greens – Page 6 – no counterspace

party at the work place – Spinach Dal

My boss bought us a deli platter for lunch, and I had three tasty half sandwiches.

Now I am all full and I still want another corned beef sandwich because I never get those…

only I have to save my appetite for the amazing indian food a co-worker is cooking for some of us tonight because a woman is leaving on sabbatical. And the woman making the indian food is know as a very good cook – I think she used to own a restaurant.

Such difficult choices for me!

ETA: recipe from the Indian co-worker
Spinach Dal
Take yellow lentils (tur dal or arhar dal)

and boil until they are halfway cooked

Add a box/bag of frozen spinach and continue to cook.

In a separate pan, fry:

* small white “lentils” (gram dal or udad dal)
* fresh shredded coconut
* a couple red chilis
* asofoetida

When cooked, blend smooth with 5 or 6 spoonfuls of the spinach mixture.

Then combine everything together an finish cooking to desired consistency.

Cowboy Chicken Fajitas w/ Mango Salsa, Ma Po Tofu variation, Pumpkin & Lentil Mulligatawny

I am so hungry. Every now and then – two or three times a year, I’ll be at a point where it feels like I can eat infinite quantities of food and still be hungry (or at least able to eat more). It’s a bit weird since just last week, I was getting full at the drop of a hat (or fork, as the case might have been), but I can roll with it.

I have fun food things going on.

I made an amazing dinner last night.

It started off with the acquisition of a mango.

So I looked through my spice rack (which is painfully small due to the amount of space int he apartment) and came up with one of the odd spice blends I have adopted due to my mother’s neglect. Cowboy Barbecue Rub. Who can resist that name? Its ingredients are: chile powder, garlic, onion, black pepper, cilantro, cumin, oregano, basil, cinnamon, clove, cayenne – and it always smells like it has dry mustard in it, but apparently it doesn’t.

So I pulled out one of the packages in my freezer with two chicken breasts and dumped a lot of the seasoning in there – and then left it to thaw/marinate in the fridge for a couple days.

Last night, I started off making a mango salsa by slicing purple onion very thinly, cooking it until caramelized, adding a little bit of the seasoning, and then adding the diced mango to the pan just briefly. Then I poured it into a container and added red wine vinegar (less than a teaspoon, I think) – popped that in the fridge.

Then I cooked the marinated chicken on slow heat because I was worried about the whole breasts cooking through – I put some aluminum foil loosely over the pan to keep some of the moisture in.

I assembled all the other ingredients I had to make the meal – red oak leaf lettuce, sharp cheddar cheese, tortillas, sour cream, and an avocado – and then I had an anguishing decision (and called both my mother and Meghan for advice): do I serve it as a plated meal, a quesadilla/fajita kinda of thing, or as a salad?

Oh, yeah – there was also a random sweet potato that I cut up and turned into french fries while I was making the meal.

Both my advisers agreed that it should be fajita night. Oh, man – great decision! MMmmmm!

There’s some salsa and a breast and a half of chicken left over, so I put them together to co-mingle until I turn them into another meal.

~*~

So tonight, I am thinking of putting together ground beef, mustard greens, and possibly an eggplant. To me, this says spicy chinese food. None of my chinese cookbooks agree with me. I think I just don’t have the right cookbook.

So plan is – clean as much of the greens as I can be bothered to do. Pickle them (cook briefly in boiling brown sugar and rice vinegar). Then brown and drain the beef. Add onion, garlic, and eggplant. Add some five spice powder. Perhaps mix some spicy stir fry sauce with some oyster sauce so that it doesn’t blow my head off. Add greens.

I have a feeling that this will taste more like an experiment than something good, but we’ll see.

~*~

When I start cooking tonight, I shall also be putting a pumpkin in to roast and lentils to soak because I’ll be setting up the soup that [redacted] suggested in the comments to the last entry. I don’t have lemongrass, but other than that, I’m good – limes are even on sale this week.

It sounds like I won’t actually be using a whole can of coconut milk (it’s just a small pumpkin) – so either the rest will go with the chicken and mango somehow (Oooooo) or I can make sweet coconut rice.

Okay, so I need to do a quick inventory of which perishables will not be used up in this clever plan.

produce
1 zucchini
3 apples
2 (peeled!) sweet potatoes (yeah, so either I vastly underestimated the size of a cut up sweet potato or overestimated my capacity – basically I had three potatoes, so that’s how many I peeled) – they might end up wasted… or maybe I’ll make some random mashed potatoes.
probably some of the mustard greens will be left over
1/2 head red lettuce
~~scallions~~ (can totally go in the chinese food)

meat
1 cup beef stew
~~duck stock!~~ (duh! So freeze half in the beef stew container once you empty it, and use the rest to make the pumpkin lentil soup)
lots of meat is on sale this week. I need none of it.

bread
breadcrumbs – so these aren’t really perishable, but I have leftover bread I dried to turn into bread crumbs, but my container is all full.

dairy
2% milk
light cream
greek yogurt (which I bought without a plan because it was there!)
sour cream
cream cheese
gorgonzola
italian seasoned cheddar (open!)

Best Day in a Long Time – Roasted Butternut Squash Soup of Amazingness

I had a good massage
I have tried several times since I moved to find a good massage therapist without much success. So I found out this was spa week, when spas offer a variety of enticing packages for $50, and decided to try again.

I decided to try the Total Serenity Day Spa because they were close and easy to find and because their website wasn’t too woo-woo.

The reception are was fairly busy, and I spent a while sitting on a comfy chair (which I had not expected to swivel!) waiting to check in. Then I was shown to a restroom with elegant lockers for my stuff and a robe and flip flops I was supposed to change into. Every other massage place I have been has just had me disrobe in the room, so I was a bit dubious… but the XL robe fit with room to spare. I was quite comfy. The shoes, however, were too big and made a funny noise.

Once in the robe, I was shown to a different waiting room with plush couches, a fountain, and barely any lighting.

Then my massage therapist showed up. Lana. Oh, man. I have never before had a therapist who could work on my lower back without making walking incredibly dubious, but she was good. And she scritched my scalp with her strong little fingers. MMMMmmmm… Really a very good massage. The only part that was a bit iffy was that when I was on my back, she put the single folded towel that had been under my ankles to support my knees, and I really wanted more of an angle.

The sad part was that she then spent the massage asking me about my job and asking for advice on changing her profession. Apparently, when she emigrated from Russia some 20-25 years ago, she had been a nurse but was unable to pass any of the competency exams here because she did not put much effort into learning English – especially since much of her time was taken up with rearing three young children. So she ended up in massage. But it is hard work, and she is on her feet much of the day, and the leaning over hurts her back.

So I asked whether the other massage therapists at the spa would give each other massages – and she said no! They did not. Instead, once a month or so she’ll go to the Hyatt on Broad street for a spinal Sunday and pay for her own massages.

I went for a walk
When I left the spa, the weather was all mild sunshine and raw winds. I walked over two blocks to check on [redacted] and then walked with her to Rittenhouse Square. It was so hard not to stop somewhere for a decadent lunch, so I had to keep reminding myself that I had soup on the stove and a loaf of bread that I had started in the bread machine before I left for the spa.

After we parted ways, I hopped on a bus to go home.

I had an amazing lunch
And waiting for the soup was the best plan ever! It was amazing soup!

So I’d had a brilliant idea that I could make a creamy chowder-ish/bisque-ish soup and then put roasted butternut squash in it. Seriously – brilliant plan!

So I had grilled onions in a bunch of butter, added flour, added some milk, and then added some chicken stock. Then I scooped the butternut squash out of its skin and cut it into chunks.

Then I added a whole pod of roasted garlic.

Salt. Pepper. There was also some rosemary, thyme, and savory.

Then I dumped in a bunch of frozen corn straight from the bag.

Then more roasted things – roasted red pepper and one hot pepper that had been roasted.

And I finished by slicing three or so collard green leaves into small, thin pieces.

So I had that with fresh pumpernickel bread.

It was like an orgasm in my mouth.

So good.

*yawn*
*stretch*

Food lists

So I haven’t had much interest in cooking the past couple days. This is a problem, since I have a lot of lovely produce waiting to be eaten… or go bad. I’m hoping some lists will get me more in the cooking mood.

lists! of food!
Produce
onions
last of the farm grown tomatoes
~~a couple small turnips~~
hot peppers
~~a few tomatillos~~
red potatoes
collard greens
~~spinach~~
2 zucchini (now grilled)
carrots
turnip greens
1/3 butternut squash
grapefruit
most of a can’s worth of refried beans

dairy
greek yogurt!
sour cream
gorgonzola
italian seasoned cheese (open)
mild cheddar (open)
~~2% milk (shouldn’t last much longer)~~

meat
~~cooked chicken (1 meal)~~
cooked ground beef (1 meal with a extending)
ground beef
chicken stock (about 8 4 cups)
(and chicken breasts are on sale this week, so I’ll buy some of those)

Meals
I want to focus on gravies and cream sauces: a) because they are tasty, and b) because I’m about to pitch about 3lbs worth of store-brand flour because it was cheap and makes nasty bread.

Hee – let’s call this Chicken Florentine:
Creamed spinach – clean and cut all the spinach, cook an onion and some garlic in 2T butter, add 1 heaping Tablespoon flour, make roux, add spinach.
I can add the cooked chicken to that. And a hot pepper.
I could add pasta to that to make a real meal, or I could just eat it with a spoon. I’m thinking spoon.
ETA: Done. Wasn’t as tasty as I had hoped. No idea what went wrong.

Soup:
I’ve been wanting something bisque/chowder-ish with corn. And I have corn in my freezer. So onions, white roux, and then… how about butternut squash chunks? Roasted garlic. The rest of the roasted bell pepper I have in a jar with oil in my fridge. And some collard greens cut into thin ribbons. Sound decent? Does it need anything else? ~~I could roast the turnips and tomatillos for a side dish.~~ This sounds like it needs fresh parsley.
ETA: Started. I have the cream base with squash in it. I have a sprig of rosemary floating in it today. I roasted some hot peppers yesterday, so maybe I shall add them as well.

Hamburger Helper:
Shut up – it makes a great starting point.
Onion, garlic, ground beef. Zucchini. Collard Greens. And shred cheese on top and slices of tomato.

Kenyan Collard Greens:
greens, tomato, rice. (get my 5 spice powder back from my mother’s)

What’s left? Tomatoes, Potatoes, Turnip Greens, Refried beans, chicken stock – and I haven’t made use of the greek yogurt that was so hard to find!

All right – here’s a thing. These are fresh and tasty tomatoes, so I don’t want to cook them. I refuse to use the last tasty tomatoes in a dish where canned would work just as well. I’ll probably just end up eating them while I cook other things… but still.

Ummm… how about open-faces quesadillas – I know those have a name.
Tortilla, topped with a thin layer of refried beans, topped with shredded cheese, topped with tomatoes. With sour cream. Probably I won’t be able to eat enough to use up the refried beans, but maybe put a dent in them.

greens. Ummm… More soup? Turnip greens, diced potato, and carrots in chicken stock. That actually sounds rather dire.

Ummm… I could pickle the rest of the turnip greens and wait until I have leftover roast pork to make more of the excellent soup I made last night. My parents have a roast to make, so that should be soon.

Freeze the chicken stock.

Okay… Moussaka?
Layer a casserole with a mixture of ground beef and eggplant and potato slices, use lots of seasonings, pour a can or two of tomatoes over all, and serve with yogurt on the side?

That should do.

Kenyan Collard Greens

Before my lovely and friendly neighbors moved out, they had me over for dinner and served collard greens. The husband, who cooked, told me that it was a traditional recipe from Kenya, but that the spice/spice mix he used was one available at a couple markets around town – available in either powder or a cube.

The resulting greens were smooth and velvety and tasty.

After he left, I tried making it myself with a cube of bouillon from Nigeria hoping that was the seasoning he meant. It was close, but not quite right and too salty.

Last night I tried again, and got something that tastes spot on perfect – Woo!

Kenyan Collard Greens (a version of Sukuma Wiki)
start some nice white rice to cooking (you know whether you like a lot of rice or a little)

(Optional step – his wife was a vegetarian, but he told me meat was traditional – any kind of meat) Cut up two slices of bacon into 1/2 inch strips and scatter them in a pan. Start to cook them.

Dice small on medium onion and add to pan once the bacon is fully cooked and almost crisp. Add garlic when the onion is mostly cooked and you are almost ready to add the other ingredients.

Wash carefully 5-7 leaves. Shake them off, but don’t try to get them perfectly dry. Fold in half and cut out the spine. Slice lengthwise into two or three strips depending on the size of the leaf. Stack the strips. Now cut widthwise into narrow ribbons. Add the ribbons to the pan.

Season with two healthy dashes of 5 spice powder and half a bouillon cube crumbled.

Peel and dice one tomato and add.

Serve over rice.

ETA (11/12/2010): I just found another blogger who discovered this recipe – The Noshery makes Sukuma Wiki