Ingredients:

• 3 tsp Canola Oil
• 1/2 Lb Sliced Bacon
• 1 cup small diced Leeks
• 1 cup small diced Fennel
• 1/2 cup Diced Carrots
• 1/2 cup Small Diced Celery
• 2 Tbsp Thinly Sliced Garlic
• 2 Tbsp Minced Ginger
• 1 cup sliced Shiitake Mushroooms
• 1/2 cup White Wine
• 1/2 cup Sambuca
• 1 tsp Toasted Caraway Seed
• 1 tsp Toasted Coriander
• 1 tsp Chile Flakes
• 2 qts Chicken Stock
• 2 cup Cooked White Beans
• 1/2 cup Chopped Parsley
• 1 tbsp minced Tarragon
• 1 tsp Star Anise
• Salt & Pepper

Directions

1. Start with a large stock pot
2. Add Canola Oil and Bacon to render out all fat
3. Add all vegetables and cook until translucent
4. Deglaze pan with white wine and Sambuca
5. Add Chicken stock and cooked white beans
6. Simmer for 30 minutes
7. Add all herbs and final seasonings

About Cypress Grille

Cypress Grille

www.cypressgrilleboerne.com

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This week Chef Mark Arriola from SoGo demoed a Red Beet and Orange Salad.
(Note: I took some liberty in re-wording some of the steps or order)

From the recipe card:

“Every now and again, I go through these phases where I just fall in love with an ingredient and it seems to just show up all over my menus. Lately it has been beets, red beets to be exact.  Beets have the highest sugar content of all vegetables, but remain low in calories; one cup of beets has only 74 calories.  Flavor is sweet with a slightly earthy flavor, and when cooked has a great vfelvety texture.   Although beets are available all year long, we are just coming into the best time of the year for them.  These young beets are very tender, and to me always seem a bit sweeter.  The leaves are also edible and have a flavor similar to Swiss Chard which is a slightly better green.  I like to saute the greens with a bit of olive oil, a pinch of garlic, splace of white wine, salt and pepper.  Beets are a good source for potassium, vitamin C and a dietary fiber.  Studies have shown that beets contain nutrients that can be helpful in protection of heat disease and certain cancers, especially colon cancer.”

Ingredients

• 6 Red Beets, small to medium size
• 1/2 Red Onion, julienned
  You can view a video on how to julienne an onion at FreeCulinarySchool.com
• 1 Navel Orange, segmented
  This is a good video on how to segment an orange on Metacafe.
• 2 tbl Italian Parsley, chopped
• 2 tbl Red Wine Vinegar
• 6 tbl Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• Sea Salt and Fresh Ground Pepper (as needed)

1. Preheat the oven to 400º.
2. Wash the beets and pat dry.
3. Wrap in a double layer of oil and roast for approximately 45 minutes to an hour.  The beets should be soft when squeezed.
4. Unwrap and let cool until it can be handled safetly by hand.
5. While still warm, peel the beets by rubbing the skin off.
6. Dice ( or slice or cut in to wedges ) the beets
7. Combine the beets with all of the ingredients except for the orange segments in a stainless steel bowl.
8. Place in a serving dish with orange segments and server chilled.
9. Optional:  Top with Bleu Cheese, Goat Cheese, Walnuts or Pecans.

At the cooking demo, the walnuts used were candied with a bit of spice.  While Chef Mark did not have a recipe, he did give a quick run down of how the make the candied walnuts.

These measurements are not exact and you will have to play with the proportions to get it just right.

In short the recipe is as follows

Ingredients

• Equal parts sugar and water
• Walnuts
• Cayenne powder
• Chili powder

1. In a sauce pot, dissolve the sugar completely in to the water.
2. Sprinkle in the cayenne and chili powder
3. Add in the walnuts and stir consistently for ~10-15 minutes.
4. Strain walnuts
5. Bake walnuts for 10-15 minutes in oven. (I didn’t catch at what temperature, but I am going to start with 350º)

I should have taken pictures of the final product at the farmers market and in the future I will try to remember that.  Once I get through assembling the salad, I will put up some pictures.

I will also update the proportions used in the candied walnuts.

-Alex

That gave me the idea to post them here so I can get rid of all the pieces of paper that I’ve got laying around.

All that being said, this first one is _not_ of the recipes I picked up at the Farmers Market.  It’s actually one that Starbucks gave out in one of their stores.

Banana Walnut Bread

Ingredients

• 2 cups flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 egg
• 1 1/8 cup sugar
• 1/c vegetable oil
• 2 Tbsp buttermilk
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 3 ripe medium-large bananas (mashed)
• Chopped walnuts

1. Pre-heat the oven to 325°
2. Grease a 9×5x3 loaf pan and dust with flour.
3. Blend together the flour, baking soda and salt and set aside.
4. Mix together the egg, sugar, and vegetable oil until combined.
5. Add the flour mixture, and when blended, add the buttermilk, vanilla and mashed bananas and mix until combined.
6. Fold in 1/2 cup chopped walnuts and pour batter into prepared loaf pan.
7. Top batter with remaining 1/3 cup chopped walnuts.
8. Bake for 45 to 60 minutes unilt a toothpick inserted in toe center comes out clean.
9. Cool for 10 minutes on  wire rack before removing from pan

Banana Bread

Ingredients

• 2 cups flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup butter
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 2 1/3 cups mashed over ripe bananas

1. Preheat oven 350°.
2. Lightly grease 9×5 loaf pan.
3. Combine flour, baking soda, salt.
4. In a separate bowl, cream together butter and brown sugar.
5. Stir in eggs and mashed bananas until well blended.
6. Stir banana mixture in to flour.
7. Bake in preheated oven for 60 – 65 minutes.

Tees

For the days I feel on top of my game.

Kallusive has always struck me as awesome. I had the “Protector of the Kode” a few weeks ago.

On the back of this one:

The same continuous mind numbing rhetoric overwhelming the ears… Environmental surroundings crashing down on you like tidal wave, constantly beating your brain into submission… telling you who to be, what to be, how to live, dress, act, and think… Fitting in this perfect little box is their plan for you, blindly following the next being in front of you… Stifling individuality and independence, before long you’ve become a robot, another battery to propel their world, until the day you learn to… SMASH THE COOKIE CUTTER… And break free of the mold, shattering the very existence laid for you to follow… You cannot fit into any given form, shape, style, or stereotype… You are who you are. Be true to your independent self.

.

This tee is from a company called SugarCraft. You can find more about them at their website http://sgrcrft.com/

The shirt itself is available at Krudmart.com

Tees – Jeepney

This week, I have two shirts here from Jeepney.  Aside from the sweet tees, what I really like about this brand is that they divide their on-line store in to two sections, their street store and their pride store.

These are two of the shirts  that I’m really loving right now.

Caps

Videos

I had never heard of this before but remember “fart hands”, there is a whole musical genre for this.

That is all I got this week. Next week, Plaid is in.

peace.
-alex

I will include the recipe here for the sake of completeness.

Ingredients

• 1 (16 ounce) package phyllo dough
• 1 pound chopped nuts
• 1 cup butter
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 cup water
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup honey

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F(175 degrees C). Butter the bottoms and sides of a 9×13 inch pan.
2. Chop nuts and toss with cinnamon. Set aside. Unroll phyllo dough. Cut whole stack in half to fit pan. Cover phyllo with a dampened cloth to keep from drying out as you work. Place two sheets of dough in pan, butter thoroughly. Repeat until you have 8 sheets layered. Sprinkle 2 – 3 tablespoons of nut mixture on top. Top with two sheets of dough, butter, nuts, layering as you go. The top layer should be about 6 – 8 sheets deep.
3. Using a sharp knife cut into diamond or square shapes all the way to the bottom of the pan. You may cut into 4 long rows the make diagonal cuts. Bake for about 50 minutes until baklava is golden and crisp.
4. Make sauce while baklava is baking. Boil sugar and water until sugar is melted. Add vanilla and honey. Simmer for about 20 minutes.
5. Remove baklava from oven and immediately spoon sauce over it. Let cool. Serve in cupcake papers. This freezes well. Leave it uncovered as it gets soggy if it is wrapped up.

I came out pretty good as you can see.

So all that being said, I was able to take away a few things from this experience. It had been my first time working with phyllo dough that was interesting. I wish I had read BEFORE I attempted to un-roll that it needs to be thawed out.

After it was all said and done, it took about one hour of prep time, one hour to assemble and one hour to bake.

While everybody said that they liked it, some people did have a few suggestions. I’ve already got some improvements for next time.

1. Prep while dough is thawing out.

2. Chop nuts smaller

3. Less cinnamon

4. Instead of 1 cup water / sugar, I might due 1.25 cups of each.

I can’t wait to make this again.

peace.
-alex