Jenmenke

Road Warrior

Food

Meatless Monday 43

Disasterpiece Theater. Come along for the ride.

It started out innocently enough:

I found a recipe in an old cookbook of mine called “Simply Tuscan” for Butternut Squash Soup (I know, I know. I said I would not succumb to the temptation of making butternut soup ever again. But this was was different. I swear) with Kale and Farro.

I didn’t have any farro. I did have a big bag of millet that I’ve had for, oh… I don’t know, two years? Three years? I really need to use up this damn millet! When I googled “farro substitutes” I learned that barley is the best thing to use.

I did have barley… but I had just used a boatload of barley last week! I wanted to use the millet. And millet, I did.

I was bubbling with confidence, coming off two recent “winging-it” home runs. The kale soup from last week was AMAZING and this would be TOO!

It was simple to throw together and I left it to simmer on the stove for 40 minutes…

…while I took the wild indians for a walk in the deep snow to wear them out.

When I came back in the house, it smelled WONDERFUL!

“Hopefully,” I thought to myself, “There will be enough to bring to the family from church that I am signed up to make dinner for tomorrow.”

Oh, there was enough alright.

The millet had expanded like little pellets of popcorn, pushing the lid of the Le Cruset pan ajar. (The photo above is only after I cleaned up the mess.)

Undaunted, I transferred the bulk of it to a larger pot and a different, unblemished burner, and added more water. More seasoning. More water…

Lots more water.

I now had used over 16 cups of water spanning two large soup pots. If there was fear I wouldn’t have enough to share, those fears were now extinguished.

The problem was, it just wasn’t all that good.

So I figured I would puree at least some of it. You know, to give it the unctuous, silky texture.

In my mind, it was to be a pale, creamy yellow from the squash and potatoes. Not pea green.

Good Lord.

Back to plan A.

Dave wasn’t home and Charlie was at Robotics class, so I decided to have some fun with Morgan and promptly called her down to dinner. Here you go, hon:

If that was tomatillo salsa, I’d be all over it. But it isn’t.

She never believed me for a second. She’s just no fun anymore. I’m going to have to adopt some new, naive kids so I can have some real fun again.

After she rolled her eyes at me and headed back upstairs to spend some more time with the straightening iron, I sat down to my Plan A bowl, thoughtfully ladled into the ugliest bowl I own.

And, I made a decision.

I, Jennie Menke, would throw this abomination away. Yes. You heard me right. I am going to throw it away!

And I did. All 20 pounds of it.

I have never done anything like that before.

And that is how my kid’s ended up eating at my least favorite fast food restaurant:

While I contemplated this:

Some more of this:

While cleaning this:

Millet, we shall meet again.

(But maybe not for another couple years. After I have my strength back.)

Kale Harvest and a Winter Soup

Mmmmm. I know I tend to go on and on about Kale. But seriously? It’s that good.

Everyone just assumes it tastes like spinach. But it really doesn’t. Lacking a good comparison, however, that’s what most people say. Including me, I’ll admit. Because there isn’t a good comparison.

It tastes like Kale. Nutty, earthy, sweet… so good!

While spinach can be too earthy, a bit mushy, sometimes harsh tasting. –At least in comparison to kale.

So, if you haven’t tried Kale, then go buy some. Or stop by my house and I’ll give you a gallon freezer bag full.

I’ll also admit: it is very difficult for me to buy Kale at the grocery store. You get about six stems for about $3. Seriously insane. It reminds me of a lunch meeting I had. I was a bit late (always) and came in after they had ordered a couple appetizers. Being polite (hardly ever), I didn’t ask what they had ordered. When the waitress set down two steaming bowls of edamame, I blurted out, “You paid money for these?!”

Of course they paid money for those. Everyone pays money for edamame. Except me, who can’t keep up with the ice cream pails full of pods that start coming out of the garden in August. And they are so much better than the ones at the restaurants. So I encourage you to try planting edamame as well. A simpler crop cannot be found.

Anyway.

Kale.

I will admit one more thing. Processing the kale for the freezer takes about three “jennie days” consisting of anywhere from 1-3 hours each:

  1. Cutting and hauling
  2. Stripping stems from leaves
  3. Boiling, freezing and bagging

Four days this year, due to the volume of stems harvested. (It was a good year for kale.)

I detail my process here, if you are interested. Which, of course, you are not, because who but me does stuff like this? This year, I was able to do all the boiling outside which saved me from the usual three-day kale smell in the house. (Not a good thing. Imagine broccoli times ten.)

I also cut one step out of the process. Instead of chopping the frozen pieces before bagging, I simply crunched up the frozen leaves as I put them in the bags, thereby saving the cutting board clean-up. Always the innovator am I.

I saved about 6 fresh leaves and made this amazing, amazing soup. Sort of a take-off on Italian Kale soup. I substituted barley for white beans, since I had frozen barley left over from my Fall Barley Risotto and didn’t have any white beans in my pantry.

This soup was insanely delicious. And so ridiculously simple. I did start with homemade chicken broth. I’ve got a dearth surfeit** of it in the freezer that I’ve got to use up because I’ve also got a dearth surfeit** of chicken bones waiting to be made into more broth. It’s a vicious circle. I am certain it would also be great with store-bought broth.

Kale Soup with Barley, Sausage and Quinoa

  • 1 pkg hot Italian sausage (I used Johnsonville, but Chorizo with be amazing)
  • 1 medium onion diced or equivalent shallots. (I’ve got to use my dearth surfeit** of shallots up, so I used shallots)
  • 3 large cloves garlic, minced
  • 8 cups chicken stock
  • 4 cups thinly sliced kale, stems removed
  • 1 cup pearled barley
  • 1 cup quinoa
  • 1 T balsamic vinegar (yes, every recipe I use includes balsamic)
  • Salt and Pepper to taste
  • shredded Pecorino Romano for garnish

Slice the sausage into disks if using Johnsonville-type with casings. Otherwise roughly break up if using bulk sausage. In a large soup pan, brown sausage and remove from pan, leaving fat. My sausage did not render much fat, so I added some bacon fat to the pan. Sauté the onions until starting to brown, add the garlic and sauté another minute. Add the the chicken stock and barley to the pot and cook an hour until the barley is just about done (My barley was already cooked, so I added everything at once and simmered for about 45 minutes total). Add the kale, quinoa and sausage and cook another 20-30 minutes on a low simmer. Taste for seasonings. Add the balsmic and serve hot with pecorino (or parmesan) shreds and crusty bread.

Serves: 500 with leftovers*

*kidding. It serves: I don’t know, but I’m guessing 16. We ate a ton. I ate 4 days of left overs and I’ve got a container in the freezer with an additional 4 cups. Hope that helps!

**Update, 11/16/2010:
dearth (noun) LACK, scarcity, shortfall, deficiency, ANTONYMS surfeit.

Meatless Monday 42

Fall Barley Risotto

Mmmm. I did it! I finally made a winner. Here’s the thing. In busy times, I tend to do some version of the following for dinner:

  • around 3:30pm when the kids get home, and having lost all track of time, I get up from my computer and look in the freezer
  • I take something out and plop in in a bowl of water to defrost
  • then I forget about it until…
  • somewhere between 5:30 and 6:30 pm when one of the kids needs to be somewhere: band, soccer, robotics, yearbook…
  • at which point I usually tell Charlie to have a bowl of cereal, or
  • tell Morgan to stop eating ice cream (or macaroni and cheese or some other large dinner-type substitute)
  • then, I start driving
  • when I return around 8pm, I
  • quickly and randomly throw something together from the defrosted item in the sink and anything I can find in my fridge

It doesn’t leave a lot of room for recipe research. I does leave a lot of room for improvement.

Maybe I have been made delusional from watching Top Chef to think that I, too, can throw some interesting ingredients and flavors together to create a harmonious and delicious meal in 40 minutes or less.

Yes, delusional.

Because it hardly ever works when I wing it. But there is always the exception. And Meatless Monday 42 is just that. The bummer, of course, is that I don’t document anything. I might take one picture and then as the cooking spirals downward, I stop. I mostly laugh.

And drink red wine.

So, I can’t really relate this recipe to you verbatim. But I can tell you the basic outline and structure of the dish. It certainly wouldn’t suffer from variations in ingredients or quantities. The fact that it is a barley risotto, rather than a traditional rice risotto, is simply because after having set my sights on squash risotto, I found I did not have enough rice to make it. Nothing new there. But I did have enough pearled barley. I had tried making a barley risotto sometime last year that was rather disastrous, but I did not let that distract me! Ed on Top Chef made a risotto out of corn! So there!

Here is a comparison of the grains. As you can see, they are somewhat similar. But guess what? Pearled barley (and squash, for that matter) takes over an hour to cook! I didn’t have an hour! (It was already 8 pm at this point, mind you.) So I got out the pressure cooker and dumped the barley in with water (about 2 cups more than the basic recipe on the package called for), a bit of wine and plenty of salt and got it cooking while I put two sweet potatoes in the oven at 425 and sauteed some shallots.

In my brain stem, I felt a familiar stirring: I think I have actually heard of a risotto made entirely in the pressure cooker. Anyone else know of something like that? I know I’ve never tried it, but based on how the barley turned out, I can certainly see promise in concept. The barley was perfect, and the water had turned somewhat risotto-ish — as if I had been stirring it all along.

Anyway, I used water for the broth, rather than stock, because sweet potatoes (or squash) are rich enough. To the sauteed shallots I added a couple of cloves of garlic, then the 1/2 cup of risotto rice I had left in the container. Next, I added about 1/3 cup of white wine, stirring all the while as I normally would with risotto. When the barley was done (after about 15 minutes), I dumped half of it (I froze the other half. Do you have any idea how much two cups of dried barley actually makes? It’s INSANE!) along with it’s cooking liquid into the pot and simmered it with some slivered sage leaves.

When the sweet potatoes were done, I added those to pot, gently stirring to break them up. When everything was cooked to al dente — and barley is very forgiving in this respect, I added about 1/2 cup of finely shredded pecorino and garnished each bowl with a little more. The main spice I used was sage, but in retrospect I would choose rosemary. For whatever reason — and I normally LOVE sage — on this particular night the smell reminded me of cat pee. It seriously bummed me out.

I would also probably choose butternut squash over sweet potato if given enough time to roast it. The sweet potato was good — and very similar to squash — but had a vibrant, Tang-like color that wasn’t all that appealing. I continued to add more pecorino romano, which I have come to love more than aged parmesan, probably because I am cheap. But I really do love the flavor. It’s not quite as strong or sharp. Or something.

Of course the next day NOT being Meatless Monday, I added one small, but spectacular, topping for my lunch: Leftover pot roast!!

Sacrilege!

Meatless Monday 41

Coconut Green Curry with Snap Peas (and Shrimp)

My original intent had been to lump this recipe with Meatless Monday 40 and compress the agony into one post.*

“But that’s not how I roll.”

I just hate that saying. So I just had to say it.

I’m going to sit here and write this until I am done. It is 11:23 am. I am so badly anticipating my lunch of leftover fried rice from last night that I am hoping it will be motivation enough.  (I had to leave a blank space in front of the word “enough” (now underlined) because I cannot think of the word that I want to use! It is at the tip of my tongue, and this happens to me several times a day. My vocabulary has left the building. It is driving me crazy. Hopefully, by the time I am dying of starvation and desire for my fried rice, it will come back to me.)

[I came back to the space before “enough” and had to give it another 30 seconds. Then I remembered — motivation! So happy. Yesterday I couldn’t come up with the word “alienates.” I am fearful for my future. Is it menopause?]

As much as I love my Aroy-D brand green curry, I didn’t know about it until well after my foray into green curry recipes. Today’s recipe is a forerunners to the discovery of my favorite green-curry-in-a-can, Aroy-D. I am a bit ashamed to say that I have never actually made my own green curry paste, as urged in The Big Bowl cookbook, where this recipe is adapted from, though. They claim you will never know how good it can be until you make it yourself.

But I hate shopping. And I really hate hunting for obscure ingredients.

And so, I have never made curry paste. Because, as you might imagine, there are a lot of obscure ingredients required when making it from scratch.

Instead, when curry paste is called for, I’ve used Thai Kitchen brand. It’s pretty good. They changed their recipe years ago, though, which really ticked me off. It used to be made fairly mild and you added your own heat. Back when I had toddlers, that was a must. We couldn’t serve them green curry inferno, now could we? So I always just added more spice to Dave and my dishes. It was a real problem when they changed it while my kids were still young. My solution was to hold way back on the paste and complete the recipe, take portions out for them, then stir in the rest of the curry paste for Dave and I. It worked well, but it still made me mad.

I hate when manufacturers of green curry paste do that, don’t you? It puts them on par with bra and underwear makers. Victoria Secret recently changed the cut of their “low rider bikini.” Suffice to say, I am in Hell today.

So anyway, this was my first favorite green curry recipe. I know shrimp isn’t an option for vegetarians, but it counts as meatless for me. Vegetarians can substitute tofu, or just make sure to coat it with cornstarch and sesame, since those flavors are such a big part of this recipe and the cornstarch slightly thickens the sauce.

*Agony being the retelling of the tale, not the agony of Meatless Mondays. Just so we are clear.

Coconut Green Curry with Shrimp and Snap Peas

  • 2 cans light coconut milk
  • 40 medium raw, deveined, shell-on shrimp, peeled*
  • 2 T cornstarch
  • 1 T sesame oil
  • 2 T fish sauce
  • 1 T lime juice
  • 1 T sugar
  • 1/4 cup vegetable oil, less if you have a nicely seasoned wok
  • 1 large sweet red pepper, julienned
  • I have no idea how many sugar snap peas: If you are a counter, then figure 20-25, Cut fat ones on the diagonal
  • 2 heaping Tablespoons of green curry paste (or to taste)
  • 1  c chicken stock*
  • steamed jasmine rice
  • chopped fresh cilantro (optional)

Put the coconut milk in a saucepan and simmer over medium heat until reduced by half. This takes about 20 minutes. If you don’t have the time, then skip this step but reduce recipe to 1 can. Broth will simply be thinner.

Toss the shrimp with the cornstarch and sesame oil and set aside. Stir together fish sauce, lime juice and sugar. Set aside.

Heat wok up to smoking point and add oil. When hot but not smoking, add the shrimp and cook until barely translucent, about 3 or 4 minutes. Remove from pan leaving any remaining oil.

Add the peppers and snap peas to the wok and toss over high heat. Push to the side and add the curry paste, mashing it with a fork, then add the chicken stock*. After a minute or two add the coconut milk. When hot, stir in the shrimp and fish sauce mixture.

Serve over hot rice and sprinkle with cilantro. Serves 4 with the requisite container of leftovers for my lunch the next day.

*I sometimes use stock made from the shrimp shells in place of chicken stock. You just save the shells from the shrimp and add to 2 cups of water and simmer until reduced to 1 cup. Strain the shells. I encourage you to try it. It allows you to feel superior, smug and frugal all at the same time. In the photo below, I tried to get even fancier. I added the shells to the coconut milk, thinking I could save myself one more dirty pan. I don’t recommend it. It is too hard to strain. It allowed me to feel inventive, smug and stupid, all at the same time.

Meatless Monday 40

Normally this stuff just flows from my fingers without pause. But it is confirmed. I officially dread writing about Meatless Mondays.

This post has been half-finished for over a week now. And I won’t let myself post anything new until I get it done. The agony… of bad pictures and uninspired writing.

But you have to give me kudos for trying. And trying I am still. The past two weeks we have had two — actually three — meatless dishes. But remember, oh yee of actual vegetarianism: I consider fish and shellfish to be meatless. So I know that negates at least one of the dishes for the truly hardcore.

And, as usual, I lack photos. The days are getting shorter here in Minnesota. A lot shorter. And we eat late. I mean really late. I’m not all that concerned about photography when I’m frantically trying to get dinner on the table before 9 pm.

I’m also not a writer dedicated to showcasing my photography to the point of making meals in the middle of the day in order to style the dish and photograph it on a sublime background in the pleasing light of the setting sun. Do you know how many people actually do that? It is truly mind boggling. You can go ooh and ahh over their posts. Here’s a funny irony: my friends shake their heads at me and say “Where do you find the time…” and I shake my head at all those beautiful photos on those beautiful blogs and say “Where do they find the time…”

No, I grab the closest camera and snap. Flash and all.

Did you know that flash photography is the horror of all horrors? Seriously. Another little known fact for all you non-food-blogging types. Which, I hope for my sake, are most of you reading this.

But I have  two Meatless Monday winners that I haven’t posted before, so I should at least share the basics. The first, Meatless Monday 40, is a dish I tried to replicate from the old Sidney’s Restaurants here in the Twin Cities. They made this spicy sausage with peppers in tomato cream sauce which I just loved. I came up with a recipe that I thought came fairly close. Of course it wasn’t quite as good, because I could never knowingly use as much cream as they did and still enjoy eating it.

That’s probably why we all like to eat out so much. Because ignorance is bliss. Well, I guess I can’t slap that generalization on The Pioneer Woman who starts every recipe with a pint of cream and a stick of butter, but she is a CATTLE RANCHER, for goodness sake. I sit on my butt all day doing graphic design for free. I have to live by different rules.

Anyway, I recently made this for Meatless Monday, sans the italian sausage. The sausage was sadly missed but the dish was still surprisingly good.

Spicy Penne with Tomato Cream and Sweet Red Peppers*

* The photo shown above does not show this incarnation of the recipe. It shows Meatless Monday 36, when I made it with sage and yellow peppers and lots of oregano. It wasn’t nearly as good, though I did love those big pasta tubes! I recommend the following version of the dish. While the recipe is not precise, the herbs are more subtle and the red peppers more plentiful.

  • 1 lb Penne or Rigatoni pasta, cooked al dente in salted water
  • 1 small onion diced
  • 1 clove fresh garlic minced or 3 cloves Garlic Confit mashed
  • 1-2 cups of diced or pureed tomato — canned or fresh or combo — amount depending on your love of tomatoes
  • ~ 1/2 cup  half and half or cream — amount and type depending on your love of a flat stomach
  • 1 t red pepper flakes
  • 1-2 t sugar
  • 1 sweet red pepper sliced into skinny strips– green works if it is winter and red peppers cost as much as truffles.
  • 1 t dried thyme (or 1T fresh)
  • salt and pepper to taste
  • 1/4 cup fresh pecorino shreds — or parmigiano  if you are rich

Obviously there is no rocket science here. Saute the onion in a bit of olive oil over low to medium heat until translucent. Add the garlic and saute another minute, then add the tomatoes, thyme, salt, pepper and sugar and cook on low for a bit — maybe 10 minutes or so. About 5 minutes before serving add the peppers and cream. I like my peppers to stay firm and not be mushy. If you like them soft, add them earlier. Don’t let the cream boil.

Toss the half pasta with the sauce, adding pasta until you get the consistency you like. (I use about 3/4 of the pasta usually and save the rest for eating with butter. mmm). Sprinkle pecorino over and serve hot!

*******

Something I discovered that you probably already know: heat your pasta bowl in a very low oven (250 or so) for 10 minutes before tossing your pasta in it. I was always afraid to do this with my big, pretty bowls. But as I get older, I don’t care as much. Maybe it’s because I have more bowls. Anyway, IT MAKES A HUGE DIFFERENCE and keeps the pasts SO FRICKEN HOT for so much LONGER. It makes me feel like I’m eating it in a restaurant where I never fail to marvel, “How the heck do they get the pasta this hot?” Now I know.

The Great Pumpkin

…Or Not.

Remember my nail biting back in late June about whether or not I’d get pumpkins grown in time this year due to my late planting date of June 28th?

Well, thanks –I think– to the hot summer and an unusually late first frost, I did!

I had a few surprises though. This was one of them:

To my knowledge, I did not plant any cantaloupe. I thought I had planted Cinderella pumpkins but never got any of those. It’s pretty hard to mistake thin and whimpy cantaloupe seeds for massive Rouge vif d’ Etampes seeds — the proper name for the cinderella pumpkin, and my favorite — so that doesn’t really make sense. Who knows. Unfortunately, I didn’t know about the cantaloupes until last week, since they were completely hidden from view until the frost, and all but one were overripe.

All was not lost, however. I did get enough pumpkins to decorate my front steps:

The regular pumpkins — with such cool stems this year — are just starting to turn orange. I like them when they are in that transition period. I wish they would stay this way.

This one is my favorite:

I also got enough butternut squash to keep me happy for a while.

I don’t know why, but the three summers prior to this one were horrible for butternut squash. I just couldn’t get them to germinate and when they finally did, where overtaken by the more vigorous pumpkins. So, I’m happy with this bunch.

We really only eat the butternut, though we could eat all of them, I think. Every year I vow to finally try one of the pale green “Sweetmeat” squash that I grow only because they are so pretty (the gray-green one in the the photos above). They are supposed to be delicious.

The problem is, I get very befuddled about what to do with giant squash. We tend to be a bit single-minded in our squash consumption (see favored recipe below). Like many other things in life I have vowed not to do and failed (plant corn, underplant/interplant chaos, swear at my kids), I have vowed not to fall prey to another squash soup recipe. I don’t know what it is, but I am drawn to the idea of squash soup. I make one every year and am always disappointed with the results.  So many of them have that sort of heavy cinnamon/clove combo that I don’t like all that much in anything but desserts. Others have curry or apple… which sounds good right now, but I know from experience I haven’t liked them.

And inevitably I’m left with gallons of the stuff that no one wants to eat.

Then I feel too guilty to just dump it, and end up eating it for lunch for the next week, freezing the rest, and eating that throughout the winter — vowing each time to never, ever make squash soup again.

Is it just me? All these food writers wax poetic about luscious, velvety squash soup and I end up feeling so inadequate…

Anyway, it’s hard to beat this Ina Garten original recipe for caramelized butternut squash. Try it and tell me it isn’t the best way you’ve ever had it:

Carmelized Butternut Squash (serves 4)

  • 1 butternut squash
  • 3T butter, melted
  • 1/8 cup brown sugar
  • 1t salt
  • 1t freshly ground pepper
  • sprinkling of cayenne (optional)

Preheat oven to 400. Cut off ends of squash, then peel with a vegetable peeler, making sure to get through to the deep orange of the squash (otherwise the outside is tough). Cut in half and remove seeds. Cut squash into  2″ cubes and place on a heavy baking sheet or large cast iron pan.

Stir together the melted butter, brown sugar, salt and pepper and pour over the squash, stirring to coat thoroughly with your hands. Spread in a single layer on the pan and roast for 45 to 55 minutes, until squash is tender and glaze begins to caramelize.

While roasting turn the squash with a spatula to ensure even browning. Serve hot.