Mixed bag, mostly cabbage

What is going on??

Mac and cheese; cabbage salad.

The mac and cheese is pretty standard: I made cream sauce (i.e. "sauce mornay") with extra sharp cheddar and 2% milk, then mixed in a pan of cooked, drained gemelli. Mac and cheese needs lots and lots of fresh black pepper. It was comfort food night.

The cabbage salad is also a standard treatment: finely chopped green cabbage mixed with an oil and apple cider vinegar dressing, then scattered with toasted walnuts. You could instead take out the dressing and use straight up fresh lemon juice and salt, or add a bunch of finely slivered crisp apples or pears.

O cabbage, I love you so. You are so cheap, so delicious, and yet so full of delicious nutrient. Why don't more people eat you? Do they not know that Captain Cook fed his crews big barrels of sauerkraut to keep them free from scurvy? Do racial and class stereotypes of cabbage still persist; when people hear "cabbage", do they picture the smell of boiled cabbage wafting through the halls of slum tenements? Or do they picture bowls of mayo-dense coleslaw slowly congealing on the blistering picnic table? When's the last time they ate a cabbage roll, a piroshki, a bite of kimchi or a plate of steamed bok choy? What do they think those huge, thick leaves in their Thai curry are? THEY ARE CABBAGE, AND CABBAGE IS GOOD.

Yes. Anyway.

Then later I softened some fresh ginger and garlic in oil, added finely chopped cabbage and carrot, and stirfried it with sriracha, green onion, and lots of sesame seeds. We ate it for dinner.

In the morning, I made the leftovers into what was practically fried rice without the rice. Warm cabbage in a little flavorless oil until sizzling a little. Pour a beaten egg over it and stir until the egg is fully cooked. This ended up making a bowl of highly-textured vegetables, with practically no distinguishable egg bits. It was totally perfect for breakfast.

CABBAGE!

Brunchings

First, have John go to Chelsea Market and buy a pound of coffee at 9th St. Espresso. Take note: you can get Stumptown coffee in NY. They will also grind it to your specified coarseness, which is helpful if you have a french press but no grinder.

This is certainly the best coffee I've had in NY. Not that I spend an overabundance of time or money on coffee; instead I drink copious green tea. This, however, is worthwhile for weekend brunch spectacular.

On Saturday morning, go to the farmer's market and get a gigantic bag of vegetables, a dozen organic eggs (for the price of a half dozen at the grocery store), a loaf of bread, and a ridiculous impulse quiche.

Come home, break out the french press, and make delicious coffee.

While coffee is brewing, crisp some corn tortillas over the gas burner. Turn to get both sides nice and toasty. Try not to burn your fingers, or the tortillas.

Scramble a couple eggs, then layer them on the tortillas with a little shredded cheese and chopped green onions. Warm them for a minute in the covered egg pan. When the cheese is melted, add a dribble of hot sauce or salsa. Voila: brunch tostadas.

Eat tostadas. Eat quiche. Drink coffee.

Save half the quiche for Sunday second brunch: it's too rich and too much to eat all at once. This particular quiche was spinach and tomato, with a layer of swiss cheese all sunk to the bottom.

When you are still hungry, toast some of the market bread. This time it was sourdough rye. Eat it with salt, olive oil, or butter.

Have another cup of coffee.

Roasted red pepper!

Here's one thing the gas burner lets you do:

ROAST PEPPERS.

Admittedly, we have roasted peppers in the oven many times, but open flame is so much better. First, you have total control over the process, and can rotate the pepper to get every bit roasted as much as you want. Having part of the pepper in the flame while the cooked parts stay away lets you retain a whole lot more tender flesh while only searing off the skin. It's easier to peel a flame-roasted pepper, since the skin often detaches itself in process. I'm also going to say I like the flavor more. OPEN FLAME DOES IT BETTER.

To roast: grip pepper firmly in heatproof tongs. Hold it over the open flame of the gas burner, turning to get all sides evenly blistered. You want about 70% of the skin to blacken, peel, and crackle. Be careful, since the skin will start to loosen and slip as the pepper roasts. You may need to set it down and regrip it a couple times.

When it's done, you can take your roasted pepper, peel off all the skin, gently rip out the seeds and stem, and cut the remainder into strips. You don't even need a knife if you don't want one: roasted pepper is so soft and workable that you can just rip it along the grain.

Roasted red pepper! Put it on a salad! Puree it in a soup! Throw it into pasta!

Or you can do what we did and soften some big chunks of garlic in olive oil, then throw in the pepper and warm it briefly. We ate them with a big salad covered with chunks of barbecue-sauced lentil-quinoa burger.

YEAH!

Cakes cakes potato cakes

I wasn't remotely intending to make something seasonal, since St Patrick's Day is one of those holidays that floats unseen over my head, but this year I was in New York, home of Tammany Hall, the draft riots of 1863, and the annual St. Patrick's Day parade. This last goes up 5th Avenue, and has a huge media/public speaking stand at 5th and 64th, about a hundred yards from my office. It was impossible to ignore.

So yeah. Uh, I like potatoes, and I accidentally made something very potatoey and warm and delicious right before St. Patrick's Day. If only I'd also accidentally used corned beef, cabbage, and green beer.

Yogurt mushroom potato cakes

boiling potatoes
butter/olive oil
salt, pepper
garlic
mushrooms
frozen/fresh peas
paprika
plain, good yogurt/soy

This takes three steps as I did it, but you can just as easily (well, more easily) either mix everything together and serve as a massive bowl of mashed potato and vegetable, or serve the two components separately. Then you could either forgo yogurt completely or use it as a garnish. It's mashed potatoes and vegetables: you can do whatever you want.

Boil and mash potatoes; saute vegetables; mix; fry into cakes.

Put a pot of water on to boil while you scrub and peel your potatoes. I think I used three or four medium yukon golds. Throw the peels into the freezer to make soup with later, then chop the potatoes into small cubes. When the water boils, add a pinch of salt and your potatoes. Simmer covered until cooked through. Drain your potatoes and mash them roughly with some butter, salt, pepper, and plain, pungent yogurt. You could also use sour cream, cream cheese, or a soy dairy thing of your choice. I would also say goat cheese if I hadn't gotten the worst food poisoning of my life from goat cheese, such that for months I haven't even wanted to think about it. Moving on.

Warm some olive oil or butter in a nonstick saute pan. Peel and mince some garlic, then toss it into the pan. Let it soften slowly while you slice a couple handfuls of mushrooms. When garlic is soft, throw the mushrooms in as well. Season with lots of paprika and a little salt, stir to mix, and cook for five minutes or so, letting mushrooms express their juices. When your mushrooms are getting close to done, and beginning to turn golden, add some peas. I used the end of a bag in the freezer, which ended up being about 1/2 cup of peas. You can defrost them under warm water before adding if you feel like it; I didn't. Cook until peas are hot through and any extra liquid in the pan has evaporated.

If you want to use other vegetables, you could try pretty much anything that's good with potatoes: shredded carrots, corn, green onion, winter greens, or finely minced cabbage.

If you want just mashed potatoes and vegetables, stop now and eat them. Otherwise, mix the pan of veg directly into the potatoes. Wipe out the saute pan, add a little dribble of olive oil, put the heat on medium, and whack in a couple spoonfuls of potatoes. Cook for about five minutes on each side, or until they attain a nice golden-brown crust. Keep your finished cakes warm on a plate in the oven while you cook the rest.

Voila: potato cakes. Eat them with a lot of salad.

Cakes cakes pasta cakes

So you know how we eat all kinds of pasta fagioli, so much that I generally don't even bother to write about it, because seriously, how many times can you repeat yourself? Yeah. I made a batch with kale the other day, and we ate it in big bowls, and it was good.

Then the next day we had leftovers. I fried them into pasta cakes.

Don't look like that! It's a well-established fact that frying starchy concoctions into cakes is delicious. We eat potato cakes and rice cakes and risotto cakes when the leftover risotto lasts long enough to get into the frying pan. Why can't we have pasta cakes?

We ate them and they were good.

Pasta cakes

olive oil
leftover fagioli with chunky pasta
anything you want for addenda

Warm a nonstick frying pan to a little about medium. When hot, throw in a little olive oil and tilt to get everything slicked up. Then whack in a few big spoonfuls of leftover fagioli, flattening them slightly with the back of the spoon.

Flip after a few minutes, when the bottom of each cake is golden brown. I had the heat too high at first, so my first batch were more like dark brown. Whatever; it was ok. Cook until the second side is golden brown, flip onto a plate, and eat.

Addenda:
- If you want some parmesan, mix it into the fagioli before frying, or sprinkle some on top of each cake.
- I guess you could also make an actual cheese sauce and pour it over the cakes, but that seems like overkill.
- Mix pieces of roasted red pepper, corn, zucchini, or whatever other vegetable sounds good into the fagioli before you fry it.
- Put chopped parsley or other obvious herbs on top.
- Stack up the cakes with huge slices of grilled eggplant or raw tomato between them. Or pesto. Something.

Instead of doing any of these things, I washed out the pan, stuck the cakes in the oven to keep warm for a few minutes, and made garlic chard.

Garlic chard is easy.

garlic
olive oil
chard
salt

Chop several cloves of garlic in slices while you heat a nonstick pan on medium. Cook the garlic slices in a little oil. The slower you cook them, the more caramelized they'll be; I wanted pretty intact, chewy garlic, so I cooked them on medium.

Separate the chard leaves from the stems and chop each into small pieces. When your garlic is starting to brown, add the stems to the pan with a pinch of salt and cook for a few minutes, letting the juices leach out and keep the garlic from burning. When the stems are just about cooked, add the leaves and stir until wilted.

There you go: garlic chard.