Sun-Dried Tomato Pesto awesomeness

After supper tonight, I have decided that the sun-dried tomato pesto and feta cheese combo is DELICIOUS on pretty much any grilled sandwich. We made turkey paninis tonight:

Panini Of The Day

2 slices pumpernickel
1 - 1.5 slices provolone
2 oz sliced deli turkey
1.5 Tbsp. crumbled feta
2 tsp sun-dried tomato pesto
Few pieces fresh spinach

Mix the pesto and feta together and spread on one slice of pumpernickel. Pile on the sliced turkey, spinach, provolone, and top with the second slice of pumpernickel. Grill on a pre-heated panini press or George Foreman for about 4 minutes. Enjoy!

I see a lot of improvisation on this theme before I get tired of the combo... I'm thinking avocado next.

CSA Basket #3 and a frittata

Saturday (June 19) I picked up our CSA basket directly from Lyn at the Farmer's Market. Rob and I were going out of town that afternoon, and I didn't want to wait for Lyn to deliver our basket to Bob's. Our basket contained a bunch of beautiful lettuce, spinach, and spring onions. Lyn hadn't grabbed enough eggs when he left the farm, so he asked if I would mind getting 2 dozen eggs next week. I didn't mind not getting eggs because I still had a half dozen left at home!

As I put the veggies away, and Rob got ready to go, I decided to make a frittata before we hit the road. I picked all of the spinach out of our basket and wilted it in our 8-inch non-stick skillet, and tossed in a few onions and a little fresh sage that I had sitting in the fridge. I used up the last of the eggs from last week, and made a tasty, tasty frittata.


In the process of eating our frittata, we also polished off a pint of blackberries. It was the perfect meal before hitting the road.

We took the scenic route to Rob's brother's house in Brookings and partied with Kyle and his friends Saturday night. Sunday, we picked up my Grandma in Flandreau and drove out to Mom and Dad's for some birthday cake (I'm 27!). Dad grilled hamburgers and brats, and we hung out Sunday night and watched a movie. Monday, we drove most of the way home on Hwy 44. It was a far more interesting route - even if it took us almost 7.5 hours! It was a great weekend!

Steak Panini with Sun-Dried Tomato Pesto

I went grocery shopping tonight for no particular reason. Mostly, I wanted to wander in the grocery store. I had selected a couple of recipes that I wanted to prepare in the next few days, so I did have a list, sort of.

I went to the store looking for pork chops and pork tenderloin. Unfortunately all of the pork tenderloin (that wasn't pre-seasoned) was in 3 lb packages, and I only needed 1 1/2 lbs at the most. The $12 price tag kept me from buying the larger tenderloin and cutting it in half, so I was in need of another type of meat. Safeway had almost every cut of beef on sale, and I found some thin cut bottom round steaks for $2 each.

I also noticed that the bakery section had some bleu cheese and peppercorn ciabatta rolls that I had never seen before. My brain immediately jumped on PANINI, so I tossed them in the cart too. On the drive home, I hatched a plan. I was thinking of thin-slicing the steaks and using them in salads or wraps, and I realized that steak panini would be awesome. Last week, I bought some sun-dried tomato pesto, originally thinking I could use it to make a lazy man's sun-dried tomato mayo... and the plan came together.

Steak Panini with Sun-Dried Tomato Pesto
Recipe by Erin Handberg

2 Safeway bleu cheese-peppercorn ciabatta rolls, or other roughly 4" square ciabatta rolls
4 oz steak, thin cut bottom round
3 Tbsp crumbled feta cheese
1 Tbsp store-bought sun-dried tomato pesto
2 slices provolone
Spicy Montreal steak seasoning, to taste

Heat a George Foreman grill or panini press. Season the bottom round steak with spicy Montreal steak seasoning, or salt and pepper. (I like the kick from the steak seasoning and gets used on almost everything!) Grill the steak 4 or 5 minutes or until it's about medium.

While the steaks are cooking, mix the feta and sun-dried tomato pesto with a fork, mashing it together until the pesto is evenly distributed and the mix could be spread easily. Slice the ciabatta rolls horizontally. Place a slice of provolone on the top half of each roll. Divide the sun-dried tomato feta mixture and spread 1/2 of the mixture on the bottom of each roll.

When the steak is finished, slice it in thin strips against the grain of the meat. (This helps keep the ordinarily tough cut tender.) Divide the steak between the rolls.

Grill each roll for 4 or 5 minutes on the Foreman (or panini press). If using a Foreman grill, be sure to hold the top down for the first minute or so to squish the roll down and get the traditional panini grill marks. When the cheese is melted and starts to drip from the roll, remove the panini and cut it in half. Serves 2.

This is perhaps the most delicious panini I've ever eaten, and I'm a huge fan of some of the paninis at one of the coffee shops downtown. The tang from the bleu cheese roll, the spiciness of the steak seasoning, the richness of the meat, and the intenseness of the sun-dried tomato pesto made one pretty darn awesome sandwich! Rob took one bite and began nodding - I didn't even have to ask if he liked it!

As we ate, we discussed other possibilities for the bleu cheese roll and sun-dried tomato feta mix... turkey and spinach, grilled veggies, etc, etc. =)

Bacon-wrapped Jalapeno Poppers

In my recent food blog reading, I've come across a trend: bacon-wrapped jalapeno poppers. Seriously, I've seen the exact same recipe (attributed to the Pioneer Woman) used by no less than 4 other bloggers in the last week. It's crazy. Of course, that meant that I HAD to try it. What's not to love about jalapeno poppers to begin with? When you wrap them in BACON, you simply have to make them. And I managed to convince myself that these are better for you than the traditional fried version, even if they are wrapped in bacon....

Bacon-wrapped Jalapeno Poppers
Taken almost verbatim from Pioneer Woman's recipe

12 jalapenos
3 oz or so of whipped cream cheese
6 slices of black label bacon

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Cut jalapenos in half, length-wise. With a spoon, remove the seeds and white membrane. Smear cream cheese into each jalapeno half. Wrap jalapeno with a half slice of bacon. Secure by sticking toothpick through the middle.

Bake on a pan with a rack in a 375 degree oven for 20-25 minutes. If, after 20 minutes, the bacon doesn’t look brown enough, just turn on the broiler for a couple of minutes to finish it off.

Sadly, these didn't photograph worth a darn, or maybe I have too much of a dirty mind to consider posting the pictures. Either way... I'm SO glad that I listened to all of the other rave reviews! These are worth the 25 minute wait... but if you think you only need 6 poppers, double the recipe.

CSA basket #2 and stir-fry

A week has come and gone already, and it's time for a new CSA basket! I'm really impressed with what the CSA is doing so far this year. The produce is so fresh, and they've managed to keep the bugs at bay. I can't imagine how difficult that is for an organic garden - I have a hard enough time keeping the bugs out of my food when I garden INDOORS. Anyways... today we received huge leaves of lettuce, monstrous spinach, spring onions and there were a few radishes hiding in the corner of the bag. Plus, we got another dozen eggs. I'm still not finished with the eggs from last week!

Though I haven't made anything from our garden loot yet, I do plan on making a big salad and/or frittata tomorrow.

I've been spending the last few days reading food blogs. I discovered this week that if you take a muscle relaxant, no work will happen for at least 12 hours. If you take more than one of them in a day, no work happens for about 30 hours. It's not a linear function... so, despite the fact that I was awake and should have been working, I browsed food blogs and added a about a dozen blogs to my blog roll!

One of the many things I came across on Cookin' Canuck was a chicken stir fry that looked unbelievably delicious. I asked Rob if he wanted broccoli in his stir fry or if I should go for something like snap peas. He picked snap peas, so I ended up modifying her recipe quite a bit in the process of changing veggies and scaling it down to a meal for two. Here goes...

Chicken, Snap Pea and Red Bell Pepper stir-fry
Modified from this recipe by Cookin' Canuck

The Sauce:
1/4 cup orange juice
1/4 cup hoisin
1 Tbsp soy sauce
1/2 Tbsp sesame oil

The Stir-Fry:
2 Tbsp olive oil, divided
2 skinless, boneless chicken breasts, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
1 Tbsp fresh ginger, chopped
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 red bell pepper, cut into 1/2-inch squares
12 oz (by weight) snap peas, ends trimmed
1 Tbsp black sesame seeds

Stir-fry is all about the prep work, so be sure to take the time to get everything ready before you start cooking!

In a 2-cup measuring cup, measure out the orange juice. Because I'm too lazy to get a measuring cup dirty for the hoisin, I measured that by displacement. Simply add hoisin sauce until the total volume reaches 1/2 cup. Add in the rest of the sauce ingredients and whisk together. Set aside.

Heat a 10-inch skillet (or a 12-inch skillet if you have one) over high heat. Add 1 Tbsp of the olive oil and saute the chicken strips. Add cracked black pepper to taste, about 15-20 grinds from a pepper grinder. Stir the chicken until it is just cooked through. Remove the chicken from the skillet and set aside.

Add the remaining olive oil to the skillet and add the chopped ginger and garlic. Stir about 30 seconds until fragrant, being careful not to burn the garlic, and then add the vegetables. Stir the vegetables for a minute. Then add about 2 Tbsp of water to the skillet and put the lid on to steam the snap peas for a couple of minutes.

When the peas are vibrant green, but still crisp, return the chicken to the pan with the sauce mixture. Stir until the sauce is thoroughly heated. Plate individual portions, sprinkle with sesame seeds, and serve.

This recipe was a fairly large meal, but Rob and I were able to finish the pan of veggie and chicken goodness. If you were to serve this with rice or noodles, you could easily stretch it to serve 3, maybe 4. If I were to make this again, I would add a little corn starch to the sauce. It's delicious the way it is, but I was sad to have "wasted" the sauce that remained in the pan. It would be even more delicious clinging to the veggies. Oh, and because I love spicy food, I would probably replace part of the sesame oil in the sauce with some chili oil. Just some thoughts...

Bento #14 - Snack bento and GORP recipe

I spent several hours at school today working on a lecture for our independent study quantum mechanics class. Our independent studies are extremely useful, because I learn a ton, but they're also a lot of work because the students do the lecturing. Thankfully, there are three of us in the class, so the load is lightened a little from my previous independent study experience. Because I wanted to be home to make supper, I didn't want to take a full meal with me to school. I built a snack bento in my 1 cup Fit & Fresh container. I packed 2 Babybel cheese wheels (original and gouda), 1 Laughing Cow garlic herb cheese wedge, and filled the rest with about a half cup of homemade trail mix.

GORP of sorts

1.5 cups almonds
1.5 cups walnutsa
1 cup pumpkin seeds, roasted and salted
1/2 cup Craisins
1/2 cup Zante currants
1/2 cup Ghirardelli semi-sweet chocolate chips

Mix together and store in a one quart baggie. It doesn't last long!

On a side note: I hadn't planned ahead when I brought the Laughing Cow cheese wedge. I usually like to spread the cheese on something - bread or veggies - but I hadn't brought anything that had a spreadable surface. Enter the humble almond. The unsalted almonds in my GORP were the PERFECT vehicle for the garlic-herb cheese. Mmm...

Farmer's Market Frittata

Okay, the title isn't quite accurate ... it's more of a CSA frittata, but that doesn't have quite the same ring to it.

I'll be honest... I grow quickly tired of turkey sandwiches for lunch when we're dining at home, unlike Rob who could eat them every day, sometimes twice. I do agree that sometimes a turkey sandwich is the perfect solution to too much take out and rich food. Other times, it's extremely boring. Today was one of those "turkey is boring" days.


Spinach, Spring Onion and Mushroom Frittata

2-3 cremini mushrooms, thinly sliced
3 spring onions
1 cup (or so) fresh spinach, tightly packed
1 slice Firehouse beer bread - or other dark brown bread
4 farm fresh eggs
Freshly grated Parmesan cheese, optional

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Select an 8-inch oven proof saute pan and heat on medium heat. Once the pan's hot, saute the mushrooms in a little olive oil until they start to brown. Add in the spring onions and saute for an additional minute. Toss in the freshly washed spinach - the water still clinging on the spinach will help them wilt nicely. While the spinach is wilting, cube the beer bread and whisk the eggs. If the beer bread is particularly stale (like mine was), soak the bread cubes in the eggs for a minute or so. Add the bread and eggs to the pan. Keep the pan on the stove top until the eggs set around the edges. Move the pan to the oven for 8-10 minutes, or until the eggs are set and the edges are brown. After removing the frittata from the oven, grate a little Parmesan over the top, cut into wedges and serve.

CSA basket #1 and a fresh lunch

Rob and I subscribe to a CSA - consumer supported agriculture - from Chadron, NE. Once a week, produce and eggs are delivered to Rapid City, from the first weekend in June to the last weekend of October. Last year, we received a wide variety of vegetables throughout the summer, and even though the bugs and hail eliminated our tomato crop, I really enjoyed the freshness and seasonality. I have eaten garden fresh foods for years growing up on a farm, but apparently a few years of city living caused me to completely forget what an organic carrot tastes like, fresh out of the ground. They're amazing! "Our" farm - Harmony Food and Produce Co - raises everything organically, and the chickens are truly free range. In fact, we got shorted on the pea crop last year because the chickens discovered they liked the pea shoots more than the bugs!

During the summer, we can eat almost exclusively organically between the CSA, Farmer's Market, and Black Hills Milk. I even found local, organic, free range sheep and beef producers where you can buy individual cuts of meat (instead of the whole critter, like it would be if you bought from a typical rancher in the area). It's pretty sweet that you can support individual farmers and get tons of excellent food in the process. That being said... on to the food!

Our first CSA basket consisted of salad greens, spinach, spring onions and eggs. When I say salad greens, I mean a gallon bag full of fresh red and green lettuces. We got almost a whole gallon bag full of spinach too. Did I mention that this is supposed to feed a family of four for a week? =)

I had to come up with something fresh to utilize our tasty picks for the week... Rob had a big salad topped with roasted turkey breast, caesar vinaigrette, and asiago cheese. I decided to have something a little more "gourmet."

Poached Eggs with Spinach and Spring Onion on Seven-seed bread

2 farm fresh chicken eggs
2 cups loosely packed spinach, roughly chopped
1 spring onion, white and light green parts sliced into rounds
1 slice bacon
2 slices Seven-seed soda bread (see previous post for recipe)
sprinkle of asiago cheese

This recipe is really as easy as it sounds.... In a small fry pan with a little oil, saute the onion until just softened. Toss the freshly washed spinach on top of the onion and put a lid on the pan. It takes about a minute or two to wilt the spinach. Stir occasionally. Meanwhile, poach 2 eggs to your desired doneness - I prefer runny yolks. Crisp a slice of bacon (stove or microwave). Assemble the meal by putting the two slices of bread on a plate, top with wilted spinach and onion, divide the slice of bacon among the bread, and add a poached egg to each slice of bread. Break open the yolk of the poached egg so it soaks into the bread, salt and pepper liberally, and sprinkle with asiago cheese.

Tip: I learned this trick from Rob's mom. When you buy bacon - even if you only need one slice - cook the entire pound. Take the leftovers, drain any excess fat, put it in a freezer bag and toss in the freezer. When you want to add bacon to something, simply pull out a fully cooked slice, nuke for 10 seconds or so in the microwave, and voila! It's much cheaper than buying the precooked stuff (and you have some say in the quality of the bacon you're eating), and it's far more efficient than trying to thaw a pound of bacon for one slice.

Seven-seed soda bread

A lot of food happenings have happened in the last week or so. I'll summarize the notable ones in the next couple of posts...

In my interweb browsing, I came across a rather attractive photo of some six-grain soda bread that I just had to make... Earlier that day, I had gone to the pool and covered 21 laps, sat in the sauna for 10 minutes or so, and then decided I should head back to school to get something done... and that's when I tried to take off my pinky toe on the sauna door. Okay, it wasn't that bad, but I did cut the heck out of my toe. After Rob administered first aid, I went back to school for a while and browsed the interwebs. That's when I saw it... Check the original recipe out here.

Rob and I went to the grocery store to collect the seeds I was missing, and I hobbled off to my apartment to bake. Have I mentioned that I love my Kitchen Aid mixer? It's amazing! <3

Seven-seed Soda Bread
A recipe modified from 101cookbooks.com

The seeds:
2 1/2 tablespoons EACH of sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, poppy seeds, flax seeds and red quinoa
1 teaspoon fennel seeds

The rest:
1 3/4 cup whole wheat flour
2 cups white whole wheat flour
2 teas. + a touch more baking soda
1 teas. (scant) fine grain sea salt (I used less sea salt than called for because some of the seeds I bought were salted)
1 3/4 cup buttermilk + a bit extra for brushing the bread before baking

Preheat your oven to 400F. Combine all of the seeds in a small bowl and set aside.

Measure the flours, baking soda, and salt into a large mixing bowl. Stir in all but 2 tablespoons of the seeds. Put your mixer on the lowest setting and add the buttermilk. Mix until the dough just comes together. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead about 1 minute until you can form it into a ball.

Place the dough on a lightly floured baking sheet. Cut a cross into the top, cutting halfway through the loaf. Brush with buttermilk and sprinkle with the remaining seeds, making sure plenty of seeds make it down into the cracks.

Bake for 35 - 40 minutes, or until the bread is golden crusted on top and bottom. Cool on a wire rack.

It's truly delicious! Using both white and regular whole wheat flours resulted in a rather dense loaf - you could exchange one of the two for unbleached all-purpose flour, and I'm sure it'd be lighter. Either way, the bread was so delicious that Rob and I ate almost half of the loaf while it was still warm with butter and extra sharp cheddar cheese. Mmm! The leftovers will appear in a later post...