on the grill and in a taco, along with grilled tomato salsa and sweetened grilled plantains… and mojitos!  Grilling the tomatoes gives this salsa a warm smoky heat, so savory and full of fresh flavor- it’s incredible.  Plantains are starchy, like a potato, but we treated them as a dessert- melted butter and brown sugar scented with vanilla.  We didn’t cook ours long enough, so you will want to make sure these are tender because the flavors were certainly showing up to party!  A quick rub of spices on the flank steak really punches up the savory taco.  So for your next BBQ as these last long days whittle down, please give this combo a try:

Roasted Tomato Salsa

Ingredients

6 roma (plum) tomatoes

2 cloves garlic, unpeeled

1/2 small onion, quartered

1 jalapeno chile pepper

1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1/4 teaspoon salt

3 tablespoons fresh lime juice

1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro

Directions
Start the Grill.  In a medium bowl, place roma (plum) tomatoes toss with a drizzle of olive oil, salt and pepper.   Transfer to the grill when it is hot and ready, checking often, grill 5 to 10 minutes, or until outsides of tomatoes are charred.  Remove vegetables from heat. Remove and discard tomato cores.  In a food processor, coarsely chop the remaining ingredients.  Transfer to a medium bowl and serve with extra lime juice and cilantro.

Flank Steak

Ingredients

2 lb flank steak

1 tablespoon ground mustard

1 tablespoon onion powder

1 tablespoon garlic powder

1 tablespoon salt

1/2 teaspoon cayenne

1/4 teaspoon allspice

Directions

Preheat a grill pan over high heat for 3 to 4 minutes. Combine the mustard, onion powder, garlic powder, salt, cayenne and allspice in a small bowl. Rub the flank steak all over with the mix and let sit for 10 minutes.  Put the steak on the hot grill and cook 5 minutes per side. Remove and let rest 10 minutes before slicing.

Plantains
1/2 cup dark rum

1/4 cup dark brown sugar

Pinch salt
1 teaspoon vanilla

1 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

2 very ripe plantains (should be almost black), peeled and sliced horizontally and then in half 

1 Tablespoon canola oil

Directions

Heat grill to high. Place rum, brown sugar, vanilla and salt in a small saucepan and cook until the sugar has melted and the mixture reduces and thickens slightly. Stir in butter until melted. Remove from the heat.

Brush plantains with oil on both sides and grill until golden brown and caramelized, about 3 to 4 minutes per side. Brush with the glaze during the last few minutes of grilling. Remove from the grill and brush with more of the glaze before serving.

Mojitos

makes 8 cocktails

Ingredients

2 cups sugar

1 cup water

8 ounces light rum

1 cup tonic water

16 limes, juiced

2 cups fresh mint

TO MAKE THE SIMPLE SYRUP WITH MINT: In a saucepan, mix together the sugar and water and heat over medium-high heat. Let the syrup cook for a couple of minutes or until the sugar dissolves and the syrup looks clear. This will be about the time it takes for the syrup to begin to bubble. Remove from the heat and add the mint leaves. Cover and set aside for about 10 minutes, so the mint can infuse the syrup. Strain the syrup and use immediately or store in a lidded container for up to 1 week.
TO MAKE THE PITCHER OF MOJITOS: In a large pitcher, stir together the rum, lime juice, and syrup. Add half the mint leaves and using a wooden spoon muddle the leaves. Serve at once or refrigerate until needed. Do NOT add ice to the pitcher.

TO SERVE: When ready to serve, squeeze a lime wedge over the ice in a rocks glass. Drop the lime wedge into the glass along with a few fresh mint leaves. Fill the glass two-thirds full of the mojito mixture and top off with club soda.

http://www.jasonrobertscott.com

Chicken, Chipotle and Avocado Soup

As the warm summer air slowly fades away, cool shorter days begin their take over. This recipe is for those of us stuck between mourning summer’s end, and anticipating the crisp fall colors. The fresh ingredients in this simple soup will keep you locked in to the summer, while the richness and wamth of homemade broth ease you into the cool fall nights. Since the ingredients and this recipe are so simple, the broth takes center stage. Making your own broth is the only way to ensure it can stand up for this task. We reserve our chicken carcass from recipes such as our “Whole Roasted Chicken Tacos”, and store it in an airtight bag in our freezer.

BROTH
Ingredients:
1 chicken carcass
10 cups water
1 cup carrots, chopped
1 cup celery, chopped (see note*)
1 cup onions, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 teaspoon thyme leaves
1/2 teaspoon salt and pepper
1 bay leaf

Combine all ingredients in a large heavy bottom pot. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to simmer, place lid on the pot, and set your timer for 90 minutes. Strain the contents through a mesh sieve into a large bowl, reserve the carcass, toss the veggies and any skin. When the carcass cools, you can pick off the bits of chicken to use in the soup, usually about 1 cup.
* NOTE: For the veggies, you don’t need to carefully chop up each piece in uniform shape or size, these are only used for flavor in the broth and are dicarded. For the celery, we like to use the discarded top and core that aren’t what you would want to snack on with your peanut butter.

Chicken, Chipotle and Avocado Soup
Ingredients:
6 1/2 cups chicken broth
1 chipotle chili pepper in Adobo sauce, seeded and sliced thinly (see note**)
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 cups cooked chicken, diced
1 teaspoon Paprika
1/2 teaspoon each Salt/ Pepper
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 avocados, pitted and diced
3 green onions, chopped
1 cup cilantro, chopped
2 limes

Bring the broth, chipotle chili, and garlic to a boil in a large pot. Meanwhile, you will need to cook up 1-2 chicken breasts to add in on top of the reserved chicken from the carcass. We seasoned ours with 1/2 the Olive Oil, Paprika, Garlic, Salt and Pepper. Pour the other 1/2 of the olive oil in a medium pan over medium/ high heat, cook the chicken for 4-5 minutes per side, until cooked through. Set aside under foil for 5 minutes before chopping it up. In four bowls, divide the avocado, green onions, chicken, and cilantro. Ladle the broth mixture over each bowl, and squeeze some lime juice over the top. Serve with tortilla chips and sour cream if desired.
** NOTE: Chipotle Chilis in Adobo come in a small can at the store with about 10 chilis, we divide them in to separate zipper baggies and keep them in our freezer to use whenever a recipe calls for it. Usually a recipe will only call for 1-2 chilis, as they are very potent in flavor (and heat if you leave those seeds in!).

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Whole Roasted Chicken Tacos with Avocado Corn and Cucumber Salsa

Ingredients:

Chicken

3 pound whole chicken- gizzards removed

3 limes- 2 loose chopped; 1 juiced

1/4 red onion- loose chopped

1/4 cup cilantro- loose chopped

1 tablespoon Canola Oil

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon pepper

Coriander

Garlic powder

Chili powder

Cumin

Directions:

Place the chicken in a 9×9 dish, season the interior with salt and pepper then stuff with chopped limes and onion and cilantro. Rub in the Canola oil on the outside ok the chicken, then season well with the remaining ingredients. Using twine, tie the two legs of the bird together to close off the stuffing from falling out. Cook on a hot grill over indirect heat for 1 hour, or unill the temp reads 165 degrees. Allow the bird to rest in foil for 10 minutes before shredding the meat for the tacos!

Avacado Corn and Cucumber Salsa

Ingredients:

2 avocados- diced

2 limes- juiced

1/2 red onion, chopped

1 small cucumber, seeded and diced

3 jalapeno peppers, seeded and diced

1/4 cup chopped cilantro

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 ears of corn, cooked and removed from cob

Directions:

Toss everything together in a medium bowl. Serve with chicken.

You’ll also need taco toppings:

We used,

Corn Tortillas

Shredded Red Cabbage

Greek Nonfat plain yogurt

More chopped cilantro

Fresh lime juice

For the tacos, char fresh corn tortillas over an open flame ( on your stove or grill), then load up some shredded chicken, fresh avocado salsa, shredded red cabbage and fresh chopped cilantro. You can also top that with plain non-fat Greek yogurt and more fresh squeezed lime juice. Fold in over and enjoy!!!!!!!

http://www.jasonrobertscott.com

Spicy tacos, fresh salsa and Stuffed Banana Pepper

We were really craving some home made tacos so we picked up some fresh ingredients from our local grocery store, La Casa Del Pueblo. Here’s how we made it:

INGREDIENTS:

1 1/2 lbs ground beef

1 bundle of cilantro, chopped

3 jalepeno peppers, chopped

2 red jalepeno peppers, seeded then chopped

1 banana pepper

1 white onion, chopped

12 corn tortillas

3 small avacados, peeled, seed removed, chopped

6 tomatos, diced

3 Limes

8oz brick of Chihuahua cheese, shredded

2 tsp kosher salt

DIRECTIONS:

Tacos:

Start off by browning your ground beef with one finely chopped jalepeno pepper. While that cooks, chop the rest of the ingredients.

Drain the meat of all fat, then in the pan, add your favorite taco seasonings ( we used McCormick) you can sub that for a combo of garlic powder/ cumin/ coriander/ chili powder etc. and add 3/4 cup water per pound, stir to combine bring to a boil and then simmer on low heat for 15 minutes until the liquid has reduced.

Salsa

To make salsa, start by combining a generous handful of cilantro and 2 garlic cloves in your food processor (get one if you don’t already have one) and process until both ingredients are finely chopped. Take the chopped tomatos, peppers, and 1/2 of the onion and add to the processor. Squeeze 1 whole lime and add salt to taste. Pulse 8 times for a nice and chunky salsa. Be careful to not over process the salsa. Doing so will result in a foamy consistency.

Guacamole

Combine 1/4 cup cilantro, 1 clove of garlic in a food processor till finely chopped. Next add 3 small avacados roughly chopped, 1/4 cup onion chopped, 1 jalepeno seeded and chopped, a squeeze of fresh lime juice and a teaspoon of salt, pulse 8 times or until desired consistency is achieved.

Stuffed Banana Pepper

Chop the top of the pepper and slice only one side of the pepper so that the inside is exposed. Scrape out the inner core of the pepper and its seeds. Mix Chihuahua cheese and cilantro generously and stuff the inside of the pepper. Wrap in tin foil and bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes. Slice for serving.

http://www.jasonrobertscott.com