twenty years. no. 3. happy birthday sweet india.

There are those people that you meet in your life that alter one's journey. As you get older you have the luxury of choosing and creating family. These are the people that we travel along with on new journies in the rise and fall our lives.

India is one such person. I have know her now for eighteen years. We met by chance when she was fifteen and dancing with a baby on her hip. We have been family ever since. She is one of the greatest people I will ever know. Happy birthday sweet India. 

x

India at Nineteen. Breezy Shores, 1998

 Copyright © 1998, Andrea Gentl. All rights reserved

twenty years. no. 2

I have been in the midst of archiving my work shot with my 8x10 Deardorf,  a monstrosity and a relic by today's standards. These photographs are very dear to me. They represent the time line of my adult life. If there is anything that hits home most about these photographs to me, it is, to always shoot what is right in front of you. It could not be simpler.

a few more from over the years.

 

winter salads

In these darker days of winter I am prone to eat heavier foods. I adore winter stews, braised meats and rich pastas but lately walking the streets of China Town I have been really inspired by the winter fruits and vegetables lining the street side markets. This led me to experiment with some new winter salads. The salads are really fresh, clean and simple and a welcome reprieve after my holiday binge. I tend to use cookbooks for inspiration and then improvise with ingredients. I am not posting the recipes for these yet as I have to work out the ratios. They are fairly simple and easy to work out but I will post soon.

One flavor combination I used comes from Terry Walters of Clean Start. We photographed her book Clean Start a year or so ago and I fell in love with many of her recipes. The maple lime dressing is from one of Terry's recipes. I love the combination of sweet maple and the and tart lime. I always add a little Bhutanese red pepper to it for a little kick. I used it on the Apple and Endive salad with mint but you can use it on just about anything. I took those same elements and added buttermilk and cumin seed to it for the dressing for Grapefruit Breakfast salad. I also used the combination of maple and lime for the Crazy Rainbow Carrot salad but added shaved ginger. I love taking a flavor combination and using it in different ways. 

Maple Lime dressing inspired by Terry Walter's 

2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil

2 tablespoons of maple syrup

The juice of one whole lime ( more if the lime is not juicy!)

  Warning! This dressing is addictive!

 winter salad inspiration

 asian pear and persimmon salad with celery leaf and blood orange dressing

blood orange over radish micro greens with shallots and white pine salt. meyer lemon walnut oil dressing

three radish chop salad with chopped, celery, celery leaf and parsley with japanese apple cider vinegar and  a spicy extra virgin olive oil

 three radish chop slad

 organic fuji apple and endive salad with maple lime dressing and bhutanese red pepper

 crazy rainbow carrot ginger salad with maple lime and cilantro

 

pink grapefruit breakfast salad with maple lime buttermilk dressing with cumin seed 

 

sauteed hen of the woods with fermented black garlic over chopped parsley salad with bergamont lemon and olive oil.

Copyright ©2012 Andrea Gentl all rights reserved

sunday morning steak and eggs.

Recipe for today.

A lazy Sunday morning. A pile of teenage girls asleep on the couch. Hindu Holiday awaiting them. The smell of snow. A hot cup of coffee for me and steak and eggs for the boy who stayed up all night and has a soccer game to play. One cast iron pan I cannot live without. Bring on this day.

  Copyright ©2011/ 2012 Andrea Gentl all rights reserved 

where the wild things are no. 9. wild pantry

The first time I saw mushrooms drying in great abundance was in Northern China in the Shanxi Provence. We stopped for some tea at a tiny morning market where the women had piles of wild mushrooms laid out on cloth drying in the morning sun. They had collected the mushrooms from the peaks of the Wutai Mountain, a luminous, foggy, pine and temple covered wonder. Though i don't speak their language, they managed to explain to me perfectly their continuous pilgrimage to collect the mushrooms from the mountain during the different seasons. I will never forget it, it was such a beautiful moment. I dried many wild mushrooms in the summer and fall of this year inspired by those women. It was my first time doing so and I am really happy with my stockpiled pantry of little treasures. Wild mushrooms are easy to dry. Though there are different ways of drying mushrooms I sliced most of mine thinly with a very sharp knife and laid them out to dry on a board. The oyster mushrooms I tore gently in long tin strips. Depending on the weather (if it was very humid for instance) I sometimes put a fan on the mushrooms or used a clip light to speed the drying process. In the end you want the mushrooms to be cracker dry before you put them up for storage. I know our children's friends thought us fairly insane with mushrooms drying all over the place but for the most part I think they kind of liked it, especially when I make them late night pizza or breakfast pizza with mushrooms and a fried egg on top! They are willing to put up with almost anything for pizza.

Some mushrooms dry and store better than others. Some of the varieties that dried well for me were; Black Trumpets, Chanterelles, Chicken Of The Woods, Hedgehog, Porcini, Yellow Foot, and Oyster mushrooms. Dried mushrooms should be soaked in water to re-hydrate them. Some mushrooms need to soak longer than others. Save the water that you soak the mushrooms in, never throw it away, it is like flavor gold! Once the mushrooms have plumped up from the water, Gently spoon them out of liquid and give them a rinse. Set them aside for your recipe. Put the remaining mushroom liquid through a sieve to get any bits out of it. You can use that liquid to flavor soups and broths. Dried mushrooms can also be pulverized in a food processor in order  to make a powder to use in soups and stews and other recipes. I recently made a gin drink with wild ginger syrup and used a mushroom salt for a little flavor on top. I am already fanaticizing about next mushroom season! In the meantime I am going to invent some new ways to use all these dried beauties.

When the mushrooms are cracker dry, I put them up in sealed weck jars for storage.

 A good source for wild mushrooms on line is wildgourmetfood.com

Recipes to come!

to see a gallery of wild mushrooms click here

 Copyright ©2011/ 2012 Andrea Gentl all rights reserved