The Reach: Goat Cheese & Ratatouille Tart

Ratatouille.  It's like a stew, right? Why do they call it that?  If you're gonna name a food, you should give it a name that sounds delicious.  Ratatouille doesn't sound delicious.  It sounds like "rat" and "patootie."  Rat Patootie!  Which does not sound delicious.

Linguini, Ratatouille

This recipe comes from a wonderful cook book given to me by my boss at christmas, called Farmer & Chef Asheville.  The cook is a compilation of over 200 recipes from restaurants, bed & breakfasts, and farms around Asheville, NC.  Asheville is one of my favorite places in the world, and the recipes in the book are outstanding.  This particular recipe was contributed by A Bed of Roses Victorian Bed & Breakfast.  I highly recommend this cookbook to anyone who loves delicious recipes!  The recipe is slightly augmented here, but it came out beautifully!  The recipe for the tart actually only calls for 1 cup of ratatouille, so in making the tart, you also get lots of ratatouille to eat for other meals!

What you need:

     For the ratatouille

• 2 Leeks, white parts only, sliced
• 3 cloves crushed garlic
• 2 bunches green onions, sliced
• 1/2 cup chives, diced
• 1/4 cup rosemary
• 1 green bell pepper
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 small yellow onion
• 1 tsp red pepper flakes
• 1 tsp Italian herb mix
• 4 large tomatoes, coarsely chopped
• 2 zucchini, sliced
• 1 eggplant, diced
• 3 tbsp parsley
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp pepper

     For the tart crust:

• 1 1/2 cup flour
• 2 tsp sugar
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 cup vegetable shortening
• 1 tbsp butter
• 1/4 cup cold water

     For the tart filling:

• 4 large eggs
• pinch of salt
• 1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
• 1 cup ratatouille
• 4 oz. goat cheese

To make the ratatouille, start by heating the oil and garlic over medium-high heat in a large sauce pan.  Next, add in the leeks, green onions, onion, and green pepper, and cook until tender.  

Next, add in the chives, red pepper, and rosemary, cooking for approximately a minute.

Add in the tomatoes, stir, and simmer uncovered for 10 minutes.  Next, add in the zucchini and eggplant and simmer uncovered for an additional 15 minutes.  

After 15 minutes, remove from heat, add salt, pepper, and parsley, and stir.  

Got the ratatouille made?  Great!  Move on to the tart crust.  For the crust, whisk together the flour, salt, and sugar.  Next, add in the shortening and butter and mix everything until you have a breadcrumb consistency.  Now add in the water and continue to mix.  It should be a damp, crumbly mixture.  

Add the dough to a lightly floured surface and roll it out into a 10 1/2 - 11" circle.  Grease the bottom of a pie pan, and then put your rolled crust into the pan, rolling the ends over the edges of the pan.  Refrigerate for 30 minutes.  After 30 minutes, pre-heat the oven to 400 degrees, pierce a few holes in the bottom of the crust, and put the pan in the freezer for ten minutes.

After 10 minutes, take a piece of foil large enough to fit over the crust, oil one side, and then place the foil, oil side down, over the crust.  Use pie weights, beans, or rice to weigh the foil down, and bake the crust for 10 minutes.

Now you're ready to finish the tart!  After removing the crust from the oven, whisk together the egg, salt, and heavy cream.  Add the ratatouille to the pie plate.

Next, crumble the goat cheese over the ratatouille.  

Then pour the egg mixture over everything.  Return the dish to the oven and cook for 40 minutes.

Voila!  The finished product serves about 6.  Enjoy!

House Baratheon: Venison Gnocchi with Kale

In the world I see... you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You'll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You'll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower. And when you look down, you'll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying strips of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway.

Tyler Durden, Fight Club.

Awhile back, I acquired several delicious, less common meats, one of which was the yak  I made sambussas out of.  Today's recipe was made with the second of the interesting meats: Venison.  It was incredibly simple to make, delicious, and filling.  If you don't have access to venison, ground bison or lean ground beef would work just as well.  I split the dish into four servings, but it could go farther if you served it with some sides.

What you need:

• 1 lb. ground venison
• 2 bunches Lacinato Kale, torn into pieces, stems removed
• 1 medium sized yellow onion, diced
• 1 lb. Whole Wheat Gnocchi
• 6 oz. can Tomato Paste
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1 tsp red pepper flakes
• Juice of 1/2 lemon
• 3 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tbsp minced garlic
• Salt and pepper, to taste

To begin, season the meat with cumin, red pepper flakes, salt and pepper and let sit while you get everything else going.  If I'm being honest, I probably used more cumin and red pepper than 1 tsp each, but 1 tsp will give you a nice flavor, so you can go with that or add more, whichever is to your liking.  Next, cook the gnocchi according to the directions on the package.  Once it is cooked, drain, toss in 1 tbsp olive oil, and set aside.

Next, heat remaining oil and garlic over medium high heat in a large skillet or wok.  When the garlic is fragrant, add the onions, cooking until they are translucent.  Once your onions are translucent, add the ground meat and tomato paste to the skillet.

Once the meat has browned, add in the kale.  You will have to add the kale bit by bit because it takes up so much room at first, but once it starts to wilt, you can fit everything.

Once all of your kale is stirred in and wilted, pour the gnocchi in, stir everything up, and then enjoy!

Martell Gazpacho

It's not blood, it's tomato juice!

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes!

When I was in Spain, my favorite thing to eat was gazpacho.  Even the grocery store gazpacho was delicious.  It is the perfect summer dish, in my mind.  After getting the vitamix, I vowed to make a delicious gazpacho once the weather turned nice, and I am happy to say I succeeded in my goal.  It's an incredibly simple recipe, and took all of 20 minutes to make (and that includes the time spent rough-chopping the vegetables).  And the best part?  The only clean-up required involved wiping down the cutting board and the vitamix.  Couldn't be simpler.  The recipe makes about 8 cups, so serve it as an appetizer for a summer dinner party, have it for lunch during the week, or let it be dinner for a couple of nights!

What you need:

• 2 lbs Tomatoes, stems removed and quartered
• 4 inch slice of French Baguette (and then you can eat the rest of the baguette with the soup!)
• 1 large cucumber, peeled and sliced
• 1 small-medium yellow onion, quartered
• 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 1 poblano pepper, seeded and roughly chopped
• 1 tbsp minced garlic
• 1/2 tsp cumin
• Salt & Pepper to taste. 

Other than chopping your veggies, the only other prep you need to do is to soak the piece of bread in water, and once it is saturated, squeeze the water out as best you an and throw it in the blender with everything else.  Start by putting the tomatoes, poblano, and cucumber in the vitamix, and let it run just long enough to liquefy everything and give you some more room in the blender (assuming the veggies have filled it up!).  Then add the rest of the ingredients and blend on high until it is smooth.  Don't let the soup get hot!  Pour the soup into a large serving bowl or pitcher and refrigerate for at least an hour, to be sure it is nicely chilled upon serving.

Rainwood: Beet Chip & Kale Salad

Breathe properly.  Stay curious.  And eat your beets.

Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

Happy (belated) Earth Day!  To celebrate, I decided to make a salad using one of the most deliciously earthy vegetables out there: the beet.  I love beets in every form, and for this salad, I tried something I haven't done before.  I recently bought a vegetable spiralizer, so I decided to make roasted beet chips.  Mixed in with kale and candied walnuts, the salad was a perfect blend of earthiness and sweet, all topped with a sweet and spicy dressing.

What you need:

     For the salad:

• 3 medium-large beets, peeled and spiralized (or sliced VERY thin)
• 1 cup walnut halves
• 1 large bunch Lacinato Kale, stems removed and torn into bite-sized pieces
• 3 tbsp 100% pure dark amber maple syrup
• 1 tsp olive oil
• Salt & pepper to taste

     For the dressing:

• 1 tbsp stone-ground mustard
• 1 tsp balsamic vinegar
• 3 tbsp olive oil
• 3 tbsp apple cider vinegar
• 2 tbsp honey
• 1 tsp minced garlic

Heat the oven to 400.  After spiralizing the beets, toss them in the olive oil and then lay them out on a foiled and oiled baking sheet.  Let them cook for 20 minutes.

While they cook, put your walnuts into a skillet and cook on medium-high until they begin to brown.  Once they have started browning, add the maple syrup and stir until all walnuts are coated and the syrup is basically evaporated.  Remove from heat and pour the walnuts onto parchment paper to cool.

Next, mix together the ingredients for the dressing, and toss all of your torn kale into a large salad bowl.  I recommend massaging the kale a bit to soften it before adding the other ingredients.  When the walnuts have cooled and the beets are finished roasting, combine all of the ingredients, toss them in the dressing, and serve. 

The Lion & The Rose: Lion King Hyena Masks

Mufasa! Mufasa! Mufasa! 

The Lion King

For the most part, this mask-making process was one great big experiment. Luckily, it worked out!  Our initial idea involved sculpting the masks out of clay, covering the clay in vaseline, doing plaster of paris over the clay, and then somehow just pulling the dried plaster off while retaining the shape.  Yeah, that didn't work.  After failing miserably at our plaster attempt after sculpting the Banzai mask, we regrouped and started looking into other options.  Ultimately, we settled on Worbla, which comes in sheets and becomes mold-able when heated. 

The biggest concern after we got the worbla was how we were going to heat it and press it into the correct form without melting the clay.  Obviously, the easiest solution to this problem is to get clay that doesn't melt, but we had already sculpted the whole thing out of clay which, as it turned out, did melt.  Based on the fact that we had more problems with applying the worbla to the Shenzi mask, I would say that if for some reason you decide you want a challenge and go for clay that will melt, coating the clay in vaseline first helps tremendously (and this vaseline layer has other uses too, so we recommend using it no matter the clay you use). 

Putting the worbla on the Banzai form

To apply the worbla, you just need a heat gun.  We folded the worbla in half and heated it all up before getting to the application because one side of the sheet had an adhesive, and by "gluing" the two sides together, we ended up with a sturdier end-product.  If you were just putting the worbla onto a foam base (for armor or something like that), you wouldn't need to go through that extra step.  Once the two sides were put together, we just heated it up and molded it onto the clay as best we could.  Application of the worbla ended up being a bit tricky, just due to the weirdly-shaped mask, but other than a few seams and a few misplaced wrinkles, we were really pleased with the end result.

Worbla applied to Banzai form

Once the worbla was molded onto the clay, we used a spray primer to coat the whole thing.  We were hoping that this would help cover up the seams, but as it turned out we needed some additional work to mask those. 

Primered Banzai mask

Once the mask was sprayed with primer and dry, we got to work digging the clay out.  Once again, we learned that a vaseline layer over he clay was helpful here.  The clay came out of the Banzai mask much more easily than it came out of the Shenzi mask.  Once we had the Banzai mask all molded and spray-primered, we got to work on the Shenzi mask.  The process was basically the same, although we had quite a bit more trouble with melting, and ended up basically losing the entire sculpt on the left eye.  To fix it, we ended up with applying worbla on top in the shape we had originally sculpted.  I wasn't 100% thrilled with the result, but it ended up working out and looking fine once all of the paint was applied.

Side view of Shenzi sculpt

Shenzi sculpt

Worbla on Shenzi, Banzai covered in primer

Primer applied to Shenzi

Once we got both of the masks coated in primer and realized that the seams were still pretty visible, we purchased a jar of modeling paste, which let us fill in the seams and then sand the dried paste down to create a smooth form.

To help us cover, up the seams

Seams covered in Liquitex

Seams covered in Liquitex

Sanded Liquitex

Sanded Liquitex

There were, admittedly, still some errant wrinkles on the lips after the molding paste was applied, but we were sufficiently happy (and not sure how fixable they were) and decided to move forward with the paint job.  For painting, we used createx airbrush paints, and mixed together black and white to create our desired shade of gray.  We settled on the createx because it also works on fabric, and we wanted to be able to color-match our body-suits to our masks.  We opted to go a hair lighter than the hyenas were in the movie, just because we figured the features and other paint would stand out more in person if we weren't a super dark gray. 

Airbrushing Banzai

Masks drying after getting their first coat of gray

Faces being painted

Once we got the masks painted, we added on the final touches of teeth and hair.  For the teeth, we just used foam strips, which we hot glued into the mouths and then carved to look like teeth.  Once the carving was done, we added white paint to the foam to make the teeth pop.  For the hair, we used roving wool, which I simply rolled and then hot glued to the masks.  For Shenzi, we just needed the forelock.  Banzai needed a tuft on top of the head and some bushy eyebrows.

Finished Shenzi Mask!

Banzai nearly finished, just needs his eyebrows in this one

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Finished Banzai mask!