Fresh Food Wednesday

I am introducing a new feature on my blog: Fresh Food Wednesday.  We have been meaning to get to the local farmers market since we moved here.  We finally got our acts together yesterday.  Holy Cow was it amazing.  It was small in scale, but the produce was gorgeous.

The idea for the feature comes from today's trip.  Tim and I are big nerds.  Food nerds, that is.  Tim is a chef by trade, and I worked in hotels and restaurants my entire life.  We love eating and cooking good food.  This is important because you will think I am incredibly nerdy when you read our idea...

Challenge:  Dinner Tuesday night comes from the farmers market.  All items, other than meat, or pantry staples must be purchased at the market.  Menu planning may not be done in advance.  You must create from what you find!

I warned you we were food geeks!  But it sounds awesome, right?!

We purchased:  Beets, Organic mixed greens, Valencia oranges, lemons, farm cheese, and pluots.  No we didn't make anything with the pluots, but the Goose really wanted them! 

We stopped at a local market on the way home and picked up Red Snapper to go with our farmer's market finds.

Dinner?  Mixed greens with beets, oranges and farm cheese tossed with citrus vinaigrette and panfried snapper with citrus buerre blanc

The prep:

For the beurre blanc: slice 1 shallot and put in a small pot.  Add 1/4 cup juice.  I used half of an orange and half of a lemon for the juice.  Add 1/4 cup white wine.  Cook over low heat until reduced by half.  (you can work on other prep while it does this.  It takes some time.)  Add 2 tbsp of heavy cream.  Stir and simmer until thickened.  Add  1 stick of butter, cubed and very cold.  Remove pan from heat.  Whisk until butter is melted.  Strain to remove shallots.

Boil the beets until tender.  Run under cold water and sluff off the skins with your fingers.  The skins come off quite easily.  Wear gloves if you don't want to have purple fingers!  Chop and set aside.

Supreme the oranges and set aside.  Oh, if supreme is a term you are unfamiliar with, it basically means to section the orange.  There is a really easy way to do it, but that is for another post!

Wash greens and set aside.

Take the juice of one orange and one lemon and place in a tall mixing glass with olive oil, some roughly chopped basil leaves and a little bit of white wine vinegar.  Mix the bageezus out of it.  I like to use a stick blender.  If you haven't ever used one, buy one.  They are great for salad dressings, smoothies, sauces, and my personal favorite, soup.  It is definitely $26 well spent!  Buy it here.

Toss the greens in the dressing, top with beets, oranges and crumbled farm cheese. 

For the snapper.  Season with kosher salt and cracked black pepper.  Heat your skillet for a minute or 2 on high.  Add olive oil and let that heat a moment too.  Put the snapper in the skillet and lightly fry on both sides.

Top with Beurre Blanc.

Simple and delcious! 

Enjoy! 

A quick tribute to my husband, who actually cooked this dinner.  I just licked my plate at the end.

Thanks Honey!