Beets with beet greens & soft eggs

I planted my beets a little earlier than usual this year, and they are so lush! It was a good move. I am going through and eating a few of them to thin things out as we progress through the summer, since they are a good veggie that will keep well into the fall. Last fall I remember walking home from my garden with an overflowing basket of beets and their greenery, and an older couple stopped me to ask about them. They told me beet greens were their favorite greens and they go to the farmers market just to buy them as they are hard to come by elswhere. I used to not like beet greens as much as kale or collards, but then I started to steam them briefly before loading them with butter. They become so soft and luscious, it is pretty much the only way I eat them now.

I made a 1 person serving, so adapt this as necessary!

2-3 small/med beets with greens

2 tsp Butter

2 tsp Dijon mustard (I used my homemade stuff)

salt/pepper

fresh dill sprigs

2 eggs

1. Chop beet and beet stems into 1" pieces; chop greens. Boil salted water in a small saucepan and add beets and stems. Cover and simmer for 5-6 minutes, then add greens and simmer another couple of minutes. Drain water, and add butter, mustard, salt and pepper; toss to coat.

2. While beets are simmering, make a 6 minute egg: bring enough water to cover eggs to boil in a small saucepan. Once boiling, carefully add eggs (I use a spoon so they don't crack) and cover pot. Set timer for 6 minutes. When done, remove eggs and cover with cold water to stop the cooking.

3. Plate beets and greens, top with eggs, and sprinkle dill over the top. Eat!

Camping Tinfoil Dinner

Lake superior at Park Point

I was camping the past several days with a few friends - we decided to not social distance and spend some days in the woods together. Or in our case, in various bodies of water, with some other time in the woods. I have not car camped in so many years, maybe in 2004? It was a luxury to have a cooler for fresh veggies, chocolate that didn't melt, and real cream. The best meal of the week was the tinfoil dinner, a relic of family camping trips and summer-camp overnights. My mom tells the story of bringing my sisters and I camping one year, and feeling exhausted from coordinating such an effort and driving up north. She says she was floored when we sent her to nap in the tent, saying that we would take care of dinner. This is the meal we made.

The tinfoil dinner allows every person to make their own packet, putting in whatever they want. On this trip, ours featured some standard fare (potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, celery, beef) along with some stellar add-ons: homemade mustard, cheese and spices all wrapped in collard/kohlrabi leaves before the final foil layer. Sauerkraut would have also been great on these, but we didn't think of that til after. Other options might be: steak, sausage, green beans, zucchini, zataar spice, corn, peppers...really the possibilities are endless. I sadly did not take a photo of camping foil dinner, but I just searched some images and found all kinds of inspirations. People find these dinners so good, they make them in the oven at home?! I might just do that in my fire pit some night - they really are so tasty. And it's really fun to open your very own packet - I don't know why. It's like the best version of tv dinner. In lieu of a photo of the meal - here is a picture of our smiling faces.

Reading some Tove Jansson while waiting for dinner

The number one thing with this dinner is that you need coals - meaning you need to have a fire going prior to when you want to eat. So start that first, and as the fire is going, prep your ingredients and foil packets.

Foil Dinner (for 4)
2 potatoes, diced
2 sweet potatoes, diced
2 celery stalks, diced
2 carrots, diced
1 lb beef, formed into 1/2" balls
8-12 collard/cabbage/kohlrabi leaves
mustard
Spices/herbs/salt/pepper
(opt) Cheese, mini cubes or shredded for serving
Tinfoil

Tear a large piece of tinfoil (1-2 feet length) and lay flat. Place 1-2 pieces of collard/cabbage leaves on the center, and pile your selected toppings in the middle. Sprinkle with spices/salt/pepper and mustard. Place another cabbage/collard leaf on top, and wrap the whole thing in the foil. Use a 2nd foil piece to seal in all the juices. Be sure to shape your foil packet with some character to identify your particular packet as yours - as a kid we used to love to make swans.

Once you have some coals in your fire pit, pull them aside and place your foil packet down in the ashes, then cover and surround with coals. We found our packets were done after 20 minutes, but depending on your coals and size of veggie dice, you may need a little more/less. You can pull one packet out to test things to give you some idea.

Top with more mustard, cheese, kraut or whatever else you want and eat!

This was actually from the curry dinner night - but fire making in action.

Kohlrabi and Apple salad

I grew my first kohlrabi! Not all of my seeds became plants because some bug was eating all the cruciferous seedlings, but a good half dozen pulled through. I love growing kohlrabi - you can also eat the greens, which makes this vegetable a twofer! I so far make the greens Ethiopian-style with onions, garlic and maybe ginger, with butter or spiced ghee, water, and a longer cook time.

I harvested this first kohlrabi thinking I might just eat it raw with some toasted spice and salt, but then saw this Bon Appetit recipe and decided to get a little fancy. The fancy is maybe a result of talking food all weekend with my friend, and her going into detail about a $1200 dinner (for 3) at a fancy Persian restaurant in New York that sounded exquisite. Especially because somebody else was paying! This lead to dreaming of post pandemic trips. If there ever is a post-pandemic time, which, well, is hard to say.

So, until then, fancy food can be attempted at home. This shaved kohlrabi and apple salad was really nice. I am listing the original recipe below, though I substituted almonds for hazelnuts, and aged cheddar for Parmesan because it is what I had. (Cheddar wasn't bad, but Parmesan would be best!) Do be sure to peel your kohlrabi to get the tough outer layer. Inside is a soft, crisp, very pale interior that matches the apples, which just have that sliver of red b/c I didn't peel mine. *Also, it turns out my 1970s mandoline is on it's last days, at least on the thin slicer setting, so I used a vegetable peeler and that worked fine. It was just a bit more tedious.

Kohlrabi and Apple Salad

½ cup blanched hazelnuts (or almonds)

2 medium kohlrabi (about 2 lb. total), peeled, thinly sliced on a mandoline

1 tart apple (Pink Lady or Crispin), peeled/cored, thinly sliced on a mandoline

½ teaspoon finely grated lemon zest

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

1 tablespoon white wine vinegar or white balsamic vinegar

Kosher salt

½ cup torn fresh mint leaves, plus more for serving

1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil

2 oz. Pecorino or Parmesan, shaved (about ¼ cup) 

1. Preheat oven to 350°. Toast hazelnuts on a rimmed baking sheet, tossing occasionally, until golden brown, 10–12 minutes. Let cool, then coarsely chop. *I did this all on the stove tip b/c it's hot and I do not have A/C.

2. Toss kohlrabi, apple, lemon zest, lemon juice, and vinegar in a medium bowl; season with salt. 

3. Add ½ cup mint and gently toss to just combine.

4. Toss toasted hazelnuts and oil in a small bowl to coat; season with salt.

5. Divide kohlrabi salad among plates and top with seasoned hazelnuts, Pecorino, and more mint.

 

Last night's dinner was this salad, plus leftover pork roast and a cucumber salad of mint, dill, cucumbers, lemon juice, and a little mayo. Yum.  

Fermented Pickles (and Warm Salad)

One of my cucumber varieties started producing (the other two are flowering now), and I have had cucumbers for about a week now. I wanted pickles, even though I didn't have many yet, so I made a small jar a few days ago that tasted ready today. I actually just made a quart of salt brine, so that I could make a jar at a time as I have some extra stuff (not that making salt brine is hard, but might as well just measure it out once and have it ready to go). So far the brine has resulted in this small jar of cucumbers, and a quart of dilly beans, which are my favorite.

My experience lacto-fermenting cucumbers is that they do not last as long as other things. The cucumbers I need to eat in a month or so, but if I leave them for the winter or spring, they are too soft and I don't eat them. The dilly beans (and kraut) always stay crisp, and I keep those in the fridge for a year and they are still good.

My method was to make a fairly salty brine, which tends to be better for hot weather: I used 3 T of salt to 1 quart water, though you could use less. Once you have the brine, you can pour that over whatever veggies you want to pickle: cucumbers, green beans, green tomatoes, garlic, peppers, etc. You can add in any herbs or spices you like. Below is what I would use in a quart of (dill) pickle.

Fermented Pickles
1 quart jar filled with veggie of choice
1 head flowering/seeded dill
1-2 garlic cloves, peeled
pinch of peppercorns
red chili pepper flakes
fresh oak/horseradish/cherry or grape leaf
*(if you have it to keep the veg crunchy)
salt brine solution (3 T salt to 1 quart water)

Put everything in a jar and stuff it full as well as you can. Be sure to use the freshest vegetables you have, and to remove the flowers from cuke ends and trim the green beans. Ideally, you want all veggies to be submerged under the brine, but they sometimes get sneaky and stick out, or the spices float. This means you may get a little white film on anything sticking out, which you can just pull off. I just loosely cover my jar with the lid, screwed on but not tight, and don't worry about it. But you can also fill a ziplock with some water and use that to press everything under the brine, or fill a smaller jar with something to weight the veggies down. Sometimes the liquid will overflow, so I set it on a plate and check them every day or two.

These take anywhere from 2-5 days, depending on the heat and how you like your pickles. Taste them and decide what you like.

I ate my pickles on a cheeseburger, and also made a warm-ish salad of seared zucchini, tomatoes, blanched green beans, cucumbers, basil, mint, and feta. It was delicious with a simple vinagrette on top.

Peach Shrub

I've been revisiting Sandor Katz's Wild Fermentation book and finding all sorts of amusements and possible future fermentation fun. Had I read it a week ago I might have tried making daylily wine, but I need to acquire a few things before I try wine making, and my daylilies have peaked and are starting to dwindle.

One amusement is Katz's talk about vinegar and shrubs - a soft drink of sorts (pre-carbonated sodas) made with vinegar and fruit. I had recently tried making this shrub after my friend served it to me with bourbon and bubbly water some weeks ago. It is peach season, though I have not had any MN peaches yet, and this shrub is quite tasty with some fresh mint. I ended up increasing the amount of vinegar and decreasing the sugar a bit, and I found that I like this best with bubbly water, no alcohol. I also want to try switchel sometime, not quite a shrub, but similar: vinegar, sugar, molasses and ginger that you then add bubbly water to.

I finished my peach shrub today amidst a labor intensive day of chopping wood followed by digging up part of the yard for a retaining wall. It was at large root number 7 (or so) where I decided a peach soda beverage was in order (gatorade-hydration-energy-boost-style) so that I could complete the digging before the landscaper truck person finished his job next door and came with his front loader to load all my dirt fill. I made it just in time.

The peach shrub recipe comes from Smitten Kitchen, where it is used in her "Bourbon Peach Smash" recipe. My version (with the option of a little less sugar and more cider vinegar) is below.

Peach Shrub

1 large very ripe peach, pitted, thinly sliced
1/3 to 1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup water
1-3 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
Pinch of salt

Place peach slices in a jar, cover with sugar, water, 1-3 tablespoons vinegar (more may help for a longer steeping time, less if you are worried about vinegar taste), and a pinch of salt. Place lid on jar, give it a swish/shake until mixed and let chill in fridge for 3 hours, overnight, or up to 1 week.
*I had mine 2 weeks using 3 T vinegar, and that lasted just fine. I did like the shrub better at the end than the beginning, so maybe it was more mellow by then?

Serve with bubbly water and fresh mint. Add some bourbon if you want to try that.

Garden Salad

There is a show on Hulu that Padma Lakshmi started about food and culture of different immigrant groups in the US called Taste the Nation. I have only watched the first 4 episodes (the 4th is my favorite so far about the Gullah Geechee people in South Carolina) and it is really good, highlighting people growing/serving their own cultural food. And it is fun to see Padma in a more relaxed way than Top Chef, and meet her mom and daughter in episode 2!

The show continues to inspire a way of living to cook from the land. The Gullah way of making gumbo includes using okra as the thickening agent (rather than a roux), and last week I read that Chinese people use daylilies to thicken stew and soups. I wonder about a daylily thickened fish soup? Something to ponder. Or if I could dry daylilies and make a powder? Questions abound.

This post isn't a recipe really, just a big salad of things from the garden, including the first tomatoes and cucumbers. I ate a lot of protein in the prior 26 hours (including kitfo and kocho take out from Dilla's, which was delicious), so all I wanted for dinner was this. I also went with my friend to Costco this weekend (my first ever Costco excursion), where I bought a bag of avocados and kerry gold cheddar, so they went on the salad too. Definitely not a cooking from the land aspect of this dinner!

Salad:
Lettuce/arugula
Daylily leaves
Nasturtium
Snap peas
Cucumber, diced
Tomatoes, halved
Fresh Herbs (dill, mint, basil, tarragon)
Avocado, sliced
Diced cheddar

Ranch style dressing:
Mix together homemade mayo, sherry vinegar, dijon mustard, salt, pepper, dill, heavy cream.

Chia seed pudding

Chia pudding with cherries and coconut flakes

This heat and humidity is feeling a bit stifling, but better with cold chia seed pudding and some of the summer fruit that is currently available, which for me at the moment are sour cherries and black raspberries. I made 2 variations on this recipe so far (cherry-vanilla and chocolate), though the options are endless. The basic recipe is below, and you can modify and add flavors or toppings as you like. It's so easy, and turns out to be nice for a breakfast-y cereal type of thing, or more like a dessert (the chocolate version in particular!). This recipe is mildly sweet to my tastes, so add more if you want something sweeter.

*I don't have a high speed blender, but if you do, you could blend the final product and it will be more like a pudding consistency and less like a chia seed consistency.

Chia Seed Pudding

1/3 c chia seeds

1 can coconut milk

1/3 c. water

1 T maple syrup or honey or sweetener of choice

pinch of salt

1 tsp vanilla

*If you want it chocolate: add 2 1/2 T cocoa powder

*If you want cherry flavor, add 1/4 c cherry juice

Chocolate chia pudding with black raspberries

Mix all ingredients in a bowl, and let sit for at least 30 minutes, at which time give it another stir. I put mine in the fridge overnight, though if I do that without leaving it out first, the coconut oil separates and creates a firm layer on the top that I mix in later.

Serve with your favorite toppings: berries, sour cherries, bananas, chocolate pieces, coconut flakes, cream, whipped cream, nuts, granola, etc.

Keeps in the fridge for 5-7 days, maybe more, but I have not tested that yet!

Sauteed Daylilies

I have known day lilies were edible for I don't know how long, but I had never gotten around to trying them. They are in full bloom alongside my house right now, and I decided to try some of the flower and the blossoms. You can also eat the little tubers that are in their roots, which apparently taste like a sweeter version of a fingerling potato.

Daylilies bloom for just one day, and have many blossoms on each stalk. The whole thing is edible, and quite tasty. The flowers are mild, a tiny bit sweet, and I put those in a salad, mostly for color and as an herb. I tried a bite of the raw blossom, and that was stronger and left a more pungent taste in my mouth the way garlic scapes do, but not garlicky. Maybe sort of green tasting, with a bit of radish. When sauteed, they taste almost like asparagus to me. They are tender and so good, and thus far in my recipe experimentation, my favorite way to eat them.

Minimal research on my part yielded the following info: Daylilies have lots of nutrients and are good as a body system detox, they have medicinal properties that make them an antidote to arsenic poisoning, and in China whole fields are grown to cultivate for eating - primarily using dried spent blossoms. One important note: some people have allergic reactions to daylilies. Test a small amount first to make sure that is not you!

Daylily buds - the largest ones

Sauteed Daylilies

1. Cut however many daylily buds you want to eat/have available.

2. Saute them in butter or ghee, with salt over medium heat.

3. Enjoy!

*I put some garlic scapes with mine - if you do that, put the scapes in first as they need a little more time. The daylilies go pretty quickly, and are ready in just a few minutes.

Other daylily recipe experiments this week:

Salad with daylily flower leaves, tarragon, mint, dill, arugula and lettuce. And one nasturtium!

Daylily Pakora that I tried to do with less batter and more tempura-like with onions and cilantro.

Bourbon Sour Cherries

The sour cherries are prolific! I will not be able to try these for 6 weeks, but I feel fairly confident that they will be delicious because my friend makes a similar recipe each year and I've had at least a couple of Manhattens with her cherries and a splash of the syrup. The more traditional option for this would be brandy, but I only had bourbon and didn't feel like a trip to the store, so bourbon cherries it is. These will be excellent in some future cocktails, or atop some dessert, if you like that kind of thing.

This recipe makes about 1 quart. I had a little liquid leftover, and more cherries, so I made a mini jar which will be a nice gift somewhere down the line. This recipe came from an online search, though I modified her technique to be more simple and with less dishes!

Bourbon Cherries
1 1/2 pounds of sour cherries, pitted
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup water
juice of one lemon
4 cardamom pods
2 whole cloves
1 cinnamon stick
1 cup bourbon or brandy

1. In a small saucepan, heat sugar, water, lemon juice, spices and bourbon until boiling. Turn off heat and stir so that sugar dissolves. Let cool 10 minutes or so.
2. Fill a quart jar with pitted cherries and pour cooled sugar-bourbon-syrup over the top. Use a small strainer to catch the spices so they do not go into the jar. Cover cherries with enough liquid so they are not exposed to air. Put lid on jar and leave in the fridge for 6 weeks to get the best flavor.
3. After 6 weeks, your cherries and bourbon syrup are ready. They will keep in the fridge for a year.