onions – Harmonious Belly

November 29, 2013December 15, 2013

Making a Root Vegetable Ferment

Lately I’ve been feeling like my gut and digestive system could use a tune up (not to mention dealing with a recent bout of heartburn/GERD), so I decided to make a nice root vegetable ferment. My body loves lacto-fermented foods, and I had some beautiful carrots and rutabagas from the CSA this week, plus onion, garlic, and ginger were in the house. I also added some red pepper flakes to make it a little spicy.

I washed off the vegetables (and got rid of the carrot hairs), but didn’t peel them, since there are microbes on the outside of the vegetables that help in the fermentation process. I grated the rutabagas and carrots, chopped the onion into small pieces, and minced the garlic (2 peeled cloves) and an inch chunk of (unpeeled) ginger.

I added a good shake of red pepper flakes—maybe 1/2 a tsp. Then I added 1 tbs of kosher salt, which doesn’t have iodine (that also interferes with the fermentation process). Continue reading “Making a Root Vegetable Ferment”

August 30, 2011September 2, 2011

Roasted Tomatillo Salsa

One of my favorite summer vegetables – apart from tomatoes – is the tomatillo. Tomatillos are those seemingly green tomatoes that grow with a papery husk around them… but they are not unripe green tomatoes at all! They are actually really different from tomatoes.

tomatillos from El Poblano Farm — With their husks on

They are in the nightshade family – just as tomatoes, potatoes, and eggplants are – but resemble ground cherries more than tomatoes. They are more solid than tomatoes, sometimes a little sticky under their husk, full of tiny seeds and have a tangy taste. They are also very high in pectin, and that helps to thicken salsa verde. Some people like to eat them raw but I don’t care for them that way.

Continue reading “Roasted Tomatillo Salsa”

May 18, 2011May 18, 2011

Cream of Carrot Soup

I love carrots – after parsnips, they are my favorite root vegetable (apart from potatoes, sweet potatoes, and those kinds of tubers) to roast. Whenever I see crudités, I head for the carrots first. I’ve eaten more than my share of carrots at recital receptions, and I never tire of them. I do find packaged “baby carrots” to be a bit amusing – big carrots whittled down to become small carrots (I have no idea how they do it exactly). Actual baby carrots right out of the ground are a totally different creature and are sweet like candy.

I made a carrot cake the other day, from Heidi Swanson’s 101 Cookbooks site. It’s a wonderful cake, very earthy and sweetened with bananas and dates – there’s no refined sugar (or unrefined sugar, actually – it’s just fruit sweetened) in this carrot cake. It’s one of my favorite things about this cake.

I did make a maple syrup sweetened mascarpone frosting for it, but after tasting the whole shebang, I found it made the whole thing too sweet, so I scraped a lot of it off. There’s only a thin layer now, and it’s perfect.

After I made this carrot cake, I had a bunch of carrots left over, so I decided to make soup out of them. I whipped up this cream of carrot soup the other day and it turned out to be simply amazing. It’s basically carrots and onions cooking in milk and then pureed. Cooking vegetables in milk and pureeing them is one of my base recipes – it works well with broccoli, cauliflower, root vegetables, and even dark leafy greens.

My bet is that one could make this dairy free by using homemade almond milk in place of the cow’s milk. Carrots and almonds go so well together. Maybe garnishing the soup with dukkah would be nice in that case, too!

Cream of Carrot Soup

1/4 white onion, preferably organic, chopped
carrots, preferably organic, washed and grated enough to make 1.5 cups
1 tbs unsalted grass-fed butter (I like using Kerrygold)
1 tbs extra virgin olive oil
juice from 1/2 orange
1/2 tsp coarse sea salt/kosher salt
1/4 tsp Aleppo pepper/red pepper flakes
2 c. whole milk (mine is raw, but any kind of grass-fed milk would work just fine)
salt and pepper to taste
whole milk yogurt (I used raw yogurt, but regular whole milk yogurt would work, as would strained yogurt)
za’atar (optional, but delicious; fresh thyme leaves would be an alternative)

Melt butter in a medium saucepan, then add the chopped onion. Cook for a few minutes until softened, and add the grated carrots. Cook for a few minutes until they soften, too.

Add the olive oil and stir until combined. Squeeze half the juice of the orange (so, juice from 1/4 of an orange) onto the onions and carrots. Add salt and sprinkle on the Aleppo pepper.

Add the milk and combine everything in the pan together. Turn the heat down on low (do not let this mixture boil), put a lid on the pan, and simmer for 20-30 minutes until everything is soft. Note: you may have to place the lid on the pan at an angle if things are too hot, to let the steam out, and so as to not cause over-boiling (milk burns easily and smells terrible when it does).

Take the pan off the heat and blend everything in the pot with a stick blender (you could do this with a regular blender, too, but it’s just more work). Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Ladle into bowls and top with yogurt and za’atar (optional) to taste and squeeze a little more orange juice onto the soup.

Serves 1-2 people.

This post is participating in Real Food Wednesday hosted by Kelly the Kitchen Kop.

April 30, 2010September 2, 2011

Asado de Bodas

final dish

Last week I was in a bookstore, and found my way to the cooking section (no big surprise there). I was there with the intent to buy some food writing or a memoir. I saw a number of books that were perfectly respectable candidates, but nothing spoke to me at that time. Then I spied Diana Kennedy’s The Art of Mexican Cooking, and had to check it out. For a while now, I’ve been debating whether to get a basic Mexican cookbook by Rick Bayless or Diana Kennedy, not sure which I’d prefer. After perusing this book, I knew I had to have it. And I’m glad I did.

There are so many delicious sounding recipes in here! I knew I had some pork kebab meat in the freezer that I wanted to use, so I checked out the pork section. I came across this recipe for Asado de Bodas – a northern wedding dish from Durango and Coahuila – and it looked perfect. The flavors sounded wonderful – chiles, chocolate, tomatillos – and the method looked pretty simple (boiling, sauteeing).

I prepared it after work last night. It took a little longer to make than I anticipated, but none of the steps were difficult. It was worth the time and waiting – this pork is good. It’s warm and tangy, which just the tiniest hint of bitterness in the background, not at all disturbing (I’m not normally fond of bitter things). The tartness of the tomatillos takes care of the harsh bitterness you often find in chile soaking liquid. As the sauce thickens, it tastes more intense, as would be expected. I just loved it.

ingredient collage

I got to use some special ingredients, too. I had a few stale tortillas from Tortilleria Nixtamal; the chocolate I used was made by Taza, so it is organic and stone ground, with a hint of cinnamon in it; and the pastured pork I used was sourced from the wonderful Lewis-Waite farm via my CSA.

While I’ve included the recipe as-is, I did make a few adjustments. First, I halved the recipe, simply because I had one pound of pork on hand instead of two. I used extra virgin olive oil, because I haven’t rendered my lard yet. I used ground cumin instead of cumin seed, because that’s what I had. I also chose to cut the pork into slightly smaller sizes because I like it that way.

sauce collage

And I used a regular old Queens bay leaf instead of a Mexican bay leaf. Interesting story – as T and I were walking around Corona one day, we noticed a house with a big greenhouse attached to it. The older man who lived there came out and said hello, and we remarked how amazing his house looked with that green house attached. He invited us in and showed us around – he’s growing citrus trees in there! Also a bay laurel tree, and so he snipped off a handful of leaves for us. Such a kind and neighborly thing to do – I’ve loved using these bay leaves in my cooking.

I ate this over millet cooked with chicken broth, but tortillas would be wonderful. I hope you enjoy this dish as much as I do.

Asado de Bodas
From The Art of Mexican Cooking

The Meat
2 pounds (900 g) pork with some fat, cut into 1-inch (2.5 cm) cubes
1/4 medium onion, roughly sliced
2 garlic cloves peeled
sea salt to taste

The Sauce
6 tbs lard
4 chiles anchos, slit open, veins and seeds removed
the pork broth
About 8 tomatillos
4 garlic cloves, peeled
1 small slice dried French bread
1/2 dried corn tortilla
1/8 teaspoon cumin seeds, crushed
1 oz Mexican drinking chocolate, broken into small pieces
1 Mexican bay leaves
1/2 tsp dried Mexican oregano
Thinly pared zest of 1 orange
sea salt to taste

Put the pork into a saucepan; add the onion, garlic, and salt to taste. Cover the meat with water, cover the pan, and bring to a simmer; cook slowly for about 25 minutes. Remove 1 1/2 cups (375 ml) of the broth and keep warm in a bowl. Continue cooking the meat, uncovered, until it is just tender but not soft and the water has been absorbed – about 15 minutes (cooking time will vary with the quality and cut of the meat).

Melt 3 tbs of the lard in a frying pan and fry the dried chiles very briefly on each side until they are an opaque tobacco brown inside – about 3 seconds. Remove from pan an add to the broth. Fry the tomatillos and garlic until golden and transfer them to the broth. Last, fry the bread and tortilla over very low heat until crisp and brown. Add to the broth. Set the contents of the bowl aside to soak for about 15 minutes or until the chile skins are soft.

Transfer the mixture to a blender jar, add the cumin seeds and chocolate, and blend until smooth.

Melt the rest of the lard in a heavy pan and fry the pork pieces until golden, about 10 minutes. Add the blended ingredients, bay leaves, oregano, orange, zest, and salt to taste and cook over low heat, scraping the bottom and sides of the pan until the sauce is fairly thick and the lard makes a shiny surface on the sauce – about 20 minutes. Serve with corn tortillas

Serve 6-8.