Cilantro garlic butter, my busy kitchen and week two of my trip.

As promised I am posting the recipe for this cilantro garlic butter. It makes just about everything taste better, so far I have had it on toasted French bread, beet greens, steak, pasta...yum !
It's very simple, the only trick is to be sure your butter is soft. To make this vegan use Earth Balance instead of butter.

 Cilantro Garlic Butter

Ingredients

1/2 cup soft butter
4 cloves garlic
1/2 cup fresh cilantro, coarsely chopped

1) Start by whizzing the peeled garlic cloves in your mini-food processor.
2) Add the fresh chopped cilantro. Whiz that a bit.

3) Add the soft butter and whiz some more until it's fairly smooth. It's doesn't have to be pureed.

4) Scrap into a small bowl and store in the fridge, try not to eat it on EVERYTHING :-)

I have been busy in my kitchen lately, I do spend a lot of time there. Cooking food from scratch is my default mode, I have come to realize.
Continuing with the winter squash theme, I made a pumpkin pie out of the rest of my frozen squash. Just remember to turn the oven down from 425 F to 350 F after the first 15 minutes...I forgot and while the pie is long gone, it was a bit brown on top.

One night I was feeling lazy so I took some pesto from the freezer for pasta. It was some I made this summer with almond pulp instead of other nuts or seeds and froze without the cheese. I do like it this way better.

With some locally grown and processed chorizo, I made chili the other day. What a great fall meal, served with my cornbread muffins. I threw the almond pulp from my almond milk into the muffins and it added a nice texture.

I got really ambitious and made my vegetable Wellington tonight. I was a bit lazy about draining all the liquid from the vegetable so it was a bit sloppy. It still tasted great and was a good paring with the flat iron steak we grilled, much like we do our flank steak.

To warm up the kitchen in the morning I baked apples, great smells and yummy to eat with hot cereal in the morning.


Here is week 2 of our latest road trip:

Day 8: Crazy found art sculptures in someone's yard in Hanksville, UT.

Day 9: Striped Mountain near the Henry Mountains, great place to find 200,000,000 year old petrified wood.

Day 10: Our campfire by Oowah Lake in the LaSal Mountians outside on Moab UT.

Day 11: We hiked to Warner Lake in the La Sal Mountains, UT.

Day 12: Red sandstone canyons in Colorado.

Day 13: T-shirt seen in a visitor's center on I-70 in Colorado.

Day 13: Genevieve on a hike outside the Mount grandparents cabin in Eldora, CO.

Day 14: Princess KitKat, roommate of the senior Mounts in Boulder, CO.

Chimichurri, it's fun to say.

I was recently visiting my daughter in Baton Rouge. I offered to make dinner for her and several of her housemates. Ryan asked if he could make anything to add to the meal, he mentioned chimichurri...I had heard the name but wasn't entirely sure what exactly it was. Once I caught the drift that it was a sauce with garlic I acquiesced, it would make a fine complement to the dinner I had planned of pork chops, fresh lima bean succotash and roasted potatoes. In fact it was such a hit, most of the diners put it on EVERYTHING !!

Chimichurri could be called South American pesto...it's originally from Argentina and was made to be served with beef. In looking at the recipes, there is a LOT of variation. All recipes have fresh parsley, garlic, olive oil and vinegar, those are really the only common ingredients I could see. I saw recipes with fresh cilantro, fresh oregano, red wine vinegar, white vinegar, lemon juice, shallots, red onions, hot peppers, red pepper flakes, cumin, paprika etc... It can be used as a marinade or a sauce.
Bob has discovered that it makes cottage cheese (which I hate) into a gourmet meal ;-)

I decided to go with fresh Italian parsley, fresh cilantro, red onion, garlic, red wine vinegar, fresh oregano, lemon juice, red pepper flakes and olive oil. I am not a fan of very hot food so I went very light on the red pepper flakes.

Some recipes want you to finely chop all the ingredients by hand, other have you use the food processor, I think Ryan used the blender. He also said he quadrupled the amount of garlic, which I did in this recipe.

Laurie's Chimichurri



Ingredients
1/2 + cup packed fresh Italian parsley
1/2 + cup packed fresh cilantro
2 tablespoons fresh oregano
10-12 cloves garlic
1 tablespoon chopped red onion
juice 1 lemon
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
3/4 cup olive oil
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes

1) Peel the garlic and chop in food processor.
2) Wash, spin and stem the parsley, cilantro, oregano and add to the food processor. Pulse a few times but don't over do it.

3) Add the chopped red onion, lemon juice, vinegar and red pepper flakes. Pulse again to combine.

4) You can add some of the olive oil, maybe 1/4 cup to help combine the other ingredients, also add the salt and pepper.

5) Remove from the chimichurri from the food processor and add the remaining oil. Store in a jar in the fridge and watch it disappear in a matter of days ;-)

6) Use to marinate your favorite beef, I used flank steak. And serve as a sauce !!

Fresh Spring Rolls

If you have eaten Thai or Vietnamese food at a restaurant, you have probably seen fresh spring rolls on the menu. Unlike their deep fried cousin, they are packed with fresh raw vegetables. They are also a great vehicle for that fabulous peanut sauce I make.

With a little patience fresh spring rolls are easy to make and you can fill them with whatever you have on hand or what is in season. They will impress anyone at your next potluck or dinner party.

You will need to find the rice paper wrapper. These days most large or natural food grocery store have them in their Asian section or go to one of those amazing Asian food emporiums like Ranch 99.

We like our rolls stuffed with thin rice noodles or rice sticks sometimes called maifun. You can find these in the same Asian section of your grocery store.

Fresh Spring Rolls

Ingredients:

rice wrapper
thin rice noodles ( soy sauce, sesame oil)
ripe avocados
fresh cilantro
grated carrot
finely sliced cabbage
other possible fillings: baked tofu, cooked crab meat, fresh spinach leaves, fresh basil leaves, green onions, cucumbers, shrimp, bean sprouts, mint leaves, lettuce leaves.

1) Usually the rice noodle package comes with more that you will need even for a dozen spring rolls. Don't be shy about breaking off a third of the noodles, remember too, they will expand. Bring water to a boil, toss in your noodle and cook for 1-2 minutes.
2) Drain your noodle and toss with a tablespoon of sesame oil and 2 tablespoons of soy sauce. This is optional but I find the noodles pretty bland without something on them. Set them aside to cool while you prepare the vegetables.

3) Grate the carrot, finely chop the cabbage, stem the cilantro, peel and slice the avo.
4) Now you are ready to assemble them. I like to use a plate to soak the rice wrappers. They take about 30 to 60 second to rehydrate, make sure they are completely covered in water. Do them one at a time, as you take one out, put another one in.

5) I like to have a couple of clean dishtowels handy. One goes down under the rice wrapper and the other I use to blot it before I fill it. Handling the rice wrappers are a bit like handling wet paper towels. They rip easily if you are not careful. Small holes are OK, big ones are not ;-)

6) DO NOT OVER FILL your wrapper, that is the key to success. You are not going for the burrito grande !! Just layer your veggies with restraint, slightly to the top of the wrapper.
7) Fold the top of the wrapper toward you, then each side toward center, then wrap the bottom flap up. Place on a plate flap down.

8) Repeat until all your filling is gone. You will find you get the hang of it after the first few.

9) You can serve them whole or cut them in half on the diagonal. Use the peanut sauce I mentioned above or make your own version. These wrappers last for several days in your fridge !! They are great the next day for lunch !