There was fresh lemongrass at the farmer’s market again! This time I used it to flavor a batch of rice cooked with coconut milk and daun salam (recipe from Cradle of Flavor
To go with the rice, J made some grilled beef skewers Click to continue »
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lemongrass rice and grilled beef
Friday, June 20th, 2008pomegranate marlin and dill pilaf
Monday, May 12th, 2008
So we came back home from our Vancouver trip loaded down with new cookbooks, and of course I had to immediately find something new to cook. The first recipe that jumped out at me was a pomegranate molasses-marinated swordfish from the Casa Moro cookbook. Hey, I thought, we still have pomegranate molasses! And, as fate would have it, we were able to buy big fat steaks of Hawaiian marlin at the store – plus the weather was good enough for outdoor grilling!
To go along with the fish, the book recommended a pilaf, so I tried out the Moro recipe for rice with dill and pine nuts. It involved rinsing and then soaking basmati rice so that it took very little cooking – not a technique that I’d tried before, but it worked like a charm.
About two hours ahead of time, I combined pomegranate molasses, cinnamon, cilantro, garlic and salt in a pie pan and rubbed it all over the fish steaks, which then went back into the fridge. Then I measured out the rice, rinsed it several times and set it to soak in warm water and salt. J got the grill started, then sliced eggplant and rubbed it with olive oil and salt.
cooking class: tapas & paella
Monday, March 24th, 2008
Another cooking class at Gretchens, this time focusing on one dish: paella! Knut Christiansen of Paellaworks catering brought his big pan and lots of good stuff to put in it, and Randy Finley of Mount Baker Vineyards brought wine to go along with it all. Paella is something Knut does especially well, even when he’s making it up as he goes along, so it was great fun to watch it all come together. And even more fun to eat it at the end.
Paella takes a while to cook, of course, so to keep people occupied and happy Knut put together some tapas to pass out. One was a leaf of Swiss chard wrapped around a tasty filling of cheese and sausage, paired with a salad of shredded asparagus, olives, chard stems and a tangy tangerine and cinnamon dressing. Everyone ate those immediately, so after that he toasted some crostini in the paella pan, I rubbed it with raw garlic and he swiped a bit of tomato sauce across it. Simple but good. We ate the tapas with two white wines, a blend called Rosetta Blanc and a Viognier (Mount Baker makes a really nice vio).
