This dish was created for a class I taught at Draeger’s Culinary Center in Menlo Park, California. It literally made people smack their lips. I believe it was the creamy, luscious flavor of the combination of mashed potatoes and roasted pepper.
4 medium poblano or Anaheim chile peppers
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 pound all-purpose organic potatoes, peeled and cut into large chunks
2 tablespoons chopped fresh chives
4 ounces cream cheese
1/4-1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup (2 ounces) Cheddar or Monterey Jack cheese, shredded
Preheat the oven to 375°F.
Cut the chile peppers in half lengthwise, removing the seeds and stems and scraping away most of the white membranes.
In a medium bowl, combine the garlic, vinegar, oil, salt, and black pepper. Toss the chile peppers in the bowl to thoroughly coat. Place, cut side down, on a baking sheet and bake for 20 - 30 minutes, or until the peppers are tender.
Meanwhile, bring a large pot of salted water to a boil and cook the potatoes for 15 minutes, or until tender. Drain and place in a large bowl. Mash the potatoes with the chives. Cut the cream cheese into pieces and add to the potatoes, allowing it to melt and mash with the potatoes. Add enough milk as you are mashing to make the potatoes smooth and creamy.
Turn the peppers cut side up on the baking sheet. Mound the mashed potatoes in the baked peppers. Top with the shredded cheese. Bake for 15 minutes, or until lightly browned.
Makes 8 servings.
~~ Jesse Cool is author of Your Organic Kitchen and lives in Menlo Park, California.
Jesse’s current book is The Really, Truly, Honest-to-Goodness One-Pot Cookbook. Photo by Lisa Koenig [Permanent Link] [Top]
Eating organic food and living an environmentally aware life means doing things like recycling waste, cutting carbon emissions, and following the old Yankee maxim of “Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.” But it also means becoming a whole human being. And that means being a mensch, telling the truth (when appropriate, which it almost always is except if the truth will gratuitously hurt someone), and making things of beauty. Of these three, people seem to have the most trouble with the third—making things of beauty—art, in other words.
A flaky pie crust can be a thing of beauty, and so can a nicely whistled version of The Whistler and His Dog. But when it comes to what most people think of as the arts—drawing, painting, sculpture, and so on—too many people think they have no talent. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard someone say, “I can’t draw,” or “I can’t draw a straight line.”
Other than a straight line, the simplest figure one can draw is a circle. We all know what a circle is. In the Zen tradition, enlightened ones are supposed to be able to draw perfect circles. If that’s true, it’s because they don’t think about drawing a circle. They just do it. And you can do it, too. Here’s how:
Think of a mental image of a circle and then try to reproduce that image on paper. They’re already a couple of steps removed from simply drawing a circle and will in all likelihood draw something resembling an asteroid.
Instead, think of a giraffe—long legs, long neck, wobbly spots on its hide, two martian antennae-looking things sticking out of its head, and a mouth full of leaves from high in an acacia tree. If I said, “Don’t think of a circle,” you would be forced to think of a circle. Don’t believe that? Okay, if I say, “Don’t think of an elephant,” what’s the first thing you think of? So thinking about the giraffe prevents you from thinking about a circle.
You must draw your circle with your whole arm, not just your hand or your fingers. Pretend you have a pen in your hand. Move your arm so that the tip of your index finger makes four- to five-inch diameter circles in the air. All movement comes from the shoulder without bending your elbow, wrist, or fingers.
Now get paper and pen and sit high enough above the paper for you to make comfortable circles without having to raise your forearm. Your arm should just hang naturally with a 90-degree angle at the elbow. Holding the pen an inch above the paper, start moving your arm so that the pen is making circles in the air. Don’t focus on the paper. While your arm is moving, think about that giraffe. Watch him eat and run gracefully on the savannah. Slowly lower the pen to paper while watching the giraffe.
Voila! Imagine the giraffe leaping through the circle you’ve just drawn and running away. Don’t worry about him. There are plenty more giraffes where that one came from.
~ Organic Crust for a 9-Inch Pie
1 cup organic all-purpose or pastry flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons organic butter, chilled
2 tablespoons canola oil, chilled
1/4 cup cold water
1. Mix the flour and salt together in a bowl. Cut the butter into 4 pieces and add them into the flour along with the 2 tablespoons of canola oil. Using 2 knives or a pastry cutter, cut the butter into the flour until the piece of butter are smaller than peas and the mixture resembles coarse meal.
2. Add 3 tablespoons of water and toss the mixture lightly using two forks. Add more water if needed so that you can press the mixture together into a ball that retains its shape. Refrigerate for at least a half hour before rolling.
~~ Jeff Cox is author of The Organic Cook’s Bible and lives in Sonoma County, California. [Permanent Link] [Top]
Paul Newman & Michael Nischan Open Organic Restaurant
Michel Nischan, chef, cookbook author and avid proponent of healthy, sustainable and culturally significant food and social causes, has teamed up with like-minded actor and philanthropist Paul Newman to open Dressing Room - A Homegrown Restaurant, located on the grounds of the Westport Country Playhouse… to support local and regional farmers, fishers and producers, cooking food that recaptures the simple and pure tastes found in locally grown, natural and organic ingredients and strive to raise awareness of a sustainable food future.
It’s rapidly becoming an organic world
Conventional farmers who scoff at organic producers and brand them as members of the “muck and magic brigade” might do well to consider the global picture. Organic farming is now practised in more than 120 countries, taking up more than 30 million hectares on about 630,000 farms.
Clean eating may fight off cancer
…we are living in a world filled with chemicals, pesticides, additives, preservatives, antibiotic and hormone residues, and heavy metals. Whether consumed, inhaled, or absorbed, our bodies soak this stuff up. In order to reduce the load, and the toll it takes it takes on our health, there’s something we can do. We can eat clean. Here’s how…
Organic Meat and Dairy linked to better quality breast milk
The breast milk of mothers consuming organic meat and dairy contains higher levels of beneficial fatty acids, and has an overall imporved quality, suggests new research. “These findings provide scientific support for common sense, by showing that organic foods are healthier,”…
Research at the National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science
…has shown that runoff from the commonly used herbicide atrazine (that’s Round-Up) causes decreased protein levels in phytoplankton, free-floating algae that form the base of the food chain for aquatic animals. Meanwhile land under herbicide-free organic cultivation increased by 1 million acres in 2005 to over 4.5 million acres, and 2006 is expected to top that. Choosing organic food is truly voting for a clean environment with your food dollars. (From Jeff Cox)
It seems the moon really does have influence on gardening
The country gentleman, who keeps a close watch on his backyard vegetable patch, already had adopted some of the principles of biodynamic, a form of farming in which livestock are treated with homeopathic remedies rather than antibiotics, and astronomical calendars and signs of the zodiac play a role in determining when to sow and harvest crops.
Declaring Ireland a GMO-Free Zone
We reject the myth that GMO crops can “co-exist” with conventional and organic farming. We support the farmer’s right to a sustainable future and the consumer’s right to choose safe food.
~~ Dave Smith is author of To Be Of Use - The Seven Seeds of Meaningful Work and lives in Mendocino County, California. Photo Credit: Treehugger.com
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Pennsylvania
