Chana Masala with squash and potatoes, and chick pea fritters

Now is probably a good time to answer that question I've been meaning to write about. Why a blog, and why me? In case you haven't noticed, I'm no chef and no foodie. Tom loves cooking, but I really kind of don't. I do like food, though - real food; I'm not that crazy about prepared foods and we can't afford to eat out every day. And the whole family is pretty adventurous - we all enjoy trying something new. I get excited when I find something new and easy (i.e., not too many ingredients and can be cooked in less than an hour.) If the kids also like it - perfect. In the blog it goes, and I can get rid of these dozens of recipes on pieces of paper around the house.

Tonight's meal is a little bit out of season for us (tomorrow back to the tomatoes - fabulous but endless). Both kids gobbled this up and had seconds, probably because they were so hungry from the effort of the first day of school!

Chana Masala with Butternut Squash and Potatoes

1 T olive oil

1/2 smallish butternut squash, seeded, peeled, and chopped into small pieces (about 1/2" dice)

1 medium yellow potato, rinsed and chopped into small pieces

1 medium onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced

1 (15 oz.) can chick peas (garbanzo beans), drained and rinsed
Curry for seasoning. Amount and style varies depending on what you have in the house and how strong you want it to be. I used about a tablespoon of garam masala and about 2 teaspoons of mild yellow curry.

About 1/2 small (6 oz.) can tomato paste

1 teaspoon ketchup (optional - adds some sweetness)

about a teaspoon of lemon juice

1 can (13.5 oz.) coconut milk. If you don't like coconut milk, you can substitute more lemon juice and tomato paste, or vegetable broth.

salt

pepper

Add oil to a non-stick skillet over medium-low heat. Add squash, potatoes and onion. Cook for about 3 minutes and add curry powder (note: for more flavor and aroma, put the curry powder in the pan before the oil - I skip that because our kitchen ventilation sucks. Or doesn't, which is the problem.)

Cook for a couple more minutes and add the garlic, tomato paste, optional ketchup, lemon juice, and chick peas. If things are looking dry, add a tablespoon or two of water. Cover, turn heat to low, and allow flavors to blend for a few more minutes. Add coconut milk, and salt and pepper to taste. Cover and allow to cook (checking occasionally) about 10 more minutes - the chick peas need at least 15 minutes of cooking to mellow and soften.

How come food photographers never have spatters and mess in their pans? Wait, they probably don't have children hanging over them asking when dinner is ready.

Serve with rice and/or chickpea fritters, below. Serves 4 hungry diners.

Chickpea Fritters

Adapted slightly from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian

1 cup chickpea flour (also called besan or gram flour)

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon ground black pepper

olive oil

about 1/2 small/medium onion, thinly sliced 

Pour 1 1/2 cups lukewarm water into a mixing bowl and sift the chickpea flour into it (you can do this with a sifter or just by shaking the chickpea flour through a strainer - goal is to eliminate lumps.)  

Whisk the water, flour, salt, pepper, and 1 Tablespoon olive oil together. Let batter rest on the counter for a couple of minutes or longer (Bittman says up to 12 hours. He must have a lot more counter space than I do.)

Note: depending on the weather and the brand of flour, I sometimes add extra flour at this point. It will be thin, but should not be watery. When in doubt, just do a test fritter. 

Add onion slices to the batter.

In a non-stick pan, heat about a tablespoon of oil on medium to medium-low heat. Pour batter like pancakes. The batter pours into the pan very thin, but holds together kind of like crepes. You will be able to make very thin, large pancakes. Cook until golden, flip, and cook other side. Serve with the chana masala (or any curried or Indian food.) 

Beets

Beets are like cilantro. Either you love them or they taste like dirt, and no amount of coaxing or persuasion can change the genetic programming of the tastebuds. 

Luckily, my whole family got the "loves beets" gene, because I don't think I could resist cooking with them this time of year when they're piled up all come-hither at the farmer's market. And they're great for you. The greens are higher in iron than spinach, and both the greens and the roots are packed with vitamins and antioxidants (lots of folate and Vitamin A.)

They're a useful little root, too. Until I left Michigan and couldn't find Pioneer any longer, I didn't realize that people don't make baking sugar out of beets everywhere. They also can be used to manufacture bioplastics. 

All that, and good-looking

In the fall, I'll be posting Tom's borscht recipe, but in the summer I usually just roast the beets and leave them in the fridge until I'm ready to use them. 

The other day at the farmer's market a shopper asked me how long to cook the beets so that they are still firm enough to use in a recipe that involves beets on a skewer and a dipping sauce. I didn't have an answer for her at the time, but after thinking about the times I've left my beets in the oven overly-long, I don't think they ever lose their firm, kind of gelatinous texture. 

More importantly, I forgot to ask her about the skewered beets recipe! Anyone have one? Would love to try it.

Roast beets

Preheat oven to 350

If this is your first time using beets and you've purchased the classic purple variety - be aware that the juice stains like crazy, including wooden cutting boards. PARENTS! Warn your kids (and their daycare providers) that their pee is going to be a bit pinkish/orangish the day after a meal of beets.

Gently rinse the beets. The skin will come off later, so don't worry about a little dirt. Don't trim the skin because you don't want the juice to flow out onto the pan. Trim off the greens, leaving about 1/2 inch of stem. (If the greens are still fresh, save them for cooking.) Leave some of the rooty bottom, too, again to keep the juice inside the beet.

I've seen recipes that say to put oil and salt and pepper on the beets at this point. But the skins will be coming off, so I skip that step. Put some aluminum foil in the bottom of a 9x13 pan (any pan with edges in case of juicing.) Put beets in the pan about an inch apart. Cover with aluminum foil. Roast for 45 minutes to an hour until cooked.

Allow the beets to cool enough so that they can be handled. Remove peels under running water (they will come right off.) If you will not be using the beets right away, they can be refrigerated with the skins on until you're ready to use them. 


Last night I prepared the beets I roasted a few days ago by just pan-sauteing with onion. Milo ran in from playing with the neighbors and grabbed a bite (of beet) out of the serving dish. "Mom, is this onion? Because if it is, it's the most perfect onion ever grown." 

best thing about summer cooking with fresh veggies: you really don't have to do much.

Rating: Four big, enthusiastic thumbs-up from my young diners.

Salad

After reading this post, you'll be shopping for beets this weekend, right? I've made myself hungry, at least. Here are a couple of other easy ideas. 

Roasted beets plus sweet onion and vinaigrette, garnished with hard-boiled egg slices, make a tasty and attractive salad.

If you've bought golden beets, you can use them in a summer potato salad. Also add sweet onions, some yellow and red bell peppers, and a dressing made with white balsalmic vinegar (1 part), olive oil (2 parts), some dijon mustard, and herbs of your choice. (I'd choose something sweet - marjoram and thyme, maybe.) Add a bit of honey if the dressing is too acidic. The sweetness of the beets complements the vinegar and the bland potatoes. Plus: mayonnaise- and egg-free, so you can pack it in your picnic basket.

USDA Beet Fact Sheet

Illinois Extension on Beets (scroll down on this page for another roasted beet recipe)

The Mondo Zucchini

As shown in a previous post, there was this zucchini that escaped the notice of my young harvesters until it was an enormous size. Smaller than a bread box, but bigger than a baby's arm. An impressive beast of a vegetable.

It sat on the counter staring me down for a few days. Such a large specimen might be seedy, maybe bitter. Zucchini bread was out of the question in 90-degree weather. Then dinner time rolled around one day and I remembered eggplant parmigiana. Eggplant is bitter, it's slimy - there is no way Giant Zuke wouldn't come out on top in a cook-off. 

As it turned out, it was a lot better than OK. It was excellent. And kind of pretty on the plate, if I do say so myself. This is more a food hack than a recipe, and maybe not something I'll ever make again (unless another zucchini goes astray and grows to enormous proportions) but if you, too, have a monster veggie in the garden give it a try.

Mondo-Zucchini Parmesan

Prep

- Make breading mix. I used bread crumbs, salt and pepper, some grated Parmesan cheese, and fresh minced oregano and basil from the garden.

- Whisk an egg in a shallow bowl, for dipping.

- Slice enormous zucchini into disks about 1/4 or 1/3 inch thick. (no need to remove skin)

Cook

- Heat some oil, about medium-high, in a non-stick pan. I used olive oil, and I had to keep adding more to keep it from sticking (so much for the low-cal vegetarian cuisine)

- Dip the zucchini in the egg 

- Coat thoroughly with breadcrumb mixture.

- Put each piece into the oil immediately after you coat it (not onto a plate - you'll lose your coating.)

- Cook about 4 minutes on each side, until nice and brown. I tossed some onion on top, too.

You'll be dipping and frying for a while. Test your first pieces to make sure they're cooked enough (neither mush nor crisp) and adjust heat. The photo shows my first batch, where the heat was a little high and the color a little too dark.

Sauce confession: while the other stuff was cooking, I sauteed some grated zucchini (no shortage here) with chopped onion and garlic, added a jar of storebought spaghetti sauce, let it all cook together for a while.

Put the eggplant on a serving plate like this 

Impressing the children with the complementary colors. Not

to make it look like you worked hard it it. I added a spoonful of spaghetti sauce, grated mozzarella, and snipped fresh basil.

We served this with whole-wheat spaghetti and sauce. Adults had the zucchini on top, but the kids asked for the zuke on the side and ate it as a finger-food. The lunch leftovers were even yummier. 

Servings? Depends on how mondo your zuke is. I made 2 serving plates worth of zucchini, enough for 4 good-sized dinner meals plus a couple of lunch servings.

Midsummer harvest curry

I credit my neighbor J.'s influence for this dish today. When I stopped by early this afternoon, she was making a mouthwateringly aromatic fish curry. Back home, I noticed that the green and purple string beans she'd given me the other day from her garden were starting to look a little limp. Could I do something with those and curry? There was a whole package of carrots wilting down in the crisper drawer. Zucchini.

Here's what happens when you forget to check the zucchini plants for a week

So this dish, an easy way to use up garden veggies at a time of year when the kitchen counter seems to be always overflowing with them.

Look at those colors!

Midsummer Harvest Curry

This is such a simple, throw-it-together thing that it seems almost silly to write it down. But it was fresh, and tasty, and not flavors I normally use in the summer. You could use any vegetables (squash would be great instead of the potatoes) but the string beans add a lot.

Steamed rice (1 to 1 1/2 cups dry)

Oil for sauteing

About 1 or 1.5 cups of string beans (green, yellow, purple - whatever you've got), cut into pieces

3 medium carrots, peeled and cut into small pieces (small enough to cook quickly)

2 medium-large potatoes, peeled and cut into small pieces (use a waxy style that will hold its shape after cooking)

Purple onion, about one large (or any sweet onion.), chopped
2 medium zucchini, cut into smallish pieces

1 small/med. green or other bell pepper or mild chile pepper, chopped. (I actually used a long-green pepper - slightly spicy and and sweet in flavor)

3 cloves garlic, chopped

Salt, pepper 

Sauce:

1 can coconut milk (not coconut cream - save that for pina colada)

canned Thai red curry paste (we had Maesri brand)

1 T. sugar

soy sauce or oyster or fish sauce

Start the rice.

In a large (12") non-stick skillet, add some oil and the longer-cooking vegetables: string beans, carrots, and potatoes. Add about 1/5 of the onion now for flavor. Cook until the harder vegetables are starting to soften but not completely done (I covered the pan, stirring occasionally). Add the onion and bell pepper and cook for another 2-3 minutes. Add the garlic and zucchini and continue cooking, uncovered, until all vegetables are cooked. 

While the vegetables are finishing, start the curry sauce in a small saucepan. Whisk about 2 Tablespoons of the red curry paste into the coconut milk. Add the sugar, and a couple of dollops of soy sauce (or oyster or fish sauce). Bring to a simmer over low/medium heat. Taste the sauce and add more of the red curry paste if needed. Bring back to a simmer, taste and remove from heat.

Add the sauce to the pan with the vegetables. Cook, uncovered, about 2-3 minutes to combine flavors and allow sauce to thicken slightly.

Serve with steamed rice. We also had pan-fried tofu (marinate extra-firm tofu with sesame oil and soy sauce, pan fry until golden.)

 Serves about 6 (or my 4 with leftovers)


James (10) gave this 2 thumbs up. Milo (6) was not fooled by the tasty sauce hiding all those healthy veggies! but he ate some.

Bee Bim Bop (Bibimbap)

We have our friends Lisa and Brad to thank for this recipe. They invited us over for bee bim bop, we all swooned over the awesomeness of it, and I begged for the instructions.

Bee Bim Bop (assembled bowl)

This dish is simple to make (although not fast, so it's not a weekday meal for us). It's great for feeding company and kids because everyone can make up their own one-dish meal from what's on the table. My kids can avoid the loathed mushrooms, and it becomes vegetarian by just ignoring the ground beef.

Plus, it's pretty.

The first time we made this we didn't have the hot pepper paste, so we borrowed some spicy bean paste from our neighbors. It was also delish, although the flavor is not exactly the same.

[Can I just pause here to say what a wonderful world it is when I can borrow a cup of sugar or a quarter cup of Chinese bean paste from my neighbors?]

The serving sauce is addictive: hot, sweet, umami deliciousness. 

This recipe does not include quantities for the vegetables, but just make as much as you feel like having. (we make sure we have lots of zucchini because the kids love it made this way.) The 1 lb. of ground beef, and the hot sauce quantity in this recipe should be enough for 6 or 8 people.

Lisa's authentic-enough-for-me Bee Bim Bop

ingredients are indicated in green

Step 1:  Steam rice (1.5 to 2 cups of rice will feed 4-8 diners.)

Step 2:  Chop and saute the following individually with a little s/p and evoo.  Everything gets chopped in very fine rectangular pieces. Those less lazy about washing their food processor than I am, may want to get it out for this step. Set each finished vegetable aside in its own serving dish (or in its own spot on the platter.)

     Onion

     Zucchini

     Carrot

     Mushrooms (we've used fresh, or reconstituted Shitakis.)

Step 3:  Mix 1 lb ground beef [or beef of your choice - in the meal in the photo I think we used chuck roast] with 

2T soy sauce

1T sugar

1T sesame oil 

pepper

Brown the meat mixture.

Step 4:  Fry 1 egg per person, sunny side up.

Step 5:  Build the bowls!  Layer rice, veggies, meat, egg and a drizzle of sesame oil. Put hot sauce on the table (see below). Garnish with green onion (optional).

Step 6:  Eat!

Hot sauce

Sunchang Gochujang is the right paste for this sauce, if you can find it

Mix 

2T hot pepper paste

1T soy sauce

2T sesame oil

2 cloves garlic, pressed

2T honey 

Chilaquiles with eggs

No matter how we parents talk the big talk about how our kids will eat your vegetables and enjoy what you are lucky enough to get, darnit, we can't help but feel warm and fuzzy when they love whatever goes on the table for dinner.

And a meal that had my 10yo asking his dad to make it for his birthday party? A meal that cost maybe $2 for the four of us? A meal that is piquant and savory, filling, fast, and meatless? That's a perfect first recipe for a new blog.

Chilaquiles with eggs and queso fresco, garnished with yellow tomato and avocado

This recipe is forgiving of modifications - whatever you have or like, go ahead and throw it in. Tom says that authentic Mexican restaurants don't serve it with eggs, but we found it delicious that way. He also says restaurants will deep fry the tortillas - we don't have a deep-fryer, so he just crisps them a bit in the pan.

Chilaquiles with eggs

Ingredients

Soft corn tortillas, about 6 or 8, cut into about 1" to 2" pieces. (slightly stale tortillas are fine.)

Vegetable oil (for sauteing)

medium onion, chopped into small pieces

green pepper, chopped into small pieces

(and/or one small can mild green chiles)

4 cloves garlic 

about 1/2 cup red tomato salsa (we use medium heat)

8 oz. can tomato sauce (mexican style is fine, or plain old hunts)

Salt and pepper to taste

For topping:

4 eggs (8 if your diners are really hungry)

Green onion, chopped

(optional) cilantro, avocado, sour cream, queso fresco, thin-sliced radishes, hot sauce

Fry tortillas in a little bit of oil in a large nonstick skillet, until crisp. Put aside on a paper towel to drain.

In the same pan, saute onion, green pepper over low heat. When 90% soft, add garlic. Saute until everything is soft and your kitchen smells like heaven. Add salsa and tomato sauce. On low heat, simmer  for 2-3 minutes, stirring frequently. Add salt and pepper to taste. Add fried tortillas and allow to continue to cook another 2-3 minutes until tortillas have soaked up the sauce. 

Serve topped with green onion and fried egg. Add optional toppings as desired.

Serves 4