Beet green salads

A few very simple ideas for using those beet greens from the garden.

First, we love them raw in a salad, just like you'd use lettuce or spinach. The young, smaller greens are better to eat raw since the older, larger leaves can be a bit bitter and more tough. On this night we mixed the greens with a basic vinegarette (two parts olive oil, one part vinegar, garlic clove minced, salt, a touch of dijon mustard), some onion slices and walnuts.

Steamed beet greens are an excellent way of preparing the older, larger leaves. After they become tender, add a splash of vinegar, lemon juice and salt for a very fresh dish.

Rhubarb custard pie

One of the best uses for rhubarb. Here prepared by my mother, Constance St.-Pierre, in her own kitchen, for Josh and I a few days before we embarked on a 6-day canoe trip on the Allagash and St-John Rivers in Northern Maine.

Prepare a pie crust: Mix 1 cup flour, 1/2 tsp of salt and 1/4 cup lard with a fork until crumbly. Add cold water slowly, mixing until you have a soft, pliable ball. Roll out a little more than half of it on a floured surface and place in a pie dish.

Wash and chop (no need to peel) about 4 rhubarb stalks, until you have a cup of it. Mix with 1/8 cup of flour, 1/2 cup of sugar, 1 egg and 1 tblsp fresh-squeezed lemon juice.

Pour the rhubarb mix into the pie crust. Roll out the rest of the dough and cover, pinching the edges.

Pour a little melted butter over the crust and sprinkle some sugar over the whole thing. Bake at 400 for 10 minutes then at 350 for another 30 minutes or so.

Josh and I ate the big pieces in the event that they might be our last if we died on the Allagash, and my mother, who as a stomach-cancer survivor is redefining the meaning of senior-citizen portions, ate the little one.

(Note: this is a half-recipe).

Wicked healthy green balls

It’s official: brussel sprout greens need a publicist. Though nutritious, delicious, and just as easy to grow, pick and prepare as collard greens or chard, brussel sprout greens are far from being stars in the garden veggie world. They’re more like Paris Hilton’s older sister (does she have one?) who’s not-so-hot but is smart and has a nice personality. The problem is, for all that brussel sprouts bring to the table, we know only a handful of people who eat them. Over the last few weeks, though, since brussel sprouts are growing like mad in our community garden (at the Brooks School in North Andover), we’ve been getting creative with them, whipping up concoctions like curried brussel sprout greens with tofu, a pesto-esque pasta sauce with the greens, and a supergreen omelet with spinach, collard greens, broccoli, chives and brussel sprout greens all mixed with a few cheeses and spices. And our latest brussel sprout concoction...green balls!

So much better than blue balls. Start by chopping a few peeled carrots in a food processor with the metal blade until small. Throw in about 10 stemmed and washed brussel sprout greens, ripped in halves or thirds, and process again until very small.

Next, throw in a can of drained and rinsed black beans, a few handfuls of instant oats, salt and pepper and an egg and process. Keep adding oats through the feed tube until the consistency is just a hair away from being dry. Remove the container from the processor and place in the fridge to sit for at least 45 minutes.

With floured hands, form the mixture into balls.

Heat a generous amount of olive oil in a cast-iron skillet and place the balls evenly throughout the pan. Drop the heat to medium-low and cook, turning the balls after about 5 minutes or so. Cover and cook for about 10 minutes, checking every once in a while to make sure that nothing is sticking to the pan.

We served these on a bed of baby beet greens from our garden with a simple vinagrette, accompanied by both a curry mayo and a garlic and watercress mayo I whipped up for dipping sauces.

If you don't have ready access to brussel sprout greens, try substituting collard greens, kale or most any other leafy green in their place and let me know how it turns out.

Hash in a flash

If today's explorations in cooking with brussel sprout greens lacked beauty and creativity, it was none the poorer in taste, thanks primarily to the sausage. But then, what dish dripping in a little sausage grease wouldn't be tasty? This is a package of the stuff we got at Appleton farms in Ipswich, MA, already flavored with fennel and other spices; the greens are from our garden.

Once you prep the ingredients, the whole thing shouldn't take more than a half hour to cook.
1 potato, peeled and chopped
1 small onion, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
About 7 or 8 brussel sprout greens leaves
1 package of sausage
Salt and pepper


Heat some olive oil in a cast-iron skillet and sautee the onions and greens until soft. Remove from the pan and reserve. Add a little more olive oil and cook the potatoes over medium-low heat until soft, stirring occasionally. Remove the potatoes from the pan and reserve with the greens mixture. Put the sausage into the pan with the garlic, salt and pepper. Break up the sausage and stir constantly over medium-high heat until the meat is cooked through.

Return the greens and potatoes to the meat and heat through.

Enjoy. Immensely.

BS Pie

No, not that kind of bs. We're talking brussel sprouts. Brussel sprout greens, to be specific. Since our brussel sprouts must be juicing it up on the sly, we've got a plethora of greens that we're getting creative with.

The ingredients are simple:
Brussel sprout greens, chopped into small pieces
Two medium-sized onions, sliced thinly
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
Salt, pepper, 2 bay leaves and about a teaspoon of oregano
4 eggs
Parmesan cheese
2 cups of flour and 1 stick of butter, cut up into pieces (for the crust)

Heat some olive oil in a cast-iron pan. Sautee the onion and garlic over low heat until translucent. Add the greens and spices and cook until soft.

In the meantime, prep the pie crust. Put the flour and the butter into a food processor with the metal blade. Pulse until the mixture looks like fine crumbs. Add cold water, a little bit at a time, until the dough turns into a ball. Roll out the dough on a floured surface and place it into a buttered pie dish. Shred the parmesan into the crust then cover with the greens mixture from which you should remove the bay leaves.

Serve hot or allow to cool and eat like a pizza pie with your fingers. Serves four.

Beet greens and carrot salad

Tom Robbins once said that the beet, with its feverish, fiery, lusty red, "is the most intense of vegetables." If so, that must make the beet green, with its dark-green leaves and rich red veins, one of the most intense of the leafy greens. Adele and I opted for a bit of intensity with dinner tonight, so we gleaned a basketful of beet greens from the garden this afternoon and brought it back home for a simple salad.

Spread the beet greens evenly in a large bowl. Peel and shred two carrots and place them in a pile in the middle over the greens in the middle of the bowl. Thinly slice about half a small onion and spread evenly over the greens, around the carrots.

The dressing is a creative variation of the most basic vinagrette: In a small bowl, mix a clove of garlic, minced, with a generous amount of salt, and allow to sit for a while. This will bring the flavor of the garlic out. Add about a teaspoon of ground ginger and mix. Add a teaspoon of balsamic vinegar and stir again. Stir in two heaping teaspoons of olive oil and finally, add the zest and juice of half a lime.

We ate this salad with a grilled hamburger topped with some of our very own basil and a basil and garlic mayo that Adele made the other day with - you guessed it - more of our own basil. Makes an excellent, light summer-time meal.

Verde, verde, mucho verde!

We were so in love with the results of last's night dish with the brussel sprout greens that we decided to get a few more leaves and do a little more experimenting. All the better that this dish turned into another good excuse to pick off a few more leaves and sprigs off our much beloved basil and rosemary plants.


For two people:
About 12 small brussel sprout greens, chopped coarsely
1/2 small onion, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, crushed
Salt
Fresh mozzarella cheese balls
Fresh basil and rosemary, chopped

Heat some olive oil in a pan. Sautee the onions and garlic for a few minutes, then add the greens and a generouse amount of salt. Stir to cover with oil and cook for a few minutes. Add a very small amount of water (really just to barely cover the bottom of the pan), cover and cook until the greens are very soft.

Throw the greens into a food processor. Heat a small amount of cream in a separate sauce pan. Add the cream to the greens in the processor and turn the machine on to process until the greens and the cream are well-blended into a thick sauce. Return the sauce to the small saucepan, stir in the basil and heat through.

Serve over pasta with a few mozzarella balls and a sprinkling of pine nuts and an olive or two. (If I had this recipe to do over, I would have added the mozzarella balls to the saucepan with the basil and let it soften a bit).

Curried brussel sprout greens with tofu

Over the last few weeks, we've been watching the vegetables in our garden grow. The brussel sprouts in particular have bloomed beautifully, their dark, bluish-green leaves reaching for the sky. When we were out there yesterday evening, Josh wondered out loud if these leaves couldn't be eaten much like beet greens or collard greens. A quick search on the internet later and we had our answer: yes, they can!


Here's what you need:
About 15 young brussel sprount leaves, stems snipped and sliced thinly
1/2 small onion, sliced thinly
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 block firm tofu, cut into squares
Salt, pepper, curry powder
Cream
A couple handfuls of pistachios

Fry the tofu in olive oil over medium-low heat, turning over occasionally, until the pieces brown. Remove from the tofu from the pan and reserve. Lower the heat and sautee the onions and garlic for a few minutes. Stir in a good tablespoon of curry powder and salt to taste and cook a few minutes more. Add the greens and stir to coat with the oil. Raise the heat to medium-low again and cook until soft, about 10 to 15 minutes.

Add the pistachios and stir. Cook for about 5 more minutes then remove the greens and nuts from the pan and reserve with the tofu. Drop the heat to low and pour some cream into pan, perhaps about a half-cup. Heat through and add the tofu and greens back to the mix. Stir and allow to cook for five more minutes or so.

Serve hot on brown rice for a hardy, healthy meal. This recipe rocks. Seriously.

Sweet-potato-and-beet-loaf

The idea for this recipe came to me just now as I was munching on these chips called "sweets and beets" (yummy, you should try them...) while pulling out the sweet potatoes I planned to use for dinner. These potatoes, long and thin in shape, were just screaming to be run through the feed tube of a food-processor. It's what nature seemed to want for them...

Here's what you need:
3 or 4 skinny sweet potatoes, peeled and shredded
1 large golden beet, peeled and shredded
1 small onion, chopped small
2 cloves of garlic, minced
2 eggs, beaten + 4 more, also beaten
A handful of flour
Salt and pepper to taste
Chicken broth (enough to wet the ingredients a little bit so that they'll cook more evenly)
About a tablespoon of dill weed

Butter the bottom and sides of a casserole dish. In a large bowl, mix all the ingredients except the 4 eggs and the dill together and pack into the casserole dish. Beat the dill weed into the four eggs and spread evenly over the top of the casserole. Bake at 350 for about 40 minutes.

Serve on a bed of lettuce with tomatoes and cukes, some toasted bread and lemon wedges.

Vegetable soup

After a few days of unseasonably hot days with temps reaching up into the 90's, this evening's measly 6o or so weather was a little chilly and the idea of a hot soup seemed appealing. It was also time to use those two broccoli stalks that have been sitting in the fridge for over a week now, not to mention the zucchini and summer squash that were pushing their limits, and Josh and I are always looking for an excuse to use the fresh basil and rosemary that we've been growing in our garden.

Here's what you need for about 6 servings (most of it is pictured here):
1/4 onion, chopped very finely
2 broccolli stalks, chopped very small
1 summer squash, chopped small
1 zucchini, chopped small
1 small eggplant, chopped small
1 large carrot, shredded
1 clove garlic, minced
5 or 6 fresh basil leaves, chopped fine
A few sprigs of fresh rosemary, chopped fine
Salt and pepper to taste
Chicken broth and/or water
Pasta of choice
1 can of red kidney beans, drained and rinsed

Heat a generous amount of olive oil in a soup pot. Sautee the onions over low heat for a few minutes, then add the broccolli pieces and cook for a few minutes, stirring. Add the rest of the vegetables except the carrots and garlic, salt generously, and cook for a few more minutes, stirring to cover with the oil. Add enough broth or water (or a combo of both as we do) to cover and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to simmer and cover.

After about 20 minutes, add the carrots, garlic, the red beans and the herbs. Bring the soup back up to a boil and then simmer until the carrots are cooks, only about 5 minutes or so. The flavor of the garlic and the herbs will be richer and more robust if you don't overcook the soup at this point. Add the pasta and heat through.

Serve piping hot with croutons if you wish (those are my mom's homemade croutons that she makes with her own bread). Enjoy!

Pissaladiere

Things just fell together perfectly for this dish: a little leftover pizza dough that Josh made, and a big fat onion that was going a little bad around the edges that needed to be used pronto. It's the basics of what you need to make this delectable little pizza specialty from Nice, France.

Slice the onion thinly and sautee very slowly over low heat in olive oil until very soft. Add herb de provences if you like for flavor, but don't add any salt. The anchovies and olives will make it salty enough.

Sprinkle some cornmeal lightly over a baking dish and spread the pizza dough thinly into a rectanglur shape. Spread the onions evenly over the dough, add some anchovies over the top and olives. I used black greek olives because it's what I had, but in Nice, it was always calamata olives, so use those if you prefer. Bake in a 400 degree oven until the crust is cooked, about 30 minutes or so.

Cut into squares and serve as an appetizer or eat the whole damn thing as a main dish with a salad. It is a pizza, after all!

Going nuts for dessert

This simple concoction of nuts and honey is one of our favorite desserts. All it takes is a few handfuls of walnuts or pecans and a few spoonfuls of honey. In this case, we were lucky to have honey from the hives kept by Adele's sister Corrine in western Maine. The easiest way to make this is simply to put a few handfuls of nuts in a food processor and churn them into a flour-like substance with the metal blade.



Put the nut flour into a bowl or mug and pour in a few spoonfuls of honey. Stir with a spoon until the honey and nuts are well-mixed.

Give it a try...you'll be addicted.

Spicy sausage & fiddlehead stew

The hot sausages are from Appleton farm's grass-fed beef and the fiddleheads are from my sister Corrine who picked them in Weld, Maine. With some sliced onion and minced garlic, a little salt and pepper, all of these things together made a most delicious, simple and healthy meal.


In a dutch oven, sautee the onions and garlic in olive oil until translucent. Cut the sausages into chunks, add to the onions and garlic and stir, cooking on medium-low heat until browned.

Add the fiddleheads, salt and pepper and stir. Add about an inch of water and bring to a boil. Drop the heat to low, cover and simmer for about 30 minutes.

Serve hot with a side of vegetables, like sauteed carrots and turnips seen here.

Total prep and cook time : about 40 minutes

Total cost : about 5 dollars for two people (more if you bought the fiddleheads)

Savory brown rice, take 2

Josh and I have been growing basil and rosemary in the house now for several weeks in preparation for transplanting it into our garden, but we've been reluctant to use these lovely, aromatic herbs, so we woke up this morning determined to do so. And since we had plenty of leftover brown rice from last night's meal, why not something savory for breakfast?

Here's what you need (for 2 servings):
about half a large sweet potato, diced very small
about 4 tbsp minced onion and 1 minced garlic clove
a bit of vegetable broth or water
about 6 fresh basil leaves and a sprig or so of fresh rosemary, chopped
salt and pepper to taste

In an iron pan, sautee the onion and garlic for a few minutes in olive oil then add the sweet potato, salt and pepper. Cook on very low heat until the sweet potato is soft, about 20 minutes.
Add the rice and a little bit of vegetable broth and stir well to heat through. Add the herbs and mix through.

Serve hot for breakfast with fresh grated parmesan or romano cheese (or without for wonderful vegan fare), or pack up and eat later for lunch.

Total prep and cook time: about 30 minutes

Total cost: approximately 2 or 3 dollars for two people

Pig in a blanket

Here's what you need:

One overweight cat who will tolerate human absurdity
One blanket
A few too many glasses of wine