Recipes
Achiote Paste
Fun alert! Spices offer so many ways to play with flavor and texture, and making achiote paste is a great one. Made with a combination of annatto seeds, spices and a little bit of liquid to bind it together, the paste can be used in a variety of rubs, marinades and sauces. Annatto seeds are the star and they provide an earthy flavor and deep red color to your food. The seeds are very hard and most easily ground in a high speed blender or electric spice grinder. Alternatively, you can put some elbow grease behind your mortar & pestle or molcajete to get the job done. Use the paste made fresh, keep it in the fridge or freeze in ice cube shapes so you'll always have some of this fantastic flavor on hand. The paste is traditionally formed into a brick for easy use.
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Juniper Pelmeni
What are Pelmeni? These little morsels are Russian dumplings, typically filled with simple ingredients and formed into a tortellini-like shape. Combinations of meat are the most common fillings, with mushrooms, cabbage, tomato and horseradish sometimes making an appearance. Pelmeni are typically shaped by hand, but we thought the twelve dollar pelmeni mold we bought was well worth the price. We opted for a pork and bison filling for these pelmeni, which we seasoned with Juniper for an intriguing counterpoint to the rich, savory flavors of the meat. Juniper is piney, sweet and fragrant - everything you want this time of year. We garnished our pelmenis with caramelized sweet onions, sour cream and fresh dill to complete the dish.
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Rocky Mountain Pork Loin & Savory Applesauce
Early Fall harvest provides a perfect menu to highlight our Rocky Mountain Rub. Toasted juniper with notes of citrus and pine combine with oregano and savory, black pepper and allspice to give a taste of the mountain high country. Rubbed on pork tenderloin and served on a bed of vinegar-massaged kale and savory applesauce, it makes a hearty meal that is light enough for early fall days. It still hints at summer. The applesauce is a show stopper in its own right, seasoned with brown butter and Poultry Rub. The batch we made for this recipe is pretty big thanks to an abundance of apples in our orchard, and it can be canned to last. If you don't have the volume, just pare it down to make enough for this delightful meal. A quick sauté of crispy leeks with butter and Rocky Mountain Rub is the perfect garnish.
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Seafood Boil
Rustic and decadent, seafood boils are meant to be shared. The delicious mounds of shellfish, veggies and more bring folks together for a fabulously messy feast. This meal will have you excited to get your hands dirty! A hidden perk of this awesome meal is how little prep time is involved. Simply cut your corn, onion, and garlic, and you're ready to start! The key to such a simple dish is all in the timing. Exactly how you stagger the ingredients as you add them to a broth seasoned with our Elliott Bay Seasoning is what will make or break the dish.Once everything is cooked, lay out your feast on a picnic table and enjoy alongside some spiced butter. You can substitute almost any spice blend to suit your tastes, but for this recipe we've selected an an array that will please anyone. Butter with Garlic Salt is ideal for those who prefers something mild, while anyone our Cajun Black offers a more tangy, spicy kick.
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Biscayne Corn Chowder
Bright and spicy, this corn chowder is bursting with Caribbean flavor. Our Biscayne Citrus Rub is featured here, packed with spices like thyme, oregano, chile flakes, and citrus peel to bring out the natural sweet flavor of the corn. Smoked ham gives this chowder a meaty flavor, and the corn is grilled to bring a bit of fiery flavor.To get a perfect texture in this chowder, the ham and vegetables should be uniformly diced small. Cubes of about 1/4 inch work well. Aside from a bit of chopping, this dish is quick and easy to bring together. It's perfect as a side dish for a backyard summer bbq or a low-maintenance weeknight meal.
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Melange Classique
This fanciful French blend combines nutmeg and pepper with a healthy harvest from the herb garden, to satisfy all your taste buds. Melange Classique is an all purpose seasoning for stews and roasts, pate, stuffing and bean dishes. Melange Classique will work well as a rub on any meat, particularly lamb, duck and pork.
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Cuban-Spiced Pork with Mojo Sauce
This Cuban spiced pork is an easy recipe for the slow cooker as summer slides into fall, when the comfort of a warm roast starts to sound appealing, but you're not quite ready to let go of the bright flavors of citrus and fresh herbs. Our Cuban Spice seasons the meat with cumin, oregano and orange for deep layers of flavor, with lime, orange and mint adding sunny flavors to the sauce. Serve alongside black beans and rice for a hearty meal or a green salad for lighter fare.
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Southern-Style Pork Vindaloo and Green Bean Verakka with Cardamom Cornbread
If you've never had vindaloo, you don't know what you're missing. From My Two Souths and Chef Asha Gomez, we get this recipe for a Southern-Style Pork Vindaloo and Green Bean Verakka with Cardamom Cornbread. Tangy, spicy, garlicky pork goes perfectly with the Cardamom Cornbread. The Green Bean Verakka is the perfect flavorful complement to both dishes. If you're not one to eat pork, lamb will also work perfectly as a substitute. Here's one dish that you'll make over and over again. From the author: "Vindaloo is a recipe that best represents Kerala's diverse culinary influences, and it also reflects many of my own. My first encounter with tongue-searing pork vindaloo served in many Indian restaurants in the US was a bit jarring. I remember thinking how vastly different it was from the pork vindaloo I grew up eating in Kerala. Like many dishes traveling across the seas amid many interpretations, I feel vindaloo got lost in translation. Vindaloo was originally inspired by a Portuguese dish, carne de vinha d'alhos (meat with wine and garlic), with the wine substituted with palm wine vinegar. This dish was introduced to Kerala and Goa by Portuguese who stored chunks of meat in wine barrels on the ship; the wine would turn to vinegar and thus preserve the meat for long journeys. When they got to shore, the sailors would add local spices to the meat and cook a stew. This dish has many nuances: your palate experiences the tang from the vinegar, sweetness from the sugar, heat generated more from garlic than chiles, and a touch of bitterness from ground mustard seeds. Here, sugar, hot paprika, and a generous amount of garlic transport the pork roast to a faraway land. Choose a nice fatty pork shoulder, or Boston butt, to ensure lusciousness. I particularly enjoy the flavor of the rich sauce once it seeps down into the Cardamom Cornbread. Serving it this way brings to the plate a little something extra; my Louisiana friends refer to this as lagniappe."
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Mojo
This Mojo recipe from Cuba!: Recipes and Stories from a Cuban Kitchen by Dan Goldberg is for garlic-lovers, but one of our regular customers described the Mojo sauce of his youth as having a fair amount more citrus. Either way, this sauce will become a favorite and you'll find excuses to use it. (Seriously. Make a double batch, as you will put it on everything!! It's great on seafood, rice, veggies...)From the Author: "Mojo is one of the primary flavoring ingredients in Cuba. At its most basic it's composed of garlic, citrus juice, oregano, and oil. Bottled sour orange juice is common throughout the Caribbean, but if you have trouble sourcing it, regular orange juice with added lime juice is a good substitute. Sunflower oil is the most common fat in Cuba, aside from lard and butter, but in this recipe we're using olive oil to further enhance the flavor of mojo-dressed recipes such as baked fish, fried plantains, and grilled chicken."
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