Fearless Kitchen

Recipe: Braised Tofu

Recipe Source: Song, Young Jin.  The Korean Kitchen.  Anness Publishing, London, 2010 p. 138

Here's another recipe for which pictures are completely lacking.  Again, I remember taking them.  I think they must be on someone's phone.  I guess that's okay.  The important thing is that I still have the notes from this recipe.  I write my notes down on these little pieces of paper which works fine when I'm in the kitchen - as long as I can transcribe them or write up the recipe very quickly.  If I cannot write up the recipe for, say, a month, the piece of paper either gets lost or gets eaten by the dog (no joke) or ceases to make sense.  After all, what does "1 bx ps" really mean?

Anyway.  Vegetarian dining doesn't have to be a penance and tofu doesn't have to taste like whale snot.  Done correctly, and by "correctly" I mean "in a way where it is not pretending to be some sort of animal product" tofu can be an excellent source of protein.  Unfortunately almost all tasty vegetarian and vegan food seems to come from points east of Italy, starting with Greece and really picking up momentum in India.  Tofu, of course, comes to us from East Asia where they have many dishes that in no way, shape or form involve "chicken" or "beef" or "cheese" or any other "food."  It's tofu, it is what it is and it's good.

I made a few changes to the original recipe.  I used light tofu here because I am very anxious to lose weight and I will take whatever help I can get at this point.  I used vegetable broth in place of seafood stock to keep the dish vegan.  I also omitted the honey.  I added a habanero because I intended to serve this just to my husband, although that's not what actually happened.  Finally, I added peas.  An entire 1 pound bag of peas had been thawed for my daughter, but no 2-year-old needs to just eat a 1-pound bag of peas for dinner.  I took the leftovers and added them to the pot so they wouldn't go to waste, and I think that while that's not necessarily the most authentic way to present the dish it was still delicious.  I'd like to point out that our dried kelp actually came from Maine, which makes it much more local than some of the imported dried kelp I've seen on the market.

Braised Tofu (serves 4; approx. $1.16/serving)

1 block firm light tofu, diced

1 cup vegetable stock

3 tablespoons soy sauce

1 sheet dried kelp, chopped

8 garlic cloves, crushed

1 onion, finely chopped

1 serrano chili, sliced

1 red chili, sliced

1 habanero, sliced

1 tablespoon chili powder

8 ounces frozen peas, thawed (approx.)

Equipment:

• Large saucepan

1. Combine the tofu with the stock, 1 cup water, the soy sauce and the kep.
2. Add the garlic and bring to a boil.  Cover and boil 5 minutes.
3. Add the onion, chiles and chili powder.  Reduce heat and simmer, uncovered, 10 minutes further.
4. Serve.

 

Recipe: Honey-Oatmeal Sandwich Bread

Recipe Source: King Arthur Flour Whole Wheat Baking.  The Countryman Press, Woodstock, 2006 pp. 197 - 8.

So, for my daughter's birthday I decided not to do anything too fancy.  I mean, she's two.  It's not like she'd remember a big elaborate meal, and it's not like that would really be appropriate for the middle of the day anyway.  Furthermore, I was going to be entertaining relatives the whole weekend.  I didn't have time do do something big and elaborate.  I decided that I would do some fairly simple hors d'oeuvres - vegetables and hummus, baguettes with cream cheese and smoked salmon, that sort of thing - with a sandwich board.  I decided that I would bake my own bread for the sandwich board.  This may seem like a big deal, especially if you haven't made bread in quantity.  The thing is, though, bread is mostly waiting.  Take some stuff, mix it together, wait.  Deflate it.  Shape it.  Wait again.  Put it in the oven.  Wait some more.  Remove from oven.  Wait.  Wait wait wait.  Eat.  Bread freezes very well.  If you plan enough ahead of time you and have an appropriately-sized freezer you can make enough bread to feed quite a lot of people right there in your home kitchen.  As I type this I'm in the middle of a project - 75 pounds of bread for a historical re-enactment event.  Making a few loaves a day it isn't an onerous task, and not only is homemade bread much healthier than store-bought (fewer chemicals, etc) it's much, much cheaper.  I knew I could pull off bread for this party.

The problem is that I wanted a variety of breads.  I made some white bread because there are, for some reason, quite a few people who actually prefer white bread.  I don't get it myself.  I've read that white bread may contain compounds that help you sleep, but I've only seen that in one place and I'm not sure I'm buying it.  I've so gotten over the white-bread thing that now when I see raw white bread dough I find it a little nauseating.  It looks kind of like paste and I suppose that's not far from the truth.  Anyway, I made some normal whole wheat sandwich bread, and then I decided I would make some rye sandwich bread.  I had a new cookbook I was dying to try out - Peter Reinhart's book using the delayed fermentation method for whole grain breads.  I tried to make one of the rye bread recipes and it was a total failure.  I'm fairly certain the problem is with me and not the book, but either way I didn't have time to try it again.  Since the delayed-fermentation method takes several days to complete I couldn't use it again.  In desperation I flipped through my stand-by baking book until I found something that appealed to me and here it is.

I can't see why I haven't made this sandwich bread before.  You can't go wrong with honey and oats.  The smell was phenomenal, the crumb delicious, and there were no leftovers.  I did make a few small changes - I'm still not so confident as a baker that I'm willing to risk big changes.  I used all whole-wheat flour instead of mixing in some white flour.  I'd love to tell you that I did it out of some kind of principled objection to white flour but the truth is that the sack of white flour lives in another room while the whole-wheat flour is on the counter.  I omitted the optional nuts since we're still not supposed to let Fearless Baby eat nuts.  I used active dry yeast instead of instant.  I've always thought it was just an even exchange, but when I was reading the above-mentioned Peter Reinhart book he said specifically that you need to increase the amount of yeast by 25% when you make that change.  When I'm using recipes I've made before with an equal exchange I don't mess with it, but going forward I'm going to follow that advice.  (That would be on p. 81 of Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads, if you're looking to check me.)  I needed to increase the liquid to accommodate the switch to 100% whole grain, but since I needed to wake the yeast up anyway I just dealt with it there.)

Honey-Oatmeal Sandwich Bread (makes about 10 generous slices; approx. $0.14/serving)

10 ounces boiling water

3 1/2 ounces old-fashioned rolled oats

1 ounce butter, cut into 3 pieces

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

3 ounces honey, plus about a teaspoon

11 ounces whole wheat flour

1 ounce nonfat dry milk

2 1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast

1/4 cup lukewarm water

Equipment:

• Small bowl
• Stand mixer with dough hook attachment
• Loaf pan
• Cooking spray

1. Combine the boiling water, oats, butter, salt and 3 tablespoons butter in the bowl.  Stir and set aside until lukewarm.  This doesn't take nearly as long as I thought it would, just so you know.
2. Combine the yeast, 1 teaspoon honey and the lukewarm water in the small bowl.  Set aside until the yeast is foamy.
3. Combine the flour and milk in the bowl of the stand mixer.
4. Add the oat mixture and the yeast mixture.  Knead until the dough is soft and smooth.
5. Cover and set aside until doubled in bulk.  I like to do this in a new clean bowl, but that's probably because I need to use the stand mixer right away for another loaf.  I cover with plastic wrap; I've seen some recipes call for a clean dish towel.
6. When the bread is doubled in bulk, grease the oaf pan with the cooking spray.  Punch the dough down and shape it into a log as long as the loaf pan.
7. Put the log into the pan, cover and allow it to ruse until it rises 1 1/2" over the lip of the pan.  If your kitchen is normal temperature it should take about 1 to 1 1/2 hours.
8. Near the end of the rising time, preheat your oven to 350°.
9. Make a cut lengthwise down the length of the loaf.  It doesn't have to be a super-deep cut, just down to about the rim.
10. Bake 45 minutes or until done.  I use an instant-read thermometer to determine doneness - anything over 190° is done.
11. Cool completely before cutting.

Recipe: Stuffed Cabbage

Recipe Source: Holmin, Dalal A. & Maher A. Abas, M. D.  From the Tables of Lebanon.  Book Publishing Company, Summertown, 1997 pp. 86 - 7

Growing up I worshipped my grandmother - my mother's mother.  She was the best cook in the whole world, and the best human being at least as far as I was concerned.  (I've never met anyone who had anything to say to the contrary either, so as far as I'm concerned I was right.)  She was not a fancy cook - far from it, she prided herself on the simplicity and "ordinariness" of her cooking.  Of course nothing ordinary ever came out of her kitchen, but she wasn't the kind of cook to experiment with the exotic or unusual.  She knew what she wanted to make and she knew exactly how to make it happen.  Her house always smelled divine and I used to spend hours upon hours in her kitchen, wrapping myself up in the smells of Paradise.

There was one dish she never liked to make, and it was stuffed cabbage.  She never liked to make it and I was never even really encouraged to eat it.  Not that I can remember anyway.  My mother liked it, though, and every once in a while she would make it to gratify her daughter.  What I remember most about those times was the smell.  The perfumes of Paradise were exchanged for the stink of Hell, and if I go to Hell when I die I am certain that it will smell like cooking cabbage.  That smell turned me off cabbage for decades and until I started this website I would not permit cabbage in my home.  I've been working my way toward the stuff slowly but surely.  When I was entertaining relatives for my daughter's birthday party I decided that maybe I would try to serve them stuffed cabbage.  My mother, at least, would probably like it.

As it turns out, everyone liked it.  Everyone but me, that is.  I've figured out what it is besides the hideous smell that I don't like about cabbage.  It is sweet.  I do not do sweet.  At least now I know, right?  I made a few changes tot he recipe as you might well expect.  I used brown rice instead of white because that's what I keep around.  My husband is allergic to mint so of course that was right out; instead I used dill.  I couldn't get my hands on white onions so yellow were used and I increased the garlic on general principles.  My mother cannot eat cinnamon so that was left out too, and I reduced the amount of olive oil on general principles.  I didn't have tomato puree.  What I did have was my own home-canned tomatoes, which I pureed myself.  If I used a little more than originally called for, well, lycopene is good for you.

Like I said, everyone liked it but me, but it didn't turn out the way I envisioned.  The cabbage rolls did not stay rolled.  They mostly fell apart.  That's why I'm listing this as a "fail" even though it was well received.  I guess appearance counts for less than some writers would have us think!

Stuffed Cabbage (serves 6; approx. $1.99/serving)

1 cup uncooked brown basmati rice

1 large bunch fresh parsley, finely chopped

1 bunch fresh dill, finely chopped

1 bunch scallions, finely chopped

8 cloves garlic, chopped

1/2 cup fresh lemon juice

2 teaspoons kosher salt

1 teaspoon ground allspice

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 cabbage, leaves separated and deveined

8 more cloves garlic, chopped

1 1/2 cups canned whole tomatoes with their juices

Water

Equipment:

• Large deep pot
• Large bowls
• Immersion blender
• Heat resistant plate

1. Rinse the rice and drain.
2. Combine the rice with the herbs, onion, first 8 cloves garlic, spices, lemon juice and olive oil.  Mix well and set aside.
3. The original recipe called for the cabbage leaves to be briefly blanched.  I tried that.  It made me curse and didn't work for the purpose intended.  So I stopped.  It's your call.
4. Spread the cabbage leaves out on a work surface of some sort.  Fill with some of the filling toward the middle-bottom of the leaf.  Fold in the sides and roll up.  Put it in the pot.  Stack in layers.
5. Combine the remaining garlic with the tomatoes in the other large bowl.  Use the immersion blender to puree.
6. Cover the layers of cabbage with the pureed tomatoes.
7. Add water to the pot.  The water should come up 1/2 inch taller than the tallest layer of cabbage.
8. Weight the leaves down with the heat-resistant plate.
9. Cover and bring to a boil over medium heat.
10. Reduce heat to low and simmer 20 minutes.
11. Serve.

Recipe: Sweet Potato and Cauliflower Gratin

Recipe Source: Bocar, Shira and Lindsay Funston.  "The Side Show."  Whole Living no. 61, November 2011 p. 99

Wow, here's another recipe that's been lingering in my to-do box for months.  I think I've just been blocking it.  I made this as a Thanksgiving side dish.  You may be looking at the title and thinking, "But Fearless, you hate sweet potatoes!  And you've always been deeply suspicious of gratins."  Both of these statements would be true.  I have always been deeply suspicious of gratins.  I've had a few that I've liked but at the end of the day I just don't trust 'em.  And I hate sweet potatoes with a passion usually reserved for centuries of ethnic feuding.  But certain things are expected at Thanksgiving and well, sweet potatoes are an important part of the winter culinary landscape whether I like them or not.  They grow very well here in New England, for example, and they are full of all sorts of nutritious gobbledygook that I'm not really qualified to discuss.  All that means is that, in general, people want sweet potatoes.  I figured that Thanksgiving was a good time to add them to the table, if only because there would be enough other things on the table that I would not be forced to touch them.

I was not, in fact, forced to touch them so I can't tell you for certain how they turned out.  I know there were no leftovers which is usually a good sign.  My daughter liked them as she would anything orange.  I made a few changes to the original recipe as I'm sure you expected.  I omitted the crispy sage leaves.  I know it's possible to crisp them in the microwave but I just didn't trust it and frankly given the health-conscious mindsets of most of my Thanksgiving guests I didn't think they would even want "crispy" anything.  I did increase the non-crisp sage because sage is good.  I used two percent milk because that's what we keep on hand - only my daughter actually drinks the stuff and I'm not taking up valuable real estate in the fridge with something she won't drink.  I can't for the life of me remember why I decided to use chickpea flour here, but my notes say very firmly that I did and so I must believe them.  You can use all-purpose or (better yet) whole wheat.  My cheese, finally, was Pecorino Pepato instead of the Parmesan required by the original.  It seems like a minor change but frankly decent Parm is prohibitively expensive whereas I can get pecorino relatively cheaply.

Sweet Potato and Cauliflower Gratin (Serves 8; approx. $3.22/serving)

2 tablespoons olive oil

3 tablespoons chickpea flour

1 cup 2% milk

1 cup water

1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon grated Pecorino Pepato

About 20 fresh sage leaves, finely chopped

Kosher salt and black pepper to taste

2 pounds sweet potatoes, peeled and sliced

1 head cauliflower, peeled and sliced

Equipment:

• Baking dish
• Cooking spray
• Saucepan

1. Preheat oven to 350°.
2. Heat the oil in the saucepan over medium heat.
3. Add the flour and cook for about a minute.  The flour may start to change color and that is a good thing, just don't let it get too dark!
4. Add the milk and water very slowly, whisking constantly.
5. Cook, whisking constantly, until the mixture is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon.
6. Remove from heat.  Stir in 1/4 cup Pecorino and the sage.  Season to taste.
7. Lubricate your baking dish.
8. Pour about 1/3 of the sauce into the bottom of the baking dish.
9. Layer about 1/2 of the sweet potato and cauliflower slices onto the bottom of the dish.
10. Repeat with the remaining sauce, then the remaining vegetables, then the rest of the sauce.  Sprinkle the remaining cheese on top.
11. Bake about 1 hour.
12. Increase temperature to 425°.  Bake another 20 minutes.
13. Let stand 10 minutes.
14. Serve.

Recipe: Whole Wheat Barley Bread

Some of you may have noticed that nothing has been posted for a few weeks.  It's not that I haven't been cooking.  It's that I haven't been writing.  Life has become a lot more complicated recently - mostly in good ways, or ways that could be reasonably interpreted as good anyway - and I haven't had more than a few moments to sit down and write anything up.  After a few weeks of frustration I asked my husband to stay home with our daughter for a day while I went off-site with a pile of sources and my computer.  Free from distractions I can focus, more-or-less, on writing up recipes.  Hopefully I can get my backlog under control!  Anyway, this recipe dates back to November 23.  That's right.  November 23.  That's Thanksgiving, for the record.  I haven't had a chance to write this one up since Thanksgiving.  It's almost Valentine's Day now.

There's a lot of tension about bread lately.  It was brought formally to my attention when I was reading Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads, which I received for Christmas, but I guess it's been hovering around the back of my consciousness for a while.  As a culture we went through a phase where carbohydrates were considered Bad.  I can kind of see it, actually.  Carbohydrates provide energy to the body.  When life was more physical - when people walked where they needed to go, and mostly worked at physically demanding jobs in factories or on farms - we needed lots and lots of carbohydrates to keep us going through the day.  Now most folks in the West at least - especially in the United States, much of which was designed around the car - people drive where they need to go and work at desks.  We don't need as much energy, but our culinary culture hasn't caught up with the times.  Energy means calories, and what the body can't eat it stores as fat.  A loaf of bread a day was fine a hundred years ago.  Now - not so much.  Bread, like most other starches, contains lots of calories.

The thing is, we still need energy.  We need less of it but we still need it, in quantities that depend on our activity levels and metabolisms.  I have no metabolism to speak of.  My husband's metabolism works best with lots of carbs, and if I try to cut them out there is Woe and Drama.  I decided to compromise by using whole grains.  Whole grains contain fiber, which everyone needs.  There are other nutrients in there, vitamins and other things the body needs.  I'm not a nutritionist, I'm a kind of harried mother, so I'll leave it at "fiber and stuff."  I try to make things that are healthy for my family and just eat less of the things with a lot of calories.

I developed this recipe myself, although I had a lot of help.  One source I reached for fairly frequently is the Basic Bread recipe from The River Cottage Bread Handbook by Daniel Stevens.  I don't feel confident enough in my own knowledge to know what proportions of flour and salt and whatnot without recourse to some sort of guidance.  It went over pretty well.  No one complained about the whole grain bread.  I feel like the barley flour gave it an interesting flavor, although that could be in my head.  Still, it was a decent bread and you could do a lot worse.

Whole Wheat Barley Bread (serves 10 generously; approx. $0.31/serving)

11 ounces whole wheat bread flour

11 ounces whole wheat all-purpose flour

13 ounces barley flour

2 1/2 cups lukewarm water

1 tablespoon active dry yeast

1/2 tablespoon honey

1 1/2 tablespoons buttermilk powder

Equipment:

• Stand mixer with dough hook attachment
• Bowl
• Baking sheets

1. Combine the honey, water and yeast in the bowl.  Set aside until the yeast is frothy.
2. Combine the remaining ingredients in the bowl of your stand mixer.
3. Add the yeast combination and knead on the lowest speed until the ingredients have blended more or less.  Add more water or flour as needed.
4. Increase speed very slightly and knead until the dough is smooth and just tacky and forms into a ball.
5. Cover and let rise until doubled in bulk, about 1 1/2 hours.
6. Punch the dough down.  Divide it in half and shape into two loaves.
7. Cover and set aside until doubled in bulk, about 1 hour.
8. Preheat your oven to 425°.
9. Make three slits in the top of each loaf.
10. Bake 40 minutes, rotating the loaves halfway through baking.
11. Cool completely before eating.

Recipe: Baghdadi Yogurt Dip

Recipe Source: al-Baghdadi, Muhammad b. al-Hasan b. Muhammad b. al-Karim.  A Baghdad Cookery Book.  Charles Parry, trans.  Prospect Books, Totnes 2005 p. 88.

I have two copies of A Baghdad Cookery Book.  One is translated by A. J. Arberry.  It came out, I believe, sometime in the 1930s and was later included in a much larger volume entitled Medieval Arab Cookery.  The other was published as its own volume and was cited above.  This was the first book of medieval recipes I ever owned.  It has, unfortunately, been lost somewhere in the recesses of my house for quite some time.  Recently the house decided to cough up the book.  I don't know why.  It was just suddenly on the shelf again.  This happens sometimes, I don't know why.  Anyway, I prefer to work with this translation rather than the other.  I don't feel that I'm qualified to comment on the quality or accuracy of the translations themselves, but the style of English in the Perry translation is much easier to work with.

Anyway, the book made its re-appearance in time for me to start work on our New Year's Eve celebration.  I wasn't necessarily setting out to make a medieval dish for the party, but I happened to be flipping through the book and saw the recipe and decided that it looked good. I like that about a lot of the recipes from the medieval Middle East.  I mean, medieval people had taste buds too, and food for the classes that left recipes didn't need to taste like dust.  But a lot of the medieval Middle Eastern recipes fit right in with modern tastes and preferences.  You can mix them right into a modern dinner or party and no one would ever know the difference.  Try this one at your Super Bowl party.

As is usually the case when I'm trying to re-create a medieval recipe I didn't make a lot of changes.  The original wanted mint.  My husband is allergic to mint so I left it out.  I substituted tarragon.  The two are nothing alike of course, but I really like tarragon and it at least has a similar strength to mint.

Baghdadi Yogurt Dip (serves 16; approx. $0.51/serving)

1 large leek, finely chopped

4 celery stalks, finely chopped, leaves separated

1 small bunch tarragon, finely chopped

1 large tub Greek yogurt

1 cup chopped toasted walnuts

Kosher salt to taste

1/2 teaspoon ground mustard

Equipment:

• Large bowl

1. Combine the leek, celery stalks, celery leaves, tarragon and yogurt in the large bowl.
2. Mix well.
3. Sprinkle the salt, mustard and walnuts over the top.
4. Transfer to a serving vessel and serve.

Recipe: Chickpea and Delicata Squash Stew

Whenever we host Sunday dinners I try to have at least one vegetarian entree on offer.  I'm not a vegetarian and I have limited patience for other people's food choices, but people have different reasons for going vegetarian and not all of them are matters of personal choice.  I know a couple of people who are actually allergic to meat, and a couple of people besides myself who are allergic to certain types of meat.  A vegetarian entree offers them something, and if no vegetarians show up then we can all enjoy a healthy side dish.  After all, vegetarian food shouldn't be a penance.  If the dish acknowledges the actual, natural flavor of the ingredients without pretending that it's meat then there is no reason to feel deprived by a lack of meat.

Right.  Soapbox away.  This was not intended to be an original recipe.  When I set out to make it I had an issue of Better Homes and Gardens open in front of me.  Then I realized that the author wanted me to jump through an awful lot of hoops to make this dish.  She wanted the squash to be roasted.  She wanted the beans to be cooked a certain way, and she wanted a certain type of tomato, and so on and so forth.  All of these things took time.  I did not have time.  What I had was squash, chickpeas, hungry diners and a knitting lesson waiting for me to finish cooking.  I looked at the recipe again.  I was coming down off a nasty head cold and was in a mood, and finally I just ran out of patience.  "(Author's Name) can bite me," I said, forgetting that I had a kitchen full of hungry diners.  "Twice."  And then I went ahead with my recipe.

This amused the crowd to no end.  The dish was a satisfying and flavorful accompaniment to the main meal.  Even my daughter liked it and she's not a huge fan of chickpeas.

Chickpea and Delicata Squash Stew (serves 8; approx. $1.38/serving)

2 delicata squash, peeled, seeded and diced

2 cans chickpeas, drained and rinsed

1 tablespoon olive oil

2 onions, finely chopped

5 garlic cloves, chopped

1 very large jar canned whole tomatoes (a couple of 28-oz cans should do just fine)

2 bay leaves

1 teaspoon ground coriander

1/2 teaspoon ground mace

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon chile powder

1/4 teaspoon ground turmeric

1/2 large bunch dill, chopped

Equipment:

• Large deep saucepan

1. Heat the oil in the saucepan.
2. Add the onions and garlic.  Saute until the onions are soft.
3. Add the spices and the bay leaves.  Mix well and saute until fragrant.
4. Add the squash.  Saute about 3 minutes, or until coated in the pan juices.
5. Add the chickpeas and the tomatoes.  Bring to a boil.
6. Reduce heat and simmer until the squash is tender.
7. Add the dill.  Cook about a minute.
8. Serve.

Recipe: Cabbage and Squash Rice

Well, I should have known better.  First I took two foods that I have never loved: winter squash and cabbage.  I figured, "Oh, I'll cook something with them.  A side dish."  I ran out of brown rice so I went to a certain very large chain of warehouse "club" stores and I got this huge, massive sack of brown rice.  I figured it would be the same as any other bulk brown rice.  Wrong.  Wrong wrong wrong.  I should have remembered the last time that I bought rice at this large warehouse chain.  I got the most incredibly glutinous rice I have ever seen.  It stuck better than glue and had about as much flavor.  I did, actually, remember it when I was shopping.  I don't remember who did the dissuading, though.  It could have been The Spouse, but it could just as easily have been me who said, "Oh, what the heck.  How bad can it be?"  I didn't think brown rice could stick this badly!  There are more disasters to come with the brown rice, don't you worry, but we can save those for another day.  Or days.  I've certainly got a large enough bin of the stuff to keep you entertained for weeks.

Anyway, for our New Year's Eve dinner I decided that I would cook up the cabbage and the squash and mix them into the rice.  This would provide a delicious, nutritious side dish to delight and amaze our acquaintance.  And to be quite honest if the guests are to be believed I'm probably the only one who didn't like this.  No one commented on the sub-par rice, at least, and people seemed to really enjoy the cabbage and squash.  I used celery seeds instead of caraway seeds because that's what I could find - I think I'm out of caraway - and maybe that had something to do with my distaste.  Anyway, I suppose this does make a decent side dish if you like cabbage, or caraway.

Cabbage and Squash Rice (serves 8; approx. $0.54/serving)

2 cups long-grain brown rice

4 cups water

1 head Savoy cabbage, shredded

1/2 butternut squash, diced

1 cup vegetable broth

2 tablespoons celery seeds

Equipment:

• Medium saucepan with lid
• Large wok with lid

1. Combine the rice and the water in the saucepan and bring to a boil.
2. Reduce heat to low and let simmer until the liquid has been completely absorbed by the rice.  I prefer to judge this by appearance rather than time - different pans and even different rices cook differently.  For that reason I usually use a glass lid when cooking rice.  Use whatever works for you, though.  I'd guess it generally takes about 40 minutes.
3. Meanwhile, bring the broth to a boil in the wok.
4. Add the squash.  Reduce heat to low, cover and let steam about 10 minutes.
5. Add the cabbage.  Cook with the lid off until the cabbage is tender.
6. When the rice is ready, transfer the contents of both pots to the serving vessel.  Mix well and serve.

Recipe: Pureed Root Vegetables

Our lifestyle is... well, it's ours.  That's all there is to it.  I've tried to change aspects of it over the years but it never seems to work and we inevitably seem to fall back into our typical ways.  On the surface there are quite a lot of reasons for this, but at the end of the day there are really only two: priorities and health.  I'm sure anyone living in the greater Boston area is aware of the latest Horrible Creeping Crud that's been going around - I'd say it's probably about half allergies, given the mild weather and the people who seem hardest struck by it.  At any rate, when I'm sick I don't feel like cooking.  While I might make every effort to make food ahead of time so I don't have to cook it when I'm pressed for time or not in a culinary mindset there are only so many hours.  Inevitably some of those dishes fall by the wayside.  The other issue is priorities.  We have friends.  We enjoy their company.  Often we enjoy their company while dining out.  Sure, we could probably invite them over more often, but then we'd have to plan ahead.  There's no way to plan ahead for a phone call that consists of, "I just got a cancer diagnosis, can we get together?"  You want to get together and be supportive and if you don't have meals on hand that match the dietary restrictions of your guests that means going out.  Our lifestyle therefore requires a great deal of flexibility, which means that sometimes certain dishes don't get made.  (If it's any consolation to the moralizers out there, I really do plan for us to dine at home every night.  It just doesn't actually happen.)

That's the origin of this dish.  I found myself for whatever reason with some leftover root vegetables.  We were having a Sunday dinner and so I decided that would be a good opportunity to use some of them up.  We had half of one of those massive Macomber turnips, the kind that could probably feed an entire Ethiopian village for a week.  We had a celery root - I'd intended to do something else with it but I wound up skipping it.  We had some carrots my daughter insisted we needed, lest the world come to an end.  I decided that they would go quite well as a puree.  I'm not usually a big fan of purees, but in this case it seemed like a good thing to do.  I decided to steam the vegetables rather than boil them since steaming retains more of the nutrients in the vegetables.  I'm all about the nutrients.  This might not have been the best idea.  Some of the vegetable chunks got tender but some of them did not, and I'd gotten to a point where I feared for my steamer and for my pot.  I decided to just go with it.  This necessitated adding an extra half-cup of half-and-half, giving fat that we probably didn't actually need.  Oh well.  The dish went over well with everyone but me, even my daughter liked it.  I think my distaste had more to do with frustration at the steaming failure than anything else.  Try this on a chilly winter's evening.

Pureed Root Vegetables (serves 8; approx. $1.10/serving)

1/2 Macomber turnip (about 2 normal), peeled and chopped

1 celery root, peeled and chopped

3 carrots, peeled and chopped

1 teaspoon grated nutmeg

1 1/2 cups half-and-half

Equipment:

• Steamer
• Bowl
• Immersion blender

1. Prepare your steamer for steaming.  I prefer a basket-style steamer with multiple baskets, but there are quite a few other options out there.
2. Steam the vegetables until mostly tender.  This seemed to take about a thousand years for me, but I could be exaggerating.
3. Transfer the vegetables to the bowl.  Add the nutmeg and the half and half.
4. Use the immersion blender to puree the vegetables.
5. Serve hot.

Recipe: Cabbage with Onions and Kalonji

I know you've all been following my progress with cabbage.  If you haven't, for a long time I hated cabbage to such an extent that I would not permit it to enter my home.  I got upset about having

ornamental cabbages on my lawn.  (I still don't see the point of ornamental cabbage.  If you're going to grow cabbage, grow some cabbage that you can actually eat.  Don't waste time, space and energy on something that only looks like food.  But I digress.)  Anyway, I've been making a real effort to learn to like cabbage and I've been making some real progress.  I started out with Asian cabbages - bok choy, baby bok choy, that sort of thing.  I progressed up to Napa cabbage over the summer when I got some in my farm share.  Then I progressed up to Savoy cabbage.  Savoy cabbage doesn't seem to have the same offensive stench as other forms of cabbage.  Plus, it kind of looks like brains.  You can pretend you're a zombie chef when you're cooking it.  Or not.

Anyway, this was a quick side dish I came up with using cabbage.  The key to cooking cabbage without stinking yourself out of house and home, as it turns out, is not boiling it.  Saute it instead.  It's worth it.  Adding some kind of seasoning is helpful too.  In this case the seasoning was kalonji.  I have a large jar of kalonji which I bought at an Indian market some time ago.  It's something that I like and something that I use when the mood strikes me, which is admittedly fairly frequently, but I can't remember the English name for it.  Oh well.

Cabbage with Onions and Kalonji (serves 4; approx. $0.65/serving)

1 head Savoy cabbage, quartered and shredded

3 onions, thinly sliced

1 tablespoon olive oil

2 tablespoons kalonji

Equipment:

• Large saute pan

1. Heat the oil in the saute pan.
2. Add the onions and saute until soft.
3. Add the kalonji.  Saute about a minute.
4. Add the cabbage.  Saute until just wilted.
5. Serve.