We love yogurt at What We Eat. Plain yogurt is a super delicious and versatile ingredient; it gets as friendly with our granola as it does our roasted veggies. It doesn’t hurt that it’s also crazy good for you, too — chock full of probiotics which are good for your tummy, high in protein and low in sugar so extra filling.
So you can imagine that when we caught wind of Siggi’s recipe contest, we jumped at the chance to participate. Siggi’s is a local company that makes skyrr, a thick Icelandic yogurt that’s not too sweet. They, like us, champion the use of simple, whole food ingredients and not a lot of sugar. Their contest challenges registered dieticians to create recipes with Siggi’s yogurt that align with the ethos of their brand. The top twenty entrants will secure a spot in the forthcoming Siggi’s cookbook.
For recipe inspiration, we turned to our imaginations (or in my case, a healthy dose of the Sqirl LA Instagram feed). After some texting, some coffee and one epic trip from Williamsburg to Red Hook and back again (it’s a long story), we headed for the kitchen.
The rest of the day was a blur of cooking, testing, tweaking and tasting. Of course, there were some oh man’s and I should have’s. But you know what? There were more belly laughs than anything else. We had fun.
The truth is, cooking like this comes naturally to us. It’s the food we want to eat. And I think that shows in this recipe collection, which is small but mighty.
There’s orange and ginger roast pork tenderloin, super savory and full of flavor. Roasted acorn squash with tahini-honey yogurt, an ode to the end of winter produce. And last but not at all least, spiced pear panna cotta with cardamom, not too sweet but creamy and lovely to eat.
When we went home that evening, we felt full and nourished and happy. And, as always, we want to share that with you. So look out for our Siggi’s recipes, which we’ve been sharing weekly on Instagram. And try incorporating any yogurt into your meals in new and creative ways. Here are a few ideas to get you started:
Green Goddess Dressing
Blend a few scoops of yogurt with ripe avocado, lemon or lime juice to taste, a little olive oil, plus fresh basil, mint, cilantro, scallions or chives for a super quick, healthy and delicious avo-yogurt dressing.
Tahini Yogurt
Mix 1/3 tahini with 2/3 plain greek yogurt. Season to taste with minced garlic, salt and pepper. Spread over the bottom of a serving bowl and top with raw or cooked veggies. Roasted sweet potatoes, freshly sliced avo, cilantro and sliced scallions is an oft-repeated variation on this around here.
Honey Yogurt
Add honey, toasted walnuts and cinnamon to taste and serve with any sliced fresh fruit or pound cake.
Yogurt Marinade
Whisk together yogurt, olive oil, lemon, garlic, ginger, salt and black pepper. We love to use this with chicken or pork. Depending, you may also want to incorporate spices like paprika, cayenne and cumin, or an herb like chopped cilantro. Transfer meat to a ziplock bag and coat with marinade. If possible, let marinate several hours, preferably overnight.
“Healthy” food is having its day. It seems like there’s a new Sweetgreen, By Chloe or juice bar along those lines opening up each time you turn your head in New York City. Bon Appetit has launched a new brand and site, Healthyish, to “cover wellness through the lens of food.” Eighteen of Amazon’s 20 top selling cookbooks have a health focus. The hashtag #cleaneating has over 29.5 million posts and counting on Instagram. People are connecting the dots between how they eat and how they feel.
On the one hand, this is awesome. Think about it, we literally are what we eat. Every strand of hair, follicle of skin and organ in our bodies is made up of the building blocks provided by what we eat. I don’t know whether that fact will ever stop fascinating me. The more people realize and celebrate this, the better.
On the other hand, some of what I see makes me uneasy. The more interest there is in healthy eating, the more commoditized it becomes. Many of those making a business around it, whether as an Instagram celebrity or as a food company, are not as informed as they purport. They claim that their way of eating, or their product offers the optimum diet. Conviction is easier to sell.
“It is the least substantiated, most uninformed opinions about how to eat that will come at you with the greatest conviction. That’s your first clue that something is awry, because true expertise always allows for doubt.”
– Dr. David Katz, Founding Director of the Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center
The truth is, there is not one way to eat well. Envision eating on a spectrum. On one end are diets lacking anything that would make you feel good or keep you healthy. Think Doritos for breakfast, burger/fries for lunch and pizza for dinner. On the other end are more whole foods-based diets. Think tons of produce, lean proteins, whole grains and legumes, etc. There are endless ways to eat poorly and endless ways to eat well. If you are operating at the healthy end of the spectrum, there should be no anxiety around doing things “right” or “wrong”.
As a company, we strive to help our clients eat better no matter their choice of diet. We have clients who are vegan and animal-protein obsessed, gluten-free and grain-loving, dairy-averse and cheese-loving…you get the point. None are innately healthier than the other. It comes down to personal choice.
As a team, we enjoy all foods. Most of the time you’ll catch us crushing veggies but we never turn our noses up to a plate of the best fries or a good dessert. The former isn’t #cleaneating because it implies the latter is somehow dirty. It’s not! Its balanced. This isn’t “healthyish”. It’s healthy.
As this movement continues to boom, take heart in knowing that you’re probably already doing most things right. The devil is not in the details. And remember that while food is certainly a vehicle for health, it’s also about pleasure, culture and community. Enjoy it for all it has to offer!
Someone once told me you have to soak kale for an hour and allow it to dry out on a kitchen towel for another hour before chopping it, which is why I spent many years avoiding it. Ordering kale in restaurants felt like such a luxury. Since then I’ve obviously done a little more research and that method has since been debunked, however there was definitely a time in my life when I thought prepping kale was a ridiculously arduous task. This got me thinking; what if other people had received similarly faulty and perplexing information about kale prep and perhaps this was why our clients often ask for extra prepped kale? So, today, we’re here to demystify the steps to perfectly prepped kale. And I promise it’s not as complicated as you’re making it out to be.
The things I’ve learned about prepping kale: buy a salad spinner, the stems are not really edible (unless you cook them or chop them finely), roll the leaves up like a sushi roll or burrito, slice it as thin as possible and massage it just a little with some oil and salt or extra vinaigrette.
It’s no surprise that kale is one of our favorite greens, not only for it’s health benefits but it’s heartiness as well. Prepped kale is a great option for people that like to keep things in their fridge all week. Our team preps it out and uses it as the last salad on our client’s weekly menus because it stays green and crunchy for a long time, sometimes as long as a week and a half. But if you’ve eaten a bad batch of kale you know that there’s nothing worse than getting a solid chunk of stem in your mouth. This is why kale prep is important.
To de-stem kale, hold the kale stem with one hand and strip the greens with the other. Next, lay the kale flat on your cutting board with with the tip facing you. Roll it up from front to back and hold it in place with one hand. With your knife slice the kale thinly in one fluid motion without sawing at the greens (in chef terms this is called a chiffonade).
Next it’s time to rinse. Kale is one of the dirtiest greens with lots of nooks and crannies so salad spinners are pretty much a necessity if you want a good clean and don’t feel like spending a good portion of your prep time straining and blotting your greens with paper towels (been there). We like to wash our kale after it’s been stripped and chopped because it’s easier to transport from board to spinner. Be sure not to over handle the kale because it will start to soften and wilt. This is only important if you wish to store your prepped kale in the fridge for as long as possible.
If you’re planning on serving it right away, you’ll probably want to massage it. If you don’t think you’re a fan of kale, it’s probably because you haven’t massaged it. This is a technique for softening kale to make it easier to eat and gives the dressing a better grip. You can do this with a little vinaigrette or a sprinkle of olive oil and a pinch of salt. Don’t get crazy with it, once you feel your kale start to break down stop.
If you’re like me and you hate throwing ingredients away, you’re probably wondering what to do with the leftover stems. These are great chopped up and sautéed in a stir-fry or frittata. Making a soup? Add it in with your onion, celery, etc. for a little extra crunch.
For this video we used lacinato kale (dinosaur kale or Tuscan kale) but you can use with technique for any variety of kale. You can also use this technique when you’re prepping chard or collards.
Once you’ve mastered your prep, here are a few of our favorite kale salads. Hope this how-to opens you up to a world of delicious-kale-salad-possibility!
With love, Charlotte
Kale Salad with Pecorino and Walnuts – https://smittenkitchen.com/2013/08/kale-salad-with-pecorino-and-walnuts/
Kale and Pecorino Salad with Ricotta Salata (we usually swap out crumbled goat cheese for the ricotta salata) – https://smittenkitchen.com/2014/03/kale-and-quinoa-salad-with-ricotta-salata/
Raw Tuscan Kale Salad (add avo) – http://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/raw-tuscan-kale-salad-recipe.html
Kale Market Salad – http://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/kale-market-salad-recipe.html
Northern Spy’s Kale Salad (a good “gateway” kale salad with all of that cheese!) – https://food52.com/recipes/15584-northern-spy-s-kale-salad
Lamon-Garlic Kale Salad (add avo) – https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1015707-lemon-garlic-kale-salad
Kale Salad with Dates, Parmesan and Almonds (make extra vinaigrette) – http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/kale-salad-with-dates-parmesan-and-almonds-51137020
A trip to the Union Square farmer’s market with Laura last week made clear that we have a way to go before spring produce makes its grand appearance. Root vegetables galore. Nary a pea, ramp or asparagus stalk in sight. This is the time to experiment with what we’ve had available for a while but have overlooked. Behold the Jerusalem artichoke!
My singular experience with Jerusalem artichokes happened early springtime during college, a day I will never forget. I was taking an urban gardening course and my “classroom” was a private plot on the Lower East Side. It was still freezing. We were sifting through the melting ice with picks to attempt to wake up the unyielding dirt beneath the melting snow. Almost immediately, we began to unearth tons of little bulbous roots. My professor explained that they were called sunchokes, or Jerusalem artichokes, and that while they were edible and delicious, they were known to dominate gardens and were often seen as a nuisance.
Back to the present. As Laura and I perused the Union Square stalls, we encountered those same irregularly shaped spuds and decided to purchase them in a moment of curiosity. We took them home with us, along with the many other small brown bags filled with root vegetable goodies, and set to searching for ways to best prepare them. In the end, we came to the consensus to simply roast them in a mix of fingerling potatoes along with some EVOO, salt and pepper to best bring out the integrity of the ingredient.
The result was beyond our expectations. A delicate, earthy, almost sweet flavor coupled with a just-crisp exterior and smooth, creamy interior. We finished the root vegetable mix with some bright lemon juice and zest and a scattering of parsley leaves as we nearly always do. In this moment we were reminded that simplicity almost always equals perfection when you’re working with the best produce.
Hope you enjoy them as much as we did!
Note: It’s a good idea to mix sunchokes with another root vegetable because consuming too much can be difficult on some people’s tummies. This has earned them quite a reputation. No one in the WWE crew has ever felt a thing though so don’t be afraid to try them!
Simple Roasted Jerusalem Artichokes and Fingerling Potatoes
Ingredients:
¾ lb Jerusalem artichokes/sunchokes, scrubbed clean, then cut into 1 inch wedges
¾ lb fingerling potatoes, scrubbed cleaned, then halved or quartered
A few tablespoons olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste
½ cup parsley leaves
1/2 lemon, juice and zest
Method:
Preheat oven to 425. Toss sunchokes and potatoes together with the olive oil and salt and pepper to taste. Roast for 30-40 minutes, flipping once or twice, to ensure even browning. Allow to cool on sheet tray for 5-10 minutes. This allows the vegetables to stay nice and crisp. Finish with the zest and juice of ½ lemon and a scattering of parsley leaves. Enjoy!
Every Friday afternoon, Kristina, Rian, Charlotte, Emily and I gather round my table for lunch. Although most of us cook with one another at least once a week (and we have an incessant group text going round the clock), it’s the only time all five of us get together. More importantly, it’s the only time we get together to break bread. As much as this group loves to cook, it loves to eat even more.
This is usually how to unfolds. All five of us have been looking for inspiration for the coming week’s menu throughout the week – mostly from our own home-cooking but also from restaurants, blogs, cookbooks, magazines, talking with other chef friends, etc. Rian and I have put the finishing touches on what we’ll be cooking the following week early Friday morning. I choose a meal or meal component I’m most excited about that I feel needs a little extra explaining and decide, That’s for lunch today!
The hardest part of our lunches is the moment right before we sit down to eat. Everyone is so excited to dig in but we know we have to capture it first. ANNOYING!
I send a shopping list to Charlotte and Emily (who are usually working on blog posts, updating our Mail Chimp account, chipping away at our granola project, etc.) so they can pick up needed groceries on the way over. They get here early and I get to work. While I know and love these girls, I always feel the slightest bit nervous about making them an extraordinary meal. These are chefs I need to impress after all. In the next 45 minutes or so, Charlotte and Emily set the table, light some candles (always), and my platters generously piled high with next week’s offerings begin to hit the table.
Kristina and Rian buzz us from downstairs at 2:30pm. Kristina is coming from cooking in Red Hook and Rian from perfecting our menus in Williamsburg. Like clockwork, Charlotte, Emily and I giggle as we hear them oooh and aaah about the smells wafting from my second floor apartment in Park Slope down to the entryway. They’re like a tornado when they come in the door – bags here, shoes there, coats here – mid conversation as if they haven’t seen each other in years (they live together) and loud.
“What’s for lunch?” They yell in unison.
Good eaters here:)
After I explain what I prepared and the initial five-minute silence with exception of groans of pleasure (Ri), the next two hours unfold with us sharing stories from our past week, discussing the next week’s menus, and touch basing about other things on the docket. If you know this group, my main job here is redirecting everyone back. Tangents are frequent.
We talk about what ended up being our favorite menus to cook, what went well, and what didn’t. Those granola bars we were so excited to make that ended up just being granola because they wouldn’t stick together, those homemade veggie burgers that ended up being hummus because we didn’t like their consistency, that last minute swap we made because the butcher was out of chicken (what?!).
By the last hour we shift gears to the next week. What ingredients we’re highlighting because there at their peak and how to pick them at the market. How a finished dish should look. A new technique that we all need to talk through. Sometimes we’ll even hit my kitchen together for a demo (more food to eat for this ever-hungry crew). By the time the last plate is cleaned, we’re on the same page and, as crazy as it sounds to a normal person, excited to get back into our clients’ kitchens the next week.
Finished Dish for a Client: Typical avo:greens ratio here. Who doesn’t love avo?!
These lunches together are sacred. This sharing is what makes us all better cooks. We get to learn from one another’s successes and occasional failures. Our passion for cooking is amplified by being around one another. Enthusiasm (no short supply here) is contagious after all. We want you to know, there’s a seat at my table for you too.
Finished Dish for a Client: Roasted Sweet Potato and Avocado with Tahini Yogurt on our menus last week. This is a super hard time of year to be inspired in the kitchen. Magazines and blogs are talking about asparagus, peas and other amazing spring veggies but we won’t really see any of that in the markets for weeks in New York. Until then? Root veggies.
Going forward, we’ll be sending out (and posting on our blog if we’re too longwinded) a newsletter with highlights of this weekly tradition. We know you’re busy so this will have to be the next best thing to actually being here. If you’d like to sign up to receive the newsletter, please leave your name and email address in the comments section below or send us a note on our Contact Page.
For our clients, maybe you’re content enjoying our food, but we want you to be able to see “behind the scenes” if you want to. You have some very happy people cooking for you. A happy cook makes better food. We appreciate every opportunity you give us to provide for you. You’re the reason our company exists! For anyone else, maybe you’re curious about the private chef business or how chefs eat. We want you at our table too.
Finished Dish for a Client: Roasted Chicken Salad with Grapes, Walnuts and Lemon Zest
So read these newsletters if you want to get to know us better, want to learn or want to our draw from our enthusiasm and passion about cooking. And while the newsletter is just a symbolic seat, a real place will be set for you whenever you can join us. I mean that. The very best thing about food is the way it brings people together. With just a little more stock added to the soup, or an extra platter of bread and cheese added to the meal, there is always enough for more.
So pull up a chair. We’re so excited to have you!
Always with love, xo Laura
p.s. Please leave us a reply with your email and first name if you’d like to be added to our Newsletter mailing list, or feel free to send it confidentially via email by selecting that little letter icon to the right.
KIPPERED SALMON, ROASTED FINGERLING POTATO AND DILL SALAD
We enjoyed this for lunch this week and it will make an appearance on a few of our clients menus soon. This is more of a recipe template than a stick-to-it-exactly recipe. For instance, Kristina found some amazing Jerusalem artichokes at the Union Square Farmers Market so a few of those were added into the potato mix to roast as well. You could use roasted salmon instead of kippered (aka hot-smoked salmon), or sub in smoked trout or even oil-packed tuna. This dish is delicious finished with dollops of 2% or whole plain Greek yogurt seasoned simply with salt and pepper. And you can bump up the protein content even more by adding halved hard-boiled eggs to the mix.
Ingredients
1 lb fingerling potatoes (and Jerusalem artichokes if you have them!)
8 oz kippered salmon (aka hot-smoked salmon or smoked trout)
A few tablespoons of dill (parsley and or basil would be delicious too)
1 few tablespoons of scallions or chives
Lemon zest and juice to taste
Olive oil
Salt and pepper
Optional add-ins: Sliced hard-boiled eggs, dollops of plain 2% or whole Greek yogurt mixed with freshly cracked black pepper and salt to taste (I’d leave this out if opt for tuna), a few handfuls of arugula or other greens, sliced raw radish, toasted walnuts, sliced avocado…get creative!
Method:
Preheat oven to 425. Halve fingerling potatoes (and Jerusalem artichokes) lengthwise. On a sheet pan, toss the potatoes with several tablespoons of olive oil and season with salt and pepper to taste. Roast for about 30 minutes, tossing halfway through until well browned and crisp. Allow to cool on the sheet pan for at least 5 minutes to help the potatoes stay crispy.
While potatoes are roasting, gently flake the kippered salmon into large chunks. Roughly chop or tear dill (and/or other herbs) and thinly slice scallions or chives.
To assemble salad: Layer the roasted vegetables, flaked salmon and herbs on a platter. If you are adding in eggs or salad greens, layer those in as well. Finish the dish with lemon zest, a generous squirt of lemon juice, a judicious drizzle of olive oil and dollops of the seasoned Greek yogurt if you’re using it. Enjoy alone or with grilled bread. This dish would also pair nicely with blanched greens beans simply tossed with lemon-dijon vinaigrette.
