Tag Archives: Squash

Beans, Veg, Yogurt, Meat

23 Nov

Another simple meal pattern: legumes, roasted vegetables, yogurt, and optionally meat.

In this case, fresh shelling beans (simmered on medium-low 30-40 minutes with aromatics + herbs), winter squash from the garden and broccoli (both chopped, tossed with olive oil and salt, and roasted in a 400F oven for 20-30 minutes), and a pan-fried sausage and some yogurt (optional: fermented hot sauce).

It does take three pots/pans, but only 45 minutes (depending how long the beans take to cook), so it’s on our roster as a common weeknight or weekend meal with endless variants…IMG_20191003_201919.jpg

Tags: ,

Lentils, Kuri, Spigarello

31 Jan

Okay, too much eating out, back to cooking (mostly from the Tuesday CSA). I meant to invite a few friends over but didn’t plan ahead.

Red Kuri Squash, brushed with peanut oil, black pepper, and salt, baked about 30 minutes at 425F, until soft. No butter or sugar, and it was earthy and good with a dark belgian beer (St Bernardus Abt):

Spigarello greens, which taste uncannily like broccoli, but not bitter (shredded and sauteed with about 8 cloves of crushed garlic until just starting to wilt).

And continuing the attempt to make good quick legumes in a pressure cooker (after one failure, and one non-pressure-cooker, slower, more involved success):

Sauteed four thin-sliced shallots in the open pressure cooker, added half a pound of lentils (no liquid), and sweated them over medium heat for about 5 minutes, stirring. Then I added some dried peppers (nora, guajillo), two bay leaves, and four cups of water (I didn’t have any stock or pork to add). I closed the lid, brought it up to steam temperature, cooked for 10 minutes, then did a quick release of the pressure by running the pot under cold water. Hey, the lentils were perfectly done this time, with good texture and a little liquid still remaining… but blander than I wanted. Browsing the cupboards, I added a heavy pinch of cayenne powder, a bit more salt, a quarter of the dark beer, a little sauteed garlic from the spigarello, and a dash of cholula. After about 5 more minutes of simmering on low, I tasted it– spicy, and pretty good! I added juice from a meyer lemon and it was even better.

 

Tags: , , , , , ,

Bean & Kale Soup, Steak, Squash, Spinach Salad

27 Dec

Using the new pressure cooker to try to make beans quickly:

A mix of classy-looking anasazi beans and white navy beans from Tierra Farms, soaked for about 12 hours, drained, then combined with 3 cups water per cup beans, half an onion, two bay leaves, two dried guajillo chiles, a few garlic cloves. Pressure cooked for 15 minutes (from the time the steam started escaping), which it turns out was longer than needed– they were very soft by the end of this.

At the same time, a few slices of bacon, a diced onion, and a few cloves of minced garlic were fried, then mixed into the cooked beans along with a shredded head of red kale, some paprika, oregano, salt, and pepper, and simmered for another 20 minutes or so. Good, though it could have simmered for longer. I’ll see how it is after sitting a day.

Also part of dinner: squash (butternut squash cut in half, rubbed with sesame oil, salt, and pepper, and roasted at 400F until soft– about 30 minutes. Kept in the fridge for a day, then reheated and mixed with a bit of maple syrup), a steak (seared on a stovetop grill), salad (spinach, pomegranate seeds, olive oil, white balsamic vinegar), Acme sourdough, tea, wine, and chocolate. A simple feast with friends, from about an hour of evening-cooking effort.

Tags: , , , , ,

Deviled Eggs, Pickled Fennel, Kale, Squash w/ Sage Butter

11 Nov

CSA Week Two, a recent trip to City Beer, and a friend visiting from Boston inspired another little dinner party:

Deviled eggs (perhaps the best variant I’ve made: hard boiled eggs, the yolks mashed with quite a bit of olive oil (and no mayo!) and a little mustard, salt, and pepper, sprinkled with smoked paprika, and topped with crispy-fried capers, a crowning touch inspired by this printer & piemaker post).

Salami (Olli Napoli, smoked pork with red wide– fine but not remarkable, I probably wouldn’t buy it again).

Lightly-pickled fennel (two days earlier I boiled a mix of 1 part white vinegar to 2 parts water, with a few tsp of mustard seed, 1 tsp salt, and maybe 1/2 tsp coriander seed, then poured the hot liquid over a jar of sliced fennel and refrigerated it). I wasn’t sure anyone else would like it but we ate the whole pint.

Kale (minced shallots cooked in sesame oil over medium heat for 10 minutes until crisping. In parallel, kale boiled/steamed in about an inch of water for 8 minutes, rinsed in cold water and drained, then added to the skillet with the shallots for a few minutes).

Carrots brushed with olive oil and roasted for about 20 minutes at 400F.

Squash: a butternut squash and an acorn squash, each cut in half and brushed with olive oil and baked at 400F face down for about 40 minutes, until soft. I actually did this two nights before, scooped out the squash, and put it in the fridge, reheating it the night of the dinner. With a little salt and pepper and sage brown butter drizzled over it right before serving (5 Tbsp of butter melted over medium heat with maybe 1/4 cup of chopped fresh sage for 5-10 minutes). Quite good, and easy.

And the meal only took about an hour to make (not counting the prep a few days before).

Beer included Upright Brewing’s Six (a slightly malty rye beer, which I continue to love), La Fin Du Monde (a belgian-style tripel / golden ale), Upright Flora Rustica (from a Portland trip, saison-style but slightly vegetative and strange, in a good way), and La Trappe Dubbel. And Corona, but we won’t talk about that.

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Butternut, white beans, tahini

10 Oct

Basically this Smitten Kitchen recipe, with a few changes based on what the store was out of:

  1. Preheated oven to 425.
  2. Diced a butternut squash into 1″ cubes, tossed with 3 cloves crushed garlic, 2 Tbsp olive oil, and 1/2 tsp of a “Kashmir curry powder” blend I had around. Roasted in the oven for about 25 minutes.
  3. Made a tahini dressing (3 Tbsp tahini, juice of two lemons, 2 Tbsp olive oil, 1 crushed clove garlic, a splash of water).
  4. Let the squash cool about 5 minutes, then tossed with a can of cannellini beans. Drizzled with the tahini dressing, minced parsley, and pepper.

[ edit: It tasted great, but the texture was a bit boring– I think it would have been better with garbanzos as originally intended, or next to some crunchy fresh vegetables ]

I also opened a Firestone Walker Velvet Merlin (formerly Merkin) oatmeal stout with it… which didn’t fit at all (too strong a flavor).

Tags: , , , ,