cooking beets

Free Icon for Bloggers: Fresh from the Farmers Market

A quick way to identify farmers market finds, here in 400px

Two or three or more times a week, I trek to the farmers market. Here in St. Louis, that means any one of my favorite farmers markets.

To encourage all of us to seek out fresh produce from our hometown farmers markets, I commissioned an icon to help showcase fresh vegetables and fruits -- Meet Blush, the Sweet Tomato! -- and invite my fellow bloggers to adopt the icon, too.

[Many thanks to the talented Jeannette of Matchbox Creative aka Kickpleat from Everybody Likes Sandwiches for designing the icon. We all should blush as prettily as Blush!]

So yes, fellow bloggers, you are invited to use the icon in posts and places that feature fresh produce and other farmers market finds. Use it once, use it a hundred times, it's up to you.

It comes in a 400px, 125px and 100px sizes. You're free to use the icon as you see fit: in posts, in a sidebar, to link to a list of your own favorite farmers markets, anything creative you come up with that's related to farmers markets. Me, I plan to insert the icon into my Blogger template so that it's easy to add to every post when featuring farmers market vegetables.

"Blush the Sweet Tomato" icon is my gift to the food blog community, so it is "free" for all bloggers to use. But when you use the icon for the first time, I would appreciate your linking to A Veggie Venture. If you're not a blogger and are interested in the icon, please contact me to request permission. (Once you're using the icon, if you'd like others to know, feel free to leave a comment with a link to your blog, below. Use this code, {a href="InsertYourBlogURLHere"}InsertYourBlogNameHere{/a}, replacing the { and } with <>. )

COPY INSTRUCTIONS To copy the icon to use on your own site, (1) right click an icon image in the size you'd like to use, (2) click Save As to save the image on your own computer, (3) then upload to your site as normal. No hot linking, please!

VEGETABLE HUMOR Why did the tomato blush? Because she saw the salad dressing. (A friend sent this, I couldn't resist!)

MANY THANKS to Elise, Kalyn and Nupur for acting as 'icon consultants'!

FROM THE ARCHIVES See the Recipe Box for the Alphabet of Vegetables, an A - Z of inspiration of ways to your farmers market finds!

NEVER MISS A RECIPE! Just enter your e-mail address in the box in the sidebar. Once you do, new recipes will be delivered, automatically, straight to your e-mail In Box.

FRESH from the FARMERS MARKET

Hands-on time: 5 minutes
Time to table: 5 minutes
Serves 4

And for readers of A Veggie Venture, when you see the icon in future posts, you'll be reminded of the beautiful vegetables and fruits and other farm products that we're lucky to find at farmers markets.

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Kool-Aid Pickles ♥

Dill pickles, 'pickled' a second time in double-strength Kool-Aid, in this case, yes, orange

Oh I just love crazy stuff like this! And the pickles are surprisingly good! Since the New York Times wrote about Kool-Aid dills a bit back, there's been lots of talk but to my knowledge, no one's actually MADE them.

The color's pretty wild, yes? And at an impromptu rained-out picnic on Sunday, it was great fun listening to people guess what might be flavoring the pickles. They all got 'orange' but none got so far as Kool-Aid.

(Does Kool-Aid translate across the world? It's a packet of powder, just sugar and artificial flavor and dye, marketed to kids. And for those of us of a certain age, it was "the" coveted drink of childhood, in the way soda/pop is now but which, at least for my family, was prohibitively expensive.)

KITCHEN NOTES Since the dill pickles I purchased were quite small, I hoped that the Kool-Aid color/taste would permeate a whole pickle -- no luck. So I cut them in half after two or three days. Be sure to stir the mixture once a day for even color.

FROM THE ARCHIVES Do you love refrigerator pickles, you know the ones that aren't 'canned' but keep in the frig for awhile? Me too! My favorites are Swedish beets, carrot & daikon refrigerator pickle and these cucumber & pepper refrigerator pickles.

PRINT JUST A RECIPE! Now you can print a recipe without wasting ink and paper on the header and sidebar. Here's how.

NEVER MISS A RECIPE! For 'home delivery' of new recipes from A Veggie Venture, sign up here. Once you do, new recipes will be delivered, automatically, straight to your e-mail In Box.

KOOL-AID PICKLES

Hands-on time: 10 minutes
Time to table: 1 week
Serves ?? depends on who'll eat them at all!

Two packets Kool-Aid
1 cup sugar (the 'recipe' calls for a pound of sugar, about 2 1/3 cups)
2 quarts water
Up to 4 16-ounce jars dill pickles, halved or quartered, depending on size

Mix Kool-Aid, sugar and water in a large glass container until well mixed. Add pickles and refrigerate for about a week before eating, stirring every day.

NUTRITION ESTIMATE
I have no idea --

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Thai Roasted Eggplant Salad ♥

The more I cook vegetables in new ways, the more amazed I become how much yet remains to be explored. Mexican vegetables? Asian vegetables? Indian vegetables? It's a whole new unexplored world that I think, yes, we shall call A World of Vegetables. (There are enough recipes, already, from various cuisines that I'll create a new section in the Recipe Box.) I'll work to limit (but not exclude) hard-to-find ingredients or suggest sources and substitutes when I know. But I'm excited about exploring entirely new flavor profiles and hope you'll enjoy the journey, too. Grab your culinary passport. This could be fun!

We'll start with Thai vegetables, inspired by a new cookbook's introduction to the vegetable section.

"Please do not tell the good people of Thailand that vegetables are good for them. They have no idea. They only reason they eat vegetables is because they like them. They like the way vegetables taste and the way they look. They like the way vegetables crunch and exude coolness when raw, the way the soften and shine when put to the flame. ... So please do not tell Thai people that vegetables are good for them; that good food and vegetables live in different countries, separated by mountains too steep to climb. Let them keep eating their vegetables with pleasure and with abandon, all the time, every which way, five times a day."

And this eggplant salad is soooo packed with flavor. No one ingredient stands out; together they meld to create something entirely new and to me, anyway, in a way that's unusual without being 'weird'.

The recipe's introduction explains that this eggplant salad (yum makeua yao) is a wildly popular dish all over Southeast Asia, some times includes pork or fresh shrimp, and is often served with lettuce leaves for tidy little wraps. I can see why -- it's a keeper!

FISH SAUCE (NAHM PLAH)
The eggplant salad does rely on one essential ingredient that might take some searching out, fish sauce or nahm plah which is (apparently, remember I'm just learning myself, so make no claims to expertise) the 'essence' of Thai food. It's a deep, dark, bold and salty liquid made from salted anchovies. It's worth seeking out and for this particular dish, is essential to the taste. If you can't find it nearby, Amazon sells fish sauce.

DRIED SHRIMP
The salad also calls for another unusual ingredient, dried shrimp, that the recipe says is optional and I agree. That said, it might be that dried shrimp has an effect like that of anchovies, creating a depth and complexity of flavor without standing out on its own.

Dried shrimp really stinks -- really really stinks. At my nearby international grocery, it's kept in an end-cap refrigerator behind glass and the odor still permeates that area. (Yay rah, Dried shrimp is sold on Amazon, too!) I'm storing it in the frig in a heavy glass jar, no odor problem!

Dried shrimp are very salty. I'm friendly with a check-out woman at the grocery; she advises that when dried shrimp are used with already-salty fish sauce, they should first be soaked in hot water, then drained. I also wanted to diffuse the strong flavor. The shrimp didn't mash well in a mortar and pestle didn't work, but did grind beautifully in a small food processor.

NEXT TIME I'll grill the eggplant, which I suspect will add a lovely smoky essence.

MOM, IT'S TOO SPICY Even with a tablespoon of fresh chillies, this salad had no 'heat'.

NUTRITION NOTES This salad has virtually no fat, only that used to mist the tray before roasting. All the flavor comes from that long list (for me) of ingredients -- though don't worry, the instructions are very short.

COCONUT & LIME
One of my favorite food blogs, Coconut & Lime, is celebrating its third birthday and has invited followers to post recipes that contain, surprise, coconut and lime. Happy Blog Birthday, Rachel!

FROM THE ARCHIVES Eggplant recipes are a favorite search here on A Veggie Venture, all in the Recipe Box.

THAI ROASTED EGGPLANT SALAD

Hands-on time: 35 minutes
Time to table: 60 minutes
Serves 4

Olive oil to mist
1 1/2 pounds eggplant, preferably the long slender Asian eggplant (that won't likely require peeling, though mine did today) or the larger globe eggplant

1 tablespoon dried shrimp, optional
2 tablespoons shallot, chopped thin (I replaced this and the green onion with 1/4 a white onion, chopped)
2 green onions, chopped
2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro
1 tablespoon garlic
1 tablespoon fresh hot chilies (I used a finger chili), trimmed, seeds and membrane removed, chopped fine
1 tablespoon unsweetened coconut
3 tablespoons fish sauce
Zest of 1 lime (my addition)
3 tablespoons lime juice (about 2 limes)
1 tablespoon sugar (I used chopped palm sugar and think brown sugar would be some better than white)
2 tablespoons chopped roasted salted peanuts (I skipped this)
Additional coconut and cilantro for garnish

EGGPLANT Set oven to 400F or heat grill. Mist a baking sheet with olive oil. Trim stem ends and (for ASIAN) cut in half lengthwise or (for GLOBE) in quarters lengthswise. Place cut-side down and roast or grill til golden, about 25 minutes. When cool, decide whether skins are tough and should be removed. Chop into pieces.

DRIED SHRIMP Cover with hot water while prepping salad, then drain. Chop finely or run through food processor.

MEANWHILE Collect the remaining ingredients in a medium bowl. Add the cooked eggplant and shrimp. Garnish and serve at room temperature or chilled.

NUTRITION ESTIMATE
Including Peanuts, Per Serving: 81 Cal (8% from Fat, 17% from Protein, 74% from Carb); 4 g Protein; 1 g Tot Fat; 0 g Sat Fat; 17 g Carb; 6 g Fiber; NetCarb11; 37 mg Calcium; 1 mg Iron; 1115 mg Sodium; 9 mg Cholesterol; Weight Watchers 1 point

Without Peanuts, Per Serving: 75 Cal (5% from Fat, 18% from Protein, 78% from Carb); 4 g Protein; 0 g Tot Fat; 0 g Sat Fat; 17 g Carb; 6 g Fiber; NetCarb11; 36 mg Calcium; 1 mg Iron; 1100 mg Sodium; 9 mg Cholesterol; Weight Watchers 1 point

CREDIT WHERE CREDIT'S DUE
Adapted from Quick & Easy Thai by Nancie McDermott

SHORTHAND RECIPE
THAI EGGPLANT SALAD Roast 1 ½ lb Asian eggplant, halved, 400F 20-30min or grill. Mix 2T shallot, 2T cilantro, 2 green onion, 1T garlic, 3T fish sauce, zest 1 lime, 3T lime juice, 1T sugar, 1T chilli, 1T dried shrimp (soaked, FPd)

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Arugula Salad with Smoked Trout & Peach Preserve Dressing ♥

Day One: Christine from My Plate or Yours raved about a smoked mullet dip. We bantered back and forth a bit on e-mail.

Day Two 7 am: Arggh. I was, um, hooked. I woke up wanting smoked fish dip NOW. (For breakfast, Alanna?)

Day Two 11am: A client's husband was off to fetch fish from Bob's Seafood [for St. Louisans, the best (and in my opinion, only) place to buy fresh fish in St. Louis] for their supper. When I asked if he'd mind buying smoked fish for me, he and my client answered, nearly simultaneously, "Oh, you need a smoker." Now he's an accomplished foodie and she's a chef so I trust their judgments nearly without question. An hour later, he'd picked up the fish, he'd picked up a smoker -- and she'd given me a lesson in hot-smoking shrimp, scallops and trout!

And this stuff is heaven! I'm looking forward to learning more about the stovetop smoker -- including, with any luck, some vegetables. More on that, later. (Update: My first foray with smoker at home turned out beautifully, just scallops and shrimp and OH SO EASY.)

In the mean time, the sauce the client recommended for the trout turned out to be a delicious oil-free dressing on arugula -- snipped fresh from the client's home garden. Yes, indeed, this is a client with 'fringe benefits'! Thank you, Anne, thank you, Tom! And Christine, you, for the inspiration that started this odyssey!

FROM THE ARCHIVES Yes, there's a collection of recipes for lettuce and salad greens -- including homemade salad dressings -- in the Recipe Box.

TWO YEARS AGO Pied Piper Refrigerator Pickles ... made from Trader Joe's frozen roasted peppers

ARUGULA SALAD with SMOKED TROUT & PEACH PRESERVE DRESSING

Hands-on time: 10 minutes?
Time to table: 10 minutes?
Serves as many as needed

DRESSING
Peach preserves
Dijon mustard
Salt & pepper to taste

Mix to taste.

SALAD
Arugula
Dressing
Smoked trout
Add Ons: Dried fruit, bits of cheese, warm goat-cheese rounds

Wash arugula well and let dry. Toss with dressing and top with smoked trout.

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Kitchen Parade Extra: How to Make Rhubarb Jelly & Rhubarb Jam ♥

The start of a second-generation rhubarb patch, the start of the second year

When my sister and I were girls, on hot June days, our Mom would send us with a bowl of sugar to the backstep where her rhubarb patch was within arms' reach. Ruby stalk by ruby stalk, we'd wipe off the most evident dirt with our fingers, then dip -- and dip and dip -- the rhubarb into the bowl to sweeten each tart biteful. When I was home last summer, I rescued the last bits of my Mom's Round-up ravaged rhubarb from the back step and planted it in my own garden. Some years must pass before my rhubarb plants will qualify as a patch but someday I'll sugar my very own rhubarb.

Rhubarb? It's almost as good, straight from the farmers market and this time of year, even, carefully picked over, the supermarket. This week's Kitchen Parade column is a kitchen lesson in how to make rhubarb jelly and rhubarb jam. In an hour, you'll have six or seven pints of rhubarb confection. Where's that column? In Kitchen Parade, of course!

Botanically, rhubarb is a vegetable. And since it suits my northern soul, rhubarb recipes show up often on both A Veggie Venture and in Kitchen Parade. How about a cinnamon-sweetened rhubarb pie? or an unusual but simple rhubarb sorbet? Or for true indulgence, consider a rhubarb cobbler or last year's favorite with my book club, a rhubarb bakewell tart.

SO WHAT IS KITCHEN PARADE, EXACTLY? Kitchen Parade is the food column that my Mom started writing for our family newspaper when I was a baby. Today it's published in my hometown newspapers in suburban St. Louis and features 'fresh seasonal recipes for every-day healthful eating and occasional indulgences'.

Where A Veggie Venture is 'pure food blog', full of experimentation and exploration, Kitchen Parade features recipes a modern cook can count on. All are thoroughly tested by a home cook in a home kitchen and many are family and reader favorites. All recipes feature easy-to-find ingredients, clear instructions and because I believe so strongly in informed food choices, nutrition analysis and Weight Watchers points. Want to know more? Explore Kitchen Parade, including Kitchen Parade's Recipe Box!

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Kalyn's Roasted Asparagus & Mushrooms ♥

Fresh spring asparagus and fresh mushrooms are a magical combinations, especially when their natural earthiness is accentuated by roasting, seasoned with no more than a little salt and pepper. Delicious.

~recipe & photo updated 2011~
~more recently updated recipes~

2007: Fans of the South Beach diet (which of course starts out as a diet for losing weight, then evolves into a healthful way to eat while maintain the new weight, much the same as Weight Watchers) either already do or should know about the great food blog Kalyn's Kitchen which is packed with weight loss tips, low-carb product recommendations and of course, South Beach recipes.

Kalyn regularly features vegetables so I am often inspired by her site. Still, isn't it funny that the two recipes I've felt most drawn to both feature mushrooms? Roasted Carrots and Mushrooms with Thyme was soooo good and so is Kalyn's roasted asparagus and mushrooms! This is a total keeper!
Keep Reading ->>>

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Eggplant Caviar

A low-cal, low-carb, low-point appetizer

It's always fun to inaugurate a new cookbook, this time Chocolate and Zucchini: Daily Adventures in a Parisian Kitchen. It's a personal and amusing look into a fellow blogger's kitchen, the charming Clotilde Dusoulier, with both both recipes and photography all her own. It's doing very well -- at this writing, it's the #206 best-selling book on Amazon! Plus last week Clotilde appeared on the Today show!

And if you like A Veggie Venture, thank Clotilde. I'm quite sure that it was her blog, Chocolate & Zucchini and one of a couple of 'famous' blogs then and now, that was my own introduction to food blogging back in 2005.

left to right, Chinese eggplant, Japanese eggplant & Indian eggplant

For this easy appetizer, I experimented with three different kinds of eggplant. Two small-ish globe eggplants (a pound apiece, not pictured) yielded less than a cup of eggplant after roasting and removing the seeds. (What's a globe eggplant? It's the 'standard' eggplant, at least my experience in American supermarkets. They typically weigh a couple of pounds and are elongated but fat, typically four or five or even six inches across the fattest part.)

So then I roasted Chinese eggplants (these are eight to ten inches in length, a couple of inches wide, one is pictured at the far left) and some Japanese eggplants (four or five inches long, about an inch wide, the smaller eggplant in the middle). The Chinese eggplant were perfect -- they yielded a pile of roasted eggplant with few seeds. The Japanese eggplant were just too small, roasting overwhelmed them. The India eggplants (small and round, on the right) I gauged too small for roasting but I'm anxious to see how they turn out in something else. Here's an excellent comparison of the types of eggplant.

NUTRITION NOTES This is a low-cal appetizer, low-point appetizer, even a great low-carb appetizer. Dig in! (Not counting the bread or chips, of course ...)

FROM THE ARCHIVES

Clotilde inspired this asparagus jam ... "good along roast pork or some other rich meat where the sweetness would contrast richness".

The Recipe Box has plenty of appetizer recipes and of course, eggplant recipes.

TWO YEARS AGO Fiddlehead ferns! ... "these were utterly delicious and so very, very pretty! Look at those curlicues!"

EGGPLANT CAVIAR

Hands-on time: 20 minutes
Time to table: 2 hours or overnight
Makes 2 cups

Olive oil
2 pounds eggplant, preferably Chinese, left whole (Clotilde suggests Italian eggplant which are smaller versions of the globe eggplant, or baby eggplant)
Garlic cloves, halved if large

2 tablespoons olive oil (I skipped this, accidentally)
2 teaspoons balsamic vinegar (this creates the more pleasing 'dark' color vs the muddy gray of eggplant flesh)
Zest and juice of a lemon
1/4 cup fresh flat-leaf parsley (also called Italian parsley, it has way more flavor than the 'curly' parsley that served as 'garnish' on 70s-style plates)
1/4 teaspoon whole cumin seeds, toasted in a drop of olive oil in a small skillet
Salt to taste
Pinch of chile powder

Turn oven to 350F. Line a baking sheet with foil and mist with olive oil. Prick the eggplants all over with the tip of a knife. Then cut a slit partway into the fattest part of each eggplant and insert a piece of garlic into each one. Roast for an hour, turning after 20 minutes and 40 minutes. Remove from oven and cut along the length of each eggplant without cutting through skin on the other side. To drain 'excess liquid' from the eggplants, place slit-side down in a colander to cool. Once cool, use a knife to scrape the flesh from each eggplant, discarding the stem and skins.

In a food processor, combine the roasted eggplant with the remaining ingredients and process til smooth. Chill for an hour or overnight. Serve with crostini.

NUTRITION ESTIMATE
Per Tablespoon: 16 Cal (52% from Fat, 7% from Protein, 41% from Carb); 0 g Protein; 1 g Tot Fat; 0 g Sat Fat; 1 g Mono Fat; 2 g Carb; 1 g Fiber; NetCarb1; 1 g Sugar; 4 mg Calcium; 0 mg Iron; 75 mg Sodium; 0 mg Cholesterol; Weight Watchers 0 points

Per 1/4 Cup: 65 Cal (52% from Fat, 7% from Protein, 41% from Carb); 1 g Protein; 4 g Tot Fat; 1 g Sat Fat; 3 g Mono Fat; 7 g Carb; 4 g Fiber; NetCarb3; 3 g Sugar; 16 mg Calcium; 0 mg Iron; 299 mg Sodium; 0 mg Cholesterol; Weight Watchers 1 point

CREDIT WHERE CREDIT'S DUE
Adapted from Chocolate and Zucchini: Daily Adventures in a Parisian Kitchen by Clotilde Dusolier

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Pages

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FRESH from the FARMERS MARKET

KOOL-AID PICKLES

THAI ROASTED EGGPLANT SALAD

ARUGULA SALAD with SMOKED TROUT & PEACH PRESERVE DRESSING

EGGPLANT CAVIAR