Food Simply Simple

We had some beets and not much else in the refrigerator, so at last, we dragged them out and had to decide what to do with them.  We like beets.  Beets store well.  But sometimes, we get tired of the beet-y flavor of beets.  However, we played a bit, inspired by random recipe reading.  As a side dish, we can highly recommend this one.

Beets in Black Bean, Garlic, and Ginger – a side dish

Serves 4

4 medium sized beets, peeled and julienned

2-3 large shallots, peeled and sliced thinly

3 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced thinly

1” fresh ginger, peeled and sliced thinly

3 T. Black Bean sauce

2—3 T. olive oil

Salt & Pepper, optional

Prepare the garlic, ginger, and shallots and put in sauté pan with the oil.  Sauté on low, stirring to distribute the oil.  If using salt and pepper, add them after the vegetables start to cook.  Once the vegetables are starting to cook, add the beets and stir into the mixture.  Cover the pan and turn the heat to low.  Pan roast 15-20  minutes until beets are fork tender.

Stir in the Black Bean sauce and serve.

Options:  Serve on top of steamed or sautéed spinach or other greens.

We found that this recipe made the strong beet flavor much less but didn't lose the sense of a tasty root vegetable.  And of course, if you don't have shallots, just use a large red onion, very thinly sliced.

It's still root vegetable season, and why not go for a different flavor combination while you can?

LinK

I've been traveling a lot, so cooking has been a non-issue.  But two recipes were intriguing me: a vegetarian moussaka, and a white bean and chard ragout.  So when I finally had a chance this week to be home and cook, I decided to merge the concepts, and we loved the result!  We like to "cook once and eat twice" -- and making the larger amount allows us to get two or maybe even three meals out of the one effort.

One of the great discoveries of this past summer is that I can gather Swiss chard, fold it gently in half, and wrap it in a big plastic bag.  It freezes beautifully, and then when I go to use it now, frozen, I use a very sharp knife and slice it, stems and all.  So far, each time I've used Swiss chard this way, it has been excellent.  Of course, substituting a big bag of frozen, chopped spinach, thawed, always works as a replacement for Swiss chard.

Squash Somehow

(Serves 8-10)

This recipe is easy to cut in half to serve 4-6

1-2 lb. winter squash (Uchiki Kuri, Buttercup, Kabocha, Butternut), seeded, peeled, diced and pan roasted (4-6 cups before roasting)

1 lb. dry white beans (cannellini, navy), soaked, drained, cooked, cooled

2 medium onions, halved and then sliced thinly

3 large cloves garlic, sliced or chopped

1 bunch Swiss chard, cleaned

          Separate stems from leaves; Slice stems ½”, Slice leaves thinly

½ - 1 tsp. dried rosemary

½ - 1 tsp. dried marjoram

Olive oil

Topping:

3 cups plain, no fat yogurt or 1 ½ c. yogurt + 1 ½ c. cottage cheese

4 eggs (large)

½ - ¾ c. freshly grated parmesan cheese

Oil a 9x13 pan.  Preheat oven to 375ºF.

Sauté onions and garlic in some olive oil.  When the onions are soft, add herbs and Swiss chard leaves and stems.  Sauté 1-2 minutes and add cooked, partially drained white beans.  Sauté/Simmer until there is not much water left (3-5 minutes).  Mix in the squash.

Pour mixture into the 9x13 pan.  Stir together the topping ingredients, distributing the eggs thoroughly.  Put spoonfuls on top of the bean mixture and spread to cover.

Bake 45-60 minutes until the topping is browned.

This is excellent with a salad. 

While we were waiting for the Squash Somehow to cook, the smells were wonderful -- preparing us for the comfort food needed as the temperature keeps dropping in to the teens and twenties.

Enjoy!

Lin K

I was reading Rozanne Gold's 1-2-3 Cookbook over the weekend and found a great recipe for Eggplant Souffle, using only 3 ingredients.  Since it's past eggplant season and I have lots of winter squash in storage for the winter, I adapted the recipe.  I believe most eggplant recipes can be adapted to winter squash, assuming you choose the right squash.  It worked!  I changed the eggplant to roasted and pureed squash and the feta to gruyere.  It worked, and we figured out options for variations to modify flavor and texture.  We will use this recipe again and again.

Squash is an incredibly inexpensive, easy to work with, non-processed food.  We lose a few each year, but we keep our winter food bills way down by investing in a lot of different kinds of winter squash and using them inventively.  So far, we've created about 100 recipes.

Squash “Souffle” – with options

Serves 4-8

6-8 cups winter squash, pre-roasted and pureed (Hubbard, sweet meat, golden delicious) – measure after pureeing

NOTE:  Choose a squash with some moisture versus a buttercup type that is quite dry

NOTE:  Most squash will puree easily if roasted and then stirred well.  Sometimes, a hand beater or hand-blender or even a food processor will work, depending on whether the squash is fiber-y.

5 large eggs

8 oz. gruyère or other Swiss cheese, shredded (medium cheddar will also work)

If squash puree is not smooth when you begin, stir or beat squash until it is smooth.  Add eggs and beat by hand or with mixer until eggs are fully incorporated.  Stir in the cheese.

Place mixture in oiled 9x13 pan.  Bake 350°F, 45 minutes, until set.

Options:

Sprinkle with lemony-y gremolata before serving.

Gremolata is an Italian way to add flavor:

Remove the peel of a fresh, washed, and dried lemon.

Mix the lemon peel with finely chopped parsley (2-4 Tablespoons), either flat leaf or curly.

Mix with 2-3 cloves garlic, chopped.

Chop the three items very finely and sprinkle on top of the dish just before serving.

You can add very finely chopped toasted nuts.

Serve with cranberry relish on the side.

Add 1-2 tsp. cumin when mixing.  Serve with some chutney on the side.

Add 2 tsp. ancho, chipotle, or cayenne pepper spice to the mix with the cheese and make sure it is mixed in well.  Top the soufflé with dollops of plain, no-fat Greek yogurt.

Enjoy!

LinK

We gathered our final CSA collection of veggies yesterday, and as usual, we ran out of time to do anything but cook fast.  What do you cook, though, when there’s pretty much just a hodge podge of things, some needing to be used now, and some more flexible?

I started to aim for putting a lot of veggies – turnips and potatoes and beets and fennel – into a nice sauce and cooking on low for an hour or so, and then I remembered I had chard stems, lots of gorgeous rainbow chard stems.  It’s gloomy lately, and they tend to be excellent.  How to make a dinner of chard stems?

The approach was quick and satisfying.  I will do this again with lots of variations:  hot peppers, or not; more varieties of vegetables such as daikon or regular radishes sliced; cabbage; radicchio.  Herbs would add a lot, as would some nice pesto mixed with plain yogurt to dollop on top.

Chard Stems Dinner

Chop coarsely a lot of onions and garlic, about 6 small to medium onions and half a head of garlic.  Sauté in olive oil while chopping chard stems (1”), fennel bulb (thinly, thinly sliced), 3 medium potatoes (thinly sliced but not peeled ), 3-4 red and green peppers (thinly sliced).   Once the onions have wilted a bit, add the potatoes and stir well to coat them with the oil already in the sauté pan.  Put the lid on and keep on low heat 10-15 minutes.   Add everything else and stir well, again distributing the oil.  Cover and cook on low 15-20 minutes until chard stems are tender.

Serve with grated cheese.  We used aged provolone, and it would work well with goat’s cheese, mild blue cheese, romano, or parmesan. 

Now, the challenge is to select from many options what to do with the gorgeous turnips, the last of the collard greens, and the thick bundle of curly kale.  There are probably some mustard-y stews and soy-saucy mixes just ahead.

LinK

Nothing is French about zucchini. Zucchini doesn’t exist in France. France has courgettes, and we have entered the season of courgettes. However -- about ten years ago, I was in southern France on a business trip with a great friend, and we ventured out into a tiny medieval town tucked into a hill. The hotel had recommended the restaurant for offering food that would please the two of us, both vegetarians. We took a taxi and entered the little village and then the restaurant, a medieval building that had been adapted to a wonderful restaurant. The owner and chef greeted us and took us to a table in the back, through the kitchen. He moved the long table, disrupting somewhat a German couple already seated at the other end, and asked us what we wanted. We negotiated in not terribly polished French, and left ourselves in his hands. It was a wonderful meal, and the one single food that stands out in my memory remains the courgettes in mustard sauce. The dish was simple, a whole courgette sitting in the middle of mustard sauce.

Courgettes, our zucchini, is often under-cooked and can lack flavor, particularly when it is late season or overgrown. This zucchini was tender, flavorful, and very zucchini-ish. The mustard sauce was creamy and a great setting for the vegetable. It was such a simple preparation, and I’ve wanted to re-create it ever since.

It doesn’t sound like much of a challenge, but research gives dismaying results. Mustard sauce appears to be heavy cream with mustard added. Heavy cream is not exactly healthy, and I avoid using it except when it’s the only option, and those tend to be treats. Zucchini in heavy cream is hard to justify when there are so many wonderful ways to cook and enjoy zucchini without heavy cream. But the wish to re-create the courgettes I tasted in the south of France remains.

How to cook zucchini – without cream?

Sauté very thinly sliced zucchini in olive oil with several sliced cloves of garlic and as the zucchini softens and becomes transparent, cook the pasta. If you love butter, add a tablespoon with the oil to create a buttery taste without adding tons of butter itself. Drain the cooked pasta and combine with the sautéed garlic. For 4 people, use 4-8 medium zucchini, or as much as you enjoy.

Zucchini is full of water, so you can use a lot of zucchini to start and end up with not so much zucchini to consumer. If you use yellow zucchini or yellow summer squash, expect more liquid from the vegetable as it cooks and be prepared. You can pour off the extra liquid, add some bulgur wheat and let it sit a while the pasta boils. The bulgur will soak up a lot of liquid given time.

Variation? Add 1-2 cups of ricotta cheese and some of the pasta cooking water as part of the mix.

Variation? Crumble 4 ounces of feta cheese on top of the zucchini, add some pasta cooking water, and toss with the pasta.

Variation? Add 1 /4 - 1/3 cup of lemon juice when mixing the zucchini with the pasta.

Variation? Top any version with freshly grated cheese and/or toasted bread crumbs.

How can you go wrong?

Well, we went “right,” finally, last week and created the Courgettes and Creamy Mustard Sauce (I wonder if that would be Courgettes en Sauce Moutarde? My French is pretty rusty). It’s as good or better as any zucchini dish I could imagine. Yum. It is the heavy cream abuse for the summer.

Zucchini in Mustard Sauce

4-6 medium zucchini, cleaned, sliced ½”

2-3 T. olive oil

½ c. heavy cream

2 T. Dijon mustard

Toss the zucchini slices in the oil and sauté them, letting them a bit brown and also soft. You should be able to smell the zucchini, and they will be somewhat transparent.

Place the zucchini in a 9x13 or other casserole dish – to allow the zucchini to cover the bottom but not be in thick piles. Mix the cream and mustard and pour on top of the zucchini, distributing the sauce all over. Bake at 450° for about 15 minutes, or until the sauce reduces and thickens and starts to brown at the edges.

Enjoy! And if the guilt is too much, adapt with less-high fat yogurt:

Zucchini in Mustard Sauce – with less guilt

4-6 medium zucchini, cleaned, sliced ½”

2-3 T olive oil

½ c. high fat plain yogurt (4-10% milkfat, a lot less than 35-45% milkfat in heavy cream)

2 T. Dijon mustard

Follow the instructions above.

The alternative has some fat, but less fat, and lots of flavor. I tried it with Greek yogurt, no fat, plain, also, and it was nice, but not creamy enough. I’d use the no fat Greek yogurt again, but given a chance, I’d set my compromise on high fat yogurt and enjoy every taste.

Who could complain about excess zucchini?

LinK