Broccolololo

Oh my god, you guys! Winter vegetables!

Right now the kitchen is full of vegetables and vegetables and more vegetables. I don't want to eat anything but vegetables. Yesterday I defrosted and heated up a gigantic block of soupe au pistou and ate the Entire Thing because it was so vegetabley and delicious and huge and perfect. Then I was extremely full and happy and had some cointreau and went to bed.

YES!

Broccoli is one of the best vegetables, yet people put it down and kick it in the shins! Boo! They LOSE, because this is some delicious broccoli.

Seriously eat lots of the broccoli:

a head of broccoli
a hot red pepper
lots of garlic
olive oil
maybe some salt.

Get out a bunch of garlic. Use about eight or ten cloves. You want lots of garlic. Garlic is delicious! Smash all the cloves with the flat of your knife, peel them, chop them into medium bits, and put them in a sauté pan with medium to large amounts of olive oil. Cook them slowly and nicely.

Get out a hot pepper, cut off the stem, halve it, and cut it into thin half-moons. Stick it in there with the garlic.

Cook slowly, so everything gets sticky and sweet. While things cook, get out the broccoli. I only had a broccoli crown, which was Not Enough for two. Get a whole head of broccoli. Cut it into reasonable small florets. If you want more bits, cut up some of the stem. You may need to peel this if it's particularly tough.

When the garlic is starting to turn goldeny brown, add the broccoli to the pan. Turn the heat up to medium-high, stir things up, and cook for about five minutes. The broccoli will turn BRILLIANT GREEN and absorb some of the garlic oil. When it starts to show a few singed edges, you are done.

EAT. We had it with seared marinated tempeh and brown rice, but you could do practically anything else. Fried egg, steak, cup of soup, teriyaki, big sandwich. Eat it with a fork.

Vast alien landscape complete with slime and goo

We almost never have bread anymore, which I find tragic and senseless. Oh, and kind of reasonable, considering just how much space bread takes up in a backpack. We usually end up breaking baguettes in half to avoid gaping zipper syndrome.

So there's no bread in the house. Then there's the whole bit where we're too lazy to go out to the store just for some bread. Then there's the bulk flour in the freezer. We have yeast in there too, but yeast bread takes actual time. Soda bread and banana bread aren't really bread; they're cake. So: crackers.

Crackers are actually really easy. I first tried making them after I read redfox's post on them, ages ago. Everyone likes to whip out dough like a sheet! Of course, I scored my dough, so that made whipping it around a little more difficult.

Ok ok.

My nearly identical crackers:

I did Not put my cookie sheets in the oven ahead of time, due to aforementioned dough issues. So instead I just preheated the oven to high high serious heat. I didn't put any wheat gluten in the dough, and didn't make any attempt to measure the sesame seeds. Then I rolled out my pieces, pricked them with a fork, put them on cookie sheets, and scored them into diamonds with a sharp knife. It probably took about five minutes to bake each piece, complete with flipping dough and pan rotation.

Then we broke them into bits and ate them with lentil soup and yogurt cheese.

Lentil soup! It can sit on the stove bubbling while you do all the baking, and it will only get more and more delicious.

Lentil soup

green lentils
onion
a hot pepper
olive oil/butter
salt, pepper
a bay leaf
veg broth
maybe some marjoram?

I soaked a bunch of green lentils overnight, even though it's not really necessary. It'll just take longer for everything to boil if you don't soak them.

Ok. Chop up an onion and cook it down slowly in olive oil or butter. Mince a hot pepper and add that too. When the onion is good and soft, add a bunch of lentils, a cup or two of vegetable broth, and a bay leaf. Bring the whole business to a boil, lower to simmer, cover, and cook everything until the lentils are tender and your broth has evaporated as much as you want. Mine took about twenty minutes. Salt, pepper, and otherwise spice if you want.

At this point you have intact lentils and onion in broth. You can leave it like that, and it will be delicious. But if you want vast bowls of swampy goo, you can break out the immersion blender. Then you can eat it with lots of crackers or pita or big spoonfuls of plain yogurt or yogurt cheese in the middle.

Everyone likes goo.

Today I got two pairs of socks soaked through.

I AM VERY TIRED OVEN SAMMICHES:

rye bread/other nice bread
gouda/other cheese that likes apples
fuji/other crisp nice apple/maybe pear
pepper

Get rye bread.

Get apple. Cut in very thin slices. Put slices on bread.

Slice some gouda. Rip into smaller bits if desired. Put bits on bread.

Pepper.

Put in toaster oven or regular oven. You can use the toaster "toast" setting or just bake at 350F.

When cheese is browned and bubbly, eat.

Have the rest of the apple.

Go to sleep.

I often capitalize "purple".

Another thing you can do with your squash is put the leftovers into your pan of purple scalloped potatoes.

These are actually fairly fake scalloped potatoes. I didn't make a sauce or anything; I just used chunks of cheese and butter with milk over all. It works perfectly well, and you avoid cleaning another entire pot plus a whisk full of cream sauce. It's an easy casserole thing that you assemble, shove in the oven, and forget. By the time you get hungry and remember, everything is done.

Clearly you can use regular potatoes for this, as long as they're decent boiling potatoes. But PURPLE.

Purple scalloped potatoes

some potatoes
shallot or onion
milk
butter
cheese
spices: paprika, salt, pepper, maybe some mustard powder

I made one pie plate for maybe 1.5 dinner servings. It works fine for two if you have other things to eat alongside.

So. Preheat the oven to 350F.

Get out some potatoes and an onion/shallot. I think I used about four potatoes. Slice the potatoes as thin as you can stand. It helps to cut them in half, lay them on their flat sides, and cut across into half moons. This way nothing is slithering out from under your hand while you're using a knife. Then consider the onion business. I used shallot, but whatever you have lying around works. The proportions here depend on how much you like onion. I used one big shallot; you can use as much onion family as you like. Just peel it and slice it up. The shallot can be in thicker slices, since it's going to disintegrate nicely in the oven.

Get out some cheese and butter. You can use lots of different cheeses; I had gouda. Get out some milk. Get out any spices you want.

Now it is time to assemble. Find a shallow casserole of some type. Pour a little milk into the bottom, then layer in a bunch of potato slices. Scatter over a layer of shallot bits, plus some chunks of butter and cheese. Add a shake of salt, pepper, and paprika. Then start again with the potato layer. You can also add your leftover squash, or whatever else you deem appropriate. Repeat until you are out of potatoes and onions, ending with cheese/butter/spice layer. Pour some more milk over the whole thing. It doesn't have to completely cover everything, but should come at least 3/4 of the way up the side.

Now shove the dish in the oven and go do something else. Check on it in about 15 minutes. At this point you may want to baste the top of the potatoes with any available liquid running around the pan, but this depends on how little milk you could scavenge. Then stick it back in the oven and leave it another 15 of 20 minutes.
When everything is nice and happy and brown, and the potatoes are clearly done when pierced with a fork, get it out of the oven and eat it. It is a big sizzling ugly soporific mess. Scalloped potatoes!


Later you can continue the purple theme with cauliflower. PURPLE! Also easy! Also DELICIOUS.

Roasty purple cauliflower

head of cauliflower
olive oil
salt
that's it.

Get out a good knife and whack that cauliflower into many delicious florets. Anoint it with olive oil, sprinkle it with salt, and spread it in one layer in a baking pan. Then stick it in the oven to roast at hot hot 425F.

Check in about ten minutes. Stir. Put it back in.

When the cauliflower has acquired a number of singedy brown bits and smells really, really good, it is done. Eat it! It is popcorn! PURPLE POPCORN.

Ok, that one I didn't actually do. But PURPLE!

Squash squash

Winter squash is kind of a bitch. It has the whole supertough skin, which requires some serious cleaving action to deal with effectively. Then, once you've gotten the thing split/peeled/seeded of all its stringy little bits, it takes an hour to cook. It's hard to eat squash on a weeknight.

Of course, on the weekend you have hours of laying around available. You can whack that squash in half and leave it in the oven while you go play video games. Then you can either use the flesh right away or stick it in the refrigerator for later. It is an excellent idea.

I like acorn squash, so that's what I'm using.

Baking a winter squash:

Preheat the oven to about 350F. Get out a good knife and whack the squash in half through the stem end. This is not anywhere near as hard with a little acorn squash as it is with, say, a butternut. Butternut squash is awkwardly shaped and can grow into some totally appalling coils if you let it. You'd have to cut a squash like that into lots of big chunks, then halve all of them. Acorn squash, in contrast, is little and squat and only requires one cut. Once it's halved, scoop out all the seeds and chuck them.

If you were going to boil your squash, you'd have to peel each half and cut them into reasonable chunks. So instead of doing that, get out a little baking pan. Stick the squash halves in, cut side up. Add a bit of olive oil or butter to each half. Then chop a quarter of a storage onion into medium chunks and divide them into the two halves. This is clearly for savory squash; if you're going to use your squash for pie or something, don't add any onion. Also make sure to use a flavorless oil instead of olive oil.

Stick it all in the oven and bake. If you want, you can add some water in the bottom of your baking pan; this will steam the top flesh faster and keep the heat uniform at the bottom. It works fine to bake squash without any water, though.

Check back in about a half hour or 45 minutes. This time is going to depend pretty heavily on the size of your squash. If the flesh is tender and there are lots of goldeny brown crusty bits on top, you're done. If not, rotate the pan and leave it another 15 minutes, or however long it takes.

When things are done, pull them out of the oven and let them cool for a couple minutes. Then get a fork and scrape as much flesh as possible out of each piece of squash. I find this easiest when actually holding the squash; make sure to keep your oven mitts on if you do this, since the squash will be pretty dang hot.

Now you have a bowl of squash puree. Squash!

What will you do with it?

*Make delicious squash-onion-sage and marjoram soup
*or squash/black bean/cayenne soup
*or use it instead of pumpkin/sweet potato in a pie of some sort
*or find a pumpkin/squash bread recipe and do that
*or stick it on a plate and eat it with gravy/chunk of meat/seared tempeh/something, plus a green salad
*or

Squash and black bean quesadillas

cooked squash
refried beans (or whole cooked, whatever)
any other vegetables you want
tortillas
cheese or no cheese

These are super easy.

Get out a tortilla. Spread squash puree down one half, and refried beans down the other. I usually cook a bunch of onions and garlic and hot pepper into my beans, so I don't really need to add any more vegetables. If you have just plain beans though, you can add lots of things: caramelized onions, fresh green onion, cooked corn, hot pepper rings, whatever. Add these to the bean half. If you want cheese, slice it thinly and put a layer of it over the beans as well. Most hard cheeses will work ok here; I had sharp white cheddar. Once you've added everything you want, fold the squash half of the tortilla onto everything else. The result will probably be very thick and exciting.

Prep as many tortillas as you want, then cook, two at a time, in a frying pan over medium heat. Since these are pretty thick, it can take five or so minutes to brown the first side. Check then out every once in a while. When the first sides are browned, flip the quesadillas carefully. It's easiest to just lift one up with a spatula, put your hand on top, flip the entire construction, and lay it back in the pan. Or you can just use the spatula and work quickly.

When both sides are browned, eat with salsa or sour cream or yogurt cheese or guacamole. Or plain.

You can also make these with leftover mashed sweet potato instead of squash! YES.