Pepper Vinegar

Recently,my brother reminded me of the pepper vinegar that was a staple in my house when I was growing up. At some point, my dad started growing the peppers and making his own. I hadn't seen either the prepared vinegar or even the peppers for some time. Not a trendy item in the city, I guess.

About 3 weeks ago, we found beautiful bunches of pepper plants that looked very much like the peppers in the vinegar bottle - or at least that's what I remembered them looking like.

We only bought one bunch, which was way too few to fill the nice bottle I wanted to use, so when I saw more this week, we bought three bunches. It takes quite a few bunches to fill a jar with peppers. Too bad you can't eat the leaves - or can you?

To make your own pepper vinegar, just get a jar full of nice clean peppers, add white vinegar to cover and wait 3 weeks. This is a staple for turnip, collard or mustard greens in the South. You can replace the vinegar several times when the vinegar starts to be used up.

I heated the vinegar before pouring over the peppers and keep my pepper vinegar in the fridge. I also added peppercorns - probably less than 2 tsp to this jar.

Tofu Carrot Miso Dressing

I found this recipe on the internet and snagged it. I did not add the salt and used red miso (with mackerel dashi - yum!) instead of yellow. It was tasty.

This recipe makes 1 1/2 cups - I made a double batch. If we can't eat it all, I'll bring it to work and share.

1/2 cup grated carrot

1/2 cup silken tofu

2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

1 tablespoon rice vinegar

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

2 tablespoons red miso (soybean paste)

2 teaspoons chopped peeled fresh ginger

1 teaspoon honey

1 garlic clove, crushed

Bitter Melon & Beet Greens

Let me state up front that most people will not like this. I would never offer this dish to anyone that has not already tried bitter melon because it is, well, bitter. Some people think bitter melon is an acquired taste, but I loved it the first time I tried it. I think young people do not like it, although my 3 year old granddaughter ate grilled bitter melon at a cookout. Granted, I had told her that 'you will not like this' and she may have been proving a point.


We picked up 2 bunches of baby beets with their greens and one bunch of bitter melon greens at the Noe Valley farmer's market last weekend. $ per bunch - what a deal.

We made a fine meal that afternoon with the beets, greens and a baked potato. I think potatoes go very well with bitter melon. We are making the same dish again this weekend - minus the baby beets. The beets were about twice the size this week, so we are reserving them for another meal.

First separate the little baby beets from the greens. I parboiled the beets and left the skins on since they were tiny.

Then cut up the beet green stems into 1.5 inch lengths and stir fry them with a little oil and LOT of garlic and ginger. I some of added the beet juice from boiling the beets and let it reduce a bit while the stems cooked.

The little beets were cut into halves or quarters, depending on the size and the beet greens were chopped into a manageable size. At the same time remove the bitter melon leaves from the primary stem. Do not keep the little tendrils, although they are pretty, they will never become tender enough to eat.



After the beets stems were mostly tender, add the beet greens and cook for a few minutes. You can season with soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, pepper and whatever you think would work. We added a bit of red wine in the batch today. Might work. Cover and steam.

Sweet Coconut Rice

This recipe came from a newsletter by yoga instructor Darshana Weill. We tried it for a Sunday breakfast and really enjoyed it. It is perfect for those cold, dreary weekend mornings when you really don't want to hurry out.

• 1 cup sweet brown rice
• ½ cup barley (or millet, oat groats or other crunchy grain
• 1 can coconut milk
• 1 ½ cups water (1 cup if using light coconut milk)
  

Rinse the rice (and possibly other grain). Place all ingredients in a saucepan.
Bring to a boil then lower to a simmer, cover and let cook for 55 minutes.



We sometimes add raisins & nuts at the end. Darshana suggested trying spices; mustard seeds, cumin seeds, fennel seeds, turmeric, curry, cumin (about 1 tsp of each), or a Bengal spice teabag. We haven't tried that yet.

Happy Girl Kitchen - Fermentation Workshop

We had a great time today going to a 'Fermentation Workshop' given by Happy Girl Kitchens. This was a wonderful way to spend a Saturday, and we learned how to make sauerkraut, kimchee and kombucha from our favorite source.

The workshop was given in Oakland in a beautiful old Victorian house.

It was a fun group and they fed us a yummy meal - featuring sauerkraut and kimchee. I'm still on the fence about kombucha, but Wikipedia says there is scientific evidence that drinking it might make your liver more efficient. I'm wondering if maybe the kombucha is just introducing more toxins into your system which could skew the results. Do you know any 100 year+ folks that regularly drink kombucha? I'll try it, but I'm still taking my vitamins.

Here are some pics from the workshop.






We brought home our jars of kimchee & sauerkraut to ferment. The house smells like kimchee, but it will be tasty!

North African Roasted Cauliflower

This recipe is derived from the recipe in one of my favorite cookbooks, the Moosewood Restaurant Daily Special. This is even better the next day. Here is the cauliflower we found today at the farmer's market.

Ingredients:

• 1 large cauliflower head, cut into florets
• olive oil to coat
• 6 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 tsp ground caraway sees
• 1 tsp ground coriander
• 1/2 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 450F.

Toss the cauliflower with oil & spices, place on a roasting pan. Bake until the cauliflower is tender and begins to turn golden brown, about 25-30 minutes, stirring occasionally.




The original recipe suggested topping with diced tomatoes and parsley. This is not necessary. just incorporate the cauliflower into your meal standalone or as part of a composed salad. Cilantro would be nice. We had this with leftover chickpea and leek soup.

Mid-Century Potato Salad

We made a salad plate with potato salad, poached salmon, for a mid-century potluck dinner. The recipe came from a 1957 USDA pamphlet Potatoes in Popular Ways. My parents didn't have cookbooks. Maybe people just knew how to cook back then, perhaps we were poor. The ingredients were arranged in typical 1950's style in lettuce cups with lots of parsley for garnish, but the potato salad was not chilled so it didn't mold into nice rounded shapes. It was still good enough that I might try it again. We replaced the canned salmon with the very trendy salmon from a local butcher shop.

Salmon & Potato Salad (1950's style)
1 lb salmon - poached w fennel seeds
Potato Salad (recipe below)
Lettuce cups (this would be iceberg lettuce)
3 tomatoes - sliced
1/2 cucumber, peels & sliced
1 lemon
curly leaf parsley

Arrange 4 molded hemispheres of potato salad on lettuce cups.
Decorate with the other stuff. The fussier, the better.

Potato Salad

4 medium potatoes
2 Tbs finely chopped scallions
1 cup hot dressing (see below)
2 eggs
2 Tbsp finely diced green pepper
1/4 cup finely diced celery
1/4 cup diced cucumbers

Hard boil 2 eggs. Peel & chop.
Peel, dice and cook potatoes. Drain and add onions.
While the potatoes are still hot, add hot dressing to potatoes and onions and stir gently. Allow to cool for 10-15 minutes.

Add remaining ingredients.
Chill for several hours - or consume warm. - up to you.

Dressing

2 Tbs flour
1 Tbs sugar
1 Tsp dry mustard
1 tsp salt
dash cayenne
1 cup milk
1 egg, slightly beaten

Prepare dressing:
Mix flour, sugar, mustard & salt in top of double boiler over heat.
Gradually add milk, stirring continuously untill thickened.
Continue to cook, stirring occasionally for 10 minutes.
Add a small amount of hot liquid to egg, then add egg into hot liquid.
Cook for another 3 minutes.

I recently made the potato salad for a 4th of July potluck, doubling the recipe, using red, un-peeled potatoes and substituting red bell peppers for green.  It fit nicely in grandma's old brown bowl with a sprinkling of paprika instead of the fussy presentation.

Christmas Limas & Fennel Salad

These are some leftovers from New Year's eve. It could have been a Christmas dish - so pretty and seasonally colored. Featured were the Christmas Limas from Rancho Gordo's Heirloom Beans. Next time we will double the quinoa and omit the honey, but other than that, the beans were lovely - cooked simply in a mirepoix of onion, celery and carrot. The Fennel salad was a simple mixture of thinly sliced fennel, celery and red onion; dressed with a lemon and walnut oil vinegrette. A nice complement in texture and flavors as well as color. I should have tried to do the presentation as a tai-ji diagram (yin yang).

There were no pictures, but we had roasted dungeness crabs for Christmas dinner. Jen and Mike were here to help demolish the 4 crabs we purchased from the San Francisco Fish Company. They were very easy to fix, tasty and messy. A nearly perfect meal.

Marinated Tofu

This is so simple - why I never tried this before is beyond me but here it is...

I found this recipe in the 'Moosewood Restaurant Daily Special' cookbook. This is a great cookbook IMHO. I will undoubtedly modify it each time, but you can get the basic idea. It is really good and really easy. My 2 favorite things.

1 cake firm tofu, pressed
3 T soy sauce
1T water
1T toasted sesame oil
1 T tomato paste/pesto
1 t rice vinegar
1 t honey
1/2 t anise (I used Chinese five spice)


Preheat oven to 375 F
Cut the tofu horizontally into 3 slices, then slice vertically into shapes you like.
Combine sauce ingredients and blend.
Arrange the tofu into a baking dish and coat both sides with the sauce. Bake uncovered for 35 minutes, turning the tofu every 10 minutes. When the tofu has a taut, seared appearance and the sauce is mostly evaporated, it is ready to serve.

This works well when you are also roasting vegetables. Just start the tofu 1st, then turn up the heat when the tofu is finished. Unfortunately, this does not result in the same chewy texture due to the steam from the vegetables.

Chickpea and Leek Soup

One of our favorite soups shamelessly copied from Jamie Oliver who copied it from a friend who found it in some undocumented recipe book. Very tasty indeed. This is nice with roasted cauliflower.

Yield: 6

This is a recipe that my Aussie friend Bender found in some old recipe book. It is quick and easy to make and it tastes fantastic. The chickpeas go really creamy and moreish and the leeks go silky and sweet. These are just two simple flavours, and even though I?m a bit of a fresh herbs boy, this lovely light soup is very tasty.

Ingredients:

Chickpea and Leek Soup

• 12 oz chickpeas, soaked overnight in water
• 1 medium potato, peeled
• 6 leek, finely, sliced
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• knob of butter
• 2 cloves of garlic, finely, sliced
• salt
• freshly ground pepper
• 850 ml chicken or vegetable stock
• 2 handful parmesan cheese, grated
• extra virgin olive oil

Directions:

Chickpea and Leek Soup

1. Rinse the soaked chickpeas, cover with water, and cook with the potato until tender.
2. Remove the outer skin of the leeks, slice lengthways from the root up, wash carefully and slice finely.
3. Warm a thick-bottomed pan, and add the tablespoon of oil and the knob of butter. Add the leeks and garhc to the pan, and sweat gently with a good pinch of salt until tender and sweet.
4. Add the drained chickpeas and potato and cook for 1 minute. Add about two-thirds of the stock and simmer for 15 minutes.
5. Purée half the soup in a food processor and leave the other half chunky this gives a lovely smooth comforting feel but also keeps a bit of texture.
6. Now add enough of the remaining stock to achieve the consistency you like. Check for seasoning, and add Parmesan to taste to round off the flavours.
7. This is classy enough for a starter, but I like it best for lunch in a big bowl with a good drizzle of my best peppery extra virgin olive oil, a grinding of black pepper and an extra sprinkling of Parmesan.© Jamie Oliver 2002
   http://www.jamieoliver.com