use real butter

Recipe: chinese stir-fried chicken with vegetables

***Hey Coloradoans!!***

Shauna and Danny (and Lu) of Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef are HERE in Colorado! They have a beautiful new book out (try their pumpkin soup = teh awesome) and want to share it and the gluten-free love with all of you. Just so you know, Danny is our homeboy – a native from Breckenridge. It is so very very special for Shauna and Danny to be coming home to Colorado with their little girl. You have several opportunities to meet them this week and give them a proper welcome home:

Monday, November 15, 2010 in DENVER
Party at Udi’s Stapleton restaurant: 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm. This event is SOLD OUT.

Tuesday, November 16, 2010 in DENVER
Reading and book signing at The Tattered Cover Book Store (on Colfax Ave.): 7:30 pm and open to all.

Wednesday, November 17, 2010 in DILLON (near Breckenridge)
Book signing at the Dillon Borders Book Store: 4:00 pm – 5:00 pm open to all.

Thursday, November 18, 2010 in BRECKENRIDGE
A BIG Gluten-Free PARTY for Shauna, Danny, and Lu at Mi Casa Restaurant: 5:00 pm to 8:00 pm for $16.25.

Saturday, November 20, 2010 in BOULDER
Gluten-Free Potluck at First Congregational Church (1128 Pine St.): 1:00 pm and open to all. Bring a favorite gluten-free dish to share around. If you can chip in a couple of bucks to help cover the fee for the rental space and cleaning, that would be extra swell!

For all of the details on these events, please visit Shauna’s post on their Colorado Book Tour.

***Come Meet Shauna, Danny, and Lu!***

I was rather pleased that I kicked my cold in time for my Yosemite shoot last week. It was a short-lived victory though, because it came back and thwacked me square in the shins this weekend. I lost my voice. I felt sapped of energy. And Jeremy’s family visited for the weekend (but they had a blast playing Rock Band 3). The key was to lie low and stay under the radar… and watch the snow fall outside. I think we are finally getting our winter on in Colorado, albeit slowly. Oh wait, but a few more from Yosemite (and the rest are on the photo blog).

bridalveil

half dome

I’m happy to be home. It isn’t just the fact that I don’t have to plan for another trip, but that I can actually make plans at home. Plans to see my friends, to cook and bake, to SKI, to fix things around the house, to get some real work done, and especially spending time with the guy and the pup. When I was preparing all manner of recipes ahead of time to post during my travels, we were always eating a “new” recipe. Jeremy commented at one point that we hadn’t repeated a dinner in quite some time… months, in fact. I’m no fan of serving the same five recipes every week for all eternity, but the nice thing about a great recipe is that you can make it again. Variety is the spice of life, but favorites are meant to be re-lived.

chicken, green onions, garlic, straw mushrooms, snow peas, water chestnuts, baby corn

slice the chicken against the grain

There’s nothing like a quick stir-fry full of vegetables that puts a smile on my face. I grew up eating a lot of vegetables and I start to feel lethargic and sleepy when I don’t get enough of them. My mom was an ace at the Chinese stir-fry. Her vegetables were always crisp, fresh, and brightly colored. So that’s how I make my stir-fries and wouldn’t you know it – Jeremy craves those vegetables too. One of my favorite dishes is this chicken and vegetable stir-fry because of the clean and bright flavors.

sauté the chicken with the green onions and garlic

stir fry the vegetables

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: arepas with guasacaca

It has been snowing horizontally in my ‘hood for the past couple of days. I rather like the vertical snow more – you know, the kind that falls gently and accumulates so you can ski it? But I’ll take any snow we can get at the moment because we haven’t had our usual Big Dump Snow Day yet and it’s nearly November. Meanwhile, we’ve been taking care of business at home – like choosing who won the Doughnuts cookbook giveaway! Jeremy gathered Kaweah’s ragtag crew of toys, assigning each one a number and randomly distributing them in a line (that is, they are not laid out in numerical order). Then we recorded the number of the first toy she touched. We did this three times.

kaweah picked the number 557

Our number is 557. We had 274 qualifying entrants (I basically accepted entrants up until Kaweah had a number) and 557 MOD 274 is 9. Congratulations Emily Vigue! You’ve won a free copy of Lara Ferroni’s Doughnuts! I’ll send you an email to get your shipping address right away!

In case you’re wondering just how random my selection process is, my resident astrophysicist came up with the method and we had it verified for pure idiotic randomness by my friend and resident economist (also statistician), Erin. Not to mention – it’s Kaweah – does ANYONE know what goes on in that little brain of hers?

well, right now you know what kaweah is thinking

Erin and Ali came up yesterday so Erin could teach us to make arepas. Erin has been wanting to share arepas with us forever and ever. She learned how to make them the proper way in Venezuela. While I don’t particularly enjoy spending time in tropical climates, I am more than willing to partake of the cuisine. I’ve been wanting to try and blog about arepas ever since Erin mentioned them, so it all worked out. And if you see henna tattoos on the hands of our models, yes – they were at the party too!

start with harina pan

Erin told me there are two brands of harina that she is aware of and harina PAN is the one you want to use. You probably won’t find it in your neighborhood grocery store unless you are lucky enough to have a good Latin American market nearby (if so, color me jealous). So burn that image above into your brain because it is soooo worth it to make these delectable little pockets of savory amazingness.

pour the harina pan into a large bowl

add warm water

and some oil (and salt)

mix it together with your hand and let it rest

While you let the harina sit (Erin says ten minutes minimum, but the longer the better), you can make the guasacaca, a Venezuelan avocado salsa. Sounds like huasakaka – no hard G, okay? The ingredients are relatively easy to come by.

onion, jalapeño, parsley, cilantro, garlic, and avocado

blender it

You’ll also need a little salt, some white vinegar or rice wine vinegar, and oil (which you add last – always last). This might have come together easier had we used the food processor or if we hadn’t packed the leafy herbs in first. If you go the blender route and your blender sucks as much as mine does, then please blender the onion, vinegar, and avocado first. That will produce enough liquid to get the rest of the ingredients blendered properly, otherwise you’ll spend a lot of time pushing ingredients down toward the blade over and over and over again (with the blender OFF, of course).

erin finally gets the guasacaca to blend up

brilliant green color

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: meatball sandwich

On our quick 2-day trip in California’s glorious wine country, our first stop was Jordan Vineyard and Winery just over a mile north of Healdsburg off of beautiful Alexander Valley Road. I had met Jordan’s director of communications, Lisa Mattson, at IFBC in Seattle this past summer. Lisa was spunky and hilarious company during dinner. When she gave me her card, I only registered that Jordan was in California.

the lovely grounds at jordan winery

old oaks grace the patio

A couple of weeks before I left for BlogHer Food, I tweeted that we’d be spending a few days near Healdsburg after the conference. Lisa tweeted back that I should visit Jordan – perhaps attend their Harvest Lunch. The dates and locations all matched up, except that Lisa was going to be away on travel the day we arrived. But she made sure we were in good hands. Laura greeted us and walked our group through the stunning grounds to the incredible Harvest Lunch spread that their resident chef created. It was like being transported back to summer (California does that to you).

our table for harvest lunch

What I noticed and loved about Jordan was how all of their employees came in from the fields, the buildings, and gathered at the tables across the lawn to share lunch. Every day, Jordan’s chef prepares lunch for everyone at the winery to eat. There was a nice family feel to it. Laura told me she was excited about the mac and cheese (it was deliciously fancy mac and cheese) they were serving at lunch, but I was completely enamored with the vegetables – most of them straight from the garden, bursting with flavors of summer. Our lunch was served with Jordan’s crisp and bright Chardonnay. The winery is known for two types of wines: Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon. The Chardonnay grapes are harvested from the Russian River Valley, but the Cab grapes are harvested in Alexander Valley.

tomatoes picked from their gardens that morning – still warm from the sun!

just a fraction of the beautiful dishes on offer

jordan chardonnay on ice

During lunch, we learned that Jordan was founded in 1972 by the Jordans – two petrologists who moved from Colorado to California. Petrologists are a flavor of geologist and so I was delighted to hear that the winery recently began incorporating soil mapping into how they grow their grapes. The property itself spans over 1,500 acres of rolling hills adorned with majestic California oaks and 75% of that is left natural and wild. As Laura led us down to see the chef’s garden after lunch, she explained Jordan’s commitment to sustainability and ecological balance of their land. The business is certified carbon-neutral and they implement several policies to minimize their impact on the environment. The garden was an enormous plot with tomatillos, all manner of herbs, precious heirloom tomatoes, several varieties of peppers, strawberries, figs, beans, onions, corn.

strawberries down at the chef’s garden

Because it was the harvest, we could see large stainless steel containers being loaded with hand-picked grapes and then transported up to the winery. We watched the operations as each container was tipped and emptied of its contents. The grapes fell into the hopper and then moved via conveyor belt past inspectors who removed debris and lesser-quality grapes before speeding into the building to be processed further. Meanwhile, the stems and leaves that were separated were trucked out to their compost (I love that!). The sheer volume was mind-blowing.

petit verdot grapes pouring into the hopper to remove stems and leaves

sooooo many grapes!

picking out burned grapes and other plant matter

On the way back to the reception area, I couldn’t help but admire the architecture and all of the trees and plants growing in courtyards and on the structures. Grand walls were blanketed in ivy which helps to keep the buildings cool from that hot hot sun. It’s the kind of place – with all those idyllic little nooks in the shade – that makes you want to grab a book, some cheese and bread, a glass of wine and go sit down and forget about everything else. Our sincerest thanks to Lisa and Laura for such a special visit at Jordan Vineyard and Winery.

persimmons ripening

a quiet courtyard with a statue of bacchus, roman god of wine

Full disclosure: Our group of four received complimentary harvest lunches and tours from Jordan Winery with no obligations.

It’s a small world, you know. When I was photographing lunch at Jordan, Laura asked me if I knew Matt Armendariz because he had been there not too long ago for a photo shoot. Are you kidding me? I love that guy! I just hugged his adorable self at BlogHer Food not five days ago… Food connects everyone in some form or another, but food and the interwebs bind us all like The One Ring. Not long before I flew to San Francisco, Jeremy informed me that the first year graduate students in his department gathered and took turns cooking for each other every weekend. He told me that the coming weekend they were going to make my recipe for Italian meatballs. Somehow, someone found my blog. I asked Jeremy if he thought it was weird to have these separate worlds colliding. He shrugged. I don’t think it phases him anymore. Okay, but where was I going with all of this? Those meatballs are not *my* recipe, they are Lorna’s recipe and when I saw her at the Queen Anne farmers market last month, I promised her I had another post on those meatballs coming.

i made meatball sandwiches

I must confess that I have always had a problem with meatball sandwiches. I began to discuss this with Jeremy because I had never had one before and he asked me why not. I’ll tell you why not. Because meatballs are spherical and they don’t stack nicely between two planar surfaces, that’s why not. Who the hell thought up such horrendous design mechanics of a sandwich? Also, they are discreet spheres rather than a continuous filling in the sandwich space. Ultimately, you know what this means, don’t you?

*inherent structural instability*

**Jump for more butter**