CSA Cooking, Part 1

My first CSA pickup this week contained
butter lettuce
red oak leaf lettuce
kale
radishes
scallions
and a tiny plant of lemon basil
I've washed and checked many of these vegetables and placed them in the crisper in ziplocs for safekeeping- and I'm plotting how best to cook/eat these delightful gems.
Tonite, I've made a butter-lettuce and radish salad with a bit of lime, salt, pepper, and olive oil. Now I know why butter lettuce is called butter lettuce- it is, well, buttery-textured/tasting.
So much excited about all the delicious veggytubbles!!!!!!!!!

A Grain, a Bean, and a Vegetable

This is the first (second if you count my soba/kabocha/tofu bowl) in a series of posts on the way I like to construct a veggie dinner or lunch, especially for lunchboxing- one grain, preferably of the whole variety, one bean or bean product, and one vegetable. However, the bean product might, on occasion, be replaced by an alternative protein, like tempeh or seitan, or maybe even fish or eggs- I am omnivorous, with veggie tendencies).
This one is bulgur wheat pilaf with a quick black bean and spinach stew. If this topic is successful, I'm thinking of turning it into a blog event. Any thoughts?

Bulgur Wheat Pilaf
Saute one small onion in a bit of olive oil until translucent. Add 1 cup bulgur wheat, stir to combine with onions and allow to toast slightly. Add 2 cups hot water or broth and a bay leaf. Bring to a boil, cover, lower to a simmer and let it steam about 25 mins or until all the water is absorbed.

Quick Spinach/Black Bean Stew
Open a can of black beans (or cook them yourself.) Place in a small saucepan with 1/2 a can of water and a few handfuls of spinach (frozen or fresh, chopped), a few pinches of thyme, a few grinds of pepper, and a bit of cumin. No salt needed. Bring to a boil to cook the spinach a bit. Serve on the bulgur, top with yogurt or a bit of olive oil if desired, and more pepper.

A Simple Fennel Salad

I like fennel. It is cool, crunchy, and refreshing, and makes a delightful salad. The lightly licorice flavor intensifies and warms somewhat when roasted, and attenuates when boiled or steamed. It is, however, also delicious sliced up plain and raw, and eaten like celery sticks. Now, some might say this salad is Morrocan in origin, and I have certainly enjoyed it at the tables of Morrocan cooks, but I think this recipe is more of my standard method for dealing with any vegetable that is good eaten raw- slice thinly, toss with lemon or lime juice, a pinch of salt, a grind of pepper, and a bit of garlic (processed as you choose). Now, I know I missed the deadline for weekend herb blogging, but had I made it, this would be it.

Lentils with Olive Oil and Salt are as Good as Mashed Potatoes

Really, they are. Take the plainest, brownest lentils from the supermarket- none of your fancy French Le Puy or your black baby beluga lentils- and cook them until soft in plain water with a bay leaf. Drain them and add some salt and dish them up with a sprinkle of pepper and a dribble of good olive oil. It's the same comforting homeyness of texture and simple earthiness of taste that I crave when I want mashed potatoes- these are oddly satisfying.

Tamarind and Allspice Meatballs

Tamarind (or Tamarindo, or Temerhendy, or Ourt, or Oooh) is one of these funny ingredients that crosses ethnicities in New York City- the bodegas, the halal shops, and the kosher markets alike carry it in some form. And for delicious reason- the fuzzy brown pods of the tamarind tree conceal a delicious paste-like fruit that when peeled, seeded, and boiled down creates an instantly sweet-and-sour complexity.

Tamarind has many fruity and earthy notes beyond just sweet and sour; it is essential to many Syrian Jewish dishes and, when combined with chili and salt, makes an unusual candy I have seen in multiple Spanish-speaking communities in New York and Los Angeles. Its combination of sweet, sour, hot, and salty is well worth seeking out.

As a riff on typical sweet and sour meatballs (which one of my former roommates used to make with cranberry sauce and grape jelly) I am making a Syrian-inspired meatball recipe with a tamarind/allspice sauce. I defrosted a pound of ground turkey and added 3 eggs, a few handfuls of oatmeal, parsley, pepper, ground cinnamon, and ground allspice.

In my large saucier, I combined a 16oz can of tomato sauce with a few healthy globs of tamarind paste and about 2 cups of water and started it boiling. The sauce needed more balance so I added the juice of a small lime and some splenda (peccavimus!) and a few allspice berries and a splash of red wine. I formed the meat into largish balls and placed them in the simmering sauce. I will probably add more tamarind paste later when I reheat them.


This post is for Weekend Herb Blogging. Check out the rest at Kuchenlatein!

Point Reyes Blue Cheese- Now Kosher!

Josh and I made a late night stop to the Cheese Man at Fairway who, to his surprise and ours, discovered the recent kosher certification (KORC, The San Francisco Orthodox Rabbinate) of POINT REYES BLUE CHEESE!!!!!! Now, ever since having heard of this magical cheese from Foodgoat and Ladygoat (a hearty mazal tov to them on their recent wedding!) I have been lamenting its non-kosher status. But I weep no more, for all my cheese-related lament has turned to gladness and my tyrosination-bereft darkness to blue, creamy, tangy delight with the advent of this wondrous cheese!
Expect more cooking and talking about this cheese first, assuming we don't just eat the whole wheel straight or on wasa crackers.

Polenta Lasagna with Mushrooms, Spinach, and Leeks

I'm making a big veggie-centric Shabbat lunch- Soupe Au Pistou, Butternut Squash, Salad Nicoise, and this spontaneous creation- Polenta Lasagna. It is (incidentally) gluten-free and CORE-friendly (for those of you on weight watchers). I sliced up a log of polenta very thinly and sliced ordinary button mushrooms and the white parts of a leek and sauteed them together in a bit of olive oil, then mixed up some ricotta (1 16oz tub) and eggs (2 large ) for a binder. I laid down a layer of polenta slices, then spooned over some ricotta mixture and about half of the mushroom-leeks. Then more polenta slices, more ricotta, and the other half of the mushrooms, plus about 3/4 of a cup of wilted spinach. I topped the lasagna with the remaining polenta slices and a scant dusting of parmesan cheese and baked it at 350 until the top layer looked crispy and the ricotta/egg was cooked through, because I like to avoid food-poisoning my guests.
This is my first post for weekend herb blogging, check out the rest at Kalyn's Kitchen.

Since last I posted...

Many changes have taken place. I am engaged to be married. I am now doing the CORE plan of weight watchers (focus on whole grains, vegetables, healthy fats and lean proteins/dairy), which dovetails nicely with what I eat anyway. I am currently writing my thesis for my Masters. So, there is alot going on. Notably, registering for housewares (delighted shriek!!!!!) and cooking supplies (more delighted shrieking!!!)
Heres a look at whats in the bowl (Kabocha Soba Bowl)
Steamed Kabocha Squash over Soba noodles with bits of sliced tofu and a handful of arugula. I stirred up some miso paste in hot water to make a broth and floated a few drops of hot sesame oil and sprinkled on a few sesame seeds. It's pretty good, and would be better if all of these were leftovers, but since both had to be made fresh it was a bit of work but not horrible.

My Mother, the Blogger

My mom has a blog. And its a cooking blog!!!!
http://debbysegura.blogspot.com

The Shabbos That I got Everything Done Thursday night

So, seeing that HB and I might go to a conference most of friday, I decided to make my shabbos night meal tonight and warm it up right before shabbos. This was pretty successful, and took less time than cooking shabbos dinner usually takes. I'm serving...
Chicken soup (leftover from last night, ill make new matza balls tomorrow afternoon)

Chicken in wine and herb sauce (defrosted 4 chicken thighs, poured the rest of a mostly empty bottle of wine on them, capers, basil oil, and a splash of lemon then pinched a few oregano buds from my miraculously still alive herb box and some dried basil, thyme, and pepper)

Purple potato kugel (not as gorgeous as i would have liked, i grated two large purple potatoes, sliced a small onion very thinly, and added 4 eggs, a splash of oil, salt, pepper and garlic powder and baked it in a greased muffin tin. unfortunately, they stuck to the pan so that is how I will serve these mini kugels.)

Romaine salad with grape tomatoes (just cleaned some lettuce really, I'll make a dressing on shabbos)

I want to make some form of dessert but im not really sure what... maybe baked apples with nuts inside?

Cooking with my new La Chamba pot!

Things I've made in the La Chamba
Delicious Soups (a few, so far, and they all came out great, even though most of them were leftovers thrown together)
--Yeminite soup (Hawaaj spice mix, some frozen leftover soup from a few weeks ago, potatoes, some lima beans, and dill)
-Potato-zucchini soup (I even blended it in the pot, with fantastic results)
---1 onion, sauteed in a bit of olive oil. A few garlic cloves. 3 potatoes, 3 zucchinis. Salt, pepper, bay leaves, maybe a pinch of soup powder (peccavimus!) Cook. Puree.
-Two-Nut soup- Coconut/Butternut squash.
---Take 2 frozen blocks of butternut squash and unwrap into the pot. Open a can of coconut milk and add it to the pot with an equivalent volume of water or maybe slightly more. Add freshly ground black pepper, a few whole peppercorns, salt, cayenne pepper, and nutmeg. Boil. Thats it. It is supremely delectable.

Brown Jasmine Rice- which comes out deliciously separated and perfectly fluffy- I think the La Chamba clay conducts heat very slowly and evenly, making this the most perfect rice I have ever had the pleasure of cooking, and I've ruined a few pots of rice in my day.

And......
Mark Bittman's famous no-knead bread!!! More on this exciting development later.

Wow, its been a long hiatus

but NOW... I am the proud owner of a La Chamba soup pot! Expect fun things to be cooked, and posted. Culinarily, I've been so busy with school that most of my effort with food goes to the effort to keep body and soul together while at school (where the food options are atrocious and expensive) untill I get home. Many packed soups-in-thermoses, stuffed vegetables, etc.

Party-Shabbos!

So I did something I havent done in a long while- make a large shabbos meal for lots of friends.
This meal ended up being 12 people, so I went with cooking lots of a few main dishes and some plainer sides for picky people.

Morrocan Vegetable Tagine for 12- see below, only doubled or tripled most of the quantities

Charmoula Chicken
Defrost more chicken than you thought possible. For me, this meant 2 family-packs of leg/thighs (resulting in 10pcs total) and 1 pack of breasts (2 largeish ones which i later split into 4). Pound a bunch of cilantro with 2 cloves of garlic, salt, olive oil, pepper, and a spoon of harissa. Mix with a bit of water and some vinegar, spoon over all the chicken thighs. Season the chicken breasts with mustard and paprika for anti-cilantrites. Bake till it wont food-poison your guests.

Couscous
Really easy, just boil up about 4 cups of water and add 4 cups of whole wheat couscous. Cover, remove from fire. When this turns out not to fill up your serving pan, make one more of pinenut-flavored couscous mix you have sitting around and mix it in with the plain stuff. Add more pine nuts (stroke of genius!!)

Fennel Salad
Slice up a bulb of fennel and a clove of garlic. Lemon, salt, oliveoil, pepper. thats it.

Roomie made cake and edamames. Esti brought salad, HB brought humus and eggplant salad and breads. His roomies brought wine and soda.

Overall, A Smashing success with many people crowded into half of a living room!

Rock the Casbah, Veggie-Style

Delicious Vegetable Tagine With Couscous
First I cut a red onion into large, flat peices, sauteed them in a very small quantity of olive oil, cut and seeded a small Kabocha squash and placed this skin-side down on top of the onions and added water to cover. Then I added 2 chunked red potatoes, 2 chunked and peeled carrots, 4 ribs of celery and 4 garlic cloves, more water, some peppercorns and let it simmer for a while. Added 2 bay leaves, a shake of turmeric, a bit of powdered ginger, some cumin, some dried parsley, salt, and some hot paprika and then a dab of harissa paste. Added a can of chickpeas. Let simmer untill all the vegetables are tender and the spices no longer can be individually
discerned.
Serve over whole-wheat couscous.

Tzatziki Salad

Peel and seed 3 largish or medium cucumbers if theyre the kind that need that sort of treatment. Otherwise, use your discretion. Chunk them up. Toss them with lemon, olive oil, a pinch of salt, and some peppermill. Oh, how I love the peppermill... I chilled mine for a while in the fridge, scooped out a bowl-full, and topped with a few spoons of Fage 2% Yogurt and a shake of hot paprika (untraditional for tzatziki I know.) Very cool and refreshing. Add some chickpeas for protien and fiber if you want.

Succotash Soup

This post is special for LutC who expressed a desire (indirectly) for healthy things. Please, comment all you want, and I'd link you if I could figure out how the darn thing worked.

Succotash Soup

I sliced the kernels off 3 ears of beautiful white corn. I cut an onion into halfmoons and sauteed it in a bit of olive oil, added carrots, zuchhinis, and lima beans. Added water, salt, pepper, and some garlic cloves. Let it stew for a bit. Added the kernels. Cooked for a small while, didnt let the corn get too un-crunchy. Dished up with a bit of low fat greek yogurt and a dash of hot paprika on top. Yummy. I ate the whole pot.

Sorry About the Lack of Pix

But I've been eating my food before I get a chance to photograph it, really....
I made a fake cream of cauliflower soup the other night- really just an onion and a few garlic cloves and a head of cauliflower boiled in a mixture of milk, water, and a soup cube for a while. Sounds very spare but it was actually great- very soothing. Lovely with parmesan and ground pepper on the top.

Meatless Moussaka

This one is in the oven, we'll see how it comes out

Slice up a robust eggplant into thin slices, toss with a pinch of salt and a very small dribble of oil. Roast in a large aluminum baking dish (no need to seperate out on trays) at 400 while you make the sauce, tossing occasionally.

Fry up an onion and a red pepper. Add whatever wine you have around, a can of crushed tomatoes and a little can of tomato sauce, cinnamon, allspice, oregano, parsley, and garlic, salt, pepper. I also rehydrated a few dried mushrooms and added them and their soaking liquid. Let it cook for a little bit, then add a package of soy crumbles.

Take the eggplant slices out of the oven and transfer to a plate. Oil the bottom of the pan you used for the eggplants- I used a 9x13 aluminum disposable- and toss some pinches of breadcrumbs on it. Place a layer of eggplants on the bottom, spoon half the sauce on top, then the rest of the eggplants, then the rest of the sauce. Top with more breadcrumbs. Lower the oven to 350, Pop back in untill the eggplant slices are fully cooked and the sauce is thick.

Sometimes Everyday Food is Nice, too.

So I'm settling in to more of a routine in my new apartment lately- get up, go to work, work, leave work, stop at the 175th farmers market for vegetables for dinner, start cooking something, go to the gym for a bit while it cooks, come home, tidy up a bit, water the plants, and eat dinner. Optional activites include- hanging up curtain rods, organizing the kitchen, and planning where all the clutter is going to be contained once I get everything out of the moving boxes. Understandably, food has to be rather simple. A few nights ago I stewed some lentils and served them with watercress and pine nuts. Last night I made a black bean chili and turmeric rice. The color contrast made it really special, I thought- purple and yellow.

Black Bean Chili
Chop a large onion, a handful of celery ribs, 2 large garlic cloves, 2 carrots and a red pepper. Let fry a bit in some olive oil. Add 2 chopped tomatoes when reasonably soft. Add 2 cans of rinsed black beans and a few cans of water. Pepper, cumin, chili powder- and I threw in some sprigs of fresh oregano from my windowbox. I went out to the gym and let this simmer.

Turmeric Rice
When I got back from the gym I tossed 1 drinking glass of brown rice into a pot with 2 drinking glasses of water and let it boil with a dribble of oil, a pinch of salt, and some shakings of turmeric. Bring to a boil, cover, and let steam untill all the water is absorbed.

Too busy to sit there and check leaf lettuce, I chopped up a head of iceberg and served with vinegar, oil, salt, and pepper. Maybe a few pine nuts.

Suprise Tomato Watercress Salad

Last night, Hippoboy and I decided to take a break from our strenuous 4th-of-July vacation of putting together large pieces of furniture and moving heavy boxes upstairs by making dinner for the first time in my new apartment. While I boiled some whole-wheat penne, HB graciously stepped out to the bodega for some tomatoes and basil for a quick tomato-basil-caper sauce. He returned however, with not basil, but a lovely bunch of very basily-looking watercress. On discovering this, I scrapped the idea of basil sauce, made a lovely sauce just with capers, tomatoes, and spices and had the penne and sauce.

Later that evening, after a very patriotic fireworks viewing over the bridge, I concocted a salad to fuel our continued moving efforts- I chopped 2 largish tomatoes, pinched handfulls of watercress off of their stems, chopped up a hard boiled egg, and added salt, pepper, balsamic vinegar, and olive oil. It was so delicious that I made two more variations on this salad tonight- and I havent even begun to make a dent in the large bunch of watercress.

Variation One- Omit egg, add pine nuts.

Variation Two (pictured above)- omit salt, egg; add feta, pine nuts.

Delicious!