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Month: October 2008

Cookbooks review – Georgeanne Brennan (+ bonus Creamy Peas recipe)

One of the food blogs I have read in the last month, has been raving about recipes from various cookbooks written by Georgeanne Brennan. So I checked my library and its newly massive cookbook collection, and I had a look at the two they have.

Down to Earth – her exploration of root vegetables. Instead of trying to be comprehensive, she instead offers a few recipes each for potatoes, jerusalem artichokes, jicama, lotus root, carrots, radishes, salsify, celery root, horseradish, turnips, leeks, sweet potatoes, and onions. And so if you are going, “OOoooo… I wonder which recipe she chose to highlight onions instead of just counting them as an ingredient as everything… maybe something with really sexy caramelization,” you’d be wrong (and you’d be looking for Smitten Kitchen, instead) – onions just sometimes show up in a lot of recipes, as they do, not really highlighted. I think, I ended up returning the book after looking through it for an hour. It didn’t even make it home. Because while it had a really lovely section talking about the ingredients, the food wasn’t anything I couldn’t figure out on my own. Jicama – apparently, no, there’s no way to cook it or give it flavor, just cut it into little strips and pretend you like the crunch while it bulks out your salad. Horseradish – did you know you could add it to sauces for meat? You get the idea. So by all means, you should grab someone else’s copy and look through the first chapter, but not so much spending money on your own copy.

Great Greens – Suffers from pretty much the exact same problem, but I can talk about it more since this one made it home with me, and I even bookmarked three recipes that might be interesting (Bacon-wrapped cabbage rolls with blue cheese and walnuts, Taco salad with cabbage and red snapper, and Shepherd’s pie with three greens). Actually, you know what? I was going to pan this one just as much as the other one, but then I went to the farmers’ market today – and there was a woman with greens I’d never seen before but recognized from this particular cookbook, so I bought them and have reached for the cookbook to give me ideas. So this one is not a total wash.

So her glossary of greens includes: arugula, bok choi (only one variety, I think), cabbage (many varieties), chard, chicories (belgian endive, radicchio, curly endive/frisee (which I hate with a passion, and she apparently loves with a similar passion), and escarole), kale (oddly, only the lacinato variety, instead of the kind I see cheap and plentiful at the stores), lettuces (crispheads, butterhead, iceberg, looseleaf, romaine), mâche, mesclun (separate from the lettuces), spinach, and watercress. With this variety, you’d think there’d be some pretty exciting recipes, yes? Well, I listed three for you. And that’s about it for me. I mean, there’s a lovely roast chicken with cornbread recipe, served with a garnish (kid you not! Just a garnish) of mâche. There’s some pretty standard soups you’d see anywhere. Salads… with lettuces. Starters such as: make a nifty dip and then serve it on individual leaves. And healthy side dishes like: gratin of belgian endive with pancetta or savoy cabbage gratin or creamed spinach gratin (isn’t that a little redundant?).

So, yeah, it’s not a keeper, but it’s worth a slightly longer term borrow.

~*~

Meanwhile, today for lunch I made fried rice. For some reason, it is ingrained into my psyche that fried rice must contain peas.

Well, about a year ago, I found a great sale on canned vegetables and I only really trusted two kinds: peas and corn. So I bought 5 cans of each. I have been very happy with having cans of corn on hand to dump randomly into soups – I only have one left. However, I have 3.75 cans of peas left.

The only recipe I have for canned peas is from Meghan:

Make some bacon. With the bacon grease, make a béchamel sauce. Dump in peas. Maybe half a teaspoon of brown mustard. If there are any pieces of the bacon still uneaten, crumble them on top. If you were being really fancy, there could be another pot getting dirty making some pasta to go with that, but we aren’t that fancy.

But for every other purpose, I have learned that I much prefer frozen peas.

I mean, sure, there are fresh peas, but I have only seen them in the early spring at the farmers’ market in Baltimore where you have to wake up early in order to fight your way to the head of the line before the peas run out.

So in conclusion, I think I can reconcile myself to losing $1.50 to donate the remaining three cans to some Thanksgiving food drive and then let myself buy some proper frozen food.

Cheapass slacker dinner – Meatballs

You all had something really sexy for dinner (especially if you were breaking a fast), right?

I was feeling a little lazy.

So – into a small skillet

1 tsp olive oil
1 small onion, cut in half and then sliced fairly thinly
2 jalepeno peppers, flesh cut off the seeds, and then sliced thinly.

Hold on. Let me take a moment to talk about green peppers. You may have noticed that in my pantry I never ever have green bell peppers, but I am likely to have just about any other color. Yep. That’s true. I love bell peppers in any variety except green. They just taste bitter to me, in not a sexy way like bitter leafy greens have started to. Actually, I lie. I also don’t like any color bell pepper from the farmers’ market. Fresh grown, fully flavored bell peppers taste like ass… or, well, green peppers, really. Plus, they end up being so thin that you can’t even get a happy roasted pepper out of them. So give me some mass produced colored bell peppers from the produce warehouse.

But! Jalepeno peppers. I can use them just like my mother uses green bell peppers. Instead of slicing them, just cut the flesh off of the seeds – there’s no need to do it the hard way. And then then most times the jalepeno isn’t that spicy (depending on the time of summer and how much it was shaded from the sun by the plump pepper a little higher up) so you can use a couple of them. No, really, I’ve started putting jalepeno peppers in almost everything I cook up with onions.

So back to the ingredients

2 cloves of garlic, sliced
6 turkey meatballs, thawed

About those turkey meatballs. I can’t remember whether I’ve given you that recipe yet or not. So my grocery story pretty regularly has a sale on ground turkey meat – 3lbs for $6.99 – so I have started buying lots and then packaging it so I can freeze it. That means hamburger patties or meatballs. There are a pound or two of ground turkey meat, a handful or two of breadcrumbs (or matzoh meal), garlic powder, sausage seasoning (which contains salt), and an egg or two depending on the consistency – and, yes, this is judged my mixing it all up with my hand instead of a fork. Roll into small meatballs – 1 tsp/ball. Bake at 350 for about 15 minutes, drain on paper towels, toss into a bag and freeze.

And cook that up real good until it is all getting burny edges.

Take some sprigs of fennel (why do all of the fennel recipes call for throwing away the herb parts and just using the bulb? I am all for using the whole plant), remove any stiff stems, and cut into small piece – drop your scant handful into the meatballs.

Pour off onto a small plate, realize that the meatballs taste slightly freezer-burned, so grate an ounce of sharp cheddar cheese (from the farmers’ market) on top.

The only thing that would have made this tastier (aside from some noodles in a creamy sauce) would have been some mushrooms. The eating kind.

Hell’s Kitchen

No, not the one in New York.

A bit before the third Lord of the Rings movie was publicly released, I went to Minnesota to visit an internet friend and see the third movie. And while there was a lot of good food on that trip, some delightful culture (highbrow and lowbrow – including a delightfully communal book arts center), and some wonderful people – the one thing that really stuck (other than how much I wish to see that same friend again – because she’s amazing) was this restaurant we went to for breakfast near the end of the visit (because if it had been earlier in the visit, I might have attempted another meal there).

Now before I talk about this restaurant, let me assure you that fine dining in the twin cities is an art form. In fact, I don’t think I have been anywhere else that has taken the business lunch to such a high art form that most restaurants have black and white cloth napkins so that they can match the color to blend in with your suit pants, be they khaki or pinstripe.

So – Hell’s Kitchen

Full of kitsch. Not only is it full of hellish glee, but for breakfast all of the servers are attired in their pajamas and other nightclothes. And they seemed happy.

There were some hard choices on the breakfast menu. My friend chose the Lemon Ricotta Hotcakes, and they were some of the finest pancakes I have ever stolen off of someone’s plate. I tried something completely out of character. I mean, I’m a bagel girl – I think everything breakfasty tastes better on top of a bagel. If I’m getting an omelet, it’s going to be cut into little bites and mushed into the cream cheese on top of my bagel. You get the idea.

Instead, I decided to be daring and I tried the hot cereal. No, really. Well, not really, since it wasn’t really oatmeal or farina or grits. Nope, it was rice. Wild rice with roasted hazelnuts, dried blueberries, sweetened cranberries, heavy cream, and maple syrup on the side. And this converted me to the warm cereal side of the cold morning breakfast side of the force.

It’s almost cold enough to be fixing this – and I’ve got some wild rice in the pantry and a recipe that needs some cranberries coming up.

Pepping for a longish trip – clearing out perishables

Food list
tonight for dinner:

  • retrieve laundry
  • make bacon
  • 3 ounces of pasta
  • cook together: olive oil, onion, garlic, fried leeks, jalapeno pepper, kale, red pepper flakes, diced tomato
  • cook on the side: small yellow squash with Penzey’s Pasta Sprinkle (in pan with the bacon grease poured out)
  • stir into kale at the end: 2 sliced scallions, 1 roasted red pepper, crumbled bacon, 1/3c shredded parmesan cheese
  • freeze at least half of the kale/pasta as lunches
  • pop turkey meatballs in the freezer
  • put remains of beet/coconut milk soup in compost
  • pack
  • empty trunk of car

tomorrow for breakfast:

  • slice the last scallion and mix it with 1.5 ounces of cream cheese
  • microwave/toast bagel
  • while making up all the rest of the collard greens (kenyan style)
  • freeze half the greens on top of the leftover rice as a lunch
  • do dishes
  • vacuum, scoop litter, fill up extra food bowl for Tika, take everything that won’t melt to the car on the way to work

food list

food I have
Protein
chicken breast of dubious vintage
roast beef from weekend before last
chicken stock (needs to be boiled and put in a new container)
1/2 slice bacon (yes, there’s more in the freezer, but that’s what is thawed)

Produce
roasted garlic (1 1/2 heads)
roasted tomatoes (2/3 cup)
container with the seeds and juice from the tomatoes I roasted
roasted red peppers in their own juice (1-2 peppers’ worth)
fried leeks
fresh cilantro
1 whole coconut
muhammara
hot peppers (mostly green jalepenos)
1 small leek
bulb of fennel
3-4 leaves of kale
5 little yellow squashes and 1 medium
carrots
6 potatoes
1 delicata squash

Bread
Nope, I ate all the bread. Well, there ate tortillas and the bagels in the freezer, but those don’t spoil, so they don’t ever count.

Meals
Well, I was going to ask you all for recipes that would combine the winter squash and the fennel, but then I came across this recipe for delicata with spiced pecans and dried cranberries (I’ll need to acquire some cranberries for that plan.)… but don’t let that stop you from offering suggestions anyway. Especially for the fennel.

Thursday, October 2
pasta with the rest of the kale and the medium yellow pepper. Also turkey meatballs from the freezer. And some lemon juice. Huh – I didn’t notice lemons when I made this list, but there are usually some hiding out in my fridge… if not, I’ll find out how important they are to the recipe. Also nab some more of those jalepenos from my neighbors that had been on the bush long enough to turn red; those are awesome. Ooo… maybe I shall put roasted tomatoes in this.

Friday, October 3
Make hash from roast beef and potatoes. Also add fried leeks, roasted garlic, and two jalepeno peppers.

BUY LETTUCE – it’s on sale at my grocery until Friday. Can I just mention how much it bothers my that it is a physical impossibility to stock up on lettuce when it is on sale? I cry my bitter tears of woe.

Saturday, October 4
Harry Potter’s naked bum! Er, I mean, I’ll be eating out. At Red Lobster.

Sunday, October 5
breakfast: make more awesome cream cheese with roasted red peppers and roasted garlic. I am so glad this will be my last batch of the peppers because ever since I perfected the technique it has been very difficult not to just eat it ALL RIGHT NOW! Nom!