Recipes for a move

The moving truck is coming in a week, and we’re leaving in twelve days, and I’m trying to clear out the fridge, freezer, and pantry. I’m also trying not to waste food, and to enjoy the last few days of cooking in my current kitchen which, although inferior, is nonetheless much larger than the kitchen in San Francisco. This has meant several things:

1. Making muffins. I am not particularly creative with frozen fruit, but it is delicious in muffins. Similarly, canned pumpkin. I love it in pies, and soups too, but one of those things takes a lot more doing than muffins, and the other just seems out of season.
2. Cooking beans. My slowcooker has been working overtime to cook the volumes of dried beans that I don’t want to move with me. Right now, I’ve got navy beans cooked and sitting in the fridge, ready to become baked beans, and dried peas ready to stand in for split split peas cooking now. I didn’t think I’d have anything positive to say about the terrible spell of cold weather we’ve just started, but at least I can make split pea soup!

Here are some recipes for your enjoyment…

Pumpkin Muffins
Adapted from Mark Bittman’s How To Cook Everything

2 1/2 c flour
1/2 c corn meal (You can use flour for this if you prefer.)
1/2 tsp salt
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ginger
1 pinch cloves
1 pinch nutmeg
1 c sugar
2 eggs
1/4 c melted butter
1 1/4 c milk
1-2 c pumpkin (I often err on the side of more pumpkin.)

Preheat oven to 350F. Butter/oil muffin tin, or use silicon muffin cups, with which I am now obsessed. Combine all dry ingredients. Beat the egg with the butter and milk. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry, including the pumpkin. Combine the ingredients quickly, stirring and folding rather than beating, and stopping as soon as all the dry ingredients are moistened. The batter should still be lumpy. Pour into the muffin tins, and bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out dry. This is about 20 minutes.

Split Pea Soup
Adapted, but not yet tested, from Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything

2 cups green split peas, washed and picked over
6 cups vegetable stock or water
2-3 carrots, cut into 1-inch sections
1 medium onion, minced
1/2 cup rice
Salt and pepper to taste
Croutons of some kind

Combine the peas, rice and stock in a large deep saucepan and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Add the carrots, turn the heat to low, cover partially, and cook until the peas are very, very soft. Alternately, put these things in a slow cooker and let them cook unattended for a long time. Either way, add the onion about halfway through the cooking time. Mash the cooked peas with a fork, food mill, or immersion blender, and add stock or water if necessary to get the desired consistency. Season with salt and pepper, and serve with croutons.

Melon Salad

Lynn and I went to Isalita for the first time right before she left. It was amazing, and I can’t wait to go back. We had a wonderful server, and the food was absolutely fantastic. One of the many delicious things I ate there was a melon salad that I tried to reproduce at home, with some moderate success.

Melon Salad   

Cantaloupe (the restaurant used a mix, but I didn’t have that)
Lime juice
Sunflower seeds (would have been better with the pepitas they used)
Cayenne pepper
Salt

Cut up as much cantaloupe (or other melons) as you like. I made one serving at a time to avoid spoilage. Sprinkle the sunflower seeds or pepitas, drizzle the lime juice, and dust the cayenne over it. Sprinkle it with a little salt and enjoy.

On the theme of orange foods, my brother felt that I should have something "aged" for my birthday this year (thanks a bunch, Jake). My gift included some delicious cheeses. Yum!

Chocolates, again!

Now that all of them have been shipped out, I wanted to share another fun holiday recipe. Last year, motivated by something I’d heard on The Splendid Table, I decided to make chocolate bark for some friends and family. This year I did it again. The recipe is included in last year’s post, and on the Splendid Table website. Last year’s flavors: Mexican hot chocolate, candy cane, fleur de sel, and gingerbread. This year I repeated the candy cane, gingerbread, and fleur de sel, but added cinnamon and ginger brown sugar flavors. They were all pretty delicious.

Enjoy!

The chocolate comes in giant bricks...

Then it is transformed into giant sheets!

 I stored each of the different kinds in a bag in the refrigerator.

And then I packaged them in little baggies in little boxes. 

 Martha Stewart, you have my number...

 

And the CSA makes one more appearance, from the freezer…

So when I posted previously that the summer CSA was finally complete, I’d forgotten about one small remaining item. The corn. Toward the end of the summer I was getting lots of corn on the cob, and just couldn’t keep up with eating all of it. So I would boil it, cut it off the cob, and throw it in the freezer. When I finally took stock of what was in there, I realized that I had about 12 cups of frozen corn languishing in there, taking up valuable real estate as my winter-time, frozen CSA was about to begin. Someone brilliant (Lynn, for the record), sent me this recipe, and it was a wild, wild success. I doubled the recipe, in order to use a full 10 cups of frozen corn, leaving only a little bit still in my freezer. The soup was delicious, and the salsa/garnish was not only fantastic on the soup, but was also great with tortilla chips once I realized that I had more than I really needed for the soup. All of it was made with frozen corn, and was just summery enough to make me almost forget that it's really gross outside, and warm enough to keep me cozy when I had to brave the weather. Enjoy!

The giant vat of soup. I recommend an immersion blender!

The garnish. I think the only modification I made was adding avocado to taste (meaning as much as possible) rather than limiting myself to the recommended amount in the recipe.

Thanksgiving

This year, Thanksgiving was not only a time to reflect on how wonderful it is to spend time with my friends and family, but also a respite from the ridiculous interview season that has consumed most of October, November, and December. I had almost a full week at home over the holiday, and I made the most of it. This was the most delicious part of that week:

 To accommodate everyone, there are little sugar free and gluten-free versions of the pumpkin pie baking on the bottom rack. 

Yum!

Peach Cranberry Pie
adapted liberally from Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything

Two batches of pie crust
16 oz frozen peaches, thawed and drained
6-8 oz frozen cranberries, thawed, drained, and sliced lengthwise
3/4 cup sugar
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 1/2 tablespoons cornstarch
Little bit of milk

Preheat the oven to 425F. Prebake the bottom crust (using a little more than half of your crust dough) for about 10 minutes with foil and pie weights (or dried beans, which is what I use) over it, and for another five minutes with the foil removed, or until it is very slightly brown. While this cools, mix the lemon juice with the peaches and cranberries. Increase the heat of the oven to 450F. Mix together the dry ingredients for the filling and toss the peaches and cranberries with this as well. Roll out the remaining pie dough, and cut it into strips a little less than an inch wide. Once the bottom crust is cool, pile the fruit filling into it. Lay four-five strips of crust across the top of the pie, and attach them to the bottom crust on one side. Starting at one side and working across the pie, weave the perpendicular strips across the pie, over and under the other strips. When it is all woven, press the edges of the strips into the bottom crust. It should look roughly like this when you’re done.

Brush the top crust with a little milk and sugar, and bake for 10 minutes at 450F. Reduce the heat to 350F and back for another 40-50 minutes, until the pie is golden. Let cool and serve warm or at room temperature.

In addition to eating, we also went to the parade, joined by Ash’s mom Cindy. The weather behaved so well that it was an ideal first parade year for her!

The Detroit Mounted Police

The clown fire brigade

Grover visits Detroit

End of the CSA

My CSA this year caused more anxiety than last year. I think I was working so much last year that I got into the habit of cooking massive amounts of food on my limited days off, and eating salads at every possible juncture. This year felt much less organized, with rotations that were really radically different each month, and somewhat unpredictable. I wasn’t nearly as diligent about cooking regularly, and so I frequently had panicky moments until I figured out what to do with the massive lot of greens in my fridge. When I finally had some time at home a few weeks ago, I cleaned up my refrigerator and finally used the last of the CSA. (I will note that since it's very, very fresh when it comes to me, it's actually just fine to sit in the fridge for a week or two. Not ideal, but fine.) Some of it, okay, truthfully, massive volumes of it, became sautéed greens with a fried egg on top. But another large portion became this:

Eggplant + final tomatoes of summer + chick peas = delicious

There’s not much "recipe" to share, as I just roasted the eggplant in the oven and then warmed it on the burner with the tomatoes and chickpeas. I seasoned it with zahtar, which is a mixture of sesame seeds, coriander, sumac, thyme, cumin, and black pepper. The sumac adds a citrusy deliciousness to the whole thing, and I highly recommend it!

Catch-Up

Somehow, in the midst of rotating with the midwives, a family wedding, and two board exams, the blog was a bit neglected last month. Oh, and the month before because of the ICU… Sorry! Here is a quick catch-up post to share some fun things that I did but didn’t blog about.

1. Hell’s Kitchen. I went to Minneapolis to see my lovely cousin get married, and in doing so got to see my mom and sister, among others. On the Saturday morning before the wedding, we decided to try Hell’s Kitchen, advertised as the most amazing place since sliced bread. We’d gotten mixed reviews from some, but wanted to check it out. It did not live up to the hype. I got the huevos rancheros, which were by far the best of anyone’s breakfasts, and they were fine. Not amazing, but fine.

2. Creamy Turnip Soup. This was an adaptation of Mark Bittman’s Creamy Carrot Soup, and used up many of the turnips that my CSA so vigorously produced. It was delicious, and delightfully simple. Sautee a chopped onion and as many turnips as you wish (or carrots, in which case you may wish to add a potato) until they are just tender. Add about 5-6 cups of water or stock and cook until the vegetables are soft. Use an immersion blender to make it smooth, and season with salt and pepper.

3. A lovely picture of peas. Nothing more to say, just wanted to share this pretty picture from my CSA back in June. Join a CSA here!

Pickles and other reasons the summer is lovely

The ICU has been sucking away my time, so this will be somewhat brief. In fact, the title is now blatantly misleading, as I’m really only going to talk about radish pickles.
These pickles were amazing. I try to cook seasonally, and in Michigan, that means eating a LOT of vegetables in the summer, and preserving some for the winter. These were my first attempt at a recipe from the canning book I got for Christmas, although I will note that they were not actually canned. I will also note that they were so delicious that they did not need to be canned. They probably didn’t even need to be refrigerated, given how quickly I ate them (as evidenced in part by the fact that I couldn't even snap a picture before the jar was half empty). Also they were pink.

Radish Pickles
adapted liberally from the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving


2-3 cups sliced radishes
2 cups white vinegar
2/3 cup granulated sugar
1 tsp mustard seeds
2 tsp whole black peppercorns
sprinkle of red pepper flakes

Place the sliced radishes in a large glass or stainless steel bowl and set them aside. Combine everything else in a saucepan, and bring it to a boil over medium-high heat. Reduce the heat and let the liquid boil gently for a few minutes. Pour the liquid over the radishes, and then let it stand for about 30 minutes, or until it’s cooled to room temperature. Pack the radishes into jars, and ladle the pickling liquid over them to cover. Put the lids on the jars and refrigerate. The recipe recommends that they marinate at least two weeks and up to three months. I think I made it about 5 days, and they were all eating with two weeks. Yum.

More greens

If you are under the impression that I spend a great deal of time thinking of things to do with greens, as evidenced in posts here, here, here, here, here, here and most recently here, you would be correct. I’ve concluded, as I am not the first to learn, that eating seasonally in Michigan requires equal parts creativity, dedication, and insanity. Or maybe there is a serious flaw in my logic and the insanity is not a pre-requisite, but rather a result of eating so much kale…

In any case, during our very brief stint of cool weather a while back, I made another soup. I ate a serving or two if it while it was cold, and then popped it into the freezer for next month when I’m working in the ICU and will likely have less time to cook (and will be eating in the hospital, where the vagaries of the weather are less likely to affect what I feel like eating).

Curry Broth with Whole Wheat Noodles and Greens
Adapted liberally from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian by Mark Bittman

3 tablespoons neutral oil (I used safflower)
1 small onion, chopped
2 tablespoons minced garlic
1 tablespoon peeled and minced fresh ginger
2 tablespoons curry powder
2 quarts vegetable stock or water
Long, skinny-ish, whole wheat noodles to taste (I used udon, the recipe calls for spaghetti, so go crazy…)
3-4 cups spicy greens, sliced into thin ribbons (I had a combination of radish and turnip greens)
Salt and pepper to taste (this will depend a lot on the stock)

In a large soup pot, heat the oil over medium-high heat. Add the onion and cook until soft, then stir in the garlic and ginger and cook for another minute or two. Add the curry powder and a little salt and pepper (unless you are worried that your vegetable stock is a bit salty already – it is always easier to add more later) and stir it around in the oil for a moment while it smells amazing. Then add the stock and bring to a boil. Add the noodles and cook until they are done – this will obviously depend on the type of noodles you have selected, but 8-10 minutes is probably a reasonable estimate. Turn off the heat and stir the greens into the soup. If you like, garnish the soup with fresh herbs (per Chef Bittman cilantro is a good bet, but I had already blended mine into some dal earlier in the week), or just enjoy!

Chilled Arugula Soup

The CSA has started up again and as is apt to happen in the early part of the season, I have masses of salad greens. I like salad as much, maybe more, than the next person, but there is only so much one can eat. When I noticed that I had two bunches of arugula that were looking a wee bit sad in the fridge, I started trolling How to Cook Everything Vegetarian for a recipe I knew I’d seen Mark Bittman do somewhere. I think the recipe I was remembering was this one, for lettuce soup, but I was struck by the possibility of a creamy chilled soup that really featured some spicy greens. The recipe called for cream or milk, but I boiled some turnips (also courtesy of the CSA) in vegetable stock instead. Here it is:

Chilled Arugula Soup 
adapted slightly from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian by Mark Bittman

2 tablespoons olive oil
6 cups (roughly) washed arugula or other spicy green (watercress, sorrel, and spinach are all recommended in the recipe)
3 cups vegetable stock
3 turnips, cubed
tiny, tiny drizzle of fish sauce (at the recommendation of Lynn Rosetto Kasper)
salt and pepper to taste

In a saucepan, bring the turnips, vegetable stock and fish sauce to a low boil. While you do this you can wash the greens. If they are large, you can chop them, but if you have a decent immersion blender you really shouldn’t need to. Once the turnips are soft (about 10 minutes, but it depends on how small you chopped them), in a large soup pan, heat the olive oil over medium heat; when it is hot add the greens. Stir until the greens wilt, then add the stock and turnips. Bring almost to a boil, and get out the immersion blender. Blend until smooth, and season with salt and pepper to taste. Chill and serve.

If you don’t have an immersion blender, you can chill the un-pureed soup and then put it in the food processor, blender, or food mill once it is cool. Esteemed Chef Bittman includes some cream or milk in his recipe at this point, but I opted to leave this out. You could try soy milk or rice milk for a vegan alternative, but I found that the turnips added enough creaminess for me. Enjoy!

A taste of summer in the springtime

I get a lot of frozen fruit with my wintertime CSA, and I’d struggled a bit to know what to do with it all. I mean, pies and crumbles are delicious, but I was pretty sure that it wouldn’t be good for me to eat pounds of fruit in the form of baked desserts. I also enjoy smoothies, but they are hardly a winter beverage. I’ve baked a lot of fruit into muffins, which works well, but still doesn’t use quite the volume I’d had in my freezer. Enter ice cream. Sort of.

 

This is my most recent batch, featuring peaches, raspberries, and a few mint leaves. I didn’t know that color of fuchsia could occur in nature, but it can. Also, did I mention that this stuff is good for you? It’s basically a really, really thick smoothie. It won’t keep in the freezer (or rather, it will keep beautifully as a giant block of ice), but who would want to do anything but eat it all?

 
Not quite ice cream
1c frozen fruit
1/4 c soy milk (approximately)
sugar/sweetener to taste

If you are using large frozen fruits, like peaches or pears, let them thaw a little bit in the food processor. Once you can actually puree them, you are good to go. Add a little bit of soy milk and any small fruits you are adding (berries, in particular) and process until the consistency is nice. Add a little sugar/honey/sweetener if you’re using rhubarb (which is a little stringy, but pretty good) or some other not-so-sweet fruit.

Enjoy!

Quick Soup

The last month, as you will have noticed from the marked decrease in blog entries, has been busy. I’ve been back on an inpatient service, meaning that I’m back to only have one day off in seven, averaged over the length of the month. Since we get the switch weekends off (the weekends between services), that means we get 3 days off during the month; this brings the grand total to 5 days. As I have undoubtedly whined here before, and I’m too tired to take the time to look that up right now and reference it for you, 5 days/month is not enough. More specifically, one day at a time is not enough to both accomplish some relaxing and some grocery shopping/laundry/checkbook balancing/cooking/sleeping/studying. Arguably there is not enough time in the world for that second list, but one day each week is not even enough to gets started. This has resulted in an unfortunate dependence on eating random meals at the hospital (thank goodness for the magic of money on my hospital ID graciously put there by the medical school to ensure that I eat), things from my freezer that my mom has brilliantly prepared and stashed away for me, and the crazy stuff I can cook up in the stolen moments between arriving home from the hospital and studying and sleep.

This brings us to the soup. The soup was inspired by two things.

1) The new presence of the Pacific Rim noodle bar in the hospital cafeteria. It’s delicious, vegan (at least if you want it to be), and available at the hospital.

2) This ancient packet of miso soup mix that has been languishing in my pantry for years. I moved that packet of miso soup mix almost two years ago, and I’m pretty sure it had sat in my old apartment for a while prior to the move. I am not one to throw away food that has not really gone bad, and that packet of soup was tormenting me. I could remember that the last packet I ate was not as delicious as I’d hoped, but couldn’t bring myself to just throw it away. So I made it better. I added some random stuff from my pantry (dried mushrooms, dried seaweed, noodles), and it was pretty good. This reminded me that I had a tub of miso paste in the refrigerator that had also spent more than it’s fair share of time in the fridge and would probably actually make better soup.

Miso Soup
3 cups water or vegetable broth
2-3 Tablespoons of miso paste (I used mild yellow miso, you could also use an ancient packet of miso soup here)
dried shitake mushrooms
2-3 baby carrots, thinly sliced
1 stick seaweed kombu, broken into small pieces
1 serving udon noodles (you be the judge here)

Heat the water or broth, add the shitake mushrooms (as many as you’d like) and the seaweed, and bring to a low boil. Add the noodles. I broke them up so that they would be easier to eat. When they are nearly soft, stir in a little bit of the miso paste at a time until you like the flavor of the broth. Add the carrots to the soup, and heat for another 10-15 minutes. The noodles, mushrooms and seaweed should be soft. Enjoy!

A little holicrazy?

Cross-posted on Dose of Reality:

I think I’m not alone in occasionally feeling on the edge of hypomania around the holidays...


Clinical definition: Hypomania is an episode of at least four days of elevated or irritable mood different from the individual’s normal mood that does not cause marked impairment of function or hospital admission, and which includes at least three of the following

• gradiosity
• decreased sleep
• more talkative than usual
• racing throughts or flight of ideas
• distractability
• increased goal direct activity or psychomotor agitation
• excessive involvement in pleasurable activities even if they have a high potential for negative consequences.

Although oftentimes my family and friends' extracurricular expectations of me are low, I love finding, wrapping, and giving gifts, and have been known to go a little overboard sometimes. This year I think it was brought on by the realization that I hadn’t handmade any gifts for anyone. Usually I knit like crazy during the summer, fall, and early winter to make sweaters, socks, hats, and scarves for friends and family. I knew that wasn’t an option this year, with the clinical calendar as it is, but decided to make small gifts for my extended family members. This blossomed from a well-intentioned little craft project into a bit of a crazed mission involving large volumes of chocolate and Martha Stewart branded craft materials.

(Another note: This gifting is not the extent of the holicrazy. I also made squash soup from scratch, which included roasting the squash seeds as a snack, and was posted earlier this week… Also, I drafted all of these holiday posts in a single morning when I was feeling particularly productive…)

Since they were all mailed last Saturday, and should have arrived already, I think it won’t be spoiling anything for anyone to post some pictures and the recipe here…

Chocolate Bark
adapted slightly from Seriously Good Improvisational Chocolates by Sally Schneider
Chop up 1 lb (or more, or less, depending on how much you want) of really good chocolate into 1-inch or smaller pieces. I used Callebaut chocolate, which they carry at my bulk food store, and Ms. Schneider recommends Valhrona, which I’ve seen at Whole Foods, or Sharfenberger. You can use either dark semi-sweek chocolate or milk chocolate. Cover a baking sheet with parchment paper. Melt 1/2 of your the chocolate in a saucepan floating in another saucepan of water on the stove (or use a double boiler if you have that sort of fancy equipment). When half the chocolate is melted, remove it from heat and stir in the remaining chocolate until it’s all melted. Use a spatula and spread it into the parchment paper so that it’s about 1/8”-1/4” thick. Let it sit for 3-4 minutes to set a bit, and then sprinkle with the toppings of your choice. I’ve listed the festive holiday options I chose below. Let the chocolate sit for a few hours or until it’s firm. Break it into shards, and package it up! Per Ms. Schneider it will keep for several weeks in a sealed container at room temperature.

For Mexican hot chocolate: Vietnamese cinnamon or other very fragrant cinnamon, and cayenne pepper. Sprinkle the cinnamon liberally, and go easy with the pepper.

For candy cane: Crush candy canes in a plastic bag (I used a rolling pin) and spread the shards over the chocolate. This is pretty!

For fleur de sel: This may seem obvious, but it’s just fleur de sel. It can be as coarse or fine as you’d like to grind it.

For gingerbread: This was (I think) the best one. Smash up some gingersnaps or other gingercookies in a plastic bag until the largest pieces are about 1/2” across. Sprinkle these over the chocolate, preferably dark chocolate and spicy cookies, and enjoy.

Soup for the holidaze

I tried out a new recipe last week, and it has quickly skyrocketed to the top of my list. It would be delicious with canned squash or pumpkin, but working with a whole squash was fun (if a bit time consuming). I modified the recipe so that it was more healthful and also vegan, but you could obviously use heavy cream in place of the silken tofu, although the soup might be a little thinner (and with less protein!). It was equally delicious reheated the next day, so it’s also a convenient weekday lunch…

 

Squash Curry Soup
adapted from the Fall/Winter 2011 Good Health, which Blue Care Network sends to me on a quarterly basis, ostensibly to lower my health care costs for them

1 tablespoon olive oil, plus a little for roasting the squash
1 cup finely chopped onion
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 cup diced celery
2 teaspoons curry powder
1/4 teaspoon ground coriander
1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper
3 cups water
1 cup low-sodium vegetable broth
1-2 squashes (total weight 32-40 oz, or one 32 oz can)
1 package silken tofu

(Skip this part if you’re using canned squash/pumpkin.) Preheat the oven to 400F. Wash and peel the squash. Cut it into slices, and set the seeds aside if you want to bake them later. Arrange the slices of squash on a baking sheet with a small amount of olive oil, and bake at 400F until they are easily poked/smashed with a fork. Let the squash cool a little, and then transfer to a food processor. Process until you’ve got squash puree. Set aside while you work on the rest of the soup.

 
Heat the olive oil in a soup pot over medium-high heat. Add the onion, garlic, and celery and cook until tender. Stir in the curry powder, coriander, and crushed red pepper and cook for another minute.
Add the water and broth, and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and cook 10-15 minutes to allow the broth to take on the delicious onion, garlic and celery flavors.

 
Stir in the squash puree and the silken tofu, and cook until heated through. Use an immersion blender (or carefully transfer to a blender or food processor) to blend until creamy.

 Garnish with fresh thyme or other herbs and enjoy!

More delicious things to do with greens and squash

As we near the real winter, I know I’m not the only one constantly looking for more things to do with greens and squash. My CSA ended a while ago, and I still have some squashes to eat. Luckily the squash keeps for a while, so I focused on the greens to keep them from wilting into little bags of brown goo in the fridge! Here are some of my more recent endeavors:

 

Ravioli on a bed of wilted greens 

 

Fried egg sandwiches

 

Scrambled eggs with greens and potatoes 

Baked tofu sandwich 

I’ll leave you with the directions for crafting that last sandwich, which I would consider an excellent achievement for the following reasons: (1) it is delicious, (2) it would be vegan if you used vegan mayonnaise instead of the addictive substance filled with egg yolk that I love, (3) in uses greens, and (4) it also features chili garlic chutney, which used a bunch of the hot peppers I also had accumulating in my fridge from the CSA. A win all around!

Chili Garlic Chutney
Adapted from 1,000 Indian Recipes by Neelam Batra
1 tablespoon black peppercorns, ground
3-4 large cloves garlic, peeled
3-4 quarter-size slices of peeled fresh ginger
8-10 fresh hot chile peppers, in any combination of red and green, serrano, jalapeño, whatever, coarsely chopped
1-2 red or green bell peppers, chopped
1/8 cup of lime juice
1/2 tablespoon paprika
1/2 tablespoon ground ajwain seeds (available at some Indian groceries, or use dried thyme)
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon salt
Put the garlic, ginger, hot peppers, bell peppers, and lime juice in a food processor and process until they form a paste. Add the paprika, ajwain/thyme, pepper, and salt and process until smooth. Transfer to a serving bowl, or to a container for freezing or storing in the refrigerator. Per Ms. Batra this will keep in the fridge for about a month or in the freezer for 6 months.

Baked Tofu
1 package extra firm tofu
1/3 cup tamarind date sauce (available at Indian markets, or substitute barbeque sauce or something else a little sweet)
1 tablespoon chili garlic chutney
Preheat the oven to 350F. Mix the tamarind date sauce and the chutney in a large bowl or pie pan. Press the tofu between two paper towels to remove some of the excess water, and cut into 1/2” slices. Place the tofu slices in the sauce mixture and let them sit while you prepare the pan to bake them. Film a baking sheet or roasting pan with a small amount of oil, and lay the tofu slices in the pan. It doesn’t matter if they have had a ton of time to marinate, because they will pick up more flavor as they bake.
Once you’ve spread the slices in the pan, spread some of the extra sauce on each on in a thin layer. Bake until they are slightly chewy, usually when a fork will no longer easily poke through, flipping approximately every 5-10 minutes and applying additional sauce with each flip. Remove from the oven and let cool.

Awesome sandwich
1 square pita
Mayo to taste
Chili garlic chutney to taste
4-5 small spinach leaves, washed
2-3 slices baked tofu
Combine and enjoy!

Greens and Squash

Ooops... I wrote this a while ago and forgot to hit post!

In the interest of bringing some of the color back into the word clouds from my blog, I thought I’d share another recipe. I’m onto the “extended” version of my CSA (an extra three or four weeks at the end of the season), and in a few weeks the frozen CSA will begin, and I’m still pretty overwhelmed with the volume of greens and squash I have at my house. It’s also been getting cooler here, which for me means that it is getting toward one of my favorite times of year: soup season! Soup (and stew, and chili…) season is convenient as well, because nothing freezes and thaws quite like a delicious soup, and nothing is forgiving like a stew recipe in terms of absorbing greens and other miscellaneous vegetables. I enjoy these dishes on their own, or over grains. Most recently I’ve cooked up some barley and farrow, and they are really delicious in or under hearty soups/stews! I tried a new one last night, and was thrilled with how it came out. The recipe didn’t call for greens, but that has never stopped me before. I think the chard was a delicious addition… Enjoy!

 
Peanut Squash Stew
Adapted from Real Simple
1 cup grain of your choice (farrow and brown rice are excellent options)
2 tablespoons peanut oil
1 large onion, yellow or white, finely chopped
2 tablespoons grated fresh ginger
1 small green chili, serrano or jalapeno, or whatever you have, chopped
3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1.5 teaspoons ground cumin
4 cups vegetable broth or water
2 1/2 cups tomato puree or canned diced tomatoes (roughly one 28 oz can)
1/2 cup peanut butter
1 medium squash (acorn or other firm squash is best, I used what I think is a buttercup squash), cut into 1”-thick slices
2 tablespoons brown sugar
2 16-oz cans black-eyed peas, or 3-4 cups cooked beans
2-3 cups baby chard (I think that’s what I had, I think most kinds of greens would be delicious), sliced into thin strips

Prepare your grain according to the directions. Heat the oil in a skillet over medium heat. Add the onions and cook until tender. Add the ginger, chili, garlic, salt, and cumin, and cook for another few minutes. Add the tomato puree, peanut butter, broth, and sugar, and stir until blended. Add the squash slices and cook over medium heat until the squash is tender, 20-30 minutes depending on the size of the squash. Add the black-eyed peas and greens and heat through. Spoon over the farrow or rice and enjoy. You can also sprinkle peanuts on top as a garnish…

More about the middle (Or, everything tastes better with mayonnaise)

I’ve continued to love my CSA vegetables all summer, even though I’ve fallen off the wagon with regard to posting about them here. One challenge that continues to present itself, however, is kale. I like kale, and I probably like it more than your average person. I’ve used it in saag paneer, fresh salad, soup, and muffins, among other things. That said, there is only so much kale one person can eat. In spite of the fact that everyone I know (and even a few people I don’t) has suggested I try kale chips, I’m fairly certain that I made them a few years ago and they were gross. As I’ve continued on my quest for delicious uses for kale, I was inspired by this post from Crazy Aunt Purl about the deliciousness of raw kale salad. It made me think about using kale instead of lettuce in other applications, and reminded me that I hadn’t made any crazy sandwiches in a little while. My most notable and original creations have involved peanut butter (side note: green bean and peanut butter sandwiches are amazing), but I tend to be willing to combine any number of odd condiments and vegetables on a sandwich. In particular I love mayonnaise combined with spices or other spicy condiments. Now, I think to think I’m pretty creative between those slices of bread, but it really hadn’t occurred to me to include kale. Now it has… The kale is nice and crisp, and lasts longer in the fridge than most other sandwich greens. This is also a great use when the share only includes a few small leaves of kale.

Earlier in the summer the sandwiches included tomatoes, which were also in my CSA. My most recent sandwich creation required the roasting of eggplant, which I would highly recommend.

Pesto Sandwich Spread

1 tablespoon basil pesto

1 tablespoon mayonnaise

Mix and spread onto a sandwich. Enjoy, and try not to eat it out of the bowl.

Roasted Eggplant Slices
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen

As much eggplant as you can eat before it molds, cut into 3/4” slices

Salt and pepper to taste (or other spices if you’d prefer)

Olive oil for drizzling

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Coat a cookie sheet generously with olive oil. Arrange eggplant slices on the cookie sheet so that they don’t overlap. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Roast, without disturbing, for 10 to 15 minutes. Let them cook until they can easily be separated from the pan – the edges and the bottom should be brown and even blistering. Carefully flip each piece and sprinkle them with additional salt and pepper and roast for another 10 minutes, until the undersides match the tops.

Let cool, and add to just about anything…

In which both my camera and my oven make a long-awaited appearance

It’s been a long time since I posted something unrelated to school in this space, and even longer since I posted a real photo (not taken with my phone). We can either just pretend that I successfully took photos to document the summer I spent in the hospital or pretend that I didn’t miss a season at all, since summer is by far my least favorite. I think that sounds good: 2011, the year of only three seasons.

To kick off fall, which comes right after spring, I think these muffins are quite fitting. I slightly modified this recipe, in that I used kale rather than spinach. You could smell the kale slightly after they were cooked, but couldn’t taste it at all. I plan to continue this variation on a theme, as I still have a lot of kale from the CSA and I am tired of eating it other ways.

Hello summer…

It’s been warm here, and while it’s cooled down substantially today, the search for all things refreshing has been unending. It seems appropriate to celebrate the official start of summer by sharing something cool and delicious with you. Enter Ashley and her knowledge of many things foreign and fancy. When I had dinner with her last weekend she introduced me to the concept of a shandy, a grown-up Arnold Palmer that is half lemonade and half beer. Apparently it is a dainty lady’s drink in Britain… The combination of Oberon and a really good lemonade was really fantastic and, although many beer lovers are probably judging me right now, I would mix them again in a heartbeat.

Fast forward to this morning, when I was describing this drink to someone else, and couldn’t remember the name. Entering “half lemonade half beer” into Google to try to find it, I discovered not only the Wikipedia page for Shandy, but also a Huffington Post article about cocktails made with beer. Because the lead slide was about a spicy Mexican beer cocktail called a michelada, I was somewhat dubious due to my experience with “Chips and Salsa” Beer:

It was not delicious … I’ve concluded that beer should not be spicy. It is not refreshing to have your drink leave a hot burning taste in your mouth…

Looking past the michelada, however, I’m interested to try the Lambic Sangria recipe from Chow. Let me know what you think of any of these if you try them, as I’m eager to explore new beverage options, as well as dodging bullets when I can.

While I suspect that this new knowledge will not get me out of looking like a little kid (with my Shirley Temple) or like a confirmed member of the ladies who love ladies club (with my beer, which never looks dainty at a wedding or other fancy occasion), I suppose I could at least try to ask for a shandy at my next dressy occasion, and hope it comes in a glass that looks like everyone else’s cocktails. Regardless of any long-term possibilities, I will be making these all summer long!

CSA Weeks 2 and 3

M3 year seems to be getting the better of me in terms of blog posts, but I wanted to share more of the CSA bounty photos… Here is the haul from two weeks ago:

And then this week (minus the strawberries I devoured before taking the photo):

I made a really delicious saag paneer, which was a little complicated but so worth it for the deliciousness.

Also amazing but much simpler is a yogurt chutney that I love, both because it is delicious and because it accommodates almost any greens/herbs left over in the refrigerator and the end of the week.

Yogurt Chutney with Pureed Greens
Adapted from 1,000 Indian Recipes by Neelam Batra

1 teaspoon Chaat Masala (I like the MDH brand, as it contains too many different things for me to make it myself)
4 quarter-sized slices of peeled fresh ginger
3-4 scallions, chopped
1 green chile or a sprinkling of dried ground cayenne
2 cups coarsely chopped fresh herbs in any proportion (I’ve tried cilantro, mint, parsley, dill, basil, peppermint, lemon balm… I've considered adding a little spinach or kale as well...)
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon salt (or to taste)
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 cup nonfat plain yogurt

In the food processor, mince together the ginger, scallions, and green chile (if you’re using a fresh one). Set aside a few fresh herbs for garnish if you like, and add the rest of the fresh herbs and lemon juice, and process until smooth. Add the chaat masala, salt, pepper, and cayenne (if you’re using dried). Add half the yogurt and blend until smooth. Artfully stir this mixture into the other half of the yogurt, or process the rest of the yogurt into the chutney, depending on how much time you have and how you wish to serve it. Garnish with the fresh herbs if you like.

Enjoy as a dip for vegetables, chips, and breads, as an accent with lentils, or as a side with potatoes. Yum!