Kale Salad

My friend Jackie came up with this salad, based on a recipe from the Esalen Institute. I had never eaten kale before, but when friends raved about the kale salad she had made at a recent retreat, I knew it was time to give it a try -- Jackie is a marvelous intuitive cook and knows good food!



Esalen Kale Salad Recipe
Serves 4 to 6

1/3 cup soy sauce (or Bragg Liquid Aminos or tamari)
1/3 cup lemon juice
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/2 medium-sized red onion, sliced into thin half-rings
1/2 cup sunflower seeds
1/4 cup sesame seeds
1 lb. fresh kale
1 avocado, cut into 1/2″ inch cubes (optional, but really good!)
1 red bell pepper, diced (optional, but really good!)

(The original recipe also calls for 1/4 cup pumpkin seeds, 1/2 cup alfalfa sprouts, and 1/2 cup sunflower sprouts, so add these in if you like them.)

Whisk the soy sauce and lemon juice together in a bowl (or use a blender). In either case, slowly drizzle in the oil as you blend. Slice the onion and marinate in the dressing, while preparing the rest of the salad.

Toast the seeds in an oven or frying pan over medium heat until they are are golden and fragrant. Toast each seed type separately, as they require varying toasting times. Cool to room temperature.

Destem the kale and slice the leaves into thin 1/4 inch ribbons (very important!)

Toss the seeds, optional red pepper and kale with the onions and as much dressing as necessary to lightly but completely dress the kale. Thoroughly massage the kale with your hands. Gently toss the avocado with the salad and serve.

 

Sauteed Swiss Chard

After avoiding chard for many years, I finally succumbed to its beauty and tried cooking some. What a wonderful surprise! It has a delicate lemony flavor with a bit of pungency -- not bitter or strong. The texture is a little denser than spinach, and I think the flavor is brighter.

The recipe below is very simple and fast to make. The lemon juice highlights the lemony nature of the chard and the garlic... well, garlic complements everything!



Sauteed Swiss Chard
Serves 2-4

1 Tb butter
1 Tb olive oil
~1 Tb fresh lemon juice (optional)
1/2 tsp fresh garlic, minced
1 bunch Swiss chard

Cut the stems out of the chard and slice them. Cut the leaves into 1-inch pieces, keeping them separate from the stems.

In a skillet over medium-high heat, saute the sliced stems in the butter and oil until they are tender. Then add the lemon juice, garlic and the chard leaves. Stir until the leaves are wilted and tender, about 4 or 5 minutes. Serve.

 

Crisp Winter Slaw

This is a recipe of my grandmother's for a sweet-sour winter slaw. It's very forgiving of proportions, so if you want less onion or like things more vinegary, don't hesitate to make changes. The only thing I've tried that hasn't worked very well was adding red cabbage -- it turned the slaw a light purple color.


Crisp Winter Slaw
Makes about 1 quart.

3/4 lb cabbage, shredded
1/2 onion, finely chopped
1 carrot, grated
1 small green pepper, chopped
1 small red pepper (or pimento), chopped
1/4 Tb salt
1/4 c vinegar
1/4 c water
1/1 c sugar
1/2 tsp celery seed
1/2 tsp mustard seed (optional)

Prepare the vegetables and mix well in a large bowl. Combine the salt, vinegar, water, sugar, celery seed, and mustard seed in a small saucepan and bring to a boil. Pour over the vegetables¹. Chill. Store, covered, in the refrigerator. Will keep 2-3 weeks.

¹ I use a canning jar for marinating and then chilling & storing the slaw in the refrigerator. Squeeze as much of the veggies in as you can, and then pour the hot vinegar mixture over. The veggies will compress down with some assistance and ultimately fit in the jar. Screw the lid on tight and can shake the jar periodically to distribute the marinade & spices.

 

Why Local?

Writing this blog encourages me to cook more mindfully. As part of that, I've been giving more thought lately to why I like local products so much.


I'm always on the lookout for local produce and dairy products, locally-raised meat, or locally-caught fish. Partly I choose them because I'm not from the Pacific Northwest, and exploring local products is part of exploring the area I now call home. But I also instinctively think they're better and, after some reflection, here's why:

• Local fruits and vegetables can be picked at the height of flavor -- when they're ripe and bursting with goodness. Those that have to be transported long distances must be picked when they're green and then ripened in warehouses or on your counter. There's no contest, for example, between the taste of a typical supermarket tomato and a vine-ripened one from a local farm stand.
• Because it doesn't have to travel as far, local food is also likely to be fresher and, hence, contain more nutrients. According to a study done at Iowa State University, if you live in Iowa, a local apple travels about 60 miles to reach you, whereas a conventionally-sourced US-grown apple travels over 1700 miles¹²³! Thus a conventional apple may travel a week or more, and that translates to its losing important nutrients.
• Local food tends to be available in a wider range of interesting and delicious varieties and cultivars. Varieties that will be transported long distances are limited to only those tough enough to withstand the rigors of shipping, and for which there is a big market. In Oregon there's no better example than strawberries -- our local varieties are small and a little gnarled-looking, too delicate to ship fresh, and only available a few weeks every year, but they're sugary lumps of intense strawberry deliciousness -- much better tasting than their more perfect-looking better-traveling mass market brethren!
• Buying local products supports your local economy. When you buy from local farmers, much of the money they spend, in turn, goes to supporting other businesses and charities in your surrounding community.
• Buying local products is kinder to the environment than buying those that have to be shipped by planes, trains, boats, and/or trucks and protected by large amounts of packaging.
• Since most GM (Genetically Modified) foods come from large industrial farms, I think it's easier to avoid GM products when you shop locally. Plus you may have more opportunity to learn about the food by talking with the farmer and asking about GMO use.

So next time you're at the grocery store, check out the "locally-grown" foods. Or seek out a farmer's market or farm stand. Your tastebuds, your body, your community and the earth will be glad you did!


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¹Pirog, Rich and Benjamin, Andrew. "Checking the Food Odometer: Comparing Food Miles for Local Versus Conventional Produce Sales in Iowa Institutions." Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, July 2003.
²Note that this average distance traveled was for apples grown in the continental US. If New Zealand apples had been included in the mix, the distance would have been greater!
³And if you think apples travel a long distance, look at the figures for carrots, lettuce, broccoli, etc.!
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Photos used with permission from Portland Farmers Market © Amy Nieto Photography 2010, 2011, All Rights Reserved.

Tomato Soup Base and Soup

Several summers ago, The Oregonian, my local newspaper, published some tomato soup recipes; a set of recipes, actually: a tomato soup base to be made and frozen plus some soup recipes that could be made from the soup base. I tried it and have been hooked ever since. Now, every summer when the tomatoes are ripe I make soup base. Then throughout the year, when we feel like a light meal, I defrost some soup base and make a pot of soup.


The soup base should be made with very ripe flavorful tomatoes -- the kind you get at a farmer's market, not the supermarket kind that are shipped green and then "ripened" in warehouses. You really taste the ingredients in the final product, so you want them to be as flavorful as possible. This year I used canning tomatoes from a local organic produce stand. They were a mix of different varieties and not as pretty as slicing tomatoes, but they made great soup!


Versatile Tomato Soup Base
Makes about 14 cups soup base

3 Walla Walla or other sweet onions (2 ½ pounds), cut into ¼ -to ½- inch dice, about 6 ½ cups packed
1 medium celery stalk (3 ounces), cut into ¼-inch dice, about 2/3 cup
¼ cup olive oil
1 large red bell pepper (½ pound), cut into ¼-inch dice, about 1 ¼ cups
20 to 24 cloves garlic, peeled and finely chopped, about ½ cup
6 pounds tomatoes (very ripe garden or farmers market varieties such as Early Girl, Roma or Beefsteak), cored and chopped¹ into ¾- to 1-inch pieces, about 14 cups

Optional:
2 ½ teaspoons kosher salt²
½ teaspoon ground white pepper

In a large stockpot over medium-high heat, cook the onions and celery in the olive oil until translucent and almost tender, 10 minutes. Do not brown. Stir in the bell pepper and garlic; cook 5 minutes. Add tomatoes and any salt or white pepper. Cover and bring to a boil; reduce heat to medium and simmer for 10 minutes, covered. Allow base to cool. Freeze in 2- or 3-cup portions for later use.

¹ If you want, you can peel and seed the tomatoes, but I don't find it necessary. I may squeeze out the seeds from a particularly ripe seedy tomato, but otherwise I don't usually bother.
² Kosher salt has larger crystals than regular table salt, so if you use table salt, use half as much!


Here is the soup recipe that I use most. It's very flexible and can be made vegetarian or vegan by leaving out the bacon and/or milk or cream. I've had it all ways and can attest that each is delicious.

(Cream of) Tomato Soup
Makes about 8 cups

1 large carrot, peeled and finely chopped, 2/3 cup
1 tablespoon olive oil, if you're not adding bacon to the soup
6 cups Versatile Tomato Soup Base (thaw fully if frozen)
1 cup water
1 fresh bay leaf
¾ teaspoon chopped fresh thyme

Optional:
2-4 slices bacon
1/3 cup milk or heavy cream
* Kosher salt and black pepper

If you're using bacon, cook it in a medium pot over medium-low heat until crisp, about 5 minutes, turning frequently. Drain bacon on paper towels; remove all but 1 tablespoon fat from pot. Chop bacon; reserve.

Add carrot to pot; cook over medium-high heat in either the bacon fat or 1T of olive oil, stirring until tender, 5 minutes. Add soup base, water, bay leaf, thyme and any reserved bacon. Cover and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and cook 15 minutes. Remove from heat and remove the bay leaf. Add milk or cream if desired. I tend to like it chunky, but if you want a traditional smooth soup, use an immersion blender or conventional blender to puree soup. Taste and add salt and pepper if needed.

Tomatoland

Tomatoes were a big part of summer life when I was growing up in Indiana. We grew them in the garden, had them for dinner every night, and canned the juice for winter. We generally didn't eat them other times of the year -- they were trucked in from Florida, and as my Uncle George in Miami always said, "Florida tomatoes just don't taste as good as Indiana ones." So I'm a big tomato fan and a sucker for any kind of story about them.


When I sat down to listen to a Talk of the Nation radio show with Barry Estabrook, the author of Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit, I expected to hear about the difficulties of growing a delicious fruit that can be shipped thousands of miles and still look perfect. And I did. Estabrook talked about how slicing tomatoes (what we buy in the grocery) are picked when hard and perfectly green and then ripened with ethylene gas in warehouses. But he went on to talk about some other things -- some of which were very disturbing.

He talked about how most tomatoes in US supermarkets come from either Florida or California, and how those in the winter almost exclusively come from Florida. Combating the molds and rusts and germs and insects of Florida's humid climate requires lots of pesticides, however -- 8 times the amount needed in California's dry summer climate! Florida tomatoes are also grown in sand, and all the plant's nutrients have to be added to that sand.

What really disturbed me, though, didn't have to do with the tomatoes, themselves; it had to do with the workers picking tomatoes. Supermarket tomatoes are picked by hand, primarily by foreign workers. And in southwestern Florida, the wintertime "tomato capital" of the US, those workers are slaves.

Yes, you heard me right - slaves¹! Not even virtual slaves; they're "locked up, shackled in chains at night, locked in the back of produce trucks at night so that they're handy to be delivered to the fields in the morning, bought and sold and negotiated for almost at auction." And if they run away, they're chased down and beaten as an example to others.

According to Estabrook, "There have been more than 1,200 people freed from slavery rings in Florida agriculture in the last 10 or 15 years. Off the record an official told me recently that there's two cases currently under investigation. The problem is they're very, very hard cases to prosecute. So what you're seeing is the tip of a really ugly iceberg."

I thought Estabrook surely must be exaggerating, but Luis CdeBaca, Ambassador-at-Large and director of the US State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, also spoke briefly by phone on the program. He confirmed that "there still is modern slavery right here in our own backyards." Enforcement is being stepped up around the country, but what will really help is if companies know that consumers care about how their food is picked and packed.

So I care. And I suggest you do, too. Take a listen to the interview (it's linked above) and see what you think. The pesticide issue, alone, would make me want to limit consumption of conventionally-grown Florida tomatoes. But slavery ... while that problem exists, I won't be buying or eating Florida tomatoes at all!


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¹ I couldn't believe it, so I did some more research. The US now includes itself in the annual US State Department Trafficking in Persons Report, and here are links to the 2010 report and the 2010 special briefing. There's not a lot of detail, but the briefing has a little more - just search on "Florida".

Home-Smoked Salmon

I love smoked salmon! For years I toyed with the idea of smoking salmon myself so I could control the sodium level, quality, and flavor. And last year while visiting a friend, I had the opportunity to try making and eating fresh home-smoked fish --- what a WOW experience! I arrived home, ready to quit toying with the idea and try my hand at it.


My friend used a specialized electric smoker, but I decided to start off more simply... using my outdoor gas grill. I searched the Internet for recipes and techniques, and I experimented with them whenever local salmon went on sale. What follows is my current recipe. Feel free to change it up so it tastes the way you like best!

It takes about 5-7 hrs total time to make, although most of that time is spent waiting, not working. The breakdown of time is as follows:

       ½ hr preparation + ½ hr brining + 2 hrs drying + 2-4 hrs smoking

Anne's Home-Smoked Salmon

• Brine (use about 1 cup per side of salmon):
  
  • 1 cup of lukewarm water
  • 2T kosher salt
  • 1/3 cup honey
  • 1/3 cup brown sugar
  • 1 bay leaf
  • 1+ teaspoon minced garlic (fresh tastes best, but dried is ok)
• Wild salmon fillets.
  
• 2-3 handfuls of wood chips - alder, mesquite, etc. If you use the chips for BBQing that are available at the grocery or other stores, they'll be fine. If you get wood at the lumberyard, make sure it's untreated.

Carefully bone the salmon. First, wash a pair of needle-nose pliers. Then run your finger across the salmon side, feeling for the pin bones. When you find one, use the pliers to grasp it and pull it out. The bones are in there at an angle, so be sure to pull at the same angle, or else you'll rip the flesh.


Then you have a choice --- to leave the salmon fillets whole, or to cut them up. When serving, I like to present a whole side of salmon, but for brining and smoking and freezing, it's easier to work with smaller pieces. So I'll often cut a side of salmon up for smoking and then reassemble it for serving (you can see an example of this in the first picture).

Next, simmer the bay leaf (or leaves) in a little additional water while making the brine. To make the brine, add the various ingredients to the lukewarm water and stir until dissolved. Then add in the bay water & leaves.


Place the salmon in the brine in a glass or plastic container. Since the salmon tends to float, if it all fits in one layer, I place it skin side up so the flesh will be in contact with the brine. Otherwise, if you need to layer the salmon, place the fillets face-to-face and back-to-back to help keep scales off the the flesh. If necessary, place a small plate on the salmon to weigh it down. Allow the salmon to brine for 30 minutes. If you prefer your salmon saltier, brine it longer.



After it's brined to your satisfaction, remove the salmon from the brine, rinse well (but don't scrub the fish!), and pat dry. Allow the salmon to dry on racks (I use cookie racks) over cookie sheets (to catch any drips) in a cool place in the open air for at least 2 hrs (a basement is a great place to do this). No guarantees, but I read that, because the fish has been brined, it won't spoil. As the fish dries, its surface gets kind of tacky --- perfect for capturing little smoke particles!


Soak the wood chips in water for the last half hour of the fish's drying time. About 5 minutes before the drying time is done, place a handful of wet wood chips in a smoking box¹, and place the box directly on one burner on one side of the grill, under the grate. Turn on only that one burner. Set it to medium/high for about 5 minutes to get some smoke going and then adjust it back to medium or low. Adjust the setting as needed to achieve a low temperature (200 – 300 degrees).


Oil a cooling rack and place the salmon on it, skin-side down. If you like pepper, sprinkle some cracked black pepper on the fish. Place the rack on the cool side of the grill and close the lid. If you have more racks of salmon than will fit on the grill surface, I've found it possible to stack them, using other grill accessories like a warming or shish-kabob rack.


Check on the salmon every 15-30 minutes or so and add more wet chips to the smoking box as needed (i.e. if it doesn’t seem very smoky). After an hour, start testing the salmon for doneness and take it off the grill when it reaches 165 degrees. The length of time it takes will depend on the grill temperature.


Serve immediately or cool to room temperature, wrap tightly and then either refrigerate for up to 3 days or freeze in an airtight bag.

Enjoy!

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¹ A smoking box is a small metal box with holes in it and a removable lid. I found one in the BBQ section of the hardware store for a few dollars. You can also use an aluminum foil pouch with holes punched in it, instead. Just put the wet wood chips in the box or pouch, place it on or near the burner and, voilà... smoke!