Arugula and Goat Cheese Risotto

Arugula and Goat Cheese Risotto

My good friend surprised me the other weekend with an enormous bag full of goodies that she picked up for me at the local farmers market. Her kids are a little bit older than mine and she knows that I rarely am able to make it out of the house on a Saturday morning to enjoy perusing the local produce. One of my favorite goodies was a huge bag of arugula. Yum! We love to grow arugula in our backyard garden and I have been feeding it to my children forever so I think they are quite used to the taste. If you haven't had arugula before, it has a nice little peppery kick to it - some arugula has more of a kick than others! Ask your farmer for a taste test.

Arugula

As I was looking around the kitchen, trying to come up with something nice but easy for a Monday night dinner, I spied the beautiful bag of arugula and a large container of goat cheese ... why not make an easy risotto? Basically five ingredients - garlic, arborio rice, broth, arugula, and goat cheese.

Goat Cheese from Looking Glass Creamery

Ingredients: 

4 or 5 cloves garlic, minced
Coarse sea salt
A swirl or two of olive oil
1 1/2 cups of arborio rice
4 cups broth (your favorite)
A few handfuls of arugula, chopped
1/4 cup goat cheese

Directions: 


1. Mince your garlic and mash it with some coarse sea salt to create a little garlicky paste.

2. Saute your garlic in some olive oil so that it gets a little bit toasty but not burnt and bitter. You want it to look browned - not any darker.

3. Add in 1 1/2 cups of arborio rice and stir to combine the garlic and olive oil. Add about in 1 cup of your favorite broth - chicken broth, vegetable broth - any broth you like. (Side note ... I tried the White Wine and Herbs Culinary Broth from College Inn recently on a whim and it was great.)

Arborio rice and broth ... let it simmer

4. Bring your rice and broth to a low boil. Stir well. Let it simmer until all the liquid has been absorbed and then add another cup of broth. Continue adding broth 1 cup at a time until all the liquid has been absorbed.

5. After you have added all the broth, taste test the risotto to make sure that it is soft enough for you. Sometimes you might need to add more broth! Add the chopped arugula and stir to combine. Remove from the heat. The arugula will wilt instantly.

6. Add the goat cheese - about 1 tablespoon at a time and stir to combine. The goat cheese will make the risotto nice and creamy.

We served our risotto with leftover salmon from the night before but I think that risotto can be a meal all by itself. Enjoy!!

Sauteed Apples and Brie Quesadillas

Sauteed Apples and Brie Quesadilla

Pack Square Brie

I recently found myself with a lot of extra Brie cheese on my hands ... being a cheese lover, this was not necessarily a bad thing. If you happen to trip across the Pack Square Brie-style Cheese from the Looking Glass Creamery in Asheville, North Carolina - grab some! It is absolutely delicious. My favorite way to eat this cheese is sliced with some fresh apples but for lunch the other day, we needed something a little bit more substantial so I decided to fancy up a traditional quesadilla with some sauteed apples and beautiful slices of Brie and Gouda. Instead of sliced apples beside your sandwich, why not just put the apples IN your sandwich??

Apples in Asheville, NC

We are really enjoying apple season here in Charlotte - apples are in abundance just a few miles down the road from us and we can't get enough! For the past month or so, my kids were devouring Mutsu Apples and now they are currently obsessed with the Pink Lady Apples ... all of them grown on Ben Lynch's Orchard not too far from here. And, as I have mentioned before, we really emphasize knowing where your food comes from in our house. Apparently, I might have been making too big of a deal about this (or perhaps not...) because the following story came up at parent-teacher conferences on Friday...

Baby R prefers NC apples!

According to the teacher, another first grader was about to throw out his mostly uneaten apple and the teacher intervened and told him to save it for later, don't waste food. The boy agreed to stick the apple back into his lunchbox. My daughter felt the need to defend her friend and tell the teacher that S usually eats apples but he only really likes the apples that his mommy picks up from our house from the big bushels. The teacher, just slightly confused by the fact that people are picking up apples from my daughter's house in relatively urban Charlotte, tried to teach a little lesson about the fact that all apples come from trees. My daughter had the following reply: "Yes, Ms. C, all apples come from trees, but the apples at my mommy's house come from North Carolina trees. We don't know where those apples at the store came from. North Carolina apples just taste better." And so, apparently, the propaganda machine is hard at work here at our local elementary school.

If you have some local apples, or if you have the apples from your favorite grocery store ... the following recipe will work just fine!

Ingredients: 


Corn Tortillas
Sliced Brie (about 3 to 4 slices per quesadilla)
Thinly sliced apples (1 apple for 3 to 4 quesadillas)
A little bit of butter
A little bit of brown sugar

Directions: 

1. Gently saute the thinly sliced apples in a little bit of butter until the apples are very tender. Depending on the apples that you use, you might want to add in a little bit of brown sugar - about a teaspoon or so.

Sauteed Apples with Butter and Brown Sugar

2. Remove the apples from the pan and put in one corn tortilla. Layer a few slices of cheese on the corn tortilla and top with apples. I used a combination of brie and gouda.

Brie-Like Cheese and Gouda

3. Cover the apples and cheese with another corn tortilla. Press together with a spatula and cook over medium heat until the cheese has melted both tortillas together. Flip the quesadilla and cook for a few minutes on the other side.


4. Enjoy! I like to cut up our quesadillas with my kitchen shears to make them more kid-friendly for little hands.

Gluten-free or not ... We make grilled cheese quesadillas around here because they are naturally gluten-free when made with corn tortillas but this can easily be made with bread as well... gluten free or not! For this sandwich, I used muenster cheese and sauteed pink lady apples. Our favorite gluten-free bread is from Udi's - check out your grocery store and see if they carry it. Delicious!

Grilled Cheese Sandwich with Sauteed Apples

Bagel Pizzas

This recipe is another not-a-recipe recipe. Bagel pizzas are so inexpensive and easy and they can be a great weeknight dinner option or a weekend lunch. When I was little, my mom would make us English muffin pizzas using sliced English muffins, tomato paste, and sharp cheddar cheese sprinkled with a little oregano. Delicious. This is just a slight variation on that yummy snack.

Bagel pizzas can be a great use for leftover bagels or you can check out your grocery store's bakery section or  local bagel shop to look for marked down day-old bagels. By no means do you need fresh bagels because you are going to toast them up in the oven and no one will ever know how old they are. Bagel pizzas are handy for me to make in this house because I can make a pan of bagels - half gluten-free, half not gluten-free and feed my small crowd.

Ingredients: 

Bagels - sliced in thirds
Pizza sauce, tomato paste, or something similar
Shredded or sliced mozzarella cheese
Dried oregano
Any toppings

Directions: 

Spread out the bagels on a pizza  pan - we love this pizza pan from Crate and Barrel - spread a little bit of tomato paste or pizza sauce on the bagels, sprinkle with dried oregano, and top with shredded cheese.

Cook at 400 degrees for about 12 minutes.

Gluten Free Rice Krispy Treats

Gluten Free Rice Krispy Treats

For years, it was a mystery to me that Rice Krispies cereal was made with rice and yet it was not gluten free. Kellogg finally got wise to the current gluten-free mania and has actually made a gluten-free version of rice krispies made with brown rice - even better! After years of patiently waiting, my daughter can finally indulge in a yummy rice krispy treat.

I have to confess that, since rice krispy treats seem so ubiquitous, I figured that they must be easy to make. Ummm... wrong. These were absolutely awful to make and yet I pushed on ... desperate to have my first grader indulge in some yummy yet bad for you goodness like all her little friends. Now that I have made them, I can't say that I will be rushing back to make them again... Although the final product was actually delicious so maybe I will be swayed sooner rather than later. We shall see...

Round 1: Peanut Butter Rice Krispy Treats 

Ready to expand ...

For my first attempt at Rice Krispy Treats, I decided that it would be fun to let the kids watch the  mini marshmallows expand in the microwave.

I combined 4 cups of mini marshmallows, 3 tablespoons of butter, and 1/4 cup (or so) of peanut butter and put it on high for 2 minutes.

Getting bigger!

The children were FASCINATED by the expanding marshmallows. They were also fascinated by the fact that I was actually using the microwave ... usually it doubles as my bread box.

I tried to stir this expanding mess and it was quite a chore.

The disaster ...

I stuck it back in the microwave for another minute. Took it out, added 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract and tried to get it to combine without sticking to my spatula. Not willing to admit defeat, I tried to add 6 cups of rice krispies. Disaster ensued. And round 1 was over. I surrendered.

Round 2: Nutella Rice Krispy Treats

For my second attempt at Rice Krispy treats, I used the good old-fashioned stove. I combined the following in a heavy bottomed saucepan...

3 cups of mini-marshallows 
2 tablespoons butter
4 tablespoons Nutella 

I let it melt very slowly and then I added in a splash of vanilla extract.

After the concoction was as smooth as it could be, I added 4 cups of gluten free rice krispies and strong-armed them into submission with my wooden spoon.

After all this hard work, I needed this dessert to at least look a little bit pretty, so I lightly greased the bottoms of a muffin tin with cooking spray and then I pressed the Nutella Rice Krispy Treats into the muffin tin using a piece of waxed paper.

Gluten Free Nutella Rice Krispy Treats in Muffin Tins

After pressing these into cute little circles, I let them sit for a little while until dinner was ready and then I popped them into a tupperware container with a tight seal. If you want to keep these fresh, they need to be at room temperature in a tightly sealed container - if you put them into the refrigerator, they will be rock-hard. Don't do it ... The kids loved these cute rice krispy treats but I think that next time I will press them into mini-muffin tins. These circles were way too big for one small child to eat! An adult, on the other hand, could easily have 2 or 3... Enjoy!

Kale and Potato Soup

Kale and Potato Soup

Although today was 83 degrees and sunny here in Charlotte, it really is fall and fall calls for soups. Soups are so healthy and so very hard to mess up. This weekend, my girls and I had a rare opportunity to wander our favorite Farmers Market on Saturday morning so I was able to pick up some fresh kale, local onions, and amazing homemade butter.

The butter has absolutely nothing to do with this recipe, but if you happen to visit the Atherton Farmers Market here in Charlotte, you must stop by and say hi to LynnErin at Simply Local - everything she stocks in her little corner of the market comes from North Carolina. There are too many items to list but a few of my favorites were the peanut butter, goat cheese, gouda, milk, chocolate, and, most importantly, butter. It tastes like the butter I make at home on the rare occasion that I need to keep my kiddos occupied for an extended stretch of time... Really, really delicious.

Yum! Love that kale...

But let's get back to the soup! For this soup, I used a small bunch of fresh kale - the leaves stripped from the stems and then chopped. We like to compost around here but, truthfully, I don't really need to because my two huge dogs have never met a veggie scrap they didn't love. These kale stems were gone in minutes.

Fenway ... veggie lover

My Co-Shopper

Ingredients: 

1 bunch of kale, leaves stripped from the stems and chopped
4 or 5 cloves of garlic
1/2 large onion, chopped
5 potatoes, peeled and chopped
1/2 lb hot pork sausage (optional)
4 cups chicken broth
4 cups water
2 tablespoons paprika
1 teaspoon or so of salt, to taste

Directions: 

1. Gently crumble and cook about 1/2 pound of hot pork sausage, drain the fat and then added the onions and garlic and let those cook until the onions are soft. If you would like to make this vegetarian, simply cook the onions and garlic in a little bit of olive oil.

Kale and Potato Soup

2. Add the chopped potatoes and the paprika and stirred the ingredients well. I let everything cook for a few minutes while I was chopping up the kale.

3. Add the kale and about 1/2 teaspoon of kosher salt. Stir and add the chicken broth and water. Bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to low and let it simmer for about 20 to 30 minutes until the potatoes are soft.

We served our soup with a little bit of cheese sprinkled over the top and I added some hot sauce to give it a little kick! Enjoy!

The local line-up ...


Hot pork sausage - Charlene's Garden
Garlic - Greene Family Farm
Kennebec Potatoes - Jones Family Farms
Kale and Onion - Atherton Farmers Market 

Vietnamese Chicken Noodle Soup in a Crock Pot

Vietnamese Chicken Noodle Soup in a Crockpot

Many, many years ago, my husband bought me this crockpot for Christmas. I had another very good crockpot at the time, but he thought I loved my first one so much that I might put a second one to good use as well. He was right, of course. This cute little crockpot is perfect for keeping hot dips warm at parties or cooking up a perfect batch of soup on a rainy afternoon like we had today here in Charlotte.

This recipe is super simple, gluten free, and it basically cooks itself in about 2 or 3 hours. I recently was wandering the aisles at my grocery store looking at the chicken broths and a new item from Pacific Natural Foods caught my eye - a Chicken Pho soup base! If you are a fan of Vietnamese food, you will be as excited as I was. Pho (pronounced -fuh-) is a very simple and delicious Vietnamese soup flavored with herbs like star anise, ginger, cloves, cilantro, and garlic. You can make it with beef or chicken (I prefer chicken) and vegetables and rice noodles. So simple. When I saw this Pho Soup Base I just had to try it. If you don't see this pho soup base at a supermarket near you, simply use chicken broth and experiment a little bit with the herbs that you have on hand.

Snap peas, onion, and baby carrots

Ingredients: 

4 cups of chicken broth or pho soup base
1/2 onion, sliced very thinly
handful of baby carrots, sliced thinly
1 inch of ginger, grated with a microplane
1/2 chicken breast, sliced in small pieces
1 tablespoon Tamari sauce
2 ounces of rice noodles (handful)
handful of snap peas or beans
bean sprouts (optional)
fresh cilantro for garnish (optional)

Rice noodles

Directions:

                                                                  

Combine broth, chicken, carrots, grated ginger, and Tamari sauce into a crock pot. Cover and turn to low for two or three hours. Add the rice noodles. Cover and let cook for a few more minutes. Add the snap peas and turn off the heat. Serve with a little bit of chopped cilantro for garnish.

Some additional notes ... 

What is tamari sauce? Tamari sauce is a must-have in your kitchen if you are gluten-free. It is basically a stronger version of soy sauce.

Do I really need a microplane? Yes. Yes you do. Microplanes are so handy in the kitchen, they don't take up much room in your utensil drawer, and they are very inexpensive. Mine is yellow - I found it on clearance at Marshall's for a few dollars and it works great. A microplane is a flat, handled grater with small holes that allow you to grate whatever you need to right into your bowl or pot or saucepan. So convenient! It cleans very easily too - don't try to grate ginger on a box grater. No good can come of that endeavor.

Fresh ginger? Powdered ginger? If you have fresh ginger, by all means use it! Fresh ginger is very inexpensive and keeps pretty well - I wrap mine in saran wrap and keep it in the fridge. However, if you don't have fresh ginger, use powdered. I use powdered ginger in recipes all the time.

Slicing your chicken ... Did you know that if your chicken breast is still a little bit frozen, it will be so much easier to slice it super thin? Seriously. Give it a try. You can thank me later.

The final product ... the broth is not super-duper clear like you would find in a Vietnamese restaurant because I put the chicken in the broth uncooked. If you cook your chicken separately and then add it to the soup, you will have broth that is much more clear. Enjoy!!

Super Simple Quinoa

Quinoa

During the month of October, a great food blogger, Andrew Wilder, writer of Eating Rules, has challenged the food blogging community to commit to eating unprocessed food. In short, that means that if you cannot make a food in your kitchen (even if it takes a little bit of effort) than you cannot eat it. If you are eating healthy and gluten-free already, this challenge might not seem too challenging. This super simple quinoa certainly is a great side dish to try out during the month of October Unprocessed!

If you look at your local grocery store, I promise that you will find quinoa. I usually buy mine at Trader Joe's but this week I was tempted (again) by the bulk bins at Earth Fare and couldn't resist this multi-colored version. Quinoa is not a grain, although if you look at it in this picture, I am sure you think that it looks like one. Quinoa is a plant primarily harvested in South America and it has been grown for centuries. When you see it packaged in a store, it usually resembles couscous - a pale yellow or white color because the delicate shells from the seeds have been removed. When I saw this multi-colored quinoa, I had to give it a try because it looks far less processed than what I am used to seeing.

I am so happy that I took a chance on this beautiful chenopod selection! In about 20 minutes, I had a pot of some of the most delicious quinoa I have ever tasted. The kiddos agreed. Baby R ate an entire bowl of it - and banged on the table for more. I call that an unequivocal success.

Ingredients: 

1 cup quinoa
4 cloves garlic, diced

Super Simple Quinoa

1/2 large onion, chopped
Swirl of olive oil
Salt
2 cups of water

Easy How-To:

Saute the garlic and onion in a little bit of olive oil and then add the quinoa and a little bit of salt. Stir to coat the quinoa and let it cook for a minute or two. Add 2 cups of water. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to simmer and cover. Let it cook for about 20 minutes until the water has been absorbed and your little quinoa buds have popped open.


We served our quinoa under sliced eggplant baked in a delicious tomato sauce. Yum! This easy side dish will go with just about anything. Give it a try!

An additional reading suggestion ... 
If you would like to read an interesting article about the impact of skyrocketing quinoa sales on the indigenous people in South America who grow it, click here ... New York Times article about quinoa.