glacier grist

Issue #13 • Thursday, December 25, 2008

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

31 December 2008 box contents

from Alaska’s Glacier Valley Farm and VanderWeele Farm:
Alaskan green cabbage | Alaskan carrots | Alaskan onions

from Outside:
certified organic leeks | certified organic spaghetti squash | certified organic sunchokes | certified organic celery root | certified organic navel oranges


PLEASE RETURN YOUR BOXES!

For more recipes, check out my Alison’s Lunch blog, or the South Anchorage Farmers Market website.
Cheers! And happy cooking!  --Alison

recipes

for glacier grist Issue #13

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pasta with savory cabbage & walnuts

I love this recipe! Here’s another of my pasta recipes that has loads of vegetables and not so much pasta. Browned onions, sweet Alaskan carrot slices and cabbage, and salty, toasted walnuts… fantastic! It’s inspired by a recipe in Rebar Modern Food. If you want to see a photo of this yummy recipe, there’s one on the the South Anchorage Farmers’ Market website.

½ pound whole wheat pasta
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 large onion (or 2 medium onions), diced
sea salt or kosher salt
6 garlic cloves, minced
¼ teaspoon red chile flakes
1 tablespoon dried sage (or ¼ cup fresh, minced)
1 ½ teaspoons dried thyme (or 1 tablespoon fresh)
1 medium head green cabbage, halved, cored, and cut into ¼-inch thick ribbons
½ to 1 cup vegetable stock or water
3 medium carrots, cut into thin half-moon slices
1-2 teaspoons balsamic vinegar (optional)
freshly ground pepper
½ cup walnuts, toasted for 15 minutes in a 350-degree oven
1-2 tablespoons toasted walnut oil (optional)
½ bunch parsley, leaves chopped finely

1. Put a large pot of water on to boil to cook the pasta.
2. Heat the olive oil over medium-high heat and sauté the onions with ½ teaspoon salt until golden. Add carrots and sauté for another couple of minutes, then add the garlic, chiles, and herbs for several more minutes.
3. Stir in the cabbage with another ½ teaspoon salt and the stock or water, and add enough stock to keep the cabbage from sticking in the pan. Continue to sauté the vegetables until the cabbage is tender.
4. Meanwhile, add a couple of tablespoons of salt to the boiling water and cook the pasta until tender.
5. Chop the walnuts coarsely and toss them in a small bowl with the toasted walnut oil (if using) and a generous pinch of salt.
6. Just before serving, taste the vegetables and season with salt and pepper. Drizzle with a little balsamic vinegar if you want, but don’t overdo it—you want to be able to taste the flavors of the vegetables and the toasted walnuts.
7. To serve, put a small mound of pasta on each plate, and mound a big pile of vegetables on top. Sprinkle with toasted, salted walnuts and chopped parsley.

spaghetti squash with marinara sauce

This is such a fun meal—veggies on top of more veggies! This is a great main course with any kind of a green salad alongside.  The sauce is Dan’s recipe—super easy, and really yummy!

the squash

1 spaghetti squash

1. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees (or if you’re baking something else, use whatever temperature is convenient). Poke the squash with a paring knife a couple of times to make sure it won’t explode. (This may be a cooking myth, but I’m not willing to try and see if it really happens.)
2. Bake the squash until it’s tender and you can poke a paring knife easily into it. Maybe this will take 40 minutes or an hour… you’ll just have to see.
3. While the squash bakes, prepare the sauce.
4. Cut the squash in half and gently scrape the seeds and innards out with a spoon and discard them. Then take a fork and scrape cross-wise across the strands, piling them into a bowl like spaghetti.

the sauce

4 cloves of garlic, minced
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 28-ounce cans whole or diced tomatoes
2 tablespoons dried oregano
sea salt or kosher salt and freshly ground pepper

1. Coarsely chop the tomatoes if using whole ones. Saute the garlic in the olive oil until fragrant (30 seconds or so). Add the tomatoes and cook the sauce down until nicely thickened, about 30 minutes.
2. Crush the oregano between your palms as you sprinkle it into the pot. Stir to combine, and add salt and pepper to taste. If you want a smoother sauce, put some of the sauce into your blender, or use a hand-held immersion blender to puree some of the chunks out of the sauce.
3. Top the spaghetti squash with tomato sauce, and enjoy! If you want to add garnishes, you could use chopped parsley or parmesan cheese, but I don’t think it needs it.

leek & potato soup with greens

This is a great soup to use up extra greens—whatever you happen to have hanging around. And potatoes and turnips, too! This recipe is very loosely based on one in Peter Berley’s Fresh Food Fast, but I spruced it up quite a bit with red wine vinegar and mustard.

1 tablespoon olive oil
3 medium leeks, white and tender green parts only, cleaned carefully by slicing in half lengthwise and swishing in water, then thinly sliced (or you can substitute 2 medium onions, diced)
sea salt or kosher salt
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 tablespoon caraway seeds
1 pound small turnips, cut into ½-inch pieces (optional, but very nice)
1 pound small waxy potatoes, cut into ½-inch pieces
1 bunch greens, stems trimmed and leaves chopped—chard, kale, or collards
red wine vinegar
Dijon mustard
fresh-ground pepper

1. In a large saucepan over medium heat, heat the olive oil. Add the leeks or onions, season with a teaspoon of salt and sauté until soft, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and caraway seeds and sauté for 1 more minute.
2. Add 6 cups of water, the turnips (if using) and potatoes, and bring to a boil over high heat. Add the 1 teaspoon of salt, reduce the heat to medium, and simmer, covered, until the vegetables are tender, about 10 to 15 minutes. If you have time, it’s great to let it sit overnight after this step—the flavors really develop.
3. If I have chard, I add the chard and simmer the soup until wilted, 2 or 3 minutes. If I have kale or collards, I like to par-boil these tougher greens first in plenty of boiling salted water, separately, until they are tender. This could take 8-10 minutes. (Par-boiling also removes bitterness.)
4. Season with a spoonful of mustard, and a little red wine vinegar—but taste after each small addition!  Add salt and plenty of pepper, and serve.

sunchoke bisque w/ hazelnut oil

Another recipe based on one of Deborah Madison’s… this one from her beautiful book Local Flavors. Have you ever tried sunchokes? I love their earthy flavor with rich hazelnut oil! You can find roasted hazelnut oil at Summit Spice & Tea at 1120 E. Huffman Road… but if you don’t have any, you can substitute a nice extra-virgin olive oil. You don’t have to peel the sunchokes—just scrub them well.
You can just toast your bread in the toaster and cut it into cubes for croutons, or you can make garlicky croutons in the oven.

1 onion
3 small waxy potatoes
1 pound sunchokes
2 celery stalks
1 tablespoon olive oil
6 cups vegetable stock or chicken stock
Sea salt or kosher salt and fresh-ground pepper
2 bay leaves
croutons
roasted hazelnut oil (or extra-virgin olive oil)

1. Wash all the vegetables, then chop them into ½-inch chunks. Don’t bother peeling the sunchokes.
2. Heat the oil in a soup pot, add the onions, potatoes, sunchokes, celery, and 1 ½ teaspoons of salt and sauté over high heat, stirring frequently, until lightly browned, about 10 minutes. Add the garlic during the last few minutes.
3. Pour in the stock and add the bay leaves. Bring to a boil, then simmer, covered, until the potatoes are tender, about 25 minutes.
4. Cool briefly, then puree until perfectly smooth. Return the soup to the stove and add stock or water to thin itt o the desired consistency. Taste for salt and season with pepper. Serve with a few croutons in each bowl and the oil drizzled in a thin stream over the top.


garlicky whole-grain croutons

5 slices hearty whole-grain bread (preferably whole-wheat sourdough)
3 tablespoons olive oil
3 cloves garlic, minced or pressed in a garlic press
¼ teaspoon sea salt or kosher salt

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Mash the garlic with the salt in the bottom of a medium-sized bowl. Stir in the olive oil. Cut the slices of bread into ½” cubes and toss them in the garlicky oil until the oil is thoroughly absorbed and distributed. Spread the bread cubes out on a baking sheet and bake for 15-25 minutes, until the croutons are crispy and golden-brown. Cool on the baking sheet.

super-easy roasted celery root

Peel the celery root with a paring knife, quarter it and cut into ¼-inch slices, then toss it with a little salt and a spoonful of olive oil. Roast it in a 450-degree oven on a greased baking sheet until browned and yummy, 20 to 30 minutes. Devour!

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Rice is the seed of a monocot plant Oryza sativa, of the grass family (Poaceae). As a cereal grain, it is the most important staple food for a large part of the world’s human population, especially in East, South, Southeast cuff links Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, and the West Indies. It is the grain with the second highest worldwide production, after maize ("corn").[1]

Since a large portion of maize crops are grown for purposes other than human consumption, rice is probably the most important grain with regards to human nutrition and caloric intake, providing more than one fifth of the calories consumed worldwide by the human species.[2]

A traditional food plant in Africa, rice has the potential to improve nutrition, boost food security, foster rural development and support sustainable landcare.[3]

Rice is normally grown as an annual plant, although in tropical areas it can survive as a perennial and can produce a ratoon crop for up to 20 years.jewelry boxes The rice plant can grow to 1–1.8 m tall, occasionally more depending on the variety and soil fertility. The grass has long, slender leaves 50–100 cm long and 2–2.5 cm broad. The small wind-pollinated flowers are produced in a branched arching to pendulous inflorescence 30–50 cm long. The edible seed is a grain (caryopsis) 5–12 mm long and 2–3 mm thick.