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A Trio of Winter Winners
We’ve certainly been experiencing our share of winter weather this month. Light snow, heavy snow, and wintry mix. Having a dog sheds a new light on winter because you have to go out walking, rain (or should I say snow) or shine. I’ve learned to enjoy winter walks, especially on a weekend afternoon when we can walk through the woods. Cold just doesn’t feel as cold as it used to.
That said, the amount of winter precipitation is getting tiresome. Any suggestions on where we should move for better weather? It’s tough to figure out because I don’t like to be hot.
In deference to the weather, in the past week, I’ve tried three new recipes for hearty fare. Two were from websites I follow and the third, torn from a magazine by a friend and shared with me. All three were successful, so I share the results here with you.
#1 Mujaddara
This is a relatively simple lentil and rice dish, Middle Eastern in origin. I found this on Food 52, the website of Amanda Hesser (of former New York Times fame) and Merrill Stubbs. I can easily get lost for hours, browsing through recipes and watching the videos. The thing I especialy like about this site are the videos. They make everything looks so easy, which is inspiring.
Each week, this site has a themed recipe contest. The top two recipes, as chosen by Amanda and Merrill, are demonstrated and readers can vote. If I understand the site correctly, all the winning recipes are being published together in a cookbook, coming soon.
Lentils are probably my top favorite bean or legume. For this recipe, three basic parts are cooked separately and then combined and served with a spicy yogurt sauce. You bake some rice, while simmering some lentils, while caramelizing some onions. That’s about it. After you combine the lentils, rice, and onions, they sit for a short while while the flavors blend. This is just enough time to make the yogurt sauce. Its components definitely sum up to something greater than its parts. If you check out this recipe, be sure to watch the video.
This recipe comes from Six Burner Sue, the website of Susie Middleton, former editor at Fine Cooking magazine and author of the recent book Fast, Fresh and Green. Given the 5 pounds of parsnips in the fridge, this one appealed to me right away.
The recipe uses only one pound of parsnips, so it use up my entire supply. However, this is a fast side dish that I will definitely make again. I think I made the “fries” a little to thin. I cut them to around ¼-inch sticks. That was fine for eating with fingers, but with a fork, slightly wider, maybe ½ inch sticks would have been better. I also might not have blackened as many if they’d been a wee bit thicker.
We opted for a simple sprinkle with kosher salt, though a lime and maple drizzle was offered as part of the recipe. Maybe we’ll try a little squeeze of lime juice next time.
#3 Beet and Fennel Soup with Kefir
My friend April (see her recent guest post on my blog here) passed this recipe along to me. It’s from the January issue of Bon Appetit, which I subscribe to, but hadn’t browsed yet. Again, I have a large supply of beets (10+ pounds) in the fridge from our winter CSA. They are gigantic beets too.
This soup has a lot going for it. The texture was velvety, the color was a shocking pink, and it uses kefir, a yogurt-like drink, which was a new taste adventure for me. I can’t say enough about the color. It’s wild! The double fennel taste, supplied by fresh fennel plus fennel seeds, is not overpowering as I feared it might be. It has an interesting flavor that complements the beets nicely.
I had some already roasted beets, so instead of peeling and dicing raw beets, I just peeled and diced my roasted cooked beets and simmer for only 10 minutes to blend the flavors as the beets did not need cooking. Because I love the caramelized sweetness of roasted beets and the ease of peeling them, I’d go this way again. Actually, I made a double batch of this soup.
I still have some kefir left, so I think I’ll try to use it in place of buttermilk for some scones or other quick bread this weekend. Or maybe for pancakes on Saturday morning breakfast, or maybe both!
We’re Swimming in Beets
I’ve mentioned before that we LOVE beets at our house. I hit the jackpot at Wilson Farm this week. They had three different kinds of beets on offer: regular red beets, golden beets, and candy-cane-striped Chioggia beets. Of course, I bought all three.
My favorite way to cook beets is to roast them, to maximize the sweetness, as the roasting caramelizes the sugars. I also find I can roast the beets a day or before I use them in a salad. I roasted each type of my treasure trove of beets in a separate pan, mostly because I wanted to keep the red ones from staining the others.
With the red and Chioggia beets, I made a couple of batches of our house favorite Roasted Beet Salad with Walnuts.
I used the golden beets in another summer favorite, Russian Salad. I’m not exactly sure why this is called Russian Salad. As best I can tell, it has its origin in Salade Olivier, a recipe originally created by a famous Russian chef in the nineteenth century. That recipe included meats and was bound with a secret type of mayonnaise. I’ve had versions of Salade Olivier made by Russian colleagues, and while my recipe shares some ingredients, it is quite different. This salad is vegetarian, and the dressing is a vinaigrette, not mayonnaise, making it much lighter.
This is not truly a beet salad since it contains several different vegetables, including golden beets and wax beans. Since these two vegetables are usually only available from farmers’ markets, this is definitely a seasonal salad.
I suppose you could use red beets, but then the colors would just blend together. It’s so pretty with its assorted colors: green, white, orange, and two shades of yellow. The capers and chopped pickles add a vinegary surprise to the vegetables.
Russian Salad
Serves 6-8
Adapted from Verdura: Vegetables Italian Style by Viana La Place
1 bunch golden beets (3 or 4 beets)
2 medium red-skinned potatoes
¼ lb wax beans, ends trimmed and cut into 1-inch pieces
¼ lb green beans, ends trimmed and cut into 1-inch pieces
2 carrots, peeled and diced into ¼-inch pieces
3 Tbsp capers
2 Tbsp chopped cornichons (or dill pickles)
3 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 Tbsp red wine vinegar
Salt and pepper to taste
Preheat the oven to 450F. Scrub the beets, and place in a small baking pan. Add about ½ inch water to the bottom of the pan and cover tightly with foil. Bake for 1 hour, or until the beets are tender. When the beets are cool enough to handle, the skins should slip right off. Trim the ends. Dice into ¼-inch pieces. Add to a large mixing bowl.
In a medium saucepan, steam the potatoes in a steamer basket until the potatoes are tender, about 30 minutes. When the potatoes are cool enough to handle, dice into ¼-inch pieces. I leave them unpeeled. Add the potatoes to the bowl with the beets.
Fill a medium saucepan with water, bring to a boil. Add the beans, and cook until tender, about 5 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, scoop the beans out of the pot, and add to a bowl filled with ice cubes and water to stop the cooking.
In the same pot of boiling water, add the carrots, and cook until tender, about 3 minutes. We don’t need the water anymore, so either scoop the carrots from the pot with the slotted spoon, or just drain. Add to the same bowl of water to stop the cooking.
Drain the bowl of vegetables, and dry them off with a clean dishtowel. Add the vegetables to the beets and potatoes in the bowl. Add the capers and pickles to the bowl.
Whisk the olive oil and vinegar together. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Pour the dressing over the vegetables and gently toss everything together until the vegetables are mixed together and coated with dressing.
A Plateful of Happiness 