Costa Rican Cabbage Salad

We had this everyday in Costa Rica. They would use cabbage over lettuce because of the climate cabbage would last much longer than other types of lettuce. I loved the dressing! A lot of the ingredients are optional. I usually just had cabbage + carrots for the salad and the dressing was vinegar, olive oil, lime juice, salt & peppa to taste. It was quite delicious.

((Recipe credit here))

INGREDIENTS:
• ½ head of green cabbage, sliced in very thin strips (much like coleslaw – try using a wide blade grater)
• 2 Tablespoons fresh cilantro, coarsely chopped
• snow peas, stems removed, chopped in 1” pieces
• 2 tomatoes, thinly sliced into rings
• 1 carrot, peeled and sliced into oval rings
• 1 or 2 green onions, sliced into thin rings (use white and green part)

DRESSING:
• ¼ cup white vinegar
• ½ cup olive oil
• juice of lime
• 2 Tablespoons Honey
• 2 Tablespoons cilantro
• ½ jalapeño (seeded)• garlic salt, salt and pepper to taste

DIRECTIONS:
In a large salad bowl, simply toss all the salad ingredients and in a separate bowl, whisk together the salad dressing ingredients. Pour dressing over salad and let sit up to an hour before serving to let the flavors blend and the cabbage soften.

BONUS SECTION! Claire and I kickin' it at the Yoga Horizon Infinity Pool.

Cabbage?

I currently have two heads of cabbage in the fridge, and one more on the way. Suggestions? Besides braising it in bacon. Done that. Delicious. But man cannot live on bacon alone.

Speaking of, I took Hans and Atticus to Casa de Luz, a vegan macrobiotic restaurant near our house. They loved it. And here's a sauce recipe from there, it's delicious on EVERYTHING:

Timo's Pepita Sauce

Serve this richly flavorful sauce over grains or dark, leafy greens.

1 cup unroasted pepitas (pumpkin seeds)
1 clove garlic
1 tsp. oregano
1 Tbs. flax oil
2 tsp. shoyu
1 Tbs. ume vinegar
1 cup filtered water

Pan-roast pumkin sees in a stainless steel skillet, stirring constantly. Remove from heat when seeds are lightly browned, puffed, fragrant, and sound slightly hollow when stirred. Place roasted seeds and remaining ingredients in blender, mix well, and serve.

Smörgåsbord Pizza: Confirmed good.

Don't have any mozzarella cheese? Is your significant other craving some food and you want to oblige their needs? Going on a vacation and need to clean out the fridge? Sounds like you need to make yourself a Smörgåsbord-style pizza.

Ingredients used (but certainly not limited to):
For the dough(inspired by Ruth's pizza dough):

2 cups regular flour
1 tsp. Sea salt
1 tsp. Oregano
1 tsp. Thyme
1 tsp. Garlic salt
1 - 2 tsp. Active yeast (1 used for this recipe.)
1 1/2 c. Warm water
Small splash of olive oil

Combine all ingredients except water and olive oil. Pour water in last. I like to add around 1/2 cup of water at a time so I get the perfect dough consistency. Too much water and you have too add more flour. Too little and your dough will be anti-dough. Knead with your hands or a strong metal spoon until you have a smooth dough. Add olive oil, Knead and get the olive oil into every pore of the dough. Finally, I like to drizzle olive oil over the top of the dough and get the entire outside covered in a nice shine.

For best results, let dough sit overnight in fridge. For better than good results, let sit out for 3-4 hours in a covered bowl. For very quick and still decent results, microwave dough for 30 seconds (not too long or parts of the dough will actually cook through and get hard, not fun to work with, and generally just bad bad bad) and let sit out for 30 minutes. For instant results, microwave for 30 seconds and on an oiled stone/pan roll out dough while it is still warm. I found that if you use this last method, it works best to just roll it out once, it can get tough if you put it back into a ball.

Pre-heat oven to 500 degrees farenheit. Once you have dough rolled out onto stone or pan, put the stone and dough (no ingredients) into an oven of at least 300 degrees. Pre-cook this dough for 3-5 minutes. If air bubbles form, pop them with a long barbeque fork or other poker. Pre-cooking your dough gives you a crunchy bottom and ensures the dough cooks all the way through without burning your toppings.

Toppings(subjective, Smörgåsbord inspired):
Pesto (I used some straight ahead Pesto. Basil or fire roasted tomatoes Pesto is also tastey and unique.)
1/2 bag of shredded Swiss cheese
1/2 bag of Mexican cheese (aka mixed)
1/2 to 1 White Onion chopped into small squares (not restricted to squares, consider onion art?)
1 red bell pepper chopped
1 tomato sliced (or chopped if you don't like huge, awesome, borderline Sacred slices of tomato)
Ricotta cheese

Optional ingredients not used here:
Toss some baby spinach leaves on top of the pizza with 2-3 minutes left to cook, or as soon as you take it out. Don't let these cook too long or else they can get bitter.
Small pieces of Bacon, pre-cooked a little. Think crunchy Bacon crumbs.
Especially good with Bacon is to serve your pizza with slices of avocado and just put it on top cold. I think it accents any pizza ingredient well and brings out a lot of flavors you might've missed or overlooked.

Prepping the pizza(lolwut? put ingredients on duh):

With a spoon, spoon out chunks of Pesto and spread it evenly on your pre-cooked pizza crust. If you are running low on Pesto, I like to add olive oil in the jar and mix it around, this makes the Pesto go further.

Add Swiss and mixed cheeses.

Take small (like 1/2 to 1 tablespoon size) blobs of ricotta and place accordingly.

Then throw the rest of your ingredients on top. You win if a) 10% or more of the ingredients end up on the floor or b) someone laughs at the pattern you made on the pizza.

Cook at 500 degrees farenheit for 15-18 minutes.

Confirmed this recipe actually tastes good.

Simple Spaghetti

Well it's the elephant in the room. It's no secret that RD and I aren't "top chef material". We aren't "serious contenders" in any Burrows cooking competition. We "struggle" to make a "dish" that is "impressive".

None the less, we are contributing to the "blog". Here is our "simple" spaghetti recipe. Maybe Atticus can make it for the family at the reunion.

Ingredients

Pasta

Tomato Sauce

Onions

Spices

Ground Turkey

Directions

Make pasta.

Sauté onions, brown ground turkey, add tomato sauce, add spices, simmer.

Put together.

Enjoy.

Artichoke Ravioli - courtesy of French Laundry and Ruth

Pan-Roasted Striped Bass with Artichoke Ravioli and Barigoule Vinaigrette
Ruth came over last night, and put together this DELICIOUS recipe from the French Laundry cookbook. I made some fresh pasta from the Babbo cookbook (pretty simple, rolled out into sheets with the pasta maker).

Potlikker pasta with greens

So, I made the Bon Appetit recipe (from my previous post). Success! It was delicious and not greasy, despite using bacon. A couple substitutions: I used homemade vegetable stock (John, an awesome way to use vegetable leaves, scraps, etc), and one bunch of swiss chard and one bunch of kale. I also used less meat for the stock.

Farmers market pasta

I go to the farmers market every Saturday and my goal is every week is to cook as many meal based off what I get at the market. This recipe came from my need to use the cucumbers I got this week. Sorry about not having everything measured out.
Roasted sauce pasta
Bow tie pasta with tomato sauce topped with roasted cucumber slices.
INGREDIENTS
Bow tie pasta
for sauce
Cashews (10ish)
Olive oil
1 tbspButter
8 Garlic cloves
3 Tomatillo
Salt
Pepper
Thyme (dry)
Basil (dry)
Rosemary (fresh)
2 cucumbers
4 slices of bacon (optional)
INSTRUCTIONS
sauce and roast cucumbers
1. Heat oven to 350
2. Cut cucumbers in quarters and then if need be in half for two bite pieces
3. Peel garlic and rough chop
4. Peel tomatillos
5. Place all 3 on a roasting pan
6. Pour olive oil (enough to coat plus a tbsp or a little more because it makes up a part of the sauce)
7. Season with salt, pepper, thyme and basil
8. Roast until tomatillos are soft but haven't popped.
9. Meanwhile cook bacon
10. Remove from pan
11. Discard bacon Greece but don't whip the pan
12. Add butter salt, pepper, rosemary
13. As butter melts add chopped cashews
14. Cook until soft
15. Pour all into a blender (or food processor)
16. Boil water with salt
17. Add pasta once boiling
18. Once roasting pan is done remove cucumbers and tomatillos
19. Quarter 2 tomatillos and put in blender (with cashew mixture)
20. Also pour in garlic and extra olive oil
21. Blend until smooth
22. Taste
23. Pour into sauce pan and heat
24. Add cooked pasta to sauce
25. Plate pasta, top with cucumbers, bacon, chopped rosemary and the other tomatillo.