Farmers Market Saturday

Typically my weekends are full of the exact same things from week to week.  I refer to myself as rainman and to be honest I am okay with this.  I recently sat in a leadership  seminar in which the  CEO from Cardinal Health talked about work life balance.  So many people think that balance means that everything is going to be equal - equal parts of butter to sugar, work to play, oil to water.  Well this is not the case - he explained work life  balance is to do the things that make you feel whole.  So for me that means having the same weekend routines.

A typical Saturday routine consists of going to a local farmers market then coming home to create all kinds of shit based on what I bought.  Often this means being in the kitchen for quite a few hours.  Today was no different, I scored huge at the market and therefore came home and got right to work! 

Up first was a fire roasted tomato salsa -this was pretty easy and really just a hodge podge  of a few  different recipes that I have done in the past.  Here is what I did:

Used a sauté pan and sautéed up about 6 tomatoes, with 1jalapeño, and a half of a red onion.  When they were nice and soft I thew everything in my vitamix (you could use a blender or food processor) put in about a half cup of water, tablespoon of minced garlic, teaspoon of harissa, teaspoon of salt and a bunch of cilantro.  I mixed this all up then put it in the fridge to get cold!  The final product....yum!

Next batter up...avocado ranch dressing.  I am going to start eating a little better this week and starting to work out again.  Restaurant week equals Kimmie not feeling so fabulous!  I found this recipe and then made some changes!! 

 http://www.cookingclassy.com/2015/06/avocado-greek-yogurt-ranch-dressing/
    

I added - a serrano pepper, and in order to thin the dressing out a bit used 4 tablespoons of olive oil!  No picture of the dressing yet because I didn't have the chance to use it!   This is sitting  in the fridge right now, but I did get some feedback from a favorite neighbor that it is really yummy!

Up next... a creamy corn gazpacho!  I got some fresh corn at The Doran Market (thats a real vendor at the farmers market) and was like what can I do with this? Then I found this recipe:

http://lindawagner.net/blog/2014/09/creamy-corn-gazpacho/index.html

So  using another one of my favorite kitchen tools from Williams Sonoma - I cut the corn off the cob and got to work here  is a great picture of how awesome this tool makes doing things like this easy breezy

Here is the link to order one of these badboys!

http://www.williams-sonoma.com/products/kuhn-rikon-corn-zipper/?pkey=e%7Ccorn%7C25%7Cbest%7C0%7C1%7C24%7C%7C9&cm_src=PRODUCTSEARCH||NoFacet-_-NoFacet-_-NoMerchRules 

I did make a few changes to  the recipe based on what I had from the market - here is what I used

about a quarter of a hot yellow pepper, a red onion, 2 vine ripe tomatoes, 3/4 cup skim milk, everything  else was kept the same!

Here is a picture of the final product - also given the thumbs up from my neighbor!  Not sure if I will eat it as a cold or hot soup tomorrow but I am pretty sure it will be yummy!

Then finally batting clean up for the afternoon....a polenta tart with a garlicky white bean spread, mushrooms and  roasted tomatoes.  Here is the link to the recipe and my step by step photos!  

http://www.choosingraw.com/polenta-tart-with-garlicky-white-bean-spread-and-roasted-cherry-tomatoes/?utm_content=buffer8648a&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

It seems like it could be hard but if you read things over first you will have no problem executing it!

1.  Roast that garlic

2. Squeeze that garlic into your food processor

3.  Add the beans, and herbs

4.  Get that polenta ready

5.  Put polenta in spring form pan and let cool 

6. Cut up those maters and get them ready for roasting

7. Get polenta tart out of pan to cool - I roasted tomatoes while this was going on

8. Spread the beans on the tart

9. Put the mushroom and tomatoes on top 

DIG IN!!!! It was delish!  The only change that I made was adding sautéed mushrooms - I thought that this was a great addition. Using the polenta tart was an excellent alternative to a "pizza" crust.  In fact I would really like to make a pizza with it next time.  The only thing that I would probably do would be to crisp up the bottom side of the polenta tart. Not 100% sure how I would do that yet...but I will figure it out!

Tomorrow is Sunday Funday - which consists of Starbucks, picking the ROW,  going to techniques class, running errands and then back in the kitchen to get ready for the week ahead. Stay tuned for tomorrows post.

Happy Cooking!