As I touch on there, the food that grocery stores shove down our throats is pre-packaged corned (cured) beef brisket with limp cabbage.  It doesn’t have to be a bad dish, but I haven’t seen it prepared well yet.  Besides that, I’ve been trying (as Chambanamoms editor, Amy, has) to incorporate more meatless meals into our diet.  It can often be cheaper, much healthier, and if you’ve read books about how food is produced in this country (like Michael Pollan’s excellent In Defense of Food) you know that it may be a much more responsible dining option.

I had most of the ingredients for this meal already at home, but if my math is right, I can pick up everything for this meal at the coop, getting all organic produce (and supporting a local business), and still have a complete dinner for four for less than the cost of a bad piece of corned brisket at the grocery store.  And I’d still have to buy more stuff for the sides.

Even if the weather here is warming up, nothing says comforting like a stew.  It’s too bad that most stews cook so long that everything can end up tasting the same.  This meal came together while thinking about making something that was quick and easy, yet packed with lots of flavor (something many vegetarian meals lack).

You can read about how we introduced a lot of flavor into the stew, with umami flavor bombs like soy sauce.  Root vegetables are easier though, since you can just throw them in the oven.  Parsnips are one of my new favorite vegetables, and one that most people overlook.  They look like carrots, but are usually a pale yellowish color on the outside.  You can peel them and treat them just like carrots, but they are a little starchier, which lends well to roasting.

Roasted Parsnips

side/garnish for 4

• 8 parsnips, carrot-sized, a little less than 1 pound
• olive oil, to coat
• salt and pepper, to taste
• 2 T flour

1. Pre-heat your oven to 400 degrees F.
2. Peel the parsnips and cut on the bias into 1/4 to 1/2-inch slices.
3. In a bowl, toss parsnips with olive oil, salt, and pepper, until they are all coated.
4. Add flour, and toss to give each slice a good dusting of flour.
5. Spread out on a (foil-lined for easier cleanup) sheet pan, and roast for about 30 minutes, or until they soften and the edges start to brown.

We all know that potatoes and cabbage are very traditional Irish staple ingredients.  There is an old dish that is typically served around Halloween, according to Wikipedia, called colcannon.  It really boils down to mashed potatoes with cabbage (or kale).  Most recipes I’ve seen have you boil the cabbage.  This is a travesty.  Boiling cabbage tends to make it soggy and limp, devoid of flavor.  Worse yet, most recipes suggest overcooking it, which makes it stink and taste bad from the sulfur compounds it contains.

Here we use just a little water with a little oil, steam until it’s soft, then saute it to add some flavor.  I like to leave my cabbage with just a little crunch, but if you like it softer, go ahead and cook it longer.  One great kitchen gadget in use here is a potato ricer, which looks a bit like a giant garlic press.  After you cook your potatoes, cut them in half, put them skin-up in the ricer and press down.  The peel is left behind like magic.

Colcannon

serves 4

• 2-3 pounds of potatoes, scrubbed
• 1/4 – 1/2 head of cabbage, thinly shredded
• 2 T oil
• 6 T butter
• 1 c milk
• salt, pepper, to taste

1. Boil/steam the potatoes until cooked through, about 20-30 minutes depending on the size of your potatoes.  Drain and allow to cool slightly
2. Add the cabbage, the oil, and 1/2 cup of water to the pot, cover and steam over medium-high heat until cabbage begins to darken and soften, about 5-10 minutes.
3. Remove the lid, allow the water to evaporate, then sautee the cabbage with the existing oil until it is as soft and browned as you like, about 5-10 minutes.
4. Lower the heat to low and add the milk and butter.
5. Pass the potatoes through a ricer or food mill, or mash by hand (which would require you to peel them first).
6. Add potatoes into the pot with the cabbage and stir to combine.
7. Taste and adjust texture with more milk and/or butter, and season with salt and pepper.

Potatoes are the perfect foil for stews, as they absorb a little of the liquid and add more heft to the plate.  Plus, well, I just love mashed potatoes!

I hope you find yourself trying some new meatless meals this year.  You may save some money, you may get a little bit healthier, and you’ll be eating with a little less impact on the environment.

Offal, if you’ve never had it, refers to the magical “fifth quarter” of the animal, the stuff that falls off (get it, off-fall?) when you cut it open.  This also includes the extremities, like feet and ears.  Today we’re going to look at some organs and a tissue.  For you vegetarians and squeamish people (and because I don’t have any), I’ll spare you the before pictures.

The most common offal available is liver.  It’s available in many forms, from the grandiose foie gras to buck-a-pound pre-packaged chicken livers.  You may have had pâté, which usually includes the liver of some animal.  My friend, Laurence, makes a mean pork liver pâté studded with tongue.  The flavor and texture is one I find so enjoyable.  Some people, however, turn their noses at it because “it looks like cat food.”  Good… more for us.  Beef liver is available, and is commonly served overcooked and doused with onions to try to cover up the fact that it’s overcooked liver.

You can sometimes find tongue, usually beef tongue, especially if you have ethnic markets available to you.  Americans have tended toward the less-worked, less-flavorful, more expensive parts of the animal, but many in the world have held on to traditional cuts.  I’ve had beef tongue a few times, and none of them were spectacular.  It was beefy, but not terribly flavorful.  It needs to be cooked a long time to make it tender, but in the process it seemed to have lost much of its character.  I recommend you try it… find a good taquería and order one.  If you don’t like it, close your eyes, dump some salsa on it, and pretend it’s actually tenderloin.

Now for the serious stuff, the kind of thing you can’t find at a typical grocery store.  The first is a specialty sausage made with a mix of delicious piggy parts, some spices, some fruit, and blood.  The traditional blood sausage, or boudin noir, is made with caramelized apples and cognac (or calvados), but the Caribbean-inspired riff that I tried (courtesy of Larbo’s skilled manipulation) had raisins soaked in rum.

Since I forgot that it had raisins instead of apples, I stayed true to traditional accompaniments and made simple baked (in butter) apples and crisp-fried (in schmaltz) potatoes, as inspired by the mentions on this page about boudin noir.  As recommended by Larbo, I sizzled the sausages in a skillet until heated through and served them sliced open.  The sausage mixture inside was almost creamy, with a slight metallic hint (blood does have a good amount of iron) in the aftertaste.  The allspice came through as a pleasant warm spice accompaniment to the sausage, and despite the raisin/apple difference, it went very well with the baked apples.

If you learn how to cook potatoes one way, learn how to cook sliced potatoes in a flavorful fat (like lard, goose, or chicken fat) until they are nicely browned all over and crunchy.  I added some lightly sautéed onion and garlic and finished with a sprinkle of parsley.  I could have eaten a bowl of those potatoes.

The other offal experience I recently had was with pork kidney.  I’ve seen them at the University meat salesroom a few times, and was always curious what they’d be like.  Last Friday, when my wife was returning from a business trip, I decided to prepare them as a side dish.  As a filtering organ, I knew there would be a much stronger flavor than, say, tripe or tongue, but there was little advice to be found on the web on how to “purge” them of their offensiveness.  I trimmed the meaty outer portions away from the inner glandular portions and gave them a quick rinse with water.

I did read that overcooking was strictly verboten, as they would quickly become disgusting.  I opted to saute them in a bit of butter, then finish with what I gathered is a traditional mustard sauce.  It was simply a bit of whole grain mustard and heavy cream stirred in at the end.  The mustard and cream worked together with the, ahem, unique flavor of the kidneys to make something that really tasted good.  Our 7-year-old tried them first (without knowing what they were) and said the kidney was “really good.”  To her credit, after we told her what it was, she kept on eating it.  I love that girl!

Edited to add (due to a question via Google Buzz): A friend who reads the blog asked me to be a little more descriptive about the flavor of the kidneys.  Here’s what I said: “I’ll be honest… it had a little bit of acidic twang, but the underlying flavor was deeply meaty. The texture was firm but pretty tender. To put it bluntly, kidneys filter pee and you could taste it juuust a little, but it worked well with the acid and fat of the mustard cream sauce.”

Since my wife loves steak, and I’d heard steak and kidney pie has been a hit in the UK for generations, I made a pan-seared steak, some cannellini beans mashed with truffled goat cheese, some kale for greenery, and a parsnip-potato pancake (improvised from a Union Square Cafe cookbook) for crunch.  As a home-coming meal, it was teetering on the edge between extravagant and overwhelming, but we all managed to enjoy it.  I’ll definitely try to learn more about kidneys and prepare them again.  If you can find them, give it a shot.  As a less-desirable organ meat, they are super-cheap and pack a lot of flavor.

If you want to learn more about offal, there are many great resources.  The local meat master, Larbo, of This Little Piggy, has explored everything but the oink.  Famous chefs are becoming more open about offal, as it becomes more available and trendy in times of economic hardship.  One notable chef is Chris Cosentino, who is known for his offal cooking skills.

Weisswurst, blaukraut, and potatoes… oh my!

Or you could go to the next page.

We frequently drive up route 47 to visit family in the Chicago suburbs and pass through a little town called Gibson City about 45 minutes away from C-U.  My wife loves German food, especially sauerkraut and sausages.  After hearing reviews, seeing pictures, and looking at their menu online, we finally stopped in to Bayern Stube.  If you’ve never been there, you’re missing out.  The experience of the restaurant, with the waitresses dressed in Bavarian outfits, taxidermy-covered walls, and good German beer served in large one-liter mugs, should not be missed.  The food is very good, and portions are large, but you don’t have to take my word for it.

If you’re not up for the drive or the prices, I haven’t found any good options in town to get good wurst.  Your best bet is to make it yourself.  The hardest part about recreating a meal like this is getting the right sausage.  You can really use just about any sausage you like, as long as it’s not too spicy.  I really like going to the UI Meat Salesroom.  In addition to pork, lamb, and beef cuts, they make a wide range of sausages from the pigs they raise.  Their bacon is also very good.  They sometimes make varieties of sausage that you won’t find anywhere else in the area, like weisswurst or mushroom & swiss brats.

One of my favorite parts of the meal at Bayern Stube was the braised red cabbage or blaukraut in German.  The sausages can’t help but be delicious, the starch could be any manner of things, but the cabbage is vital to the meal.  Not only does it the only really colorful element, but the sweetness of the cabbage and acid note of the vinegar bring the plate together.

You’ll want to decide on your starch beforehand, I went with potatoes that I boiled until done, then crisped them in a pan with a little bit of Triple S Farm lard I found at Common Ground.  Other good options would be spaetzle, potato pancakes, or simple mashed potatoes.  The weisswurst is a juicy but lean sausage, so you can afford to use a little extra butter (or lard, or your fat of choice) in this part of the meal.

The weisswurst that the UI Meat Salesroom makes is pre-cooked, so all you need to do is gently heat them in water.  Because of its delicate flavor, this is not a great grilling sausage.  Simply cover them with water and heat until the water is barely simmering.  Hold that temperature for about 5 minutes to heat them thoroughly, then kill the heat and leave them in the water to stay warm.  You should do this while the cabbage is cooking.  You could serve a couple of these links to each diner, but I’d recommend serving a couple different types of sausage.  Perhaps offer a contrast to the weisswurst with some of the smoked bratwurst.

Braised Red Cabbage

• 3T oil, lard, or bacon drippings
• 1 onion, chopped (red would be nice)
• 2 cloves
• pinch of caraway seed (optional)
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 head red cabbage, quartered, cored, and shredded
• 1 1/2 t salt
• 1/2 c water
• 2T red wine vinegar

1. Heat the oil in a large pot over medium heat.
2. When hot, add the onion and cook, stirring, until it becomes translucent.
3. Add the cloves, bay leaves, and caraway (if using), stir for 30 seconds until they release their fragrance.
4. Add the shredded cabbage, the salt, and the water.
5. Reduce the heat to medium low and cook slowly, stirring, as the cabbage wilts, about 10-15 minutes.
6. Eventually the cabbage will all be uniformly wilted.  Add the vinegar, and continue cooking for another 15-25 minutes or until you reach the desired tenderness.
7. Once the cabbage is as soft as you’d like, taste and season with salt, black pepper, and more vinegar, to taste.

When cooking for my family, I try to be conscious of choosing healthy options and a wide range of foods. These days, for health and cost reasons, I’m trying to incorporate more vegetarian items into our menu. One popular staple in the house is the chickpea, also known as a garbanzo bean. Of all the lentils and beans available, I think they are one of the “meatiest.” They are available dried and canned, but I find the canned tend to have an off, metallic flavor and tend to break down too easily. Dried chickpeas are great (and much cheaper), but they do take a LONG time to cook. My method is as follows:

For 1c dried chickpeas (yields a little over 2c cooked)

1. Rinse the dried legumes with plenty of cool water, checking for rocks.
2. Put into a bowl and soak them overnight, at least 8 hours, no more than 24.
3. Drain and rinse with cool water.
4. Put in a crock pot, cover with 1.5 inches of water, and cook on low for 8-12 hours.
5. Drain and use in any recipe as you would canned chickpeas, or store in the refrigerator, covered in the cooking liquid, for up to a week.

Chickpeas cooked this way are tender, but firm. At this point, they can be fried, mashed, or cooked in a sauce for another few hours, which is what I’m usually doing anyway. If you want meltingly-soft chickpeas, you can cook them longer, or cook them on the high temperature of your crock pot.

The chickpeas I made tonight are from a recipe in Madhur Jaffrey’s book, From Curries to Kebabs: Recipes from the Indian Spice Trail titled “Easy Chickpea Curry”. Since it’s such a flavorful dish, canned chickpeas would be fine, but I really prefer the texture of home-cooked. The “easy” in this recipe comes from a long list of ingredients that just get blended together, no need to carefully chop onions, garlic, ginger, etc. Here’s an abbreviated, annotated version of that recipe:

Easy Chickpea Curry
by Madhur Jaffrey
(serves 4 to 6)

2c drained chickpeas

Curry Paste
2 smallish tomatoes (about 8 ounces), chopped (I used a half-can of diced tomatoes)
2-inch piece of ginger, peeled and chopped
4 cloves garlic, chopped
3 to 6 fresh hot green chilies, chopped
1c cilantro tops, chopped (save some for garnish later)
1T ground coriander
2t ground cumin
1/2t ground turmeric
1/2t cayenne pepper
1 1/4t salt

3T oil
1 medium stick of cinnamon
5 whole cardamom pods
2 bay leaves
1c finely chopped onion
2 medium potatoes (about 9 ounces), peeled and cut into 3/4-inch dice

Put all the Curry Paste ingredients (from the tomatoes to the salt) in a blender with 5-6T water and blend until smooth.

1. Heat the oil over medium-high heat in a wide, lidded, medium pan. When hot, put in the cinnamon, cardamom, and bay leaves.
2. When they start to color, in about 10 seconds, add the onion and potatoes.
3. Stir and fry for about 6 minutes, or until the onion is lightly browned.
4. Add the curry paste and stir for a minute (deglaze the pan, scraping any stuck bits).
5. Reduce the heat to medium-low and cook for 6-7 minutes, stirring occasionally.
6. Add 1c of water and the chickpeas
7. Stir and bring to a simmer, cover and cook 20 minutes for canned chickpeas, up to an hour for homemade.

I like to serve this with rice, garnished with a little finely chopped fresh cilantro.

You’ll see the other components of tonight’s meal over the next few posts. If you try the recipes I write about here, let me know how they turn out. If you have any questions about any of the ingredients or techniques I use, leave a comment and I’ll make sure to respond.