But we wanted something different the other night, so we combined the items in our refrigerator and were very pleased.

Cauliflower Tomato Cashew Curry

Serves 4

3-4 cloves garlic, peeled and thinly sliced

1 tsp. fresh ginger, peeled, julienned or grated

1 large onion, peeled and thinly sliced

2-3 T. Olive oil

2-3 tsp. curry powder (red curry, yellow Madras curry, or curry)

1 cauliflower, cleaned and separated into bite size florets

Salt and pepper, to taste

28 oz. can crushed or whole tomatoes

½ c. raw cashews, toasted in microwave 2-3 minutes until lightly browned

Add garlic, onion, and ginger to sauté pan with 2-3 T. olive oil.  Salt lightly.  Sauté until the onions wilt and add curry.  Saute 2 minutes, stiring to prevent sticking.  Add tomatoes and cauliflower, stirring gently.   Fill tomato can with water and add to cauliflower.  Cover and simmer 10-15 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Once cauliflower is cooked, remove cover and simmer until sauce thickens a bit.  Season with salt and pepper.

Serve with rice.  We prefer brown rice.  Top with toasted cashews.

This turned out to be fast and easy, and it was such a nice change without providing a lot of spicy heat.  That is something we're saving for a different evening.

LinK

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

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

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

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

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

Actually, shelling the peas is not very hard, and if I work with friends and family, it's a great social moment that leads to great eating, too.

Pea – Feta – Israeli Couscous – Mint Salad

4-5 quarts of fresh peas, shelled

4-5 oz. feta, crumbled

2 c. Israeli Couscous (cooked in 2 c. water until just cooked)

3 T. olive oil

2 T. rice wine vinegar

2-3 T. dried mint or 1/3-1/2 c. fresh mint, in bits

Cook the peas very briefly, just until they turn bright green. Let them cool off the heat.

Stir the olive oil and rice wine vinegar into the couscous gently to distribute and stir in the mint. Stir well, but gently.

When the peas are cool, gently stir the peas into the couscous and then stir in the feta.

If for some reason you can't find or don't want to deal with Israeli couscous, use a small pasta shape, about a half pound.  We found that adding a bit more olive oil and rice wine vinegar at the last minute dressed it up with a fresh taste and didn't make it oily or sharp.

Enjoy!

LinK 

Kohlrabi is low calorie, tasty, and excellent raw or cooked.  Its nutrition profile is high!  But so few people know what to do with it.

Use the greens pretty quickly.  You do have to remove the thick stems, but after that, soak the leaves and make sure they're clean.  Slice them into ribbons or squares, and steam/saute them with oil and garlic.  Use them with pasta.  Use them in quiche.  Use them as a tasty, garlicky side dish.  Use them with the crustless quiche recipe below.

The satellites store for a bit.  The purple ones are a titch sweeter than the green ones, but you probably won't notice unless you do a taste test.  The purple ones are a purer white than the green ones when peeled.  I use them interchangeably.  Cut off the outside of the bulb.  As you cut, you will be able to see that the skin is pretty thick.  Cut off any part of the outside that is woody/fibrous.

Eat the bulb raw, sliced thinly, with a mustardy or garlicky dip.

Or use the recipes below!

Kohlrabi Greens Crustless Ricotta Quiche

Serves 4-6 – main dish

Greens from Kohlrabi – 1-2 bunches, cleaned, thick stems removed, sliced in ½” ribbons

2 c. plain, no-fat Greek yogurt

3 eggs

1 T. chili sauce

2 T. olive oil

1 c. ricotta cheese

Preheat oven to 350°F. Lightly oil a 10” pie pan or 10” square pan. Sauté the kohlrabi greens in oil until they wilt. Cover the pan and leave on low for 5 minutes. Turn off heat and leave covered.

Mix the yogurt and eggs. Mix in the chili sauce. Add kohlrabi greens and mix well. Pour into oiled pan. Drop ricotta on top in spoonfuls. Bake 45-60 minutes until lightly browned and firm in the middle. Serve in wedges.

Kohlrabi and Mustard Cream Sauce

Serves 4 – Side Dish

2-3 kohlrabi bulbs, purple or green

1/3 c. plain, low-fat Greek yogurt

2 T. mayonnaise

1-2 T. Dijon mustard – or horseradish mustard

1 tsp. olive oil

Remove leaves from kohlrabi and save for another recipe. Peel the kohlrabi and slice it thinly. Stack the thin slices and cut them into ribbons. This is very easy to do. Mix the yogurt, mayonnaise, and mustard and toss with the sliced kohlrabi.

Oil a pie pan. Spread the kohlrabi around the pie pan to an even depth. Bake 475°F 15-20 minutes. The sauce will bubble and brown. Serve hot or room temperature.

 Kohlrabi and Lemon Tahini Sauce

Serves 4 – Side Dish

2-3 kohlrabi bulbs, purple or green

1/3 c. plain, low-fat Greek yogurt

2 T. tahini (sesame seed paste)

1-2 T. lemon juice

1 tsp. olive oil

Remove leaves from kohlrabi and save for another recipe. Peel the kohlrabi and slice it thinly. Stack the thin slices and cut them into ribbons. This is very easy to do. Mix the yogurt, tahini, and lemon and toss with the sliced kohlrabi. Mix the yogurt with the Tahini first and then add the lemon. Tahini thickens the yogurt and the lemon will brighten the flavors and thin the sauce a little bit.

Oil a pie pan. Spread the kohlrabi around the pie pan to an even depth. Bake 475°F 15-20 minutes. The sauce will bubble and brown. Serve hot or room temperature.

So go to your nearest farmers' market and buy  kohlrabi and indulge!  Two for one, and many ways to use it.  Plus, they look great on a bowl, stored until you're ready to work with them.

LinK

Pasta:  Using whole wheat pasta helps us meet our needs for comfort food without indulging in unnecessary processed white flour.  All white flour is processed.  So we buy whole wheat pasta from Whole Foods or from Bionaturae, a good brand.  Whole Foods has an excellent whole wheat pasta that is half the price of Bionaturae, but bionaturae is easier to locate and is excellent, too. 

Cabbage:  I always thought cabbage was nutrition-free and boring.  I still don't like boiled cabbage or the smell of boiled cabbage.  But stir-fried?  Great.  Saute?  Great.  Just last night we thinly sliced a small head of purple cabbage.  Then we sauted lots of garlic and 2 red onions, thinly sliced, and added the cabbage.  While the pasta water came to a boil, we covered the saute pan with the vegetables and let them juice a bit.  Once we were cooking the pasta in the water, we added some of the pasta water to the vegetables to  make sure the cabbage was actually cooked, but not dead.  We tossed the drained pasta with the cabbage and onions and then topped it with some salty, almost meltable feta cheese.  Yum.

Cabbage and Squash:  We realized while eating dinner last night that we should have added some roasted winter squash chunks to liven up the color, add to the creaminess of the dish, and increase the veggie count.  So that's what we'll do with the leftovers to  make a dinner tonight.  

Cabbage and pasta can make for a healthy, fast, inexpensive, and tasty meal.  If you  need hot sauce, just add the one you like.  We opted for some dried sage.

LinK

Somewhat Spicy Squash Soup

Serves 6-8

1 large yellow onion

2-3 cloves garlic, chopped

2 cups/l package yellow split peas or chana dal

1 package frozen corn

2 lbs squash (6- 8 cups), peeled, seeded, cubed

3 T olive oil

2 tsp. red curry [add more, to taste, if you like spicy food]

1 tsp. turmeric

1 28 oz can whole tomatoes in juice

9 c. water

Salt and Pepper, to taste

Chop onion and garlic and place in large soup pot (6-7 quarts) with olive oil, salt lightly, and sauté until the onion softens. Stir in the turmeric and curry and sauté for a minute or two. Add the squash, split peas, tomatoes and their juices, and the water. Bring to a simmer, stirring occasionally, and simmer for 30-45 minutes. Check to see if the squash and split peas are cooked. The squash is done when you can smoosh it with your spoon. Taste the split peas to ensure they are soft enough. It is nice to have them with a little bit of bite, but not uncooked.

When the split peas are cooked, add the corn and cook 3-5 minutes to ensure the corn is cooked thoroughly and heated.

Serve!

This soup turned out to be a great dinner, and I will serve it with corn muffins next time, and maybe a salad, although we tend to eat one dish meals in the winter so that we can stay by the fire.  Our dog loves muffins, but we are not certain it's good to keep dropping crumbs for him.  Anyway, there was quite enough left for hearty lunches, too, so it was cook once, eat twice, or more.

LinK