Vegan Sag Aloo (creamy greens & potatoes)

I love any Indian dish with spinach it seems, so when I came accross a recipe for a vegan sag aloo in "Chloe's Kitchen" I knew I had to try it! This is very light but satisfying- you wouldn't even know it is vegan/dairy free!

Also it cooked up fast because you boil the potatoes- one those are done then you throw everything in a large skillet. 

This is an excellent way to use up greens from the farmer's market.  Spinach, mustard greens, swiss chard... anything that is light and leafy (avoid heavy greens like collards) should work great.

Method:
Cut 1-3 C potatoes into bite-sized chunks, boil potato chunks until done. I like waxy potatoes like yukon gold or red potatoes.

Meanwhile:
Chop 1 large bunch of greens into pieces the size of a dime or smaller. I used swiss chard (stems removed). Spinach, mustard greens or any leafy greens from the farmer's market would work (except collards which I suspect are too think). The food processor is great at this.

Blend 1/4 C raw cashews with 1/4 C water in high speed blender until creamy. Set aside.


Now we're ready to cook.  Pour 1 TB olive oil in hot saucepan. Add and cook for 30 seconds:
1 tea mustard seeds
1.5 tea ground cumin
1.5 tea ground coriander
1.5 tea garam masala
1 TB grated ginger
2-3 cloves garlic, minced

Optional: If you are light on potatoes or have mushrooms sitting around, you can dump up to 1 C sliced mushrooms in at this point.

Dump in the chopped greens, stir.  After 30 seconds add the cooked potato and cashew cream. Stir and warm through over low-medium heat. 

Add salt to taste and 3/4 tea amchoor powder (sour dried mango- or substitute lemon juice).


Serve with roasted Indian cauliflower peas (pictured), brown basmati rice, parathas or chapati bread. 

Salmon & Veggie Soup

This is a great way to use up whole salmon (or other fish) as you can use the leftovers from hot smoked salmon and the trimmings in one dish.   Make the salmon stock ahead of time.

Method:
Saute 1/2 diced yellow onion in olive oil until starting to brown.  Add thinly sliced carrot, celery and diced yukon gold potatoes. Saute for a few minutes until starting to soften.

Add salmon stock/broth (or use fish stock or veggie stock), stir to scrape the veggies off the bottom of the pan.

Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer. Cook 15-25 minutes until potato and veggies are soft.

Stir in corn, leftover cooked salmon (I used leftover smoked salmon!). Season with salt and pepper.

Once warmed through, serve with crackers or sourdough bread. Optionally garnish with chopped parsley.


Variation: Salmon Potato Corn Chowder
Puree cooked potatoes and add to the soup. Optionally add cream or whole milk.  Substitue carrot and celery with more corn. 

Hot-Smoked Salmon on Weber Grill

My friend James taught me how to hot smoke salmon.  Hot-smoking is like grilling, but with a wood-chip-smoking phase.  This is different from cold smoking that is much slower and uses lower temperatures (and usually can't be done on a traditional grill).
 
And more importantly, it's not hard to do and doesn't require special equipment. Use a standard Weber grill (although one with a hinged grill inside will help but isn't necessary).  Pick up some alder wood chips and charcoal and you're ready to go!
So delicious! This is good hot, cold, on sandwiches, in soup or sushi/temaki rolls.


Hot Smoked Salmon Method:
Rinse 1-3.5 lbs of salmon fillet in water.

Place salmon, skin down on foil on a baking sheet.  Pat dry with paper towel. Fold sides of aluminum foil to make a tray.

Generously spread spice rub/mix over salmon.  The spice rub should contain salt, sugar and black pepper. I like smoked paprika too! Here's my spice mix:
4 TB paprika or smoked paprika
2 TB white sugar
1/2 tea onion powder
1 tea salt

Let the salmon sit at room temp with the spice rub on it for 20 minutes while you work on lighting the grill (I've read it is best to cook seafood when it is at room temp anyway).

Get a generous amount of coals/briquettes going in a chimney starter.  You want to have enough so your fire is strong when you shut the vents for the 5 minute smoking at the beginning. Too few coals and the smoking time will extinguish the fire. 

Once flames are shooting 5-7+ inches out the top of the chimney starter, then pour half of the hot coals on each side of the BBQ grate, leaving 8-10 inch pathway through the middle of the grate where the salmon will sit.

Get ready by putting the salmon and foil onto the top grate of the grill.

Pour several large handfuls (approx 4 C?) of alder wood chips directly on the hot coals.


Immediately place the top grill with salmon on the grill. The salmon should not be over the coals- you're going for indirect heat.

Close the lid over the grill. Close all vents (top and bottom). Set timer for 5 minutes. Assuming you had enough coals and they were hot and flaming then this will not extinguish the fire- it will get the wood chips to smoke and infuse the salmon. 

After 5 minutes, open the vents (top and bottom).  Set another timer to check the salmon in 7-10 minutes.

You will cook the salmon until done, approx 10-25 minutes in total after the initial 5 minute smoking. The time depends on the heat of your grill/coals and the size/thickness of the salmon fillet.

Salmon Broth (what to do with the trimings when you buy whole salmon)

New Seasons was running a special for whole wild keta salmon at $4.99 a pound!  Previously scared at the concept of buying a whole fish (?!!) I decided to take the plunge. And it was worth it. 

Usually places will fillet it for you on the spot.  And then you get the extras/trimmings for free.  And the price per pound is usually lower than the fillets sitting there.

The trimmings I got included the salmon "cheeks" (meaty pieces with fin attached from right behind the head) as well as the spine and the meat around the spine.

Method:
I threw the salmon trimmings into pressure cooker pot with the usual stock making companions: onion, celery, parsley, black pepper corn, bay leaves.  I had a corn cob and husk laying around (and had read about making corn stock) so I threw that in there too. Added water.

Sealed the pressure cooker and brought it up to pressure. Then reduce hte heat, maintain pressure and cook for 10-20 minutes. Let the pressure come down, then strain.

The little bits of meat left in the pot made excellent dog treats.

And the stock made really good salmon soup!!

Potato Harvest (and why everyone should grow potatoes)

I've come to the realization that everyone should grow potatoes.  Here's why:

1. most of the time you've got old, sprouting, squishy potatoes going bad in your kitchen that you would normally throw out or compost. So this is the ultimate in thrift!!
2. potatoes are on the "dirty dozen" list for most pesticide residue, so they are important to buy organic. Or grow your own!!
3. potatoes thrive even in bad soil
4. potatoes don't need tons of water (so I can put them out of the reach of the sprinklers and they'll survive the summer)
5. potatoes don't seem to care about the weather either (at least not in Portland Metro area, zone 7 ish). I started some in February- they just took longer to grow.
6. home grown potatoes taste more potato-ey than store ones... sooooo delicious!

Favorite ways to enjoy home grown potatoes: roasted, mashed, potato salad, in soup, or on salad!

Method for Home Grown Potatoes:
Find old squishy and/or sprouting potatoes. Any kind will do (yukon gold, red, russet, fingerling, purple).

Cut into chunks, preferably with at least one eye/sprout per chunk.

Place chunks in soil.  I use a deep bucket. Fill the bucket 1/3 of the way with soil. Spread potato chunks out. Pour in 3-5 more inches of soil over the top. Spread remaining potato chunks out.  Pour remaining soil, to cover by at least 5 inches.

Let the potatoes grow. Don't worry, it will take a while for them to tunnel up and for the green shoots ot appear at the surface.

Let them continue growing until the greens turn yellow and start to die. It doesn't matter if they flowered or not.

Dig up the potatoes. Rinse and enjoy.

 Note: we grew this amount of potatoes (8-10 lbs?) in two large buckets (approximately 9 cubic feet). These were from store bought yukon gold, red and purple potatoes that had gone bad in our kitchen!

Roasted Baby Potatoes and Farmer's Market Carrots

When you've got home grown baby potatoes and uber-fresh carrots, this is what you do with them!  Their flavors really shine. This is so simple but so delicious.

Method:
Wash potatoes and carrots. 

Slice carrots lengthwise into halves.  Cut any large potatoes into chunks, otherwise leave the small ones whole.

Place carrot and potato on rimmed baking sheet. Toss a glob of bacon fat, butter or olive oil.

Place the pan in a 350 or 400 F oven. In a few minutes the oil/fat should melt. At this point give the pan a shake to toss the veggies in the fat. Sprinkle salt and pepper over.

Continue cooking until soft on outside and crisp on outside, approximately 25-30 minutes.

Enjoy on their own right off the pan, or with a side salad. 

White Cherry Vanilla Preserves

Fell in love with cherry preserves at Frog Hollow's restaurant in the Ferry Building in San Francisco.  Big chunks of cherry goodness is just the thing for dreary winter days.

I read in a jam book about using the kernels inside cherry pits to add a maraschino flavor to jams and preserves.  And I've also been fantasizing about white cherries and vanilla in a jam... so here it goes!

White cherries are notoriously overpriced- anywhere from $4.99 - $7.99 a pound at farmer's markets and grocery stores. I got mine by picking my parent's tree-- nothing beats three pounds of cherries for FREE.  Some farms will let you U-pick cherries- so you'd get a better price per pound.



White Cherry Vanilla Preserves
Makes 4-6 half pint jars

Sterilize 6 half pint jars.  Get ready fresh lids for the 6 jars.

Wash and pit 3 lbs cherries (stemmed and pitted- approx 8 C).  I used white cherries (queen anne, or rainier). You could also use  dark sweet cherries (like bing). Sidenote: I love my Push Button Cherry pitter (call the phone number on this website and arrange a mailing, then pay by check) which I got for $9.95 including shipping - I can pit 3 lbs of cherries in less than 10 minutes!! Another reason to love: it is a small device as it sits on top of a small mouth canning jar- meaning less storage space.

Using a towel and a hammer, smash a few of the cherry pits on a cutting board. Remove the white inner kernel from inside the cherry pit. Do this until you have 1 TB of cherry pit kernels. Roughly chop the kernels, then place in a tea strainer.

From left to right: white inner kernels from inside cherry pits; queen anne cherry, pits.

Put cherries in saucepan with a splash of water. Bring to a boil, stirring & crushing fruit a little bit. Place the cherry pit kernel tea strainer in the pan.

Add 1 C sugar and stir to dissolve

Add 1/4 C lemon juice. Scrape the seeds from 1 vanilla bean into the mixture and stir. Don't worry if they clump at first-- the 20 minutes of simmering will make them spread out.

Cook for 20 minutes, until reaches desired gel.

Turn off heat, let rest 5 minutes.

Pour into sterilized jars, leaving 1/4 inch headspace. Wipe rims clean, seal with lids.

Process in boiling water canner for 10 minutes.

BBQ Spice Rub & Sauce (home made from tomatoes)

Adapted from my friends' folks favorite recipe. The recipe made a little over a quart (large canning jar).  It was delicious on slow cooker bbq ribs! 

I don't normally keep ketchup in the house (in fact I used the last cup of kethcup from an old-old container- yay for cleaning out the fridge!). Hence I'm using canned tomatoes/tomato paste which worked well.

You can make this vegan by using a vegan version of Worcestershire sauce.

The recipe requires 2 hours of simmering on the stove, so be prepared! I'd bet you could adapt this for the slow cooker- something like a few hours (3-5??) on low is where I'd start experimenting (although I wonder if you'd want the lid on or off?).

Method:
Mix the spice rub and set aside: 
8 TB paprika or smoked paprika
4 TB white sugar
1 tea onion powder

Combine the following in large wide saucepan.  (next time I want to try making in slow cooker for 4 hours on low- not sure how much adjustment is required for slow cooking the sauce.) 

2 C pureed tomatoes (I used what I had which was 1 C ketchup, 6 oz tomato paste, some water and 28 oz diced canned tomatoes, pureed)
8 oz water
6 TB brown sugar
6 TB white sugar
1 TB black pepper
1/2 TB onion powder
1/2 TB dry mustard powder
2 TB lemon juice
2 TB Worcestershire sauce
4 TB of spice mix (See above)

Bring to boil, then simmer on low for 2 hours until thick and dark. 

Slow Cooker BBQ Ribs

This is from a Cook's Illustrated recipe for ribs, cooked in the slow cooker and finished under the broiler. It's great because you don't have to do anything with it for the 5- 6 hours that it cooks-- so you can set it up, enjoy the day, and then finish it for dinner.  The worst part was boiling down the sauce, and removing the ribs from the slow cooker (they fell apart!)

Method
Buy 3 lbs of pork ribs. Select small ones, like baby back as they are easier to maneuver.  Specifically you want the width of the ribs (i.e. the length of hte longest rib bone) to be shorter than the height of your slow cooker.

Use a spice rub/mix to coat the meaty side of the ribs. My spice mix is:
8 TB paprika or smoked paprika
4 TB white sugar
1 tea onion powder

 Place the ribs into the slow cooker, wrapping them inside with the meaty sides facing the walls of the cooker.The rib bones will be perpendicular to the ground (i.e. standing upright).

Pour 3 C barbecue sauce over the ribs in the slow cooker. I make my own with this BBQ sauce recipe.

Cook on low 6-8 hours.


Prep a large, rimmed baking sheet with aluminum foil.

Check at the 5-6 hour mark- are the ribs tender?  Once tender, remove the ribs, placing them meaty side down on the prepared baking sheet. Tent with foil.


Let the barbecue sauce in slow cooker cool for 5 minutes, which will let the fat rise to the top. Spoon off and discard the fat. Pour the barbecue sauce into large saucepan. Bring to a boil, and simmer until the sauce is thickened down to 2 cups (approx 15- 20 minutes).  Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Brush ribs with some of the sauce. Broil 2-4 minutes or until beginning to brown.

Flip ribs over (meaty side up now), baste with more sauce. Continue to broil 9-12 minutes until browned and sticky. You can baste with additional sauce while cooking if you want.

Let rest 10 minutes. Then serve.

White Cherry Vanilla Almond Smoothie

I'm a big fan of smoothies with almonds and a delicate fruit- like almond & peach or almond & white cherry.  I find that adding peach or white cherries to other fruits overpowers the delicate flavor, so I like them on their own like this. Feel free to swap out the cherries for peaches!

Blend until smooth:
1/8 C almonds
1.25 C pitted white cherries (Rainier or Queen Anne)
1" of vanilla bean
1-2 C water

Yumm!!!