Food Simply Simple

Radishes are for salads.  Turnips are for the dark days of winter when nothing else is available.  Wrong.

Radishes come in many varieties – the colorful Easter radishes with white, pink, red, purple; the huge long red ones that appear to be carrots, at first; the tiny sausage-shaped rose and white set.  I’ve seen others, too, but these are the radishes we collected recently.  The turnips were white, salad turnips, perhaps Tokyo turnips.  They are texturally a little bit like radishes with only a dimly pungent taste of a turnip.  Most of the radishes and the turnips had all their greens intact, thankfully!  So, how to make use of these rarely used vegetables and have a great meal?

Pasta with Turnips, Radishes, and Greens

1 lb. brown rice pasta

2-4 bunches of radishes and turnips, with greens removed and saved

1 green pepper, seeded and thinly sliced

1 red pepper, seeded and thinly sliced

Olive oil

1 T. sesame oil

2 T. soy sauce or tamari

1 garlic clove, thinly sliced

Salt and Pepper, to taste

Grated cheese or toasted bread crumbs

Clean the radishes and turnips and cut them into bite-sized pieces so that all are about the same size.  Soak the greens and discard any that are discolored.  Drain the greens and remove any large stems.  Chop roughly and set aside.

Sauté the radishes and turnips in a big sauté pan with some olive oil.  When they are starting to cook, after about 2-3 minutes, put the lid on the pan and turn down the heat.   Pan roast them for  about 10 minutes.  Stir occasionally.  The radishes and turnips will be a bit soft, a bit brown, and more translucent.  Add the peppers, stir well, and continue cooking for another 3-5 minutes.  Stir in the sesame oil, soy sauce, and garlic.  Stir well.  Turn off the heat and let the vegetables sit.

Boil water for the pasta and add the pasta as the package directs.  After you add the pasta, salt the water well.  As soon as you add the pasta to the water, turn on the radishes and turnips again and add the chopped greens.  Stir well over high heat and let the greens wilt.  Cover the pan for a minute or two if you want to speed the process a bit.

When the pasta is done, drain it and add it to the vegetables, stirring gently and thoroughly mixing the pasta with the vegetables. 

NOTE:            If the vegetables are dry-ish when you finish adding and cooking the greens, add some hot pasta water, about a cup, to the radishes and turnips just before you drain the pasta.

TO SERVE:    Serve the pasta with grated cheese such as Locatelli Romano or toasted bread crumbs.

Serves 4-6 depending on how much you like it, and how much you eat at one sitting.

Options?  You could start with a lot of onions and garlic before sautéing/roasting the radishes and turnips.  You could use other types of greens, too.  We were trying to use what we had, and only the big, carrot-like red radishes  lacked their greens, so the greens were plentiful, lush, and tasty.

LinK

We love poblano peppers and whenever we see them, we buy several.  I know I am supposed to make chili rellenos with them, but stuffing a pepper and then deep frying it are about as far away from my preferences and skills as it’s possible to be.  I don’t fry things, and stuffing peppers that are wonderfully misshapen and often bent – and typically small, is not fun.  So how to enjoy the chil relleno experience?  Deconstruct and reconstruct.

This is a recipe with lots of variations feasible:  Add a thin layer of corn and black beans between the cheeses; add to the sliced poblanos some very thinly sliced truly hot peppers; or add a layer of sauted mushrooms between the two cheeses.

Chili Rellenos Deconstructed and Reconstructed

1-2 poblano peppers for each person – 2 medium/small or 1 very large

¼ red pepper, sliced very thinly, for each person

1 oz. Monterey Jack cheese, shredded, for each person

Ricotta cheese

Olive Oil

Topping:

Per person:

¼ c. Bread crumbs, approximately

1-2 mushrooms, sliced thinly

1 clove garlic, sliced thinly

Olive oil

Remove the stems, cores, and seeds from the poblano peppers.  Try cutting them in half lengthwise and using a sharp knife to remove the seeds and ribs.  You might want to wear protective gloves since hot peppers leave their heat behind on hands and fingers for a long time, and poblano peppers can be hotter than expected.   Slice the peppers very thinly and layer half in a pie tin, 8x8 pan, or 9x13 pan depending on how many people you are serving.  The peppers should cover the bottom of the pan without a lot of open space, although there cannot be total coverage.  Drizzle with olive oil.  Season with salt and pepper to taste (lightly is a good choice).

Sprinkle the shredded Monterey jack cheese on top of the peppers.  Put small spoonfuls of ricotta cheese on top of the Monterey jack cheese.

Layer the remaining peppers on top of the cheeses.

In a small sauté pan, sauté the mushrooms with the garlic in some olive oil.  When the mushrooms have wilted, add bread crumbs and keep cooking until the liquid is gone.  Spread the crumbs mixture on top of the peppers.

Bake 350° 30-45 minutes covered.  Uncover and keep baking 15-30 minutes until the crumbs are browning.

We enjoyed this a lot because it was a satisfying mix of cheese and peppers with just enough heat and a sense of crispy breading without the heaviness of something fried.  Hope you like it.

Lin K

What a busy growing season we've seen!  Abundant everything.  I've been doing a lot of business travel and cooking in spare weekends and evenings, so I've not added a lot of ideas here.  I'll catch up more frequently now that harvest is slowing a bit -- and I'll be on my squash hunt.  A horrible growing year in the midwest, so my outstanding source of outstanding squashes in Iowa is not on my hunt list this year, and I hope very much that Kathy's Pumpkin Patch in Donnellson, Iowa will be back up and running next year at this time.  I am sourcing some squashes in upstate New York, though, and always looking for growers who will add a few more types.  I found La Estrella locally recently, and also an American Tonda.  I'll add photos later.

But now -- a great crop that is just starting to be readily and abundantly available is kale.  We love Tuscan (Lacianato, Dinosaur) and Red Russian.  So few recipes seem to be available that make great use of kale, and even worse, so many recipes require that we first boil the kale and then sauté the kale.  I am unlikely to use two pans where one will do.  So try some kale with feta – a great main dish since it has protein.  It’s easy.  Serve with bread or rice and/or a salad.

Kale and Feta

1-2 bunches of kale (Tuscan, Red Russian, or Curly), stems removed

3-4 cloves garlic, thinly sliced

1-2 red peppers, cored, seeded, and very thinly sliced

3-4 oz. feta, crumbled

Olive oil

Salt and Pepper

Finely slice the de-stemmed kale and put it in a sauté pan.  If it’s still wet, that’s great.  If it’s pretty dry, add ¼ - ½ cup water.  Bring the kale to a boil and stem it with the lid on for 3-4 minutes.  When it wilts a bit, remove the cover, add oil and the garlic, and sauté until the kale is cooked – another 5-8 minutes depending on how soft you prefer kale.  Spread the kale around the pan.  Distribute the pepper rings on top, and cover for 2-3 minutes while the peppers wilt.  Season to taste.  Top with crumbled feta.

We use 2 bunches of kale for 3 people as an entrée.

Lin Kroeger

We've been eating a lot of winter squash, as usual, with lots of soup varieties evolving quickly and tastily.  In particular, we liked one when we roasted the squash and then cooked it with brown rice and chili spices.  When it cooled, we used a hand blender to smooth it out and it was the texture of a creamy soup.  Easy and a nice mix of slightly sweet squash with chili spices.

But we wanted something different the other night, so we combined the items in our refrigerator and were very pleased.

Cauliflower Tomato Cashew Curry

Serves 4

3-4 cloves garlic, peeled and thinly sliced

1 tsp. fresh ginger, peeled, julienned or grated

1 large onion, peeled and thinly sliced

2-3 T. Olive oil

2-3 tsp. curry powder (red curry, yellow Madras curry, or curry)

1 cauliflower, cleaned and separated into bite size florets

Salt and pepper, to taste

28 oz. can crushed or whole tomatoes

½ c. raw cashews, toasted in microwave 2-3 minutes until lightly browned

Add garlic, onion, and ginger to sauté pan with 2-3 T. olive oil.  Salt lightly.  Sauté until the onions wilt and add curry.  Saute 2 minutes, stiring to prevent sticking.  Add tomatoes and cauliflower, stirring gently.   Fill tomato can with water and add to cauliflower.  Cover and simmer 10-15 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Once cauliflower is cooked, remove cover and simmer until sauce thickens a bit.  Season with salt and pepper.

Serve with rice.  We prefer brown rice.  Top with toasted cashews.

This turned out to be fast and easy, and it was such a nice change without providing a lot of spicy heat.  That is something we're saving for a different evening.

LinK

We had some beets and not much else in the refrigerator, so at last, we dragged them out and had to decide what to do with them.  We like beets.  Beets store well.  But sometimes, we get tired of the beet-y flavor of beets.  However, we played a bit, inspired by random recipe reading.  As a side dish, we can highly recommend this one.

Beets in Black Bean, Garlic, and Ginger – a side dish

Serves 4

4 medium sized beets, peeled and julienned

2-3 large shallots, peeled and sliced thinly

3 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced thinly

1” fresh ginger, peeled and sliced thinly

3 T. Black Bean sauce

2—3 T. olive oil

Salt & Pepper, optional

Prepare the garlic, ginger, and shallots and put in sauté pan with the oil.  Sauté on low, stirring to distribute the oil.  If using salt and pepper, add them after the vegetables start to cook.  Once the vegetables are starting to cook, add the beets and stir into the mixture.  Cover the pan and turn the heat to low.  Pan roast 15-20  minutes until beets are fork tender.

Stir in the Black Bean sauce and serve.

Options:  Serve on top of steamed or sautéed spinach or other greens.

We found that this recipe made the strong beet flavor much less but didn't lose the sense of a tasty root vegetable.  And of course, if you don't have shallots, just use a large red onion, very thinly sliced.

It's still root vegetable season, and why not go for a different flavor combination while you can?

LinK