Karina's Spring Breakfast Series- pt. 1- Thyme For Eggs

I've probably stated somewhere before that my favorite meal to both cook and eat is breakfast. (It shocks me that so many people can willingly skip it.) Taking a few minutes extra than it would to toast your frozen waffles or slam a bowl of Fruit Loops, you could have a restaurant-worthy plate of energizing morning goodness to fuel you for your day. I thought I'd share with you a few of the simple, creative breakfast twists I've tried over the last few weeks..


I purchased some organic fresh thyme, shallots, yellow summer squash and pears to treat myself for a rare weekend morning off to myself.




I began by heating up some olive oil in my saute pan and then adding my shallots. Once they were translucent and starting to brown, I added the thyme I had washed and (mostly) taken off its stems, and the sliced yellow squash and pears.


After a few minutes of sauteing, I added sea salt, pepper, cinnamon, cayenne pepper, and a dash of yellow curry powder. I also added some fresh spinach in there at the very end and let that wither into the mix.


I fried two eggs Over Medium (you can see me a flip an egg from a previous post here) and sprinkled a pinch of sea salt on them. I also toasted my favorite Mi Abuelita Tortillas blue corn tortillas that I get from The Haight St Market.


Ten Minutes later I was feasting on this delicious sweet and savory breakfast of champions and quite thrilled about it.

ariel's making ... root mash

i feel kinda silly even doing a post on this, but it's so yummy, that i thought why not.

baby parsnips showed up at the farmers' market last weekend, so i chopped them up, really small, with some carrots and turnips, and boiled them 'til they were soft.

then i drained them and added a rather large dollop of butter, salt and pepper, and mashed them up.

sweet, buttery, way too easy! perfect for a foggy evening at home ...

have a lovely weekend darlings!

kisses,

ariel

chef sam ... makes purple sauerkraut

look at the purple loveliness! so vibrant! we got a lot of purple cabbage one sunday from the free farm stand ... and so chef sam decided to have a go at sauerkraut. it was super easy -- the hardest part is that you have to wait ... and wait ... and then it's done!

all you need is:

organic cabbage

sea salt

water

in a large jar, add your chopped cabbage. sprinkle with salt -- add more cabbage -- keep doing this -- making layers of a dash of salt -- then cabbage.

then press is all down -- REALLY HARD -- try to get the cabbage to start to release it's own juices. the more compact you can make the cabbage -- the better.

now -- top off with water and add a weight on top of it (we used a glass jar filled with water), so that all the cabbage is totally submerged under the water (if it's not under the water -- it can rot.).

we added a pretty yellow cloth on the top too -- to keep out any bugs.

ok -- that's all done. now the hard part. wait .... at .... least .... TWO .... WHOLE ... WEEKS. (the warmer it is out -- the faster it goes though!).

it'll start to smell a lil' stinky and yummy. you'll know when it's done ;)

YUM! tangy! enjoy!

kisses,

ariel

Karina Steals Seaweed Salad for Sushi Feast!

I'm a big fan of sushi and an even bigger fan of throwing sushi parties. It's a cheap, relatively easy way to feed and impress a lot of people at once. I actually did an entry on throwing a sushi party last year you can check out by clicking the link, so I won't get into the actual rolling process here...


Instead, I am going to share the AMAZING seaweed/avocado salad I made to go with the sushi. (Actually, the amazing seaweed/avocado salad I ripped off from a prominent, vegetarian fine dining spot I had eaten at that week... It rhymes with Bellenium...)


I made a big batch of glass rice noodles. These only need to be boiled in water for a few minutes total.


I sliced a bunch of organic raw kale and mixed it with chopped carrots, cucumbers, apples and seaweed. I was actually overwhelmed when I stopped by the Japanese market by the many different ways to buy seaweed (all with Japanese labels) and actually just ended up buying two containers of freshly and already- made seaweed salad to save some time.


I threw in some sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, two fresh avocados, and tossed it with a lime-tahini dressing I had in my fridge left over from a few nights earlier (olive oil, lime, tahini, garlic, salt, agave, cayenne, and pepper.)


This is just a picture of some sweet potatoes I roasted with garlic and onion that I put in a few rolls!


Like I stated in my previous sushi post- you can put ANYTHING in sushi. In these rolls I used carrot, cucumber, roasted sweet potato, mango, apple, yellow b. pepper, avocado, asparagus, dates, and almond butter. You just get all your ingredients together, cut and cooked (if needed) and make every roll completely different!


And of course always have plenty of pickled ginger and wasabi on hand!


Best part is all the cooking is done by the time people come over and you can just enjoy and eat rolls until you all burst!

Karina Does Betty Does!

I have a lovely and impressive friend, Jesse Silver, who recently teamed up with other lovely and impressive women to start the online magazine, Betty Does.

Betty Does is a new San Francisco collective publication celebrating women and their work.

I had been following their posts and reading their interviews since they began a few months ago, so to say I was thrilled and flattered beyond belief when Jesse asked me to be her first interviewee is an understatement.

She asked to interview me about my cake making, food blogging, and acting, and we decided it would be fun to make a cake in the process. Since the lovely and impressive Betty photographer, Margo Moritz, was also coming over to document the interview, I offered to make them both dinner as well...



Like so many people out there, Jesse has a gluten intolerance so I decided to recycle an old idea I had of using shreddings of zucchini for a pasta rather than wheat noodles.


I made a vegan pesto by blending raw cashews I had soaked overnight with a few handfuls of organic basil, several cloves of garlic, a squeezed lemon, olive oil, sea salt, cayenne and pepper in the food processor.


I wanted to make some type of protein in the form of a "meatball" for the pasta, so I quickly improvised with the left over quinoa dish I had made the night before. I started by chopping some carrots, raw almonds, and sunflower seeds in the food processor.


I added a cup or two of the leftover quinoa dish I had made that consisted of quinoa, brussel sprouts, mushrooms, spinach, apples, vegan sausage and the lot of my usual spicing (salt, pepper, cumin, curry, cayenne, cinnamon, braggs and lemon.) I also threw in a few spoon fulls of organic re-fried beans I had open to help bind the mixture when it came to forming balls.




I heated up sunflower oil (good for high heat) and lightly fried them on all sides until they were crunchy on the outside.


I then set them on a paper towel to soak up any excess oil.


I boiled water in a pan and cooked my "zuc noods" for a few minutes until soft and then drained them.


In another pan, I sauteed an onion, some garlic, and several shitake mushrooms in olive oil and then salt and peppered them.


I threw the mushrooms and onions in with the pesto and "noodles" and mixed well.


I made a fresh salad of lettuce, spinach, orange segments, avocado, snap peas and almond slivers and tossed with a tahini-tomato dressing.


The Betties seemed quite pleased! Jesse brought a lovely Riesling to accompany the meal and it all made for a perfect appetizer to the Mango-Ginger-Sage cake that was made! (Coming soon in the Betty Does article!)

ariel's making ... french chocolate macarons

leenie dear threw us a "french night" this past weekend, in preparation for our very near trip to france. i opted to bring dessert and decided to try and tackle the infamous french macaron. now don't get these confused with macaroons -- those are the coconut ones.




so here's what i did ... in a bowl mix together:

2 c. powdered sugar
1 c. almond flour
6 T. cocoa powder

in another bowl -- add the whites of 4 eggs -- that are at room temp.

beat the egg whites 'til they form soft peaks. then add to the whites 10 T. of granulated white sugar and beat that together for 2 minutes. it will start to get gooey and smooth in texture.

now carefully fold together the dry and egg white mixture until totally combined.

put your batter into a plastic bag and cut the tip off. pipe little blobs of the batter onto a baking sheet, that is covered in parchment paper. bake in a pre-heated oven for 15 minutes at 350*.

now it's time to make the ganache filling. chop up some dark chocolate -- as much as you want.

on the stove, heat up to a slow boil, about 1/2 a c. of heavy cream. turn off the cream and then add to it a dollop of butter and a few T. of cocoa powder. mix 'til combined.

then add in the chocolate chunks and mix 'til melted too. mix for a few minutes with a whisk. then place in a glass container and chill for at least 2 hours -- or overnight.

this is how the macarons looked right out of the oven. let them cool completely before taking them off the parchment -- otherwise they stick and fall apart (and then you have to eat the "mess-ups").

once they are totally cool -- and the ganache has firmed up -- slather the ganache on one cookie -- then find it a cookie buddy -- and you've just made a french macaron!

they were pretty awesome tasting -- and i even had a second batch that i made to take to a feast a liz's the next evening.

i still have a bunch of ganache leftover too ... what should i make it into??

happy baking.

hope you're all doing lovely!

kisses,

ariel

ariel's making ... love cookies

happy love day, sweeties. it's been forevs! sorry. been way busy getting this whole photo biz started .... but today's special ... so i decided to make something extra tasty.

how about cookies with choco-mint for sam love? yum!

for these buttery delights ... you'll need:

1 stick organic butter
1 cup organic sugar or sucanat

mix these together. this may be difficult -- if you live in a cold house -- i put my stick of butter on my table this morning to let it thaw.

then i went and did my laundry.

when i came back it was still hard-as-a-rock ... so i used a potato masher to mix the butter and sugar. that worked great!

next i opened a bar of fair-trade mint-chocolate -- then i ate a bunch of it.

with what was left -- i chopped it up into chunks and added it to the butter sugar mixture, along with an organic egg.

then i mixed in 1 1/2 c. of organic flour, a pinch a sea salt, 1 t. of baking powder and a dash of milk.

once it was all mixed, i put in plastic and threw it in the freezer to chill.

while it chilled, i got way productive by putting away the laundry.

about 30 minutes later -- i rolled the dough out -- cut into cute heart shapes -- and baked at 350* for about 15 minutes ... give or take.

i hope sam love likes them. i bet he will.

now -- give someone a kiss! and tell at least two people you love, that you love them -- today and everyday!

kisses,

ariel

p.s. the valentine's are by two amazing girls ... siren suzy and countess karin. i love you both so much!