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.

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.

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.

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.

Black Pepper Vinaigrette

The vinaigrette recipe in the September issue of Cook's Illustrated (thanks for the gift subscription, Sarah!) has totally revolutionized our home salad dressing preparation. Having discovered the optimal balance of oil and vinegar, we took advantage of our stash from Kerala and, instead of grinding in a few shakes of black pepper, used a whole tablespoon. One of the major lessons we picked up in India is that black pepper doesn't have to be the afterthought it often becomes in Western cooking--it's an amazing spice that deserves to occasionally be celebrated on its own. For maximum impact, your pepper should be freshly and coarsely ground. Here, we served it with a baby spinach and arugula mix topped with cubed Parmesan and pepitas.

1 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1/3 cup balsamic vinegar
1 tablespoon coarsely ground black pepper
1 tablespoon maple syrup
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon mustard

Combine all ingredients in a squeeze bottle. Shake well to emulsify and pour over your salad of choice!

Warm Beet Salad with Potatoes and Sauerkraut

We'd hate to call this a potato salad because of the slimy mayonnaise memories "potato salad" evokes. So let's just call this Russian dish, inspired by a version we devoured at Sadko, a beet salad with potatoes. You can still serve it cold in situations that normally call for potato salad, like summertime picnics, but when served warm, it can keep your blood from freezing during those long Siberian winters.

3 large waxy potatoes (with or without skin)
3 large beets
1 1/2 cups sauerkraut, chopped
3 tablespoons dill, minced
3 scallion, chopped
1 tablespoon white vinegar
3 tablespoons olive oil (plus more for roasting)
salt

Peel the beets and chop them into 1/2 inch cubes. Toss with a little olive oil and salt on a baking tray. Roast at 350 until fork-tender (about 40-50 minutes).

Meanwhile, chop the potatoes into 1/2 inch cubes. Boil in water until tender, then drain and rinse in cold water.

Toss together all of the ingredients and taste for salt. Serve slightly warm or cold.

Crispy, Buttery, Smoky Potatoes and Cauliflower

These potatoes and cauliflower are absolutely addictive. Our secret? A whole stick of butter. Okay, it's not much of a secret, but you'll still impress your friends when you serve this dish. Make sure to use unsalted butter or else you could end up with a very salty final product. If you're on a diet, you could cut it down to maybe 4 tablespoons of butter, but any less and it won't crisp.

1 head of cauliflower, broken into bite-sized florettes
3 medium Yukon gold potatoes, cut into 1/8" slices
1 stick unsalted butter (yep, 8 tablespoons)
salt
black pepper
1 1/2 teaspoons smoked Spanish paprika
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Preheat oven to 350. Toss cauliflower, potatoes, melted butter, salt, pepper and 1 teaspoon smoked paprika. Bake in a cast-iron skillet, loosely covered with foil, for 30 minutes. Remove the cover, turn heat up to 375, and roast for another 35-45 minutes, until potatoes are browned and crispy in places. Sprinkle Parmesan cheese over the top, shake on a little more paprika, and return to oven for a few more minutes, until the cheese is melted. Let sit for a few minutes, then hold the potatoes in place with a lid and pour off the excess melted butter.

Slow-Cooked Broccoli Rabe

Broccoli rabe isn't actually broccoli at all, but a leafy relative of the turnip. If you don't have access to broccoli rabe, substitute mustard or turnip greens. In the past, we've always sauteed our broccoli rabe. But after spending some quality time in North Carolina last month and learning the aforementioned turnip trivia, we decided to treat broccoli rabe like turnip greens are treated in the South: cooked slowly with a smoky flavor. You won't taste tomato paste in the final product, but it does contribute to the satisfying, meaty umami flavor.

6 cups greens
2 tablespoons butter
3 cloves garlic, skinned but left whole
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 teaspoon smoked Spanish paprika
salt

Wash the broccoli rabe and cut off the tough bottom parts of the stem. Chop the tender parts of the stems and the leaves roughly.

Heat the butter over medium-high heat. Saute the garlic and greens for a few minutes. Add the tomato paste, paprika and 1/2 cup water. Simmer on low heat, covered, for three hours. Salt to taste.

Roasted Potatoes and Tokyo Turnips with Crispy Rosemary

These roasted root vegetables have a rich, juicy sauce, which makes them a nice change from the usual browned, crispy texture of roasted root vegetables. (We suspect you CSA subscribers might be starting to tire of the same old root vegetable treatments!) Tokyo turnips are everywhere here now, and while they're much-loved for their unique turnip ability to be eaten raw or lightly cooked, roasting always makes everything more delicious.

4 cups diced Yukon gold potatoes (about 4 potatoes)
1 and 1/2 cups diced Tokyo turnips (about 10 turnips)
10 cloves garlic, peeled and left whole
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
5 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons fresh rosemary
2 tablespoons fresh thyme (stems removed)
salt
pepper
3/4 cup stock
2/3 cup red wine

Preheat oven to 375. Chop the Tokyo turnips and potatoes into 3/4 inch chunks. Combine potatoes, turnips, garlic, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, rosemary, thyme, salt and pepper in a 9" x 13" casserole dish. Roast for 30 minutes, or until potatoes are fork-tender. Add stock and red wine. Stir to coat, then return to the oven for another 10-15 minutes, until the liquid has reduced by two thirds.

Braised Brussels Sprouts with Rosemary and Lemon

We love Brussels sprouts roasted and stir-fried, but we wanted to experiment a little and decided that since cabbage is delicious braised, why not see if Brussels sprouts would be amenable to the same treatment?

And oh, are they ever.

olive oil
2-3 cups Brussels sprouts
6 cloves garlic
1-2 cups stock
2 tablespoons fresh rosemary (stems removed)
juice of 1 lemon
salt

Trim the bottoms of the sprouts and slice in half lengthwise. Heat a little olive oil in a heavy-bottomed saucepan. Add the garlic and only as many sprouts as will fit in a single layer. Saute for a minute or two, until the sprouts are bright green and glistening. Add enough stock to cover the Brussels a little more than halfway. Add rosemary and salt (keep in mind how much salt your stock may already have). Turn the heat up to medium-high and cook, uncovered, until the liquid has completely evaporated.

Add some olive oil and flip the sprouts so that they are all cut-side-down. Fry until the bottoms of the Brussels are well-browned. Remove the sprouts, garlic and rosemary to a serving dish. Return the saucepan to low heat and add the lemon juice. Deglaze, scraping the pan to get all of the delicious browned bits, then simmer just a minute or so, to reduce the lemon juice. Pour sauce over Brussels and serve.

Seethed Potatoes with Thyme

No, these cute little potatoes aren't angry at anyone--seething is a cooking technique in which small potatoes are left whole and cooked in just a little water, butter, and aromatics like garlic and herbs. We got the basic idea from One Potato, Two Potato about a year ago and have been modifying and loving it since then; we've increased the garlic from the original recipe and tried several different herbs before deciding thyme is our favorite. Try this with the most adorable tiny potatoes you can find--it's a great dish for using the small heirloom varieties that are cropping up at farmer's markets this time of year!

1.5 lbs tiny potatoes, scrubbed
5 large cloves garlic, peeled
1 tablespoon chopped fresh thyme
3 tablespoons butter
Salt
Freshly-ground black pepper

Place potatoes, garlic, thyme and butter in a wide skillet--you want to be able to fit the potatoes in a single layer. Barely cover with water, bring to a boil, and simmer, partially covered, for 20-25 minutes, until potatoes are soft and nearly all of the water has evaporated. Turn the heat back up and shake the pan around for a minute or so, which will coat the potatoes in smashed, soft garlic. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Shredded Skillet Brussels Sprouts with Walnuts

Mark Bittman wrote last month that the story of Brussels sprouts' new life as an actually-liked vegetable "is one part mystery, one part thanks to bacon, and one part a tribute to our ability (finally) to appreciate members of the cabbage family." While you're appreciating, try this: a quick stovetop option in which they're shredded to cut down on cooking time. These sprouts cook down to a third of their original size, so if you're making dinner for a crowd, scale up.

3 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
4 cups brussels sprouts, thinly sliced
2 teaspoons dry red wine
2 teaspoons red wine vinegar
salt

Melt the butter in a skillet over medium-high heat. Add the sprouts and walnuts and saute, stirring frequently, until the Brussels are well-browned. Add the wine and vinegar, cook until they've evaporated. Salt generously and serve immediately.

Chai-Spiced Roasted Sweet Potatoes

Bring a little bit of India to your Thanksgiving table with these spicy sweet potatoes--we've taken the components of a steaming cup of masala chai and applied them to sweet potatoes for a nice change of pace from that tired old marshmallow-and-canned-pineapple routine. This may seem like a lot of ginger, but we've found that any less doesn't really do much.

Sweet potatoes have such vast size variation that we've listed the amount you'll need in cups of chopped sweet potato rather than in number of potatoes. For us, this was one gigantic sweet potato.

1/4 cup canola oil
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom
1/2 teaspoon freshly-ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
2 tablespoons finely grated fresh ginger
3 cups chopped sweet potatoes, in 1/2-inch cubes

Preheat oven to 375. In a medium-sized bowl, toss ingredients together. Spread in a single layer on a foil-lined baking sheet and bake, stirring occasionally, until sweet potatoes are tender, about 30 minutes.

Beets with Toasted Feta and Walnuts

Such simple ingredients, such total deliciousness! The synergy between the toasted walnuts, strong feta and sweet beets will keep you coming back for more.

3 large beets
olive oil
salt
1/2 cup feta, chopped into 1/2 inch cubes
3/4 cup walnuts, roughly chopped

Preheat oven to 375. Peel the beets and chop into 1/2 inch cubes, then transfer to a 9 x 13 inch pan and toss with a little olive oil and salt. Cover with aluminum foil and bake at 375 until tender (about 30-45 minutes). Remove from oven, stir in walnuts and top with feta cubes. Broil for about 5 minutes, until the feta has a golden crust.

Berkeley Rarebit

Berkeley Rarebit is like Welsh Rarebit, only with hippie-friendly flour. Other than that, we don't have a lot to add to this classic recipe, other than to say: you MUST eat this! We've been serving this boozy cheese sauce with simple vegetables to keep dinner exciting and to use up the beer that has languished in the fridge since our last party. Here, we serve it alongside roasted brussels sprouts.

2 tablespoons butter
2-3 tablespoons whole wheat flour (use extra flour for a thicker sauce)
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 12-ounce bottle of beer
1 cup sharp cheddar cheese, packed
black pepper

Melt the butter in a medium saucepan. Add the garlic and flour and whisk until the flour is browned. Keep whisking while you add the beer and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer, stirring frequently, for about ten minutes. Add the cheese and pepper and stir until the cheese is melted. Salt isn't really necessary, but it wouldn't hurt.

Massaged Kale Salad with Asian Pear, Smoked Gouda and Cucumber

This is one of those rare October weeks at the farmer's market where you can find summer foods like tomatoes and cucumbers alongside harbingers of fall like delicata squash and Asian pears. To take advantage of the seasonal overlap, here's another massaged kale salad! The crisp, clean taste of the cucumbers and the sweetness of the pears nicely offsets the assertiveness of the kale and gouda. If Asian pears aren't available, we've also tried this with slices of green apple with good results. Best of all, this requires no dressing beyond the olive oil used to massage the kale, making it an excellent choice for you brown-baggers who would rather not get vinaigrette all over the inside of your briefcase.

1 large bunch curly green kale, washed, de-stemmed and chopped (about 5 cups)
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 large Asian pear, diced
1/2 cup cubed smoked gouda
1 small Persian or English cucumber, diced

Place kale in a large bowl and drizzle with olive oil and salt. Massage the kale for a few minutes, until it breaks down and wilts. Top with pear, gouda and cucumber and enjoy!

Mashed Potato Pancakes

Mashed potato pancakes are an excellent way to turn leftover mashed potatoes into a whole new meal with minimal effort. If you're truly lazy and can't even work up enough energy to fry your potato pancakes, we've discovered that baking works just as well.

2 scallions
1 tablespoon minced fresh dill
2 eggs
4 cups leftover mashed potatoes
Canola oil

Mix together all of the ingredients except the canola oil.

Choose your cooking method: baking or frying.

The Easy Way: Grease a cookie sheet and dot with tablespoons of batter, pressing each mound down to flatten it. Bake at 450 until the bottoms of the pancakes are golden and crispy. Flip the pancakes over, return the tray to the oven and bake until the undersides are golden. It should take about 10 minutes on each side.

The Hard But Deliciously Fatty Way: Heat a few tablespoons of oil in a cast iron skillet, medium-high. Drop 1 tablespoon of the batter into the pan. Flatten the mound of batter slightly with the back of a spoon. Add as several more mounds, then fry for about 5 minutes on each side, until the bottom is golden and crispy. Transfer to paper towels to blot the oil.

Serve with ketchup.

Cumin Rice with Cashews and Raisins

More than six months after our return from Kerala, we still can't stop making this aromatic, earthy rice we discovered in cooking school. It's fantastic with curries or thoren! The only modifications we've made are to use shallots instead of onions and to substitute cooked brown rice for more traditional white basmati rice. The cashews and raisins are an easy way to turn an otherwise humble rice dish into something impressive.

One of our biggest take-aways from learning to cook South Indian food is the value of black pepper as a centerpiece spice rather than a finishing touch. Resist the temptation to just grind in a few shakes of black pepper and call it a day--measuring out the full 1/2 teaspoon, you'll see how much more it is, and using that much black pepper really makes a difference for the final product.

3 cups long-grain brown rice or brown basmati rice, cooked
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 and 1/2 teaspoons whole cumin seeds
1 teaspoon urad dal (optional)
1 cup very thinly sliced shallots
1/2 teaspoon freshly-ground black pepper
a pinch of turmeric
1 tablespoon butter or coconut oil
1/4 cup cashews
1/4 cup raisins

Heat the olive oil in a large wok over medium-high heat. Add the cumin and urad dal and stir until dal is brown, then add the shallots and saute until starting to brown. Now add the pepper and turmeric, stir to coat the shallots, and fold in the cooked rice. Stir well, ensuring that the shallots and spices get mixed in well. Salt to taste and set aside.

In a small skillet, heat the butter or coconut oil and saute the cashews until just barely starting to color. Add the raisins and continue stirring for about a minute longer, until raisins are puffy. Remove from heat, sprinkle raisins and cashews on the rice and serve.

Skillet Okra with Parmesan

OK, it's official: we've got an okra addiction. Here's another way to zap the sliminess and convert okra-haters! This is an incredibly simple and delicious preparation--good enough to eat the entire thing out of the pan (which hey, we may or may not have done), and also lovely on top of pasta with tomato sauce.

1 teaspoon olive oil
3 cups chopped okra
Salt
1/2 cup fresh grated Parmesan

Heat olive oil in a large cast-iron skillet over medium-high heat. Add the okra and salt. Fry, stirring frequently, until the okra is slightly browned. Sprinkle with cheese and transfer to the broiler. Cook for just a few minutes, until the cheese is crispy.