Chilled green soup

a.k.a. Fridge cleaning before the veggies go bad.

It is the middle of another goddamn Houston summer so most nights I want the coldest, simplest food possible. Inspired by this NPR article on the subject, I set out to salvage a few items of produce that were getting kind of old:

1. 2 zucchini
2. 1 bunch parsley
3. 1 head roasted garlic



Shown here still in the pot, cuz I'm lazy. With lazy chunks of homemade bread.

Chunked everything up and boiled directly (adding parsley at the very end of cooking), didn't brown the veggies or use lemon as per the article's directives.
Once cooked, the pot of boiled veggies actually sat in my fridge for a few days before I got around to blending and seasoning...I waited to add salt until after I'd tasted the cold version, as cold tends to blunt flavors and you typically need more seasoning to get your point across. Also added a touch of half-and-half (aka remnants of cream and a glug of milk) while blending to round out the salt+green flavor.

It tastes really fresh (huge bunch of parsley). And cold. mmmm.

Shrimp and Garlic Chive Flowers

Had leftover shrimp from making spring rolls and bought chive flowers at the market.



Shrimp:

marinate in chopped garlic, grated ginger, a little salt and about a tablespoon or two of corn starch. I also added the bottoms of the chive flowers chopped up fine and a tablespoon of chinese cooking wine and a little white pepper. mix together, should be a little ooblicky. Basically this sits around while you cook the chive flowers or whatever veggies you're having that day. Stir fry for about 7 minutes or until pink on the outside.

Chive flowers:

Chop into manageable strips - 2 inches? um. Stir fry all but the tops. salt. pepper. uhhh until tender. 5...minutes? add tops and cook about two minutes more. om nom.

Nostalgia Dinner

Apparently I get the urge to make Hong Shao Rou about once a year. This time I fried up the pork belly in caramelized sugar and oil and it really brought out the color and sweetness I remembered.

So along with the pot of porky coronary failure are the little side dishes.



Chinese broccoli. Steamed for about five minutes with a little garlic and then topped with oyster sauce. They have delicious crunchy stems and well. Sometimes you need veggies.



Braised eggs. Softboil eggs, peel carefully, and then tuck into the braising liquid of the pork. They get all brown and porky and delicious, and if you keep the braising temperature low enough, they don't get all chalky in the middle.


Bao! Because sometimes you need something to dip into the pork belly sauce or make a pork belly sammich.

I think the recipe I used was

1/2 c warm water
1 packet's equivalent of yeast
about a tablespoon of lump sugar
3/4 c milk
1 T butter
3 c flour (or enough flour to make a smooth dough)

combine warm water, yeast, sugar milk and butter. Let sit for 10 minutes. Mix in flour. Knead until smooth. Let rest for an hour and a half. Punch down. Let rise another hour. Form into little buns. place in steamer. Let proof for 15 minutes. Steam for 10 minutes. Eat.

I lay down moist paper towel and spray with pam in the steamer. Helps with the release. traditionally napa cabbage is used, but I didn't have any on hand.







Now have lunch for a few days, a little vat of cooking fat, and HI I THINK WE'RE BACK.

Asian slaw

uh. hi. Yeah I know I've been bad. But I've been trying to cut down on dishes that are bad for me and cream heavy and meat heavy and I finally made something delicious that boys will eat that is also delicious.

I hated cole slaw. Forever. I mean. It was just scary. Turns out, more mayo issues! So we had this at our friend's parent's house and it was delicious and I made a version out of whtaever leftovers we had.

Essentially, if you ever feel like slicing things up really thin



Or just grating things for a while. make this.

I used half a cabbage, a large carrot, 4 sprigs of green onion, two crimini mushrooms and a handful of peanuts for the slaw itself. And the shredded leftovers of a roast chicken from earlier in the week, but this can be omitted to make this a vegetarian dish.

For the dressing i used 1 garlic clove, 1 tablespoon of sesame oil, a teaspoon of black vinegar, a tablespoon of rice wine, 2 tablespoons of soy sauce and blended it all together. I'm going to have to play around with these ratios, but it should make enough to toss the slaw in. you can also vary ratios to taste. I tend to like things a little soy saucey and a little tangy. Ginger is good if you have it and a little black pepper. You can add a touch of sugar if you want, but i think the vegetables work well for sweetness on their own.

Other things you can add if you have it: cilantro, mint, bean sprouts, sriracha, citrus juice.

Toss all together. can sit around let the flavors meld but man I just ate it two minutes after I was done mixing it and it's way too tasty for raw cabbage.

Cheese rinds and beets

The Whole Foods down the street sells these little plastic-wrapped bundles of Parmesan rinds for super cheap and I just can't resist. So I've accumulated this small stockpile of cheese rinds and finally decided to do something with them: make cheese stock. Rinds + pot of water + a few hours of simmering = smells amazing, and awesome stock for risotto making.



I had a butternut squash from the farmer's market so I cut that open and roasted it, and added it to the risotto to give it more body. The starchy squash partially disintegrated into the rice, which was nice.

Also: roasted beets for the first time. I paired them with herbed goat cheese, salad greens, and pine nuts. Interesting.

Oh yeah, and I folded sauteed beet greens into the risotto because the internet said they were also edible.

Pumpkin ravioli in sage browned butter

Still feeling pretty good from last night's hand-cut pasta dish, tonight I decided to use up half a can of pumpkin puree by making ravioli. After a quick googling for ravioli-assembling instructions, I was ready to go.

No eggs this time, just flour, water, a pinch of salt, and a bit of olive oil:



Really unphotogenic filling:



Contains: pumpkin puree, minced garlic, mixed dried mushrooms (crushed fine and rehydrated), grated really old parmesan, shredded cheddar&jack cheese mix, plain yogurt, a bit of brown sugar, and salt/pepper/herbes de provence/paprika/coriander. It tasted pretty flat in the beginning which is why yogurt and sugar and prepack cheese mix got in there. But afterward it was tasty! Go team improvisation.

After some finagling with rolling out and dolloping and cutting and sealing and boiling and tossing in sage browned butter and some simultaneous making of honey-lemon-ginger glazed carrots, I picked the prettiest ravioli and sage leaflets and put them on a plate to show you.



Pine nuts were added for textural contrast.

Go team pantry cleaning!

A new ...leaf?

A friend commented that we should post our more vegetarian friendly recipes - it's true. Our more grand food schemes tend to involve meat. And I tend to lean on cheeses a LOT.

Challenge for today was a vegany dish with not very much prep time and well. Not much in the fridge. BUT, I did have a CSA box that came with a bunch of nummies including a few organic lemons and a bunch of parsley. Also, it's Houston and it's flipping hot.

Took half an onion and a few carrots and cooked them on high until they were all nice and brown. While those did their dansen I boiled a couple of cups of israeli couscous.

Here's the trick. after draining the hot couscous, add one pressed/minced/beaten to death clove of garlic while still hot. dump the hot carrots and onions in there too. That'll take the edge off the garlic.

Added a couple of glugs of olive oil and the juice and zest of a lemon, a little salt and pepper and a generous chopped handful of parsley.



It's tasty and tangy and if you have good parsley, green. Really good cold too. I wish I had time to soak beans because chickpeas would go really well with this too in order to make it a more complete dish.

And you know what. After a few bites, I remembered I had some chevre from The Blue Heron Farm and added a chunk to the salad. I am a failure at the veganism, but man. Those happy pampered goats and their mom make some incredible cheese.

This slaw.

Yesterday I made a vaguely Southwestern slaw on a whim to go with KFC for Bad Decisions Night (tm). Except this was a good decision and I want to eat this delicious slaw forever. No pics because I was too busy om-nom-nom-ing.

Here's how:
- 1/2 head red cabbage, shredded
- 1/2 red onion, chopped fine and quick-pickled in apple cider vinegar + salt
- shredded carrot
- sweet corn kernels
- large diced avocado
- lime juice (2 limes) + buttermilk + salt + pepper

It's got all the elements of an addictive snack food: crunchy, savory, sweet (from the carrots and corn), creamy (from the avocado). But it's made of vegetables.

Today I filled a tupperware container with it and had it for lunch and it was still awesome.

Pulled pork

Ed.--I wrote this post right after the July 4th weekend but we just got around to uploading photos today, so here you go.

Pulled pork recipe is lost to the madness that is the kitchen counter. I wrote it on the back of some piece of paper and now I can't find it amongst the chip bags and empty beer cans.


Two pork shoulders

But off the top of my head, here are the things that went into 15 lbs. of pork shoulder this weekend:

Dry rub
salt
brown sugar
paprika
black pepper
cinnamon
garlic powder
ground thyme
ground bay leaf
ground ginger
ground mustard


Dry rub


Dry rub after overnight rest

The meat got rubbed down, sat in the fridge overnight, then was put into roasting pans with 1" of apple cider/juice, sealed tightly with foil, and put in a 225F oven the next morning. 8 hours later, deliciousness happened.


Juices.


Pulling pork.

We pulled the meat out to cool, drained off all the juices and shredded the meat (awesome stress-relief exercise, that).


More pulling.

And then we made the sauce.

Sauce
Skim most of the fat off and reduce the meat juices in a wide-mouthed saucepan until it's about half the original volume or so (estimated around 3 cups final for 15 lbs. meat). Dump in 1 small can of tomato paste, mix/stickblend well and then add the following to taste (more important ingredients first, random-ass crap from the pantry further down the list)

Brown sugar
cider vinegar
garlic powder
paprika
ground ginger
black pepper
brown mustard
apple cider
smoked salt
Shiner smokehouse
random herbs and shit

Blend well, taste, add more stuff, taste again, pour over shredded pork and let the ravenous hordes loose upon it.


Sauced


Plated.

I guess I should tell you the potato salad in the above photo was also delicious. Here's how you make it: Take a bunch of fingerling potatoes, boil them in heavily salted water, drain but do not rinse off the salt. Refrigerate overnight. This allows the salt to get absorbed into the potatoes through the skin and make everything tastier.

Dice potatoes the next day and mix with the following:

quick-pickled red onion - fine dice, put in bowl with balsamic vinegar, brown sugar, salt and leave 20+ minutes to get rid of the burning effect from raw onion.
salted radish - get a bunch of radishes, slice them into thin rounds and lightly salt them in a bowl. Let sit about 5-10 minutes to release water, then rinse well and drain.
sour cream
a bunch of dill
minced scallions
dijon mustard
salt & pepper to taste.

If you have time, let it sit a few hours in the fridge for the flavors to meld. It's way better that way.

Curried Roasted Cauliflower

I feel a little guilty about all our meat posts, so I've started a "veggies" tag and I will try to fill it with delicious.

For starters, this is possibly the most delicious preparation for cauliflower that I know of, and it's quick to throw together on a weeknight if you're roasting something else as well.

Curried Roasted Cauliflower

1 head of cauliflower (fresh!)

curry powder

olive oil

salt

Preheat oven to 375 F.  Wash and hack up the cauliflower into florets, then toss with a drizzle of olive oil.  Sprinkle with curry powder and turn to coat.  You don't have to get the coating completely even, but make sure every chunk has contact with the curry powder.  

Throw the mixture into a baking dish and put it in the oven for 20-30 minutes, or until just tender.  

Season lightly with salt (use a coarse salt to get nice little bursts of salty flavor).

Parsley root

The result of some gardening:

Parsley root is supposed to have a nutty flavor, like a parsnip/carrot/celery.  I took a cue from iheartkale tried their recipe for parsley root potage, but in miniature because my parsley roots are barely finger-sized.  Also, I didn't so much try their recipe as just mess around in the spirit of the recipe, because I hate following directions.

I started with a knob of butter and some garlic:

The purest form of love.

Mise en place looks fancier from above.

Parsley roots, chopped...

...and thrown in the pot.

I tasted a bit of parsley root.  Indeed, it tasted like something between a parsnip, a carrot, and celery.

I tasted a bit of the garlic.  It was garlicky.

I would eat a whole bowl of this.

I poured some chicken stock in the pot to cover the solids,

And while that was simmering I turned my attention to the parsley greens.

Picking the leaves off the stems is boring.

Rough chopped:

And plopped in the soup.

I must pause now to thank Dan for rearranging our small kitchen so that the blender is set up in the kitchen and not on the dining table like it was before.  I am gonna blend SO MUCH MORE STUFF now that I don't have to walk an extra 8 steps to the blender.

Blorp.

I threw some cornstarch in the blender to thicken the soup.  Just 1/2 a teaspoon or so, since this was essentially a single-serving preparation.

So very green.

How'd it taste?

Green, nutty, sweet, earthy, on a creamy base of garlic and butter.  The big gobs of parsley leaves make it taste fresh, while at the same time the texture is perfect for winter comfort food.  Given that parsley root is pretty much unavailable at most grocers, I would totally do this again using parsnips.