Vegetables

by

Shrimp, Corn, and Squash Soup

Nothing makes me crabbier than fall. That cheerfully crisp weather, that can-do spirit that forces you off the porch and into some useful activity–it’s all too horrible to contemplate for very long.

This year, though, good news has buoyed me up, helping me to face fall’s dreadful enthusiasm with a sense of hope: The Louisiana shrimpers are headed out into the Gulf again.

For me, the Gulf oil spill has loomed all summer like . . . well, like the black oily cloud it is, seeping into the fragile marshes, threatening the livelihoods of shrimpers and fishermen even more than cheap seafood from China, oozing into delicate marine life and causing damage we may not fully realize for years. Still, earlier this week the shrimpers were out on the water again. They didn’t catch much. But there’s a little hope.

To celebrate, I’m offering this soup recipe that I developed at the beach, using these gorgeous shrimp from the North Carolina coast, caught the same day they were served. Fred’s little camera doesn’t begin to do them justice.

This dish is a lot less complicated than it looks. If you can boil water, you can make the shrimp stock, and it cooks while you prepare the other ingredients. Besides, there’s almost no way to mess up the combination of fresh corn, squash, and shrimp–a hearty yet delicately flavored combination that may well be the perfect summer dish, just in time for summer to end.

You can, of course, cheat by using frozen shrimp and corn and substituting water or chicken broth for the shrimp stock. But you’ll regret it. And you need to help the shrimpers get back out there.

Shrimp, Corn and Squash Soup

Serves 6

Kernels from 6 shucked ears of fresh sweet corn (do not substitute frozen)
6 small to medium yellow crookneck squash, quartered lengthwise and sliced (may substitute 1 – 2 small zucchini for 1 – 2 of the squash for added color)
2 tbsp. olive oil or butter
1 large onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 fresh jalapenos, minced (optional)
1 lb. large fresh shrimp, peeled, deveined, and cut into 3 pieces each; shrimp peels and tails set aside in bowl
Water
1 15 oz. can evaporated milk
Salt to taste

Begin by making the shrimp stock. Place shrimp peels and tails in medium saucepan. Add enough water to cover by about 1 inch. Bring to boil on high heat. Reduce heat to medium low and simmer for about 20 minutes. Drain stock into bowl, discard peels and tails, and set aside.

While stock is boiling, sauté onion in olive oil in large pot on medium high heat until translucent. Add garlic and jalapenos and stir. Add squash and sauté until tender, about 5 – 10 minutes. Remove from heat. Pulse in food processor until very finely chopped. Return to pot. Add corn. Cover with shrimp stock and increase heat to high; add water just to cover if there is not enough stock. Bring to boil; reduce heat to medium low. Add evaporated milk, cover, and simmer until corn is tender. Cooking times can vary significantly depending on the type of corn you use, anywhere from 5 to 30 minutes; taste periodically until the corn is tender but not starchy. When corn is cooked, reduce heat to lowest possible flame. Add shrimp and cover; cook about 3 minutes or until shrimp are cooked.

by

Cucumber-Avocado Soup

Several events converged in the making of cucumber-avocado soup yesterday.

 A reminder that The Newlyfeds is about the stories and food, not the photos

The first was last month’s family trip to Kiawah Island, South Carolina, where we made our annual pilgrimage to Hege’s. Hege’s is a “brasserie Francais classique” focusing primarily on seafood. (Fred, of course, ordered steak.) On this trip, they offered a cucumber-avocado soup as a special. It was so good that even my seven-year-old niece loved it. The color was the perfect green for this kind of soup but it’s hard to describe exactly what it was–the only thing that comes to mind is a very unappetizing comparison to a 1970s appliance, only about six shades lighter. Or maybe the minty color of a bedspread you’d get at Pottery Barn.

Color aside, the soup somehow managed to taste like neither cucumber nor avocado, but a summer evening, with a dash of cream and chives. (The server claims there was no cream in the dish, but I am sure he lied–see below). I was determined to try this at home.

The second event was the avalanche of produce that is coming out of the nascent community garden at our church, St. John’s Presbyterian.

You can see the cucumber plants in the fourth box from the front. There are a lot of cucumbers buried in those plants–so many that our small congregation can’t quite manage all of them. And there’s parsley, enough to supply the entire city of Durham for the remainder of 2010. 

Here, of course, was my opportunity to re-create that spectacular cucumber-avocado soup, only this time with parsley in place of the chives. I was a bit reluctant to replace those chives, since they complemented the other flavors of the soup so well. But I hated to see that parsley go to waste, and there’s only so much tabbouleh that one person can eat.

The parsley was a stroke of genius. As a garnish, it added crunchiness and a gentle undertone, with a hint of creamy pine nut balancing its natural sharpness. And like the original, this soup tasted just like summer.

Cucumber-Avocado Soup

4 servings

4 large cucumbers, seeded and roughly chopped
1 avocado
1 small garlic clove, minced
1 tbsp. Salvadoran or Honduran creme
2 tbsp. heavy cream or half and half
6 – 8 large Italian (flat-leaf) parsley leaves, plus generous amounts for garnish (about 1 cup)
2 mint leaves, torn (optional, but these smooth out the flavor)
Salt to taste
Water

Scoop avocado from peel and remove pit. Puree cucumber, avocado, and garlic in food processor until finely minced. Add remaining ingredients except for water and pulse in food processor a few seconds at a time until ingredients are combined. Add water until soup reaches the consistency of thin grits or whatever you prefer. Garnish with very generous amounts of parsley.

The soup is best if served immediately. The avocado will create a brownish film on top of the soup if it is kept overnight.

Note: The creams and avocado make this a rich dish, and I noticed a bit of greasiness around my mouth after each bite that some might find unpleasant. To correct this I would suggest reducing the Salvadoran creme to a teaspoon and substituting half and half or whole milk for the heavy cream, or even omitting these and adding chicken broth until the dish is the proper consistency. I did not have chicken broth on hand when I made this, and that may well be what Hege’s used to get the right flavor instead of cream. But I still think the server lied.

by

Roasted Persimmon Salsa

In addition to the loss of our beloved Louise, June has been a trying month for The Newlyfeds. That’s primarily because my work takes me traveling across the country to Annual Conferences of the United Methodist Church. There’s generally not much to report food-wise on these trips, unless you fantasize about hotel banquet meals.

Perhaps this overabundance of salad topped with chicken breast, combined with our current explorations of Durham’s taqueria scene, has led me to explore spicier food–along with the prodding of my dear neighbor, Melissa. During one cat-sitting stint for us, she looked over my cookbook collection and upon our return declared, “Your cookbooks seem kind of outdated for someone who writes about food.”

I tried to explain that a) I liked to collect older cookbooks and b) we were too cheap to buy new ones. She raised her eyebrows, looking at me just as my mother did about 40 years ago when I tried to tell her that it was Cindy Riden’s idea to “decorate” my bedroom furniture in magic marker and crayon.

“You can buy used cookbooks on Amazon for practically nothing,” she said. “Come over to my house and look over some of mine. You can even borrow them.”

That’s how I ended up with her copies of Rick Bayless’s Mexico: One Plate at a Time and Mexican Kitchen–two thorough, engaging books that have set me off on a new journey through Mexico’s foodways. Melissa was finally able to pry the books out of my greedy, grasping fingers after several weeks, but fortunately Fred stepped in and bought me copies for my 45th birthday on June 16, along with the newer Salsas that Cook.

I’ve especially enjoyed the salsas, which have introduced me to the technique of roasting garlic and peppers in a skillet to bring out their flavors, then adding to roasted tomatoes.

Inspired by these and by the purchase of some persimmons on a trip to Atlanta, I came up with the recipe below. It’s reminiscent of peach or mango salsa, but not treacly as those can be. Instead, it offers just a hint of sweetness followed by a considerable kick.

If you’ve never tried persimmons, they’re common in the South though not always easily found in the store. The trees grew wild on our farm in Tennessee. These wild ones must be very ripe before they’re eaten; unripe, the taste resembles lemon infused with chalk. The ones you’ll find in stores are a little more forgiving, tasting a bit like a not too sweet apricot with hints of orange. For this recipe, use the ripest ones you can find, or let them ripen on your counter for a few days–the sweeter persimmons help balance the acidity of the tomatoes.

Roasted Persimmon Salsa
 
2 whole unpeeled, very ripe persimmons (available in most stores)
2 whole unpeeled tomatoes
1-2 whole jalapeno peppers
3 whole cloves unpeeled garlic
Salt to taste
Chopped onion and fresh chopped cilantro for garnish

Set oven rack about 6 inches below broiler and turn broiler on high. Place persimmons and tomatoes on baking sheet with rim. Roast in oven about 6 minutes on each side until blackened in spots. Remove and let cool on sheet.

Meanwhile, place garlic and jalapenos in ungreased skillet on medium high heat. Roast on stove top until blackened in spots, about 15 minutes. Set aside to cool.

Remove stems from jalapenos and peel garlic. Chop in food processor or blender a few seconds, until minced. Cut out tops of persimmons and tomatoes and discard; peel if desired. Add to jalapenos and garlic in food processor or blender, along with juice. Chop coarsely and salt to taste. Garnish with onion and cilantro if desired.

by

Red Turnips, Scallops, and Pasta

I continue to grovel for nearly killing Fred last week, and yesterday some some scallops offered a chance for redemption. (They came from Walking Fish, our community sponsored fishery, which I’ve raved about so much in this blog that they need to start paying me.)

My first thought was to serve them over pasta, with a side salad that included this bunch of red turnips, picked up at the Durham Farmers’ Market on Saturday and so in desperate need of eating.

The turnips are white on the inside, laced with red, and with a thick scarlet ring around the edge when sliced. They would have been beautiful in a salad, especially with their greens mixed in. Unfortunately, though, they tasted like–turnips. Really sharp turnips. So cooking was in order, and I considered serving them mixed with the scallops.

But I dispensed with this idea when I saw the scallops, just a few hours out of the ocean.  They were everything you hope for in a scallop–sweet, buttery, tender little pillows that needed only a quick visit to the skillet. They deserved star billing, not to be sullied by any association with pasta or, God forbid, turnips.

Thus the turnips, with their greens, ended up on top of the pasta. The idea was inspired in the vaguest sort of way by a visit to Liguria, Italy, in 1994, when I first had potatoes and pasta with pesto–the moment I came to understand that anything, even another starch, could be served pasta and it would be good.

My scallop technique comes from Cook’s Illustrated’s book The Best Recipe, though really the only technique you need for scallops is not to overcook them. The recipe includes a nice sauce made from the pan juices, and it occurred to me that a variation on that sauce would be good with the turnips. (“Variation” may be the wrong word here, since I left out everything in the recipe except butter, white wine, and parsley and added turnips, garlic and turnip greens.)

The meal below looks more complicated than it is. I’ve written out the recipe in some detail because the timing is critical–but the whole thing took only 30 minutes from the moment the ingredients came out of the refrigerator.

And it’s worth it. Fred declared this one of the best meals we’ve had–though he thought the addition of sausage might help. Only the fact that I put him in the emergency room last week kept me from killing him right there.

Scallops, Red Turnips, and Pasta

Serves 2

Scallops
14 medium to large scallops
1 – 2 tablespoons butter
Salt and pepper

Turnips and Pasta
6 small red turnips, washed, greens and ends trimmed, sliced into 1/2″ wide strips
Greens from turnips, stems trimmed, washed, dried, and cut into 3″ wide strips
2 large cloves garlic, minced
1 – 2 tablespoons butter
1/2 – 1 cup white wine
Fresh chopped parsley for garnish (about 1/2 cup)
1/2 lb penne pasta
Butter and salt for pasta

This recipe goes quickly once you begin cooking, so it is important to have everything ready.

1. Prepare vegetables and set aside.
2. Set scallops out on a plate and salt and pepper to taste. Set out additional clean plate, with foil to cover, for cooked scallops.
3. Put salted water for pasta on to boil. (Follow package directions.)
4. Heat large skillet on medium high heat for about 2 minutes. Once skillet is heated, add butter and swirl until bottom of skillet is coated. Cook until butter is lightly brown, a few minutes.
5. Add scallops quickly, one at at time. Cook for 1 minute. Turn individually and cook for an additional minute. You want to undercook the scallops a bit, as they will continue to cook a little on the plate. Turn off heat and transfer scallops to plate. Keep in warm place until ready to serve. (Covered on top of or near the stove is fine, or in a warming tray on the lowest possible heat.)
6. Watch the pasta water while you are preparing the other ingredients and add pasta to water once it comes to a boil. Cook according to package directions and keep an eye on it so it doesn’t overcook. When pasta is done, drain it, return to cooking pot, add butter and salt, and cover until ready to serve.
7. Return heat on skillet to medium. Add 1 – 2 tablespoons butter until melted. Add wine, enough to cover bottom of the pan, and scrape bottom to remove brown bits. Add turnips and salt to taste. Cover and cook until just tender, about 5 minutes.
8. Add greens. Cook an additional 2 – 3 minutes, covered, until greens have just wilted.
9. Remove lid from turnips and continue cooking just a few minutes more. Serve turnips over pasta and garnish with parsley, with scallops on the side.

by

Jicama and Watermelon Radish Salad

I regret to report that my sweet potato recipe did not win the contest. God only knows whether I’m getting my just desserts for not paying attention to the sermon, or whether retribution is in order for the contest judges, or whether God is too busy with a few other things to worry about than who wins the North Carolina Sweet Potato Recipe contest.

So–off to other vegetables. Recently, I was thrilled to pick up this beautiful watermelon radish.Though it is indeed large. it’s not actually the size of a watermelon; it’s closer to your average orange. You can see, though, where it gets its name. 

Apparently this radish is a type of daikon, but I didn’t spend enough time investigating to find out if that is true. There also appear to be many different varieties. Apparently most of these are actually available in the fall rather than the spring; I’ll start looking for them at the Durham Farmers Market.

Descriptions of the watermelon radish on the Internet say that it’s slightly sweet. This was not the case here. It tasted more like a typical radish–sharp and crisp. So I decided to pair it with jicama, which is sweeter and milder, and added a South American twist by including chili powder. (The chili powder idea came from a dinner party I attended years ago, when the host served mangoes covered in it.)

The result was a nice mix of sweet and sour. I’ve tried it with regular radishes and apples since, with good results.
 
It seems unlikely that North Carolina’s watermelon radish farmers have developed a contest, but if they did I am certain this recipe would win.


Jicama and Watermelon Radish Salad

1 watermelon radish (or other radish of your choice), cleaned and cut into 1/2″ pieces
1/2 large jicama, peeled and cut into 1/2″ pieces
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup white wine vinegar
1 tbsp. honey
2 tsp. chili powder
1/2 tsp. ginger
1/4 tsp. cloves
1/4 tsp. allspice

by

Sweet Potato and Black Bean Soup

This recipe comes with deepest apologies to the pastor of St. John’s Presbyterian Church. Last Sunday, as Fred and I sat dutifully in worship, I wrote out a new recipe for a sweet potato and black bean soup on the church bulletin instead of thinking about Mark 6:45-56 and Jesus walking on water.

Some might say I should apologize to God instead of the minister for this kind of behavior. But God knows better than anyone that while you can always get a copy of the sermon, you can’t always remember a good recipe idea.

And if you want proof that God favors those who care about food, I discovered the North Carolina Sweet Potato recipe contest while I was doing a little online research for this blog posting, just in time to enter the contest before tomorrow’s deadline. Frankly, I don’t see how the judges can NOT pick a recipe that was originally written out on a church bulletin (even if that bulletin serves as proof that the recipe creator was not paying very much attention to the sermon).

The idea for the dish was not actually triggered by anything in the service but by a recent potluck dinner, where one of the guests brought a dish with sweet potatoes, black beans, rice and chicken. I had been wanting to make something interesting with the Carolina Ruby sweet potatoes sitting on my counter, the only ones from Whole Foods that were under $2 a pound.

My constant carping about Whole Foods and their prices aside, our unit on Ninth Street is certainly a friend to North Carolina’s sweet potato farmers–a good thing, since the state produces forty percent of the sweet potatoes grown in the US and is the country’s number one producer. On any given day the store will feature up to five different varieties, including purple ones.
We’d already enjoyed two of the Carolina Ruby potatoes served mashed with a little butter, but the remaining two deserved a more exciting end. Here’s what I came up with–a combination based in part on the potluck dish and part on a Cuban-style black bean soup I’d tried years ago. The dish is unexpectedly but pleasantly spicy, which complements the sweetness of the potatoes. To me it’s a welcome change from our Southern tendency to smother these wonderful vegetables with sugar and pecans. After all, there’s a lot more to a sweet potato than the sweet.
Here’s hoping the North Carolina Sweet Potato Commission will like this recipe as much as we did.
Sweet Potato and Black Bean Soup
Makes about 2 1/2 quarts, or 6 – 8 servings

2 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
1 medium onion, diced (about 1 cup)

3 large cloves garlic, minced (about 1 tbsp.)
2 large sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1/2″ cubes (about 6 1/4 cups)
4 cups chicken broth (homemade or low-salt)

2 1/2 tsp. cumin
1 tsp. ground coriander
1 tsp. thyme
2 medium-sized bay leaves
1/2 tsp. hot red pepper flakes (add more or less to taste)
2 tsp. salt (or to taste)
3 tbsp. fresh squeezed lime juice (do not substitute concentrate)
2 cans black beans, drained
1 c. crushed tomatoes
1 c. evaporated milk
Chopped fresh cilantro for garnish (optional)

Heat oil on medium high heat in large pot. Saute onions until translucent, about 3 minutes. Add garlic and stir. Add sweet potatoes, broth, and spices. Cover and turn heat to high, bringing to boil. Reduce heat to medium low and simmer until potatoes are becoming tender, about 5 minutes. With potato masher, mash potatoes briefly, crushing into smaller pieces but not pureeing–there should still be distinctive pieces of sweet potato in the soup, but crushing them will distribute the flavor throughout the dish.

Add remaining ingredients except evaporated milk. Cover and cook until potatoes are very tender, 5 – 10 more minutes. (At this point, soup can be frozen. When ready to serve, thaw and finish according to instructions.) Add evaporated milk. Cover and continue to simmer until flavors are blended, about 45 minutes to 1 hour. (The soup’s flavor continues to improve the longer it sits and is better the next day.) Correct seasonings and garnish with cilantro if desired. Let cool slightly before serving.

by

Flounder with Green Tomatoes and a Radish Salad

Seasonal cooking is ideal for the easily bored: if you don’t eat some things all the time, you get the chance to appreciate them anew every year.

Right now, we’re appreciating green tomatoes, as well as radishes, turnips, and their accompanying greens.

At $2.00 – $2.50 a bunch, these radishes from the Durham Farmers Market are costly little beauties. So I suggest you use every last bit and add the greens to a salad. I posted a simpler recipe for radish salad back in the spring, but the dressing here has a little more heft and can stand up to fall’s richer foods.

Radish Salad (Makes 2 large salads)

4 cups cleaned and dried radish and/or turnip greens, torn into bite-size pieces
6 radishes or small white turnips, thinly sliced

Dressing

1 tsp. olive oil
3 tsp. white wine vinegar
1 tsp. brown mustard
1/2 tsp. honey
Salt and pepper to taste
1 small clove garlic, crushed or grated with zester

Whisk dressing ingredients together. Toss with greens to coat; add more salt and pepper if desired and toss again. Top with radishes and serve.

As for the green tomatoes: Every decent Southerner knows that you’re supposed to slice them and fry them up in bacon fat. But my fried green tomatoes are often abject failures– slimy green discs with bits of charred breading sliding across them. So I’ve turned to other methods.

Green tomatoes, it turns out, are wonderful accompaniments to fish. Their tart, citrusy flavor is perfect with any mild white fish that you’d pair with lemon–like this beautiful flounder from our CSA.
 

Baked Flounder with Green Tomatoes
1 whole flounder, 1 – 2 lbs, headed and gutted, skin and tail on
4 cups chopped green tomatoes
1 medium yellow onion, chopped
2 extra large cloves garlic (ours came from the Durham Farmers’ Market)
1/4 c lemon juice
1 tsp. red pepper flakes, or more to taste

1/4 cup olive oil

Kosher salt and fresh ground pepper to taste

(Special Note: If you are The Cat, pretend that you do not want to wrestle the flounder to the floor and gnaw its bones. )

Preheat oven to 350. Lay flounder in broiler pan. Brush with enough olive oil to coat fish. Salt and pepper both sides. Stir together remaining ingredients together in large bowl. Pour over fish.

Cover with foil and bake for 20 – 30 minutes. To serve, scrape top layer of fish from bone, set on plate, and cover with tomatoes. Peel off bone and serve remaining fish. Be sure to let a piece or two fall to the floor so The Cat can take it with dignity.
by

Finally–Durham Farmers’ Market

It’s embarrassing to start two blog posts in a row with the phrase, “It’s a little embarassing . . .” So be it.

It’s a little embarrassing to have lived in Durham for over two years and never to have visited the Farmers’ Market. My early complaints about store produce were always met with tching from friends, who would scold, “You just need to go to the Farmers’ Market!” But their admonitions were also laden with various qualifications, “It’s small.” “You need to go early.” “It’s only on Saturday.”

Such comments had led me to expect a dozen or so ragtag booths, populated by earnest, tie-dye clad organic farmers, each with three or four tomatoes and some salad greens on display, all of which would have disappeared by 9:00 a.m. Why would I drag myself out of bed on the only day of the week I can truly sleep in for that?

Yesterday morning, though, I found myself in unusual circumstances. First, I was Fredless, since he was working a 24-hour shift at the hospital where he serves as a chaplain. Second, I was awake and about by 9:00. It was a gorgeous morning and I had nothing to lose, so I figured I’d stop by the Farmers’ Market and see what it had to offer.

Quite a bit, it turns out. First, there were these tiny heirloom tomatoes from Bluebird Meadow Farms. The orange ones could well be the sweetest, most perfect little tomatoes I have ever eaten.

I ate about half of them plain, then put the rest in this salad of olive oil with a dusting of sea salt. It turns out that plain was best–they were simply so perfect that the extra flavoring was wasted.


There were also these baby eggplant, though I can’t remember where they came from. They are coated in kosher salt, waiting to be broiled with olive oil and pepper as I type this.


Best of all, however, was this:

These are goat’s kidneys, from Meadow Lane Beef farm. Neither Fred nor I have ever tried kidneys, but they are soaking in milk and will be cooked for supper tonight. They are supposed to be quite tender and delicious. I will post results.
Durham Farmers’ Market, I am sorry I ever doubted you. I will be back!
by

A Beet, a Pickle, and a Potato Walk into a Bar . . .

My explorations of Sundays at Moosewood continue, and thank God I’m I nicer person than I was in the early 1990s. In reading through the section on food from the Southern United States, I came across the very sentence that nearly led me heave the book out the window: “I had to redefine Southern cooking in order to present it without meat.”

Therein lies the major shortcoming of the book. If the cuisine I grew up with has been rendered unrecognizable (the author suggests adding Gouda cheese instead of bacon to give Southern dishes their smokey flavor, an idea that’s only slightly better than shoving a fork into your own eyeball), then I can only imagine how they’ve desecrated the cuisines of Africa, India, and China.

But I’m a calmer person now, content to labor along in abject ignorance of other cultures and willing to accept butchered versions of “authentic” dishes if they are edible. Thus I came across the recipe below for Russian salad–which used a miraculous combination of beets, pickles, and potatoes to clear out the entire supply of oddball items left lurking in my refrigerator.

The recipe comes from the section in Sundays at Moosewood on Finnish cuisine. The recipes, focusing on root vegetables, are fascinating, but there’s still a lot of earnest vegetarianism to overcome. The author of this section is a grad-school dropout who adopted some goats from a Finnish farmer, couldn’t bear to kill them, and started rescuing animals at livestock auctions. I sympathize (heck, I still can’t bring myself to eat veal)–but then, there’s the problem with the fish and the need to take advantage of what’s available in local conditions. Never mind that “the Finns do eat a great deal of fish, as is quite natural in such a watery place”; the author writes: “I don’t eat fish myself or recommend it to others, so I’ve not included fish recipes in this chapter.”

I’ll let the reaction of her Finnish neighbors to the smorgasbord Moosewood put on for them sum all this up: “Knowing how nostalgic Finns can be about their traditional foods, it was with some trepidation that we presented our [vegetarian] versions of some age-old dishes. But all was well. Nothing was too far off the mark or else, with the usual quiet steadiness and reserve of the Finnish folk, they didn’t let on.”

If those Finns had been in North Carolina, they’d have been saying, “Bless their hearts” quietly to themselves.

To honor the fishy Finns, I served the Russian Salad with a mackerel recipe adopted from James Beard’s “Mackerel in Escabeche.” It was a great combination of spicy and sweet, hearty and light. In this case, I DO recommend fish to others.

Russian Salad (Venalainensalaatti) (from Sundays at Moosewood, p. 263)

2 c. cooked, diced potatoes (the recipe says to peel; I did not)
2 c. peeled, diced, and cooked carrots
1 c. peeled, diced tart apple
1 c. minced dill pickles (we used Claussen’s)
1/2 c. minced onion
2 c. cooked, peeled, and diced beets

Cooked beets for Russian Salad, from Britt Farms

Dressing
1 c. sour cream (or 2/3 c. heavy cream)
2 tbsp. fresh lemon juice or cider vinegar (we used lemon juice)
Dash of salt, sugar, and freshly ground black pepper

Hard-boiled eggs, sliced

Dressing for Russian Salad

Mix potatoes, carrots, apple, pickles, and onion in large serving bowl. Chill. (I did not.) Combine all the dressing ingredients and chill. (Again, I did not.) Add the beets to the other vegetables just before serving. Fold dressing into salad just before serving. Can also serve dressing on the side or mounded on top of the salad. Decorate with egg slices.

Russian Salad ingredients assembled

Mackerel in Escabeche

3 mackerel steaks, salted and peppered (1 1/2 lb.)
1/4 c. lemon juice (recipe calls for lime)
1/4 c. orange juice
2 tbsp. olive oil
1 onion, finely chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped
2 tbsp. red pepper flakes
4 small cloves garlic, minced
2 tbsp. minced fresh cilantro
White wine

Mackerel awaiting saute

Saute all ingredients except mackerel, cilantro, and wine in large skillet until onions are translucent, about 5 minutes.

Vegetables in saute

Add cilantro and mackerel.

Mackerel sauteing, just before covering

Cover and cook for about 2 minutes. Turn fish, cover and continue to cook until mackerel is just done, about 5 more minutes. Check after 1 – 2 minutes, and if sauce begins to dry out, add a few splashes of white wine.

Voila! Finland meets Mexico
by

Return to Moosewood: Vegetable Curry

Efforts to claw my way out of the cooking rut are beginning to succeed, as my old friends, the Moosewood Collective, lent a very helpful hand earlier this week.

I became acquainted with Moosewood during my six-month vegetarian period, which lasted from the fall of 1987 to one day in the spring of 1988, when a Krystal oasis wafted its heady onion-burger scent across a concrete desert of strip malls and lured me back into the dark world of flesh eating, never to return.
Moosewood Restaurant, in Ithaca, NY, was an early vegetarian mecca. Their first two books, The Moosewood Cookbook and The Enchanted Broccoli Forest, introduced me to exotic new dishes such as Welsh rarebit and lentil soup. In 1990, they put out Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant, featuring menus focused on foods from a specific region (India, the Caribbean, the American South, New England, etc.)

But the timing was off for me. By the time I got Sundays at Moosewood as a present sometime in the early 1990s, I was living in Madison, WI, where I was quickly wearying of earnest, Birkenstock-clad, dredlock-sprouting vegans and vegetarians. I’d had enough of middle-class white grad students appropriating select tidbits of other cultures in the name of “diversity,” especially when they failed to realized that a hairstyle that looked wonderful on people with thick, curly hair was going to turn into a smelly, matted rat’s nest on them. I was over Moosewood. I didn’t need their sanitized versions of “ethnic” vegetarianism anymore.

So the book sat on my shelf virtually untouched until last week. But having grown up a bit, and becoming more patient with others (even white people with dredlocks) and myself–and being nearly desperate for some new vegetable recipes–I opened up Sundays at Moosewood again.

I was pleasantly surprised. Without meat, of course, many of the recipes aren’t going to resemble what you’d find in the region from which they came. (Vegetarian Brunswick stew? Please.)* Still, Sundays at Moosewood offers a good place to start sampling different cuisines and try out fresh flavors.

*I should note that Fred loves the vegetarian Brunswick stew at Whole Foods. He claims it’s wonderful if you add barbecued pork.

I turned to the section on India first. Each section of the book has a different author, and only two have names that suggest they grew up eating the foods they write about. Linda Dickinson, the author of the section on India, is one of them, and my reservations about the book came surging back when I read her introduction. Her first exposure to Indian food came in Cambridge, Massachusetts, when her roommate made an Indian dinner. I have a sneaking suspicion that she was an enthusiastic participant in the post-Beatles India fad of the 1960s and fear that she still favors flowing batik skirts with Tevas.

Still, Linda, bless her heart, has done a heck of a lot more than I ever will to understand Indian food. I did not actually use one of her recipes but cobbled together the one below from the techniques she suggested. Most important is to heat the spices in the butter first to bring out the flavors.

This dish is probably as “authentic” as vegetarian Brunswick stew–I didn’t even make my own spice mix. But until I decide to get my own Indian cookbook, the wildly complex food of India is probably beyond my ken. This will do for now. Thanks, Linda.

Vegetable Curry

2 tbsp. butter, melted
2 tbsp. muchi curry powder (available at Whole Foods)
1/2 c. minced onion
4 small to medium red potatoes, diced, cooked until just tender
3 carrots, minced
1 Mediterranean squash, diced (zucchini and chayote squash would work nicely as well)
3 small cloves garlic, minced
Salt and pepper to taste
Milk and sour cream (yogurt would be more appropriate for an Indian dish, but we didn’t have any)

Melt butter in large skillet over medium high heat. Add curry powder and heat until spice becomes aromatic, about 20 – 30 seconds. Add onions and saute for 1 – 2 minutes. Add garlic and stir. Add carrots and squash. Stir, cover, and saute about 5 minutes or until vegetables are tender. Stir in potatoes until well-coated. Salt and pepper to taste. Add milk and sour cream until dish is desired consistency. (I use roughly 1/4 c. milk and 3/4 c. sour cream.) Can serve over rice if desired.