The Food We Eat

Beans and Rice

2012-02-05T13:13:00.000-08:00

There are surely a gazillion recipes for beans and rice on line, but that won't stop me from posting yet another one. I made this last week with Adzuki beans that I cooked myself using my pressure cooker, and found that the finished product was so much more delicious than making the same recipe with the more classic red kidney beans.

About 1 to 1.5 cups cooked adzuki beans, drained (canned is fine, I am sure)
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 small onion, minced
1 dried whole red chili, crushed
About 1 tbsp each ground cumin and ginger
About 1 tsp each ground coriander and tumeric
Freshly ground black pepper and salt to taste
1.5 cups cooked white rice

In a cast iron skillet, sautee the garlic and onion in a generous amount of olive oil over very low heat until translucent. Add the spices and stir until onions and garlic are coated. Add the beans and cook for a while to marry the flavors, adding water a little bit at a time as necessary to keep the beans from sticking to the pan. Add the cooked rice and blend well.

Serve hot garnished with fresh chopped cilantro and a dollop of creme fraiche.

Enjoy!

Gingered carrot and soba noodle soup

2012-01-16T14:05:00.000-08:00

This dish is tasty and nutritious, and simple to make and enjoy on a cold winter's evening. The only thing the average person might not have in her kitchen to make this is the soba noodles. I wouldn't recommend substituting regular pasta in their place, so it's worth a trip to the store to get some.
For two:

4 -5 medium carrots, peeled and julianed (i.e. cut into thin batonettes)
1 medium onion, sliced
Fresh ginger, grated (about 2 tbsp)
3 - 4 cloves of garlic, minced
Vegetable stock (or water)
Soy sauce
2 bunches of soba noodles

Bring a pot of water to boil. Add the soba noodles and cook for half the time the package recommends, about 5 minutes.

Heat some oil (olive or almond) in a heavy iron skillet. Sautee the onions over low heat for a few minutes, than add the garlic, carrots and ginger. Stir to coat with the oil and cook for a few minutes. Cover with just enough vegetable stock, bring to a boil and lower the heat to simmer until the carrot is just tender, maybe 5 minutes or so. Add the soy sauce and the soba noodles and heat for a few minutes.

Divide the noodles and vegetables evenly into two large bowls, and pour the broth into the bowls. Serve with chop sticks and Chinese spoons.

Cauliflower in rosemary tomato sauce

2011-12-20T15:05:00.000-08:00

This is a new twist on an old favorite of my mother's, what she calls "Sauce tomate", essentially her canned tomatoes heated and ladled over her homemade bread, buttered and toasted in a cast-iron skillet. Though my rendition requires a few more ingredients, it is just as simple to make, and if I have to say so myself, so much tastier!

1 leek or small onion, sliced
2 or 3 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped
1 head of cauliflower, separated
1 can of tomatoes
2 sprigs of fresh rosemary, minced
day-old baguette, cut into thin pieces (see below)
creme fraiche (optional)

Heat a few tablespoons of olive oil in a cast-iron skillet. Sautee the leek or onion over low heat until translucent. Add the garlic, stir to coat and cook for a few more minutes. Layer the skillet with the cauliflower and pour the tomatoes over the top, breaking up any big pieces. Sprinkle the rosemary over the top and salt generously. Bring the tomatoes to a boil, then cover and simmer on low heat until the cauliflower is as tender as you like it.

When ready to serve, lay out the baguette pieces on a plate like so:

Then ladle the cauliflower and tomato sauce over the bread. Add a dolop of creme fraiche over the top and serve hot. The bread will soak up the sauce and melt in your mouth. Enjoy!

Trout spread 2

2011-04-12T16:18:00.000-07:00

Josh and I had some more fresh trout the other night, caught from Porter Pond by our friend, Bill, and his son, Joe. This spread, made from the leftovers, made a nice before-dinner treat. This recipe is based on about 3/4 cup of leftover, roasted trout. Mince the trout and add some minced garlic, salt and minced parlsey. Add about 1/2 teaspoon of liquid aminos (or soy sauce) and about two teaspoons of plain yogurt. Mix well and serve with crackers.

Warm eggplant and tomato salad

2011-04-09T08:36:00.000-07:00

This salad, with it's meaty eggplant slices and chick peas, makes a great main dish. Serve with a green salad and bread for a full, healthy meal. For two people:

Half a medium eggplant, peeled and sliced into thin strips

Half a yellow pepper, sliced into strips

1 small onion, thinly sliced

1 large garlic clove, crushed

2 medium tomotoes, cut into wedges

1 can chick peas, drained and rinsed

turmeric, cumin & cayenne pepper

small handful of fresh parsley, minced

Heat a generous amount of olive oil in a non-stick pan. Add the onion and garlic and cook on low heat until translucent. Add the spices to taste as well as the eggplant and stir to coat with the oil and spices. Cook on medium heat until the eggplant becomes just soft, then add the yellow pepper and the chick peas and cook for a few minutes (or longer if you don't like your pepper too crunchy). Add the tomato and cook for a few more minutes. Remove from heat and stir in the parsley. Serve warm, garnished with black greek olives if you happen to have some.

Saffran potatoes

2011-03-07T15:03:00.001-08:00

I'm not the biggest fan of potatoes, but it's what I've been getting in abundance in my winter CSA, so it's what I've had to work with lately. For this easy, quick and delicious recipe, I used baby potatoes.
Peel, wash and cut the potatoes in half. Boil in salted water until just soft, about 10 minutes. Drain and set aside. Mince half a small onion, a couple cloves of garlic, and one small sweet red pepper. In a non-stick pan, heat a few tablespoons of olive oil. Sautee the onion and garlic over low heat until translucent. Add the pepper and cook for a few minutes. Add the potatoes, a teaspoon or so of American saffran, salt and pepper to taste. Raise the heat to medium and fry the potatoes for five to ten minutes, or longer if you want more crispy potatoes.

Serve over a bed of green salad dressed with olive oil, salt and pepper.

Meat-eater salad

2011-02-08T15:17:00.001-08:00

There's no meat in this salad, but it does have potatoes, every traditional meat-eater's perfect side dish. The lettuce is there for the fun and the color of it, but since it marries so well with the potatoes and the warm oil from their frying, no meat-eater will be able to resist, no matter what his or her take is on the leafy green stuff.

For two servings, peel and boil about 5 or 6 small to medium potatoes in salted water for about 10 minutes. Drain, allow to cool for a while, then cube. Heat about 4 or 5 tablespoons olive oil in a non-stick skillet. Add the potatoes and sautee until the potatoes brown a bit, maybe 5 minutes or so.

Mince a garlic clove and add to a large bowl with salt to taste and mix well. When the potatoes are done, pour the oil from the skillet into the bowl and stir again. Allow to cool for a while and then add the potatoes and a handful of fresh minced parsley. Stir to coat the potatoes with the oil and parsley, the add fresh lettuce and mix again. Serve the salad lukewarm as a side dish. It's delicious!

Squash, spinach and gorgonzola pizza

2011-01-30T12:08:00.000-08:00

This simple pizza has the most flavorful, full-bodied taste. It's quick to make if you happen to have left over roasted squash in your fridge. All it takes is dough (I made Bittman's recipe in my food processor) spread thinly on a pan which you then drizzle with olive oil and cover with roasted squash cut into small pieces, thawed and drained frozen spinach, gorgonzola cheese. Bake at 450 degrees until the crust is golden brown. Enjoy with a nice cold beer!

Carrot salad

2011-01-10T16:15:00.000-08:00

This little side-dish of shredded carrots loaded with garlic and onion will give your immune system a boost, not to mention keep the vampires away! Scroll down to see a second recipe made with the leftovers of this salad.

In a large bowl, add 2 or 3 large garlic cloves and half a small onion, both minced. Add a generous teaspoon of salt and mix. Add 3 generous tablespoons or so of olive oil and stir. Peel and shred about 5 or 6 large carrots. Add to the dressing, stir to coat, and then add a few heaping teaspoons of hemp seed if you have any. Serve at room temperature with a slice of lemon.

Sautee a can of drained, rinsed chick peas in a tablespoon or so of olive oil until browned. Mince a large handful of fresh parsley. Stir the chick peas and parsley in a large bowl with about a cup and a half of leftover carrot salad described above. Serve a side dish. (For the curious out there, the dish behind this one in the picture is creamy rainbow chard, which is simply one chopped leek sauteed in olive oil with chopped chard to which I added salt and creme fresh when the chards were nicely wilted. It's very yummy, too.)

Hemp seed and parmesan dressing

2011-01-03T19:01:00.001-08:00

I really enjoy the subtle, nutty flavor and the unique texture of raw hemp seed. Try it in this simple dressing for green salad and you may be converted as well!

Pour a generous tablespoon or two of olive oil into a large salad bowl. Add a few teaspoons of raw hemp seed and 3 to 4 tablespoons freshly shredded parmesan cheese. Salt to taste and stir. Add washed, cut-up fresh lettuce to the bowl and mix. Serve the salad garnished with lemon.

Soupe épicée à l'indienne

2010-12-29T16:32:00.001-08:00

When I set out to make dinner last night, my intentions were to make a chinese style, clear-brothed vegetable soup, but when I discovered I still had a bit of fresh ginger left, it morphed mid-stream into this hot indian-style soup inspired by the spice concoction I picked up recently from a woman friend from India. The following recipe feeds two to four people, depending on if you serve it as the meal or an entree.

Mince one small onion and 3 large garlic cloves. Peel a small piece of ginger and mince. You should have at least a heaping tablespoon's worth. Sautee in olive oil until tender and translucent over low heat. While the onions, garlic and ginger are cooking, add a teaspoon of ground turmeric and about a half a teaspoon or more of coriander. Stir to coat and continue cooking.

Meanwhile, bring to a boil about 8 cups of water or vegetable broth or a combination of the two. Wash and cut up about 10 mushrooms and a good handful of green beans. Chop up 4 scallions.

When the water and/or broth is boiling, add the mushrooms and green beans. Drop to simmer and let cook for about 10 minutes or so. Add the scallions and continue to cook until the vegetables are just tender, about 10 more minutes.

In the meanwhile, put the onion, garlic and ginger mix into a blender with a little of the soup's broth and puree until smooth. Add this to the soup while the vegetables are still cooking.

Serve piping hot in deep bowls.

Curried onion pizza pie

2010-12-04T15:25:00.000-08:00

To make this simple, filling dish, all you need is pizza dough (I followed Bittman's recipe, using whole wheat flour), one large onion, curry powder, ground coriander, frozen peas and a little creme fraiche.

Thinly slice the onion and sautee in olive oil over very low heat until translucent and very soft. While the onion is cooking, add salt to taste and a teaspoon or so of curry and a bit of coriander. Near the end of their cooking, add the frozen peas and a couple dollops of creme fraiche. Stir and allow to cook for a few more minutes.

Roll out a small ball of pizza dough to the desired thinness. Spoon a generous amount of the curried onion mix on the center of the dough. Pinch up the sides and bake in a 400 degree oven until the crust is golden brown. Time will vary depending on the thickness of the crust.

Serve hot with a green salad on the side. Enjoy!

Lentil and cilantro soup

2010-11-28T10:21:00.000-08:00

It's winter, so soups are in order. This one was inspired by a simple lentil and cilantro soup that came with a meal Josh and I enjoyed last winter break in Montreal at an afghani restaurant called Kyber Pass. I've added carrots because their taste just marries well with lentils and I also added onion and garlic.

Pick over 1/2 cup of green lentils and add them to a pot with 5 cups of vegetable broth or cold water. Bring to a boil and reduce heat to simmer until the lentils are soft, about 4o minutes. Don't salt the broth or water; doing so will prevent the lentils from softening.

Meanwhile, peel 4 carrots and cut them into very small pieces. Mince half a medium onion and three cloves of garlic. Wash and mince about half a cup of fresh cilantro. Sautee the carrots, onions and garlic with in a generous amount of olive oil over low heat until the carrots are just soft, about 10 minutes. While this cooks, add about a teaspoon of cumin and salt and pepper to taste. At the very end of cooking, add the cilantro, stir and cook a few more minutes.

When the lentils are done, add the carrot, onion, garlic and cilantro mix. Add more water if you want a more liquidy soup, and adjust the salt if necessary.

Makes two generous portions or four first course servings.

Purity Soup

2010-11-16T15:46:00.001-08:00

If you have vegetable stock already made, or if you choose to use store-bought stock, this soup is really easy and very quick to make (30 minutes max). There is no set recipe as far as the vegetables are concerned; pretty much whatever you have in your fridge works well. For onions, stick to small green onions or chives.

While the stock is heating over high heat, peel and cut a variety of vegetables, keeping the scraps to make more stock for later soups. When the stock is boiling, add the vegetables. Allow the water to come back to a boil, reduce to a good simmer and cook for five minutes. It is important not to overcook in order to keep the vegetables will be firm and flavorful.

Serve hot over cooked soba noodles or rice for a wonderfully light yet surprisingly filling winter evening meal.

KAPS (Kick-ass pasta sauce)

2010-11-03T16:19:00.000-07:00

Since the eggplants and tomatoes were abundant at Paisley's Farm Stand this fall, and I was tired of making ratatouille, I experimented one night and came up with this delectable accompaniment for pasta. This sauce, when allowed to sit overnight, gathers in flavor and serves as a lovely side dish with rice and roasted vegetables, so make plenty!

1 large eggplant, peeled and cubed
1 large onion, chopped
About 5 cups fresh, chopped tomatoes
1 large summer squash, shredded
1 large garlic clove, minced
basil, rosemary, oregano, thyme (fresh is best, but dried is okay) and salt to taste

Sautee the onion over low heat in a generous amount of olive oil. After a few minutes, add the eggplant and stir to coat with oil. Cook for a few minutes, then add the summer squash and the tomatoes. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to simmer until everything is reduced to mush, at least 30 to 40 minutes.

Serve over hot pasta and top with grated parmesan cheese, or store over night and eat the next day as a rich side dish. It's excellent both ways.

Green Machine Soup

2010-10-13T15:44:00.000-07:00

This is the easiest, no-nonsense soup you will ever make. What's more, it tastes good!

Roughly chop up the edible part of one large leek, and peel and crush a few cloves of garlic. Wash and trim the stems of a large bunch of swiss chard (about enough to overfill a large collander) and chop roughly.

In a large pot, melt two generous tablespoons of coconut oil (olive oil is fine). Sautee the onion over medium low heat until translucent. Add the garlic and the greens and stir to cover with the oil. Sautee for a few minutes, then add some water. Don't cover the greens with water, as they will wilt, so a few inches is fine. You can always add more if necessary later.

Bring the water to a boil and cook the greens until they are completely wilted and soggy.

Spoon some of the greens into the container of a food processor with some of the liquid. Process until completely smooth. Repeat until all the greens and liquid have been processed.

Serve hot with a sprig of parsley and some fresh bread.

French toast stuffed with cottage cheese

2010-09-08T05:19:00.000-07:00

If you live near a farm where homemade cottage cheese is sold, I recommend it for this recipe. The commercial cottage cheeses tend to be watery (not to mention that they're packed with a few too many sketchy ingredients) so they wouldn't work well here. The cheese I used here, as well as the wheat bread, comes from Nezinscott Farm in Turner, Maine.

In a flat-bottomed bowl, mix three eggs with 1/4 to 1/2 cup of milk (rice or soy is fine) and salt to taste. Spread about 1/4 cup of cottage cheese on a slice of wheat bread, trying to stay away from the edges. Cover with another slice of bread and pat down. Place the cottage cheese sandwich in the egg-milk mixture, letting each side soak to the degree of sogginess you like. Be careful when turning the sandwich over, especially if it is soaked. Fry in butter on a heavy skillet until brown on both sides. Serve hot with more butter and applesauce and whatever fruit you like. Cinnamon is always good as well.

Curried tofu and mixed vegetable salad

2010-09-06T06:32:00.001-07:00

This salad is both warm and cold, soft and crunchy, and bursting with flavor. It makes a great main dish when served with another salad and hearty wheat bread. Followed up with a nice cheese and then a couple squares of dark chocolate, the meal seen here is perfectly balanced and purely healthy and satisfying. All of the fresh ingredients seen in the picture come from either my mom's garden, Nezinscott farm in Turner, Maine, or Josh and my own's garden. Vive l'automne for healthy eating!

Cube half a block of firm tofu and half a large summer squash. Heat a generous amount of olive oil in a non-stick pan. Add the tofu and summer squash with about 1/2 teaspoon of turmeric, a teaspoon of curry and salt and pepper to taste. Sautee over medium-low heat until just browned and set aside.

In a large salad bowl, mix a large garlic clove, minced, with about a teaspoon of salt. Add a generous tablespoon of fresh squeezed lemon juice (or vinegar if you don't have a lemon). Mix well, and then add two generous tablespoons of olive oil.

Peel and chop two large carrots into thin rounds. Half peel, quarter and chop a cucumber. Thinly slice a very small onion (about 1/8 to 1/4 of a cup).

Strain and rinse half a can of red kidney beans.

Add all the ingredients to the salad bowl and stir to cover with the dressing. Add a generous handful each of fresh chopped parsley and basil and mix again.

Red lentil mush

2010-09-06T06:22:00.000-07:00

This is a simple, warm side-dish to add protein to any vegetarian meal or color to a meat and potatoes dinner.
For two to three people, add about 3/4 red lentils and 1 1/2 cups cold water in a pan with a generous teaspoon of turmeric and salt to taste. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer, covered, until the lentils have turned to mush (about 30 minutes). Before serving, finely chop a good handful of fresh basil leaves and stir into the lentils and adjust salt if necessary. Sprinkle with chopped fresh chives and serve with a slice of lemon.

Mixed veggie and chick pea salad

2010-09-01T15:26:00.000-07:00

Some of the recent litterature I have read has made me aware that eating a strictly raw vegetable and fruit diet works miracles, like bringing terminal cancer victims back from the brink and visibly shrinking the unsightly look of cellulite. Now that's food for thought, but I can't say that I would be willing to convert to this kind of diet as a lifestyle because I simply like cooked vegetables a bit too much. Nonetheless, I am experimenting lately with mixing cooked and raw vegetables in salads. This one, which includes vegetables and herbs from my garden and the local farm stand at Paisley's farm, was particularly yummy! The portions given here served two people.

Slice 3 small fairy eggplants and sautee them over low-medium heat in a generous amount of olive oil. Add a half a can of drained and rinsed chick peas. Cook until the eggplant and the chickpeas are browned. Remove from heat and set aside.

In a medium-sized salad bowl, mince a few cloves of garlic and mix with a generous amount of salt. Add 1 tablespoon white balsamic vinegar and stir. Add two tablespoons olive oil and stir again.

Thinly slice half a small red onion and cube a few red tomatoes. Half-peel a few cucumbers, cut in half and cut into half moons.

Add all the veggies, the eggplant and the chickpeas to the salad bow. Top with a generous handful each of fresh chopped mint and parsley. Stir until everything is covered with the dressing and serve.

Green Pie

2010-06-13T10:34:00.000-07:00

Everything about this pie is heavenly, from the creamy chevre cheese to the silky combo of eggs and fresh cream to the buttery pie crust! This recipe makes one pie, enough for four hearty servings. Serve with roasted potatoes and a side of baby greens salad for a healthy brunch.

Preheat the oven to 375.

Crust: Make your own trusted recipe or try this: mix 1/2 cup white flour and 3/4 cup wheat flour with a tsp. of salt in a food processor with the steel blade. Add one stick of butter, cut into chunks. Pulse until all the butter is incorporated into the flour. Leave the machine running and feed about 1/4 cup cold water through the feed tube. Add some more flour if too sticky, which it most likely will be. Turn out onto a floured surface and roll flat. Place into a pie dish. Make a few holes in the bottom of the crust with a fork. Layer the dish with crumbled chevre. Be generous!

Filling: Fill a six quart pan with loosely packed baby greens (I used beet and mustard, but spinach would be great, I am sure) and a little water. Bring to a boil and let the greens just barely wilt. Remove from heat, strain fully and chop up the greens with a sharp knife. Layer over the cheese in the pie dish. In a small bowl, beat four eggs and then add 1 cup good heavy cream. Salt generously and pepper. Pour the egg/cream mixture over the greens. Sprinkle the top with nutmeg and bake for about an hour.

Garlicky creamed baby beet greens

2010-06-12T14:24:00.000-07:00

The beet greens just keep a comin', which suits me just fine since I love them! This little side dish is so easy you could make it with your eyes closed, and so good that you'll be eating them with your eyes closed, too, as you savor the garlicky creaminess.

Melt a few tablespoons of good butter on very low heat in a stickproof pan. In the meantime, mince 3 large garlic cloves. When the butter is nice and hot, add the garlic. Toss the garlic around by lifting and shaking the pan and let it cook until just translucent. Add enough baby beet greens to the pan so that it almost overflows as you stir them. Stir to coat with the butter and the garlic, and salt generously. When barely wilted, add some good, fresh heavy cream to the pan and heat through. I use Smiling Hill Farms cream; the processed kinds don't have the same taste.

Serve in separate bowls as a side dish with a piece of toasted bread or baguette to sop up the cream. Believe me, you will want to sop up the cream!

Cheesy mustard greens salad

2010-06-12T14:23:00.000-07:00

You could make this with any baby greens or lettuce; I used mustard greens because it's what growing like crazy in the garden for the moment. You may think you have never had mustard greens, but I would be willing to bet that you have since I see them often in fresh garden salads that I eat in restaurants. They're very mild, which makes this dressing a good combo since all the flavor is in the dressing.

In a bowl, mix 1 minced garlic clove with a generous amount of salt. Add a tablespoon of vinegar and stir again. Finally, add 2 to 3 tablespoons of olive oil and stir. Add 1/4 to 1/2 cup freshly grated parmesan and mix again. Toss in the greens (washed, snipped if necessary, cut in half if long) and stir to cover with the dressing. Top with pine nuts and black olives.

Three bean salad with mustard greens

2010-05-30T17:26:00.000-07:00

The mustard greens are here in full force in the garden, so the race to eat them all is on. In this lovely and delicious side dish, the greens are sauteed with a bit of crême fraîche and topped with a three bean salad.

One big bunch of mustard greens, stems clipped, washed & cut in half (long way)
2 heaping tbsp crême fraîche
About 2 cups total of 3 different kinds of canned beans, drained and rinsed
2 tsp minced onion
1 garlic clove, minced
1.5 tsp dijon mustard
2 tbsp olive oil
Salt to taste

Mix the beans with the olive oil, onion, garlic, mustard and salt.

Heat some more olive oil in a non stick pan and sautee the greens with some salt for a few minutes, until just wilted. Add the crême fraîche and heat through.

Pile the bean salad on top of the greens, pouring the crême fraîche over all.

Serves two.

Blackberry vinagrette

2010-05-20T18:14:00.000-07:00

Made with some of my sister Corrine's hand-picked wild blackberries from Weld, Maine, this was a lovely alternative to your standard vinagrette. A beautiful color, a great taste!

3 tbsp vinegar
8 tbsp olive oil
Good pinch of salt
3 1/2 tbsp blackberry puree*
3 tsp maple syrup (or to taste)

This makes about 3/4 cup of dressing.

*To make the puree, process some frozen blackberries with a little water in a food processor until smooth. Strain, discarding the seeds.

Garlicky croutons

2010-05-20T18:13:00.000-07:00

There's nothing more simple than making your own croutons, and they are a lot less expensive and healthier for your than anything you can buy at the store. All you need is a little bread (the older, the better), some garlic, salt and a little time. It's worth the little work it takes to make!

Slice up a thick slab of old bread and then cut the slice into cubes, and then finely mince a clove or two of garlic. In a non-stick pan, melt a few tablespoons of butter. Sautee the garlic over low to medium heat for a few minutes and then add the cubes of bread and salt generously. Shake the pan occasionally to turn the pieces until all (or almost all) of the sides are nicely browned. Serve on a salad or straight out of the pan as a poor man's appetizer. They are delicious!

Warm fiddlehead salad

2010-05-20T18:12:00.000-07:00

Served with a generous portion of roasted potatoes and some thick slices of wheat bread, this salad makes a lovely centerpiece for a tasty vegetarian meal.

Wash, clean and snip the ends of about two cups of fiddleheads. In a non-stick pan, sautee a clove or two of minced garlic in a couple tablespoons of olive oil.

Meanwhile, make the dressing. First, grind 1 tsp dried rosemary, 1/2 tsp marjoram, 1 1/2 tsp sea salt, about ten pepper corns and 1 good pinch of red pepper flakes in a mortar. Add this dried mix of herbs to a mix of 1 tbsp vinegar and 3 tbsp olive oil.

When the fiddleheads are ready (about ten minutes; more if you prefer them softer), allow them to cool for about 5 minutes. Mix with the dressing and serve warm.

Mousse au chocolat

2010-05-09T06:52:00.000-07:00

Because I had fresh, free range eggs from my sister Corrine this week, and since it was a dreary and rainy day yesterday, the time was right to whip up a chocolate mousse. My rendition of this lovely dessert is based on my friend Beatrice Luttman's recipe which I modified a bit by using crême fraîche instead of milk and by folding in the eggs whites in two stages, the way Bittman does with his mousse in How to Cook Everything and the way Patricia Wells' does with her chocolate cake recipes in Bistro Cooking. According to Beatrice, the mousse is to be made the night before you plan to eat it. However, following Bittman's advice, I put the mousse in small ramekins and they were set and ready to eat within three hours. If you are going to make this recipe, be sure to use the freshest of eggs from free-range chickens.

150 grams of bittersweet chocolate
1 tbsp crême fraîche (cream will work just fine)
3 fresh eggs, separated
4 tbsp sugar
1 1/2 tbsp butter

In a small saucepan, melt the chocolate with the crême fraîche over very low heat. When it is melted and smooth, add the butter and stir until it is completely melted. Remove from heat.

In a small bowl, blend the sugar with the egg yolks. Stir in the chocolate and blend well.

Beat the egg whites until they form firm peaks. Fold half of the whites into the chocolate mixture, slowly and patiently until all the white disappears. Repeat the action with the rest of the egg whites.

Pour into four ramekin molds and place in the refridgerator to set. Serve cold.

Trout spread

2010-05-08T17:30:00.000-07:00

This simple spread, which was made with a little leftover trout from a previous meal (see "truite sautée à la poêle"), is based on a recipe called "Anchoiade chez Gilbert" from Patricia Wells' Bistro Cooking. On some fresh baguette from Anarosa's in Newburyport, it made a most delicious little appetizer.

Leftover cooked trout, chopped up fairly small (about 1/4 cup)
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tblsp olive oil
1 tsp red wine vinegar
1/2 tsp each kosher salt and dried rosemary, ground up with a mortar and pestle
8 thinnish slices of good baguette

The the broiler on and place the baguette slices on a tray. Toast the bread for about two minutes, turning over once. Reserve. Mix all the ingredients for the spread together in a small bowl. Spread evenly on the toasted baguette slices and return to the broiler for about one and a half minutes. Serve immediately.

Spinach and Cottage Cheese Omelette

2010-05-06T18:15:00.000-07:00

When I went home to Maine this past week, my sister Corrine gave me a dozen fresh eggs from her free-ranging chickens (hence the bright yellow color of the omelette seen in the photo) and I picked up some homemade cottage cheese from my cousin Gloria's and her husband Greg's farm store at Nezinscot Farm on Route 117 in Turner. I also picked up a loaf each of anadama (seen in the photo), wheat and seven grain bread. If you are ever in the area, you must absolutely stop! The farm is excellent, Greg and Gloria are real and the food is fantastic. I highly recommend the cookies, especially the chocolate chip cookies!

You might think it weird to add cottage cheese to an omelette. Of course, you aren't wrong to think so if your notion of cottage cheese is that watery, chemically-tasting stuff you buy at the grocery store. My cousin Gloria's cottage cheese is drier and crumblier. It has the texture of feta, so if you can't get your hands on some homemade cottage cheese, use feta in this recipe instead. It will change the taste, however, as feta is much more salty than cottage cheese.

2 cloves of garlic, minced
Half a small onion, sliced thinly
A few generous handfuls of fresh spinach
2 - 3 eggs per omelette, lightly beaten and generously salted and peppered
Cottage cheese (or feta)
Butter

In a non-stick pan, melt a few tablespoons of butter over medium-low heat. Sautee the garlic and onion until translucent. Add the spinach and cook until it wilts without losing it's dark green color. Remove the spinach, onion and garlic mix from the pan and reserve in a bowl. Melt a few more tablespoons of butter in the same pan and raise the heat. The butter should sizzle but not brown. Add the beaten eggs. Lift the pan a bit from the stove and shake it as though you were making popcorn. Place it back on the heat and cook, lifting it to shake every once in a while to keep the eggs from sticking to the pan. This will also help move the uncooked liquidy eggs to the edges of the pan to cook. Right before the eggs are set, remove from the heat and add some spinach and cottage cheese to one side of the circle. Using a plastic spatula, flip the other side of the circle over the part that has the spinach and cottage cheese. If you like your eggs runny, serve it up just like this. If you want them a little more cooked, place the pan back on the heat and cook until your desired consistency.

Enjoy with a light green salad and a thick slice of homemade bread. This is dinner in 5 minutes! This is heaven on your plate! Enjoy!

Truite sautée à la poêle

2010-05-05T04:27:00.000-07:00

There is nothing more simple or more delicious than fresh trout fried in butter! I got this fish from a friend and colleague, Bill, who went fishing in Cape Cod last weekend and didn't hesitate to cook it up as soon as I had it in my hands. This was easy to do since Bill had already gutted the fish and removed the scales and the head!

For two medium-sized trout, mix about half a cup of corn meal with some fresh ground pepper, fresh ground sea salt and ground rosemary in a shallow bowl. Rinse and pat dry the fish, then roll it in the cornmeal mix. In a non-stick pan, melt a generous amount of butter (3 to 4 good tablespoons) over medium heat until melted but not browned. Place the fish in the butter and cook, turning only once, for about 4-5 minutes on each side. Sprinkle with more salt, pepper and rosemary if you wish.

Serve with sides of fresh veggies and quinoa, or other grain of your liking. Enjoy!

Tofu and Carrot Sautee

2010-04-22T18:16:00.000-07:00

I have never been a huge fan of tofu. In fact, I have always thought it was quite disgusting. Josh likes it, and because it is a source of protein, I prep it sometimes to include in dishes simply for its protein content. The other day, however, I made a discovery: small pieces of tofu fried up in oil in a non-stick teflon pan is quite lovely. So lovely, in fact, that Josh and I ended up eating the first batch I made as a simple appetizer! The difference was the pan, which I just bought recently in my efforts to cook the perfect Julia Child's omelette. The non-stick pan allows for a more crispy, browned top, something I've never been able to achieve by frying the tofu in my cast iron pans, the only kinds of pans I owned until just recently. So, with salt and some cumin, the result of tofu cooked in the non-stick pan is a slightly crispy, lovely nugget of flavor. As an appetizer served with toothpicks or in this dish, it's great!

Half a block of firm tofu, cut into small cubes
1 large clove of garlic, minced
About 2 tsp fresh minced ginger
Half an onion, cut into small pieces
5 or 6 small carrots, peeled and cut into small pieces
Half a can of black beans, drained
Rice

Sautee the cubed tofu in a tablespoon or so of olive oil, sprinkling with salt and cumin to taste as you go. Use a wooden spoon to stir occassionally and shake the pan so that all sides of the tofu (or at least a few of them) turn a golden brown. Remove to a bowl, add a bit more oil to the pan and sautee the garlic and onion until translucent. Add the carrots and cook only until just tender. Add the black beans and cook until hot.

Serve over rice for a delicious, healthy meal!

Ginger broth

2010-04-09T16:20:00.000-07:00

My stomach was feeling a little queazy the other day, and since I didn't have any gingerale in the house, I thought I'd try making a little ginger broth to calm the system a bit. There's nothing more simple or economical than this: all you need are a few scraps from an onion, some garlic and ginger that you might be using for something else that you are cooking up. In the pot, you see that it doesn't take much to start, but the yield is pretty high.

Place the scraps into a pot about this size and fill about 3/4 full with cold water and a generous amount of salt, about what you see in my hand below. Bring to a boil than reduce to simmer for at least an hour, if not more. Strain, cool and drink or spoon up like any other soup. Enjoy!

Mango Banana Batido

2010-03-30T17:51:00.000-07:00

Drinking cold juices or water with heaps of ice cubes has never been my thing. And I've never been a big fan of smoothies either because, even though I like the idea of drinking fruit (uh... yum!), I just can't deal with the ice factor... it just plain old hurts my head! The batido, which Josh and I discovered in Costa Rica, is the answer I've been looking for all these years: healthy, refreshing, just slightly sweet and only as cold as the temperature of the rice milk used to make it. The best ones I tried came from the mom and pop type sodas (restaurant) simply because, unlike the american or european versions we tried, they weren't packed with crushed ice. The recipe I give below uses agave syrup instead of sugar, which is what the waitress at La Amistad Soda in Monteverde told us she uses, and rice milk instead of cow's milk. You can also use water instead of milk for a lighter drink, and you should feel free to expirament with different fruit and fruit combinations.

For two generous, pint-sized servings, place the following in a blender:

2 ripe mangos, peeled, pitted and cut
1 banana, peeled

Next, pour in just enough rice milk (or milk or water) to cover the fruit and add in a few squirts of agave syrup (or a teaspoon or so of sugar, or to taste). Blend on high until smooth. Adjust more liquid if necessary as well as sweetener if you prefer sweeter drinks.

Try a blackberry batido as well:

About 3/4 cup frozen blackberries
1 banana, peeled

Place the berries in the blender with enough water and blend. Strain and return to blender. Add the banana and sweetener and serve cold.

Casado con vegetales (comida tipica)

2010-03-30T17:50:00.000-07:00

Casado is a plate full of food guaranteed to satisfy all your tastebuds, salty and sugary alike. At the base of every casado is the salty black beans and rice as well as a small cold salad, and the sugary fried plantain. To this, you may add a variety of cooked vegetables or a choice of meat. The casado you see in the picture below is my rendition of the one Josh and I kept going back to in Santa Teresa, in Costa Rica, which replaced the plaintain with fried yucca plant (see the recipe I give for this as it needs to be prepped the night before). The 10 students who participate in Josh and my food club, three of whom you can see below serving themselves and getting ready to dive in, can attest to the fact that it's delicious, healthy and very simple to make!

Take any vegetable (We used cauliflour, broccoli and carrot here) and prep them for roasting with salt, pepper and olive oil (my favorite), sauteeing or boiling. While the vegetables are cooking, prep the rice and beans, and the salad.

For the rice, mince a clove of garlic, half a small hot pepper and 1 or 2 scallions. Sautee these things in olive oil, add the rice (basmati is best) and stir to cover with oil. Add salt and the required amount of water and bring to boil then simmer for 20 minutes.

For the beans, sautee some chopped onion in olive oil until translucent. Add canned beans with their liquid, salt, pepper and cumin (optional - the Ticos didn't use spices as far as I could tell, but I love cumin too much to pass it up), and simmer.

You can prep any simple salad you want as a side. In the casado seen above, the salad consists of shredded carrot and cabbage with a simple vinagrette (1 part vinegar, two parts olive oil, minced garlic, salt and pepper).

Near the end of everything being ready, heat a few inches of oil in a deep cast-iron pan or deep fryer for the yucca plant, and cook as instructed in the recipe I give in a previous blog.

Fried yucca plant

2010-03-26T16:23:00.000-07:00

While in Costa Rica, Josh and I ate at a number of small mom-and-pop restaurants called sodas. The one in the photo below, called Layunta Soda, which was located directly across the street from Casa Zen where we stayed in Santa Theresa, was our favorite. (It didn't make the cut for the restaurant section in our guide book as "places to eat", but it really should have been!) Rather than serve fried plantain with the comida tipica (otherwise known as casado) as is the tradition, this one served fried yucca plant. After our second meal there, I walked to the grocery store, bought a yucca plant and brought it back to the restaurant. In my best spanish possible, I asked the woman to show me how to prep and cook this long, thick-skinned brown potato-like veggie. She very graciously showed me how, and here is what I learned.

Pick a yucca plant that it fairly fat. The skin is thick, so use a cleaver and a hammer to cut the plant into 3 or 4 inch sections.

Using a small, sharp knife, make a slit down the middle of the plant, the long way. Using the edge of the knife, edge the blade under the skin and start to move the knife along until the whole skin comes off. Once you get this going a bit, the skin very easily detaches itself, usually in one piece.

Cut the pieces into 4 sections, the long way. The pieces will look like triangles with one round edge. Use the knife to cut away the tough, stringy little root that is at the pointed edge of these pieces. You may have to cut it out of one of the pieces, or all four, depending on how big it was. There may also be little knots in the flesh which you should also cut out and throw into the compost bin. Put the pieces in a pot, cover with cold, salted water. Bring to a boil and cook until soft, about 15 minutes. Drain, cool, cover and store in the fridge over night.

When you are ready to eat the yucca plant, heat a generous amount of oil in a deep fryer or a deep pot with a cover. Submerge the pieces of cooked yucca in the hot oil and fry for a few minutes, turning over once in a while. Remove from the oil an place on a plate lined with paper towels to soak up some of the oil. The outside will be crispy and slightly yellowed, while the inside will be soft and white. Salt and pepper generously the tops of the cooked yucca.

Serve with casado con vegetales or as a side with black beans and rice.

Comida tipica

2010-03-21T09:09:00.000-07:00

In our recent trip to Costa Rica, we stayed in a couple different hostels with common kitchens which gave us a chance to buy some local, in-season veggies and cook up our own "comida tipica". Nothing more simple than carrots and sweet potatoes and black beans, spiced up with some ginger (which I didn't know was so typical in Costa Rica) and cilantro. The only thing missing here to really make it complete as far as Ticos would be concerned is the rice.

1 big fat carrot, peeled and cut into rounds
1 big fat sweet potato (it's white here... not sure what kind it is), peeled and cut into rounds
About 2 tbsp fresh minced ginger
About 2 tbsp fresh minced garlic
1 small onion, thinly sliced
1 can of black beans
A bunch of fresh cilantro, minced

In a cast-iron pan, sautee half the onion, half the garlic and all the ginger in a generous amount of olive oil until translucent. Add the carrots and potato and stir to cover with the oil. Salt and pepper and allow to cook until the carrot and potato are just soft. Add the cilantro at the end and stir to mix, cooking for a few more minutes.

While the veggies are cooking, sautee the rest of the onion and garlic in a small saucepan until translucent. Add the beans along with the liquid. Salt to taste and allow to simmer for 10 minutes or so.

Serve hot with rice for an excellent and inexpensive dinner!

Skinny carrot and bok choy soup

2010-02-27T18:41:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I make something and I think: this isn't blog worthy, it's way too simple. But simple is often (very often) quite good, if not quite scrumptious. And thus I present this simple soup whose flavor has only improved since I cut the heat over two hours ago and which, by tomorrow at lunch time, will surely be all the more delicious.

1 small onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
About 2 tbsp minced fresh ginger
2 large carrots, peeled and cut into rounds
1 medium head of bok choy, washed and chopped (stalks and leaves)
Lots of salt
Soba noodles, cooked and drained

In a large pot, heat some oil. I used grapeseed oil because I was out of olive oil, and I found it to be better because it was lighter and didn't compete with the ginger and carrots for taste. Sautee the onions, garlic and carrots for about five minutes. Add the stalks of the bok choy and stir to cover with the oil. Cook for a few minutes, and then add about 10 cups or so of cold water. Salt generously and bring to a boil. Drop the heat and simmer until the carrots are just tender. Add the bok choy leaves and allow to simmer for five more minutes or so.

Spoon some soba noodles into a bowl, then ladle the soup over the top. This recipe will make many servings. Store the leftovers and cook more soba noodles for a second or third round as needed. Don't add cooked noodles to soup to sit overnight in the fridge, as they will get mooshy.

Enjoy hot on a cold winter's night, or reheated at noon in the office!

Nut bread

2010-02-20T15:14:00.000-08:00

This is a variation of the wheat bread recipe, which is the post that preceeds this one, so please refer to that post for the recipe. The only thing you do differently for this variation is kneed nuts of your choice to the dough before setting it under the towel to rise for an hour. I used coarsely chopped walnuts and sunflower seeds, which is what I had on hand, but any nut variation would do. My favorite nut for bread is hazelnut, and I also enjoy hazelnut and chocolat.

Easiest wheat bread

2010-02-16T19:30:00.000-08:00

This recipe comes from my 99 year old aunt, Jeanette Moreau Pomerleau. Originally, it's a recipe for raisin bread, but I make it without the raisins and it's lovely. The recipe calls for sugar, but I leave it out without much change in taste or texture. I also use olive oil instead of lard, as my aunt does. And finally, you can replace the molasses with honey, though it makes for a lighter colored bread. This recipe, along with a few more easy bread recipes, is included in the cookbook I wrote based on my mother and her sister's recipes.

4 cups each white and whole wheat flour (see note below*)
3 tsp sugar (optional)
1.5 tsp salt
2 tbsp yeast
3 generous tbsp melted lard (or olive oil)
1/2 cup molasses (or honey)
3.5 cups hot water
3/4 cups raisins (optional)

In a large bowl, mix the flours together. Make a hole in the middle of the flour and add all of the ingredients (even the raisins if you choose to include them) into the hole, adding the water and the molasses last. With your hand, starting in the middle of the hole, mix by making little circles until all of the flour is incorporated. You may need to add more flour if the dough is still sticky at the end. Knead on a floured surface until you get a large, smooth ball. I don't knead for that long, maybe five minutes or so. Rub a small amount of oil over the dough and place in deep bowl. Cover with a towel and allow to rise until it doubles in size, about an hour. When the dough has doubled, separate into two or three round balls. Place them on a baking stone or in bread pans (depending on the size you choose to make) and allow to rise again, covered, for about an hour.

Bake at 375 for about an hour. For a crispier crust, spray the inside of the oven with water every ten minutes. Enjoy with butter as a side with soup, or for breakfast with more butter and jam.

*Note: I made this bread again since posting this and realized in the process that I had no more white flour. What I did have was some unbleached white flour (about a cup and a half) and wheat flour. I made the recipe with this and discovered that the bread had better flavor. The next time, I may just try it with all wheat flour to see what happens.

Sumo Noodles

2010-02-12T16:33:00.000-08:00

Adele made this soba noodle concoction tonight and it was so good that we wanted to keep eating it until we became as big as sumo wrestlers. A few days ago we bought several large boxes of buckwheat soba noodles from an Asian market in Cambridge and now we're hooked. In the regular grocery stores they're not much of a deal, so try checking out an Asian market for bulk soba.

Half a large onion, sliced thinly
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1 tsp powdered ginger
1 tsp salt
2 tablespoons fish sauce
Juice of one small lime
Generous half teaspoon each dried cilantro and dried mint

Get a pot of water boiling for the soba noodles. Heat a generous amount of olive oil in a large skillet. Cook the onions and the garlic with the salt and ginger over low heat until very soft and translucent, stirring often. Add the fish sauce and the lime juice and stir to cover the onions. Add the cooked, drained soba noodles (they take about 4 - 6 minutes) and stir to cover. Add the cilantro and mint, stir again and cook for a few more minutes, stirring.

Makes two servings as a main dish. Excellent with a side of steamed bok choy.

Red lentils with ginger and cilantro

2010-02-07T16:41:00.000-08:00

Josh and I dined in a great little Indian restaurant last night in Cambridge where I had Mushroom Saag. I have no idea how to make Mushroom Saag, but I did take some mental notes on the tastes that the dish boasted: ginger, cilantro and coriander. So I thought I'd try out the combo this evening with some red lentils. The end result, served warm with a dollop of crème fraiche, a side of steamed broccoli and a fresh salad, was heavenly!

1 small onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
Fresh ginger, peeled and roughly minced (about 3 tablespoons)
12 ounces of red lentils
A teaspoon or so coriander seeds, crushed in a mortar
2 teaspoons salt
A good handful of fresh cilantro, washed, stemmed and minced

In a deep pot, heat about two tablespoons olive oil over low heat. Add the onion, garlic, ginger and coriander and cook until the onion is translucent. (The smell is fantastic!) Add the lentils and stir to cover with oil. Add the salt and about 3 cups of water. Bring to a boil, and then drop the heat to simmer, covered, until the lentils turn to mush, about 30 minutes. Uncover, add the cilantro and cook for a while longer, stirring. The lentils should not be watery; if they are, cook at a higher temp for a few minutes and let the excess liquid evaporate. Remove from heat and let the lentils set for about five minutes before serving.

Creamy celeriac dip

2010-02-01T04:24:00.000-08:00

These are the three celeriacs Josh and I got last week from our CSA. They look like something out of Lord of the Rings which will come to life and attack your face, but these ones got turned into a nice dip that Josh and some friends I tested it on said was better than hummus.

Peel the celeriac with a sturdy knife, cube and place into a pot with barely enough water to cover, salt and about a teaspoon of turmeric. Bring the water to a boil and cook the celeriac until it is soft. Spoon the pieces out of the pot with a slotted spoon and place into a food processor with the metal blade. Add a teaspoon or so of salt and puree until very smooth. (Drink the cooking water... it's actually quite good, and full of antioxidants!)

Serve warm with crackers. Enjoy!

Sweet potato and lentils à l'indienne

2010-01-19T15:39:00.001-08:00

To make this delectable one-pan dish for two, all you need is one large sweet potato (peeled and diced), one large onion (chopped), a few cloves of garlic (minced), a good bunch of fresh cilantro (washed and chopped fine), about 3/4 cups French lentils and this spice combo: 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper, 1/2 tsp ground cumin, 1/4 tsp ground coriander, a pinch each of ground cinnamon and ground cloves, and freshly ground pepper and sea salt to taste.

In a pot, sautee the onions in a few tablespoons of olive oil over heat until translucent. Add the sweet potato and and the lentils and stir to cover with oil. Add the spice combo and just enough water to cover. Bring the water to a boil and then reduce the heat and allow the mixture to simmer until the potatoes and lentils are soft, about a half hour. Stir occasionally ; you may need to add a little water as you go. When the potatoes and lentils are soft, remove about half of them into a bowl and mash them with the back of a fork. Put them back into the pot along with almost all the cilantro. Stir and allow to cook for about 5 or 10 more minutes.

Serve in bowls with the rest of the cilantro sprinkled over the top.

If you wanted it to be a heartier meal, serve over brown rice.

Deep Sea Dip

2010-01-16T17:02:00.000-08:00

A most refreshing and surprising dip, packed with omega-3's!

All you need is a can of sardines in olive oil, one minced garlic clove, about 1/3 of a small jalopeno pepper (minced), about a handful of fresh cilantro (minced), 1/2 teaspoon of cumin and a pinch of salt. Put it all together, mix it up, and eat it with some good crackers. Enough for several people.

Penne with kale and baked squash

2010-01-15T14:11:00.000-08:00

I had no intention of making this dish... it just kind of happened. I had a delicata squash baking in the oven and some kale simmering in onions, thinking I would just put it all on a plate for a light veggie meal, but then I threw some leftover penne in the kale and decided it would be fun to peel the cooked squash, cube it and throw it in the dish. I have no regrets, as it was all very lovely!

Here's what you do:

Peel and cut a small squash in cubes and bake covered in olive oil at 400 degrees for about 45 minutes to an hour.
Meanwhile, slice a large onion and sautee in a large pot in olive oil over low heat until translucent.
Wash and chop up a bunch of kale and add to the onions. Stir to cover with oil. Salt and pepper generously. Add just enough water to create some steam. Cover and let the kale wilt, stirring occasionally and adding a bit of water at a time if you notice it has all evaporated.
When the kale is very tender, add cooked penne (or other pasta) and stir.
Add a couple heaping teaspoons of creme fraiche. (Sour cream may work, but you should heat it first before adding it to the kale or it will curdle.)
Add the cooked squash and stir.
Shred some fresh romano cheese and add to the dish, stirring.
Serve hot with some more fresh romano grated over the top. YUM!

Poor Little Rich Soup

2010-01-08T04:18:00.000-08:00

We got a bunch of parsnips in our winter CSA the other night that were already on the wilty side, so I whipped up this creamless (yet very creamy) soup. With a salad and some croutons, it made the perfect cold winter meal.

Ingredients and prep:

1 medium sized onion, roughly chopped
4 or 5 large garlic cloves, roughly minced
5 parsnips, peeled and roughly chopped
Chicken broth
Olive oil
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
About 1 tsp ground cumin
About 2 tsp dried cilantro

In a medium-sized pot, sautee the onions and garlic in the oil over medium-low heat. Add the parsnips, salt and pepper and the cumin. Stir to cover with oil and cook for a few minutes. Add enough broth to cover and bring to a boil. Drop the heat, add the cilantro, and simmer until the parsnips are very soft, at least 20 minutes. You may need to add some broth as you go. When the parsnips are soft, put all the ingredients into a food processor and puree.

Serve piping hot with croutons or bread and a green salad. Enjoy!

Detox soup à l'asiatique

2010-01-03T08:07:00.001-08:00

Just what the doctor ordred after a holiday season of too much alcohol, too many smokes, too much coffee and too many sweets!

Prep (for a large soup, about 6 servings):

1 onion, chopped
lots of garlic, minced
3 carrots, peeled and thinly sliced
1 zuchinni and 1 summer squash, julianned
a couple tablespoons fresh minced ginger
a couple generous tablespoons of olive oil, water and lots of salt
soba or rice noodles, cooked and drained

In a large pot, sautée the onion, garlic and ginger in the olive oil over low heat until translucent. Fill the pot to about two-thirds full with cold water. Add a couple teaspoons of salt and bring to a boil. Reduce to simmer and add the carrots and mushrooms. Cook for about 5 minutes then add the zuchinni and summer squash. Continue to cook for a few more minutes. Start testing the carrot and stop cooking when it is still crisp or to your desired tenderness. Adjust the seasoning (salt) as you go, taste-testing every once in while as the soup cooks.

Place some of the cooked noodles in a bowl and ladel some of the soup over them. And here's to good health in 2010!

Beet green salads

2009-06-25T16:34:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-22T16:00:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-08T16:48:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-07T16:44:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-06T15:16:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-02T16:07:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-05-30T16:12:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-29T15:28:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-27T15:30:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-26T15:32:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-25T16:12:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-22T15:54:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-17T16:10:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-17T06:56:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-13T16:24:00.001-07:00

Here's what you need:

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

Fiddlehead casserole

2009-05-13T15:58:00.000-07:00

When Adele was in Maine last week her sister Corrine gave her a whopping bag of fiddleheads that she had harvested along a stream in Weld. We got right to work using them up, and fiddlehead casserole was the first thing we made.

Here's what you need:
1/2 onion, chopped
a few cloves of garlic
8 eggs
feta cheese
butter
(no salt, the feta takes care of that)

The first step is to fry the onions in butter until translucent.

Butter the bottom and sides of an 8 x 11 1/2" glass dish and spread the onions evenly over the bottom. Then spread a generous layer of fiddleheads over the onions.

Now spread a generous layer of feta cheese over the fiddleheads.

Beat the eggs in a bowl (add milk if you'd like it to be more like a quiche) and pour evenly over the other ingredients. Bake at 350 for about 45 minutes or until eggs have set.

Serve with a side salad or any other veggie.

Blackberry jam

2009-05-12T14:56:00.000-07:00

Digging around the freezer the other day, Josh discovered one last bag of frozen wild Maine blackberries that my sister Corrine picked last summer. And what better to do with frozen berries than jam? This is without a doubt the easiest, quickest, low-maintenance thing to make. Ever. All you need is berries (we had a five pound bag of them) and sugar (we used a cup).

Put the berries into a deep saucepan. Crush them a bit with the back of a wooden spoon. Add the sugar and bring the whole thing to a boil. Drop the heat to simmer, half-cover and let it go for an hour or so, stirring only occasionnally. After about an hour, turn the heat up and allow most of the liquid to evaporate.

Serve hot (with caution!) or store (for up to a couple weeks) and use later on top of peanut butter or butter on a slice of toast.

Fiddler on the stove

2009-05-06T16:34:00.000-07:00

It's fiddlehead season! Not only is this greenery a beautiful and delicate work of nature for me, it's also synonymous with community and small town relations. One of my first memories is of picking them with my mother and a few of my sisters along a riverbed with other random folks with whom we struck up small conversation. There's also the man I used to buy them from when I was in graduate school - straight from the riverbed to the back of his truck parked on route 2 to my hands. And then there's the old couple in Frederickston, New Brunswick, selling them on the sidewalk in front of their house. Josh and I picked up a bag and had a wonderful meal that night in the little cabin we'd rented in St. Agathe, way up in Northern Maine.

The way I cooked them tonight is the way my mother cooks her greens, with pork fat grease. Normally, she uses salt pork, but all I had on hand was bacon but this works just as well.

What you need: fiddleheads, small potatoes cut in half (optional), half an onion, sliced, and about 2 tbsp of thinly sliced salt pork or bacon.

Put the pork fat in a dutch oven and heat it on medium low until the pieces get crispy and you have enough oil to work with. Remove the crispy pieces from the pan with a slotted spoon and reserve for later use.

Sautee the onions for a few minutes and then add the potatoes, if you're going to use them. Cook until the onion is translucent.

Add the fiddleheads, just enough water to barely cover and salt generously. Bring to a boil, cover and drop the temperature to simmer for about half an hour.

Serve hot with the crispy bacon pieces sprinkled on top, either as a side dish with any piece of beef or pork or as a main dish with a side of vegetables and grains, like we did here.

C'est vachement bon!

2009-04-26T14:44:00.000-07:00

In a recent rambling with a colleague and friend, Josh discovered a place called Appelton Farms in Ipswich, MA. Our friend is a member of the CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) there, and she also buys her meat there. Getting our own share of grass-fed beef from free-ranging cows was as easy as calling the farm, driving over there, forking over the cash (which was surprisingly not that much), loading the box into the car, driving it home and filling the freezer with the packages. Here's what a regular-sized refrigerator freezer looks like with 40 pounds of beef in it:

We had ridiculously warm weather this weekend with highs reaching into the mid-80's, so after an afternoon of working under the hot sun in our garden and a small jaunt in our canoe out on Lake Cochichewick, we figured a barbecue was definitely in order. And a beer.

Here's how it all starts: place a barbecued beef patty on a slice of toasted wheat bread. (This is about where the peasant-like part of the meal ends... the rest of the stuff, though fresh and organic, is nonetheless nothing we could have found grown locally at this time of the year... but we never said we were slaves to eating only as peasants do!)

Top with a few slices of avocado...

and then with a generous serving of fresh salsa (see recipe below).

Served with a green salad, makes a lovely, light, hot-weather meal.

Salsa (two generous servings):

2 roma tomatoes, diced

A heaping tablespoon of finely minced onion

2 garlic cloves, minced

Finely minced chili pepper (to taste)

Zest and juice of 1 small lime

A handful of fresh cilantro, minced

A little olive oil

Cumin, salt and pepper to taste
Note: the salsa gains flavor the longer it sits. Overnight is best.

Old dog, new trick

2009-04-19T16:17:00.000-07:00

Beets. Crimson, sweet, healthy, hardy... but what do you do with them? There's always roasting, steaming and pickling, but this can get old after a while. So I've been thinking lately of new ways to cook these most lovely veggies. And today, when I was least expecting it, an idea flashed through my mind: stuffing! Yes, stuffing! For cabbage leaves... or collard greens, since that's what I actually had in the fridge.

What you need: 3 carrots and 1 large beet (peeled and shredded), half a finely chopped onion, collard greens, brown rice, rosemary, salt, pepper, juice of one lemon, garlic. (Note: in retrospect, the beet-carrot mixture ended up being way more than I needed, so you can cut it in half or make the whole thing and have leftovers... I highly recommend the second option!)

Cook the rice (I had leftover, which is best). Sautee the onions in olive oil until soft, add the carrots and beets, salt and pepper. In the meantime, bring a large pot of water to boil. Snip the stems of the collard greens, rinse and submerge in the boiling water for a few mintues, a few batches at a time).

Line the bottom of a glass dish with enough collard green leaves to cover. Mix about half the beet-carrot mixture with the rice (maybe a cup or so) and rosemary. Lay out a collard green leaf on a cutting board, cut off about 3 to 4 inches of the stem, place 1 or 2 good spoonfuls of the stuffing on the leaf and roll it up like you would if you were making a burrito or a sandwich wrap, and line the stufffed leaves tightly into the pan.

Peel some garlic cloves and place them down the center of the two rows of stuffed leaves, and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Pour the lemon juice evenly over all as well as some of the collard greens cooking water. Cover and bake at 400 for about 40 minutes.

Served with rice mixed with a bit of olive oil, salt and pepper, these stuffed collard greens made a great light, late-night dinner.

First grill of the season!

2009-04-16T16:43:00.000-07:00

The stars were aligned for this date to be the first grill of the season. First, the weather reports have been predicting warm temperatures in the 60s and 70s for today and tomorrow. Second, the rearranging of the contents of our tiny freezer two days ago to make room for the 40 pounds of grass-fed beef we picked up yesterday at Appleton farms in Ipswich meant that we had to take out a few of the packages of venison to thaw and eat. Third, we just felt like grilling.

The cut of the venison here is sirloin, and the marinade we concocted is quite simple: the juice of one lemon, powdered ginger, a couple tablespoons of soy sauce, and lots of sea salt and freshly ground black pepper. We marinaded the meat for about 3 hours, but an overnight marinade would no doubt yield the best flavor.

We ate these delictable little nuggets with some steamed carrots and spinach, and bok choy sauteed with garlic and onion. There was plenty of meat leftover (2 skewers), so we'll have some leftovers to work with tomorrow.

Gleaning, take #1

2009-04-13T15:40:00.000-07:00

A few evenings ago Adele and I prepared hors d'oeuvres for an environmental lecture at the school where we work. Our goal was to show that without intensive labor we could offer a variety of healthy snacks for a very low cost (we spent under $50). We ultimately prepared three bowls of different flavored hummus (cilantro & cumin; tomato & basil; garlic, lemon & pepper) with whole wheat crackers and carrot and celery sticks, as well as three different types of beer bread that we cut into toothpickable, bite-sized morsels. About fifty people turned up for the lecture by green architect Bill Reed, and afterwards students swarmed into the lobby to devour the snacks. Though Adele and I had initially worried that the food would run out, there were plenty of leftovers after the students had gorged on the beer bread (it sounds naughty, but it ain't) and grazed guiltlessly on the veggies and hummus (plural: hummii?). At home, we assembled the leftovers and realized that we had to do something with the several dozen celery sticks and a handful of carrot sticks that hadn't been eaten. Eating them raw seemed out of the question: gleaning to prevent waste is one thing, but eating something that's been out in the open air and picked over by a bunch of people is another. The obvious solution was thus to boil them down and make a cream of celery soup.

The ingredients are pretty basic: celery, which you see boiling here in just enough salted water to cover (the carrots are undercover...), and some chopped onion and minced garlic, which you see sauteeing in a pat of butter.

When the celery is so soft it turns to mush under the slightest touch, throw it in a food processor with the water, the onions and garlic, and process until smooth. Pour some cream into the pot the celery was just in and heat it up for a few minutes. Add the cream to the celery through the feed tube and process again for a few minutes. Adjust salt to taste.

Serve piping hot topped with a bit of dill weed for color and some fresh, hot biscuits. The ones you see here are Sister Esther Perkins' recipe from Shaker your plate: of Shaker Cooks and Cooking which I modified by replacing half the flour for almond meal.

Wicked easy cornbread

2009-04-12T16:26:00.000-07:00

One whiff of cornbread fresh out of the oven and I'm immediately transported back to my grandmother's kitchen in the hill country of northern Georgia. It's one of those powerful Proustian involuntary memories that grabs me in the gut and sends me back in time. The farm dogs bark outside, it's 81 degrees and cooling, flies linger around the screen door, my grandfather tells one of his famous policeman stories as I wipe the sweat from my brow, and the smells of fried okra, black-eyed peas, chicken strips, and cornbread permeate the kitchen. That's a bit of what cornbread conjures up for me...country roads, take me home, to the place, where I belong...

Adele cooks her cornbread in a cast-iron skillet as her aunts taught her, and that's exactly the way my grandmother used to do it as well. The cast-iron skillet makes cornbread into a nice round shape and is quite aesthetically-appealing, with the yellow bread constrasting the black skillet.

Cornbread is so easy that Adele doesn't have an official recipe for it. Rather, like her aunts and my grandmother, she just has it in her head (until now!).

This recipe fills an 8-inch skillet. Dry ingredients, to be mixed in a medium-sized bowl:
3/4 cup corn meal and 3/4 cup flour (preferably white whole wheat)
2 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
(Sometimes I add some cumin, or dried cilantro)

Wet ingredients, to be mixed in a separate bowl:
1 egg, beat lightly with about a tsp or so of sugar
About 3/4 cup of milk (rice milk works fine)
A little under a 1/4 cup of oil

Heat the oven to 350. Put a good-sized pat of butter in the skillet and place it in the warming oven until the butter has just melted. Take the skillet out of the oven and turn it carefully so that the butter evenly covers the bottom and sides.

Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ones and mix with a wooden spoon just until all the liquid is absorbed into the dry ingredients. Pour into the skillet and bake until a knife comes out clean, about 30 minutes.

Serve with chili, like we did here. Also makes a nice and simple, healthy dessert, with butter and honey or molasses. I'm sure it would make great breakfast fare as well, but it usually never makes it that long in this house.

Chili con venison

2009-04-05T15:06:00.000-07:00

I once tried Molly Katzen's vegetarian chili recipe. It was good, but I remember thinking how much better it would be if it just had a pound of ground beef, the kind that's a little on the fatty side so to give the dish good flavor. And a sausage or two. And more salt, more cumin, more chili pepper. I also remember thinking how if I put the pot in the fridge overnight, the flavor would stay exactly the same rather than mature the way it would if it had some animal fat in it. I could have made the recipe again and again until I'd acquired a taste for it, maybe even prefering it to chili con carne. But I didn't. Sometimes, for flavor's sake, you just can't pass up on the meat! When I lived in Quebec City for four years, juggling my graduate studies, work, and my personal and social lives, chili was one of my staple dishes. I'd make a big pot of it on a Sunday night and have enough to bring to the university every day for lunch for at least a week. What could be easier and more economical to make than this one pot dish of simple ingredients? Nothing! And because I lived only a short walk away from rue St-Jean's local butchershop, Moisan, I never had to worry about the quality and integrity of the beef I used to make it.

The what: 1 pound ground venison, 1 pepper and a small onion, roughly chopped, a couple cloves of garlic, roughly minced, tomatoes (those are my mom's garden tomatoes), 1 can each of black and red kidney beans, a couple chili peppers, cumin, salt and pepper.

The how : In a dutch oven, cook the meat in hot olive oil with the garlic and spices. When the meat is just brown, remove and store in a bowl. Add a little more oil to the dutch oven and sautee the onions and pepper for about 5 minutes. Put the meat back into the pot, add the tomatoes and drained, rinsed beans. Simmer, covered, for as long as you want. Longer simmer time equals better flavor, but ultimately you'll get the best taste if you put eat it the day after it's been made.

Serve with cornbread, of course. (Stay tuned for my own cornbread recipe to appear at some later date...)

Total prep time: about 15 minutes

Total cook time: The longer the more flavorful, but at least an hour

Cabbage in the corner

2009-04-03T16:39:00.000-07:00

We've had several cabbage halves in the corner of our fridge for a few months now and tonight we're finally putting them to use for a hearty carrot, leek and garlic side dish. Cabbage is wonderfully cheap, nutritious and easy to cook, but I always associate it with miserable scenes of Irish poverty from Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes, in which a drunk father and dozens of kids sit down to a pitiful meal of cabbage soup prepared by a downtrodden mother. Adele thinks of the bouillé choux her mother used to make often throughout the summer, though while perfectly well-prepared, was one of the least exciting dishes that ever made its way on the table. Also, we both grew up in papermill towns that seemed to be infused with a rotten-egg, cabbage-like odor on overcast days. Thus our reluctance to embrace the cabbage.

But tonight we've decided to make amends. Or, to put it another way, we decided we had to eat this stuff soon or risk having it go to waste. And there could be nothing more straightforward than this side-dish: half a cabbage, sliced; three carrots, peeled, halved lengthwise and sliced thinly; a couple inches of a leek, sliced; 2 garlic cloves, minced; salt and pepper.

Sautee the leeks and garlic in some olive oil until soft. Add the cabbage and carrots, salt and pepper to taste, and cook, stirring occasionnally, for about ten minutes. (Cook more or less, depending on your taste for crisp vegetables or not.)

We ate this with some leftover brown rice seasoned with sauteed onion, currants, chopped hazelnuts, cumin, ginger, tumeric, salt, pepper and olive oil. In the end, we were pleasantly surprised by the combo of these two dishes, particulary with the taste of the cabbage side-dish, and we're happy to say that the compost pile didn't get to this thing before we did.

Total prep and cook time : about 30 minutes

Approximate cost : about 3$ for two people

Faux Curry Cream Sauce

2009-04-02T16:10:00.000-07:00

Looking for a way to turn broccoli stalks and the stems of other greens into a hearty meal? A few nights ago we ate broccoli and collard greens in a simple stir fry and saved all the stalks and stems to make a broth. Once the greens were all boiled down and we'd transfered the rich, translucent green water into jars for storing, we looked at the ghosts of the vegetables we were about to throw out and decided against it, thinking that the most peasant-esque thing to do would be to make use of the whole shebang.

Here's what you need: Boiled-down brocolli and greens stems, some of the water used to boil it, a large potato, peeled and cubed, onion, garlic, salt, pepper and curry powder.

Boil the stalks and potatos in just enough of the water to cover and salt. Meanwhile, chop an onion into fairly small pieces and mince a couple cloves of garlic. Heat some olive oil in a dutch oven and sautee the onions and garlic with a teaspoon or two of cumin until very soft.

When the stocks and potato are so soft they fall apart at the slightest touch, throw them into a food processor with the steel blade. Add the onions and spice mix. Cover and blend, adding the water slowly through the top shoot until you get a very thick, creamy consistency.

Return this faux cream sauce to the dutch oven and add about a cup of spinach. When we made this, we didn't have any fresh spinach on hand, so we used frozen and it came out fine. Adjust seasonings.

We ate this sauce over brown rice and with a side of roasted name.

Total prep and cook time : a few hours (largely unattended)

Total cost (for the sauce) : not even a dollar

Total cost for the whole meal you see above for two people : about 4$

Who's your sprout?

2009-03-30T15:42:00.000-07:00

Adele and I first truly understood the potential of brussel sprouts in Ithaca, New York, when we were reveling at a friend's farm the evening before Thanksgiving. Food was abundant; drink was flowing. Our friend Simon was concocting a brilliant beef stew with massive red slabs that he'd bought from a Brooklyn butcher. Stephen, the owner of the farm, was cutting off large, unruly slices of whole-wheat bread that someone had brought from an Ithaca bakery. A bearded man in overalls was dumping fresh cranberries into a bowl in between swigs of his bottle of hard cider. And then there were the brussel sprouts, gently sauteeing in their cast-iron skillet, nobody paying them any attention. That's what usually happens with brussel sprouts, they go unnoticed, ignored little nuggets of verdure. As we later learned from the local vintner who prepared them, he had picked them that very day off their frozen stalks and cut them in half, sauteed them in olive oil for a half hour, and then topped them off with walnuts. And they weren't bad. But then, they could always be better. The seed of possibility had been planted.

When we got back home we picked up a few packages of brussel sprouts. Our mission was to take what had been so pleasing to the eye in Ithaca (the lush green of the sprouts peppered with the earthy brown of the walnuts, the whole shining in aromatic olive oil) and turn it into something just as pleasing for the palette. In other words, we were looking for something a little softer, and a lot less bitter. Our solutions were simple, and sitting in right in our cupboards: chicken broth and raisins.

What we used: brussel sprounts, onion, garlic, walnuts, raisins, cumin, tumeric, salt, pepper, olive oil and chicken broth.

Finely chop about half an onion and mince a clove or two of garlic. Sautee in olive oil until soft. Meanwhile, wash, stem and halve the brussel sprouts. Add to the onions and garlic and stir to cover with oil. Add a couple teaspoons of cumin, a couple sprinkles of tumeric and salt and pepper to taste. Cook for a few minutes, then add just enough chicken broth so that it comes up to about half the depth of the sprouts. Bring to a boil, and add the raisins and walnuts. Reduce the heat to simmer, and cook until the sprouts are as tender and the liquid is nearly evaporated.

The finished product, which is quite pretty and smells lovely, makes a great side-dish for any meal. We've eaten it with everything from salmon to a simple cheese omelette to basic roasted turnips, which is how we ate them this evening.

Total prep and cook time : about 45 mintues.

Approximate cost : about 4$ for 4 servings

Broth, baby, broth!

2009-03-29T10:59:00.000-07:00

Here’s one for the Zen masters among you: is a peasant truly a peasant if she buys pre-packaged vegetable broth at the village store? Probably not. Commercial broth is in the same food family as boxed muffins and pancake mixes and packages of instant rice pilaf. Somehow the modern food industry has convinced many consumers that these things are difficult to make and that we can all save precious time if we shell out a few bucks more for the pre-packaged, instant ingredients. But all the items mentioned above are scandalously easy to make from scratch and cost very little when made at home.

Whenever Josh and I cook, we keep a Tupperware container on the counter into which we put the onion and garlic ends, as well as the vegetables peels and ends. (Of course, if you’re going to do this, a word of advice: wash your vegetables before peeling so that the peels you’re saving will be free from dirt.) Some nights, it might just be a bit of onion; on another night, it may be carrot peels. When we get enough of it collected, we boil it down in plenty of cold water until the vegetables are virtually colorless. If we happen to have broiled a chicken, then we’ll throw our vegetable scraps in the pot with the chicken bones and fat to make a tastier broth. So to recap: throw your scraps in a pot (with chicken bones or meat if you wish) with cold water and boil them down until they are leached of color. Strain the liquid through a colander and that’s your vitamin-packed broth (aka veggie water).

Peasants and subsistence farmers and many others have been making homemade broth for generations. We’ve been doing it ever since we read about it many years ago in Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything. Not only are you getting the most out of the money you paid for your vegetables (which can be significant if you buy organic veggies), but you are also extracting all of the nutritious vitamins and minerals that can be added later to other food. We use it regularly instead of water when we make rice, bulgar, quinoa, etc., or we use it as a base for our soups. When we make a large batch of broth, we usually can it. For information on canning, visit the Colorado State University Extension website: http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/foodnut/09348.html

No grain, no pain

2009-03-28T18:02:00.000-07:00

Adele and I are beginning to commit more and more acts of blasphemy with regard to the USDA food pyramid. Namely, we're undermining the entire grain-based foundation of the pyramid and substituting squash and tubers - mostly sweet potatoes - for grains like rice and pasta. We're not on some anti-grain crusade (Adele would probably trade in our obese cat for a perfect baguette), but squash or sweet potato is a wonderfully delicious and filling substitute for our typical grains. Squash or tubers are the staple foods of many cultures across the world and are fundamental to traditional peasant cuisine. No need to stick with rice or pasta every night when there's so much variety out there that still fills us up and serves our carbo needs. And bonus: we also get pretty colors on the plate!

This is what tonight's meal looked like in it's original state: dandelion greens, onion, garlic, butternet squash and eggs.

Start with the squash by cutting it in half lengthwise and spooning out the seeds. Place them flesh-side-down in an oven-safe dish with perhaps an inch of water, cover and bake until soft, about 40 minutes. Start checking for done-ness after about 30 minutes by poking the squash with a sharp knife. If the knife slides through with no effort, it's ready to serve.

While the squash is baking, think about the dandelion greens and the egg. The greens are longer to cook than the egg, so think about that first. But at some point during the process, crack an egg per person into a ramekin. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, place in a skillet or pot and add enough water to come halfway up the ramekin. Bring the water to a boil and cook the eggs until the whites set to your liking. (It doesn't take long...)

For the dandelion greens, slice the onion and roughly mince the garlic. In a skillet, heat a bit of finely cut up bacon (I highly recommend it for the taste, but feel free to use olive oil or butter) until the bacon shrivels and crusts, leaving a hot layer of bacon fat. Remove the rinds with a slatted spoon and preserve. Sautee the onions and garlic in the bacon fat until soft. Add the dandelion greens and stir to cover with the oil. Add salt and pepper and a teaspoon or two of sugar and cook until the greens are as crisp or as soft as you like them.

Remove from heat, return the bacon rinds to the greens and stir.

Serve everything piping hot, adding a generous pat of butter to the squash and toasted wheat bread to sop up the egg if you want.

Prep & cook time : about an hour

Price : approximately 4$ for two people

Venison Stew

2009-03-27T15:49:00.000-07:00

Students at the school we work at always ask if we're vegetarians or vegans because they never see us eat meat at the school cafeteria. We do indeed eat meat, and many of our best meals in the past few years have involved meat, but we're pretty choicy about the meats we consume. Of course, this choosiness isn't very peasant-like of us since peasants tend to be poor and often don't have the luxury of selecting which meats they will and won't eat. On the other hand, many peasants raise their own meat or procure it from local or regional sources that don't involve the industrialized meat industry. And that's what we try to avoid: the meat pumped full of growth hormones and antibiotics, the meat from animals raised inhumanely, the meat that doesn't really have taste unless you marinate or season the hell out of it, or that ambiguous brownish-grey meat that may be cow or pig or chicken...or wait, it's all three combined in some Frankensteinian meat processing plant. When we eat animal flesh, we prefer to eat meat we trust, meaning we generally know where it comes from, how it was raised (or lived in the wild), and how it was killed. To that end, we tend to stock up on meats when we go to Adele's cousin's biodynamic farm (Nezinscott Farm) in Maine or during hunting season when one of Adele's brothers kills a deer.

These are the St. Pierre brothers (Tony, Tom and Jean) with two of their sons (Matthew and Jason) and a brother-in-law (Ethan) on a typical Saturday morning during hunting season in Maine. The venison that went into the stew we made this week came from the deer that was killed by Tom (far right in the picture) whose wife and daughters don't like the taste of wild meat.

The ingredients are simple: a package of venison stew meat (a pound maybe?), 5 carrots, 1 large onion, 2 potatos, salt, pepper and paprika (lots o'). Please do add lots of garlic... we just didn't have any more on us when we made this (damn it). This made enough stew for four generous portions.

The best-tasting stew is the one that sits over night in its own juices, so we started making this stew last night to eat it tonight.

Heat some olive oil in a large dutch oven, and sautee the onions (and garlic). When the onions are translucent, add the meat, lots of salt and pepper, and about 2 good teaspoons of paprika. Brown the meat, then add just enough water to almost cover, bring to a boil, cover and reduce the heat to simmer for a couple of hours. (We watched this great French movie - Diva - while it cooked). Allow to cool and store in the fridgerator over night.

About 45 minutes before you feel like eating, peel and chop the carrots and potato. Throw them in with the meat and just enough water to cover everything. Bring to a boil, then reduce to simmer, cover and cook for about 30 minutes. The meat will be very tender, but the carrots and potato won't be mushy.

Total prep and cook time : about 4 hours, largely unattended

Total cost : hard to estimate, since we bartered the deer meat

Savory brown rice at sunrise

2009-03-26T10:32:00.000-07:00

During my two years as a U.S. Peace Corps Volunteer in Zimbabwe, I generally ate corn three meals a day. Cornmeal porridge for breakfast, and thickened corn porridge (called sadza) for both lunch and dinner. With the morning porridge, many Zimbabweans added sugar, milk or butter. I always preferred it with butter, which made it creamy and salty rather than sweet and syrupy. The salty breakfast doesn't just apply to cornmeal though; as Adele and I explore the virtues of salty breakfasts, we're discovering that virtually any leftover grain can be transformed into a delectable and healthy breakfast. That said, why does oatmeal tend to dominate most peoples' breakfast grains? Not sure, but it's taking a backseat in our cupboard from now on.

Last night Adele and I made a simple vegetable stirfry with brown rice. Good eating, but nothing too interesting. However, since there was plenty of brown rice left over, we decided to transform it into our breakfast this morning.

By adding a little olive oil to the rice and stirring it around to cover, we were able to heat the rice without risk of it burning to the bottom of the pot. We added some chopped almonds and hazelnuts (but any nut could work), some sunflower seeds, dried basil and salt and cooked through until warm. Topped off with some freshly grated parmesan cheese, and accompanied by a slice of buttered wheat toast, this breakfast rivals anything we've ever had for brunch in restaurants.

Bulgar at breakfast: making the most of leftovers

2009-03-25T06:54:00.000-07:00

Growing up on the farm, my breakfast of choice all the way through high school was a tomato sandwich on my mother's homemade bread and a tall glass of chocolate milk. Weird choice of fare for breakfast? Perhaps, but pretty tame considering what my mother was (and still is) known to whip up for herself for this meal: leftover spaghetti sandwiches, chicken pot pie, sardines on buttered saltine crackers.

Over the years, especially during college, I took to eating cereal for breakfast, sometimes toast with peanut butter and jam or honey. In the past couple of years, however, Josh and I have decided to change this up a bit and re-adopt my family (certainly my mother's) anything-goes attitude when it comes to breakfast food. Here's why:

I lived in France for several years and ate variations of the "baguette with butter" for most breakfasts. The incredibly tasty baguettes were made of flour, salt and water. The butter was churned cream. No sugar, aside from a perhaps spoonful in that dark coffee. Josh lived in Zimbabwe for a few years and travelled quite a bit afterwards and ate anything (salty or sugary) he could get his hands on for breakfast. During our travels abroad, we rarely saw foreigners downing sugary breakfasts. We certainly saw cereals, but they tended to be meuslix and bran cereals rather than chocolate puffy things and frosted stuff (what is that stuff, anyways?). Breakfast doesn't have to be defined by the American breakfast cereal industry, which really consists of just a few companies. New York Times food writer Mark Bittman agrees. Read his recent article about the virtues of rethinking breakfast: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/18/dining/18mini.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=your%20morning%20pizza&st=cse

The following dish is something we whipped up just the other day:

Breakfast bulgar. Remember that bulgar we talked about in yesterday's blog (Bulgar and friends) that was cooked with onions, garlic, cumin, cranberries and almonds? Well, we had some leftover, so I thought I'd recycle it for breakfast. Since there wasn't enough for two servings, I cooked up another half cup of bulgar, and added the leftover bulgar to heat when the fresh bulgar was almost cooked along with some frozen Maine blueberries (thanks to my sister Corrine who picked them last summer). Topped with butter, this is perhaps one of the yummiest breakfast we've ever made.

Bulgar and friends

2009-03-24T17:00:00.000-07:00

Another early spring meal based on root crops, leafy greens, and bulgar, one of the hippest grains (more nutritious than rice or couscous!).

The beets: Peel and cube, mix with 1/2 a chopped onion, olive oil, salt and pepper, and roast in a 425F oven for about 45 minutes.

For the bulgar dish: 1/2 cup of bulgar, 1/4 of a finely chopped onion and garlic, a handful each of dried cranberries and chopped almonds, salt, pepper and cumin. Sautee everything but the bulgar in olive oil over low heat until onion is transculent. Add the bulgar and stir, covering the grains with oil. Add 1 cup cold water and bring to a boil. Reduce and simmer, covered, for about 30 minutes. Be watchful of the water and add more as need be.

For the greens: Collard greens (washed, trimmed and cut into long strips), 1 carrot (peeled, halved lengthwise and chopped fairly thin), 1/4 sliced onion and 1 clove garlic minced, salt and pepper to taste.

Sautee the onion, carrot and garlic in olive oil for a few minutes. Add the greens and cook over low heat, stirring occasionally, until greens are tender.

The finished dish: Bursts of flavor and color, healthy and filling!

Prep and cook time: about 1 hour

Cost: about 5$ for two people.

The First Meal

2009-03-22T16:37:00.000-07:00

Before we get to the food, a few words of introduction on this sunny second day of spring.

We aren't peasants. We teach at a private boarding school north of Boston. We do yoga and enjoy watching subtitled films. We don't have farm animals (though we'd like to) and, unlike most peasants, food takes up a very small percentage of our income. Despite these unpeasant-like credentials, however, we both grew up in rural Maine in families that subsisted, at one time or another, on farming and various approaches to gleaning and living off the fat of the land. Our families tended to eat very well without spending much money. And so do we.
Our exploration of peasant food is in the context of globalisation. Thanks to the modern industrialized food system that you have to love and hate, many of us are far removed from our food sources yet we can get virtually any type of food we want at the grocery store regardless of the season. Your average peasant, on the other hand, tends to live near her food source and probably eats seasonal foods and preserves food to last through the winter. Most of us live in a world defined by globalisation. The food and recipes in this blog will reflect modern times, but will strive to retain what we feel are the essential qualities of peasant food: that it be delicious, economical, healthy, relatively simple and easy to prepare, and considerate of the seasons and local environment.
Most of our dishes don't have names. Bake a sweet potato. Steam some greens. Saute some carrots and ginger. That all tastes damn good, but it doesn't necessarily have a cutsie recipe name. Most peasants don't use cookbooks or watch cooking shows; the ingredients and recipes are just a fundamental part of their lives. We're trying not to overcomplicate matters here. Most of it's straightforward food. Cook it. Eat it. Ommmm.

As with much peasant cuisine, our first meal on this exploration fits right in with Michael Pollan's introductory words in In Defense of Food: "Eat food. Mostly plants. Not too much."

It's the end of winter, so note the emphasis on root crops in this meal : carrots, turnips, sweet potato, onion. The white stuff in the measuring cup is quinoa, a grain we've recently discovered and fallen in love with (get it at any grocery store in the bulk section). It's super easy to make (it cooks like rice), it adds variety to the staple (and boring) base grains of rice and pasta, and it tastes excellent. On a final note, this whole meal can be quite easily vegan fare, except that Adele added butter to the turnip because she's French-Canadian and butter flows through her veins.

There are three parts to this meal, so you'll need to do a little prepping of the elements before jumping in to make sure that everything is finished and ready to serve at about the same time. So read ahead before starting...

1) Wash and make some slits in a large sweet potato. Wrap in tin foil and bake at 425F for approximately 45 minutes.

2) Peel and cube a large turnip. In an oven-safe dish, mix with olive oil and (optional) a couple pats of butter, the rest of the onion peeled and chopped, and 5 or 6 garlic cloves peeled. Roast in a 425F degree oven for about 30 minutes.

3) 2) Bring 1/2 cup of quinoa and a cup of cold, salted water to a boil. Cover and reduce to simmer for 20 minutes.

4) When the quinoa is about half done, heat a generous amount of olive oil in a large skillet. Add 2 finely chopped carrots, a 1/4 of a finely chopped onion, and 1 large clove of garlic minced, a handful of raisins, cumin (about 1 tsp), powdered ginger, cinnamon, coriandar (each about 1/2 tsp) and salt to taste. Cook on medium-low heat until carrots are just tender. Add the cooked quinoa and a little more water, and cook for a few more minutes.

A glass of red wine, a slice of lemon, and dinner is served!

Total prep & cook time: about an hour
Approximate cost: $7.00 for two people