These last few days of spring have been warm ones up in the woods! On a recent evening after work, Jonathan and I took a picnic to one of our favorite local hiking spots. Russian Ridge runs down the peninsula just south of San Francisco and I love it because you can see the SF Bay (and Silicon Valley) to the east and the ocean (Pescadero/Half Moon Bay) to the west. This was our first time using the picnic backpack we got as a wedding gift, which proved very handy. We weren’t really celebrating anything, but had a chilled bottle of bubbly in the fridge which was a fun addition to the salad and Asparagus Tart I packed.
Whole Pepper tacos
I got these sweet peppers from my CSA box recently and roasted them up on a baking sheet for 20 minutes at 400º with just a drizzle of oil and a pinch of salt. I love how the true flavors of a vegetable come through when that’s all you use! These (banana peppers?) are not as big as bell peppers so one fits perfectly inside each corn tortilla. I feel like I always have leftover quinoa in the fridge (that stuff multiplies!) so we used that instead of rice, along with cottage cheese, avocado slices and my favorite hot sauce, Sriracha. Salt to taste and enjoy (perhaps with this springy cocktail!)
This dish was featured in my recent Food52 post that shared 5 recipes using avocados, yum!
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Sesame Tofu Noodle Bowls
This meal-in-a-bowl is so easy! Rice noodles take a second to cook, and then you can top them with a handful of chopped fresh herbs (like basil and cilantro) plus tofu cubes (brown them if you have time, or buy the pre-marinated baked type). I serve each bowl with an entire half of an avocado. For a dressing I mix 3T olive oil, 1t sesame oil, 2T soy sauce and 2T rice vinegar. Drizzle this over the bowl along with slivered almonds, and pour a little extra dressing into the cavity of each avocado.
For more dish ideas involving avocados, check out this post I did today for Food52, featuring 5 avocado inspired recipes! What’s your favorite way to eat an avocado?
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Namu Farm to Table
For each quarterly issue of Edible San Francisco magazine this year, I am doing a “farm to table, in one afternoon” story to show the origins of a dish served at a San Francisco restaurant. For the last issue I visited Annabelle’s farm in Bolinas, and in the current issue I traced an ingredient for Namu Gaji, a New Korean-American street food restaurant.
Kristyn Leach is the farmer at Namu Farm, a one-acre plot dedicated to the restaurant an hour outside the city. She picked red mustard with her trusty farm dog, Bebe, that I took to Chef Dennis Lee (pictured above) at the restaurant where he prepared the dish above (recipe here).
Roasted Beet and Turnip Galette
A farmers market feast: Roasted Beet and Turnip Galette! I layered the rosy rounds over ricotta on puff pastry, and sprinkled with sea salt and smoky paprika, yum! Find the recipe HERE on my guest post for The Kitchn.