Curry Cocozelle, Baharat Beans, and Georgia Bibimbap

Food in jars!

 

That's right. I'm sick. But I still have to eat, so the super easy cookery came out yesterday and this is what I named the dishes at the end of the day.

Oh, man, who am I kidding? I'm always a super easy cook. It only has to be good, it does not have to be extravagant, right?

And because I am under the weather, and because I cook to taste most of the time, these recipes have only approximations. Just like Medieval cookery.  Just like the cooking you've learned from your nana.

That's me, everyone's nana.

Curried cocozelle

Chop a large onion and three-4 large, ripe beefsteak tomatoes . Peel, deseed, & chop a giant  cocozelle.   Smaller cocozelle can be used whole; chop 4-6 small ones--enough to make 4 cups of prepared squash .

Fry the onions in some olive oil. Add the tomatoes and enough water to make a broth— about ½ cup to 2 cups. Seethe the onions and tomatoes for 5 minutes over medium fire, then add the prepared cocozelle. Cover and let the mixture cook until the squash is just a little harder than you like. Add curry powder to taste. Let cook a few minutes more until squash is done and serve.

 

The center and the right to jar above contain this soup . It's a bright orange not because of the  turmeric  in the curry powder, but because of the tomato mixture I used. One of the joys of using your homegrown tomatoes is that you get to experience a wide variety of tomato tastes and colors! So yesterday I used an Aunt Ruby German Green tomato, a Crismon Cushion tomato, and two Amana Orange tomatoes. It's definitely a tomato flavor, without being the typical red sauce you get from the store.  Also, the curry mixture I used was Capricorn Moon from Auntie Arwen.

 

 

Pinto Beans in their own Bayat Baharat gravy

 

Take dried pinto beans and boil them in enough  vegetable stock (or water, or combination of both) to cook them to the al dente stage.  Add salt, pepper, and continue to cook until the beans are quite soft and beginning to break down into the cooking liquid. Add a Baharat powder to taste  and cook down until the bean broth is the consistency of gravy.

 

 

I used Arwen's Ibraham's Mom's Bayat Baharat blend. This blend has a strong cinnamon component, which is very good with cooked grains or injera.  It appears in the picture above in the smaller jars.

Georgia Bibimbap

Heat olive oil in a wok. Chop a large onion.  Chop green tomatoes, as many as you like. sauté the onions and the green tomatoes in olive oil; cook until the tomatoes are soft enough to eat.  Add  soy sauce as needed, a tablespoon of nutritional yeast, and mix. Set aside. Scramble an egg (or otherwise prepare an alternative protein). Set aside. Place cooked rice (preferable a day old, but just made is fine) in a bowl. Arrange the egg, the green tomato mixture, and some collard kraut on top of the rice. Serve with more soy sauce and hot pepper sauce.

Bibimbap is a classic Korean dish. I have been making all kinds of  versions of bibimbap  since the early 80's, something I learned to do while in the Army. This version, however, features items reminiscent of classic Southern cooking and a homemade kraut made with Georgia collards .  When you get your bowl of rice covered  with vegetables and proteins, you mix it all together.  It ends up looking pretty much like fried rice.

 Other cooking notes

 I made a batch of rhubarb chutney with the last of this year's rhubarb. this year, instead of using canned tomatoes, I used tomatoes from my garden. I used  2 fresh fish peppers from my garden instead of the pepper flakes, and I used coriander seed from my garden. Fish peppers? Strike me as hotter than jalapeno but not as hot as habanero. The chutney is a little spicier this year because of it. And coriander seeds, dried in your garden  instead of out of the jar that's been sitting in a spice warehouse for a couple of year, are uber dandy. I actually went to the trouble of puréeing the end product of this year, as I intend to give a few jars away, and I don't want people to be reluctant to try it because it's chunky.

I've canned tomato sauce this year, much more than I did last year .

I canned strawberry jam this year, and homemade strawberry jam is much better tasting than commercially produced.  However, its shelf life, once opened, is also a lot shorter. Next year, I can half- and quarter pints, not pint jars.

I have resorted to drying turnip greens for winter use this year, as my freezers are now full. For this same reason, I expect I will be making kale kraut and am planning to try fermented green tomatoes.

Oh, and tempeh scramble! Whee, my new favorite breakfast. Jodi turned me on to making my own tempeh, which is much nicer than store boughten, and if I felt well enough to cook it today, I'd take a picture of that and talk about that, too. But I don't. So I won't.

Summer stuff in my Tsardust Fried Rice.

I made a variation on the Tsardust theme, and Michael mentioned it especially tonight. "Did you write that down?" he asked, and so here I am.

Olive oil to saute a poblano pepper, chopped. When the pepper is al dente, toss in some chopped fresh cabbage, a 1/2 cup of drained collard kraut, and a cup of cooked dandelion greens. When heated through, add 2 cups of cooked rice (I had leftover jasmine rice, this time) and a quarter to a half cup of whole raw almonds. Saute this mixture a bit. Throw in a tablespoon of Magi seasoning, a tablespoon of nutritional yeast, and a heaping teaspoon of Tsardust Memories.

I was particularly pleased that he liked this, because it contains dandelion greens and collard kraut. This batch of collard kraut is a little too salty-fermenty for most people straight out of the jar, but I have found that when drained and tossed into a dish, no one realizes that it's a home ferment. Awesome.

I used the recipe here to make the kraut, sort of. What actually happened is that I used leftover brine from making watermelon pickles and a tablespoon of sugar, so this is probably why it is a little salty. The brine is way more than the teaspoon of salt the original recipe calls for.

For my reference, in case the original site ever goes away, here is the original recipe, as referenced above:

Collards, desired amount. Cut real fine, pack in quart jars, add 1 tsp. salt, 1 tsp. sugar in each jar. Pour boiling water in each jar. Run knife on each side in jar to get the air bubbles out. Make sure the jar is full of water; seal and it should be ready in 2 weeks.

I let it ferment until the collard kraut settled down to clear again (while fermenting, the liquid gets cloudy) and then put it in the fridge to stop the ferment.

Gawrsh, it makes me happy to eat my yard on such a snowy day.