Tall Kate's Kitchen

How to cook summer squash, part 1

2010-08-01T18:41:00.003-04:00

Remember Barbara Kingsolver's Disappearing Zucchini Orzo? I have riffed on that recipe repeatedly, often substituting rice (white or brown) for the orzo. It's such a great formula for using a lot of summer squash. Grate it up and cook it the heck down. I love stirring in a cup or so of grated romano cheese, but it's delicious without.

Tonight, I'm doing it with brown rice and no cheese (it was a heavy-dairy day), but I threw together a little relish-like thing for the top: small dice of tomato, green pepper, peach and onion, with minced serrano for a little kick.

I was pleased that I thought of the peach. I made jam today, and had an extra peach that had been blanched but not yet peeled. And I love sweet fruitiness combined with the subtle heat of a chili pepper. I'm looking forward to this one!

(Hopefully I'll post a picture later!)

What I planted today . . .

2010-05-26T13:26:00.003-04:00

Phew, it's hot. I just put in the rest of the tomatoes--I bought a 6-pack of romas (which I planted yesterday) and a 6-pack of sun gold cherries (today). I also planted 3 parsley plants, 6 hot pepper seedlings, a row of radishes, and more kale and chard. I wish I could remember the date I put in the first of the kale and chard, but I'd say around 2 weeks ago. I think the chard is getting eaten by critters (either that or I haven't watered them enough, sigh.) I also planted nasturtiums and marigolds.

Last night I picked up a bag of mesclun mix from Mainstone Farm in Wayland, so for dinner we had a big salad with avocado, radishes, carrots, chickpeas and olives, in a balsamic vinaigrette. Oh, and croutons that I tossed with olive oil and Penzey's "sandwich seasoning." Altogether a very satisfying meal.

Vegetarian Fried Rice (also Mark Bittman's dumplings)

2010-05-22T10:05:00.002-04:00

This recipe for pot-stickers is fabulous. Personally, I'm partial to the vegetarian variation listed underneath, and I add mushrooms to the meat filling, too. (My family prefers the pork ones.)

I confess I play extremely fast and loose with the proportions.

Last night I had leftovers of both fillings, so Jon filled wrappers with the pork and I decided to try something different with the vegetarian filling.

Earlier in the day I made a pot of brown rice, lightly salted. I used about a cup of raw rice. It was at room temperature when I set out to make the fried rice.

I heated a couple of tablespoons of oil in a cast-iron skillet and, when it was nice and hot, threw in the leftover vegetarian filling (I'd guess I had about a cup and a half leftover?) and stir fried it for several minutes, until the mushrooms released their liquid and it dried back out again. At that point I stirred in the rice, tossed everything around so it was well-combined, and then lowered the heat. I also tossed in some commercially-prepared baked tofu, cut into little strips. When it was hot, and sticking a bit to the bottom of the pan, I turned off the heat and ate. Yummy.

Broccoli, chickpeas, dried tomatoes & lemon zest

2010-05-12T11:29:00.003-04:00

My mom visisted last week, and she brought the cookbook I'd given her for Christmas, Mollie Katzen's The Vegetable Dishes I Can't Live Without. While she was here, we looked at it together, a little, but then it got lost in the shuffle and didn't go home with her. She refused to let me send it to her, but I told her I'd be sure to actually USE it, so her leaving it here wasn't in vain. I'm such a martyr.

True to my word, I've been faithfully making recipes from it. Or not-so-faithfully, as the case may be. I tried the gingered asparagus, and it was sensational. Then I made her cauliflower gratin with capers, which was also excellent. I have my eye on a sweet potato hash with smoked tofu, next.

Last night I riffed on a recipe for broccoli, sun-dried tomatoes, and lemon zest, which I served over whole-wheat penne.

2-3 T olive oil
1 bunch broccoli, cut into bite-sized pieces
6 oil-packed dried tomatoes, chopped fine
zest of one lemon (I used long ribbons, but I think I'd chop it next time so the flavor is distributed better)
1 1/2 cup cooked chickpeas
1 clove garlic, minced
toasted pine nuts (optional)
sliced olives (optional)
grated romano cheese (optional)
hot pepper flakes (optional)

Boil a big pot of water and add the broccoli. Cook for two minutes, then drain.

Heat olive oil in large deep skillet. Add garlic, stir for a few moments, and then add dried tomato, lemon zest, and chickpeas. Add broccoli and optional ingredients to taste.

Serve over pasta of choice.

First Harvest

2010-04-05T13:36:00.001-04:00

I just plucked a few tender spring chives to put in my egg salad. Heavenly.

Corn, Quinoa, Sweet Potato & White Bean soup

2010-04-03T14:16:00.002-04:00

There are several elements to this soup, but it is easy to pull together. I was very happy with the results!

1 large sweet potato, peeled and diced
1 scant cup quinoa, rinsed thoroughly and cooked for 7-10 minutes in 3 cups boiling water
2 cups frozen corn
1 guajillo pepper, seeded and stemmed, soaked in boiling water to cover 15 minutes, then minced (save water)
1/2 lb small white beans (see cooking instructions below)
1 garlic clove, minced
1/2-1 tsp each ground cumin and coriander
2 T oil or butter
salt & pepper to taste

Put sweet potato in a saucepan with bean broth (or water) to cover. Bring to a boil and cook till just tender (you don't want it to fall apart). I think I cooked it for 12 minutes.

Meanwhile, heat oil or butter. Add corn and let it defrost. Add garlic, pepper, coriander and cumin and cook, stirring constantly, for 2 or 3 minutes. Add bean broth and simmer till corn is cooked (5 minutes max). Add sweet potatoes (and their cooking liquid), quinoa (and its cooking liquid, if any remains), and beans and their cooking liquid, as well as the liquid from soaking the pepper. Season with salt and pepper to taste, and serve.

To cook 1 lb white beans: soak in salt water overnight; drain, rinse & cover with fresh water by 2-3 inches. Bring to a boil and skim foam. Add a small peeled onion, a carrot & a couple of stalks of celery. Lower heat to a simmer and cook for 45 minutes. Test; if tender but still intact, add 1 2 tsp salt and continue to cook for another 10 minutes. Take off heat and allow to cool. For the soup recipe, I used all the broth and half the beans. Use remaining beans for baked beans, a bean salad, or another soup.

Green beans with almonds

2010-03-21T19:55:00.002-04:00

Every summer, I wind up freezing nearly all the green beans from Drumlin's PYO share. There's just such a bounty at that point, and few things freeze as well as green beans. I wash them, give them a quick trim, blanch, shock and then pack in bags. I've served them to people who can't believe they aren't fresh.

Sometimes I prepare them the way I describe in this post, or sometimes the Greek-style pictured in this post.

But sometimes you just want to go back to basics, like the traditional "Almondine" style. Here's my very simple version with my home-frozen beans.

Thaw beans for an hour or so on the counter. Heat generous tablespoon of butter in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add green beans and slivered almonds--anywhere from a couple of tablespoons to 1/3 of a cup, depending on how much you have and what else you're serving. I leave the heat nice and high and just shake the pan often. Grab some tongs and move it all around to be sure nothing's burning in the bottom. Add a few pinches of salt and keep it all moving. Test them after 3 or 4 minutes to see if they're hot or tender enough for your liking.

New Year's Day black-eyed pea fritters

2010-01-01T18:33:00.002-05:00

Just jotting this up here for future reference: I make a lot of veggie-burger type things (as I may have mentioned once or twice). Here's the one that materialized today when I wanted to serve black-eyed peas on January 1.

1 onion, chopped
1 large daikon, grated
1 rib celery, chopped fine

3 cups cooked black-eyed peas, mashed
1 1/2 cups soft bread crumbs
1/3 cup mayonnaise

Saute first three ingredients till soft. (NB: I grated the daikon on the large holes of the grater and it wound up a little stringy. I was afraid the kids would object to the strands in the fritters, but they didn't seem to notice.)

Combine with the rest of the ingredients and add salt and pepper to taste.

Generously coat a cast-iron skillet with oil and fry till golden on both sides. Delicious with or without ketchup, and served alongside kale chips for a true New Year's feast. Luck and riches for all!

Crisp spice cookies

2009-12-08T20:29:00.001-05:00

For many years I kept two otherwise-unused ingredients in my house for a single family recipe: crisp spice cookies my grandmother, and then my mom, used to make for Christmas. The two ingredients? Crisco and Karo syrup. But I was determined to find a way to make the cookies without using trans-fats or high fructose corn syrup. Molasses, brown sugar and a combination of butter and Spectrum's organic shortening did the trick. (I found that butter alone made the cookies spread too much.)

I also tweaked the spice blend a bit.

(Of course, I once scandalized my dad regarding those cookies. He asked me what my favorite cookies my mom made at Christmastime, confident that my answer would echo his: oatmeal-date cookies. Though delicious, my favorites since childhood have been these little gingersnap-like goodies.)

1 stick butter
1/4 cup vegetable shortening (preferably non-hydrogenated)
1 cup brown sugar
3 Tablespoons molasses
1 egg
2 cups flour (you can use a combination of all purpose and whole wheat pastry flour)
1 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp ground cloves
granulated sugar (about 1/2 cup)

Preheat the oven to 375. Cream butter, shortening and brown sugar till light and fluffy. Beat in molasses and egg. In a separate bowl, combine dry ingredients and gradually combine them into the egg and sugar mixture.

Shape the cookies into little balls, about 3/4" in diameter. Roll them in granulated sugar and place them well-spaced on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.

Bake for 12 minutes; allow to cool on the pan for 4-5 minutes, then remove them to a rack.

You may need to adjust the baking time a bit to get the right degree of crispiness, but in my experience, no one complains about a slightly soft, chewy cookie.

Vegetable Stock

2009-12-03T16:34:00.007-05:00

Usually when I make soup I use water. I always use tons of vegetables, and I let them get nice and caramelized in the oil or butter when I'm sauteing them, so I figure, it sort of turns into its own stock, right? Plus, you know I'm a bean-cooking fiend, so I always have plenty of "bean stock" to round out the soup with flavored broth.

But.

Sometimes one needs a good stock (I'm thinking particularly of the stuffing I made last month for Thanksgiving, or this baked dish with beans and potatoes I've been making from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, or, even, sometimes, to add depth to soup.)

So, how to proceed?

I've been making one that's very close to Mark Bittman's roasted vegetable stock, where you roast the usual suspects (onion, garlic, celery, carrot, maybe a potato and/or a parsnip, if available), plus mushrooms, in plenty of olive oil in a really hot (450!) oven, till they get nice and browned. I de-glaze the pan with some white wine, then throw in several cups of water and a little soy sauce. Dried herbs or a couple of sprigs of fresh (parsley, thyme), plus a bay leaf help round out the flavor. I let it gently simmer for about an hour before cooling and straining.

Squash bread, a.k.a. "vegan challah"

2009-11-30T08:51:00.003-05:00

The circumstances:

1. I wanted to take bread to a pot luck a couple of weeks back
2. I had a plethora of squash (that's the understatement of the year)
3. At least one vegan would be attending, and, as a sometime/semi vegetarian, I am highly sympathetic to the plight of "oh, crap, the only thing I can eat in this entire spread of food is the thing I brought myself!"

I decided braided loaves would be nice for presentation, but of course I didn't want to use eggs, butter or milk. Beard On Bread has a recipe for sweet potato bread that my sister and I have riffed on for years, often subbing in squash for the sweet potato. And for what it's worth: I don't think it matters at all what kind of winter squash (or pumpkin) you use.

Preparing the squash: I usually halve the squash, scoop out the seeds, oil the cut surfaces lightly, and then bake, face down, at 350 or 375 till soft. Lately, I've been putting a cup or so of water in the roasting pan as well. I think it cooks better when there's some moisture in there.

Next, I let the squash cool, then scoop out the flesh and run it through the food mill. I know people who skip this step and use the processor instead, but I wouldn't just mash it by hand. Strings or lumps will mar the quality of your bread!

If your squash is particularly watery, you may need to adjust the quantity of water in the bread. (For pies, I generally cook the puree down in a skillet; for bread, it doesn't much matter because you can just add less liquid.)

To make the breads (this recipe makes two loaves):

6 cups flour
1 1/3 cup squash
1 scant T yeast (I use instant)
1 T salt
1/3 cup oil
3 T maple syrup
1 1/3 cup water

Mix all ingredients till you have a nice, elastic dough. Knead then shape into a round; cover the bowl and let rise till doubled.

Divide the dough into six equal pieces (I use a scale but you could just eyeball it). Braid into two loaves and cover and let rise again, about half the time you let it rise the first time. Brush with water and sprinkle with poppy seeds, if you like.

Bake at 375 for 45 minutes to an hour.

(Note: the first time I made this I did an overnight [about 12 hours] rise on the counter and only used 1/4 tsp of yeast. Given how cold my kitchen is overnight in November, I probably should have used a touch more yeast, but it did okay.)

I liked this bread so much (and I still had the plethora of squash) that I used it for my Thanksgiving stuffing.

Thanksgiving prep, etc.

2009-11-24T16:04:00.003-05:00

It goes without saying that I'm hopelessly behind on posts, but I wanted to say what's cooking TODAY (it's Tuesday, and Thanksgiving is just a couple of days away!)

Cranberry sauce (I used this recipe, but cut the sugar down to 1.5 cups and added two peeled, diced apples). I particularly like this because you add the bourbon after it cooks, making it nice and boozy.

Preserved lemons (I have my eye on this recipe, to help deal with my plethora of squash--I used his recipe for the lemons, too, which is linked somewhere in the recipe).

Pumpkins, baking for pie.

Toasted bread cubes, from a new recipe I made up for bread. I will post the recipe in a day or so--I've now made it twice and it got good reviews at a pot luck I took it to on Saturday. This is the recipe I use as a guide for stuffing amounts and proportions--but I don't think I'm including apples or walnuts this time. And I may just use Penzeys poultry seasoning for the herbs!

Last but not least: rice krispie treats.

Last chard? (for my own reference)

2009-11-18T16:07:00.002-05:00

I just wanted to make a note that I just harvested what might be the last of my chard. It's clear and cold, and I'm thinking that's a recipe for a hard frost, so I just cut down nearly all of the plants. I still left the "hearts" of the plants out there, in case I'm wrong about the frost, so it can keep growing. I love that I'm still getting food from my yard on the 18th of November!

Chard with apples

2009-11-06T16:06:00.004-05:00

I'm still here, and still cooking. I'm just having a two-pronged crisis. Prong A: In a nutshell, I'm having trouble downloading pictures and figuring out how to store and sort photos efficiently. Prong B: I can't figure out what to do about posting recipes copyrighted by other people, which covers a lot of my cooking.

BUT!!

That's not why I'm posting today. I'm posting today (without a picture, it's true) about a Brand New Recipe that I Dreamed Up All By Myself. You can probably figure out how to make it from the title, up there--it's that simple. But it is SO delicious, so much more than the sum of its parts. The apple adds a subtle, beautiful sweetness that's hard to identify in the finished dish.

I'm partial to ruby chard, myself: it's what I grew this year and I'm still harvesting, even now in the first week of November. Woot! Next year I'll grow more, even! These proportions work with a small bunch of chard.

Anyway: chop an onion and the chard stems nice and fine. Saute till mostly tender with a few pinches of salt. Add half a diced, peeled apple and the chopped chard leaves, as well as a tablespoon or two of water. Continue to cook, stirring occasionally, for about 10 more minutes.

This is delicious on its own as a side dish, or tossed with rice and topped with feta.

I did this because I love chard with dried fruit: raisins, apricots, even (especially?) dried cherries . . . but one day I had a ton of garden chard to cook and no dried fruit in the house. But I did have apples, and thought, oh, why not? Why not, indeed. Try it. You won't be sorry.

Raspberry syrup

2009-09-24T10:03:00.001-04:00

I barely have time to post this, but don't want to forget what I did.

Combine 1/2 cup of water and 2 cups of sugar until dissolved over medium heat. Add a pint of raspberries and stir till it boils. Let it boil for 5 minutes (stirring often), then line a strainer with cheesecloth and let it drain for an hour. Done. It made about 2 cups.

Dill pickle chips

2009-08-25T11:28:00.008-04:00

I have no picture to accompany this post, but you all know what sliced cucumbers, and pickles, look like, anyway, right?

I've been using my mandoline in the kitchen lately (story of why to follow, assuming I ever catch up on all the posts I haven't written this summer), so I sliced the 3 lbs. or so of pickling cukes I got at the Waltham Farmer's Market nice and thin.

I threw in 2 or 3 crushed garlic cloves as well as a bunch of dill flowers from my wildly overgrown patch of dill (I planted six plants this spring, so when they went to seed, they went with a vengeance!)

Here is the recipe I used for the brine, from one of my new favorite blogs. I made about 1.25 quarts of brine, which was a lot, but I've had trouble in the past with lacto-fermentation and liquid evaporation. It's much better to have too much brine than too little.

If the temperature hadn't been quite so extreme, I think I'd have left them out for another day or two to ferment before packing them into jars and fridgeing them. It was awfully hot, though, so I went with 48 hours.

(Thanks, Susan, for the nudge I needed to get this up here!)

Vegetarian baked beans, ketchup-free

2009-07-12T21:13:00.007-04:00

I've noticed that this post gets my blog more hits than practically anything else. I guess there's quite the demand for vegetarian baked beans! Honestly, it's not that hard to make them, either. A little time consuming, but not difficult.

But I've been tinkering with the recipe. It still stands as a good one (pretty loosey-goosey, but I think that's okay: it gives plenty of room for modification to individual tastes.) I've been making these about twice a month since April, so I'm updating with the latest incarnation.

As if it's not enough to make baked beans from scratch, though, I decided I wanted to make them without ketchup. Ever hear that old Carol Sagan quote? "In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe." So, um, yeah, I know that perhaps "from scratch" can be taken too far. Still.

I used canned tomato sauce (about 1.5 cups, I think), and some additional spices, instead. Perhaps a little extra molasses as well.

You know, the ketchup label doesn't give a whole lot of detail about what's in there (other than the HFCS, of course). "Spices." What does that mean? I checked a couple of cookbooks, notably Laurel's Kitchen and The Complete Book of Home Preserving, by Kingry and Devine, and added small amounts (no more than 1/4 tsp) each of ground celery seed, ground cloves, oregano, and about a pinch each of cinnamon and cumin. I wanted depth without making any of those noticeable, although I may have erred too far on the side of caution. Next time I may try just a touch more.

Chermoula

2009-07-07T12:03:00.000-04:00

These pictures, as frequently happens, are out of order. For reasons I can't quite understand, blogger uploads the pictures backwards from how one selects them. Or else it's just messing with me.

Anyway, I frequently get a bunch of cilantro, and don't know quite what I'm going to do to use ALL of it. I often use a few sprigs to half the bunch, but the rest doesn't quite make it into, well, anything but the compost pile.

I vowed it would be different this time -- and I decided to make this Moroccan sauce, traditionally used on fish. I used it two ways: once to dress some thinly-sliced raw salad turnips. The other time I put over a couple of portobello mushrooms Jon grilled for me. Totally delicious.

(The first picture is, um, maybe not as clear as it could be. It's a grilled mushroom on a roll. Blurry, of course.)

Chermoula

about 1/2 cup chopped cilantro
about 1/4 cup chopped parsley
4 garlic scapes, minced
4 scallions, minced
salt to taste
1 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/3 cup olive oil
juice of 1 lemon

Fun with garlic scapes

2009-07-02T12:26:00.003-04:00

I'm pretty much out of scapes (I have two more hoarded from last week to use in pesto later) but next year, I'm going to make this.

A perfect early summer meal

2009-06-28T11:08:00.006-04:00

This isn't so much a post about recipes, as just a celebration of a dinner made from local food.

First, steamed beets, sliced and tossed with butter. My sister loves beets so much that she believes butter's purpose on earth is to be combined with beets. Usually I make pickled beets, which is my favorite way to eat them, but for the first beets of the season, I made them Julie's way. They were sensational.

Next, a beautiful salad, with two kinds of lettuce and arugula, radishes and salad turnips. Dressing loaded with garlic scapes, and a couple of tablespoons of chopped parsley and dill from my herb garden.

Finally, a classic in my kitchen: "Spinach Squares." Also known as crustless quiche, and the basis for those little mini-quiches I made a few weeks back. (These are also great brunch food.)

3 eggs
1 cup milk
1 cup (or more - up to 1/2 lb) grated sharp cheddar
1 cup flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
as much spinach as you can procure
onion/garlic/leeks/etc. (I'd use one small onion -- use that as your guide for amounts of other things)

Saute onion (I had some lovely spring leeks so I used those) in 2 tablespoons of olive oil till softened.

I had one good-sized bunch of spinach, but could easily have used two. Also I have successfully made this with frozen chopped spinach -- a one-lb. bag works perfectly.

Chop the spinach and add to the pot with the onion. Let it just wilt -- don't cook it too much. Allow it to cool.

preheat oven to 350.

In a 9x13 pan, melt a tablespoon of butter. Tilt the pan so the bottom and sides are coated.

Combine the dry ingredients in one bowl.

In another bowl, beat the eggs, then add the milk, the cheese, and the spinach mixture. Carefully mix in the dry ingredients, then spread into the prepared pan.

Bake for 35 minutes.

Strawberry roll cake

2009-06-19T10:56:00.004-04:00

We picked strawberries, 6.5 lbs, which yielded enough for 4.5 pints of jam (still making the old-fashioned, long-simmered, no-added-pectin kind), plus the sauce for this strawberry roll cake, and some just for snacking. I still have plans to pick more in a few days. I want to be drowning in jam. Jon loves strawberry jam; I love making it. Good thing we're married.

Several factors contributed to the making of this cake:

1. I had a weird hankering to make a roll cake a couple of weeks ago, and told Arij maybe I'd make one for my birthday in a few months. (Planning ahead is so important, don't you think?)

2. The kids requested shortcake (complete with whipped cream), but I was pretty sure they were thinking "cake" and not "biscuit," so I thought I should make something cake-like for the base.

3. I consulted The Joy of Cooking for cake recipes; they suggested a sponge cake. My original intention (lacking little cake molds) was to cut it up into squares and layer them with a little strawberry syrup and top with whipped cream.

4. But then all three of these things coalesced and I thought, why not just roll that sheet of spongy-sweet goodness up with some strawberries?

The result was yummy.

The cake was moderately fussy. The recipe instructed me to beat 5 eggs with 3/4 a cup of sugar for 5 minutes (with a stand mixer) or 7-10 minutes (with a hand-held mixer). Well, since I don't actually BAKE cakes (or so goes the logic in my little brain), I don't own a stand mixer. Besides . . . where would I *keep* it?! But I was making this as I was stirring jam, sterilizing jars, supervising my kids, etc., so I couldn't very well stand there all that time. So I took breaks, and estimated, and tried to gauge whether it resembled "soft whipped cream." (Oh, I also worried if one could OVER mix it and ruin it irreparably.) So I finally just stopped beating it already and added the 3/4 cup of sifted cake flour, the teaspoon of baking powder, and the 3 T of melted butter combined with 1/4 cup of hot milk.

The baking was uneventful: I poured the batter into an 11x17 pan lined with the sil-pat (basically reusable parchment paper) and baked for 9 minutes. You have to invert it right away onto foil, wait for it to cool, and then peel off the parchment, flip it back over and peel the foil off. Then it's ready to go.

basil and garlic scape pesto, with an elaborate presentation

2009-06-18T15:55:00.008-04:00

Do you ever fiddle around with food, preparing multiple parts of a dish, only to realize you've just spent an inordinate amount of time on something that doesn't really even count as a full meal?

Oh. Maybe it's just me, then.

Moving right along . . . We got a little bunch of basil, yielding maybe a loosely-packed cup, from our CSA this week. Not enough to really make pesto with. But we also got a generous clump of garlic scapes, and together, I thought they'd make a great pesto. I shelled a couple of walnuts and tossed them in the processor, followed by 3 or 4 coarsely chopped scapes and the basil, adding a little olive oil to loosen it up. I added a few pinches of salt and some parmegano reggiano, and scooped it into a jar. Lovely.

But what to eat it on? Pasta? Yawn. How about polenta? But I apparently am incapable of making it and leaving it alone. I made my oven-baked polenta, then stirred in about a cup of grated romano cheese. I scooped it into a loaf pan and let it solidify.

Somewhere along the way, I realized I had a few mushrooms that my mom had brought me, and they weren't getting any fresher . . . . so I chopped those up and seared them in olive oil with a little salt.

Once the polenta was (almost) solid -- almost because I ran out of time -- I (washed the processor and then) processed up a couple of slices of pain de campagne from several days ago to make crumbs. I dipped the polenta slices into a an egg beaten with a little salt and a couple tablespoons of milk, and then into bread crumbs. I baked them at 400 for 20 minutes, flipped them over, and baked for 20 more minutes.

But really, does fussed-over polenta topped with ~~fungus and elaborately-wrought weeds~~ mushrooms and pesto really constitute a meal? No, I didn't think so either.

So I threw together a salad, with scallions, radishes and beautiful lettuce, dressed with a lemon juice and olive oil vinaigrette. (Um, is it still vinaigrette if it doesn't contain vinegar? Clearly, one for the ages.)

Know what? It's a good thing I have an indulgent spouse who puts up with this kind of thing for dinner. The fact that it tasted beyond fabulous probably had something to do with it.

(As you can see, the camera situation is getting pretty desperate around here. I have *got* to upgrade.)

braised turnip and radish greens, for breakfast

2009-06-18T12:05:00.001-04:00

We had two beautiful bunches of turnips and greens, as well as one of radishes. I've read that radish greens are edible, and they looked so fresh and yummy, so I decided to toss those in with the turnip greens.

I cleaned them and chopped them, then tossed them into a heavy pot with a couple tablespoons of olive oil. I added a couple of minced garlic scapes and some salt.

I stirred for a bit, and then wondered what I'd use for braising liquid. Water would do, I guess . . . then I remembered that I'd just cooked lentils for lentil salad (see two posts ago) . . . that lentil cooking water would be perfect!

I cooked them for about 10 minutes, maybe, or a little more, till they were tender.

Leftovers, pictured above: toasted pain de campagne, topped with warmed juicy greens and an egg.

(Yes, this would be Jon's plate, with the leftover steak for breakfast. He and my dad were in heaven.)

Garden radishes!!

2009-06-17T12:02:00.000-04:00

So, so excited about my own radishes, harvested this morning.

Lentil salad with my favorite vinaigrette

2009-06-15T17:44:00.005-04:00

I have been using a fabulous combination of salad dressing ingredients for quite some time, now. But as part of my ongoing internal dialog about whether I can post a recipe from someone else verbatim, I have not shared it here.

But.

I have recently found variations on this dressing in more than one place, and I realized that I have indeed varied it enough myself that I can post it in good conscience.

So here it is, My Favorite Vinaigrette:

1/4 cup olive oil
2 Tablespoons red or white wine vinegar
1 tsp to 1 T minced allium-family item (shallot, onion, garlic, scallion, chive, garlic scapes)
1/4 tsp salt
freshly-ground black pepper
1-2 T fresh parsley, minced (other fresh herbs work well, too, but don't use too many at once)
about 1 T sour cream
about 1 T dijon mustard
about 1 T capers (optional)

Mix the vinegar, salt and minced allium and let stand for 10 minutes. Then add the rest of the ingredients and shake or stir vigorously.

This dressing is great on a green salad, or on julienned radishes or baby turnips (a personal favorite), or on legumes.

I threw together a version with lentils de puy when I realized last week at 5.30 that I had no protein item for our dinner.

Lentil salad

3/4 cup lentils, sorted and rinsed.
4 radishes, halved or quartered and thinly sliced
2 scallions, chopped fine

Cook lentils in 3 cups salted water till tender but not falling apart, about 40 minutes. Drain. (I used the cooking water to help braise some turnip and radish greens we ate with the lentil salad.)

Toss the lentils with the dressing while they're still hot. Allow to cool to room temperature before adding the radishes and scallions.

You might want extra salt or pepper.

Simple rhubarb

2009-06-10T10:41:00.003-04:00

Yesterday I went to the Lexington Farmer's Market. What a great market, with tons of vendors and great local food energy. I had to restrain myself, as I have another CSA pickup today, but I did buy a few things, including a big bundle of rhubarb from Blue Heron Organic Farm in Lincoln.

Once home, I cleaned and chopped the rhubarb. It yielded maybe 3 or 4 cups? I put it in a baking dish, stirred in maybe a half cup of brown sugar and a half teaspoon of cinnamon and baked it at 350 for about 40 minutes, stirring often.

It's a lovely little compote, just a little sweet but with that inimitable rhubarb flavor shining through! I'm thinking I'll stir it into oatmeal . . . spread it on toast . . . mix it into yogurt and eat it with granola . . . I don't think it will last long!

Vegetables for breakfast

2009-06-08T15:40:00.005-04:00

I'm trying to incorporate more vegetables into my life. One strategy I hit upon was to try to eat a vegetable with *every* meal -- even breakfast, even lunch -- even if it just means a few lettuce leaves, or a raw carrot. I don't claim that I am managing this all the time, but it's a goal to strive for. One strategy, of course, involves using leftovers.

I like a shot of protein in the morning, so I often eat an egg. I'm a big fan of the improvised fritatta -- with leftover greens, or pasta, or even quinoa. (One of these days I'll blog my quick quinoa dish -- fast fast and very versatile, and the leftovers make a great fritatta.)

Today I didn't have an egg, though: I had the classic radish sandwich, the makings of which are pictured above. (I made the bread yesterday.) A slice of pain de campaigne, lightly buttered and covered with thinly-sliced radish, topped with a sprinkle of kosher salt. Heavenly.

I also ate the other night's turnips and greens, also pictured above, reheated and spooned over another slice of bread, lightly toasted. (Side note: I generally prefer baby turnips raw, sliced thinly or julienned and dressed with my variation on Deborah Madison's mustard vinaigrette, but this time I sliced them, sauteed in olive oil with some garlic and their chopped greens. A delicious preparation, but I do think I prefer them raw. They're sharper raw, whereas cooked they're SO sweet and melting. They provide a nice foil for their greens, though, which retain their sharpness even when they're cooked.)

Finally (don't be grossed out), I ate leftover baked beans on toast. Didn't I say I need protein in the morning? I usually go for an egg, but beans can serve me well, too!

(A final note: I apologize for the lousy quality of the pictures. My camera is not doing that well. Maybe one of these days, I'll upgrade.)

Quick bok choi

2009-06-03T15:32:00.005-04:00

Today was the first pickup at our summer CSA. (It also might be a year ago today that I started this blog -- can that really be?!) I participated, a little, in a new member orientation that was instituted this year, and Ellie, one of the growers, pitched this blog (Thanks, Ellie!) And then I had a conversation with a new member about what to do with bok choi -- I sort of rattled off a "recipe," but told her (hi, Debbie!) that I'd put one up here.

1 bunch bok choi (these bunches were huge -- maybe a pound?)
1 large garlic clove, minced
1 large-garlic-clove-size piece of fresh ginger, minced
2 T soy sauce
1 (scant) T rice vinegar
2 tsp sugar
1 heaping T corn starch
1 T canola oil mixed with 1 tsp Asian sesame oil

The biggest trouble I have with bok choi is how watery it can be. I think I came up with a solution. I chopped the leaves, but kept the stems separate, and cooked them first. Also, I used plenty of corn starch in the sauce.

Note: as you can see from the pictures, I wasn't super-careful about keeping the stems and leaves separate. It doesn't really matter; just be sure you get most of the stems separated.

Heat the canola and sesame oils in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the stems and cook, tossing or stirring frequently, for about 5 minutes, until they're tender (try a piece -- you don't want it soggy, but you want it to cook down a bit and let that excess water cook off.)

Add the green part of the leaves as well as the ginger and garlic. Continue tossing/stirring for another 3 or 4 minutes.

In a small bowl, combine soy sauce, vinegar, sugar and corn starch and stir well.

Give the sauce an extra stir right before adding it to the skillet of greens. Stir constantly to coat all the bok choi with sauce and let the sauce thicken (about 30 seconds?), then remove from heat and serve.

Edited to add: We get a *lot* of bok choi, so I reprised this a few days later. This time I used Loriva brand roasted peanut oil combined with canola to cook with, and drizzled on a couple of teaspoons of toasted sesame oil at the end. I also increased the amount of sauce I made to accommodate the cooked soba noodles I tossed in to make a meal out of it.

Next up, maybe, fried rice with bok choi.

"Asian" spinach

2009-05-27T08:46:00.003-04:00

No picture of this one, sorry! I forgot to take one before we gobbled it up. I went to Wilson Farm last weekend for some seedlings, some black beans (Baer's, of course) and to check out what they had for local produce.

I came home with a giant bag of spinach and two bunches of asparagus. (Jon looked at the asparagus and said, "only two? are you serious?" Looks like I'll have to go back.) The first bunch of asparagus I just boiled gently till just tender in salted water and served with a combination of olive oil and butter. Heavenly. I have a plan for the second one, but that will have to wait for another post.

Spinach: that's what I'm writing about today.

1 lb spinach, give or take
1 T toasted sesame oil (or to taste)
1 T soy sauce (or to taste)
2 tsp sugar

Combine all dressing ingredients in a small bowl.

Wash and stem the spinach. Spin or blot it dry, but don't worry about getting it totally dry, as it will steam in the moisture left on the leaves. Get out a big pot -- I used a 6-quart stockpot and still couldn't fit it all at once. Fill the pot with spinach, put a lid on it, and put it over medium heat for a minute or two. As the spinach wilts down, put more into the pot, tossing it around with tongs or a wooden spoon. Once it's all wilted, drain it well, squeezing out the moisture so it doesn't make the dressing watery.

Chop the leaves coarsely, then toss with the dressing.

Serve hot or cold. Love that kind of versatility.

Variations:
I could also imagine throwing a splash of rice vinegar into the sauce, and some hot pepper flakes. Maybe some scallions or minced garlic? Really, the possibilities are endless.

"Wild thing" mini quiches

2009-05-26T11:51:00.003-04:00

I was going to call these "weed quiche" but the attorney we had over for dinner advised against it. It's nettles, people!

I keep reading about the edible weeds that grow wild in our gardens . . . we've tried purslane, which I rather like. The burdock is crazy but you can't eat the leaves, only the root, and I haven't managed to dig one up. Their taproots are really hard to pull out and must go all the way to the core of the earth. Lamb's quarters? Haven't seen 'em. Dandelion, check; violets, check. But what about stinging nettles? Finally I found some growing in one of my flower beds. I even proved that it was indeed nettle by (wait for it) getting stung by it. Ouch. Seriously, ouch.

So, what to do? I went to my friend google and learned how to handle it, for one thing. I wore a rubber glove on one hand and wielded scissors in the other. I swished the nettles in a bowl of water to clean them off, and then put them into a small pot of boiling water for 1.5 minutes. Then I fished them out with tongs, blotted them with a towel, and let cool.

3 T melted butter

2 extra large eggs
1/4 cup milk

1/4 cup flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 cup finely grated cheddar

4 oz mushrooms, diced fine
1 smallish onion, diced fine

salt and pepper

3 stalks spring nettles (could substitute spinach, chard, etc.), blanched (see instructions), stemmed, and chopped fine.

Preheat the oven to 350.

First, saute the onion with a few pinches of salt till softened, then add the mushrooms. Let them relealse their juices and get tender. (I used a little olive oil for the sauteeing.) Toss in the blanched, chopped nettles and remove from the heat.

Next, beat the eggs with another couple picnhes of salt and add the milk. Combine the flour and baking soda in a bowl, then grate in the cheese (that 1/4 cup is an approxiate measurement). Add the egg/milk mixture and then the onion, mushroom and nettles. Grind in some pepper, and mix gently but thoroughly. You don't want any clumps of flour! .

Brush the mini muffin pan (24-muffin size) generously with melted butter. Fill each muffin cup with 1 level tablespoon of the batter.

Bake for 15-20 minutes.

Vegetarian baked beans

2009-04-26T11:58:00.008-04:00

(For an update of this recipe without ketchup, please click here.)

Canned baked beans are one of the few convenience foods I buy regularly. And since I'm not exactly a vegetarian (except sometimes, ha ha), and I live with omnivores, I can happily eat Bush's baked beans and just avoid that chunk of pork they put in there and not get too worked up about it. But still. If you're me, you reach a point where you wonder why, exactly, you're so dependent on that can. Surely we can come up with good baked beans with a little tinkering . . .

I've tried most of the vegetarian baked beans out there, and I have not been impressed. They seem overwhelmingly sweet, which led me to conclude that, without meat, it must be hard to make full-flavored baked beans. What was I thinking?

Here's the other thing: as someone who is frequently choosing to make a meal out of low-protein "side dishes," I really like having a "side dish" that provides a real alternative protein to the meat on the grill. Vegetarian baked beans fill the bill: they're familiar; everyone likes them, but they still mean I don't HAVE to eat meat or get protein-deprived. (My other standby on these occasions is hummus, of course. Any others?)

I had amazingly good luck with Goya navy beans (available at the Hannaford down the hill for $1.67) (but doesn't that seem sort of steep for pre-packaged dry beans? Am I hallucinating that a few short years ago, they were about a buck cheaper than that?)

I didn't plan ahead terribly well, but did a strong saltwater (2 hefty T of salt dissolved in about 3 quarts of water) soak for 4 hours in warmish water, and it worked fine. I brought the beans to a boil for about 5 minutes, then added a medium onion, chopped fine, and some garlic. I covered the pot and let it simmer for about 45 minutes and they were done: tender but still holding their shape. Bean perfection!

My sauce is a work in progress, and I would strongly suggest playing with the proportions to suit your own tastes. (Expect updates throughout grilling season as I continue to refine the recipe.) It's a long ingredient list, but don't let that intimidate you: if you don't have some of the items, just leave them out.

Optional sauce additions, particularly if you don't have some of the items on my list: bottled barbecue sauce (we like Dinosaur in our house), if you happen to have some around; citrus, like a splash of lemon or orange juice; pineapple; hoisin sauce. Personally, I think that citrus can easily become overwhelming, which is why it's not part of my recipe, but everyone's palate is different.

My inspirations for this recipe come from Laurel's Kitchen, The Moosewood Restaurant's Low-Fat Favorites, and Emeril's Every Day's a Party.

2-3 medium onions, chopped
2-3 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
2 T vegetable oil
1/8 to 1/4 tsp ground fennel
1/8 to 1/4 tsp ground allspice
1 tsp tamari
generous 1/2 cup of ketchup
scant 1/4 cup molasses
1/4 to 1/2 cup brown sugar
1 generous tablespoon brown mustard
1-2 tsp Pickapeppa sauce
1 tsp tamarind concentrate
2-3 tsp cider vinegar (go easy -- it can easily become too tangy!)
1 tsp vegetarian Worcestershire sauce
several generous grindings of black pepper

Saute onions in oil with a couple of pinches of salt, stirring often. Allow them to caramelize for as much time as you have. Add garlic, fennel and allspice, stirring constantly. Add remaining ingredients (except beans) and bring to a simmer.

I use about 3/4 of the beans (rough guess) for this much sauce. Adding more ketchup is a good plan if there doesn't seem to be enough sauce, but you can also thin the sauce with some of the bean broth. Be sure to taste for salt and add more if you need to.

After the sauce has simmered a few minutes, add the beans. Bring it back to a simmer, then put it, covered, in a 250-degree oven for 45 minutes. Needless to say, they can be made ahead and they reheat beautifully.

Black bean soup

2009-03-28T19:19:00.003-04:00

Did I say, in that last post on "veggie chili," that I make soup out of the leftovers? Well, I do.

Basically I just puree the leftovers with the cooking broth from the black beans, sometimes adjusting the seasoning with a little more salt or cumin.

Garnishing with sour cream and chopped cilantro is completely optional, though delicious.

Occasionally it will wind up a little thin, texture-wise, but fear not. I got a great little trick from (where else?) a Deborah Madison cookbook to thicken this soup: whisk in a couple of tablespoons of masa harina. (That's the corn flour treated with lime that you use to make tortillas from.) It adds a really nice flavor dimension as well as the thickening.

Oh, and regarding blenders: I have a hand-held "stick" blender that I've been using less and less. I don't know if it's just gotten old, and sort of worn out, or what -- but I really think that the standard countertop blender is more effective. Only problem is, it is more of a chore to wash.

I don't have a fancy one, either. It's an Oster that cost about $30 in about 1992, bought, if memory serves, at the Montgomery Ward in Morgantown. But it is effective for pureeing soups.

A final note: there's no picture with this post because this soup may not be the most photogenic thing going. Delicious, but kinda plain.

Beans and rice, redux

2009-03-27T10:12:00.002-04:00

In my house, there is a dinner we eat easily once a week. Over the years, its name has evolved. Once it was "tacos" or "veggie chili." Then it became "Permission" (as in, "permission to eat junk food for dinner," because we'd scoop it up with chips that had cheese melted over them.) Its current iteration is "chips and cheese" because that's how the kids think of it. They also love the sour cream we serve as a condiment.

But, um, in recent months, I've been trying to watch what I'm eating a little more closely, and I decided I don't really need to gorge on chips and cheese, delicious though they are. So I've been experimenting with other sides to go with the veggie chili so I don't have to fill up on the chips. I'm trying to treat them as a garnish or whatever, instead of the main dish!

Polenta works well, as do potatoes boiled then combined with sauteed onions and chili powder.

But today I decided to make rice.

I've been relying more and more on cooking my own beans instead of canned, and that results in lovely broth that I often use to make soup (more on black bean soup in another post). But there's a recipe of Deborah Madison's where she uses the black bean broth to cook rice. It's not perhaps the prettiest thing going, but it is tasty.

"Veggie chili"

I usually use black beans, though kidney or pinto beans also work, as does a combination.

1 large onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic
2 tsp chili powder
2 tsp cumin
2 tsp coriander
1 tsp oregano
1 cup frozen corn
1/2 to 1 cup diced canned tomatoes, including the liquid (or salsa)
3 cups or so of cooked beans (or canned)
salt to taste

Saute the onion in oil for 10 minutes or so, then add the corn. Let it thaw and even get a little browned. Add the spices and garlic and stir constantly for a minute or two. Add beans and tomatoes, and simmer for as long as you have. I often add some bean broth to make it a little juicier.

Oh, and I used corn from the freezer from the farmer's market last summer! As I said earlier in the week, I've finally been using all the local produce I froze last summer.

The rice is pretty standard: saute a little onion and garlic plus 1/8 tsp anise seeds with a cup and a quarter of rice and 1/2 tsp of salt. Add 2 cups bean broth and bring to a boil; turn down the heat and let it simmer till done.

Leftovers of this veggie chili make a great base for black bean soup. But I'll write about that in another post.

Indian-inspired dinner

2009-03-25T09:43:00.000-04:00

Okay, I'll get that top picture out of the way right away. People sometimes ask me how I cook so much with small children in the house. That picture provides one of the answers: those are brown mustard seeds that Anne was playing with while I cooked. You wouldn't believe how long she enjoyed those for . . . or how long it took me to clean up afterward. This was about three weeks ago and I'm still finding them around the kitchen.

The second picture is the sort of standard red-lentil dal that I make -- I used to make it a LOT, but then Arij kind of lost interest in it so I don't make it as often. It's almost not worth posting a recipe for, because you could find it in any number of cookbooks, but what I do is this:

Red lentil dal

1 cup red lentils, sorted and rinsed, then cooked in 2.5 or 3 cups water till soft
1 large onion, chopped
(1 T minced ginger -- I don't always have it on hand, so I don't always include it)
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
1 T Penzeys sweet curry powder
salt to taste

Saute the onions in a couple of tablespoons of oil till nicely soft and browned -- then add garlic and ginger (if using). Stir constantly and keep cooking for another minute or two, then add the curry powder. Turn off heat and stir all this into the cooked lentils.

This time I also added a cube of frozen eggplant from last summer into the simmering dal. It kind of melted in and nearly disappeared, but still provided some depth of flavor.

Potatoes with Indian spices

This time, I sauteed twice as much onion, garlic, ginger and curry powder, and then kept half of it out to combine with the cubed, boiled potatoes.

Green beans

This recipe I adapted from one that Phantom Scribbler gave me. It is seriously yummy.

I made it with Drumlin Farm green beans from the freezer -- they have been delicious!

2 T oil
2 tsp brown mustard seeds
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 lb green beans
1/4 cup water
1 tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar

Heat the oil and add mustard seeds and cumin seeds. Have a lid handy, because those mustard seeds pop everywhere! Fry for a couple of minutes; add the beans and stir fry for 2 or 3 minutes. Add water, cover, and cook for 4-5 minutes.

Uncover, raise heat to boil off any remaining water, and add remaining ingredients.

Blueberry pancakes

2009-03-23T09:37:00.001-04:00

These are pretty standard pancakes (from an old edition of The Joy of Cooking) that we have used for years, with the addition of BLUEBERRIES FROM THE FREEZER. (That is, from Honey Pot Hill.)

It's funny, it takes me until about March to start realizing that I froze all this wonderful produce for a reason, and I need to use it! Whee! Arij has been requesting these so much that, alas, the blueberries are gone. Next summer, I'm going to freeze more. Well, I will if I can convince Arij to help me pick them ;-)

Beans and rice

2009-03-21T09:28:00.003-04:00

Isn't this a beautiful combination of food? I feel I can't post the recipes, because I make them more or less verbatim from Vegetarian Suppers from Deborah Madison's Kitchen, but I had to post the picture, and I'll describe the dish. If you're desperate, email me and I'll send you the recipe, but I feel weird posting HER recipe without permission.

Basically it consists of a "sauce" for the black beans with onion, cilantro and coconut milk, and then you use the other half of the can of coconut milk as part of the rice cooking liquid. I think it's saffron making it yellow, though maybe it's both turmeric and saffron. (It's been awhile since I made this.)

The pickled red onions on top are so delicious and make a nice contrast in flavor and texture.

Elemental bean soup with polenta croutons

2009-02-10T07:18:00.002-05:00

This is the soup I made with some of the Baer's "money" beans I cooked the other day. I'd been reading Deborah Madison soup recipes for days, and this is what materialized in the kitchen. It was good enough that I wanted to jot it out.

The beans: I cooked a pound of them with an onion, a garlic clove, two bay leaves and a couple of pinches of asafoetida. Toward the end of cooking, I added a teaspoon or two of salt.

The soup:

1/2 an onion, chopped fine
1 carrot, diced fine
2 garlic cloves, halved and finely sliced
1.5 cups cooked beans PLUS another 1.5 cups pureed till very smooth in the processor
about 3 cups of bean cooking water
a splash of balsamic vinegar
salt and pepper, to taste

Saute onion in olive oil over medium-high heat; add a few pinches of salt. After 5-10 minutes, add carrot and continue to saute for another 5 to 10 minutes, stirring frequently. Add the garlic and stir constantly for another minute, and then add 2 cups (or so) of bean broth and bring to a boil. Simmer till the carrots are tender. Add the beans and bean puree and enough additional bean cooking liquid to make it soupy.

The polenta:

Earlier in the day, I made a batch of my oven-baked polenta and put it into a loaf pan to cool. About 20 minutes before I served the soup, I made 4 or 5 thick slices of polenta and then cut each slice into cubes (see picture above). I fried it up in an unholy amount of olive oil, turning it after 3 or 4 minutes to be sure at least two sides of each cube got toasty. A spatter guard was essential -- the popping and spitting was really unreal. I wish I could have put in an audio file so you could actually hear the noise it made.

The combination of the creamy soup and the cruncy polenta cubes was really amazing.

Cooking beans, again

2009-02-08T14:15:00.004-05:00

If you've read through much of this blog, you know I have a fixation on cooking beans. I do use canned beans, but I prefer cooking them myself. However. Just when I think I've got it all figured out, I'll cook some up that refuse to cooperate.

I bought an 8-lb bag of chickpeas from one of the Indian groceries here in town, and I have had terrible luck with them. They were a lot cheaper than the ones I'd had previously from Whole Foods, but they are taking forever to cook. Like, 3 hours or more. The last batch that I'd bought from Whole Foods cooked like a dream -- after soaking, they took barely an hour. And they tasted wonderful: sweet and rich. The ones I'm using now? They don't even taste that good, and the texture is weird. It's really aggravating.

I've had similar things happen with kidney beans -- the Baer's Best ones (a Massachusetts grower) cook up beautifully, by and large, but a large bag of kidney beans I bought just won't soften properly without that salt-water soak thing.

What's the lesson here? I'm guessing that it's an age issue. The ones I've had better luck with are fresher? But how do you always know? I have been toying with the idea of trying to find a buyer's club/co-op thing to buy bulk foods, but what if I buy, say, 20 lbs of chickpeas and find that they're not good ones? But what I'm doing now doesn't seem surefire, either, by any means.

All that said, an old friend from college who found me on Facebook suggested that I try using whey in the soaking water, a la Sally Fallon's book Nourishing Traditions. I tried that last night and I'll see how it goes. But I used it on a 1-lb. package of Baer's "money" beans, so I'm guessing that they'd have cooked up pretty well regardless of what I did.

Vegetable stock

2009-02-08T14:05:00.003-05:00

Always on the lookout for more things to do with root vegetables, today I made a really nice stock. I roasted this array of veggies (onion, garlic, rutabega, celeriac, carrots, parsnips) in a bit of olive oil and butter.

I cut everything small and used maybe a tablespoon of fat, sprinkled on some salt and tossed them all so everything was coated. I roasted them at 400 for about 45 minutes, stirring every 15 minutes or so.

When they were done roasting, and things were nicely browned in places, I scraped it all into a 3-quart pot and added water to cover. I brought it to a boil and then lowered it to a simmer for another 45 minutes.

The stock is a rich brown in color with a nice round depth of flavor. I'm thinking a mushroom risotto might be a good use for it . . .

Cinnamon Rolls

2009-01-20T19:10:00.000-05:00

This is an old recipe of my mom's. I'm pretty sure she got it from a Fleichman's Yeast package many years ago. It is incredibly easy, but also really good. I've tweaked it a little over the years. You mix these up the night before, the dough rises in the fridge, and then you shape them in the morning, let them rise, and bake. Perfect for brunch.

If you have a stand mixer, use it for sure. I don't, so I have used a hand-held mixer, but I've also just mixed it up by hand with a spoon.

4 cups all purpose flour

1/2 cup whole wheat flour

1/3 cup sugar

1 tsp salt

1 T instant yeast

3/4 cup milk

1/2 cup water

1 stick butter, cut in pieces

2 eggs

1 tsp fiori di sicilia or lemon flavor

To make the cinnamon sugar filling, mix 1/2 cup sugar with a tablespoon of ground cinnamon.

Combine 1 cup flour, 1/3 cup sugar, salt and yeast.

Heat milk, water, and butter over low heat to melt the butter. Add to dry ingredients and mix well. Add eggs and the whole-wheat flour, and mix again. Add enough additional flour to make a stiff batter. Cover tightly and refrigerate overnight.

In the morning, turn the dough out onto a floured board. Divide the dough into 3 equal pieces. as you work with one piece, keep the others covered so they don't dry out. Roll each piece into a 9x12" rectangle. Sprinkle dough with a generous amount of cinnamon sugar. Press it gently into the dough with your fingers, and then roll up the dough from the short side. Carefully seal the seam and the ends. Cut the roll into 1" pieces and place them evenly spaced into a greased 8" cake pan. Cover and let rise until doubled, about 45 minutes.

Bake at 375 for 20-25 minutes; remove from pans and cool on wire racks.

Tamale Pie

2009-01-19T07:31:00.000-05:00

Aaron was coming for dinner and I wanted something a little bit different, something I hadn't made in awhile.

First I made a batch of polenta (using my oven-bake method, of course), but I halved it. I'm not sure that was the best bet -- next time, I think I'd make a full batch and use about 3/4 of it. I added a lot of grated extra-sharp cheddar -- maybe 1 1/2 cup? -- after it came out of the oven.

Grease a gratin dish (or a plain rectangular or square baking dish) and spoon in the hot polenta. Spread it evenly around, and as far up the sides of the dish as you can easily manage.

While the polenta was baking, I prepared the filling:

1 large onion, chopped fine
2 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp chili powder
1 T flour
1 cup bean broth (or vegetable broth, or water)
1 cup crushed tomatoes
2-3 cups cooked pinto beans
1/2 tsp oregano
1 cup grated cheddar (this is for the top -- in addition to what gets mixed into the polenta)

Sauate the onion till golden, then add garlic and spices. Stir constantly for 1 minute, then stir in the flour and continue stirring for another minute. Add the broth, tomatoes, beans and oregano and stir well. Simmer for about 10 minutes, then spoon into the prepared polenta "crust."

Sprinkle with cheese and bake for 30 minutes, covered, then 15 minutes, uncovered, at 350. You might want to let it stand for a few minutes so the cheese sets.

Mashed potatoes and rutabegas with cheese and caramelized onion (or, oh, god, enough with the root vegetables, already!)

2009-01-10T12:01:00.005-05:00

Yes, more root vegetables!!

One of my best childhood/cooking memories is of my paternal grandmother (who died last year at the age of 98). She made pierogi by the gazillion several times a year when the extended family gathered at her house. She taught my mom to make them, too, and hers were even better than Grandma's. Beautifully supple egg-noodle dough, encapsulating a cheesy, onion-y, mashed potato filling. (Grandma also made ones stuffed with "kapusta" -- which was a combination of canned sauerkraut and fresh cabbage -- also delicious, and ones stuffed with stewed prunes, about which, well, the less I say, the better.)

After filling, they're dunked in boiling water long enough to cook the pasta, and then fried in a pan with butter and served, brown and crispy, with sour cream and/or more butter. Heavenly.

My mother and I have made pierogi together, with the help of the pasta machine to roll out the dough (Grandma used a rolling pin, of course). They're fun, but incredibly time-consuming (not to mention highly caloric!)

I was thinking of these the other night as I made this root-vegetable mash for dinner.

Mashed potatoes and rutabegas with cheese and caramelized onion

(maybe) 2 lbs potatoes, scrubbed (peeling optional) and cut into chunks
(maybe) 1.5 lbs rutabega, peeled and cut into small chunks
2 medium onions, sauteed in 2 T butter until brown and caramelized
1.5-2 cups grated sharp cheddar
salt and pepper to taste

Mash everything together. Use a scraper to get all the butter and onion out of the pan and into the mash.

Notes: the rutabegas and potatoes should really be cooked separately, as the potatoes cook a lot faster. The rutabegas are easier to mash if they're cooked nearly to falling-apart.

The broth from cooking the rutabegas and the potatoes is great to save for soup.

I served this with these lentils.

Root vegetables for breakfast

2009-01-09T16:05:00.002-05:00

I'm crazy, aren't I? Driven over the edge by a surfeit of rooty goodness from my Winter Share, apparently.

Not quite. In Vegetarian Cooking For Everyone (Deborah Madison, natch), there's a recipe I've been meaning to try forever, and I finally did. Really, it's so beautifully simple, it's hardly even a recipe.

Peel and thinly slice some parsnips (this is the most work of all). Melt 2 to 4 Tablespoons of butter over medium or even medium-high heat, and let it sizzle. Then add the parsnips, sprinkle with a little salt, and stir occasionally. Let them get a little browned around the edges. Dump them on a plate and drizzle on some maple syrup.

Really, a LOVELY dish, even for supper.

Daikon and carrot pickle (or, more fun with root vegetables)

2008-12-21T11:15:00.001-05:00

3/4 cup white vinegar
1/2 cup water
2-3 T sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 dried red pepper
3 cloves garlic
enough sliced daikon and carrot to loosely fill a 1-quart jar

Combine first four ingredients in a small saucepan. Heat, stirring, just until the salt and sugar are dissolved.

Put the remaining ingredients into a quart jar and pour vinegar mixture over.

Chill for at least 12 hours.

Bonus item: Annie, 3.5, was eating the sliced carrots almost as fast as I could cut them. I offered her a slice of daikon, but she said "It's too different for me."

Another take on green salad in the winter

2008-12-18T19:24:00.003-05:00

From left to right, that's julienned turnip, red storage radish, and carrot. The turnips are surprisingly crunchy, light, and sweet, when they're raw. Tossed in with lettuce and vinaigrette, it was quite lovely.

Root vegetable turnovers

2008-12-14T09:33:00.001-05:00

So when I was talking on Facebook about having a surfeit of root vegetables, someone (Hi, Kris!) suggested pasties. She even sent me a pile of recipes . . . most involving lots of meat. Then I remembered I'd seen a recipe for vegetarian pasties in Sundays at Moosewood. But that wasn't quite right, either. S. helped me by mentioning the word turnover and reminding me to check Deborah Madison. At last, the pieces were coming together. Here's what I wound up with.

They are sinfully rich, thanks to the pastry -- but so satisfying on a cold dark December night . . .

The filling actually makes too much for this amount of pastry, I found. But fear not! I have at least two delicious suggestions for leftover filling.*

The filling:
2 medium onions, diced
2 cups cabbage, chopped pretty fine (1/4 inch pieces, maybe?)
2 medium-small rutabegas, diced
1 celeriac, diced
2 medium carrots, diced
2 T olive oil
about 2 cups grated extra-sharp cheddar
salt and pepper to taste

Heat oil over medium heat; add onions and a few pinches of salt. After they've softened (5-10 minutes), add the cabbage. Continue to saute for another 5 minutes, then add the root vegetables (in my case, I added them as they got chopped). Saute for another 10 minutes or so after they're all added, and then put a lid on it and let them steam till the root veggies are tender, but not mushy. Salt and pepper to taste. Remove from the heat and let cool.

Meanwhile, make the pastry. I think basically any method or pastry would work -- this is what I did.

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup whole-wheat pastry flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 T sugar
12 T butter
1/4 to 1/2 cup ice water

Mix the dry ingredients. Cut the butter into little bitty pieces and add to the flour mixture. Work it together with your fingers until it resembles the proverbial "coarse meal." Sprinkle in enough water to help it cohere, then fridge it for about 30 minutes.

Now toss the cooled vegetables with the cheese and combine thoroughly.

Divide the dough into 6 pieces (or however many you want) and roll into "circles." Mine were, uh, rustic, to say the least. Calling them circles would be, how you say, generous. Notice I didn't take pictures of that stage -- though you can certainly tell from the finished product that they weren't quite circular.

Put a generous 1/3 cup of filling onto the circle, distribute the filling, and fold over and seal with a fork. Make 3 cuts on top of the turnover to allow steam to escape. Repeat with all remaining, and then bake for 30-35 minutes at 350. Let them cool for 5 or 10 minutes.

*Extra filling suggestions:
1. Make a pot of rice. When it's just done, and plenty hot, stir in a 1 1/2 cups of the root vegetable mixture, which you have left out for an hour so it's at room temp. The cheese will melt and it will be divine.

2. Now you have leftover rice with root vegetables and cheese. Never fear. Beat an egg or two, and stir in a cup or two of the rice-and-veggies mixture, as well as a splash of milk. Heat a little pan, and some olive oil, and make yourself a nifty little frittata.

Favorite winter salad

2008-12-12T16:48:00.000-05:00

Drumlin Farm, god love them, has a fabulous greenhouse where they grow salad greens for the winter share. It's worth the price of all that squash, any day.

Green salad is different in the winter, though, for me. We put in dried cherries from Michigan (here -- yeah, I know, it's not local, but Jon's family used to own a cottage in that part of Michigan so it feels local, in a way), crumbled feta, and sunflower seeds, as well as our usual vinaigrette. Dried fruit and seeds or nuts just don't belong in a summer salad, but they're right at home in a winter one . . .

Roasted Kale

2008-12-11T11:11:00.001-05:00

This is the only way Arij will eat kale. He says it reminds him of nori.

Wash it, tear it into smallish pieces, cutting out the big stems. Toss it with a tablespoon or so of olive oil and some salt, and spread it on a cookie sheet -- it doesn't need to be in a single layer, but it should be well-spread-out. Put it into a 350 degree oven for 10 minutes, then shake and/or stir the pan and put it back into the oven. Check it after 5 more minutes, and stir again, but it will probably need another 5 minutes or so again (a total of 20 minutes). Sometimes if it's not completely crisp, I'll turn off the oven and leave it there another 5 minutes or so.

Addictive for nibbling or garnishing soups or salads.

Roasted butternut squash

2008-12-10T10:17:00.004-05:00

My new favorite way to cook butternut squash is to slice it thinly and toss it with olive oil, then spread it in a single layer on a cookie sheet at roast in the oven, turning occasionally, until it's brown and caramelized. Seriously, folks, if you have the time and patience, the result is like candy. It even sticks to your teeth like caramel. I'm sure your dentist would not approve.

Although I have nibbled a ton of it plain in the past few days, I also have been eating it other ways -- mostly with cheese and a starch, as you might be able to tell.

The top picture is slices of polenta, browned in a pan and then spread with roasted squash and cheese and run under the broiler.

The other two are one of my usual fast foods -- cheese toast -- but with that roasted squash layered between the bread and cheese.

Molasses spice cookies

2008-12-09T11:59:00.001-05:00

For one brief, shining moment, one of my fantasies was fulfilled today. Both my children were in the kitchen helping me make cookies. I'll pause a moment to let that sink in. It stands to reason, though, doesn't it? For someone who loves to cook as much as I do, the ultimate is sharing it with people I love.

Bonus: I caught it on film!

These cookies are fabulous. They were a fave at a book group I used to belong to back in the dark ages, made by a bakery called Dancing Deer. I cut the recipe out of the Boston Globe when Arij was a baby, and they never disappoint.

I'm never sure about the protocol regarding supplying a recipe when it really, clearly belongs to someone else.

Should I post it, or not?

2 1/4 cups flour (I used 1 cup whole-wheat pastry flour and the remainder, all-purpose)
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
2 tsp cinnamon
1 1/2 tsp cloves
1/2 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 cup sugar
3/4 cup canola oil
1/3 cup molasses
1 egg
extra sugar for sprinkling

Preheat oven to 350. Line cookie sheets with parchment.

Combine flour, soda, salt, and spices; stir well.

Combine oil, sugar, and molasses. Beat with an electric mixer for 5 minutes (give or take). Add egg and beat for another minute.

Mix in the dry ingredients 1/4 at a time, combining thoroughly.

Form the dough into walnut-sized balls and flatten into disks. Sprinkle with sugar and bake for 12 to 15 minutes. (I'd say, experiment and see if you like them better slightly chewy, or more crisp.) Let cool on the pan for a few minutes, and then remove to a rack to cool completely.

MIA

2008-12-08T20:32:00.003-05:00

I haven't gone away, but am experiencing technical difficulties: a nasty respiratory virus as well as a camera with a mind of its own.

Hopefully both issues will be resolved soon and I'll be back again.

Thanksgiving

2008-11-27T20:41:00.004-05:00

Oh, my goodness.

Usually I host Thanksgiving dinner (I know! Try to stifle your amazement!). It may be my favorite holiday -- one that hasn't been corrupted by rampant materialism, one that's all about food. True, the menu can be kind of limiting . . . but not this year.

Our wonderful friends the Hendersons hosted Turkey-day this year, and what fun it was. And we didn't collapse into food coma. We figured that was for two reasons. 1. we forgot to make mashed potatoes. Freaky, no? Maybe it was the Scotch whiskey we were all sipping that induced a little of that forgetfulness, or maybe it was all the other stuff we were busy making. 2. Morgan's mom is gluten-intolerant, so both the stuffing and the gravy were, I think, lighter than when they're made with wheat.

I forgot my camera, but Morgan came through with these photos.

They fried the turkey. If you eat meat, and you have never eaten fried turkey, I'm here to tell you, you are missing out. I could not stop nibbling the crispy bits. Absolutely phenomenal. (Plus, an 18-lb turkey cooked in an hour. Seriously.)

Morgan's dad, Bob, made the porcini mushroom gravy, and it was incredible (I believe he used a combination of rice and quinoa flours in the roux). Rich, silky -- everything you want in gravy. We had two kinds of cranberry sauce, one made by Morgan containing bourbon (here's the recipe) and one with port, walnuts, ginger, and citrus from the Hi-Rise Bread Company in Cambridge, where we had lunch last weekend while Christmas shopping. Bob also made the fantastic stuffing (pictured above with the sage leaves decorating the top).

I made butternut squash with caramelized onions and toasted pecans (pictured twice, I think), Greek-style green beans with about a cup of chopped garlic, and roasted parsnips, carrots, and red onions.

Desserts and appetizers were also amazing.

Squash soup

2008-11-25T21:00:00.003-05:00

Have you ever checked out 101 Cookbooks?

If not, you should.

(That makes me think of Dr. Seuss: "Have you ever flown a kite in bed?/Have you ever walked with 10 cats on your head?/Have you ever milked this kind of cow?/Well, we can do it. We know how./If you never did, you should./These things are fun and fun is good.")

Ahem. Where was I?

Oh, yes. If you have a plethora of winter squash right now, you should definitely try this different and yummy recipe. And did I mention easy? It has like four ingredients, and very little work.

Cacciatore

2008-11-24T20:07:00.001-05:00

A vegetarian version of cacciatore would probably strike most people as the height of oxymoron. (Cacciatore means "hunter" in Italian.) Replacing the animal protein with a plant-based one means that no actual hunting went into the making of the dish. On the other hand, the chickens and rabbits that go into the traditional version are certainly domesticated . . . hm. I didn't think of that before. Maybe one ate cacciatore after one's hunting was unsuccessful?

I digress.

The point is that I love the rich flavor of cacciatore's sauce, but I don't particularly want chunks o' meat in there. So, what to do with that hankering?

I've made two versions in the past week, one with mushrooms and one with chickpeas, and both were delicious. I also want to try one with cannellini beans, but three inside of a week was undoubtedly too many, even for me.

I think the thing that distinguishes this sauce from "regular" red sauce is the red wine reduction.

2 T olive oil

2 medium onions, diced

2 cloves garlic, crushed

2 medium carrots, diced small

6 or 8 oz mushrooms, quartered (optional)

1 28-oz can diced tomatoes

1/2 cup red wine

splash of balsamic vinegar

2 cups cooked chickpeas or cannellini beans

Heat the oil over medium-high heat and add the onions and a few pinches of salt. Saute, stirring occasionally, until the onions get soft and a bit browned. Add the carrots and continue sauteing. The goal is to get the carrots to caramelize a little bit, too. Add the mushrooms (if using) and let them get a bit brown, too. Add the garlic and stir constantly for 1 minute. Add the wine and stir well. Keep stirring until the liquid is basically gone. Add the tomatoes and bring to a simmer, then reduce the heat and continue simmering for 20 minutes or so. Add the beans of choice and allow them to heat through.

Serve over pasta, polenta or garlic-rubbed toast.

Warming and delicious on a cold fall evening . . . and the leftovers rock.

How To Freeze Kale (for chichimama)

2008-11-23T17:20:00.003-05:00

(I started to write this as a comment on the previous post after chichimama asked . . . then I realized it was really too long for a comment.)

Bring a big pot of water to a boil.

Wash and prep your kale -- I usually coarsely chop it.

Prepare a bowl full of cool water and dump in some ice cubes.

Line a large cookie sheet or try with an absorbent towel, and have another handy.

When the water boils, drop in the kale. Leave it in there for two minutes, regardless of when or whether it returns to a boil. It should turn a brighter green.

Drain thoroughly in a colander, then dump into the ice water to "shock" it. After it's thoroughly cool, drain it again, pressing the moisture out gently.

Spread it out on the cookie sheet, and press the other towel gently on top to wick out as much moisture as you can.

When it's dry, pack it into a ziplock freezer bag, pressing out as much air as you can. Fold over the top of the bag and then put it into another ziplock freezer bag, again pressing out air.

Label the bag, then put it in your freezer. (If you press the kale-filled bag sort of flat, it will make it more compact for storage.)

First CSA pickup, or, if you don't like squash, look away!

2008-11-21T11:06:00.002-05:00

Crazy, no?

Already I've started freezing kale and baking pumpkins. Yummy!

Really good one-day bread

2008-11-14T20:28:00.000-05:00

I've reached a point where most lean breads -- those without added milk, butter, or other enrichments -- made in only one day, without any kind of starter, taste kinda flat. One-dimensional, even. It's kind of a bummer, because I don't always have a ripe starter in the fridge (keeping a ripe, ready-to-use sourdoubh/wild yeast starter in the fridge at all times requires a certain amount of flour waste I just can't live with). And sometimes I get the inspiration to make something for dinner that would go great with bread, but I didn't think to make a starter the night before.

This bread, though it does require the extra step of cooking potatoes, just might be the one to fill the gap.

5 cups all purpose flour

1 cup whole wheat flour

2 tsp instant yeast

1 T salt

1 c well-mashed potatoes

2.5 c warmish water (include the water from boiling the potatoes!)

1 tsp caraway seeds (optional)

Combine all ingredients. Mix/knead till gluten is well-developed.

Let rise till doubled; gently deflate and, if you have time, let rise again (if you don't have time, go ahead and shape the breads now)

For shaping: divide the dough in half, and gently form into a round. Don't deflate it altogether -- handle it gently.

Let it rise (covered) on parchment paper while the oven preheats.

Heat oven to 400 with a pizza stone for 30-45 minutes. Slash the bread, and then slide it onto the hot stone.

Bake for 1 hour. I like to remove the parchment paper after about 20 minutes -- makes the bottom crust nicer.

(Oh, and to give credit where it's due: this is closely based on a recipe from James Beard's Beard on Bread.)

Apple butter and applesauce

2008-11-13T19:58:00.001-05:00

I've had so much fun making these and canning them in the past weeks.

I did have a little issue with the applesauce "siphoning" when I tried to can it -- somehow the seal failed and it oozed down the sides of the ostensibly sealed and processed jars. I took a little sauce out, used new lids, and reprocessed with no ill effects. Phew.

The apple butter is really wonderful -- made with cider, a little cinnamon, and some sugar -- spread on pumpkin bread, it is amazing.

I'm looking forward to giving it to friends for the holidays.

Three sisters stew

2008-11-08T23:31:00.001-05:00

A classic I return to every fall/winter.

I cooked up a big pot of kidney beans. I didn't salt-soak them, but they turned out nice and tender. I get so frustrated with beans. I just don't know what I do that works or doesn't work from one time to the next. This time, I soaked them for about 5 hours, then brought to a boil on top of the stove. I threw in an onion and a carrot, boiled hard for 5 minutes, and then put them into a 250" oven (covered) for about an hour. I checked on them at that point, added a couple teaspoons of salt, and then I think I put them back in for 15 minutes.

Maybe it's the nice, even, consistent heat of the oven that made them turn out well this time. Or maybe this particular batch from the store was just fresher or whatever.

Anyway. I will keep experimenting, because I really love all the benefits of cooking my own beans.

1 onion, chopped
2cloves garlic
2 tsp cumin
2 tsp oregano
1 tsp Aleppo pepper
1 butternut squash, peeled and cubed
2 heaping cups cooked kidney beans
1.5 cups kidney bean broth
1.5 cup frozen corn kernels
1 16-oz jar crushed tomatoes (yes, my own home-canned ones -- I am using them so fast! Next year, I'm SO doing more. Phantom, I'm looking at you!!)

Saute onions and a couple of pinches of salt till soft; add squash and corn and saute another 10 minutes or so, stirring occasionally. Add garlic and spices and stir constantly for another minute. Add tomatoes and broth and bring to a boil. Simmer gently, covered, till squash is tender, and then stir in the beans.

As with many bean dishes, this one's even better the next day.

Veggie burgers

2008-11-01T20:11:00.000-04:00

This is my standard quickie veggie burger. It's fast, it's easy, and it's yummy. I usually make pitas to go with it, but sometimes I serve them on rolls. I love it with a yogurt sauce with crushed garlic (or minced scallions) and salt.

1 1/4 cup red lentils, sorted and rinsed

scant cup bulghur

1 large onion, chopped

2 garlic cloves, pressed or minced

2 tsp. cumin (or maybe a little more)

1 tsp. paprika

salt to taste

2 T. olive oil, plus more for frying the burgers

Cook the lentils in 3 cups of water seasoned with 1 tsp. of salt. (Bring to a boil, then simmer till the lentils are soft, about 20-25 minutes.) Add the bulghur, stir well, cover, and remove from the heat. Allow to stand for 20 minutes or so.

While the lentils are cooking, saute the onion in 2 T. olive oil with a couple of pinches of salt until soft and browned. Add the cumin, paprika and garlic and saute, stirring constantly, for another couple of minutes. Remove from the heat and stir into the lentil/bulghur mixture after it has sat long enough to absorb all the liquid. The mixture should be pretty stiff.

I find mixing with my hands is the easiest way to go.

I use pieces about 1/3 of a cup, fried in a couple of tablespoons of hot olive oil.

Polenta with mushrooms

2008-10-24T20:01:00.006-04:00

Mushrooms are one of those things that I don't buy regularly. But I'm constantly reading recipes that sound delicious and I think, I should write this on my shopping list and plan to make this! But then I don't. On the other hand, when I do buy mushrooms, but don't have a specific plan for them, they tend to wind up in the compost a couple of weeks later. I took that risk earlier this week, though: I bought a package of baby bella 'shrooms without a plan.

Thursday is the night Jon has class, and so I usually throw together whatever for dinner for the kids and me . . . but this week I sort of forgot that he wasn't coming home for dinner that night, and had the brainwave to make creamy polenta with sauteed mushrooms on top. When I remembered that I'd be eating it solo (no way would my kids touch this), I thought, oh, so what. It's what I want to eat, so I'm going to make it anyway.

And then I sliced polenta and fried it up with eggs for breakfast for the next few days. Yum!

Polenta

2 cups coarse cornmeal (I use Bob's Red Mill)

6 cups water (broth is excellent: think chickpea, or cannellini . . . darker bean broth will make it a little dingy-looking [though still delicious])

1 tsp salt

1 cup shredded sharp cheddar (optional, but yummy)

Mix all in a 9 by 13 pan. Put in a pre-heated 350 degree oven for 40 minutes. Stir, then bake another 15 minutes. It's a miracle -- delicious, creamy, slow-simmered polenta with No Stirring.

Mushrooms were just sort of thrown together -- onions, garlic, thyme, salt and pepper.

Pita chips

2008-10-24T18:38:00.002-04:00

This is gratuitous -- just a picture (I think I posted instructions already!) But these were fantastic with hummus. The other night, that's what we ate for dinner, with a big pot of squash. Everyone ate it and was happy . . . that just might make a regular appearance on our dinner table . . .

granola

2008-10-23T13:53:00.001-04:00

I love this granola mixed with plain yogurt! My kids prefer it plain. Adding the optional puffed cereal makes it lighter. I get mine in bags at Whole Foods.

Actually, this is a VERY forgiving recipe -- practically any of the ingredients can be left out or substituted. Other kinds of nuts or seeds, some nutmeg, oat bran for the wheat bran . . .

5 cups rolled oats
3 cups puffed rice or millet (optional)
1/4 cup wheat bran
1 cup walnuts
1 cup sliced almonds
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup sunflower seeds
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup maple syrup
2-3 T molasses

Preheat the oven to 350. Oil a large roasting pan or baking sheet (or a couple, if you're adding the puffed cereals.)

Mix dry ingredients in a big bowl. Mix the wet ingredients in a measuring cup or small bowl and whisk together. Drizzle over the oat mixture, tossing well to coat it all.

Spread out the granola in the pan(s) and bake for 30 minutes, stirring at 10-minute intervals. Let it cool, and then pack up in airtight containers.

lentils with onion and tomato sauce

2008-10-18T16:04:00.003-04:00

This is adapted from a recipe in Mollie Katzen's Vegetable Heaven. It's not a lot of work, but it does require attention every now and then for a couple of hours.

I've become somewhat particular about lentils, I must confess. I really don't like the supermarket green/brown lentils very much anymore, particularly in soup. They fall apart and the skins kind of bug me. I'd much rather eat those snooty "French" lentils, sometimes called lentils de puy, for soup or pretty much anything else. This is one recipe that works really well with the plain, ordinary (cheap!) brown lentils, though. I've never tried this with red lentils, though I bet it would be pretty good.

1 1/2 cups lentils, cooked in 4 cups water
3-4 good sized onions, chopped fairly fine
2 T olive oil (or a combination of olive oil and butter)
1 T (or maybe a little more) balsamic vinegar
2-4 T brown sugar
1-2 cups diced tomatoes (amount variable, also kind of tomatoes variable -- I've successfully used crushed tomatoes, sauce, leftover pizza sauce . . . )
salt and pepper to taste

Heat olive oil over medium heat and add onions and several pinches of salt. Stir every few minutes for 10-15 minutes, until they start to get brown around the edges. Then put a cover on the pot and turn the heat down to low. Stir only every 15 minutes or so until the onions are nice and brown. (When I take the lid off, I drain the condensed steam off the lid but not back into the pot. The onions will brown better with the liquid removed.)

Add the tomatoes and bring to a simmer. Keep simmering, uncovered, until the tomatoes reduce and meld with the onions, making sort of a syrupy sauce. Then add the remaining ingredients, starting with the smaller amounts of vinegar and sugar. Don't be afraid to add more, though. Stir well. Taste for salt; it might need quite a bit.

This is not a particularly pretty dish, but it is delicious.

I served it with a rice and broccoli raab gratin: not terribly gorgeous, but warming and good comfort food.

Chickpea minestrone

2008-10-16T09:48:00.001-04:00

I'm not sure I can even re-create the elements of this soup, but it turned out really well, so I wanted to try.

2 medium onions, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
4 medium carrots, sliced into thin rounds
a spoonful of honey
1/2 bunch "dinosaur" kale*
several sprigs of thyme and one of parsley
1 cup cooked chickpeas, plus 2 or 3 cups of their broth
2 cups leftover pizza sauce **
cooked pasta, pepper and grated romano cheese on top when serving

*for the kale: wash it, chop it fine, and cook in a cup or so of lightly salted water for 5 minutes. Save the cooking water for the soup! The more finely it's chopped, the easier it is to eat the final soup. No "strands" dripping off your spoon and down your chin.

**my usual pizza sauce is adapted from Peter Reinhart's American Pie. This time, instead of using basil and oregano, I used some Penzeys "Pizza Seasoning," which they sent me a small jar of as a free sample in my last order. It has crushed tomatoes, a bit of red wine vinegar, salt, pepper, crushed garlic.

Saute onions with a pinch or two of salt for 10 minutes over medium heat (has anyone else noticed how often my recipes begin with more or less that same direction??); add carrots and saute for an additional 5-10 minutes. Add garlic and herbs and stir constantly for another minute or two, then add the pizza sauce. Simmer for 15 minutes, then add chickpeas, broth, the kale and its cooking water. Simmer another 20 minutes or as long as you have.

Wild yeast ("sourdough") rye

2008-10-15T15:46:00.000-04:00

I made this straight out of Peter Reinhart's Crust and Crumb, but I have a few notes I want to make.

After trying coffee and cocoa powder to get a dark rye bread, and even attempting to make my own caramel color, I finally gave up and just ordered the little jar of powdered caramel color from King Arthur. But along the experimental way, I decided I really like the flavor and aroma that the cocoa powder delivers, even if it doesn't add the color I was looking for. So this time I used a scant tablespoon of cocoa powder as well as a scant tablespoon of powdered caramel color.

(My real purpose in buying the powdered stuff is to try to make marble rye bread, just because I think it's cool. This time I used it just for kicks, to see how dark it made the bread! I was very pleased.)

This recipe calls for making a rye starter from ripe wild-yeast starter one day, which I did, and then a secondary starter the day after, before finally making the finished dough on the third day. I baked the bread that same day I made the final dough, rather than shaping the loaves and then retarding them in the fridge overnight and baking them on the 4th day as Reinhart suggests. I have not yet found a good method for getting the breads into the fridge and keeping them well-covered so the edges don't dry out. He suggests a giant food-safe bag, but I haven't found a source for those.

Chickpea stew with ginger and kale

2008-10-14T20:00:00.001-04:00

When I put ginger on the grocery list, my husband bought the biggest piece at the store. Good grief. When I made this stew, I used a piece of ginger the size of an egg. What else to do with all of it?

1 bunch "dinosaur" kale, stemmed and chopped

3 T oil, divided

1/2 tsp red pepper flakes

3-4 cups cooked chickpeas, plus about a cup of their liquid

1 onion, chopped fine

4 or 5 cloves of garlic minced with several tablespoons of ginger

2 tsp cumin

2 tsp coriander

Cook the kale: heat a couple teaspoons of oil and toss in the red pepper flakes. Add the kale and a few pinches of salt and stir to coat. Add a generous cup of water, bring to a simmer, cover, and cook for about 12 to 15 minutes. Let it get nice and soft.

Meanwhile, heat the remaining oil and saute the onion with some more salt till lightly browned. Add ginger, garlic, cumin and coriander, and cook another minute or two, stirring constantly. Add chickpeas and their broth, as well as the cooked greens and their broth. Simmer to combine the flavors for at least 15 minutes.

I served this over brown rice, and it was good, if a little austere. I think it could have used some other vegetables, maybe some carrots and diced tomatoes.

Raspberry leaf tea

2008-10-12T15:14:00.004-04:00

Herb tea has never really done it for me.

I like black tea, and a few flavored black teas (say, Earl Grey?), but I'm pretty boring in my taste.

Some fruit-flavored herb teas are just awful. I like chamomile when I have an upset stomach, and sometimes when it's late in the day and I don't want a caffeine hit yet I do want something warm to drink, I suck it up and drink something -- red zinger, or honeybush, or whatever I might have bought thinking maybe this would be the one to convert me to the wide world of herb teas.

When I was pregnant with Annie, I read a lot about raspberry leaf tea: just dried raspberry leaves, steeped in hot water. I wasn't using caffeine at all, so I decided to give it a try. I was pleasantly surprised. I was so happy to find something else I liked. I think it's the tannic acid -- it has a little of that same puckery bite to it that black tea has.

(Oh, I also happened to like nettle infusion, which I drank for the iron after Annie's birth, but I haven't seen nettle growing in my yard.)

The raspberries I planted last year yielded some berries -- enough for the kids and me to go on a daily quest for the few that we'd get -- but I was eyeing those leaves all summer. Last weekend, I clipped off about 8 or 9 branches, tied them into bunches, and hung them upside-down on the basement clothesline to dry. I wasn't sure how long it would take, but they certainly seemed dry enough inside of a week. Last night I pulled off the leaves and put them into a jar for storage.

Now I'm just waiting for an inevitable cool late-afternoon tea-drinking urge to see if it lives up to my memories . . .

Red pepper jelly

2008-10-11T10:00:00.002-04:00

We have friends whose usual pre-dinner snack is a chunk of cream cheese covered with spicy red pepper jelly, served with crackers and a knife for spreading. There's something sort of retro about it, but it is delectable, and addictive! I asked them where they get their jelly, and of course they make it. Well. I can do that.

So last week at the farmer's market, I bought a pile of red peppers, and I finally, after several days of admiring how pretty they looked in a basket, set out to make some of my own!

I trimmed them and cut out most of the seeds, but I wasn't religious about it. My fingertips stung for about the next 15 hours -- if ever I make a bigger batch, I'd better wear gloves! I think I wound up with about 9 oz. of coarsely chopped peppers. I pretty much followed the recipe in the Ball book I've used lately, but I used the weird "crunchy" brand of pectin Jon got me at Whole Foods.

As the jelly was coming to a boil on the stove, I was standing there studying the directions that came with the pectin, and trying to decide how much to use since it's not really a standard kind . . . and the jelly boiled over. That's what you get for turning your back on the stove. I actually coped pretty well, and managed to clean it up and even finish the batch and heat processed it and all without getting injured or bursting into tears. Lucky for me Jon had just gotten home and washed about a million dishes to ease me through the rest of the project. Thank goodness.

The other night I finally cracked it out (Phantom was visiting!) and we were quite pleased with the results. I think I'm going to check and see if there are more peppers at the market tomorrow . . .

(Oh, and do you remember the peach jam debacle? the one of the lost directions? I found the directions this week -- tucked inside Peter Reinhart's Crust and Crumb, of course. Where else? Sigh.)

Lentil soup, redux

2008-10-10T15:40:00.003-04:00

I'm just posting the prep picture here -- let's just say that this pretty array of ingredients was the high point of this batch of soup. Sometimes things just don't come out as good as we were hoping . . .

Two soups (red lentil and broccoli cheese)

2008-10-03T19:55:00.004-04:00

It was definitely soup weather this week.

Last year my mom gave me yet another Deborah Madison cookbook: Vegetarian Soups from Deborah Madison's Kitchen. (I must say -- I finally returned the favor and gave Mom one of her books a few weeks ago!) I have spent many happy hours browsing in that cookbook, but I had not yet actually applied myself to to the task of making one of the recipes. This week, I fixed that oversight! And I must say, if either of these recipes are an indication, I could probably happily cook every recipe in this book and eat well for weeks/months to come.

Tonight I made the broccoli cheese recipe. I must say I'm reluctant to post recipes verbatim that I make more or less verbatim -- without any modifications to speak of, that is. And this one, I made pretty close to the recipe. I wish I'd taken pictures of the broccoli before I cooked it -- we got two ENORMOUS heads from Drumlin this week, totalling 1.75 lbs! I used it all, as well as about 0.75 lbs red potatoes. Oh, and I had no celery, so I left that out. The seasonings included marjoram, bay, thyme, cayennne, dijon mustard -- I pureed it but left a little texture.

The red lentil soup I didn't exactly follow the recipe for, and there were other modifications I wish I'd made. I think I wanted it to go in more of a curry direction: so should I post the recipe I should have made?

3 T butter

1 cup red lentils

1 cup leftover chickpeas and their broth

1 delicata squash, peeled and diced

3 carrots, cut into half moons

2 onions, diced

1 cup canned tomatoes (I used some of my own home-canned crushed tomatoes!!)

1/2 tsp cumin (should have used more)

1 tsp turmeric

salt

1 cup basmati rice, cooked in 1.75 cups water and a 1/2 tsp salt

Melt the butter; add the onions and a tsp of salt. Cook at medium for 5 minutes or so, and then add the rest of the veggies. Saute another 10 minutes or so, then add tomato, lentils and 5.5 cups of water.

I wish I'd also added a healthy tablepoon or two EACH of minced ginger and garlic, added toward the end of the vegetables getting browned. She also called for scallions to be sizzled in butter at the end and added as a garnish -- personally I'd have liked scallions just sprinkled over the top of each bowl for a garnish, but I left them out.

I served this with rice in the bottom of each bowl.

A true harvest dinner, featuring pan-roasted butternut squash

2008-09-29T16:06:00.005-04:00

This is an amazing time of year.

Last night for dinner I roasted a chicken, and served it with mashed potatoes (my family would RIOT if it wasn't -- I toyed with making roasted potatoes with onions and carrots but couldn't face the mutiny that would result) and pan-roasted butternut squash. The chicken was not exactly local -- it's from a farm near my sister and her husband, who live outside of Syracuse, NY -- but even if it was from 300+ miles away, at least it was sustainably raised by people they know are responsible farmers. The potatoes were from Drumlin, the squash from Honeypot Hill.

But since it's September, and not the middle of winter, I could also serve this meal with yet another fabulous summer-style salad, with lettuce, heirloom tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers from Drumlin. It was a fun, season-spanning meal.

Pan-roasted butternut squash

1 large squash, peeled and cut up into rough chunks

2-3 T canola oil

a few pinches of salt

1 T butter

2 T maple syrup

Heat oil in a heavy pan (I used enameled cast iron) till quite hot. Add squash then turn the heat down to medium or medium-hot. Add a few pinches of salt. Now leave it alone for awhile (maybe checking to be sure it's not burning in case your stove or your pot are wildly different from mine) -- maybe 20 minutes. As with caramelizing onions, the idea is to let it get brown so the flavor develops.

(I neglected this a lot because I was doing lots of work work (as opposed to, you know, kitchen work, which rarely feels like work), so I just came back and checked on this every so often until it had browned parts all over. At some point I turned down the heat some. That part of the process probably took an hour or more.)

When it's as brown as you have time for, add a little water and a lid and let it steam till it's really tender. Mash, add butter and maple syrup, and then serve or keep warm till it's time.

This is the first time I've added sweetener to squash in years, but it seemed just right.

Cabbage, onions and potatoes

2008-09-23T12:46:00.007-04:00

There's a recipe in Moosewood Restaurant's New Classics that I return to every fall and winter, occasionally multiple times per extended fall/winter season. It's incredibly humble, and incredibly good -- cabbage, onions, paprika, noodles. As I've said before (and no doubt will continue to say OVER and OVER because I'm subtle that way), I get tired of pasta. I decided to make this dish yesterday, but I served it with pan-fried potatoes instead of noodles, and it was awesome.

3 onions, sliced

1 head cabbage (I used some kind from the farm that I'm not sure exactly WHAT it was -- crinkly/curly like savoy cabbage, but elongated like napa cabbage rather than round), sliced into ribbons

1 Tablespoon paprika

salt to taste

2 T canola oil plus 1 T of butter for the onions and cabbage, plus an additional couple of T canola oil for the potatoes

4-6 large potatoes (if your family is complete potato hounds like mine)

Heat the oil and butter over medium high heat and add the onions and a few pinches of salt. Cook, stirring occasionally, but not so often that they don't brown, for 20 minutes or so. Then add the cabbage and maybe a little more salt and continue cooking and stirring occasionally for another 10 minutes. Then turn the heat down and cover the pan and let it just cook along in there for as long as you have. Much neglect is possible at this point -- I was outside with my kids for about 45 minutes. But the longer you have to cook them, the softer and browner and more caramelized and delectable this gets! When it's cooked down, uncover and raise the heat to cook off any accumulated liquid, then add the paprika and cook another 10 minutes or so.

For the potatoes -- I scrubbed and cubed the potatoes, boiled them for about 10 minutes (actually, longer because I forgot about them when I was outside) -- and then put them in a hot pan with oil to brown.

If one were feeling particularly decadent, one might serve sour cream with this, although I didn't this time.

Leftovers were amazing about 11 o'clock this morning with an egg and some toast alongside.

Lentil soup, or, the approaching equinox

2008-09-20T09:59:00.005-04:00

This will be the first in a long line of lentil soup posts. The weather has changed, and lentil soup was definitely in order yesterday! I will probably be making some variation on this soup every week for the next 6 months or more. Once upon a time I ate a lot of canned soup, because it's so easy and nourishing, but it really can't hold a candle to homemade.

This is a particularly wonderful time of year for this soup because there are still fresh tomatoes around. In a few weeks, and until next year, I will of course wind up using canned tomatoes, or none at all. The ingredients and the proportions can take all kinds of mixing up and the results are still just what you need.

2 leeks, halved and sliced thinly

1/2 an onion rescued from becoming compost in the fridge

1 fat garlic clove

3 sprigs parsley

1 or 2 big sprigs of thyme

2-3 T. olive oil

4 carrots, halved and sliced into half-circles

4 smallish potatoes, in 1/2 inch dice

1 cup French lentils

4 large plum tomatoes, peeled and diced

1/2 a bunch of broccoli raab, stemmed and chopped

salt, pepper

more olive oil to drizzle over the top

Cook lentils in four cups of water and a half-teaspoon of salt.

Saute the onions in the oil with 1/2 tsp of salt for 5 or 10 minutes, then add the leeks and the herbs and a little water and cover, allowing them to "braise" a little. After another 10 minutes, raise the heat to medium high and add the carrots and potatoes. Stir often, but allow to caramelize a bit. Crush or chop the garlic and add it. Stir for another minute, and then dump in the cooked lentils. Add a little more salt, and then bring to a boil. I also added more water at this point because I wanted a big pot of soup. After it comes to a boil, turn it down to a gentle simmer and cook, stirring occasionally, until the carrots and potatoes are nearly tender. Add the tomatoes and continue to simmer.

Meanwhile drop the broccoli raab into a pot of boiling water for 3 minutes. Drain and add to the soup. Fish out the herb sprigs before serving.

Add salt and pepper to taste, and drizzle olive oil over the top of each bowl.

shallot vinaigrette (for Nicole)

2008-09-17T21:06:00.002-04:00

Basic Shallot Vinaigrette

chop up a shallot pretty finely
add it to 2-3 tablespoons of red wine vinegar in a jar.

Let those sit for 10-15 minutes.

Add 6 tablespoons olive oil, and salt and pepper to taste. A little Dijon mustard can also be good.

Shake vigorously to emulsify.

That's it!

foccacia

2008-09-16T12:21:00.004-04:00

From Peter Reinhart's Bread Baker's Apprentice, more or less . . . I used the poolish starter version rather than the retard-in-the-fridge version, because to me it's easier. Trying to find room for a whole tray in my fridge, and trying to cover it adequately, is way more stressful than just making the darn starter the night before. And I sort of play fast and loose with the rising and shaping instructions -- I just let the final dough rise, then dump it onto the oiled and parchment-ed pan.

I use way less oil than he calls for.

The basil is from Drumlin. It was delicious!

"veggie burgers"

2008-09-12T20:42:00.006-04:00

I put the title in quotes because I make a wide array of things that I market to my kids under the name of "veggie burgers." The only consistencies among them are a legume, a grain, some salt, and an allium or two. (Occasionally a chopped-fine green that I manage to sneak in.) They're a standard menu item in our house, but I haven't been making them much lately. They're more of a winter thing, and I am sure I'll put many of their manifestations up here eventually.

(Actually, that first picture I took, of the stuff in the pan before I pureed it, because I thought it looked delicious as is -- it was, actually -- but I wasn't sure my kids would eat it that way.)

1 onion, chopped
about 4 oz. mushrooms
some sauteed leeks
a couple of small bunches of tat soi, chopped
1/2 lb light red kidney beans, cooked
1/2 cup bulghur, soaked in 1 cup boiling water and then thoroughly drained
about 1/2 cup panko

I sauteed the onion and mushroom over medium high heat till browned and caramelized, then tossed in the tat soi. I took it off the heat and then combined it all except the panko and pulsed it in the processor, and then added in the panko to get it to cohere a bit better.

They shape better if the mixture is thoroughly chilled, but this is a step I often don't have time for, so I take what I can get! 20 minutes is better than none.

Oh, and I had my usual tough-skin issue with the beans. Bummer. They're not old, either. Maybe I should make more of an effort to soak them longer? But I think I'm just going to go with that salt-water soak thing. It may not be traditional (but I am just sure that somewhere on earth there's a culture that soaks/soaked their beans in seawater!!) but it does yield tender beans.

vegan eggplant and tomato gratin

2008-09-12T20:37:00.003-04:00

I made this from Vegetarian Suppers from Deborah Madison's Kitchen, only I put lots of soft breadcrumbs liberally laced with olive oil on top. Quite yummy, though I have to say that I think a touch of cheese would make it better. But I had no suitable cheese in the house -- no fontina, no mozzarella. I couldn't imagine using cheddar or aged gouda, and I didn't think romano was quite right.

It was even better the next day, warmed up and spread over pasta.

leek gallette

2008-09-12T20:09:00.003-04:00

I cobbled this together from several sources, including this month's Bon Appetit, which is a really good issue. (Side note, I got a free subscription to BA for placing an order from Amazon last Christmas. It started in April, and I have not been impressed, on the whole. I mean, it's fine, but it's not really my speed. This month, however, I feel like I hit the jackpot.) There's an article on leek tarts by Molly of Orangette (which I've read for years), and that helped serve as my inspiration for this creation tonight.

With leeks, my default is to make potato leek soup, which I could eat eternally, but it is good once in awhile to actually try something new.

So I made the "leek confit," which is essentially sauteed/braised leeks with butter, salt and pepper. Quite lovely on its own, but she suggested putting it into a tart shell with egg and cheese and suchlike. . . well, one of the (few) pieces of kitchen equipment I lack is a tart pan (when I told Jon this, his response was, "my god, how can you LIVE this way?!")

I've often read of galettes in Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, but I decided that today, it was time to give it a try! I made a very simple dough: 1/2 cup all purpose flour, 1/2 cup whole wheat pastry flour, 1/4 tsp. salt, 1 tsp sugar, 6 tablespoons butter cut into small pieces, and a couple of tablespoons of ice water. I didn't even drag out the processor but combined the dry ingredients and the butter with my fingers, and then tossed in enough water to make it come together. I flattened it out, wrapped in plastic and stuck it in the fridge for an hour or so.

For the leeks, I started out with 3 large-ish leeks, and sauteed them in 3 tablespoons of butter and a couple of pinches of salt, then added a couple tablespoons of water and covered them and let them stew, occasionally stirring, for about an hour. I did wind up thinking that it looked like too much for my little gallette shell, so I scooped some of the cooked leeks aside for another use. I spread them on the pastry and then topped it with thin slices of aged gouda that I get at the Waltham Farmers' Market.

The assembly of the gallette was really easy. The dough is allowed to be rustic, and "pleating" the dough as I folded it over was a piece of cake.

I baked it 30 minutes at 400, and I had to restrain myself from eating more than 2 pieces. Hopefully it will be good for breakfast tomorrow morning . . .

salad with quinoa

2008-09-05T14:47:00.011-04:00

What inspired me to add quinoa to a green salad?

Mostly it was desperation. I didn't want to accompany my salad with a grilled cheese or cheese toast, or even the refried-beans-and-cheddar quesadillas my kids were eating -- sometimes (as I think I've written about before) I just get burnt out on wheat. (Once upon a time, I ate pasta like 3 times a week. Now I just don't think I could. It just doesn't appeal that much. I think it's because we eat so much bread.) I also didn't feel like opening a can of beans to dump into my salad. I love legumes in salad, as has been well-documented, but I get sick of canned beans. That's one of the reasons I cook lentils and dress them . . . 'cause they're fast.

(This urge translated into my soaking some chickpeas last night, but fat lot of good that did me right then --)

So my needs were protein, no wheat, and no beans. Where did that leave me? Cheese, of course! But we were out of feta, and I haven't bought or made fresh mozzarella in ages, which also would have been nice . . . so, no cheese. Or eggs. But I've never been crazy about hardboiled eggs in a green salad. Deviled eggs, or egg salad, fine, but in a green salad? Meh.

Grain! I was thinking tabbouleh, or a loose, late summer in Massachusetts interpretation thereof, but then I was again back at wheat, not to mention the relatively long cooking/soaking time that coarse bulghur requires. And the desire for protein kept kicking in. So what grain has a lot of protein . . . quinoa. So there it was. I cook it the way one cooks pasta, not the soak-absorption method of cooking rice, oats, etc. -- and my timer doiesn't work so well if I set the time and then forget to click the "start" button, so it was a little on the mushy side, but I quickly tossed it with olive oil and a few minced scallions, let it cool to room temp, and then added it to my salad, which was only nominally a "green" salad -- mostly it was along the lines of the farmer's chop suey I wrote about before with a few torn lettuce leaves.

I quite liked it -- and Annie ate some, too.

summer squash fritters

2008-09-02T19:40:00.005-04:00

I got this recipe from my friend Rachel, and they are SERIOUSLY some kind of good. Delicately crisp on the outside, just barely custardy/creamy on the inside -- just, yum. Try them!!

(I don't want to admit how much of this recipe I actually consumed all by myself.)

I bet some finely chopped greens -- maybe spinach, or chard -- would be lovely in here, too, as well as maybe some parsley. But I wouldn't muck with them too much, because their flavor is pretty nearly perfect as is.

2 eggs beaten

2 cups of grated squash

1/4 cup flour

1T melted butter

2 chopped scallions

2 T parmesean

(chopped jalapeno if you want)

salt

pepper

oil for frying

(I bet this would be good baked in a casserole with a light topping of breadcrumbs and more grated cheese, too.)

More freezing and canning

2008-09-02T12:05:00.006-04:00

Although I didn't take pictures, I wanted to record that I made a large batch of potato leek soup (as the broth, I used some cannellini broth I had in the freezer) and froze it in four containers. It hasn't been soup weather lately, really, but it's my favorite thing to do with a plethora of leeks.

I also froze 2 more quarts of green beans -- I think that's 6 quarts I have in there, now!

I also experimented. I had five eggplant. Two I peeled and sliced and breaded and fried and ate happily.

The other three, I baked, scooped, mashed, and froze. I'm envisioning stirring the puree into a vegetable/lentil curry, maybe, or else spreading some into a lasagne? Or even trying to make baba ganoush with it? I froze it into four small containers.

Finally, I canned 5 pints of crushed tomatoes from the farm pick-up yesterday. I estimate we got about 10 lbs of tomatoes; I think I canned around 6 lbs, or maybe a little more. I just peeled and crushed -- seeds and all.

Lentil/salad sandwiches

2008-09-02T09:49:00.003-04:00

I wanted to call this post "Vegetarian Salad Sandwiches" but it sounded too much like "vegetarian-salad sandwiches" -- you know, made with real vegetarians!

So I didn't.

For Arij's birthday we had one of his favorites: hamburgers. I made rolls, as I usually do. (I use a recipe from the King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion, which is a great recipe but way too sweet. If I cut the sugar way back, they're just the way we like them.) They're fun and easy and very satisfying. But the problem is they do not keep at all. Seriously, mere hours later, they're just not as good anymore. I have finally hit on a solution -- one that I personally like even better than the original incarnation.

There's more backstory here.

Several years ago I decided not to use nonstick pans anymore. I have a couple, and I use them for exactly one thing: crepes, which I make about twice a year in a good year. I basically switched over to well-seasoned cast iron pans, and by and large, they rock. They retain heat, they put iron in your food, and the more you use them, the easier they are to use and clean. They're the best!

One of the things I missed, though, was a griddle. I had an All-Clad square griddle that I loved, but it had nonstick coating. It was perfect for pancakes, for grilled cheese . . . and it conducts heat like a dream (okay, I confess, I still pull it out and use it once in awhile.) So I took the logical step of buying a cast-iron griddle. I selected the two-burner model, imagining that many more pancakes or grilled cheese sandwiches. It's even reversible: it has a grill-pan on the other side! I bought it maybe 3 years ago, and it was I think one of the last things Lodge sold without the factory-installed pre-seasoning. So we set about seasoning it. Things stuck to it horribly, and it had hot spots and cool spots so pancakes would be burnt and raw and stuck to it. It drove me nuts.

Finally I decided to just use it every single day. That's right: one fried egg for breakfast? Out it came. A couple of grilled cheese sandwiches? Check. Some bacon? Bring it on. Well, it helped with the seasoning, but I still have trouble with the hot/cool spots. The best solution we've found is to blast the heat so it's really well pre-heated, then put the food on and immediately turn the heat down. Fiddly, but that's the price I pay for refusing to embrace better living through non-stick cookware.

Anyway, there's a point here somewhere. I had never used the grill side before last night. I split and buttered several leftover hamburger rolls, and then put those suckers on the grill/griddle, pressing them a little with a spatula to make sure they toasted. They looked and tasted amazing.

I made a lentil salad with just warm lentils, feta and dressing made from Penzey's "Greek Seasoning." With green salad, crammed on that toasted roll, it was a very satisfying dinner.

Rock Stars

2008-08-30T08:10:00.006-04:00

My friend Phantom and I are ROCK STARS! Look what we did!

Okay, maybe we're a little too proud of our (ahem) 11 jars of canned tomatoes, and a little embarassed by how bone-tired we were afterward, but hey, we did it. It made us both intensely grateful that we don't have to spend the entire month of August doing this every day, while keeping track of our kids, without the help of the television.

I want to write a little more about what we did. We started out with about 42 lbs of field tomatoes from Wilson Farms . We were hoping for roma/plum tomatoes, but the ones they had were from NJ, which wasn't quite local enough for us. After some wrangling with the employees about what, exactly, constitutes a bushel of tomatoes (don't ask), I picked out 6 boxes containing approximately 7 lbs each. That was the extent of what I could load into the cart and still keep track of my kids.

Okay, so we started out by dunking the tomatoes in boiling water and then peeling them, quartering them, and cooking them down a bit. Then we ran them through the food mill. We realized at that point that what we were getting was basically tomato juice, which wasn't quite what we had in mind. So we changed horses midstream, so to speak.

At that point we started peeling, seeding and dicing the tomatoes by hand, which we cooked down and eventually combined with the juice/sauce that was simmering away from the first half of the tomatoes.

That makes it sound so simple, doesn't it? You should have seen our shirts, our fingernails, the stove, the floor, the sink, and the quantity of pots, pans, bowls and dishes we used.

A busy week

2008-08-28T08:22:00.004-04:00

I had to hit the ground running when we got back from vacation, and I've sort of only just surfaced for air.

The first picture shows the 3.5 lbs of cherry tomatoes I harvested from our plants after a week away. Needless to say, we made very short work of them. And now I'm back to yelling at the kids to PLEASE STOP PICKING them before they're ripe. Seriously, I don't think we've had any ripen on the vine in the last 3 days. Not only that, they EAT the underripe tomatoes. That means none for me. Augh.

Next picture is a cute little salad I made with butter lettuce from Brigham's Farm in Lincoln, some shredded cabbage, carrots, and some of those cute yellow tomatoes. I have to say, cute as the yellow tomatoes are, I find them sort of insipid. They're so low-acid and mild they have practically no tomato flavor. Next year, regular cherry tomatoes. (If I even grow them next year. Our lot is really too small to accomodate any sort of crop rotation.)

Then (and this is sort of gratuitous, because I make this like twice a week) I took a picture of my basic sandwich bread, adapted from a recipe in Peter Reinhart's Bread Baker's Apprentice. It's half whole wheat, half white flour, enriched with scalded milk and butter . . . it serves as the basis for countless grilled cheese sandwiches, french toast, cinnamon toast, and probably constitutes a good half of the calories my children ingest.

Yesterday was my Drumlin pickup and so major food prep is going to take place today. (Can you say FIVE eggplant??) Pictures will follow! (Though I must say I'm getting p!ssed about the greens situation. Seriously, folks, where is my weekly infusion of chard? Surely I should be getting tons of kale by now? This week we got two heads of lettuce and a leetle tiny bunch of tatsoi. Thassit. We are not amused. Of course, next year I'll compensate by growing my own, and then I'll be so inundated I won't know what to do with myself. I'll cope with that when the time comes.)

Highlights from Canada, part 2

2008-08-24T18:47:00.004-04:00

Look! Milk comes in a bag!

Janet caught a 2.25 lb small-mouth bass. It was delicious. (Pictures of Jon butchering the fish available upon request.)

Local cheese from the cheese factory near Smith's Falls! The curds squeak in your teeth!

One more post from this trip is forthcoming, along with a recipe, once Janet forwards me the picture of what we dubbed "Crosby Lake Hummus."

Highlights from Canada, part 1

2008-08-24T18:33:00.007-04:00

We went to Crosby Lake in Ontario last week for vacation with my friend Janet and her family.

Of course we cooked a LOT, and that included baking.

The top picture is the bread I made more or less every day; the next one is the pizza I made one night. After that are some onion rolls from a Martha Stewart Living magazine Janet brought for cottage reading material. Finally, I had to throw in a picture of the flour I used. I'm such a tourist. I hadn't been to Canada in many years (or anywhere else outside the country, to tell the truth) so I got a total childish charge out of the foreign currency and the grocery store where everything's packaged using the metric system. That there bag of flour? 2.5 kilograms! Ha! And everything is labeled in English AND French. Duh, I know, it's not that exciting. But it takes so little to amuse me!

Baking was pretty low tech. I didn't bring a stone or a peel, and we didn't think to buy cornmeal. So I made very basic bread: 2 c all-purpose flour, 2 c bread flour, 2 tsp salt, 1.5 tsp yeast, and maybe 1.5 c of water. I saved a little chunk back each day to use as a starter for the next batch. I let it rise once, then shaped the dough and put it on a buttered cookie sheet to rise again. I baked it at 425 for 10 minutes and then another 25-30 at 350.

I haven't made pizza without a stone in years. There was a round pan, which I greased generously with olive oil. I pressed the dough out a little less thin than usual, and baked it with toppings for about 10 minutes at 500, at which point I pulled it off the pan and just slid it back in on the oven rack for 2 more minutes to crisp the bottom crust. The result was so good that I think I might occasionally do that again. I can only imagine how good the crust would be in a pan ON the preheated stone. Yum.

The onion rolls were yummy, though they needed more onion and possibly some gruyere.

Lots of cooking

2008-08-16T11:23:00.006-04:00

All I've been doing lately is cook. I don't know how many pictures I can cram into one post.

Just today I froze two quarts of green beans, and threw together a coleslaw and some bread for Jon's company's potluck picnic. I took no pictures of those things.

Yesterday Aaron and Rachele came for dinner, for which I made, in no particular order, zucchini bisque (I'll write about this sometime, if for no other reason to preserve the recipe, which I misplace often and usually wind up calling up my sister AGAIN to get it), cucumber and feta salad (yes, again, what of it?), baba ganoush (ditto), carrot salad, "farmer's chop suey,"* bread, pickled beets, and apple crisp. One of these pictures shows a plate loaded with those things.

This week I also made zucchini bread (using the recipe in James Beard, which is good, though next time I think I'm going to try Rose Levy Beranbaum's from The Bread Bible.)

That might be all. Whew.

*re. "farmer's chop suey" -- well, I thought I'd made this up, years ago. I used to come home from the farmer's market and just chop things up and throw them into a bowl: tomatoes, cukes, peppers, scallions or red onions, maybe some carrot. Sometimes I'd add feta or cubed mozzarella, or some chick peas. Then I'd dress it with red wine vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper and swoon my way through the bowl. I never thought of it as anything -- just what I did in summer when the livin's good. But somewhere I saw a "recipe" for it that called it farmer's chop suey -- I thought that was too cute, so I started calling it that.

salads (and potatoes) for dinner

2008-08-13T11:33:00.003-04:00

The top picture is fattoush, made from Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, but lacking the cilantro and sumac. I added chickpeas for a little extra protein (plus they were just sitting there . . . ) For the bread I used the leftovers from Monday night's crackerbread, but pita would be better -- just a little thicker and spongier. This was delicious, though!

The middle picture is a cucumber salad I found on David Leibovitz's blog. I've read him for a long while, and I gave Aaron and Rachele a copy of one of his books for Christmas last year, but this is the first recipe I was compelled to try, and I have to say, it was simply phenomenal. I had slim pickin's for dill from my garden (most of it has gone to seed) but other than the tiny amount of dill, I followed the recipe exactly. Oh, and I used a French goat's milk feta I bought at Russo's a couple of weeks ago, which is excellent, creamy, and not too salty.

Finally, another gratuitous potato picture. Just in case anyone out there thinks my kids are happily wolfing down fattoush and cucumer and feta salad for dinner. (Hysterical laughter.)

peach jam (and calabacitas)

2008-08-12T15:31:00.004-04:00

Just made some peach jam, from "seconds" from Honey Pot, and I am ashamed to admit just how fast and loose I played with the recipe. For one thing, I used the lemon I meant to use in the jam yesterday, in baba ganoush (how the hell do you spell this, anyway?) and in fennel salad (which wasn't terribly spectacular, to tell the truth.) For another, I LOST the directions that accompanied the Ball brand pectin stuff. I opened the box yesterday, read the directions, and LOST them. SIGH. I shouldn't even be allowed to be a grown-up.

Anyway, the formula of the pectin I bought involved using less sugar, so I couldn't even reliably use a recipe I found online for peach jam, since I had this weird formulation. So what did I do? That's right, I winged it!!! I used 1 cup of apple juice, 3.5 cups of sugar, 1.5 tsp of powdered citric acid, and a heaping 4 cups of prepared fruit. My experimental tastings were pretty good, so hopefully I didn't wildly screw up.

The other photo is the leftover calabacitas from last night: sauteed onion, jalapeno, diced zucchini and pattypan squash, and corn. A summertime favorite.

what's cooking today: potato leek soup, roasted eggplant and crackerbread

2008-08-11T13:47:00.003-04:00

It's been a rainy and cool stretch of summer, but the produce doesn't stop. We've eaten lots of dinners that consist of little more than chopped fresh things, lightly dressed, and lots of corn on the cob.

Today I'm really cooking again, or I risk losing a bunch of stuff! I am making a small amount of potato leek soup, top picture -- that's an action shot, bubbling away -- because I can never think of ANYTHING better to do with mature leeks than this elemental soup. Love it. We only got one, so it's a small amount of soup, but it should make nice lunches this week.

The roasted eggplants I'm going to scoop out and make into baba ganouj, to scoop up with the crackerbread I'm also making (bottom picture).

I have two cute fennel bulbs that I think I'll make into fennel salad (picture and recipe hopefully to come) and I cut up a bunch of teeny, tiny squash to saute with an onion, some cumin seeds, and some leftover corn as "calabacitas." Maybe I'll even through in some jalapeno, if I get brave.

. . . why, how much olive oil do YOU use in a week?

2008-08-09T08:39:00.002-04:00

Salsa, Ratatouille, Beans

2008-08-05T14:42:00.004-04:00

I made some salsa on Saturday evening. Well, it was intended as salsa but came out kinda soupy, so I ate it with a spoon, as if it were gazpacho. I didn't drain the liquid out as I went along, but the final effect was still delicious, if rather on the juicy side. I chopped tomato, green pepper, about half a jalapeno (very finely minced, almost pulverized, and without ribs or seeds; I'm sort of a wuss about heat), lime juice, salt, and and ear of corn. I had no cilantro, which would have been a fabulous addition.

The middle picture is ratatouille. I use as the "recipe"/guide for ratatouille an old recipe that my mom used to make, found in a Junior League cookbook called Applehood and Motherpie, for "Mediterranean Pie." When I was a kid, it was the only way I really LOVED eggplant, and it still holds up. Occasionally I've made the filling (which is, essentially, ratatouille) and then baked
it with buttered breadcrumbs on top -- the idea of putting it in a pie shell doesn't really appeal anymore. The richness of pie crust just seems over the top. I sauteed onion and salt in a generous amount of olive oil, and then added peppers and zucchini. This time I just stirred in the roasted eggplant and garlic I'd made the other day, which wasn't really getting eaten, and then some tomatoes.

We ate the ratatouille last night accompanied by cannellini beans which I tossed with some of the pesto still hanging around in the fridge, and bread. As I wrote about last time I made cannellini beans, I decided to go ahead and salt the soaking water. The results were fantastic! I soaked probably half a pound of beans in about 1.5 quarts of water with about a tablespoon of salt, for about 5 or 6 hours. I drained them and added fresh water, a few cloves of garlic, and a bay leaf. I brought them to a hard boil for about 5 or 6 minutes, and then turned them down to a gentle simmer for 40 minutes. They turned out beautifully tender, yet did not fall apart.

The bread is a standby "dinner" bread (as opposed to sandwich bread) which I got from a Washington Post recipe by Rose Levy Beranbaum. I just hunted around but could not find a link to it, unfortunately. It's a reliable one-day bread; certainly not as complex as one made with a starter, but when I don't think of it a day in advance, or when I don't have a well-fed, active wild-yeast starter (which I tend to let go dormant in the summer when it's often too hot to bake a lot), it does okay. I toasted my slices and drizzled them with olive oil before topping with the beans and ratatouille.

oatmeal for breakfast; risotto for lunch; it's carb-tastic!

2008-08-03T16:57:00.003-04:00

The oatmeal I topped with yogurt, flax seeds, a few blueberries and a chopped peach. Oh, and a litte agave nectar. (Jon asked, shouldn't you be wearing your birkinstocks if that's what you're eating? Ha ha ha.)

I pan-fried leftover risotto, and ate it with a salad for lunch!

More to come about a trip to Russo's, salsa, ratatouille . . .

Rachel's bruschetta

2008-08-02T17:24:00.005-04:00

That bread I made the other day? I took a couple of loaves to my friend Rachel (to whom I had promised bread *way* too many times without delivering!) Look what she made from it! And she sent me a picture!!

She writes: I sauteed garlic and fava beans in olive oil and then added the tomatoto the hot mixture. Then I toasted the bread and spread goat cheeseon it and topped it with the mix.

Looks delicious, doesn't it?

It's August!

2008-08-01T20:24:00.004-04:00

Last night I froze those green beans pictured above; I also made a huge jar of pesto. I probably should freeze some!

Today we went to Honey Pot Hill and bought peaches, apples, corn, as well as picking blueberries! Ouma (MIL) hung out with Annie while Arij and I picked. As you can see, I froze two bags according to the instructions in a Cook's Illustrated from last summer.

Last night for dinner I cooked some beet greens and onions; I added some water and some chickpeas and let it all stew for maybe 20 minutes or so -- it was really good, much better than the sum of its parts. (Let's see. I sauteed 2 onions chopped medium with some salt in a couple tablespoons of olive oil till they started to brown. I chopped the beet greens and added them too . . . let saute for a few minutes before adding the water, the chickpeas, and a lid.) The greens and onions took on a silky quality that was really lovely.

Today made eggplant "jam," based on what I remembered of a Deborah Madison recipe. I had four smallish light purple and white streaked eggplant; I baked them whole for an hour at 400 on a foil lined sheet. After they cooled a bit I sliced off the tops and peeled off the skins, scooping the flesh into a bowl. While they were still warm, I poured in some olive oil and a clove or two of garlic pounded with salt in the mortar & pestle. Delicious on little toasts I had made last week and saved airtight.

I also made hummus, a huge amount with the remainder of the chickpeas I'd cooked the other day.

Finally, I made risotto (that's the third picture above). Sort of a plain one as the base, with the chickpea broth, but I sauteed onion, pattypan squash, and a few fava beans and stirred that (as well as several big scoops of pesto and lots of Romano cheese) in at the end. Sort of similar to what I've been making and putting over pasta, but mixed into risotto instead -- a nice change.

Now I'm exhausted! But in a good way, and Herm washed dishes, cleaned the stove and generally made it fun to be in the kitchen today!

bread, tomatoes, lunch

2008-07-31T14:11:00.004-04:00

The bread is from King Arthur's website; it's called "Gruyere-Stuffed Crusty Loaves" or something like that -- though I used a combination of Cabot's extra shap cheddar and some Asiago, because that's what I had.

The slightly blurry tomatoes were harvested from our yard!!

And the bottom one is my lunch. Chickpeas, deviled eggs (made with chives from my herb garden), and a pepper.

That's all I have time for right now!

today's lunch

2008-07-24T17:49:00.002-04:00

That polenta I made the other day? Worth its weight in GOLD, I tell you.

Yesterday I fried some up in a bit of butter for breakfast, with a fried egg.

Today I did it again, but ate it with the greens and beans from the other night (which are, of course, even better now than they were the first time).

a coleslaw miracle! (also notes on cannellini beans and polenta)

2008-07-22T12:37:00.002-04:00

The miracle: my kids ate it. It's based on a recipe in The Best Recipe -- I chop the cabbage and grate th carrot, and toss them together (also a few radishes and scallions, this time) in a colander with about 1/4 cup of sugar, and 2 tsp kosher salt. I let it drain for several hours and then toss it with some oil and cider vinegar. Delicious.

It's also amazing how mild-tasting this cabbage was! I love cabbage, I have to say, but it is often quite strong-flavored. This one is so sweet and almost delicate.

I also made Barbara Kingsolver's "Disappearing Zucchini Orzo" which tastes better than it looks, honestly, so I didn't take a picture. It's kind of bland looking, but it tastes great.

(I called it "grated dinner.")

Finally, I cooked some cannellini beans from Baer's. I don't have good luck with cannellinis. I don't love canned ones because the skins are often tough, but when I cook them myself, well, the skins are also often tough. I don't have this issue with other kinds of beans, by and large. Once I tried the Cook's Illustrated method of soaking them in salt water, then draining them and cooking in fresh water. I was amazed by how soft the skins were, and how quickly it happened -- so quickly, in fact, that they basically dissolved and turned to mush before I noticed. Whoops. Not that that's always a problem, since I often mash them with garlic and olive oil, anyway.

Well, so I emailed the Rancho Gordo guy and asked him what he thought of this technique and he basically said, why bother? He felt that he has refined his technique well enough.

But I am feeling after multiple attempts that maybe cannellinis just have a tendency toward tough skins and this is a way to compensate. (Plus I sort of hope that somewhere in the ancient world there might be a precedent for this -- soaking them in seawater or something -- but I haven't seen any evidence for it!) So next time, I'll try the salt brine again and then watch them really carefully to keep them at a low simmer and test them early and often . . .

Today I decided that polenta would go well with the white beans and beet greens I'm making for dinner -- I really make an effort to vary the grains in our diet. It's so easy to eat wheat at every meal, but I just don't think it's the best for us. And since I bake so much bread (though not so much lately, as it's been hot) . . . I try to incorporate rice, corn, quinoa where I can.

I remembered reading about a cooking technique for polenta where you bake it in the oven instead of stirring it constantly on top of the stove, and I gotta tell you, I'm now a convert! It's cooling in a loaf pan in the kitchen as we speak. I used the cooking water from the cannellinis as the broth, and I had a little trouble figuring out the amounts, but it seems to have come together okay. I started out with 4 cups of broth and 2 cups of coarse cornmeal (Bob's Red Mill, I think), but after about 40 minutes it was REALLY dry. So I whisked in an additional 2.5 cups of water and gave it another 45 minutes, and I think it'll be good. I also stirred in some grated Romano -- maybe about a cup?

Look, I do own another pan!

2008-07-21T09:24:00.003-04:00

The thing about the summer CSA (in past years) is that I sort of missed the ritual of the farmer's market. We've been participating in Drumlin's Winter Share since 2002, but they didn't start a summer share till 2005. We debated joining, because we've always loved going to Waltham's farmer's market. It's not a huge market, and there's only one organic grower, but we like participating in the community of it. The first couple of years, the Drumlin summer share more than met our needs, and we didn't get to the market much.

But this year, I really feel that we're getting less produce from Drumlin. Honestly, it's probably because they got complaints about too many greens (how sad!), but maybe it's also that they're trying to make more $$ at the farmers markets they participate it -- and really, we used to get SO MUCH for the amount we paid, that this is probably reflecting true market prices a little more accurately.

The point is, I don't begrudge it, particularly since the silver lining is shopping regularly at the farmer's market again! I bought potatoes, blueberries, a purple cabbage, and some herbs.

The top picture shows some gorgeous red potatoes that I quartered, lightly boiled and then browned in a pan. They were fantastic -- but I can't take much credit, because they were so wonderful to begin with. Cooking with perfectly fresh produce doesn't require much fussing, (I think Deborah Madison says something like, you don't need to do much to make it good, because it's already good.) Plus, the kids tend to like things plainer, anyway.

There was an extra bunch of radishes in the share bin at Drumlin last week, so I took it (as well as the greens someone took off their beets!) -- and our salads have been heavy on the radishes ever since. The kids really like the *stuff* in the salad -- if I serve Arij salad from the bottom of the bowl, he's perfectly happy. He might eat a piece or two of lettuce, but he loves crunching on the vinaigrette-soaked carrots and radishes.

I was thinking I'd put some radishes in the coleslaw I'm planning on making later today, too.