The bulk section in PCC Markets has these awesome dried tortellini.  We’ve found them to be super convenient for when we’re in a hurry or when we’re stumped for meal ideas.  Today they made me 5 minutes late getting back from lunch because i couldn’t stop eating this.

First. Bring a pot of water to boil, then toss in a handful or so of tortellini.  These take about 12 minutes to fully cook, so meanwhile….

Second. Heat some butter in a skillet.  I use cow’s milk (unsalted) butter, but i’m sure vegan butter or your choice of cooking oil would also work well.

Third. Chop a couple (i used 4 medium-sized) shiitake into bite-sized pieces.

Fourth. Toss the shiitake into the skillet and stir them around a bit to get them coated with the butter/oil.  Then sprinkle a little salt, pepper, onion, and garlic on them.  (These are my 4 usual spices.  Of course use whatever sounds delicious to you.)  I sauteed the shiitake over medium heat — i wanted them browned, but certainly not crispy.

Fifth. When the tortellini is finished, drain them well — get off as much water as possible.  Water is bad for the next step.

Sixth. Toss the tortellini into the skillet with the shiitake.  Saute everything together to coat the tortellini with the (now-flavored) butter.  You don’t want to leave things in the skillet too long — maybe just a minute.

And then eat.  Oh my goodness, it was so delicious.  I didn’t even have time to take a picture of the final dish (which was very pretty, with the shiitake nestled amongst the tri-colored pasta!) because i was too busy eating it.

Lentil Soup w/ Potatoes and Kale

(from my unpublished zine “Quit your bitching, if I can cook vegan so can you”)

This makes a lot of soup (I fill a 3.5 Qt pot with it). If you aren’t cooking for a lot of people or wanting a lot of leftovers cut the recipe in half.

3T olive oil

1 medium onion

3 carrots

2 cups dry lentils, rinsed

6-8 cups water

1 can diced tomatoes

1 large potato, peeled and diced

1 bunch kale, cleaned, tough stems removed, cut into edible size strips

2t salt

1/2t pepper

3t balsamic vinegar (1.5 if you don’t like a vinegary soup)

Heat olive oil in the pot over medium high heat.

Finely chop onions and carrot (food processor works well) and saute for about 5 minutes.

Add lentils and 6-8 cups water and bring to a boil. Add additional water as needed.

Add tomatoes, reduce heat, and simmer for 30 minutes

Add potato, simmer 10 minutes

Add seasonings and kale, cook until kale is tender.

This afternoon up here in our 4th-floor farm has been:

1)  sprouting. I bought Fresh Food from Small Spaces (Ruppenthal, R.J.  White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2008.) back in may.  We live in an apartment that, fortunately, has at least enough space for me to indulge my passion for growing things (herbs and fruit trees on the deck, mushrooms in the kitchen) — this book is an excellent addition to my library because it has great advice on how to cram even more growing things into our home.  (My only complaint about this book is that there’s no index.  What the…??)  The 1st, and perhaps easiest, thing i’m going to try from this book is sprouting.  So i spent the afternoon scouring the sprouting chapter in Fresh Food from Small Spaces, skimming Sprouters Handbook (Cairney, Edward.  Argyll, Scotland: Argyll Publishing, 2009.) (which i picked up at Essential Trading in Bristol on our trip back in october), and googling around the internet.

Tonight i shall start my 1st batch of sprouts — emmer farro from Bluebird Grain Farms!  I’m going to start the grains soaking tonight.  After 12 hours, i’ll drain the grains from the soaking water, rinse and drain them again, then let the jar sit on the kitchen counter.  Looks like i’ll need to rinse/drain them at least once a day.  After 2-3 days we should be able to eat the sprouted grains.  I can’t wait!

2)  horseradish. I love horseradish.  I grew up eating spicy, spicy horseradish in Central Pennsylvania.  Now that i have a deck garden i’ve been growing my horseradish (Armoracia rusticana) in a large container.  I started my plant in 2007.  You should wait a year to harvest anything, but winter 2008-09 was so super snowy and cold here in Seattle that i simply could not be bothered to care about harvesting horseradish, and besides the prepared horseradish available at our local seafood/poultry market is perfectly tasty.

But today!  Today was a sunny, warm, gorgeous day, so we took the opportunity to harvest a small bit of the horseradish root.  Andy scrubbed and peeled it, then carefully shredded it in the food processor — carefully, because ground horseradish is not something you want to get a strong whiff of.  Worse than onions.  Then we packed the pulverized horseradish into a small canning jar, sprinkled in just enough white vinegar to cover the mash, and put it into the fridge.  I’ll try it tomorrow to see what i think.

We followed the instructions in the Encyclopedia of Country Living (Emery, Carla.  Seattle: Sasquatch, 2008.), but Bert’s Gourmet Horseradish has some good information, too.

3)  beets (pickled).  I love beets, but only done in 1 specific way — i actually have a really hard time eating them any other way.  Because i grew up in Central PA, i must have my beets pickled.  Here’s how to do it:

• Boil the beets until they’re soft enough to get the skins off.  Remove the skins!
• Cut the beets into whatever pleases you in a pickle — round slices, bite-sized chunks, long strips.
• {Bonus step!  Prepare fresh garlic/onions to add to the pickles if you like.  We didn’t use these when i was growing up, but i’ve come to love them in my pickled beets now that i’m making the pickles myself.}
• Mix together white vinegar and water in whatever proportion pleases you.  I like 1 part vinegar to 2 parts water, but i know people who prefer either a 1-to-1 ratio or even just straight vinegar — yowza!
• Put the beets (and garlic/onions) into a glass jar and pour the pickling juice over everything — make sure all the veggies are covered!
• Put the jar into the refrigerator for at least a week for best effect.

I eat these pretty quickly because i love them so, but you can easily make up more beets (and garlic/onions) to put into the same pickling juice again.  I wouldn’t keep this more than a few months, tho’, to prevent it from growing nasty shit.

Traditionally, this would be pickled red beet eggs.  To do that just hardboil some eggs and peel off the shells, then add them to the pickling juice with the beets (and garlic/onions).  Wait as long as possible to make sure the pickling has permeated the eggs — you know you’ve achieved perfection if the yolks have turned purple.  But i don’t like egg yolks, so i just make pickled beets these days.

Caution!! Be careful with those beets — they’ll stain everything while you’re working with them.  Wear an apron!

veggie pita pocket
Originally uploaded by wrdnrd.

Every spring in the CSA box from our farm we get garlic scapes — the curly tops of garlic plants, which are usually snipped off so that the plant puts its energy into creating big, delicious bulbs of garlic. In culinary use, garlic scapes can be used like spring onions and sprinkled onto salads or into soup, or like asparagus on the grill, or in pesto.

Every year, we usually wind up either giving our share of garlic scapes away or composting them if they’ve sat too long. I find them a little too hard to be enjoyed in salads and i’ve never gotten around to trying the other methods. If we get more garlic scapes in the box this tuesday i think i’ll try them on the grill, because today i finally got around to making garlic scape pesto.

I started with this recipe from What Geeks Eat. I quickly realized i’d have to improvise a little because we don’t have pine nuts in the kitchen and i didn’t have 1 pound of scapes.

Once all was said and done, i was very glad i didn’t have a pound. This is potent stuff! I think my little 8-ounce jam jar will be sufficient for awhile.

garlic scape pesto

Note:  Requires food processor.

• 0.5 pound garlic scapes (chopped into ~1.5-inch pieces this was about 1 cup)
• 0.5 cup fresh grated romano/parmesan blend (either romano or parmesan is fine, we just happen to really like this blend)
• 0.25 cup extra virgin olive oil

1. Cut the garlic scapes into pieces about 1.5-inches long. You can use as much of the garlic scapes are in good condition (the very tips of mine had started going soft, so i discarded them).
2. Zip the scapes in a food processor until they’re chopped fine.
3. Add the grated romano/parmesan and process until blended. Note that pesto will never lose all of its chunkiness and get truly smooth.
4. While processing the scapes and cheese, slowly drizzle the olive oil thru’ the processor’s chute.

I can’t say yet how long this will last in the fridge, tho’ i have heard of people freezing their basil pesto so perhaps garlic scape pesto can be frozen as well. If i try it i’ll report back.

The 1st thing i did with this was spread it inside a pita pocket. Then i sliced up some cherry tomatoes and mixed them by hand with some feta and a dash of salt and pepper. I filled the pita pocket with the tomatoes/feta mix and called it lunch.

It was good.

Yes, i cooked and ate a fritatta at 10:45pm.  No, i didn’t eat supper — it’s a thing that often happens when i’m really into either a project or some schoolwork.  Tonight, yes, it’s schoolwork.  Trying to wrap up my certificate program.

So!  I realized we’d just gotten some fresh spinach from the farm AND that we still had some feta in the fridge.  Thus:

• 2 eggs + a splash of soy milk, whisked together & tossed into a hot cast iron skillet
• spinach, chopped into strips (i like fairly small pieces) & tossed onto the eggs in the skillet
• feta, crumbled by hand onto the spinach in the skillet
• a few shakes of salt + granulated onion and garlic + a few twists of the pepper mill

It cooked on the stove until the edges easily pulled away from the pan, then it was into the oven to sit beneath the broiler for about 8-ish minutes.  I managed to cook the fritatta beautifully this time instead of (a) burning it, or (b) cooking it to the bottom of the pan — must have had just enough butter in the skillet this time.

Thoughts:

• spinach — definitely needed more.  This is the mistake i usually make with fritattas: i always under-ingredient because i forget how the eggs overpower all flavors.
• feta — might be getting old.  Not only could i barely taste any feta flavor, the fritatta tasted vaguely of spoiled cow’s milk.  Since i haven’t noticed soy milk at all resembling the flavor of spoiled cow’s milk, i suspect the feta.
• salt — too much.  I should have either mixed it in with the egg/milk base, or i should have been more careful when sprinkling it on.  Then again, it’s not unusual for me to over-salt things.

At any rate, it put something in my belly, wasn’t entirely unpleasant to eat, and Andy liked it well enough to finish the last few bites i couldn’t get thru’ after i got full.

homemade sauerkraut
Originally uploaded by wrdnrd.

I’ve been wanting to try making sauerkraut at home for awhile now — ever since picking up a copy of The Encyclopedia of Country Living (by Carla Emery) back in 2001. But Carla’s method required pounds of cabbage and months of waiting while it all fermented. I don’t want 25 pounds of sauerkraut, and besides, i only get 1 head at a time from our CSA farm every other week or so when the stuff is in season.

This past summer, fortunately, i came across Novella Carpenter’s much easier sauerkraut instructional:

Get some nice heads, tight ones. Half the cabbages, then chop into thin strips. Add the cabbage to a large bowl and sprinkle with kosher salt. A TB of salt per cup of cabbage is the rule of thumb. Once sprinkled with salt, pound the cabbage so that it starts to release some water. I use a pestle from a mortar and pestle that my roommate left behind. Add this point you can add caraway or coriander seeds. Once the cabbage strips look a bit wilted, pack them tightly into a large jar. Pack them tightly into the jar using your fist to press down all the cabbage. Weigh down with a bag filled with water or a rock, or as pictured, a glass bottle of water. This isn’t shown, but you should also drape a cheesecloth or piece of fabric to keep out flies and such. After an hour or so, the cabbage should be submerged under its own juices. Let sit 2-3 days on the counter. Taste after a few days and see if you like it, when tastes right, remove the weight, and put the jar in the fridge to enjoy. Happy lacto-fermenting!

Now THAT i can handle!

Last night we were cleaning out the veggie drawers. Hmm, 1 small head of cabbage. Well, not a “nice, tight” head (per Novella’s instructions). Nor an especially fresh head: Carla’s instructions say to start work on sauerkraut within about 24 hours of harvesting the cabbage — and i’m guessing the head of cabbage i found lurking in the bottom of the fridge is about a month old. Well, i pulled off all the damaged and dubious leaves anyway and proceeded onward. I wound up with about 4 cups of shredded cabbage, which was more than enough for my purposes!

I added the salt, pounded the crap out of everything for awhile, then packed it into a 2-cup mason jar. For weight, i filled one of my small spice jars with water (because the spice jar was the only thing i could find that would fit into the mason jar). My cotton veggie bag seemed like a good “don’t feel like cutting off a piece of cheesecloth” solution, so i gumbanded that onto the mouth of the jar.

And now we wait until about wednesday night after my copyediting class. The only thing i’m worried about is the temperature in the house. Carla suggests:

Store at 70-75°F while fermenting. At temperatures between 70 and 75°F, kraut will be fully fermented in 3 to 4 weeks; at 60°F, fermentation may take 5 to 6 weeks. At temperatures lower than 60°F, kraut may not ferment; above 75°, it may become soft. (p.273, 10th edition)

I’m not entirely certain how warm it is in the kitchen right now. Outside temps here in Seattle have only been reaching highs of mid-40s lately, and we don’t turn on the heat in our apartment. I’m betting (the kraut) that it’s not below 60°F in here, tho’.