Good Real Food

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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this is a minor variation on my usual kale recipe which involves sauteeing garlic and onions for a few, adding crushed red chili, followed by roughly chopped kale and cooking, covered till done to your liking.

The minor variation is this - cook your garlic over very low heat for a longer time - 10 minutes maybe, to really infuse your olive oil.  Turn up the heat to medium and add lots of very thinly sliced onions and cook till those are brown.  Then add your chili and kale and cook as usual.

The extended time on the garlic and onion really makes the sweetness of the onions and the flavor of the garlic pop, and creates a really nice contrast to the bitter flavor of the kale.

It was different enough from the usual that my daughter commented on it, hence this posting.  Enjoy.

By the way, in case you didn’t know this, the trick to getting truly brown onions is time.  Turn down the heat once you start to get a bit of color and cook, stirring frequently.  It takes a while, but the flavor is well worth it.

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Last night we hosted 20 some folks for my birthday party/fundraiser for the Progressive Technology Project (which would be where I work).
Because I’d just returned from a rather taxing week away, I decided to keep the food for the shindig as easy as I could, and though I hadn’t made this recipe before, figured it was simple enough and fairly straightforward and how could you really go wrong with veggies and beans and broth anyway?

As expected the soup came out nicely, though I can certainly see why the cooks that I lifted this recipe from added some bits of meat.  I sort of thought that some stew meat/pork/lamb would be a nice addition, though you’d want to change the cooking order a bit if going that route.  In any event, here’s a soup that’s quick to make, dead simple, and is filling and warming and everything else that winter soups should be.  Enjoy.

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What the heck is this? Well, it is practically the only local vegetable available (Wisconsin) so I should try it. This is what led me to buy one of these strange things today to take home and test it out.                                                                                                                        I found online a CSA farmer in California who fell in love with these Heirloom roots. “The black Spanish radish is an antique radish, a throwback to a time when people counted on storing roots to survive the winter.” He talks about his journey growing them and also has some interesting Recipes. I was inspired by the Asian influenced one on the site and created this salad using: 1 black spanish radish, two carrots, four scallions, 1/4 tsp red pepper flakes, 1 tbsp olive oil, 1 tbsp lemon juice, 1 tbsp rice wine vinigar, 1 tbsp sugar and 1/ 2 tsp salt. It has a very fresh spicy bite with a really clean finish that tasted amazing with a glass of beer. I brought the mixing bowl over to D right after I tasted it. He gave me a sour look for bothering his reading, but I held up a fork to his mouth. His eyes closed as he chewed and he reached for more with  a boyish grin.                                                                                 

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I found this recipe for Shitake Mushroom and Koshihikari Rice Cakes in my new cookbook Homegrown Pure and Simple. I loved the idea — kinda like Italian risotto cakes but with a Japanese flare – but did not like the fact that to follow the orders exactly would require three seperate stops: to the grocery store, a specialty Japanese food store and, being in Minnesota, the booze store. So, I am doing the unthinkable and customizing a recipe before even making it properly. I do hope you understand. Life is too darn short to forsake a beautifull idea just because you work a 9-5 and are not a professional chef.

The real recipe called for sake, mushroom soy sauce, Koshihikari suchi rice, home-made mushroom stock, Panco (Japanese style bread crumbs), spreading out the hot rice on a cookie sheet and letting it be in the fridge for UP TO 6 hours, and the use of some tool called “ring molds”. I used rice wine that I already had in the house, regular soy sauce, the closest thing I could find to sushi rice at the coop, ready-made mushroom stock, my hands, and the little bit of bread crumbs I had left over from making fish cakes a while back. The whole thing set in the fridge for 9 hours and was just dandy.

Here is what I did today. With a bit of planning, I worked a full day and was able to serve these special delicious treats along with salmon and left over mustard greens for dinner.

 What you need:

• 3 cups mushroom stock (you can make your own by pouring hot water over dried mushroms and letting sit for 30 minutes then drain.)
• 1 cup rice wine
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 cup rice (arborio or sushi)
• 10-12 fresh (shitake) mushrooms, chopped
• 1 large shallot
• 2 tbsp oil (I used grapeseed oil)
• 1/2 cup bread crumbs
• 1/2 cup black sesame seeds

What to do in the morning before leaving for work: saute the shallots and mushrooms in the oil for 3 minutes. Add the rice and stir for another 3 minutes until toasty. Add the rice wine and stir until dry, add the mushroom stock and stir until rice is cooked. Take off the heat, stir for a few minutes to cool. Leave in the pot and cover. Put in the fridge while you are at work.

What to do When you get home: Take out the rice, form into somewhat flattened balls, roll one half in the bread crumbs, the other in the black sesame seeds. Fry 3 minutes on each side and serve with broiled fish and greens sauted in the same oil with the cakes waiting in the warm oven. I swear it took less than 20 minutes!

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delicious and insane is how I’d describe this beet pesto recipe that I got from the nami-nami blog - delicious because come on, it’s beet pesto - beets, cilantro, garlic, and pine nuts - what’s not to like? Insane because when you toss this with pasta (reserve a bit of cooking water) and some olive oil, the pesto colors your pasta a beautiful, intense lustrous red that has to been seen to be believed. You look at the color and can’t help but wonder what beets were thinking when they decided that that was their color of choice.

We ate this pesto tossed with whole wheat fettuccine and it was lovely.

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Made another recipe from nami-nami-blogspot.com, this time the Beetroot soup with Goat’s cheese. We’ve been a bit meat and carb heavy recently since that’s what my wife’s been craving and I don’t argue with pregnant women, about food at least. This week though, we all hit that mid-winter point where we had deep vegetable cravings - I think the little one devoured almost a head of lettuce on her own over the weekend. Anyway, when I saw this recipe using not one, but three of my favorite vegetables - beets, parsnips, and celeriac, I knew I’d be making it.

We had it with a large salad, fresh baked sourdough bread, and some cheese and radishes. It was lovely - very simple to make, very tasty, and wonderfully light and cleansing after too much heavy foods. If you’re looking for a simple vegetarian soup, give this a shot.

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currently making sweet potato dal via this recipe from google.

Yesterday, made empanadillas from this recipe filled with leftover cabbage soup from my last post - they were delightful and disappeared much more quickly than the soup had, though with the amount of butter in the dough, it isn’t much surprise.  Unless I did my metric conversion wrong in which case - oh, nevermind.

And finally, my kid has chicken pox and I think that garam masala may be the Indian equivalent of ketchup in that it sneaks into many many dishes and makes everything it appears in taste better.  Maybe.

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I can’t really take credit for either of the items that graced our table this evening - a lovely rice and smothered cabbage soup via The Wednesday Chef (where do I know her from?) accompanied by squash fritters based on this recipe with light modifications courtesy of me. No pictures cause the camera has been acting up a bit, but it was a truly lovely supper. My wife was in the mood to cook, so she took charge of the soup while I tackled the squash and by some odd miracle, we finished up everything right on time as the small one was starting to get peckish - in both the hunger and mood senses of the word. Since we’re expecting another child, I added a few sausages to the menu to bump up the protein, but they could easily be left out for a really nice vegetarian meal that is just perfect for a winter Sunday supper.

Two notes on the recipes - we switched out the arborio rice in the soup for some already cooked left-over brown rice and vegetable broth for the beef stock, we also spiced up the squash fritters with cayenne and skipped the powdered sugar. The fritters were great. We felt that the soup was missing something, which C and I both agreed was a green flavor - likely solved by the addition of some chopped up parsley at the very end. In summer, basil or other fresh herbs would do nicely, maybe even arugula. The soup recipe is quite simple - though does take some time, and seems to be a good place from which to make multiple modifications.

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I received a cuisinart food processor for xmas this year and it is opening up all kinds of nifty-quick recipe memories. This particular dish was made for me by a Scottish mystic and microbiotic convert on the Isle of Arran in 1997 and I still remember it!

Shred one whole onion, three cloves garlic, three raw whole scrubbed and topped beets and four scrubbed topped carrots into a bowl. Add two to three tbs. oil, two to three tbsp. apple cidar vinegar, two to three tbsp apple cidar, salt and pepper and sunflower seeds.

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