Greenling Quickfire Round 11-13

I know... I know...  I was supposed to be doing this every week and keep up with each episode and make a corresponding dinner using my weekly Surprise Me ingredient from Greenling. and then the holidays happened and then vacations...


So what's my excuse this time? Trust me it's a good one. I was out of the country on a cruise with the band Weezer!


But this week I'm finally getting caught up and what better way to celebrate than with a yummy treat?


This week's Surprise Me ingredient was turnip greens!

 My favorite family recipe for any type of greens is "bacon and butter".


So that's just what I did! The secret I use is to boil the bacon first - this allows you to easily remove the fatty pieces and leaves you with a delicious pile of smoked pork.


I only boil the bacon for a few minutes, just long enough to cook off some of the white. Then I let it cool off in the liquid and let the fat separate and float up to the top.  Once cooled it easily pulls apart and from there I just chop it up.

Throw the bacon meat in the pan with a heavy helping of butter and some chopped onion.


Stir until the onion is caramelized and the bacon starts to crisps up.


This will also make your house smell like heaven.


Just as the bacon starts to crisp throw in your greens, remove from heat and stir until they are wilted. For turnip greens I also threw in a pinch of sugar and a dash of Maldon seat salt for good measure 

 For this meal I also chopped up one of my tomatoes from my Greenling box and an avocado.


tossed them in a bowl with some fresh lime juice, sea salt and fresh cracked black peppercorn for a quick and refreshing avocado salad.


And not that it really goes with turnip greens, but I had a flank steak marinating in the fridge in orange juice, orange zest, habanero pepper and honey so I pan grilled it up medium rare.




The finished meal? A mismatched habanero orange honey steak, avocado salad and southern style turnip greens.


I was a little off in the pairing of these 3 - but each on its own was pretty damn fantastic.


I could have eaten an entire plate of just bacon and butter turnip greens, but I had a dinner guest and had to share :D


And Paul Qui is rocking the Top Chef competition! Life is good!

And just in case you didn't believe my excuse - Here's a pic of me and Weezer!

Best Vacation Ever!!!

Greenling Quickfire Round 10

Tonight's Greenling Surprise Me item was Watermelon radish! I love this veggie and pick them up any time I see them at farmers's markets or at the grocery.


Round and encased in a pale green, thin skin, the watermelon radish has pinkish-red flesh, with a mild, sweet flavor.  


I love to pickle these radishes, but since I had already used that approach with the breakfast radishes on a previous challenge I opted to take a different approach. I once had a really great radish tempura. So why not deep fry them and make chips?

 This week I also decided to switch up my beverage selection from wine to beer. And since this is Top Chef Texas - I opened up a few of my favorite Texas beers.


Texas has so many great brews to choose from but Shiner is almost always at the top of my list as a great Texas standard. 


Their Holiday Cheer seasonal is a fantastic mix of peaches and pecans and always a winter favorite in my house. The bottles are labeled with a cute gift tag and make great gifts.

 Back to tonight's dish. I decided to tap into one of my favorite secret ingredients to finish off the radish chips. 


Truffle salt. 


This amazing jar is filled with some of my favorite spice ever. I picked up the jar based on a foodie recommendation at Central Market from my favorite resident foodie Mimi. 


She made duck fat fried potatoes with this salt and I've used it on every chip made in my house since.

 To go with the chips I pulled out a giant loaf of sourdough bread from my Greenling farmstead box.


Sweetish Hill makes some of the most fantastic baked goods ever. This bread is no exception.


I also had some leftover lobster tail in my fridge from last night's dinner of trufled lobster mac and cheese - sometimes I really love my fridge :)


As a native New Englander these ingredients can only mean one thing - Lobster Roll!

 My basic lobster roll recipe has a slight twist of Sriracha - then again, most of my recipes have that same twist. I must go through a bottle or more of this stuff a month.


I also added some chopped sweet onion, a tiny bit of fresh mayo, chopped celery, salt and pepper.


Mixed all of that up with the lobster meat in a small bowl and then topped off the amazing sourdough, and squeezed a bit of fesh lime on top of the lobster meat mixture,

 The result?


Possibly one of my new favorite dinners of all time. My daughter downed hers in record time and asked for seconds.


Luckily greenling sent two gigantic watermelon radishes and we had an entire pile of chips to finish off (which we did)


The watermelon radish chip was absolutely fantastic - slightly sweet and super savory.

I'm now watching Top Chef and it's Restaurant Wars! One of my favorite episodes each season.


Paul Qui is making roasted pork belly - OMG yum!


My favorite beer to pair with pork belly? Texas's own Real Ale Lost Gold IPA. 


Cheers to all the cheftestants!

Greenling Quickfire Round 8-9

So once again a holiday interferes with my Top Chef Quickfire Greenling Challenge - well sort of. I spent the holidays in Dallas, TX this year. And as of Dec 2011 there was no Greenling service in the DFW area. So I had to drive my box of fresh awesomeness to my amazing hosts's house to make my weekly dish. I used the russet potatoes and local kale to make my family's favorite passed down recipe for Portuguese Kale Soup - and sure enough Emeril announces that would be his family pass down favorite the same night on episode 8. I nearly died :)


My gracious hosts are vegetarian so I made a modified version with Soyrizo - and it was a hit!  And then upon my return I was thrilled to see Greenling is starting service to DFW in 2012! Score!!!  

 My other distraction for the holidays would be my baking obsession. After baking over 1600 cookies, I embarked on the red velvet birthday cake to end all red velvet birthday cakes. 


This tower is made of red velvet thumbprint cookies, red velvet Krispy Kreme doughnuts, red velvet cupcakes, red velvet cake balls spiked with Peppermint schnapps and topped in a red velvet whoopie pie. 


Oh and yes, those are chocolate mustaches decorating the cake. Why? Because Why not? And the birthday girl deserved an awesome cake :) 

So back to tonight's challenge. In my Greenling box tonight I got a bag of turnips.


At first I was all "YAY turnips" as I love turnips, then I realized I had never cooked them. Ever.  So I sat and stared at them for a while.


Then I reconsidered the whole challenge thing and thought about skipping tonight.


Then I opened a bottle of wine from the fridge and stared at the turnips some more and then poured some more wine... 

 So turnips were just not inspiring me, so I did what I do with most things I don't really know what to do with.


I added butter.


I chopped and peeled them and added to a sauce pan and poured some more wine while I tried to figure out what to do with this vegetable that was stumping me. Then I turned to the rest of my Greenling box and I figured it out!


I had an awesome corn and blackbean salsa as well as some amazing looking southwest tortillas in there. A turnip burrito was in order!


I decided to spice them up with sea salt, cumin, and a pinch of celery salt for good measure and Ta-Da! Instant Yum!

 The finished product, a fantastic veggie burrito alternative (usually bean and cheese in my house) and instant hit with my daughter. She finished hers and was asking for seconds before I even got halfway through my own.


Who knew turnips would be such an interesting and challenging ingredient for me?


I enjoyed the challenge and enjoyed tonight's episode as well. Especially with Paul Qui taking yet another win. Way to go Paul!  He's up to $35,000 in winnings. I'd love to see him take it all! Uchi and Uchiko are two of my most favorite places in the country. I need a bacon steakie fix!





And with that I'm going to relax and enjoy the rest of my evening. Cheers to all the Top Chef contestants and to Greenling for adding the new DFW service!


And like my wine glass, Everything is Bigger in Texas!

Greenling Quickfire Round Seven

Tonight's Greenling box had a repeat Surprise Me item. The Sunflower Sprouts reappeared in my box!  This was not a bad thing at all - who doesn't love a repeat of one of their favorites. But it would be cheating to remake the same dish, so I decided to add a twist and try to use my farmstead box items as well.


The Greenling Farmstead box is a collection of items for $15  - "A selection of local farmstead & artisan products that changes weekly! Might contain local cheeses, bread, meat, eggs, sweets, beverages, or prepared foods." 


I started ordering the farmstead option about a year ago and have loved the food craftsman variety!


I decided to take the delicious looking croissants from Sweetish Hill and use up some leftovers in my fridge and make a chicken salad croissant. 


I pulled out my handy dandy Zyliss chopper and threw in some cooked chicken breast, celery, and a granny smith apple. Added 2 Tbsp of light mayo, sea salt and pepper to taste, and a sprig of fresh dill for good measure. I also added in a couple of seedless green grapes with the apples for a pseudo Waldorf spin.


Mixed up everything in a bowl and then made up my croissant sandwiches using the Sunflower Sprouts and a couple of slices of tomatoes from the leftover tomato I had from last week's "tomato seconds".



The finished result was a tasty light sandwich treat for dinner tonight. The spicy sprouts were fantastic with my Waldorf Chicken Salad and I've decided in the past year or so that anything baked by Sweetish Hill is buttery perfection!


Can't wait for tonight's episode of Top Chef Texas!


I saw tequila on their quickfire highlight reel. I think I'm getting off super easy with yummy sunflower sprouts!


Go Paul Go!!!


I'll be tweeting and toasting Paul tonight with a big glass of Texas Red and my yummy farmstead box dessert of Chocolate Goddess Clusters by  New Earth !

Greenling Quickfire Round Six

I have been looking forward to tonight's Greenling box and Surprise Me Quickfire challenge all day and once again the Surprise me item was a fantastic one. Acorn Squash! And a huge one at that! 


With the cold snap passing through tonight's dish was a crazy easy decision, I decided to make a roasted acorn squash soup.


Roasting an acorn squash is super easy. Slice in half, scrape out the seeds and place open side down in a baking dish and roast at 350 degrees for 20 minutes. Once the meat has softened it's easy to scrape out with a spoon. 

To start the soup I diced a sweet onion and added to my stock pot with 2 tablespoons of salted butter.


I let the onion caramelize, then I peeled and chopped up 2 small granny smith apples and added them to the onion with a tiny bit more butter. I let those cook down and then added the scooped out roasted squash.


Once I had all the main ingredients in the pot, I added a small box (apx 4 cups) of organic vegetable broth and used my hand immersion blender to puree the mixture to a beautiful creamy soup texture. The immersion blender is one of my favorite winter appliances. It makes soup making so easy! I picked it up for under 20 bucks and it's a great tool.

My other inspiration for tonight's dish was this amazing Roasted Saigon Cinnamon i picked up at the grocery store. I first saw an ad for it in this month's Southern Living magazine. They had a recipe for a chocolate ancho cinnamon crackle cookie I plan to use for my cookie exchange this year. But I really didn't want to wait to use this fun new spice.


I love this new spicy cinnamon and can't wait to try the cookies. For the soup it added a great flavor and kick without adding any heat.


I can't wait to find more uses for it in my kitchen

Once the soup was spiced (I also added a dash of allspice, sea salt, and fresh cracked white and black peppercorns) I let it simmer for about 20 minutes. 


The smell in my kitchen was fantastic and the soup was even better once we got to eat it.


I will be making this dish again and again and again.


I'm also thinking of taking my immersion blender with me on vacation to prepare this dish for my vegan friends!


Here's a shot of the finished soup. My daughter ate 2 bowls full and I finished of a bowl and a half by myself. 


Thanks Greenling for another fantastic dinner inspiration and fun evening in my kitchen. 


While the soup was cooking I also knocked out a double batch of Bacon Chocolate Chip Cookies for a work party tomorrow.  Kitchen success tonight all around.


I'm still giddy over Paul's win last week on Top Chef and hoping he grabs another tonight!

Greenling Quickfire Round 4-5

Thanksgiving vacation put a delay in my blogging and Quickfire challenge, but I made sure to play catch up this week with a fantastic yummy ingredient.

This week's Greenling Box Surprise Me item was Sunflower Sprouts! 

Sunflower sprouts are baby sunflowers. They make an inexpensive and tasty nutritional addition to any salad or green smoothie.


Fresh, crunchy, and slightly nutty in flavor they are grown indoors all year round, providing lovely fresh greens in the depths of winter. They can also be grown outdoors when the weather is warm. They are an awesome treat.

In the theme of Top Chef Texas I decided to try out the sunflower sprouts with one of my favorite standard recipes I learned in this great state. Chilaquiles!

I heated some organic black beans in a small sauce pot and cracked some farm fresh eggs into my wok. When making Chilaquiles I love using my wok to toss around all of the ingredients.

The first time I had Chilaquiles was in College Station,TX served at a cute Bed & Breakfast. I loved the salty chips and the chile peppers with the fresh eggs. It became an instant hit in my own home.

I had a bag of leftover Xochitl organic white corn chips sitting up on the counter from a dinner party the previous week. One of the best parts of Chilaquiles is using up leftover chips. They don't have to be super fresh, and maybe it's just my own superstition, but I'm pretty sure this dish comes out ten times better when you use leftover almost stale chips.

After the eggs were cooked about halfway through I added a little milk and the chips to the wok. I then cooked the egg and chip mixture until the eggs were cooked all the way through and scrambled.

I also chopped up one of the Russet potatoes from my greenling box, tossed in olive oil, sea salt, and pepper and roasted in the oven for twenty minutes for another side dish.

 Then I added the sunflower sprouts and let them cook down for about three to four minutes on medium. I wanted to bring out their nutty flavor but not over-cook them.

After adding the sprouts I tossed in a chopped up tomato from my "tomato seconds" and a chopped up green hatch chile from my freezer stash.

Once the tomato and chile peppers were heated up I turned off the burner and topped with a handful of raw milk cheddar cheese.

I like melting the cheese last after the burner is turned off to prevent it from separating or over-melting.

The finished dish... Sunflower Sprout Chilaquiles, with black bean and roasted potato sides. Is there anything better than breakfast for dinner? 

This dish was an A+ hit and I'll be ordering more Sunflower Sprouts from Greenling in the future to recreate this vitamin packed delicious dish.

I finally got caught up on Top Chef last night and was delighted to see Paul Qui kicking some ass and taking the much deserved win. I am also craving brussel sprouts.

Can't wait until next week's box and Top Chef Episode!