Braised Carrots with Parsley and Sorrel

Parsley and lemony sorrel give these carrots a little pick-me-up for summertime.

Ingredients
Olive oil
1 bunch carrots, brushed clean and sliced at an angle
Splash chicken or veggie broth
2 oz fresh sorrel leaves, chopped
Handful flat leaf parsley, chopped
Salt and freshly ground white pepper

Heat a wide pan over medium-high heat. Drizzle in a thin layer of olive oil, then add the carrots and stir to coat lightly. Cook, stirring every couple minutes or so, until the carrots are golden brown on at least one side. (If they're not browning, stir less frequently. If they're browning too quickly and sticking to the pan, turn the heat down to medium and add a pinch of salt to bring out a little extra liquid.)

Add a splash of broth and cover the pan to let steam for another 2-3 minutes or until the carrots are desired tenderness. Turn off the heat and fold in the sorrel, parsley, and a pinch or two of salt. Let sit for about a minute, then sprinkle with white pepper and serve.

Serves 2-4.

Ginger-Rubbed Salmon with Mustard Seeds and Sorrel

Quick, easy, and stupendously delicious...hello, salmon season. I've missed you.

Serve this over jasmine rice or jade pearl rice, with sauteed greens on the side.

Ingredients
12 oz wild salmon
Kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper
2 tsp grated fresh ginger
1 small clove garlic, pressed
Mustard seeds
Onion blossoms
(or sub 1 scallion, thinly sliced)
Olive oil
1 cup chopped sorrel leaves
(about one third to half a bunch)


Sprinkle salmon generously with salt on both sides, and a little ground pepper on the non-skin side. Mash the garlic and ginger together, and then rub onto the fish (mostly on the non-skin side, and a little on the skin if you plan to eat it, which you should, because it will be amazing. Trust me). Sprinkle the non-skin side lightly with mustard seeds and the onion blossoms or scallion.

Heat a nonstick pan over medium heat. When the pan is hot, add a glug of olive oil and swirl to spread in the pan. Place the fish in the pan skin-side down, wait a moment, then shake to make sure it's not sticking.

Cook for several minutes, until the skin is golden-brown, then flip and cook for a minute until the fish has just a hint of gold to it (if it's a thick piece of salmon, you may have to cook it for a couple minutes on the non-skin side...or, keep it skin side down, and put a lid on the pan for a minute to help it cook through).

When the fish is medium-rare (still that darker shade of pink in the middle), serve onto a bed of rice. The trick is to catch it just before it's as cooked as you want it, since it will keep cooking a bit over the hot rice. The other trick is to eat it medium-rare, because medium-rare salmon is amazing.

Drizzle a little more olive oil in the pan, add the sorrel, sprinkle with a pinch of salt, and toss to coat. Turn off the heat. Saute the sorrel, stirring, for about 20-30 seconds till it just starts to change color from a vibrant green to a darker olive tone. Pour over the salmon, and serve immediately.

Serves 2.

Grilled Veggies and Chicken over Quinoa

Hey guess what? It's summer. I'm not quite sure how it happened, but it's clearly high time we put things on skewers and grilled them.

Also, just in case you've been pining for new ways to express your support for the blog, voila: Visit this website, and click "Like" near the top of the page. And as always, you can Follow the blog by clicking the button to the right, either to actually follow via Google or as just a virtual wave to say hi and that you enjoy it here.

Incidentally, I'm completely delighted by the wave of new readers (hello!) as well as by those of you who have been regulars for awhile now and keep coming back. I kept thinking, when I started this, that either nobody was ever going to read it, or that to get readers, I'd have to do one of those advertising thingies (so that someone somewhere would put up a link to my blog in exchange for me advertising Rice-A-Roni or whatever at the top of the page...which struck me as slightly ridiculous for a blog that's purportedly about whole foods). So, let me just take a moment and thank you all so much for reading and cooking along with me. Without you, I would've gone back to easy microwave dinners sometime last October and thought back nostalgically from time to time to the few months I actually did what I wanted to do with food and cooking.

But that wasn't the point. The point was skewers. This combination is delicious, and I like that the meat ends up being a complement to the meal rather than the main focus.

 
Ingredients
Chicken
2 pastured chicken breasts, cut into 1 1/2" cubes
Zest and juice of 1/2 Eureka lemon
1 tbsp chopped green garlic (or sub 1-2 cloves garlic, pressed)
1-2 sprigs rosemary, chopped
Ñora pepper (if you have it)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1/2 red onion, sliced in half again lengthwise and then quartered into wedges (you want squares that are about as big as the chicken pieces)
1 bell pepper, cut into squares (same as above)
Olive oil



Veggies
Olive oil
1 tbsp chopped green garlic (or sub 1-2 cloves garlic, pressed)
2-3 sprigs fresh thyme, chopped
Ñora pepper
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
2-3 portobello mushrooms, brushed clean and stems cut off
Summer squash (.25 lbs or a bit less), thickly sliced (about 1/2" thick -- cut pattypans crosswise into circles; zucchinis lengthwise into long strips)



Quinoa
1/2 cup red quinoa
1/2 cup white quinoa
1 cup veggie or chicken broth
A little less than 1/2 cup water
4-6 sorrel leaves, thinly sliced crosswise into ribbons (optional)



Whisk together a glug or two of olive oil with the lemon juice, and then stir in the zest, garlic, rosemary, ñora, salt, and black pepper. Pour over the chicken, toss to coat evenly, and let marinate for an hour or two in the fridge.

About half an hour before you want to take the chicken out, rinse the quinoa and then soak in room temperature water for about ten minutes. Next, whisk together the ingredients for the veggie marinade, and brush over the vegetables (including the onion and pepper). Make sure to let a little marinade soak down into the gills of the portobellos.

Take a couple pieces of the onion and pepper and chop them (I use any pieces that ended up too small or weirdly shaped for the skewers). Rinse and drain the quinoa. Heat a smallish pot over medium heat, and add a glug of olive oil, followed by the onion and pepper. Saute until soft. Stir in the quinoa, saute for another minute, and then add the broth and water. Bring to a boil, cover, and reduce the heat. Simmer for 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, preheat the grill on high. Push the chicken onto skewers, separating each piece with a pepper on one side and an onion on the other. Grill the skewers, mushrooms, and squash slices, turning to let all sides cook evenly.

Just before serving, stir the sorrel into the quinoa. Use as a bed for the chicken and veggies.

Serves 3.

Sorrel Soup

Spring arrived in our CSA box last week in the form of sorrel, which is apparently the gastronomic equivalent of a robin. When you acquire sorrel, you are to make sorrel soup, just as when you see a robin, you are to shout "Hey! The first robin of spring!" Now usually, when I shout about the first robin of spring, my husband smugly informs me that he saw a robin yesterday, to which I smugly reply that I actually saw a robin two weeks ago, and so begins the first faux-argument of spring. In contrast, the sorrel soup produced murmurs of contentment on both sides, and no season-specific altercation. I'm not saying I don't like robins, but if I had to vote in a bird vs. plant run-off for most beloved springtime indicator, I think I would pick the leafy green one.

Regardless of your relative preference for sorrel versus robins, here is what you should do with the former, adapted from this recipe.



Ingredients
1 tbsp pasture butter

1 tbsp olive oil
2 large-ish red spring onions, halves lengthwise and sliced (white/red part only; about 1 cup)
1-2 stalks green garlic, chopped (2-3 tbsp)
2 sprigs fresh thyme
1 bay leaf
2 large yellow potatoes, peeled, halved, and sliced
3 cups chicken broth
2-3 big handfuls spinach, briefly steamed or blanched, drained, and chopped
1 bunch sorrel, sliced
Salt & freshly ground black pepper
Splash cream

Heat the butter and olive oil in a pot over medium heat. When the butter has melted, add the spring onion and saute until soft, then add the garlic and herbs and saute for a minute more.

Next, add the potatoes and stir to coat with the onion and garlic mixture. Saute for 3-4 minutes, then add the broth, cover, and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for about half an hour, until potatoes are tender.

Meanwhile, put the sorrel in a Cuisinart and blend until finely chopped.

When the potatoes are soft, remove the bay leaf and thyme stems. Stir in the spinach and then use a hand blender to puree the soup (or pour the soup into a regular blender to puree, which may be easier to do in small batches). Add salt and a little freshly ground black pepper to taste.

Just before serving, stir in the sorrel and a splash of cream (you want to do this moments before you bring the soup to the table, since sorrel turns grayish green as it cooks and after a few minutes your soup will lose some of its vivid green color. The spinach helps with this, and so does adding the sorrel raw right at the end, but it will still be prettier if you serve it sooner).

Ladle into bowls, and serve with some crusty multigrain brain and aged gouda.

Serves 3-4.