Winter Soup (With Kale and Barley)

Hello everyone. It's been a long, loooong time since I've posted anything on here, so I figured it was time to fix that. Do enjoy!

So, you're getting kind of hungry. You check out your stash of food, and what do you find? Some chard that Molly grew that's threatening to go bad, some Guinness you're not sure you're ever going to get around to drinking, some veggie broth, a bunch of frozen beans, some dried barley, a couple taters and a couple onions. What do you do? If you're like me, make some soup!

Winter Soup (With Chard and Barley!)


Before I embark, the whole idea behind my soup-making philosophy is that you don't go out and buy ingredients for soup. You make soup with whatever you have. So if what you have is different from the ingredients I listed here, don't make it like I made it – do you're own thing. It's all simple and sustainable and stuff.

Second thing is I recommend making your own broth. All you really have to do is collect the not-so-edible parts of your vegetables in a bag and stow them in the freezer. Once you have a bunch, just boil them for a couple hours and throw the veggie bits in the compost. The only tricky part is determining what veggie bits will keep long enough (leek greens, onion peels, broccoli stems...) and what will slime up on you (bell pepper caps, leafy matter, etc.)


Ingredients
2 onions, diced
3 cups cooked kidney beans (you can use whatever kind. They can also just be soaked if you add them earlier in the recipe so that they have an hour or more to cook)
1 ½ cups dried barley
1 tbs butter
2 bunches of chard or other greens 2-4 taters
~2 quarts veggie stock
2 bottles of beer (I used Guinness)
2 or 3 bay leaves
4-6 cloves garlic, sliced on a bias
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp thyme
½ tsp tarragon

Procedure

1. Melt the butter in the bottom a large soup pot over medium heat. Add the onions and saute until translucent. Add about half the garlic and saute for another 2 minutes.
2. Add the broth, the beer, the potatoes and the barley (basically whatever starch you're adding to the soup). You want to make sure you have enough broth to cover the other ingredients (you can add water if you run out). If your beans have merely been soaked instead of cooked, add them now too.
3. Bring the pot to a simmer (I usually crank it up to high to do this, then turn it back down once it starts to bubble). Add the seasonings, the rest of the garlic and the kale and resume simmering.
4. Let the soup simmer for at least half an hour and stir thoroughly. Serve nice and hot in a bowl.

There you have it. I personally found it to get better over night once the flavors had a chance to really come together. It's excellent with some home-baked bread... but that's another recipe :)

What the Hell Do I Do With All This Kohlrabi??

A perplexing question indeed! Those readers who have taken part in a CSA (C0mmunity Supported Agriculture - where a farm sends you a portion of its produce every week) will either be familiar with this question, or a variation thereon (What the hell do with all this/these kale/turnips/dandelion greens/radishes???). Well, as in my new house we have one person working for a farm that gives us a CSA share every week, for my first week and a half we found ourselves with probably six huge kohlrabi on our hands, and it was largely up to me to figure out what the hell to do with them.

This is not so much of a straight up recipe post, because this question yielded multiple answers!

The first approach we took was to cut it up with some squash and bake it in the oven with butter, salt and pepper. This worked pretty well - the kohlrabi was still decidedly crunchier than the squash, but it all worked out and had a lovely dinner of it alongside some Lentil Shepherd's Pie.

Some time after that, I got my cookbooks in the mail and was able to look up kohlrabi in the Joy of Cooking, and discovered that, among other things, it had "an affinity for" tomatoes and cream. Thus, I tried making a creamy tomato sauce to go over pasta, in which kohlrabi was the main vegetable. This ended up working decently well, although the kohlrabi was still a bit too crunchy in this instance (it also featured alongside squash again). The basic process, however, was to start the kohlrabi sauteing over medium heat for several minutes, then add the onion, then the squash, and then the other ingredients, so that the kohlrabi got enough time to cook.

After this I got a bit more daring. We decided that we wanted to make chili for dinner, and what went in to give it some extra umph? Indeed! It was perhaps one of the world's first batches of kohlrabi chili! I followed a similar process here to the one outlined above: you have to begin by leaving the kohlrabi to saute over medium heat with a good dollop of oil or butter before adding anything else. The chili actually turned out really well! I would recommend this to anyone with a random kohlrabi or two on their hands, because it gets incorporated really well and just adds more foodiness to the chili. One thing to note, however: in this recipe we experimented with leaving the purple skins on, which didn't turn out badly per se, but we were spitting out skins the whole evening, so I recommend trimming them off.



The last use we came up with (after making another batch of pasta with kohlrabi in it) was actually to saute it in a skillet with other produce from the next CSA share, which might have (aside from the chili) been my favorite. Naming this creation "harvest jamboree", we began much like we did before, sauteing the kohlrabi alone. I then added potatoes, and let them sizzle together until both veggies got nice and golden brown on the outside. Then came the squash (zucchini, summer squash and patty pan), and once that was cooked I added several handfuls of frozen corn, some chickpeas, some garlic and four minced chilis (two jalapenos and two unidentified sweet peppers). We served up the final dish with sauteed greens (rainbow chard) and some grain left in our cabinets, labeled erroneously as "qinoa" but was actually irish oatmeal, but that still turned out to be yummy.



Well, that just about did it for the kohlrabi - the roots at least! There was still one use to list: broth! Since these kohlrabi all came with leaves still attached, I collected them in a bag and refrigerated them with all sorts of other vegetable matter and made a big batch of veggie broth with them. I can safely say that we used up that kohlrabi well and truly!

Well, while I would hope that in your cooking adventures you didn't find yourself with six kohlrabi to use, I certainly enjoyed this culinary challenge, and I look forward to the next one that cooking from a CSA presents me with!

Summer Salivations - Part II

Hello all!

So, it's been quite a while since Part I, but that is mostly because I've been very busy! This will, sadly, be my last post of something I cooked in Minneapolis, at least for quite a while, as I have officially made my move to Tacoma! I have spent much of my time lately in orientations and traveling and moving, so not so much with the posting.

However, I do hope to be creating/discovering and twisting some new recipes while I'm here (sadly without my access to the Seward Coop or the Midtown Farmers' Market, which will take some getting used to), and so I shall continue posting!

Pasta with Slow Cooked Peppers and Onions


This is a dish originally inspired by a Jamie Oliver recipe we found in a cook book from the library. That dish had a cool name, but I completely forget what it was, and this recipe is significantly different from it anyway, aside from the core method of preparation. If you prepare no other pasta recipe I have offered you, try this one! It is exquisitely delicious (if I do say so myself!).

Ingredients
2 bell peppers (I used one green and one purple; yellow and red are quite excellent)
10 crimini mushrooms
1 onion
four cloves garlic
salt and pepper
1 lb pasta (penne or rigatoni)
olive oil
balsamic vinegar
Parmesan cheese

Procedure

You may have noticed that the ingredients list here is not terribly different from a typical pasta recipe - the difference here is all in the preparation!

Step 1: The Mushrooms. Wash and slice your mushrooms and dice your garlic. Heat some olive oil in a skillet (cast iron if possible!) and saute the mushrooms with about half the garlic, plus a little salt and pepper. Set aside. This keeps them from getting soggy later on.

Step 2: The Peppers. Cut your peppers into longish strips. Get a few tablespoons of oil heating in the skillet over low heat. Add the peppers, some salt and pepper and cover. Cook the peppers over low heat for about 15-20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add more oil if it seems to be in danger of getting dry, Do not rush this process! This is where all the flavor comes from!


Step 3: The Rest. Slice up your onions (also in strips) and add them to the peppers. Cook these together for 10-15 minutes. This is a good time to put up some water to boil and begin cooking the pasta. After those 10-15 minutes, add a good couple slugs of balsamic vinegar, the rest of the garlic, and a hearty pinch of salt and pepper. Keep it cooking for another couple minutes, then turn off the heat and stir in the mushrooms, as well as a couple tablespoons of the pasta water. Combine with the pasta and serve with Parmesan. If the flavor feels off, add a little more vinegar or salt and pepper.


Tada! That's really all there is to it - I figure I must have riffed off this a little bit, but not terribly much. It's not terribly complicated, it just takes a little more patience than your average pasta dish. Again, I hope you enjoy this - it truly is worth the wait!

Portabella Burgers

So what is super fun to grill, easier to cook than a hamburger, twice as juicy, and doesn't involve the death of several cows to prepare? This dish! You know, this recipe is so simple that it doesn't even really bear my usual recipe format, but it is delicious, so try to squeeze it in before grilling season is over!

Basically, before you go outside to start your fire, get a big Ziploc bag. Take your portabellas, trim the stems and wash them (if you want to preserve the flavor as much as possible, you can wash them by wiping them with a damp paper towel) and place them in the bag. Pour a few glugs of olive oil and a glug or two of balsamic vinegar, plus a good bit of salt and pepper, and coat the mushrooms with these things (shake to distribute). Push out as much extra air as possible and seal the bag, leaving the mushrooms to marinate for an hour or so as you ready your fire and wait for the perfect coals.


Once the coals are ready, grill face down for a few minutes, then flip them right side up, adding cheese if desired.


After another few minutes, serve on a lightly toasted bun.


And that's it! I hope you enjoyed all the recipes from Minneapolis this past year, and I hope you enjoy the recipes from Tacoma this new year! Let's also hope Emily sends some recipes from Heqing, eh?

Cheers!

Iain

Summer Salivations - Part I

I could not possibly have made that sound less appetizing. Okay, I could have titled the post "disgusting pukations from the planet Hurl," but I also don't go around philosophizing with an anthropomorphic tiger, and I think only six year old boys who do that are allowed to utter that sort of phrase.

I digress (as if any of my posts weren't digressions already). I'm here today to share with you, crammed into a two mondo posts, four dishes I've played around with this summer! Three are pastas. Are you surprised? I'm not - for some reason, summer is the time when I can't get enough pasta. It becomes all about the fresh ingredients, so why not?

Anyway, here we go!

Homemade Peppery Papardelle with Sauteed Zucchini and Mushrooms and Sundried Tomatoes


This dish here was fun to make, pretty much impromptu, when my brother Alexander came up to visit. I basically took inventory of the kitchen and made a sauce to accompany this papardelle out of whatever was around.

Ingredients
4 cups durum semolina
5 eggs
at least 2 tablespoons freshly ground black pepper
pinch of salt

2-3 zucchinis (and/or other summer squash), chopped into chunks
olive oil
5-10 crimini mushrooms
1/2 cup sundried tomatoes
salt and pepper
a hefty handful of fresh basil
a few cloves of garlic (duh)
shallot, diced

Procedure

1. Prepare the pasta. If you want a more detailed description of how to make pasta, see several of our earlier posts. Make the semolina into a mound, mixing in the salt and pepper. Make a well in the middle and crack the eggs into it. Carefully break the yolks with a fork and mix, slowly incorporating more and more of the flour as you go, reinforcing the walls as necessary. Once the liquid is gone, continue mixing by hand until the dough holds together. Form into a ball, wrap in plastic wrap (or if you're as much of a hippie as I am, in a used plastic bag), and store in the freezer for an hour. Go watch an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.



2. Roll out the pasta. If possible, conscript younger brother to do a lot of the rolling. Aim for about 1 mm thick. Once it's rolled out, cut into strips about 1/2 and inch (maybe even a little wider) wide. Set aside, and put up some water to boil.


3. Get the sauce ready. While younger brother is nearing the end of his pasta rolling, cut up your vegetables and, if necessary, rehydrate your sundried tomatoes. Heat some olive oil in a skillet and saute the zucchini and set aside. Then saute the mushrooms, and also set aside. Prevent younger brother from munching everything you just sauteed. Set about heating a good few tablespoons of oil, and saute your shallot. After it turns translucent, add most of the garlic and the sundried tomatoes. Now is a good time to put the pasta in to boil. Put the remaining parts of the sauce together once it's simmered for a few minutes, saving the remaining garlic and the basic for last. Turn off the head after giving it a few stirs. The pasta should only take a few minutes, so test it to see if it tastes done. Once it's al dente, drain it and combine pasta with sauce in a big bowl. Top servings with plenty of Parmesan.


Tada! This one is a good recipe for an evening where you have a good few hours to devote to the food, but believe me, it's worth it. The result is one of the most savory pasta dishes I've ever sampled!

Classic Tomato and Basil Pasta... with Three Colors of Tomato


Nothing says delectable summer meal like some pasta with olive oil, basil, garlic and tomatoes, right? Right. Except when you live by a co-op, and so you have access to locally grown heirloom tomatoes that come in a staggering variety of colors!

Ingredients
1 lb pasta of your choice
3 heirloom tomatoes (I went with green zebra, purple and classic red)
1 hearty handful of fresh basil
3 cloves garlic, minced
olive oil
salt and pepper
Parmesan

Procedure

1. Boil the pasta and chop the veggies.


2. Heat up some olive oil on low heat. Add about half the garlic and the salt and pepper. Let it simmer for a few minutes, then add the rest of the ingredients, stir and turn off the heat. Combine with the pasta and top with Parmesan.

Easy, right? :)

Okay, I'm blogged out. See you soon for Part II.

Red Wine Ravioli

Well, summer is here, the sun is shining, holy crap it's hot out even in Minnesota, and it's time to pluck fresh herbs from our garden, buy produce from the Midtown Farmer's Market (how we missed it) and make pasta from scratch. A lot.

After making quite a lot of linguine and farfalle, we decided to try an elusive shape we'd never tried before: the mysterious ravioli...

Red Wine Ravioli

Ingredients
about 2 cups durum semolina flour
about 1 cup bread flour
3 medium eggs
red wine as needed
15 mushrooms
1 red shallot
olive oil
1/8 cup grated Parmesan cheese
4 cloves garlic
salt and pepper to taste
hefty pinch oregano
small handful chopped basil

Music Listened To
chances are we put an iPod on shuffle and enjoyed whatever ridiculous thing came out

Procedure

Step 1: The Pasta. Pile a mixture of semolina and bread flour on a clean counter top and make a well in the middle. Crack your eggs into the well, taking care not to let it spill over the edge. Use a fork to break the yolks and mix them.


Very, very carefully, start to incorporate the flour from the edges of the well into the mixture, bolstering your walls as necessary. If it breaches (which it usually has when we do it) it's OK - just stop the egg from spilling all over the place and bring it back in its place (we did say this should be a clean counter top). Now, this will probably start to get pretty dry once everything gets mixed together, so this is where the wine comes in. Just give it a little glug every time it isn't holding together. I wouldn't go more than a quarter cup (if that), but do not fear the wine. If you're especially avid, you could even replace one or two of the eggs with an equivalent amount of wine.


Once it's mixed and the dough holds together in one big lump, wrap it up in plastic and throw it in the fridge for about an hour.

Step 2: The Rolling. This step really doesn't warrant much description, but it does take a heck of a lot of time. Divide the dough into two equal balls and roll it out (we went by hand with a rolling pin, but feel free to use a machine. If you're a wuss) until you have two 1 mm thick sheets of pasta. Don't just go by the thickness on one side - try to get it as even as possible.


Step 3: The Filling. Chop you shallot and mince your garlic. Heat oil in a skillet over medium heat and add the shallot. Saute for about 3-5 minutes, then add the garlic and finely chopped mushrooms. Add several glugs of wine - the mushrooms will just drink it up. After the wine is almost soaked up, add the herbs, salt, pepper and Parmesan and mix. You can leave it on low for a while if you like, but it's effectively ready to go once the cheese melts and is thoroughly mixed in.


Step 5: The Assembly. Lay out one of your pasta sheets on a cutting board and trim into the shape of a rectangle. Place about a teaspoon of filling in one corner, leaving about half an inch border from the edges. Place the next dollop also half an inch from the edges, a whole inch away from the first dollop. Continue adding dollops until you fill the rectangle with dollops, each separated by an inch, each no closer than about half an inch to the edge. Use a brush or your fingers to brush water onto the pasta that isn't covered by filling. This will help glue the ravioli together. Lay the other sheet on top. Gently use your fingers to form it into mounds over the dollops of filling.


Once you have all your pillows of filling set up, trim away the edges and cut the pasta into squares. Press the edges of the squares together to form a good seal (or else you may let water into your scrumptious filling).


Step 6: The Yummies. Put some water up to boil and prepare a sauce (I might suggest using the red wine sauce from my earlier post, although we just did a basic tomato marinara sauce).


Once the water is gently boiling, turn down the heat to medium or medium-high and drop in as much of the ravioli as will comfortably fit. We did ours in about two batches. You will be able to tell they're done once they're puffy and float to the surface. Scoop them out and put in the next batch.


At last, at long last, place ravioli in a bowl, slather with delicious sauce, and top with some freshly grated Parmesan.


Sorry to follow up all that typing with such a lousy photo of such a delicious dish. This is probably the first homemade pasta we ever made completely forsaking a recipe. While this sounds like a lot of work (indeed, it is more work than most of our recipes), it's honestly not as difficult as it sounds. The trickiest part is honestly just managing your time. This dish is more fun with a partner to help, but an adventurous sort could handle it on their own.

Have an excellent evening, and enjoy!

Mujaddara

Hello,

A long time ago (uh, probably about 2 years ago) my (Iain's) mother sent me a recipe for a dish that involved lentils, rice and onions that had turned up on the internet. A very simple affair, but it sounded good. Despite its relatively simple concept, the first several times I and my housemates tried to make it, it seldom neared the superbly scrumptious, no matter how I tarted it up with various spices and seasonings. After finally realizing that something just plain wasn't quite right, that I was missing something in the execution, I put this dish on the back burner for well over a year.

[No, I did not literally place it on the back burner for over year, although now that I typed that sentence, the concept does sound rather amusing. One can hardly have one's deposit reimbursed on a burned down house.]

A couple months ago, Bozzie, who had previously written down my doctored-to-the-point-of-butchery recipe as "Lempke's Lentils and Rice Thingy" in his recipe notepad, stumbled across a different version of the recipe. By a different version of the recipe I mean it was almost the same in almost every way. The main difference was that at this point, we were much better cooks than we had been those almost two years ago. This version got written down as "Esau's Favorite" in the notepad, that being an alternate name for the dish. He prepared it as instructed (although substituting Bulgar for rice), and the results were sublime. I've prepared it a few times since (without the help of a recipe, as I quickly became unable to find the one he used) with Bozzie, with Emily and by myself, and with the basic addition of liberality and patience, the ugly duckling of a recipe had turned into a... oh good grief, I'm not really using that cliche am I?

Lentils and Rice/Mujaddara/Esau's Favorite


Ingredients:
A little more than a cup of dry lentils
About 3/4 of a cup of rice (preferably white) or Bulgar wheat
About a quart of water or broth
2 medium to large onions
3/4 cup olive oil

Music Listened To:
The sound of onions sizzling in olive oil

Procedure:

1. Put the lentils in a pot and cover them with water or broth so that the broth goes at least an inch over the top of the lentils. Cover and set them to boil on medium high heat.

2. As the lentils do their thing, cut the onions in half, and then into thin slices (ideally actually a little thinner than shown in the picture below). Meanwhile, heat up the olive oil in a skillet (yes, you really will want the whole 3/4 cup listed above - the onions and oil are where the majority of the flavor comes from, so don't skimp!) and toss the onions in to sizzle. Turn down the heat and stir them occasionally for the next 20-40 minutes until they are crispy and a nice caramely color. This is one of the ways I went wrong earlier - skimping on the onions (only putting in one, with only a little oil) and rushing them (I think the original recipe said to let them do their thing for about 10 minutes. For the size of the strips I had cut, this was too short a time).


3. Once the lentils have gotten nice and soft, put in the rice and add at least a cup and a half more broth. If this doesn't cause the rice to be well-covered by liquid, add more until it is sufficient. Add salt and pepper, cover and boil on medium heat for 15-25 minutes, or until the rice is soft. With this dish, the softer the better, so gauge your proportions semi-liberally and carefully (I know, it sounds contradictory, right?) and try not to check on it until it is likely to already be done, as uncovering or stirring may interrupt the cooking process. This is the other way in which I went wrong before. I did not always give the rice enough water or broth, and I only let it boil as long as I would boil ordinary rice. The idea is to get it quite soft.

4. Put it together. Add about half the onions and oil to the lentils and rice and stir them in. Use the remaining onions and oil to top each serving. Season with a little salt and pepper.

As you've probably gathered, the procedure is quite simple, but requires a delicate hand. I encourage you to give it a try, and if it doesn't work the first time, try, try ag... more cliches? Seriously?

The Best Brownies

Alright, so I (Emily) know that I've been doing the bulk of the posting lately, and that the vast majority of said posts have involved baked goods of some sort or another. Allow me to take this moment to explain.

On July 1st, I am leaving the Twin Cities to spend two weeks with my family in Georgia.

On July 14th, I am leaving Georgia to spend two years with a bunch of strangers in China. (I'm one of 30 international teaching fellows who will join up with 30 Chinese teaching fellows to form the China Education Initiative's 2010-12 cohort. Eek!)

China doesn't really do the whole baking thing, and when I studied abroad in Beijing my junior year I remember my friend's Chinese roommate was unable to handle the sweetness of dark chocolate. In other words, in a little over a month I'm going to have to begin finding some way to compensate for my lack of baking delicious things on a regular basis. For the time being, I'm baking up a storm.

These particular brownies came about because I found a ghirardelli 100% cacao bar for $2.50 and couldn't resist, so I decided to make something extra special and went on a quest for "The Best Brownies." Of course, after half an hour's pouring over both cookbook and internet recipes, I didn't find anything that struck me as the ultimate chocolate treat. So instead of being reasonable and picking out one of what were probably several close seconds, I decided to have a baking adventure and make it up as I went along. It's quite simple and amazing. Also, I was so excited I forgot to take pictures, but it looks like a brownie when it's done. Trust me.

Chewy Chocolate Fudgy INCREDIBLE Brownies
Ingredients

• 4 oz unsweetened chocolate (1 ghirardelli baking bar)
• 4 tsp. cocoa powder
• 2 sticks butter (1 cup), softened
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 4 eggs, at room temperature
• 2 tsp. vanilla extract
• 1/2 tsp. baking powder
• 3/4 cup flour
• 2 TBS cocoa powder
• 2/3-3/4 cup chocolate chips
• a pinch or so of salt
  

Procedure

• Melt the chocolate and 4 tsp. cocoa powder together. I used the double boiler method. Let it cool for at least 8-10 minutes.
• Preheat the oven to 350°F
  
• Cream the butter and sugars together until well blended. You shouldn't see any "spots" of butter. Depending on how soft the butter is, this'll take anywhere from 1-5 minutes
• Stir in the eggs one at a time, then add the vanilla extract.
• Gently whisk or stir in the melted chocolate.
• Stir in the baking powder and flour, then add the 2 TBS cocoa powder. Everything should be smooth and a rich brown.
  
• Fold in the chocolate chips.
• Pour the batter into a well-greased 9"x13" pan. It should be thick. You will need a spatula to get out the last of it. Spread the batter evenly, and sprinkle a little bit of salt over the top.
• Bake for 25 minutes, checking after about 20. When a toothpick comes out with a few crumbs sticking to it, they're done.
  
• Let the brownies cool in the pan, placed atop a baking rack.
  

In terms of cooling times, you can eat them as soon as 10 minutes after they come out of the oven, but I'd say wait at least half an hour. These brownies honestly didn't hit their peak until day 3--when they tasted almost as though they were spiked with some kind of liqueur, they were so flavorful and chocolaty. Truly amazing.

Oh, and you'll need some milk. Or water. Or ice cream. Or something!