The Hunger Struck - Confessions of a Food Fanatic.

I over bought at the farmers market a few weeks back. Does that ever happen to you? I find it so hard to control my purchases at this time of the year, it seems I have to constantly remind myself that with work and everything else I just don’t have time to plan what I’m going to do with 10 pounds of berries on a Sunday night. This is a really upsetting realization for me. I have always thought I could be such a great candidate for a stay at home wife position. Not out of laziness or not wanting to work, but simply because my favorite thing in the whole wide world is cooking and spending time in my kitchen. I knew I should have married rich. Or maybe become a farmer instead of choosing a career in advertising?

Fortunately I was able to have a bit of control this week when I saw the little bushels of black currants. Of course what I wanted to do was just buy up the whole lot, I love currents, but seriously what are 2 people going to do with 10 pounds of currents? In the long run I’m glad I had the strength to limit myself because as it turns out the currents on top, the ones I tasted, were pretty sweet but the ones underneath that first layer were really tart almost sour. If I was a suspicious person I would call the farmer I bought them from sneaky, but I’m not and honestly it gave me an excuse to make this pretty awesome black current jam.

Saturday lunch during the spring and summer months is my favorite meal of the week. It rivals even the prized boozy Sunday night dinners at my parents place. Though arguably lighter and without the wine parings these lunches are always pretty fantastic and inspired by the farmers market. They are also extremely simple, usually no more than just a few ingredients.

I had been meaning to write up one of these for some time now so I’m glad I’m finally getting to it. It might become a tradition, well see. This week, like most, I was drawn to the greens and decided to whip up a salad from a mix of pea shoots, pepper crest and another delicate green that I think was called something like Cresh. I’ll confirm that next week. Regardless though the result was pure perfection. The sweetness of the greens with the salt of the anchovies was amazing and surprisingly these greens though delicate were not overpowered by the anchovies. I was pretty happy with myself about that.

There are many things I love about quinoa but the best thing by far is that it fills you up for a long long time. I’m not sure exactly why that is, someone mentioned to me recently that they thought quinoa contained more protein than other grains, I’m going to run with that theory as it makes perfect sense to me.

So I’ve gradually started to make quinoa in the place of other grains and pastas. I never thought it would stick for more than maybe a few dinners as I was anticipating serious opposition from my husband. If there’s one thing I’ve learned it’s to never take rice away from an Indian! Not that I was actually trying to make him stop eating rice, I was just trying to find something that we could occasionally replace the all the basmati rice with.

Have you ever had basmati rice at an Indian restaurant? Or maybe you have a fabulous Indian cook in the family too? Ever wondered why the rice is so freaking never-want -to-eat-anything-else-EVER-again good? I’m talking about the kind of rice that makes you completely forget about that incredible piece of naan bread laying next to your plate AND the butter chicken you ordered.

Can you guess the answer?

Here’s a recipe that will make you feel a little fancy on a Tuesday night. I almost can’t believe I’m writing a post about artichokes as they were one of my most feared food items as a child. I’m not quite sure why anymore, I think it had something to do with a period in my life where my mother made them a lot, beyond that I can’t remember any details.

A few years ago after seeing baby artichokes make there way into Vancouver markets, I decided it might be worth giving them another shot. They are small and seemed like the perfect entry level artichoke to tackle as a former artichoke hater. Plus I had them once being served as part of an amazing antipasti platter and I completely fell in love with the way they  complimented everything both aesthetically and with their woodsy flavor.

These artichokes apart from the cleaning process are extremely simple to prepare. Really it’s just a few tablespoons of olive oil, lemon and any variety of strong hard cheese you have on hand. They are a perfect snack or accompaniment. I served these roasted as is but I suspect they would be fabulous if you had some kind of simple sauce like an aioli to dip them in. My behind is starting to look like an Easter ham so I decided to skip that part at least this time around.

I think Chicken Paillard might be the only chicken recipe where I can support using boneless skinless chicken breast. It’s inadequacies are well documented, but to put it in a nutshell, boneless skinless chicken breast has the power to turn even the most ardent meat lover into a vegetarian. You know that staunch type that would sooner do something incredibly barbaric like open up a can of spam than eat something completely vegetarian? Or maybe like me you have some experience with someone in your life who repeatedly proclaims the unpalatable piece of petrified leather on his plate (in the name of cutting back on fat or something equally obnoxious) to be the best tasting piece of meat they’ve eaten in ages. Seriously, if boneless skinless chicken breast was the only available meat it would have even these people begging for a tofu turkey before you know it.

I’m not going to pretend there aren’t those out there who actually do like such things because experience has taught me that there are. Experience has also taught me that these aren’t the kind of people I want to cook for me. I have a tendency to think that they are members of that paradoxical group who view food solely as fuel (shudder). Or that other group that have some major psychological issues with a little thing called fat. Ok I know there are people who for serious health reasons limit their fat, but they are not the ones I come across in my life, so to be clear those aren’t the people I’m talking about.

This salad was one of those unplanned surprises. I had intended on using up all of the asparagus I had purchased from the Farmers market in my chicken salad and was a bit alarmed when I realized I would only need about half. It was one of those weeks where I had planned almost every meal and I absolutely hate the possibility of having something go to waste.

Fortunately, being the over-eaters that we are, it wasn’t particularly difficult to find a way to add an additional course into one of our meals. Never is come to think about it. This might be the reason why I am not fitting into my jeans the way I used to and have been wearing leggings almost exclusively for the past month. I might have to look into that. Oh well! Never trust a skinny cook, right?

I’ve been seeing all kinds of shaved asparagus salads over the past month and so I was immediately drawn to this when trying to think of creative ways to use up the rest of mine. Seriously though, this salad is another one of those extremely easy ways to impress. Aesthetically its almost perfect and will take you about 10 minutes to prepare. Also, the taste of raw asparagus, thinly shaved may even have the power to win over those asparagus skeptics in your life. I know it did with mine.

There really is nothing that pleases my hubby more than some open face sandwich action. It’s among his top 5 favorite things to eat and I would bet that it might actually be in his top 2. It doesn’t really matter what you put on the bread, as long as it’s piled high, it could be almost anything that you fish out of the fridge and it would still be “the best thing he’s ever tasted.” Men are funny.

Because of this we tend to eat bruschetta a lot or some other variety of sandwich fare. More often than not these also end up to be quite simple, as they are usually the result of random items left at the end of the week. After being away for a few weeks on vacation with my girlfriends, I was feeling generous and decided to plan his favorite and perhaps more lunch appropriate meal into our dinners for the week.

After 2 weeks of eating white bread for almost every meal, I haven’t been able to eat anything but fresh vegetables since I got home. I know it seams a bit simple to be posting a recipe as basic as an heirloom tomato salad, but this is what I’ve been eating so tough! Ha! No in all seriousness there were some amazing looking heirloom tomatoes at the farmers market this morning and I just wasn’t strong enough to leave without a few of them. For the most part I’m powerless against these, when I see some good ones I just can’t walk away.

This salad is so simple and really needs nothing aside from some ripe heirloom tomatoes and maybe a bit of olive oil and some sea salt. I added in the pea shoots and thought the sweetness really complemented these amazing subtle tomatoes, but of course they aren’t necessary.

As some of you may know I’ve been in Egypt for the past 2 weeks. Sneaky I know. Just when you think I’m at home making macaroni and cheese.

There really is no need to to state how amazing it was, so I thought that while I get myself straightened out and back in this timezone I would post a few pictures that for me highlight our trip.

Over the last few months Mac and Cheese has been the #1 internal blog search here on The Hunger Struck. It’s funny because I remember back in September when I first started this blog thinking about how much I was looking  forward to writing about my favorite Mac and Cheese recipes. I’m particularly fond of my history with this classic American comfort food, so this was the perfect excuse to make one of my absolutely favorite things.

Several years ago when I still lived in San Francisco, along with a few friends, I was a Macaroni and Cheese connoisseur. We would go to the cheese section of Rainbow and spend a ridiculous amount of time figuring out what cheese combination to try out  in our next experiment. Naturally some of these Mac and Cheese adventures were more refined than others, some were pure and simple while others seemed more like an experiment in excess and were as dirty as Mac and Cheese can get.

We were cheese obsessed and quickly mastered the art of the weekend brunch cheese plate, often followed by the weekend dinner grilled cheese, which would generally include niman ranch bacon and be washed down with cold glasses of makers mark. We were the very definition of hedonism, our behavior driven by our mutual love of cheese. That was the life, although I have reformed my behavior a bit since then, my devotion to cheese is stronger than ever and mac and cheese is definitely one of my most favorite ways to showcase it.