26 blobs of future happiness

I have a new favorite cookie recipe. I realize this isn't ground breaking news, but it is comforting as hell and right now, with the world careening toward the abyss, I'll take what I can get. And while they aren't exactly good for you (2 sticks of butter and a lot of brown sugar in a batch that makes about 2 dozen large cookies) neither are they as bad for you as my previous favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe which had no redeeming nutritional value. These are stuffed full of nuts and seeds and whole grains, yet don't taste at all "healthy." There are pecans, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, flax seeds, sesame seeds, coconut, spelt flour and oats packed in there (along with the aforementioned butter and sugar and a generous quantity of chocolate.)

Cookie glamour shot

My version comes from this base recipe for Anytime Chocolate Chip and Oat Cookies though I made a few tweaks to suit my tastes. The base recipe is very flexible with lots of possible substitutions in the nuts/seeds/whole grains department that I imagine yield a wide spectrum of different tastes and textures. While I intend to do some experimenting--I'm thinking of trying a batch with buckwheat flour, walnuts and sunflower seeds--I'm sure that it would produce a very different cookie. The recipe at the end of this post is a winning combination that has been validated by my 17 year-old (who ate an insane number of these) and a group of friends who gave them the thumbs up. 

This cookie took a trip to Lake Michigan and made a delightful pairing with a Honeycrisp apple

They are the kind of cookie that you don't make in the moment when you desperately need a cookie to keep your sanity because they take a little time, first resting the dough in the fridge before scooping and then freezing the scooped cookies until solid. They bake up to the best texture when they go directly from the freezer to the oven. I made one tray with refrigerated dough and they spread a lot more, still tasty, but less chewy. But the positive side of all this resting and waiting is that you can have a supply in the freezer which promises fast future happiness: 10 minute to preheat your oven + 16 minutes bake time and you have my idea of heaven in a cookie.

Ready for the freezer: 26 blobs of future happiness.

Nutty Seedy Chocolate Chip Oat Cookies
makes about 2 dozen large cookies

1 C (2 sticks) unsalted butter

1/2 C chopped pecans
1/4 C raw pumpkin seeds
1/4 C raw sunflower seeds
1T whole flax seeds
1T whole sesame seeds

1/4 C unsweetened flaked coconut
1 C (125 g) all-purpose flour
2/3 C (83 g) spelt flour (or swap in whole wheat)
1 t kosher salt
1 1/4 t baking soda
1 1/2 C (300 g) light brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 T vanilla
8 oz chocolate chips (I like the Ghirardelli 60% Cacao chips because they are a little bigger and a little more bitter than regular chocolate chips)
1 C old fashioned oats

1. Brown your butter. Melt butter over medium-low heat and patiently wait until it turns golden brown and nutty smelling. Remove from heat and cool slightly (you can dump it in the bowl with the brown sugar if you are worried about it overbrowning in the pan). And if browning butter is among your least favorite things to do then you can just melt it. I made one batch with melted, not browned, butter and they were excellent cookies, just not quite as amazing as the browned butter ones.
2. Toast your nuts and seeds. I do this in the toaster oven but a regular oven is fine. Preheat to 325, line a tray with parchment and spread out the pecans and toast for 6 minutes until fragrant. Transfer to a plate to cool (I pick up the edges of the parchment, slide off the nuts and then reuse the parchment for the next step). Spread out the pumpkin, sunflower, flax, and sesame seeds and the coconut on the parchment and bake for about 5 minutes until the coconut is golden. Transfer to the same plate as the nuts and cool. 
3. In a small bowl, mix together all purpose and spelt (or whole wheat) flours, salt and baking soda.
4. In a large bowl measure out your brown sugar and add your slightly cooled browned (or melted) butter. Mix on high until it is thick and smooth. Then add the eggs and vanilla and mix on high until it is pale and silky smooth. 
5. Add the flour mixture and mix until fully combined. Fold in the nuts/seeds/coconut mixture. Then stir in the chocolate chips and oats until everything is evenly distributed. 
6. Cover the bowl and chill the dough in the fridge for a few hours (or over night) so it firms up and is scoopable.
7. Scoop the chilled dough (I use an ice cream scoop) into blobs (about 2T sized) and place close together on a parchment lined baking sheet. Freeze for about an hour and then either bake a batch or pop them into a freezer bag and feel the delightful security that you have a stash of amazing cookie blobs ready to go when things get dire.
8. When you decide to bake: preheat the oven to 350 and place about 8 cookies on a parchment lined baking sheet; they will spread so give them space. Bake for 8 minutes, rotate the pan, and bake for 8 more until deeply golden at the edges but still a little squishy in the middle. Cool on the baking sheet.

 

Dessert for breakfast and other things of joy in this absurdly stressful time

 

The world is a shit-show so let's all tear our eyes away from the news and latest catastrophe and share a few things that bring us joy. There should be a little something for most people who find their way to this blog. Please chime in in the comments if you have suggestions for things that are getting you through because I could use as much joy as I can drag over the threshold.

Culinary Joys

Fruit Desserts for Breakfast

Based on what I've been eating this month, it might be hard to believe that I don't really have a sweet tooth. I do, however, love the process of baking and I love summer desserts that are made from fruit whose season is fleeting. One of the benefits of having picky eater kids (yes, still...) is that there is usually left-over dessert that I can enjoy for breakfast. 

Lately, I've made these three recipes and they are all freaking fantastic as dessert but also can be enjoyed the next morning for breakfast:

Blueberry Cream Cheese Galette

(scroll down to the third recipe in the linked article)

The only change I made was to use my own single pie crust recipe and I put all the crushed blueberry mixture on the cream cheese to bake while the original recipe reserves half to have a mix of raw and cooked (why? I have no idea. The raw squished berries looked kind of gloppy and unappealing so I just tossed it all on the cream cheese layer.)

Texas Peach Cobbler

I used more peaches than the recipe called for, about 4 cups sliced, and I didn't peel them. I also served it with heavy cream rather than ice cream. Brown butter, peaches, cream, and absurdly easy.

Italian Lemon Almond Cake with Honey Lemon Peaches and Honey Whipped Cream

I followed this gluten-free recipe to a T and added my own spin by serving it with diced peaches that had 1/2 a lemon squeezed over them and a spoonful of honey stirred in and about a cup of heavy cream whipped up with another spoonful of honey.

(For those of you thinking, "Wait, this is the only recipe that's gluten free but not that long ago Kate said she was avoiding gluten," well, I have an update on that at the end of this post.)*

Visual Joys

I use Instagram differently from any other form of social media: it is where I curate my retreat from the world so there's a lot of joy there and not a lot of news. I follow recipe developers and knitting designers and people who post beautiful photos of far away places that allow me to dream of traveling again someday. Lately, I've been following lots of illustrators and two in particular have on-going projects that I look forward to and which bring me joy.

Watching a cephalopod poster come to life by artist Kelsey Oseid (@kelzuki)

Kelsey Oseid started a project last week to draw and paint 31 creatures from the order Cephalopoda (that's right! Octopuses, squids, cuttlefish, nautiluses!) to create one of her beautiful "Creatures of the Order" posters. It is simply magical to watch a sped up time-lapse video of a strawberry squid come to life. I already own a print of her Creatures of the Infraorder Cetacea (whales and dolphins) and am looking forward to purchasing a companion print when she completes this one. 

  

Transmundane Tuesdays prompts by artist Carson Ellis and the resulting submissions

Artist and illustrator Carson Ellis posts a prompt made up of 3 random phrases on a Tuesday and then people submit their creations. The results are absolutely stunning and create such a sense of shared humanity: there are professional artists who submit, there are little kids, there is everyone in between. I look forward to her curated display of the previous week's prompts and am contemplating becoming more than just an observer and trying my hand at it even though words, rather than visual art mediums, are more my thing. This week's prompts were: 1. has a long beard 2. has butterfly wings 3. wearing glasses. The prompts always surprise and send my mind down myriad paths that aren't our current reality. One of my past favorite weeks was 1. is a baby 2. is made out of mud 3. is wearing a helmet. You can follow her feed @carsonellis where she has stories featuring some of her favorites of the week's submissions, follow the hashtag #transmundanetuesdays where all the submissions for all of the weeks reside or follow a tag for each individual week: this week's #beardedandwingedinglasses has some absolutely stunning works in there (a papercut! an embroidery! one that is made, I kid you not, entirely from pressed flowers!)

Literary Joys

I've read a string of amazing books lately that have been balm to my soul in very different ways. If you are looking for some fiction to get you out of your present reality, maybe one of these will also appeal to you. I think all will make it onto my "best books of the year" list:

Deacon King Kong by James McBride
The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich
Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell
Apeirogon by Colum McCann

My reviews are posted both on my Books Read in 2020 page and on my Goodreads account.

Fiber Joys

I'm knitting two sweaters right now that bring me great pleasure: not only are the patterns well-written, but the two yarns I'm using are so different and both so lovely.

First up is the Wave of Change Jacket by Denise Bayron that I'm knitting in a linen tape yarn called Kestrel. Linen isn't the easiest fiber to knit with because it has little to no stretch (I likened the last time I knit with linen to the sensation of knitting with dental floss...) but this tape yarn is way better: the construction means that there is a little bit of give to it and the pattern uses big enough needles that it won't be an endless project (I still have a linen t-shirt that I started 3 years ago and didn't finish--fine yarn, little needles and just really not enjoying the process. I'll finish it someday, but not someday soon!) The linen is cool in my hands on a hot day and has a lovely sheen.

Here is a picture of the stunning designer wearing her linen version (the pattern is also written for chunky wool and my friend Carol is making a version so I'll get to see my jacket's winter sibling!)

And I also just cast on to make this Bronwyn sweater:

I'm using different yarn than what is called for in the pattern, Kelbourne Woolens Germantown in the color Natural; it's less expensive than the yarn pictured above and has really lovely stitch definition that should make the cables pop! I'm thinking of this as practice since one of my kids requested that I make them a version of Chris Evans' Aran sweater from the film Knives Out (the link takes you to a New Yorker article that discusses said sweater. Yes, it is a phenomenon). I found this pattern which looks pretty damn close to the movie sweater. We'll see if I'm burned out on cables when I finish the Bronwyn sweater (this is a pattern that I'll need to pay close attention to so I don't criss when I should cross) or on fire and reluctant to stop!

Please share your joys in the comments. I'd love to know how other people are coaxing their brains out of daily panic mode!

__________

*The status of gluten.

So I started going gluten-free at the beginning of February and I felt better: less joint pain, less digestive upset. I kept it up for a good 4 months while the world went fucking nuts. And then I decided to see what would happen if I tried gluten again. I made a batch of our favorite pasta al limone (fantastic recipe) and had a big bowl. And I didn't notice any difference. I went a few days, then tried gluten again with a big slab of my dad's homemade bread (he's an amazing bread baker.) Again, no difference. Huh. So what was going on that I had felt better when I went GF? A bunch of things I think. Placebo effect most likely contributed: I had felt helpless in the face of pain and discomfort and felt better because I was doing something. That feeling was probably compounded during the helplessness of the initial COVID-19 shut down when everything felt out of control (not that everything is hunky dory now, but at least we have more information so I don't feel quite so afraid of everything.) I also made some substitutions while GF that were probably pretty healthy: eating more whole grain brown rice and cornmeal instead of items made from white flour probably helped out both in the digestive realm and in controlling inflammation. I also frankly had the time and energy to focus on getting good at GF baking and welcomed the distraction from endless worrying. I am glad that I learned a lot about GF cooking and particularly baking since it led me to invest in ingredients that I didn't usually have around and to learn how to make safe, delicious foods for my GF friends. Going forward there will probably be some featured GF recipes here, but not exclusively GF. 

Let's make Breakfast Salad a thing

The lettuce bounty from my garden continues and has transformed my morning consumption habits. Now, I eat this pretty much every morning and I am here to testify it is simply the best breakfast:

There's lettuce, quinoa, walnuts, hard boiled egg, feta, tomatoes and dill fronds on that pile.  Low carb, high protein and best of all, tasty as hell. It'll give you plenty of energy to put your hand to fixing this fucked up world. The above photo was taken when my lettuces were still in their more diminutive state. Now they look like this monster pictured below:

I didn't plant you, but I welcome you. 

Breakfast Salad

(quantities for each serving)

pile a plate high with lettuce (and/or spinach, arugula, baby kale)

top with: 

1/4 C chopped walnuts

1/2 C quinoa*

1 medium tomato (or a handful of cherry tomatoes), cut into wedges

1 hard cooked egg, cut into wedges

about 2T crumbled feta

some dill fronds if you have them

drizzle on your favorite vinaigrette

Eat your breakfast salad and then relish the energy that you have, no mid-morning carb crash coming for you, my friend! You are well-fed, fired up and off to change the fucking world! 

*in order to always have quinoa on hand, I recommend making a big batch, cooling it and freezing it in a big gallon ziplock bag. When you need some, you pull the bag out of the freezer, whack off a lump, nuke it for a minute or two, and then put it on your salad. 

Crackers? Crackers!

Crackers are not something that I thought I'd ever get excited about. They mostly serve as a way of getting something else delicious, cheese or spread or dip, to your mouth without filling you up as much as bread. But I am now excited about crackers.

When growing a sourdough culture there's a decent quantity of what's called "discard," the bubbly starter that you remove before you feed the remainder and maybe, in times of plenty, people threw the stuff away. But when flour is in short supply and gluten free flours are absurdly expensive, you better believe that that stuff is not going in the trash. There are all kinds of recipes out there to use up sourdough discard; pancakes are by far the most popular way to use it up but people chuck it in everything: muffins, crumpets, even cakes. My favorite thing to do with it is make crackers.

I might not be quite so motivated if I was eating wheat right now because there's a good selection of high quality, affordable, wheat-based crackers, even in stores where the shelves of beans and pasta have been wiped out. There's really only one type of gluten-free cracker that I like (thankfully it's one of my favorite crackers with or without wheat). These babies:

But they are expensive and lots of regular supermarkets don't carry them. So my motivation was high to try and make my own crackers and the results make me almost as pleased as the almond flour chocolate chip cookie recipe I recently shared.

Behold, the sourdough discard cracker:

This batch was made with a sourdough starter which was primarily brown rice flour and I added some nigella seeds for their mild, onion flavor. 

The next batch of crackers happened a week or so later, and by then I'd switched to feeding my sourdough starter quinoa and teff flour (which it loooooves: bubbles right up and almost coos with happiness) so the resulting cracker is more multi-grain and toasty tasting. I mixed in nigella seeds again (of which I am inordinately fond: you can buy them here) and some black pepper.

Sturdy enough to make an excellent hummus delivery device

These are so good that I'm going to be feeding my sourdough more often than it really needs it just so I have an excuse to scoop out a 1/2 C of "discard" to keep myself supplied with crackers.

Sourdough discard crackers

1/2 C sourdough discard (regular or GF)
1/2 C flour (AP or a GF flour mix that has some xanthan gum, or use a different gf flour and add about 1/4 t xanthan gum for each 1/2 C of flour)
1.5 T olive oil
1/4 t salt
(optional) 2 t seeds of your choice (sesame, nigella, poppy, caraway, cumin or a mix)
(optional) 1/4 t dried herbs or spices of your choice (rosemary, black pepper, herbs de provence)

Mix everything together until it forms a ball, add additional flour or water by the tablespoon to get the right roll-able consistency (some starters are very wet and others are drier so start with equal quantities of starter and flour and then adjust accordingly.)

Wrap dough in plastic wrap and rest in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

When you are ready to bake, preheat oven to 350.

Cut the dough into 4 equal pieces.

Put down a sheet of parchment paper and dust lightly with AP or rice flour, roll out two pieces of dough directly on the parchment, getting it as thin as you can/as thin as you like. Slide the parchment onto a baking sheet. Get out another piece of parchment and do the same thing with the last two pieces of dough.

You can score the dough lightly with a knife or pizza cutter if you want the pieces to break apart evenly, or leave them un-scored for rustic crackers.

Brush the dough with water and a little sprinkle of flaky sea salt, if you have it. Regular salt is fine too, just use a light hand, or leave it off.

Bake for about 15 minutes--time will vary depending on how thin you rolled your crackers and how toasty you like them. Flip and bake the other side for about 5 minutes (unless they are done enough for you already). If they are still a little doughy, put back in for another 5 minutes.

Break into pieces and when cool, store in an airtight bag or container.

Take a bite

These are the best gluten-free cookies I've tasted and are the second-best chocolate chip cookies I've ever made, only surpassed by the Cook's Illustrated "Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies" recipe that they published in 2009 and that I haven't yet tried to reproduce with gluten-free flour. 

So many gluten-free recipes fail in the texture department, but not these babies: they are chewy and gooey and wonderful. These are cookies I would make even if I wasn't avoiding gluten. And they are way easier and faster to make than my #1 recipe which involves brown butter and lots of steps. 

These cookies are made with 100% almond flour--no obscure superfine brown rice flour that can only be purchased online or xanthan gum required. And if your grocery store is out of wheat flour during the pandemic, they might just have plenty of almond flour!

A few things I have learned making these:

1. Monitor the color near the end of the cooking time closely. Nuts can go from golden to burnt very quickly so I set the timer for a few minutes less than I think they'll need and then check them every minute or so (usually rotating the pan so that any hot spots in the oven don't make them brown unevenly) until they are golden.

2. These are easier to make if you use weight rather than volume to measure your ingredients (this goes for a lot of gluten-free recipes because weight is much more specific if you are making substitutions). If you don't have a digital scale, this is a good and affordable one. I put volume estimates in the recipe for people who don't have a scale.

3. Shaping and freezing the dough balls leads to a better texture than baking right after you make the dough. If you do bake them right after you make the dough, they'll spread a lot more and won't be as chewy, more of a crumbly-crispy cookie and if that's your ideal, then go for it; just be sure to reduce the baking time by a few minutes. I prefer chocolate chip cookies with a little gooeyness in the center. Freezing the dough means adding a few minutes of cooking time but I think it's worth it and it means that you will probably have a supply of ready-to-go dough if you are having a crummy day and need a little pick me up. Reach in the freezer and grab three dough balls and in about 20 minutes (5 minutes to preheat the oven, 15 minutes baking time) your day is a little better:

Ahhh. Cookie-therapy on a tray.

Almond Flour Chocolate Chip Cookies

adapted from a recipe by Erin Jeanne McDowell

300 grams almond flour (about 2 3/4 C)

3/4 t kosher salt

1/2 t baking soda

140 grams butter at room temp (10 T or 1.25 sticks)

110 grams light brown sugar (about 1/2 C)

100 grams white sugar (about 1/2 C)

1 large egg

2 t vanilla extract

300 grams (10 oz) chopped dark chocolate or chocolate chips (I prefer hand chopped because then you get the little flecks of chocolate throughout the cookie, but I've also made them with comercial chips and they are fine.) The volume varies widely with these because it depends on your chip/chunk size. 10 oz of Ghirardelli 60% Cacao chips, which are a little bigger than standard chips, is about 1 1/2 C

flaky sea salt. 

In a bowl, combine the almond flour, salt and baking soda. 

Cream the butter, brown sugar and white sugar until light and fluffy. Add the egg and vanilla and mix. Scrape down the bowl if needed.

Add the almond flour mixture and mix on low speed until combined. Add the chocolate chunks/chips until evenly distributed. 

Scoop about 2T sized balls (I used a heaping tablespoon as a scoop), roll in your hands to make a ball and then flatten to about 1/2" thick. Place on parchment and then freeze.

When it's time to bake, preheat your oven to 350, set the desired number of dough balls on a parchment or silpat lined sheet, sprinkle with a pinch of flaky sea salt, and bake for about 15 minutes. I set the timer for 10 minutes and then check (somewhat obsessively) for the last few minutes to rotate pans for even browning and to make sure the almond flour doesn't burn. You might need to add a few minutes depending on your dough ball size. One time I was a little generous making them and they took about 18 minutes total, another time they were more modestly sized and were done at about 14 minutes.

Week 8 (and a little 6 and 7)

We went out of town and missed parts of two weeks of our CSA--my parents got the bounty of those two weeks but there were a few carryovers.

First off, here's a photo of Week 6 that I took before we went out of town:

two bunches of baby beets w/greens some green and yellow zucchini, small broccoli head, bulb of green (uncured) garlic two heads of lettuce, scallions and a bag of snap peas. I sautéed up some of the zucchini, broccoli and peas and dumped them over a bowl of pasta the night before we left, but the rest went to my parents' fridge (except the garlic which I popped into ours to wait for our return.)


Then when we got home my parents left us some of the Week 7 haul: two zucchini, some spring onions (bigger bulb than scallions), parsley and a pint of red new potatoes waiting in the fridge for us. We sautéed up the zucchini, onions and parsley which tasted great after a lack of green veg while traveling. And the potatoes are bing folded into this week's plan:

Here's what I picked up for Week 8:

small head of lettuce, yellow and green zucchini, cabbage, bag of snap peas, bag of green kidney beans and a bunch of beets (a few large, the rest baby) with their greens.

• The zucchini and last week's potatoes will be combined into one of my favorite summer dishes: a goat cheese basil potato squash gratin (recipe below).
• The lettuce will be mixed with some of the shelled peas, sliced cucumber, mint leaves and sliced radishes and served with feta dressing. If I can track down some ground lamb then I'll serve lamb burgers stuffed into pita with this salad.
• I've never had green kidney beans, but according to the letter that came w/this week's share I should just cook them like regular green beans. They look a bit sturdier, so I might try a slow braise like Greek-style green beans stewed with tomato, onion and a little cinnamon.
• I'm looking for a good beet-green recipe. I'm hoping I can find something more interesting than the standard sautéed w/garlic. Thus far my history with beet greens has been tolerance rather than celebration as they rank as my least favorite green (despite my ardent love of beetroot.) Maybe that'll change if I find the right recipe.
• I'm thinking some kind of slaw with the cabbage. It's a small head so might require buying another cabbage to supplement it, but I'm thinking maybe this sweet and sour coconut coleslaw with mint and dates?

Zucchini potato goat cheese gratin

adapted from this recipe

about 3 medium or 4 small zucchini or summer squash (or a mix)

about 1 lb new red potatoes (not the teeny ones because they'll be a pain to slice)

4 oz goat cheese

1/4 c slivered basil

1/3 C whole milk

1/3 C grated parmesan

glug of olive oil

salt and pepper

• Preheat your oven to 375 and grease a 2 quart casserole dish w/non stick spray
• Get out your mandoline (and kevlar glove) or your sharp knife and slice all those potatoes and zucchini thin. Chuck them in a bowl and toss with a glug of olive oil, and some salt and pepper.
• Put half the potato zucchini mixture in the casserole dish, sprinkle with 1/2 the basil, dot with half the goat chese and add a little more salt and pepper. Add the rest of the potato zucchini mixture, top with basil, goat cheese and parmesan. Pour milk over the top and top the dish with aluminum foil (if your casserole dish is shallow, then spray some non-stick spray on the foil or else the cheese will stick when you remove it and you don't want to lose your crusty delicious cheese). 
• Pop it in the oven for half an hour then remove the foil and bake for another 15-20 minutes or until the top starts to brown (and if it resist browning, feel free to run it under the broiler for a minute.)
• Top it with some more fresh slivered basil, if you have any on hand.

This is what I'm bringing to Thanksgiving....

...because it isn't f***ing beige.

It also tastes great.  Crunchy, spicy, sweet and salty--it hits pretty much all of my happy tongue spots and is the antithesis of mashed potatoes, stuffing and turkey.  If you are a lover of Thanksgiving foods, then don't make this. Or at least, don't make it for Thanksgiving. If, like me, you dread the festival of beige, bland foods and yet have to do most of the cooking for it because you love people who love it, then do yourself a favor and slip this onto the sideboard. Most people will ignore it which is great because then there's MORE FOR YOU!

I plan to load my plate with this, the spicy cranberry relish that my sister introduced me to years ago that has kept me sane at every following Thanksgiving, and some roasted potatoes. This will also mean I will have plenty of room for apple pie (which is one beige food in the Thanksgiving spread of which I heartily approve).

Cabbage, feta, date salad
adapted from this recipe on Smitten Kitchen

• 1/2 of a medium head of red cabbage, sliced thin on a mandoline if possible (or use a very sharp knife)
• 1/2 C chopped Italian parsley
• juice of 1 lemon
• 2 -3 T olive oil
• 1 T pomegranate molasses
• salt and pepper
• 1 t sumac (can skip this if you don't have any, but it gives an extra sharp burst of flavor that complements the lemon)
• 1 T of Aleppo Pepper flakes (use only 1 t or less of regular old crushed red peppers. Aleppo Pepper is milder and wonderfully addictive and you can order it online pretty easily these days.)
• about a 1/2 C dates, sliced lengthwise into halves and then crosswise into thin half circles
• about 1/2 C crumbled feta
• 1 T toasted sesame seeds

In a large bowl, toss together the cabbage, parsley, lemon juice, olive oil, pomegranate molasses, sumac, salt and peppers. Taste for seasoning and adjust for how you like it. Then gently toss in the dates and feta and sprinkle with the sesame seeds. Can be left at room temp to wilt a little or popped in the fridge if you like your cabbage crunchier.

Salmon, two ways

The big revelation this summer is that my kids will eat salmon. I had assumed that the two humans whose eating habits so frustrated me at one point in time that I started a (now dormant) blog about them called The Picky Eater Chronicles would reject salmon simply because they somehow intuited that kids don't like fish (believe me, that would have been one of their more rational reasons for rejecting a food).

And because I love fish but lack confidence when cooking fish--I often order it in restaurants, but have found my own attempts making fish lackluster--I just stuck with canned tuna and omega 3 fish oil pills to get some of that good fat into all of us.

But one day in June I was in Costco and I cast my eye longingly over the seafood case, trying to figure out when I'd be able to go out to some restaurant and order fish. The wild caught salmon in particular was so beautiful and orange and fresh looking. So finally, I just said, fuck it and chucked a tray in the cart. Of course, this being Costco, it was a big tray with two full long fillets, enough fish for 8-10 people depending on hunger and portion size.

When I got home, I was pretty motivated to figure out how to cook it since I had just spent $28 on food I wasn't sure anyone would eat.  I can't remember where I found the super basic technique, probably by googling "idiotically easy salmon recipe" or something like that, but I found something that has worked well beyond my wildest dreams and I now make over and over and over.

I take the filet, pat it dry with paper towels. Cut it into portions and sprinkle the non-skin side with salt and pepper. Then I heat up a ceramic non-stick pan* until it is pretty hot, put in a couple of teaspoons of neutral high smoke-point oil (like canola), and then slap in the salmon, skin side down.

Then, this is one of the best parts, I walk away and go do something else in the kitchen for about 3-5 minutes (depending on the thickness of the filet). Don't poke or nudge or bother that fish! After 3-5 minutes, the skin has crisped up and a spatula slides right under it. Flip it over and leave it alone again for 3-5 minutes.

On the cut side, you can see the center of the fish start to turn opaque and use that to decide how long you want to cook it. Put it on a plate and, hot diggity, your main protein source is cooked and ready in less than 10 minutes.

So what happened when I put this down in front of the kids? Not one bit of drama. I'm slowly learning to shut the hell up so I just placed it in front of them and when they asked what it was, I said, "Salmon." That's it. Nothing more--no explaining, no preface about how salmon is mild and since they like tuna I thought I'd try this, no begging them to just try a bite.  And then my husband did something truly wonderful: he pulled off the crispy skin, popped it in his mouth and said, "Yum. Tastes like chicken skin."

Those are magic words in my house. If not watched carefully, my daughter will strip a roast chicken (or for god's sake, once at Thanksgiving, half of a turkey) of the skin and munch on it like potato chips.

And now she does that with salmon skin, too (!!)

That first night I served the salmon plain, just a squeeze of lemon on the grown ups' portions, and it was so good. Since then I've been buying wild salmon pretty much every time I go to Costco, about once every two weeks, and we eat it two nights in a row. I've also gotten better at figuring out interesting stuff to put on top of it: the cucumber yogurt sauce that I usually serve with kibbeh, the miso/ginger dressing from the baby bok choi recipe, some defrosted garlic scape pesto, all were really good and took the salmon in different directions. And best of all, the saucy stuff can be left off of the kid portions and I don't have to cook theirs separately (they still only want it plain, plain plain plain plain, thank you very much.)

Here is what this weeks two salmon dinners looked like:

Last night the salmon was topped with lime juice and a little lime zest, served with a corn, red pepper, radish, cilantro, red onion salad (which could have easily gone on top like a salsa, except I made so much of it--hey, it's corn season--that it would have buried the salmon), and a few slices of baguette.

Tonight's dinner looked like this:

Salmon and sesame noodles topped with a riff on David Chang's Momfuku ginger scallion sauce (recipe below), served with a Korean spinach and bean sprout salad and a nice glass of chilled Provencal rose.

By contrast here is what the kid-version of dinner looked like:

Plain salmon, plain sesame noodles, plain spinach, a plain sliced ginger gold apple and plain milk. Detect a pattern here? Oh my god they are the most boring eaters on the planet.

I enjoyed both dinners and even more, I loved the fact that both were fast to make and I got to eat them with no sour expressions, no kvetching, and no people sitting next to me sullenly poking at their food until it had disintegrated into an unrecognizable mush.

Ginger Scallion Sauce

adapted from David Chang's and Peter Meehan's recipe 

My version is a bit saucier than the original and I cut the quantity of scallions and ginger in half since there are only two of us who eat it in this household. It still makes plenty and is great for adding to things like leftover rotisserie chicken or, as Chang recommends, a big bowl of cheapo ramen noodles.

1 and 1/4 C thin sliced scallions

1/4 C fine minced fresh ginger, peeled before chopping

2 t sherry vinegar

2 t hoisin sauce

2 t (or more) tamari 

1/2 t kosher salt

fresh ground black pepper

Mix everything together in a bowl and let sit for at least 20-30 minutes. Any left over can be refrigerated and kept for a few days.

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*I love this thing. It's a T-fal ceramic non-stick that I got for about $20 at TJ Maxx and it works like a dream. The best thing for keeping it non-stick is to run a Mr Clean Magic Eraser over the surface after washing to get off any sticky oil blobs that resist scrubbing.

Winter break

I don't know about you, but I am heartily sick of roasted vegetables at this point in the winter. Roasted cauliflower, broccoli, brussels sprouts, butternut squash, sweet potatoes, regular potatoes, parsnips, carrots, I could go on and on. I welcomed them when they first appeared in the autumn and happily consumed them with the roasted garlic, lemon juice and zest, black pepper and grated parmesan which works on just about any vegetable to make it taste great.

But I've had enough. Maybe it was the 14.1 inches of snow that fell a few weeks ago, or the heavy gray skies, or the stir crazy feeling of being inside too much because the windchill makes my face feel like it's going to fall off. It isn't fair to the roasted vegetables, but they are getting lumped in with everything wintery that I'm sick of (along with hot chocolate, hearty soup, fires in the fireplace, cozy wool sweaters and other things that were pleasant when they first appeared but have outlived their welcome.)

Rather than purchase disappointing tomatoes and other summer vegetables, I hit the Asian grocery store. Yesterday I picked up a massive bag of baby bok choi. They looked so alive and promising and like the antithesis of cauliflower.

But then I got home and realized I don't really have any recipes for baby bok choi. I usually chuck one or two into a bowl of udon, but I'd be eating udon every hour if I wanted to get through all these before they spoiled. (Besides udon is soup which, as I mentioned above, I'm pretty sick of.)  Also, to compound the challenge, Brian is out of town and my kids don't like bok choi (maybe because they've only been served it limp in udon...) so I needed a recipe that could use up a lot of it and that was tasty enough that I'd want to eat it all.

Happily I can report success! I found a recipe in Fine Cooking that consists of basic sautéed baby bok choi that gets interesting by being doused in a warm miso ginger vinaigrette. It is bright and zippy and crunchy and fresh and an excellent antidote to the frozen dingy piles of snow outside. For lunch today I ate 1/3 of the big bag of baby bok choi that I'd purchased and can easily see replicating this again in the coming days.  Did I mention that it was fast and easy? It is. Next time I'll probably put it on top of some brown rice and add a little cubed firm tofu in with the bok choi, but it was excellent on its own too.

Baby Bok Choi with Miso Ginger Dressing
(very loosely based on a recipe from Fine Cooking issue #127 because I didn't measure anything)

Ingredients:
baby bok choi (as many as you want to eat)
some neutral oil
a clove of garlic
a small nob of ginger
miso (I used white but any kind will do)
a lime (if you have it)
mirin
rice vinegar (or white wine vinegar)
Sriracha or your favorite hot sauce
sesame oil

Cut the baby bok choi in half.
Chop up the garlic and ginger.

Get a big skillet or wok to saute the bok choi and a little skillet for the miso vinaigrette. Pour a little oil into each and turn on the heat. When hot, toss the bok choi in the big skillet and the ginger and garlic in the small one. After about a minute, turn the heat off under the small skillet and plop in a spoonful of miso and a glug of mirin. Use a whisk to blend the miso and mirin until there aren't any lumps of miso. Then add a little vinegar and whisk again (meanwhile you are occasionally tossing the baby bok choi with a pair of tongs.) Squeeze in half a lime (if you have it) and whisk again. Put in a squirt of sriracha, whisk and then give it a taste. Do you want it sweeter? Add a little more mirin. More acidic? Add a little more lime or rice vinegar. Saltier? A little more miso. Once it tastes good to you, add a little bit of sesame oil, dump the baby bok choi (which have wilted but are still crunchy at the base) onto a plate or serving platter (if you plan to share) and then pour the vinaigrette over the top. Cooking time total was about 5 minutes; tack on a few more for prep and you can have a plate of these sitting in front of you in about 10 minutes--faster than takeout!

Relish that this tastes nothing like winter.

Summer Vegetables--an appreciation

I interrupt my blathering-about-England posts to share my present appreciation for summer vegetables. It is possible that my present status at day 13 of a 16-day solo parenting-in-the-summertime adventure has warped my perceptions (I have no idea how single parents--especially those with sole custody--do it, particularly not with a teenager who is riding the roller coaster of hormonally induced emotion.). I've hardly spoken to an adult face-to-face in the past two weeks, other than my son's piano teacher and the farmers at the farmers's market. So yes, I got a little weepy today when my son played "In a Sentimental Mood" (which he played this Spring and I had assumed he had already forgotten--such a beautiful, gentle piece and such a surprise when most of this week has been "I'll play the damn B flat, E flat and A flat scales and their related minors but I'll make sure you know that I am not enjoying it!" Who knew that piano scales could be such an effective way to communicate rage?) And the tears welled up again in gratitude when I sat down to this lovely plate of summer vegetables with accoutrements for dinner.

It isn't a fancy meal but it made me very, very happy. It's just kale, new carrots, corn and an allium of your choice (this time, a shallot), sautéed up and then splashed with sherry vinegar. But this simple preparation brings out the minty-sweetness of the carrots, the bright pops of the corn and the sturdy earthiness of the kale in a way that keeps me grounded. This is the third time this week that I ate it--that's what happens when you buy a big bunch of Tuscan kale and another huge bunch of new carrots at the farmer's market and you are only cooking for one (the girl critter will eat some of the carrots raw, but not cooked.) It's quite a lot of kale and carrots for one person to go through, but thankfully, I am happy to eat this combination until it is all gone (two or maybe three more meals, I'm thinking.)

Here's the general formula for the vegetable sauté (in per-person quantities. If you are lucky enough to be cooking for more than just yourself, then adjust quantities accordingly):

Take one large shallot, or about a quarter of a medium sized red onion, and slice it up. Sauté in some olive oil and then chuck in a good handful of new carrots that you've scrubbed and then halved or quartered lengthwise. Keep the heat at about medium and stir them occasionally while you cut the kernels off a cob of sweet corn and wash, stem and shred coarsely about five large Tuscan kale leaves. Sprinkle the carrots and shallots (or red onions) with a little salt and pepper and some chopped up fresh thyme if you have it (and don't worry if you don't), then put in the de-cobified corn. Give it another stir and go slice yourself some baguette. Then dump in the shredded kale, stir again and go decorate your baguette (I went with goat cheese on two slices and sharp cheddar on the other two). Drizzle about 1T of sherry vinegar over the kale and stir. Go arrange the baguette and some olives on your plate.  Pour yourself a glass of red wine because God knows you are going to need it to get through this evening's emotional antics once they inevitably arise when you are too tired to think. Then stir the kale and give it a taste--add more vinegar, salt and pepper to taste. When the carrots are tender crisp and the kale has softened, pile it all on the plate and go hide in a quiet place and enjoy the taste of summer.

Lentilicious

It gets my attention when a chef says that they could eat a particular dish every night which is what Yotam Ottolenghi said about the above dish.  While I haven't made it daily, I have made it twice in as many weeks and it is really good--a cross between a lentil stew and hummus, but served warm (which is totally necessary since we're in the middle of a very harsh winter here.)

I made it once with regular old brown lentils and once with the more swanky French Puy Lentils that Ottolenghi called for and what do you know, I liked the more humble lentils better. He had to crush the French kind at the end of his recipe, while I found the slightly less firm brown lentils made for the perfect texture (the above photo is of the French kind; I forgot to take a picture when I made it with the brown, but it was a bit softer and saucier.)

Once I served it with brown rice because I already had some cooked and it was fast and easy and fine. But it was even better when I took the extra step of making pita bread to go with it--hot, soft, puffy bread pillows were the perfect medium for scooping up the saucy lentils. Add a green salad and you have a fantastic meal.


Lentils with Tahini and Cumin
adapted from Yotam Ottolenghi's Crushed Puy Lentils with Tahini and Cumin

3 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
2 T butter
2 T olive oil
1 C lentils (I prefer the humble brown lentil)
1 t ground cumin
1 can petite diced tomatoes, or 3 large fresh tomatoes, chopped
a handful of cilantro leaves, chopped
4 T tahini
2 T lemon juice
1 C water
salt and black pepper

garnish:
olive oil
1/2 small red onion, peeled and sliced very thin
1T chopped cilantro

Bring a medium pan of water to a boil. Add the lentils and cook for 15-20 minutes, until completely cooked, drain and set aside. Put the butter and oil in a large sauté pan and place on a medium-high heat. Once the butter melts, add the garlic and cumin, and cook for a minute. Add the tomatoes, the handful of cilantro and the cooked lentils. Cook, stirring, for a couple of minutes, then add the tahini, lemon juice, water, a teaspoon of salt and a good grind of black pepper. Turn down the heat to medium and cook gently, stirring, for a few minutes more, until hot and thickened. Serve each portion with a drizzle of olive oil, a scattering of red onions and a sprinkle of cilantro (or put it all in a warmed serving dish and garnish the whole thing).

Contrasts

As I mentioned in my last post, I'm a little rusty on the blogging front. As I forgot to take a photo when I made this the other night, you are stuck with this photo of the leftover version that I had for lunch today:

Thankfully, a much prettier version accompanies the recipe in Plenty:

This recipe works because of the contrasts:  silky roasted eggplant; garlicky, sharp buttermilk sauce; bright sweet-tart pops of pomegranate seeds. It's not a terribly complicated recipe, but you don't want to skip any of the three facets and that means you better get in gear and make it while pomegranates are in season (they pretty much disappear from the markets here for about half the year.)

I've made a few tweaks to the recipe because while the combination is inspired, I think the dish benefits from added intensity: more garlic in the buttermilk sauce, more salt and a lot more za'atar. Also, while this edition of Plenty has fixed some errors that were in the first edition (the copy I borrowed from the library last year had erratic conversions of temperatures in Celsius to Fahrenheit so this recipe had 250 F listed rather than the approximate conversion of 450 F), I still had to adjust some temps. My edition of the cookbook says 400 F and I would definitely recommend 450 to get that golden burnished top (unless maybe you are dealing with really small eggplants).

And a warning, if you are thinking of serving this at a formal dinner party you should know that there really is no tidy way to eat it. Despite its pretty presentation once you start eating you're going to get a plate full of messy bliss, that quickly turns into something requiring fingers to pull away the eggplant skin and release the delicious innards. I recommend serving it with puffy, warm pita bread so you can sop up all the mashed bits of eggplant and sauce that will flood the plate.

Eggplant with Buttermilk Sauce and Pomegranate Seeds
adapted from Yotam Ottolenghi's Plenty

Ottolenghi recommends serving this as an appetizer but I found it made a terrific main course, especially when paired with a spiced lentil tahini dish (recipe to come!), warm pita and a salad.

Eggplants
2 medium eggplants (if you are using large, then increase cooking time)
1/3 C olive oil
4 t za'atar*
salt and pepper

Sauce
9 T buttermilk
1/2 C greek yogurt
1 1/2 T olive oil
2 cloves of garlic
1/2 t salt (or more to taste)

For serving
the seeds from one pomegranate
4 t za'atar
ground black pepper
olive oil

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F. Cut the eggplant in half lengthwise. Score the flesh in a diamond pattern (but make sure not to pierce the skin).

Place the eggplant halves, cut-side up on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Brush them with the olive oil--keep brushing until all the oil has been absorbed. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and 1 t of za'atar for each eggplant half. Roast for 35-40 minutes until the tops have become golden brown and the flesh is soft. Remove from the oven.

While the eggplants are cooking, seed the pomegranate (I do it in a bowl of water to keep me and my walls from being speckled with red juice) and set the seeds aside. Then make the sauce. In a medium bowl whisk together the sauce ingredients until smooth. Taste for salt--you want it pretty salty since it'll disperse over the eggplant and be diluted--and adjust as necessary.

You can serve these with the eggplants warm or at room temp. Put an eggplant on a plate, generously top with the sauce, sprinkle on an abundant quantity of pomegranate seeds and then sprinkle each eggplant with 1 t of za'atar (or more!) and a grind of black pepper, then drizzle with a little olive oil. Put the bowls of sauce and seeds on the table so people can add more as they work their way through their eggplant half.

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* za'atar is a Middle Eastern spice mix composed of roasted thyme, sumac, sesame seeds and salt. I'm sure there are chi-chi spice shops that sell it for $10 for a 1/2 cup (no doubt with thyme harvested by elves at starlight and salt from the shores of Atlantis) but if you have a Middle Eastern market nearby, it is sold in 1 lb bags for $3-4.

Not going to win prizes in the looks department....

The other day I made a soup that was oh so tasty but pretty damn ugly:

Let's face it, the inside of an eggplant is not exactly attractive and that's the main ingredient. If you take away the artfully scattered drops of lemon olive oil and the sprinkle of za'atar, then you are left with something that looks like sludge.  

But it's really tasty sludge. So this isn't a recipe that you are going to make for its looks. And looks aren't everything, right? The soup is makes up for it by being smokey, silky and piquant in every spoonful.  Did I also mention that it is ridiculously easy to make? I've made it three times in the last month and the recipe has been filed in my recipe binder--this one is a keeper, even if it isn't very pleasant to look at.


Smoky eggplant soup
adapted from this recipe in the New York Times

2 lbs eggplant(s)
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 cups sliced yellow onions
Salt and pepper
6 garlic cloves, minced
Pinch of cayenne
6 cups mild vegetable broth (I used this Better than Bouillon stuff and it works great here)
4 T lemon juice
1 tablespoon za’atar (Middle Eastern blend of thyme, sesame seeds, salt and sumac)

• Poke a couple of holes in the eggplants with a paring knife, then place on a baking sheet under a hot broiler, about 2 inches from the flame. Cook until the skin has blackened and charred. Turn and cook on other sides until eggplant is soft and the skin is charred all around. This took me probably 10-15 minutes, keeping an eye on the eggplant and rotating it with tongs.  Set aside to cool, then remove and discard skins, scraping away any flesh that sticks to the skins (that's where you get the nice smokey flavor) then roughly chop the eggplant flesh.
• Put the olive oil in a saucepan over medium-high heat. Add onion, season generously with salt and pepper, and cook until softened and beginning to color, about 5 minutes. Add garlic, cayenne and eggplant flesh and cook 1 minute more, then add broth and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer gently for 10 minutes. 

Either use your immersion blender and blend until smooth, or blend in batches in a regular blender. Add lemon juice to puréed soup and taste again, adding more as necessary. Soup should be well seasoned and rather lemony.
Top each serving with about a teaspoon of za'atar. 

(If you want the pretty lemon olive oil droplets to detract from the dinge, then mix a teaspoon of finely grated lemon zest with two tablespoons of olive oil and dribble a little over each serving. I thought it made a negligible impact on taste so I wouldn't make the effort, unless you are really worried about the sludge-look. And if you are really worried about the looks because you have some judgmental diners on your hands, then you probably also want to follow the original recipe and put some chopped parsley on top, too.)

Vegetarian Hoppin' John

I don't have a southern bone in my body, but I do like the tradition (and taste) of eating hoppin' john on New Year's Day.  I've always had it with ham or bacon (or both) but I've been cutting back on meat so I thought I'd do a little improvisation. I put in a little smoked paprika to give some depth to the flavor. I also remembered that a restaurant I really like down in Lexington (Alfafa's) tops their vegetarian hoppin' john with sharp white cheddar cheese so I crumbled up a bit I had in the fridge, too.

It turned out really well--I'm thinking that I might make another batch and freeze individual portions because nuking a bowl of it would make for a fast, tasty and healthy lunch.

Vegetarian Hoppin' John

1 C dried black-eyed peas or yellow-eyed beans*
1 T olive oil
1 small onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 stalk of celery, diced
1 t dried thyme
1 t smoked paprika
1 C rice
1 small red pepper, diced
2 C vegetable broth
2-3 scallions, chopped
1/2 C sharp white cheddar cheese, shredded or crumbled
hot sauce

Cook your peas or beans. Either soak overnight in water, change the water, bring to a boil and simmer until tender, or do a fast soak (pour over boiling water and wait an hour before proceeding). If you think of it, chuck a couple of extra garlic cloves into the cooking water. Drain off all but about a cup of cooking liquid.

In a medium pot, heat the oil and add the onion. After about a minute, add the garlic, celery, thyme and smoked paprika. Saute for a couple of more minutes to soften. Add the rice and give it a good stir to coat the grains in oil.  Then add the red pepper, peas/beans and cooking liquid, and veg broth. Add salt and pepper to taste. Bring to a boil, then slap on a lid, turn on low and let simmer for 20 minutes.

Give the pot a good stir, then dish it out. Top each portion with some chopped scallions and a sprinkle of sharp cheddar cheese. Let people add their own hot sauce.

* I hear that you can also make this without the pesky soaking/cooking beans step by using frozen black-eyed peas, in which you just chuck them in with a little extra water or broth with the rice. I've never tried it though since I have enough dried beans in the house to last us through an apocalypse in relative beany comfort.

Christmas baking

I think I'm almost done (pant, pant). So far I've churned out:

10 pounds of apricot cherry granola (for teachers)

2 of these amazing boozy fruit cakes (no nasty fluorescence in them--more like really good trail mix, soaked in rum and bound together with a minimal amount of flour/sugar/eggs and some spices. I swapped out dried blueberries for dates and added lots more pecans.)

a batch of espresso chocolate chunk (substituted dark brown sugar for the light and hand-chopped 70% chocolate which makes for nice non-uniform bits and blobs)

a batch of currant ginger shortbread

a batch of almond orange biscotti

and a batch of slightly altered Italian wedding cookies (recipe below) (pecans instead of almonds, some orange zest and orange flower water mixed in).

You would never know from this list that I don't really have much of a sweet tooth...

Italian Wedding Cookies
(sort of)

2/3 C of pecans
1 C unsalted butter
1/4 C powdered sugar (plus 1/2 - 1 C more for rolling and dusting the cookies with after baking)
1 t vanilla extract
3 t orange blossom water
zest of two oranges
2 C all purpose-flour
1/4 t salt

Preheat oven to 350. Line baking sheets with parchment paper or silicon mats.

Toast nuts: toss nuts on a baking sheet and bake for about 8 minutes. They should smell good and, you know, nutty. Cool completely.

Take half the cooled nuts and put them in a food processor with 2 T of flour. Pulse until they are finely ground. Add the rest of the nuts and pulse a couple of times to just chop them.

In the bowl of a mixer cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the vanilla extract, orange blossom water and orange zest. Add the rest of the four and salt and beat until combined. Stir in the nuts. Cover and refrigerate dough until firm (about an hour).

Form dough into 1 inch balls and place them 2 inches apart on the baking sheets. Bake for 12-15 minutes until they are brown around the edges. Remove and cool.

Put about 1/4 C of powdered sugar in a plate then put the cooled cookies on top of the sugar. You can then roll them around or (as I prefer) sift the rest of the sugar over the tops.

Makes about 3 dozen.

Tantre Farm Share, week 19

Top row: spaghetti squash, bag of baby lettuces, kale, beet greens, turnips and greens
Middle row: delicata squash, hot peppers, onion, sweet potatoes
Bottom row: fingerling potatoes, tatsoi, carrots, green and yellow beans, eggplan, radishes

Menu plan:

• roasted chicken thighs with roasted delicata squash, braised turnips and salad with lettuce, radishes and carrots
• calzones with blanched kale, turkey sausage, ricotta
• Spaghetti squash with Indian Spices, daal, rice, and turnip and radish greens cooked up saag style.
• sweet potato coconut soup (recipe below)
• there will probably be a stir fry in there somewhere to use the tatsoi, green and yellow beans and hot peppers.
• no plans yet for the eggplant or beet greens; the fingerlings won't spoil so I'll wait for a chilly day to roast them. It's too beautiful outside right now to crave roasted potatoes.

Sweet Potato Coconut Soup

Relish (This is not an extra, but a must)

1 T oil (use coconut oil if you have it)

1 T butter (or more coconut oil)

1/8 t red pepper flakes

1 or 2 sweet potatoes (med to large), peeled and diced small

Salt/pepper

¼ fresh chopped cilantro

Soup

1.5 T oil

1 small red or yellow onion chopped

2 t grated fresh ginger

1/8 t red pepper flakes

3.5 cups vegetable broth

1.5 sweet potatoes (med to large), peeled and diced large

1 can coconut milk

2 T honey

¼ t cinnamon

For relish: Heat oil and butter over medium heat, add red pepper flakes heat for 10 seconds. Add the

diced sweet potato, salt and pepper to taste. Cook, COVERED, stirring occasionally until softened, about 15 minutes. Uncover, increase heat and cook until potatoes are golden brown, another 5 to 10 minutes. Transfer to a bowl and mix with cilantro.

For soup: Heat oil over medium heat, add ginger and onion, cook until soft (about five minutes), and

add red pepper flakes. Add broth, bring to a boil and then add sweet potatoes, bring to a simmer

and cook until soft (20 to 30 minutes). Blend soup until smooth. Simmer over low heat.

Whisk in coconut milk, honey and cinnamon. Cook until thickened. Season with salt and pepper.

Serve the soup with a large spoonful of the relish on top.