Verde, verde, mucho verde!

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


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

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

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

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

Curried brussel sprout greens with tofu

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


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

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

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

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

Sweet-potato-and-beet-loaf

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

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

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

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

Vegetable soup

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

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

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

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

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

Pissaladiere

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

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

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

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

Going nuts for dessert

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



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

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

Spicy sausage & fiddlehead stew

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


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

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

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

Total prep and cook time : about 40 minutes

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

Savory brown rice, take 2

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

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

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

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

Total prep and cook time: about 30 minutes

Total cost: approximately 2 or 3 dollars for two people

Pig in a blanket

Here's what you need:

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

Fiddlehead casserole

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

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

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.