Crispy Roasted Cabbage

I’ve not always been a fan of cabbage. I only started eating it a few years ago. The cabbage that changed my mind was from this lady that used to cater in Hattiesburg. She called her business Juke, Jazz, and Jambalya. Man, that woman could cook. I work in a medical office where we have reps bring us lunch everyday. We would order from this lady all the time. Our favorite meal to get from her was the roasted pork loin, black eyed peas, sliced tomatoes and cucumbers in vinaigrette dressing, cabbage, mac and cheese, and cornbread. At first, I’d skip the cabbage since I didn’t like it. Or so I thought. When I finally tried her’s, I was hooked. I’d eat two plates of cabbage every time she brought it.  That lady moved a few years ago to somewhere in Texas, much to our dismay, but I will never forget her cabbage. I haven’t had any that good since.

Since I never really ate cabbage before, I never really learned to cook it until recently. It can be a pretty forgiving little vegetable. I almost burnt a pan of it one time. I added some water in hopes of reviving it. It turned a weird brown color, and miraculously, still tasted ok.  You can add just about anything to cabbage.  Bacon and ham give it a nice flavor.  I’ve cooked it with onions, bell pepper, apples, carrots.  I’ve really only tried saute/stew methods or coleslaw approaches. The roasted route was a new one for me.

This is the second Cook This Now recipe that claimed to have a “crispy” outcome. The “crispy” onions did not reach a crisp status, and neither did this cabbage. It browned, and crisped a tiiiiny bit on the edges, but not enough to claim “crispy” in my book. It was, however, incredibly easy to cook. I cut the cabbage into 1 inch thick slices, brushed them with olive oil, generously sprinkled with kosher salt, and roasted at 400 degrees for 30 minutes.  Some of the thinner slices that fell apart did crisp slightly on the edges, but the cabbage mostly steamed and turned lightly brown on the large pieces that stayed together.  It definitely benefited from that generous sprinkle of salt.  It really flavored the cabbage, keeping it from being bland and boring.

The fun part about this recipe is seeing what everyone else in our group cooked with it.  Melissa Clark suggests this would be a great as an all veggie meal with brown rice and fried tofu croutons.  Umm, yeah.  Brown rice and tofu squares as a meal?  Not in this house.  Big Guy really only tolerates meatless meals to humor me.  The man likes his meat.  I made pork chops, black eyed peas, and cornbread for our dinner.  Actually, Big Guy grilled the pork chops, and the crockpot cooked the black eyed peas, so I really only made cabbage and cornbread.  The cabbage went great with the rest of the meal.  But as my neighbor said, it’s just cabbage.  No bells and whistles.  Big Guy loved it.  And the black eyed peas.  And the cornbread.  Then again, those are three of his favorite food right there.  The pork chops he could probably do without, but Little Guy and I love them, so I sneak them in occasionally.  Once again, he humors me.  Next time I’ll make the meatloaf that Dick and Sharmyn made.  Big Guy would love that dinner for sure.

Fragrant Lentil Rice Soup

This week was my turn to choose the recipe.  I originally chose the chocolate cake recipe to make for Little Guy’s birthday this week.  But as I looked at all the other recipes, I decided the cake was a little boring compared to all the other choices.  I love seeing how the rest of the group varies the recipes to their liking.  A chocolate cake recipe doesn’t offer much room for creativity.  So I changed my mind (what? me, change my mind??) and went with the fragrant lentil rice soup with spinach and crispy onions. 

I cooked my soup Sunday afternoon so I could take my time and attempt homemade naan bread at the same time.  My plan was to eat it for dinner Sunday night.  I invited my neighbor over to eat, but it turned out he smoked a boston butt and was planning to feed us.  There was no way I could turn down pulled pork sandwiches with slaw, so I decided we’d eat the soup for dinner Monday night.  The soup came together quite easy: a sautee of aromatics (garlic, ginger, onions), some spices (cinnamon stick, cumin, allspice, bay leaf), red lentils, brown basmati rice, stock, and water.  I wasn’t paying attention and added the brown rice and lentils at the same time.  The brown rice definately needed the 10 minute head start she suggests in the recipe.  The rice was still a tad crunchy and the lentils were plenty soft.  I used kale in place of the spinach and added the mint at the end and let it wilt.  My first taste-test impression:  that cinnamon stick was a bad idea.  Second impression:  was the hunt for the brown basmati entirely necessary?  I couldn’t tell that it added much to the flavor.  I think white basmati or regular brown rice would have been just fine.

Monday night made for a quick and easy dinner, just the way I like it.  All I had to do was reheat my soup and cook the crispy onion part.  I thinly sliced the 3 onions, wiped the tears from my eyes, and cooked them in butter on low until they softened.  I added some salt and oil, cranked up the heat, and cooked them until they browned.  They didn’t really get crispy, but they caramalized nicely.  I served the soup with some roasted cauliflower sprinkled with cumin seeds and a piece of rustic Italian bread from Breadsmith.  The cinnamon flavor toned down a bit after the soup sat in the refrigerator overnight, but I will leave the cinnamon stick out if I cook this again.  And since I found a huge bag of red lentils at the Asian market by Best Buy, we’ll be having this again.  The end result was delicious.  Those onions really gave the lentils a nice touch.  The soup turned out thick and creamy and was very filling.  She suggests serving the leftovers topped with a fried egg for breakfast the next morning.  I tried it the next day with an egg and she was right; it was really good and I wasn’t hungry for lunch until late that afternoon.

Why didn’t we eat the naan bread, you ask?  Well, not everything goes as planned.  I followed the recipe in my Joy of Cooking.  I even got to use my dough hook on my Kitchenaid for the first time.  I must have missed an unwritten step somewhere though because it tasted terrible.  I was so disappointed.  I threw the whole thing in the garbage.  Maybe next time, the naan will turn out better.  Or I’ll take time to cook the buttery paratha recipe she has in the book.

soup’s on

This week’s recipe from Cook This Now! was Creamy Parsnip and Leek Soup with Pumpernickel Croutons.  She describes the recipe as a “simple root vegetable puree” that is “something good and heartwarming to eat”.  The original recipe calls for parsnips and potatoes as the root vegetables.  I looked for parsnips at Winn Dixie.  They had them for $3.99 per a 1 lb bag.  Right next to those were turnips for $0.99/lb.  You can do the math.   I’m not very experienced with many root veggies, so I took this as chance to try my hand at turnips.  Maria suggested I add some carrots to the mix to sweeten it up a bit.

The recipe was easy enough to put together.  It involved a bit of chopping, so for a weeknight meal, it would have been helpful to have some things washed and chopped beforehand.  The soup starts with a few tablespoons of butter melted in a pot.  You throw in leeks and celery, season with salt and pepper, and let those cook about 5-10 minutes.  When those soften a bit, you add your herbage and root veggies.  My  herbage consisted of a handful of parsley, 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme, and a bay leaf.  I then added the turnips, potatoes, and carrots along with 1 quart of boxed chicken stock and 2 cups of water.  All this simmered on the stove until the veggies were nice and soft, about 45 minutes.  When the soup finished cooking, I plucked my bay leaf from the pot and put the immersion blender to work until it was nice and creamy.

My first thought when I tasted the soup was blah.  It definitely needed something.  I added some salt.  Not much help.  She did mention in the recipe to add lemon juice if it tastes a little flat.  I kept adjusting lemon juice and salt until the flavor perked up.  Another thing she suggests is Turkish or Syrian red pepper, such as Aleppo, to garnish the soup.  I need to see if Kitchen Table carries Aleppo so I can try it.  I put some cayenne pepper out, but I’m pretty sure it’s not the same.  Big Guy thought the soup needed more than pepper to garnish.  He sprinkled quite a few things (cayenne, Mrs. Dash, salt, pepper, green onions, and bacon) to get his soup “flavor-tastic”.  I thought the flavor was fine with lemon and salt.  I really loved that this soup was incredibly low-fat/low-calorie/nutritious/comforting all at the same time.

The thing that brought the whole dish together was the pumpernickel crouton part.  I called Breadsmith, the new bread store in Hattiesburg, to see if they had pumpernickel.  Boy was I in luck that Austrian pumpernickel was their weekly special bread.  The nice lady sliced it for me at the store.  I toasted the slices and rubbed half a garlic clove over the bread when it was finished.  A little smear of butter, and wow! my mouth was happy.  If you haven’t been in Breadsmith yet, stop depriving yourself and go there.  You will not be sorry.  The bread is baked fresh daily and will not disappoint.  I had the yeast pull apart rolls for Thanksgiving.  You want to be the most popular guest at dinner??  Bring those rolls.  Instant superstar status guaranteed.

cooking with friends

I don’t play words with friends. I think it would be fun, but I’d probably be a little too obsessive about it. I could justify it as making me smarter and spending time with friends, but I just can’t seem to part with the time I’d spend coming up with words to beat the pants off all my friends.

Instead, I’ll be obsessive about cooking with friends. Apparently this is a new movement out there in the blog-o-sphere: a group of friends pick a cookbook, take turns picking recipes, and blog about the results.  Sounds fun to me.  A book club and cooking group all rolled into one neat package.  My friend Maria, who lives in France, and her sister, who lives in California, did a similar project they finished recently.  Check it out:  http://mhbakeoff.blogspot.com.  Once they finished  Maida Heatter’s book, they decided to pick a new book.  That’s where I come in.  They thought it’d be fun to get impressions of cooking the same thing in very different places, so they invited little ole me in Mississippi to join in.  Along with a few other friends, we have completed week one of  Cook This Now! by Melissa Clark.

The book is organized in monthly recipes to take advantage of fresh, seasonal ingredients throughout the year.  There are some really great recipes in the book.  My goal is to blog the weekly recipes each Thursday for your culinary entertainment, some with pictures, some without.  Though seasonal for the author (in New York) and myself (in Mississippi) varies some, I’ll just make adjustments along the way to stick with the idea of fresh as possible.  I’ll be frequenting the farmer’s market downtown (April – October), local stores, and hopefully (fingers crossed) my own backyard garden for the ingredients.

The first recipe we cooked was Garlicky, Buttery, Spicy Calamari with Israeli Couscous.  I called a few places in the Burg looking for calamari.  I tried the Asian market by Best Buy and E & L Triangle Seafood on Hardy.  Both places described to me a frozen package of squid that cost $20.  The Asian Market was willing to sell me a whole squid.  I just don’t see squid as a regional flavor for south Mississippi, so I went with the “fruit of the sea” as dear old Bubba Gump so adequately described them:  gulf shrimp.  I always buy my shrimp from E & L.  They also sell boiled crabs and Leidenheimer poboy bread by the loaf.  That’s worth going in there alone.

This meal came together super fast.  I had the whole thing cooked in less than 30 min (maybe longer if my shrimp hadn’t been de-headed).  I went with steamed broccoli for our side item.  The broccoli and couscous cooked while I tossed the shrimp in the pan with the olive oil, butter, chili flakes, parsley and garlic.  A squirt of lemon, salt and pepper finished the saucy shrimp.  I tossed it  together in the pan with the couscous, and that was dinner.  The Little Guy didn’t eat much of it, but I think the second pinch of chili flakes made it a tad too spicy for him.  The Big Guy loved it.  He said even though he’s never had it with calamari, he’s pretty sure it is better with shrimp.  Lucky for him, we’ll never find out.  I’ll definitely be making this again, but with a little less spice to please the little one.