Grown Up Rice

Confession. I love white rice with ketchup mixed into it. It's a dirty secret from my childhood. It's comfort in a bowl--slightly chewy, soft, hot, a bit sweet. I eat with a spoon. It's even better topped with a fried egg. Nutritional value of said dish without the egg? Yeesh. I won't even try to quantify it. 

I grew up eating grains and have always loved them as a food group. But when I try to conjure up a more grown up rice dish that I really love, nothing rises to the top of the pack. I know that brown and wild rices are great for me and can be delicious, but when I look at my jars of grains and pulses on the shelf I almost always pass over the rice in favor of quinoa, millet, amaranth, lentils.

Last week I had my nose in Yottam Ottolenghi's great cookbooks, Plenty and Ottolenghi. I spent a week making his recipes--green gazpacho, sesame and harissa marinated chicken thighs, burnt eggplant with pomegranate molasses. In Plenty, I came across a recipe for rice with herbs, which he describes as "actually, herbs with rice".

His cooking method is pretty intricate and involves things like making "chimneys" in the rice to allow for proper steaming and what seemed like constant "drizzling" with water and different oils. Steaming chimneys seemed more labor-intensive than necessary for a working night's dinner but I loved the idea of a heavily herbed rice dish. I chose red Wehani rice over Ottolenghi's call for white, ** and decided--at least this time--not to add his called-for yogurt and sour cream. To make it a one-dish meal I sauteed shallots and delicata squash, stirred it into the cooked rice, and added some sriracha hot sauce. It was hot, easy to eat with a spoon, toothsome, intensely flavorful. It would be great with an egg on top. And this time, no ketchup necessary.

** White rice is the whole grain stripped of its hull whereas brown rice (and Wehani rice) is the grain with its hull in tact. The hull contains most of the B vitamins, minerals, fiber and fat and 10% of the protein. While white rice is not completely devoid of nutrition, it doesn't provide as many nutrients as its brown or wild counterparts. Think of it as white bread versus some kind of seedy whole grain bread--it's not evil, it's just doing less good.

Grown Up Rice

serves 4 as a side dish
adapted from Yottam Ottolenghi's book Plenty

1 cup red (or brown or wild) rice

2 1/4 cups water

salt

1-2 cups finely chopped herbs (dill, parsley, cilantro, basil, mint, oregano)

1 shallot

olive oil

1 small delicata squash

sriracha or hot sauce of choice

egg (optional)

Put the rice in a sieve and rinse under cold water. Put it in a pot and cover with the water. Bring to a boil, uncovered, over medium-high heat. Once water boils, throw in a pinch or two of salt, cover the pot and reduce heat to low. Set time for 20 minutes.

While the rice is cooking, halve the delicata lengthwise and use a spoon to remove the seeds. Halve each piece again, lengthwise, and slice crosswise into slices about a 1/4 inch thick. Set aside.

Peel the shallot and chop. Set aside.

Choose the herbs you like in the amounts you like (I go heaviest on mint, basil and dill, personally) and chop finely.

When the timer on the rice goes off, remove the top, add the herbs in one big pile and replace the lid. Se the timer for another 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, heat a tablespoon or two of olive oil in a small pan. When glistening, add the shallot and stir. Cook for a couple of minutes then add the delicata and a pinch of salt. Cook over medium high heat until the squash is tender and browning at the edges. About 10 minutes. 

When the rice is finished, remove the lid and fluff the rice with a fork, stirring the herbs into the grain. Add the delicata and shallot to the pot and mix well or spoon the rice onto a plate and top with the squash. Top it all with an egg (fried or poached recommended) and a generous amount of hot sauce. Salt and pepper to taste as always. 

Roasted Cauliflower with Salsa Verde

I have a lot of books about food. I have books about nutrition, books about the socio-political implications of food, collections of essays about food, books of poetry about food, musings from MFK Fisher and Elizabeth David, and slim vintage manuals that sit on my shelf to serve as art rather than instruction. I have cookbooks that are dog-eared, food-splattered and marked up the way any well loved, good cookbook should be, and I have beautiful cookbooks from which I have never made a recipe but which I find in my lap on a regular basis for inspiration.

Nigel Slater's book Tender, falls into the latter category. It is a thick, 618 page, beautiful beast of a book centered around the vegetables the author loves and grows in his backyard in London. The book is heavy on text and when pictures do appear they are simultaneously lush and cold, inviting and a bit austere, rich in hue but suggestive of a damp grey just outside the border of the page, evocative of London itself. I love Slater's narrative tone which is conversational, at times equally poetic and snarky, and always confident. He breaks the book into chapters by vegetable, gives a brief introduction, discusses the vegetable "in the kitchen" and "in the garden" and then gives general suggestions for flavors that work well together. Finally there is a picture or two and a few recipes showing how these flavor combinations might manifest.

Whenever I tire of how I am preparing a vegetable I turn to Tender for some new suggestion of a spice or preparation I haven't thought of. We have a lot of cauliflower in our garden right now. I have made "rice" with it. I have made soup with it. I've thrown it into salads and stir fries and dipped it in hummus. I ate it every couple of days for weeks and finally got sick of the stuff, wished it gone, and felt as Slater does that "Sometimes I think it wouldn't bother me if I never saw one again." Still, the dense heads of crinkly florets continue to thrive outside--some white, some an almost pale purple. I opened to Slater's chapter on the brassica about which he says, "Its chaste, slightly coy presence makes this a vegetable that would never shout its qualities." I have to agree. It can be borderline dull when mistreated and sublimely subtle given the right circumstances. Among his recipes for cheese or bechamel-smothered cauliflower, I found a simple dish of fried cauliflower with salsa verde. With plans to grill lamb chops that night it seemed the perfect first recipe to test from the book. We have a small kitchen with poor ventilation so I opted to roast the cauliflower at high heat until just tender. I collected the herbs from our backyard, chopped some garlic and 10 minutes later had a bowl of piquant, emerald colored sauce that is not only delicious on cauliflower but also on lamb, on salmon, on chicken, on roasted potatoes, mixed into quinoa......you get the idea.

Roasted Cauliflower with Salsa Verde

adapted from Tender by Nigel Slater

serves 4

1 head of cauliflower

olive oil

1 or 2 lemons

a big handful each of basil, mint & parsley

2 cloves of garlic, minced

1 T dijon mustard

2 T capers, rinsed

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. 

Trim the cauliflower of its stem and outer leaves then pull apart or cut into florets. Place on a sheet tray and drizzle with olive oil. I like to go light on the oil so that the cauliflower crisps rather than sogs. Sprinkle with salt and maybe a little smoked paprika if you have it handy. Roast until just tender but not limp. About 20 minutes.

While the cauliflower is cooking prepare the salsa verde.

Chope the herbs finely but don't worry about uniformity. They should be thin but, as Slater says, "not so small they look like tea leaves." Place in a medium sized bowl and add the garlic, mustard and capers. Stir with a fork and then, while stirring, slowly add enough olive oil to bring the mixture to a dressing or sauce-like consistency. About 6 tablespoons. 

Add the juice of one lemon, a pinch of salt and a lot of black pepper. Taste and adjust seasoning and lemon juice and herb ratio as needed. It should taste salty, zesty, bright, garlicky and all around delicious.

Remove the cauliflower from the oven and serve immediately, smothered in salsa verde.

Red Cabbage & Fennel Slaw with Creamy-Coriander Dressing

'Tis the season for winter salads. And for winter colds apparently. I've had two different strains of a bug in the past 10 days.  All I want to eat is hot, simple soups (Miso!) and raw, crunchy salads. I'm not the only one. All my favorite bloggers seem to be on the soup and salad train. It makes sense, after the holidays that our bodies are craving simple and nutrient-rich foods.  I love salad any time of year, but while I tend to leave my summer veggies unadorned, I like to pair raw winter vegetables with rich, creamy dressings and warming spices to stay grounded in the cold months, even when eating light.

Fennel is one of my favorite vegetables and I love that it comes into season in the winter when so many foods are earthy, heavy, rich, and dark in flavor. Fennel is a warming vegetable and spice though you might not guess it at first. Its clean, astringent crunch, and its power as a digestive aid, make it the perfect counterbalance to rich, fatty foods.

Cabbage is one of the little-discussed miracle vegetables. Like the rest of the brassica family, cabbage is  a strong anti-cancerous agent. Cabbage is an amazing detoxifier and alkalinizer, as well as an immuno-booster. Again, I was surprised to learn that cool, crunchy, cleansing cabbage also has a warming effect on the body. The sulfur and iron in the leaves can improve poor blood circulation, an attribute helpful to many of us in the colder months.

In keeping with the theme, coriander seed is a warming herb which aids in digestion, helps regulate energy levels, and can help cure all kinds of maladies, from headaches to urinary tract infections. Like its cohorts in this slaw, coriander has a bold, bright flavor that seems to cut through anything heavy on the pallet or sluggish in the body. I crushed the seeds into a yogurt-based dressing along with some cayenne and paprika.

Eat this slaw for breakfast with an egg, for lunch or dinner with a simple soup, or like we did last night, along side baked sweet potatoes and spicy Andouille sausages.

Red Cabbage & Fennel Slaw with Creamy Coriander Dressing

1/2 a small head of red cabbage (about 3/4 lbs)

1 small fennel bulb, stems trimmed

a handful of basil

2 t coriander seed

1/2 a small clove of garlic

1/2 cup creamy, plain, whole fat yogurt 

1 T apple cider vinegar
2 T good quality olive oil

dash cayenne pepper

dash paprika

pinch of salt

whole lot of cracked black pepper

Slice the cabbage in half lengthwise. Using a paring knife, make a cut on either side of the triangular core/stem of the cabbage and remove the stem. Place the cabbage flat-side down on a cutting board and slice into thin ribbons. (You can also cut the cabbage into quarters and use the shredding blade on a food processor, which is what I did.) Place the shredded cabbage into a large bowl.

Slice a small, trimmed bulb of fennel in half lengthwise. Starting at the fat end of the bulb, slice the fennel thinly, about the same size as the cabbage. This too can go through a food processor using a shredding blade. Add the fennel to the bowl with the cabbage.

To make the dressing, place the coriander seeds, the garlic and a pinch of salt in a mortar and pestle or in the bowl of a food processor with the chopping blade in place. Blend/mash well. If using a food processor, add the vinegar, olive oil, yogurt, paprika, cayenne, pepper and a bit more salt and blend well. If using a mortar and pestle, transfer your coriander-garlic paste to a medium sized bowl and whisk in the vinegar, oil, yogurt and remaining spices. Taste and adjust seasoning as needed.

Pour the dressing over the slaw, add a handful of roughly chopped basil and toss together until all the vegetables are well coated with dressing. Serve right away or store in the fridge. The slaw will keep its crunch for a few days in the fridge, even after its dressed.

You will probably have left over dressing. We spooned the rest of ours over cumin-roasted cauliflower the next day.

End of Summer Lasagna (no noodles): Zucchini Trilogy Part 3

Apologies for the delayed post. For whatever reason, this post about the medium sized zucchini was the hardest for me to decide on. I flipped through every cookbook I have and went into the archives of several blogs looking for inspiration. I considered making this inventive cobbler which I am still going to try, and I also considered some iteration of this but I have yet to buy a spiral slicer (next on my "to buy" list for the kitchen). I settled on pasta-less lasagna. The mornings and evenings have turned cold here and I find myself less drawn to chilled soups and salads for dinner. I want hot food but I still don't want the heavier pastas and stews of winter. This lasagna, using slabs of zucchini and eggplant in place of the noodles is a nice middle ground--hot, comforting, gooey with cheese but light and fresh and full of the summer garden harvest. I didn't include a recipe for the pesto here because I never really measure when I make it. Basically I throw salt, a clove or two of garlic, a raw nut of my choosing (walnuts this time) and big handfuls of herbs (basil & lemon balm in equal measure) into the food processor, hit "on", and pour good olive oil into the feed tube until I get the texture I want. From there I salt, pepper, and re-herb as needed. It requires, as most cooking does, the happy job of multiple taste tests.

Noodle-less Zucchini & Eggplant Lasagna

2 medium sized zucchini

1 medium eggplant

10-15oz whole milk ricotta

1 egg

zest of one lemon

parsley, thyme, oregano, mint or any other fresh herb you have on hand

red pepper flakes

pesto

olive oil

mozzarella and/or parmesan to top

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Slice the zucchini & eggplant lengthwise into 1/8-inch thick slices. Arrange in a single layer on your counter, cutting board or a sheet tray and drizzle lightly with olive oil. Sprinkle with salt.

In a bowl mix ricotta, lemon zest, egg, and chopped parsley, mint, oregano & thyme (or other herbs), and red pepper flakes until well combined. Salt and pepper to taste.

Lightly oil a lasagna pan and cover with a single layer of zucchini. Top the zucchini with a generous layer of the ricotta mixture.

Cover  the ricotta with a single layer of eggplant. Top the eggplant with a generous layer of pesto. Repeat the layering steps alternating zucchini, ricotta, eggplant, pesto until you reach just below the lip of the pan.

Sprinkle grated mozzarella and/or parmesan over the top and cover the pan with foil making sure the foil is not resting directly on top of the cheese.

Bake covered for 25-30 minutes. Uncover the lasagna and bake another 15 minutes until the cheese is melted and brown. Zucchini and eggplant should be fully cooked but, in my opinion, still a bit firm.

Let rest uncovered for 10 minutes, slice, share, enjoy.

Health benefits of lemon balm & basil

Lemon Balm
Lemon balm is antibacterial and has been used topically to dress and heal wounds for centuries. When ingested it is said to help with digestion, relieve nausea, and help with troubles of the liver, spleen, kidneys and bladder.

Basil
Basil is a member of the mint family. It helps stimulate appetite and digestion and it is a tonic for frazzled nerves. It is a natural breath freshener and can help counteract flatulence, constipation, nausea, and stomach cramps. It is a mild antibacterial and anti fungal so the leaves can be used topically to alleviate itching skin and insect bites.

Bonus: They are both delicious!!!