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Red Cabbage, Leek & Apple Walnut Slaw

Friday, December 30th, 2011

 

Cabbage Salad Ingredients

One of our favorite winter salads is coleslaw.  We had a really good cabbage harvest this year – red and green alike, so we are still eating this from our own garden.  Cabbage is a good keeper and we had 2 in the fridge just waiting for good things to happen to them.  We also had a few garden leeks lurking in the produce drawer and they make a great substitute for green onions when you want a little flavor but not the strong taste of regular chopped onions.

The ingredients for the salad pictured are:

2-3 cups red cabbage, shredded

1 red apple, cored and chopped

1 medium leek, finely chopped (white & light green parts)

¼ cup currants or raisins

¼ cup walnuts chopped, optional

 

Dressing:

Option 1:  1-2 T. seasoned rice vinegar or to taste

 

Seasoned Vinegar Cabbage Salad

Option 2:  1 T. seasoned rice vinegar mixed with 1 T. your favorite mayo & 1 T plain yogurt

 

Creamy Cabbage Salad

I don’t usually measure the ingredients for the dressing so go lighter if you’re unsure.  You can always add more.  Sometimes I’m in a cinnamon mood so I’ll mix about ½ tsp. into the dressing.

If you don’t have an apple, try some other fruit such as chopped oranges or tangerines.  This salad is very flexible, as most salads are, so use what you have available and create a new dish.  This salad along with a casserole or soup is all you need to round out a meal.

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Double Corn Chili Bean Bake

Tuesday, December 13th, 2011

Double Corn Chili Bean Bake

Need a quick meal to put on the table while you’re ‘busy’ doing holiday preparations?  This dish is a great way to ‘re-purpose’ leftover chili if you have about 4 cups from a previous meal.  If that’s the case it takes about ten minutes to put together & it’s ready for the oven.  But no problem if no leftovers – it’s still a relatively easy dish to make and you can get creative with the type of beans and seasonings.  Don’t be afraid to spice it up.  The corn mixture and cheese mellow the flavors.  But you can always keep the salsa jar or hot sauce on the table if you want to play it safe.

 Double Corn Chili Bean Bake

½ c. chopped onion

½ cup chopped sweet & hot peppers or 1 can green chiles

1 clove garlic, minced

2 T. olive oil

4 cups cooked kidney or black beans, or 2 cans, drained

2 cups chopped tomatoes preserved from your garden, of course, or 1 – 16 oz can

Hot sauce or salsa to taste

salt & pepper to taste

Optional:  Cumin (1-2 tsp.), chile powder (1 tsp.)

 

2/3 c. cornmeal

½ tsp. salt

¼ tsp. baking soda

½ c. milk, soy milk, rice milk or broth

4 T. olive oil

1 egg, beaten

1 ½ – 2 c. frozen garden corn, thawed

1 c. shredded sharp cheddar cheese

 

In lieu of that leftover chili – sauté onion, garlic & peppers in 2 T. of oil until onion is softened.  Stir in beans, tomatoes, chili peppers and seasonings.  Simmer until thickened or until most of the juice is evaporated.  Remove from heat.

Mix cornmeal, soda & salt in large bowl.  Combine egg, 4 T. oil & milk or liquid of choice.  Add corn & mix with dry ingredients.  Pour 2/3 of the cornmeal mixture into a greased 2 qt. baking dish.  Cover with the shredded cheese & layer the seasoned beans over the cheese.  Spoon last 1/3 of cornmeal mixture around edge of dish.  Bake at 350 degrees for about 35 minutes, until corn bread is done.  Makes 4-6 Servings.  Yum, it’s even good for breakfast!

 

ladling the corn - a work in progress

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Sautéed Veggies with Volcano Rice

Wednesday, December 7th, 2011

Veggie skillet

Recipes are normally Judy’s and Geoff’s department and what you see here is totally Judy’s creation, I’m just putting it down on the blog because I found it way more than worthy.

Judy had to grab the phone to take an order and that’s a good thing.  On her way past me as she went to her desk she whispered, “stir the veggies.”  When I went to the stove, the skillet looked so colorful I knew I had to take a picture.

What we have here are several kind of green beans, some are purple, but they’re still green beans, leeks, garlic, and sweet peppers.  All from our garden and that’s cool.  They are being sautéed in olive oil and flavored with tamari sauce and toasted sesame oil.

Veggies over volcano rice

The finished stir fry was served over Volcano Rice with crumbled blue cheese.  The rice was seasoned with mushroom broth and cooked with a hot pepper, garlic, and a couple shiitake mushrooms for added flavor.  We buy several exotic rices from Lotus Foods at our local co-op.  Lotus is owned by some really nice folks we first met at a trade show in Chicago. They mail order if  their products are not available where you live.

How did it taste?  Well, as the great Louis Jordan said,  ”Mmm, mmm, mmm.  I’m such a hungry man.”   Judy’s not from Tucumcari, but she’s the one I did marry, and man, she sure can cook.

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Pumpkin from the Garden to the Table

Wednesday, November 30th, 2011

Pumpkin Pie

Why pumpkin pie – and not a Hubbard or an acorn squash pie?  Just about any hard squash will make an excellent pie, but because pumpkins are pretty bland and flavorless as a stand-alone squash, they get relegated to fillings for pies and breads.  Most winter squashes are pretty tasty on their own so why waste them in a pie!  Someone long ago figured out that if you mix enough sugar and spices with the pumpkin you get a darn good dessert.  And besides it’s good for you.

To make the pie shown, I cut a couple of garden pie pumpkins in half & cleaned out the seeds.  They were then baked in a covered roasting pan at 400 degrees for about an hour until soft.  I got out my trusty old Foley Food Mill and enlisted Noel’s expertise at turning the crank to puree the pumpkin pulp.

Fresh cooked pumpkin is a lot moister than what comes out of a can so I just cut back on the amount of liquid normally called for in recipes.  In fact this year I replaced the usual milk with coconut milk.  I had 2/3 of a can leftover from a coconut curry that I had made earlier in the week and thought why not give it a try.  It worked very well.  With all the strong spices in the pie you don’t really notice the difference unless you’re looking for it.

Basically I started with the standard pumpkin pie recipe from an old Better Homes and Gardens cookbook and branched out from there.  E-mail me if you want an exact recipe but cooking is an experiment waiting to happen – so what are you waiting for??

 

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Garden Vegetable Coconut Curry

Tuesday, November 22nd, 2011

Garden Veggie Coconut Curry and Salad

 

Here’s a quick little lunch or dinner with veggies from the garden.  Add a side salad and you’re all set.

Garden Vegetable Coconut Curry

1 T. olive oil

1 medium leek, chopped

½ cup chopped onion

1 tsp. brown mustard seeds

1 ½ tsp. curry powder

1 cup veggie broth

1 cup sliced carrots

1 cup cubed potato, unpeeled

2 cups cauliflower chunks or florets

½ cup organic coconut milk

½ tsp. seasoned salt to taste

Heat olive oil on medium low.  Add leeks, onion and mustard seeds and sauté 5 minutes.  Add carrots, cauliflower, potato and vegetable broth and simmer for 15 minutes.  Top it off with the coconut milk and warm until heated through.  Sprinkle with the seasoned salt & pepper to taste.

This version is stew-like in consistency.  If you want to serve it with rice you might want to add a little more broth to make it soupier.

You can get creative with this recipe and use whatever vegetables you have on hand.  I usually like to have a potato in the dish to give it some substance but this concept should work in a lot of various ways including spinach or kale in the mix.

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Sweet Potato Leaf Quinoa Soup

Sunday, November 20th, 2011

Since it’s getting close to the end of the growing season for my sweet potatoes, I decided that harvesting some of the leaves that have sprawled into my other garden beds would probably not affect tuber production significantly.  I’ve sautéed sweet potato leaves before and will post another recipe soon, but today I wanted soup.  The quinoa in this soup gives it some body to make it more filling.

Sweet Potato Leaf Quinoa Soup

Sweet Potato Leaf Quinoa Soup

  • 1/2 Onion chopped
  • 1 Stick Celery chopped
  • 1-2 Hot Peppers seeded and chopped
  • 1/2 cup uncooked Quinoa triple washed
  • 5 cups Veggie Broth
  • 3 TBS Rice Cooking Wine
  • 2 cups Sweet Potato leaves coarsely chopped
  • Avocado

In a medium sized pot sauté the onion, hot pepper and celery until the onion starts to turn golden.  Add the veggie broth and quinoa and bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes.  Add the sweet potato leaves  and rice wine and simmer for five more minutes.  Garnish with sliced avocado and enjoy.

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Wild Rice and Bread Stuffed Winter Squash

Saturday, November 12th, 2011

It’s that time of year when the weather turns chilly and winter squash is on the menu.  Obviously it’s right after the plentiful harvest but the body seems to need that filling substance to warm itself and feel satisfied after a hard day’s work.

Since we don’t cook a turkey, and would miss the stuffing dearly, we especially like to stuff some winter squash and have a little gravy to top it off.  Here’s a recipe we use that reminds me of what my mother used to put in the turkey.  The herbs used always remind me of Simon & Garfunkel’s Scarborough Fair song with the line “Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme”….

Wild Rice and Bread Stuffed Winter Squash

2 sweet dumpling or acorn squash, halved & seeded

2 T. olive oil

1 clove garlic, minced

1 small leek, finely chopped (or ½ cup minced onion)

¼ c. finely chopped mushrooms (I used fresh shiitakes)

1 ½ c. cooked wild rice (1/2 c. dry)

2-3 c. whole grain bread, cubed

½ c. veggie broth or water flavored with Tamari

2 T. parsley, minced

1 t. sage

½ t. rosemary

½ t. thyme

Preheat oven to 400 degrees, then reduce heat to 350 degrees when you put the squash in to bake.

Sauté garlic, leeks and mushrooms in the olive oil on medium low for about 5-10 minutes until softened.  Turn off the heat and stir in the cooked wild rice and bread cubes.  Sprinkle on the broth & spices and toss lightly so as not to mush up the bread.  If the bread is really dry you may need to add more liquid.  Divide the filling among the 4 squash halves.  Bake for 1 hour in a covered roasting pan at 350 degrees or until squash is done.  Serve with gravy.  See my previous gravy post here.    We have even made a huge bowl of dressing and stuffed a hubbard squash.  You’ll just have to bake it longer.  Enjoy!

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Black Bean Quinoa Salad

Tuesday, November 8th, 2011

I’ve made a couple of versions of this dish over the past few weeks and gotten a lot of compliments, so I figured that it was time to share.  Quick and easy to make.

Please keep in mind that the quantities listed are approximations as I don’t measure everything exactly when I cook.

Black Bean Quinoa Salad

Black Bean Quinoa Salad

One-half cup uncooked black beans (One cup cooked)
Two cups uncooked quinoa
Three celery stalks
One-half onion
Olive oil
Balsamic vinegar

Cook the black beans the way that you like them.  I tend to use garlic, onions, Mexican oregano and cumin with a hot pepper or two thrown in for good measure.

If the quinoa is not pre-washed then rinse it three times, then add four cups water and a little vegetable bouillon and bring it to a boil.  Once it’s boiling reduce the heat to low, cover, and cook for exactly fifteen minutes.  If the quinoa is still liquidy after fifteen minutes, drain off any excess water, but don’t cook it past the 15 minute mark or it will get mushy.

Drain the black beans and add them to the quinoa.  Chop the onion and celery and add these as well.  Splash on some olive oil and balsamic vinegar, give it a good mix, and you are done.

Options:  Throw in some chopped parsley or chopped cilantro.  Or, chop some fresh or steamed garden greens like chard and add these as well.

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Garlic Roasted Tomatoes

Monday, October 10th, 2011

Are you tired of tomatoes yet?  Not here!  It seems like the more I remove from the kitchen counters to cook down or preserve, the more that magically appear in their place.

This year the first few batches of sauce were made in my usual way – boil the tomatoes for 30 seconds, skin and cut them up and simmer on the stove top for a few hours until thick enough for spaghetti sauce.  Cool down and put in freezer containers.

Then a few days ago I was reading a recipe for roasted tomato soup – probably from Epicurious.com but there are several of these soup recipes floating around out there.  Each has their own personality.

I wasn’t really interested in the soup as much as the garlicky roasting of the tomatoes.  So time for experimenting – I cut my rather large tomatoes (Oxheart, Brandywine, & Pomo d’Oro) in half and sometimes quarters and placed skin-side down on a roasting/broiler pan and placed in a 350 degree oven for an hour.  I somehow forgot all about the olive oil & garlic when I first started but decided to let it go.  After an hour I decided that the tomatoes could use more roasting so that’s when I splashed on 2-3 T. olive oil, several cloves of chopped garlic and 1/2 tsp. salt and put them back in the oven for another hour.  Two hours was just about right for my oven but since ovens vary you’ll need to check on them until they’re done to your liking.  The longer you roast them the more they will caramelize so it all depends on your taste.  The tomatoes did start to brown more when I ‘forgot’ about them until 2 ½ hours had passed.  Oops!

After the tomatoes cooled I removed the skins although they had almost disintegrated but not quite.  I tasted them more than I should have and reluctantly got them freezer-ready for a wonderful sauce to be enjoyed mid-winter.   These tomatoes stand on their own as a side dish but of course you can use them in soup, lasagna, chili, pizza and casseroles to name a few.

-          Broiler pan filled with fresh tomatoes, halved or quartered depending on size

-          2-3 T. Extra Virgin Olive Oil

-          4-5 cloves chopped garlic

-          ¼ – ½ tsp. salt

Place tomatoes on greased pan, splash with olive oil, sprinkle on garlic and salt.  Roast in a 350 degree oven for 2 hours.

 

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Roasted Green Beans and Cherry Tomato Pasta

Saturday, September 10th, 2011

Garden meals are the name of the game around here during harvest season.  As much as you’d like various items to ripen at different times the inevitable happens.  It’s like being a kid in the proverbial candy store…. what do we eat first, next and thereafter?

Last night’s meal was roasted green beans and cherry tomato pasta.  Yum!  Ever since I talked to my friend, Pat from Michigan, and her love for roasted green beans, I’ve been experimenting.  The first time I roasted some raw green beans, slivered onions and sliced yellow summer squash.  I tossed this mixture with a splash of olive oil and salt and pepper to taste and roasted it for about 25-30 minutes at 425 degrees.

The next time we tried the beans on the grill but couldn’t get them soft enough for our liking before they got too dark.  It may have been that the temperature wasn’t quite right.  As much as crunchy green beans seem to be in favor at a lot of restaurants these days we like our beans slightly softer – they are more enjoyable to us that way.

So back to the drawing board – this time I blanched the whole beans for 4 minutes & let them drain.  I tossed them with a splash of tamari, olive oil and toasted sesame oil mixed with a crushed clove of garlic.  If I had to hazard a guess – the splash is about 2 teaspoons each – for about a pound of beans.  Noel put them on a hot grill for 15-20 minutes, until they started to blacken & shrivel a little.  They were declared the best green beans ever by our friend Dave!

Now for the cherry tomato pasta sauce, I read this recipe in a magazine several years ago.  I have no idea who to credit this to but I’ve been making it every year since. Halve about 4 cups cherry tomatoes of various kinds – red, yellow, orange, purple – whatever you have.  If using some of the larger ones such as Sweet Treats you may have to quarter them.  Mince several cloves of garlic and sauté in 2-3 T. olive oil for about 1 minute on medium low.  Don’t let the garlic brown or the flavor of the garlic may add a bitterness to the sauce.  Add the chopped tomatoes all at once being careful not to get splashed by the hot oil.  Add about ½ tsp. salt & freshly ground pepper and let simmer for 10-15 minutes or to taste.  Add a handful of chopped fresh basil for the last 5 minutes. Serve over your favorite pasta & top with freshly ground parmesan cheese.

Now I wonder what we’re going to eat next????

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