Today I woke up and had this insatiable desire to make lots and lots of food. Sometimes I work so hard in my Raw Melissa kitchen, I forget how much I enjoy spending time in my OWN kitchen at home. Thanks to some wonderful volunteers at the commercial kitchen, though, I’m a bit freed up these days to cook again in the comfort of my own home and have also been able to test recipes for my new dessert cookbook.

Today I made German Pancakes (because I had about a hundred eggs that needed to be used), Lentil Stew (heartier than soup because it SNOWED today!) and Roasted Golden Beets with Caramelized Sweet Peppers (boy oh boy was that delicious). I also cooked 30 pre made, uncooked tortillas over the open flame of my gas stove with the intention of filling them with refried beans and freezing them for “homemade frozen burritos” as well as dicing up apples with cinnamon and maple syrup for apple crisp, but I got tired and decided to go read about food on food blogs instead. I think after this post, I’ll go finish those last two tasks, but I’ll tell you, in the meantime, it’s wonderful sitting here typing with all those smells coming from my kitchen. Inspiring really.

So as I said, the Roasted Golden Beets with the Caramelized Sweet Peppers was divine. I think it was the sheer level of no less than ten flavor elements that just made this dish explode with excitement for me. So I’d love to share it with you:

Roasted Golden Beets with Caramelized Sweet Peppers

3 golden beets, peeled and coarsely and rustically chopped

2 mandarin oranges, sliced in half

3 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped into bits (no need to mince)

olive oil

salt

tarragon

Put the first three ingredients in a shallow glass baking dish and toss with a nice drizzling of olive oil, a sprinkling of salt and tarragon (as if you were salting and seasoning a dish you were about to eat). Squeeze the juices out of one of the mandarins into the dish. Toss this all together, cover the dish and put in a 400 degree oven. Let roast until the beets are tender. Stir a couple of times during roasting to get flavors to meld.

Meanwhile, put the following in a sauté pan:

1 yellow pepper, sliced lengthwise very thinly

1/8 red pepper, sliced lengthwise very thinly

1/8 orange pepper, sliced lengthwise very thinly

a sprinkling of ground annatto (similar to paprika but with a more musky flavor)

a generous sprinkling of salt

a drizzle of olive oil

Saute on high heat just to get the peppers sweating and then turn down the flame to low. Let the peppers cook, stirring often, until they are very wilted and start to get a brown caramel color blush. Set them aside while the beets finish cooking.

When beets are done, toss them with the peppers, keeping the mandarins (which will now have a bit of char on their skin and tops) in the mix. Mound up on a plate, squeeze a little more juice  from one of the mandarins over the top and serve right away.

Tarragon and ground annatto are not an herb and spice that are typically seen together, but they work in this dish. Add in the roasted mandarins and the fruity flavors of the colored peppers and the golden beets, and you can’t go wrong.

MamaBaby Haiti staff.
From left to right: Marie the midwife, Santo the translator,
Me, Dr. Zeenia, Jason the guard, and Dieula the cook

Yesterday was the first day here that I’ve felt full. It’s not that they don’t feed us an abundance of food here at MamaBaby Haiti. It’s just that I burn so many calories when I’m here. I spent the first two days of my trip in Port au Prince with some friends. They are newly moved into an apartment of sorts: three small rooms with cement walls and floors, two of which have recently been tiled, and the recent addition of a toilet, sink and shower with running water. There is no kitchen of course. One of my friends cooks eggs on a hot plate when there’s power and eats cold beans from a can when there is not. The other has wonderful meals of Haitian rice and beans brought in by a beautiful woman, Mithou. Incidentally, Mithou and I got to be friends when we both started dancing to Justin Beiber music at an outdoor event we all went to together.

My visit was a suprise to my friends and I didn’t want to impose too much so while they offered me bits of their meals, I mostly ate Pro Bars (made in good ol’ Park City Utah) one of my most favorite protein/meal replacement bars. I always have several on hand when I’m traveling abroad and when I go to births. They are one of the only bars that really fill me up.
Needless to say, when I arrived here in the North of Haiti at the clinic, I was so excited for the Haitian food of Dieula, the cook here I am so fond of. Sure enough, when I walked through the door, there was a plate of the familiar rice and beans I had been craving. That night I tried to catch up on sleep but the next two nights were filled with births so I found myself hungrier and hungrier as I wasn’t sleeping quite enough to keep my body going. Yesterday after a all night birth, Jason, our gate guard and all around extraordinary man, went out and bought Marie (the Haitian staff midwife) and I delicious  street food for breakfast consisting of boiled plantains and yellow yams, onions, garlic and a leg of chicken. Now before you start judging me for eating meat (since I know many of my readers are vegetarians) consider that it was humanely raised in a beautiful environment where it was free to roam, that it was probably fresh from that morning, that I am in a third world country where often meat is a very safe source of protein, that by eating it I’m supporting the local economy which is in a shambles, and that it was offered to me out of love and thanks for working here at the clinic. All of these fit within my criteria of meat eating as layed out in my food philosophy.

Part of the reason Jason had bought us the food is that Dieula and Monise, two of the staff were at the market buying food for the next several days and there was hardly any food left in the house. So, for lunch I found some dry quinoa and a couple potatoes, and a beet and a radish from the garden. The cupboards here are bare since we don’t have a fridge and since Dieula cooks everything fresh and from scratch and usually only buys ingredients to last for exactly our needs for the next several days. I did, however, find salt and curry powder and a head of garlic, all of which I added to a pot of boiling water along with the veggies, chopped in to cubes. After the veggies were nearly tender, I added some quinoa, and let it all simmer while I had a bucket shower. The result was a beautiful vegan and high protein meal with veggies from the garden.

Between the Hatiain street food and the quinoa dish, I finally felt full for the first time in several days.

Here is the recipe for the quinoa dish:

1 beet cut into 1/2″ cubes
2 small potatoes or one large potato cut into 1/2″ cubes
1-2 large radishes (yes these are great cooked!) cut into 1/2″ cubes
5 cloves garlic, left whole
3 C water
1 C quinoa
2 tsp. curry powder
1 tsp. salt

In a medium sized saucepan, add all the veggies and the spices. Cook on a simmer for about 15 minutes or until the veggies are almost completely tender. Add the quinoa and cover. Let simmer until the quinoa is cooked through and the water is absorbed. Approximately another 15-20 minutes.

Serve alone or on a bed of greens drizzled with lemon juice and olive oil (two things we definitely DO NOT have here, but will be absolutely delicious with this dish).

Check out the article and let me know what you think. What is your eating philosophy?

http://bit.ly/eVFISK

You can watch by clicking on the “watch” page on this website and pressing play at 11:00am this Saturday.

Find out more here:

http://delightfuldelicacies.blogspot.com/2010/12/for-agoraphobic.html

Hope to see you there or at least feel you there! haha!f

Let us know what you think and Enjoy!

I’m feeling like making up a new recipe. Comment here with what you’d like me to make and I’ll work on it and test it out and post the recipe in the next couple days. Oooh, I’m excited to see what you come up with and I’m getting hungry so hurry!

A note: None of the desserts I sell are eligible for this game.

Ready, set, go!

No, it wasn’t me in the competition, it was my wonderful spouse (who is also a chef) and my dear friend, Bobbie of Ginger’s Garden Cafe. They were joined by two other teams and were required to make three “tapas” type dishes for judges. They had two secret ingredients and were required to use as many local ingredients as possible. The secret ingredients were berries (blackberries and bluberries) and Jerusalem artichokes.

They were both nervous as this was the first chef competition either of them had ever been in and one of the other team’s chefs had been a chef for decades and had been in many chef competitions.

As the competition began, they felt a bit out of their league as they noticed one of the other teams beginning to prepare lamb, but they quickly refocused and reminded themselves that their specialty of making mostly plant based whole foods was their strength.

They used ingredients like sun-dried heirloom tomatoes that I got from Jacob’s Cove Farm and had dehydrated earlier in the summer, tarragon blossoms from our garden, local apples and pears, and Real Salt from local salt deposits.

They presented their dishes to the judges with a bit of trepidation, but in the end, won second place! Here is a recipe for one of the dishes they made. This was the judges favorite dessert. There are no measurements. Just be intuitive and confident and it’ll turn out great!

Apple and Pear Saute on Berry Puree

Saute a couple apples and a couple pears in butter or coconut oil, cinnamon, sucanat (dehydrated and ground sugar cane) or honey, and a pinch of salt until wilted but still a bit crisp in the middle when you bite.

Blend a cup or two of blackeberries and blueberries, a little water to get the blender going and some real maple syrup.

Pour this into a dessert bowls and make a tower of the apple pear mixture in the middle. Grate fresh nutmeg over the top and serve.

Mmmmm…I’m so proud of them! Congrats!