Spicy Breakfast Food

Need a hot breakfast? Here are two ideas. Both are spicy, and delicious any time, but especially well-suited to breakfast or brunch.

For this frittata, I used a large iron skillet. If you do not have an oven-safe skillet, after browning the sausage in a skillet on the stovetop, then pour the drippings into a pie plate, and layer it with the potato slices.

Pork chorizo and roasted cabbage frittata

1-1.5 lbs fresh pork chorizo sausage

5 medium potatoes, scrubbed

Half a head of cabbage

A dozen eggs

Salt and pepper to taste

Thinly slice the potatoes into 1/16" rounds. Slice the cabbage into small pieces, either by shredding or chopping.

Slice open the sausages to remove the meat; discard the casings. Brown the chorizo in a large skillet for a few minutes. Add the cabbage to the skillet and turn the heat down to medium. Simmer the cabbage, stirring occasionally, until it is tender: about ten minutes. Remove the cabbage and sausage mixture from the skillet and set aside.

Line the skillet with overlapping slices of potato, to completely cover the bottom and sides. Add the sausage and cabbage in an even layer.

Beat the eggs with salt and pepper, and pour them over the top of the sausage and cabbage to fill the skillet to within 1/2" of the top.

Bake at 350 degrees until the egg on top of the frittata is set and the visible edges of potato are very well browned: about 30 minutes. Allow to set for 5-10 minutes.

Slice and serve warm or cold.

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This next dish is an aloo gobi recipe. In the original, Jaffrey has you soak the sliced vegetables in water before cooking with them, but I don't think it's a worthwhile step and always skip it.

Cauliflower and Potatoes with Fenugreek and Fennel Seeds

Adapted from Madhur Jaffrey's World of the East Vegetarian Cooking

A head of cauliflower

4 medium potatoes, scrubbed

1/4 cup olive oil

1/4 tsp fenugreek seeds

1 tsp fennel seeds

1 tsp cumin seeds

1/4 tsp red pepper flakes

3/4 tsp ground turmeric

1 tsp ground coriander

1 tsp salt

black pepper

1 tsp garam masala

Break up the cauliflower into florets and slice them into thin wedges, about 1/2" thick at the widest. Slice the potatoes thinly, about 1/4-1/8" thick.

Heat the oil in a large skillet that has a lid. Add the fenugreek, fennel, cumin, and red pepper. Stir for a minute, then add the sliced potatoes and cauliflower. Stir to completely coat in oil and spices. Sprinkle with the turmeric, coriander, salt, and pepper. Sauté for several minutes until vegetables begin to brown.

Add 1/4 cup of water to the skillet and cover, turning the heat to low. Steam the vegetables, stirring occasionally, until they are completely tender, about 15 minutes. Sprinkle with the garam masala, stir, and serve.

Vegetarian comfort food: dal and mash with mustard cabbage

I recently transferred this Blogger account to the one associated with my more frequently used Gmail account. Having removed that stumbling block should have me posting a little more often.

Many of the recipes I share on my blog are posted here because a friend wanted a recipe, and having gone to the trouble of documenting it, I wanted to share somewhere publicly accessible. This turns out to be pretty handy, because a few years later, someone will want that recipe again, and I can just give them a link.

My cooking themes include local food and seasonal cuisine, with those last two keyed to my location in western Massachusetts. In late winter, I cook a lot of cabbage, and through the summer I hardly ever eat it: my plate is full of zucchini and summer squash, then. I don't eat 100% local: lately, most of my greens seem to come from California, except when I can get some local greenhouse leaf lettuce. At this time of the year, our winter farm share still includes plenty of cabbage.

I was in a rut, eating only steamed or roasted vegetables with few seasonings, so I went through a few of my favorite cookbooks for inspiration. Here is a delicious way to prepare cabbage. I served it recently with dal and mashed potatoes. I've decided dal and mashed potatoes is the new turkey gravy and mash. It's comfort food, another of my food themes. I'm also an enthusiastic meat eater, and eat wheat and dairy, but some of my friends don't, so I like to stay flexible and be able to turn out a nice meal my friends can eat, no matter who shows up. To that end, I'm going to work on a vegan mash, next. My usual mash takes plenty of butter and a splash of half and half. I use steamed potatoes, skins on, steam peeled garlic cloves with the potatoes and mash them in, too. Plenty of salt and pepper.

Mustard cabbage with cumin seed

Adapted from Maddhur Jaffrey's World of the East Vegetarian Cooking

The original recipe also calls for some asafetida to be added at the beginning of the recipe, with the tomatoes, but I haven't had any in months, and forgot to get any at the international market today; I was in a hurry and just grabbed the bottle of mustard oil I needed.

Mustard oil is difficult to find in American markets, and when you can find it, it is usually marked "for external use only." Despite these caveats, it's worth finding if you like to cook Indian dishes. Mustard oil is a traditional food in several cultures of India and Bangladesh, made from the same mustard seeds that you find in the spice aisle and in the condiment known as "mustard" to most Americans. The oil of the seed imparts a delicious flavor, and cannot be duplicated by using the whole seed or powder.

Ingredients

1/4 cup mustard oil

4-5 canned whole plum tomatoes, diced

1/2 tsp whole cumin seeds

1 tsp ground cumin seeds

1 tsp salt, plus more to taste

1/4 tsp ground cayenne

1/2 head of cabbage, diced into 1" pieces

Heat the oil on high heat in a very large, wide skillet that has a lid. When the oil reaches the smoking point, turn down the heat to medium and add the tomatoes. Stir and cook for a moment, then add the cumin seeds and powder, salt, and cayenne.

Add the cabbage to the pan in batches, stirring it in and allowing it to cook down slightly, to make room for the next batch. When all of the cabbage is in the pan, cover and turn the heat to low. Allow to cook for at least 20 minutes, until it is well done. Salt to taste.

Today, I'm home with a cold. I wanted some comforting, nourishing soup, so this is what I made.

Butternut Apple Bisque

1 butternut, peeled, seeded, and cubed
1 large cooking apple, peeled, cored, and quartered
4 cups strong chicken stock
3 small yellow onions, minced
Fresh rosemary, about 12 leaves, finely minced
2T butter
2T sherry
1 cup whole milk
Salt, pepper, and nutmeg to taste

Sauté the onion and rosemary in butter, then deglaze the pan with the sherry. Simmer the butternut in the stock until nearly soft, then add the apple and onion mixture. Simmer until the butternut and onions are very soft, about ten minutes. Use an immersion blender to puree the soup. Add the milk, about a teaspoon of salt, a generous grind of pepper, and a pinch of nutmeg to start, mix well, then season to taste.

Pork and Beans

A five-pound pork shoulder roast, oven-braised all day with barbecue seasonings and navy beans until the large chunks of pork fall apart, tender, and the beans are firm yet creamy through to the center.

This is a classic American dish, rendered unrecognizable by the commercial products that have replaced it for more than a generation.

Pork and beans, beans and wienies, and similar dishes can all trace their roots back to cassoulet, a French peasant dish of white beans, slowly stewed with mixed meats that vary but often include pork shoulder, garlic sausage, and duck confit. It's rich, hearty food, and this American descendant is no exception.

One thing you know for sure about the pork and beans you buy in a can: it never has enough pork. This recipe has got a ton of pork in it. Delicious, melt in your mouth pork shoulder.

Pork and Beans

Ingredients
5 lbs pork butt or shoulder, cut into rough 3" cubes
2 cups of dry navy beans, rinsed well and soaked overnight in a quart of water and a teaspoon of salt
8 cups meat stock (I used 6 cups chicken and 2 cups beef)
6 or more cloves of garlic, chopped
2 yellow onions, chopped
2 apples, cored and chopped
1/2 cup molasses
A bay leaf
1/4 cup tomato paste
1T paprika
1 tsp dried oregano
2 tsp dry mustard
2 tsp salt
1 tsp black pepper

Season the pork with the paprika, oregano, mustard, salt, and pepper.

Put all of the ingredients into a roasting pan and bake at 300 degrees, stirring every half hour, until the beans are thoroughly cooked. If the mixture seems too dry for the beans to absorb liquid, add more stock. It takes several hours for the beans to be done; at that point, the pork should already be falling-apart tender, and the onions and apples will have completely disintegrated.

Serves two men for a week.

The Basics: How to Cook Brown Rice

This is the most basic recipe I can imagine: rice and water. So why is it so hard to find a simple, foolproof recipe for the most basic things? Even Bittman, my go-to guy, is cagey about it. Either, he can't make it simple enough—is butter necessary?—or he won't commit to how much water it takes. And that's in his big yellow book. Complicated, show off recipes abound on the internet. Finding someone who will show you how to chop collard greens and steam them, that is an internet gem. Here, I will tell you how to make brown rice.




The coveted rice pot is the saucepan on the back right burner, behind the pasta pot (which I use to steam vegetables), and catty-corner from my favorite iron skillet. Take a bow, beauties: these are the hardest working cookware in my kitchen.

Brown rice is the staple without equal in the hippie universe. It is the basis of a macrobiotic diet, and was adopted with fervor by vegetarian and omnivore hippies alike in the seventies. Think Laurel's Kitchen, and the Moosewood Restaurant cookbooks. Hippie cuisine has matured over time, and can get as fancy as you like: one of my favorite restaurants is the vegan macrobiotic Zen Palate in NYC. But it's a favorite because I don't cook that highbrow at home. Many of our meals start with about a cup of brown rice.

I have been making my rice like this for several years. I nearly always use the same pot, because it is the right size—a one-quart saucepan—and because it has a matching, properly fitting lid. Many of my pots have suffered concussive injuries, rendering them incapable of holding a lid in a tight fit. In other cases, pots are the right size, but have a vented lid, either the kind that looks like it's sneering, or the kind that are holes in the top that cannot be closed; in the case of the latter, this is also sometimes the result of taking a beating. The kitchen is the most dangerous room in the home, for cookware. I guard this saucepan for its rice making prowess, and if it were to die, I'd have to replace it. I have my oatmeal pot, but it has a sneering lid, so it takes longer to cook rice in.

When you are selecting your own perfect rice pot, choose one that is relatively light. This is not the job for your Dutch oven. About one to two quart capacity, max, with a good, unvented lid.

Some people slavishly rinse their grains before cooking them. When it comes to washing dried beans and lentils and dried grains and similar items, I'm concerned with anything that will affect flavor or texture, and wash accordingly. If it looks clean, not dirty or dusty, that's good enough for me. Other dry bulk goods need a good scrubbing: for example bulghur, which retains odors, and navy beans (usually dirty) and quinoa, which needs to be especially harshly dealt with before cooking, or the naturally occurring saponins will make it taste like soap. I rinse rice in a sieve before I start, but it won't affect the cooking instructions if you do.

Plain Brown Rice

About 6 servings

Ingredients:
2 cups organic brown basmati rice
3 ¼ cups water

Bring the water to a boil in a medium saucepan. Add the rice, lower the heat, and put the lid back on. Cook undisturbed on very low heat for 40 minutes. Turn off the heat, and leave the lid on. Wait 5 minutes, minimum, to fluff with a fork and serve. Yields 7 cups.

Hard core soft drinks

So there's slow food, and then there's sloooooow food. The thing about slow food is, it takes time. Usually we're just talking clock time, as with a meatloaf. Right now I'm baking a "Yes, We're Out of Onions" meatloaf. I can tell you how it is in about an hour. Sometimes slow food stretches out into calendar time. The ambitious menus planned for holiday and party spreads require scheduling at least some of the food prep and cooking for days before the event.

Lately I'm getting into brewing soft drinks, which stretches into the weeks in prep time. Last week I invited a few select friends for a root beer float party. Rain kept some away, so we were an especially small and cozy group, sipping the frothy heads off homemade root beer poured over scoops of homemade vanilla bean ice cream.

Root beer takes a week, ice cream about an hour and a half. The root beer recipe is from my co-op's newsletter. Coincidentally, I am on the cover of this issue.

Root Beer

Source: River Valley Market newsletter, July 2009

Makes 4 liters. Note: Fermented with yeast—may have slight alcohol content.

INGREDIENTS:

1/4 oz dried sassafras root bark
1/4 oz dried birch bark
1/4 oz dried sarsaparilla root
1/8 oz dried licorice root
1" piece unpeeled thinly sliced fresh ginger
1 split vanilla bean
4 qts filtered water
2 cups molasses
1/8 tsp active dry yeast

DIRECTIONS:

1. Place the herbs in a medium pot with 2 qts filtered water; bring to boil. Remove from heat, cover, and let steep for 2 hrs.
   
2. Strain root-infused liquid through cheesecloth-lined sieve into a very clean plastic container. Discard solids.
   
3. Add 2 qts filtered water, stir well, and let cool to 75 degrees.
   
4. Wash four 1-liter plastic soda bottles with hot, soapy water. Rinse well and air-dry. (I bought new half-liter brown plastic bottles from the friendly neighborhood brewing supply company to use for my soft drink projects.)
   
5. Stir molasses and yeast into root-infused liquid; cover and set aside to let ferment for 15 minutes.
   
6. Using a funnel, pour into bottles, filling to within 2" of top but no higher. Screw lids on tightly; ferment at room temperature for 12 hrs. Chill 2-5 days. After 2 days, root beer will taste strongly of molasses; 5 days will yield a milder beverage.
   
7. When ready to drink, open bottles very slowly, easing caps open little by little, to let any excess gas escape gradually.
   
8. Serve over ice or with vanilla ice cream.
   

The foam from the root beer is sometimes of the delayed sort. The first bottle I opened and drank, I'd been sipping for at least a minute when it suddenly began gushing. I recommend you pour the beer into a glass for drinking. For root beer floats, put two or three scoops of vanilla bean ice cream into a glass, then slowly pour root beer over it. The combination of this particular root beer with vanilla ice cream is creamy and delicious.

The beer is mildly alcoholic, is slightly thicker than a commercial root beer, with a stronger molasses flavor. There is less of the spearmint flavor I usually associate with root beer. It tastes a little like a porter. I think the next time I make this, I will try using more of the first three ingredients, which smell to varying degrees like spearmint. That said, I'm pretty fond of this batch and have been drinking the rest of it steadily. I am saving one to trade with a friend later this week. She's made hard lemonade.

Vanilla Bean Ice Cream

INGREDIENTS:

2 cups milk
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1 pint heavy cream
1 vanilla bean

Makes about 5 cups.

DIRECTIONS:

1. Beat the egg in a large bowl until it begins to froth.
   
2. Scrape the seeds from the inside of the vanilla bean, and add them with the sugar to the egg. Beat until the sugar dissolves.
   
3. Add the milk and cream and beat until well mixed.
   
4. Freeze ice cream in an ice cream maker, according to your product's manual.
   

My next brewing project is under way: ginger beer. I'm following the recipe in Sally Fallon's Nourishing Traditions, which calls for creating a ginger "bug," then brewing and fermenting for three weeks. I still have two weeks to go before I can say how it turns out.

Green eggs and ham: part of this complete breakfast

I just noticed that the colors in this breakfast are those traditionally used in Mardi Gras decoration: yellow, green, and purple. Also topical because Dr. Seuss' birthday is tomorrow.

This is the kind of breakfast I make for myself on a weekday, when I've got the whole morning to get ready for work, I'm full of energy, and don't have any chores waiting for me. Every morning, I share a pot of coffee with Kevin, and we both have fruit smoothies. Weekdays, he leaves for work with a container of oatmeal or some peanut butter toast to eat at mid-morning, and I'll often have the same, instead of or in addition to a couple of scrambled eggs. Not long ago, I put some herb butter in my morning scramble, and was so amused to have made green eggs that I bought some ham so I could make Green Eggs and Ham. I like them, Sam-I-Am.

The herb butter is a simple blend of equal parts parsley and cilantro, with a little garlic, salt, and pepper. Use two cups of fresh herbs like these, or a lot less of more potent herbs like rosemary, fresh citrus zest, or anything dried, with two cups of butter, blended in the food processor. If it's not moving smoothly in the food processor, add a little olive oil until it does. It keeps beautifully in the fridge, for more than a month, and goes on all kinds of things: plain rice or steamed vegetables, on chicken or fish, in eggs.

When my bananas get ripe, I peel the whole bunch and freeze them, for use in smoothies and baking. I use vanilla soymilk because we get it cheap in shelf-stable quart packages. Do not follow my poor environmental example on this. Use any kind of milk, but if it's unsweetened soymilk, add a teaspoon or more of sweetener, like maple syrup.

Smoothie

Serves 2

2 bananas, frozen
11 strawberries, hulled and frozen
½ cup frozen blueberries
1 cup yogurt
Cold milk to measure (about 2 cups)

Put the fruit and yogurt into a 5 cup capacity blender. Pour milk to the 16 oz line on the blender. Blend on the highest setting until the particles of blueberries are the size of coarsely ground pepper. Serve right away.

Green Eggs and Ham

Serves 2

4 eggs
2 oz diced ham
2 T herb butter
Salt and pepper to taste

Heat an iron skillet on high. Add the diced ham and toss while the skillet heats.
Beat the eggs with a little salt and pepper. When the skillet is hot, add the eggs, then the herb butter. Toss the eggs with the ham and herb butter gently until they are firm.