Cook with the Chef: Lorin Parrish of Body, July 11 2009

RAW SWISS CHARD SALAD (with Lorin Parrish of Body)

Salad Instructions:

Mash 1 avocado

1 head of ribbon-cut Swiss chard, dice stems

1 large head or 2 small of ribbon-cut bok choy or any local Asian green

Mix avocado, chard and bok choy until leaves are well-coated

Toss the following ingredients into avocado mixture:

1 cup fresh peas, cut into 1-inch pieces (leave in the pod) or any local pea

1 cup, fresh green beans, cut into 2-inch pieces or any local bean

1/4 – 1/2 cups Hatch chile pepper (local, diced if hot, chopped if sweet)

1 large carrot, sliced

1 large turnip, small-cubed

1 small zucchini, julienned

1 small cucumber, sliced

2 cup raw pecans chopped or any local nut

1/2 cup cherries (or any local fruit)

1/2 cup apricots (or any local fruit)

1/4 cup fresh dill, finely chopped

1/4 cup fresh basil, julienned

Dressing Instructions:

Mix in a blender and pour over salad

1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil

1/2 cup fresh lemon juice

1/4 cup wheat-free tamari

3 tb honey

4 clove garlic (heart removed)

1/4 tsp freshly ground pepper

Cook with the Chef: Melanie Milasinovich of The Sacred Way, July 25 2009

Garden Fresh Paella (Melanie Milasinovich of The Sacred Way)

INGREDIENTS: 
2 – 2.5 cups Spanish Rice: Bomba has a higher yield, use 1/4 -1/3 per person. 
1/2 cup Spanish Olive oil (Light virgin oil) 
2 med Onions minced 
2 med Peppers minced 
2 med Tomatoes fresh, ripe 
6 Garlic cloves minced 
2 cups Snap Peas, Snow Peas or Broad Beans 
1 med (12oz.) White Spanish Beans 
1 med (12oz) Artichoke Hearts 
1 Tbs. Spanish paprika Mild 
1/2 tsp. Saffron and Sea Salt 
1/2 cup sliced Piquillo Peppers ( Garnish ) 
1 cup Dry White Wine 
8-9 cups Veggie Stock: 3 cups to 1 cup of Rice, homemade is best, leeks, potatoes, carrots, onions, garlic, herbs, greens, salt
Herbs: Choice or combination Thyme, Basil, Savory, Fresh 3 Tbs. or Dry 1 Tbs. 
Garnish: Peppers, Scallions, Yellow Squash or Zucchini, Broccoli Raab, Chard (Peppers make a camelized base for the pan which later gives the rice a golden crust)

PROCEDURE:

• Saute Veggies used for the garnish in hot oil. Then remove and keep warm.
• Saute Minced Onions, Peppers, Garlic till soft. Add dry herbs and paprika
• Grate Tomatoes over the pan, remove skin
• Add a couple of cups of Stock
• Add Rice and sear with White wine
• Mix until even, add more stock (check salt in stock) and allow the rice to sit undisturbed).
• Bring to a boil, check to see if rice is sticking, if so lower the middle burner.
• Add white beans, artichoke hearts, fresh chopped herbs.
• Add more stock, add paprika and salt if needed.
• Mortar and pestle the Saffron to a powder.
• Add 1 cup of stock to the Saffron and wait a few minutes to soften.
• Drizzle Saffron mixture evenly into the pan.
• Lightly take a spoon to infuse the saffron into the pan, without disturbing the rice.
• Keep checking if the rice is sticking; work your flame so the rice is cooking evenly, make sure there is enough stock. If rice is still hard, add more stock.
• When the rice is close to finishing, add the Garnish Veggies, decorate your pan.
• Turn off the heat, cover with foil. Wait 5-10 min. Serve with a tossed green salad.

Cook with the Chef: Joel Coleman of Mauka, July 4th and 7th 2009

River Canyon Beef Salad (Joel Coleman of Mauka)

INGREDIENTS: 
1lb skirt steak (cut into 4 oz portions) 
4 cups Napa cabbage (julienne) 
1/4 cup pickled mango 
1/2 red onion (thinly sliced) 
1/4 cup macadamia nuts (rough chop) 
4 Tbsp cilantro (torn leaves) 
1/2 cup Nuoc Cham: 1 cup fish sauce, 2 cups water, 1 cup sugar, 1 cup lime juice, 5 thai chiles 1 Tbsp garlic (minced); Heat all ingredients in saucepan until sugar is disolved. Refrigerate.

PROCEDURE:

• Season skirt steak with salt and pepper and grill 2 minutes on each side until rare to med rare.
• Let rest for 2 minutes and slice.
• Combine with the rest of the ingredients in a bowl and serve.
• Spoon additional sauce over salad.

Cook with the Chef: Michelle Blodget of La Montanita Coop, June 30 2009

Seared River Canyon Ranch Beef with Blue Corn Polenta, Cilantro-Lime Crema, Grilled Chipotle-Peach and Pistachio Compote (Michelle Blodget of La Montanita Coop)

INGREDIENTS: 
4 1/2lb. River Canyon Ranch steaks (you can use top or bottom round steaks, or if you prefer, a more expensive cut such as flank steaks or tenderloins) 
1 12oz. bag blue corn meal 
8 oz. fresh goat cheese 
8 oz. grated asiago cheese 
32 oz. whole milk 
1 8oz. bag shelled pistachios 
1 box micro greens 
1 jalapeno 
2-3 T chipotle powder 
1 lime 
2-3 peaches 
honey to taste 
1 cup orange juice 
1/2 cup olive oil 
salt and pepper to taste

PROCEDURE:

1. Season steaks with salt and pepper; wrap and save for later.
2. Slice jalapeno in half, remove seeds from both sides- remember to wear gloves or not touch anything until you’ve washed your hands afterwards. Small dice jalapeno.
3. In a medium sauce pot, heat 1/4 cup olive oil. Saute jalapeno 1-2 minutes. Over low heat, add blue corn meal, stir together. Add 12 oz. whole milk and stir frequently- as the corn meal absorbs the liquid add more milk until the polenta is soft and cooked all the way through. Mix in asiago and season to taste with salt and pepper. Reserve on the side.
4. Mince the cilantro.
5. In a small bowl, mix together goat cheese, juice of 1 lime and cilantro- season with salt to taste.
6. Shell pistachios and rough chop to small pieces.
7. Large dice peaches and put them on skewers. Grill peaches lightly on all sides- be careful of peaches that are too ripe and may fall off the skewers.
8. Rough chop grilled peaches.
9. In a small sauce pot, heat orange juice; add honey and reduce to syrupy consistency.
10. In a small bowl, mix together peaches, chipotle powder, pistachios, orange-honey sauce, and salt and pepper to taste.
11. In a large saute pan, heat 1/4 cup olive oil. Sear steaks on both sides and finish in the oven at 350 degrees to desired temperature.
12. Reheat polenta.
13. Slice and serve the steak atop polenta and garnish with crema, compote, and micro greens.

Serves 4.

Cook with the Chef: Oliver Ridgeway, June 20-23 2009

Flank Steak Bruschetta with Heirloom Tomato Salsa (Oliver Ridgeway of Inn of The Anasazi)

Heirloom Tomato Salsa

INGREDIENTS: 
4 medium heirloom tomatoes 
1 small onion 
3 cloves garlic 
1 jalapeno pepper 
fresh cilantro 
juice of 1 small lime 
1 teaspoon cumin 
salt & pepper

PROCEDURE: 
1. Roughly chop tomatoes and onion and throw in a mixing bowl. 
2. Mince garlic; remove seeds from jalapeno pepper and mince. Add to the tomatoes and onion. 
3. Chop a handful of fresh cilantro and add it to the salsa. 
4. Add the lime juice and cumin to salsa, then season to taste with salt and pepper.

Flank Steak

INGREDIENTS: 
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped 
1 tablespoon grill seasoning blend 
1 teaspoon smoked paprika, ground chipotle chili powder or ground cumin 
2 teaspoon hot sauce 
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce 
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar, 2 splashes 
1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil 
2 pounds flank steak

PROCEDURE: 
Mix garlic, steak seasoning, smoked paprika, chipotle or cumin, hot sauce, Worcestershire sauce and vinegar. Whisk in extra-virgin olive oil. Place meat in shallow dish and coat it evenly in marinade. Let stand 15 minutes. 
Heat a grill pan or outdoor grill to high heat. 
Grill flank steak 6 to 7 minutes on each side.

Bruschetta

INGREDIENTS: 
1 narrow Italian or French loaf of bread 
1 head garlic, cut in 1/2 crosswise 
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil 
Kosher salt and pepper

PROCEDURE: 
Preheat oven on broiler setting. Place a rack approximately 6 inches from broiler. 
Slice the loaf of bread, on the bias, into 3/4-inch slices. Place bread in oven on sheet pan and broil until golden brown on both sides, approximately 2 minutes for the first side and 1 to 1 1/2 for second side. Remove to a platter and rub each slice of bread with the garlic and then brush with olive oil. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and serve immediately.

Create all recipes, then slice the steak against the grain and assemble on bruschettas and top with the salsa. Delicious.

Declaration for Food and Agriculture

Declaration for Healthy Food and Agriculture

en Español

We, the undersigned, believe that a healthy food system is necessary to meet the urgent challenges of our time. Behind us stands a half-century of industrial food production, underwritten by cheap fossil fuels, abundant land and water resources, and a drive to maximize the global harvest of cheap calories. Ahead lie rising energy and food costs, a changing climate, declining water supplies, a growing population, and the paradox of widespread hunger and obesity.

These realities call for a radically different approach to food and agriculture. We believe that the food system must be reorganized on a foundation of health: for our communities, for people, for animals, and for the natural world. The quality of food, and not just its quantity, ought to guide our agriculture. The ways we grow, distribute, and prepare food should celebrate our various cultures and our shared humanity, providing not only sustenance, but justice, beauty and pleasure.

Governments have a duty to protect people from malnutrition, unsafe food, and exploitation, and to protect the land and water on which we depend from degradation. Individuals, producers, and organizations have a duty to create regional systems that can provide healthy food for their communities. We all have a duty to respect and honor the laborers of the land without whom we could not survive. The changes we call for here have begun, but the time has come to accelerate the transformation of our food and agriculture and make its benefits available to all.

We believe that the following twelve principles should frame food and agriculture policy, to ensure that it will contribute to the health and wealth of the nation and the world. A healthy food and agriculture policy:

1. Forms the foundation of secure and prosperous societies, healthy communities, and healthy people.
2. Provides access to affordable, nutritious food to everyone.
3. Prevents the exploitation of farmers, workers, and natural resources; the domination of genomes and markets; and the cruel treatment of animals, by any nation, corporation or individual.
4. Upholds the dignity, safety, and quality of life for all who work to feed us.
5. Commits resources to teach children the skills and knowledge essential to food production, preparation, nutrition, and enjoyment.
6. Protects the finite resources of productive soils, fresh water, and biological diversity.
7. Strives to remove fossil fuel from every link in the food chain and replace it with renewable resources and energy.
8. Originates from a biological rather than an industrial framework.
9. Fosters diversity in all its relevant forms: diversity of domestic and wild species; diversity of foods, flavors and traditions; diversity of ownership.
10. Requires a national dialog concerning technologies used in production, and allows regions to adopt their own respective guidelines on such matters.
11. Enforces transparency so that citizens know how their food is produced, where it comes from, and what it contains.
12. Promotes economic structures and supports programs to nurture the development of just and sustainable regional farm and food networks.

Our pursuit of healthy food and agriculture unites us as people and as communities, across geographic boundaries, and social and economic lines. We pledge our votes, our purchases, our creativity, and our energies to this urgent cause.

Why did this declaration emerge?

The movement to create a healthier food and agriculture policy in the US has been slowly and steadily gaining ground for well over a decade. Those all around the nation who began the work are encouraged by the progress and simultaneously concerned by the pace of change given the disproportionate impact of food and agriculture on personal and planetary health.

The public’s increasing interest and the media’s deepening coverage of climate change, energy, agriculture, rural poverty, labor issues, food costs, food quality and obesity may finally illuminate the interrelationship of these crises and provide a context for urgently needed changes, which are clearly possible.

The Declaration is meant to provide

1. A clear statement of what kind of policy is needed now, endorsed by a broad base of organizations and individuals with a long-established commitment to a healthier food and agriculture.
2. An invitation to all Americans to join in the improvement effort by taking action in their own lives and communities and by offering them a way to call on policymakers to support comprehensive change.
3. A set of principles from which policy makers can craft policy that will lead to a healthier system.

Click here to endorse and/or comment on the Draft Declaration.

Have feedback? Contact us directly at feedback@fooddeclaration.org. Your information won’t appear on the website.

As Food Becomes a Cause, Meeting Puts Issues on the Table

By Jane Black

Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, August 30, 2008; Page A01

This is how far some people will go these days to get locally grown food: In California, more than 40 residents volunteered their back yards to an aspiring young farmer who couldn’t afford to buy land of his own. In exchange for a weekly supply of produce, they would let him till their all-American lawns into rows of lettuce, broccoli, squash and peas.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/29/AR2008082903447.html

Squash Blossoms!

Squash Blossom

It’s squash blossom AND peach season in Santa Fe!

Chefs blossom with creative squash recipes Chef David Rosales’ recipe for squash blossom filling incorporates roasted poblano peppers, corn and onion, creating a traditional-tasting Mexican dish. For an Italian take on squash blossoms, try deep-frying them or stuffing them with a mixture of ricotta and Parmesan cheeses. Rutland Herald (Vt.)/San Francisco Chronicle (7/29) Take advantage of summer’s peaches Roasting peaches helps concentrate the sweetness and softens the fruit, making it easier to use in pie and even ice cream recipes. Peach crostata is an Italian-inspired dessert that can be made without a pie plate and bakes in 30 to 45 minutes. St. Petersburg Times (Fla.)/TampaBay.com (7/29)

The No Dig Garden

THE CALIFORNIA GARDEN

How do his veggies grow? The no-dig way

Email Picture

Robert Lachman / Los Angeles Times

Pat Marfisi carries alfalfa hay into his Hollywood Hills backyard, but there aren’t any animals to feed. It’s for his “no dig” vegetable garden.

Pat Marfisi applies the low-water, layering technique to his Hollywood Hills plot and reaps an abundance of organic produce.

By Lisa Boone, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
June 12, 2008

PAT MARFISI carries bales of alfalfa hay and straw into the center aisle of his Hollywood Hills vegetable garden and begins tearing off pieces of the stuff. He doesn’t have any animals to feed, just his “no-dig” landscape: raised beds using lasagna-like layers of fodder, bone and blood meal and compost — and remarkably little water.

Now that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has declared a statewide drought, Marfisi’s 300-square-foot patch seems more relevant than ever. It’s his personal horticultural laboratory for a low-water, sustainable technique he learned working on organic farms in Australia last year. http://www.latimes.com/features/home/la-hm-nodig12-2008jun12,0,55177.story

GARDENING

How to start a no-dig garden

June 12, 2008

 

PAT MARFISI calls Esther Deans’ no-dig method of gardening “absurdly easy.” Here, he offers tips on where to buy alfalfa and straw and how to create a 300-square-foot vegetable garden, which took him only two hours to complete:

MATERIALS:

Newspaper, alfalfa, straw, compost, blood meal and bone meal.

BASICS:

1. Lay 10 to 20 sheets of newspaper on the ground — soil, grass or concrete. This stops weeds and attracts worms. Saturate with water and dust with blood meal and bone meal.

2. Add a pad of alfalfa and dust with blood and bone meal. Bales of hay and straw come apart in 2- to 3-inch-thick pads.

3. Next come 8 inches of straw, again dusted with blood and bone meal. Don’t skimp on the alfalfa and straw, Marfisi says, because “this stuff really compresses in the first few weeks and then you lose the benefits of low water need and thriving plants.”

4. Wet all this down.

5. Finally, top off with 3 to 4 inches of compost, which also will compress.

6. Now plant seeds or seedlings.

FINDING FODDER

Alfalfa and hay can be found at grain and hay suppliers. There are a few near the L.A. Equestrian Center in Burbank. At Stephens Hay & Grain in Glendale, for example, a 110-pound alfalfa bale is $18.50; a 60-pound bale of straw is $7.50. Delivery is available.

NO DIG BOOKS

“Esther Deans’ No Dig Gardening & Leaves of Life,” by Esther Deans. The 2001 reprint is available at harpercollins.com.au.

“How to Have a Green Thumb Without an Aching Back: A New Method of Mulch Gardening,” by Ruth Stout.

“The One-Straw Revolution,” by Masanobu Fukuoka.

—

Lisa Boone

 

Chefs Marc Black and Michelle Blodget Cook with the Chef Recipe

Cook with the Chef June 21, 2008

La Montanita Coop

 

 

Chefs Marc Black and Michelle Blodget from the Montanita Coop prepared a delicious spicy seared chicken using Pollo Real chicken, Heidi’s Red Chile Raspberry Jam, fresh red onion and cilantro, all purchased at the Farmer’s Market.

 

Spicy Seared Chicken with Charred Red Onion Relish and Red Chile Raspberry Sauce

– Recipe by Marc Black
 
Serves: 4
 
4 boneless skinless chicken breasts
Cajun spice rub
1 Red onion
Cilantro
1 Jalapeno, seeded and diced
2 limes, juiced
Olive Oil
1 10 oz. jar Heidi’s Raspberry Red Chile Jam
1 16 oz. container of More Than Gourmet Demi-Glace Gold

Sea salt to taste
Black pepper to taste
 
1.  Marinate the chicken in the juice of one lime and spice rub for at least one hour, preferably overnight.

2.  In a sauté pan, heat 2 T of olive oil.  Quarter and peel the red onion, leaving the root end on for the moment.  Sear all sides until a dark golden brown, and then remove.  Small dice the onion.

3.  Mince the cilantro. 

4.  Seed and small dice the jalapeno.  Make sure to wear gloves while doing this or don’t touch anything until you’ve washed your hands afterward. 

5.  Mix the onion, cilantro, jalapeno, remaining juice of one lime, about 3-4 T of olive oil, salt and pepper.  Cover and allow to marinate. 

6.  Slice the chicken breasts on a bias.  Heat 3-4 T of olive oil in a sauté pan and sear the chicken until it is done; it should be moist. 

7.  While the chicken is cooking, heat up the demi-glace in a sauté pan.  Add about half the jar of jam and heat together.  Add your own herbs or spices if you wish, including salt and pepper. 

8.  Serve the chicken atop a bed of your favorite local mixed greens with the relish and sauce.