Fresh Summer Salad with Tangy Buttermilk Lime Herb Dressing

Tags

buttermilk, salad, vegetables, vegetarian

The Dinner Party Collective has unveiled its first Summer Menu, which includes suggested wine pairings for each of the courses. Our first course is this beautiful refreshing salad courtesy of my favorite recipe developer Suzanne @apuginthekitchen. Please check it out! That Tangy Buttermilk Dressing is a must try!

Get the recipe –>Fresh Summer Salad with Tangy Buttermilk Lime Herb Dressing

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Three ways with Brussels sprouts

Tags

awards, brussels sprouts, brussels sprouts fritters, brussels sprouts recipes, recipes, vegetables, vegetarian, vegetarian recipes

I’ve eaten Brussels sprouts maybe twice in my life, or thrice (is that still a word?). Okay, honestly, in all likelihood, I’ve probably eaten them more times than that, but I was just trying to stress how infrequently Brussels sprouts figure in my diet. Plus I wanted to say thrice.

Why I never thought about cooking and serving Brussels sprouts, I have no idea. It’s not like me to ignore cute, baby cabbages. Cute babies usually have a way of attracting my attention. Brussels sprouts, however, didn’t exactly pique my interest. My thought on them ran like this,”These are not as good as cabbage, these are bitter, and I wouldn’t know what to do with them.” Along those lines, pretty much.

But they’re everywhere right now, and I see that every blogger has done at least a recipe or two featuring them. A quick online research also reveals that they’re highly nutritional, more so than cabbage. In short, it’s time for me to put aside old, unfounded perceptions about the vegetable, and rise up to the challenge. Of coming up with clever ways to serve Brussels sprouts that the family, specifically the children, will appreciate.

Remember my motto? When in doubt, always baconize or fritterize. Well, apparently, I’ve found a third way. Thoranize. Let me show you.

Creamy Brussels Sprouts with Bacon
2 cups Brussels sprouts, sliced thinly
5 strips of bacon
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tbsp. olive oil
1/2 cup light cream or half & half
Grated Parmesan cheese
Salt & pepper

1. Blanch Brussels sprouts in boiling water briefly, drain, set aside. This is an optional step. I was just trying to make the dish more son-friendly.
2. Cut bacon into small pieces, then fry until crisp. Remove from pan and set aside.
3. Sauté garlic in olive oil until fragrant, add sprouts, salt & pepper, and cook until Brussels sprouts are tender. If you didn’t blanch the sprouts, you may need to add a little water/stock.
4. Add bacon pieces, cream, and stir to mix.
5. Sprinkle Parmesan cheese.
6. Served with spaghetti or any pasta.

Brussels Sprouts Fritters
Follow the recipe for Onion Bhajis to make these. In place of the onions, use a mix of shredded Brussels sprouts and some chopped onion.

Brussels Sprouts Thoran
Cut the sprouts into quarters, and blanch them briefly. Then, follow my recipe for Turnip Leaves Thoran. I still think this is one of the most interesting and delicious ways of preparing vegetables. I would wager that very few vegetables wouldn’t improve served this way.

So there you have it, folks, the baconized, fritterized, and thoranized Brussels sprouts. All are worthy of being repeated at least thrice while Brussels sprouts are in season right now. Next year, Brussels sprouts will make their appearance in my garden, now that I know the family eats them without complaint.

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November Greens

Tags

Asian food, chickweed, edible weeds, fish, fish fillets, fish in chili sauce, lemongrass, recipe, turmeric, vegetables

November greens are a sight for sore eyes. Even if they are the weedy kind, they offer a little taste of the now impatiently awaited next year’s Spring. Just when the garden is about to be gone, I begin to miss it. The cause is obvious. This gardener has not stepped outside to check on it for a few weeks.

Oh, I picked herbs here and there, but when I did, mostly confined myself near the deck, close to the kitchen, where most were grown. They were still green, protected by the side wall and a cement walkway. The ones in the garden proper were brown. Visibly so, even from the kitchen window. Making venturing into the garden an unwelcome proposition.

But today I got the urges. To go out and touch the dirt. To nibble on something fresh. To look at something living, of the botanical kind, preferably green. Considering the month, is it too much to ask? Looks like Mother Nature indulges me one last time.

How fortunate for a green-starved gardener. And how rewarding for a curious gardener. Did you see the lemongrass and the turmeric? They started as a stalk and a couple of rhizomes. They were stuck into the ground, quite casually, many months ago, and promptly ignored. Now they have bestowed a most unexpected, but welcomed, tropical harvest. In November!

So this mind flew into the tropics. Phuket, maybe, or Bali. And I brought my family with me, with this dinner, inspired by the flavors of the tropics.

Fish fillets in Turmeric & Lemongrass Sauce

4 fish fillets (flounder is good, or any other mild-flavored fish. Tilapia? Or chicken, if you’re not into fish.)
1 stalk of lemongrass, minced (mine was gigante, so I used half.)
2 smallish turmeric rhizomes, cut into slivers (about 1 inch long each, or substitute with ginger. In fact, I think ginger would be very nice, nicer than turmeric probably, but turmeric does have excellent health benefits.)
1 red hot chili pepper, thinly sliced (omit, if you can’t stand the heat.)
1/2 medium onion, thinly sliced
1/2 medium sweet red pepper, julienned
1 small carrot, julienned
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tbsp. agave nectar (or sugar, but you may need more than 1 tbsp. Agave nectar is sweeter than sugar.)
1 tbsp. red wine vinegar
1 tbsp. oyster sauce
1/2 – 3/4 cup chicken stock (*Read the comment from ohlidia. She added coconut milk. Brilliant!)
2 – 3 tbsp. olive oil
Cilantro for garnish
Salt & pepper
Cornstarch for dredging

1. Season fish with salt & pepper, then dredge in cornstarch. Fry in a little bit of oil, until cooked and crisp. Remove and set aside.
2. Add more oil to the pan, stir lemongrass, garlic, turmeric, and chili. Cook until fragrant.
3. Add the rest of the vegetables (carrot, sweet pepper, onion).
4. Add sugar/agave nectar and let it caramelize a little.
5. Add chicken stock, oyster sauce, and vinegar. Let simmer for a couple of minutes. Return fish fillets to the pan, and move them around a little to soak up the sauce. Garnish with cilantro.
5. Serve immediately.

The rest of the family ate their fish with rice. I ate mine with a side of olive oil-massaged raw green salad, consisting of senposai, kale, arugula, and chickweed, with just a few pieces of carrot to sweeten it. I’m planning to lose a few pounds before the season’s eating begins, so I can gain them back. See, there’s a method to my madness.

Linking to:
Daphne’s Harvest Monday

Hello … Potato!

Tags

basil, herbs, potatoes, vegetables

I have to admit, I’m a better cook than I am a gardener. In fact, when I first started blogging I was undecided about what I should call my blog, The Novice Gardener or The Novice Cook. But Sabo said it’d be misleading to call the blog The Novice Cook. I guess that was some kind of a compliment.

But my gardening skills are slowly catching up to the cooking. One thing for sure, I now know how to grow potatoes. Just take a look at my potato harvest, all from just one and a half plants. (One plant wasn’t dug up completely.)

Potato harvest

The one that was uprooted produced 20 tubers, totaling 4 lbs of potatoes. I used my bathroom scale to weigh them, so it’s probably not very accurate, but it should give you an idea. And I even scrabbled 3 potatoes from this plant earlier in the season. That made a grand total of 23 tubers, from one original seed potato. That’s pretty impressive in my book.

The plant I didn’t uproot gave me 7 huge tubers, at 3 lbs total. I just scratched the dirt around the plant and felt for the tubers, and extracted them, without digging up the whole thing. I’m letting it grow for now, to see what will happen. It still looks green and lush.

And I have a theory. As long as the potato continues growing green leaves above ground, it also continues to grow tubers underground. So the longer the plant stays green, the more it produces. Am I right?

I based my theory on the fact that when I uprooted the plant with the 20 tubers, the leaves were also still green, and there was even a small cluster of flowers. And look at the number of tiny tubers still forming.

There were at least half a dozen of them. I wonder if they would have continued to grow had I not dug up the entire plant? It would be exciting to have a perpetual potato plant, wouldn’t it? Harvest only as needed, as long as the season lasts.

I have to thank my fellow bloggers for giving me advice and information on growing potatoes. Annie’s Granny taught me how to scrabble for a few new potatoes without digging up the whole plants. And Food Kitchen Garden gave me an explanation and sort of confirmed my theory already, about how potatoes will continue producing tubers as they grow. Thank you, guys!

Harvest this week also included cucumbers, eggplants, kale and senposai leaves, a few blackberries and tomatoes, green rhubarb stalks, and runty carrots and turnips.

Harvest this week

And lots of volunteer basil.

The small carrots and turnips were grazed by the cook as she slaved in the kitchen. 😉 And some of the potatoes were made into oven fries. But I have other plans for the rest of them. Maybe samosa (TG’s favorite) and clam chowder (Sabo’s favorite). But don’t say anything to them yet. I still need to find the time to make them. Right now I’ve got to do some Mom stuff, like playing chauffeur for the kids, etc.

You, on the other hand, can head right over to Daphne’s and view other harvests from gardens across the globe.