Mashed celery root, brussels sprouts, and broiled seabass with onion

Pad Thai

Inspired by the New York Times.

Cabbage gratin and prawns with parsley and garlic

Prawns are delightful when deveined, boiled until pink, and tossed with olive oil, minced parsley, and minced garlic. We served the prawns with a cabbage gratin from Joy of Cooking that was ultimately a bit too eggy for our taste. But the flavor pairing of the gratin — cabbage with caraway seed — was nice.

Fried catfish with cooked cole slaw and tartar sauce

For the "slaw", slice in the food processor and combine leeks, cabbage, and carrots, in a medium pot with some butter. Add also some salt, vinegar, and beet greens. Stew covered over low, stirring occasionally.

For the tartar sauce, mash garlic with salt in the mortar and pestle, and combine with one egg yolk and a tsp water. Slowly dribble in 1/2 cup olive oil, whisking all the time. Then add some chopped capers to the mayonnaise.

For the fish, first make sure to take out any bones (we had bought a single whole pan-ready cat-fish, but then filleted it). Prepare a breading of flour, salt, and paprika. Coat the fish in the flour mixture, then dip in egg yolk, and then coat in flour again. In a non-stick pan, heat a mixture of olive and vegetable cooking oils, until a drop of batter starts to sizzle. Fry the fish on each side until golden.

Two curries

I'm back in Aarhus, of course, which means cooking for myself, and that seems to mean curry.

For example, sauté leeks in olive oil and a little salt, and add some powdered ginger. Add one head broccoli, cut into small pieces, and cook a little; then add one can coconut milk, a splash of soy sauce, a small spoonful of red curry paste, some chopped lemongrass, and a small bag of frozen shrimp, and bring to a boil. Mix in the juice of one lime, and serve over rice.

Alternately, sauté leeks in a mix of butter and olive oil and a little salt, and add a lot of curry powder and a little ginger. Then add 6 oz dried lentils and 10 oz water, or so, bring to a boil, and reduce to a simmer. Add one head (chopped) of whatever brassica you have lying around — I bought what I thought was kale, and perhaps is, but is somewhere between an American kale and a cabbage (they are the same species, after all) — and some more salt and spice. Let the mixture simmer covered for twenty minutes, until most of the liquid has cooked off or been absorbed, and then serve over rice.

February 12: pan-fried fish, mashed potatoes, and cabbage cooked with apples, butter, and lemon

Slaw with mushrooms, peas, and carrots

The title says it all. For a tasty coleslaw, combine:

• 1 small green cabbage, stem removed, sliced fine
• 1 lb shelling peas, shelled (yields about 1 cup)
• 1/2 bunch purple carrots, thinly sliced
• 2 oz brown button mushrooms, sliced
• salt
• olive oil
• Moscatel vinegar

Coleslaw

Here's an easy coleslaw, which I took to a potluck tonight.

Thinly slice a small head of green cabbage, and transfer to a large salad or mixing bowl. Wash, peel, and grate one bunch (raw) red beets, and add to salad. Wash and grate (but young carrots do not need peeling) half a bunch carrots, and add these as well. Sprinkle with generous doses of salt, moscatel vinegar, and a nice olive oil, and mix. Let sit refrigerated a few hours before serving, so the vegetables have a chance to soften in the acid.

Peasant food

Joy has a variation on boiled cabbage which is quite good: she chops the cabbage, and boils it with onion (we used leeks), apples, vinegar, red wine, salt — the standard fare — and honey. The flavor is quite good, but I think she makes it too sweet.

Along with our cabbage, we ate gnocchi, cooked in sage-butter and a little cream, and with grated grana padano on top. It was very good, but mild and comfort-food-tasting; I think the gnocchi could have handled a gorgonzola cream sauce, our original plan.

Gnocchi (meaning "lumps") is very simple, and there are as many recipes as there are Italian and Latin American families, times starches. Most Americans are most familiar with potato gnocchi.

Wash, peel, boil, and mash, and allow to cool, three pounds mashing potatoes (I like yellows, e.g. Banana, Butterball, or Yukon Gold), or use leftovers. Knead in one egg, and enough flour so that it's not particularly sticky: expect about one cup of flour per pound raw potato. Since you want the gnocchi to be light, work until consistent, but do not overknead.

Set a large pot of salted water on the stove and bring to a boil.

Working on a well-floured surface, cut the dough into workable chunks, and roll each chunk into a long log, about half-inch in thickness. Chop of gnocchis, and either transfer to a well-floured environment (do not stack your raw gnocchi in a bowl, as they will stick together), or, better, set up an assembly line so that the cut gnocchi move immediately to the boiling water.

Add gnocchi to the water few-at-a-time, so that they don't stick together. They will sink at first, but after just a few minutes they will float, at which point they are done and can be removed with a slotted spoon. It's ok, though, to leave them in the water for a while. In any case, you will probably decide to remove some before the others have been added; they won't stick together too much, but you may decide to drizzle each layer in a bowl with some melted butter. When all the gnocchi are done, prepare sauce and combine and serve hot.

Red stew with tempeh, cabbage, leeks, and potatoes

My boyfriend and I were planning on a movie and a late dinner afterwards. I wanted a stew I could prep in twenty minutes or less, and leave simmering for two or more hours to eat upon return. I also wanted to use up the three-weeks-old half-bottle of red wine we had left from a picnic he and I had had.

In a dutch oven or large pot (the stew can cook in the oven or on the burner on low), combine:

• 1 red cabbage, cut into small pieces
  
• 1 lb tempeh, in large cubes
  
• 1 large leek, washed and cut into small pieces (with, as always, tips and roots reserved for a vegetable stock
  
• Up to a bottle of red wine — cooking wines that have started to go acrid are fine
  
• A fair amount of soy sauce, but not so much as to overpower anything
  
• A handful of star anise
  
• A spoonful of sugar
  
• Enough water so bring level close to covering, but not too much; cabbage will release liquid.

Cover, bring to boil, reduce to simmer, and let stew on low for more than an hour, but up to all afternoon. Ten minutes before you are ready to eat, bring back to high, and add

• 3/4 lb red fingerling or Russian Banana potatoes

and boil ten minutes. Serve in wide bowls.

Wine is a meat tenderizer, so this broth is great for stewing tough meats (guinnea hen, mutton, etc.). If you are not trying to play the timing game, you can also thicken the stew with some corn starch at the end and serve over rice.

Post-Christmas cabbage and cookies

Originally posted on 26 December 2007.

Possibly my favorite Christmas gift was Alice Waters' Chez Panisse Vegetables, an indispensible reference. I've been reading it non-stop: each vegetable (sorted alphabetically) is described, including how to judge freshness, how to store, how to prepare, and how to grow in a kitchen garden, and many recipes are suggested. Tonight and tomorrow we will be eating leftovers before leaving for a family trip to the Coast; tonight's dinner was lasagna. But dinner should include a fresh vegetable. A trip to the local organic grocer yielded a gorgeous and very fresh and sweet red cabbage. What, we asked Alice, should we do with it?

After removing the outermost leaves and washing the cabbage (I would only save cabbage for a beef stock; it's fine to compost this), remove the core and slice into very thin strips, a few inches long. Thinly slice a leek, and in the bottom of a heavy large saucepan, cook the leek in three tablespoons butter or duck fat for five minutes. Add the cabbage along with a large spoonful of sherry vinegar, a healthy handful of salt, some black pepper, a bay leaf, and half a cup of water. Stir, bring to boil, reduce to simmer, cover, and let the cabbage reduce for twenty minutes.

While the cabbage cooks, wash, peel, and grate (with a coarse grater) an apple. Toss with a little sherry vinegar to keep the apple from oxidizing, and eat the peel and core. When the cabbage has cooked for twenty minutes, stir in the grated apple and cook another five minutes. Serve hot.


In the days after Christmas, one should never be long without a good cookie. The following is from The Joy of Vegan Baking, by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau:

Three cups flour should be combined in a large bowl with a quarter teaspoon salt, one and a half teaspoon baking powder, one tablespoon aniseed, and one cup pine nuts. In a separate small bowl, whisk to combine seven eighths of a cup of pure maple syrup with half a cup canola oil, one quarter cup water, two tablespoons anise extract, and one teaspoon vanilla extract. Combine wet into dry, roll by tablespoons onto a parchment-lined cookie tray, and bake twenty minutes in a preheated three-hundred-fifty-degree oven.

Addtionally, after Christmas we eat an endless supply of pfeffernusse, gingerbread, and the many cookies left with us after our annual Cookie Party, a wonderful potluck at which we have eggnog with and without rum, hot mulled wine, ciders, and homemade cookies with all our friends and neighbors.

Cabbage with apples, Sausage with beans

Last night's seitan sausage is especially good sautéed in olive oil. Add a little dried oregano to the oil for good measure, and chop the sausage into pieces. I had set a large pot of dried cannellini beans, along with a bay leaf and a few black pepper corns, soaking last night, and boiled an hour or two upon arriving home (never cook beans in salted water; it toughens the skins). Once the sausage had sautéed a little, I added the beans and some salt to the pan and cooked on medium-high, stirring constantly, until the beans started to brown slightly with the tasty oil-and-bean-starch cake on the bottom of the pan.

We will be getting vegetables tomorrow, and the refrigerator is almost out. For some green food, I washed, cored, and diced a granny-smith apple and half a green cabbage. These went in a sauce-pan-with-well-fitting-lid, along with a healthy splash of lemon juice and a small squeeze of red wine. (When cooking vegetables with an acid, it's generally best to put the acid in the pan first, and add the veggies as soon as they have been cut, even if you will not cook them right away. This controls oxidization, keeping the apples green, and keeping, e.g., onions from emitting too much eye-watering aromatic.) A small handful of salt and ten minutes on high with the lid on cooks the cabbage.

Amaranth seed, cabbage, and turnip and rutabaga

Before starting this blog, I would post recipes on various other sites on the internet. In the interest of compiling all my food postings on one site, I reprint them here. Originally posted 4 January 2008.


My body is not made for carnivory. Being at the Oregon Coast means eating a lot of fish; being with family means eating a lot; being not in Berkeley means eating food that is not almost entirely local organic vegetables. I think that when I eat a lot of not-vegetables I start to smell.

Tonight, however, we had yummy hippie food. Amaranth seed can be combined with two and a half parts water, mixed well, brought to boil covered, let simmer twenty minutes, stirred again, and eaten as gloop. It's good with salt, and probably better with fruit conserve as a hot breakfast cereal.

Cabbage is a fantastic winter vegetable, and should be available local-organic almost everywhere in the country. After removing the outer layers and washing and thinly slicing green cabbage, try sautéing in butter with a little dried thyme and a hint of oregano and salt, but go easy on the flavorings. Cabbage is in the same species as broccoli.

Turnips and rutabagas are not the same species, but the rutabaga should be treated as a large, starchy turnip. Washed, peeled, and sliced about a centimeter thick, they can be placed single-layer in a few millimeters of olive oil spread on a basting pan, turned so that both sides are coated, and baked in a preheated 400-degree oven, turning them once after 10-15 minutes and serving after another 15, when they are tender and caramelized on the bottom. Be sure to transfer first to a paper-towel-lined dish to absorb the excess oil.

Tofu stir-fry with peanuts, leek, mushroom, and green cabbage

Before starting this blog, I would post recipes on various other sites on the internet. In the interest of compiling all my food postings on one site, I reprint them here. Originally posted 13 January 2008.


If you get very good tofu, it's worth eating plain, with soy sauce. Alternately, marinate in soy sauce mixed with water, but be careful not to make it too salty, and add right at the end to a stir-fry, just long enough to heat up.

Before adding the tofu, heat an inch or two of vegetable oil in a wok, along with peppercorns, whole cloves, star anise, and one dried hot chili. When spices start to darken, remove from heat and strain out spices. Discard spices, and toast unsalted peanuts in the spiced oil until they start to darken. Remove peanuts and set aside, leaving oil in wok. Toss peanuts with a little salt and some aniseed.

Add to the wok washed and finely chopped leeks (onions, garlic, shallots, etc.), and cook a little bit. Then add sliced mushrooms and drain some soy sauce from the marinating tofu. Toss briefly, and cover with lid of wok to steam (this helps preserve the mushroom flavor). When mushrooms are cooked, remove from wok, leaving as much liquid as possible in wok.

Slice a green cabbage in half, remove core, and slice thin from pole to pole, and half the slices along the equator. Add to wok, cover, and steam to reduce. When cabbage is soft, add and (re)heat leeks and mushrooms and tofu, but not the tofu marinade. Cook off as much liquid as possible, and toss in peanuts at the end.