Maybe Cam Newton should have stayed home and ate these instead...

It's Superbowl Sunday and the last thing I want to think about today is vegetables!  Ribs, yes.  Chips, yes.  Beer, yes.  But vegetables?  Really?   And then it came to me - Superbowl is probably the largest beer consumption day of the year, and nothing goes better with a Cold One than crispy, salty, Biergarten Radishes.  Added benefit:  they only take about 15 minutes to prepare and don't require any oven time - which is especially important because my oven broke today. Luckily this dreadful calamity occurred after I baked the last trays of cupcakes and pigs in a blanket. The oven is nearly 24 years old, so I guess I can't complain too much.

This dish uses a special radish which is aptly named German Beer Radish or sometimes Munchener Bier Radish but they are really hard to find here.  However, daikon makes a fine substitute - the fatter the better if you have a spiralizer to cut them into slinky-like chains. If you're a purist, you can always grow your own with these seeds from one of my favorite seed companies, Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds: http://www.rareseeds.com/munchener-bier-radi/



German Bier Radishes

1 large, fat daikon radish, washed and peeled
2 Tbsp kosher salt
Chives or green onions for garnish

Spiralize the daikon or slice very thinly into rings.  Place in a bowl and sprinkle liberally with kosher salt, mixing to coat.  Let the radishes sit for about 15 minutes then rinse very well in cold water to remove as much salt as possible.  Let dry in a colander for a couple minutes then place in a serving bowl or plate and garnish with chopped chives or green onions.

Enjoy with a giant slab of ribs and too much spinach dip and chips.  Or be good and just eat the radishes with your favorite craft beer.

Pantry Purge Hummus

When you love to cook as much as I do, and when you also have a fettish for trying anything and everything new and different, you end up accumulating a lot of stuff.  My pantry has become over-run with odd jars of Asian sauces, Peruvian beans, Brazilian flour, assorted fruits, vegetables and homemade preserves, cans of foods left over from our last-summer rafting trip down the Colorado River, etc., etc.  I have over 15 different types of flour, 7 types of sugar, and more bins of dried grains and legumes than I can count.

I became inspired by a nearly expired avocado -- another item that came in my farm box which I forgot about until I found it passing into the 5th stage of dying today -- wrinkled and very soft.  I was craving a healthier snack and had my eye on the rainbow chard relish I made the other day, when I spied the avocado and decided to make some hummus with it, topped with the relish.

Hummus is so easy and versatile.  All it needs is some kind of bean, salt, olive oil and lemon as a base -- the rest can be whatever you feel like adding.  Today I felt like adding the withering avocado, some garbanzo and lima beans I found in my pantry, and some smoked paprika I bought in Germany. You may wonder why I bought smoked paprika in Germany.  Well, I was visiting my sister Paula there, and she had just made me the most incredible dinner of Osso Buco so I wanted to repay the kindness by cooking something delicious for her.  However, in the process of preparing dinner, I totally forgot to use the spice and since she doesn't cook much (and is compulsively organized), she didn't want it cluttering up her kitchen. So  home it came, to clutter up my spice cabinet instead, which already had a large can of smoked paprika, along with three types of regular paprika, Spanish paprika, and hot Hungarian paprika,   One ingredient my hummus was lacking was tahini - a paste made from sesame seeds.  I had a large jar of tahini in my fridge, but due to an overcrowding problem brought on by my aforementioned fettish, it leapt to its death when I opened the door the other day, splattering annoyingly all over the kitchen floor.  Honestly, I really wanted to clean it up myself, but since I had my hands full trying to prepare dinner and talk to my BFF on the phone at the same time, I just looked at my husband with "that look" and he, in his saintly manner, eradicated the evidence from the floor, bottom of the fridge, and cabinets.  Bottom line:  no tahini in this hummus, but as it turns out, it tasted great without it.

When I started to make the hummus, I reached for the olive oil - of which I have nine different bottles.  I picked one that was nearly empty -- a jar of California first pressed oil - and found I would be able to finish it off but would need more.  Rather than open a new bottle of EVOO, I decided to use up a jar of expeller-pressed sunflower oil (one of 12 different types of non-olive oils I happen to have cluttering up the countertop and refrigerator).

The hummus turned out delicious -- the smoked paprika really takes it over the top, and adding the swiss chard relish as a garnish on top provides a great layer of sweetness and acidity to balance the creaminess of the oils in the hummus.

I ate up a serving of it with - you guessed it - left over carrots and celery from an office Superbowl party I'd arranged the day before, Can I say Superbowl, or do I need to refer to it as the Game Whose Name Shall Not Be Mentioned since I haven't paid my millions in royalties? The best part of using up all the excess items, of course, is making room to buy more!

Pantry Purge Hummus

1 14 oz can garbanzo beans
1 7 oz can of lima beans (or omit/substitute with any other bean)
1 tsp salt
1 ripe avocado
Juice of 1 lemon
zest of one lemon
1 Tbsp dried parsley
1 tsp smoked paprika
1 large clove garlic, or two small cloves
1/4 cup of extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup of sunflower seed oil (or use more EVOO or another mild flavored oil in lieu of this)

Place all the ingredients except the oil in a high speed blender or food processor.  Add 1/4 cup of your oil of choice and puree.  While the blender or processor is running, add the remaining oil until the hummus is smooth and has a nice consistency. If it is too stiff, add more oil until your desired consistency is achieved.  Taste and add more salt if needed.

Nothing like Cioppino when you're feeling Crabby

I have been struggling with my Bay Area commute lately.  Usually it's a predictable 1 hour and 15 minute ride each way which gives me a chance to unwind, chat with my best friend Cathy, listen to all the podcasts I follow or enjoy some soothing, relaxing music. Lately, however, it has been horrific, with several days in the last two weeks taking more than 2 hours in each direction.  Even all my trusty shortcuts (like the secret route through the convent grounds) have been clogged up, making me irritable and very hangry by the time I get home.

Eating out is an option but it comes with a cost - both expensive and pretty unhealthy since most restaurant food is loaded with butter and sodium. It's hard to lose weight when you eat out a lot, so I have been making an effort to try to cook for myself whenever possible.  With all that thinking time on my hands as I crawl home at 3 miles an hour, I was able to strategize this fairly quick recipe which used a fresh, whole dungeness crab and some ingredients I had on hand from my farm box delivery - basil, bell peppers, onions, carrots, and celery, plus a can of San Marzano crushed tomatoes and some tomato paste.  I like to make the cioppino base extra thick, similar to how they do it at Sotto Mare in San Francisco's North Beach - a gem of a hole in the wall restaurant that has THE BEST cioppino in the entire world.  You can add other seafood to this besides just crab, but I was in a hurry and wanted to go with what was easy and convenient.  Any firm white fish (I'm not a fan of salmon in a dish like this), shrimp, clams, mussels, or scallops would be a good addition.

Including the time spent stopping at the store to buy the crab, this whole dinner took less than an hour to make and was very satisfying despite how low-fat it was. Best of all, there was a lot of sauce left over, which I was able to re-use to make a version of the French Basque dish, Piperade.   Both recipes are included below.

Crab Cioppino

3 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 medium yellow or white onion, chopped into small dice
3 large garlic cloves, minced
1 large red bell pepper, cut into small dice
2 carrots, diced
3 stalks celery, diced
1 tsp salt
1 28 oz can crushed San Marzano tomatoes
1 12 oz can tomato paste
1 cup full bodied red wine (like Zinfandel)
1/2 cup water
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
1 whole cooked Dungeness crab, cleaned, and well-cracked (body broken into 4 pieces and legs left whole but cracked liberally to allow sauce to seep in)
1/4 cup fresh basil chiffonade

Heat a skillet over medium high heat, add and heat the oil.  When the oil heated, add the onion and saute until it starts to soften and is translucent, about 5 minutes.  Add the garlic, bell pepper, carrots and celery, stir to coat with the oil. Sprinkle with 1/2 of the salt and cook until softened, about 8 - 10 minutes. Add the tomatoes, tomato paste, wine, water, remaining salt and red pepper flakes and stir to combine.  Turn up the heat to high and cook for 5 minutes to blend the flavors.  While the sauce is simmering, clean and crack the crab, then add it to the sauce and stir well to coat.  Cook for an additional 15 minutes, then stir in the basil which has been chiffonaded (? is that a word?*). To serve, remove the crab pieces and serve them in bowls with some of the sauce and toasted garlic bread. Reserve the left over sauce for a second use.

* When you are writing sometimes you get stumped on how to properly describe something.  This was my dilemna when trying to discuss basil chiffonade and a quick web search indicated I am not the only one stumped by this word.  See the Pioneer Woman's blog post about this very topic, and learn how to prepare basil chiffonade at the same time!   http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/how-tochiffonade-basil/

Cioppino-style Piperade

Piperade is traditionally made with lots of bell peppers but this cioppino sauce has a very similar flavor profile so I just adapted it slightly so it can be used in the same way piperade is traditionally eaten - with soft boiled eggs and crispy slices of baguette.  There is nothing so delicious as breaking into the warm, rich, runny egg yolk and letting it flow into the tomato sauce before you scoop it up with a crisp piece of toasted bread!  Note, however, that because this base was used to cook shellfish, there is a definite seafood flavor to it.  If you are expecting a traditional sweet pepper flavor with this, you will be disappointed.

1 tsp piment d'espellete or smoked paprika
2-3 eggs
optional 1 cup broth, white, or red wine
1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
Several slices of crispy toasted baguettes

To the leftover sauce, add about a teaspoon of piment d'espellete or smoked paprika and rewarm ina skillet over medium heat.  If you need to stretch the sauce you can add some broth or additional white or red wine to get to the consistency of a very thick pasta sauce.  Make two or three wells in the sauce with your spoon and crack an egg into each well.  Cover the skillet.  Simmer until the egg whites are set but the yolks are stilll runny, spooning a little sauce over them now and then to help the tops to set.  This should take about 8-10 minutes.  Remove from the stove, sprinkle with the cheese and serve with crispy, toasted baguette slices.

Why are there so many songs about Rainbows?

A:  Probably because the songwriter was inspired by a beautiful garden overgrowing with rainbow chard that never seems to die and turns into trees.

Earlier this week I made "watercress" soup using a combination of mustard greens and rainbow chard, and in that process, I had to de-stem the chard.  It seemed like such a shame to throw out those neon-hued stems, so I searched for recipes and came up with this one from chef Jack Staub, contributor to Food & Wine magazine.  I believe he is the same Jack Staub who is a vegetable gardening expert and has written several interesting books on herb and vegetable gardening (check him out on Amazon.com).

This recipe is for a very fast and easy, sweet and tart flavor-packed relish, which gets even better if you let it sit in your fridge for a few days. The flavor profile is similar to chutney but unlike the store bought version (such as Major Grey's), the vegetables in this rendition remain crisp and crunchy.  The substitutions I made from Staub's original recipe, which cam be found here:  http://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/bright-lights-swiss-chard-relish included increasing the amount of garlic, substituting a large shallot for the onion, and using zante currants instead of golden raisins.  The currants are smaller, denser, and more crunchy compared to the soft, anemic looking, squishy raisins (OK, can you tell I am not a big fan of golden raisins?).

I like to use this as a condiment for fish or chicken but my favorite preparation is to mix a liberal amount into a can of high-quality oil packed tuna, along with some chopped almonds and dash of curry powder. With the oil in the tuna, there is no need to add mayo.  It is also really good when spread on crostini with a little bit of cream cheese or hummus.  Enjoy!

Rainbow Chard Relish

Olive oil
2 garlic cloves, minced
Stems from a bunch of Rainbow Chard (also known as Bright Lights chard), chopped into small dice
1 shallot, sliced and minced
salt & pepper
1/3 cup zante currants
3 Tbsp apple cider vinegar
1 Tbsp honey
2 Tbsp chopped fresh mint

Follow the "HAHA" method to warm a tablespoon or two of olive oil in a skillet (Heat-Add-Heat-Add:  heat the skillet, add the oil; heat the oil, add the ingredient), Reduce heat to medium and add the garlic, taking care to soften it but not brown or burn it. Saute for 1 minute then add the shallot and chard stems and rain a little salt and pepper onto the mixture.  Stir to blend and continue to cook for 4-5 minutes until everything starts to soften up.  Raise the heat to medium high and stir in the remaining ingredients, letting the honey-vinegar mix bubble up.  Cook for another 1-2 minutes.   You can eat it immediately but I prefer to transfer the mixture to a clean jar or bowl and let the flavors meld for a couple of days.

Conquest of the Red Giant

Today is day 3 of my challenge to make and post about vegetables, and I thought it would be a good idea to try to use up some of the abundance of greens from my garden.  I have an endless supply of swiss chard sprouting my mutant, 3 year old tree-plants which form creepy looking stalks that sprout bunches of tender swiss chard every few inches.

And then there is the red giant mustard.  Last September, I planted some heirloom Red Giant Mustard seeds but was disappointed because nothing sprouted -- until December, that is.  Somehow, about 10 plants grew stealthily under a tangle of fallen tree leaves, unnoticed until I decided to clean things up a bit to make some space for all the new seeds I intend to plant in a few weeks.  Red Giant Mustard is a really interesting plant.  It's leaves are very pretty, with hues of rust and purple appearing on the older growth. Eaten raw, it tastes exactly like super-pungent horseradish.  But when cooked, all the red color leaches out into the cooking water, leaving just mildly peppery, bright green leaves.

Scrolling through facebook, I came across David Lebovitz' post for Watercress Soup, and I decided to try making it with swiss chard and mustard leaves instead.  You can find his recipe here:  http://www.davidlebovitz.com/2016/02/watercress-soup-recipe/  (And when you get to his site, consider following him - you will not be disappointed if you love pastry, cheese, Paris, or the good things in life!).

I followed the recipe fairly closely, except I used about twice as much greens as he suggested (18-20 cups instead of 9 cups), and I used 3 cups water and 3 cups vegetable broth instead of the 6 cups of water he called for.  Also, he adds about a cup of frozen green peas to his soup but I didn't have any so I omitted them.  One last change - I used my high speed blender to mix the soup rather than an immersion blender. I don't think you can get a fine enough texture with an immersion blender, but is this is all you have I would suggest passing the end product through a fine sieve or chinois once you are done, to ensure it is as smooth as possible.

The end result was delicious.  I made this soup in about a half hour after coming home from an evening session with my personal torturer I mean trainer, and it was warm, creamy,and filling.   I tried it three ways - plain, with a dollop of greek yogurt, and with a few drops of preserved kumquat oil which I'd made a couple weeks ago.  All three ways tasted great and proved the versatility of this soup. I think you could add lemon, mint or numerous other garnishes to the basic base.

One last thought - if you are watching carbs (as I am supposed to be), you may not want to add the potatoes.  Instead, you can add a little xanthum gum powder (and I mean a little - like a teaspoon- because it is about 10x more powerful than corn starch as a thickening agent).  You can buy xanthum gum in many markets, where products like Bob's Red Mill flours are sold. It is commonly used in gluten-free bread and dough recipes so is usually available where gluten free flour is sold.

De-stemmed mustard leaves

20 cups of mustard and swiss chard leaves, along with peeled potatoes

The oddest thing - the red leaves turned bright green, and the broth turned pink

Soup has been pureed and returned to the dutch oven to warm.  It is amazingly creamy

A tasting bowl of soup garnished with some preserved kumquat oil

Brocolli Redemption

Just look at all those crispy browned bits!

After yesterday's vegetarian chile verde fiasco I was feeling the pressure to redeem myself and prove that I actually do know how to cook.  Today's recipe for roasted broccoli and lemon aioli was just the thing I needed to restore my confidence. This recipe came from a Facebook post by Food and Wine magazine featuring all things broccoli, but I made a couple small adjustments to reduce the amount of mayonnaise, and to use broccolini and cauliflower instead of regular brocolli, because I happened to have those items from my farm box delivery this week.  I think this would also taste great with carrots, artichokes and maybe even parsnips, if you wanted to change it up once you tire of the basic recipe.  Another reason I chose this recipe was because I have an abundance of lemons, which like all citrus, are in peak production right now.

I have to do something with all these lemons!

I made this recipe for lunch on a chilly February day, and it provided a warm, comforting alternative to my usual salad.   I dare you to try to resist eating the whole pan yourself!   These have a great flavor that is reminiscent of artichoke hearts, and a nice crispy crunch in the sections that started to char.  If you want to add a little protein, some roasted pine nuts, cashews or almonds would make a delicious garnish.

Roasted Brocolli and Cauliflower with Lemon Aioli

Preheat oven to 400°F

1 head of cauliflower, florettes broken off and cut into even sizes, along with the stems

1 bunch of broccolini or a head of broccoli with the florets and stem cut into even-sized pieces

1/2 cup vegenaise or mayonnaise 

3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

Juice and zest of one small lemon (about 2 tbsp juice and a tbsp of zest)

2 large cloves garlic, minced

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp cayenne 

2 tbsp nutritional yeast or finely grated Parmesan cheese

Line two baking trays with parchment paper. Cut the broccoli and cauliflower into even pieces and place them in a large bowl.  To make the aioli, purée the remaining ingredients except the nutritional yeast or cheese together in a high-powered blender until very smooth. Pour over the veggies and toss them well to coat evenly.  Spread the vegetables out in a single layer on the baking trays.  Roast for 15 minutes then sprinkle the nutritional yeast or Parmesan cheese lightly over the top. Rotate the pans in your oven, and continue to roast for 3 to 5 minutes longer,  or until the florets are just starting to blacken on the tops and edges.

As you can see in the picture, the undersides have developed an incredible carmelization.   When this happens, it's time to remove the pans from the oven, rain on a little bit of finishing salt and then serve immediately.  Try to resist eating the whole pan yourself!   These have a great flavor that is reminiscent of artichoke hearts, and a nice crispy crunch in the sections that started to blacken.  If you want to add a little protein and even more crunch, some roasted pine nuts, cashews or almonds would be a delicious addition. 

A Month of Vegetables

February is a great, transitional month. January has ended and we've already forgotten those resolutions to lose weight and exercise more.  The seed catalogs are coming in the mail every day, and every now and then there are a few hours of clear skies and warmth to remind us that Spring is just around the corner.  In honor of this almost-Spring month and the transition it places on our souls, I have decided to blog about Vegetables every day in this month.

Why vegetables?  Well, two reasons.  1: I love to cook,  and  2:  I love to eat.  Anyone who loves to cook and eat usually has a hard a time with Vegan people -- how can they give up bacon, braised meats, butter, and all those incredibly tasty animal things that make food taste so good? That is the boat I've been in for a while, since my husband gave up the aforementioned foods (now dirty words in my household) following heart bypass surgery in 2010.  At least there were still carbs.  Carbs are good. Yum. I love carbs.  At least, I loved carbs, until I was diagnosed with the onset of Type II Diabetes, which runs in my Hispanic family. That happened last year, and since then I have been trying to figure out what to eat and cook to satisfy our somewhat mutually exclusive dietary requirements.  And the common ground for both of us was Vegetables.

For the past several months, I have been on a quest to find vegetable recipes that are so delicious they make me forget about carbs, and make my husband forget about butter and meat.  I was inspired by a post I read in Food and Wine magazine showing 20 different ways to prepare brocolli, and I decided that with a little help from resources like Yotam Ottolenghi (the master of exquisitely flavored middle eastern-influenced vegetables), Angela from OhSheGlows.com (a really great Vegan blog and series of cookbooks), and some other popular veggie and foodie enthusiasts, I could do this.

So here we go - look for the good, bad, and ugly of my attempt to prepare the best possible veggies every day.  I can't guarantee they will all turn out like I am hoping, but the result should be fun and healthful. Read on below for the first recipe.

Feb 1, 2016: Mushroom Chile Verde with Smoked Tomatillos

Before you get all excited and try this recipe, please know that it did not turn out that great and I would not recommend it.  As with many first attempts at anything, it needs some refinement.  But I'll put a sketch of it up, so I can stick to my resolution of posting about a vegetable a day.  I did promise the good, the bad, and the ugly. I am also hoping that this will help you understand that even great cooks make bad food every now and then.

Ingredients:
1 dozen tomatillos, husked and washed
4 Anaheim chilies
1-2 tbsp olive oil
1 medium yellow onion, diced
2 large cloves garlic, minced
1 serrano pepper, minced
1 bunch of cilantro (this was my first mistake, more on that below.  Quantity should probably be about 1/4 cup of leaves, loosely packed)
1 cup salted vegetable broth (mistake #2, needed more broth - maybe an addl 2 cups -- and more salt - probably another 3/4 to 1 teaspoon)
3 portabella mushrooms, washed and diced in 1/2 inch chunks
1 cup black eyed peas, cooked (mistake #3 - tried to repurpose these which I had leftover from earlier in the week, but a firmer, meatier type of bean would have been a better choice.  These were too soft and bland)

After a very a long day of work, I was dealing with a nearly 2 hour commute to my tap dance class. I was starving and knew that after class I would be even more hungry, so I sent a text to my husband asking if he would consider making this dish for dinner, and I provided him the recipe.  He was tired too but he is a saint so he obliged me and put it all together based upon my instructions.

I have a smoker and love to smoke anything and everything.  I love the smoky taste of salsa and thought the smoke would add something special to this chile verde sauce.  Bob spread the chilies and tomatillos on a baking sheet and placed them in the smoker, with a temperature setting of about 300 degrees (when you set my Traeger smoker to 325, it cooks at about 300), for 20 minutes.  This was another mistake - it wasn't hot enough.  A better choice would have been to crank it up to really hot and let the veggies roast a little more quickly.  After cooking for 20 minutes, he realized he would need to increase the heat.  He cranked up the smoker to its highest setting and ended up cooking the veggies for about 10 to 15 minutes longer to get them to soften up. Whether you cook them in the smoker or roast them in the oven, they should look collapsed and oozing juice, but not dried out when they are ready.  And if prepared in the smoker, they need at least 20 - 30 minutes to pick up a light smoke taste.

While the chilies and tomatillos were smoking, Bob sauteed the onions in the olive oil, then added the garlic and serrano chili and cooked until they were also softened and the onions were opaque.  Once the chilies and tomatillos were ready, he scraped them into a high-powered blender with the onions, cilantro, and broth and pureed everything.   I mentioned above that the quantity of cilantro was mistake #1 - I was going by memory and I thought I only had a few sprigs left when I instructed Bob to use all of it he could find.  However, it turns out I had a whole bunch left, and when Bob prepared it, he just chopped off the bottom stems then added the whole lot to the blender. It gave the sauce a very dark green color and the flavor was a little off. So, lesson learned. Next time, less cilantro.

The next mistake was the volume of fluid -  I only instructed Bob to use 1 cup vegetable broth, under-estimating the amount of fluid that would come from the peppers and tomatilllos.  It needed to be much thinner, like a soup - so an additional 2 cups of veggie stock (or any stock you like) was needed.  And the brand of stock I use is very lightly salted but this preparation needed more salt.

After the sauce was ready, Bob poured it back into a pot and simmered it with the chopped mushrooms and leftover beans.  The beans I used (actually black-eyed peas-- Bob is so funny, he thought he could find these "fresh" peas in the veggie crisper;  he reported to me that all we had were sugar snap peas but there were none with black eyes).  I had made these a couple days earlier by simmering them with onions, oregano, and salt.  But they were really bland and definitely needed something to give them some kick. Unfortunately, this sauce did not do the trick.  I think next time I will use a larger, firmer, meatier bean like a kidney bean or some of the really delicious Rancho Gordo ayocote beans.

So, how did it taste?  Well not great.  The tomatillos have a a very tangy flavor, sort of acidic.  Usually this is toned down and softened by the mild-flavored chilies. This time, I think the acidity overpowered everything, and when combined with the huge amount of cilantro and not enough salty broth for dilution, it was just not a pleasant eating experience.  It was edible but not my best effort.

However, Spring is the season of hope and renewal, so I guess it's OK that sometimes in getting to Spring you might have to shrivel up and fail.   I will try again later in the month, hopefully to achieve some redemption!