Curried Squash Soup

Winter squashes are beautiful. Yet who can be bothered with all that peeling. And the thought of chopping the big ones leads to fears of finger loss.

Fortunately, there is an easier way.

I wash and dry the squash, then roast it whole in the oven. Once it's cooked it cuts and peels easily, and it's a matter of moments to discard the seeds and scoop out the pulp. You can save energy by cooking an oven full of squashes.

The pulp freezes well, and is great in quick breads or pancakes, cheesecake or creme brulée. You can substitute squash for canned pumpkin in any recipe. I always have at least one 1/2 cup container of squash purée in my freezer. (And I never buy canned pumpkin.)

Winter squash is high in beta carotene which is healing to the entire digestive tract. It soothes the villi in the small intestine, healing the inflammation of diverticulitis, and lessening autoimmune reactions.

I like to combine the sweetness of squash with the spicy heat of curry or chiles. This fragrant curry soup is a favorite when I want a soothing meal after a stressful day. A bowlful scintillates the tastebuds and fills the tummy. (If I want more scintillating, I add hot sauce to my bowl.) Leftovers freeze well.

This soup is very thick. Add more water or stock if you prefer a thinner soup.

Vary the squash based on what you find in the market. Measure the cooked pulp and adjust the quantities of the other ingredients accordingly.

Curried Squash Soup
1 acorn, 1 small butternut and 1 turban squash
1 tbsp olive oil
1/2 large onion
3 cloves garlic
1 tbsp curry powder
1 cup vegetable stock (see post Feb. 2010 for a good vegetable stock recipe)

Preheat oven to 350°F. Wash and dry squash, place on a cookie sheet, and roast until a knife slips in easily, about 45 minutes.

Let the squash cool, then cut each in half, remove the seeds and strings, and scoop out the flesh in chunks. You should have about 4 cups.

Fry the onion and garlic in olive oil in a large soup pot over medium heat. Add the curry powder and stir one minute. Add squash and vegetable stock and stir well.

Cook until hot. Puree or mash as needed, and add extra broth or stock to get the desired consistency. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Serve with hot sauce on the side.

Makes 6-8 servings.

The Thrill of Fresh Citrus

The heaviest bags we haul home from the Hollywood Farmers Market are those that hold the citrus for Larry to hand-squeeze into juice for Sunday brunch.

He uses the Juice-O-Mat we found at the Pasadena City College Flea Market. My mother used one just like it to make fresh orange juice in the 1970s.

The juice Larry makes is more interesting.

He recently combined tangelos and blood oranges with Sierra Gold, Dancy and Page tangerines. Our niece Tracie joined us for brunch and said it was the best juice she ever tasted.

Commercially manufactured juice is formulated to always taste the same. How boring. Our juice varies from week to week, depending on the varieties of fruit available and how sweet or tart each piece of fruit is.

We only drink orange juice on Sundays. On other days we eat our breakfast fruit. Juice is not a whole food - it lacks fiber and the nutrients in the pith.

Also, it's important to chew fruit in order to fully digest it. Fruit is a carbohydrate, and the human body uses the enzymes in saliva to start the carbohydrate-digesting process. Swallowing fruit as juice or smoothies prevents the salivary enzymes from doing their work. The pancreatic enzymes in the small intestine have to do all the digesting of the juice. This is hard on the body and hard on the pancreas.

So it is better to eat fruit on a daily basis, and save fruit juice for a treat.

And if you squeeze your own juice from a variety of citrus, it will be a very special treat.

Nibbles

Larry and I like to spend Sunday evenings by the fire with the weekend papers.

It's nice to have something to nibble on while reading. Sometimes it's cheese and crackers, or Larry's fresh-popped popcorn.

Recently I served a plate of fresh spring vegetables alongside some tangy goat's milk feta. I really liked it. Larry found it a little challenging.

The vegetables were a medley of green and white. Radish-sized turnips with their spicy tender greens attached, leftover diced and cooked kohlrabi, slivers of sweet fennel, and shelled young fava beans.

The salty richness of the feta was a great foil for the spicy, sweet and pungent flavors of the vegetables.

I like food that activates my tastebuds and offers diversity in each mouthful. This appetizer plate fits the bill.

Asparagus Risotto

Risotto has a reputation for being time-consuming and complicated -- something to only be eaten in restaurants. But actually the best risottos are made at home.

I find it an easy dinner to cook. I stand at the stove with a glass of wine, gently stirring for the 30 minutes or so it takes to make good risotto. The stirring is not continuous. I can do dishes, make salad or steam vegetables at the same time.

It is possible to partially cook risotto ahead and then slowly stir in the last of the hot stock ten minutes before dinner. (I think this is what restaurants do.) It takes a little practice to get your consistency and timing right, but even over-cooked risotto is delicious if made with good ingredients.

Use whatever vegetables you have on hand. The essentials are arborio rice and a good stock.

I buy eco-farmed arborio rice at Granny’s Pantry on Arroyo in Pasadena. Lundberg Farms grows it north of Sacramento, CA. It’s not organic, but the Lundbergs have an earth-centered approach to farming, and it doesn't travel far to get to me. Find it at your health food store or order from their website. On the East coast, look for organic arborio imported from Italy.

The vegetable stock is homemade. The asparagus is from the Suncoast Farms Stand at the Hollywood Farmers' Market. Our garden provided the garnish of mint, chives and nasturtium flowers, and of course the lemon.

You can use any vegetables in risotto. Fresh or frozen peas can replace the asparagus. Mushrooms are good, added with the shallots. Don't add too many, though. The risotto experience is based on the rice - rich and creamy, each grain separate yet held together in the broth.

Taste the risotto often as you near the end of cooking. That's the best way to know when you have the texture you like.

I make enough risotto to have leftovers for a quick dinner later in the week. I form handfuls into burgers, coat them in breadcrumbs, and fry them in a little olive oil until they are warm in the middle and crispy on the outside.

Asparagus Risotto
1 cup arborio rice
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp olive oil
2 shallots, diced (or 6 spring onions or 1 leek)
1/2 cup white wine (optional, but it adds flavor)
3 cups vegetable stock
1 bunch asparagus, trimmed, stems chopped, tips reserved
1/3 cup parmesan (optional, add salt to taste it you omit it)
1/2 tsp shredded lemon peel
1 tbsp lemon juice
1/4 tsp black pepper
fresh mint, chives and nasturtium flowers for garnish (optional)

Bring the vegetable stock to a boil in a covered pan and let it simmer on the back of the stove.

Melt the butter and olive oil over gentle heat. Add shallots and cook until they soften. Add the arborio rice and cook over medium heat, stirring, about 5 minutes until it starts to turn pale golden. Add the wine and stir until absorbed. Add the asparagus stems, then start adding the stock, 1/2 cup at a time. Stir frequently, adding stock as it’s absorbed. Cook until the rice is tender and creamy. You might not need all the stock, or you might need to add boiling water from the kettle.

When the risotto is almost done, add the asparagus tips.

When it is creamy with still a little texture to the rice, stir in the parmesan, lemon peel, juice, and black pepper.

Serve in warmed bowls garnished with mint, chives, nasturtium flowers, or a little lemon zest or grated parmesan.

Makes 4 servings

Roasting on the Stove

I ate the most delicious roast parsnips and carrots the other day, and I didn't have to turn on the oven.

My mother made them in my cast iron fry pan on the stove.

I'll be using this technique often.

The parsnips came from Tutti Frutti at the Hollywood Farmers Market. They were the most slender parsnips I've ever seen. Mum cut them into sticks about 3 inches long and between 1/4 and 1/2 an inch wide. She cut carrots (from the Givens Farm stand) to match.

Meanwhile my cast iron fry pan was warming over low heat on the stove. She added enough olive oil to glisten the bottom and then the vegetables in one layer. She let them cook until lightly browned and then turned them and cooked them some more, for a total of 10-15 minutes, until they were fragrant. Next she added 1/2 cup water, covered the frypan with a saucepan lid, and let them steam until tender.

They were a great vegetable side dish, although I confess to having eaten many of them out of the pan before dinner was served.


There's nothing like a cast iron fry pan. This recipe won't work in non-stick -- and let's not start on the chemicals involved in the non-stick process (at least in this post). Berg Hardware in Pasadena -- corner of Altadena and Villa -- currently has a great selection of Lodge cast iron pans.

Pollan Season

In my last guest post, I wrote about my growing awareness of local and organic food advocates such as Alice Waters and Michael Pollan. Joy knows I’m still mad at her for not pointing out Jamie Oliver when she saw him shopping at the Hollywood Farmers Market last year. She’s dazzled by rutabagas, not celebrity.

Michael Pollan is on a promotion tour for Food, Inc. (see post March 2010). We’ve heard him on Fresh Air and Democracy Now, both of which can be downloaded as podcasts. He was on Oprah this week, and writes on Huffington Post about Oprah’s battle with the cattle industry. Pollan feels that Oprah “waded back into food politics” in a courageous way by having him on her show.

Joy and I both admire Pollan’s remarkable ability to fight the big money of agri-business and the meat industry armed with only facts, common sense, and a calm and intelligent speaking style. He takes on outrageous crimes against Nature knowing that he would lose his platform if he could ever be painted as shrill or extremist. He is neither.

Pollan’s interview on Huffington Post is framed with an interesting array of old photos of food producers and meat packers. There are more pictures of slaughterhouses and butchers than I would like. I won’t even show the site to Joy -- she couldn’t take it. (The pictures were chosen by Huffington Post, not Pollan.)

But if you’re a meat eater like me, these pictures force you to acknowledge the reality of the all-American meat-eating diet. Pollan isn’t a vegetarian, but he does choose his meat carefully, and eats only grass-fed beef and free-range chicken.

I used to gloss over those terms, feeling they were trendy marketing ploys. But after reading Fast Food Nation and watching Food, Inc., I find myself paying more attention to the meat that I buy. And I find myself appreciating every opportunity to listen to Michael Pollan. He certainly gets my wife’s stamp of approval.

Watercress and Barley Soup

It's easy to get stuck in the brown rice rut. Yet there are so many other great grains to eat. Recently I've been diversifying the grain in our diet, and have re-discovered the pleasure of barley.

I made barley soup last week to welcome my mother who’s visiting from Montreal.

Travelling can leave one slightly queasy, and barley is good for settling upset stomachs. I remember as a child being given barley sugar sweets to ease carsickness. And babies are traditionally fed barley water for colic.

Barley also provides long-term health benefits. A US Department of Agriculture study shows that the soluble fiber in barley reduces cardiovascular risk factors such as high blood pressure and cholesterol (especially the bad LDL). Barley also helps balance blood sugar.

Just as you can buy brown rice or white rice, you can buy hulled or pearled barley.

Hulled barley is less processed, with only the tough outer hull removed. At my local health food store I found Health Best organic hulled barley (also called whole barley or scotch or pot barley). This has the bran intact, like brown rice. It’s more nutritious, a little chewier, and takes a little longer to cook than pearled barley.

Arrowhead Mills makes an organic pearled barley which has the bran shaved off so it has a little less fiber, but is still nutritious. (And honestly, to me it looks the same as the Health Best hulled barley.) Regular supermarket pearled barley is just the small white starchy center of the grain - don’t bother with it.

Barley takes between 45 and 60 minutes to cook. The way to know when it's done is to taste a grain.

This is the sprightly spring soup I served my mother. The watercress enhances the lemony taste, but you could substitute arugula or spinach if necessary.

A lot of the flavor comes from the vegetable stock. Chop the greens finely just before adding to the soup to conserve nutrients and keep their fresh flavor.

Watercress Barley Soup
2 tbsp olive oil
10 cloves garlic, crushed
1/2 cup hulled barley
4 cups water or vegetable stock (I used 2 cups stock and 2 cups water)
2 cups finely chopped watercress (leaves and stems)
1 tbsp lemon juice

Sauté garlic in olive oil until lightly browned. Add barley and stock. Simmer until the barley is tender but still a little chewy, about an hour. At this point it can wait until you’re ready to eat. Then reheat the soup, adding extra water if necessary. Stir in the watercress and lemon juice, and cook for five minutes until the greens are soft. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Serves 3-4 as a meal.

Duck in a Tub

The front page of the Los Angeles Times recently featured a Column One piece about Alice Waters called “Yanking their food chain.” You can find it here.

Through Joy, I’ve learned some of the most notable advocates for local, organic food, and I knew that Alice Waters could be considered the Julia Child of the organic movement. Before Joy came along, the only cooking Alice I knew was from the Alice’s Restaurant song, which I heard Arlo Guthrie sing at my first concert in the 1970s. Now I can read this article about Alice and Julia and Michael Pollan and have a real understanding of the food and farming issues being debated.

Since Joy is (a) vegetarian, and (b) willing to cook for us, I’ve become a house-trained vegetarian myself. By that I mean I don’t cook meat in our kitchen, but I will occasionally barbecue it, or eat it at a restaurant. But Joy’s organic kitchen is really Joy’s organic - vegetarian - kitchen.

I watch Joy cook and help her shop at the Hollywood Farmers Market. All the extra time in the kitchen gives us time to (a) discuss food and (b) drink wine and eat cheese. Last week, I bought some Cowgirl Creamery (Point Reyes, CA) Red Hawk cheese at Whole Foods, at Joy’s suggestion, and learned that washed rind cheeses are very stinky. We had to open the windows.

I’m also the one who browses the used bookstores and L.A. Central Library for food books for Joy. (Brand Books in Glendale has a great food section.) It’s a vicarious pleasure that is slowly shifting my consciousness and habits from (a) wanting to keep my wife occupied to (b) really starting to enjoy the issues and experiences that come with a commitment to local food.

One recent summer we watched our neighbor, Jose Martinez, try to domesticate a duck. God knows where he got her, and we’re pretty sure that she returned to God, because Jose did not shelter her from the coyotes and other predators.

Joy had grown particularly fond of this duck she named Louise. Our kitchen window overlooks the backyard patio where Louise lived (and briefly swam in a Rubbermaid tub).

As Alice Waters said in the LA Times piece, Julia was a pioneer in her time; and she blazed a path that led to Chez Panisse and Joy’s Organic Kitchen. Instead of learning how to bone a duck like Julia did, we chose to photograph Louise and memorialize her short time on earth with a special edition of homemade salsa.

Green Eggs, No Ham

Shawn sent me this picture and said: "Here is my morning breakfast inspired by your blog. Yummmmmmmy!!!"

Greens with an egg on top: move over Wheaties - this is the new breakfast of champions.

Garlic-Buttered Kohlrabi

If you want to get your family to try a new vegetable, one you're not sure they'll like, toss it in garlic butter.

The smell will whet their appetite, and the flavor will be so good they'll ask for second helpings.

I learned this when I was experimenting with kohlrabi. Tossing it in garlic butter made it a nice addition to a meal, rather than a weird vegetable to be pushed around the plate.

I have become infatuated with kohlrabi this winter. The South Central Farmers Cooperative have the most beautiful purple kohlrabi at their stand -- how could I resist?

The name kohlrabi comes from the German words kohl for cabbage and rube for turnip, and it has all the health-promoting qualities of the cabbage family, plus a fresh taste with a hint of cabbage and turnip.

After much trial and error, I learned that the secret to good kohlrabi is to peel it well. Cookbooks say peel it, but they don't say peel off almost a quarter inch, making sure you get rid of all the tough fibers in the outer layers. Those tough fibers make eating kohlrabi distinctly unpalatable. (I don't feel bad about the trimmings because they feed the compost pile.)

The kohlrabi from SCFC comes with greens attached, so I cut them off when I get home and store them separately. They are a great addition to wilted greens.

To prepare the roots for cooking, I cut the tops and bottoms off with a big sharp knife. I then stand them up on end and shave off the sides with a paring knife. When I think I've carved off enough, I trim a piece and eat it. If there are any strings, I keep trimming. Raw kohlrabi makes a good addition to salads or a crudité plate.

Once all the fiber is gone, I cut it into bite-sized wedges and cook it in a half-inch of boiling water until tender. This takes a while -- up to 30 minutes depending on the size of the pieces. When the crunch is gone but it still has a toothsome texture, I drain it and set it aside until the last minute before dinner, when I melt a tablespoon of butter in a pan over low heat. I crush a peeled clove of garlic with 1/4 tsp salt and toss it in the butter, cooking over low heat for a minute or two without letting the garlic brown. I toss the kohlrabi with the butter until it's warmed through.

You could use this same technique with Brussels sprouts, turnips, green beans, snap peas -- anything your family is dubious about. Garlic butter makes everything better.

Butter for Health

When I have a few extra hours, I like to churn my own butter.

There's nothing like good butter. It's a natural food made from cream -- no chemicals required, unlike all the margarines on the market. And that butter taste is essential in baked goods and yummy on steamed vegetables.

Making it the old-fashioned way is a good workout for the arms, and relaxing for the mind.

Okay, that's an April Fool's joke. I've never made my own butter, although I understand it's possible to make it in a food processor.

I do appreciate butter, though. I've always been averse to the chemicals they call margarine. And now science has caught up with me, finding that hydrogenated vegetable oils are harmful. Now they're making margarine without trans-fats, but it's still not food.

Butter is food. And it's actually good for you.

Ideally we would eat raw organic butter made from milk from grassfed cows. You'd think it would be hard to find, but Organic Pastures makes it at their dairy farm near Fresno. You can buy their raw dairy products at the Hollywood Farmers Market, and at Granny's Pantry on Arroyo in Pasadena. Also at the Hollywood Farmers Market you can get organic butter from Spring Hill Cheese Co. made from the milk of Jersey cows in Petaluma, CA. I often get regular organic butter at Trader Joe's. Even supermarket butter has health benefits.

Butter is a saturated fat. Twenty years ago this was a no-no, but science has realized that the saturated fats in butter have strong anti-cancer and anti-tumor properties.

It contains conjugated linoleic acid, which is a potent anti-cancer agent, muscle builder, and immunity booster.

The cholesterol found in butterfat is essential to children's brain and nervous system development. It contains arachidonic acid which plays a role in brain function and is a vital component of cell membranes. Butter can protect against gastrointestinal infections in the very young and the very elderly.

Butter is rich in anti-oxidants, selenium, vitamins A, D, E and K. It contains lecithin (essential for cholesterol metabolism) and a highly absorbable form of iodine. It also contains an anti-stiffness factor which protects against calcification of the joints and prevents hardening of the arteries and cataracts.

It helps your body absorb minerals. It's good for your arteries, thyroid and adrenals. It has nutrients that fight candida and fungal infections.

Best of all, butter is not stored in your body's adipose tissues.

So eat some butter. Spread it on your whole wheat toast, toss it with your steamed vegetables. And on special occasions, make butter cookies.

Easy Butter Bar Cookies
1 cup butter
1 1/4 cups brown sugar
2 cups whole wheat flour
1 tsp almond extract
1 egg, separated
1/2 cup flaked almonds

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Grease 9"x12" baking pan.

Cream sugar and butter. Stir in almond extract. Add flour, stir until well combined, then beat in egg yolk. (This can all be done in the food processor.)

Press into greased pan. Brush the lightly beaten egg white over the top and sprinkle with almonds.

Bake 20 minutes. Let cool in pan, then cut into bars.