Rainbow Bread Pudding (almost)

The other day, over at sweet salty, Kate said I was all rainbowy. Well, not me exactly, but my house. And, I am pretty sure she was referring to what we eat and not how we decorate. At least I hope that is what she was saying. 

Well, just as she was saying that, I went and posted this. Then I read what she said and felt all embarrassed and immediately wanted to post something cleaner and brighter, more orange and green, good for the body as well as the stuck in the depths of February soul.

Problem was, we were in no fit state for contact with the general public. We were at the stage of the cold when trying to wipe away the green nasal discharge (am I really talking about this in a post about food? Yes, but I am going to blame it on the fever.) creates shrieking one could easily associate with murder by chainsaw. That and the fact that I could not bring myself to put pants, and by pants I mean trousers, on let alone shoes, jacket, find the car keys (yes, I know the supermarket in less than a block away), load two children into their car seats, etc, etc. This meant that we were cooking with what we had.

We get squash in our CSA, and while I don’t dislike the lovely little orbs, I don’t love them either. It takes a bit of motivation for me to get excited about cooking them up into something good. Luckily, Kate had asked for orange, and since I had a few of these little pumpkin cousins sitting around here, I could do orange.

I could do green, well I guess it is greeny white but greenish anyway. I had some leeks and green onions. I had a slightly stale loaf of bread that hadn’t become the sandwiches it was meant to because preschool and picnics had been called off. While the bread is not very rainbowy, it would have to do for all of the reasons mentioned above.

A one dish, casserole kind of supper was pretty appealing. I couldn’t think to manage getting more than one thing on the table at the same time. Throwing all of my found, and by found I mean rescued from the depths of the refrigerator, ingredients together seemed like the best thing to do. Adding eggs and cheese, I had a Kabocha and Leek Bread Pudding, fodder for the Februariest of souls.

The kabocha can be replaced by any squash you like or have to hand. I chose this one from our ever-amassing collection because it is so niftily neat and easy to peel. I used some myzithra cheese here but, on a higher energy day, when I felt like leaving the house to get some, I may just have chucked it full of little blobs of goat cheese. You could easily substitute some feta as well.

All of this to say that despite feeling like a small person is sanding away at the inside of my throat, I am now challenged to be as colourful as I can be, in the kitchen anyway. So, thank you Kate for the kick in the pants. Unless, of course, you really were speaking of our decorating aesthetic. In which case, please disregard the above.

Kabocha and Leek Bread Pudding (this should handily feed 8)

4 cups peeled, seeded and cubed squash

2 teaspoons olive oil

3 large leeks washed and sliced (about 2 cups)

1 large onion chopped

3 cloves garlic

2 teaspoons olive oil

5 cups cubed french bread (a round boule, a couple of days old is perfect)

4 green onions chopped

1 cup cream

1 1/2 cup milk

6 eggs

1/2 cup myzithra cheese grated

1/2 teaspoon salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste

Butter a large baking dish.

Preheat oven to 350ºF.

Sauté the squash in the first two teaspoons of olive oil over low heat until it is tender. It is packed full of natural sugars, so make sure it doesn’t burn. Browned is okay, burnt is not. Remove from heat.

Sauté the leeks, onions and garlic in the second two teaspoons of olive oil until soft. Remove from heat.

In a mixing bowl, whisk together the cream, milk, eggs and salt and pepper.

In the baking dish, mix together the bread, squash, leek mixture, green onions, cheese and egg mixture. Press the bread down a bit to make sure everything is soaked with the egg mixture.

Bake for 40 minutes.

Enjoy with some sautéed greens or salad or, if you must, some bacon.

Grapefruit Guacamole

We got some avocados the other day. Despite being local, they were hard as hard things. I explained to Poppy, our resident guacamole La Jefa, that there would be no guacamole for a couple of days because of the state of the avocados. She, of course, forgot that somewhere in the midst of asking the next eighteen rapid fire questions in our daily never-stopping, seven-to-seven barrage of questions, forty-two minute songs and general, but demanding response, chit chat and she was was pissed when we got home and she couldn’t make guacamole.

Everybody had posted this, and we had also bought some grapefruits, so I suggested that we make our take on that but no, ‘if I can’t make guacamole I don’t want to make anything at all,' was shrieked while stomping up the stairs and threatening to never come out of her room. Yah, because that would teach Mommy a thing or two about making sure the frickin’ avocados are ripe, wouldn’t it? 

Our avocados sat ripening for a very long three days and our grapefruits sat near them, waiting for their time and purpose.

The avocados ripened and we still hadn’t used up the grapefruit and we had some tortilla chips waiting for some guacamole to dip themselves into. 

I had a hankering for something citrusy and I remembered an old school little grapefruit and avocado salad number from somewhere. It has been done but it sure was good. 

After no small amount of negotiation with La Jefa, a promise of three toppings on a chocolate frozen yogurt and three chapters of Ramona Quimby, Age 8 at bedtime bought me permission to guide and assist her in making a sunny tasting grapefruit guacamole.

The chief left this a little chunky and we added lots of the grapefruit juice which made it pretty juicy. I would be inclined to leave some out but she was enjoying squeezing that poor grapefruit so much, I just left her to it. It is so simple it could probably almost make itself and there are only four ingredients.

It was 80ºF that day, that’s around 27ºC, so it was perfect for a no-cook lunch. The ingredients are all pretty local to us as well, I know that isn’t the case for those enjoying a Northern January, believe it or not I am finding myself a little jealous of the snow. You can save this up for a grey day splurge. Add a margarita or two and you won’t be able to tell where you are.

And yes, when La Jefa wants to make guacamole and we can't find the stool, I let her perch on the counter top. You've got to pick your battles.

Grapefruit Guacamole

2 avocados peeled and sliced

1 pink grapefruit peeled and segmented and juice squeezed out of what remains

1/4 cup finely chopped red onion

1/2 cup chopped coriander

Salt and fresh ground black pepper

Mix all the ingredients together and season to taste.

Eat with tortilla chips, on top of fish or chicken or on its own.

Good Luck Lentils

It’s the New Year. I was thinking all about how well it was going. There were lots of happy, uplifting stories like this and this and this. I was smiling.

Then this happened, which infuriated me in the it is easier to buy a gun and ammunition than it is to buy beer kind of way. Later on, I watched this and I thought the world is really, seriously going to hell in a hand basket and what happened to Happy New Year and all that.

It is a few days, alright nine or so, past New Year’s Day but I turned the clock back at our house and we are going to eat lentils, lots of them.

Italians eat lentils on New Year’s day and in the new year. They eat them in hopes of money and good fortune. And let’s face it, the money sure would be nice but the good fortune part? It’s essential.

Good Luck Lentils with Fennel and Chard

1 large onion, finely chopped

5 large cloves garlic minced

Fennel - I had five sweet little bulbs - you should have about 1 cup chopped stalks and 1 cup julienned bulbs

1 cup diced carrots

1 bunch chard chopped

1 cup lentils- I used De Puy but you can use brown or green. I wouldn't use red though. I was going to use black beluga lentils which are awfully pretty but not always to hand.

3 tablespoons olive oil

3 cups stock (chicken or vegetable)

1 cup halved cherry or grape tomatoes (or diced tomato)

Few sprigs fresh thyme

Salt and fresh ground black pepper

Parmeggiano-reggiano shaved

In a large pot, sauté the onions, garlic, carrots and chopped fennel stocks with the olive oil until the onions are translucent. Stir in the lentils and the thyme.

Add the stock and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer, uncovered, for about 20 minutes, until the lentils are almost tender.

Add the chard and the julienned fennel bulb. Cover and simmer for five minutes. Add the tomato and simmer for another three minutes. Season with salt and pepper.

Serve in bowls with a little drizzle of nice olive oil, some fennel fronds and some shaved parmeggiano. A nice chunk of crusty bread goes well here too.

Happy New Year - again!

Man Bread

A while back we were passing through our local market one Sunday morning, trying desperately not to eat everything in sight. There was a woman promoting her new book and handing out recipe cards, which Poppy needed to have.

The card got filed in with the shopping. When we got home it got removed from the market bag, a little damp from something or other. I put the card in a catch everything basket on the counter. It stayed there for a couple weeks. Then, in a flurry of tidying up, it got put in a drawer.

I remembered the card and started a little search for it which turned into a frustrating and exhaustive tidy up and sort out of the drawer. There it was, finally, nestled between some cookie cutters and cupcake wrappers right up against the last six weeks worth of supermarket receipts and an empty package of throat lozenges.

It was a recipe aimed at men to promote a book aimed at men, insinuating that men need to eat different things than women, or at least cook different things. I am not sure. Regardless, it looked like this recipe could turn out well so Tilly and I made it.

The whole time, I thought about the man recipe thing and my thoughts turned to this. I realized that, at our house, the man drawer is mine. It is in the kitchen, it isn’t full of lightbulbs and batteries. It is full of piping tips that haven’t made it back into the case, clips and closures, thread and pens, chokey bits of toy hastily hidden from a curious baby and lots of random notes, recipes and clippings and it is full to spilling out. The kind of spilling out that takes a hip to shut it while you smooth the top layer down while carefully trying to extract your hands before you scrape your knuckles.

The man area at our house is very well ordered. Sure, there are some useless bits of junk and some empty wrappers but it is all tucked away in a quite carefully organised corner of the basement, so far from the bottom of the stairs that I only venture down there in the direst of cases. Safe from the clutter and mess of the rest of the house. A dark and peaceful little haven.

So, I did what I do and we made this man recipe an little trickier, if sautéing onions is tricky. And, I lightened it up using a lighter beer than it called for - the original called for a stout and I used Stone Levitation Ale, a hoppy little local number. I foofooed it up with the tiniest bit of oregano, dried because I can’t stomach fresh in any quantity. If my children weren’t eating it, I would have chucked it full of something spicy too.

The result was a loaf worth accompanying even the ladiest of winter pots. It is quick enough to make after a day out to go with whatever has been in your slow cooker all day. It is tasty enough to want to make more than once. It is really gorgeous toasted and would be pretty damn fine with some eggs and mushrooms.

Technically, it isn’t Man Bread, it is Anybody Bread. Unfortunately, this means you’ll have more competition getting a slice.

Cheddar Onion Beer Bread adapted from a recipe by Susan C. Russo

3 cups all purpose flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 tablespoons sugar

1 cup grated cheddar cheese, I used a 2 year old number

1 cup sautéed onions, cooled

A few grinds of fresh ground black pepper

1/4 teaspoon dried oregano

12 ounce (350 mL) flavourful ale of your choice

Preheat oven to 400ºF. Butter an 8-inch x 4-inch loaf pan.

Mix dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Stir in cheese. Stir in onions.

Pour beer in and mix all ingredients until combined.

Pour into prepared tin.

Bake for around 40 minutes. When a tester comes out clean, it is done.

Cool for a few minutes before slicing.

Enjoy.

Eat Your Greens

There are lots of greens in our CSA lately. Luckily, Poppy shares my love of them so with two avid eaters, one reluctant partaker and one hysterically unimpressed refuser, we manage to get through our allotment each week. Along with a big bunch of kale, dandelion or spinach and the huge bunches of greens on top of the beets and turnips, we have been getting a big bag of ‘braising mix’ for the last few weeks. I usually whizz it up into undetectable pieces and throw it into just about everything. You see, as soon as the green bits get too big everything in the mouth is spat out in a big head shaking, literally tongue wiping, dining room spraying mess. Until now, because of this, we haven’t been able to enjoy our greens as they should be. Or, at least as I have decided they will be.

The braising mix would not make its way into the food processor today. The greens would be supper.

I had a little look around for the right way to cook the greens, which were a mix of collard, mustard, spinach, kale and turnip greens, by looking up recipes for collard greens mainly. I was surprised by how long they all told me to cook them for. I was also dismayed that most recipes called for bacon fat or ham hock baths and various other cured pork remnants. I am not opposed to said pork remnants but after the consumption of the last two weeks I was looking for something a little less hearty. So, I strayed from the right way, favouring my way.

Years ago, that makes me sound so old, we served creamed spinach with raisins and pine nuts at Lolita’s Lust. It was pretty damn tasty. Our braising mix had spinach in it, the rest was green, this was where I would start.

The resulting bowl of greens probably took a little more chewing than your average Southern greens eater would approve of but delicious nonetheless. I would happily sit down to eat a bowl of these with nothing else but the rest of my family, save for Tilly who, after one bite, spat, wiped her tongue and pushed her plate away, had them with the Man Bread I made today, post to follow.

The raisins add a little chewy sweetness to the slightly bitter green while the almonds give a toasty crunch. Onions and garlic sweeten and deepen a tiny bit of cream that ties all the flavours together without them seeming too rich.

This couldn’t be much simpler and can be made with whatever type of greens you have to hand, just adjust the cooking time accordingly. Spinach will take less time, a greater proportion of collard greens will take more. How long you cook them also depends on how soft you like them to be. I cooked the mix, covered, for twenty minutes and a further 7-10 minutes to reduce the liquid before I added the cream.

If you do use spinach alone, you may want to use two pounds instead of one as it will cook down quite a bit more than the others do.

Braised Greens with Raisins and Almonds

1 medium onion diced

3 large cloves garlic minced

2 tablespoons butter

1 cup stock - vegetable or chicken

1 pound mixed greens, cleaned and chopped into strips

1/3 cup raisins

1/3 cup heavy cream

1/3 cup toasted slivered almonds

Salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste

Melt butter in a pot large enough to hold the greens. Add the onion and garlic and sauté until translucent. Add the stock and bring to a boil. 

Add the greens. Reduce the heat and cover. Simmer until the greens are tender. Remove the cover and reduce the coking liquid until it is almost dry. 

Add the raisins and cream. Bring to the boil and reduce just until it coats the greens. 

Add the almonds.

Season with salt and pepper and eat.

Brussels Sprouts with Garlic, Lemon and Poppy Seeds - Just in Time for Thanksgiving # 2

As far as children’s eating preferences go, I know I am pretty blessed. Poppy had a wee tantrum at Whole Foods the other day because I wouldn’t let her get a salad to eat in the car on the way home. It’s not that I am depriving my child, I was thinking of the brand new, until we got our greasy and sticky little mitts on it, rental car.

It was her who decided that we should have brussels sprouts, one of her favourites, for supper the other day. When asked what she would like to have with her father’s most dreaded vegetable, she replied, ‘Just a glass of milk.’

I chose to provide some protein and starch with the sprouts, purely as a marriage preservation technique, but that is beside the point. It is about the sprouts.

Way back when, we used to do rapini with garlic, lemon and toasted sesame at Lolita’s Lust, which was not a brothel but a restaurant where I used to work. As the girls and I strolled, read: stop-started in three foot intervals while one child or another tried to leap out of the shopping trolley at one shiny package or another while I pleaded still-sitting and inside voices, through the supermarket aisle, I thought that such treatment would suit the much maligned sprout.

Poppy informed me that Hazel, our imaginary sister, didn’t like sesame seeds, she only likes poppy seeds narcissistically enough. So we shifted from thoughts of toasty, nutty sesame to the prettier and stick-in-your-teethier poppy seed. Don’t think I don’t like poppy seeds, I do. I just think they are at their best mixed with lots of sugar and dairy and baked into something gooey and sweet, think rugelach, lemon poppy seed cake with cream cheese frosting and poppy seed danish. You get the gist.

Well, it is lucky that Hazel happened to join us for that trip to the supermarket, she has been using that time to surf lately, because she hit it right on and the poppy seeds are perfect here. 

No longer is there any excuse for stinky, overcooked lumps of mushy grey green brussels sprout. These are delicious. Stephen even said they were good. This, from a man who for the last forty years has sulkily eaten one brussels sprout each Christmas because he was made to.

Shredded Brussels Sprouts with Garlic, Lemon and Poppy Seeds

28 large brussels sprouts shredded, about 5 cups shredded, or in the absence of a food processor, thinly sliced

3 cloves (about 1 tablespoon) garlic minced

2 tablespoons lemon juice

1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil

1/4 cup stock (chicken or vegetable) or water

1 tablespoon poppy seeds

Salt and pepper to taste

In a large pan, over medium high heat, heat the oil.

Add the garlic and sauté for a few seconds. 

Add the sprouts and toss with the oil, then add the stock or water. Continue cooking, tossing every twenty seconds or so, until the sprouts become bright green and start to become tender.

Add the lemon juice and poppy seeds, toss and remove from heat. 

Season with salt and pepper.

Enjoy.

Pasta della California

Yep, I am a total geek. Call me corny, but I couldn’t resist.  And, to be fair, the recipe title flashed in my head while ogling some local organic avocados at the market. It had to be done.

This comes, originally, from the book Veganomicon by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero. I know, my cookbook collection is nothing if not eclectic. It is a great book and I have discovered some tasty things in there.

So, I don’t remember the original recipe, I remember the name and I remember a quick scan. I started reconstructing and we have basically wound up with a cross between a chunky guacamole pasta and the Kiwi Café’s BLAT but chopped up with pasta instead of in a panini. In fact, we turned Poppy's stroppy suppertime refusal into acceptance by selling it as Guacamole Pasta.

Being back in the carnivore’s company, I decided some crispy bacon would be very tasty topping this all off, and easy to remove for the less meat inclined. This would have a great kick if you added some hot chili, which I think the original called for but the four year old no longer tolerates. I used a healthy handful of chopped cilantro/fresh coriander because it just seemed right. I like a lot of lime and quite a bit of salt with avocado, so I wouldn’t be disinclined to serve this with a lime wedge on top.

If you were cooking this in a normal kitchen, ie. one equipped with a pot large enough to cook a pound of linguine, I would recommend a full pound. If, like me, you are living in a holiday flat where the pots are disturbingly small, you may have to use a little less. You may also have to cook everything that would require a frying pan in the wok because it is in the least terrifying state.

Pasta della California adapted from Veganomicon by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero

8 slices bacon cooked until crisp (optional)

1 avocado

5 oz (142 grams) grape or cherry tomatoes, quartered

Juice of 1 lime

2 cloves garlic minced

1/2 red pepper finely diced

Healthy handful cilantro/fresh coriander

2/3 pound linguine

2 tablespoons olive oil

Salt and pepper to taste

Remove the stone and the skin from the avocado and chop it into 1/2-inch pieces.

Boil the water for the pasta. Add the pasta. Cook to al dente and drain. Do not cool.

As the pasta cooks, heat the olive oil in a large pan, or wok, and add the garlic. Cook for a minute, don’t let the garlic burn. Add the tomatoes. Cook for a few seconds and add the red pepper and the lime juice. Toss the cooked, still hot, pasta into the pan with the tomatoes. Add the avocado, fresh coriander and salt and pepper. Toss, gently, until combined.

Put it in a big bowl and top it with some crispy crumbles of bacon, if you fancy.

What? Cauliflower Cake?

I discovered this while I was catching up on some posts from the Guardian food section one night. I should have been sleeping but it seemed such a shame to let all that peace and quiet and perfectly good reading time go to waste. I wound up reading it and thought I would file it away, by file I mean forget about in my ‘spirited’ daughter addled brain, for supper some day.

Turns out, some day came sooner than I thought. It came in the form of our say-goodbye-to-my-beautiful-bamboo-counterscape dinner rolled into a last-big-gong-show-before-we-leave-all-of-our-friends-for-six-months dinner. It also came because I needed something to sop up the beef and chestnut and the spicy butternut and lentil stew juices.

Because I am trying to empty the cupboards before we go seasonless in CA, and I will be countertopless for the rest of the week, I didn’t want to wind up with any leftovers. I wanted something a little different though and I remembered, miraculously enough, that I had seen this cauliflower cake thingy somewhere. After a mildly frenzied interweb look around, I found it or remembered where it was. 

I was alarmed that it asked for 10 eggs. I needed to make two and I had exactly four eggs in the house. I had decided that this was what we were having for supper though and continued some by-now-not-so-mildly frenzied (Little Daughter was underfoot and Big Daughter’s return from a friend’s house was imminent) interweb search until I found something the contents of my cupboards and fridge could cope with.

I was not skeptical, Big Daughter was when she got wind of what was going on. The recipe struck me as a little bland but I had remedied that, I hoped, with the addition of more cheese than it called for, a lot of grainy mustard and some finely sliced onion.

Turns out, Big Daughter changed her tune. It is pretty delicious. It has a really great texture like a cross between cake and fritatta but the ground almonds keep it from getting gummy.

I used some 2 year old cheddar because let’s face it, cauliflower and cheddar cheese were pretty much made for each other. I used Kozlik’s Double C mustard but any good grainy mustard would be fine.

I doubled the original recipe, which was lucky, because breakfast was ready for the next day. I even cooked bacon to go with it - big brownie points with Big Daughter. She was putty in my hands for all of about forty-two seconds.

Which leads me to what I may do next time, not that this isn’t really delicious as it is. I keep thinking about roasting the cauliflower with caraway seeds and adding sauteed onion to the batter. I also think that some lardons, that’s bacon bits in English, as Croque-Camille forgets in the recipe I started from, would also make it kind of perfectly meal-like.

Cauliflower Cake adapted from Chou-Fleur de Bretagne by Croque-Camille

1 head cauliflower

2 cups grated old cheddar cheese

4 eggs

1/3 cup + 1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon olive oil (plus some for roasting the cauliflower)

2 tablespoons grainy mustard 

1 cup flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 1/4 cup almond meal

1/2 teaspoon salt (plus a little for roasting the cauliflower)

Freshly ground black pepper

1/2 cup milk

Thinly sliced onion rings

Preheat oven to 350º.

Break the cauliflower into florets and put it on a baking sheet. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper and toss. Put it in the oven and roast, tossing once or twice, for about twenty minutes or until cauliflower is tender and starting to brown.

Oil two 8-inch round cake tins.

Whisk the eggs, olive oil and mustard together in a large bowl.

In a separate bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, almond meal, salt and some pepper.

Add half the milk to the eggs, then half the flour mixture, half the milk and the remaining flour, thoroughly mixing between each addition.

Fold in the cauliflower and cheese. 

Pour into the baking pans and top with the onion slices.

Bake for 35 minutes.

Remove from oven and cool on a rack for a few minutes. Loosen edges from pan and carefully remove the cake from the pan and serve in wedges.