Spoon Jar Kitchen and Fermentery
Recipes and ideas to feast and ferment on.
Miso Mushroom Salad
My husband and I recently returned to Izakaya Minato in Portland, Maine on a weekend vacation to get out of the house and eat a bunch of delicious food. One of the stand out dishes was the Kinoko Salad, consisting of sauteed mushrooms and roasted delicata squash in a rich soy and butter sauce over lightly dressed baby spinach. The sweet squash and gently dressed spinach balanced the bracingly salty sauce perfectly. I knew after we ate that dish I wanted to make a version of it at home.
Using Preserved Lemons
Let’s revisit the subject of preserved lemons. With more time at home, now’s a great time to either make some if you bought too many lemons or start using the jar you made a month ago. Here are a few quick recipe-ish ideas to start incorporating them into your cooking.
Farmer’s Market Celery Root Soup
My favorite way to cook many winter vegetables is as a smooth, thick soup. Soup is easy, approachable, and delicious! It’s the sort of meal that can be built from ingredients that can be found at my local farmer’s markets and keep the supporting ingredients limited to common staples.
Three Bean Chili
What I love about chili is the trifecta of texture, spice, and meaty-ness. It needs to have something to “chew” and that visual of a lot of great things going on - tomatoes, peppers, beans, all-the-toppings. The spice needs to be balanced; yes to heat and smoke but not so much as to blow out your taste buds on the first bite.