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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Sweet Potatoes with Chard, Green Garlic and Spring Onions aka Indian Spinach

 

Sometimes dinner needs to be fast and furious, and a plan made in haste goes badly awry. But occasionally a crazed forage through the pantry yields exciting surprises, like last night. In this case, Nigel Slater's Indian Inspired Spinach and Potatoes were on the menu (from Tender, my second favorite kitchen garden cookbook), but after dumping my son in front of TV and gearing up for dinner, I found no spinach and only a single potato in the house. Luckily, we had some sweet potatoes leftover from a past CSA box, fresh chard, spring onions and green garlic, all of which remade a semi-traditional take on saag aloo into a delightfully Springy Californian version. For a little extra protein, and something besides rice that the kids would eat, I warmed some frozen chickpeas with a little bit of curry powder and tossed those on top.  

Here's the recipe below. For more info on what I did with the rest of this week's produce box, check out the CSA section of this site.

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Indian Inspired Spinach or Springy Californian Indianesque Chard (adapted from Nigel Slater's Tender)

1 large bunch spinach or chard

3 medium potatoes, sweet potatoes or a mix of both

2 T vegetable oil (I like canola)

1 large onion or 2 large spring onions

2 cloves garlic or stalks green garlic

1 inch piece of ginger

1/2 t black mustard seeds

1/2 t turmeric

1/2 lemon, juiced

1 c cooked chickpeas

1/2 t curry powder

rice to serve

Start by putting on a pot of salted water on to boil, enough to cover the potatoes. This is good over rice, or with naan, so start the rice now if you're having that or send someone to collect some takeout naan. In a small pot, stir the chickpeas and curry powder together and warm over low heat.

Wash and scrub the potatoes (peel the sweet ones), then slice into 1/3 inch rounds or so and put them in the pot. While the potatoes boil until tender (5-10 minutes, just keep poking them with a fork to check), wash the spinach or chard, remove and discard the spinach stems or  if using chard, separate the leaves from the stems (the easiest way to do this is just grab the stem with one hand and pull toward the outer edge of the leaf with the other, tearing leaf off the stem as you go).  Chop the chard stems finely and put them aside. Next wash and chop the onions, garlic and ginger.

By now the potatoes should be tender. Dump them in a strainer in the sink, wipe out the hot pot with a towel and put it back on medium heat. When it is dry, add the oil, then onions and sauté for a few minutes until softened and add just a pinch of salt. Next add the chard stems and cook for a few minutes, then add the garlic, ginger, mustard seeds and turmeric, stirring occasionally. Add the cooked potatoes and about 1/2 cup of water. Bring it to a boil and simmer until the liquid is absorbed, just a few minutes.  Add the spinach or chard leaves  and cook until they are wilted to your liking. Add a squeeze of lemon, salt and pepper to taste. Serve over rice, with chickpeas on top.

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Fava Bean Tagine

 

I love the way that rolls off my tongue - fava bean tagine. I bet if I made it into a little song and dance, while I served dinner, my daughter would repeat it all day long - just to annoy me. But would she eat it? Well, yes, under duress. I spoon fed her all the fava beans (which she enjoys raw, but not cooked) and sweet potatoes, in exchange for a bowl of super sugar clifford crisps, or some other fake-healthy organic sugar cereal. The chicken and cous-cous she ate on her own. My son refused the vegetables outright, but that is nothing unusual.

The tagine wasn't mostly favas, they didn't even make up a large percentage of the meal, but I did use a whole bag from last week's CSA delivery. Not counting what's in the garden, I"m all out. 

In this tagine, I replaced the usual green peas that my friend Khadesia taught me were OK to throw in at the last minute. She wouldn't use chard, or spinach. No kale or stir-fry greens. Carrots, sure. Sweet potatoes, of course. Turnips, maybe. But something green?  Only peas. I guess I could serve it with a salad, but I prefer to think of a tagine as a one-pot meal, excepting the cous-cous.

In my garden, favas are the one thing (besides mildew) that will always grow.  When I planted my garden in mid-January, only the favas managed to get going before the weather warmed up. They are great for the soil (if you cut and compost them before they flower, some say) and are great to eat, unless you have inherited an enzyme defect from your parents. Even if you have, Wikipedia tells me that most people with the disorder don't react to fava beans. 

There is also quite a bit of protein packed into them - according to Nutrition Data's website, a one cup  serving has 187 calories, 1 gram of fat, 33 grams of carbohydrates, 9 grams of fiber and 13 grams of protein. Also lots of vitamin A, folate and choline (whatever that is). That is for boiled beans, so I'm sure the fat changes when they're cooked in olive oil, but they start out good.  When you compare that to the green peas, its about the same with less protein.  

So I guess those brits with their grey skies and mushy peas were on to something. I have to say that I'm pretty impressed that I can grow 13 grams of protein per cup in my backyard without doing much of anything. But now I see that a cup of roast chicken has 43 grams of protein. So maybe its not such a good deal after all. But I'm definitely more sure than I was yesterday that a meat serving doesn't need to be very large.

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Khadesia's Chicken Tagine:

1 chicken, cut into parts

4 small sweet potatoes or 2 large

1/2 cup peas (or snap peas or fava beans - shelled, boiled briefly and skinned)

1 or 2 slices preserved lemon

1/2 bunch cilantro

1 Tablespoon olive oil

2 largish pinches saffron threads

1 teaspoon ground coriander

1 teaspoon ground turmeric

1 teaspoon paprika

1 teaspoon colorant (safran)

salt and pepper

Heat the oil in a tagine - be careful not to turn the heat up too high (I use a medium low setting) because you can crack the tagine .  The temperature is about right before you hear a lot of sizzling. Sprinkle a little salt on the chicken, then arrange it in a single layer in the tagine. Add the preserved lemon to the chicken - on top is fine. Sprinkle half the spices (1 pinch saffron, 1/2 t coriander, turmeric, paprika and colorant) on top of the chicken, salt and pepper it and add half the cilantro. Put the lid on the tagine and cook over  for about twenty minutes.

While the chicken is cooking, wash, peel and slice the sweet potatoes into long slices (I usually cut them in half, then half the halves longways).  Wash the peas. If you're using favas, snap them out of the pods, then drop the beans into boiling water for about thirty seconds. Drain them and pour them into a bowl of ice water, then skin them. Its easiest to pinch the pale green skin on the stem end, then gently squeeze the bean to get it out.  When twenty minutes have passed, flip the chicken over, then sprinkle the remainder of the spices and cilantro on top. Lay the sweet potatoes on top of the chicken.  Cover and cook for another twenty to thirty minutes.  For the last few minutes, add the peas or favas.

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cous-cous:

1 cup cous-cous

2 cups boiling water

1 tablespoon olive oil

salt

Bring the water to a boil in a teakettle or separate pot and keep it simmering.  Heat the oil in a large skillet (or low sided pot), then add the cous-cous and stir it around for a couple minutes until it browns just a little bit. Stir in 1/2 teaspoon of salt and remove the skillet from heat.  Pour in the water, it will bubble up and make some noise.  Quickly stir it one time, then cover the skillet with a lid and let it sit for ten minutes. If it seems too dry, then add another cup of water in the same manner. Fluff the cous-cous before serving.

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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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Chicken Tagine with Sweet Potatoes and Peas

 

Mmmm...spicy peas. 

How exciting that the San Francisco Chronicle answered my quest for a homemade energy bar in their Sunday food section this weekend!  Thanks Mr. Hearst, I promise I'll stop threatening to cancel my subscription whenever your delivery boy throws the paper through our window.  I'll test the Cherry Chocolate Energy Bar recipe out later this week.

Yesterday we dined at my friend Laure's house.  She served a delicious salt cod dinner and we brought a pea and asparagus salad from a recipe in the latest Canal House Cooking. I'll have to make the salad again soon, it was really tasty.  

Tonight I made a tagine with chicken and sweet potatoes. My Moroccan friend Khadesia showed me how to cook this, so its really her recipe. She usually makes it with frozen peas, but today I picked my first harvest of snap peas from our garden, so I'm putting those in at the last minute instead.  The best part of this dinner are the sweet potatoes.  They cook on top of the chicken, so basically are steamed over spices.

Today was a great day in the garden.  First of all, we finished planting the strawberries.  Sixteen of them (a few are leftovers from last year) in a terraced rock garden that should get enough sun, if I can find an arborist to lop a couple branches off our ancient apple tree.  I'm determined to have great berries this year so that my kids can feed themselves (I'm also planting a dozen raspberries). I'm debating whether or not to mulch with black plastic, then coconut hulls or straw on top. I'd love to hear about your strawberries, if you have any.

As for the peas, they have been growing like crazy over the sides of our deck.  I have to reel in the vines that hang down over the railing to pick the peas, as though I'm bringing in lobster traps.  Unfortunately all our pea plants have powdery mildew right now, so I'm planning to pull them as soon as their current flowers have turned into peas and are ready to eat. The mildew seems to start at ground level and then travel outward, so the newest growth is fine, while the part in the pot look horrible.  From now on I'll be more careful to buy only mildew resistant seeds. 

Now, back to the tagine.  One of the spices I use is a bit of a mystery to me - it is on the far right of today's photo. My friend Laure brought it to me from Cambodia.  It is labeled Imit or maybe 1mit.  It calls itself Khmer Safran and has a picture of a rootish thing, that looks like what turmeric comes from, basically an orange piece of ginger.  Khadesia called it "colorant", which appears to be a typical ingredient in a moroccan tagine, but she said it is not the same as turmeric.  My friend Laure told me it was "safran" and left it at that. I think it smells similar to turmeric. Wikipedia tells me that turmeric has been called Indian saffron in the past and used as a replacement for saffron (the kind from a crocus), so maybe that is why what appears to be turmeric is labeled safran. Go figure.  I'll  list it on the ingredient list, but good luck finding it.  Your tagine will probably be fine without it.  

You will need, however, the proper cooking vessel - a tagine. My favorite is the Emile Henry version, in red. Its kind of pricey.  I served this with cous-cous, which I made really quickly in a regular old pot. Khadesia tells me that to make couscous you need a couscoussiere to cook it properly, and would probably be horrified to see my instructions below.

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Khadesia's Chicken Tagine:

1 chicken, cut into parts

4 medium sweet potatoes

1/2 cup peas (or snap peas)

2 slices preserved lemon

1/2 bunch cilantro

1 Tablespoon olive oil

2 largish pinches saffron threads

1 teaspoon ground coriander

1 teaspoon ground turmeric

1 teaspoon paprika

1 teaspoon colorant (safran)

salt and pepper

Heat the oil in a tagine - be careful not to turn the heat up too high (I use a medium low setting) because you can crack the tagine .  The temperature is about right before you hear a lot of sizzling. Sprinkle a little salt on the chicken, then arrange it in a single layer in the tagine. Add the preserved lemon to the chicken - on top is fine. Sprinkle half the spices (1 pinch saffron, 1/2 t coriander, turmeric, paprika and colorant) on top of the chicken, salt and pepper it and add half the cilantro. Put the lid on the tagine and cook over  for about twenty minutes.

While the chicken is cooking, wash, peel and slice the sweet potatoes into long slices (I usually cut them in half, then half the halves longways).  Wash the peas.  When twenty minutes have passed, flip the chicken over, then sprinkle the remainder of the spices and cilantro on top. Lay the sweet potatoes on top of the chicken.  Cover and cook for another twenty to thirty minutes.  For the last few minutes, add the peas.

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cous-cous:

1 cup cous-cous

2 cups boiling water

1 tablespoon olive oil

salt

Bring the water to a boil in a teakettle or separate pot and keep it simmering.  Heat the oil in a large skillet (or low sided pot), then add the cous-cous and stir it around for a couple minutes until it browns just a little bit. Stir in 1/2 teaspoon of salt and remove the skillet from heat.  Pour in the water, it will bubble up and make some noise.  Quickly stir it one time, then cover the skillet with a lid and let it sit for ten minutes. Fluff the cous-cous before serving.

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