Eating Dirt

Three Cheers for Kohlrabi!

Kohlrabi is something I remember vaguely from my childhood. My mother presented it to us in the kitchen, a strange alien form she found either at the grocery store or in her garden. It was not purple, but a pale greeny white, as though it might taste minty or sweet like a honeydew melon. She peeled it, cut it into cubes and then, announcing her love for the thing, served it to my brother and me with toothpicks. It was not minty, or sweet. Maybe a little bit refreshing with a strong whiff of broccoli, and all around objectionable to our young palates. We squealed in horror and ran out into the yard, never to touch kohlrabi again.

So imagine my surprise when a modern, giant version arrived in our CSA box. Not sure what to do, I consulted my cookbooks. Nigel Slater seems to have avoided this vegetable, Alice Waters didn't include it in her latest book, nothing in Mad Hungry or Canal House, and all Joy of Cooking had to recommend was kohlrabi with parmesan. Not terribly appetizing, but at least I'd learned it could be cooked. Eventually Stephanie Alexander emerged as the Queen of Kohlrabi. She is Australia's Kitchen Garden Master, with multiple pages of kohlrabi recipes in her book Kitchen Garden Companion, plus a paragraph on how to select a good one.

"It is best picked at about the size of a small apple," she says. Closer to the size of a football, ours served us well through three meals, after having its woody bits removed. We ate roasted root vegetables with lentils from Eat Good Food, Kashmiri-style slow cooked kohlrabi leaves and my favorite, Kohrabi and chickpea soup. The best part about kohlrabi? I told the kids it was potato, and they believed me. Maybe next time one arrives with the produce I'll get out some toothpicks and reveal my duplicity.

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Kohlrabi and Chickpea Stew (adapted from Stephanie Alexander's Kitchen Garden Companion):
(Click here for printable recipe cards.)

1 t cumin seeds (or ground, to speed things up)
1 t coriander seeds (or ground)
1/2 t chili flakes
1/2 t ground turmeric
2 T olive oil
1/2 lb kohlrabi, cut into 1/2" pieces
1 can or about 1 1/2 cups cooked chickpeas, drained
1/2 lb tomatoes (green ones work fine)
1 T tomato paste
4c water (or so, whatever looks right to you)
1 t salt (or more to taste)
1/2 small handful chopped coriander (aka cilantro) or flat leaf parsley

If you have five spare minutes, dry roast the cumin and coriander seeds in a small skillet until they are fragrant, watching carefully because they burn quickly. Then grind them with a clean coffee grinder or mortar and pestle. They are more flavorful this way than pre-ground, but you can use pre-ground spices if you are in a hurry. Either way, mix the chili and turmeric with the cumin and coriander.

Heat the olive oil in a medium pan until it shimmers, then fry the spice mixture for one minute. Add the kohlrabi and sauté for a couple minutes more, then add all remaining ingredients except the coriander or parsley leaves. Bring to a simmer, then continue to simmer for another 15 minutes, or until the kohlrabi is as tender as you like it. Taste and add salt if needed.

Ladle into bowls and garnish with parsley or coriander.
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Chickpea and Sweet Potato Curry

 

Today I picked up Alice Water's latest book - In the Green Kitchen. It looks to be an interesting mixture of essential basics for simple home cooking, gathered from people Alice knows, most of whom are chefs. She also has a website with each featured person giving their cooking lesson, a recorded series that was begun at Slow Food Nation in 2008. I love the book's lime green spine, and it has gotten me all fired up to revisit The Art of Simple Food, which is still sitting on my bookshelf only partially read. Maybe I'll get to it in time to pull some recipes out for late spring and summer of this year.  

The most exciting thing I discovered about In the Green Kitchen, so far, is that the photographs were taken by Christopher Hirsheimer, one of the women behind my favorite, Canal House Cooking. She has taken a major role in remaking food photography, as far as I can tell, starting with the casual, real-world photos in Saveur Magazine, which she co-founded, maybe in 1996? I can't find the date. In the Green Kitchen has some truly wonderful portraits - one of Alice Waters in what I assume is her own kitchen (p 1), Peggy Knickerbocker (p 120) and Darina Allen (p 30). I especially love how Christopher's photos aren't all the same - she constantly surprises me with unexpected details. And in this book, Gilbert Pilgrim's guacamole page is just so fabulous! Though I have to say that isn't the way I make guacamole. But its pretty close.

Yesterday's quiche with asparagus and morels was a big hit - I left the veggies off the top for the kids' half, and all five of them gobbled it down and asked for more. The recipe was a combination of the Sunset one I listed on my calendar and a quiche lorraine from Joy of Cooking.  I'll post it sometime soon. Huh. I had no idea The Joy of Cooking had its own website, I'll have to check it out.

Dinner tonight also turned out really well - a chickpea, sweet potato and pumpkin curry from Nigel Slater's The Kitchen Diaries. The only complicated thing were the chickpeas. I woke up this morning and soaked them, then in the evening put them in the pressure cooker for about thirty minutes, turned it off and let them sit until the rest of dinner was ready. That worked.

The curry was super fragrant, it cozied up the whole house. I served the kids on their partitioned plates, with buttered rice in one, salted chickpeas in another, curry in the third and leftover lollipop from this afternoon's birthday party in the last. Their curry didn't get eaten, I heard many complaints of "too spicy". But they tried it at least, and ate everything else.

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Chickpea and Sweet Potato Curry (adapted from Nigel Slater's The Kitchen Diaries):

200 g dried chickpeas (about 1.5 cups) soaked for several hours in water

2 medium onions, chopped

4 cloves garlic, chopped

2 red chiles (fresh if you have them, otherwise dried)

3 carrots

one medium squash or pumpkin

one large sweet potato

2 Tablespoons tomato paste (or 1 tomato if they're in season)

2 teaspoons coriander seeds

6 green cardamom pods

2 Tablespoons peanut oil

1 teaspoon black mustard seeds

2 teaspoons ground turmeric

coriander leaves (to garnish)

yogurt (to garnish)

Drain the soaking chickpeas and cook them in boiling water, until reasonably tender, about 45 minutes. Or you can put them in the pressure cooker for less time, about 30 minutes. Peel and chop the onions and garlic. Heat a heavy pot, add the peanut oil, and cook the onions and garlic over medium low heat, until they are translucent and starting to color. 

Stir in the mustard seeds, coriander, cardamom, turmeric and chiles. Leave them to sizzle for a minute or so, then add the vegetables, all cut into one inch pieces. Add water to the pan, until it is about halfway up the height of the curry. Put a lid on halfway, turn the heat down to low and let the curry cook until the vegetables are soft all the way through. Be sure to add more water if the pan dries out. Serve it with rice - my favorite is to add five cloves, three cardamom pods, a stick of cinnamon and a pinch of saffron to the rice cooker before you start it.

Mix the chickpeas in with the curry right before serving, and garnish with cilantro.

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Mega Minestrone

 

My cruet of olive oil.
 

Phew - that was a nice vacation.  A little sledding, a little skiing, lots of snow and lots of kids.  Now we're back and ready for spring.  Its especially lovely that San Francisco has been sunny and 65 degrees the two days since our return - its so liberating not to need a thousand layers of clothing to go out the door. And better yet, the kids sleep later in the morning and now five o'clock is late afternoon instead of evening. Hooray for springing ahead!

I managed to get away with cooking only one night of our seven day trip.  And I didn't check my email or write a blog entry once.  Not ever.  I didn't even check my voicemail.  Next time I'll be more responsible and set up an email auto-responder.  I promise.

So here it is - a simple soup that serves twelve.  Its hit or miss with toddlers, so good to serve next to a composed salad (mine is loosely based on salad nicoise) with multiple protein options, some crusty whole grain bread and soft cheese.  At our big ski cabin dinner, everyone ate something and I managed to make a meal from scratch in an unfamiliar kitchen after a relaxing trip alone to the local Safeway - it did take two or three hours, from start to finish, though, so plan for that. The total cost was $62, including two twelve-packs of PBR.  PBR because its cheap there - at least cheaper than my local corner beer store. I buy it in bulk because that it what the slugs in my yard drink.  And I certainly want to be able to drink along with them, so MGD or some funky Trader Joe's beer just won't do.  Offer the folks at your ski cabin something a little more suited to cold weather, like a zinfandel or rye and ginger ale.

As for the blue flowers below, that is whats blooming in my garden (aside from the oxalis and a couple sunflowers still hanging on from summer).  I think this plant overwintered from last year - it grew from seed in a hummingbird garden packet.  Or maybe it was Bring Home the Butterflies.  Or perhaps the Fairy Meadow Mix.  I love the artwork on Botanical Interest's seed packages, its even prettier in real life than on the web - now that's unusual.

 

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Mega Minestrone (serves 12 or more):

3 Tablespoons olive oil    

6 oz can tomato paste

1 large onion

1 smallish bulb garlic

6 medium waxy potatoes    

1 small bunch carrots

1 Tablespoon thyme     

1 teaspoon oregano (if there are no dried spices in your ski cabin's kitchen, just leave them out)

1 bunch chard (white stems if possible)   

8 oz small pasta (stars, ABCs, loops, whatever)

2 12 oz cans chickpeas

1 parmesan cheese rind (if you happen to have it)

salt & pepper

Mince the onion (if possible - I know cabin knives tend to be horridly dull so just chop it if need be).  Put the olive oil in a really big stock pot, heat it up and toss in the onion.  Let it cook over low heat for a while, ten minutes or so, while you chop the other veggies.  You want it to get soft and translucent, but not brown or burn, so adjust the heat accordingly.  

Chop the potatoes and carrots into 1/4 inch pieces, mince the garlic.  When the onion is translucent and soft, add a teaspoon of salt and the tomato paste, stir it around, then let it cook for a minute.  Then add twelve cups of water, the potatoes, carrots, garlic, thyme and oregano.  Go ahead and add the water even if you haven't finished chopping the veggies, just toss them in as you finish.  

Bring the pot to a boil, then turn it down to a simmer. Drain and rinse the chickpeas, then add them to the pot.  Add the parm rind now, if you have it. Then separate the chard leaves from the stem - for each chard leaf, grab the stem with one hand and from the bottom up, pull your other hand along the stem to pull off the leaf.  Chop the leaves and save them, chop the stems into 1/4 inch pieces and toss them in the pot.  

In a second pot, boil enough water to cook the pasta, cook it until it is chewy but not soft then drain it in the sink.

Simmer the soup partially covered until the potatoes and carrots are quite soft - probably about an hour, but just keep testing them until they seem right.  Taste and add salt in 1 teaspoon increments or so when ever you test the veggies.  But don't over salt it - its better to let your eaters add more themselves than feed them seawater.  But then don't let it taste bland either - the key to this soup is really the proper amount of salt.  Keep it slightly under salted until its done, then do a final salting before you serve.

When the veggies are soft enough, turn off the heat and stir in the chard leaves.  Taste it and add salt, if needed.  Put some pasta in each bowl, then ladle the soup on top - you can make it as soupy or pasta-y as you like.  Don't serve up the cheese rind - pull it out and throw it away.

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Voila! Salad Nicoise (or a salad with something for everyone - serves 12):

8 oz spring mix salad

2 7oz cans of tuna (chunk light if you like less mercury)

1 can black olives (for kids)

assorted olives (for grown-ups)

cherry tomatoes

6 to12 eggs

2 avocados

6 Tablespoons olive oil

3 Tablespoons champagne vinegar

salt & pepper

For starters, hard-boil the eggs.  If you don't already have a favorite way, try this one:

Put the eggs in a pot, cover them with water.  Bring the water to a medium boil (thats not wimpy, but not hard enough to crack the eggs).  Let them boil for a full minute.  Turn off the heat, and let the eggs sit in the water until it is cool.  I've been told that adding vinegar to egg water makes them easier to peel, but I haven't tested this.  I have found that fresher eggs are harder to peel, so I like to stash some away in the back of the fridge to age for easier peeling.

When the eggs are cool, peel them, slice in half and put on each plate.  Peel and slice the avocados, add some to each plate.  Add some olives, then some tuna.  Be sure to leave room on the plates for the lettuce, in the middle of all the other items. Slice the cherry tomatoes and plate them too.

Wash and dry the salad, then let it rest in the fridge while you mix up the dressing.  In a small jar, add the oil and vinegar, then about 1/4 teaspoon salt and some pepper.  Put on the lid, shake it up.  Pour over the salad and toss it.  If it seems too dry, sprinkle on some more olive oil.  Its handy to keep some in a cruet just for situations like this.  Grind some more pepper over it, add it to the plates, and serve.  Be sure to put salt on the table for this one - I like to sprinkle it on the egg and avocado.

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Chana Dal and Spicy Shredded Turnips

 

Mmm... shopping in the bulk section!

Ratings for yesterday's spinach and ricotta baked pasta are good - approval from the grown-ups and a not unrecoverable rejection from the pasta loving preschool set.  Because the spinachy part is salty and cheesey, I suspect that in time they will eat it on their own, instead of making me feed it forkful by forkful into their hungry mouths.  I forgot to mention yesterday that a salad might have been nice too, lettuce with pomelo or grapefruit and a vinaigrette.  Here's my recipe for that:  

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Salad with Pomelo and Vinaigrette:

In a small jar, mix two parts olive oil to one part champagne vinegar. For a two person salad, I usually use two teaspoons of oil, one of vinegar.  Add lots of salt.  If you're feeling fancy, finely mince a very small shallot and toss it in.  Screw on the top of the jar and shake it up.  Chop the lettuce into manageable bites, then wash and spin them dry and dump them into a very spacious bowl.  Peel the citrus and remove the membrane off a few sections, shred up the fruit part and put as much as looks good to you into the bowl with the lettuce.  Right before you eat, shake the dressing again and pour it over the top, grind some pepper over it, toss and serve.

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Tonight I'm cooking up one of my daughter's favorites - dal.  Inexplicably, she has always loved it.  My son will eat it too, which is quite unusual. Most of the time they are at odds over main courses. The turnips, however, are something else entirely, but worth a try.  Luckily Jason and I like to gobble down what the children won't.  I've also started a cup of basmati in the rice cooker, because my kids love it.  For two relatively normal adults who aren't running marathons, the dal and turnips are probably enough.

This recipe is basically mine, cobbled together over a number of years from different sources.  I've found that some indian cooks like to add asofotida, to aid with digestion (take the toot out of the magical fruit?). But the only asofotida I've ever purchased smelled too much like catbox for me to keep around, so I don't use it.  But you might give it a try, if you require aid.  Or, if you have trouble with gas and beans and things, you can introduce them into your diet in small but frequent quantities - definitely make some rice in this case.  Or take some acidophilus.  Or, better yet, if you're british like the fabulous Nigel Slater, just have some wind and cope with it.

And speaking of sources for recipes, I've sent off some letters to publishers of several of my favorite cookbooks asking for permission to reproduce a few recipes on my blog.  I'll let you know how that goes. The turnips are from our CSA newsletter, an adaptation of Neelam Batra's 1000 Indian Recipes, submitted by a CSA member.

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Chana Dal:

1 c Chana Dal (aka split chick peas)

2-3 cloves garlic, minced

1 inch or so ginger, minced

1 cinnamon stick

1 t cumin seeds

1 t red chile powder

1 t turmeric powder

1 T tomato paste (or 1 chopped tomato if in season) 

2 T vegetable oil

salt

Soak the split chick peas in some water for a while, 15 minutes to an hour.  Then add them and 2 1/2 cups of water to a partially covered pot.  Bring it to a boil and turn down to a simmer for 20 minutes or so.  While the chickpeas are simmering, heat the oil in a small skillet over medium-high heat and briefly saute the ginger, garlic and cinnamon stick until they smell good.  Then add the cumin, chile, turmeric and tomato (paste).  Stir it all around for a couple minutes then remove it from heat. After the dal has simmered for 20 minutes, stir in the spice mixture.  Continue to simmer until the chick peas are really soft and some have fallen apart, add some salt to taste when its close to done.  If it starts to look too dry to you add more water.  At the table, you can garnish with chopped cilantro.  Or not, especially if you don't have any.

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Grated Turnips, Indian Style:

1 lb turnips, scrubbed, trimmed and grated

1 t vegetable oil

1 in ginger, minced

1 t cumin seeds

1/4 t ground turmeric

1/4 t hot red pepper flakes, or to taste

1 t sugar, or to taste

3/4 t salt, or to taste

1/4 t garam masala

cilantro for garnish

Heat the oil in a wok or saucepan over med-high heat.  Add the ginger and cook for thirty seconds to a minute until it turns golden. Add the cumin seeds; they should sizzle upon contact with the oil.  Add turmeric.  Add the grated turnips and red pepper flakes.  Cook for three to four minutes.  Add the sugar and cook for another two minutes.  Sprinkle on garam masala and garnish with cilantro and serve.  As in the chana dal recipe, these things are optional.

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