Whatever fløts your grøt

Fløtegrøt is a Norwegian creamy pudding still enjoyed on special occasions today in Norway and parts of the United States with a history of immigration from Norway. The word fløtegrøt is a compound of the words fløte (cream) and and grøt (porridge). It is thickened with flour and can be flavored with sweetener and spices.

A 100-year-old recipe from the St. Olaf College (Northfield, MN) Phi Kappa Phi Literary Society's cookbook explains the modern process of making the pudding:

“Use a round bottomed kettle; have a good pudding stick. Take rich cream – if a little sour it may be used anyway. Let it come to a boil, then sift in flour gradually, stirring rapidly. When about as thick as cornstarch pudding do not put in more flour. Let it boil and stir constantly, and the butter will be given off. As it floats pour it off into a cup and put on back of stove to keep warm. When you can drain off no more butter add a little warm milk and stir…Cook well, stirring continually. When done serve with the hot butter drippings, sugar and cinnamon. This mush is very rich and a quart of thick cream will make enough for six or eight persons.”

  

Kathleen Stokker in Remedies and Rituals: Folk Medicine in Norway and the New Land describes a childbirth tradition brought to Minnesota by 19^th-Century Norwegian immigrants: 

“Mothers who survived the birth could look forward to the far more joyous custom of receiving the sengemat (bed food)…” 

She also relates a story from a doctor about his mother’s experience in 1857:

“…the neighbor woman came to see her and brought along fløtegrøt, such as had been the custom on similar occasions in Norway.” 

Stokker writes that the practice of sengemat dates back to Viking times, but offers no further explanation for this claim.

Toying with this idea of Vikings making fløtegrøt, I came up with a process of making the dish with ingredients more likely to be available in medieval Scandinavia, where white flour, sugar and cinnamon were hard to come by. I won't bore you with the details from my research into other flour-thickened puddings of the Middle Ages, but will just jump to the recipe:

Fløtegrøt

Pour a quart of cow's milk cream into a heavy kettle over a very low fire or hot coals. Stir frequently with a frayed stick or whisk. If butter rises to the surface, skim off and keep in a bowl. While the cream heats, sift some freshly ground wheat flour through a cloth to remove the bran. When the cream boils, slowly sprinkle in the flour, stirring constantly with the whisk to prevent lumps from forming. Keep sprinkling in flour and stirring until you have a thick pudding. Cook until the floury taste is gone. Thin out with warm milk if needed and sweeten with a small amount of honey. Best served warm with some of the melted butter drizzled on it. 

I made this version for an event last weekend and its creamy, slightly sweet flavor got rave reviews.  It is decadent, so serve small portions and use a quart of cream only if you want at least eight servings.  

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Who needs yeast packets to make bread?

Not me! I've been having great success making bread that is leavened only by sourdough starter. 
There is a great bread recipe called "Almost No-Knead Bread" from Cooks Illustrated that I love, but I love using real sourdough even more than the CI recipe for faux-sourdough flavor, so I gave the recipe a sourdough makeover. Granted, the time savings of the CI recipe are gone. Baking with sourdough as the only leavening is for those who like it a bit old-school.

My recipe assumes that you already have a sourdough starter available. If not, you'll need some time to refresh one you've received from someone you know or to start one from scratch. There are several from-scratch processes described in the books The Art of Fermentation and Wild Fermentation by Sandor Ellix Katz, Sourdough Cookery by Rita Davenport and Flour Water Salt Yeast by Ken Forkish.

Also assumed: that you own a cast-iron Dutch oven with a lid.

Crusty Sourdough Bread
yield: 1 loaf, approximately 1 pound

Step 1: Refresh the starter 
Stir 1/4 cup unbleached all-purpose flour and 2 Tbsp water into the starter. Leave the container out on the kitchen counter several hours until starter is bubbly and increasing in size. 

Step 2: Mix up the recipe
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour (5 ounces)
1 cup unbleached bread flour (5 ounces)
1 cup whole-wheat flour (5 ounces)
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 cup sourdough starter
1/2 cup water, plus a little more if dough is dry
 
In large mixing bowl, mix the dry ingredients, then stir in sourdough starter with enough water to make the dough into a shaggy-looking ball. Start with 1/2 cup water and add a little more water if dough is dry and not coming together.

Cover bowl with plastic wrap and leave out overnight.

Step 3: Prepare for rising 
Line a flat pasta bowl, a bread basket or an 8-inch cast-iron skillet with parchment paper and grease the paper with cooking spray. Remove your plastic wrap from the mixing bowl and spray one side with cooking spray.

Step 4: Knead and shape
Spread flour over your kneading surface and knead your dough just 10-15 turns until it is smooth and elastic. Gently pull sides down under the loaf to make a ball, squeeze bottom seam together and place loaf seam-side down in the parchment-lined bowl//basket/skillet. Cover loosely with the plastic wrap, oily side down. Allow to rise until nearly doubled in size, about 1 1/2 to 2 hours. About 1/2 hour before the end of rising, turn on the oven to 500 degrees Fahrenheit with a cast-iron Dutch oven (lid on) inside it on the lowest rack.

Step 5: Baking a crusty loaf
Sprinkle the loaf with flour, then slash a 1/2 inch-deep line across the loaf with a sharp knife. Turn on the kitchen exhaust fan, if you have one, before the next part. Carefully bring out the Dutch oven, open the lid, pull up the corners of the parchment paper around your loaf, place the paper with the loaf in it inside the Dutch oven. Cover carefully with lid, turn oven temperature down to 425 degrees Fahrenheit and bake 30 minutes. 

At 30-minute mark, remove lid and continue baking loaf in Dutch oven another 20-25 minutes until it is well-browned and center temperature of loaf is 210 degrees Fahrenheit. Cool finished loaf on a wire rack.

Step 6: Eating and storing
I'm assuming that you will already start to eat the bread the same day it is made, as soon as it is cool. Who could wait longer? I won't tell you what to put on your bread, but storage is a piece of cake. Turn the cut side of the loaf down on a cutting board.

Alternatively, you could wrap the whole loaf in foil. If the crust is getting tough and losing its crispness, it can be re-crisped in the oven or toaster. This bread is still delicious on Day 2 and makes great toast for a couple days afterward. 

Keeping a sourdough starter: Once you've got your starter going, you can store it in the refrigerator in an airtight container between uses. I feed mine at least once a week by mixing in 2 Tbsp unbleached all-purpose flour and 1 Tbsp water. I feed it more, still in a ratio of 2 parts flour to 1 part water, if I will be baking often. If I baked nearly every day, I'd just leave the starter container out on the counter to keep those yeasts really active. If I know I won't be baking for a while, but the starter is getting close to filling the container, I discard some before the next feeding.

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The Müsli-on-the-cheap experiment

While I was a college student in Germany, I fell in love with the breakfast mixture of whole grains, nuts and fruits called Müsli. It has all the ease of cold cereal – pour into bowl, pour on milk or stir in yogurt. After it has soaked a short while in milk or yogurt (or my favorite soaking liquid of plain yogurt thinned with almond milk), the grain in Müsli softens up as it soaks up liquid, yielding a bowl of tender grains with exciting bits of crunchy nuts and sweet dried fruits in a creamy sauce. It has only as much sugar as the dried fruits in the mix. Unlike granola, Müsli is cheap and easy to make; no baking required, the ingredients don't need to be pricey ones. Also, it does not have the added oil of granola, just the fats that might be in nuts and grains.

I was hoping I could make a cheaper at-home version of my current favorite brand, Seitenbacher. I wanted to vary the ingredients a bit, but keep the texture mix of crunchy and chewy and the flavors of sweet and tart dried fruits.

Original Seitenbacher Müsli #2 ingredients

Rolled oats
Rolled barley flakes
Dried raspberries
Dried apples
Sunflower seeds
Sliced almonds

Raisins

Net weight: 16 oz

Retail price: $4.99 per 16 oz    (sometimes on sale at $3.99)
Price per ounce: when on sale, $0.25 per ounce

                        When at regular price, $0.31 per ounce

New at-home version

Quaker Old-fashioned Oats, 1 lb 2 oz = $3.50, or $0.20 per ounce

Rolled rye flakes (cheaper than rolled barley), 8 oz = $1.03, or $0.13 per ounce
Sunflower seeds, 6.08 oz = $1.17, or $0.14 per ounce
Dried apples, 2.4 oz = $1.69, or $0.71 per ounce
Golden Raisins 15 oz = $4.99, or $0.33 per ounce
Pecan pieces, on sale 16 oz = $8.49, or $0.53 per ounce
Dried raspberries not available (maybe I could dry some from my back yard next year!)

Trial recipe for Müsli-on-the-cheap

7.5 oz oats (cost: $1.50)

5.25 oz golden raisins (cost: $1.73)
4 oz rye flakes (cost: $0.52)
4 oz pecan pieces (cost: $2.12)
3.25 oz sunflower seeds (cost: $0.45)
2.4 oz dried apples, chopped (cost: $1.69)

Total weight of finished cereal: 26.4 oz (1 pound, 10.4 oz)

Total price of finished cereal: $8.01
Price per ounce = $0.30

I think I can still do this a bit cheaper. I love pecans, but pecan pieces had a bit too strong of a flavor along with sunflower seeds, and I decided I’d like a more grain-based cereal with fewer nuts, seeds and apples per spoonful. On my next attempt, I’m going to increase the amount of grains per batch and reduce the amounts of nuts, seeds and apples. I might change the nuts to sliced almonds instead of pecans next time, but I will have less of whichever nut is involved. Perhaps the rolled oats at the natural foods store will be cheaper per ounce than the Quaker oats, too. That store had rye flakes that cost less than my oats!

Update after next grocery run: store brand old-fashioned oats on sale, 1 pound 2 oz for $1.50!

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Introducing kids to medieval flavors

I've been at two different schools this spring giving presentations about medieval food to local kids. The kids I've talked to find it a bit strange that children in medieval England were likely to drink ale at breakfast and that even in the wealthiest households there were not always enough cups and plates to go around and people shared them at table. They have shown much curiosity in whether some of their favorite foods also showed up on medieval tables, whether they were told correctly that wealthy feasters enjoyed such odd dishes as roast peacock dressed in its feathers and cockentrice, and whether the table knife I bring to medieval-style feasts (that piece of tableware was usually provided by the diners, not by their hosts) is a weapon. For the record, my table knife has only been used on food, the peacock and cockentrice stories are for real (I've seen the original recipes) and pizza and potatoes were unknown to the Europeans of the Middle Ages. 

At the first school demo, I had the opportunity to bring a dish for the students to taste. They impressed me by being more adventurous eaters than I expected. A few even asked for second helpings, which I was happy to provide. I was telling my favorite friendly city bus driver about the school demo and he asked for the recipe, since he hasn't eaten any medieval food either. I hope he likes it as well as the schoolchildren. 

This dish travels well if it is in a sturdy pie plate and it is tasty when cold or warm. Enjoy the mix of sweet and savory flavors, a typical medieval English combination.

Tart in Ember Day

A tart for religious holidays in medieval England when eating meat was forbidden

Pie crust:

Measure all the ingredients by weight with a scale.

8 ounces all-purpose flour

4 ounces whole-wheat flour

8 ounces cold butter

4 ounces ice-cold water

1/8 ounce salt

Mix the flour and salt. Cut the butter into 1/8-inch cubes. Rub into the flour until flour-butter pieces are the size of small peas. Mix in the water and push mixture together with your hands to make a ball of dough in your bowl. You may need to mix in a tablespoon or two more of the water to get a dough to form. Divide your dough ball into two pieces, wrap and refrigerate at least one hour before rolling out for your pie plate.

Tart filling:

4 Tbsp butter

pinch of saffron threads

Melt the butter, cool a little and stir in the saffron. Let this mixture sit while you prepare the rest of the tart filling.

2 medium-sized onions

dash of salt

Boil a couple cups of water in a small pan with the salt. Peel the onions, cut off ends and chop each onion finely. Parboil the onions until tender, drain in a strainer with very small holes. Make the rest of the filling while the onions are drip-drying:

1 ½ pounds cottage cheese

about 1 cup chopped parsley

½ cup zante currants or golden raisins

2 Tbsp sugar

10 eggs

1 tsp chopped fresh sage

½ tsp ginger powder

½ tsp ground cinnamon

3 cloves, ground

½ tsp ground nutmeg

small pinch of ground mace

½ tsp salt

1 cup breadcrumbs made from fresh bread

Mash the cottage cheese in a large bowl until it is no longer in lumpy curds but is smooth. In a separate bowl, lightly beat the eggs. Mix the eggs and all the rest of the filling ingredients in with the cottage cheese, including the saffron butter and onions.

Roll out two rounds of pie dough and line two 9-inch pie plates. Pour half the filling into each pie shell. Put the tarts side-by-side on a baking sheet. Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit about 20 minutes, turn each pie plate (move the outside edges to the center), and bake another 10 to 20 minutes or until center of each tart is just barely set.

Original recipe sources:

“Tart in Ymbre Day” in Ancient Cookery, a collection of 14^th Century English recipes edited by Samuel Pegge

original text: Take and perboile oynouns presse out the water & hewe hem smale. Take brede & bray it in a morter, and temper it up with Ayren. Do therto butter, safroun and salt, & raisouns courauns, & a litel sugur with powdour douce, and bake it in a trap, & serue it forth.

“Tart in ymbre day” in Forme of Cury, a 14^th Century English cookbook, edited by C. B. Hieatt and Sharon Butler in their book Curye on Inglish

original text: Take and perboile oynouns & erbis & presse out the water & hewe hem smale. Take grene chese & bray it in a morter, & temper it up with ayren. Do therto butter, safroun and salt, & raisouns corauns, & a litel sugar with powdour douce, & bake it in a trap, & serue it forth.

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Smoothie #9

This is a fizzy, purple smoothie Andrew whipped up from the fruits we froze together this summer. 

Smoothie #9

1 banana
approximately 1/4 pound each frozen peach slices and frozen blueberries
1 cup unsweetened plain almond milk
peach-flavored sparkling water

Blend all together until smooth.

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Recipes to try again later

I promised to share recipes that were successes and failures when I set up this blog. Spectacular failures often come with a good story, which is probably why I've been hanging onto this group of recipes without posting them. They were not highly impressive dishes (or haven't been tested yet) and they don't come with good stories. Despite that, I'm posting them here today because the blog entry is easier to find (and read) later than a little slip of paper with pencil marks on it. Hopefully in the future there will be revisions with photos and more exciting tales. Perhaps someone out there will try them out with the suggested "note to self" revisions and let me know how it goes.

Choco-cherry Smoothie

1 cup cherries from cherry bounce
1 1/2 cup seltzer water
2 cups homemade kefir
1 Tbsp brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 Tbsp cocoa powder

Blend until smooth. 
NOTE TO SELF: try with 1/2 cup seltzer next time, possibly less kefir. Great chocolate and cherry flavor, but beverage ended up too thin to be a good smoothie. The tanginess was nice, but perhaps less kefir and/or a teaspoon more sugar would bring taste into better balance. Booziness of the alcohol-preserved cherries sneaks up on you, so warn people if you serve this to others. 

Lemon-Chicken Pasta

3/4 pound thin spaghetti, cooked in boiling salted water
2 cups shredded leftover roasted chicken with lemon-pepper-garlic seasoning
75 g bunch parsley, chopped
juice and zest of 2 Meyer lemons
5 Tbsp olive oil
grated Parmesan cheese to taste

Whisk together the lemon juice, zest and olive oil. Toss with chicken and pasta and parsley. Sprinkle each serving with grated Parmesan. 

NOTE TO SELF: I'm sure that this dish could be done with plain salt-and-pepper roasted chicken with just the addition of a minced clove of garlic and some pepper to the sauce. Next time, consider using at least 1 Tbsp less oil. This version was a little too oily. 

The Large-Crowd Meatball Experiment

5 pounds ground beef (85% lean/15% fat ratio)
1 large onion, minced
2 Tbsp minced garlic
4 oz fresh bread, processed into fine crumbs
3/4 cup vegetable stock or milk
3 eggs, beaten
2 oz (by weight) sour cream
1 1/2 Tbsp kosher salt
2 tsp freshly-ground black pepper
2 Tbsp dried Greek oregano
2 Tbsp dried basil

Place ground beef in large mixing bowl. Saute minced onion and minced garlic in olive oil. Moisten breadcrumbs with vegetable stock/milk in a small bowl. Add sauteed onion/garlic and moist breadcrumbs to meat along with all other ingredients and mix thoroughly. Form into meatballs and fry in oil or bake.
NOTE TO SELF: These would taste great with ground lamb or beef-lamb mix. Salt was not quite overpowering, but could easily be cut to 1 Tbsp plus 1/2 tsp. Dried basil and oregano amounts (especially oregano) should probably be cut in half. Devote another blog entry to this experiment and its theoretical variations with Korean, sweet-sour, American meatloaf and Middle Eastern flavor profiles. 

Bloody Mary Meatballs

3 pounds ground beef (85% lean/15% fat ratio)
1 1/2 cup rolled oats
2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp freshly-ground black pepper
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup minced onion
1/4 cup Bloody Mary Mix
1 Tbsp prepared horseradish

Saute onion and garlic in olive oil and mix thoroughly with meat and other ingredients. Form into meatballs and fry in oil or bake. Serve in a Bloody Mary sauce I haven't written a recipe for yet or make Bloody Marys and eat meatballs as snack with cocktail.
NOTE TO SELF: Mixed parts of three different recipes together to create this one, can't try it out until there is a sharing occasion to make this with a Bloody-Mary-inspired tomato sauce to serve them in.

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How much more awkward-sounding can the name of this salad be?

A mixed-bean salad with garbanzos, kidney beans and green beans and a pickled-tasting sauce is a common player on potluck tables in my area. It's an old standby, everyone sees the contents and knows what the salad is going to taste like. I felt like making one that had a bit more crunch, no obvious sweetness (my least favorite part of some versions of bean salad) and used the spicier pickle flavor of my own home-canned green bean pickles. 

The bean pickles are one of my favorite recipes from the Bernardin Guide to Home Preserving, one of my souvenirs from living in Canada. The original recipe is called Dilled Beans, but I use the variation called Hot 'n Spicy Beans, skipping the red pepper strips and the dill. The recipe also worked this year with purple beans, which make me sad by doing the same thing purple asparagus does: turn green when cooked.

When asked at the potluck supper what name this dish has, I responded, "Bean, uh ... bean and bean salad." There are three beans, but do you think my brain could add them up in the necessary moment to say something succinct like Triple-bean Salad? Uh ... nope. 

Bean, Bean and Bean Salad with Carrots
serves 6 to 8

1 15-oz can garbanzos (chickpeas)
1 15-oz can Great Northern beans
3 small garden carrots, julienned (about 1/2 cup julienne)
1/2 pint home-pickled spicy green beans with garlic 
1 clove pickled garlic from the jar of home-pickled beans
4 to 5 Tbsp pickle juice from the jar of home-pickled beans
4 Tbsp olive oil
2 pinches dried epazote
salt and pepper to taste

Place all beans and carrots together in a bowl. Whisk together pickle juice with minced pickled garlic, olive oil, epazote and some salt and pepper. Pour over beans and mix thoroughly. Add more salt and pepper if required. Allow salad to sit overnight in the dressing before serving.

Note: the epazote could be replaced by dried basil, savory or thyme for a different flavor.

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Successfully avoiding a trip to the grocery again

You know the scenario: You're pressed for time to get that dish done by dinnertime or in time to leave with it for someone else's house and you realize you don't have as much of one ingredient as you thought you had. The recipe won't turn out the way you have come to expect. You're not sure whether you can fudge it with using less, but you have to try anyway because you've already started mixing the other parts.

This recipe is about embracing the unexpected and foisting it off on your friends at a potluck, which I did. And about avoiding a trip to the grocery for which there is no time, which I also did and made it to that potluck on time. And it's about finding another tasty use for backyard rosemary and other gardeners' summer tomatoes that show up unannounced at our place or appear in our Henry's Farm CSA box.

Running-Out-of-Cornmeal Cornbread (with bell and whistles)
alterations to Cook's Illustrated "All Purpose Cornbread" recipe
at least 6 servings

5 ounces unbleached all-purpose flour
4 ounces whole-wheat flour
3 ounces cornmeal
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp table salt
1/4 cup packed light brown sugar
3 1/2 ounces fresh cooked corn kernels (or thawed frozen corn)
1 cup unsweetened kefir (or buttermilk)
2 large eggs
8 Tbsp unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly
large pinch dried rosemary, crushed (this is the bell from my backyard plant)
one to two ripe garden tomatoes (this is a whistle)
a pinch of kosher salt or sea salt (this is a whistle)

Heat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Spray 8x8-inch glass baking dish with nonstick cooking spray. Whisk flours, cornmeal, baking powder, baking soda, salt in a bowl until combined and set aside.

In food processor or blender, process sugar, corn, kefir and eggs until combined. 

Make a well in the center of dry ingredients and pour in wet mixture. Fold together for a few turns of the spatula/spoon. Add melted butter and rosemary and fold until dry ingredients are just moistened.

Pour batter into baking dish. Smooth the top. Slice the tomatoes thinly and lay the slices on top of the batter so they just touch each other. Sprinkle with kosher/sea salt.

Bake about 25 to 35 minutes until golden brown and a toothpick inserted it the center comes out clean. Tomato slices will look as if they have sunken into the top. Take directly from oven to potluck and serve cornbread still warm out of the baking dish.

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Monster Beets!

Just had to post an amusing picture from last fall at work. Kelly and I are posing with some beets from Jane's Garden. I've been thinking a lot about those crazy super-sized beets because this year's beets have been just normal ones.
Thanks to Jackie Pope-Ganser for the photo.

When you get monster beets, it's time to use just one to make a big salad. Here's a recipe I use at home. I'm changing the title to commemorate the beets.

Monster Beet and Apple Salad

One monstrously-large beet, peeled and ends cut off
3 to 4 crunchy eating apples (examples: Fuji, Jonathan), peeled and cored
1 bulb fennel (optional), save the feathery fronds
balsamic vinegar
sugar
salt
fresh-ground black pepper
walnut oil (tastes the best, but olive oil will also serve)
walnut pieces (optional)

Grate the beet into a bowl, using the large holes on your grater. You may need to cut it into smaller pieces to hold onto it while you grate. Grate the apples into the bowl. If you are using the fennel, cut off the stalks, cut the bulb in quarters and cut out the cores. Then slice very thinly.
In another bowl, pour in a few tablespoons of vinegar and add pinches of sugar and salt until it has a taste you find pleasantly tart and lightly sweetened. Season with pepper and then whisk in oil in small batches until the dressing emulsifies. Mix the dressing with the beets and apples and walnut pieces (if using). Use the fennel fronds for a garnish or mix them in with the whole salad.

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Today's summery salad

I typically assemble salads according to my whims and what's in the refrigerator/cupboard. The only real planning involved is how to obtain the salad greens: backyard, CSA, friends or shopping?

The basic principles: Using whatever is around, find some textural variety, a mix of sweet and sour and savory, and make a homemade vinaigrette or a creamy dressing based on kefir, yogurt or mayonnaise.

Apples, berries, pears and dried fruits are frequent attenders in the sweet category, as is honey in the vinaigrette dresing. Textural variety is provided by mixed greens, edible flowers, nuts, fruits (fresh or dried), crunchy or fibrous vegetables like cucumber or raw zucchini or bell pepper or carrot, and, occasionally, cheese.

In keeping with the basics of "whatever ya got" and switching up the flavors and textures, today's salad was a greens mix of half lettuce, half sorrel. It was topped with fresh blueberries, pecan pieces and cucumber batons, with a honey-sweetened balsamic vinegar-Dijon vinaigrette spiked with a little lime juice.

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Summer Skillets are back!

The corn, squash and beans "Three Sisters" are ripe and ready to eat this month. We've eaten sweet corn, zucchini and "beans and greens," in addition to plucking the backyard green beans and eating them straight off the bush when they are small and tender. I love summer squashes like zucchini and pattypan and cucumber, and I'm waiting impatiently for the winter squashes to ripen on their long vines stretching out of my garden box toward the house.

All of these "Three Sisters" taste great with another of the summer/fall staples in our area, cooking greens. This year, one Swiss chard plant from some pretty old seeds was successful in the backyard box. It's time to ramp up the enthusiasm for greens because from here on out in the CSA box, I predict there will be a minimum of two greens each week.

The ubiquitous and ever-flexible zucchini teams up with our county's major export product, corn, and a bit of earthy chard in this summertime skillet. The quantity is large enough that the Dutch oven or chicken fryer is a more appropriately-sized cooking vessel. It's quick to prepare, provided you've cut off the corn kernels and kept them from a previous meal of sweet corn this week.

Smoky Summer Vegetable Skillet
2 to 3 Tbsp olive oil
1/3 cup sliced onion
3 cloves garlic, smashed with flat side of knife
1 foot-long, fat zucchini (scrape out seeds if it has tough, mature seeds in it)
handful of Swiss chard, approximately 8-12 oz weight
the kernels cut off from 6 ears of cooked sweet corn
2 tsp cumin
1 tsp Spanish smoked paprika
salt and pepper to taste

Heat oil over medium-high heat in a large, deep skillet/Dutch oven. Saute onion in oil. While it is cooking, cut zucchini into long strips and dice. Add garlic to the onion and stir one minute. Add diced zucchini and stir occasionally. While zucchini is cooking, clean chard and strip the leaves off the stems. Chop the leaves, save the stems for another dish or compost them.

Put corn into pan with cumin and smoked paprika when zucchini is somewhat translucent. Stir in chard when corn has started to heat through. Stir and cook briefly until chard wilts. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Serving suggestions: by itself; on rice, quinoa or couscous; with bread or on top of toast; topped with a fried egg.

This next recipe was today's lunch, created and eaten hastily when I issued a spontaneous lunch invitation to two of Andrew's friends, who were passing through to drop him off on their way back home from Indianapolis. 

Tart, tangy tomatillos are probably cheating on my low-acid diet, but they are so good with rice and beans and I didn't want to waste this treat from the CSA box. I tried to leave most of them in the serving dish and only put a few slices on my plate. Sharing is better than eating them all myself, right?

When paired with a large salad, this dish served four. If it were a one-dish meal, I'd say it is two portions.

Tangy Tomatillo-Bean Skillet

4 Tbsp olive oil
1/2 cup chopped onion
2 cloves garlic, sliced
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp smoked Spanish paprika
1/2 tsp ground coriander
1 pint tomatillos, washed
1 cup leftover cooked rice
One 15-oz can black beans, rinsed and drained
salt and pepper to taste

Cut tomatillos into thick vertical slices, then cut each slice in half to make half-moon shapes. Heat olive oil to medium-high heat in a nonstick skillet. Saute onion until starting to become translucent, add garlic and stir one minute. Add tomatillos and spices and stir frequently until tomatillos are tender. Add rice, stirring and cutting with spoon to separate rice grains. Add black beans and heat through, stirring frequently, and season with salt and pepper.

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Fresh dill: will I ever use it all?

Occasionally, I will purchase fresh dill at the supermarket for a recipe, which always leaves me with a whole bunch of unassigned fresh dill that taunts me from the refrigerator until it goes bad. The same happens, but in smaller quantities, with the bunches of fresh dill from the Henry's Farm CSA box.

I feel a great sense of relief when I discover something else that I like to make with fresh dill. Admittedly, it is not one of my favorite herbs. That's why it lingers in the fridge and taunts me. "Ha, ha ha ha haa, you only have one dish using me that you'd be willing to eat this week!" Relief this week came in two forms: one, a different dish using dill; and two, other people to share the dish so the dill would finally run out.

Here's my breakfast from Wednesday:

A slice of whole-wheat toast, topped with asparagus and scrambled eggs with fresh dill.
Saute the asparagus in olive oil mixed with a little butter, scramble up the eggs with milk and add those to the pan, and then sprinkle on fresh chopped dill, salt and pepper when the eggs start to set. 

Andrew's parents were visiting this week, and after seeing my breakfast, his mom decided she had to get in on this dill-on-eggs idea, so she added it to her over-easy eggs the next day. I threw a little dill in with the fennel greens on our pasta Thursday, and Andrew and I had the rest of the dill on Saturday's breakfast omelet that also included orange bell pepper and a little cheddar cheese.

The main problem with me and dill is that a little dill goes a long way. Its flavor is a bit intense and distinctive, so I really have to want to taste dill wherever it appears. I don't make pickles or use vinegar much anymore, so there goes one potential use of massive quantities of dill. Having this simple little breakthrough in my dill mental block could open up other ideas about dill. Perhaps my homemade kefir salad dressing could use a bit of dill blended into it next time. I know it's tasty sprinkled on fish, but how about making green garlic sauce for fish with some dill instead of only parsley? Hey, I'm on a roll here, and if any of these ideas happen, I'll tell you about how they worked.

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My new "pet"

As I quipped this week to a co-worker, my ideal pet is a single-celled organism. My kitchen is a great place to keep them. I have managed to keep a sourdough starter alive and still sweet for about a year, and it is still yeasty enough to raise bread. The latest addition to the menagerie is a kefir (kəˈfɪər/ kə-FEER) culture, which I purchased dry at a local natural foods store and rehydrated at home. Kefir is a bacterial culture that ferments milk. It has been used for centuries to make milk safe to store for longer periods than fresh milk can keep. Other advantages are that the process adds to the vitamin and probiotics content of milk and reduces the amount of lactose, since the kefir bacteria feed on the lactose sugar.

After only two changes of milk, my kefir "grains" started producing kefir, and, if I wasn't careful to monitor more than once a day, curds that I then had to turn into cheese. Here is a kefir grain (the little protein mass at the top left that has the culture in/on it that starts fermenting the milk), floating on a new batch of kefir:

Care and feeding of kefir is much easier than looking after, say, a dog, but it has added several minutes of prep work to my day. I'm regularly changing jars from active kefir fermentation on the kitchen counter to storage jars in the refrigerator, moving extra kefir grains to the storage vessel in the refrigerator, sterilizing containers and utensils at each step. It's not a lot of work, but it is something that requires a little bit of attention each day unless I take a few days off and put all the kefir and grains in cold storage.

The flavor and texture of kefir is similar to a very thin yogurt. Uses I've put it to so far:
1. pouring on morning cereal instead of milk
2. in a salad dressing
3. making a spreadable cheese
4. putting the cheese into cooked dishes
5. mixed with juice as a breakfast drink

Here is a jar of kitchen-counter actively-fermenting kefir:

I keep eating the kefir cheese before I get a picture of it. Just imagine spreadable goat cheese like chevre, and that's pretty much what I'm getting when I strain a batch of over-curdled kefir in a cheesecloth for a day. It tastes great with the addition of a little salt and some dried or fresh herbs. If I heat little chunks of the cheese, it changes texture to something like a fresh cheese curd.

In a couple of weeks, I'm hosting a workshop at my place about fermented and cultured foods, through the Meetup group Radical Homemakers of Bloomington-Normal. I'll give away starter kefir grains to those who attend. I also have sourdough starter available, and a friend said she'd bring kombucha culture for fermenting tea.

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This post brought to you by foods that start with the letter G

Food is arriving weekly through Henry's Farm CSA again ("what's a CSA?" check this link), and at the beginning and end of the season, the major vegetable group is GREENS. We eat a lot of salad and stir-fries and search around for other options to keep up our interest in greens. When gnocchi (small Italian potato dumplings) went on sale recently, I bought a couple packages and figured they'd eventually come in handy, so bring on the unfamiliar greens!

Lamb's quarters showed up at the CSA pickup, and I traded some onions to get some more of this stuff in the hopes that we'd like it enough to eat it for two meals.
"Use as you would spinach" was the take-home message about this edible weed on the Brockman Family Farming blog. So Andrew and I did so with this earthy-tasting dish that was a team effort. We discovered that like most of the cooking greens, these are great cooked with garlic. Garlic shows up twice in our recipe: once as minced cloves, once in the pesto.
If you have leftovers, I recommend adding a bit of liquid when reheating to soften up the gnocchi.

Earthy Greens and Gnocchi
serves 4

2 Tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
1 large clove garlic, minced
12 oz white button or cremini mushrooms, sliced 
One 17-oz package potato gnocchi
grated parmesan cheese, optional
1 bunch (about 8 oz. by weight) lamb's quarters, spinach, or Swiss chard
1 Tbsp basil pesto
1 Tbsp dried Italian seasoning
salt and pepper to taste

Clean all dirt and grit from greens, remove stems and chop greens down to bite-size if needed. Heat water to cook gnocchi according to package directions. Cook other ingredients while waiting for water to heat. Heat oil over medium-high heat in a large skillet. Saute onion until tender, then add garlic and mushrooms and continue cooking. Stir in lamb's quarters, then Italian seasoning. Keep warm on low heat while waiting for gnocchi to cook. When greens are wilted, turn off heat and stir in pesto. Drain gnocchi and add to mixture in skillet. Season with salt and pepper. Serve with grated parmesan if desired.

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Mushrooms roasting on an open fire

On my birthday, I invited some friends over for a patio party, featuring food cooked on sticks over the fire in our chimenea. Of course, we roasted marshmallows and made s'mores, but we were also pleasantly surprised by how well some less-obvious foods turned out. People were holding their skewers both down at the usual front opening and also over the top of the chimney part. We discovered both spots are at the right temperature for cooking foods.

Experiment 1: Mushrooms
Thread several whole washed white button mushrooms on a skewer, brush with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Patiently hold over an open fire, turning frequently, until they start to exude some liquid and get browned. I ate several skewers of these.

Experiment 2: Rather large beef kebabs
Big chunks of marinated beef, held at the right distance from the fire and frequently turned, cooks up to a juicy medium-rare right around the same time as the vegetables start to really soften. Careful not to hold so close to the hottest part of the flames that things scorch before the meat is cooked.

Experiment 3: Halloumi cheese
The label on this cheese claimed it was "the grilling cheese," so I decided to take it at its word and cut it into cubes to toast on my skewer. It does not really melt, so that keeps it on the skewer long enough to brown the outside and make the cube puff up a little. Crispy texture on the outside contrasts with fluffy center.

Try these yourself the next time you're building a fire!

In other fantastic flame-cooking news, the indoor barbecue grill is working great!

 It was a huge success for making s'mores and toasting strawberries and angel food cake bits at a party on a rainy day the week before my birthday. Hooray for whoever installed that ventilation system when the outdoor barbecue was enclosed in the addition!

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Sometimes, you just want the traditional ingredient

After eating a favorite of my Minnesota childhood, tater tot hotdish, while visiting at the in-laws' recently (my sister-in-law Katie made it), I had a hankering for it again when I got home.
At its most basic, this casserole (casseroles are known as "hotdish" in Minnesota) is ground meat (usually beef) in a dish with some mixed vegetables held together with a sauce of condensed cream of mushroom soup (straight from the can) and topped with frozen tater tots, which brown on top while the casserole mixture underneath is getting up to bubbling heat in the oven.

But hey, I'm in Illinois, where even the mixed vegetables are optional (so I'm told by a co-worker who knows this dish from his rural Illinois childhood), so why not have a different option for the meat? And why does it have to be cream of mushroom soup? Couldn't I make a perfectly good nondairy white sauce to serve the purpose of holding the casserole together?

The answer to "why does it have to be cream of mushroom soup?" is that it's easy. And as for the question about making white sauce myself, well, my sister-in-law did so for hers. And yes, yes I can make a perfectly serviceable white sauce that holds stuff together just fine. I do it all the time at work. Did I do it this time? No. And I won't go blaming the nondairy milk. I'll blame failing to measure out how much milk I was putting in the pan. I had too much liquid for the amount of starch I used, and I ended up with a sauce that was too loose, entirely unlike the consistency of condensed soup. My sauce was like sauce, nothing like the congealed mass that holds its shape while squooging out of the can. I'll also blame not having mushrooms. Didn't have them on the grocery list. I think I'd have liked the hotdish much better with mushrooms instead of the small amount of grated cheddar I desperately added to give the sauce a bit more flavor and body.

Why not have a different option for the meat? Well, no real reason, unless you're very attached to the flavor of browned ground beef. If I had been thinking straight when making the grocery list, I would have used ground turkey, but instead I decided to go out on a limb entirely and borrow a meat substitute option I learned from a vegan enchilada recipe on the New York Times website: crumbled tofu, cooked until it is browned and chewy.

The browned tofu has excellent texture, but I missed part of the lesson of the vegan enchilada recipe: the tofu needs to be heavily seasoned. I went straight from browning tofu to cooking vegetables and white sauce in the same oil. And I wasn't even patient enough to fully brown the tofu this time around. The flavor of my casserole is, as a result, a bit thin, despite my additions of other spices and herbs to the sauce. With every bite of tofu, I was wishing I had used meat.

Fortunately, I was not tempted to also spend the time and effort making my own tater tots, although this guy can tell you how.

I think I can revisit this process sometime after I've finished off the leftovers of the disappointing hotdish and try again to make a low-fat, possibly even still vegetarian version.

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Curried ravioli: Asian ingredients in a European-style dish

This one's an attempt from work, so no pictures, alas. The bright yellow sauce was very attractive, as was the orange-with-green-bits stuffing for the ravioli. Just try to imagine, eh?

At my last workplace, I learned a trick for making ravioli with wonton wrappers. The process moves along quickly enough that with a bit of practice, I was able to make several dozen in half an hour there. I'm a little rusty now, so the work was a bit slower.

I love how this works, so I wanted to share with you here. Start with your favorite filling, a very small portion scoop (the kind that have a spring handle that you squeeze and then a wire draws across the scoop to empty it out), a stack of wonton wrappers, a bowl of water or thinned-out beaten egg and either your fingers or a pastry brush. Lay out 12 wrappers on a countertop or cutting board, arranged in a pair of lines. Brush half of them (just one line) with water/egg. Plop a scoopful of filling on each of the wet wrappers. Now brush the wrappers in the other line. Flip the wrappers onto the ones with the fillings, match up the edges and corners and be sure to "burp" any air caught around the filling. Seal the edges with a fork or special ravioli tool. Repeat the process until either the filling or the wontons run out. These can now be frozen for later use, or dunked for a few minutes into boiling water until they are cooked through.

Wonton wrappers come in various sizes, so change your scoop size to deliver the amount of filling you can reasonably fit onto your little wonton squares and still seal them properly without having filling leak out the corners/edges. 

The filling for my most recent batch was mostly cooked sweet potato with Indian spices (I hope I'm remembering correctly that I used garam masala, ginger and garlic and possibly some extra ground coriander), some leftover filling from an earlier stuffed vegetable Indian dish, and green peas. I had a frozen batch of maybe about 30 ravioli or so to prepare and I knew I'd want them swimming in sauce because they wouldn't be served until the next day. To start the sauce, I pureed four or five cloves of garlic with a couple of tablespoons of chunks of fresh ginger, cooked the paste in a couple tablespoons of canola oil for just a few minutes, then added the spices that would flavor and color the sauce: ground coriander and cumin, plus Spice House Hot Curry Powder blend. After the spices had a chance to bloom in the oil, I stirred in three 15-oz cans of coconut milk and waited until the sauce came to a boil and thickened slightly. After a bit of seasoning with salt, the sauce was ready for pouring over ravioli.

This dish is a mixed success. The flavor and color were amazing, especially with a little sprinkling of chopped cilantro leaves for a garnish to contrast with the bright yellow sauce. The downside is that after an overnight of hanging around in the sauce, the ravioli got so soft that many broke apart when being spooned out of the dish for serving the next day. Although they were swimming in sauce when entering the cooler, they stuck together anyway. Also, the coconut milk sauce dried a bit and had cracks in it after cooling down. Clearly, this dish is best served immediately, with hot sauce poured over freshly-cooked ravioli. I'd also prefer, if making this at home, to let the frozen ravioli thaw before cooking them, or to cook the ravioli without freezing them at all. The filling was still a little cold after I cooked the ravioli straight from the freezer.

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Smoothie #8

A contribution from Andrew, using leftover cider from a holiday party.
1 banana
approximately 1 cup frozen peaches
1/2 cup spiced apple cider
2 cups almond milk (1 1/2 cups if you like a really thick smoothie)

Blend all ingredients together in blender until smooth.

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Mmm, breakfast dishes

A co-worker of mine declared yesterday that the only meal he cooks with any consistency is breakfast, "because it's easy."

Yup, he's so right. Breakfast foods are so easy, they are all I have left in me. I have spent a bit more than a month not feeling like cooking anything at home because I've been slowly getting over some major back, hip and leg pain due to a bulging spinal disc. I can make it through work okay now (just constant discomfort, not real serious pain any more), but all the way through this healing process, the last thing I want to do after exhausting myself cooking at work is to come home and stand up for another hour to cook. Thankful every day for having a husband who is a capable cook, so we are still getting consistent hot meals with fresh foods.

But I'm still making breakfast for myself on my day off. Or breakfasts for guests we've had over on several weekends in October and November. French toast, fried eggs on toast, a bit of oatmeal, whatever goes well with coffee or tea and people's moods.

Today's breakfast, eggs over-easy on English muffins and a lettuce salad. Last weekend, Scottish oats cooked into a nice, thick cereal and served with butter and honey.

However, since I have not made any new amazing discoveries in the realm of breakfast, I've been on hiatus from this blog for a long while. Today, I'm back to offer my take on French toast, a long-time breakfast specialty of mine.

French toast
serves two people at least two slices

2 eggs
about 1/3 cup almond milk
4 to 5 slices of day-old bread 
one dash of whichever you are in the mood for today: powdered ginger, cinnamon powder, ground nutmeg, ground cardamom, perhaps a combination of two of these
canola oil (add one tablespoon of butter if desired)
maple syrup

Note on breads: ordinary American sliced bread in packages often has a better texture if it is lightly toasted first before frying. The most awesome French toast is with French bread that has gotten too hard to eat by itself. But I don't insist on only the best bread. I'm not picky about whether the bread is white or whole wheat or has raisins or seeds in it.

Coat the bottom of a nonstick pan with canola oil and put on medium heat. Add one tablespoon of butter to pan if desired. Whisk together eggs, milk and spices. Add more milk if the mixture is too thick to soak into bread.  Dip pieces of bread into the mixture to fully coat. Fry until golden brown, flip and fry the other side, and serve hot with maple syrup.

If you've been using pancake syrup (which is usually corn syrup with maple flavoring) and have the chance to purchase real maple syrup from maple tree sap, make the switch! Maple syrups from different parts of North America have slight differences in flavor, which is part of the fun. All are less mellow, more maple-y and often thinner than pancake syrup.

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Schwarzwälder Kirschtrifle and a bonus cocktail

Now that the cherry bounce I made in May has had several months to mellow out in the bottles, its character has changed greatly. In June, it was very harsh and pretty tart, especially if I ate one of the cherries that had been steeping in the liquor. Now, it's sweeter and has the full flavor of cherries in it, but it still packs a boozy punch.

A boozy punch is exactly what's on order when making a Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte (Black Forest Cake). The cherry filling in the traditional German preparation includes a couple shots of Kirschwasser (a schnapps made with cherries), also known as just Kirsch.

This story starts back a couple Saturdays ago, when I decided instead of Kirsch to use my homemade cherry liquor to make a Torte to take to a housewarming party. I also figured it would be something productive to do with the strained-out whiskey-soaked cherries.

I was using a recipe for the cake that I'd never tried before, one that had fewer ingredients than the one in my baking cookbook from Germany and seemed to have a promise of being less dry than the traditional recipe that included almond flour in the cake. I was excited while watching it bake to see it puff up, since it was a cake leavened mostly by beaten egg yolks and whites, and I feared it might fail to rise. I beamed proudly as I pulled the finished cake from the oven, then cried out in wordless shock as the pan slipped from my hands and hit the floor. The cake fell out of the pan and folded in half, leaving a smear of chocolate everywhere it touched.

A few unkind words and a few minutes of cleaning up the floor later, I decided there was nothing else better to do with the quart of whipping cream in my refrigerator, so I'd better get started on a new cake. Another hour later, I was pulling out Cake Number Two at the end of its baking time. It wasn't quite as tall as Cake Number One, but I hoped I could still manage to get two layers out of it.

As it sat on the cooling rack, the cake looked more and more discouraging as the center of it kept sinking. When the time came to cut the layers, it was very clear that the center of the cake was an underbaked, gooey mess that wouldn't have anything to do with layers. I had a two-layer doughnut on my hands with chocolatey sludge for a doughnut hole. Tasty sludge, but not suitable for Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte.

What to do now? The eggs are gone, there's still a quart of whipping cream that needs to go into something for this party, the filling made with whiskey-steeped cherries is ready and waiting, there's not enough time to bake and cool another cake, and the one I've got is fantastic around the outside, but impossible to use the inside. What else uses bits of cake and has pretty layers with fruit and whipped cream? Trifle! The Schwarzwälder Kirschtrifle was born.

Here it is, complete with the garnish of chocolate shavings and chocolate chunks, ready to go to the party. Those who grew up with trifle, please excuse the Pyrex bowl standing in for a proper trifle bowl, which I don't have and never thought I would ever want.

Both layers of cake have cherry filling, I soaked the cake with a bit more cherry bounce, and of course there are thick layers of whipped cream on top of each cherry layer.

This solution to cake disaster was a big hit at the party. This past week, the partying with boozy cherries continued with an experiment to use the leftover cherry juice I had from making the filling and the Kirsch I've had hanging around the house since a trip to Vom Fass in Madison, WI in June but hadn't had occasion to use yet.

Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte (Black Forest Cake), a cocktail

1 part Kirschwasser/Kirsch
2 parts Mocha Kahlua (perhaps another chocolate liqueur would work, this is what I had around)
2 parts cherry juice (100 percent tart cherries, and not a juice blend)

Mix Kirsch, Kahlua and juice and serve out into glasses. To finish off just like the traditional cake, garnish each glass with a dollop of whipped cream and sprinkle with chocolate shavings.

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