Ugly Carrots

This now counts as my Halloween post.  More than a month after my first carrot harvest, I pulled a few more to use in a crab salad.  The one that had the bushiest tops went first.  It was at least an inch in diameter, but quickly devolved into a misshapen gnarl of carrot that usually happens only in compact or rocky soil.  The next one wasn't much better.  The third one was carrot-shaped, but very thin.  And the last was a lumpy mess of carroty tumors.

I cleaned them up and ran the veggie peeler over them to get rid of stray roots.  In the grocery store, they don't tell you that they've scrubbed off all kinds of stuff from the carrots.  There was also a lot of dirt in the ridges and between the stringy roots.  When you pick a fruit or leafy veggie, you don't have to deal with all that dirt.

This did not discourage me from planting a winter garden of mostly root vegetables in the pond.  The 20 or 30 gallons it took to rehydrate the soil almost made me wait for El Niño, but by then it will not be warm enough to give the sprouts a good start.  I'm also gambling that it will not climb above 85º again in two weeks, when everything starts to take root.  I planted a mesculun assortment, beets, and yet more carrots.  Eventually, I will figure out how to grow them properly.

The neighborhood skunk rooted through the pond a few days later.  All the dirt was tossed into random piles, meaning my neat rows are useless.  Adding to that, all sorts of things started sprouting way too early to be what I planted.  I pulled many of the weeds, but a few may be the lettuce assortment.  I'll wait for a few more leaves before pulling those.  The problem is the only thing I will recognize when it first comes up is the carrots.  Wish me luck.

Crepes Foster

I had a couple of galettes left over from the Greques and a banana a couple of days past its prime.  Thus comes the inspiration for the fastest fancy dessert I ever made.

If you're making the crepes as well, this is not fast.  But there are pre-packaged ones in the market, usually near the little spongecake cups or the berries.  If you do want to make them on your own, I have a basic sweet crepe recipe here.

8 crepes
2 slightly over-ripe bananas
2 Tb butter
2 Tb brown sugar
1 Tb light rum
vanilla ice cream to garnish (I didn't have any)

1.  Slice bananas thinly.  Melt butter in a medium skillet over medium heat.  Add brown sugar and let it melt into the butter.  Add banana slices and continue to cook until they are glazed and the butter makes a sauce, 3 or 4 minutes.  Add rum and either let the alcohol boil off or just stir it into the sauce.

2.  Divide the bananas among the 8 crepes and fold them into quarters.  Use two per serving with a small scoop of vanilla ice cream on the side.  Or you could do a single one in a small dish with a scoop to make it serve 8 if you had a big meal.

Difficulty rating  π (store-bought crepes)

Galettes a la Greque

So the thing about writing posts is remembering to finish and publish them.  I was going through the photos in the camera and went oops.

Once again, I'm spending a lot of grocery money to use one ingredient I've grown.  I did use the rest of the package of spinach I'd bought for the pizzas, the lettuce I had gotten last week for salad, and all of the crepe ingredients were pantry.  So I bought a lamb chop, a container of yogurt, a cucumber, and hit the olive bar to pick out only pitted kalamatas and marinated feta cubes.

So far, I have roasted or fried all of my eggplants.  It was nearly 100º on Sunday last week (look at the date of this post) and I couldn't bear to turn on the oven.  So I decided to find out how they tasted stewed, then pan-fried the lamb chop after.  I think I prefer roasted, but they weren't bad.

Oh, and for the lamb chop, I decided to get cute.  You know on cooking shows how they rain down spices from about a foot above the pan, pinching them from a cute little portion cup?  I did that.  Aside from making me feel stupid, I don't think it made any difference.   The meat was seasoned just the same  as if I had rubbed it on.

Once again, this produced way too many dishes.  I made the time to do a round before things got out of hand, and only had the soaking lamb skillet to finish in the morning.

1 batch galettes
1 C tzatziki sauce
8 large leaves red or green leaf lettuce
1 medium eggplant
4 oz spinach leaves
4 oz pitted kalamata olives
4 oz cubed or crumbled feta
1/2 lb lamb chop
1/4 tsp paprika
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp cumin
1/8 tsp black pepper
olive oil

1.  Prepare galettes and sauce and set aside until ready to use.

2.  Dice eggplant into 1" cubes.  Drizzle about 1 Tb olive oil into a medium skillet and heat on medium.  Add eggplant and cook, covered, until eggplant is completely softened, at least half an hour.  Stir periodically.  Drop in spinach leaves and allow to wilt, 3 to 5 minutes.  Remove veggies to a holding container.

3.  Add a little more oil to the pan and turn up the heat to medium-high.  Combine the four spices and rub all over the lamb chop.  Pan-fry until medium done, about 4 minutes per side.  Remove meat from pan and chop into bite-sized pieces, getting as much meat off the bone as possible if you bought a bone-in.

4.  Start layering the ingredients in the crepes.  First the lettuce, then the cooked veggies, then the meat, olives, and feta.  Close the crepes and drizzle generously with tzatziki sauce.  Serve two galettes per person.

Difficulty rating :)

Crazy-Pizza Night

Lately, it has been all about what I can make with eggplant.  At one point, there were 10 eggplants on the bush of various sizes.  This is why I rarely plant the same thing twice.  By the time the plant runs its course, I am thoroughly over whatever it was for the next several months.

So I decided to make pizzas that incorporated roasted eggplant.  I was originally going to do a Greek theme with ground lamb, like a moussaka pizza, but wasn't impressed by the quality or price of the ground lamb at the market.  So I went with Italian sausage and your basic red sauce/mozzarella kind of pizza with a bit of spinach to round things out.  The dough is the same one I used for the prosciutto & brie pizza.

I usually clean as I go, especially when rise time for dough is involved.  This time, I just got busy and didn't have time to do dishes until the pizzas were in the oven.  That's when I found out just how many pots, pans, bowls, etc I had been using.  And it doesn't count the two baking sheets in the oven.

Yeah, that took a while.

Hearty Pumpkin Soup

It's going to be cool-ish for a couple of days, so I'm making soup.  Hot Santa Ana winds won't be here until the weekend and I'm pretending it's Fall.

There are two ways to make this, the way I did it and the easy way.  I made my own stock and soaked and pre-cooked the beans.  The chicken was from a leftover carcass in the freezer.  Something close to 24 hours for a pot of soup.  On the other hand, you could buy broth, canned beans, and canned chicken and be done with this in about half an hour, so I'm going to post that.  The biggest difference with my version is the salt content.  I've been eating way too much salt.  I did an experiment recently where I only ate food I had prepared and drank plenty of water for a day.  Woke up the next day a pound lighter, and that's including snacks and ice cream.  All salt.

1 qt low-salt chicken broth
2 large carrots, peeled and chopped bite-sized
4 stalks celery, chopped bite-sized
1/2 onion, diced
1 (15 oz) can white beans, drained and rinsed
1 small can chunk chicken
1 (15 oz) can pumpkin purée
salt and pepper to taste
1/4 tsp dried sage
1 bay leaf
1/2 tsp nutmeg

1.  Bring broth and bay leaf to a simmer in a large pot.  Add carrots, celery, and onion and simmer until carrots are tender, about 10 minutes.

2.  Stir in remaining ingredients.  Bring back up to a simmer and cook for 10 minutes.  Discard bay leaf and serve hot.

Serves 4 to 6

Difficulty rating  π

No-Plan French Toast

When you look up French Toast recipes online, what you're going to find requires a trip to the grocery store and several days of preparation.  What if you just wake up and decide you want it for breakfast?  That requires all the skill and ingenuity of the average home cook.  It's called dropping bread into an omelet mix.

Any bread will do, even the cheap stuff from the market.  I happen to have some raisin challah in the freezer.  That's as fancy as this gets.

I'm giving the single-serving, one-egg recipe.  (Or 2 small children.)  That makes it easiest to scale up.

1 egg
1/4 C milk
2 slices bread
1 Tb margarine (so you don't have to salt the egg)

1.  Beat the egg in a shallow pan.  I use a pie tin.  Add the milk and beat to combine.  If you want to get creative, you can add spices directly to the egg like cinnamon or nutmeg.

2.  Set bread slices in egg mix.  Go make coffee, or sausage, or something.  In five minutes, flip the bread to let the other side soak up the mix.  Preheat a skillet over medium-low and melt the margarine, even if you're using a non-stick.  It will be creating the browned look on the bread.

3.  Place the bread slices in the skillet and allow them to cook undisturbed for about 5 minutes.  You're cooking this over a lower heat so the outside doesn't burn before the egg on the inside is done.  It's also how I make grilled cheese, so the bread is browned around the time the cheese melts.  I used to throw out any egg that didn't absorb, but they're expensive nowadays, so I just pour it on top of the bread in the skillet.

4.  Turn the bread and cook until browned, about 3 minutes.  Serve hot with powdered sugar and/or syrup.

Serves 1

Difficulty rating  π

Molasses Baked Beans

While I'm technically not on my endurance test anymore, I'm still using pantry items first.  The idea of leaving the oven on all afternoon was pretty hideous, but I cooked this at a low temperature.  I have a very well-insulated oven, so it didn't really heat up the kitchen.

For the most part, I followed a scaled-down recipe from food.com.  I skipped the pork because I was having this with short ribs done kalua style.  I was happy that there's no added salt.  For once, a recipe doesn't resort to it for flavor.  Yes, ketchup is salty.  That was enough.  I've been eating out too much and noticed my face getting a little puffy from all the salt.  Started having high-potassium foods and more water to compensate.

This is a soak-the-beans recipe because the ones out of the can are already cooked and will come up entirely too mushy.  Plan the day before.

1 C dry great northern beans
1 bay leaf
1/2" thick slice of onion, quartered
1/4 C ketchup
3 Tb brown sugar
3 Tb molasses
1 tsp mustard or 1/2 tsp dry mustard powder
1/4 tsp ground pepper

1.  The night before, soak beans in 3 cups water.  Early in the day, drain.

2.  Preheat oven to 300º.  Into an oven-safe 2 qt casserole, place all ingredients.  Cover with 1 C boiling water.  Stir until sauce is even, cover with a tight lid, and bake for 4 hours.  Check every hour to make sure the water didn't all evaporate.  If still too watery at the 3-hour mark, leave the lid cracked slightly.  You want a thick sauce, but not dry beans.

3.  Remove from oven, discard bay leaf, and serve hot or cold

Difficulty rating  :)

Nothing Special

I went a little crazy at the market and spent about $50 restocking.   Basically, I bought anything I thought I might use in the near future that was a decent price.  Only the chicken thighs and broccoli were part of a planned meal.

The reason I'm posting something as basic as this is to show that a "special" meal (in this case, my Shabbat Shuvah dinner) is all about the attitude and presentation.  You can make something fancy, or you can present the ordinary with an air of elegance.  Half of what makes restaurant food so appealing is how it is plated.  (The other half is salt.)

I haven't been cooking much because it has been so hot.  Boiling the veggies and throwing chicken in the oven felt taxing.  I'm mostly doing dips and cheeses.  Or picking up stuff. The last thing I baked was a batch of Oatmeal Everything cookies.  Since it makes over four dozen, I just threw the rest in the freezer for teas over the next few weeks.  Don't be surprised if I don't post for a week.  Unless my cooking mojo comes back, I'm not making anything until next Tuesday, meaning the post would be the day after.  I really hope it's cool enough by then to slow-roast some pork ribs I picked up.

Garden Meatloaf

I'm going grocery shopping this morning!  I had hoped to sneak in a small batch of chicken soup with a carcass I found at the bottom of the chest freezer, but there isn't enough to round it out.  It would have been just chicken and lentils or navy beans.  I used up the last bit of onion on this.  Still, 18 days is pretty impressive for someone who shops every three to four days (the shelf life of bananas) and primarily uses fresh produce.  I'm going to clean the fridge first.  It hasn't been this empty in a year.

I pulled the first ear of corn and the largest-seeming carrots for this.  Eggy was getting jealous until the carrots turned out to be extremely small.  So I threw in the two largest eggplants instead.  This turned out to be an excellent idea.  This has to be the most moist and delicate meatloaf I've ever made.  It does not taste like eggplant, except for a lingering hint of something different.

I used rice for the filler, but did not pre-cook it.  I soaked the Basmati for several hours and put it in raw, so the juices of the vegetables and meat could soak into it as everything baked.  The rice did cook, so that experiment is a success.

*1 small eggplant, cut up
1 carrot, chopped
*1/2 onion, chopped
*1 ear of corn
salt and pepper
1 egg
1/4 C dry rice
1 lb 80/20 ground beef
*1/4 C ketchup

1.  Early in the day, soak the rice in 1 C water.  Drain and toss in the food processor.

2.  Preheat oven to 325º.  To the rice, add eggplant, carrot, and onion.  Scrape the kernels off the ear of corn and add.  Run the processor until the veggies are a coarse paste.

3.  Add ground beef, egg, and ketchup.  Process again until uniform.  Spread in a loaf pan and bake until internal temperature reaches 160º, about one hour.  It's ok to drain off the juices after about 45 minutes.  There will still be enough in there to finish cooking the rice.  Let loaf sit for 10 minutes to rest and reach 165º.

4.  Slice and serve.  It may be very soft and break apart.  Given the alternative of a sturdy chunk of meat, I'm cool with that.

Difficulty rating  π

Lemon Meringue Tarts

Rooting through the pantry doesn't have to mean weird, mish-mash food.  It just means you have to look at what's in there with an open mind.

I have no idea how old the box of graham crackers is, but the "sell by" date was Jan 2013.  It's pie crust now.  One lemon off the tree, an egg before I finish them off, and the rest is pantry staples.

I had debated whether to do these as simple lemon curd tarts, but then I'd have an egg white left over.  Instead, I did a 1/4 recipe of a full sized lemon meringue pie.  Fun with math.

4 graham crackers (8 squares)
2 Tb + 1 tsp butter
sugar
salt
4 tsp cornstarch
2 Tb lemon juice
6 Tb water
1 tsp grated lemon zest
1 egg, separated

1.  To make the crust, crush the graham crackers.  You can use the food processor, but I just put them in a ziplock and ran over them with the rolling pin.  Melt 2 Tb butter and pour into crumbs.  Stir with a fork until moistened.  Press into 4 patty pans or - if you're into insanely cute kitchenware like I am - individual tartlet pans.  These are so small that you do not need to pre-bake the crusts.

2.  In a small saucepan, stir together cornstarch, 8 tsp (2 Tb + 2 tsp) sugar, and a dash of salt.  Stir in lemon zest, lemon juice, and water and allow everything to dissolve.  Cornstarch will clump when heated if it is not dissolved in a cool liquid first.

3.  Bring mixture to a boil over medium heat, stirring constantly.  It only takes a couple of minutes because there is so little in the pot.  It will start to thicken and turn glossy.  Remove from heat.

4.  Beat egg yolk slightly.  Add a couple of spoonfuls of the lemon mixture to the egg to temper it, beat everything together, then return the gloppy mess to the pot.  Heat over low until thickened further, but do not boil or you'll curdle the egg.  Turn off heat and stir in 1 tsp of butter until melted and incorporated.  Divide filling between tart shells.

5.  Preheat oven to 375º.  Beat egg whites with a dash of salt to soft peaks.  Slowly add 1 Tb of sugar and beat meringue into a firm, glossy peak stage.  Top tarts with meringue and bake for 10 minutes, or until meringue is as dark as you want it.

6.  Cool tarts to room temperature before trying to remove from tins.  I left the removable bottoms on mine and served them without the rims.  You can chill the tarts to serve cold, but the meringue will start to get chewy after a day or so.  I don't recommend making these more than one day ahead.

Difficulty rating  :)