SF Swappers Event 10/15

Fall's a swappin'! It's been a while since Tea Time has adventured to a Swap together. SF Swappers slipped this event in just before the craziness of the Holidays begins. Everyone was happy to stand, chat and sample the evening away at the Sports Basement. Let's mosey among the offerings, whaddaya say?

J.K.'s gingerbread cookies–Halloween themed of course! Two big cookies for swapping and mini shapes for tasting.

Also on the offer from J.K. Chocolate cake in super cute shapes.

Homemade chocolates hit the spot, Bon Bons and Bars in several different flavors.

A little spice is nice... there always turns out to be a semi-theme among the goodies on offer and this October we're all ready for our food to feel the burn.

Two flavors of hot sauce–fruit gives the bottles on the left their lovely color.

Do you know about Togorashi? This spice can have a little kick. This version is perfect for onigiri (the food, not the game) and the samples of it sprinkled on rice showed that off to a T.

Perfect homemade tortillas are always a most popular item. Especially if you feature them in a homemade taco as your sample/potluck contribution. Delish.

Hostess Aimée offered up a savory treat of crumbly sesame bars. Tea Time suggests that if you were lucky enough to swap for some that you let them crumble onto your ice cream and then drizzle a little caramel on top. Or you could simply stir them into Aimée's other swappable treat–homemade yogurt!

Angela came back to the swap with big ammunition. Four options!
Left to Right, cashew butter, medium spice salsa, drunken cherries, fresh raw almonds
Sample Sample Sample, plenty of crackers to try them all.

Pickled grape tomatoes? Don't mind if we do... Or if you're feeling cheesy, check out the parmesan dip.

Here comes our theme again, featuring Hot Pepper Jelly. (Feeling smelly? try some homemade soap) Samples of hot pepper jelly were on the potluck table, poured over cream cheese with bread on the side.

So many spreads at this swap, good that there's a bit of bread to take home too.

Who could resist homemade crackers and pimento cheese spread? This was a popular and tasty item which turned into the perfect snack instead of dinner for Angela one night.

A last minute swapper showed up with a big bag of these North Bay Heirloom Apples. Scavenged from his Mom's tree just for SF Swappers.

That's quite a hunk of cheesecake! Or if you're in the mood for savory there's Jalapeno Cheddar Bread, tomatillo salsa or even a fruity nectarine salsa.

Somehow we misplaced our photo of Co-hostess Stephanie's Walnut inspired goodness, but rest assured our resident Chef had an inspired recipe to share. Have you ever attended a Food Swap? The Holidays are coming and this is the perfect time of year for a cookie or dessert swap. Everyone brings a few dozen cookies in bags and everyone gets to take home some of each kind. A perfect mix and match.

Street Food Lunch--June Cook the Book

This month Cook the Book parent bloggers Ohbriggsy and Meg over at Grow and Resist gave us the inspiration to dive into Street Food by Susan Feniger. J.K. and I Love street food, hence our attendance at the SF Street Food Festival every year. When I picked up the book from the library this month and paged through it, I discovered a wide variety of cooking styles with great pictures to distract you. As always, I was instantly attracted to a few recipes, but postponed making them for a bit. I admire how some bloggers start cooking day 1 from the book, but it always takes me a while to decide what to make.

One recipe did catch my eye, something I thought would be perfect to take along and trade at the SF Food Swap. It was easy to get down to business and make some "Earl Grey Tea Dust" inspired by Ginger Dust (p209) I also made "Rooibos Dust" and the real deal using ginger as well. I also made Heirloom Tomatoes with Garlic and Balsamic Vinagrette (p48) as my swap potluck dish. It was a hit!

Potluck Gold!

Earl Grey Dust

Both of these recipes were simple and adaptable. In fact I felt that way about all the dishes I made from Street Food this month. It would be easy to change up the recipes I cooked to accommodate what was on hand in the pantry. However, it was more fun to plan lunch and shop for the "special" ingredients. Stephanie, J. K. and I set the date, and decided on the menu.

 When I went to buy the cactus paddles, I couldn't resist getting Mexican cheeses and sour cream as well!

Welcome to Lunch!
Cook the Book Menu:
Cactus Rellenos with Corn Salad and Arbol Chili Salsa
toppings of Mexican sour cream, avocado, pickled jicama
Canton Ginger Kick Cocktails (with ginger syrup)
Danish Black Licorice and Cherry Biscotti with Buttermilk Koldskal

Ready to eat!

The recipe for Cactus Rellenos was my choice for lunch because I have wondered what/how people cook them ever since I moved to SF and saw them for sale in the Mission at the produce bodegas. During our lunch, Stephanie said that many people use them as a vegetable. They cook them the same as peppers or squash. Considering you have to scrape all the pointy stuff off to use them I'll just keep on eating peppers instead, but now I feel ready to face the cowboy trail, able to live off the desert land (as long as I have a sharp knife to clean the spines off my food-although I bet they'd burn off if I had fire).

I made the Corn Salad the day before, I thought the dressing would meld with the corn overnight. However, when I tasted it after tossing them together it was simply delicious. It was just as tasty the next day, but I think this dressing could make any veggie salad a hit!

Corn Salad- corn with a dressing of cilantro, salt, oil, onion, and lemon juice

I picked up the dried A chilis the morning of the meal when I biked over to the mission to grab the cactus paddles. That was also when I spied the Monterey Jack and Mexican Sour Cream. They even had a bag of already "shredded" Cojita cheese. Score! I roasted the tomatoes over the open flame instead of under the broiler, I think that it uses less energy that way. Now you're cooking with gas! I took 90% of the seeds out of the chili's. It had the perfect tiny bit of heat for our trio, but if you're into the spicy, just leave in the majority of the seeds in order to burn up your taste buds. This effortless salsa also made it on the short list for swap ideas. I mean, I have Plenty of dried chilis left for another batch. They're chili'in in the freezer right now.

A nice flavorful salsa, a tiny bit spicy.

Full disclosure: I have been craving Jalapeno Poppers for a while now. They've just been on my mind. Not enough to go someplace fast food and Pay for them, but enough that I think they influenced my recipe choice this month. Because as Stephanie pointed out at lunch, "You can't go wrong when something is stuffed with cheese and fried." Such truth. I appreciated learning a new way to fry as well, first rolling the relleno in flour then immersing it into beaten eggs. It wasn't even that messy since I rolled all the rellenos in the flour first, then dipped those in the eggs to fry as needed. The main difference between my interpretation and Susan's recipe is that I didn't make "sandwiches" from the cactus. I kindof tried to "roll" them. Which ended up meaning they were smaller in size and in the end, I think that was good, because they were painless to dip in the egg batter and also cooked faster.

Fry little Rellenos, Fry!

Golden cactus "poppers". Just what I was wanting.

I also made a cocktail to go along with our meal. It's a pretty strong drink! Since I didn't have any ice made, we ended up adding water so we would all be sitting in our chairs by the end of the meal (instead of under the table). This cocktail used the Ginger syrup, and I think it would be nice with Ginger Dust as well.

The force is strong in this cocktail.

Money shot! Cactus Rellenos with Corn Salad and Arbol Chili Salsa (p70-73)

Plus, of course, Dessert. Brought to us by the letters J and K. You can learn about the Licorice and Cherry Biscotti with Buttermilk Koldskal (p180-181) here. Suffice to say the soup could be a great summer meal starter, totally refreshing. Plus the biscotti (even though they weren't Matzo toffee) were pretty darn tasty with or without licorice.

That's a lot of dipping sauce!

Dessert!

* Angela *REALLY* lobbied for J.K. to make matzo candy, starting asap when Angela saw the recipe in the cookbook. But since she swapped for pretzel toffee at the food swap it became less as urgent. Plus J.K. made her some biscottis w/o licorice, phew.

Food Swap/Street Food

It's time to swap again! Plus this month I am actually going to record what I make from Susan Feniger's Street Food before the dog days of the month. I chose to make the Heirloom Tomato Salad for the potluck, plus I adapted the Ginger Dust recipe . (I also made Lavender Sugar and Rosemary Salt, but no recipe is really needed for these flavored items.)

I was vacillating about what to make for the potluck until I looked through this month's cook the book selection. In fact, I was still torn, Beet salad v. Tomato salad, but Tomato salad won for several reasons. I just saw my first heirlooms of the season this past week, plus this recipe is super simple with only a few ingredients. Additionally it has the twist of Black Garlic (just found this website!) which is new to me. I'm still on the hunt for the Black Garlic, since the three Asian food stores I visited didn't have it for sale. Instead I did as she suggested in the recipe and blended the cooked garlic with the balsamic vinegar. This is a nice summer recipe, light and fresh. If you tossed in some mozzarella, you'd have a version of Insalata Caprese. I made it the day before and the juice from the tomatoes watered down the dressing, so next time I would take them separately and then toss it together before serving.

Up close and personal salad.

Sideways Salad.

 I chose to make the Ginger Dust as a swap item because I thought it would pair nicely with my homemade sugar and salt. The recipe for Ginger Dust is also very simple, and it seems that I could replace the ginger with a different herb or spice to create a similar "dust." Which is what I ended up doing, since I didn't have any ground ginger in the house. Oops. Instead of ginger, I used Earl Grey Tea. People at the swap asked me what I would suggest to use it on, and they gave me ideas! Truthfully, I use the flavored sugars for baking or stirring into drinks, but they would also be a great meat or tofu dry rub. Of course you can also add them to any dish you're cooking instead of a plain salt/sugar. This Dust has sugar and salt with lime zest, so you can't let it sit on the shelf, and you should use it within a week. J.K. just gave me a bottle of ground ginger, so I'll make the original recipe and post the results. Stay tuned.

Earl Grey Dust. Next time I would pair this with orange zest instead of lime.

Lavender Sugar, Rosemary Salt, Earl Grey Dust

J.K.'s madelines, chocolate dipped, of course!

I took home a treasure trove of goodies again from this swap, and scored lots of desserts from the potluck table as well. I'm already thinking about what to make for the August Swap! Maybe I'll finally make beer bread. Or I was also thinking about chocolates, or maybe soup–a chilled soup. Lots of time to ponder, so if you're a swapper and have a request, let me know!