Good Real Food

anyone who tells you that two kids more than doubles the work is totally correct. Wow.

Anyway, in addition to being up to my eyeballs in kids, this site’s software lost it’s marbles for a bit and none of our intrepid authors could login to share their culinary adventures. Apologies that it has taken me so long to get things sorted out.

And being back, I thought I should share something food-ish. In fact, I have two things to share: squash stuffings, and a nifty thing to do with soup.

Squash Stuffings:

I don’t know what’s happening where you live, but we are well into fall here, and that means squash.

In the past weeks, our CSA share has provided a few butternuts, a couple of acorn, a kombucha and some truly amazing delicata. I’ve been kind of down on the peel, roast, eat practice recently - maybe since that was all I ever did with squash so lately, I’ve been stuffing it. Below are two suggestions for stuff squash - the sausage one filled out the roasted delicata, while the bean and greens stuffing filled out roasted acorn squash. The butternuts and kombucha are likely to find themselves in a soup or pie in the not too distant future.

Sausage stuffing for squash: This couldn’t be simpler. Get some good bulk italian sausage. Cook it. Make a simple tomato sauce - I put fennel and peppers and garlic and onions and capers in mine. Halve, scoop, lightly oil and roast your squash (cut side down) - I did ours at 400 and tucked a sprig of thyme under each half of squash. When cooked, spoon sausage into squash and top with tomato sauce and some grated pecorino or parmesan.

Beans and Greens stuffing for squash: Another simple one. Cook some great northern beans. Chop some bacon, cook until it’s mostly done, then add diced onion, garlic, carrots, and peppers assuming you’ve got some from your market or CSA. Cook down, adding some salt and pepper and some crushed red chili along the way. Add your greens. I used some lovely “saute greens” from our CSA - a mix of all kinds of little greens. You could use any greens you like. I think dino kale, chard, spinach, or arugula would all be lovely. Beet greens would be fantastic, and you’d have beets too! Once the greens are wilted, add your cooked beans without the liquid they cooked in, and reduce heat and let it hang out for a bit, stirring occasionally and maybe adding a bit of water if it looks like it needs it. Once again, roast your squash, stuff it with this mixture, and enjoy.

Really, these are shared not because there’s anything terribly interesting about them - you likely already do stuff like this all the time - I just find that sharing and hearing about what others do with their veggies inspires me to get a bit more creative with my cooking from time to time.

Nifty soup trick: Yes, I was rather proud of myself when I thought of this one. Does that make me a food nerd? Fine, then I’m a food nerd.

Anyway, I was making some celeriac, carrot, and beet soup, and I thought it would be swell with a poached egg in each bowl. So, instead of poaching them separately, I just broke the eggs directly into the simmering soup and waited till they were cooked to my liking. Just don’t forget how many eggs you put in!

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I have been trying to work japanese style home cooking into my repertoire. And we have three cabbages from our CSA aging in our fridge. Madhur Jaffrey delivers: 1/2 of a medium cabbage, sliced thin.  1/2 tsp salt, cooked in some oil 3-4 minutes just until the cabbage is starting to wilt.  Add in 4-8 umoboshi plums and 1/2 tsp sugar that you pounded or mashed into a paste. We had it with an egg (scrambled, with scotch bonnet since we’re still working through those) and rice. Easy.

Might give me gas (cabbage seems to do that) but I did just move through a serious amount of brassica.

My next challenge: a monster eggplant. I haven’t decided what to do with it.

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Like so many midwesterners in late August, I find myself completly overrun with monster zucchini and summer squash. I have included a recipe in this post that I made up to use up the bunnies in unique and yummy ways: Chocholate Zucchini Bread. But first, as an homage to my father, Jim Heynen, I want to share with you his short story about zucchini.

Garden Rabbits, by Jim Heynen
There were the fuzzy sharp-toothed ones that nipped tender shoots of lettuce and cabbage before they could dream of the salad bowl, the kind that multiplied as quickly as aphids and were as hard to discourage from their nibbling ways. But there was another kind of garden rabbit. These too were fruitful and multiplied in great abundance, though they did not hop. They were zucchini.
The boys did not like to eat zucchini very much. The taste was as dull as potatoes without salt or butter or sour cream, and the texture was slimy as cooked okra. But in August when the lettuce had bolted and the cabbage had died, when even most of the tomatoes had ripened and the wine-colored beets bulged from the earth ready for harvest, the zucchini caught a second breath: the yellow blossoms quickly turned into small green fingers that within a week were the size of cucumbers and in two weeks the size of small watermelons. Why couldn’t the animal garden rabbits eat these vegetable garden rabbits instead of the carrots and lettuce?
If the boys didn’t do something, they knew it would mean zucchini in eggs for breakfast, fried zucchini and onions for dinner, boiled zucchini for supper. Zucchini casseroles! Zucchini salads! Zucchini pie if there was a recipe for one hiding somewhere!
The oldest boy had a plan. Over supper, as they all swallowed the soggy chunks of zucchini, he said, We have so many zucchini, we should give some to the poor people who don’t have anything to eat.
The oldest boy had never in his life suggested giving anything to anybody, not even to his friends. And now he was thinking of poor people he didn’t even know?
The grown-ups thought it was a wonderful idea and even brought it up in their family devotions: That the abundance of the earth should be given to all, they prayed. Yea, even to the neediest of our number.
On Saturday night the boys loaded the car trunk with big zucchini before they went into town. The boys agreed that they would spend the evening giving the zucchini to poor people they met.
Look at them, said one of the grown-ups, as the boys loaded their arms with zucchini and started down the streets looking for poor people. Aren’t they wonderful?
The boys couldn’t really tell a poor person from a rich person, so they started offering zucchini to everyone they met. They figured the rich people wouldn’t take them and the poor people would. But it seemed that poor people were few and far between when it came to feeding them zucchini.
When the boys got to the big parking lot next to a WalMart that had just replaced most of the stores downtown, the oldest boy said, Let’s just put some in the back seat of everybody’s car. We might not be getting them to poor people, but at least we’re still giving them away.
This is what they did and within a half hour they were rid of all the zucchini. The grown-ups thoughts the boys’ charity had been so successful that they let the boys load up the trunk of the car with zucchini the next Saturday night too.
The boys went straight to the WalMart parking lot. But word had gotten out that if you didn’t lock your car doors somebody would fill the back seat of your car with giant zucchini.
Oh no, said the oldest boy, after they had tried all the car doors in the parking lot. We’re stuck with them. We’ll be eating zucchini until Christmas!
Then one of the boys pretended to drop one on the street as he crossed on the way back toward their car. The other boys followed suit, dropping zucchini, one after another. Whoops, whoops, whoops, as the zucchini dropped to the street.
The boys stood on the sidewalk and watched the cars pass by, some of them slowing down and swerving to miss the shattered vegetables. But in a few minutes the zucchini had been mushed up and the cars didn’t even slow doen. And that was how the last of the green garden rabbits died. Smeared out on the street like so much road kill.

Chocolate-Zucchini Bread
-1 1/2 cups brown sugar
-3/4 cup sunflower or safflower oil
-3 eggs beaten
-1 1/2 tbsp melted butter
-1 tsp vanilla
-2 cups grated zucchini
-1 1/2 cups white flour
-1 cup whole wheat flour
-2 tsp baking soda
-1 tsp baking powder
-1 tsp salt
-2-3 tbsp good quality cocoa powder
-1 tsp cinnamon
-1 tsp ground cloves

Preheat the oven to 350F
1. In a large bowl combine the sugar, oil, eggs, butter and vanilla and beat well with a whisk. Mix in the grated zucchini. 2. In a separate bowl, combine all the remaining dry ingredients and mix well. Gently stir the dry mixture into the wet. Pour the batter into a well-oiled loaf pan and bake for approximately 1 hour, until firm and a toothpick comes out of the center clean. Cool for 15 minutes before removing from the pan.

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My parents brought a dozen meyer lemons from their tree in San Francisco. Used some in salad dressing, been putting them in water glasses. I’m not used to having lemons around.  Do you keep lemons always? For what? Can I freeze the zest of the last three? Can I just freeze lemon slices? I know their days are numbered.

And, also, we have five scotch bonnets and there is no way I can eat them on my own and N. is leaving me for almost a week. What to do? Make some kind of salsa? Pickle them? Dry them?

PS, from the eat your vegetables department, mystery greens (Mr. Prince, the gardener up the street, calls it spinach, but it isn’t. More kale-y) cooked up with mint, leftover brown rice, a dash of habanero powder that Paul gave us for some reason. (You know I’m the last one to say that a gift has to be new, but there must be a story behind half a jar of powdered spice with the label faded and wearing off.) It was most excellent. Mmm, and some Parmesan.  I am going to have to start working on my protein intake, I think. I tend to just assume that they’re right when they say most Americans eat too much protein and I shouldn’t fret.  And, um, ice cream with almonds is a good source of protein, right? That is my other new trick, salted almonds in my ice cream.  I finished Reading Lolita in Tehran which is the subject of one strangely obtuse and contentious wikipedia entry, and which features a narrator who regularly pours cold coffee over toasted walnuts and ice cream and which, somehow for me turned into salted almonds and ice cream. And looking more closely at what I can learn from fiction.

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Caroline wants pickling advice and I’m afraid to tell her I don’t know a thing. I mean, I know a lot right? I know everything. But I’m too lazy to do much more than put more vegetables in the turnip pickle juice when the turnips start to run out. Sliced white onions are good for that. So are green tomatoes. Sliced or whole. Then you can put them on sandwiches. Mmmm. Sometimes I put carrots in, which don’t go well on sandwiches and are better fresh anyway. After a few rounds of onions the brine starts to get funky and I dump it.

This week, though, I made a batch of Korean turnip pickles, that came out pretty great in a garlic skunk kind of a way. Hsuan offered a book of simple Japanese pickles (which she still hasn’t delivered. I gave her some pickled turnip today to help her remember …) which got me thinking that Madhur Jaffrey would probably have some useful advice. I had to adapt a little, since I don’t have any dried Korean chilies and I couldn’t find scallions and I wanted to pickle a lot more than three small turnips.

Note: I think preserving things is one of those adventures that can lead to botulism, so, um … you know. Think for yourself here. Look up a recipe. When in doubt, throw it out.

I started with 4 or 5 really really big turnips, which I sliced about a quarter inch thick, sprinkled lightly with salt, and let sit for a few hours in a glass bowl. I gather that glass is important if you don’t want rust and funky reactions going on. I rinsed and rinsed and chopped up two monster cloves of garlic (I’m thinking now that one would have done it) and one small white onion and one nice hot chili. I don’t remember what variety it was, it was from the green market and it was super spicy. Only you know how spicy you like your pickles. I added ~2tsp of salt and a tsp of sugar and stirred it all around and added enough water to cover the whole business in a glass jar. I added three or four impossibly small beets because pink pickles rule and what else are you going to do with three or four impossibly small beets?

Rest a saucer loosely on top. It was supposed to sit for 6-8 days but I put a real lid on it and stuck it in the fridge on day 5, for no good reason. I had them in my lunch today. Like I said, I think one clove of garlic would have done it–I won’t be getting any mosquito bites tonight!

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I’ll probably accidentally write this again before summer is over but nothing goes better than fresh zucchini and fresh mint. Good thing since both are more prolific than anyone really wants them to be. Hot iron skillet, onions, garlic, patience, patience, sliced squash, patience, salt and pepper, patience, lots of chopped mint and just a little more patience.

We had it with romano and tortellini this week, but it goes nicely with tofu and rice, too.

We cooked it to softness but you can leave out some of the patience and have a fresher squash and a fresher mint and call it salad. Maybe with bulgur or kasha and a bit of feta.

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This was definitely a night for boiling some water while considering my options.

Kale in a hot skillet with some olive oil and a few sun dried tomatoes. Onions and garlic would have been nice, carmelized onions even better, but I was feeling about that lazy tonight. Toasted walnuts (on the skillet that was still out from an ill advised beans and tortillas lunch prep; note to self: don’t make lunches that want a toaster oven if you work in a microwave-only office.) A good size glob of red pepper paste from a tube (it is french, so it must be good for me, right?). I forgot this is why I keep capers around–they would have been good. Some mascarpone because I got it on special so we have to eat it until we have a collective butterfat heart attack. Some cheddar and parm because they were there. Toss with some type of pasta.

What do you throw on pasta when you want to feel like you made dinner but don’t feel like making dinner?

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I had no idea that this was such an easy meal to make, or that pork tenderloin is one of the leanest meats you can get. My Dad and step mom are big fans of pork tenderloin on the grill, but I was lazy, and, being as it is not quite summer yet, and no risk of overheating the kitchen….I went with an easy inside version. Take a fresh pork loin, salt and pepper it, then brown in a heavy skillet on both sides with a little oil. Transfer to a baking pan and roast in the oven at 350 for about 15 minutes. At this point, pour on a sauce or glaze of some kind. I used about a 1/2 cup of maple syrup mixed with cinnamon and cloves. Other recipes I have seen call for orange juice and ginger. Roast for another 5-10 minutes–but check, as it as it is really easy to overcook these babies, leaving them dry. D liked the finished product with a bit of the extra glaze drizzled on top. I served the sliced tenderloin with summer squash and kale made by sautéing both in sesame oil with onion and garlic and sesame seeds added just before serving. The combination of sesame infused veggies with the maple syrup taste of the pork was divine.

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I won’t be this prolific for long, I’m sure, but I’ve had a few posts stewing in me, which is why I finally decided I should just dive in.  Continuing on the theme of my sister (and quietly laying the groundwork for my master plan which is to get her writing about her own recipes) and her coworkers, she told me another story, on the same trip to Costco to buy reading glasses and an EZ pass for dad. I don’t remember what the story was supposed to be about, but it wound up being about her mac and cheese and her coworkers who don’t cook. About how they ooh and awww when she brings mac and cheese to a potluck “when I just put some Wensleydale and a swiss and it isn’t any big deal.” So she starts into how she was trying to explain to her coworkers that home made mac and cheese is easy and you just have to start with a white sauce, but no one knew what a white sauce is. So she says “first you make a roux” and they all stare at her like she’s speaking french. Which she is.

This story was on my mind, this story about “first you make a roux” and all the blank stares, when I called Noah to tell him that we had broccoli and some fresh pita and not a whole lot else. He asked after our cheese stocks and whether we couldn’t have some cheese on our broccoli. And so I made a roux. I haven’t done that in 10 years, but I cracked open Joy and found a cheese sauce recipe (Sauce Mornay, to be precise) and ignored it entirely. Not entirely. Actually, I followed the first half pretty closely, and then tripled the amount of cheese. If you don’t have the Joy, find a standard cookbook, the kind that might have a recipe for at least Bechamel. When it is done, stir in 3/4 cup of cheese and spoon it on some food that needs cheese sauce.

The Joy recipe has you simmer the milk with  half an onion, a few cloves and a bay leaf  before you add it in to the sauce. You don’t have to, but that was a nice touch.

So we had a lot of steamed broccoli and some cheese sauce along with some  manaeesh, which is just bread and zaatar, which was good.

As a rule, I file cheese sauce under “well sure, anything tastes good with enough butter on it” but, well, it is true. So it was good.

Zaatar is just oregano, thyme, sumac, sesame seeds … and some kind of secret ingredients, which is why when I buy Sahadi’s zaatar mix it tastes better than when I try to mix my own spices. You take the spice mix and mix it with enough olive oil to make a paste and you spread it on, if you are lazy, pita bread. If you are classy, you make fresh flatbread, which probably tastes fantastic. You put it in a hot oven (500) for as long as it takes for the bread to get nice and hot.

Since we almost always have pita in the freezer, this was a serious scraps of the fridge meal.

PS. I was thinking about Winnie and her Wensleydale and almost bought some Wensleydale today but it had ginger and figs in it and even though right now that sounds amazing, when I was standing in line at the cheese store it sounded like the kind of thing that could go either way, even at $3/lb.

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I started out with the best intentions to make a traditional tabouli salad…but the great veggies in the fridge kept calling until I had created a new favorite salad.

What I used (veggies can vary)
-1 cup bulgur
-2 cups hot water
-juice of one lemon
-3 cloves garlic smashed with the back of a knife
-1/2 cucumber cubed
-4 radishes cubed
-7 cherry tomatoes, quartered
-1/2 red pepper chopped
-1 handful parsley chopped
-1/2 avocado chopped
-1/2 cup corn (fresh or thawed)
-1/2 tsp salt
-1 tbsp olive oil
Squeeze the lemon into a stainless steel bowl. Add smashed garlic and dry bulgur. Cover with the boiling hot water and let stand for 1/2 hour. In the meantime, chop all the veggies. Add them to the cooked bulgur, toss with salt and olive oil and serve luke warm or put in the fridge for an hour to cool before serving.

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