Happy New Year

A couple days late with that sentiment isn't so bad, is it? I've been busier than I hoped I'd be this past year and the amount of posts I had is evidence of that. I don't do resolutions, but I do promise to try and be a bit more vigilant in 2011.

I think I got caught up in wanting to write what I thought others wanted to read. That's all well and good because artists want to please their fans, but I also need to get back to why I started this in the first place and that was simply for me and my kids.

This coming year looks to be filled with positive changes for us and I'll try and keep those of you who are loyal readers in the loop, but it's all good things, not easy and some rather difficult, but all for the best in the end.

Here's a typical Southern recipe for the New Year, one that actually comes from my own upbringing. We aren't Southern, but the influence in the area of Indiana where my mother grew up was heavily Southern and many of her recipes reflect that.

You can chill out some with the bacon here, but it really is necessary for the right flavor. Try and get organic produce when you can and feel free to substitute canned black-eyed peas if you like.

Black-Eyed Peas and Collard Greens
Serves 8

1/2 pound bacon - cut into small dice
3 cloves garlic - minced
1 small yellow onion - chopped
1 Tablespoon apple cider vinegar
salt to taste
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
15 large collard leaves - rinsed, dried and chopped
1 pound dried black-eyed peas
1 bay leaf

1. Pick over beans and rinse. Cover with cold water and soak overnight.
2. Drain water from beans and place in a heavy pot. Cover with 1-inch of water and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and add 1 clove minced garlic, 1 bay leaf and 1 Tablespoon salt (the salt will NOT make the beans tough, that's an old wives' tale). Cook 45 minutes to 1 hour or until beans are cooked through. Remove bay leaf, drain well and set aside.
3. Heat the same large pot over medium heat and add bacon. Cook until crisp and add onion and garlic. Cook just until onion turns translucent. Drain grease and add chopped greens. Stir well and add 1 cup water, vinegar and cayenne. Lid tightly and reduce to a simmer. Cook for 45 minutes or until greens are tender.
4. Add drained beans and heat through before serving.

It's Not Even Spring Yet!

I couldn't help it. I tried to restrain myself, really, but this stretch of warmer weather had me champing at the bit to grill something. Anything. So, after spending the morning zesting citrus for various things (Dorie Greenspan's Perfect Party Cake was one) I felt the need for fresh flavors on my dinner plate.

I had already thawed chicken breasts and was planning on fried chicken with a tomato based sauce, but I caught sight of the grill outside and made a last minute executive decision: the chicken must be grilled.

I had also been cooking beans to have on-hand. The beans were cooking with dried arbol chiles, bay leaves and garlic, and after tossing the lime shells (limes sans zest and juice) into the beans I felt like they needed to come to play in our dinner somehow. I scratched the tomato sauce idea and instead made a quick salsa with beans, avocado and tomato. It was the perfect complement to the grilled chicken. It was so good, in fact, that I had to keep from finishing it off myself. There are no herbs added and it doesn't need any at all - the combination of crunchy onion, tender avocado and tangy lime juice is terrific as-is.

Our dinner was a thrown-together delight. The chicken was topped with the salsa and I made a simple side of linguine tossed with olive oil, dried lemon zest and basil. It was divinely delicious and even the kids liked it. Not quite summer, but so close I could almost taste it.

Simple Tomato, Bean and Avocado Salsa
Makes 3 cups

1 1/2 cups seeded and diced tomato
1 1/2 cups cooked and drained beans (I used kidney and pinto)
1 small Hass avocado, peeled, seeded and diced
1/2 cup white onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 limes, juiced
1 teaspoon Kosher salt

Combine all in a small bowl and toss well. Let stand for several minutes to blend flavors before serving.

Foul Medames

While I was away last week my husband discovered a new felafel joint had opened not far from where we live in Bristol called Falafel King. Actually they've been around for a while at gigs and other shows and have a stall down on the docks but they now have a posh new takeaway and café in Cotham.

It was buzzing when we got down there at lunchtime - justifiably so in terms of the size of the portions. £4.50 will buy you a monster wrap smothered with hummus and topped with lovely light puffy felafel (much, much better than the ones I attempted last year), two different slaws and whatever else you want to add: pickles, sumac and tahini, chilli or sour mango sauce.

But having ordered it what I actually wanted was my husband's foul medames, a super tasty dish of hummus topped with rich, dark earthy fava beans (pictured in the rather murky, blurry picture above)

He knew to order it because he once lived in Cairo where it was his daily lunch - at about 2p a throw. Ironically it's also an Israeli street food, one of the strangest things about the bitter Middle East conflict being that Israelis and Arabs eat very similar dishes. (In Egypt it's known as Ful)

I suspect you'd find a definitive recipe for this ultra-frugal dish in Claudia Roden's superb New Middle Eastern Food which I lent a while ago to my son and realise he hasn't given back or try this version from About.com. Wikipedia also has quite an informative entry. I'll have a go at it myself as soon as I can find the right beans.

Have any of you made foul medames? If so do you have a good recipe to share?

Foul Medames

While I was away last week my husband discovered a new felafel joint had opened not far from where we live in Bristol called Falafel King. Actually they've been around for a while at gigs and other shows and have a stall down on the docks but they now have a posh new takeaway and café in Cotham.

It was buzzing when we got down there at lunchtime - justifiably so in terms of the size of the portions. £4.50 will buy you a monster wrap smothered with hummus and topped with lovely light puffy felafel (much, much better than the ones I attempted last year), two different slaws and whatever else you want to add: pickles, sumac and tahini, chilli or sour mango sauce.

But having ordered it what I actually wanted was my husband's foul medames, a super tasty dish of hummus topped with rich, dark earthy fava beans (pictured in the rather murky, blurry picture above)

He knew to order it because he once lived in Cairo where it was his daily lunch - at about 2p a throw. Ironically it's also an Israeli street food, one of the strangest things about the bitter Middle East conflict being that Israelis and Arabs eat very similar dishes. (In Egypt it's known as Ful)

I suspect you'd find a definitive recipe for this ultra-frugal dish in Claudia Roden's superb New Middle Eastern Food which I lent a while ago to my son and realise he hasn't given back or try this version from About.com. Wikipedia also has quite an informative entry. I'll have a go at it myself as soon as I can find the right beans.

Have any of you made foul medames? If so do you have a good recipe to share?

Veggie Wednesday: Sofrito Rice and Beans

Sofrito is an ingredient that plays a very large role in any type of Hispanic cooking. However, there are two distinct ways of making it; one involves tomatoes and one does not. I've used both and it really depends on my mood as to which will find its way into a dish, but for this dish it was the green sofrito made without tomatoes.

This sofrito is another of those things I made by throwing together the ingredients until it 'looked good'. There is a good recipe for it HERE. I simply tossed green peppers, cilantro, garlic and onion into the blender and chopped it fine. I store mine in the freezer in small batches until needed.

This isn't a typical Hispanic recipe - just something I made for lunch when this was all that I had on-hand.

Sofrito Rice and Beans

2 tablespoons oil
1 cup green sofrito
2 cups uncooked rice - rinsed
3 cups cooked pinto beans
4 cups water plus more as needed

Heat oil in a heavy bottomed pot and add sofrito. Cook and stir until fragrant. Add rice and toss until well coated with oil and sofrito. Add beans and stir until well mixed. Add 4 cups of water and reduce heat to very low. Cover tightly and check every 5 minutes - stirring to keep rice from sticking. This is completely contrary to the usual method of cooking Puerto Rican rice and beans - that one you want to have stick to the pot!

Add water if necessary and cook with the lid on until the rice is tender. Salt if necessary and serve.

Bargain beans

I anticipated a bit of a hiatus in blog postings after the move so had stashed away a couple of items I thought would get me by until I re-focussed on culinary matters (though we did manage to cook some pretty decent lamb chops - reduced in Somerfield - and roast parsnips last night in the dreaded AGA)

Anyway the first was about bin-ends. The other day I bought 13p's worth of red kidney beans in our local health food shop out of curiosity to see how much I would get when they were cooked up. And the answer was at least as much as you get in a 400g tin which are currently selling for about 50-60p if you buy them singly.

True, you have to soak them overnight (not time-consuming, just a matter of remembering) and cook them for about an hour - unless you have a pressure cooker and you know what my feelings are about those - but they do also taste a great deal better than canned beans.

I made a batch of Mexican-style refried beans, the recipe for which you can find, appropriately enough on my student website Beyond Baked Beans, but you could obviously also use them for a chilli or a salad. Or both, even

Bargain beans

I anticipated a bit of a hiatus in blog postings after the move so had stashed away a couple of items I thought would get me by until I re-focussed on culinary matters (though we did manage to cook some pretty decent lamb chops - reduced in Somerfield - and roast parsnips last night in the dreaded AGA)

Anyway the first was about bin-ends. The other day I bought 13p's worth of red kidney beans in our local health food shop out of curiosity to see how much I would get when they were cooked up. And the answer was at least as much as you get in a 400g tin which are currently selling for about 50-60p if you buy them singly.

True, you have to soak them overnight (not time-consuming, just a matter of remembering) and cook them for about an hour - unless you have a pressure cooker and you know what my feelings are about those - but they do also taste a great deal better than canned beans.

I made a batch of Mexican-style refried beans, the recipe for which you can find, appropriately enough on my student website Beyond Baked Beans, but you could obviously also use them for a chilli or a salad. Or both, even

Veggie Wednesday: Grow Your Own IV

Part four! Yes, I'm going to continue this until I can effectively convince at least one person to attempt to grow his or her own veggies. I mean really, this is definitely one of those, 'if I can do it, you can do it' deals.

I'm no farmer Brown, and yet I've managed to grow my own vegetables and herbs in a very small plot for 5 years (non-consecutive). I've done it completely organically, as well, and I am of the mind that anyone can achieve the same.

I don't get bumper crops, but I do get enough to extend our food stores for several months in the summer, and that's good enough for me. Everyone should grow some type of food whether it's in a container, the ground or hydroponically. If we all did it, there would be quite an impact on our not-so-happy-at-the-moment earth.

So, here's what is going on in my backyard:

Lovely mint. It grows all by itself with very little need for me at all. I make the most killer Mint Pesto from this and dunk it in almost everything I drink.

A zucchini flower...
...and another. Beautiful.
Flowering cucumber vines - and dirt under my nails! It's actually one of my favorite things.

Remember those week-old bean plants? Look at them now! Flowers galore means beans galore.

Our lettuce is all eaten up - by us! It made a delicious salad. The radishes didn't fare so well. I hadn't turned over the ground deep enough and they didn't get very big. Live and learn; I'll definitely try them again next year.

Now, stop sitting in front of that computer and go out and grow something!

Beans 'n' Cornbread

In between Christmas and New Year's we try to keep the food a little lighter here. Beans are not as heavy as you may think, but heavy enough to be filling, and more than that, comforting. There's nothing better on a cold day, I assure you.

When I was a kid, my mom made beans and cornbread often. She's from the Midwest in an area that was settled mostly by people from Tennessee and Kentucky, so most of the food that mom grew up with had a heavy Southern influence. Regardless, my mom never made beans and cornbread with pinto beans; she always used navy beans.

I don't have an exact recipe for these beans, but it goes a little like this:

Cover 1 pound of navy beans with water and soak overnight. Drain and rinse them. In a big, heavy pot, cook about 5 slices of diced bacon until crisp. Don't drain that bacon grease! Leave it where it is and add a chopped onion, one chopped carrot and 2 chopped celery ribs. Add the beans and cover by one inch with chicken stock. Cook this over a low flame for just about forever, or until the beans are soft and the stock has thickened a bit. Add a generous tablespoon of salt and a healthy dose of pepper. Don't add salt while the beans are cooking or they'll get tough.

While those beans are cooking for the last half hour or so, make your cornbread. Please don't use that boxed stuff, real cornbread is so easy to make that there's just no excuse for it.

Cornbread
Makes one 8x8 pan

1 1/4 c. flour
3/4 c. cornmeal
2 T. sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1 c. milk
1 beaten egg
1/4 c. oil

Combine flour, cornmeal, salt, sugar and baking powder
and stir together well.
Mix in milk, egg and oil.
Don't over mix this, you want your cornbread to be tender,
not rock-hard! Mix just until moistened.
Bake 20 to 25 minutes in a greased 8x8 pan at 400 degrees F
or until golden brown.

Now, you can serve this in a big bowl with the cornbread tucked off to the side, or do what we always did; smother that cornbread with beans and eat 'til you pop!

Veggie Wednesday

This is my favorite salad as of late. It's super fast, no-cook, frugal and delicious. It continues to get devoured before I think to snap a picture, though.

Three Bean Salad

1 can each black beans, dark red kidney beans and garbanzo beans-drained
1 large cucumber-peeled, seeded and diced
1 large ripe tomato-seeded and diced
1 cup (or more, if needed) Italian dressing

Mix and chill. It doesn't get any easier!
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Now...I must apologize for being so far behind on posting. The end-of-year rush with field trips, graduation and special half-days at school has my head spinning. I promise to get caught up ASAP!
Much love to those of you who continue to stop by in my absence.