Photo: courtesy of Tri to Cook

Granola, to my mind, is one of the best ‘good-for-you-but-feels-kind-of-decadent’ foods out there. Olive oil, too. A cold-pressed oil is filled with healthy nutrients and the taste is crazy good.  

Well, local blogger Shannon of Tri to Cook has brought one to the other — olive oil to granola — along with maple syrup, cardamom, and a variety of nuts to make some AWESOME-looking granola. If this isn’t food therapy for a day, and a great pre-work out snack any day (Shannon does tri’s!), I don’t know what is.

Here’s the recipe for Olive Oil Granola from Tri to Cook.

PS: My swear-by snack before a run is yogurt with granola. Power food! Thanks for this recipe, Shannon!

Photo: Enokson/FLickr

I cannot say I am this dedicated, despite my Irish husband, but some of you out there surely are.

If you want corned beef on St. Paddy’s Day and want it home-brined, you need to get started NOW. No kidding.

Want to learn how? Here’s Tony Maws of Craigie-on-Main in this demo on how to prep, in several steps, your own glorious beef for a scrumptious St. Patrick’s Day meal. It’s a 5-7 day process.

In this next video, Maws shows how to make corned beef hash. Much quicker.

Thanks to how2heroes.com once again for sharing the love!

P.S. Keep your eyes and ears peeled next week for Radio Boston’s interview with Jack Epstein of Boston Brisket Company…

Photo: snowpea&bokchoi/Flickr

Remember when we wrote about the office-wide weight loss challenge of two of our favorite local bloggers – Lara from Good Cook Doris and Renee from Eat. Live. Blog? Well, the contest came to an end last week, and though Lara and Renee didn’t win any prize money, they both managed to lose a bit of weight (you can see the final standings here). 

What’s more impressive is that they managed to lose weight while continuing to cook – and blog – their lovely mix of filling, simple and satisfying dishes. The only difference was an increased emphasis on making those dishes wholesome – without sacrificing flavor.

Take today’s Food Therapy – metch (or eetch), a tabbouleh-like bulgar salad in a lightly spiced tomato sauce. I was lucky enough to sample Renee’s metch last Friday, when her office held a potluck to celebrate the end of the weight loss challenge. Since then, I’ve found myself craving it on a near-daily basis. There are worse things I could be itching for:  beyond quite a bit of olive oil – two tablespoons of the extra virgin stuff per serving – it’s an incredibly healthy dish, chock full of vegetables and whole grains. 

Hot or cold, eaten alone or sandwiched in a pita, the salad tastes fresh and light – a nice change of pace from heavy winter stews and roasts. When summer sweetens up supermarket tomatoes, I imagine it will be even nicer.

Photo: Sam Anvari/Flickr

It’s Mardi Gras. Happy Fat Tuesday, everyone!

If you’re looking to celebrate (or an excuse to), or simply want to enjoy a great cocktail and some N’Awlins soul food, here’s a Sazerac Cocktail, demo’d by local barman Evan Harrison, and a chicken and sausage gumbo coming to you straight from down South via Fenway resident Allen Collier. Both recipes are from the folks at how2heroes.

NOW you’re livin’!

Photo: dbking/Flickr

Among the few winter farmers markets in the greater Boston area, the Plymouth Winter-into-Spring Farmers Market is worth a stop.

This Thursday, March 1oth, is your next chance to catch it. The market is open the second Thursday of each month, November through April, from 2:30 to 6:30pm at Plimoth Plantation.

Find staples such as eggs, onions, carrots, bread and grass-fed beef. There’s also a lovely selection of other veggies, herbs, baked goods, prepared foods and jams. Best of all, the market takes advance email orders for pickup. So, if you know you need ground beef and carrots for the weekend, get in your order and pick them up on your way home from work.

Does your local grocery store do that?

Sarah Kleinman of Boston Eats recently had her mom in town (and her period) and the end result is hilarious. NOW we know where Sarah gets it!

Stick past the first minute, below, and you’ve got a banger of a review for the All Star Sandwich Bar in Inman Square, Cambridge.

Sarah in previous ‘Boston Eats’ reviews featured on PRK:
Cafeteria on Newbury Street, Boston
Angela’s Cafe in East Boston
Pho So 1 Boston in Dorchester
Ariana Restaurant in Allston
Gourmet Dumpling House in Chinatown

Catch Sarah here, too: our initial Q&A about the Boston Eats series.

Todd Maul (Photo: Susanna Bolle)

Boston has no shortage of fine bartenders, but sometimes you need to know where to look. The finest guide to the city’s tippling scene and the spirit(s) world in general is local blogger Lauren Clark of DrinkBoston.

This week Clark profiles bartender Todd Maul of Ken Oringer’s Clio restaurant, which has a small bar with a massive –and breathtakingly creative–cocktail menu.

While the bar at Clio may be small, Clark says Maul has “put that little bar on the map as a destination for serious and inventive cocktails.”

Clark isn’t the only local writer who’s singing Maul’s praises of late. Local food writer, MC Slim JB, recently wrote his first drink column in the excellent Serious Eats blog, and also spotlighted Todd’s fine work behind the bar.

Photo: *clairity*/Flickr

What was the freshest fish you’ve ever eaten? I recall a salmon filet grilled with the scales still on, rich with its own juices, the barest tang of lemon and thyme transformed by a summer smoke. To eat something that is just barely dead, where you can still taste a hint of sea salt crusting the skin, is a world away from frozen supermarket tilapia and canned sardines. Good, fresh fish takes you back to the ocean.

New England is gifted enough to have a long and fruitful coast, so this delicacy isn’t far off. To support local fishermen, in fact, you can taste a little bit of summer by next week by purchasing a Cape Ann Fresh Catch share online.

What’s Cape Ann Fresh Catch? Think of a community supported agriculture program, but for local fishers instead of farmers. CAFC’s first catch of the season is on sale at Cambridge’s Morse School (and two other nearby locations) from 4 to 6 p.m. today – it’s pollock, according to the organization’s online calendar. The fish is local, as fresh as possible and – they say – sustainably caught.

For regular readers of Public Radio Kitchen, the name “Cape Anne Fresh Catch” might sound familiar. The community supported fishery previously got a skeptical treatment from us when Edible Boston’s Roz Cummins questioned their commitment to sustainability – last year’s shares were comprised of cod “almost every week during the summer,” she wrote. Cod is sometimes overfished and populations in the Gulf of Maine “are not yet recovered,” a spokeswoman from the New England Aquarium told Cummins. Continue reading →

Photo: celesteh/Flickr

If you’re squeamish about unconventional animal parts, consider yourself forewarned.

In this month’s post from local chefs Diana Kudayarova and Tse Wei Lim of Journeyman in Somerville, Tse Wei shares with us their ‘go’ at preparing pigs’ feet, or trotters.

***

Tse Wei Lim
Chef, Journeyman
PRK Guest Contributor

It sounds silly, but part of the reason we started Journeyman was to undertake all those cooking projects we’d never managed to nail at home, for want of material, know-how or, simply, time and opportunity. Since cooking a pig’s head is practically a rite of passage for serious home cooks these days, this isn’t really a long list, but a satisfactory stuffed pig’s trotter was one dish that had eluded us for a while.

A big part of the problem was simply the trotters available to us – generally somewhat beaten up, with large gashes in them from the singletree at the abbatoir or with the pads cut off by hurried butchers, they basically lacked the structural integrity to stuff properly. Worse still, when boned out, the amount of meat they yielded was completely inadequate for making anything like the quantity of stuffing needed to do the job properly.

At Journeyman, we have several things we didn’t have at home: a whole lot of trotters; the opportunity to butcher our own animals and thus cut the trotters with our end goal in mind; and, Jared, a cook of great brilliance and derring-do. Continue reading →