Good Real Food

I don’t know about you, but I have been trying to think of ways to cut down our food budget as things are tight and all the current events are causing me to draw on my Dutch genes that tell me to plan for the worst. So, I have been finding ways to cook with what is in the house and garden and waiting way longer than I usually would to restore the food supplies. Apples are abundant and if you save the one expensive honey crisp for a raw sliced dessert and use the other less expensive ones for cooking, you can make a $7 bag of apples go a long way. When I was a kid we had four apple trees in our back yard. Every year we made apple cider, dried apples, and my favorite, apple sauce. We were not allowed store bought sweets in our house, so I made up snacks for myself using plain yogurt and apple sauce that is still one of my favorite things to eat, though my family thinks it looks gross. Apple sauce is perhaps one of the easiest things you will ever make, and it freezes really well so you can enjoy hot apple sauce in the dead of winter.

Slice and core (but do not peel) as many apples as you have around and put them in a large pot. Cover with water and simmer until soft. Place cooked apples in a food processor or food mill and make the consistency you want. Chunky-fine. Return mixture to the pot, add sugar and cinnamon to taste. Freeze in air tight containers.

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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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I only recently figured out that a person could, if they wanted, just soak bulgur overnight and never heat it at all. I’m a master of forcing legumes on myself by setting them out to soak in the morning which means I can’t laze out and not cook them into food when I get home. I left our bulgur soaking thusly overnight, with only half a mind to what I was going to do with it, mostly thinking “aw crap. we’ve got a crust and a half of bread which is not going to make lunch for both of us tomorrow.”

In the morning it had soaked up its water and I just put it in tupperware with cucumber, tomato, one hard boiled egg for each of us, sliced, some cubed up jack cheese because it was there and some lettuce. (which, despite my upbringing in a house where there was always washed lettuce in the fridge, except while we were washing it, I only recently started washing right away and storing in a ready to use sort of state).

I think the trick (the trick besides soaking) was to just dress the bulgur. I love pomegranate molasses, Vivian hipped me to it years ago while she was gathering provisions in NYC in preparation for her move to law school someplace in Ohio where she wasn’t sure there’d be an arab grocery. With balsamic and olive oil it makes a lovely dressing, especially for grain-type salads. Sometimes I add sumac, oregano and thyme, sometimes I forget. This time I forgot. So I just dressed the bulgur and then dumped everything else in and put the lettuce at the very top (actually N. arranged the sliced eggs artfully on top, but the idea was to keep the lettuce mostly up off the dressing so that it wouldn’t be all wilted by lunch time).

I do have a question for youse, though. A few, actually. Starting with, are you still eating out of plastic containers? We’ve got a few of these clear rubbermaid containers that comfortably hold about as much grain salad or leftovers as an adult person needs for lunch. They stay closed and don’t leak and generally rock, but they are plastic. I’m just curious about the rest of you. What do you pack your food in?

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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 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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Sunday we came home from a camping trip to a fridge with not much in it, save for half cube of tofu and a magical bag of beet greens. That and one lone boca burger. I don’t know how the greens survived the nuclear winter that seems to have decimated the rest of the contents of our fridge. The tofu I understand but fresh greens? Where’d they come from?

This is a pretty conventional recipe. For whatever reason it is almost always a chicken salad. If you don’t eat chicken or don’t have chicken or don’t feel like having chicken tonight, no big thing. Use something else. I have a tofu technique that I’m fond of, that goes something like:

• Iron skillet
• Some oil, (not olive oil: canola or safflower or something higher heat than olive oil)
• a little bit of dark sesame oil
• tofu, in cubes
• soy sauce

Get the tofu going in a little oil on pretty high heat, but not the very highest. Just a little oil, enough to coat the pan. We’re not deep frying here. Leave it. Do other things. Stir it from time to time. When it starts to brown a little, put a cap-full of soy sauce in the pan and prepare to stir madly while the soy sauce caramelizes on the tofu and makes it really crispy. There is probably a better word for the effect than caramelize, but you get the idea.

So Sunday night, the other things I was doing were washing the beet greens and cooking cellophane noodles. I drained the noodles and dumped them, hot, onto the greens.

Then I called my sister who, so far as I can tell, is not on the internet to be found and linked to, and who always knows what to put in dressings. She suggested a dressing of …

• Chili oil (actually, I used some Thai chili paste)
• Sesame oil (dark)
• Soy sauce (I always use Tamari. I don’t know if that matters or not. If you tear open a few old takeout packets the sky will not fall.)
• Rice vinegar
• lime juice
• and a dash of fish sauce

I’m going to file this under vegan because the fish sauce is optional, not because I think fish grown on trees. My sister is a vegetarian: fish sauce was not on her ingredients list, but I like a little fish sauce.

If you’re anything like me, you’re annoyed that there aren’t any portions above. If you call Winnie for recipe advice she’ll only give you “oh a little and then a bit,” and the truth is that learning to cook is about learning to make some sesame dressing, stick your finger in it, taste it and think “hmm. too salty.” and add some more rice vinegar and limes.

So there you are. There we were anyway. Mix it together. Eat. If you have other vegetables: scallions, cucumbers, asparagus … it is a salad. This is the sort of summer salad that should be a staple in my life. I don’t know why it isn’t.

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I love nettles!

Granted, today was my first experience with them outside of tea, but after today, I can see that nettles and I are going to have a long and lovely relationship.

We received some nettles in our CSA box, and C, knowing that I was intrigued at the idea of eating something that was going to do its darnedest to fend me off with its sting, grabbed a few extra bunches from the “trade” box at the pick-up site.

Given that this was my first time with nettles, I did some research and found that the only real consensus on nettles was that you had to cook them to remove the sting. Okay, fine, we can work with that.

I also learned that some people had tried doing a version of pesto using nettles. I figured you couldn’t go wrong mixing a green with loads of garlic, pine nuts, parmesan, and olive oil, so that’s what I did.

To do what I did, you’ll need the following:

• a bunch of nettles, well washed, leaves removed from stems (be careful, and do your research on how to handle the leaves
• a bunch of spinach, washed and de-stemmed
• garlic cloves, at least 3, though I think more is better
• toasted pine nuts, and maybe a few walnuts, almonds, or other nut of your choice
• parmesan
• olive oil
• salt and pepper

What to do:

1. wash your nettles and spinach
2. boil some water, and cook your nettles in the boiling water for about five minutes
3. drain, and dump nettles into a food processor
4. toast your pine nuts and walnuts either in your oven or on stove top
5. add toasted nuts to nettles, and pulse in the food processor
6. add garlic, spinach, and parmesan, along with some salt and pepper - proportions are really up to you here, if there’s a pesto recipe that you like, use it as a guide, I usually wing it
7. whiz that all up, then turn the processor on and add a steady stream of olive oil till it’s your desired consistency
8. toss with pasta and enjoy

One note: Last year, I came across a pesto recipe that suggests putting diced potatoes in with the pasta when you cook it, so when you toss with the pesto you’ve got pasta, potato, pesto happiness. I’ve taken to doing this, and highly recommend it. I generally use small red potatoes, and cut them to somewhere between 1/4 and 1/2 inch cubes - skin on. Basically, you want them small enough that they cook in same time as the pasta does.

So there you have it - stinging nettles and spinach pesto. Enjoy!

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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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Yep - those 5 things, when combined, with a few other things make for a darn tasty and quick late winter/early spring pasta - at least here in MN they do.

I know that in other parts of the country, you’re experiencing the beginnings of spring. And truth be told, so were we here in the Twin Cities. At least last week. Then, it decided to get a bit nippy again, and now the weather people are talking about a few more inches of snow over the next two days before it all melts again.

So that was on my mind as I rode my bicycle home into a headwind (it seems to almost always be a headwind on the way home) as I headed the market before going home. On the way, I was recalling a pasta dish I’d made in the past that involved sauteed garlic, slow cooked onions, and lots of parsley. When I stepped into the market, the first thing I laid eyes on was a bunch of broccoli rabe. Out of that happy coincidence our dinner was born, and it turned out to be just the right “feel” for an early spring evening. And it was pretty darn quick too

Here’s what I did:

1. cooked my chick peas - we pretty much only use dried beans these days, so I tossed them in the pressure cooker while I
2. gently cooked some thinly sliced garlic over very low heat - we’re going for flavor extraction here, okay?
3. once that had cooked a while, I threw in some chopped onion and some dried marjoram
4. after that cooked a bit, I added my chickpeas, followed a few minutes later by my parsley and finally a can of diced tomato
5. I let all this cook down while my pasta cooked
6. oh, somewhere in there, I also added salt, pepper, and a tiny bit of crushed red pepper

As all this was happening, I quickly cooked the broccoli rabe by slow sauteeing garlic in olive oil, followed by adding the broccoli rabe and a bit of water and covering that and allowing to steam/cook through. Once it was done, I salted, peppered, and added a bit of crushed red chili, both by habit, but also cause I’d recently read the recipe for something similar over at We Are Never Full. I tossed the pan in the oven to keep warm while the pasta finished.

Once the pasta was cooked, I tossed it with the sauce, along with some grated Parmesan and a bit of the pasta water that I’d reserved before draining the pasta. When plating, I topped each bowl of pasta with a fanned out portion of the broccoli rabe - it was rather pretty even if I say so myself.

The verdict from my family was positive. My four year old daughter barely paused from inhaling the food to pronounce it “good.” It isn’t a “perfect” dish - there is still some work to be done to really bring it all together - and I invite your efforts, thoughts and comments to that end.

For what it’s worth, here is what I think works about this dish - first, the chickpeas and the earthy flavors of parsley and marjoram combine nicely with the garlic, onion, and tomato - the sauce has some layers of flavor that taste much more complex than the prep was. Second, I think the bitter flavor of the broccoli rabe contrasts really nicely with the whole wheat pasta and the chickpea sauce. The contrast really emphasizes the sweetness of the chickpeas and the pasta - a much needed flavor when winter seems to be holding on too long, and spring seems weeks aways.

So there you have it - a concept that I think it pretty good, and an invitation to tweak, revise, and otherwise modify till it’s “right” for you. If you choose to take this and “fix” it, I would love to know what you do to make it really work.

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