Good Real Food

Arif wrote earlier about a great recipe he found using wild and domestic mushrooms roasted with potatoes. I thought, why not use the same concept with butternut squash? So here is the result! It tasted wonderful with our eggs this morning.

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It turns out that the cold I have been fighting the last four days, that I moaned was the worst of my life, is actually a new type of flu. Blech. It snowed a foot in Saint Paul and I can’t go out sledding just yet. So, what to do when it looks like this outside?

I turn to black eyed peas!

I am a huge fan of black eyed peas. They have such a great hearty taste that can stand on their own just being cooked and seasoned with salt and pepper. This is a recipe I have created over time that can be adjusted depending on what you have in the fridge or garden and if you want it veggie or not.

What you need:

• 2 cups dry black eyed peas
• fresh thyme (about 3 full sprigs, picked off their stems)
• one onion, chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, chopped
• half a bunch of greens, chopped (I like dinosaur, plus they grow great in my garden)
• a splash of dry sherry
• 3/4 cup stock (I used left over mushoom stock from some porcini I soaked yesterday.)
• two strips thick cut bacon (optional)

1. Soak the black eyed peas overnight and cook them in boiling water for about an hour, or until tender. Drain, rince and set aside.

2. If using bacon, slice into bite sized pieces and fry until crispy. Drain and set aside, drain off excess fat.

3. Splash sherry in the pan to deglaze. (or add 1 tbsp olive oil if not using bacon)

4. Add onions, garlic and thyme and saute until browned, about 5 minutes

5. Add the cooked black eyed peas, stock, and greens. Cover and simmer for 10 minutes. Add bacon in the last few mintes to warm through.

6. Season with salt and pepper and serve.

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I’ve been wondering about the environmental impact of a vegan diet, especially one that made use of many of the highly processed vegan foods commonly available these days.  I was interested in how such a diet would compare to a meat/normal diet.

So, a bit of googling and here’s what I found - and the results were very interesting to me.

This graph gives you the info in a nutshell, but the article that I pulled it from is well worth the read.  I knew that a vegan diet was much better, but had no idea how much better.  Also of note is that this article puts the comparison in terms that are actually pretty mind friendly and not so abstract.

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I don’t eat meat (ok, realistically, what with eating the kids leftovers on occasion, I’m probably like 96% vegetarian), but my family does, and since I can’t stomach large scale commercial farming, I buy meat for them from the folks at our local farmers market, with preference to the folks trying to raise animals in a sustainable way.

On Saturday, as we were buying our chicken and eggs, our poultry farmer mentioned that he had some bags of turkey wings that he was giving away if we wanted one. He suggested making soup, and since I’d been thinking about stock since his similar offer of chicken backs the week before, I jumped at the chance.

And though it was a decent amount of work to braise the wings, remove the meat, and then simmer the pot for 4 hours, the vat of stock that’s sitting in my fridge was well worth it.

Even more than that, I was totally overwhelmed at the amount of meat I got off the turkey wings. All told, I probably pulled about 4 cups of meat off the wings - plenty for turkey salad or something similar for the carnivorous family member lunches this week. The fact that the wings were free says something not so nice about our relationship to the animals we eat and how we want them delivered to us. Just something to think about.

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so, this was a weekend of success and failure.

First, for the hall of shame, I present to you, the hockey puck:

the bread that I had such high hopes for didn’t really turn out to be much of anything but a hockey puck. I suspect that when push came to shove, there just wasn’t enough gluten development. Probably, I should just mixed it all together at one time and gone for a more sour flavor by letting it rise in the fridge instead of doing the long rise at ~70 degrees. I haven’t cut into yet, but I suspect that the flavor is pretty good, but the texture is dense. So, it will likely be frozen and used for croutons or something similar.

With that out of the way, let’s talk about success.

After reading some recipes from the Hooked on Heat blog, I had a craving for the flavors conjured up, so I decided that I was going to have a week of pretty much entirely Indian food.

So tonight, we made aloo paratha and chili paneer:

This meal was definitely a family affair with everyone pitching in, and it turned out wonderfully.  Both recipes are from Hooked on Heat, a blog you should definitely check out if you’re interested in expanding your Indian cooking skills.

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This is such a fun winter party salad. I found it hard to get all the skins off the beets, but my co-worker Jenny swears that they will slip right off if you plunge them in very cold water after you roast them. I will try this next time, as my hands are still a bit pink from hand peeling them!

Ingredients:

• 3 bunches beets, mixed colors
• 3/4 C extra-virgin olive oil
• Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
• 1 1/2 tsp. whole cumin seeds
• 1/4 cup red wine vinegar
• 1 tbsp. lemon juice
• 1 cup cooked chickpeas, drained
• 1/4 cup shallots, thinly sliced
• 1/2 cup black olives
• 1/2 cup flat-leaf parsley leaves
• 1/4 lb. ricotta salata cheese (I have used feta as well in a pinch)

To prepare:

Preheat oven to 400F. Toss cleaned beets with 2 tbsp. olive oil and 1 tsp. salt. Place in a roasting pan with 1/4 inch water and cover with foil. Roast for 40-50 minutes until tender. Let cool and remove skins. Slice into slabs and put in a bowl.

As the beets roast, toast cumin seeds in a pan over medium heat for 2-3 minutes. Pound half of the seeds into a powder and mix with remaining cumin, 1/4 tsp. salt, red wine vinegar, and lemon juice. Whisk in 1/2 cup olive oil.

Heat 2 tbsp. of olive oil in a pan and add chickpeas when very hot. Fry for 4-5 minutes shaking pan often, until crispy. Drain on a paper towel.

Add shallots and beets to the dressing and season with salt and pepper. Toss in chickpeas, olives, and parsley. Cut ricotta into slabs and layer into the salad.

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Hsiao-ching-chou is food editor for the Seattle Times.  In a recent article she discussed the notion that creativity in the kitchen isn’t always a matter of inventiveness in recipes, but departures from the expective. As she points out, “You can buy all the 30-minute cookbooks you want, but it won’t make you a more efficient cook because you still have to folllow sometimes lengthy ingredients and be a slave to the instructions. This is where internalization and improvisation come in handy.  If you internalize the recipes you’re mosst likely to prepare often anad you stock your pantry and refridgerator with staples or accents that you can help you “whip up” something on the spot you can give the familiar  a face lift without much much more effort. Here are a few useful books:

Sally Schneider, author of “The Improvisational Cook” William Morrow, 394 pages.

Pam Anderson, “How to Cook without a book” 2000.

Basic cooking techniques are critical. Once you learn to sear, broil, grill, steam, you  have dozens of variations to try.  Once you become familiar with the tastes and scents of particular ethnic groups you can substitute for ingredients you don’t have on hand  (ginger powder=fresh ginger==candied ginger).”What if I make something nasty?”  If a dish can’t be adjusted to be edible, try it in soup stock. 

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and if I were a poet, an aspiring poet, or even maybe an English major, I might be able to maintain in that vein for a while longer. I am none of those things, so you’re spared the poor rhyming.

Instead, I’m writing with news on a variation of the no-knead bread that, as you can see from the picture, is on its way to the top of the bowl.

This variation came to me as I was falling asleep last night - in fact, it may have contributed to my difficulty sleeping since once dreamed up, I wanted to start mixing right away.

Yes, I dream of bread. What do you dream of, electric sheep?

Anyway, this bread is the result of two things:

1. Emily mentioned that when she first made the no-knead bread, she let it rise a long time - like 30 some hours long. I’d known long kneads were possible, but never had the patience to wait that long.
2. The no-knead bread is nice and all, but needs some flavor and needs to get away from being a purely white loaf.

So, here’s what I came up with last night:

1. morning one: take 1 cup of flour, 1/4 cup of rye flour, and 1/4 cup of oatmeal. Add 1/8 tsp of yeast and mix to combine. Add 3/4 cups of water (maybe a smidge more) and old-dough if you’ve got it, and mix to the shaggy dough consistency you’re familiar with if you’ve made the no-knead bread before.
2. evening one (about 12 hours later): to the fermenting pile of flours and oats, add 1.5 cups of flour, 1/8 tsp yeast, 1 1/4 tsp salt, and 3/4 cups of water, and maybe a smidge more water if you think necessary. Also add in enough flax seeds to make you happy.
3. morning two (another 12 hours later):  punch down, fold, rest, shape, proof and bake.

So far, I’m up to evening one.

The pictures above were take about 3 hours after adding the second round of flour and yeast. I was somewhat surprised at how quickly it had risen. I’m looking forward to the baking tomorrow, and will post pictures post-baking.

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As a working parent, though I do try to whip up fantastic breakfasts for my family, things don’t always work that way.  Sometimes, the kid crawls into bed and you’re just so warm and comfy that you both end up sleeping later than anticipated.  So, I file this one under “real” and “food” and leave the decision about “good” up to you.

Faced with about 30 minutes to get the kid fed, dressed, and on the way to school, I took mental stock of the fridge on the way downstairs and came up with this:

Reheated hard-boiled eggs, toast, sausage.  Here’s the fancy footwork

I took two previously boiled eggs that were sitting in the fridge and stuck them in a bowl while the electric tea kettle was filling.  After starting the kettle, I tossed a couple sausage on the stove, and started those going.  Finally, I sliced the bread for toast.

About that time, the tea kettle boiled so I poured off water for my tea and poured the rest into the bowl holding the eggs.

wait a few minutes

Then I drank my tea, started the toast, and right about the time the two were finishing, I was plating the sausage, and shelling the eggs (whose peels slipped right off due to the immersion in water).

Couple of pats of butter on the kids toast, couple of dashes of olive oil on mine, and were sitting down to eat breakfast.

Was it my best effort?  No.  But I shared the story because sometimes reality demands that we make some compromises.  And to be honest, I think I did pretty good here - the kid got a good hot meal, and we got out the door on time.  Sure, it wasn’t the french toast I made this morning, but it was still pretty darn good.

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First, the pictures:

This was far and away the best and easiest fish I’ve ever made. Here’s the skinny on how it came together:

The recipes featured here came from Food Down Under. You can find them here: Sesame Soba Bowls, and here: Sesame Salmon with Soba Noodles.

I’d originally decided on the fully vegetarian Sesame Soba Bowls, but my wife decided that we should add some fish to mix, which was okay with me. Instead of switching recipes, I thought we’d combine the two, using the noodle recipe from Sesame Soba Bowls topped with the fish from the salmon recipe.

If you decide to try these at home, here is what you should know. The recipes are really quite easy, but in both cases, there is some knife work involved. If you’re not confident in your quick knife skills, you should either budget some extra time, or else do some of the chopping ahead of time. Once the prep is done, the meal comes together in minutes, consisting mostly of mixing up the sauce for the noodles and cooking the soba and salmon.

One last tip - serve the noodles warm. This is tricky when you have to rinse the soba with cold water after cooking, but just toss some extra water on to boil and give the noodles a final dunk in the hot water before you mix them up with the sauce. Though I really like cold soba noodles, I do think these would be much better served warm. Happy eating!

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