Spring Supper: Brown Butter, Caramelized Shallots and Goat Cheese Pasta; Grilled Artichokes; Kale Salad and Lavender-Lemon Souffle

My weekend deserves a fuller update than the brief/non existent one I am about to do, but I've been procrastinating studying for Trusts and Wills by rearranging my room, watching SVU, and doing laundry. 

I have been a bit daring though, mostly in the cooking and driving with my gas light on for longer than 10 seconds. But I also wore a crop top on Friday, like omg what? And been trying out more difficult recipes.

Last week, I made dinner for Casey, Anthony and Evan. I tried out an amazing pasta recipe, which initially I thought would be rather standard. UM NO. So delicious, I want to make it again and again. (Maybe tonight :) ). The kale salad was grapefruit, apple, avocado with a balsamic dressing. 

The grilled artichoke was a hit. 

The how-to:

- get fresh small artichoke

-cut in half lengthwise

-keep in lemon water to keep from browning until ready cook

- par boil for 5-7 mins until tender

-drain

-then lather with garlic olive oil and grill on high heat until sear marks appear

-serve with lemon-garlic aioli (homemade of course)

The PASTA (recipe adapted from here):

- cook a pound of fusilli or penne

-slice three shallots and sauté in olive oil for 5 mins until tender

-add a tablespoon of brown sugar and allow to cook for ten mins until caramelized (keep stirring)

-once that is browned, throw in 12 oz of baby spinach and wilt in the pan

-in another saucepan, melt two to three table spoons of butter and simmer until butter is browned

-once butter is browned, throw in a teaspoon of minced garlic; allow garlic to cook in brown butter, but off the heat. 

-throw mixtures into pasta and add as much crumbled goat cheese as your heart desires

-I also threw in a few roasted cherry tomatoes

Lavender-Lemon Soufflé: I stole this recipe and will most definitely be using it again.

I am looking forward to more recipes but also revamping my blog posting a bit. I need some more structure and a stronger voice. 

xx

Gone Fishin' (Plus Beer-Poached Salmon)

I need the next few days to recenter, so I'll keep this brief. Yesterday, I made dinner for Jacy: beer-poached salmon with a cream sauce and lemon garlic aioli and a sweet potato-feta-chickpea salad with a honey mustard dressing. (Recipe below.)

Then Jacy, Ellie and I checked out Chinatown After Dark, which are the Third Thursday of every month during the summer. Jacy and I bought some stellar rings and then we hit up Harvard and Stone for a quick drink before calling it a night.


This morning, Evan, Jacy and I went hiking at Elysian, grabbed some coffee at the Square One Boathouse. I am just about to hop in the shower and then off to meet Larissa and her new baby, Penelope! More fun things to follow, but I wanted to check in with a recipe. I have never poached salmon before and definitely not in beer. Generally, I just bake it, but it always ends up a bit dry. The poaching kept the lovely tenderness of the salmon and I was happy with this spring time meal, although it definitely needs a bit of green. But one makes do with what they have, amiright?













Beer-Poached Salmon:

• Fill a pot (with a lid) with a can/bottle of a beer (I used a lager, but a hef would work too). Throw in some olive oil (2-3 tbsp), a spoonful of capers, a sliced lemon a couple of crushed garlic cloves plus salt and pepper.
• Bring to a simmer. 
• Throw in two defrosted salmon fillets that have a bit of mustard, skin down, in the pot. 
• Cover and cook for 15 mins.

I then removed the salmon and made a roux to thicken the beer sauce and served with my lemon garlic aioli.

Sweet Potato-Chickpea Salad with Feta:

• Two roast sweet potatoes, chopped
• One can rinsed garbanzo beans
• 4 ox of crumbled feta
• salt, pepper 
• honey mustard dressing (homemade with dijon and clover honey)
• Combine
• Inhale

Pancakes for Everyone

My initial thought this morning was that I wanted to be an island. Not on an island. But like an actual island, like in the Bermuda triangle, where I could abandon all responsibilities and accountability to all the major players in my life and live out the rest of my days in a tropical climate.


But like I can't do that. So I made a stack of pancakes for myself with a homemade affogato and then mulled over the bar/restaurant I plan on opening when I pay off my massive student loan debt. Which will be never. Clearly, I'm in a fatalistic mood, so like don't talk to me/don't touch me/don't interact with me unless you're carrying dark chocolate or a puppy or avocado fries with a lemon garlic aioli.









I do feel accomplished however because I trimmed my bangs an inch and I don't look like Raggedy Ann.

Moving on, I saw Haim with Sam last night and they are phenomenal, badass, incredibly talented, amazing women. If you haven't heard of them, I feel terribly for you because you've missed out on hours of legit music listening. Despite trekking down to the depths of hell (aka Pomona) to see them in rush hour traffic, I left in the best mood possible... until I woke up and felt inadequate with my sorry repertoire of lackluster talent. Anyway, you should listen to them. And then bring me dessert. Kthanks.

 

Hiatus Over + A Beet Salad

Since I know you all have been waiting with bated breath for a post, I supposed I owe some explanation for my absence. I was having fun + sorting stuff out + centering myself.

That meant gallivanting up the coast for dog beach days and picnics in Santa Cruz, coffee in the mission, beer in Dolores, GoT marathons and cover letters plus vegan dinner parties, flower shopping, and Instagram stalking.

But things have calmed down and although I don't think I'm that much closer to a zen state, I have figured out some things that have made anxiety attacks less likely, insomnia less frequent and my general demeanor far happier.

1) More phone calls with the people I love. Grant brought this to my attention bc he is a phone talker and I am a texter. Our communication style constantly clashes but I have been making a concerted effort to pick up calls when I can and hearing my friends' voices releases serotonin in a volume I didn't know was possible.

2) Detox baths. Baths are always nice and I haven't taken advantage of the glorious claw foot tub in my new house as much as I should have.

The method:
a) Run the bath with hot water: I throw in some combination of epsom salts, baking soda and/or hydrogen peroxide plus my favorite essential oils (lavender and rose at the moment).
b) Dry brush as the bath is going: take a clean, dry body brush and scrub in a circular motion all over your body, starting at your legs and moving up. This increases circulation, stimulates the lymphatic system (waste removal via blood cells), improves digestions, exfoliates, etc.
c) Jump in the bath. Soaking in there for 30 minutes with a face mask on with a glass of wine, low lights and some musica. Done and done.
d) Finish up with a rub down of coconut oil.
I never sleep as well as I do after one of these. I have been doing one a week and I wake up feeling relaxed, which like almost never happens.


3) Morning routines: I have written about this before that when work got bad, I didn't do any of my morning routines - coffee, blogging, hiking and I was suffering from anxiety. Now I have set aside a good 1.5-2 hours, even if it means waking up earlier than my normal 6:30am "call time" aka Sophie. I'll reserve another blog post for this, but it means oil pulling with coconut oil, salt water rinse, lemon water, a hike, blogging, and Sophie cuddling with a little yoga/stretching if I can squeeze it in plus more time for meal prepping, which means juicing and more whole foods - which brings me to my next thing...

4) Better eating: I love cooking. (That was my profound statement of the day.) However, the caveat is that I only realllly enjoy it when I have a house of full of hungry people and there's cheese. Bad news bears. After talking with my brother (and by talking I mean heated debates) about GMOs, organic, locally sourced, whole foods, I have realized something. I really only treat my body well with good food about 50% of the time. That means good breakfasts and good meals when I am at home. But if I'm at school or work, then that Taco Bell quesadilla or those happy hour chicken wings are really rockin my socks. This sort of end of the day/mid-afternoon slump really effs up my system. So I've gotten in the habit of making bigger summer salads (i.e. broccoli slaw) and making sure I have juice, salad, fruit, etc around to stave off desperate vending machine scavenging (let's ignore the Twix bar from yesterday - it was Evan's fault).

So on to  my newest concoction: Roasted beet and chickpea salad with blue cheese. I originally thought up as part of a larger spring meal coupled with a baked salmon filet and roasted asparagus as part of a submission to my friend James' magazine. But due to unforeseen circumstances, I was not able to execute the meal, but last night decided to whip this up and see how it went. The results: Pretty effing delicious. However, I want to add some herbage, but I'm not sure what would work... mint? parsley? lemon thyme? I'm open to suggestions :)

Roasted beet and chickpea salad with blue cheese recipe:

• Two roasted beets (scrub clean, cover in olive oil, roast until soft); chopped into bite size pieces
• One can chickpeas, rinsed and drained (make sure to rinse)
• A couple of handfuls of good blue cheese/gorganzola 
• Dressing: honey (w/ the blue cheese -> heaven), balsamic, olive oil, pink salt and pepper)

Mix that shit up. Eat. Boom.