Savoy cabbage and potatoes with pesto

I was inspired to invent this recipe when reading a letter from my friend Andi, who recommended a recipe from Lynne Rossetto Kasper’s The Italian Country Table. She adds broccoli and a potato to her pasta with pesto, and calls it “the King of pestos.” I had a beautiful Savoy cabbage in my refrigerator, aching to be eaten, and I had a brainwave that thin slices of cabbage would be fun to toss with pesto sauce, like spaghetti noodles! You can eat this on top of spaghetti, if you like, but I like it best just by itself—no noodles or Parmesan cheese, but just the potatoes added to the cabbage for heartiness. I think you’ll love the taste of the garlicky, sautéed cabbage with the pesto!

You can use commercially prepared pesto if you like—that does save a lot of time and effort. But I’ve included a couple of my pesto recipes, in case you have the time and desire to make your own. I use both the basil version and the parsley version—both are very nice. You’ll need to be more heavy-handed with the parsley pesto than the basil pesto, because it’s not quite as pungent and flavorful as the basil. The parsley pesto is still delicious, though, in its own right! And it’s quite a bit more economical, too, since parsley is generally a lot more affordable than basil.

Please note that the pesto recipes are for making big batches and then freezing flat in ziplock bags. If you’re just making pesto for this recipe, just make about one-third of a batch.

3 to 4 medium waxy potatoes, peeled and thinly sliced (Butterballs, for example, or purple potatoes for a fun color contrast)
1 tablespoon olive oil
6 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced thinly
1 medium Savoy cabbage, halved, cored, and cut into ¼-inch slices
sea salt or kosher salt
Freshly-ground pepper
Pesto (make one of the following recipes, or use prepared pesto)

1. Drop the potatoes into boiling, lightly salted water. Cook until tender, 5-7 minutes. Drain the potatoes, but reserve the cooking water.
2. Meanwhile, sauté the garlic for a minute in the olive oil over medium-high heat, until fragrant, then add the cabbage strands. Add ½ teaspoon salt and saute until wilted and just tender. You may have to add a little water to keep the cabbage and garlic from sticking. Taste for more salt and add more as needed, plus some pepper. 
3. Scoop about ½ cup of the basil pesto (or ¾ cup of parsley pesto) into the bottom of a big pasta bowl. If the pesto is stiff, add a little hot potato water to thin the sauce to the consistency of heavy cream. Toss the cabbage with the pesto, then add the potato and toss again. Taste to see if you want to add more pesto. Add salt as needed, and serve, topped with freshly-ground pepper.

Basil Pesto
This makes a lot—about three times more than you need, so you can freeze the rest, if you like.

6 large cloves garlic
½ teaspoon salt
6 packed cups fresh basil leaves
10 tablespoons pine nuts
12-14 tablespoons best quality extra-virgin olive oil

1. In a food processor, chop the garlic with the salt.
2. Add the basil leaves and puree them.
3. Then add the pine nuts and process into a rough paste.
4. Add half of the olive oil, process again until as smooth as you can get it. Even if it’s not terribly smooth, it’ll still taste great!
5. Taste for salt, and add more as needed.
6. Scoop into 3 freezer ziploc bags and freeze them flat on a baking sheet.

Parsley Pesto
This recipe also makes more than you’ll need for the cabbage and potatoes, but you can very easily freeze the extra!

2 cloves garlic
½ teaspoon sea salt or kosher salt
4 cups packed parsley leaves
½ cup pine nuts
¾ cup extra virgin olive oil

1. In a food processor, chop the garlic with the salt.
2. Add the parsley leaves and pine nuts, and turn on the motor, beginning to grind the parsley. It’s OK if all the leaves aren’t incorporated yet.
3. While the motor is running, pour in the olive oil gradually. Let the blade run for a while to puree the mixture. It won’t be very smooth, but it’s hard to get the parsley pesto smooth, anyway—the leaves are kind of tough. 
4. Taste for salt, and add more as needed.
5. Use what you’d like for tonight’s dinner, then scoop the rest into a freezer ziploc bag and freeze flat.

beets and their greens with a lemony dill vinaigrette

I made this recipe up tonight, and I was so excited about the glorious colors that I had to post it immediately!!  The bright magenta of the beets contrasted with the beautiful light green of the dressing, and the dark green leaves of the beet greens… SO beautiful!  And so delicious, too! Not to mention thrifty, since it uses the entire beet—even the stems!

The tart dressing cuts the sweetness of the beets, and the dill and sunflower seeds are a classic Eastern European beet accompaniment , but this dish is definitely a new twist! The vinaigrette is loosely based on one for a kasha & beet salad in rebar modern food.

vinaigrette

3 garlic cloves
zest of a lemon
juice of a lemon
¼ cup apple cider vinegar
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon dried dill (or 2 tablespoons fresh)
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon honey
¼ teaspoon freshly-ground pepper
½ cup olive oil

salad

2 bunches beets with their greens and stems
¼ cup sunflower seeds, toasted

1. First, roast the beets. (You can do this a day or two ahead of time if you’re baking something else in the oven and have room for a pot of beets alongside.) Preheat your oven to 400 (or if you’re baking something else, just do it at that temperature). Cut the beets from their stems, wash them, and put the whole, unpeeled beets in a baking dish or Dutch oven. Put about ½-inch of water in the dish. Cover tightly with foil or the lid of the Dutch oven and bake them until tender when stabbed with a paring knife. Usually they take 40 minutes or longer, but young beets might be quicker, depending on their size.
2. While the beets are roasting, make the vinaigrette. Toss the garlic cloves in a blender jar, and buzz them briefly to chop them a bit. Add the lemon zest, juice, vinegar, mustard, dill, salt, honey, and pepper. Puree until smooth, scraping down the blender jar as necessary. While the motor is running, pour in the olive oil and puree until everything is nicely emulsified. The color will be a beautiful light green! Taste the dressing—it will be quite tart, to cut the sweetness of the beets, but add more salt, honey, and olive oil as necessary to get a nice balance.
3. When the beets are tender, remove them from the oven. If you have a variety of sizes, you’ll have to pull the smaller ones out first and let the larger ones cook a little longer. Let the beets cool just a bit, or if you’re in a hurry, run them under cold water. Don’t let them dry out, though, because the skins will be a lot harder to peel off. When the beets are cool enough to handle, slip their skins off. Cut the beets into ½-inch pieces and toss with a few tablespoons of the vinaigrette. Set them aside to marinate.
4. While the beets are roasting, toast the sunflower seeds on a baking sheet in the oven for about 10 minutes, until lightly browned and fragrant.
5. Pull the green leaves from their stems—but reserve the stems, too! Wash the leaves in a pan of water, and set them aside. Wash the stems, too, and then cut them into ½-inch slices. Set aside in a bowl.
6. Put about an inch of water in the bottom of a steamer. Steam the beet greens for 5-7 minutes, until nicely tender. Set aside to cool in their bowl. Steam the beets stems for 10 minutes or so, until they are nice and tender, as well. Set aside. Chop the beet greens coarsely.
7. To assemble the salad, toss the beet greens with some of the vinaigrette, and then toss the stems with some vinaigrette (keep them in separate bowls). Make a little tower: first the greens, then the stems, and finally the cubes of beets. Drizzle with a little of the green vinaigrette (what a color combination!) and then sprinkle with sunflower seeds.  Enjoy! 

roasted brussels sprouts

I know that brussels sprouts are not usually the most popular vegetable, but our fresh Alaskan sprouts are so sweet and delicious that you just have to give them a try! Anyway, how can you resist them when the farmers bring the gorgeous green stalks to the market bursting with plump round sprouts? Serve these as an appetizer or as a side to just about anything!

1 or 2 large stalks of Brussels sprouts
extra-virgin olive oil
sea salt or kosher salt

1. Preheat your oven to 450 degrees. Coat 1 or 2 large baking sheets (you’ll probably need 2) with non-stick spray or oil (that makes clean-up a lot easier).
2. If the sprouts break off easily, break them off with your fingers. If not, use a small paring knife to cut each sprout off the stalk. Cut the largest ones in half (and if they are really big, quarter them), but leave the smallest ones whole. Put them all in a large bowl.
3. Drizzle 2 or 3 tablespoons of olive oil over the sprouts, and sprinkle with salt (about ½ teaspoon per pound—to your taste). Mix them all up until they are coated with olive oil, and then pour them onto your baking sheets. Make sure that they are only in a single layer, and not too crowded, so they roast instead of steam. Make sure a cut surface of each sprout is touching the baking sheet (this makes them brown really nicely).
4. Roast them until the cores inside the sprouts are tender when poked with a paring knife and they are brown on the bottom where they touch the baking sheet. This might take 15 to 20 minutes or so, depending on their size, but maybe longer. Just keep checking them!

fresh tomato sauce

I admit, if I didn’t have a friend with a really big greenhouse, I’d never make tomato sauce with fresh tomatoes. If you are lucky enough to have lots of tomatoes, you can increase the amount of sauce accordingly, to freeze. It’s a variation on one of Lynne Rosetto Kasper’s tomato sauce recipes in The Italian Country Table. Most tomato sauce recipes (including hers) tell you to use a food mill to get rid of the skins at the end of the process, but 1) I don’t have a food mill, and 2) I like my sauce chunky. So I just peeled the tomatoes at the beginning to avoid the little tough bits of skin in the sauce, and blendered it up a little at the end.

sauce

2 pounds ripe tomatoes
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium onion, minced fine
1 tablespoon fresh rosemary, minced fine (the easiest way I’ve found is to use a coffee grinder)
sea salt or kosher salt and freshly-ground pepper
2 large cloves garlic, minced
¼ teaspoon sugar

pasta & toppings

½ pound pasta, such as spaghetti. (I prefer whole-wheat.)
kalamata olives, quartered lengthwise
chopped parsley

1. Bring a large pot of water to boil. You can use this water to prepare the tomatoes, and then to boil the pasta, so wash your tomatoes first. Mark an “X” in the bottom of each tomato with a serrated knife. Put 3 or 4 tomatoes in the water at a time for 30 seconds to a minute, until the skin starts to peel away from the “X.” Remove tomatoes with a slotted spoon, and cool in a bowl as you dip the other tomatoes. Peel the skin off the tomatoes and remove the core with a paring knife. Cut the peeled tomatoes into wedges.
2. Heat the oil in a heavy pot over medium-high heat. Add the onion and ½ teaspoon salt and sauté the onions to golden-brown, stirring often with a wooden spatula.
3. Stir in the rosemary, garlic, tomatoes, and sugar. Bring to a boil over high heat, stirring often and scraping down the sides of the pot. Cook about 15 minutes, until the tomatoes have thickened and the tomato flesh is softened.
4. At this point, you’ll probably still have lots of chunks of tomato flesh in the pot. If you like it chunky, leave it this way. I wanted it a little smoother, though, so I used an immersion blender to puree some of the tomato pieces into the sauce. It still left the sauce quite chunky. If you don’t have an immersion blender, put some of the sauce into a blender and puree.
5. Now, stir it all around and taste it. Add more salt until you have the right balance of flavors. If you want the sauce to be thicker, boil it down some more.
6. Salt the tomato-dipping water and bring it back to a boil. Cook your pasta in that fiercely boiling water until done to your liking.
7. Serve the pasta with generous amounts of sauce, and top with a sprinkling of olives and parsley. 

kale (or collards) and cabbage with white beans on garlic toast

This is one of my favorite recipes, believe it or not. The ingredients are so unassuming and humble, but when you cook them all together, they become wonderfully good. The onions are sweet, the garlic and greens are savory, the parsley is fresh and vibrant, and the cabbage is tender. You don’t have to put this on toast, but I love it that way. If you add lots more bean broth, this is a good soup, as well. It’s a meal on its own.

It makes a big batch, but I’m betting you won’t have any trouble finishing it off as leftovers. It tastes even better the second day, after the flavors have had time to meld. This recipe is a variation of one in Deborah Madison’s Local Flavors: Cooking and Eating from America’s Farmers’ Markets.

beans:

2 cups white beans, soaked for 4 hours or overnight
1 onion, peeled and quartered
4 garlic cloves, peeled but left whole
2 bay leaves
sea salt or kosher salt

vegetables:

2 large onions, finely diced
2 bunches dino or Tuscan kale or collard greens, leaves stripped from the stems and sliced into ½” slices
1 small cabbage, either Savoy or green cabbage, quartered, cored, and sliced thinly
4 plump garlic cloves, minced
1 cup of chopped parsley
1-2 tablespoons olive oil
sea salt or kosher salt and freshly-ground pepper

toast:

thick slices of hearty whole-wheat bread (1 or 2 per person)
garlic
extra-virgin olive oil

1. Drain the soaked beans, then put them in a pot and cover with cold water by at least an inch. Add the quartered onion, garlic, and bay leaves and make sure the water covers the onions. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer, partially covered, until the beans are tender. This could take 45 minutes to 1 ½ hours, depending on the size of the beans and how old they are. When the beans are tender enough to easily squish between your tongue and the roof of your mouth, turn the heat off. If you have time, let the beans sit in their liquid with the aromatics until cool. Remove the quartered onions and whole garlic and discard. Add salt to the beans to taste.
2. While the beans are cooking, chop all the vegetables and bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add the kale or collards and boil them until tender. The boiling time could be as short as 3 minutes in the summer, or as long as 10 or 12 minutes in the fall, depending on how big and old the greens are—just keep tasting them. Drain the greens.
3. Warm the olive oil in a heavy, wide skillet or pot (non-stick works especially well). Add the onion and cook over medium heat with 1 teaspoon salt until the onion is soft and golden brown, about 12 minutes. Add the kale or collards, cabbage, garlic, parsley, and 2 more teaspoons salt. Cook over low heat with the pan covered until the vegetables are soft and the volume greatly reduced, about 15-20 minutes.
4. When the beans are done, add them, along with a cup or two or their cooking liquid, to the pot. Simmer until the greens are completely tender. Taste for salt and season with pepper. (You may have to add quite a bit of salt—kale and collards need a lot of salt, as do beans.) Save the rest of the bean broth for vegetable stock in soups and stews—just freeze it until you need it.
5. Toast the bread slices. Rub the toasts with a peeled clove of garlic and sprinkle with a little salt. Spoon the beans and greens over the toast and serve, drizzled with a little olive oil, if desired.

Vern Stockwell’s Easy French Fries

Vern’s suggestion was basically to take everything I’d learned from my reading on the topic and throw it out the window. Use French Reds instead of floury Idaho potatoes, and don’t worry about frying them twice. And use light olive oil, which gives the fries a really great flavor!! It was really fun, and a lot less stressful than trying to get “the perfect French fry” written about in all my books. Not something I’d want to do every day, but a fun little adventure!

equipment:

large, heavy soup pot
candy thermometer (measures to 400 degrees) that clips onto the side of your pot
slotted spoon
paper towels or brown paper bags

ingredients:

potatoes (French Reds or other variety—what the heck, try whatever you have!)
large jug of light olive oil (NOT extra-virgin! The smoke point is too low.)
sea salt or kosher salt
ketchup

1. Cut the potatoes into approximately 3/8-inch batons. Don’t bother peeling them.
2. Fill your pot halfway with oil. Don’t fill it much fuller than that, because the oil bubbles SO fiercely when you first put the potatoes in (cooking off the water) that it would overflow if you got it much fuller than that.
3. Attach your thermometer to the pot and heat the oil over high heat, watching the oil temperature carefully, until it comes up to 375 degrees. Carefully slide a smallish handful of potato batons into the oil. Don’t drop them in, because the oil will splash out and could burn you! The fries will bubble up like crazy for a while until most of the outside moisture has cooked off. They might initially stick to the bottom of the pan, but just leave them alone—they will unstick in a minute when they cook a little bit.
4. Watch the oil temperature carefully. It will drop a bit when you put the potatoes in, and then will slowly come back up to temperature, at which point you need to turn the heat way down (or off) until it stabilizes. Cook the potatoes until they are beautiful and golden-brown, and cooked all the way through. This will take a few minutes. Take one out when you think it might be done, drain it on paper towels or bags, sprinkle with salt, and give it a taste.
5. Fry the rest of your potatoes this way, in batches, not too many at a time (because the oil will cool off too much if you overload the pan). Just hang out in the kitchen with your family and enjoy them, hot out of the oil, dunked in your choice of ketchup, or just enjoy them naked! 

I always make a big batch of this very easy stock, and then freeze the extra. You can make a half batch if you like, but why would you want to? Don’t be tempted to boil it longer than 30 minutes—it can turn bitter, and it doesn’t need any longer than that, anyway.

2 large onions
6 large carrots
6 celery ribs
1-2 tablespoons olive oil
16 garlic cloves, peeled and smashed
16 parsley branches
1 teaspoon dried thyme (or 12 sprigs of fresh thyme)
4 bay leaves
sea salt or kosher salt

1. Scrub the vegetables and chop them roughly into 1-inch chunks. Heat the oil in a large soup pot and add the vegetables and herbs and 1 teaspoon salt and cook over high heat for 5-10 minutes, stirring frequently. The more color they get, the richer the flavor of the stock.
2. Add 2 more teaspoons salt and 4 quarts of cold water and bring to a boil. Lower the heat and simmer, uncovered for 30 minutes. Strain.

braised celery with tomatoes, capers, and olives

This recipe is based on one in Jack Bishop’s Vegetables Every Day. The salty capers and briny olives are great with the naturally salty celery—and I’m betting you might just have all of these ingredients in your pantry, ready to whip up into a very easy side dish.

1 large bunch celery, with leaves
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 large onion, minced
1 15-ounce can of diced tomatoes (I prefer Muir Glen—they are really sweet!)
1 to 2 tablespoons capers, rinsed and drained
10 to 15 large Kalamata olives, pitted and sliced
sea salt or kosher salt (maybe)
freshly ground pepper

1. Tear the celery leaves away from the stalks and set them aside. and cut off the small branchy stems on top of the main celery stalks. Trim and discard any tough portions from the bottom and top of each celery stalk. Peel the outside of the stalks to remove the stringy fibers, using a paring knife to grab the top outer edge of the stalk, and then peeling it down the outside of the stem to get the strings. Cut the stalks into 2-inch lengths. (You’ll have about 6 cups.)
2. Heat the oil in a large sauté pan. Add the onion and sauté over medium heat until softened and golden, about 4 minutes. Add the celery, turn down the heat and cover the pan. Cook for another 5 minutes or so, turning the celery occasionally.
3. Add the tomatoes, bring to a boil, reduce the heat, and cover the pan again. Simmer the mixture until the celery is tender, 20 to 30 minutes. You may need to add a bit more water if the pan goes dry before the celery is tender (I did). My celery never got completely soft—there was a little resistance to it even after 25 minutes of cooking, but I liked it that way.
4. Meanwhile, chop up the celery leaves. When the celery is tender, stir in the capers, olives and celery leaves. Taste for salt (I didn’t use any salt because capers, olives, and tomatoes were already salty enough), and add freshly-ground pepper. Serve right away.