Cooking cheap greens

It's FINALLY hit above the freezing temperature here in New York, so I'm not as bummed out about cooking as I've been; the really cold weather makes it difficult to get up the motivation to do very much at all. To celebrate, I've put up a new podcast episode! Feel free to give it a listen.

Mid Week Feast

Kale with coconut milk, curry powder, and scallions. I put the beets in there to cook, because the greens were done too fast. Baked at 350 for 45 minutes.

Broccoli with coconut oil and sesame seeds. Tossed in a bit of cumin powder and turmeric powder. Baked at 350 for 20 minutes.

Beet greens, stewed in a bit of water and their own juices. Seasoned with ginger and garam masala. Baked for 25 minutes.

Snow peas with ginger and mint. Tossed in a bit of oil, and baked for 20 minutes.

Rasam. It's in the book.

All said and done, the prep time took the longest, because washing and chopping all those masses of vegetables in a tiny kitchen can take some time, but after it was all put together, it took five seconds to dump everything into the oven. That was well worth it. If you were making this for two people eating one meal, it would only take like 10 minutes of prep, and then dump everything in the oven. The broccoli and snow peas may be done in the microwave, if you wish. The beet greens as well. The kale really needs the oven to develop proper flavour. I didn't get to see the kale finish cooking, because I had to leave for work, so I asked Steve to turn off the oven when it beeped. He said it was fantastic.

Going on vacation food

Steve's about to head out to Chicago on Thursday, and I don't fancy having tonnes of food around that I can't finish off by myself. So what I'm in the middle of right now is "going on vacation" food. This is all stuff that freezes well, gets finished quickly, or is, in general, easy to push off on people who haven't go stuff around the house.

First and foremost came bread. Once the bread maker cooled down from the first loaf (the one you saw pictures of in the previous post), I immediately set about making a second loaf. In went the remainder of the Okara, tahini (because I ran out of oil), and the standard other ingredients. Steve was curious as to why I was making a second loaf, and I gave him my "Dino knows best" grin and went about my business.

It's fortunate that I did, because we'd ended up finishing off half of the first loaf in a couple of hours anyway! There was plenty of other food, but the bread smelled and tasted so good that we couldn't help ourselves. Hopefully, the fatkins freaks aren't reading this, and slowly going crazy. Wait. What am I talking about!? Hopefully, they ARE reading this! I love my carbs. I'm a carboholic.

Of course, we're working on that sambhar. It's so much better the next day, because the flavours have had a chance to rest, and combine more intensely. I also threw together a quick stir-fry (because we haven't had one in months), and set that in the fridge as well. Not only will it finish off quickly, it allowed me to stretch the last of my vegetables that I had in the freezer with a lot of rice. I wouldn't suggest doing this if you're looking to save your waist line and health, but if you're reaching the bottom of the food barrel, you're often times forced to improvise to make dinner happen. In fact, if you're looking to feed a hungry crowd, sometimes you don't have much of a choice, do you?

When I get home tonight, I'm not overly sure as to what to throw together. Maybe a quick marinara with onions, tomatoes, garlic, olives, basil, and oregano. Barring that, I'll roast off some potatoes, and call it a night. This all depends on how lazy I'm feeling. Hm. Maybe rice with marinara, done in a casserole-like thing? Either way, I'll figure it out, and fill you all in if I recall what I did!

Bread

You remember how I keep saying to save your deep frying oil every time? I wasn't joking, of course. Now you'll see why, I hope. This is a loaf of bread that I just made in my bread maker. It's a standard Okara Bread recipe. I tripled the oil, and used my deep frying oil, which had the spices from bajji, and other yummies I'd made the earlier day. It smells magnificent. Unfortunately, I have to wait for the bread to cool so that it stands up when I cut it up into slices.

UPDATE: The flavour is exquisite. The spices are coming right through, but in a subtle way. I can taste the hints of garlic, from when I made those rice and tomato/garlic cakes. It's very light, though. I can definitely taste the cumin from the bajji. I smell little hints of ajowain from the bajji and the cakes. I'm still savouring the taste of the bread, piled high with some tomato and onion. Lovely stuff. Either way, I do plan on making this sort of bread in the future. In fact, I might even be able to sub out whole meal flour instead of just using bread flour, and make it a twitch healthier. I've got to experiment, but I don't fancy losing that much of stuff in a baking experiment gone awry. Either way, I'm sure I'll figure something out.

EDIT 2:

Apparently, the web site has been taken down. Here's the recipe:

Ingredients:
1 ½ cups warm water
1 tbsp. oil (opt.)
2 tsp. instant yeast
2 tsp. sugar (opt.)
1 tsp. salt
1 cup okara, firmly packed
5 cups unbleached bread flour, approx.
cooking spray

Method:
1. Whisk together water, oil, yeast, sugar, and salt. Add okara. Add flour, one cup at a time, beating after each addition with a wooden spoon. (You’ll need enough flour to make a dough - the quantity of flour is approximate because it depends on the humidity of the day.) When it gets too difficult to beat, use your hands.

Note: I tend to skip the sugar, as I'm using unbleached white, or bread flour, depending on what's on sale. If you need that extra insurance, feel free to use the sugar.

2. Knead by hand on a floured work surface for 8 min., or in the mixer with the dough hook 5 min., until smooth and elastic.

3. Place the dough in a greased bowl, turning dough to grease the top. Cover with plastic, and allow to rise in a warm place until doubled. Knock dough down and divide in two. Form each portion into smooth ovals and place in greased loaf pans. Cover loaves, and allow to prove until they are ¾ of the way to doubled.

4. Place in a COLD oven. Turn oven on to 180oC. Bake loaves 40-45 min., until golden and cooked through (loaves should sound hollow when tapped on the base). Turn out to wire racks to cool.

Back to normal, after a breif break.

I was off taking care of business elsewhere, so this place has been a bit neglected. I came home to find the fridge dead empty. No rice, no bread, no nothing. EEK! I arrived back in Florida on Wednesday night, and really needed to get cracking.

This is when I'm so thankful to myself for taking care of things far in advance. For one thing, I always keep at least a few litres of soup in the freezer. This means that regardless of how long I've been out of town, or preoccupied with other things, or just swamped for time, I'll always have a ready meal, waiting for rice and/or bread within 20 minutes (which is about how long it takes to reheat in the microwave, if you keep them in one litre increments). While the soup reheated, it was a simple question of throwing rice into my rice maker, adding water, and hitting the start button.

Additionally, we have a breadmaker, that my mom got for us from Freecycle a while back. Since I always keep a few packages of yeast in the pantry, it was a simple question of dumping in the flour, water, yeast, salt, and a bit of oil, then setting the time and hitting start. Again, I don't have to bother with anything complex after getting off of a flight that took entirely too much more time than it should have.

Finally, as always, I had some dried beans in my kitchen. On Thursday night in they went for a soak, so that when I woke up in the morning, it was a crock pot away from having fully cooked beans by the time I get home tonight. I soaked up two different batches of beans, so that I could have some variety for Saturday night. Tonight, when I'm done cooking the first variety, I'll get the second variety started in the crock pot overnight. By tomorrow when I wake up, I'll have a second variety of bean to keep things interesting.

Tomorrow morning, I'll lay down some moong beans to sprout. Those will take about a day or so to bring together, and will give me a third option to have dinner on the table. After all is said and done, beans bought on sale in the 12 - 16 oz dried packages keep indefinitely, and cost around $0.50 per package at the regular price. Rice is dirt cheap, and bread made at home is just as cheap. Meanwhile, for less than $10 or so, I've got enough of the staples for the week. Now all I have to do is spice them up, and round out our meals with some vegetables. That part's the easy part.