If you’re coming here from Chambanamoms (welcome!), where I am an occasional contributor, you’ve already seen my take on a vegetarian main dish for St. Patrick’s Day.  If not, go read about that Guinness tofu stew, and learn about my opinion on “authentic” St. Patty’s Day food.

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.

I don’t often go to Youtube for recipes or recipe ideas, but there are two exceptions in the past few months.  The first is Cooking With Dog.  I don’t understand why there’s a dog.  I don’t understand why it seems like the dog is narrating the whole procedure while some woman does all the work.

I made these a while back for dessert after the Okonomiyaki dinner.  The video makes them look very easy, but they are a lot of work with a lot of short windows of opportunity where things can get really screwed up.  Of course, I had to make this as hard as possible for myself, so I made my own anko or sweet red bean (azuki or adzuki) paste first.  The recipe I used was from a book I had out from the library, Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art.

I love learning traditional ways of making things, and going through the process to make anko the old-fashioned way was enlightening.  I don’t have the cookbook I referenced anymore (I borrowed it from the library back in May), so I may be remembering the steps wrong.  If you love making anko, please send along your tips, tricks, and recipes.  You start by taking azuki beans and soaking and boiling them in water, just like most other bean preparations.  Next you mash, smash, puree the beans until they are as smooth as you want.  You can then reserve some to leave whole if you wish, but I made a smooth bean paste.  Then you thoroughly drain and “rinse” the mashed beans.  It was a strange step, something I’ve never done before, but it washed away some of the excess starchiness of the beans.  You do all of that in a flour sack cloth, and then wring it dry.  What you end up with looks like a really dry, crumbly reddish paste.  You can see it in the picture here.  Then you add back a little water, a bunch of sugar and heat it up until it’s all dissolved and it becomes shiny and smooth again.  It does have a beany taste, but the slight sweetness reminds you that it’s dessert.

Once the anko has been made (or, more often, purchased), you envelop the strawberries with it.  You want to made sure your strawberries are clean and completely dry, otherwise the anko will slip around instead of sticking like you see in the video.

The mochi dough is made with sweet rice flour (also known as glutinous rice flour).  It’s not actually sweet, nor does it contain gluten, it’s just referring to the different type of starch in the glutinous rice it’s made from (sticky amylopectin instead of amylose).  The most popular and widely available brand that I’ve seen and heard of is Mochiko.  You basically mix it with sugar and water to make a sweet pasty slurry then steam it for a while.  Once it’s been cooked it is very sticky and stretchy.  The texture is unique, and changes quickly.  As it dries, it firms up and will not stick together well any more, so despite being way too hot to handle with your hands, you have to divide the dough and carefully cover the anko-covered strawberries.  Place on corn starch (or powdered sugar) so that they don’t stick, but brush off the excess as it can make the outside too dry.  You can see my mochi that I made… they’re messy and misshapen.  The small ones just have the anko inside (no strawberry).

They are really a treat.  As you bite into them, you pass through the chewy layer of mochi dough and the sweet sticky azuki bean paste to get to the strawberry inside.  The mochi dough is nice, but it’s really just a containment system for the filling.  The strawberry and red bean flavors combine into something that is definitely greater than the sum of the parts.  This recipe is not for the faint of heart, but if you’re feeling adventurous (or see ichigo daifuku in a store or restaurant near you), give them a try.

I love to try new things. In this small town, I usually find myself in the situation of having recipes calling for ingredients I can’t get. Sometimes, though, I find new ingredients that need to be explored. Sometimes they aren’t so exotic, like smoked paprika or smoked salt. Sometimes they seem a little more exotic, but are still comparable to other familiar products, as is the case with pomegranate molasses or wasabi. I recently walked into our newest Indian grocery store, Mirsung, and was excited by the fresh vegetables they had that I’d never used before.

One of them was roughly the shape of a pointy cucumber, slightly ridged, and covered with bumps. Having seen pictures before, I knew this was a bitter gourd (also known as bitter melon or karela). Having seen Lisa’s post on Champaign Taste, I knew I would have to try it out and report back. They are in the same botanical family as gourds, and as such, have some seeds and a little pulp that needs to be removed before cooking them. They are, as the name suggests, bitter, but in a pleasing appetite-inducing kind of way, like a Campari aperitif.

Being an Indian vegetable, I looked a little online, but eventually I knew I wanted to use some recipes from my go-to vegetarian recipe source, The Art of Indian Vegetarian Cooking. It had a handful of recipes listed under karela in the index under bitter melon. The first one I tried was called “Potato Patties with Crunchy Bitter Melon Chips” or Aloo Karela Tikki. Think crunchy potato blini, studded with fried vegetables. You boil some potatoes and peel them. Then you trim (the ends), clean (the seeds/pulp), and chop the karela. Fry it in some oil until it’s GBD. I tried the karela at this point, and it was good–crunchy, chewy, a flavor similar to properly-fried okra with a little bit of bitterness. The rest of the dough comes together with some salt, cayenne pepper, whole wheat flour, horseradish, coconut, and lime juice. Shape into patties and fry it up. Some people garnish a blini with sour cream and caviar. I spooned on some plain yogurt, and added some chives from our garden.

They were great. The karela was there, but in the background. This dish is more about texture and the balance of some simple flavors instead of showcasing the karela. I was pleased with the result, but wanted a more bitter melon focused dish, so I chose one called “Pan-Fried Whole Bitter Melons with Cashew Stuffing” or Kaju Bhara Karela (from the same book).

In this recipe, the karela were handled as a hardy vegetable. They are cut open, cleaned, sprinkled inside-and-out with salt and a little sugar to draw out some moisture and bitterness, then par-boiled for 10 minutes. Then I stuffed them. The mixture was ground cashews, coconut, brown sugar, turmeric, cayenne pepper, whole fennel, cumin, and coriander, moistened with a little yogurt. The recipe has you tie them up with (cotton) sewing thread, but I didn’t have that so I used my kitchen twine in the classic method (used previously on chicken). I did try just wrapping it around and tying, like they mention in the recipe, but I think my method worked much better.

This was definitely a showcase of the bitter gourd. It had a distinct bitterness that takes some getting used to, but I thought it was great. It was so different from other things I’ve had. The creamy, nutty filling balanced out the bitterness quite well, and adding the suggested squeeze of lime juice brought out more of the flavors of the filling. The recipe says that you should use baby karela, which would probably cut the bitterness somewhat (mine were almost twice the size they call for). I’ll definitely make something like this again, but maybe tweak the filling. The filling as-is would also be great with green bell peppers.

Part of what I like about trying new things is the new experience I have. Whether it’s new flavors or new techniques, whether it works or not, trying something new is exciting. The way new experiences can open my mind to new ideas building and improvising from that point. What new things have you tried? If you want to try one of these new recipes, I strongly recommend buying the book (it’s like 800 pages with a lot of information), but I’ll share if you leave a comment or email me.

This was a collection of finds from the market (Urbana’s Market at the Square) a couple weeks ago. As I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, our farmers’ market is wonderful. There are so many great products to be found in one place. Here’s a quick breakfast or any-time-of-day snack, with nearly no work involved:

It’s the last few bites of one of Stewart Pequignot’s egg bagels, slathered with some of the creamy fresh herbs de provence chevre from Prairie Fruits Farm, topped with spring mix sprouts from Tiny Greens. If I remember right, they are all in rows 4 and 5 of the market. What great combinations have you found at the market this year?

Last fall, I was tasked with cooking up some dishes for a Romanian-inspired dinner for a church-related event. I, along with the other members of the committee in charge, prepared goulash, polenta, and numerous other dishes for a group of about 45. It was quite an experience for me, being the first time I was cooking (mostly me alone at the stove) for such a large group. It was a lovely event, and we got a lot of positive feedback about the food. We do a large dinner like this every year as a fundraising effort, alternating between Romanian and Indian cuisine. I’m looking forward to helping with this year’s Indian feast.

After the large dinner event, we were tasked with providing refreshments for after the Sunday services. I researched a lot of Romanian resources on the web, learning a lot about the culinary history of the country. The place has been controlled at various times by the Roman Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the USSR, and all of these cultures have left their mark. There are not a lot of recipes labeled as Romanian on the net, but there is one site attempting to be a fairly complete Romanian Cookbook.

The site has hundreds of recipes in categories ranging from appetizers to beverages, veal roasts to vegetable sour soups. I made some variations on deviled eggs (the site refers to them as “stuffed eggs“) that went over well. The star dish that went faster than anything else was a simple eggplant dip.

You can make this dip fancy, add some roasted peppers, maybe some lemon juice or finely chopped herbs, but it really doesn’t need it. There are just a few essential ingredients, and they’ll make a great dip, but make it your own with a few extra additions.

Your Own Eggplant Dip

The Essentials

• 2 medium-large eggplants
• 1/2 to 1 onion, diced
• 2-8 T extra virgin olive oil

Optional Additions

• finely chopped herbs (chives, parsley, cilantro)
• lemon juice
• roasted peppers
• diced tomatoes
• garlic
• tahini (like baba ganoush)

1. Roast the eggplants until soft. I do this by putting them under a broiler, turning occasionally, until the skin blackens and becomes brittle, about 10-15 minutes total.
2. Let the eggplants cool, then harvest the innards of the berry (yep, it’s a fruit, who knew?). You won’t be peeling them so much as scraping the meat off the charred exterior.
3. Mash the eggplant in a bowl. Clean hands make this part more fun.
4. Stir in the onion, add salt and pepper, then add some of the olive oil.
5. Stir in the olive oil until it emulsifies with everything else.
6. Taste it and see if it needs more of anything. You’ll probably want to add more salt and more oil.

That’s it–some broiling, mashing, and stirring. It’s good, really good, but you can add any of the optional additions I suggest, or whatever you can imagine. You could caramelize the onions before adding them, though raw onions offer a delightful crunch that offsets the creamy eggplant. You could also put this into a food processor or use an immersion blender to make a completely smooth spread. Eat it with pita chips, spread it on bread, put it in a quiche or tart.

I can’t tell you how many people were astonished that this dip was so simple. When you serve it, go ahead, tell them it’s your own recipe. Let me know in the comments what you come up with to make it yours.