tilted skillet

one-bite wonders: melon, feta, and mint

When it comes to summer fruit, I think melon gets a bum rap as the unexciting alternative to the season’s darlings, berries and stone fruit. As one of the hardiest fruits around, melons are colorful yet ubiquitous stalwarts on ‘seasonal fruit platters’ all year long. While a South American melon can survive midwinter transcontinental travel, by the time it reaches our shores its flavor and color is at best insipid. Contrast these globetrotting melons with the musky, heavy orbs currently weighing down rickety tables at Bay Area farmers markets. A ripe melon (besides most watermelons) is a bit soft to the touch and emits a pleasantly musky, slightly fermented scent. When purchasing melons, I also check to make sure that there’s a light-colored spot somewhere on the skin. This means that the melon was left to ripen on the vine, in the field.

Our CSA proffers only stone fruit and berries (poor us), so I’ve been supplementing our weekly fruit allotment with all sorts of heirloom melons. Beyond the trifecta of watermelon, honeydew, and cantaloupe exists an incredible variety of melons. Like books, you really can’t judge an heirloom melon by its cover. Such was the case when I cracked a green-skinned watermelon and found yellow flesh inside! Heirloom watermelons never got the memo to go seedless, so prepare yourself for some deseeding…and maybe a seed spitting contest?

Although I’ve been plowing through a melon every few days, I reserved some for an easy appetizer I served at George’s birthday dinner party last weekend. The salty-sweet melon bites were a light and fitting start to the rest of the meal, a homemade burger bar that warrants its own post at a later time. This appetizer is easy, so I’m not going to write a formal recipe here. Simply cube the ripe melon of your choice, top with a small mint leaf and a chunk of good-quality (preferably brine-packed) feta cheese, and skewer the three ingredients together with a toothpick. Just before serving, drizzle the whole plate of them with syrupy balsamic vinegar and sprinkle with freshly-ground black pepper.

black cod braised with miso and spiced peach jam

Since last summer’s peachapalooza, chronicled in scintillating detail here, I’ve enjoyed a fairly steady stream of Mas Masumoto peaches thanks to a frantic post-harvest weekend of freezing, brandying, and jamming. There have been plenty of peach smoothies and crumbles, brandied peaches atop anything creamy, and peach jam snuck into and onto coffeecake, spread on toast with salty butter, and cooked down to top fish filets.

That final frontier – pairing peach jam with a food not traditionally eaten for breakfast or dessert – was a challenge I left for the last couple jars of jam. It took us a long time to finish the jam. I gave plenty of it away, at one point feeling like a drug dealer as I sheepishly handed out jam to friends from the trunk of my car, a case of mason jars haphazardly shoved up against golf bags and soccer cleats on a trip up the city. While training for an ultramarathon last fall, I would stuff dates with a mix of almond butter and peach jam and snack on them during long runs like I did M&Ms or boiled new potatoes, two disparate foods that surprigingly pair well. It’s possible that running for seven consecutive hours lowers my food standards.

My post-ultramarathon jam usage has tended toward savory applications, such as this black cod braised with mellow white miso and a spiced-up peach jam. Through Real Food Bay Area, I’ve found a great source for sustainably-raised seafood. If you’re in the Bay Area, I highly recommend checking out their seafood selections from I Love Blue Sea and Lummi Island Wild. The black cod is buttery and mild, making it a perfect match with a sweet, salty, and spicy peach sauce. I like serving this fish with hot buttered rice, as the recipe yields a lot of sauce.

Until the next peachapalooza, peaches, I FINALLY bid you adieu.

grilled sweet pepper and tomato soup with avocado pesto

I have a shopping addiction, and it involves my CSA. While some women pine for new bags and shoes (who am I kidding; I’ve been there, too), I generally sate the shopping bug with weekly add-ons from our CSA’s web store. The web store, a members-only online catalogue of artisanal foods, bulk produce, locally-roasted coffee, and other goodies (Monterey Bay sea salt with kelp? Yes, I needed that), is available for three days each week. Shopping these limited-time offerings is as exciting for me as it is for a normal person to score a great deal via Groupon or Gilt.

In recent weeks, summer’s bounty has made the offerings in the web store unbearably attractive. I have no self-control with pints of organic blueberries, hearth-baked breads, and, my newest addiction, grab bags of mixed sweet peppers. The sweet peppers, which range from the size of my pinkie to the size of my whole hand, come in a kaleidoscope of colors. Although I’ll crunch on one like an apple, I prefer them grilled or roasted. 

Despite my desire to eat them all whole, I convinced myself that I could spare one of the two bags of peppers I bought last week for a recipe in which their sweet flavor would really shine. I thought soup would be nice, but the reality of slaving over a hot stove in a hot house is always unappealing. Instead, I sent my favorite grill master out to the Weber with said peppers, an equal amount of dry-farmed CSA tomatoes, sliced sweet onions, and a handful of unpeeled garlic cloves wrapped in foil. Coated in olive oil and smoky spices, the grilled vegetables form the base of a soup that requires very little subsequent time on the stove.

Topped with sliced radishes and a cold and creamy avocado pesto, this soup – served hot – still fit the bill for a warm summer night’s meal. I lamented the disappearance of yet another bag of peppers, but the good news is that I only have to wait two more days to re-up my horde.

braised pork with rhubarb and ginger beer

As an undergrad, I had the great pleasure and luxury of studying abroad for a few quarters. I spent one of them in Australia on a marine biology- and oceanography-focused itinerary that had us on the go every week or so. We traveled up and down the Eastern seaboard, conducting research projects along the Great Barrier Reef and wearing our swimsuits to classes held on white sand beaches.

I never managed to funnel my island vacation into a viable career, but I learned a lot about the ocean and even more about Australian culture during those three months. There was a lot of beer, and not just because we were a group of underage drinkers unleashed in a country where we were, indeed, of age. No, something about the Australian culture dictated that we always have a bottle of beer in hand.

I was all for the upbeat social culture, but at the time hadn’t yet grown to tolerate the taste of alcohol. My, how times have changed! As I was always being pestered and plied with drinks, I quickly adopted a fail-proof strategy for staving off alcoholic advances: Bundaberg. In Australia, this ginger beer is available at just about every outlet that sells beer. So, it’s available everywhere. Housed in a dark brown glass bottle with an understated label, it might as well be beer. And the spicy kick makes it an addictive pleasure!

Back in the States that spring, I managed to source some Bundaberg from a local Cost Plus. From time to time I pick up a four-pack for a taste of gingery nostalgia. I’ve also found that it’s a great ingredient in marinades and sauces. In my most recent endeavor with the golden elixir, I used it to both deglaze and slow-cook a braised pork dish.

While ginger beer is very sweet, the addition of three cups of chopped rhubarb tarts up the cooking liquid and cuts through the richness of the pork shoulder. Rhubarb is a super-seasonal ingredient, so find some soon! Please note that Bundaberg makes a lookalike reduced-calorie version of their ginger beer, which I strongly suggest you avoid for this dish. The only thing worse than fake sugar’s very existence would be pairing it with something as downright delicious as pork.

raw kale salad with avocado, tangerines and walnuts

      Thanks to our catering manager at Yahoo! for snapping these photos!

As we approach Easter and the start of Passover, a time associated with heavy eating (ham! chocolate eggs! brisket!), it seems only fitting to talk about raw greens. It should come as no surprise to those lucky enough to regularly hear my jumbled stream of food-related consciousness that raw greens are one of my passions. Right up there with short ribs and brownies, in fact. I can only begin to describe how lucky I felt a couple weeks ago, when I was given the opportunity to host a healthy cooking demonstration at one of our local accounts.

Yahoo! employees toil away at a Silicon Valley campus wrought with primary colors, manicured grounds, and awesome amenities. Multiple Bon Appétit cafés offer something for everyone, and special events – such as cooking classes, weekly farmers markets, and wellness fairs – give Yahoo! employees many reasons to leave their colorful cubes. During National Nutrition Month, our team goes beyond the call of duty to host a full lineup of fun activities. And bless their little hearts, they decided I’d be a worthwhile addition to this year’s healthy-eating calendar.

In anticipation of the demo, I got serious in my little kitchen. Since my demo was relegated to a large conference room, I knew I’d have no access to most of the creature comforts of a kitchen – such as an oven, sink or stove. Armed with baby spinach and bundles of kale, I came up with a couple items that would be 1) easy to demonstrate in a conference room, 2) not so weird that the Yahoo! employees wouldn’t try a bite, and 3) foods for which easy-to-follow recipes could be proffered.

Three green smoothies and two raw kale salads later, I settled on approachable yet alternative takes on everyday eats. You won’t mistake my brown smoothie for a fruity neon Jamba Juice, or my super-green kale monstrosity for a friendly little salad. You should’ve seen the looks on the Yahoo! employees faces as I packed baby spinach into the blender and enthusiastically massaged avocado into tender kale leaves with latex-gloved hands. I answered questions and happily chattered away about all things vegetal as I proffered plates of avocado-citrus kale salad. I saw a few of them smell the salad before trying it. Weird? Soon enough they dug in, wary big eyes easing into satisfied smiling, chewing faces.

I thought to myself, c’mon people, this isn’t Fear Factor! This is kale salad. Today I have the kale salad recipe for you. It’s perfect for raw kale newbies, as the avocado, citrus and salt help to tenderize the leaves. Just be sure your avocado is ripe, and your hands are clean. And don’t be offended if your eaters smell it before they take a bite.

raw mint chocolate truffles

Last night I took a red eye to Boston. As an incorrigibly finicky sleeper, red eyes are generally my least favorite way to travel. Sometimes, though, the allure of an extra day spent with friends is reason enough to forsake a full night of sleep. After a busy day at work, I’d been feeling pretty good about my redeye decision as I tried valiantly to slip into a sleepy state in the boarding area. Taking relaxing deep breaths in and out at the gate was proving to be a good sleep-inducing strategy as I found myself swaying ever so slightly back and forth.

All my dreams of sweet dreams were shattered as an amped-up class of eight graders shepherded by precious few adult chaperones lined up behind me. I figured they were boarding for the next flight, not MINE. You know, jetting off to Fort Lauderdale for coed spring break? I tried to convince myself that there was no way they were Boston-bound, but deep down I knew that the odds, with Boston home to famous tea parties and other such events of historical significance, were against me and my sweet dreams. 

Resigned to a fate of temporary insomnia, I pulled out my secret weapons: an Ambien and a small container of mint-infused raw chocolaty date-seed truffles I’d made a few days before. With just a handful of ingredients and no cooking required, these truffles are a breeze to put together and function equally well as a snack, pre- or post-workout fuel, or dessert. Last night, I used them to chase an Ambien and drown my sleepy sorrows. With their pleasantly seedy crunch, (unrefined) dose of sugar and touch of mint and cocoa, these little balls lifted my spirits and perhaps even redeemed my faith in the possibility of a nap. 

I’d be lying if I said I slept like a stone with excited children whooping and hollering and occasionally kicking the back of my seat. I do know that I arrived with my sanity and some little balls of goodness to share with the friends for whom wasting a night of sleep is a no-brainer.  

peachapalooza

There aren’t many reasons I’d leave work early on a Friday afternoon to jockey for position on the 101 en route to Selma, CA. In case you haven’t spent time in this garden spot, let me describe Selma’s whereabouts: southeast of Gilroy, the smelly garlic capital of the world; and just south of Fresno, a blazing hot and dusty town whose only redeeming quality is an In-N-Out Burger (according to at least one burger-phile I know). But if there’s one thing that never fails to motivate me, it’s food. Surprised? I’m not.

While the prospect of frozen yogurt or warm chocolate chip cookies can inspire me to brave a seven-block walk on a cold and windy SF night, the promise of organic peaches and nectarines ripe and ready for picking is enough to almost have me singing the praises of the Fresno In-N-Out. Almost. Just because In-N-Out only uses the meat from one cow to make one patty does not mean that the steer are raised in humane conditions, but enough about animal welfare. Back to peaches and nectarines!

In what might make a convincing post for the blog Stuff White People Like, we participated in a tree adoption and harvest at the Mas Masumoto Family Farm in, as previously established, Selma. To adopt a tree, wannabe farmworkers and fervent fruit-lovers apply to pre-purchase the harvest from one of the Masumotos’ organic peach and nectarine trees. After a competitive application process, selected ‘adoptive parents’ clear their calendars for a period of six consecutive weekends in the summer in anticipation of the birth (really extending the analogy, here) of their tree. Or, to put it another way, when all of the fruit is nearly ripe.

On the pre-selected birth/harvest date (this is like a C-section, friends), temporary farmworkers converge in the Masumoto orchard for a stiflingly hot morning of fruit-picking, sorting and packing. Of course doing so gives you a very brief and coddled (i.e., sweat-wicking clothing, ample SPF and plenty of water) experience of the extremely hard work many farmworkers endure, but, more importantly, it gives you fruit. A lot of fruit. Hundreds and hundreds of pounds of peaches and nectarines that will likely ripen on the same day and then descend into moldiness. Scary.

With my many peaches in tow, I headed home covered in dust, sweat and peach juice and spent my weekend doing what any normal 26 year old would do: jamming, canning and otherwise stuffing my face with stone fruit. In between processing jar after jar of peach jam, I snuck in a refreshing green tea-nectarine smoothie to both cool off after many hours spent at a hot stove, and benefit from a refreshingly cold caffeine kick. This smoothie would be great with any stone fruit, such as peaches or cherries. Bottoms up!

click through for recipe

I'm back (with peppered goat cheese, fresh cherry and corn tartines)!

The funny thing about going radio silent for months on a fairly nascent blog that precious (love you, Mom!) few people read is that nobody really cares, even if for some odd reason I feel like I’m letting everyone down. For the record, I’m sorry – but I’m back. I’ve still been cooking, but my day-to-day focus has centered more on eating. And working and working out. In my case, ebbs and flows in these endeavors often go together. 

As I return to the self-interested creative outlet I call Tilted Skillet, I hope you’ll indulge my occasional desires to share with you other ideas, things and themes that catch my fancy. These may include the obvious solution for would-be ranchers without access to land (pygmy livestock, of course), a handcrafted leather wine bottle holder…for my bike, and the proliferation of what I call bread bricks (to be covered in a later post). 

But back to cooking! I whipped up this fresh, summery dish in about 20 minutes on a weeknight, utilizing a hodgepodge of ingredients that in no way adhere to the adage of ‘what grows together goes together’. In other words, just ignore the fact that I’m suggesting you eat fresh cherries, peppery goat cheese, olive bread, corn, mint and walnut oil in the same bite and just, well, take a bite. 

Strawberry-Fig Newtons

Are there any foods you associate more with their texture than their taste? For me, anything gelatinous, chicken feet dim sum, crème brûlée and Fig Newtons come to mind. I haven’t had a Nabisco Fig Newton in a long time, but I distinctly remember my favorite way to eat them growing up: pressing an entire cookie to the roof of my mouth with my tongue and letting it dissolve into sugary nothingness. I always thought that the cookies, what with ‘fig’ in their name and all, were a more nutritionally virtuous choice than, say, Oreos.

At a recent meeting, our company’s Registered Dietitian used a nutritional index to show us how common foods – both processed and whole – measured up. Imagine my surprise and disappointment when Fig Newtons received practically the same nutritional score as that classic harbinger of highly-processed and additive-laden chocolate and ‘creme’, Oreos! As figs are naturally high in sugar, the addition of high-fructose corn syrup doesn’t help Newtons’ lackluster nutritional profile. Plus, bleached all-purpose flour is generally a nutritional no-no. Add to these dings an overly-long list of mysterious ingredients, and you might as well just have an Oreo. Buy maybe not a Double Stuf.

Naturally, all this talk about Fig Newtons made me want to eat one. While I sometimes indulge in Downtown Bakery’s oversized Fig Newtons at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market, I realistically wasn't going to wait until Saturday and had heard through the office grapevine that our resident pastry expert was a Newton aficionado. A few conversations and days later, I set to work on my own version. These Newtons are more involved than your standard one-bowl drop cookies, but their flavor and texture are infinitely more complex. Also, as you can tell from the photo they’re substantially thicker than Nabisco’s Newtons. It’s a feat of trans fats and modern machinery that Nabisco manages to flatten the dough so thin without breaking. When homemade, the Newtons are inherently more rustic, charming and delicious. Just don’t try to flatten an entire one against the roof of your mouth!

Oktoberfest, or Decemberfest

They say Oktoberfest comes only once a year. I beg to differ. My Oktoberfest meal, a festive dish only a couple months late, was born mostly of a need to utilize almost-forgotten ingredients. A recipe in a recent issue of Bon Appétit magazine for sauerkraut braised in gin and caraway had caught my eye. This dish seemed the perfect way to annihilate the better part of a handle of Tanqueray a friend had left in my apartment following a particularly spirited weekend. While I may have had some reservations about using 1½ cups of liquor I really liked, such as the ethereal St. Germain elderflower liqeur, I don’t like the taste of gin on its own and was more interested in the pretty green bottle than in its contents.   

A couple days later, I pulled a frozen ‘banana’ from the freezer for a weekend smoothie only to realize that it was, in fact, a couple bangers leftover from a Whole Hog Butchery class I’d taken at the Fatted Calf in Napa nearly six months ago. The discovery was fortuitous, as too much more time in the freezer would have wreaked serious havoc on the flavor and texture of these flavorful sausages, which we’d made from a whole pastured hog that we’d butchered ourselves. 

Fearing that the combination of boozy sauerkraut and sausage would be overly salty-sour, I sautéed a red onion and an Arkansas Black apple in a bit of unsalted butter and thyme to balance and mellow the dish’s otherwise assertive flavors. Of course, I could’ve eaten a whole mess of the butter-sautéed apples and onions and called it dinner, but don’t stop there. Pair with a nice German beer in a boot-glass for the most authentic experience, or a dry German Riesling if, like me, you generally prefer wine and have to draw the line at authenticity somewhere. All told, this meal just screams Oktoberfest – even in December.