Herb Salad with toasted walnuts and goat cheese

On Halloween night when everyone else was heading out, I was tucking in for a very nice home alone. By choice, I had a date. A hot date with myself. It was a perfect Saturday night. Sunday night supper was already planned and out of my hands, so I decided to cook for myself and do a “cook the book” from Jamie Oliver’s Jamie at Home. I love Jamie Oliver and his cooking style. He does uncomplicated but powerfully flavorful dishes. He uses the best ingredients, often grown in his own backyard (the “at home” part). Listening to my strong, nagging, unrelenting desire for warming foods, I picked grilled mushroom risotto. I decided to have accompany it with a Herb Salad with toasted walnuts and goat cheese, Peri-Peri Whole Roast Chicken (a page from my own cookbook), and some caramelized brussels sprouts.

Peri Peri Roast Chicken and Caramelized Brussels Sprouts

It was a really enjoyable menu. One I would gladly put in front of a guest or large group of guests. That said, it was nice to treat myself as well as I would treat others. I am currently big into reading food memoirs and a few of them specifically talk about the things we will cook for ourselves that we wouldn’t dare share with anyone else, the secret guilty pleasures eaten over the sink. While it is true that I nosh on my oddities when it is just me, I actually think I am the most adventurous when cooking for myself. When I know my audience is just me, I have no fear of failure. I am willing to dive in and go big, go out of my comfort zone and risk the whole thing going in the bin. And though that has never happened, I don’t cook for others usually with the same reckless abandon. It’s a curious thing to have such performance anxiety with something I do so often, am trained for and loved. Maybe its because of all those things that I want to impress people with what I can do and leave the experimenting for on myself. I am sure in time that will change. As I turn my little ship towards my culinary dreams and goals, I know I will need to relinquish that fear and self-doubt. Plus, it is unfounded, nights like Halloween remind me that I have got some great skills and I can cook things that have my exclaiming (out loud into an empty house), “good lord that is tasty!”. It was indeed a tasty reminder to have a little faith in myself. I am gaining a good deal of momentum in my own cooking and look forward to building on that through more original recipes, cook the book postings, sunday night suppers and restaurant reviews. And from there even more content and casting my net even further! Such a delicious journey I am on!

Grilled Mushroom Risotto

grilled mushroom risotto from Jamie Oliver’s Jamie at Home.

main courses | serves 4-6
A mushroom risotto can be taken in many different ways, depending on what kind of mushrooms you have and whether they are introduced at the very beginning of cooking or just added at the end, as I’m going to do here. The inspiration for this recipe came when I was in Japan and saw mushrooms being cooked completely dry on a barbecue or griddle pan. This way of cooking brings out a really fresh and nutty flavour in them; perfect for being dressed lightly with olive oil, salt and lemon juice or stirred into a risotto at the last minute before serving.

Heat your stock in a saucepan and keep it on a low simmer. Place the porcini mushrooms in a bowl and pour in just enough hot stock to cover. Leave for a couple of minutes until they’ve softened. Fish them out of the stock and chop them, reserving the soaking liquid.

In a large pan, heat a glug of olive oil and add the onion and celery. Slowly fry without colouring them for at least 10 minutes, then turn the heat up and add the rice. Give it a stir. Stir in the vermouth or wine – it’ll smell fantastic! Keep stirring until the liquid has cooked into the rice. Now pour the porcini soaking liquid through a sieve into the pan and add the chopped porcini, a good pinch of salt and your first ladle of hot stock. Turn the heat down to a simmer and keep adding ladlefuls of stock, stirring and massaging the starch out of the rice, allowing each ladleful to be absorbed before adding the next.

Carry on adding stock until the rice is soft but with a slight bite. This will take about 30 minutes. Meanwhile, get a dry griddle pan hot and grill the wild mushrooms until soft. If your pan isn’t big enough, do this in batches. Put them into a bowl and add the chopped herbs, a pinch of salt and the lemon juice. Using your hands, get stuck in and toss everything together – this is going to be incredible!

Take the risotto off the heat and check the seasoning carefully. Stir in the butter and the Parmesan. You want it to be creamy and oozy in texture, so add a bit more stock if you think it needs it. Put a lid on and leave the risotto to relax for about 3 minutes.

Take your risotto and add a little more seasoning or Parmesan if you like. Serve a good dollop of risotto topped with some grilled dressed mushrooms, a sprinkling of freshly grated Parmesan and a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil.

Fast Foodie Bibimbap

At the beginning of this year, I was motivated. I was driven. I was ready to establish my food writing as consistent and present. I wanted to share my love for cooking, my navigation through my eating special needs and my support of my nutritional needs from endurance sport. I thought and still think I have something unique to offer. But I have fallen short in my follow through. Good intentions only take you so far, commitment and doing the work produce results. I have dreams, no goals of writing as a living, both food and sport. But in order to make that happen, I have to dig in and do the work. Much like my running. There are many good reasons I have not been as consistent as I like, but none of them are good and none of them will produce the results I want. Now that things have simmered down, I have had time to think about what I really do want. And I have renewed my commitment to my goals. They are goals, not pipe dreams. I have spent a good amount of time in the past 5 years waiting for the right moment, or trying to figure out the right direction, or mostly just trying to make it through the day. But inherently, all that brooding produces no tangible results, no change, nothing. So what is the answer? Just do it. I just have to put myself on the line, do the work and put one foot in front of the other. I am taking a page out of my own book (of running) and going after my goals.

What that means, my dear reader is that I am back, I am committed and I will be here and present. Doing what I love, cooking up a storm, writing amazing delicious, nutritious (and special needs) recipes, working on my food memoir, taking food photography and bringing it all to you here! Stay tuned.

To start myself off, after a 2 day-60 mile weekend, I decided to make a rendition of bibimbap. I have been reading Hungry Monkey and he talks about making bibimbap with his daughter. There is also a children’s book by the same name (Bee-Bim Bop by Linda Sue Park) which I really liked to read to my preschoolers when I was doing storytime at the Seattle Public Library. Wikipedia defines:  Bibimbap (Korean pronunciation: [pibimp͈ap̚] ) is a popular Korean dish. The word literally means “mixed rice” or “mixed meal.” Bibimbap is served as a bowl of warm white rice topped with namul (sautéed and seasoned vegetables) and gochujang (chili pepper paste). A raw or fried egg and sliced meat (usually beef) are common additions. The ingredients are stirred together thoroughly just before eating.It can be served either cold or hot. That is my kind of definition, so I decided to build my own and the results were super tasty. I strayed away from some of the traditional Korean flavor profiles, kept it vegan and gluten free and threw on some spicy kim chee. It was delicious, simple and filling.

Bibimbap

1 cup saffron rice, cooked
1 tbsp. peanut oil
1 cup broccoli , diced
1 cup brussel sprouts, diced
1 cup braising greens, diced
½ cup green beans, diced
¼ cup bell pepper, diced
1 pkg hot and spicy baked tofu
2 tbsp. cilantro
¼ cup kim chee

Directions:
Cook saffron rice according to directions.

In a large skillet, heat peanut oil over medium high heat. Add in all the vegetables (chopped small) and sautee until crisp tender. Spice with chili powder, 5 spice and salt (or whatever spices you choose!). Stir in 1 cup of cooked rice and cook for a minute.

Top with baked tofu, cilantro and kim chee.

It feels like 10 years since I left Seattle, instead of the 10ish days it has been. I have been so busy and caught up that I have felt like numerous lifetimes have passed. I have barely been able to catch my breathe. Until today. It was snowing outside here in Atlanta and I had no plans, so I decided to use it as an opportunity to not do anything. To slow down and be productive at the one thing I haven’t been productive at in a month, relaxing. Sometimes, doing nothing is as important as doing something. Balance in all things is vital.

When you hit the road and leave behind routine, it is easy to get caught up in the fast lane. While I am the fast foodie, there is nothing fast about my cooking or eating. I am definitely a slow foodist, but that is not always easy to accomplish on the road. You go out to eat with friends, grab a lunch to go on the road or aren’t somewhere you have access to a kitchen. I have tried to keep my food philosophy foremost in my travels, but today I needed a good immersion, a full dunk. I need to cook. I needed to fill my stomach with fresh, vibrant, homecooking.

Another thing that seemingly flies straight out the window when on the road is green living. We forget to be concise in our travels, unplug our ipods or leave behind our portable travel mug. Traveling is stressful, so most of us just operate in survival mode or over-indulgence mode where the stress of traveling becomes an excuse to indulge in every pleasure and throw out good conscious. I tend to try and stay balanced, but err towards the side of survival mode. No that doesn’t mean I start eating McDonalds, it just means I tend to be less mindful to be in the here and now, less time to relax and put pressure on myself to be constantly productive. Green living translates differently on the road. It becomes a battle of the time crunch and stress, with trying to be green in a city where you are unfamiliar. I found a couple of cool websites that help you seek out green business in your area, including http://www.gengreenlife.com/. But even I find, my brain, good intentions and approach to the world become muddled when I travel.

Not even airport security can stand between me and my Klean Kanteen

Case in point, I headed off for my one trip out today to go to the grocery store to pick up some things so I could make my lunches for the work week and possible some breakfast items. Even though I am familiar with Atlanta, my first instinct was to go to the closest grocery store that I am willing to shop at: Trader Joes. Trader Joes ranks lower on the list than other stores in my book. While they have a decent selection of organic foods, they also have an abundance of non-organic and tons of processed foods. And the packaging just slays me. I rank it this way:

1) Local Co-op

2) PCC/ Chain Co-op

3) Whole Foods/ Local Natural Markets

4) Trader Joes

As I drove towards Trader Joes, fresh off doing some reading about green living, I knocked some sense into myself. Why was I going to Trader Joes, when the co-op was only another mile away. At the co-op, especially Sevananda, the focus is on SLOW food and I would be able to get exactly what I was looking for and not have to wade through a sea of “organic” but completely out of season vegetables or non-organics. SLOW food is my life, and I am constantly reminded that the earth and the foods that are produced in the SLOW food way, are what are naturally best for our body.

S= Seasonal    L= Local   O= Organic   W= Whole

Simple Kale, Red Cabbage and Greens Salad with Braggs

Remember how I said that I can always tell that winter is coming to an end because I stop craving brussel sprouts? Well, today as I navigated the fresh, extremely local, organic produce section at the co-op, I noticed the brussel sprouts and could tell they were leaving the season. They were small, light green and no longer so vibrant. It was probably one of the last boxes they would put out for the year. I decided that while I wasn’t craving them in particular, that I would give them one last go around the block for old times sake and make brussel sprouts, apples and baked tofu. I picked up a bunch of kale and other greens as well as some Braggs Dressing for a super green salad. I picked up two resusable bags worth of delicious SLOW food and felt good knowing, that while I had driven the extra mile or two to get the food, nothing I had in my bags had comes very far to get to me. Mexico, New Zealand, Argentina were not involved. And that, just that, small thing was enough for today.

Goodbye Brussel Sprouts