Winter Dishes

 

Cheese fondue

Today I decided that winter is over - even though we are in the middle of a cold spell that still gives us warm sunny days but chilly nights, mornings and evenings. However, there are so many signs of spring around us that we really can't talk about winter anymore, at least not in this corner of the world.

Therefore, it's time to talk about what we ate in winter. Winter dishes are often a bit heartier than meals during the rest of the year. It seems that the short days and cold nights make us long for more comfort and warmth, and food is just the thing to give us both.

Our traditional New Year's Eve food is cheese fondue. We used to eat it with chunks of bread, but recently we discovered a healthier way to enjoy it - with roasted potatoes and brussels sprouts. It is 100% delicious and we didn't miss the bread one bit!

Baked spanakopita pasta with greens and feta

We love pasta and certainly had our fair share of it over the winter. A lot of these meals were new recipes that I tried out, most of them published in the New York Times. But we also enjoyed old favorites again.

Tortellini with caramelized onions and mushrooms and spinach

Baked spinach artichoke pasta

Lemon chicken with mushrooms and orechiette, an old favorite

Especially in winter I include a lot of veggies in our meals. My favorite place to buy fresh local veggies is the farmers market, but since it is taking place on Saturday mornings I usually cannot go there since I teach that time. However, if there is a Saturday when I don't have to teach I go to the market and my fridge drawer for the veggies is filled to the brim after that.

When I made meatballs I used to take store bought ones, but when I saw a recipe for pork meatballs that are made with ginger, fish sauce and crushed Ritz crackers I had to try that. I paired them with roasted aspargus (a recipe my lovely neighbor gave me) - what can I say? It was D-E-L-I-C-I-O-U-S.

And since I had fresh ginger in the house I made this gingery fried rice with bok choy and mushrooms - that is going to be a new favorite! In addition to everything in the recipe I added some lemon zest and scrambled an egg in at the end. It is cooked in a wok and everything comes together fast and easy.

For the first time I tried Trout Armandine, a recipe I found in our local paper. I first couldn't find trout fillets, but then Trader Joe's started to carry frozen ones - fine with me. I was a bit nervous making these - there really was no need for that, they turned out fine and were super yummy. I will certainly try more dishes with trout fillets.

What about a cheesy spicy black bean bake? Perfect on a cold evening.

Or creamy gnocchi with sundried tomatoes and basil (a family favorite)?

We do like cauliflower - a lot. I'm always on the look-out for new recipes. I found a delicious recipe for roasted garlic parmesan cauliflower. An entire stick of butter goes into the crust - it's heaven! I paired it with Kibbeh, a new item at Trader Joes's that I simply had to try since I love Middle Eastern food (it's good, I can recommend it).

I had quite some leftover of the butter-garlic-parmesan mix. A couple days later I dipped cubes of boneless, skinless chicken thighs in it and "threw" them in a stir-fry with rice noodles and veggies. The remaining leftovers (yes, there still was quite some left) went on top of Alaskan sockeye salmon that I then baked and served with roasted carrots and zucchini a few days later.

My last dish is something that I made just this weekend - leftovers will be served sometime this week. It's a coq au vin rosé - the lighter wine makes it perfect for other seasons as well.

What is your favorite winter food?

Autumn Cuisine

 

Farfalle with shrimp and roasted bell pepper drizzled with herb infused olive oil

What a start to the new year it has been! I'm still a bit shaken, shocked but not surprised. Unfortunately, my anxiety has flared up again after I was able to get it under control during the holidays.

Cooking has always calmed me. Cutting up vegetables, measuring out the spices, trying out new recipes, changing old dishes into smething new and exciting helps me to forget everything else for at least a short time. I usually listen to some music while cooking - sometimes it's soothing, calming music, sometimes it's fast and I want to dance - so I'm standing in front of my stove swinging my hips!

Lemon chicken with orzo and leeks

Autumn arrives rather late in my corner of the world and then lingers well into December. The food is changing from the rather light summer fare to heartier dishes.

One of the most wonderful things about fall is the abundance of vegetables available at the farmers market. One of the vendors offers an interesting variety of squash and zucchini, among them the Eight-ball zucchini, a small round zucchini that you can stuff with all kinds of wonderful food and flavor.

Every morning I get the morning briefing of the New York Times in my inbox and it always links to one recipe. Some of them I don't care for, but some I want to try out. We love brussels sprouts and when the NYT published a tasty sounding recipe I had to make it. It is easy to make, only has a few ingredients (I skipped the honey because I just don't like it), is wonderfully delicious and quickly became a favorite in our household.

Crisp gnocchi with brussels sprouts and brown butter

Of course Thanksgiving is in autumn. That was a different story this year. Not only was it the first Thanksgiving without our daughter, we also couldn't celebrate with our friends. Usually we go to a friend's house and celebrate with her and her huge family. This Thanksgiving was a lot quieter and since we don't really like turkey we skipped on that as well. I wasn't in the mood for cooking an elaborate meal anyway. Luckily, Trader Joe's saved the day with their tasty beef en croute and sweet potato gnocchi in sage butter. I just had to thaw the beef for 24 hours, throw it in the oven and make the gnocchi in the pan. Easy peasy - and surprisingly delicious. Beef it up (excuse the pun) with a bottle of really good red wine and you have a lovely Thanksgiving dinner.

There are a couple more pasta and meat dishes I at least want to mention here without getting into more detail:

Creamy spinach and mushroom tortellini with caramelized onions

Sausage and peppers pasta with broccoli

Loaded Italian sausage

Balsamic chicken with mushrooms and couscous

One kind of food I shouldn't forget - soup. Now I am not very good at making delicious soups; good soup can be quite time intensive to make. We often have soup on the days that I am at work (either that or leftovers) and usually it's store-bought soup that I spruce up a little bit. Trader Joe's has an organic tomato and roasted red bell pepper soup (that is also low sodium) that by itself is very tasty. Here is how I change it a little bit: I stir minced ginger into sour cream and drizzle pumpkin seeds with good olive oil. Then I spoon a big dollop of the ginger sour cream in the soup and top it with the pumpkin seeds. It is a very satisfying meal.

What's for dessert? you might ask. Simple - fresh pineapple guavas from the garden. They also make a great snack.

I hope you enjoyed this culinary post. If there is a dish or two that you are interested in the recipe, let me know. It will become a future post.

Fresh and Local

With all the sad events that our country has experienced over the past days I didn't feel like writing my blog at all. Like so many others I tried to understand what is happening, and I still don't understand. I'm just incredibly sad about the direction the US has been taking for quite some time. That's all I'll be saying here.

A place where I often feel community and where everybody is welcome is our farmers market. We are lucky to have two year-round farmers markets here with most of the booths selling organic food and most of them coming from our county. I love to support local businesses, and one of the best ways to do this is at the farmers market.

Again, this will be a very photo heavy post.

Walking along the booths feels like being in a candy store for me. The colors, the scent, the beautiful displays - how can you not like that? I love to see the seasonal fruit and vegetables. It is so easy to tell who is a local farmer and who is not. Usually I tend towards the local farmer, even though their produce doesn't look quite as crisp and clean. However, I do know where it comes from, and often we strike up a conversation.

Last Saturday a farmer and I were exchanging ideas what to cook using eggplants and how. It was so inspiring. Her eggplants were small and absolutely yummy looking - I knew that they would cook up fast and would just go well with my own home grown zucchini and a few tomatoes.

Talking of tomatoes... there were already the first tomatoes available, wonderful sweet and juicy Early Girls. They were so delicious in our Caprese that we had yesterday for dinner - one of my very favorite summer foods.

I saw beautiful greens, onions, squash and zucchini...

... as well as radishes and fresh garlic - the garlic really does it for me! I love garlic and use it generously!

There were peaches - oh, how do i love peaches! -, grapes (after all, this is wine country), blackberries, strawberries and blueberries, all of them delicious.

There are two bakers at the market, and I buy from both of them. Their bread is to die for. They use a lot of whole and/or ancient grain. One of the bakers likes to put fancy designs on top of the crust so that their bread looks even more tempting. I can never pass the bread booths without buying one or two loaves. They never keep long in our German household.

There is coffee, too, if you like - organic, fair trade, low acid coffee roasted here in Santa Rosa, freshly brewed right here at the booth. A pleasant break while you're shopping!

And of course there are flowers. What is a farmers market without flowers?

This is a very important part of summer that I love. When I work on Saturdays during the school year I cannot go to the farmers market (so I will have to bake my own bread again!). Having lived in Europe for 40 years where it is quite common to shop at the local farmers markets in all seasons, rain or shine,  I know that I will miss it - that's why I enjoy it the more at this time.

Tell me - do you often shop at the farmers market? Do you enjoy what they have to offer? Or are you perfectly happy with the supermarkets in your area?