Tag Archives: orange juice

Salad Dressing, Salads, Vegetables

Roasted Slaw

Leave a comment

Once I started roasting vegetables, whether on the grill or in the oven, it became my preference. Roasting brings out natural sweetness while keeping crispness and sometimes adding a little char. In the winter, I’m not really in the mood for cold veggies, so I didn’t see why slaw had to be cold. I like cooked cabbage, but the trick for a cooked slaw is to keep it slightly crisp, and roasting can do that for you.

This slaw can be eaten warm or cold, as long as you stick to a dressing with no fats that will congeal on chilling. That means that bacon/bacon fat—which would be great in a warm slaw—might not work with cold leftovers. My dressing here only uses fruit juices for the acid, so it’s not as tart as a vinegar based dressing. As far as uses go, it would be good as a side dish or on any sandwich where you would use a traditional cold slaw. You can see it below on a fried fish sandwich with my Everything Sauce.

Mine is a simple slaw of cabbage and carrots, but you could add bits of any vegetable or fruit that would not become watery or mushy.

Roasted Slaw

  • Servings: 4-6
  • Difficulty: easy
  • Print

Preheat oven to 400º; line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper.

Ingredients

  • 3-4 cups cabbage, sliced or coarsely grated—1 small head
  • 2 carrots, grated
  • Extra-virgin olive oil for roasting—enough to drizzle over all on the sheet pan
  • Salt and pepper to taste
  • 1 tablespoon mashed roasted garlic
  • 1/4 cup orange juice
  • 1 tablespoon lime juice, with zest if you have the actual lime in hand
  • I tablespoon honey—you really have to taste to see how sweet you want it
  • 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

Preparation

  1. Spread the shredded cabbage and carrots on the baking sheet. It will be about 1/2″ thick, but you will toss it halfway through the roasting. Drizzle with olive oil—I think I used at least 1/4 cup. Sprinkle with kosher salt and coarse black pepper.
  2. Roast for about 20 minutes, then lightly toss with tongs to expose more of the vegetables to charring. Roast for another 15 minutes or until it reaches your desired doneness. Lift the parchment paper and pour the vegetables into a large bowl.
  3. Whisk the dressing ingredients—garlic, orange juice, lime juice, honey, and olive oil—until emulsified. Pour over the vegetables and toss. Add more salt to taste.
  4. Serve warm or cold or both.

Sauce, Vegetables

Orange Jalapeño Salsa and Marinade

Leave a comment

We’re beginning to get a lot of jalapeños in the garden, so I have to come up with ways to use them, and I don’t really want to do the fried cheese-stuffed poppers. Using them in their fresh state is a nice change from roasting them; fresh jalapeños have a bright, slightly bitter taste, and they are not so hot that you suffer with each bite.

This salsa, which I’m also using to marinate chicken breasts before grilling, also uses bell pepper and raw onion, orange and lime juices, and a few spices. It has a clean, bright flavor in which you can taste all the notes of the ingredients. Made in the blender, the pulp of the onion and peppers gives the salsa enough body to work on its own, even with tortilla chips, but you could add chunky veggies to it afterwards for even more texture.

There are no oils or added sugar in this salsa, and all the vegetables are raw. You could achieve a different, milder result by roasting the vegetables first. Instead, I roasted some extra peppers and onions to serve with chicken marinated in the salsa and to echo the raw versions in the sauce.

Orange Jalapeño Salsa and Marinade

  • Servings: 4-6
  • Difficulty: easy
  • Print

Ingredients
  • 1 cup orange juice
  • 2 tablespoons lime juice
  • 2 jalapeños, about 4″ long, each, seeded
  • 1 large yellow bell pepper, seeded—I think a red pepper would muddy the color of the salsa; a green one would be good but would add more bitterness
  • 1 small yellow onion, about 2.5″ diameter
  • 1 tablespoon grated garlic or garlic paste
  • 1/8 teaspoon Jamaican allspice
  • 1/4 cup cilantro paste—fresh cilantro if you can stand the smell and the annoyance of chopping herbs
  • 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

Add all ingredients to a blender jar. Blend on low, then move to highest speed to create a smooth sauce. There will still be plenty of texture from the vegetable pulp and skins that won’t completely emulsify. I don’t have one of those high-dollar new blenders, so maybe you need to adjust the instructions for those so you don’t over-blend the sauce.

I used less than a cup to marinate chicken breasts that had been sliced horizontally to make 4 pieces. The rest was refrigerated for serving later as a dressing on the chicken.

Sauce, Tex-Mex

Carne Asada with Skirt Steak, Pt. 1

1 Comment

Yes, I finally found skirt steak at the grocery, so I’m trying out the Serious Eats recipe, mostly because the marinade/salsa looks so tasty. Luckily there are just two of us and the little under-1 lb package will do. Even at that small size, it was $18, though, so I don’t want to make any mistakes.

I made few changes to the salsa:

  • I only used dried ancho chiles, 5 of them, instead of the two kinds in the original
  • I added two roasted jalapenos from our garden
  • I did not use canned chipotle peppers
  • I did not have, nor want fish sauce, so I added a 3rd tablespoon of soy sauce
  • Neither did I have the coriander seed, so I just skipped that
  • And mostly, I didn’t do all the juicing of fresh fruit nor the toasting and grinding of seeds—I didn’t even chop my own cilantro!

IMG_5941

I’ll be back later to show how it all worked out on the grill—that’s the part I’m worried about, that cooking with the lid off won’t give me the char I want before the meat’s too done. In the meantime, here’s the sauce, with my variations:

Carne Asada Salsa

  • Servings: 2 cups
  • Difficulty: easy
  • Print

See the original recipe here: http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2015/09/carne-asada-food-lab-recipe-kenji.html

Ingredients
  • 5 whole dried ancho chilies, stems and seeds removed
  • 2 roasted jalapeno peppers, peeled and seeded
  • 3/4 cup orange juice
  • 2 tablespoons lime juice
  • 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
  • 2 tablespoons soy sauce
  • 6 medium cloves garlic
  • 1/4 cup cilantro paste—solves dealing with the disgusting smell of cilantro
  • 1 tablespoon ground cumin
  • 2 tablespoons dark brown sugar
  • Kosher salt
Preparation
  1. Place dried ancho chilies on a plate and microwave until pliable, about 20-30 seconds. I didn’t know how this would work out, because I only ever reconstitute dried peppers to use in chili or to make enchilada sauce. I always strain the reconstituted, blended chiles, so I was concerned about the pepper skins, but they blended up nicely.
  2. Transfer to a blender with the rest of the ingredients, except the salt.
  3. Blend for 1-2 minutes until smooth, scraping down the sides of the blender jar to get all the bits.
  4. Transfer the salsa to two bowls, one to eat later as a dressing, the other for the marinade.
  5. Add 2 teaspoons kosher salt to the marinade, dip meat portions in the sauce, then pour all into a sealable bag. Seal and refrigerate for about 3 hours.
  6. Add salt to taste to the remaining salsa and refrigerate.

 

Asian, Sauce

Orange Coconut Curry Sauce

Leave a comment

Still one more orange recipe, because I have just a little orange juice left, plus one of the oranges from the previous featured post photo. This is not about brining or marinating, although the finished dish includes the leftover marinated grilled pheasant breasts mentioned in the last post. Leftover meat like pheasant or chicken breast that can become dry with reheating, even after you marinated or brined it for the first cooking, works best in a sauce that is cooked separately, then used to lightly reheat the cooked meat.

The resulting sauce has a noticeable orange flavor and is a nice addition to a typical curry sauce.

Orange Coconut Curry Sauce

  • Servings: about 3 cups
  • Difficulty: easy
  • Print

1 medium onion, sliced in thin strips

1 bell pepper, any color, cut in thin strips

1 tablespoon grated ginger

1 tablespoon grated garlic

1.5 teaspoons curry powder

olive oil for sauteing

zest from 1 orange

1/2 cup orange juice

1 can full-fat coconut milk

slurry of 1 tablespoon cornstarch and 3 tablespoons water or orange juice

  1. Heat olive oil, maybe 2 tablespoons, in a large skillet over medium heat, and saute the onion and pepper until softened and the onions are translucent, about 10 minutes.
  2. Stir in the ginger, garlic, and curry powder. Cook for a few more minutes, then add the orange zest, orange juice, and coconut milk.
  3. Bring just to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for about 10 minutes.
  4. Stir in the cornstarch slurry, stirring and simmering until the sauce is lightly thickened and the cornstarch has had time to cook through, probably no more than 3 minutes.

For my dish, I added the sliced cooked pheasant breasts (4 breasts or about 2 cups) before I thickened the sauce, letting the meat simmer in the sauce until heated through.