Liz Dodder

A Girl Needs Her Greens: How to Eat More Greens

by liz · Feb 27, 2019

I had joined a CSA program in my hood, and I was starting to see green. Every week I picked up two large bags full of vegetables, many of them greens of some kind. Curly mustard greens, Chicoria (dandelion greens), Mizuna (Japanese mustard greens) and stinging nettles. What’s a girl to do with all these greens?

The Purist told me the way to cook greens was to wilt them with olive oil and garlic, which was delicious. I began wilting greens at every meal. I had wilted greens on top of my fried eggs and toast, for lunch on a warm goat cheese crostini, as a side to tomato risotto for dinner. I also made salads with the greens, then went back to wilting them. It was all good, and good for me, but I needed something different.

One day we got stinging nettles. I had to handle them with gloves or plastic bags before cooking them so as not to get a red rash from the stinging hairs on the stalk. And what to do with nettles besides wilt them like greens? Then, during a weekend in Santa Barbara wine country, I had a a wild nettle flatbread with farm egg, leek cream sauce, smoked mozzarella and thyme at a local organic restaurant (Full of Life Flatbread Bakery). Pizza! With the slightly bitter/smoky twist nettles had on greens – combined with local produce and mozzerella on crispy organic pizza dough! Oh!

A new flatbread obsession took hold: I had to recreate this flatbread – over and over. A girl’s gonna need more greens.

Thank god for CSA.

Read the results of this eating-more-vegetables-in-season experiment:

Scrumptious Homemade Tortilla Soup Recipe

by liz · Jan 4, 2019

Soup is one of my all-time favorite meals; I could eat it every day during winter, spring and fall. And sometimes in the summer.

If you like to make your own stock, soup makes an incredibly delicious, hearty and healthy meal. And making stock is easier than you think. The first thing I do is store all chicken carcasses, steak bones, lobster shells or pork bones from whatever I happen to have eaten recently in freezer bags. And during the week, I also keep various vegetable trimmings in a freezer bag, then dump it into a crockpot with the meat bones or shells and let it simmer on low for several hours. Then, pour it through a sieve or use a skimmer to remove the bones and extra stuff (but keep the meat in). And voilà.

Ingredients:

6 cups chicken or homemade broth
1 tablespoon cooking oil
1 small onion, diced
12-16 cherry tomatoes, halved
1 large zucchini, trimmed and halved
1 carrot, peeled and quartered
1 bell pepper, halved and seeded
1/2 jalapeño chile, seeded
2-3 large garlic cloves, peeled
2-3 cups chicken, cooked and chopped
1 cup whole kernel corn
3 teaspoons ground cumin
3 teaspoons chile powder
4 tablespoons chopped cilantro
Tortilla chips and sour cream, for garnish

Directions:

Place stock in large saucepan or pot on medium heat.
Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat and add the oil.
Coarsely chop tomatoes, zucchini, carrot, bell pepper, jalapeño and garlic (or use food processor to chop); add to skillet.
Cook, stirring occasionally, for 10 minutes or until vegetables are slightly browned.
Add to pot, and bring to a low boil.
Add chicken, corn and cumin and chile powder and cook, stirring occasionally, for 15-20 minutes.
Top with chopped cilantro, and add salt and pepper to taste.
Serve with tortilla strips, sour cream and cilantro, as desired.

Print recipe below.

Scrumptious Homemade Tortilla Soup Recipe

Recipe type: Main

Cuisine: Mexican

Prep time: 10 mins

Cook time: 35 mins

Total time: 45 mins

Serves: 4 servings

Making scrumptious homemade tortilla soup is easy - and even more delicious if you like to make your own chicken stock or vegetable stock.

Ingredients

4 cups chicken broth
8 cherry tomatoes, halved
1 small zucchini, trimmed and halved
1 medium carrot, peeled and quartered
½ green bell pepper, halved and seeded
½ jalapeño chile, seeded
1 large garlic clove, peeled
1½ cups chicken breast meat, cooked and chopped
½ cup whole kernel corn
3 teaspoons ground cumin
4 tablespoons chopped cilantro
Tortilla chips and sour cream for garnish

Instructions

Place stock in large saucepan or pot on medium heat.
Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat.
Coarsely chop tomatoes, zucchini, carrot, bell pepper, jalapeño and garlic (or use food processor to chop); add to skillet.
Cook, stirring occasionally, for 10 minutes or until vegetables are slightly browned.
Add to pot, and bring to a low boil.
Add chicken, corn and cumin and chile powder and cook, stirring occasionally, for 15-20 minutes.
Top with chopped cilantro, and add salt and pepper to taste.
Serve with tortilla strips, sour cream and cilantro, as desired.

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Carrots Galore: Two Carrot Soups & a Carrot Side Dish

by liz · Jan 3, 2019

After I’d been a member of my local farm share – Silverlake Farms – for several weeks I realized I needed more carrot recipes. These were the most beautiful vibrant carrots I’d ever seen. I’d been eating them raw or in salads, along with the gorgeous radishes I also received each week.

I scoured the internet and asked my cooking friends, but didn’t come up with anything that unusual. Turns out carrots are best in the forms you already know: carrot soup – puréed of course – glazed carrots or as part of a base (as in soups, roasts or mirepoix).

I tried various interesting-sounding dishes I concocted myself, like mirepoix chilaquiles (better than it sounds!) and as an accompaniment in braised cabbage.

I ended up making two soups – the Purist’s form (my friend who knows the right way to cook any food) and one blended with tomato. I also dreamed up a glazed carrot dish with honey and blue cheese. All were supremely delightful.

The first soup was the Purist’s. He believes you don’t need to add any sugar, no seasoning besides salt, pepper and ginger nor any chicken broth nor cream.

And it would only work if you had the correct 2-speed Waring Pro blender and homemade vegetable stock made from organic veggies, preferably purchased at a local farmers’ market. So yes, I bought the blender, but I changed the recipe.

I brought my loot over to my friend and fellow foodie’s apartment, the Comedienne. We sautéed the carrots with shallots, onions and ginger, then added sherry, basil, mint and sage stuffed inside a leek (stuffing a hollow leek with herbs was the best idea the Purist had) and let it simmer. We did add chicken stock and cream and then threw it all in the blender. It was divine.

Another cold night, I took inspiration from Au Bon Pain and tried my hand at a tomato-based soup with puréed carrots. This time I sautéed the carrots with garlic and onion (and ginger, a nod to the Purist), added store-bought organic tomato soup, vegetable and chicken stock plus a tiny bit of cream. This soup was satisfying and rustic. I ate the whole pot that night with a crisp green salad.

And finally, tired of soup, I tried a glazed carrot recipe. I sautéed the carrots in olive and grapeseed oil over high heat, adding a dash of white wine and some garlic – ginger too! – and coarse sea salt. I lowered the heat and cooked it all down a bit, then added some honey and finished it with crumbled sharp blue cheese. Honey goes very well with both carrots and blue cheese, so why not put them all together?

This was definitely the best thing I’ve ever done with carrots.

Read the results of this eating-more-vegetables-in-season experiment:

Celebrate Drink Wine Day with Drunken Pork: One-Pot Meal

by liz · Jan 2, 2019

It’s National Drink Wine Day! This holiday is in the same week as International Syrah Day (it was Wednesday if you missed it), which makes for a long week if you’ve celebrated properly. I thought pairing wine with a dish for this post would be a good idea, but then thought using the wine in the dish was even better. I also wanted a one-pot meal to warm up my house and my belly in this cold weather we’re having.

I love one-pot meals, and decided to create something with wine, also pork, winter root vegetables and lots of red wine. The result is what I call Drunken Pork or Red Wine-Braised Pork: a big pot of hearty, spicy goodness for the winter months (don’t worry, the alcohol cooks off, so the dish is not really drunk). This dish, with red wine on Drink Wine Day will be the best pairing I’ll make all year.

Some tips:

Use any combination of winter root vegetables you like; get the freshest ones at your local farmer’s market.
Pick a red wine that goes well with chocolate, like Syrah or Zinfandel.
You can make your own dry rub using more exotic spices like cumin and smoked paprika.
For a gorgeous twist, use a knife to poke holes in the pork loin, then insert thin slices of garlic and carrot (this will show when slicing the finished pork, see end of post for a photo).

Red Wine-Braised Pork or Drunken Pork

Ingredients for 8-10 servings (shown above):

2 Tablespoons Instant Beef Flavor Bouillon
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon ground cumin
4 pounds pork loin or pork loin roast, tied with cooking string if desired
6 carrots, peeled, cut in half and thinly sliced (or 2 cups peeled baby carrots, thinly sliced)
4 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
2 Tablespoons olive oil
1 large onion, finely chopped
1 beet, diced
1 turnip, diced
½ cup diced celery
1 dried Ancho or New Mexico chile
2 bottles red wine
1 cup (6 ounces) Semi-Sweet Chocolate morsels
1 Tablespoon each dried oregano and thyme leaves, rubbed between fingers to release flavor
8 fresh thyme sprigs, for garnish

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375° F. Combine bouillon, salt, pepper, garlic powder, cumin and stir.

CUT thin slits all over the pork loin; insert some carrot and garlic slices into the meat slits. You will have carrots and garlic left over.

HEAT Dutch oven over medium to medium-high heat. Sprinkle bouillon mixture over pork loin; pat with hands. Turn loin and repeat until all sides are coated.

Add pork to Dutch oven. Cook on each side until browned, searing each side of the loin (shown above). Remove from Dutch oven.

ADD olive oil and onion to Dutch oven; cook, stirring frequently, for 3 to 5 minutes or until softened and translucent. Add beet, turnip, celery and leftover garlic slices. Cook, stirring frequently, until edges are browned. Add leftover carrot slices; cook until slightly softened (photo above). Add dried chile.

REMOVE Dutch oven from heat; add pork loin back on top of vegetables. Pour in wine or wine/juice combination, chocolate morsels, dried oregano and dried thyme (you may have to adjust the amount of liquid depending on the size of your Dutch oven). Stir for about 1 minute or until morsels are melted; cover.

Bake, checking for doneness near end of cook time, for 2 hours or until center of pork is no longer pink.

To serve, slice pork and top with vegetables and sauce (notice carrot slivers in pork in photo above). Garnish with fresh thyme.

Final step: pair with Syrah, Pinot Noir or Gamay. Pour and enjoy!

Cooking with Wine: Roast Chardonnay Chicken Recipe

by liz · Jan 2, 2019

I love French food and wine…and I love eating and drinking local. These two loves inspired me to create a local version of a typical French dish: oven-roasted chicken with vegetables and herbs de Provence. Of course, this is using local Chardonnay – in the dish…and in my glass.

In a Santa Barbara County garden you can find rosemary, lemon thyme, basil and chives. And garlic, of course! Also, fennel is a bountiful crop on California’s central coast, which you can usually substitute for celery, instead of a traditional mirepoix (French base of onion, carrot and celery). Browning the chicken before roasting gives it a richer flavor than more simple roasts and the end result is a savory, delicious one-pot meal that pairs perfectly with the subtle body and flavors of a well-balanced Chardonnay. Think citrus and pear instead of oakey-buttery – find one fermented in steel or concrete if possible.

Also, try this Winter Squash Chardonnay Risotto.

Roast Chardonnay Chicken with Santa Barbara Herbs

Author: Liz Dodder

Recipe type: Main

Cuisine: French

Prep time: 6 hours 20 mins

Cook time: 80 mins

Total time: 7 hours 40 mins

Serves: 6

Cooking with wine makes everything taste better, and Chardonnay is perfect for a French roast chicken made in Santa Barbara.

Ingredients

1 4-pound chicken
3 cups Chardonnay (look for well-balanced, citrusy and flinty)
1 cup olive oil, plus 4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, divided
8 cloves garlic: 6 whole, 2 diced
3 tablespoons chopped mixed fresh herbs (like lemon thyme, rosemary, basil, chives, marjoram) or 1 tablespoon mixed dried herbs
2 lemons: 1 sliced, 1 juiced
½ teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper
Salt, to taste
1 small onion, chopped
4 carrots, chopped
1 fennel bulb, chopped
1 small green cabbage, cored and quartered

Instructions

In large bowl, combine the Chardonnay, 1 cup olive oil, diced garlic, herbs, lemon juice, pepper and salt. Place chicken in the mixture. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight or for 6 hours. Turn occasionally.
Preheat oven to 450°F. Heat remaining olive oil in a Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add the onions, carrots, fennel and garlic cloves and cook, stirring occasionally, for 10 minutes. When the vegetables are caramelized, spoon them along the sides of the pan.
Remove chicken from marinade and add to the middle of the pan. Sear each side until slightly brown, about 3 minutes per side. Arrange the quartered cabbage around the sides of the chicken and pour the marinade into the pan over the chicken and vegetables.
Cover the pan with a lid and roast in the oven for 60-70 minutes, until the chicken is done (meat is cooked through when cut, leg separates easily from the body, or 170 degrees on meat thermometer). Remove lid and let it rest at room temperature 10 minutes.

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Roast chardonnay chicken with santa barbara herbs recipe

Vegetables In Season: New Year Resolution

by liz · Jan 1, 2019

I believe in buying locally. I believe in small farms feeding America. I try to eat as many vegetables as possible at every meal because it’s virtually impossible to get in the number of servings recommended for your daily diet, the number needed for fighting off cancer cells not to mention helping regulate various bodily processes more efficiently and keeping you as young as possible. Vegetables = the new fountain of youth.

Eating vegetables in season is just smart, because that’s what you’ll find at your local farmers markets. So when I got an email from my newly-sprouted local neighborhood farm with an offer to join their new Community Supported Agriculutre (CSA) program, I promptly signed up for 10 weeks of fresh, locally-grown winter LA vegetables.

The first Friday pick-up got me a bunch of carrots, celery, arugula, dandelion, spinach, romaine lettuce, fresh garlic, radishes, mizuna (lovely mild mustard eaten raw), red onion and cilantro. The next week I got carrots, red onion, cauliflower, radishes, turnips, broccoli, tat soi, fresh shallots, romaine, arugula, izuna. After that it was celery, broccoli, carrots, radishes, fresh garlic, mizuna, red romaine lettuce, green romaine lettuce, italian parsley, baby bok choy, arugula, green curly mustard… You get the picture. It was a LOT of vegetables.

This CSA share was the best value in Los Angeles, but it was really going to challenge my recipe repertoire.

Read the yummy results of this eating-more-vegetables-in-season experiment:

Cooking with Wine: Winter Squash Chardonnay Risotto Recipe

by liz · Jan 1, 2019

Every so often, you stumble upon a Chardonnay so refreshing and unique, so unlike typical oaky-buttery-California Chardonnays, that you want to drink it, cook with it, maybe even bathe in it.

You’re lucky if you can find on that is half steel-fermented and half oak-fermented! I love Chardonnay with a creamy freshness and lemon-lime quality that is opposite of oak and butter. That kind of Chardonnay is just as perfect in a rustic dish in front of the fire as a on a warm summer day in the garden. And cooking with wine is just as important as drinking or tasting wine.

Cooking with this kind of Chardonnay adds something special to the dish: a little more citrus, good acid and lots of flavor. And don’t forget to pour a glass to pair the wine to sip with the dish! It’s the perfect pair to either of these winter Chardonnay recipes: Winter Squash Chardonnay Risotto below and Chardonnay Roast Chicken with Santa Barbara herbs.

And for dessert, here’s my other favorite way to use winter squash…and summer squash and fall squash and…

Winter Squash Chardonnay Risotto

Author: Liz Dodder

Recipe type: Main

Cuisine: Italian

Prep time: 20 mins

Cook time: 40 mins

Total time: 1 hour

Serves: 6

Cooking with a bright, acidic Chardonnay lends a savory, lemony quality that is perfect with creamy risotto and winter squash.

Ingredients

2 cups (1/2-inch) cubed, peeled winter squash medley
2 tablespoons olive oil
4 cloves minced fresh garlic
2 cups organic vegetable broth
2 cups Chardonnay (brincy, acidic and lemony is best)
1 ounce pancetta or prosciutto
1 medium finely chopped onion
1¼ cups uncooked Arborio rice
2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh herb mix (like lemon thyme, oregano, rosemary, basil, lavender)
Juice of 1 lemon
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
¼ cup (1 ounce) shaved Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese

Instructions

Preheat oven to 400°.
Combine squash and 1 tablespoon oil, tossing to coat. Arrange squash in a single layer on baking pan. Bake for 15 minutes or until squash is just tender. Remove from pan; set aside.
Heat a large heavy-bottom stock pot over medium heat. Add pancetta to pot; cook 5 minutes or until browned, stirring frequently. Remove pancetta and set aside.
Add remaining olive oil to pot, then add onion; cook 3 minutes or until tender, stirring occasionally. Add garlic and rice; cook 2 minutes, stirring constantly.
Add ½ cup wine; cook 1 minute or until liquid is nearly absorbed, stirring constantly. Continue to add remaining wine and broth, ½ cup at a time, stirring constantly until each portion of broth is absorbed before adding the next (about 20 minutes total). Stir in squash, herbs, cheese, lemon juice, ¼ teaspoon salt, and ¼ teaspoon pepper.
Top with pancetta.

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