Frijoles

This is another recipe from Savoring Mexico by Marilyn Tausend. I really mean it when I say the book is awesome, all the recipes are excellent. I make these every other month in a big batch and freeze them in jars that are the perfect family serving size. We use them for burrito night, to make refried beans, or to just be a yummy side to some other type of mexican deliciousness. My husband is always so happy when he sees me soaking pinto beans.

I grew up in southern california and have a love for all things mexican. Pinatas, jarritos, lucha libre, family style, you name it, I love it. I moved from cali to nyc and suddenly realized how bad mexican food can be. I had to use my taste memory to teach myself how to cook mexican in order to be able to eat anything worthwhile, this is where the cookbook came in. A lot of things I could do once I figured out the basic ingredients and methodology. Now not all mexican in nyc is bad, the red hook ball fields are a bastion of ex-calis looking for a fix, and the chinese/mex mash up is rather delicious, but not authentic. Anywho, I digress, these beans are a foundation and they are a staple to have on hand far better than anything in a can.

simple ingredients

soak beans overnight - WITH SALT!

bring to simmer in a pot and skim off initial foam

add oil, chopped onions, cumin, and chipotle en adobo

simmer for a long time - read all day on the back burner

secret sauce alert, about an hour or so before serving add a whole bunch of fresh epazote

cook until leaves are just about to fall apart, drain juices back into beans

serve as burritos, sides, etc

freeze the rest for later

Ole!

CSA week 14

Ahhh peaches, did I mention my kids like peaches. My 22 month old will eat 2-3 a day if I let her. This week we didn't have many choices. We all got corn, eggplant, tomatoes, a jalapeno, edamame, onions, and a galia melon or a cantaloupe - I picked galia. We also got peaches for our fruit share.

galia  melon's are awesome

What I made: Salsa fresca; eggplant stuffed with eggplant, tomatoes, corn, + celery and carrots from before; steamed edamame with salt; grilled corn; grilled peaches; melon and peaches in bellies.

The beauty

As you might have read I consider my stove to be the beast, but I consider my toaster oven to be the beauty. Now for some reason cook's illustrated panned my toaster oven, as the controls were too complex. Given that my four year old can use it without being able to read, I am not sure that is accurate. I love this thing. We ditched the microwave in favor of this convection toaster oven. It really doesn't take more than a minute or two longer to heat my leftovers and I can do all sorts of fun things, like dehydrate, convection bake frozen fried food, and like right now in the heat of summer—not turn on the oven.

I roasted leeks today for about an hour at and my kitchen wasn't hot at all. This little baby lets me beat the heat without a grill. I can't say enough about it. It did take us a bit to master the toasting only because we had to find the right rack configuration, but not only is my kitchen cool, but we are saving energy. If I need to heat up something frozen, I don't need to crank up the huge oven, I just pop it in. As a mom of three I use the timer function all the time. The timer on my oven just rings, this turns it off and given the small size, the heat drops fast, which means no more overcooking food while trying to mediate between a four year old and a six year old. Truly a good buy and I am no longer nuking my kids food.

the delonghi

Yes, I did not set the clock. I am obsessive with clocks being off in my house and every month or so I have to go around and synch them all. One less clock, one less synch.

CSA week 13

Millions of peaches, peaches for me, millions of peaches, peaches for free. We got more peaches. Everyone got a watermelon and fingerling potatoes that I had to trade for green beans to appease the middle child. I chose cherry tomatoes over green beans, I picked a zucchini and a cucumber, an eggplant and a bell pepper, chard over collards, kale, or roasted chiles.

summer lovin', happens so fast

What I made: Tomatoes were mostly eaten on the way home; summer salad with cucumber, tomatoes, and bell pepper; vinegar green beans; grilled peaches and peaches in bellies; ratatouille; sauteed chard and quinoa; and watermelon in bellies.

Lacto-fermented sauerkraut

We used to live in little poland, aka greenpoint, brooklyn. Apparently it isn't so much little poland any more, but rather chic these days. Back in the day it was the center of polish new york and the polish love their fresh vegetables and they love their sauerkraut. We had so many fruit and veggie stands in our neighborhood and all the produce was top notch, I miss that immensely. But all the stores also had huge barrels of sauerkraut and pickles that you would just use tongs to grab big batches of. I am almost certain they were lacto-fermented and had never been heated. So thanks to that, I am a bit of sauerkraut snob. No more eating cold sauerkraut straight out of the can like I did in college. No sir, I make my own, in big batches, keep it in the fridge, and use it as much as I can. My oldest has even developed a healthy love for veggie dogs with sauerkraut and ketchup. That's my boy.

If you don't know what lacto-fermentation is, it is basically preserving food with salt in an oxygen free environment so that mold won't develop and the food undergoes a change that 'sours' it. You can make lots of things this way. The health benefits are supposed to be big as long as you don't heat it. So don't go making lacto-anything and then can it. Make just enough to keep in the fridge for a few months. You can find out a lot more here http://www.wildfermentation.com.

When making this I usually use one big head or two small heads for my crock. You want it to be super compact in the crock. I generally forget how much salt I use, so it is a little different every time, but always good. What I also learned in little poland is that you want to use heavy cabbages for slaws and kraut and light cabbages for boiling or stuffing. Low water content = light and older, high water content = heavy and crisp fresh.

cut your cabbage into manageable pieces, usually two or four

slice ultra thin on a mandoline

now you need a crock, a weight (water jar),
and a plate or a mini-tart like I have here

add about two handfuls of cabbage and some salt
push down really hard, repeat until you have stuffed all the cabbage in,
then push down a lot more

weigh down with plate and water jar
press until liquid comes well up over the plate,
for the first 24 hours you need to press it down every so often,
if the water does not cover, add salt water until it is
at least an inch above the cabbage

cover to prevent bugs and let sit on the counter
for 4-6 weeks, press down once a day and skim off any scum,
once you see white mold circles on top, it's done

5 weeks for this batch and time to process

the only thing I ever use a baster for is to such the nasty juice off the top

then I take the whole top layer off to make sure no ick gets in the jars

stuff into jars and pop in the fridge, they will keep for months

Enjoy!

Brownies

I really do love cook's illustrated. The scientific method is awesome. This is their 'perfect brownie' recipe. I follow it almost exactly, but having three kids, one of whom is a sugar addict, I took from a 9x13 to a 9x9 recipe and added more cocoa, and umm subbed hot coffee with a dash of cream or coconut milk instead of espresso powder. I also cut these into smaller pieces to make them last, but still they go fast. I can't make them too often as my sugar fiend won't sleep if he knows there are uneaten brownies to be had. But who can argue with three types of chocolate in one little morsel. It also helps that I can make the whole thing in one pot.

all my ducks in a row, note how well used the recipe is

weighing my chocolate

mix chocolate, cocoa, coffee, and 'milk' product till chocolate melts

turn off heat and add oil, butter, and eggs

suddenly it turns so yummy looking

then add your flour and salt

fold in more chocolate

pour into a buttered pan and bake

serve with more coffee, or ice cream

Chocolate good!

CSA week 12

Fruit, fruit, fruit, I heart fruit. We got a dozen peaches today, they won't last long around here. Let's see, I picked cherry tomatoes over green beans, collards over kale or chard, we all got potatoes, celery, shallots, bell pepper, and carrots. We could chose between 1lb of zucchini or 1lb of cucumbers, I asked to mix and match, which meant I got one of each.

diced celery is better than lettuce with it's super crunch

What I made: Potato leek soup (leeks from before), peaches, carrots, and tomatoes in bellies, summer salad of cucumber, bell pepper, and last of the tomatoes, southern style collards, zucchini and onion in pasta, shallots for later

Zucchini and potato fritters

This is what we do with summer zucchini when we have too much. We make yummy fritters. My kids will eat anything fried and these are just that. Plus they are eating vegetables, sort of. The secret ingredient is cornmeal, but don't try adding fresh corn, not matter how yummy it sounds. I tried that once and the corn explodes in the hot oil even tucked in the fritters. Good times were had in the kitchen that day. I couldn't not make the fritters, I just had to drop and dodge. Fortunately we have a splatter guard. But corn fried in hot oil is actually really yummy.

The fritters take a little pre-prep, but they are so worth it. 

the csa provides

fine grate the zucchini for smoother fritters, large grate for crispier

only large grate the potatoes

salt the zucchini and soak the potatoes for about half an hour

drain the potatoes and squeeze the zucchini dry (save the zucchini water if you want)

cry a lot and rasp your onion into the bowl

add an egg and the corn meal

mix well

shape and fry in peanut oil or corn oil

drain and keep warm in the oven

double kid friendly with ketchup

Mmm, mmm good

Super quick pickles

There are lots of recipes out there for quick pickles and we make lots of them, but this is by far the fastest if you have everything on hand. We fortuitously finished our last quart of dill pickles that we canned last summer this week and our csa provided us with a handful of pickling cucumbers. It is as simple as dropping the new into the old, refrigerating, and waiting a few days. 

Note: This is a keep in the refrigerator for a month or so only recipe. You can't re-can with the old juice, it won't have the right acidity.

take new cucumbers and leftover pickle juice

slice up cukes, I do halfsies if canning, quarters for quick pickling

stuff them in and enjoy in a few days

Done!

CSA week 11

This week everyone got pickling cucumbers, potatoes, and onions. I picked kale over collards or chard (strange I know, but change is good). I picked green beans over squash blossoms or broccoli, carrots over beets, and cauliflower over zucchini only because we haven't had cauliflower yet and we all know what a late summer monster zucchini is. I wish we would get some tomatoes. The bigger shares get cherry tomatoes and my boys would love them right now since ours are not quite ripe yet. I do really wish we had some fruit, but that is the way with a CSA. You get what you get as the season allows. I know it could be much worse and I have heard stories of much, much worse, whole fields gone and nothing for anyone.

time to start pickling

What I made: Kale chips (see I had my reasons), super quick pickles, super sweet carrots in bellies, sauteed beans with butter and salt, gnocchi, onions and potatoes for later, grilled cauliflower 'steaks'

Squash blossom soup

Oh the joys of summer. I have a hobby garden and I always grow pumpkins, not because I am trying for lots of pumpkins, but because I am trying for lots of squash blossoms and boy do we get them. The kids are happy if we get one or two little pumpkins. I am happy picking the 4-5 daily blossoms. I only pick the male blossoms on long stems, all of the female blossoms appear on a fruit orb and those I hand pollinate to ensure proper seeds. Squash will cross pollinate and then the fruit won't seed true, so doing it by hand in the morning is the best bet. Just an FYI.

While I love to stuff and fry squash blossoms, my husband loves this soup. It is from a cookbook called Savoring Mexico by Marilyn Tausend. I high recommend Marilyn Tausend's cookbooks for authentic Mexican cooking that can be as fancy or as simple as you like. We have made so many recipes from her book and they are all fantastic. She also organizes these amazing looking culinary adventures in Mexico and I dream of one day doing all of them, except of course modifying all the recipes to be vegetarian.

I keep my blossoms refrigerated in a paper towel for up to 4 days for stuffing, or I freeze them in a baggie and once the baggie is full I know it is time to make this soup. It is always good to have one or two fresh blossoms for garnish, but I forgot this time. The frozen blossoms can be kept in the freezer for making a nice summer soup in the middle of winter, just be sure to pull out the stamen (big pollen covered thing in the middle of the flower) and the sepals (little green stems on the bottom of the flower) before freezing. This recipe originally called for roasted poblano, but I didn't have any so you will see serranos instead, but I do keep the peppers out of the kids soup and instead use them as garnish on the adult version.

ingredients du jour

chop your blossoms, mince your onions and peppers

saute onions and peppers, then add blossoms to sweat, note the two pans

you don't want to cook the blossoms for long at all, and I realize I forgot to add flour when I made this

add your stock - mine is from the freezer

and your dairy or dairy alternative

simmer for a few minutes and then blend

serve with homemade tortilla chips and fresh blossoms for garnish (I know I forgot)

Bon apetit!