Conquering Collard Greens and Kale

Somehow, over the course of two and a half weeks, we've ended up with three large bundles of collard greens and Swiss chard in our fridge. It was clear that I had to overcome my apprehension about how to best cook these greens and have everyone like them. Something had to be done.

I know leafy greens cook down to nearly nothing, so I wasn't afraid by the 12-cup pile of washed and chopped greens. The bigger question was how to prepare them. In order to preserve the maximum amount of nutrients of foods I cook, I like to consult George Mateljan's book The World's Healthiest Foods or his Web site, an excellent reference for the nutritional content of all sorts of good-for-you foods and their preparation. George suggested steaming for no more than five minutes. I also used one of his suggestions for preparing collard greens and kale to make them tasty–with very good results, so good in fact, that my husband and I gobbled down the entire amount of greens all by ourselves, even though the amount I prepared could have easily been plenty for four eaters.

Ingredients:

3 large bundles collard greens or kale

1/2 to 1 cup sliced scallions

olive oil

tamari to taste

Preparation:

Wash greens, cut the thick stem out and chop the leaves into bite-size pieces. Bring enough water in a large pot to a roaring boil. Place greens in the steaming basket and place over the boiling water. Cover pot and let greens steam for 5 minutes – and no more!!

Meanwhile, heat a little olive oil in a pan, sauté scallions until lightly softened and add steamed greens, tossing them with the onions until everything is mixed well. Serve immediately as a side dish or as a light meal with a poached egg on top.

A Potato-Fennel Gratin Fit Enough For Company

The best-tasting potatoes–obviously–can be had in fall when they're harvested and the stores are brimming with a large variety of different kinds and sizes. I made the following recipe for a potato-fennel gratin tonight for guests and it was a hit with everyone. The recipe is almost exactly taken from Ina Garten's The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook.

Potato-Fennel Gratin

Ingredients:

2 fennel bulbs

1 yellow onion, halved and thinly sliced

2 Tbsp. pure olive oil

1 tbsp. unsalted butter

2 pounds potatoes (russet or Yukon Gold)

2 cups heavy cream

2 1/2 cups grated Gruyère cheese (1/2 lb.)

1 tsp. kosher salt

1/2 tsp. freshly ground black pepper

Preparation:

Preheat the oven to 350˚F and butter an 9x13-inch casserole dish. Remove the stalks from the fennel and cut the bulbs in half lengthwise. Remove the cores and thinly slice the bulbs crosswise. Sauté the fennel and the onions in the olive oil and butter on medium-low heat until tender.

Peel the potatoes and slice them thinly, about 1/8 inch thick. Mix the sliced potatoes in a large bowl with 2 cups of cream, 2 cups of Gruyère, salt and pepper. Add the sautéed fennel and onion and mix well.

Pour mixture into the prepared casserole dish. Press down to smooth the potatoes. Sprinkle the top with about 1/2 cup of grated Gruyère. Bake uncovered for 1 1/2 hours, until the potatoes are very tender and the top is browned nicely. Allow a few minutes to cool and set before serving.

The recipe makes about 10 servings and can be made days ahead of time and reheated at 350˚F for about 30 minutes. (Let the gratin come to room temperature before reheating. If not, the time for reheating needs to be increased.)

Butternut Squash and Sweet Potato Gratin

Oh boy! Here is an indulgence that I made for the dinner table tonight, and with something like this on the menu I say, "who cares about dessert? Let's have seconds instead!"

With plenty of butternut squash and sweet potatoes on hand and tired of making yet another pot of soup, I found a recipe for butternut squash and sweet potato casserole on the blog Pinch My Salt that I liked because of its simplicity, wonderful photography and great directions. The only changes I made from the original recipe were cutting the salt by one third, using dried instead of fresh thyme, and adding more garlic. Here's the decadent recipe that will fill your kitchen with great smells. Even my 13-year-old daughter, who was doing homework at the kitchen table while listening to her iPod, looked up at one point and said, "Mmh! Something smells good, mom!" Here's my slightly adjusted version of Pinch My Salt's recipe:

Butternut Squash and Sweet Potato Gratin

Ingredients:

1 lb. butternut squash, peeled and sliced about 1/8 inch thick

1 lb. sweet potato, peeled and sliced about 1/8 inch thick

1 tsp. dried thyme

1 generous tsp. kosher salt

fresh pepper to taste

2 cups shredded Manchego (or Gruyère–or even aged Gouda)

3 cloves garlic, pressed

1 1/2 cups heavy cream

Preparation:

Preheat the oven to 400˚F. Butter a 9x13-inch casserole dish and set aside. Peel and slice butternut squash and sweet potatoes, grate cheese, and measure spices and heavy cream.

In the buttered casserole dish, spread half of the butternut squash out and sprinkle with 1/3 of the salt, pepper, thyme and 1/2 cup of cheese. Then spread half the sweet potatoes as the next layer, again sprinkling with 1/3 of the salt, pepper, thyme and 1/2 cup of cheese. Repeat layering with another layer of butternut and sweet potatoes. Finish by mixing 3 cloves of freshly pressed garlic with the heavy cream and pouring it over the dish. Sprinkle with the remaining 1/2 cup of cheese, cover the casserole and bake in the oven for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, remove the cover and bake 20 minutes more until the top is nicely browned. Remove the gratin from the oven and let it cool for 15-20 minutes before serving. Enjoy!

Note: Supposedly, this recipe makes 12 servings, but we live in Minnesota and it's getting cold outside, so we only get 6-8 servings out of this recipe. Oink, oink. :)

Hello Snow!

Big surprise when waking up this morning: it had snowed! Not a huge accumulation, of course, it is after all only October 10, but enough to cover all the roofs and lawns in a thin blanket of white. Our dogs, Lenny and Louie, had a very surprised look on their faces when I let them out the door into the yard. I think they had forgotten what snow was!

Now they're back in the house, everyone is still asleep, but the first pot of coffee is brewing and I'm thinking about making some nice cauliflower-cheese soup. My favorite recipe for this soup comes from Molly Katzen's Moosewood Cookbook. The only ingredient in it that I don't use is caraway because my husband doesn't care for it. Other than that, the recipe is just to our liking. Try it for yourself!

Cauliflower-Cheese Soup

Ingredients:

1 large potato, peeled and diced (about 2-3 cups diced)

1 large cauliflower, cut or broken into florets (put aside 2 cups of florets)

1 medium carrot, peeled and chopped

3 medium cloves garlic, peeled

1 1/2 cups chopped onion

1 1/2 tsp. salt (I like kosher or sea salt)

4 cups water

2 cups (packed) grated cheddar (plus extra for garnishing each serving)

3/4 cup milk (I find whole milk tastes better, though lowfat is okay)

1 tsp. dill

1/2 tsp. caraway seeds (I always leave them out…, but instead a sprinkling of freshly cut parsley for garnish is nice)

black pepper to taste

Preparation:

Place potato, cauliflower (except for the 2 cups reserved), carrot, garlic, onion, salt, and water in a large saucepan. Bring to a boil, then simmer until all vegetables are very tender. Purée in a blender or food processor, and transfer to a kettle or Dutch oven.

If you like a little texture in your soup, set aside 2 cups of the cauliflower florets and steam them reserved until just tender. Add these to the purée along with all remaining ingredients. Heat gently, and serve topped with a little extra cheese.

Mixed Veggie Medley

When I woke up this morning, I felt like consuming something light and clean. A look into the fridge revealed a number of great-looking veggies, so the idea of a nice fresh juice came to mind. I knew Emily would appreciate it, too. This is not an inexpensive juice, but the taste is definitely worth the effort. So much goodness in one little glass!

Mixed Veggie Medley

Ingredients

4 large carrots

4-5 apples

1-2 cucumbers

2 stalks celery

1/2 head broccoli (about 3 cups)

1/2 bunch Italian parsley

Preparation

Wash all produce, cut into pieces small enough to run through a juicer, and juice. Makes approximately 1 quart of fresh, delicious juice.

Sweet Corn Soup

The first time I had corn, raw, I was fifteen and my parents had decided to take my brother and me on a week-long fall vacation to a farm in Bavaria. Being big-city kids, my brother and I enjoyed being outdoors and helping with the harvest at the time. The day we helped with harvesting corn, I remember sitting on top of a huge pile of corn on the trailer the tractor pulled off the fields at the end of the day. But before leaving the fields, the farmer we stayed with peeled an ear and handed it to me, saying, "eat." I dug my teeth into the corn and thought it was quite tasty. Up until that day, I didn't know people could eat fresh corn. Actually, I didn't know anyone who ever ate fresh corn. Corn, in my experience, was fed to the animals. At least in Germany.

Many years later, after having moved to Minnesota, I found out that most people in this part of the world spend the time from mid-July to mid-August eating corn-on-the-cob almost every day–more or less. Corn-on-the-cob, heated for only a few minutes in boiling water, then slathered with butter, salt and pepper or sprinkled with a little Parmesan cheese, is a staple in our house every summer. We eat so much that the ears quite literally start coming out of our ears, and by the time we're tired of corn, the season is over, and, satiated, we can wait and anticipate the new crop next year.

Today, I found myself in the kitchen with a scant dozen ears that I wanted to transform into something other than corn-on-the-cob. My sister-in-law Julie has a wonderful recipe for corn chowder that is out of this world, but I thought it would be a bit heavy for the high temperatures and humidity we've been experiencing this weekend. I settled on a recipe for sweet corn soup that I found in Alice Waters' The Art of Simple Food. According to the girls, it's delicious–they already had seconds. What I love about it is that the ingredients are simple, the soup is easy to prepare, and it is tasty.

Sweet Corn Soup

Ingredients:

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter

1/2 very large sweet onion (roughly 2+ cups chopped)

10-12 ears of fresh corn

salt (I like kosher and/or sea salt)

2 qts. water

Preparation:

Melt the butter in a large pot over medium heat, but be careful not to brown the butter. Add the chopped onion and sauté until the onion is softened and translucent, about 15 minutes. Yes, the onion will quite literally swim in butter, but that will all change once the corn is added.

Meanwhile, chuck the corn (cut the kernels off the cobs). After the onion is softened, add the corn and sauté for 2-3 minutes. Add salt liberally. Then add the water.

Increase heat to high and bring to a boil. Boil soup for a few minutes, no more than five minutes. Turn off the heat and puree in batches to desired consistency. Adjust seasoning with salt if needed. Yield: about 3 quarts.

Cinco de Mayo

Today is Cinco de Mayo, a holiday that commemorates the Mexican army's victory over French forces at the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862. Even though I've heard that it's a day not celebrated in all parts of Mexico, here in the US it is also a celebration of Mexican heritage and pride.

In our family, no one even has a stitch of Hispanic heritage in their bloodline, but–always looking for inspiration for what to cook for dinner–Cinco de Mayo translated in my head into tacos, salsa, and guacamole. So we cooked some Mexican food for dinner tonight.

I have to admit up-front: Mexican food is not my favorite. I will eat it in a pinch, but when hungry, Mexican is not what comes to mind. Mostly because I didn't grow up with it, and, no matter where I've eaten it, Mexican food has usually struck me as an over-sized plate filled with overly cooked and mashed foods, doused with enchilada sauce and melted cheese. A picture of yellow, brown and red–not exactly pretty.

However, when we make tacos at home, I absolutely love them. I also love all the accompanying dishes, such as salsa and guacamole. So, for the record, I'm going to share our favorite (MY favorite) Mexican dishes with our favorite trimmings. I have absolutely no idea how authentic our recipes are, but suffice it to say that I love 'em, and they look beautiful because they're vibrant and colorful and not covered under a layer of melted cheese.

Tonight we made shrimp tacos with mango salsa and guacamole. It was a terrific meal with fabulous flavor. It took a while to prepare because washing all the veggies and chopping them up takes time. But the result was well worth the effort. Here are the recipes:

Shrimp Tacos

Ingredients for 4 servings:

1 lb. shrimp, preferably uncooked

butter

fresh garlic, minced

cayenne

cumin

lemon pepper

salt

soft shell tacos

Preparation:

Sauté shrimp in butter with garlic. Sprinkle with a little cayenne pepper, cumin, lemon pepper and salt. Shrimp are done when opaque. Serve with warmed soft taco shells.

Mango Salsa

Ingredients:

1 mango, diced

1/2 cup diced cucumber

1/3 cup red onion, diced

1 jalapeño, diced

1 clove garlic, minced

juice of 1/2 lime (about 1+ Tbsp.)

a couple of dashes red pepper flakes

salt and pepper to taste

Preparation:

Mix all ingredients together in a bowl and let stand, in the refrigerator, for 30-60 minutes before serving.

Guacamole Calabas

(This recipe is from Marilyn Diamond's The American Vegetarian Cookbook from the Fit for Life Kitchen)

Ingredients:

2 green onions, minced

1 large garlic clove, minced or pressed

1 large tomato, minced

1 Tbsp. fresh lemon juice

1/2 cup minced fresh parsley

1/4 cup minced cilantro

1 tsp. cumin

1/2 tsp. chili

Cayenne to taste

4 ripe avocados, peeled, seeded, and mashed (approximately 2 cups)

Salt

Freshly ground pepper to taste

Preparation:

Chop all vegetables by hand or use a food processor, to process ingredients in the order given, using the steel blade. Yields 3-4 cups.

Tip: We like our guacamole a little chunky, so I usually mash the ingredients with a fork or a potato masher. If completing the guacamole in the food processor, use the pulse setting only and scrape the bowl frequently, otherwise it's easy to over-process.

To serve, we layer a sprinkling of grated cheddar cheese, shrimp, guacamole and salsa and top the taco with chopped fresh cilantro and a drizzle of salad dressing (optional). Enjoy! This is really good stuff.

Cucumbers in Sour Cream

Today was an incredibly warm and sunny day. It must have been about 60 degrees–abolutely phenomenal! Some people were walking around in shorts and sleeveless tops! After dropping off Emily at the Opera for choir practice, I ended up walking around downtown with the mother of one of her fellow singers and raked up about 5 miles on my pedometer. It was a good walking day. :)

In the evening, Dan felt like grilling, so we got some chicken drumsticks to throw on the grill. As a side dish, I suggested cool cucumber salad, and Dan immediately liked the idea.

Now I remember my mom often making an incredibly tasty cucumber salad in the summertime that was drenched in a delicious, creamy white sour cream sauce. It was usually my job to wash and slice the cucumbers on a mandoline and she mixed the sour cream dressing and folded all ingredients together. I do not have my mom's recipe, but a few years ago, I obtained Dan's mom's recipe and I swear it tastes just like my mom's. Just as Sweden and Germany are not that far from each other, Swedish and German tastes are pretty close, too, I think. In any case, cucumber salad is what I made tonight to accompany Dan's chicken drummies. And here's the cherished recipe:

Grandma Dot's Cucumbers in Sour Cream

Ingredients:

3 medium cucumbers, peeled and thinly sliced (if organic, you can leave the skin on)

1 cup dairy sour cream

1/4 to 1/2 cup chopped green onions (red onion is a nice substitute)

2 Tbsp. white vinegar (white champagne vinegar is delicious, too!)

3/4 tsp. sugar

1/2 tsp. kosher salt

freshly ground black pepper to taste

Preparation:

Thinly slice cucumbers on a mandoline or with a knife and mix with the dressing, comprised of the rest of the ingredients. Mix well and let rest for at least 30 minutes before serving. If you only serve four for dinner, there may be leftovers, but this salad keeps well for at least another day or two.

Get a little boost through juice!

I've mentioned before that I really like my VitaMix blender and use it daily to purée soups, make smoothies, salad dressings, and even juices. Making juices in the blender keeps the whole food intact (well, in a chopped up sort of way) and retains all the fiber the fruit and veggies contain. Sometimes, though, I prefer not to have any fibrous texture in my juice and simply run all the veggies through a juicer. The advantage of juicing is that all the vitamins and minerals in fruit and veggies become readily available to our bodies. When blending juice and vegetables, the juice obviously retains the fiber content, thus slowing down nutrient absorption, which, I suppose, can be a good thing if you want to gradually stabilize your blood sugar. In any case, this morning, I made the most delicious green veggie juice using a juicer and thought I'd share the recipe:

Juice in a juicer:

4 large organic carrots

1 organic cucumber

1 large organic apple (I like Fuji, they're not too sweet and very juicy)

2 leaves organic kale, stalks and all

This makes approximately 16 oz. of great-tasting green juice. Enjoy!

Roasted Fingerling Potatoes

It's late, but I'm still waiting for a loaf of banana bread to finish baking in the oven (the bananas really had to be used tonight), so I thought I'd write down our favorite preparation for fingerling potatoes as I'm reliving the wonderful flavors of tonight's dinner that we prepared for our guests, Jazz musicians Jana and Adam Meckler: grilled top sirloin steak, roasted fingerling potatoes, and green beans Asian-style.

Fingerling potatoes are quite literally the size of fingers and are sold in stores as small gourmet potatoes. Some stores sell a variety of different kinds in one bag, others sell just one kind. Either way, they are delicious and very easy to prepare. We like them roasted and very simply prepared. The following recipe was enough for six servings:

Roasted Fingerling Potatoes:

2 lbs. fingerling potatoes, washed and dried

olive oil

kosher salt

Preheat oven to 400˚F. Spread fingerling potatoes on a cookie sheet and drizzle with olive oil. (I used pure olive oil because it has a higher smoke point than extra virgin and virgin olive oils, but I realize that I have to do more research about cooking with olive oil and which olive oil to use for what temperature.) Then use your hands to cover the potatoes with olive oil from all sides, sprinkle liberally with kosher salt and roast in the oven at 400˚F for about 40 minutes. Enjoy!

Green Beans Asian-Style

I am so excited to have found a new recipe for green beans that is quick to prepare, unbelievably tasty and can be served hot or cold without loss of flavor! AND it's healthy, too!!

Tonight, we prepared a top sirloin steak rubbed with my husband's favorite dried steak seasoning in a grill pan on the stove top because it was just too cold to fire up the grill outside. Although he's been known to grill year-round, temperatures hovering around 0˚F are just too low to be comfortable for grilling outside. So we broke out the grill pan indoors and grilled a very nice steak that we sliced thinly to serve.

We accompanied the steak with about 1 1/2 pounds of fresh green beans that I prepared in a new way. I found the recipe in George Mateljan's book, "The World's Healthiest Foods," and have to copy it here for everyone to see because it is really good. What I like most about this recipe is that it is super-easy to prepare and tastes great hot and cold. Here it is:

Asian-Flavored Green Beans

Steam green beans for 5 minutes.

Combine the steamed green beans with the following mixture:

1 Tbsp. tamari (Japanese, naturally brewed soy sauce)

1 Tbsp. freshly grated ginger

1 Tbsp. rice vinegar

1 Tbsp. honey

chopped fresh cilantro (to taste)

sesame seeds (to taste)

There you go. Enjoy!

A Fridge-Cleaning Meal…

… has got to be the meal du jour! I will have to take a peek to see what's in the fridge, probably move a couple of containers out, around and maybe even, gasp!, open. We'll see how much of what there is to make a meal and, with an ounce of inspiration and a dash of creativity, I may come up with something.

I'll be back. Stay tuned.

For BREAKFAST I found an apple, an orange and a banana and added them with a cup of purified water to the Vitamix and turned into a smoothie what used to be my mom's favorite fruit salad combo. It lacked something in flavor, probably because the water diluted the flavor of the fruit too much, but at least it was healthy, and with almost 10 g of fiber in it, it will not just clean out the fridge… : )

For LUNCH, well, everyone sort of had what they liked: a sandwich (turkey & avocado on oatnut bread), leftover bison patties with coarse-ground mustard and salad greens, whole grain crackers with cheese, lentil soup.

DINNER was almost exciting: I found a 2-lbs. mix of ground meat (beef, pork and veal) in the fridge, half a bunch of fresh parsley, a 1 1/2-lbs head of cabbage and 4 ounces of gruyère. So, the first thought was to make stuffed cabbage rolls, but since they're supposed to be better reheated the next day, I scrapped that idea and settled for meatloaf and a cabbage gratin. Both were great. I didn't make my usual recipe for meatloaf, but instead consulted the Joy of Cooking. Their classic meat loaf contained fresh parsley and turned out to be great. Here's the recipe adapted from the Joy of Cooking, p. 722:

Classic Meat Loaf

2 lbs. meat loaf mixture (equal parts of ground beef, pork and veal)

1 medium-size finely chopped onion

1 cup quick-cooking oats

2/3 cup ketchup

2/3 cup finely chopped fresh parsley (I used Italian parsley)

3 large eggs, slightly beaten

1 teaspoon dried thyme

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

Knead everything together, either with your hands, or, if you're like me and don't like to get your hands into the meat mixture, with a European-style potato masher (see picture to the left), until everything is well blended. Put into a 9x5 loaf pan and bake at 350 degrees for 1 1/4 hours.

I served this meat loaf with a cabbage gratin from the same cookbook, refer to page 355. My husband doesn't care much for creamed cabbage because it always begs for salt and more salt to make it tasty. So, since I had a nice chunk of gruyère cheese left, I opted for the cabbage gratin, thinking that all the added cheese would take care of the bland taste of cabbage and make the dish more flavorful. I was right! Even the kiddos loved the dish. So here's the recipe for those who don't own a copy of the Joy of Cooking:

Cabbage Gratin

Preheat oven to 375 degrees and butter a 2-quart gratin dish and sprinkle the bottom with grated parmesan cheese to cover.

Bring to a boil about 4 quarts of water with 1 1/2 Tbsp. salt and add and cook for 5 minutes:

6 cups of shredded cabbage (about 1 pound)

Drain cabbage. Whisk together in a large bowl:

2 large eggs

1 cup of milk or light cream (I used 1/2 cup heavy cream and 1/2 cup whole milk)

1/2 cup grated Gruyère cheese

1/4 cup all-purpose flour (I totally forgot this ingredient–didn't miss it!!)

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon caraway seeds, toasted (totally omitted, because dear hubby doesn't like caraway)

1/8 teaspoon ground cardamom

Add the drained cabbage, pour into gratin dish and cover top with:

1/4 cup grated Parmesan or Gruyère cheese.

Bake until golden on top, 40-50 minutes.

The meatloaf and cabbage gratin were great–easy to make and flavorful. To round the meal out, we added a baked potato for those who needed more sustenance. All-in-all, a great fridge-cleaning day!