Cream of cauliflower soup with homemade baguette

B made this wonderful dinner for us and a friend of ours. He described the soup as "cream of everything in the fridge": after sauteing and boiling cauliflower, leeks, and celery, he blended the soup with the immersion blender. The cauliflower gets very creamy — no dairy necessary. We garnished the soup with parsley and broccoli flowers from the garden.

Sauteed veggies

This was an everything-in-the-fridge dinner. In butter we sauteed together spring onions, garlic, cauliflower, asparagus, carrots, mushrooms, beans, and fresh parsley. Go cook on low, and while there is liquid in the bottom of the pan cover to steam the cauliflower.

Curried halibut and cauliflower

We cooked both the halibut (broiled) and the cauliflower (stir-fried in the wok) in the same spices: minced garlic, minced ginger root, and minced turmeric root. Using fresh spices is wonderful, and the turmeric turns everything a beautiful yellow (and provides a welcome flavor compliment to the mild heat from the garlic and ginger).

Meals before Christmas

Now the last of January, it seems appropriate somehow that I recap the meals. Let's then begin with the meals from around Christmas.

On Dec. 21, we had broccoli and purple cauliflower, wild rice, and salmon:





On Dec. 22, my family and I made pot stickers:



Christmas was a goose:



And Boxing Day was a seafood bisque. Begin by boiling crab shells (leftover from Christmas Eve), with some old carrots, celery, and onions, and dried peppercorn and bay leaf. Strain them, and bring the broth back to a simmer. Sauté a mirepoix of carrots, celery, and onion in butter, along with some clams (scrub them first), which will steam open and release their liquids. Remove from heat, and pick out the clams; make your little sister take the clam meat from the shells. Add the veggies to the crab broth, and blend until smooth with your brand new immersion blender that you received for Christmas. Add the clam meat, some leftover salmon, and the meat from the half-crab that you saved. Bring to a boil, stir in some heavy cream, correct the salt, and add just a little curry powder. Serve with parsley and a good bread.

Broiled tuna and French vetegable sauté

Heat butter on low with a little salt. Add in order: garlic, sliced thin; carrots, cut on the diagonal; tokyo turnip roots, quartered; cauliflower, keeping the small heads in tact; the greens, shredded; a splash of white wine. While cooking, alternate between sautéing and steaming covered — the vegetables should cook on low and end up brilliantly colored. Meanwhile, butter the bottom part of a broiling pan; rub tuna with salt and broil 10-15 minutes in the buttered pan. Serve with a pinot noir.

Old photos

We're visiting my parents; the meals have been great, but we haven't been taking pictures. Their CSA box (from the excellent Wintergreen Farm) supplied them with many tomatoes — we've had ratatouille and salad caprese — and the sea is plentiful — sole tonight, tuna a few days ago.

But since I don't have much to report from the last few days, I'll post some old photos:

February 13: Pizza with pesto and roasted potatoes



February 17: Pasta with sun-dried tomatoes, leeks, and spinach



February 21: Potato-wrapped fish with kale and cauliflower

23 November 2008

Garlic mashed potatoes, Lentils, and Steamed broccoli and cauliflower with vegetable broth

A few nights ago, we had an impromptu dinner party here. I like those: they mean I get to show off my cooking skills. Try to cook everything at the same time.

Dice a green onion (saving outer layer for soup stock) and a small head of fennel (saving greens for stock), and sauté in olive oil, with some salt. Add and continue to sauté chopped (washed, but no need to peel) tokyo turnip roots. Add two cups green lentils, two cups veggie stock, and two cups water. Bring to boil, reduce to simmer, and cover. Wash and chop a few carrots (saving greens, head, and tail, and skins if they need peeling, for stock, of course), and add to the lentils. Wash and chop a head of yellow chard, and stir into lentils five minutes before serving.

Meanwhile, wash and dice (but do not peel) a couple pounds of blue potatoes. Cover with salted water, bring to boil, and simmer covered at least ten minutes. Meanwhile, dice a stalk of green garlic, and sauté in olive oil with some ground black pepper. When potatoes are done, drain in a sieve, return to pan with garlic oil, and mash, adding a tablespoon or two of butter. Blue potatoes have a particularly good taste, but tend to be very dry when mashing, so they need lots of butter (as opposed to, say, german butterballs, which are very moist). They will unfortunately lose much of their color to a lovely grey.

Meanwhile, pick out small heads of purple cauliflower and romanesco broccoli. Slice carefully in quarters or halves from tip to stem, retaining the leaves. Expect one half or quarter of broccoli and one of cauliflower per person. Layer in the steamer, with the purple cauliflower on the bottom (otherwise the purple will drip onto the lightly green broccoli). Steam until tender, and remove carefully, arranging alternating in a nice bowl. Pour over them half a cup of heated vegetable broth.

Seitan sausage with a side of mashed cauliflower

Kate Harding at Shapely Prose has been writing about intuitive eating. As a dancer, I know how important it is to listen to one's body. I trust my body completely. Recently, for instance, I've been desiring iron-rich foods — broccoli, raisins, and, most strangely for me, sausage. It's lambing season, you see: the parents of one of my friends have a farm in the area where they raise sheep, and are harvesting the boys right now (the girls are kept for breeding and wool). I might ask her for some meat, but I don't know that I could bring myself to eat it without visiting her farm and meeting the lambs first.

In the mean time, I will soak some white beans and make something with olive oil and lemon juice (iron from vegetables is not absorbed well except in the presence of vitamin C, although broccoli, spinach, etc., are high in both). And, to satisfy my sausage craving, I made seitan tonight.

This is a foolproof recipe form the Post-Punk Kitchen, although I've varied it slightly.

Preheat oven 325°F. In a large bowl or the bowl of the standing mixer, whisk together dry ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cup vital wheat gluten
• 1/4 cup nutritional yeast
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 tsp fine-ground black pepper
• 2 tsp paprika
• 1/4 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp ground cumin (I only had whole, so ground mine in the mortar and pestle)
• 1/8 tsp cayanne (I had large red pepper flakes, ground in the mortar and pestle)
• 1/8 tsp dried oregano, ground in mortar and pestle
• 1/8 tsp garlic salt
• (We are out of allspice, but PPK suggests 1/8 tsp)

In a smaller bowl, whisk well the wet ingredients:

• 3/4 cup cold water
• 1 ice-cube (2 Tbsp) of frozen home-made vegetable broth
• 4 Tbsp tomato paste
• 1 Tbsp soy sauce
• 2 Tbsp olive oil

Add the wet ingredients to the dry, and knead well. Form the brains into a log, and wrap tightly in foil, twisting ends. Bake 75 minutes (325°F) and enjoy.

We also had sautéed greens — collards (de-stemmed), cauliflower leaves, and some very old rocket (arugula), chopped into couple one-inch pieces, and placed in olive oil that has been heated in the wok with garlic salt, oregano, and fresh-ground black pepper, and stirred until greens have been coated and turned a consistently bright green.

The cauliflower florets and peeled stems were used in a mashed cauliflower dish. Boil cauliflower for at least ten minutes, until a fork pierces the cauliflower easily. Drain in a sieve or colander, and mash in the standing mixer with the paddle blade on medium-high. While the blade is running, add a touch of good olive oil, a handful of salt, and a few turns of fine-ground fresh black pepper. Cauliflower prepared this way is extremely creamy and sweet, but has no butter added; it's a very good vegan side-dish.