BS Pie

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

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

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

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

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

Beet greens and carrot salad

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

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

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

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

Verde, verde, mucho verde!

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


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

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

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

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

Curried brussel sprout greens with tofu

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


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

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

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

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

Sweet-potato-and-beet-loaf

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

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

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

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

Vegetable soup

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

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

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

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

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

Pissaladiere

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

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

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

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