Fish with Sage, Wine and Shallots

For delicate, moist fish, we use a bed of shallots to prevent the fillets from directly touching the skillet.  We stumbled upon this method of cooking fish when Ezra was in utero and we wanted a quick, delicious way to squeeze in a serving of low-mercury fish every week.  Now that we have a toddler on the outside, it is still our family's favorite way to serve fish--Ezra likes it so much we didn't have time to get a photo of him eating it, so here is one of him grinning after polishing off his portion.

Fish with Sage, Wine and Shallots

1 tablespoon olive oil
2 shallots, sliced into rings
10 leaves sage, chopped
2 fish fillets -- delicate white fish like tilapia, basa, petrale sole or cod
salt and pepper
dry white wine

Heat olive oil in a skillet.  Saute the shallots and sage for just a minute.  Carefully lay the fish on top of the shallots and turn the heat to medium-low.   Add enough white wine to immerse the fish halfway, season with salt and pepper and cover.  Cook for a few minutes, then turn the fish over and cook, covered, until it is white throughout.

Cheesy Rice with Leeks and Swiss Chard

We had a fantastic version of this comforting and nourishing casserole from Three Stone Hearth that was a big hit with the whole family, so we decided to try to duplicate it in our kitchen.  Ezra couldn't help much with this recipe, but happily ate his portion.

Cheesy Rice with Leeks and Swiss Chard

For the rice:
1 cup short-grain brown rice
1 tablespoon yogurt
1 cup broth/stock

Everything else:
2 tablespoons butter
1 leek, trimmed and finely minced
3 cups chopped Swiss chard (1 bunch)
3 tablespoons minced parsley
1 cup cheddar cheese, shredded
1 cup broth/stock
salt

We soaked our rice overnight with a tablespoon of yogurt and one cup of water.  You can, of course, skip this step if you aren't afraid of the phytic acid fairy.

Preheat the oven to 350F and grease a small casserole dish.

Add 1 cup stock to the rice and water, bring to a boil, then reduce to a low simmer until the liquid is fully absorbed.

Heat the butter in a skillet and saute the leeks over low heat until very soft.  Set the leeks aside and saute the chard until soft.

Combine the cooked rice, leeks, chard, parsley, cheddar, 1 cup stock and salt in the casserole dish and cover.  (With unsalted stock, we added 1/2 teaspoon salt.  With commercial salted chicken broth, you might not need any salt.)

Bake for about 45 minutes, until the casserole is bubbly.

Chocolate Chip Almond Meal Cookies

We're such giant hippies that only today, at the ripe old age of two and a half, did Ezra taste his first bite of (grain-free, honey-sweetened) cookie.  This isn't an original recipe--we just used this one--but we decided the occasion was momentous enough to warrant a post.

Ezra helped make these cookies by pouring the ingredients into the bowl and mixing.  He greased the pan with a butter wrapper (big hit!) and he used his well-developed smushing skills to shape the cookies on the pan.  

We made a double batch and only put chocolate chips in half of the cookies.  Yes, we are denying Ezra the joys of chocolate until he's old enough to find his own.

Slow-cooked Kale

Ezra loves slow-cooked kale, which we often eat by itself, but sometimes serve over whole wheat pasta and sausage.
Ezra and I took the kale outside with a bucket of water and washed each leaf thoroughly.  Then we ripped out the stems and ripped the kale into small pieces.  We weren't quite ready to come inside and start cooking at that point, so we fed the kale stems to the chickens.

Once inside, Ezra cut the butter (and helped himself to a pat) and I took over from there. 

Slow-cooked Kale

1 bunch kale, stemmed and chopped
1 tablespoon butter or olive oil
3 cloves garlic, chopped roughly
1 1/2 cups chicken broth or water
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar (or red wine vinegar)
salt

Heat the butter in a cast-iron skillet with a lid.  Saute the garlic and kale until the kale is wilted.  Add the chicken broth, turn heat to low, and cover.  Cook, stirring occasionally, for about an hour, until the kale is soft -- adding more liquid as needed.  Add the vinegar, salt to taste, and serve.

Soaked Oatmeal with Molasses, Nutritional Yeast and Dried Blueberries

This oatmeal was an exercise in making breakfast as nutritious as humanly possible.  First we soaked the oats, Weston Price style, then added iron-rich molasses, B-vitamin packed nutritional yeast and antioxidant-loaded blueberries.  Also, it was delicious.

Ezra is enjoying his cooking education so much that he's started requesting to "do a recipe".  He participated in making this oatmeal at almost every level, from stirring the oats and water with his hands to carefully arranging the blueberries in each bowl.  (He wasn't involved in the actual cooking, though.)


   Soaked Oatmeal with Molasses, Nutritional Yeast and Dried Blueberries

1 cup old-fashioned oats
1 1/2 cups water
1 tablespoon plain yogurt
1 cup milk
salt
butter
blackstrap molasses
nutritional yeast
dried blueberries
chopped walnuts

Combine the oats, water and yogurt in a small saucepan and soak, at room temperature, overnight.  Add the milk and a pinch of salt, then simmer a until the oats are fully softened.

Top with a pat of butter, small drizzle of molasses, sprinkle of nutritional yeast, dried blueberries and chopped walnuts.

Sauerkraut Borscht

If you're the kind of hippie who has a mason jar of sauerkraut brewing on the kitchen counter (between the jars of water kefir, yogurt and kombucha), this is a great way to add a new kraut recipe to the rotation.  If you don't brew your own kefir and kombucha, you might not be watching enough Portlandia.

(We wrote this recipe before Ezra was born, so we don't have a picture of him eating it.)

3 tablespoons butter
1/2 onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped roughly
2 teaspoons caraway seed
4 cups beets, cut into 1/2 inch dice
1 medium potato, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
2 sprigs thyme, tied with twine or in a bouquet garni
3/4 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons minced dill
1 cup sauerkraut (preferably brined)
apple cider vinegar

Toppings:
yogurt or sour cream

Heat two tablespoons butter in a saucepan. Saute the onions and garlic until the onions are soft. Add the caraway seeds and saute for 2 more minutes. Add the beets, potato, thyme, salt and just enough water to cover. Simmer until the beets are fully cooked.

Remove from the heat. Take out the thyme and stir in the dill. Puree half of the soup in a blender or food mill, then stir it back together.

In a frying pan, saute the sauerkraut in the remaining 1 tablespoon butter until softened. Stir the kraut into the soup, reheat if necessary, and taste. If you would like more sour flavor, add apple cider vinegar to taste.

Serve hot, with sour cream or yogurt.

Egg in the Basket

Indian-spiced Carrot Salad

Ezra is still building up his spice tolerance, so when we make this carrot salad, we set aside his portion before we mix in the chiles.

Indian-spiced Carrot Salad
inspired by The Everything Indian Cookbook

5 carrots, peeled and grated
juice of 1 lemon
a few tablespoons olive or vegetable oil
1/2 teaspoon mustard seeds
20 curry leaves (optional)

1 jalapeno, seeds and veins removed, mincedSalt to taste

In a large bowl, mix the carrots and lemon juice.

In a small skillet, heat the oil.  Add the oil, mustard seeds and curry leaves.  When the mustard seeds begin to pop, pour the mixture over the carrots.  Add the minced jalapeno, stir and salt to taste.

Asparagus and Leek Quiche

Ezra helped with this recipe by breaking the asparagus into pieces (while eating most of the tips),  spreading the cheese into the pie pan (while breaking off pieces of the crust to eat) and cutting the butter (and eating it, then cutting again, and eating it, and then finally cutting one last piece for the recipe). 

Maybe I should have fed him before we started.

I experimented with putting the eggs and milk in a jar so he could shake instead of stir.  (I'm not willing to see my precious backyard chicken eggs splattered all over the kitchen.)  His chubby toddler arms didn't really have the strength to blend the eggs, but it was fun.

Asparagus and Leek Quiche

1 tablespoon butter
1 leek, trimmed and chopped
1 cup of chopped asparagus
1 cup shredded cheese (I mixed gouda and parmesan)
4 eggs
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup milk
black pepper
1 pie crust

Preheat the oven to 350F.  Heat the butter in a skillet, then saute the leeks and asparagus until the asparagus is al dente. 

Whisk together the eggs, milk, salt and black pepper.

Spread the cheese in the bottom of the crust, then add the asparagus and leeks.  Pour the egg mixture over the top. 

Bake for 45 minutes, or until the center is set.

Strawberry and Banana Smoothie: Ezra joins the team at I Heart Kale!

Is anyone still reading?  If so, are you wondering where we've been for the last three years? 

Sorry to throw you under the bus, Ezra, but we blame our blog silence on the arrival of a certain family member who blah blah didn't have the motor skills for making Indian food from scratch.  Today, at two and a half, he finally stepped up and made his own afternoon snack for the first time, so we're ready to get back into blogging and start sharing Ezra's kitchen adventures.  To introduce our newest sous chef, here's what we got up to in the kitchen this afternoon:

Strawberry and Banana Smoothie  
with Ezra and Phoebe

1 banana
4 strawberries
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup plain yogurt
1/2 teaspoon nutritional yeast

Ezra helped to peel the banana, then we held a butter knife together and chopped the banana and strawberries.  I thought the knife work would be difficult, but he's been watching us cook long enough that I only needed to steady the knife while he did the rest of the work.  He put the chopped fruit into our Magic Bullet mini-blender. 

I measured out some milk, which he poured into the blender... and on the table... and himself... and the floor.  Then he got out a rag and mopped up the spill.  He sprinkled some nutritional yeast into the blender and scooped in yogurt with a big spoon.

We screwed on the blender base together and I did the pureeing. 

It took about five times as long to make our smoothie as a team, but we're laying the groundwork for Ezra to whip up four-course tasting menus for us in our old age!

Tortillas in Black Bean Sauce

We love many things at Picante, but our favorite brunch item hands-down is the enfrijoladas, a homey dish made of their handmade tortillas smothered in black bean sauce and drizzled with crema. We decided to attempt enfrijoladas using our new favorite Cook's Illustrated method for cooking beans: brining them overnight in salt water. The brining allows salt flavor to fully penetrate the beans, leaving them tender and delicious. Throwing the beans into the slow-cooker once they've been brined saves active cooking time and develops a rich sauce.

3 tablespoons table salt
2 cups dried black beans, picked over and washed
1 tablespoon cumin
1 tablespoon butter
2 cloves garlic, peeled and left whole
3 cups vegetable stock
10 corn tortillas

For toppings:
wedges of lime
chopped cilantro
fire-roasted chiles or salsa
crumbled queso fresco or cotija

First, stir the salt in 4 quarts (16 cups) cold water in the slow-cooker vessel and add the beans. Let the beans soak overnight, at least 8 hours. In the morning, drain beans, rinse well, and return to the slow-cooker with the cumin, butter, garlic, stock and 5 cups water. Cook on low heat for 8 hours.

Puree the beans and their liquid in small batches in a blender. Warm the tortillas in a dry skillet or in the microwave. Douse the tortillas well with black bean sauce and fold into quarters. Serve immediately, topped with lime, cilantro, spicy stuff, and cheese.

If you're saving any to eat later, wait to add the sauce until just before serving.

South Indian Pancakes

We've been working on our recipe for dosas--savory fermented rice and dal pancakes--for years now. Sometimes the batter came out well, but we had trouble getting it to rise consistently. Our eureka moment about dosas happened in India last winter, watching the cooking instructor pour perfectly bubbly batter onto a hot griddle. It's hot in India! That's why the batter ferments so perfectly and gets so bubbly. So, if we could just get our dosa batter to India temperatures at home, we could make real Indian dosas that stay together and fold nicely. Success!

Making dosa batter takes a few tries to master, so don't bust this one out for that big first date until you've practiced a few times. You can also use dosa batter for uttapam, which thicker and sturdier, like a personal pizza. We've provided recipes for both here. If you want to make some of each, make the uttapam while the batter is still thick, then thin it down for dosas.

1 cup parboiled rice (boil 1 cup rice in a large pot of water for 5 minutes; drain.)
2 cups raw rice
1 cup urad dal
2 teaspoons fenugreek seeds
1 teaspoon salt

This works equally well with brown rice, white rice, or a combo.

Combine everything, except the salt, in a large bowl with enough lukewarm water to cover and allow to soak overnight. Drain, reserving the liquids. Blend until you have a consistency like thick pancake batter, adding only enough of the soaking water to lubricate your blender. Pour into a bowl that leaves room for the batter to double in size.

Cover with a towel and place somewhere warm. The batter likes to be 85-95 degrees Fahrenheit. In Kerala, that's just room temperature. Here in Berkeley, we use our dehydrator, which has adjustable temperature settings. We've heard of other creative solutions like leaving it in the oven on low, with the door propped open, or near a radiator. Within eight hours, the dough will double and fill with tiny bubbles. You should detect a pleasantly sour, yeasty smell. If your dough doesn't rise after the first eight hours, you don't have to give up! Try adjusting your heat source and give it another eight hours. Once your batter has risen, mix in the salt and proceed with one of the following recipes.

Uttapam

1 batch of batter, risen
coconut oil for frying (Coconut oil is solid in cold weather, but will quickly become liquid if you leave the bottle somewhere warm. Liquid oil is much easier to drizzle!)

Choice of toppings:
chopped red onion
finely minced green chili
chopped cilantro leaves
chopped tomato
chopped nuts
minced fresh herbs
cubed feta (not traditional, but quite delicious!)

Heat a well-seasoned cast iron or crepe pan over medium-high heat, and coat the pan lightly with oil. When the oil is as hot as possible without smoking, pour about a 1/4 cup of batter into the center of the pan. Quickly toss on some toppings, plus a little drizzle of oil around the edges.

When the pancake looks firm enough to flip (3-5 minutes), gently loosen it with a clean, greased metal spatula. Flip it over and cook for another 3-5 minutes. Carefully scrape away any bits that stuck to the pan and add a little more oil. When the oil is hot, begin your next pancake. Serve warm, with a selection of curries and chutneys.



Dosas

1 batch of batter, risen
coconut oil for frying

Stir a little water into your batter for a crepe-like consistency. Heat a well-seasoned cast iron or crepe pan over medium-high heat, and coat the pan lightly with coconut oil. When the oil is as hot as possible without smoking, pour about a 1/4 cup of batter into the center of the pan, spreading it around in a spiral pattern with the back of your ladle. It should be thin, with some lacy areas, but no large holes. Pour a fine drizzle of oil around the edges to help them get crispy.

Cook for about 3 minutes, or until the dosa easily lifts from the pan. If your dosa is nice and thin, you won't need to fry on both sides -- just transfer to a plate, fill with a thick curry and serve. If your dosa came out a little too thick, there's no harm in flipping it over to make sure it's cooked on both sides.

Broccoli Noodle Casserole

What can we say?--it was rainy out and we were feeling nostalgic for the vegetarian casseroles of the 1970's, so we crafted this adaptation of a noodle casserole recipe in our favorite Eastern European cookbook. Parents, consider this dish a useful weapon in the battle to get your pasta-worshipping kids to eat their broccoli. It's Mollie-Katzen-tastic with both sour cream and cottage cheese, and we've tinkered with it to ensure that the broccoli doesn't get overdone during the baking process.

16 ounces whole wheat fusilli or rotini
1 head broccoli, broken into bite-sized pieces
2 cups cottage cheese
1 cup sour cream
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon paprika
black pepper
1 onion, chopped fine

Optional toppings:
1/4 cup breadcrumbs
olive oil
more paprika

Preheat oven to 350. Cook the pasta until al dente. Steam the broccoli (try this in a steamer basket over the pasta!) until barely fork-tender. Meanwhile, mix the cottage cheese, sour cream, salt, paprika and pepper. Grease a casserole dish. Combine all of the ingredients, except the toppings, in the casserole dish. Drizzle the top with a little olive oil, then breadcrumbs, then a sprinkling of paprika. Bake for 45 minutes.

Hamine Eggs, for Grandma Olga

We had been planning since last Passover to post this recipe around now, reasoning that you'd be most interested in Seder recipe ideas right before the big day. Now that it's finally posting time, we want to dedicate this post to Hannah's Grandma Olga, an amazing cook and a fabulous lady who passed away earlier this month. While she never used the internet and thus never read the blog, she has been such an inspiration for our work: Grandma Olga was all about making things from scratch with the best produce she could find, and her recipes are behind many of our posts, like date charoset, mjeddra and fried eggplant. We feel so lucky to have inherited her recipe journal, a 1964 date book packed with her own handwritten recipes, recipe cards from relatives, recipes clipped from the newspaper, recipes from the back of a Quaker Oats box. There is no time of the year I associate with Grandma Olga more so than Passover, when she would to make jars of her famous date charoset for all the households in our family, lemony-minty hamud that perfumed the whole house, and perfectly-tanned hamine eggs. So Grandma Olga, this one's for you.

Hard-boiled eggs are a traditional fixture on the Passover Seder plate. The Syrian-Jewish version, hamine eggs, involves slowly cooking the eggs overnight with onion skins and coffee grounds, which turns the flesh a beautiful tan color. Last year, we started to make hamine eggs for Passover and realized that while we had plenty of onion skins, the tiny bag of 2-year-old coffee in the freezer had vanished. We did, however, have a box of lapsang souchong tea bags and decided to try them instead. Lapsang souchong is a smoked black tea with an amazing flavor, and our finished eggs were deliciously rich and smoky. Throw these on your Seder plate and everyone will be hooked!

This does take a while, but nearly all of the time is inactive and you can either do this overnight or try it in a Crock-Pot if you don't feel like being confined to your house for 6-8 hours.

12 eggs
Skins from 3-5 onions
10 Lapsang Souchong tea bags
1 teaspoon canola oil

Place eggs in a large saucepan and cover with cold water. Add the onion skins, tea bags and oil and bring to a boil, then reduce heat to very low. Simmer, partially covered, for 6-8 hours. Any cracks in the eggshells will create beautiful dark veins on the egg whites. Drain the eggs, discard the tea bags and onion skins, and peel the eggs once they've cooled.

Nettle Frittata (not to be confused with Nelly Furtado)

Our outdoorsy friend Tanya makes an annual pilgrimage into the wilds to pick nettles. Then she makes some of them into a savory pie for her yearly Pi Day party. This year, we went along for the nettle harvest and made a frittata variation on her delicious pie. If you would like to try Tanya's version, she uses a mashed potato crust from Mollie Katzen's Enchanted Broccoli Forest, and a spinach pie recipe from Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone.

Why nettles? They're full of iron, calcium and antioxidants. They taste like sort of like spinach, but with more integrity and less sliminess. You can substitute spinach if nettles are inaccessible in your area. If you do get your hands on some nettles, make sure those hands are gloved--nettles, when raw, are covered in stinging hairs.

A big bunch of nettles (two cups, once steamed and chopped)
1 tablespoon ghee (or butter or oil)
1/2 an onion, chopped fine
3 scallions, chopped
1 tablespoon chopped dill
2 eggs
1 tablespoon sour cream
2 cups small curd cottage cheese
1/2 teaspoon salt
black pepper
zest of one lemon
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Put on some heavy gardening gloves and remove the stems from the nettles. Steam the leaves until wilted. (This will kill their stingers.) Rinse and drain well, then chop.

Meanwhile, melt the ghee in a 10-inch cast-iron pan on medium heat. Saute the onion until softened, then add the scallions and saute for two more minutes. Remove from heat; stir in the nettles and dill.

Combine the eggs, sour cream, cottage cheese, salt, pepper and lemon zest in a separate bowl. Once the cast-iron pan has cooled for a few minutes (enough to keep the eggs from cooking on contact), fold the egg mixture into the nettle mixture. Sprinkle the top with Parmesan.

Bake at 350 until the eggs are set and the top is browned (about 30 minutes).

Paprika, Green Bean and Potato Stew

Phoebe was a pretty picky eater as a kid, but always made an exception for her mom's paprika-flavored potato stew. The recipe, which originally included chunks of hot dog or sausage, was passed on to Phoebe's mom by a Hungarian girl back in the 70's and Phoebe's mom started using green beans instead of hot dog chunks. Phoebe's family always called this dish paprikash, but a little wikipedia research revealed that paprikash is a chicken and sour cream sauce over noodles, while this dish is actually called paprikás krumpli.

3 tablespoons butter or olive oil
1 yellow onion, chopped
1 1/2 tablespoons paprika
1/4 - 1/2 teaspoon cayenne (optional)
4 cups green beans, chopped into 1" pieces
4 cups Yukon Gold potatoes, cut into 1" cubes
2 cups canned tomatoes (diced or pureed)
3/4 teaspoon salt

Melt the butter in a sauce pan, then saute the onions until softened. Remove from the heat and immediately stir in the paprika and cayenne. Add the rest of the ingredients and enough water to cover the vegetables. Return to the heat and simmer until the potatoes and green beans are cooked, but still tender.

Syrian Orange Salad

It's still citrus season in Berkeley, which means we can't get enough of the mandarins, pomelos and sweet limes overflowing at the farmers' market. Alongside these more exotic offerings, we're adoring the navel oranges and wanted to share this simple preparation we've been enjoying for years. It can be breakfast, dessert, a snack or a palate cleanser. What we love about this dish is how easily it transforms a plain old fruit snack into something special; we even used to make this in our dining hall in college with nothing but an orange, a knife, a bowl and some honey. But if you have or can seek out the orange blossom water (you can find it in Middle Eastern grocery stores), the extra citrus perfume elevates the entire experience to something pretty heavenly.

We've blathered about the elegant potential of supreming citrus before, and once again refer you to this helpful tutorial if you need a visual to go with our instructions.

Per person:
1 navel orange (the slightly reddish one pictured above is a cara cara)
Honey or agave nectar to taste, depending on how sweet the orange is
A pinch of cinnamon
A few drops of orange blossom water (optional)

Slice off the top and bottom of each orange. Carve off the peel from the sides and then cut out the orange sections over a bowl, leaving the membranes behind. Squeeze the extra juice from the membranes into the bowl with the oranges. Stir in honey or agave, cinnamon and optional orange blossom water.

Home-Fermented Sauerkraut

Why the multiple sauerkraut-employing recipes lately? Oh, because we have a bumper crop of homemade sauerkraut! Fermenting sauerkraut is totally easy and will make you feel like an old-timey kitchen rock star.

1 large green cabbage
Kosher salt

First, a note on salt: Sandor Katz's guideline for salt is three tablespoons per five pounds of cabbage. You don't need to worry about hitting that exact amount, though. Just add salt one teaspoon at a time; keep going until it tastes pleasantly salty, like french fries. (If you end up with too-salty kraut, rinse it off before eating.)

Trim away any brown or wilted parts of the cabbage. Slice the leaves and core into fine ribbons. In a large, non-reactive container, sprinkle the cabbage with kosher salt and massage it vigorously. Keep massaging and adding salt until the cabbage has given off a lot of water.

Pack the cabbage and cabbage juice into quart jars (two or more, as needed). Smash down the cabbage well, so that you have at least 1/2 inch of liquid on top. Fill a smaller jar with water and use it to weigh down the cabbage so that no cabbage rises to the surface. Some sauerkraut-makers put all of their cabbage in a large crock and use a plate to weigh down the top. We like the dual jar method because it makes it easy to minimize the surface area and you can see through the glass to tell whether you've got your cabbage fully submerged. Fermentation happens underwater, while mold formation happens on the surface. Therefore, less surface area equals less mold.

Cover the jars with a cloth and place in a dark corner. Once a day, take out the small jar, remove any mold that may have formed on the surface (but don't worry about it too much) and smash down the cabbage as much as you can. (Keep those potentially reactive metal utensils away! Wood or plastic are fine.) Rinse off the small jar and return to its original position.

Depending on the season--summer heat means quicker fermentation--your cabbage will show signs of fermentation in one to three days. You may see tiny bubbles forming or hear a fizzing noise. The kraut will begin to smell sour. Keep giving it daily attention and tasting.

Once it's been bubbling and tasting sour for a whole week, put a lid on the kraut and transfer to the refrigerator. In Ye Olden Times, people left their kraut in the root cellar for months or years, but we like to get ours into the refrigerator while it's young--the kraut stays crunchier that way, and is also a bit less sour.

You can begin to eat the kraut now, or wait for it to get a little more sour. The kraut will keep for a very long time in the fridge.

Cilantro-Lime Beet Salad with Cotija

We invented this salad when we needed a potluck dish for a tamale party, hence the Mexican flavorings of lime, cilantro, red onion and cotija. The tang of the quick-pickled onions and cilantro-lime dressing and salty cotija cheese are perfect counterparts to the sweet beets.

Cotija is a hard, salty Mexican cheese; if you can't find it, try ricotta salata (probably not a helpful substitute suggestion if you don't have a bountiful cheese selection in your grocery store!) or feta (which is softer and will have a different flavor, but still delivers the saltiness you're after).

6 large beets
1 small red onion, sliced into thin half-moons
3 limes
1/4 cup packed chopped cilantro (plus some extra for garnish)
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1/4 teaspoon cayenne
1/4 teaspoon salt
6 ounces cotija cheese, cubed

Scrub the beets and place in a large saucepan with plenty of water to cover. Bring to a boil, lower heat and simmer 45 minutes to an hour, until beets are very tender when poked with a knife. Drain and cool.

Meanwhile, place the onions in a bowl with the juice of 2 of the limes and a few shakes of salt. Marinate while you boil the beets and make the dressing--they'll be less harsh and slightly pickled when you're ready to add them.

When the beets have cooled down, peel them and chop into 1-inch cubes. To make the dressing, combine the zest and juice of the remaining lime, olive oil, cilantro, cayenne and salt in a food processor and pulse until you have a smooth green mixture. Toss the beets with the dressing and top with the pickled onions (and their juice), cotija and some extra cilantro for garnish.

Bubble and Kraut

Bubble and Squeak is an English dish made with leftover mashed potatoes and cooked cabbage. We like cabbage fine, but we like kraut a whole lot better, so we made the substitution and were thrilled with the results. Phoebe meant to take a picture of the full turnout, but she accidentally ate the first batch while the second was frying. It's that good.

The egg is not traditional or necessary, but we like how it helps the potatoes hold together. If you're vegan, just skip it and enjoy the softer texture. We served ours on a bed of sauerkraut with a dollop of sour cream. They're also good plain!

2 cups mashed potatoes*
3/4 cup sauerkraut (we use the fermented kind)
1 egg
Butter for frying

Stir together the egg, potatoes, and sauerkraut. Melt about 1 tablespoon butter in a cast-iron skillet over medium-high heat. When the butter is hot, but not smoking, add heaping tablespoons of batter, smashed down with the back of the spoon. When the bottoms are golden brown and crisp, flip and cook the other side.

*Simple mashed potato recipe:
Peel and dice 3 small Yukon gold potatoes and boil until soft. Drain all but 1/2 cup of cooking water. Add butter, salt and pepper, and mash. For extra fluffiness, whisk vigorously for several minutes.