Corned Pork Meatballs
“Corned” meatballs might sound odd, but I’m hearkening back to the original meaning of “corned” here, back when corns referred to any small grains. Often, those grains were coarse grains of salt used in brines and pickling solutions. That’s where we get corned beef from — it doesn’t have anything to do with the kind of corn that grows on long stalks, but it does have a lot to do with salty brines.
Rolling these meatballs in coarse, grainy cornmeal makes them corny in both the traditional and modern sense of the word. The cornmeal also provides a nice crunch and is a healthy swap for commercial breadcrumbs. (Breadcrumbs are a snap to make yourself, though: just buzz some staling slices of bread through a food processor, pour the fresh crumbs into a screw-top glass jar, and stick the jar in the freezer. You’ll have breadcrumbs any time you need them! Fresh crumbs can also be briefly toasted to deepen their flavor before adding them to recipes.)
When shopping for cornmeal, be on the lookout for the coarsely milled variety. The finer meal is nicer for baked goods — if you mill the cornmeal finely enough, it becomes corn flour — but the coarsely milled cornmeal works better as a breadcrumb stand-in. It also imparts a more pronounced crunch and flavor to savory cooked dishes.
Corned Pork Meatballs with Basil & Mint
1 pound ground pork, preferably from pastured hogs
1 medium onion, minced
1/4 cup or so of fresh basil leaves, chopped
1/4 cup or so of fresh mint leaves, chopped
1 egg
Pinch sea salt
Cornmeal
To make the meatballs, place pork, onion, herbs, egg, and salt in a large glass mixing bowl. Use your hands to thoroughly combine them. The mixture will be very wet, so add enough cornmeal to make a mixture dry enough to roll into balls. (It’s best to add the cornmeal a bit at a time, mixing the meat each time, until you’ve reached a nice consistency. If you dump in a large amount of cornmeal at once, you might wind up with a too-dry mixture that will be crumbly. Add a little water if this happens.) Stack the balls on a plate as you roll them.
Scatter some cornmeal on another plate and roll the balls in the cornmeal one by one until each is completely covered. In a large saucepan, heat about 1 T. of extra-virgin olive oil over medium heat for about 1 minute. Add meatballs — working in batches if your pan isn’t big enough to hold them all — and cook them for about 5 minutes or until they’re golden-brown on all sides. You’ll have to shift them around with a spatula (or gently shake the pan) to make sure you cook them evenly.
The meatballs make tasty appetizers, or you can include them with your favorite pasta dish. They’re also great with eggs in the morning. If you have leftover meatballs, you can quickly re-fry them on the stovetop to bring back the cornmeal crunch, or you can serve them cold. I actually preferred their flavor when I sampled them cold the next day — their overnight stint in the refrigerator made the basil and mint flavors stand out more.
Enjoy!
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Sautéed Portabello Salad
Grill them, stuff them, use them as hamburger toppings … portabello mushrooms are a favorite summer treat. But my favorite way to enjoy them is to slice them very thin and sautée them with extra-virgin olive oil and a pinch of sea salt so that you wind up with portabello crisps. It’s the perfect base for a quick salad featuring whatever is plentiful in your garden or at the market. You can also snip a few fresh herbs to go on the top of your crisp-yet-cool masterpiece.
Portabello Summer Salad
This serves two for a side salad or one for a main, but you can vary the amount of veggies depending on what’s available and plentiful. Just be sure to slice the portabellos very thinly before cooking them.
Extra-virgin olive oil
Sea salt
2-3 portabello mushrooms, thinly sliced
2-3 medium tomatoes (Romas work well), chopped
Handfuls of fresh lettuce, roughly chopped if they’re big leaves
Fresh herbs (such as chives, basil, or dill), minced
Balsamic vinegar
In a medium- to large-sized saucepan, heat the oil over medium heat for 1 minute. Slide in the portabello slices, making sure each one is fully touching the pan, and let cook for about 3 minutes. Flip over slices, season with a pinch of sea salt, and continue to cook for another 2 minutes. The mushrooms should be shriveled around the edges and turning a vague golden brown through their mushroom/earthy color.
Lay the tomatoes and lettuce out in sections on a plate, leaving a section for the mushrooms. Add the cooked mushrooms to the plate and scatter the herbs over everything. Drizzle the remaining oil from the pan onto the plate — add some fresh oil to the tomatoes and lettuce if you like — then drizzle on a few threads of balsamic vinegar only onto the tomatoes and lettuce. (The mushrooms will be so richly flavored from having been sautéed in thin slices that they don’t need any additional seasoning.) Serve promptly.
Enjoy!
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Tags: fresh herbs, mushrooms, portabello, salad, tomatoes
Caribbean Corn-Coconut Chowder
Chowder is one of America’s great culinary contributions: a hearty one-pot meal that you can customize to your stomach’s delight. While many chowders sprang out of a seafood tradition (think Manhattan and Boston clam chowders), there are also vegetable-based versions. I created this one to make use of plentiful summer crops like corn and tomatoes and plentiful summer herbs like cilantro.
Since I also had leftover brown rice in the fridge, I threw that in to give the chowder some extra body and flavor. You could just as easily use a quicker-cooking grain/pasta like quinoa or a whole-wheat orzo if you don’t have cooked brown rice on hand. Likewise, if you have frozen corn rather than fresh corn, you can substitute that, too. (Although it’d be a shame not to partake of fresh summer corn, especially for 20 cents an ear!)
Caribbean Corn-Coconut Chowder
Serves 4 people.
2 ears husked fresh corn OR 2 cups frozen corn
1 15-oz. can diced tomatoes
1 medium onion, chopped
1 cup canned black beans (you can also add the bean juice if you’d like; I use Eden canned beans, which are canned in BPA-free cans with water, sea salt, and a bit of kombu seaweed — all great additions to soup!)
2 medium tomatoes, chopped
1/4 cup whole coconut milk
1 cup water
1 cup cooked brown rice OR 1/2 cup raw quinoa or 1/2 cup raw whole-grain pasta*
Fresh cilantro, chopped (use a few sprigs if you’re cilanto-timid or a whole handful if you’re a fan)
1 tsp. dried pineapple sage OR 1 tsp. dried oregano OR 2 tsp. fresh oregano
1 tsp. dried fenugreek (optional)
Sea salt to taste
To prepare the fresh corn, bring a large soup pot halfway full of water to a boil. Ease ears into it and simmer for 3 minutes. Promptly pull out ears with tongs, rinse out pot, and refill with cold water. Place ears in cold water and let cool while you prepare the rest of the ingredients. (If you don’t promptly chill the ears, they’ll continue to cook and will be too mushy.) Remove ears and pat them dry. Use a sharp knife to cut kernels into a large bowl.
Combine all ingredients except corn in the rinsed-out soup pot and simmer for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the corn during the last minute or two. (By adding it at the end, you’ll preserve its wonderful sweet crispness.)
This soup can be served warm or cold. Like all tomato-and-spice-containing dishes, it’s even better the next day! Avocado wedges and corn chips make nice garnishes.
Enjoy!
* If you use raw quinoa or pasta, add another cup of water to the chowder to account for the liquid the grains/pasta will absorb.
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Tags: black beans, brown rice, chowder, cilantro, coconut milk, corn, fenugreek, pineapple sage, tomatoes
Summer Pasta with Bacon
Good bacon goes with everything — I have a sneaking suspicion that bacon ice cream would be a hit. (Especially if you paired the bacon with pecans.) When I say “good” bacon, I’m referring to bacon from pastured hogs that snort and snuffle about on an actual farm. You can find this kind of bacon at your farmer’s market, online, or at your favorite well-stocked grocery store. My current easy-to-find favorite bacon comes from Applegate Farms. They also make darned tasty hot dogs, deli meats, and sausages. Eatwild.com has plenty of suggestions for finding pastured animal products at farms in your area.
Aside from improved flavor, better nutrition, and a much more pleasant effect on the environment, one of the big perks of good-quality bacon vs. conventional bacon is that it has not been injected with brine to make it taste better. (It already tastes great!) That means splattering is kept to a minimum when you’re cooking the bacon…and that means you can use the bacon grease to fry and flavor other ingredients. In this case, I chopped up a variety of veggies from my garden and tossed them into the pan with the bacon a minute or two before the bacon was done. Those four strips of bacon were all I needed to have a single-skillet, deliciously-bacon-seasoned dinner!
Summer Pasta with Bacon
This recipe serves 2 but can be easily doubled or tripled.
2 servings of whole-grain pasta of your choice (I used Tinkyáda’s tricolor vegetable brown rice spirals)
4 strips of bacon, preferably from pastured hogs
Assorted summer vegetables of your choice (I used 2 small cucumbers, 8 cherry tomatoes, 2 small peppers, and 12 green beans), chopped or sliced*
Fresh basil, thyme, rosemary and/or sage as garnish (optional)
Prepare the pasta according to package instructions. When the pasta is al dente, drain it, rinse it with tepid water, and set it aside.
While the pasta is simmering, cook the bacon in a covered skillet over medium heat for about 8 minutes, occasionally turning with tongs. If you’re using good-quality bacon, this shouldn’t be too messy; if you’re using the value-pak variety, you might want to use a very deep pot and long tongs to avoid making a mess out of your stove and burning yourself. Value-pak bacon is also probably going to take longer to cook because it will have more saturated fat than bacon from pastured hogs. (Looking for and buying the good stuff is really, really worth it!)
Add the vegetables and cook for 2 more minutes or until vegetables have softened. Turn off the heat. Stir the drained pasta into the skillet to warm the pasta and mop up the flavorful bacon grease, then serve promptly.
Enjoy!
* Other tasty summer vegetables include zucchini, eggplant, corn, and anything else you find in abundance at the farmer’s market, in the produce market, or in your garden.
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Tags: bacon, cucumber, gluten-free, green beans, pasta, pepper, summer vegetables, tomato
Cucumber & Apple Salad
Scandinavians do a lot with crisp, sweet vegetables and fruits. So do Russians and Pols (and anyone else who lives in cooler climates where you’re more likely to grow carrots than bananas). I drew on those sweet-and-cool traditions to make a simple summer salad featuring two of Michigan’s best crops: apples and cucumbers. Nothing beats a hot day like a quick-to-assemble summer salad! If you have an herb garden, feel free to substitute different herbs for the dill and mint.
Cucumber & Apple Salad
Serves 2 as a side dish or 1 as a main meal. You can just multiply the ingredient portions to match your needs. You could also toss in some cooked brown rice to make this a heartier salad, although the salad would lose a bit of its sweet crunchiness if served that way.
For the dressing:
Approx. 1/4 cup Greek yogurt
1-2 T. apple cider vinegar
1/4 tsp. dried OR 1/2 tsp. fresh dill
1/4 tsp. dried OR 1/2 tsp. fresh mint (mince or tear mint into small pieces if it’s fresh)
Sea salt to taste
For the salad:
1 medium or large cucumber, chopped or thinly sliced
1 firm, crisp apple (Fuji and Pink Lady apples are my favorites), chopped
1 carrot, grated (optional)
1 small onion, minced (optional)
Whisk dressing ingredients together in a small bowl. These are approximate measurements — if you like your dressing to be more sour, add more vinegar; if you are a huge mint fan, add more of that. If you want your dressing to be thinner but don’t want the sourness of added vinegar, add a teaspoon of cold water.
Mix salad ingredients together in a large bowl, then toss with the dressing. Serve immediately.
Enjoy!
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Apricot, Date & Coconut Smoothie
Dates are fabulously useful! Just don’t confuse them with figs, which are also lovely but which don’t have the staying power or sweetness of dates. (And don’t confuse fresh figs with the gritty stuff inside Fig Newtons — an actual fig tastes much lighter and fruitier, plus it beautifully shades from pink to cream to tan and back again.) Dates are a hardy lot, prized throughout the world for their lush sticky sweetness and their ability to hold things together. Lärabars, for example, are bar-shaped thanks to mashed dried dates. Many cakes and breads of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern origin are both shaped and sweetened by dates.
Because dates contain such a high percentage of natural sugar, dried dates preserve themselves quite nicely. (Sugar is a preservative.) In fact, once they’ve lost enough moisture, dried dates can be ground into date “sugar.” It doesn’t dissolve as readily as cane sugar does, but date sugar is pleasantly sweet and retains a mild, mellow date flavor that pairs perfectly with less-sweet fruits like apricots and strawberries.
One of my favorite ways to use date sugar is in smoothies. I came up with this smoothie because my apricots were a bit on the tart side — adding date sugar was the perfect solution. You can find date sugar nestled alongside the other natural sugars in health-food/whole-food stores. (If you spot a bag of sucanat, pick that up, too!)
Apricot, Date & Coconut Smoothie
To make a single-serving smoothie, blend together 1 apricot (pit removed, but skin left on), 1/2 cup whole coconut milk, 1/4 cup cold water, and 1 T. date sugar. If you’d like your smoothie to be extra-thick, use less water and more milk; if you’d like it to be thinner, reverse the equation. You could also use dairy milk, but I think the tropical palm + palm combination (i.e., coconut + date) is a tasty one. If you’d like your smoothie to be sweeter, simply add more date sugar.
Enjoy!
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Tags: apricot, coconut milk, date sugar, smoothie
Polenta Pie with Eggplant Caponata
There’s a new crust in town, and her name is Polenta. She’s an oldie-but-goodie — although polenta dates back to Roman times, it’s still on market shelves today. It’s basically a cooked cornmeal mash. Originally, it was served as more of a porridge; nowadays, it can be cut into slices and then grilled, or it can be topped with anything from sautéed mushrooms to grated cheese and then baked.
No matter what you ultimately do with your polenta, the first step is simple: simmer cornmeal until it’s thick and creamy. After it’s reached that point, you can let it cool and then shape it (supermarket polenta usually comes rolled into a log), or you can serve it immediately alongside whatever strikes your fancy. You can even make it into an easy “crust” of sorts, as you can see in this recipe for Polenta Pie. How you choose to fill and top it is up to you!
Polenta Pie with Eggplant Caponata
For the crust:
1 cup coarse cornmeal or polenta
3 cups water
1 tsp. sea salt
1-2 tsp. dried herbs/spices of your choice (if you don’t want to craft your own mixture, an Italian seasoning blend would be an easy choice)
For the filling:
Your choice of aromatics: garlic, onions, green onion, leeks, shallots: approx. 1 cup chopped or minced (if you’re using garlic, only use 6 cloves maximum)
Your choice of greens: spinach, chard, kale, collard greens, mustard greens, turnip greens: 3-4 cups coarsely chopped
Your choice of legumes: white beans, chickpeas, black beans, lentils, even green peas: approx. 2 cups drained
1 large chopped tomato (optional)
For the topping:
One recipe caponata OR a few spoonfuls of chunky marinara, bolognese, or similar Mediterranean sauce
Grease a 9″ springform pan and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
To make the polenta, bring the water to a boil, then stir in salt and cornmeal. Reduce heat to a simmer and cook for about 25 minutes or until the cornmeal has turned into a soft, creamy mush. If your cornmeal is fine- or medium-grind rather than coarsely ground, it may cook in as little as 15 minutes. Remove polenta from heat, stir in dried herbs/spices, and set aside.
While the polenta cooks, sautée your aromatics in a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil over medium heat until the aromatics are fragrant and turning translucent. (For garlic, this will probably happen in 2-3 minutes; for thick-cut onions, this could take 10 minutes or longer.) Gently fold in greens and cook for another few minutes until greens are starting to wilt. Remove from heat and stir in beans and tomato.
Spread half of the polenta in the bottom of the springform pan. Carefully spoon filling on top of the polenta, then finish by layering the remaining polenta on top of the filling. Bake for 25 minutes or until the polenta is firm when poked. Remove from oven and let sit for 2-3 minutes to harden a little before you carefully un-spring the sides of the pan.
Slice and serve the polenta just as you would a pie, accompanying each “slice” with a spoonful of caponata. A sprig or two of fresh oregano or basil would make a tasty garnish.
Enjoy!
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Tags: beans, caponata, cornmeal, gluten-free, greens, mediterranean, polenta, savory pie, summer dish
Lavender & Mint Herbal Bouquet
Herbal bouquets are a great way to dress up your windowsills and your meals. (Beverages, too!) Most herbs are sturdy plants that will last a week or more in a vase, especially if you refresh them with cool water every day. And the best part about having herbs close at hand is that you’re more likely to use them: a few fresh mint leaves in your tea, a sprig of thyme tucked into your chicken and pasta, some fresh lavender sprinkled over your salad. You can make bouquets out of herbs you cut from your garden or fresh herbs that you buy at the store or farmer’s market.
As cooler days approach, you can keep the indoor herbs tradition going by transplanting some outside herbs into a pot and placing them in a warm and sunny spot inside. (But be careful not to put them right next to a heat vent, because too much hot air will dry them out.) Indoor herbs will add natural fragrance to whatever room they’re in. Some of them — sage and chives come to mind — are so powerfully pungent that you may actually want to leave them outside. If your formerly outdoor plants don’t take kindly to being shuttled inside, try growing new plants from seeds. As long as you give them nutritious, well-drained soil, they ought to sprout within 7 to 10 days.
In the meantime, enjoy your fresh-cut herbal bouquets!
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Tags: herbal bouquets, herbs, indoor herbs
Goat Cheese with Fruit Compote
Assuming you can find a comfortable spot in the shade, now’s the time to go on a picnic! Fresh fruits and cheeses, pickles and olives, pasta and potato salads tossed with crunchy vegetables…heck, if you can find a grill, you can bring along lamb kebabs, too.
But let’s say you decide to go on a last-minute picnic and you don’t have time to marinate meat or assemble a salad. Still, I’m sure you have some interesting leftovers in your refrigerator or cupboards. Cheese is one of the linchpins of a picnic — you could start with what you have in the cheese drawer and take it from there.
Like cheese, fruit is one of the classic picnic staples; it’s hardly surprising that it’s also the #1 accompaniment to cheese. (And to nuts, especially buttery, rich nuts like macadamias.) If you have any leftover fruit compote on hand, I recently discovered that the compote is a natural pair with fresh, creamy cheeses like goat cheese: the earthy tang of the goat cheese is off-set by the sweetness of the fruit.
If you don’t have any compote on hand, try topping your goat cheese (or any other soft, fresh cheese) with a spoonful of naturally sweetened jam or jelly…or a fruit chutney. I’m seeing more and more chutneys sold alongside cheese in the grocery stores nowadays, so if you don’t have any good picnic foods on hand, you can always just stop at at reasonably well-stocked grocery store and make a beeline for the cheese section.
May your picnic grounds be smooth and grassy!
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Tags: fruit compote, goat cheese, outdoor dining, picnic, summertime
Salmon & Wilted Lettuce Pasta
Crunchy lettuce is great…but so is wilted lettuce! Lettuces with a faint bitterness/pepperiness to them — arugula, watercress, frisée — are especially good complements to savory dishes. Plus, because they wilt so quickly, they’re a snap to toss into a sautée or stir-fry at the last minute. Just the heat coming from the pan and the hot food will be enough to wilt the leaves.
The next time you find yourself with too much lettuce on your hands and not enough ways to use it, wilt it! Especially when the wild salmon are swimming and in their summertime prime. (Salmon season matches lamb season: both run from May until October.)
Salmon & Wilted Lettuce Pasta
Serves 2 and can easily be doubled or tripled as needed.
2 servings of your favorite whole-grain linguine, prepared according to package directions, then drained and tossed with a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil*
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1/2 lb. to 3/4 lb. of leftover baked wild salmon OR you can sautée it fresh** (how much salmon you serve depends on how much each person likes it — I love salmon and like to have hearty portions), chunked into bite-size pieces with two forks
2 handfuls mixed lettuce leaves
While the pasta is cooking, sautée the garlic in a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil over medium-low heat. After 2-3 minutes, the garlic should be nicely golden brown (but not burnt!). Add salmon to the pan to warm it through. Remove pan from heat and stir in lettuce, gently lifting the salmon and incorporating it with the lettuce to wilt the leaves.
Toss salmon mixture with drained linguine. Season to taste with sea salt and add more extra-virgin olive oil if you wish.
Enjoy!
* To make this a gluten-free dish, simply use a gluten-free pasta such as brown rice, corn, or quinoa. I find that Tinkyáda brand brown rice works best.
** To sautée your salmon, rinse the filet under cold running water and pat it dry. In a frying pan big enough to hold the salmon, heat a pat of butter over medium heat. When the butter begins to sizzle slightly, slide the salmon onto it skin side UP. Cover and cook for about 5 minutes, then carefully flip the salmon over so that it’s skin side DOWN.
Continue to cook for another 5 minutes, then poke the center of the filet with a fork to see how it’s cooking. If the top and bottom are browning and seeming to dry out but the middle is still very pink, reduce the heat to medium-low. Continue cooking, covered, until the center flesh flakes cleanly with a fork. (This will probably take about 15 minutes depending on the thickness of your fish and the heat of your stove.) Once the fish is done, you can usually slide the flesh right off of the skin with a spatula, leaving the skin behind in the pan.
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Tags: garlic, gluten-free, lettuce, pasta, wild salmon, wilted lettuce
