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Green Tomato Salsa, Beef Rib Roast, Quesadillas

I’m leaving on a trip in a few days, so I am trying to make sure I eat everything perishable in the house.

First thing up – getting rid of the last of the green tomatoes that I picked when the garden season was ended by frost.

I split them in half, lay them on a baking sheet cut side down, and roasted them while I was also roasting a butternut squash. I wasn’t too sure what to do with them (because I knew I didn’t want to fry them), but I figured I could probably do anything to them I would do with tomatillos.

Green Tomato Salsa

Remove the peels from the roasted green tomato halves, and dice the tomatoes. Put the tomatoes and all of their juices into a container (but go ahead and compost the skins). I was using 1 very large one, 2 medium, and two very small. But juggle that around in your head and fix up the proportions to whatever you have – I certainly wasn’t being scientific.

To the diced tomatoes, I added roasted garlic pods. I just finished off a head, but I’ll say it was 1/3 of a head of garlic. Take the time to break up the garlic with a fork so that it will incorporate smoothly.

I added half a serrano pepper, seeded and minced.

1 tspn white balsamic vinegar, and then the juice of half a lime (squeeze a little, stir, taste, and then repeat until it tastes right).

Season with salt, pepper, nutmeg, a tiny bit of cinnamon and a decent amount (maybe 2/3 tsp) of oregano.

And it wasn’t quite perfect, so I looked in my spices and pulled out my newly acquired (but not on purpose) Penzey’s Turkish Seasoning – which includes salt, cumin, garlic, half-sharp paprika, black pepper, Turkish oregano, sumac, and cilantro.

It was tasting pretty good, but then I let it sit for a couple hours, and now it tastes amazing. This is the first preparation where I have liked green tomatoes.

~*~

A couple weeks ago, the grocery store had a sale on rib roast. Now usually I am cheap with meat and I’ll only buy meats that are under $2/pound without bones. But for some reason, rib roasts catch my eye when they occasionally go on sale at under $5/pound.

So there I was with my $25 piece of meat, and I was busy that weekend and I became rather worried that I was going to have t go bad before I had a chance to cook it.

Then I had a half day of work the Monday after the weekend to go shopping with my mother (because there was no way I was willing to brave a mall between Thanksgiving and Christmas any time other than 9am on a Monday morning). I came home and brilliantly thought to pop in the roast before I left for work at 5pm so that it’d be ready when I came home. (and that way, I wouldn’t have to start cooking the thing at 9:30pm).

Beef Rib Roast

Slice a few garlic cloves in half lengthwise. Plunge the knife into a meaty area, and then stuff garlic into the slit.

Now use the knife to lift a section of the fatty layer on top apart from the meat, and then feed a sprig of rosemary into the resulting tunnel (so the fat will rend, get flavored by the rosemary, and then season the meat).

I dusted the top of the layer of fat with garlic powder and some salt.

Then I put the roast into a very slow oven (250F) for about 45 minutes/pound.

(And don’t forget to save the ribs as you eat the meat away for stock-making later)

~*~

Quesadillas

I use quesadillas as a way to go through small quantities of leftovers. So an ounce and a half of cheddar cheese, 2 ounces of the beef rib roast meat, the green tomato salsa, half a seeded serrano pepper, and some lettuce, made a pretty delicious couple of quesadillas.

Why I am eating samosas for breakfast – Meusli

My breakfast is sitting in my refrigerator. At home.

But let me tell you about my new-found joyous quick breakfast. Okay, so fine – I was introduced to it back in early summer by [redacted], but it took me a while to believe it was good in more than just a novelty way.

Meusli

(but not that crazy healthy-looking stuff they’d offer for breakfast in Switzerland if you were really lucky and they were offering more than brick-like rolls.)

put 1/4c oatmeal (the real stuff that takes half an hour to cook) into a container.

optional: Add some dried fruit – I like using cranberries, figs, and/or dates… probably I’d like a whole bunch of other stuff, too, but that’s what’s in my pantry.

Add 1/4c orange juice. And since I was doing this from memory, I add my dairy product now. But on later checking, [redacted] adds her dairy the next morning. Your choice. 1/4 c dairy product (I have been using 2% milk, but just about anything is good here: skim milk, whole milk, light cream, heavy cream, nonfat yogurt, full fat greek yogurt, cottage cheese, sour cream – or no dairy and just more fruit juice).

optional: Add a sprinkling of cinnamon or nutmeg or some such spice.

Close up the container and chuck it in the fridge overnight.

Next morning, toss in some nuts. Maybe toasted nuts. One kind of nut or several… or no nuts.

Also, shred half an apple into the container (or, you know, into another container and then dump it into your meusli) – just wash the apple, cut it in half, and shred it coarsely – skin on and using the core as the place to rest your fingers. I suppose you could also shred carrots or some other excitingly healthy thing. But you stir it all up and then you can carry it to work, and there’s enough juice and all that the apple doesn’t get brown.

Eat and enjoy – you’ll find that all the fruit makes it plenty sweet, and it has protein from the nuts and dairy. And it requires no special storage (assuming you have non-leaking containers).

But… it does require remembering to bring it with you.

Good thing one of my coworkers was kind enough to bring in food to share with the department this morning.

More soup – Roasted Autumnal Things, Vegetarian Black Bean Chili

So that’s not the best name for a soup, but it seemed descriptive of what I made last Sunday.

Roasted Autumnal Soup

First, a few days before, I caramelized a bunch of smaller onions (peeled, stem ends trimmed, quartered almost through to the stem end but not quite) similarly to the Caramelized Shallots I have been adoring over at Smitten Kitchen – only with less butter, so completely differently. Let’s say I remembered to add a small chunk of butter, maybe 2 tablespoons. And then I splashed over some balsamic vinegar because I love it and hadn’t bought any red wine vinegar since a vicious squirrel invaded my kitchen and broke my last bottle. A bit of brown sugar (mildly infused with lime zest because that was the brown sugar easiest to hand), some salt and pepper, and a loose covering with tin foil. Cooked until the liquid was just a bit too far past syrupy to save for another use (sadly).

I think that was also the day I split the delicata squash in half (and saved the seeds) to roast. Actually, this was all done on the long planned day of roasting, so it must have been the same day. Afterward, I pulled the peel off and put the chunks in a container in the refigerator for future use.

Also, that same day, I roasted several heads of garlic.

So, slice up a couple of the caramelized onions, cut the squash meat into smallish chunks, and toss a few cloves of roasted garlic into a pot and pour in some vegetable stock to cover.

Cook cook cook.

Season with a bit of salt, some nutmeg, ground pepper, and a bit of ground coriander.

Once everything is cooked tender, puree in a blender. I am only just starting to be convinced of the whole blending soups school of thought, and I will say that it works much more smoothly when you are making single portions of soups rather than large batches that’ll last a week.

So return the blended soup the a rinsed pot. At this point, I tasted it and decided it was definitely lacking a high note. Should I add fruit? Can’t spruce it up with some vinegar because it already has that from the caramelized onions. You know… I bet a buttery, plump roasted scallop would really set this soup off well. Only I don’t have a good source for seafood.

So I set a container of nonfat plain yogurt to drain.

Once it was a bit drier, I lumped a quarter of a cup into the bottom of my soup bowl. To the yogurt, I added a pinch of cumin, a pinch of chipotle powder, a pinch of ground pepper, and a sprinkle of salt. Stirred that thoroughly, and poured over the hot soup. I gave it a few stirs to swirl the yogurt through, but I did not mix it completely. And it turned out just right.

~*~

Now I have to think of a soup that will benefit from some whey as the liquid component.

~*~

But for tonight, I am making a pretty standard black bean soup that ended up being fairly strongly based on my chili recipe. I just started going for that on automatic.

Vegetarian Black Bean Chili

Set a cup of black beans to soak the night before. (Or open a can and rinse)

In 1 teaspoon of olive oil, cook down 1 onion (small dice) and half a dozen baby carrots (cut to about the same size). One they start to soften, add 1 clove garlic (minced), flesh only of 1 serrano pepper (minced), 1 caramelized onion (sliced – see recipe above), 2 roasted garlic cloves.

Once the vegetables are soft, add 1/4 tsp cumin, 1/2 tsp ground coriander, and a pinch of asafoetida. Stir together and let heat for a minute.

Stir in the drained black beans. And for some reason, I keep feeling like cooking them a minute or two before adding the liquid. I don’t know if there is any benefit, but it doesn’t seem to do any harm.

Add vegetable stock to just cover. Once the liquid is simmering, add 1/2 tsp ground thyme, 1/2 tsp ground oregano, 2 tsp paprika, and a pinch of sugar. Oh, wait… I didn’t use sugar. My buckwheat honey has started crystallizing, and I still have about half the jar left, so I stuck a knife in and pulled out about 2/3 tsp of honey and used that, instead. Right. That should be awesome.

I let it cook down for about an hour, until it started looking a little dry, and then I added a can of diced tomatoes (juice and all). I also added a pinch of ground chipotle (you don’t want to add it too early because even a small about of hot pepper will build intensity during slow liquid cooking). And then I let it simmer until I was about ready to go to work.

When I get home and heat it up, it will probably require one finishing touch – about a teaspoon of flour (whole wheat, why not) shaken together with some lukewarm water. Add that to the soup and then cook it all for another 20 minutes, and you are good to go.

Mmmm soup – Italian Arugula and Potato Soup

I am determinedly Not Sick.

And so I am eating a lot of soup.

Last night, there was another success from The Soup Bible by Debra Mayhew (which, incidentally, a review says all the recipes are culled from her Soup Encyclopedia, but since I still haven’t exhausted this version and I paid about $5 for it, I’m not looking to trade up just yet)

Italian Arugula and Potato Soup

Only, of course, I didn’t make it exactly according to the directions – partly because I just wanted to make 1 serving… and partly because I didn’t feel like calculating proportions.

So 1 big red-skinned potato, cut into 1 cm dice, gets dumped into my 2 quart saucepan (so it’s deeper than 1 layer and it’s harder to make too much soup) with a sprinkling of salt. Add homemade vegetable stock until just covered. Bring to a boil and simmer 10 minutes.

Finely dice a carrot (3-4 baby carrots) and add to the potatoes and stock. Simmer for another 5 minutes.

Tear arugula leaves and drop into the pan. Simmer for 15 minutes longer until the vegetables are tender.

Add 1/4 tspn cayenne pepper and salt & black pepper to taste. (At this point the recipe has you tearing stale ciabatta bread and adding that to thicken, but I managed to have little enough stock that the soup was already fairly thick.)

And then it has you toasting garlic slices to top the soup. That would have been better, but I didn’t want to wash an extra pan, so I pulled out the head of roasted garlic from the fridge and chucked a could cloves into the soup.

Ended up quite a success.

~*~

Now I have some black beans soaking and I’m looking at soup recipes for broccoli to try with broccoli rabe.

And I bought orange juice.

But really, not sick at all.

Carrot Ginger Coconut Milk Soup

Carrot Ginger Coconut Milk Soup

Orangette had a post that briefly mentioned Carrot Ginger Soup with Coconut Milk, and it just sounded like the best idea ever. Now, I think that soup had a much higher concentration of carrots and it looks like it might have had more dairy fat, but mine turned out rather tasty, too.

I started off with half a can of coconut milk – the full fat foreign stuff where it is actually possible to fry ingredients in it like the directions in Indian cookbooks. Real coconut milk was a revelation, but it’s also hard to get enough coconut flavor with it without having way too much fat. I ended up giving my remaining unopened cans to the Thanksgiving food drive.

So heat the coconut milk until it separates. Add a wee knifetip of asaphoetida and inch of ginger (peeled and minced). And peel three carrots, cut them into rough chunks, and add them to the coconut milk. I only had three, but this soup would probably do well with several more carrots. Simmer for a bit, and then add stock (I had vegetable) until the volume doubles.

Then I decided I wanted a sort of curry seasoning, but neither the green thai curry paste in the fridge nor the generic indian curry powder in the pantry seemed right (nor the vindaloo… and probably not the garam masala), so I decided to make my own random spice mix:

  • 1/8 tsp kala jeera
  • 1 black cardamom seed
  • 3 fenugreek seeds (yes, i know these quantities are ridiculous, but I was working by smell)
  • less than 1/8 tsp cumin seeds
  • 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
  • 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
  • 1/4 tsp ground coriander
  • 2 black peppercorns

Grind that all up with a mortal and pestle and tip as much into the soup as smells right. (I ended up using all of it, but I hadn’t expected to.) I also added a pinch of salt (note: my stock didn’t start off with any salt at all).

Cook cook cook

Taste – at this point I added more salt and a squeeze of lime. And half a teaspoon of creamy peanut butter to mellow it out a bit.

Cook a bit – pour it into a blender. When smooth, it seemed finished, so it went straight into a bowl. I topped it with some toasted almond slivers, ground chipotle, and a handful of young arugula. A dollop of sour cream or yogurt would have been nice, too.