Monthly Archives: April 2010

April 25, 2010 · 7:01 pm

Storms Never Last…

Lots of fun music shows this past week… oddly enough, all of them at clothing shops. I saw Thad Cockrell at Imogene & Willie and Derek Hoke and Korby Lenker at Hip Zipper. (Side note from music and food- Imogene & Willie has one of the coolest spaces ever and they make totally awesome and amazing custom jeans. Carrie and Matt are good people! Teresa at Hip Zipper in East Nashville has some of the best vintage threads in town and she has a ton of new stuff!)

Oooh so back to the title there, tornadie weather in Nashville kept us in the house on this Saturday evening… and unexpectedly we needed to cook some dinner so I took stock of what we had on hand and came up with a good plan. I created a Green Risotto with cooked carrots on the side. It was delicious and very nutritious and oh so pretty! It went something like this…

I was lucky to get a little concert of Grant’s new slide guitar as I worked on the prep. Our kitchen seems to have some good acoustics! Maybe kitchen concerts in the near future?!

So, back to the risotto- First, I heated some veggie stock we already had open (Imagine’s No-Chicken stock) and added some thinly sliced garlic (2 cloves). Then I blended a little of the stock with a bunch of spinach and a bunch of parsley and mixed that in to the stock. It made the stock turn a beautiful Kelly green color!

Then I sliced up the colorful organic carrots we had and cut them in match sticks to saute in a little butter. They were so sweet and delicious that we didn’t even have to salt them. They were a perfect side dish- color and flavor.

Once all the other prep work was done, we started on the risotto. I learned to make risotto from Grant who learned from his Italian friend Maurizio long ago. First we sauteed finely chopped onion, then added garlic and the arborio rice. Then gradually we added the stock, stirring constantly. It was at this point I summoned Grant in to help. On the side we sauteed the cut zucchini and green pepper and added that in when the rice was almost done. At the very end, we stirred in some shredded Parmesan Reggiano.

AND then, this morning Grant made risotto cakes with eggs and Old Folk’s turkey sausage for our Sunday brunch! It was so delicious and a great use of left overs.

Tomato, pepper, and herb starts to plant in the garden today!!! More music and food to report soon.

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April 21, 2010 · 4:04 am

Spring is Here!

Spring in Tennessee is exciting!

Everything is starting to bloom, all the local produce crops are starting to come in, people are beginning to emerge from hibernation and the fun has begun! Most of my musical enjoyment this past week came from films at the Nashville Film Festival! A couple of favorites were Pickin’ & Grinnin’ and “Do It Again.” Also exciting Spring events happening this week were Earth Day and Record Store Day!

As soon as the warm weather starts, we crave more salads. Last week we made this one with Romaine lettuce, mandarin oranges, red carrots (which are amazingly beautiful!), white radishes (which are a tad bit sweet), and super delicious Holboldt Fog cheese. We like this salad with a simple honey vinaigrette and topped with toasted walnuts.

And, thanks to our friend Nancy who turned us on to the NY Times 101 Simple Salads, we have tons of new super easy and delicious salad ideas!

Other great Spring vegetables that I’m excited about… Artichokes and Asparagus (here served with a Soy Sauce Chicken Thigh)!

Spring is a transition season as we move gently (hopefully) into the warmer temperatures. It seems too warm for soups but with our busy schedules lately, I’ve still been excited about making some one-pot comfort meals that we can eat on throughout the week. I realized we had all the ingredients for a Jambalaya or maybe I should call it a Jambalaya-inspired dish as I didn’t follow a recipe. I also made it a little healthier by using brown rice and chicken andouille sausage and served it with some steamed broccoli with a squeeze of lemon on top.

And then tonight we got inspired to make one of our all-time favorites… a recipe from my home state, South Carolina low-country Shrimp & Grits! Bacon is an essential ingredient and we do make it with bacon sometimes but tonight we made it with veggies and shrimp as that is what we had on hand. And, it’s nice to know we can make it well for our fishaterian friends when necessary.

I use only real stone-ground grits, often that I have had my Sis or my friend Angela mail me from Charleston. I add a few extra ingredients to my grits- local Hatcher Family Dairy buttermilk and some sharp cheddar.

While the grits were cooking, we started cooking some collards. We sauteed a little finely chopped onion and garlic in a little olive oil with a small amount of balsamic vinegar and a little stock.

Next, in another pan, we started sauteing onions, red pepper, mushrooms (portabella and some button), garlic, shrimp (mixed with some garlic and flour), and a few tomatoes. We seasoned it with salt, pepper, and cayenne pepper.

We like to layer the greens, grits, and shrimp & veggies in a bowl for serving. It was delicious and really easy to cook.

And the best part about having left-overs with this meal is that we can now have grits for breakfast! My favorite way to have them for breakfast is with a little maple syrup and hot sauce. I know, it is a little strange but I love it. It is cheesey, hot, salty, and sweet!

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April 14, 2010 · 12:06 am

Food As A Revolution is A Revolution I Can Get Behind!

Today was a perfect day off. Thinking back over the course of my day, I am amazed at how each part of my day revolved around food some way or another. (Oh, wait, it isn’t that amazing. My days usually revolve around food but maybe you didn’t know that.) In the morning,  we worked in the yard preparing our raised bed so we can plant our veggie starts soon. Grant got me a composter for my Birthday so this year we are finally able to use our own homemade compost. I got obsessed thinking about Jamie Oliver as we just finally watched his Food Revolution show. I have been a fan of him for years, ever since the first Naked Chef cookbooks. He has such simple and yummy whole food recipes. He is kind of a hero now, at least to me. What I find so great is how honest and aggressive his campaign is. Unlike a majority of smart, talented people in the world who seem to sit on their safe little thrown passively pontificating about how things could be better or what needs to change, he is actually trying to change things. He really has started a revolution. He sort of thrust himself into the eye of the storm hoping to really make a difference. Sure, he’s profiting from it. He seems to have his own little Jamie Empire but really, anyone who works that hard should be profiting. And, in the end, if he makes a difference, who cares? I love him. Check out this great video from the TEDx conference in LA a couple months back:

So, quite contradictory to my honest core food beliefs and what I just expressed above, I also love all food and am a believer in food vernacular and enjoying (in moderation!) the food of the South. This is why we had lunch today at Jimmy Carl’s Lunch Box! Our friend Pat Isbey and his buddy Russell Nelson opened this smoked meat lunch spot a year ago at The Station Inn. We’ve been wanting to go here for an entire year and today, it finally worked out. They do a great job with pulled pork, ribs, and smoked chicken thighs. It was simple and really good. They offer two sauces- a hot one that seemed more vinegar based and a sweeter mild sauce. Both sauces were good and I even liked them mixed together. The portions were just right and the sides were very tasty. After lunch we visited a few of our favorite Nashville stops- we had a Mexican popsicle at Las Paletas, visited our friends at Imogene + Willie, and stopped to see all the new vintage western wear Katy had in at Katy K’s before heading home. I LOVE Nashville!

Now, in the oven- a Strawberry Rhubarb Pie- made with local, organic rhubarb! I’ve been wanting to experiment with some new pies and couldn’t resist the new local rhubarb. I’ve only cooked with rhubarb one other time and was anxious to try it again.


I kept it simple…

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

3 organic rhubarb stalks cut into 1/2 inch pieces

1 cup organic strawberries, stemmed and sliced

1 cup organic cane sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

freshly grated nutmeg

1 tbsp flour (White Lily, always!), 1 tbsp corn starch

dash of sea salt

squeeze of an organic Meyer lemon

I used one homemade pie crust on bottom, one on top.
Bake at 425 for 15 minutes, then 350 for 35 minutes.

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April 10, 2010 · 10:40 pm

A Little of This and A Little of That…

Thank God my husband plays music because I haven’t been to see much live music the last two weeks except for his. At least there was that. He’s had lots of Lower Broadway gigs with some good folks and a couple gigs with Derek Hoke. If you don’t know who Derek Hoke is, you really should. Here’s his latest video, filmed at our friend Allison’s house, in which Grant has a cameo. Enjoy.

Derek Hoke “Sweet Pea”

We’ve also had some amazing new music to listen to as I got Grant a little box set of The Browns for his Birthday. One of my favorite songs lately is this one…

The Browns “The Three Bells”

And then there is this one (Their harmonies are soooo good!) …
The Browns “I Heard The Blue Bird Sing”

Speaking of Grant, “Big Smokey”, Johnson, he smoked a delicious turkey this week with SW spices. We served it up with a classic sweet and sour cole slaw and the most delicious green chili sharp cheddar mashed potatoes ever (whose leftovers made the BEST topping to a SW Shepherd’s Pie later in the week! After growing up with a single Mom who was incapable of cooking for two and together loathing leftovers, I have finally grasped the concept of turning leftovers into something quite wonderful! More on that later.)


The rest of the week consisted of many culinary experiments. Some turned out really good, like my roasted beet hummus. My friend Nikki mentioned the idea and I couldn’t stop thinking about it so I did some internet research for recipes and then came up with this one of my own.

Roasted Beet Hummus

Throw in a blender:

can garbonzo beans
2 roasted beets (clean, place in dish with 1″ water, cover dish with foil and roast in over at 400)
few glugs olive oil
juice of 1 lemon
2-3 garlic cloves
ground cumin, salt, pepper
big handful of roasted pecans (I hate buiying Tahini because I never
use much, I figured roasted sesame seeds could be substituted by
roasted nuts and olive oil.)

THEN, for the finale… I topped it with a little crumbled Maytag blue
cheese!

I tried my hand at homemade pizza dough this week, too, inspired by the current Saveur all about LA cuisine with the squash blossom pizza on the cover. It was a super easy and really good recipe and my first two pizzas turned out great. I froze the other two dough balls for later in the week. The second time around, I forgot a crucial step- placing the dough on parchment before topping them and then moving into the oven. Thus, the raw pizzas were stuck to my dough board. I laughed and then moved them onto the cookie sheet (have to buy a pizza stone this week!) as best I could and they cooked up into what I called an open-faced calzone! It was a mess but with all those yummy ingredients, it tasted just fine.

Right now I have some banana bread in the oven. My new favorite way to make it is with coconut milk- so delicious and moist! Here is a recipe I modified:

Banana Bread With Coconut Milk

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1 cup granulated sugar
3-4 mashed bananas
1/2 cup shredded coconut
1 tsp fresh ginger (I keep my fresh ginger in freezer- it makes it so easy to grate!)
1 cup coconut milk
3 Tbsp butter, melted and cooled
1 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease and flour loaf pan
2. In a medium bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, cinnamon, & salt
3. In a mixing bowl, mix eggs and sugar until combined. Add bananas, coconut milk, butter, coconut, ginger and vanilla.
4. Slowly add flour mixture to wet ingredients and stir with a spatula until just combined.
5. Pour batter into loaf pan and bake for 60 minutes or until a toothpick entered into the center of the loaf comes out clean.

Hopefully I will have more amazing music and interesting cooking adventures to report on soon!

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