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Savory Stuffed Brioche

The idea for this beautifully tasty dish came from the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day blog.  As you know, this is my favorite book for bread baking and the brioche dough was no exception.  If you are interested in making your own bread, I recommend you get the book.   If not, you could probably do something very similar using store bought pizza dough (although, the brioche has such a lovely sweet softness to it).  

The post that references this Savory Stuffed Brioche does a great job of going through the step-by-step of putting this together.  So, I'll post the link and tell you what I added.  Click here for the original post.

I basically took their recipe and added in on some other tasty things.  The original calls for feta, sauteéd spinach and pine nuts.  I added a layer of prosciutto and some grape tomatoes cut in half for color.  The prosciutto added a lovely saltiness and added a lot of flavor to the stuffed bread.  Here's the order of my stuffing:  Prosciutto, feta, sauteéd spinach, freshly grated parmesan, pinenuts and grape tomatoes.  This was a super-tasty combination.  Enjoy!

garlic soba noodles with parmesean chicken and soy glazed roasted radishes

101 Cookbooks is a food blog that I visit (and cook from) frequently.  Heidi provides wonderful whole food and organic recipes that tend to be pretty delicious.  She has a cookbook out called Supernatural Cooking that I really like as well. 

With a bag full of Swiss Chard on hand from my farm box, I searched her site and found this delicious recipe for Garlic Soba Noodles.  She serves hers with parmesan coated tofu.  I used chicken instead (it's what I had in the fridge) and it was a winning combination.

We've been getting radishes every week in our farm box since we started getting weekly boxes.  We've mostly used them on salads, so this week I decided to try something new.  I found this recipe for Soy Glazed Radishes on a food blog called Kalyn's Kitchen.  Mine unfortunately were a bit overdone and I forgot to sprinkle on the sesame seeds at the end.  I thought they were good despite that, but would have been so much better had I taken them out of the oven on time.

fresh pea pesto

For over a month now, we've been getting a box of fresh vegetables every week through a local farm's Community Shared Agriculture program.  The first few weeks were mostly a lettuce mix and mescalune with some radishes thrown in.  We also have been getting fresh mint every week.  One week we got asparagus.  The past couple of weeks have been more interesting though.  We've had kohlrabi (for the first time ever), garlic tops, rainbow Swiss chard, baby kale, and english shelling peas. And last week in addition to the mint we got a large bunch of fresh basil.

I decided it was time to do something with the peas Sunday evening and pulled out the peas to start shelling.  Dylan decided he wanted to help.  And it turns out shelling peas is a great toddler activity.  It went slowly at first because I had to hold the pea pod for him (he had a plastic tomato in one hand), but once he set his tomato down, he just needed me to open the pods and he dumped them into the bowl, said "all done" and handed me the empty shell.

I'd seen Jamie Oliver make a pea pesto on his tv show and decided to do my own version.  I put the fresh peas (probably 2 1/2 to 3 cups) in the food processor with a large handful of mint and a large handful of basil.  I added juice from half a lemon, salt and pepper, a handful of toasted pine nuts, 1 clove of garlic and one garlic top, and about a cup of parmesean cheese.  Then I streamed in olive oil until I had a nice paste. 

The next evening, I boiled some pasta (I used alphabet pasta in hopes of getting my toddler to eat some) and threw in some frozen peas towards the end of cooking.  I stirred a nice portion of pesto with the pasta and peas, and threw in some chopped steamed carrots.  I topped the pasta with chicken that was seasoned with salt and pepper and cooked up in my cast iron skillet.   A little sprinkle of parmesan and the pasta was complete.

Toddler Note:  Dylan liked looking at the pasta but was not interested in eating it.  He did eat some cut up chicken on the side and some of the cheesy bread we had leftover from pizza night the night before.

pork & tomatillo stew

I bought myself a new crockpot for my birthday last week. Since then, we made a dish with sweet potatoes and chicken legs spiced with curry powder which was pretty good. But, on Sunday, Denny suggested we use it again. I had a bag of tomatillos in the refrigerator that I needed to use, so I did a search for tomatillos and crockpot and found several variations of a Pork and Tomatillo Stew. The one I went with came from about.com and turned out pretty well.

The only change I made was to add a topping of Avocado and Lime Sour Cream (simply, 1 avocado, a big spoonful of sour cream, and juice from 1/2 a lime pureéd together). A dollop of this on top made the stew extra good.

I served it with cornbread made from Jiffy cornbread mix, yogurt, can of corn, lime juice and cilantro.

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Pork and Tomatillo Stew

By Diana Rattray, About.com

INGREDIENTS:

• 2 pounds boneless pork ribs or loin, trimmed and cut in bite-size cubes
• salt and pepper
• 1/4 cup flour
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 1/2 cups diced celery
• 1 cup chopped onion
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 cups chicken broth
• 3 to 6 tablespoons drained jalapeno rings or chopped mild chile peppers
• 1 cup julienne cut carrots
• 2 medium potatoes, cut in small cubes
• 1 pound tomatillos, husks removed, washed and diced
• 2 cans (14.5 ounces each) diced tomatoes
• 1 tablespoon ground cumin
• 2 teaspoons chili powder
• pinch dried oregano
• hot sauce, to taste
• salt and pepper, to taste
• fresh chopped cilantro, optional

PREPARATION:

Sprinkle pork cubes lightly with salt and pepper; toss with the flour. Heat 2 tablespoons olive oil in a large skillet; add pork and sauté, stirring, until nicely browned; transfer to a 5 to 6-quart slow cooker. In the same skillet, adding a little more oil if needed, sauté the celery and onion until tender. Add garlic, chicken broth, and jalapeno peppers or mild peppers, stirring and scraping browned bits from the bottom of the skillet. Set aside.

Meanwhile, add to the slow cooker the carrots, potatoes, and tomatillos. Pour tomatoes over the top, then add the onion and celery mixture from the skillet. Stir to blend ingredients. Cover and cook on HIGH for 3 hours, or LOW for 6 hours. Add seasonings. Cook for 1 to 2 hours longer on HIGH or about 2 to 3 hours longer on LOW. Taste and adjust seasonings. Serve with a sprinkling of cilantro, if desired, and hot baked cornbread.
Serves 6 to 8.

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Toddler note:  Dylan almost took a bite of the pork, but he put it in his mouth and then took it right back out.  However, the cornbread was a big hit..he ate two pieces with his peas.