This winter I've been trying to get my kids to eat more beets. It has been a real challenge so far. These "fries" seem promising, though: there are plenty of similar recipes out there, but this is the best one yet. The key is to slice them thin, 1/4 inch all around. Then add just a hint of sweet tanginess, some thyme and a decent amount of salt.
Surprisingly delicious, this sauce makes steamed sweet potatoes into something really special. It is now one of my favorite ways to eat them, a close second to plopping slices on the top of a tagine. But this recipe is easier than the tagine and makes a great quick dinner with brown rice and sautéed greens. I added sautéed boneless chicken thighs to my kids' plates.
I remember clearly the first time my mother introduced Kohlrabi to my brother, sister and me. She stood in the kitchen holding a strange, alien form from our garden. It was not purple then, as it often is now, but a pale greeny white, as though it might taste minty or sweet like a honeydew melon.
Sometimes dinner needs to be fast and furious, and a plan made in haste can go 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 that the kids would eat I warmed some frozen chickpeas with a little bit of curry powder and tossed those on top.
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.
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 she 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.
Tonight I made a tagine with chicken and sweet potatoes. My Moroccan friend Khadesia showed me how to cook this, so it is really her recipe. The best part of this dinner is the sweet potatoes. They steam on top of the other ingredients, which infuses them with spices. Khadesia usually makes this with frozen peas, but today I picked my first harvest of snap peas from our garden. I'll add those in at the last minute instead of frozen ones.