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From our Food Goddess, TaMara:
Tonight’s recipe exchange is going to be a quick one. It’s been a stressful week – the little company I work with is downsizing (you can read about it here) and I’m busy helping them restructure. The weekend cannot come soon enough. Time to get out and ride and maybe do some gardening.
Meanwhile, in the kitchen, it’s Blood Orange season and I thought I’d take advantage. I know we just did oranges, but that’s actually one of the reasons for tonight’s theme. I received an email question about using blood oranges instead of Clementine’s in the Orange Bread recipe. That reminded me to go looking for blood oranges. Usually I have a difficult time finding them, but a new Sprouts Market opened in my neighborhood and they have a great fresh produce section where I’ve been able to find all kinds of fun stuff. Including some beautiful and flavorful blood oranges.
If you haven’t ever had them, they are sweeter than navel oranges, a little bit of a raspberry flavor, I guess, to them. A nice mix of sweet and tart flavors. Here’s a bit of an explanation over at Sunkist. Really anything you do with oranges, you can do with blood oranges and get a really pretty display in the process.
So with that, I have three recipes for you and, sorry, no photos, it took all the energy I had left just to put together the recipes.
First up: Blood Orange Salad (click here)
Next: Blood Orange Coleslaw (click here)
What’s going on in your kitchen this weekend? Anything fun? Anyone firing up the grill yet?
And finally tonight’s featured recipe:
Blood Orange Glaze and Salsa
This was originally meant for a firm white fish, but it works well with chicken, salmon and pork. So I thought I’d give you the basics and you can experiment with how you use them.
If you can’t find blood oranges, you can substitute ruby red grapefruit, or use all navel oranges, maybe add some raspberries for a nice flavor.
Blood Orange Glaze
1/2 cup blood orange juice
2 tbsp honey
2 tsp orange zest
pinch of crushed red pepper flakes
salt & pepper to tasteWarm honey and orange juice until the honey is completely melted. Stir in zest, pepper flakes, salt & pepper. Broil (set rack at second level from the top) or grill fish fillets, pounded chicken breasts or boneless pork chops, basting with the sauce and turning frequently until cooked through and glaze is carmelized. Top with salsa (recipe below).
Blood Orange Salsa
4 blood oranges, peeled, sectioned and chopped
1 tsp orange zest
1 naval orange, peeled, sectioned & chopped
4 green onions, chopped
1 small jalapeno, finely chopped
1 tbsp chopped fresh cilantro
1 tbsp limejuice
Salt & pepper to tastelarge bowlMix all ingredients in a large bowl and set aside for about 30 minutes.
opie_jeanne
What’s going on in my kitchen this weekend is that I have to cut way back on the carbohydrates and eat several tiny meals each day. My blood sugar levels have been steadily creeping up over the past two years, partly thanks to my BP med which my doc just altered for that very reason.
So, tonight was pan roasted halibut with v. small red potato (singular), a large helping of cole slaw, and a v. small slice of watermelon. In a little while I may have some nuts and another v. small slice of watermelon. The halibut was salted and sauteed in a little canola oil for 4 minutes, then the pan was put into the oven at 425 for nearly 9 minutes. The cole slaw was from an old cookbook.
It was all delicious.
I may treat myself to a v. small dish of ice cream tomorrow night. V. small.
opie_jeanne
That blood orange cole slaw sounds delicious. I will try that with the other half of the cabbage head, if I can find blood oranges.
The prophet Nostradumbass
Blood oranges have always been kind of disappointing to me when I have had them; they always seem to lack juice. Maybe I’m just used to the navel oranges from the tree in the front yard.
BarbCat
If you can find those tiny Alpine strawberries, they are delicious swimming in blood orange juice. In Sicily, in May, that is served everywhere! I plan to keep a close eye on my local farmer’s markets here in L.A.. They are always trotting out new (for L.A.) fruits and vegetables.
YellowJournalism
That picture makes me think of the wonderful blood orange visual in the Dexter opening credits. That show needs to get back on the air sooner than June, dammit.
dance around in your bones
The only place I had absolutely delicious blood oranges was in Afghanistan. The juice was incredibly delicious.
In Pakistan they had huge mounds of pomegranate seeds and they’d smush them in a some kind of hand-operated smusher device and make the best pomegranate juice evah.
I got a ‘blood orange’ margarita here in SoCal recently and it looked suspiciously like Red Dye #2 had been added to it and it tasted like it, too.
I got spoiled back in the day.
BarbCat
@YellowJournalism: I was fascinated by the end of last season, but I supposed I am glad this is the last season altogether – I need fewer reasons to watch the tube.
Joey Maloney
Twice so far, both in the last week. The first, I whipped up a batch of sriracha BBQ sauce (based on a recipe I like for Carolina rib sauce, replacing some of the ketchup with rooster sauce) and did some leg quarters.
Then a couple of days later they had salmon steaks on sale at the grocery so I made some teriyaki sauce (soy, orange [not blood] juice and zest, honey, garlic powder) to marinate them and grilled them up.
And today I think I might do some burgers.
Anne Laurie
@BarbCat:
We have alpine strawberries in big pots on either side of our front door, but they’re so tiny & delicious that they all get gobbled out of hand before reaching the top of the steps!
Don’t know why alpine strawberries aren’t more popular with home gardeners, except that they’re almost impossible to start from seed and they don’t runner. But we invested in a couple $7 plants a good ten years ago, and they’ve survived every kind of unpredictable drought/flood/freeze/no-freeze-winter with just about no assitance from me. If you have space on your terrace for a 12″ (or larger) planter, you can have a lovely mounding almost-evergreen plant that puts out pretty flowers from early spring to late fall, even apart from the delcious fruit…
different-church-lady
Amateurs…
BLOOD ORANGE FRENCH 75!
LesGS
Blood oranges equal sangria to me. Yum.
TaMara (BHF)
@The prophet Nostradumbass: @dance around in your bones:
I miss picking my own oranges. NOTHING in a store compares. That being said, the blood oranges I purchased this week were pretty good.
dance around in your bones
We have orange, tangerine, plum, apple and lime trees in the backyard. The youngest grandkid is very addicted to “Orangies, Nonny!” and we pick a couple, sit in the sun, peel, pick apart and eat them. He has learned to count the orange sections in Spanish (from watching Dora the Explorer + me) and he gets a huge kick out of it.
It always reminds me of the scene in The Godfather where Marlon Brando is chasing his grandson around in the garden with an orange section in his mouth, then keels over dead.
Haha. Ok, I’m weird.
Yutsano
I just eat them. When they come into season I go pretty much nuts. I was just at the store tonight, didn’t see them but in my defence I didn’t look very hard. I may rectify that soon.
Uncle Glenny
Here’s what I’ve done in the (way) past with blood oranges:
The first time I was exposed to them they were used in a salad, peeled and thinly sliced along with fennel and maybe shaved carrots (with a peeler), all layered together with oil and vinegar. Let rest together a bit.
I also successfully made blood orange curd (think lemon curd). I have no notes on this but had played with a number of variations of lemon curd, and it probably required extra acidification with lemon juice, and the blood orange juice required some concentrating. I think this technique may be from one of my pro cooking books (this was sometime last century).
What I’ve done more recently is make blood orange marmalade. I haven’t opened any yet (I suppose I should try it and see). I made two batches.
The first batch used all of the peel, not just the zest. The peel was peeled off in quarters, and then blanched three times for 2-3 minutes in boiling water, which is what I do to candy citrus peel, then used in the recipe; the second batch used only the zest, which I briefly blanched once.
Maybe I’ll try them now if I can get out of my chair (been dozing off).
jayackroyd
argh.
I’m too late.
But I’m looking for quiche recipes. Not horribly complicated–mushroom onion and swiss, broccoli cheddar, maybe the odd leeks and asparagus. I’d like half a dozen or so to put into a Thursday rotation.
A.J.
Ha! And speaking of blood oranges, you forgot how to start the evening off;
1 Orange Wedge, peeled and seeded (for each serving)
1 part Blood Orange syrup (Monin is very good.)
3 parts Orange Vodka
1 part orange Flavored Liqueur
2 parts red grapefruit juice
Muddle orange in mixing glass.
Add ice, and all the ingredients.
Shake for 15 seconds to dilute syrup.
Strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
Let the pain of the day drift away.
tmf (formerly tesslibrarian)
@jayackroyd: One of my favorites for spring is asparagus, red potato, and goat cheese quiche. I top it with a little shredded asiago before putting it in the oven–it works really well as a tart, or using a phyllo crust, and you can use different sharp cheese on top to your taste. With fresh asparagus coming in now, it’s really a nice way to do something other than roasting it.
@TaMara: I could use suggestions for what to do with the blood orange olive oil we were given. It seems so enticing, but I’m scared to open it before I have more than a single plan for it. So far, my husband and I can’t get past a half-hearted, “maybe fish?”
currants
VERY late to this party, but just in case anyone’s looking, blood oranges are wonderful in negronis, and just as/even better in margaritas, like this: http://smittenkitchen.com/blog/2013/02/blood-orange-margaritas/
Nonetheless, I’m glad to see the other (non-alcoholic) uses I might put this fruit to….