glacier grist
Issue #6 • Wednesday, October 29, 2008
BOX CONTENTS, 5 November 2008
from Alaska:
Alaskan red cabbage | Alaskan yellow onions | Alaskan turnips
Glacier Valley Farm and VanderWeele Farm are providing the cabbage, onions, and turnips.
from Outside:
certified organic celery | certified organic kale | certified organic sweet potatoes | certified organic grapefruit | conventionally-grown Honeycrisp apples
Please try and remember to return your box!
recipes
for glacier grist Issue #6
warm red cabbage salad
This dish is fabulous—I make it all the time through the fall and winter, and I never get tired of it. The recipe is based on one in Deborah Madison’s Greens.
The cabbage can be as soft or as tender-crisp as you like—I usually cook it until it’s fairly tender, but make it to your liking. Serve it with thick slices of whole-grain toast topped with hummus, with roasted winter squash cubes, or with baked sweet potatoes. (You can find all these recipes on the South Anchorage Farmers’ Market website!)
¾ cup shelled walnuts
2 teaspoons toasted walnut oil (I use Loriva oil. Don’t use refined walnut oil—it doesn’t have much flavor. Substitute extra-virgin olive instead.)
sea salt or kosher salt and freshly-ground pepper
1 small red cabbage (about 18 ounces)
1 crisp red apple
1 clove garlic, minced
2-3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar, plus extra to taste
1-2 tablespoons olive oil
1 red or yellow onion, quartered and thinly sliced
3 ounces soft goat cheese, broken into large pieces [optional]
1 tablespoon parsley, chopped
1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Toss the walnuts with the walnut oil and some salt and pepper and toast in the oven for 7-10 minutes, until the nuts are toasted and fragrant. Remove them from the oven and let them cool.
2. Quarter the cabbage, remove the core, and slice it thinly.
3. Core the apple and slice it thinly.
4. Put the garlic, vinegar, and oil in a wide sauté pan over medium-high heat. As soon as the mixture is bubbling, add the onion and sauté for a couple of minutes. Add the cabbage and continue to cook until wilted, and as tender as you like it.
5. Season with plenty of salt and pepper, and make sure to taste and add more vinegar to sharpen the flavors if needed. Don’t be shy with the vinegar and salt—it’s what makes the salad yummy.
6. Add the apple slices and stir for another minute, then remove from the heat. Just before serving, add goat cheese (if using), parsley, and walnuts.
turnips roasted in garlic oil
I know I gave you a recipe for roasted turnips a couple of weeks ago, but here’s another variation on that theme. I just love turnips sliced and roasted in a hot oven—especially when you toss them in olive oil that is infused with the sweet flavor of roasted garlic. The garlic oil tempers the slight bite of the turnips, creating a perfect combination. But if you don’t want to bother with the garlic oil, you can just use regular olive oil to toss with the turnips.
the garlic oil
several heads of garlic, cloves peeled
olive oil (you don’t need extra-virgin olive oil for this—the garlic imparts so much flavor that you can use regular olive oil)
1. Put all the whole peeled garlic cloves in a heavy pot. Cover the garlic cloves completely with olive oil.
2. Bring to a simmer over medium heat. Give the garlic a stir, and then turn the heat down to the absolute lowest possible heat, cover the pot, and simmer just at a bare bubble. Stir the garlic occasionally and continue to cook until the garlic cloves are completely soft and tender, and you can easily squish them against the side of the pot with a wooden spoon. This will probably take an hour or more, but check after 45 minutes.
3. Uncover the pot and let cool. Strain the garlic from the oil. This garlic can be used in any recipe that calls for roasted garlic. If you make a soup or a stew that needs a little extra pizzaz, just scoop out a few cloves, mash them with a fork, and add them to your dish to really pump up the flavor. You can freeze the garlic indefinitely (Keep it in pint-sized canning jars in the freezer), and just take it out when you need it.
the turnips
1 pound or more turnips
2 tablespoons garlic oil
½ teaspoon sea salt or kosher salt
1. Preheat your oven to 450 degrees.
2. Peel the turnips, and if large, cut them into quarters. Slice them into ¼” slices.
3. Coat 2 large baking sheets with non-stick spray or oil. (This makes clean-up a lot easier.)
4. Toss the turnip slices with garlic oil and salt, and spread the slices out in a single layer on the baking sheet.
5. Roast for 20-25 minutes, until tender. They may or may not get brown on the underside… it sort of depends on how fast your oven reheats after you put the baking sheets in. Even if the turnips aren’t getting very browned, taste them and see how they are. If they are getting brown, you can flip them after 15 minutes. They are done when tender when you stab them with a fork (and yummy when you eat one!).
African peanut stew with sweet potatoes, kale, and black-eyed peas
Warming and hearty, full of beautiful colors and spicy, savory flavors; I think you’re going to love this recipe! It’s based vaguely on a recipe in Crescent Dragonwagon’s Passionate Vegetarian
.
I like to make a double batch of this recipe and then freeze half of it for later, before adding the sweet potatoes & kale. (The sweet potatoes tend to turn into mush after being thawed.) When you thaw out the soup, just steam sweet potato chunks and boil the kale, then add them both to the completed soup.
I like to cook my own black-eyed peas for this recipe—the beans are much yummier, and since you cook the beans with garlic and onions, the cooking liquid makes a wonderful stock for the soup. But you can use canned, pre-cooked beans if you like. In that case, just use water for the liquid instead of the bean-cooking liquid. (Rinse the canned black-eyed peas first, and don’t use the liquid from the can.)
3 cups dried black-eyed peas, rinsed and soaked for 4 hours or overnight
8 cloves garlic, peeled
2 bay leaves
3 yellow onions: 1 onion peeled and quartered, and the other 2 onions peeled and diced
sea salt or kosher salt
1-2 bunches kale (to your taste)
1-2 tablespoons olive oil
6 ribs celery, diced
1 serrano or jalepeno chile, halved, seeds removed with a spoon, then diced
1 teaspoon curry powder
¼ teaspoon cayenne
8-10 gratings of fresh nutmeg (or ¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg)
1-2 cans (10 ounces each) tomatoes and green chiles (I prefer 2 cans)
2 or 3 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch dice
½ cup natural peanut butter (smooth or crunchy)
2 tablespoons tomato paste
2 tablespoons soy sauce, plus more to taste
Freshly-ground pepper
1. Drain the black-eyed peas, rinse them, and place them in a large soup pot with water to cover by a couple of inches. Put the quartered onion (not the chopped ones), all the whole cloves of garlic, and the bay leaves in with the beans. Bring to a boil over high heat, then lower the heat to a simmer. Cover and simmer until tender, 40 minutes to 1 ½ hours. When the peas are tender, add 1 teaspoon salt or more, to your taste.
2. While the beans are cooking, bring a large pot of water to boil, and salt it well.
3. Cut the long stems away from the kale leaves. Stack the leaves on top of each other and slice the leaves into 1-inch wide ribbons.
4. Plunge the kale into the pot of boiling salted water, and cook until tender. This could take as long as 8 or 10 minutes, but could be much shorter. Start tasting after 5 minutes. Drain the kale and set aside.
5. Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the diced onion, diced celery and 1 teaspoon salt, and sauté until starting to brown and the vegetables are tender. Add the chile, curry powder, cayenne, and nutmeg and sauté, stirring, for another minute. Remove from the heat and set aside until the beans are done.
6. When the peas are tender, remove the quartered onion and bay leaves and discard them. Stir the beans around, and when you see a whole garlic clove, mash it against the side of the pot with a spoon and stir back into the beans.
7. Dump the diced onion and celery mixture into the beans, and then add the canned tomatoes and the sweet potato. If it doesn’t seem brothy enough, add more water. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat to a simmer. Simmer, partly covered, for about 15 minutes, or until the sweet potatoes are tender. (Or, steam the potatoes separately until tender.)
8. Heat a kettle of water to a boil. Place the peanut butter in a large heatproof bowl and pour about a cup of boiling water over the peanut butter, whisking constantly to blend. When blended, whisk in the tomato paste.
9. When the sweet potatoes are tender, add the peanut butter mixture to the stew. Stir it well until smooth. Stir in the kale, and season well with salt and pepper to taste.
10. This stew is wonderful when made a day or two ahead of time and reheated (carefully, over low heat and stirred often, so the peanut butter doesn’t scorch).
11. You can serve this stew with rice or other grains, or just by itself.
For more recipes, search my Alison’s Lunch website!
Cheers! And happy cooking! --Alison
