Sunday, June 28, 2009

Rainbow-themed food

As if regular old Swiss chard wasn't good enough, we were lucky enough to find rainbow chard at the farmer's market this week.



This made me think of all of the other great colors that come along with fresh food. Here are some cherries from the crop share:



The red cherries in the blue bowl with the yellow background was too much to resist. The lovely bowl is courtesy of my college dining services. During my freshman year they had them for a brief few weeks at the stir fry bar, until they reverted to crappy plates that no one wanted to steal.



Lovely stem close-ups:








The colors!





And finally, a recent dinner of coconut chicken, baked tortilla chips, a bright mango-tomatillo salsa and the rainbow chard in its final, delicious state.



The mango salsa can go with a lot of things, including fish. It was great both with the chicken and the tortilla chips. I didn't settle on one recipe, since there are many and I didn't have all of the ingredients for any of them. There were no complaints, but I went a little too heavy on the lime juice and probably could have used more salt. In short, do whatever makes you happy, but here is a good starting point:

Mango-Tomatillo Salsa

2 mangos, peeled and sliced (if you've never done it before, please check out this website. There's a science to it. Really.)
5-7 tomatillos, husked
1 large spring onion, quartered
4 cloves of garlic, unpeeled
1 red pepper, sliced
1 tbs lime juice
1 tsp salt
fresh cilantro
any other spices or things that you think might taste good

Place onions, tomatillos, garlic and red pepper on a tray coated with cooking spray. Place in (toaster) oven and broil until vegetables start to char. Peel garlic, and place vegetables in blender. Blend into chunks by pulsing a few times. Add lime juice, salt, cilantro and anything else that strikes your fancy. Mix in cubed mango and enjoy!

Tortilla chips

10 tortilla wraps
1 tbs chili powder
1 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp salt
Cooking spray

Preheat oven to 450. Coat tortillas with cooking spray and cut into chip-sized pieces. Sprinkle evenly with a mixture of chili powder, cumin and salt. Spread on a cooking sheet coated with cooking spray. Bake for 8ish minutes, or until they are as crispy as you want. I've also fried them on the stove and cooked them on the grill with olive oil. The extra spices make this really yummy.

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