Roasted Root Vegetables

One of the side dishes at Christmas lunch was this pretty assortment of roasted roots.

Who needs table decorations when the food looks this good?

Usually I add potatoes to a casserole of roasted roots, but since we were eating those in the potato torte, I was able to focus on a variety of other vegetables.

I used a bunch of baby chiogga beets, a bunch of baby turnips, a bunch of baby rutabagas, a couple of daikon radish and some carrots.

I started by deciding which casserole dish I was going to bake them in, and then adding the veg as it was scrubbed and chopped. When the dish was full, I tipped the vegetables into a bowl and tossed them with olive oil, salt and pepper, 2 bay leaves, and a couple of sprigs of rosemary.

I cut each of the vegetables in different shapes so cautious eaters could tell what they were going to put in their mouths. The turnips and beets were so small I just cut them in half. The daikon was in log-like shapes, as were the carrots. And the baby rutabagas were so tiny I left them whole (although I did peel them because they were a little hairy).

I poured a little oil in the bottom of the casserole, added the roots and herbs, covered it, and let it sit on the counter until an hour before dinner. I baked it for 45 minutes or so at 350°F. I could have put the casserole in a hotter oven, but the potato torte was in there at 350°F. I find roots are very flexible in their cooking. They came out soft and luscious with wonderful flavor, and looked very pretty on the plate.

Sunday Shopping

With all the leftovers in the fridge, I didn't feel the need to buy much at the Hollywood Farmers Market today. But I did want to wish my favorite farmers Happy New Year. And I never know what I will find to inspire the week's cooking.

Yes, you know how this story ends.

Here's what we bought:
8 oz cremini mushrooms
8 oz green beans
2 sweet potatoes
1 onion
3 parsnips
3 bosc pears
16 oranges
1 bunch baby rutabagas
1 bunch baby turnips
4 leeks
2 fennel bulbs
3 grapefruit
3 summer field apples
1 bunch celery
1 dozen eggs
1 lb oaxacan coffee
olive oil

Potato Torte

The main dish at Christmas lunch was Potato Torte. This is an easy make ahead recipe that everyone loves - potatoes, cheese, zesty tomatoes - it smells like pizza when it's cooking.

Plus it looks impressive on a pedestal stand.

The recipe is adapted from Diana Shaw's Vegetarian Entertaining, a great book of recipes and menus for vegetarian feasts throughout the year.

I've been making it for years for celebrations and for comfort food. It reheats well as leftovers. I will shape the last couple of wedges into patties, fry them, and serve them with fried eggs for breakfast.

It's a Christmas gift that keeps on giving.

Potato Torte
1 large onion, peeled and diced
2 tbsp olive oil
14-oz can diced tomatoes
6 large potatoes (I used 12 smaller red ones), boiled and peeled
3 eggs, beaten
1 1/2 cups diced cheese (I used a combination of jersey jack, kerrygold reserve cheddar and firehouse mike cheddar)
3/4 cup grated parmesan
1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley
1/3 cup chopped fresh oregano (or 2 tsp dried)
1 tbsp olive oil
black pepper
butter

Sauté onion in 2 tbsp olive oil until soft. Add tomatoes and black pepper to taste. Cook over medium heat 10 minutes or so until the sauce is thick and smooth.

Mash the potatoes. Stir in the eggs, cheese, parsley and oregano.

Butter a 10" springform pan. Put one-third of the potato mixture in the bottom. Cover with half the tomato sauce. Then a layer of potato, a layer of tomato sauce, and a final layer of potato on the top.

Drizzle with olive oil. At this point, the torte can be refrigerated overnight, then brought to room temperature before baking.

Bake at 350°F for one hour. Cover with foil and bake an additional 15-20 minutes. Let sit 10 minutes before serving. It can also be served at room temperature as part of a buffet.

Serves 12

Easy Appetizers

Sometimes it's the simplest things that taste the best.

For Christmas lunch, I served an appetizer of roasted red peppers wrapped around feta. They were so delicious we ate them all before I thought to take a photo.

This is another of those recipes which are too simple to be written down. The key is to use sweet plump red peppers and salty pungent feta. Don't bother with tasteless cheese and winter-y peppers.

I used some red peppers I had roasted and frozen in the fall. (See how I roasted them here.) I defrosted them overnight in the fridge, and the next morning prepared the dish. 15 minutes before serving I drizzled it with olive oil and put it in the oven. I served the appetizers warm with forks to cut them with. I was concerned the cheese would be too hot, but it wasn't. If I had used smaller pieces of pepper and cheese, they could have been finger food.

Roasted Red Pepper Appetizer
3 red peppers
6 tbsp feta
olive oil

Roast, seed and peel the red peppers. (See instructions here.)

Cut them in half and lay them on a chopping board with the inside facing up.

Cut a piece of feta about an inch in size. Put it in the center of the pepper half and fold the pepper up around the cheese like a package. Place it seam side down on a lightly oiled cookie sheet.

At this point, they can rest for a couple of hours until you need them.

Drizzle a little olive oil over top the pepper packages, then place them in a 350°F oven for 15 minutes.

Serve with forks and plates. Will serve 3 but they will want more.

Steaming Pumpkin

We are still eating our way through our Thanksgiving decorations.

One of the squash was a long bulbous thing - quite decorative. However when I braised a little of it to eat with dinner one night, we found it bland and tasteless and a little stringy.

So I cut the rest of it into big chunks and steamed it until tender. When it was cool enough to handle, I peeled it and puréed it in the food processor.

I froze it in cup-size containers, ready to add moisture and a pretty color to muffins, scones, and maybe even pancakes. In these settings, it won't matter that the pumpkin has no flavor - the other ingredients will assert themselves.

I hope our last squash is more delicious.

Food for the Week

Potatoes will form the centerpiece of our Christmas lunch, so we carried a lot of weight home from the Hollywood Farmers Market this morning.

Here's a list of the organic produce we bought:
1 head garlic
1 onion
4 cameo apples
3 bosc pears
2 shallots
arugula
parsley
dill
Spring Hill Dairy jersey jack
Bloomsbury spinach
many pounds of red potatoes
2 celeriacs
carrots
lots of tangerines
2 fuerte avocados
2 dozen eggs
1 bunch spring onions
celery
pistachios
5 cups and 2 quarts plain yogurt
collard greens
2 red butter lettuce
1 romaine lettuce

Simple Mustard Greens

I returned home from work tired the other night, so I started dinner by putting brown rice in the rice cooker. You can't go wrong with rice.

Then I found some leftover tofu stew to reheat, and put that in a pot ready to go.

Finally, I rooted through the fridge and pulled out two bunches of purple mustard greens. Refrigerator gold!

Greens, tofu and brown rice are a healthy yet satisfying meal. And mustard greens are really easy to wash, perfect for a lazy evening.

I cut off the bottom of the stems, up to where the leaf started, then washed the leaves in cold water. and left them to drain.

I sautéed an onion, some garlic and red chile flakes, then stirred in the mustard greens by the handful, seasoning with salt as I went. When they were all in the pot, I covered it and set it over a low heat to cook, stirring occasionally to scrape up pieces that were caramelizing on the bottom of the pot.

They added a little zing and lot of nutrition and color to the meal. You can see in the picture that some of the leaves retained their purple color.

The next morning I put together a lunch of leftovers. I put some brown rice in the bottom of a container, then a layer of the cooked mustard greens. On top went a scoop of sauerkraut (natural probiotic) and a drizzle of dandelion vinegar (calcium). It was a nutritious and satisfying lunch - yes I ate it cold - that got me easily through the day.

Greens are great.

Simple Mustard Greens
2 bunches (or 1 large bunch) purple mustard greens
1 tbsp olive oil
1 onion
2 cloves garlic
sprinkle red chile flakes
salt

Cut the bottom off the greens and wash them well in cold water. Chop across in 1 inch strips and set aside. (Don't dry them.)

Warm the olive oil in a large pan. Dice the onion and sauté until it is soft. Add the minced garlic and red chile flakes. Cook, stirring occasionally, until fragrant.

Add the mustard greens, a handful at a time, stirring them into the oil and sprinkling with salt. When all the greens are in the pot, stir well once more and put on the lid.

Let the greens cook, stirring occasionally to scrape any bits off the bottom, 10-15 minutes until they are the consistency you enjoy.

Serves 2-3

Post-industrial lettuce

I was driving home last night listening to NPR when I heard a truly astonishing report on All Things Considered about the future of lettuce farming.

It turns out that lettuce is a labor-intensive crop. Workers with shovels thin the lettuce plants, weed them as necessary, and harvest them by hand. No machines have been found that don't crush the lettuce plants.

Until now. They interviewed a farmer experimenting with a tractor complete with an imac computer that automatically maps the lettuce plants, takes pictures of them, and thins them to the right spacing within a tenth of an inch. Later it harvests them when they are the perfect size.

The worker driving the tractor just has to push a few buttons for this modern marvel to do all the back-breaking labor formerly done by humans.

The part that had me cussing though, was the way the machine thins the lettuce plants.

The reporter says the tractor shoots a "killing spray" on the plants that are not in the right place.

Killing spray is another word for herbicide or pesticide, so I'm pretty sure my organic farmers will not be using this tractor any time soon.

Killing sprays are not uncommon in fields. There was a time (I hope this is not still a common practice) when Agent Orange-like herbicides were sprayed on crops of green beans to defoliate them so the tractors could more easily pick the beans. When machines get involved in agriculture, chemicals are not far behind.

It's another reminder that healthy organic earth-friendly vegetables require people willing to do tough menial labor for very little money. It raises the question of why we insist on paying so comparatively little for fresh produce when it is labor intensive and time sensitive?

I suppose mainstream farmers are realizing that since we don't value our food enough to pay a living wage and provide less oppressive working conditions, they'll eliminate the workers and use machines to grow vegetables in ways that poison our earth, and most likely our bodies.

Steamed Beet Greens

I've been enjoying Mark Bittman's book Leafy Greens: An A-to-Z guide to 30 types of greens plus more than 120 delicious recipes.

Unfortunately he prefers to blanch greens rather than sauté them because he finds they burn too easily in the pan. I find the occasional slight charring gives them a caramelized flavor that I enjoy, so I will stick to sautéing. Plus, I feel that blanching (boiling the greens in salted water until tender) releases too many nutrients. Unless I'm going to use the blanching water in soups, it feels like a waste.

He also mentioned steaming, however, and I had not tried that. I had a bunch of tender beet greens from Shear Rock Farms so I gave it a try.

I have a collapsible steamer that fits in a pot. I washed the greens, put an inch of water in the pot, added the steamer, and piled the greens on top. As you can see in the picture above, they did not fit very well. I managed to get the lid on, steamed for 5 minutes, and then looked in the pot. The greens had shrunk considerably, as you can see in the photo on the left. I tipped them onto a chopping board, chopped them coarsely, and tossed them with a dressing of a tablespoon olive oil and a tablespoon lemon juice.

They tasted good, cooked quickly, and left very few nutrients behind in the steaming water (I hope). The olive oil in the dressing allowed my body to absorb the nutrients in the greens. Altogether very satisfactory.

Food for the Week

With the cooler weather, greens and root vegetables are flooding the Hollywood Farmers Market. It's hard to decide which ones to eat this week.

I love turnips and beets because they are two vegetables in one. I separated the roots from the greens when I got home, and stored them separately in plastic bags in the fridge. The greens will be sautéed with onions and garlic as a simple side dish, and the roots will be roasted or steamed or added to soup (I haven't decided which yet).

I was grumbling to Larry that this year the farmers are growing celery root and parsnips but not rutabagas when we stopped at the Flora Bella stall to buy young turnips, radishes and mustard greens. I noticed what looked like tiny yellow parsnips and inquired what they were. They were rutabagas!!!! I have never seen finger-sized rutabagas before. They were in bunches with their greens attached, and I was told the greens are delicious. I nibbled a piece, and it was true! They are sweet - sweeter than lettuce. Unbelievable. So I bought a bunch. The roots will be sliced in our Solstice Soup this Saturday, and the greens will be a yummy vegetable early in the week.

Flora Bella has planted a lot of rutabagas this year, apparently, so this is just the beginning. I am so happy!!!!

This is what we bought today: 1 red pepper, 1 red butter lettuce, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, 4 onions, carrots, 1 1/2 lb assorted mushrooms - cremini, shiitake, portabello - turnips with tops, cauliflower, radishes with tops, tiny rutabagas with tops, 15 oranges, 6 grapefruit - 4 pink, 2 ruby - spinach, 6 cameo apples, 2 bosc pears, 15 tangerines, 1 lb honey dates, 1 dozen eggs, Mike's firehouse jack from Spring Hill Dairy, beets with greens, mustard greens.

Have you ever seen such tiny rutabagas?

Curly Purple Kale

We brought some vibrant purple curly kale home from the Hollywood Farmers Market on Sunday.

It was so young and tender, the stems were not even 1/4 inch wide. I just had to chop it, stems and all, before gently sautéeing and steaming it for a colorful nutritious side dish.

Kale has been found to lower blood cholesterol and help prevent heart disease and certain cancers. Surprisingly, cooked kale has more health benefits than raw, probably because we don't chew enough to break down the fibers and absorb the goodness.

There are many ways to cook kale, but this one is simple and tasty. The cooked green can be served as a side dish, added to rice or other grains, or stirred into soups or stews.

I served it the other night with a bean stew, potatoes, and Baked Heirloom Pumpkin.

Cooked Kale
1 bunch curly kale
1 tbsp olive oil
4 cloves garlic
sprinkle of hot chile flakes
salt

Wash the kale. Remove the stems if they are more than 1/4 inch wide. Chop the leaves coarsely.

Warm the olive oil in a large pot. Add the peeled and chopped garlic and a sprinkle of chile flakes.

Add the kale along with the water left on the leaves after washing. Stir well so all the kale is turned in the oil. Sprinkle with salt. Cover the pot and let the kale cook gently until it is tender, stirring occasionally.

Serves 2-3

Black Bean Salad

Bean salads are a great addition to a lunch bag. They are easy to eat, high in fiber and protein, and combine well with a green salad to make a satisfying lunch.

This week I combined black beans with red pepper and sweet little cherry tomatoes to make this colorful salad.

I took a green salad separately in my lunch bag and combined the two for a satisfying lunch. An apple rounded out the meal.

Black Bean Salad

1 cup black beans

2 tbsp white wine vinegar

1 tsp hot sauce

1/2 cup halved cherry tomatoes

1/2 cup red pepper

juice of 1-2 limes

salt and pepper to taste

Cook the black beans in simmering water until tender. Drain and toss with vinegar and hot sauce. Set aside to cool to room temperature.

Stir in the cherry tomatoes and red pepper. Add the juice of one lime, then season with salt and pepper. Add more lime juice or hot sauce to taste.

Serves 4

This salad will last a few days in the fridge.

Eating Pumpkin

We starting eating our Thanksgiving decorations this week.

Last night I took the beautiful heirloom pumpkin that had decorated our hall table all fall and popped it in the toaster oven.

Forty-five minutes at 350° and it had turned a gorgeous dark brown. A knife slipped in easily so I knew it was cooked.

I sliced it into wedges and served it, not really knowing what to expect.

And it surprised me by being the most buttery pumpkin I have ever eaten. It tasted like I had poured butter over it, although I had not. Wow.

Sunday Shopping

It was cold at the Hollywood Farmers Market this morning. Chilled fingers had a hard time counting bills, so every transaction took a little longer than usual.

We ate breakfast out so we didn't buy oranges to juice, but we were still weighted down. I had looked in my pantry last week for white lima beans to cook with the beautiful rapini from Flora Bella (see the recipe here), and found I had run out of them. Zut alors! I used a combination of yellow-eyed beans, black-eyed peas and barbecue beans, which tasted fine but didn't look as good, which is why I didn't post a picture. This week I bought both lima beans and rapini, so I have hopes of an attractive and tasty bean dish this week.

Larry bought an organic brisket from Rocky Canyon Farms where the cows eat grass until the day they are driven to the slaughterhouse. I think if you're going to eat a cow, it's nice to let it have a good life first. Also, for your health, grass-fed creates less inflammation in the human body than corn-fed does. (Most grass-fed cows are fed corn for the last 3-6 weeks of their lives to create more marbling in the flesh.)

We discussed grapefruits with Jorge. The ones we've been eating are sweet with yellow flesh. He says they're pink grapefruit, so named because of the color of the skin - there's a pink blush on it - not the color of the flesh. He gave us two ruby grapefruit to try - they will have pink flesh, he says. I hope they taste as good as the pink ones. (Are you confused now too?)

We also learned that the blueberry bushes at Forbidden Fruit Orchards near Santa Barbara got frosted this week, so no more blueberries from them until spring. I hope our bushes will be fruiting then too.

Still no rutabagas at the market. Instead I had to once again restrain myself from gathering armloads of squash -- this week we'll start eating our Thanksgiving decorations.

Here's the organic produce that we did bring home:
olive oil, feta, pistachios in the shell, 4 cups plain St. Benoit yogurt, blueberries, 1 dozen eggs, 13 German butterball potatoes, 4 tangerines, 2 heads garlic, cherry tomatoes, 8 red potatoes, purple curly kale, 1 red pepper, carrots, purple mustard greens, young turnips with tops, beets with tops, rapini, parsnips, cauliflower, 2 chestnut sweet potatoes, 1 lb coffee, 1 green pepper, 8 pink grapefruit, 2 ruby grapefruit, 2 lbs each of lima beans, Christmas limas and chickpeas. Russ sharpened two of our kitchen knives while we shopped.

"Cheese" Sauce

Way back in the '80s, I learned to make this "cheese" sauce using nutritional yeast instead of cheese. It doesn't really taste like cheese, but neither do most cheese sauces. It has a rich umami flavor, and is great on rice or potatoes, and when I was vegan I used it for mac and "cheese."

I was inspired to make it recently when I found nutritional yeast flakes at Granny's, my local health food store in Pasadena. I said how happy I was to see it again, and Richard looked at me, bemused, and said they've always carried it. Isn't it amazing how you can go somewhere for years and still see things you never noticed before?

Anyway, I rushed home to introduce my hubby to the wonders of nutritional yeast.

I served this sauce over brown rice and vegetables, real winter comfort food, and we both enjoyed it.

(Most people are introduced to nutritional yeast as a popcorn topping - just sprinkle it straight out of the container onto popcorn - and then rave about it. I haven't tried that, because Larry makes such excellent popcorn - see his technique here - that I don't want to mess with it.)

Nutritional yeast is full of B vitamins (I sprinkle it on my granola instead of taking a B supplement) which help calm the nervous system. It's a great source of B12 and folic acid, high in protein, and gluten-free. What more could you want?

I can't fully endorse its cheese flavor. I think it's more nutty than cheese-y. But it is a wonderful sauce that will have you smacking your lips and going back for more.

"Cheese" Sauce
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup flour
3 1/2 cups boiling water
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 tbsp tamari or soy sauce
1 1/2 tsp garlic powder
pinch tumeric
1/4 cup oil (yes, more oil)
1 cup nutritional yeast

Heat the 1/2 cup vegetable oil over medium heat. Whisk in the flour. (This is a vegan roux.) Whip in water, salt, tamari, garlic and tumeric. Cook until thick and bubbly, stirring occasionally. Whip in remaining 1/4 cup oil and yeast.

Cook until heated through. Taste and season with salt and pepper if necessary (probably won't be). Use as you would any cheese sauce or white sauce.

Makes about 4 cups of sauce (enough to make mac and "cheese" for 3 1/2 cups of macaroni).

Larry's Thanksgiving Contribution

Today is substitute blogger day. I'm filling in for Joy so I can tell you about the British and Canadian cooking influences that she has exposed me to over the years, since she is both British and Canadian herself. Years ago, we both really liked a Canadian show called Manic Organic where the host grew his own organic food on an Ontario farm. We also liked the Jamie Oliver programs where he cooked at (what seemed to be) his own house in the English countryside.

And when we last visited Joy's brother in Surrey, England, we learned that he and his wife enjoyed a cooking show called River Cottage, hosted by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingsall. In the episode we watched, Hugh held up these Samosa-looking meat pie objects and said they were called "pasties" and that Welsh miners went off to work with pasties in their pockets to eat later in the day. Or something like that. All I could think about was problems with pocket lint.

When I decided to contribute a vegetarian dish to our Thanksgiving dinner, I looked through two excellent Jamie Oliver cookbooks that Joy has given me over the years. I've hardly used them, if at all, but I think they rub off on me just by sitting on our shelves.

The recipe that looked like the best match for Joy's menu was for "Baked Creamed Spinach" out of Jamie Oliver's Great Britain. I always liked the rustic look of Jamie's food — more country cottage and dinner with friends than white linens and stuffy waiters.

I didn't quite understand all of the terms in the recipe, but I certainly got the spirit. For instance, I'm still not sure what a "knob" of butter is, but I gathered I was free to go with my instincts. Also, he didn't give exact cooking times — he just said to cook the first part of the dish (spinach, cream, onions, tomato, garlic) down until it looked "thick and lovely," which was much nicer than setting a timer. The final serving called for browning breadcrumbs and cheese over top the creamed spinach. Jamie said to put the dish under the grill and let it "bubble away" for 5 to 8 minutes, or until it was "bubbly and gorgeous."

I recommend the hearty books by Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingsall. Next year, I might put a few pasties in my (freshly laundered) pockets and head off in my Wellies to find a River Cottage with a brick fireplace and well-stocked pantry for another fun cooking experience.

Post-Thanksgiving Shopping

I was not inspired when thinking about food this morning. We still have Thanksgiving leftovers, but we'll be needing new food by mid-week, and I could not think of a single thing I wanted to cook or eat.

Fortunately we went to the Hollywood Farmers Market anyway — Larry needed his St. Benoit yogurt fix — and the piles of vegetables at Flora Bella and Finley Farm stands were so beautiful that I found it hard to restrain myself from buying one of everything.

Okay, to be honest, I did a lousy job of practicing restraint.

We will be eating a lot of greens this week.

And because we have to finish the Thanksgiving sour cream, I bought a small spaghetti squash that I will make a decadent casserole with.

This is what we will be eating this week:

Rapini, arugula, cabbage, mustard greens, baby turnips with greens, broccoli, 1/2 lb cremini mushrooms, 6 red potatoes, 2 dozen eggs, 6 grapefruit, 2 cameo apples, lightly-salted pistachios in their shells, collard greens, 1 small spaghetti squash, 1 red onion, 2 small white sweet potatoes, 2 bartlett pears, 5 cups of St. Benoit plain yogurt, red butter lettuce, orange blossom honey and 8 oranges. Also, while we were shopping, Russ sharpened two of our garden shears.