Roasted Greens

The method is not new to FC, but the vegetable is (so new, I am still not sure what the stuff is.) Last Thursday I hit the farmer's market late, already hungry and looking for something to throw together for dinner. I hadn't eaten any vegetables all day and a pile of feathery leafed precut and washed greens caught my eye.

Pepper: "Hey, what is this stuff?"
Vendor: [incomprehensible sichuanese]
Pepper: "How do you cook it?" (The reply is usually a one-word answer - stir-fry, soup, stew...)
Vendor: "Stir-fry!"
Pepper: "How about soup?"
Vendor indicates no.

Strange. Pepper picks off a leaf and nibbles. The clean-breaking leaf and slight bitterness put this in the brassica family. Some kind of kale?

After getting home I piled a few handfuls of greens on a baking sheet and drizzled them with 2 tsp olive oil and 1/2 tsp of salt. I put them in my toaster oven at 180 deg C for ten minutes, or until they started to smell toasty. I have not yet met any green thing that loves to be roasted as much - the feathery leaves darkened, the firmer stems held their shape and got juicy, and the in-between parts got melting soft.

If anyone can help me figure out what the plant is, please leave a comment! My latest guess is young youcai.

UPDATE: Concluded that this is, in fact, baby youcai. (No thanks to another vendor today, who just kept repeating "It's just a vegetable. Vegetable. You stir-fry it. Stir Fry!") Our local supply has already mostly matured past the stage where it can be prepared like this, but I will enjoy it while it lasts.

Millet Porridge and Other Convenience Foods

A couple of posts ago I mentioned that convenience is a good measure of food value. Many of the least expensive and healthiest foods take work - fresh vegetables need washing and peeling, beans need soaking and long cooking, grains ditto. The great thing is that a lot of this work can be done ahead of time so that when mealtime or random hunger strikes the prep and cleanup is minimal. Last Sunday I took a few hours in the afternoon and did a bunch of prep so that during the week I would have lots of quick food options in the fridge:

Kidney Beans: hot soak and cook, for use in tostadas and in kidney bean sandwich spread

Potatoes: scrubbed and cooked (skins on) to make home fries and Eggs Cooked on Top of Things

Skillet Grape Tomatoes: Put a pound of grape tomatoes in a wide frying pan over high heat with a tablespoon of olive oil and about a teaspoon of salt. Shake pan, covered, til tomatoes get blackened and juicy. Can be warmed up to eat with a few crumbles of feta or alongside a grilled cheese.

Roasted Calabacita: Cut calabacita into wedges (or slice zucchini); drizzle with oil or melted butter and a little salt. Roast in a toaster oven til tender and a bit charred. I was going to save these for use in tostadas too but ended up eating them. Amazingly good.

Roasted Red Peppers: These are very fun to do by yourself; they smell amazing and the vivid red/black is beautiful. Take a red pepper and char it all over under the broiler. When cool enough to handle, peel and lift out the stem and seeds. Use on eggs or tuck into sandwiches, or save to make roasted eggplant, tomato and red pepper dip.

Millet Porridge: Cook millet in 4X water (by volume) and a little salt. Keep cooked cereal in fridge and warm up with a little water mixed in for breakfast. Last time I made this I stirred in cooked sweet potato and honey, but it is just as good plain.

Green Peppers and Onions: Slice into slivers for stir fries. Red Cook is a great new Chinese food blog which is now running a stir fry series.

The Basics V: Polenta

When most of your food budget goes to glorious summer produce, eating well is still easy when you have a few inexpensive essentials on hand: grains such as couscous, rice or barley; cheese or tofu; and some cooked beans in your fridge. For the grains element, a few posts on a Southwestern gluten free blog recently reminded me of polenta's versatility. My first attempts to make polenta managed to be mushy and lumpy at the same time but still tasted great. I also came to appreciate how bright yellow polenta in a cast iron pan helps focus blurry first-thing-in-the-morning eyes and is a great backdrop for black beans or dark red kidney beans and veggies.

This slow cooker recipe helped somewhat with the textural problems. Slow cookers are usually associated with winter but are ideal for cooking in the summer, especially when they can sit outside.


1 part corn meal - I used a medium fine grind
4 parts water
Salt, 1-2 tsp
Slow cooker on low overnight

In the morning, shape polenta into a log or brick and store in the fridge to use as needed within one week.

The Basics IV: Kim Chi

This post is not a recipe since I haven't been brave enough to attempt it, but the frugal budget can accomodate ready made kim chi. For Western palates, making friends with this strong character may take a few tries but its brightness, tang, and fire make the taste very worth acquiring. There are many varieties of kim chi in Korea, but by far the most common and most available locally is cabbage kimchi.

There are so many great things to do with kim chi. Scramble an egg, mix in kim chi, and eat with rice for a great, balanced meal any time of the day. (You can vary the same ingredients by making kim chi fried rice and topping with a fried egg.) I have also made pretty good veggie burgers with chopped kim chi for flavouring. Don't recommend putting it on nachos. Trust me on this one.

Kim chi chigae is kim chi with pork, tofu, and green onions in a stew like concoction; I love how the kim chi is the seasoning and the vegetable at the same time. You want to use older, sour kim chi for this - look for kim chi whose leaves have a krauty translucency without traces of green. Ratio of kim chi to proteins should be about equal. (I would do 1 part pork and 1 part tofu to 2 parts kim chi, but adjust to taste; can even do all pork or all tofu for vegan version.) Dark sesame oil is optional but is a very worthwhile investment due to its attractive flavour/cost value. Heat a small pool of oil (cooking or sesame) in a deep frying pan or sauce pan and brown the pork - you can use cubes, pork belly, ground pork, or even ribs. If you are using the fattier cuts you might want to drain them after browning since the fat doesn't add much to the dish. Add kim chi and stock/water for a soupy consistency and stew for about fifteen minutes; add diced tofu and a chopped green onion and cook for ten more minutes or until pork is tender. Eat with rice. To nutrition power up this meal, make brown rice instead of white and mix bean sprouts into the rice pot to cook at the same time.

The Basics III: Stock

A good full bodied chicken stock is one of the best things to have in your freezer. It gives character and savour to dishes made with beans and vegetables and can be used to turn a couple handfuls of rice or noodles into a quick meal.

The hardest part of making chicken stock is figuring out where the 'chicken' part is going to come from. One of my first jobs after moving away from home was at KFC and we used to debone the leftover chicken to make salad. I would take the bones home and brown them and make the best stock of my life. If you have splurged on a roast chicken and have a leftover carcass, you are all set. Locally, the price of 'necks and backs' chicken packages at grocery stores is ridiculously high (and besides, this is the part of the chicken that almost always has bits of raw lung clinging to it, which I don't enjoy cleaning off). I often can find reasonably priced stewing chickens - sometimes labeled 'old chicken' - either at Lucky 97 downtown or in the freezer at Jia Hua, aka Chinese Superstore. I am also going to try my luck at pestering some local meat departments for bones.

You should brown the bones or stewing chickens in the oven for maximum flavour. An enamel roaster is ideal for getting good brown drippings. (This is the main reason I only roast chicken or pork in enamel; it gives the best colored gravy.) This should be done in a medium oven, about 350 deg Fahrenheit, and uncovered. Once they are brown and fragrant, turn the oven down, fill the roaster with water and add a few stalks of inner leaves of celery, onions, peppercorns, and some salt. A few clean onion skins are great for adding colour. Leftover carrots or parsley or other vegetables can also go in, but be cautioned that strong flavoured vegetables like cabbage or garlic will change the character of the stock. Also keep in mind that the stock should be about the chicken and not the seasonings; you want to salt and season the dishes you make with it more than the stock. Leave the stock to simmer in the oven, which you have turned down to about 300 degress, for at least 3 hours. You can make extra in the crock pot or stove top if you have a lot of bones. The stock should not boil, just simmer. When stock is ready, cool slightly and strain into ziplock bags or yogourt containers.

The freezer on top of your fridge and its contents are not happy to deal with a large quantity of hot liquid all at once. If you don't want ice crystals in your ice cream it is best to store the stock in the fridge until it is cold and then put it in the freezer. If you have a big freezer this is less of a problem.

Update....chicken feet work great for this and make a stock that turns to jelly when chilled.

The Basics II: Granola

This is based loosely on my mother's recipe - 1 cup honey melted and mixed with 1 cup oil, poured over 7 cups flaked cereal (can be oats, rye, wheat, triticale, or any combination thereof). I usually use up to ten cups cereal 'cause I think it's healthier. Possible addtions before it goes into the oven for the toasting stage: any kind of shelled nuts, sunflower seeds, coconut, wheat germ; anything at all that likes to be toasted and will not clash with each other. You can add 3-4 cups of additions. In the frugal kitchen, 'clean out the cupboards' granola takes an honoured place beside 'clean out the fridge' soup and 'clean out the freezer' smoothies. You also want to add any spices before the toasting stage. Powdered are best. Cinnamon is very good with most granolas, and cardamom goes really well if the fruit is raisins, dried apples, or dried pears.

The toasting stage takes place in a 300-350 degree oven. You give it a stir every ten minutes or so until it looks and smells like granola - usually this takes me half an hour to forty minutes. If parts of it burn, the rest of it is usually still OK. This stage fills the kitchen with comforting spicy toasty smells. You add dried fruit only after toasting, since dried fruit that gets toasted often ends up hard as rocks. You can also add spices after the toasting stage, if you forgot earlier. If you forgot nuts, definitely toast them separately before adding them for maximum flavour. Store in an airtight container at room temperature.

The Basics I : Biscuit Mix

Homemade biscuit mix is one of my favourite things to have on hand due to its low cost and versatility. I use it a lot for dumplings because I love the economy of making them using the same pot and burner as the main course.

Measure 9 cups flour into a big bowl. Add 1/3 cup baking powder and 1 tbs salt and mix well. Work 1 lb of shortening, margarine, or butter into the mixture with your hands. Keep in canister or ziplock bag. If you use shortening or margarine this mix can be stored at room temperature but if made with butter it is best stored in the fridge or freezer. This is very fun to make when you have combined different flours and can sense their mixed textures and fragrances while working the fat into the mix, unless you are one of those dough-in-the-food-processor types.

Mix with milk to form a stiff dough for biscuits (start with a ratio of about 1/3 cup milk to 1 cup mix) and cook at about 375 degrees til they are raised and browned, about 12 minutes depending on how you have shaped them. For dumplings, make a slightly softer dough and add a seasoning that complements your main course, like thyme or tarragon for chicken soup or grated cheese for tomato based soups. Drop into pot where main course is cooking and close lid tightly; lift lid only after dumplings are puffed up and you think they are cooked. The time varies with heat and with amount dumplings/size pot ratio; check the centre of one to make sure they are cooked through. The mix makes excellent pancakes if you mix in sugar and milk to a pouring consistency; an egg is good too and optional. If your cooking liquid is sour milk or buttermilk, add a pinch of baking soda as well to cut the acid.