Lamb with Snowbank Morels, Braised Greens and Wilted Pea Shoot and Bok Choy Salad

So, I made a base vinaigrette that serves as a sauce for this whole dish. You should make this first, then cook the rest of the items. I made it in a mortar and pestle, but it would be much easier in a blender.

1/4 cup mint leaves
2 T green onions chopped
1 tsp fresh ginger, chopped
1/4 cup olive oil
2 T red wine or rice wine vinegar (I used the daikon pickle brine from the previous recipe)
Salt, to taste

Add all ingredients and blend. You can make it as smooth or chunky as you want.

Side salad:
One small head of bok choy, chopped large
About 6 pea shoots, chopped large
Small amount of daikon pickles chopped
1 Tsp mint dressing (above)

Add all ingredients to a bowl and toss until leaves are uniformly coated by dressing. Let this sit while preparing the rest of the dish. This will wilt the greens.

Lamb and Braised Greens
2 oz lamb meat cut into 1 inch cubes
2 snow bank mushrooms chopped
1 T mint dressing (above) used instead of oil

Heat a medium sized saute pan. Add mint dressing as you would oil. When hot, add lamb meat and morels and toss to coat. Heat for several minutes until the lamb has a nice coloration. Set aside on a plate and cover to keep heated. Use the same pan to quick-braise the greens. In this instance, I used kohlrabi greens and tuscan kale, but feel free to use whatever greens you like.

2 cups mixed greens (tuscan kale and kohlrabi greens are pictured) chopped large
1 T water
1 tsp red wine vinegar
1 tsp sambal oelek or red pepper flakes
salt, to taste

Put the pan back on the heat. Add add all the ingredients except the salt and cover with a lid. Cook until the greens are bright green and shiny. Season to taste with salt. Add the greens and salad to the plate with the lamb and enjoy!

This was my first time eating kohlrabi greens. They are much more fibrous and pungent than the tuscan kale, but still good. The snowbank mushrooms were the perfect pairing for the lamb. I don't know that I have ever had lamb with mushrooms, but I would do it again in a heartbeat.

Daikon Pickles

One of my favorite things to make at work is pickles. There are endless variations of vinegars, vegetables and seasonings to add to make endless variations of pickles. I have been pondering using fresh herbs in pickles for a long time, so I decided to infuse rice wine vinegar with mint for this version. Be careful, making pickles makes your house smell of vinegar, so you should do it on a day when you can open up the windows and air it out.
If you aren't familiar with daikon, it is a root vegetable shaped like a large, blunt carrot that is white and relatively mild with a little kick of spiciness.

12oz Rice Wine Vinegar
1/2 bunch of mint

Put vinegar and mint (stems and all) in a non-reactive (stainless steel or non-stick) in a saucepan and bring up to a boil. Remove from heat, cover and let sit 20 minutes.

12oz water
1 T coriander seed
1 cinnamon stick

3 cups daikon, peeled and chopped into uniform shapes (I cut them into half moons)

1/4 cup chopped green onions
1/4 cup salt, preferably non-iodized, sea salt or kosher salt (iodized salt will make your pickles taste bad)
1/4 cup sugar

Heat a large non-reactive stock pot. Add spices and toast until fragrant (maybe for a minute or so). Add the water. Strain mint-vinegar into stock pot and discard mint. Add the remaining ingredients and boil for 5 minutes. The pickles will continue to cook until the brine cools completely, so you want them not quite done when you pull them from the heat. Taste them. When they are just a little too cruchy for your taste, pull them off the heat.

Remember, hot pickles will taste different than they will when cool. Once cool, store them in the refrigerator with all of the brine and seasonings. Over time, the seasonings will impart more flavor to the pickles. These should last for about a month. This is a fairly salty pickle, so feel free to reduce the amount of salt or add more sugar.

These are great eaten from the jar or sliced and put on salads.

Farmer's Market Greens and Pasta

So, my meal today was inspired by my trip to the farmer's market. It's so easy to forget the abundance and quality of produce that is at the market. When I first got there, I was the proverbial kid in the candy store until I settled myself down by eating a bowl of dal (indian lentils with brown rice). Thus sated, I was able to think clearly and ended up buying strawberries, small bok choy, kohlrabi with attached greens, tuscan kale, pea shoots, a gigantic daikon (which I mean to pickle) with attached greens, green onions, mint and some lamb stir fry cuts. Oh, and I picked up some snowbank mushrooms because they are almost out of season. So, that is probably what I will be posting about for the week to come.

This is the simplest meal I have had in a long time. The only seasonings are butter, olive oil, salt and red wine vinegar so you get a lot of that refreshing green flavor that comes from spring greens. Make sure you have all of you ingredients prepped before putting the pasta in the water. Sauteeing these vegetables should take no longer than the 7-8 minutes it takes to cook the pasta.

2 tsp butter
2 tsp olive oil
1 small head of bok choy sliced in half
1 T sliced green onions
2 leaves tuscan kale, sliced into 1/2 inch strips
Handful of pea shoots
1 cup pasta
1 tsp red wine vinegar
salt to taste

Heat 1/4 the butter and olive oil in the pan. Add the bok choy and sutee for 1 minute. Add the onions and kale. Drizzle a 1/2 tsp of vinegar in the pan and cover with a lid (this will steam the kale). Cook for a few minutes until the kale is deep green and starting to wilt. Put contents of the pan on a plate. Add another 1/4 of the butter and olive oil to the pan and add the pea shoots turning so they heat evenly. The leaves should wilt and the stems should still be a little crunchy. Add the pea shoots to the plate with the kale. Cover with a lid to keep heated while finishing the pasta.
Drain the pasta and add to the pan you cooked the vegetables in. Add the remaing butter, olive oil, and 1/2 tsp of vinegar and toss to coat. Serves 1.

This isn't a showstopper presentation-wise, but it is delicious and packed with nutrients and high in vitamins A and C. I chose tuscan kale because it is one of the milder cruciferous greens. I found recently I had problems eating more than a small amount of turnips greens because the taste was so pungent. It turns out tuscan kale is delicious.

Warm Asparagus, Mushroom and Farro Salad

So, here was my quick lunch. All together, it took about ten minutes from start to eating. I had farro left over from a previous meal, so it was pretty much chop, sautee, chomp. It was good and simple, not necessarily show off to your guests good. I used Snowbank Mushrooms in this which are also referred to as False Morels. They have a softer texture than morels which might be a turnoff for people who don't like mushrooms, but they are highly flavorful and quite fantastic.

Side Salad:
Chopped Romaine
Chopped Tomatoes
Sliced Green Onions
Parsley, chopped
Dash of Red Wine Vinegar
Dash of Olive Oil
Salt

Toss and Serve.

Aparagus and Farro Salad

1 T butter (sustitute olive oil for vegan dish)

Bottom parts of green onions, chopped

4 spears chopped asparagus
1/4 cup snowbanks mushrooms, chopped
1/2 cup cooked farro
Parsley, chopped
salt, to taste

Heat the butter in a saute pan. Add the onions and cook until fragrant. Add the asparagus and mushrooms and saute until starting to color. Add the farro and cook until warmed. Finish with parsley and salt.

Greek Style Broccolini with Wheat Bulghur

So, in the interests of furthering my healthy food education, I have decided I am going to try and make a new recipe every day using some seasonal fruit/vegetable and make it either vegan or healthy. Here's the first one: Greek Style Broccolini with Wheat Bulgur! Yeah, it sounds kind of weird and the flavor profile was very different than what I am used to, but once I ate two bites, I couldn't stop. This also was the first time I haven't knee jerked garlic and onions into my recipe (mostly because I didn't have them) and I have to say they weren't missed.

1 cup blanched broccolini (my seasonal veg choice)
3 small crimini mushrooms, very thinly sliced
1 T toasted sunflower seeds
1 T olive oil
8 capers chopped
2 moroccan oil cured olives*, chopped fine
1/2 tsp chiffonaded mint, fresh
1/2 tsp chiffonaded basil, fresh
1 lemon wedge

Bulghur
1/2 cup wheat bulghur
1 cup boiling water
1 tsp mixed mediterranean dried herbs
1 large piece lemon zest

First, boil the water, herbs and zest for the bulghur, add the bulghur, cover and let sit for 20 minutes.

For the veg, saute the olive oil, mushrooms and sunflower seeds until they start to brown. Add the olives and capers and cook until the mushrooms are almost done. Add the broccolini and cook until heated. Finish with a squeeze of lemon and the basil and mint. Take off heat and let cook for 30 seconds. Taste. If it is too salty or sour, add some more olive oil.

*This was my first time trying moroccan olives. They are darker and more pungent than kalamatas and extremely salty. Use sparingly.