Chop and Stir

quinoa with moroccan winter squash

The best dish I've had in a long time.

Calling all Collards!

Continuing our CSA saga, last night I braised the collards from the faux-CSA basket of last week. That's the beauty of CSA and farmer's markets-- the stuff is so fresh that is lasts at least a week in your fridge.

Most restaurants will overcook the collards, or braise them far ahead of when you order them. That leads to bitter, dark, and mushy greens. Eeeewww. Even Farmer Brown and Perbacco in San Francisco do that. I sometimes wonder, "Do they actually mean to do that?" but I'm afraid to ask.

I like to braise them just before serving, with some sweet yellow onions, so that the sweetness of the onions offset the slight bitterness of the collards. Also, finish them with so good extra virgin olive oil after you take them off heat, so you get some more sweetness in your dish. And some good quality, coarse sea salt, sprinkled on top to finish them off. You'll end up with a bowl of soul-satisfying bright green collards.

One note about washing them-- cut before washing, put them in a very large bowl of cold water, swish them around to get any dirt off, and then lift them out the bowl of water, and let drain in a colander. You want to lift them out of the water bowl, instead of pouring them along with the water into the colander, so you leave the dirt in the water, instead of pouring it back onto your greens. Also, it ok to have some of the water left on your greens, as that will form your braising liquid, to keep your collards from burning or drying out.

Time to rustle up some grub

We work up a big appetite here on the Lone Mountain Ranch, chasing after our chickens and all. Alex needs a hearty breakfast. He fixes himself some cowboy beans on the foggy San Francisco mornings. Good fueling for the bike ride to school, too.

It's a belly-filling combo of pinto beans, bacon, tomato, and garlic. Best of all, even an 8-year old can make it! As you can see, Alex does this all his own, save the mincing of the garlic.

Alex and I will post the recipe to Freebase in a day or two and provide a link to that. But why wait-- you can watch Alex cook in real time.

Two parts to this video blog, hmm, I wonder what they are called.... Alex shows off his editing skills on the second one. Thanks to Brigid for the camera work and the ceremonial tasting.

Chop!

Stir!

Spicy Orange Chicken

We accidentally woke Alex up a few nights ago, shortly after he went to sleep, and he started babbling about Orange Chicken. He longs for the Orange Chicken of Panda Express. I've never been there, but clearly I needed to make something so he'd stop asking to go.

I suspect that the Panda Express variety involves battering and deep frying some frozen chicken pieces, which sounds messy and unhealthy, so let's not go there. Instead, we'll get some high quality fresh chicken thighs from Fulton Valley Farms and some sugar snap peas from Iacopi Farm.

Special thanks to my uncle Ken in Houston for the hot peppers from his garden!

I bought the ingredients today down at the Ferry Plaza Farmer's Market market for a recipe on Epicurious for orange chicken,  only to later find the reviewer comments reporting the outcome as terrible. Unacceptable!

So, I juiced it up with some garlic, ginger, Shaoxing rice wine, chicken stock, sesame oil, black beans, and garlic. Hard to go wrong with all that flavor.

The recipe for Spicy Orange Chicken is on Freebase.

The Epicurious recipe cooks the snap peas with the chicken, which we don't do here, because that will either leave your snap peas tough or your chicken overcooked. Instead, you want to blanch the snap peas separately, so that they cook perfectly, and then add them back to your chicken and sauce.

The snap peas work well for the summer-fall version. If good snap peas aren't easy to find, just use some good organic broccoli. Blanch that in boiling water as well, after chopping into 1.5 inch florets.

Here's a short video on zesting an orange, a technique that Chef Suzette Gresham at Acquerello taught me a few years ago. It's much more effective to zest with a vegetable peeler and paring knife than to use a zester tool.