When it's triple-digit heat in Southern California, we ain't going to cook. However, a no-cook, loaded-with-greens paste could do the trick. It did with us at ASG today, and we think you'll like it too...
This recipe was born out of necessity, using what I could from the local market. I knew that edamame as the base, along with some kale would do the trick - then, found some baby spinach and Italian parsley to round it out for an earthy and subtle hot-day dish.
Ingredients: 3 cups of edamame, fresh is probably slightly better, but we could only find the 12oz frozen bags today
3 loose cups of kale leaves, cleaned and breaking away the stems - this equated to two bunches
1 cup, or half a bunch of Italian parsley, cleaned and breaking away leaves from stems
1 cup of baby spinach, frozen actually more desired in this case
1/2 a bulb of fresh garlic, peeled with the base cleaned off
Safflower oil, or sunflower oil - go for an almost tasteless oil or it will overpower the whole, you'll need about 1/2 cup over the course of the preparation
1 lemon
1 lime
Salt, fine-ground pepper and powder ginger - to taste or about 1 tablespoon of salt and pepper, and 1 teaspoon for ginger
Prep all ingredients as above, cleaning all of your vegetables. Break away stems and discard. Do not overburden the kale or parsley leaves - they will be ground down anyway.
Now, you will need to make this in two batches because we found that trying to do it all at the same time won't work for most standard blenders. So break your ingredients into two parts.
In blender, drop in a third of your edamame, one tablespoon of oil, half of your garlic - pulse until it break down and edamame are all broken. Then put in half of your parsley, spinach and kale. Carefully tamp down on mixture, add a bit of oil after it breaks down to keep the mixture turning. Use half of your lemon and half of lime, squeezing it into the blend.
Now, carefully remove your blended mixture to a medium sized glass tray. No need to clean anything as you'll now include your second set of ingredients, repeating the process until completion.
After you've combined both batches into your tray, take two large forks and blend the two halves. Every couple of folds, distribute salt, pepper and ground ginger until all of it is gone. Taste for adjustments as you go. We found that we kept hitting the mixture with lime and lemon to really brightening up the flavor.
Refrigerate when complete, covered.
On serving, get some pita bread and cook them over the stove, browning them and depending their flavor. Break the bread, and use a fork to pull some of the blend onto it. Goes well with a nice cold zinfandel.
Please explore allstreetsgourmand for more!
Bonus: a no-cook session requires some Yacht Rock to go with it ;) https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5WDEUFxyWl0s43yAMokRHl
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