I got the beets

I roasted a whole package of beets last week and it was really A LOT. So we made our regular and favourite beet salad the first night and then I didn't know what to do with the surfeit of leftovers. They sat in the fridge for a few days as I could not come up with another option but didn't want to toss 'em. So finally on Sunday I decided to make borscht. J said she was not keen on it but I wanted it and nothing else was going on in the kitchen on that dull and rainy afternoon.

I have not made it before so went to the bible - Joy of Cooking - to see what it had on offer in terms of recipes. There were a couple but neither seemed just right so I ended up doing a bit of a hybrid.

Now don't let the picture scare you, it was actually quite delicious and turns an excellent fuschsia colour when you stir in the sour cream. It also turned out to be totally vegetarian as somehow I ended up instead of buying regular veggie stock cubes getting ones that were veggie-beefy flavour. Anyway, it worked in this case as the stock needs to be, well, beefy. And it's quick.

G's roasted beet borscht

• 3 small or one large roasted beet (make extra when you're doing them for something else), slivered (leave a few chunks for colour purposes)
  
• 1/4 red onion, chopped
• 4 cups of beef stock - chicken stock does not really have enough umph!
• 1 potato, cubed
• juice of about 1/3 of a lemon
  
• sour cream and dill for garnish
• salt and pepper to taste
  

Put the stock in a pot and bring to the boil then add the few chunks of beets, onion, and potato and simmer until the potato is mostly cooked. It should be a nice purply colour. At this point, you can take out the chunks of beet as they have done their work. Add the slivers of beet and the lemon juice then cook for about five more minutes. Taste and season to your liking then serve with a dollop of sour cream and dill.

It's easy peasy and a good hearty soup. I didn't even bother to brown the onions, they just cook up nicely in the stock and float around. I also don't add cabbage, carrots, or even peppers like some recipes. I was pretty pleased with how it came out. A do-over for sure.

The highs and lows now that we're cooking with gas

Having lived in the new house for a couple of months, we are still getting used to cooking with gas. For the most part, I love it. For instance, I've always wanted to make my own baba ghanouj but I like it really smokey and have had neither a bbq nor a gas stove . . . but that has now all changed. So the other day, I picked up some beautiful aubergines, eggplants, berenjena - whatever you may call them - and set to.

The most important part of the whole operation, according to Nigel Slater and I'm middle eastern cooks the world over, is charring the skins of the fruit so you get that awesome smokey taste. So basically I took the two eggplants that I had and put them right on the burner of the gas stove and charred the heck out of them until the skin was burnt and the flesh was all soft. And oh how fabulous the kitchen smelled.

Next step - put the piping hot fruits into a colander resting on a bowl. Once they've cooled a bit, peel the charred skin off and discard. During the process, your eggplants will be leeching some water, but you want to get rid of most of it because it's kind of bitter and who needs that! So you can either just sort of mush the flesh with a fork until you've got rid of most of the liquid or sort of chop it up a bit and then mush it. Either way, get as much liquid out as you can and discard it.

You now have a nice load of mushy eggplant. Add to this:

• 3-4 tbsp tahina
• 2 garlic cloves chopped as fine as you can
• 3 tbsp olive oil
• juice of one small or 1/2 of one large lemon
• salt and pepper

Most of the recipes I read for this say you don't need to use a blender but depending on the quality of your eggplant, you may want to. I think mine may have either been a bit old or had some bruising because I got a couple of nasty hard bits that couldn't be mushed with just a fork. And getting little hard bits in your creamy dip is not pleasant, so if you need to, waz it up with the blender if you want to. Finish it off with a sprinkling of fresh chopped parsley.

I served it with some chicken grilled on the bbq after a bit of a greek marinade (lemon juice, olive oil, garlic, and oregano) as well as a green salad and rice.

So you'll see in the photo above some fluffy white rice and that brings me to one of the lows of cooking with gas. Now, you see, I have been cooking rice perfectly for many, many years. I took the knowledge passed down to me from my mother and others and then made it work for me (1 cup basmati rice, 2 cups water, pinch of salt and a drop of oil/2 tsps of tomato paste if you want. Bring water to boil. Add rice and bring back to boil. Turn down to low, cover, and cook for 17 minutes). My rice came out perfect every time. Every time. My rice mojo, however, is now lost. I've made mushy rice, I've made some absolutely charred rice, and I've made some passable but mediocre rice. I have not made perfect rice with this gas stove. So there is much to learn. For now, I'm tending more toward the potato!

oh that versatile sweet potato

The end of the season with our CSA box yielded quite a lot of sweet potatoes and never one to pass up a challenge of finding a new use for whatever we have in plenty, I thought I'd try a sweet potato biscuit. J had read a recipe for one in one of the many food mags she gets but after a lengthy search, we could not find it so I turned to the trusty internet and voila, Martha Stewart had a recipe.

I have never really made biscuits from scratch before but I was determined. So on a Saturday morning before heading out to the Brick Works market to meet some friends, I got busy in the kitchen. While they did taste really good - not to greasy and not to potatoey - they were not as fluffy as Ms. Stewart's appear in the picture on the recipe page. Nonetheless, throw some sweet butter on those babies right after you take them out of the oven and they are quite heavenly.


This picture is terrible - they did come out in a relatively nice golden colour - who knows what was going on with the lights and the camera on this one!

A vegetatation sensation

I have not been around the homestead very much lately with work travel taking me all over. As a result, we've had a bit of a buildup from our veg boxes. There is currently a surfeit of carrots and sweet potatoes, which I will deal with later on. However, I did manage to make a dent in all of it with last night's dinner: leek and gruyere tart and some squash soup.

A couple of weeks ago, we got a double helping and that week included what is known as delicata or sweet potato squash. Here it is inside and out.

I've not used or eaten it before and didn't know what to expect. But I marshalled on and hoped my extensive kitchen experience and general know-it-allness would keep me afloat. So I cut it up and started by roasting for about an hour with just a bit of salt. Once it was softened, I took it out of the oven and removed the skin and went ahead with my plan for slightly spicy roasted squash soup.

Roasted delicata chipotle soup (4-6 servings)

• 2 small or 1 large delicata/sweet potato squash roasted and peeled
  
• 1 dried chipotle, seeds removed and sliced thinly.
  
• 4 cups chicken or vegetable stock
• 1 onion, chopped
  
• 2 cloves of garlic, diced
  
• pinch of nutmeg
• few tablespoons of sour cream
• 1 tbsp of olive oil or butter
  
• salt & pepper to taste

In a medium-sized pot, saute the garlic and onion in the butter or oil until it is soft. Add the chicken stock and bring to the boil. Then lower heat to medium-low and add pieces of squash, nutmeg, chipotle, and salt and pepper. Simmer for about 20 minutes. Remove from heat and blend until smooth. Check seasonings. Serve with a little dollop of sour cream.

The other half of the dinner didn't seem all that complicated but somehow it all took forever. It was pretty delicious and used up the whole lot of baby leeks I had on hand but next time I might make my own pastry as the frozen pie shell I used was a bit too greasy. But here's my recipe.

Leek & gruyere tart

• Some leeks (I had about 10 or 12 baby leeks of various sizes and it was about right)
• 2 tbsp butter
• 1 tbsp fresh thyme (I used some from our window herb garden)
• salt & pepper
• 75 grams of gruyere, grated
  
• 1 frozen pie crust thawed out

Preheat the oven to 400F.

Cut the leeks into 2 cm rounds and rinse well (discard the dark green end leaves). Saute the leeks and thyme in a frying pan until they are soft, probably about 15 minutes or so.

Lay the softened pie crust out flat on a piece of parchement paper and put half the cheese in the middle of it (leaving about 5 cm around the edge uncovered). Then spread the leeks on top of that and finish it off with the rest of the cheese. Slowly fold the edges of the pie crust up until you have a nice round tart with an open middle so the cheese can get all nice and brown and crispy. Slide the tart and paper onto a baking tray and put in the oven for about 25 minutes until the pastry turns a lovely golden brown.


It is rich but also very yummy. We ate the soup and tart together. I also roasted a few grape tomatoes which added a sweet, sweet extra to the whole affair. The tart is enough for 4 people if you add a salad or eat lots of the soup. I, however, managed to eat a half by myself, no problemo! Both of these recipes are adapted from about 50 things I looked at on the internet, so let me know if you try either one and how you liked it.

All Sephardi, all the time

My Aunty Dianna from Israel is visiting and we had her over for lunch today. She's a tough old bird and I wanted to impress with some traditional Sephardi foods. So the main course was my mainstay of albondigas and rice. You can't go wrong with the good old meatball in sauce. No worries there, it's a tried and true recipe that is one of the faves in this house. But that was not enough to impress. So I had to come up with something else . . . well we had a few eggplants in our veggie box plus still quite a few tomatoes left over so I thought I might try something with them. I decided to give pastelikos a go. These are little pies that can be made with a variety of stuffings, one of which is eggplant (or berenjena as they like to say in Ladino). I have never made them before. I have not had a granny or an old aunty show me how. I was flying without a net on this one because without the wisdom of ages, the old cookbook from the shul in Salisbury/Harare does not always have enough info to guarantee success, especially when there is pastry involved. But I would not be deterred from my mission to impress so on I soldiered.

Yesterday afternoon I prepared the filling - gomo de handrajo - which is basically onion, eggplant, and tomato cooked for about an hour and a half into a soft pulp and then with some fresh parsley added.
The complicated part of the operation is making the pastry and the little cups to hold all that tastiness. The recipe calls for boiling oil, water, and salt together and then mixing it all together with flour and kneading into a "firm dough." All well and good if you know what it's supposed to feel like, not so useful if you don't. So mine ended up being a bit soft and my cups, when shaped from a ball with the thumb were not sitting up. J suggested using a muffin tin and all was saved by that bit of brilliance. So pastry was put in muffin cups, filling was added, and little lids were made and dipped in sesame seeds.

Putting on the lids is a bit of a mission as well but I figured out some system that actually got the lid and cup pastry to seal, so good news there. The tops are supposed to have a delicate frill design created by some subtle knife work but I was under a tight time constraint and this was not a road I was willing to go down this day. Here they are on their way to being ready for the oven.


Into a 400F oven for 40 minutes until golden brown and presto!!

Things of beauty, I tell ya!!! Aunty Dianna had two with minimal commentary on how they could have been better (her main issue was that there was no cheese inside). As she doesn't really eat a lot, the fact she consumed two pastelikos and a full plate of albondigas and rice made me feel pretty good about the whole affair. And now, I have conquered the fear of pasteliko preparation. I will make them again (probably not soon, but I know I can now!).

A surfeit of zukes

The president of my company came into my office yesterday and reported that he had an abudance of zucchinis from his garden (which is really more a farm than your run of the mill garden) and would I like them. Sure, I said, of course. Shortly thereafter he delivered a large box of them, which I promptly gave out most of to co-workers. I took a couple home with the promise that I would bring something back for the provider of the zukes to taste. I also had some zukes still in the fridge from our CSA box so decided to use up the older ones first and make a zucchini-cheddar loaf.
The recipe is right out of the bible - The Joy of Cooking - and I've made it a few times and always loved it. It doesn't use a whole lot of zuke but it does also use green onions, dill, parsley, and sharp cheddar. Sliced up fresh or lightly toasted, it is a fantastic and filling breakfast. I have it with a tiny bit of butter but it's awesome straight up as well. It got a good round of approval from various work colleagues when I took it in this morning. So good news all round and it provided some fuel for getting through our company baseball game later in the day.

Mexican Home Cooking School, Day 1

While I arrived in Tlaxcala at the Mexican Home Cooking School last night, this morning was the first day of classes, which as you may imagine started off with a quick primer on chiles - dried and fresh. There are many and this wasn't even all of 'em, just what was in the kitchen today.
On the menu for today - we cook the food for both our lunch and dinner every day.
- Sopa de Hongo (mushroom soup with nopales - cactus - poblano peppers, and squash blossoms
- Ensalad de Napolitas (cactus salad)
-Pollo Almendrado (almond chicken)
-Tortas de paps con espinaca (potato pancakes with spinach)
-Salsa roja en molcajete (red sauce in molcajete)
-Buñueolos (thin fried dough)
So any day that I can cook with an ingredient that I've not used before is a great day. Make that new ingredient a chile and that's double good. Today had new ingredient and new chile, so it was all manner of excellent.

I had cooked once before with cactus paddles but today learned a better way to do it (boiled not baked) and to clean them. The trick with the cleaning is to scrape in the same direction as the spikes, not against them. Faster and more efficient. Also less chance of getting spikes in your hands. So good lesson on that front. We also used squash blossoms in the soup, which I have not cooked with before. They're basically what you get before the zukes and pumpkins etc turn into veg. So if you want to cook with them, you have to give up the chance of having the zuke or pumpkin, which if you grow zukes and never know what to do with the bounty is a blessing in disguise. Here's the soup of the brew - it has squash blossoms, cactus, mushrooms, onion, garlic, roasted poblano peppers and more!

And the finished product at lunch:
Today's new chile was the cascabel, which we used to make a red salsa. Now with all salsa you roast the ingredients. For the most part I have done it in the oven but I think perhaps my new purchase here in Mexico is going to be a comal, which will let me do the roasting right on the stovetop as we did with the cascabels.
The tomatoes, onion and garlic were also roasted in such a fashion and then all mashed up together in the traditional mortar and pestle of Mexico known as a molcajete, which is special because it's made of volcanic rock. It's a lot more work than making salsa in a blender, that's for sure.

And the potato/spinach pancake (which is really like a mini quajodo to those who know that is) with cactus salad and salsa rojo at lunch - this is an all vegetarian meal for those keeping track of such things:

Dinner was the pollo almendrado, which unusually for Mexican food had cloves in it, which our teachers Jon and Estela say comes from the Arab influence in this area. The almonds, along with dried bread, are used to thicken the sauce so it has a very creamy texture without any cream. Good for the low fat and kosher diets! The sauce also includes dried serrano chiles, cinnamon, and roasted tomatoes (cue the comal!) As we made it in the morning, it sat all day so the flavours could get to know each other better. It was much smoother and deeper in flavour by dinner time.

The day finished off with buñelos, which again may be recognizable to some as pitikas. These were dough rolled out really thinly then fried in very hot oil for a few seconds and doused in vanilla sugar. Crispy and delicious.
Thank you and good night!