Braised Savoy Cabbage with Cinnamon and Orange

After receiving our third head of cabbage in our Wednesday "Farm Fresh to You" shipment, we knew that Thursday's meal needed to incorporate a large amount of cabbage in one form or another. With the new Le Creuset - we've been in a bit of a braising kick, so when I came across the following recipe, I knew instantly that I wanted to make it. We didn't have any cheap white wine at the apartment and not wanting to drink a nice bottle of wine that night, Derek tweaked the recipe to accommodate ingredients we did have on hand. Below is the original recipe with our tweaks pointed out.

Braised Savoy Cabbage with Cinnamon and Orange

INGREDIENTS

• One 2 1/2-pound Savoy cabbage, halved and cored, leaves separated and cut into strips
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 medium onion, thinly sliced
• 1 garlic clove, minced
• Salt and freshly ground pepper
• 1 cup Chardonnay (REVISION: 3/4 cup pale ale, 1.5 tsp honey, 1/2 orange, juiced)
• 2 cups beef stock or low-sodium broth (REVISION: chicken stock)
• 1 teaspoon finely grated orange zest
• Large pinch of cinnamon (REVISION: 2 pinches)

DIRECTIONS

1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add the cabbage leaves and blanch for 1 minute. Drain and cut into thin shreds. (We omitted this step)
2. In a large enameled cast-iron casserole, melt the butter in the olive oil. Add the onion and garlic and cook over low heat until softened, about 7 minutes.
3. Add the cabbage and season with salt and pepper. Cover and cook over low heat for 10 minutes, stirring a few times.
4. Add the wine and simmer until almost evaporated. Add the stock, cover and simmer, stirring occasionally, until tender, 40 minutes.
5. Stir in the orange zest and cinnamon, season with salt and pepper and serve.

Served this recipe with baked sweet potatoes (Derek had regular potato with chili) and some bread - who knew cabbage could be so tasty!

Sea Bass with a Charred Serrano-Basil Vinaigrette and Orange Braised Leeks

The night kicked off with a simple Arugula Salad with Roasted Golden and Purple Beets, Goat Cheese, Homemade Balsamic Vinaigrette.

(my job in the cooking process...kick my feet up and enjoy a glass of wine...thanks Derek! :) )

Sea Bass with a Charred Serrano-Basil Vinaigrette
adapted from a Bobby Flay recipe using Red Snapper

Ingredients

Charred Jalapeno-Basil Vinaigrette:

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 jalapeno pepper
• 3 tablespoons diced red onion
• 1 tablespoon finely chopped garlic
• 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
• 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
• 1/4 cup rice wine vinegar
• 3/4 cup olive oil
• 1 tablespoon sesame oil
• 2 tablespoons basil chiffonade
• 1 tablespoon ancho chile powder
• Salt and freshly ground pepper

For the Charred Jalapeno-Basil Vinaigrette: Heat oil in a small saute pan until smoking. Add the jalapeno and cook until charred on all sides. Let the pepper cool and slice thinly. Place the pepper and the remaining ingredients in a medium bowl and whisk until blended.

Braised Leeks with Orange

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for serving
• 6 medium leeks, white and light green parts only, halved lengthwise
• 1 organic navel or juice orange (seeds removed) sliced crosswise 1/4-inch thick, plus 1 cup orange juice (from about 3 oranges)
• 3/4 cup low-sodium chicken stock
• Coarse salt
• 3 sprigs fresh thyme

1.Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Heat a very large ovenproof skillet with a lid over medium high. Add oil and swirl to coat pan. Add leeks in as close to a single layer as possible. Cook until beginning to brown, 4 to 5 minutes. Add orange juice and stock and season with 1 1/4 teaspoons of salt. Turn leeks over and place oranges and thyme on top. Bring liquid to a boil.

2.Cover and place in oven until leeks are tender, about 30 minutes. Remove from oven and turn oranges over, spooning some liquid over the top. Return to oven, uncovered, and cook until oranges and leeks are browning and liquid is syrupy, spooning liquid over the top twice, about 30 minutes more. If necessary, remove from oven and boil over high heat until liquid reaches desired consistency, about 1 minute more.

Grapefruit Chicken Satay Salad

I'll start with saying that I did something that my parents would absolutely cringe if they knew I did it. I grew up thinking chicken should only be bought at a price of $1.99 a pound, and if it was anything below that price, it would be a green light to stock up and fill the freezer. Since I've been on my own, I've grown to be less of a freezer stuffer and more of a fresh meat buyer (however, you will almost always find some sort of meat in the freezer - nice to have handy). I still, however, hesitate to purchase any chicken over the $2.99 threshold. Living in a city, though, requires a bit of a different mentality and lifestyle. It's not feasible to run around to 3 grocery stores just because each store offers a different sale. When you're on foot - you go to what's near you, period. Thus, in preparation for last night's meal, I needed to get some fresh chicken, and the closest store on the way home from the gym happens to be "Real Food Company" filled with a bunch of organic/natural and well, not cheap, items. $6.99 was the price of chicken - free range. And really, I'm on board with the notion that we should be eating free-range and organic meats...there's a reason there are 10 year olds have far surpassed my bra size - but I can't say it's in my current budget to always pay premium. However, after the previous night's incredible buffalo dinner, I was willing to suck it up. Long story short, Mom and Dad - I paid $7.17 for two chicken breasts. Sorry.

Onto the meal - A recipe I had found a few days earlier and put into my "must make" file. With grapefruits sitting in our refrigerator and every other ingredient besides the chicken at the place, I thought it would be a great, light but satisfying meal following and awesome spinning class.

Grapefruit Chicken Satay Salad:

www.eatingwell.com/recipes/grapefruit_chicken_satay_salad.html

Scaled to Serve 2:

Ingredients:

1 large grapefruit

2 chicken breasts (about 1 lb total), cut into strips

1 tsp. dry mustard (we had only regular mustard so I ended up making a spice "paste")

1 tsp. garlic powder (only had fresh so I minced one up)

1 tsp. ground cinnamon

1 tsp. ground coriander

1 tsp. ground ginger

1 tsp. freshly ground pepper
1/2 tsp. salt

3-4 Tbsp. peanut butter

1.5 Tbsp. soy sauce

1 tsp. sugar (used agave nectar)

1/4 tsp. hot sauce

6 cups lettuce (mixture of spinach, red leaf)

3-4 radishes, sliced

Directions:

1. Remove peel (and white stuff) from grapefruit and carefully remove the segments. Set aside. Squeeze the remaining juice from the grapefruit membrance into a bowl.

2. Position rack in upper third of the oven and pre-heat broiler on high. Line baking sheet with foil.

3. Combine spices (mustard through salt) and toss with the chicken strips until well coated. Place on baking sheet.

4. Broil the chicken until cooked through (about 5 minutes).

5. Meanwhile, whisk peanut butter, soy sauce, sugar, and hot sauce, into the reserved grapefruit juice until smooth.

6. Fill plate with lettuce, top with grapefruit segments, radishes and chicken. Drizzle sauce over salad. (Recipes says to mix sauce with chicken and lettuce, then top with grapefruit and radishes, I guess you could do that too).

I wasn't sure how this would turn out given I had never broiled chicken before - and Derek poo pooed the idea ("sauteeing tastes infinately better"). I wanted to give it a try and was very pleased with the results. I'm not sure if it could be attributed to the good expensive chicken I bought or the method of cooking, but the strips were super tender. We had three strips leftover so that will be a perfect addition to a lunch salad for me.

We both thought this was a great after-gym meal since it was packed with protein with chicken and peanut butter. We served it with some fresh bread from the store and ended the night off with frozen yogurt from our nearby self-serve store that just opened up.

Derek called this a keeper, and while it's not braised buffalo short-ribs with X,Y and Z....it's a good, healthy, satisfying option - a "Katie" meal, if you will.

Cheers.

Our version

Mu Shu Chicken Lettuce Wraps

Yum! I love this meal. This is based on a recipe that I got from a "one-pot meal" cooking class that I took with some of my co-workers at this great little cooking school "Kitchen on Fire" in Berkeley. That was my second time taking a class, the first being on my birthday, and I'm eager to try even more!!

In our bi-weekly vegetable/fruit deliver, we scored some wonderful napa cabbage that needed to be used, thus - naturally we needed to make this meal again! It's another quick and easy one that can be altered depending on what ingredients and fresh vegetables you have on hand. Here's what we did...

Ingredients: Mu Shu Chicken Lettuce Wraps

serves 3-4 (we had a little bit of leftovers)

1 T. vegetable oil (I used half vegetable oil and half sesame oil)

1/2 lb. ground chicken or diced chicken breast meat (we've done both, this time we used ground)

1 clove garlic, minced

1 T. ginger, minced

1/2 medium onion, thinly sliced

2 cups shitake mushrooms, sliced (we added in some extra button mushrooms for fun)

2.5 cups napa cabbage, shredded

1.5 cups bean sprouts (these are a must - so delicious!)

1/2 cup bok choy, thinly sliced

1/2 cup chicken stock

2.5 T. fish sauce

4 T. soy sauce

1.5 T. hoisin sauce

1 T. sesame oil

1 T cornstarch, mixed with 2 T water to form a slurry

1/2 cup green onion, thinly sliced

soy sauce and pepper

Iceberg lettuce

Heat oil in a pan (ideally a wok....we need one) over high heat. Start by browning the meat (sprinkle with some salt and pepper) and then remove from pan.

Chop vegetables - lots of chopping!!

Place the pan back on the heat and add a touch more oil. Stir in the next 7 ingredients (garlic to bok choy) and cook until tender. (Note: one thing I learned from the cooking class was to do a stir-fry it needs to be high heat. Don't worry if anything is sticking to the bottom of the pan or if it looks like it is charring, that will loosen up once it cooks and the juices come out.)

Add in the liquids (stock, fish sauce, soy sauce, hoisin sauce, sesame oil). Cook until liquid has reduced by about 1/2.

Add back the chicken along with the slurry and stir until thickened. Removed from heat, stir in green onions and adjust seasoning with soy sauce and pepper.

We serve the mixture with iceberg lettuce wraps but it would be great with those chinese pancakes too. This one is a keeper.

Tomato Farro with Poached Eggs and Beer-Braised Kale

Wanting to use the delicious homemade tomato sauce that we had made the previous night with organic whole peeled canned tomatoes, garlic, onion, carrot, chianti wine, olive oil, red pepper flakes, and basil (the kind of stuff you pay high prices for in the grocery store) - we resorted to a recipe we had tried while back in New York whose inspiration came from a recipe found in a Men's Health magazine. This is an easy, wholesome and filling meal - perfect for weekdays when spending hours in the kitchen just isn't in the cards.

Ingredients: Tomato Farro with Baked Eggs
1 cup farro, rinsed and drained
2.5 cups water
1 large garlic clove, minced
1/2 large onion, diced
1/2 large green pepper, diced
1 T. EVOO
1-1.5 cups good tomato sauce
4 eggs
salt and pepper

The first step is boiling rinsed farro until just about cooked (about 25-30 minutes) - we used just under 1 cup of farro and about 2 and 1/4 cup salted water to a pot and brought it to a boil. Once it came to a boil, turn the heat down to a simmer and cover the pot - letting the farro cook in peace for about 20 minutes more. Once almost cooked - remove from heat (and drain any excess water if any).

While the farro is cooking, roughly chop up some goodies into that will be sauteed and then mixed in with the farro. We used garlic (minced), onion, and green pepper, but any other variations of bite sized vegetables would probably work too.

Saute the chopped vegetables in some EVOO until softened slightly.

Add the farro to the vegetables and cover with tomato sauce (we used about 1 cup). Mix well and let the flavors cook together (either at low temperature on the stove top or in the oven at about 350.



After about 10 minutes of slow cooking, carefully crack eggs, one at a time, on top of the farro mixture so as not to break the yolk. Once you have the desired number of eggs added to the dish, cover and either bake or heat on stovetop until the egg whites are no longer clear and the yolk is still runny.

Remove from heat and sprinkle with salt and pepper - serve either straight from the pan or on individual plates.



And because Katie wanted to add some kale to the farro, and I'm not a huge fan of kale, I decided to make a side dish of my own creation - something that I could tolerate and that Katie would like as well.

We had received a bunch of dinosaur kale in the latest "Farm Fresh to You" shipment. Whole Foods describes this kind of kale as: "Dinosaur kale is the common name for the kale variety known as Lacinato. It features dark blue-green leaves that have an embossed texture. It has a slightly sweeter and more delicate taste than curly kale."



So what does a man do with something that is a bit foreign and not necessarily at the top of his "eat" list? Add bacon and beer of course!

I started by cooking up a few slabs of bacon - Nieman Ranch Applewood Smoked Dry-Cured Bacon. The package claims that it is the finest tasting meat in the world. I'm not sure about that, but it's good bacon. Once cooked, I removed the bacon, crumbled it up and reserved some (not all) of the bacon fat for cooking the kale.

Next I added some onion, leeks and garlic and let those cook a bit before adding the chopped up kale.

I had bought some beer from Trader Joe's so I popped that open and poured some (probably half a cup) into the kale mixture and let the flavors simmer for a good 30-40 minutes.



The beer itself was pretty boring. I haven't really had an organic beer that I have found to be that amazing. It just tastes like a watered down Pale Ale, and I am used to drinking particularly dry and bitter pale ales loaded with hops. But it was refreshing and went well with the meal, plus its beer so that's a plus.




The picture below is the finished kale. The stuff is pretty bitter, stiff, and waxy on its own...so braising it in liquid really permeates it making it tender, edible, and actually quite delicious.

Five years ago, I, Katie, age 18, was a self-proclaimed picky eater. Seafood, wild game, anything cooked less than "medium well," interesting fruits and vegetables, cheese, condiments, etc. All of these delicacies were overlooked and underappreciated...in fact, they were abhored. My parents make fun of my standard order of Chicken Fingers (with honey) that got me through my childhood. While I know that I graduated from chicken fingers during my teen years (branching out to a common Chicken Caesar Salad or turkey sandwich with lettuce), my tastebuds were stagnant, dull, and, unbenownst to me, dying to bloom.

Into my life walks Derek, a fine looking young man in a flannel shirt, jean vest, and trucker hat - exactly what I had been looking for...(a bit of a jest, it was a Dukes of Hazzard sorority/fraternity mixer, and I admit, I was a bit of a Daisy Duke that night as well). This meeting was the end to my single college days and also the end to my mundane gastronomic profile. Together we have begun to explore the new and limitless world of food, drink and general adventures that go along with it. While we still cook the first dinner that Derek ever cooked for me, Chicken Parmesan (and I am embarrassed to admit that I washed it down with Sutter Home White Zinfandel...), our new-found passion for food and wine has led us on a journey to understand, appreciate and make some darn good food. It doesn't have to be fancy, and not everything we do turns out picture-perfect, but it's the journey and exploration that keeps us in the kitchen.

As a New Years resolution to track our adventures, here is an intimate look into the daily food and wine adventures of Derek and Katie.