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.

Faking Pad Thai

So, I'm cooking--which means that I will continue to keep the stove engaged until I have used up all the side product I have created. If you say, huh? then know that if something I have cooked produces something that would usually be disposed--for instance, the water you boiled your pasta in--I will try to use it, until I reach the point where I have so much prepared food that it's past my capacity to eat it before it goes bad. Then such things get frozen, composted, or used to water my plants.

Well, I had some leftover pasta water, and I did not want to pitch it. Oil, salt, water, starch: that's a nice start for a soup.

Which would be why I threw pad thai-style rice noodles in it. Brain cramp!

So this is just a quick note to myself to list what I threw into the pot to make something I would enjoy. I won't remember this, otherwise.

Rice noodles, tossed in hot water and allowed to soften to al dente. Don't actually cook them, let the water do its work.

Stir-fry kale, collards, frozen peas, and a sliced fresh jalapeno in olive oil.

Add an egg, scrambled, and mix it into the stir fry.

Toss in the al-dente noodles.

Add Worcestershire and soy sauce--I have lots of different soy sauces, so for my future reference, I used the one that calls itself Pearl River Bridge Lite Soy Sauce, Reduced Sodium.

Toss.

Enjoy.

Sea Monster Stew

Never mind the crappy picture that looks more like Nessie in a loch of tomato sauce, it was a tasty mctasty dish and Michael asked me to write the recipe down so he could have it again. Unfortunately, this was the only picture I got.

Stuffed peppers that Michael liked.

Based on the recipe here.

3 large green bell peppers
1 lb ground turkey
2-3 large, fresh tomatoes
salt, pepper, smoked paprika to taste.
water as needed
1/4 cup rhubarb chutney
1-2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
1/2 to 2 cups cooked rice (more rice if you are filling more peppers)
Shredded cheese (colby, cheddar)
2-3 cups spaghetti sauce.

cut the tops off the green peppers and clean out seeds, set aside.

Brown the turkey in a sauce pan. Chop the tomatoes. toss tomatoes, spices, water in with the turkey and boil down until tomatoes are cooked and water mostly gone. Add chutney, Worcestershire sauce. mix, adjust any spices if needed. Add rice. Stuff the peppers and place in baking dish. Fill tops with shredded cheese. Thin spaghetti sauce to gravy consistency and pour over peppers and in pan. Bake at 375 until peppers are soft--we prefer at "al dente."


For myself, I'd sub quorn or lentils. Maybe tempeh.

Howdy!

I decided to follow eRecipecards because I would like to see how he does with his "52 Ways to use a rotisserie chicken" project. I have a similar frugal struggle going on, but it's more like "Ways to use EVERY LAST BIT of what you bought."

So, when I cook greens, I drag out an empty peanut container, and pour the potlikker into it. Why? Because empty peanut jars are usually only empty of large piece of peanuts. There is usually a bit of salt and a palmful of small peanut pieces, which, with the potlikker, makes a nice base for cooking rice or other grains. You get a little salt for flavoring, you get a little peanut for flavoring, and you capture all the vitamins and goodies from the greens.

Canned veggies or sea creatures? Pour that canning broth into a jar and save it, and yay, you've got the salt and flavoring base for a pot of beans.

I have not had to buy stock for a while. That is the nature of my project: all the ways the bits left behind can be made to serve. Or made, to be served up. ;-)

Other odd frugal things: replant the root base of onions and leeks into your garden, and ta-da, you get more onions and leeks. I anticipate a greatly reduced need to buy onions and leeks. :-)

But that isn't strictly cooking, so I will move away from that to a squash dish I made the other day:




SPICED ZUKES

1. Chop about 4 cups of fresh zucchini. Sauté in about 2-4 tablespoons of olive oil.
2. When the zucchini has begun to soften, add two chopped tomatoes, lightly sauté, and then add enough water to lightly simmer--1/4 to 1/2 a cup.
3. Add 1 tablespoon of Auntie Arwen's Sheik of the Desert Ras el Hanout.
4. Cover and let simmer until sauce is reduced and zucchini is cooked through to your liking.

Simple. Good.

Rhubarb Chutney

What the hell is this, you might ask?

I'll tell you what it is, it's goddam deliciousness in a jar, that's what it is.

I've harvested the rhubarb and have been wanting to try a recipe for "rhubarb catsup" for some time. Since I have more than enough on hand to make several different things, I tried it. The original is here. My changes are below.

4 cups diced fresh rhubarb
1 large onions, chopped
1 cup white vinegar
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
3/4 cup sugar
1 (28 ounce) can crushed tomatoes, undrained
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon Coleman's ground mustard
1/8 teaspoon ground allspice
1/4 teaspoon ground coriander
1/4 teaspoon ground cardamon
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon Auntie Arwen's Dynamite for the Soul hot pepper flakes
1 bay leaf, crumbled as finely as possible.

Throw it all in a crock pot. Let it simmer until the rhubarb has disintegrated and the liquid has cooked off to a point just a bit thinner than you like your chutney. This will thicken as it cools. This quantity makes about 5 cups, depending on how much you boil off.

I let mine cook overnight.

It's spicy and bar-be-cue-y. I told Michael it was chutney because I was not sure he would try it if I called it "catsup." Besides, It's chunky. I can't be bothered with mashing the chunks away. Michael loved it.

I told him what it was called. Michael tasted it again and said, "Ketchup? No way, this is a chutney, you called it right, sweetie."

Ah, what a lovely al freco dining experience.

Chitown Taters Soup

Back from vacation and slowly moving into the cooking habit.

This was an accident that made Michael say, "What is this? This is delicious!"

I thought I'd better write it down.

Base:

leftover noodle broth--Michael had prepared himself some egg noddles, and buttered and salted the cooking water--totaled about 6-8 cups. There appeared to be about two tablespoons of butter in the water. It leaves a pleasant flavor and so I added the following:

2 large carrots, sliced
4 large potatoes, chunked, skin on

Bring to a boil, and then simmer until vegetables are almost done. Add

2 onions, peeled and chunked

Simmer until onions are soft. Add

1 cup fat free sour cream or sour cream substitute
1 tablespoon of Penzey's Chicago Steakhouse blend.

Blend in. Now, mix

1-2 tablespoons cornstarch
1/4 cup water

until lump free in a separate bowl, and stir in to simmering soup to thicken. Taste. You may need to add a little more of the Steakhouse blend, and a little more salt at this point--adjust according to your taste.

This produces a soup that has a touch of smokiness and a touch of pepper. Michael ate 3 bowls. I ended up adding about .5 tablespoon of the Steakhouse seasoning and about .5 t of salt after the cornstarch; the addition of the cornstarch does reduce the strength of the spices, and as I love spicy food, I added more of the blend and only a touch more salt, as I tend to not like things with much more than a hint of salt.