kimuchi
March 2, 2010
I saved baby bok choi from my CSA share for a week and a half to have enough for this recipe (it requires for about 4 baby bok chois). Kimuchi is a Japanese style kimchi, that I found in my usual canning book, Joy of Pickling. The recipe is normally made with napa cabbage, but Joy of Pickling suggests that you can use other types of cabbage as well. Since we reliably get bok choi in our CSA, I decided to try it instead.
The cabbage is sliced into sections, ready to be salted…
…and pressed overnight.
Salting draws out the moisture in the cabbage, and works as a preservative. The salted cabbage ends up looking quite shriveled.
I chopped the salted bok choi into 1″ squares, and added slivered carrots, grated apple, and the usuals: ginger, garlic, green onions, salt, and hot pepper. I used a little less hot pepper, to experiment and see what happens.
The kimuchi now has to sit, loosely covered, for a few days before it is ready. My last batch has been living in my fridge now for about a month, and it seems to get better with time. The flavors aren’t quite as sharp…
one skillet lunch
February 28, 2010
I love it when I can make a meal with one skillet. Especially when the skillet is cast iron, and doesn’t require a lot of cleaning…
I was working on a project this morning, and when it got time to make lunch I realized that I didn’t have too much time. I wanted something hot, and so I rummaged around in my fridge and pulled out a handful of rainbow chard, a carrot, and some cheese, and olives. I made a grilled cheese sandwich, and on the other side of the grill I sauteed my chard with olives. It was a yummy treat, and so pretty to look at!
soup for bait.
February 26, 2010
Sometimes it is rather tricky to get my mom over to my house. Especially in the winter, when it is cold (14 degrees), snowy (I can’t even drive down my little lane..), and dark (8 pm).
But, when I have a jar of home-made soup, and a promise to heat it up, she does somehow make it over. My dad and I made dinner for some friends of his, and I made soup from a wonderful soup cookbook, Vegetable Soups, by Deborah Madison. My mom brought the cookbook home from the store a few days ago and we have made two delicious soups from it already. (She made a black bean soup with cumin, lime, and cilantro.) I saved a jar of soup for my mom, and heated it up for her when we got home.
I started the soup with a bunch of fresh vegetables, and made a stock. I like to make home-made stock, although sometimes I just don’t have the time to do it. This particular soup calls for chickpeas, so I added the chickpea broth (made with garlic, onions, bay leaves, parsley, and peppercorns) to the soup as well.
The main ingredients were broth, chickpeas, and farro (for which I substituted soaked spelt, with a slightly chewier result). 
We garnished the soup with fresh parsley, olive oil, salt pepper, freshly grated Parmesan cheese, and a squeeze of lemon juice to brighten things up.
Anyways, I got home, heated up the jar of soup, gave my mom an eider down comforter, and the hot soup.
dosa brunch (with heli in michigan)
February 15, 2010
Heli and I made dosas this morning. She has been wanting to make them for a while, so when I came up to visit, I brought a huge jar of urad dal from my mom. It is a type of “peeled” dal.
Last night we soaked a cup of dal and a cup of rice in separate dishes. First thing this morning we ground the rice and dal.
After they were ground (the dal more finely than the rice), we mixed them together and set them out to ferment for an hour.
Meanwhile, we got the potatoes started. (For the masala part of the dish…)
We boiled potatoes, and then added them to a mixture of oil, onions, spices, and hot pepper. While they cooked, we started working on the dosas.
Heli and I have never made dosas before. Just a disclaimer. So we didn’t have our hopes set too high for the success of our “paper-thin” rice and dal pancakes. Attempt one below…
Ok…so we thinned the batter considerably, tried different utensils, switched to silicone, and then back to the stainless steel, played around with the heat until we found the optimal temperature and when we were suitably satisfied with the cooking conditions, we had made enough dosas…
So We had masala dosas, but more like potatoes wrapped in nice little scraps of dough. They tasted good though!
A finished dosa with potatoes, cucumber carrot raita, and home-made lemon pickle.
fresh iowa greens in february
February 13, 2010
We are members of a wonderful CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) in Fairfield, and enjoy fresh greens every week. It is one of the things that makes this whole winter thing a little more doable.
My mom and I get a box every week, and sometimes we have a little trouble eating anything…everything is just so beautiful and fresh, and we want to save it! (She often nibbles a little, but wants to save some for me, and we don’t always getting around to cooking or eating together.) Kind of silly, but oh well.
So this morning, as we were baking cookies, I dug through the fridge and found a few gems that we had not eaten. My mom came up with the idea to make a little casserole. She is such an inspired cook. You could probably give her a basket of vegetables, and she would turn whatever she was given into something fresh and delicious!
The base for the casserole is steamed greens: chard, kale, beet stems, and spinach. She placed the steamed greens into several baking dishes, drizzled with olive oil. On top of the greens she put mashed potatoes (cooked quickly in the pressure cooker), and finished the top with grated prairie breeze cheese (from Milton, IA).
It was a quick delicious casserole, fresh with the greens, but hearty with the potatoes (made with organic sour cream) and cheese.
To go with the casserole, she made a salad of lettuce, and ridiculously fresh arugula, topped with avocado, grapefruit sections, and carrot ribbons. YUM!
So if you ever find yourself with a produce drawer filled with yummy greens, this is a great meal to use them up and really ENJOY them. Thanks to my mom, of course!
kimchee (finished)!
February 11, 2010
Quick update.
I opened my jar of kimchee today. According to my recipe it said 3-6 days sitting, depending on how sour you like it. A much quicker turn around time than its Western counterpart (sauerkraut)! I was kind of excited to try the finished product, so I called it finished after 3 days. And to be honest, it doesn’t change much in color, and seems to mellow somewhat in flavor. Actually, mellow isn’t really the right word. Maybe more like the flavors come together. My kimchee ended up very spicy, very garlicy, and full of ginger! A perfect combination to keep healthy in this cold weather.
It is really spicy though, and Heli suggested for me to eat the kimchee with a fried egg or rice to cut the heat. (definitely helps!) I am really excited to try making a batch of kimchee with some other greens, such as bok choy, more kale, and other assorted items that I get from my CSA share.
kimchee!
February 8, 2010
Here is my first attempt to make kimchee.
I found a recipe for kimchee in The Joy of Pickling, by Linda Ziedrich. My kimchee is a simple mixture of napa cabbage, a little bit of kale, ground hot pepper, slivered green onions, and lots of garlic and ginger. The whole mixture sits in brine for several days, until the desired sourness is obtained…
Step one is to chop and brine the cabbage overnight. So last night, I chopped my cabbage according to directions, into 2″ squares. I placed the chopped cabbage in a bowl, covered it with salt water, and placed a plate on top to keep the cabbage submerged.
This afternoon, I added the additional ingredients to the chopped and drained cabbage. Slivers of green onions, lots of garlic…
…coarsely grated and chopped ginger. I couldn’t find my smaller grater, but the chopping seemed to get most of the big bits out. I added a little extra ginger to the recipe, as I love it, especially in the winter!
I was excited to use the dried peppers that I put up last summer. In the summer I always seem to acquire more fresh hot peppers than I know what to do with. As a result, I usually end up with more dried peppers than I know what to do with. This was a perfect use for some of my lovely dried peppers. I did have to grind them into a powder, which was a little difficult, with their spiciness…
I placed the cabbage mixture into a glass jar, with a plastic bag filled with brine solution on top. Looks like I put a little too much brine into the actual kimchee…
Here is the jar, all tidied up and ready to ferment in a cool corner of my house (not a problem, as I have many).
hot potato
January 25, 2010
I’ve been eating a lot of pretzels with slices of locally made cheddar cheese (prairie breeze, from Milton) and Patak’s Hot Lime Relish. Tonight I was still craving the taste, but wanted something a little more dinner like, so I switched the pretzel out for a potato.
And added some green onion, sliced jalapeño, and cilantro. And of course a dollop of butter. It was yummy, and definitely a welcome change from the pretzels.
Wash and prick potato (russets are good), stick it into a 400 degree oven, and let bake until tender. (Can’t remember how long..) While the potato is baking, chop some green onions (about 1 per potato), a little bunch of cilantro, and the tip of a jalapeño, and mix them up a little on the cutting board. Add a good amount of butter to the potato first, so that it melts, and then add the chopped green mixture and cheese. On top of all that add a big spoon of lime pickle (to taste!). This might taste good with yogurt as well (instead of the more traditional sour cream).
Pho and Martin Luther King, Jr.
January 19, 2010
Last night was a pho night. And being Martin Luther King, Jr. day we spent some time being thankful for him as well. Theo went to the library and picked up some books, cds, and dvds about Martin Luther King, Jr., and we ended up watching a documentary. I am always struck by how powerful he was. Such a great inspiration for justice and peace.
There is a little resturant in LA that makes vegetarian Pho. I like to go there when I am visiting, and last week I started wanting to make some pho on my own. Pho is actually Vietnamese beef soup, with rice noodles and lots of broth. So making vegetarian Pho, as my friend pointed out, is sort of like making pot roast without the roast… That said, our broth turned out really well, and the soup was delicious! I will definitely be making it again.
First step is to make the broth. I made a purple cabbage based broth, with carrots, onions, garlic, celery, and bok choy. I simmered everything for about 45 minutes and then strained the liquid. Because I made this last week, I put the broth into little ziplock bags and stuck it in the freezer for a few days. We also had a batch of winter broth that my mom made a few days ago for backup, in case we ran out of the purple broth.
Yesterday, when I got home from work, I took the bags of purple broth out of the freezer and started to make the “real” soup broth. Step one was to char the ginger in the wood stove. I went through several skewers before the ginger was suitably charred. Charring the ginger gives it a very distinct smell and taste.
Next was to dry roast the spices in the pan. This step helps release the flavor of the cinnamon, ginger, star anise, bay, and garlic. We went on a real hunt for star anise, and finally Jan at Everybodys found it behind the jar of Lavender flowers (in case you are looking for it there they DO have some!) After we had roasted the spices for a few minutes over medium heat, we added the purple broth, and let everything simmer on the wood stove while we chopped the vegetables.
I am not completely sure which vegetables are traditional, but we had a whole bunch of different things that we added. Sort of a composite of different pho recipes that I found online. From our local CSA we had some beautiful napa cabbage and baby bok choy. We shredded them and set them in bowls to be added to the broth at the table.
We also included dishes of bean sprouts, mint leaves, basil leaves, and lime. To garnish the top we added bowls of thinly sliced jalapenos, cilantro, and sliced green onions.
At the table, everyone got a bowl with some broth and then we added noodles, tofu, and vegetables.
Everyone’s bowl was distinct, and carefully mixed to taste.
We ate and ate and ate. It seemed to me that the broth was a little trick to get me to eat more and more vegetables.
new years pumpkin soup (haitian style!)
January 2, 2010
Swati came to visit for Christmas, and she brought with her the idea for pumpkin soup. Joumou, a type of pumpkin soup, is traditionally prepared for Haitian Independence Day (incidentally New Years Day). Although it is traditionally served for breakfast in Haiti, we got around to eating it late in the afternoon, settled around the fire. We used several different recipes to come up with a yummy, vegetarian version of the soup. Probably a little different from the one Swati had in Haiti, but pumpkin soup all the same.
I started the soup with “winter broth” from The Greens Cookbook, by Deborah Madison. Winter broth is my absolute favorite comforting winter food. I added extra pumpkin (including seeds and peels) to the broth because it was intended for pumpkin soup. The main soup pumpkin came from the farmer’s market about 3 months ago! Talk about long-lasting. Swati rinsed the seeds and set them out to dry to save for my pumpkin patch next summer.
Then I sauteed a little onion in some olive oil and added cubed pumpkin, and winter broth to cover. I put the pot on the wood stove to simmer. When the pumpkin was tender, I pureed it and set it aside.
Meanwhile, I put a little oil in a new pot and added some freshly grated ginger, shallots, 2 cloves, and a few cloves of whole garlic, pierced with a knife. While these veggies cooked, I added celery, potato, and carrots, and a dried hot pepper from my friends garden!
After a few minutes I added some more broth and the pureed pumpkin and set the entire pot onto the wood stove to simmer until the veggies were tender. About 20 minutes, slowly boiling. Yum!!
In case you were wondering, the photos in this blog are particularly beautiful. Thanks to my resident photographer, Swati!
