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Recipe: coconut lime cilantro dressing

I am headed west today, where temperatures will near 90°F. Just the thought of it makes my skin prickle and my brow sweat! On my last shoot, Jeremy and I covered a lot of miles. We love a good road trip because it’s hours upon hours talking about all manner of topics – especially food. And I got to thinking as we drove through Somewhere in the Middle of Utah of a great noodle salad we used to get at Trader Joes when we lived in Southern California. It was a lovely cilantro and coconut dressing over noodles and a few (a VERY few) vegetables. I’ve never found a recipe for it and I had always intended to try making it myself. So that’s what I did when we got home from our road trip last month.

start with what we know: lime and cilantro

add some coconut milk and rice wine vinegar

This was a little feedback loop: blend a bunch of ingredients together, taste, adjust. Repeat. After blending up the main ingredients, I realized that lime juice doesn’t give the same bright fragrance as lime zest. It’s all about what suits your tastes.

pour in some coconut milk with the lime juice and cilantro

lime zest gives it a nice boost

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Recipe: rosemary lamb noisettes

I have been joined at the hip to my computer lately working on several things at once. I know some photographers will wait to process their photos after a shoot so that they can come at it with a fresh mind. I’m not one of those. I have to plow through them while my color memory is strong, but more importantly before my next shoot or else things begin to clutter together in my brain and on the hard drives. We’re finally at the Death Valley photos and I held off on those until last because it was a complete bitch to shoot. I’m only halfway through, but I thought you might enjoy some of these. It’s amazing how the same place can look so different from sunrise to sunset.

sunset over death valley

…and sunrise

those clouds plagued me for three days

There are a few more photos from Death Valley and I’ll get around to the rest very soon because I have another shoot coming up in a week.

If it weren’t for all of the chatter on Twitter and FaceBook, I would not have known that the holidays were upon us. It’s not like knowing would have changed anything. We don’t celebrate much this time of year other than a Big Dump Snow Day or an especially gorgeous and sunny “Spring” day. It’s all good by me. As it happened, I had been contacted by Annie of Lava Lake Ranch a couple of months ago about trying their organic, grass-fed lamb. These days I’m a lot pickier about reviewing products on urb because I don’t have the time and I’m not interested in shilling for something I don’t feel strongly about. So what was so special about Lava Lake Ranch Lamb? In a nutshell: 100% of their profits go to conservation and restoration of nearly 1 million acres of land in south-central Idaho. I have a soft spot for organizations and individuals who Do Good in the world and of course, Good by my standards may not be the same as yours.

I said sure, but I’d have to let her know when I had an open window of time in my schedule. The window was this week and I received via FedEx boneless lamb loin, lamb chops, and lamb shanks. My regular readers know that I’m sort of new to lamb, so I scoured the interwebs for some recipe ideas and lo and behold – everyone was talking lamb because it’s Easter weekend.

i started with the loin since we wanted a quick meal

rosemary, there is always rosemary…

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Recipe: vietnamese beef pho

NaBloWriMo day 14. I’m blogging daily and trying not to lose it.

Eat on $30 day 4. I’ll cover what we ate on day 4 tomorrow since the Daring Cooks challenge usually goes live at midnight. This posting date was set in stone millennia ago, but I made it (and we ate it) last week, so it isn’t part of the Eat on $30 challenge.

It’s my Dad’s birthday! Happy Birthday, Baba! I hope you have an awesome day. Love, JenJen.

Did you see the giveaway for 2 $25 Macy’s gift cards? Go! Go enter! Then come back because this recipe RAWKS!

daring cooks – we slice, we dice, we sizzle, baby!

It’s time for the Daring Cooks again after last month’s hiatus. Let’s pay proper homage to the ladies of the kitchen… the DARING KITCHEN, that is: lovable Lis of La Mia Cucina and irresistable Ivonne of Cream Puffs in Venice. Our hostess this month is one of my favorite chicas of the food blogging world, Jaden from Steamy Kitchen. I had the pleasure of meeting her in person last month at the BlogHer Food conference in San Francisco – such a sweetheart.

Here’s the official line: The October 2009 Daring Cooks’ challenge was brought to us by Jaden of the blog Steamy Kitchen. The recipes are from her new cookbook, The Steamy Kitchen Cookbook.

The challenge for October was Vietnamese pho. Jaden gave us a lot of options to choose from, but I went straight for the long version of the Vietnamese beef pho recipe. I have been wanting to make beef pho for years and this was the kick in the patootie I needed. I only made a half recipe since we had to empty our fridge of perishables before starting the Eat on $30 challenge. The first step was to roast the ginger and onion in the oven. While that was roasting, I parboiled the beef bones ten minutes for the precious broth then drained them and cleared the pot of scum.

halved onion and ginger

beef bones

I’ve never made broth with this combination of spices before and I was so excited! The parboiled bones went into a fresh pot of water and were brought back to a boil. I placed the spices in a little mesh pouch and chucked those in with the ginger, onion, fish sauce, sugar, and salt.

spices

my favorite brand of fish sauce (oddly enough, three crabs)

into the pot the onion goes

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