Tag Archives: Exotic vegetables

Artichoke lemonade

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Okay, so I didn’t actually make artichoke lemonade. I was just trying to work on my search rankings. Because that title is going to be a home run.

I haven’t blogged for a while, and I’m telling you this even though I read something once that said never start by apologizing that you haven’t blogged for a while. But you know what this post is going to be about? Honesty. Open kimonos. Bet that term will get more search results than my title.

So I haven’t blogged for a while because I’ve had a few food flops lately. I wanted to tell you this because I think it’s important to be open about the fact that not everything you cook will be delicious. If you’re going to cook dangerously. there will be days when food won’t work out. You’ll never learn anything if you keep making chicken fajitas once a week. If I’m ever at your house, and we have to order in, know that as long as you have a very full wine cellar I will never judge.  And since I am far from being a top chef, I have had to compensate for my own cooking with the odd extra nip of vino lately (that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it).

First I tried Meyer lemons.

IMG_3058They were shining at me from within their highfalutin specialty packaging, so I knew I had to have them. Their PR people say they’re sweeter than regular lemons, so you should use them in lemony baked goods for extra delectabillity. Maybe mine were genetically modified beyond recognition, but they tasted sour on their own, yet didn’t taste lemony in anything I made with them. And I made lots, thanks to this blog post, shared by @HipFoodieMom1 on Twitter.

I made lemon fettuccine. And it was good, but not so lemony.

IMG_3060I made blueberry-meyer lemon fizz. Seems to be missing from White on Rice couple’s blog now, but let’s not mourn it. Although my daughter did ask for it again recently.  Blueberry puree, lemon juice, soda water, simple syrup (boiled sugar water 1:1).

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And Meyer lemon bars. Again, nice, but not so lemony. I wanted cheek pooching lemony goodness.

Thanks bobbleheadbaby.com

Thanks bobbleheadbaby.com

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I got something tasty, but not poochy.

And then there were the artichokes (that my daughter proudly chose at the grocery store and insisted I prepare for this blog). I had tasted them “from scratch” once in my life before, where my friend cooked them and told me to scrape the meat from the leaves with my lower teeth, but I thought I’d do them myself. I steamed, but undercooked them. I tried them again, but my guests thought they were too much like work.

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I bought some artichoke asiago dip to go with the artichoke the first time, and dipped it in butter the second.

But the heart was delicious (don’t eat the fuzzies, which are the “choke”).

The bottom line is, don’t give up. You can deal with the failures/blahs in your cooking as long as you hold out for the heart at the end of it all (gag, gag, please no one quote me as a cheesy retweetable quote, because it will ruin my reputation).

Next blog post: beef heart. Kidding. So far.

Following Midwesternbite.com’s method, I’ll close with a question for you. What has your biggest flop in the kitchen been?

Bystanders choke after the Jerusalem Artichoke

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Is it wrong that I knowingly made my husband gassy purely for my own entertainment?

Let me backtrack a bit.  This week, my strange, dangerous food was the Jerusalem Artichoke.  They look like this:

As usual, I decided to eat them because I had no idea what they were.  I’ll have to ask my mother if I was always that kid everyone had to childproof against because I was always eating mysterious objects off the carpet.  At least now the fact that my foods are found in markets and grocery stores suggests that they’re edible.  Most of the time (see guava post).

Anyway, their name is kind of interesting.  It turns out that Jerusalem Artichokes (also called sunroot, sunchoke, earth apple, or topinambour) have nothing to do with Jerusalem or artichokes, but were named that because they are the tuber of a sunflower, which Italians call girasole; (kind of like Jerusalem) and because they taste kind of like an artichoke, although they’re not one.  Might be best to use one of their other names going forward.

And as for their taste?  I found this quote about them early on in my research, post-purchase, but pre-preparation:

“which way soever they be dressed and eaten, they stir and cause a filthy loathsome stinking wind within the body, thereby causing the belly to be pained and tormented, and are a meat more fit for swine than men.”  John Goodyer, 1621

Mmmmm, that’s good eatin.  Apparently they’re a great source of inulin, which we can’t digest, so it needs to be … exited.  So I fed some to my husband, because he was about to get on a plane.

Now you may find this mean.  You may wonder why I would knowingly sabotage my husband’s digestive system as he was about to enter a confined space with a few hundred innocent passengers.  Innocent children.  The elderly.

I’ve narrowed it down to the following three reasons:

  1. Gas in a confined space is funny, especially if you’re the one who doesn’t have to observe it in person.
  2. Phil always sniffs food I prepare for him before he eats it, partly because he thinks I’m frugal and that I push the boundaries of food freshness.  I admit to the former, but not the latter.  My bitterness about his mistrust for my cooking despite having cooked for him daily for well over eight years may have peeked through
  3. I was sure that he would tell me proud stories afterward about how he had successfully blamed his gas on someone else for the duration of the flight, and I wanted to see how well I knew him

But before you think I’m evil, I did read something that said that if you add an acid to your Jerusalem artichoke dish it reduces its “effects,” so I did this, preparing a salad in a vinaigrette.  Which brings me to reason #4:

4.  I wanted to see if vinegar really reduces the gaseous effects of the sunchoke

So you see, it was all done in the name of science.  Here’s the recipe I improvised based on what else was in my fridge:

Bold Sunchoke Salad with Truffle Vinaigrette (serves 2)

  • 2 small handfuls arugula or other greens
  • 1 handful fresh basil
  • 5 sunchokes, washed and quartered (no need to peel) (substitute radish if you can’t find)
  • 1 handful cherry tomatoes, halved
  • 6 small wedges brie cheese
  • Feta cheese, crumbled
  • 3Tbsp Truffle Balsamic Vinegar (or plain balsamic vinegar, but the truffle one is delicious)
  • 3Tbsp Olive Oil
  • Pinch of brown sugar
  • Salt and pepper

Directions:  Mix the arugula and basil together, adding sunchokes, tomatoes, brie, and topping with feta.  In a small bowl, whisk vinaigrette ingredients together with sugar, salt and pepper, and dress the salad.

Results:  This was a bold, fresh salad.  Flavourless salads bug me, especially if I’ve paid for one at a restaurant.  The truffle balsamic combined very well with the earthiness of the root veg.  Phil naively ate the whole thing.

After effects:  TBD.  Check in later for Phil’s commentary.  I thought I got off scot-free until that night when I was a bit “windy” (Isn’t that just a pretty little British term?), but that could have been because my daughter insisted on pizza to console herself after her daddy left on his flight.

Rating:  2 Yums for the salad, 1 Gag for the Jerusalem artichoke.  If you come across these at a market, make sure to “cut them loose” (FYI: Wiktionary says that’s a synonym for fart and I’m trying to be cute).  Substitute something else earthy like radish or beet in the salad and you’ll have a winner.

Beverage pairing:  Usually I choose a wine from winealign.com to go with my recipes, but in this case I believe the best pairing would be…

The Great (Green) Pumpkin (Squash)

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A few days ago I wrote about cute little grape kiwis, and said that everyone likes to eat something if it’s extra mini.  Now, only two days later, I’m going to entice you with something big.  I’ve been seeing super huge squash around, and I knew immediately that I needed to add them to my weird food addiction…I mean, food freak show…or whatever.  My blog.

Thanks Brain4rent’s blog

Well, they weren’t that super huge.  Damn, do you think when they grow those things the pumpkin patch sucks the whole county dry?  The squash I’ve been seeing are big enough, though.  But go big or go home, I always say, unless I’m talking grape kiwis or kumquats, in which case I change my tune faster than Mitt Romney.

Anyway, these are the green giants I wanted…

…but what was I going to do with so much squash, throw a squash party?  Sounds weird, but you know you’d still come if I promised an open bar.  I didn’t have to entice guests with booze this time, though, because I was happy to find that my local fruit market sold hunks of the great green pumpkins, which actually turned out to be “Zapallo Macre,” (I’m pretty sure, anyway) for the bargain basement price of only $1.99 per chunk.  Even this amount was so big that my son agreed to struggle with it in exchange for the fame and fortune my blog brings, but doing so nearly took him down.

I say I’m pretty sure my squash was Zapallo Macre, a squash popular in Peru that looks like a green pumpkin, but my usual identification expert – Monsieur Google – came up short this time, other than providing a few Peruvian photos of the Zap Mac that looked similar to my squash.  I think the big greeners must be local because they suddenly showed up alongside pumpkins at many fruit stands and not solely at specialty importer-type markets, but there weren’t any promising results for “green pumpkins Ontario,” or “green squash,” that proved this true.  If anyone has further info, let me know.

No matter what they were, I was feeling chilled yesterday so I decided to make my pumpkin slash squash into soup.  Here comes the ONLY recipe for giant green Ontario Zapallos currently available on the World Wide Web (hush the crowds, please), which I invented:

Giant Green Pumpkin Soup with Savoury Sweet Sprinkles (serves 8)

  • Giant green pumpkin/squash (probably Zapallo Macre), peeled and cut into 1.5” chunks.  Approximately 14 cups, or filling 2 cookie sheets.  Substitute butternut squash or pumpkin if you can’t find the big greens

  • Knives exhausted from prepping squash

  • 1 very large onion, peeled and chopped
  • 3 garlic cloves, peeled and chopped
  • 1/4C sherry
  • 1.5” fresh ginger, peeled and chopped
  • 2Tbsp fresh parsley, chopped
  • 900mL veggie stock
  • Sprinkles:  walnuts, green pumpkin seeds, and Craisins
  • Olive oil
  • Kosher salt and pepper to taste

Directions:  Preheat oven to 400.  Toss squash with olive oil and kosher salt, and spread across two cookie sheets prepared with foil.  Roast squash 45 minutes, stirring once.  Meanwhile, sautee onions and garlic in a large pot until translucent, about three minutes.  Add sherry and continue to cook until it nearly disappears.

Add squash, ginger, parsley, and stock, bringing to a boil.  Add to food processor in batches, pureeing the soup.  Now.  If you prefer a very smooth, comforting soup, you’re finished.  If not, pour into bowls and sprinkle with walnuts, pumpkin seeds, and Craisins.  If you’re not vegan, you may wish to experiment with bacon, sour cream, or parmesan cheese.

Results:  Very good!  I didn’t taste anything special about the green squash – would love to taste it alongside a butternut to see if I could tell the difference, but I don’t think I would be able to.  If you want a very healthy, vegan soup that will feed umpteen people for a very low price, this is your recipe.  Love a dish that I know I could eat a whole pot of and it would still be improving my health rather than adding to my waistline.  Rating:  4 Yums

Beverage pairing:  Would you believe that this is actually what I drank with the soup by coincidence?  It’s true.  Apparently my shopping habits were pumpkin themed this week.  Happy Halloween!

 

 

What a hottie – The Pisilla Baijo

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Everyone has a hot pepper story, and today I want to hear yours.

Here’s mine.  We’re in Mexico, 2003.  It’s fajita day at the buffet.  The fresh flour tortilla shells are handed to each person by a smiling Mexican in a white chef’s outfit.  I’m faced with a long bar full of chicken, fillings, and condiments.  I’m a kid in a candy store.  I like variety and experimenting with local foods and I’m ready to load myself up.

I go big with pico de gallo, guacamole and chicken.  I’ve stuffed my tortilla so full that there’s almost no room for anything else, but I know it needs a little something extra.  I see one last mini bin of toppings, right at the end.  Yes, it has a sign on it that says, “hot,” in italics, but I like a little spice in my life and I’m unintimidated.  They know we’re lightweight gringo tourists, so they would never let us hurt ourselves, right?  I can take a whole pickled hot pepper at the Olive Garden, and I’m sure I can take this.

I spoon myself one little dehydrated pepper from its oil.  One is enough for today.  I just want a mini-kick, I don’t need to take away from the enjoyment of my fat fajita with too much spice.  I gingerly lay it on the top of all the fillings and sit with my husband and friends.

Giggle giggle, “Oh, that looks nice, I didn’t see that when I blah blah blah.”  Polite sit-down chatter.  We cheers, “to a good vacation.”  Sip for good luck and convention.  I take a bite of my fajita.  One bite.  Molars meet only once, releasing the oils in the pepper to the inside of my cheek and across my tongue.  If I was on CSI they would zoom in, and see… hellfire spreading immediately throughout the inside of my mouth.

My eyes go red and I start to cry.  At first my friends think it’s funny, but when I stand and nearly choke they get concerned.  There’s no going back.  The hottest food I’ve ever tasted is in my mouth and there’s nothing I can do about it.  I can’t breathe, and I can’t talk.  I drink water and it does nothing to relieve the fire.  My friends begin to understand the urgency and start to strategize.  “Bread, I’ve heard bread is good.”  I try it and it does nothing.  “Ice cream, can I get you ice cream?”  They run back to the buffet and return with what seem like logical solutions, but nothing helps.  I just suck it up in agony, eyes crying, nose running, heart beating, telling myself that no one has ever died from eating a hot pepper, but wondering if that’s true.  The heat eventually subsided, but the memory of what a real hot pepper tastes like never did.  And my friends’ jokes about me eating weird foods haven’t subsided either.  At least now that experimentation has turned into a world famous blog that is showering me in treasure and riches.  Ahem.

Since that day in Mexico, I’ve been a lot more cautious about eating hot peppers, so when I picked up some long dark green pisilla baijo peppers at the market the other day, I was sure to ask where they sat on the hot meter.  The farmer said they were “medium,” and when we ate them, thankfully, we agreed.

I found this recipe for roasted peppers over lemon ricotta which looked delicious to me, but afterward I found out the the pisilla baijo is used in Mexico to make “mole,” sauce, which I’ve never had, but which includes nuts and chocolate.  I was jealous of the recipe I didn’t make, but I’ll try that again next time.  This one worked out well too:

Roasted Hot Peppers and Lemony Ricotta (Makes about 12 appetizers)

  • 5 fresh pisilla baijo peppers (or other hot peppers), cut into ring-chunks, seeds included
  • 5 garlic cloves, whole
  • Olive oil
  • Kosher salt & pepper
  • 1 baguette, sliced
  • 200g ricotta cheese
  • Zest of 1 lemon

Directions:  Preheat oven to 400.  Toss pepper chunks and garlic with generous amounts of olive oil and kosher salt and pepper.  Roast peppers and garlic on baking sheet in oven 15 minutes, then reduce heat to 350 and roast for a further 40 minutes.  Combine ricotta and lemon zest and spread over baguette slices.  Smash garlic and spread over breads, topping with peppers.

Results:  Delicious.  These had a medium kick, but the spice didn’t overpower the gorgeous flavour of the pepper.  This was a simple appetizer to prepare that would be a hit for anyone who likes spicy foods.  If I see pisilla baijos again I’ll grab them for sure.  Rating:  3 Yums

Wine Pairing:  Winealign.com tells me that Mexican food pairs well with Riesling, so I’ll suggest Cave Spring’s 2009 Riesling from Ontario for $12.95.  Cave Spring has always done Riesling right.

Share:  Please comment and tell me your hot pepper story!  Your uncle never saw one he didn’t like?  You live in a town where people can take hot and you scared the pants off of someone who couldn’t?  Let us know!

Hellova Jicama (HIH-cuh-muh)

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I ran into a problem at the grocery store this week that I often do while buying foods for my blog, but this time it was taken to the extreme.

I was standing in line to pay for my full cart of kid yogurt, hotdogs, and odd dangerous foodie ingredients, trying to prevent my kids from strangling one another, when the acne ridden checkout teen lazily called, “override please, checkout 5,” into his phone/PA.  Everyone in line took a deep breath trying to ground themselves in patience they didn’t have, but who’s kidding who, I had it worst because I was the only one with kids.  Forget self-checkout and express lanes, there definitely needs to be a “hey I’ve got kids get me the frick out of here,” line.  Even if you don’t have kids you’d appreciate that for the second-hand good it would do you.

Anyway, it turns out that the old woman in front of me had a coupon for adult diapers that she thought would get her two packs for free without putting a single cent down when in fact it was only a BOGO, and the matter was complicated by the fact that she didn’t speak English.  The manager of the store took more than ten minutes to show up at the register to put her magic Alice in Wonderland key in to undo whatever the clerk had done before he was finally able to ring through all of my purchases that were splayed across the grocery belt, having prevented my escape previously.  I rolled my two children who were now blind from having poked one another’s eyes out up to the cash and got ready to pay, only to be faced with what always happens when I buy stuff for this website.  The clerk held this up…

…and said, “What is this?”

By now there were about eight people in line, and they were in no mood for me to run to where I had found it.  Luckily I usually take a picture of the sign posted above my strange food items so that I don’t forget what they are, so I was able to show him this, the sign that was posted over my round tuber veggie roots:

To which he said, “No, I know what Cocoes are.  These are not that.”

I’ll tell you, dear reader(s), that at least 60% of the time the sign posted above a strange veggie does not describe what it should.  You may have read in my blog previously that once I picked up horseradish that was labelled taro.  If it had been taro and I had prepared it as horseradish I would have poisoned my husband.  Thanks to google photos, he lived to tell the tale of how I make the best horseradish ever.  When I say I cook dangerously I mean it literally.

Anyway, when the guy didn’t know what my veggie was, I considered throwing it at him and telling him to forget it, as I watched his face wonder how badly I really needed something that I couldn’t identify.  But I stood my ground.  I’m telling you this story because even though I wanted to end my grocery store pain, I fought for my little cocoes that turned out (with the help of a senior grocery checker professional who said they were something that started with “j”) to actually be jicama.  And I want you to remember this story and do the same, the next time something won’t scan or your item is strange or your checker is incompetent.  You make them call that manager, and you cross your arms and look smug as the whole line swears at you over Twitter into their phones.

I say this because it turns out that jicama is a delicious wonder food, and so obviously I was rewarded for having had the patience of the Dalai Lama and the perseverance of Rosie MacLennan that day (the latter being our only gold medalist in these Olympic games, in the death defying art of the trampoline).

Jicama Hash Browns

  • 3 jicama, peeled and sliced into matchsticks
  • 1 small red onion, peeled and sliced thinly
  • 1Tbsp butter

Directions:  I talked so long telling an anti-climactic story that I’ll let you off easy with a simple recipe.  Melt the butter in a pan.  Sautee the onion until translucent over medium-high heat.  Add the jicama and continue to sautee until slightly brown, about 10 minutes.

Results

Shockingly good.  I “adapted” the recipe from one in the Diabetes Daily  which said that it’s a great low carb substitute for potatoes.  I just found it tasty!  When I tasted it raw, jicama was fresh, almost like an apple crossed with a potato (but less sweet), and cooked it tasted crispier than cooked potatoes.  I will stump grocery checkers with them on a regular basis and throw them into salads raw or cook them as a side dish.  Rating:  3 Yums

Just as an aside

On our recent vacation driving from Calgary to Kelowna we stopped at a rest stop candy store that had everything.  I was tempted to try these and write them up for the site, but I used the fact that I wouldn’t have to do anything to prepare them as an excuse not to:

Miraculous aloe vera lemonade (with an aloe scramble chaser)

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I had been seeing aloe vera drinks around, and I was intrigued.  Until aloe quietly began to take up residence beside the coke and orangina at the store, I had always thought that it was more friendly with the noxema and topical pain relievers, but I guess it decided to switch neighborhoods.  There probably aren’t nearly as many sunburns to keep it busy these days, so it needed to reinvent itself.

I was too afraid to pick up a drink at first, thinking it might be some kind of disgusting new age thing (let’s all stop a moment and once again wonder why uber healthy foods often taste vile) so I went home and googled it, and I found this aloe fan’s article.  I’m sure that if the aloe guy who wrote this article had recorded a sound byte it would have sounded a whole lot like double rainbow guy.  Here’s the double rainbow video in case you somehow missed it:

Double Rainbow

Never gets old.  You have to respect that kind of enthusiasm for something, and it definitely shone through in aloe guy’s article.  In case you were too lazy to click on the hyperlink, he goes on and on about the health benefits, swearing that aloe cures cancer, bowel problems, diabetes, inflammation, and pretty much everything else.  I dove in and gave a drink a try.

It was a sweet, uncarbonated energy-type drink that was very easy to take, although it was slightly lumpy as you drank it.  As I often do with cooking I wondered if I might be able to do an even better job of recreating the wheel, and so I decided to get my own aloe plant from our local Home Depot and gobble it up.  Here is a sneaky little picture of it:

I was craving lemonade, so I borrowed a simple recipe and followed it as written.  Luckily it turned out beautifully.  I didn’t want to completely pillage my little plant, so when the lemonade was ready I lopped off one small aloe frond, scooped the gel from the centre, and threw it into my blender along with one glass’ worth of lemonade.  Here are the specific instructions:

Aloe Vera Lemonade

(makes 1 pitcher, although aloe must be multiplied per glass)

  • 3/4C sugar
  • 1C water
  • 1C lemon juice (4-6 lemons)
  • 3-4C cold water
  • 1Tbsp of aloe gel per glass

Directions:  Combine sugar with 1C water and heat in small saucepan until sugar dissolves.  Juice your lemons.  Add the juice and sugar water to a pitcher, and add remaining water.  Refrigerate until cool.  Pour one glass into blender and combine with 1Tbsp aloe gel.

Results:  Great!  My husband said the lemonade did taste slightly “different,” but I couldn’t taste the aloe at all, and the lemonade was a nice tart hot weather treat.  My version of an aloe drink wasn’t lumpy.  Rating:  3 Yums  I do get disappointed, though, when I can’t taste my adventurous food, so I continued with the aloe leaf having read somewhere that the whole thing was edible, chopping it up to make…

Aloe Scramble

(serves 2)

  • 4 eggs, scrambled with fork
  • 1Tbsp olive oil
  • One small aloe frond (leaf?), chopped, gel and spines removed
  • 2Tbsp cheese (I happened to have Boursin, so I used that, but any tasty cheese will do.  Grate it if it’s a harder one)
  • 2Tsp milk
  • Salsa and fresh cilantro garnish
  • Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:  Combine all except salsa and cilantro.  Heat oil in frying pan over med heat for 1min.  Add egg mixture and scrape from pan regularly until eggs are cooked and reasonably dry.  Have you really never made scrambled eggs?  I won’t judge.  Add a dollop of salsa and fresh cilantro if desired.

Results: 

A winner again.  I’m already eyeing the remaining leaves on my aloe plant.  Could it be that the aloe made my eggs taste slightly mushroom-ish?  Strange, but that was the flavour I walked away with.  Rating:  2 Yums

 

 

 

Easy peasy lemon cream cheesy garlic greens spread

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That’s one heck of a title.  Thank goodness I don’t work for the Toronto Sun, because then I’d have been forced to choose a quick, aggressive title like, “Dip Gyp!” even though it would have had nothing to do with the content of this post.  I almost want to change the story to make the short title work.  Maybe that’s what the Sun does with page 1 too.

Anyway, this week we were entertaining relatives from Northern Ireland, and I was looking forward to it because entertaining means having a new audience to experiment on… I mean…cook for.  I didn’t want to scare these folks with my uncommon cooking ingredients though, because it was their first time having crossed the Atlantic.  I wanted to do what I could to give a good impression of Our True North Strong and Free.

At our first dinner I served asparagus as a surefire veggie crowd pleaser, but I was surprised to find out that they had never tried it, so I knew early on to exercise restraint with my cooking — asking them to taste camel or ostrich might have been a bit of a stretch, although they soon proved to be very good sports about baseball, water skiing, raccoon dodging, and other Canadian adventures.  Also, just as an aside, until this trip apparently our 19-year-old cousin Andrew had believed that chipmunks were as large as cats and dogs because he had been misled by Alvin and the gang (you’re welcome, Andrew, for not posting this to Facebook. U.O.Me).

Thanks picgifs.com

Obviously they had a thing or two to learn about Canada, and so because I wanted small chipmunks to be the biggest travel disappointment they would experience, I prepared something only slightly dangerous this week – garlic greens.

Now garlic greens still qualify as a dangerous, uncommon food as far as I’m concerned because when you see them sticking up from the white garlic bulb you’re used to, usually only at a farmer’s market, looking like this…

…I think that most people still think to themselves, “whoa, is that how they really grow?”  It is.  If you lop them off even earlier in the season than when I got mine, they look kind of curly and they’re called “scapes.”  Mine might be scapes too (the “literature” was slightly confusing on the definition) but no matter what, they’re all edible, although the woody, tough parts have to be manhandled in a creative way to be used deliciously.    I’d be willing to bet a Chipmunks Christmas album though, that young scapes or the tender parts of my green garlic tops could be used in any recipe in place of scallions.  And that’s exactly what I did as I imagined this recipe:

Easy Peasy Lemon Cream Cheesy Garlic Greens Spread

 Use a fork to mix the following:

  • 250g light cream cheese, softened slightly in the microwave
  • 2Tbsp lemon juice
  • 5Tbsp tender garlic greens, chopped (use any that are difficult to cut in a different recipe)
  • 3Tbsp fresh dill, chopped
  • 2Tbsp mayonnaise
  • Salt and pepper to taste

Results: 

Very nice!  The guests all enjoyed the spread over crackers, and when I brought it out again the following day the flavours had developed even more beautifully.  The greens tasted quite a bit like scallions although they’re definitely garlicky and slightly chewier.  The spread is not quite risqué enough for me on crackers alone, but it would have been ideal topped with smoked salmon.

Rating:  2 Yums.  The spread would be a great base for an adventurous cracker top, and I would use garlic greens as a different take on green onions or chives any time.

PS  The first time I posted this the title was spelled, “…cream cheasy…”  What kind of remedial school should I attend now that I’ve forgotten how to spell “cheese?”  Maybe an internship at the Toronto Sun really is in order.

The ugliest veggie ever

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Sometimes when I think about the premise of my blog, I worry.  This isn’t a shock to anyone who knows me, because I worry about just about everything (unless it’s something that actually matters in which case I’m pretty calm and collected), but in this case I worry that I’ll run out of exotically strange foods to cook.  This week I planned to drive to a far away market to find a rare culinary treasure, but then I walked to the fruit market at the end of my street and found this…

…the vegetable version of the Borg sphere.  Prepare to be assimilated.

This isn’t the first time I’ve seen celery roots (celeriac) in my grocery travels, but I’ve always passed them up because they’re pretty ugly.  And big.  And dirty.

I shouldn’t have been afraid though, because it was as easy to peel as a turnip or squash by hacking off its skin with my big knife, and then I was able to chop it up in a jiff.

The hideous thing was so big that I still have half of it left over to use in another meal, and apparently they keep for months.  They’re also low in calories and high in fibre and vitamins C, K, and phosphorous.

I found lots of nice recipes for celeriac soups or potato blends, but these made me feel wintry and I wasn’t sure that these would have made my overheated family very enthusiastic.  I ended up landing on an epicurious inspired recipe for risotto, although mine is quite different, below:

Celery root risotto with beet green pesto and bacon

Risotto

  • 4 strips of bacon
  • 2 leeks, whites and light green only, sliced and chopped into short strips
  • ½ ugly celeriac, peeled and chopped into bite sized chunks
  • 3/4C Arborio rice
  • 3C low sodium chicken stock
  • 1 small handful of parmesan

Directions:  Cook bacon in a deep frying pan until crispy and set aside.  Cook leeks and celeriac in bacon grease (I don’t fry in bacon grease often, so my heart won’t hate me for this.  If yours will be pissed at you, use olive oil instead and switch the bacon topping for sundried tomatoes) over medium heat with lid on until soft, about 10 minutes.  Add rice and cook 1 minute.  Add chicken stock 1 cup at a time, bringing to a boil and then simmering without lid until liquid is absorbed, stirring occasionally.  Stir in parmesan near end of cook time

Pesto

  • One good handful of beet or other greens
  • 1.5 handfuls of walnuts
  • 1.5 handfuls of parmesan
  • Stream of olive oil

 

 

Directions:  Pulse greens, nuts and parm in food processor until combined, but not powdery.  Add olive oil in a stream while processor is running until pesto becomes a paste

(You’ll see from my pics that I like my pesto a little drier to reduce oil used.  You might also notice something else about my oil picture if you look closely).

Top the risotto with the pesto and sprinkle with crumbles of bacon. Extra pesto can be used atop a meat accompaniment.

Results: 

I tried to stay away from a wintry dish, but this turned out to be a delicious comfort food.  What the heck.  Don’t we need to be comforted in the summer?  This would be a fantastic partner for ribs at a barbeque actually, having a really earthy flavour.  That’s it!  Ugly veggie risotto is the hot new alternative to picnic potato salad.

Rating:  2 yums.  Cook it when you need something to stick to your ribs, or to hang out with the pork ones you’re serving

Roasted fiddleheads, carrots, and a mushroom triple threat

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I have a special place in my heart for foods that can’t be played (aw crap, a pun.  I’m leaving it).  With fiddleheads, there’s no messing around.  They show up in the spring, get picked in the wild before they’ve turned into fully fledged ferns, and then they’re gone again.  If you’re eating them and they’re not frozen, they probably recently came from a forest glen near you, and you can be sure you’re eating something that is legitimately in season.

There are many attractive attributes to a fiddlehead.  Its name is cute, coming from that little curly bit at the end of a fiddle’s neck.  It’s healthy, having twice as many antioxidants as blueberries do, while also having its fair share of Omegas 3 and 6.  It’s clearly pretty…

I just wish I had known they could make you puke before I ate a whole bag of them.  Oh, and they might cause cancer.

Yes, after I had cooked the delicious dish below and eaten the entire side as an entrée because my husband is away, I found a Health Canada warning that says that fiddleheads can be the cause of food borne illnesses if they’re not cooked well enough.  I read something else that said that their tight little ferny fists can hang on to bacteria that would otherwise let go while under the tap.  Luckily I had rinsed mine well to try to take pictures of them without any brown bits on them, and had decided to roast them, which works to get rid of salmonella on chicken, so should do the same for the wee microbes on these.  Right?  I’ll let you know in about 12 hours or so.  As for the cancer, I’m not too worried.  The fiddlehead’s seasonality is probably fate’s way of telling you to eat the little curly greeners in moderation.  Also, I mixed them with three kinds of mushrooms which I read in the book Anticancer are good cancer fighters, so I think I broke even.

Anyway, when I read that fiddleheads could be roasted, my mind jumped to other veggies and fungi that I liked when cooked that way, and I threw them all together with some thyme, olive oil, and garlic.  Here are my pretty little carrots.  And yes, I know you’ve probably seen carrots before, but we just got a new camera and I’m excited.

And here is the recipe for Roasted Fiddleheads, Carrots, and a Mushroom Triple Threat

  • 2 handfuls of fiddleheads, washed carefully
  • ½ pint oyster mushrooms, chopped coarsely
  • 1 portabello mushroom, stem discarded
  • 1 pint shiitake mushrooms, stems trimmed
  • 1 small bunch carrots, each peeled and cut into three parts
  • 1 garlic clove, chopped
  • Very good glug of olive oil
  • 2tsp fresh thyme (or 1tsp dried)
  • Kosher salt and pepper to taste

Directions:  Preheat oven to 400.  Prepare all and combine in bowl, dousing generously with olive oil before adding thyme and salt/pepper.  Prepare baking sheet with foil and distribute vegetables evenly.  Roast vegetables for about 40 minutes, stirring once or twice.  Finished when liquids have dried and veggies are beginning to look brown with some crispy bits.

Results:

Excellent!  I would serve this mix as a side any time fiddleheads are in season.  The mushrooms added great diversity in texture and the carrots contributed sweetness as their gift.  Very easy and quick to prepare, while still looking and tasting impressive.  Healthy and vegan too, as a bonus.  The fiddleheads tasted quite like asparagus to me, and I ate every last one and would do it again, even knowing that they are making me take my life into my own hands.

Rating:  4 Yums

 

Albino eggplant (or blanche aubergine)

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I picked up the prettiest veggies the other day – two gorgeously white eggplants.  When I got them they were pristine, but because I didn’t cook them for a few days you’ll notice some brownish spots in my photo.  Mental note – always pose your albino eggplants for their photo shoots before they get old enough to have age spots.  Or at least buy them some Oil of Olay to help them recover their lost youth.

Here is what a white eggplant should look like, photo courtesy of this blog…

And here are my over-the-hill ones:

Now I’m always conflicted when I pass eggplant at the grocery store, because I love it and want to buy one, but my husband hates it.  I grabbed these ones with the excuse that, “well, maybe the white ones taste totally different and he’ll actually eat them.”  One time I tried to serve him Baba Ghanoush, thinking that he only thought he hated eggplant, and that if it was prepared in a different way he wouldn’t know the difference.  He tried a big dollop of the Ghanoush on a pita bread and had to spit it out, asking me “what’s the dip that tastes like ass?” I didn’t have high hopes for the white eggplant, but at least if he didn’t eat it I would get twice as much.

There isn’t much to say about eggplant that you don’t already know, except for two things.  One:  It’s called eggplant because the white ones actually used to be more plentiful than the purple ones, and they looked like eggs growing as plants.  Cool, eh?  Two:  They have the highest nicotine content of any edible plant.  So if you have a teenager, your eggplants are going missing, and you smell funny odours coming from the basement, he’s probably trying to smoke them.  Parents, you’re welcome, dirtbags, you’re busted.  (Don’t try this trick at home, though.  You would have to eat 20 eggplants to get the same amount of nicotine found in one cigarette!)

I found a delicious-looking Korean recipe on this blog for eggplant that incorporated two of my favourite things – sesame and garlic.  I was all ready to go with it, and then panicked.  I had people over, I didn’t have the soy sauce it called for, and I was at least 15 minutes away from a store that might not have even been open.  I had to improvise, and so wracked my brain and my cupboard for something that might do for soy sauce in a pinch.  The best I could do was Fish Sauce.  If you can think of other creative solutions, I’ll send you a prize, no joke.  And yes, that prize may or may not be a packet of soy sauce.  Anyway, here’s what I did:

White Eggplant Gaji Namul

  • 2 white eggplants, sliced into ½” rounds
  • 2Tbsp fish sauce
  • 1 chopped green onion
  • 2 cloves garlic, chopped
  • 1/2Tbsp roasted sesame seeds
  • 2Tbsp sesame oil

Directions:  Preheat to 425.  Lay the eggplant rounds on a baking sheet…

(spaced out and flat, though, I was just proud of my picture) and douse them with olive oil.  Roast them for 10 minutes.  Let them cool, and rip them with your fingers into strips, putting the strips into a bowl.  Add the remaining ingredients to the bowl and mix gently.

Results:  My husband ate it!  Enough said.  The “after” photo includes the spoon, passed out from the stress of trying to figure out what could replace soy sauce.

Rating:  3 Yums.  I’m not sure that white eggplant tastes any different from purple, but this recipe would make any colour of eggplant taste great.