Category — Recipes

One neat thing about holidays being fixed days on the calendar is that they provide markers for keeping track of other events. For example, it always snows in Michigan after our son’s birthday, which is April 4 (if “always” is the last 25 years that we’ve been paying attention). The first time we were able to eat something fresh from our garden in December was a magical moment for me as a gardener and a cook. Sure, gardening truly is a warm weather sport, but we had fresh horseradish sauce with our roast beef!

The challenge then becomes how many garden-grown foodstuffs can we have on our Christmas table? The exact number remains to be seen but here are a few dishes and condiments we have lined up for this year.

Horseradish
People are not ambivalent about horseradish; they generally either love it or not. We have enough horseradish lovers at our house to justify making good-sized servings of at least two kinds of horseradish sauce, the vinegar-based sauce and the creamy horseradish sauce.

Preparing horseradish from the yard is simple but requires effort. Carefully dig up a horseradish root. They are deep; I was told by a reliable source that the roots go as deep as the foliage is high. I like to use a large garden fork for digging in the horseradish bed.

Horseradish does not appear tasty when plucked from the ground. Multiple washings are necessary to clean the root. I do a few outside and then bring it to the kitchen sink for a bit more scrubbing.

If you purchase a horseradish root at the market — and sometimes you can– join in here.

Trim up the ends and then peel off the dark skin with a vegetable peeler or paring knife. Right about now, the pungent odor of horseradish should start clearing your sinuses.

We shred our horseradish root using a microplane shredder. Again, the scent will waft through the air, causing house mates to inquire. Nab them to help with the process if you can.

We mix the shredded horseradish root with enough vinegar to moisten and then store in clean mason jars in the refrigerator.

For a creamy sauce, mix 1/2 cup of sour cream and 1/2 cup of plain yogurt. To that, add a tablespoon of vinegar and a teaspoon of sugar. Then add prepared horseradish to taste.

Raspberry Vinaigrette Dressing
This is my latest discovery. I’m rather astonished that raspberries, which are completely wonderful just plain, could be transformed into such a delicious, elegant and beautiful dressing. And it’s easy too.

Using fresh raspberries in season, of any color, would be extraordinary; we’ve found, however, that our home-frozen black raspberries will also result in a fantastic vinaigrette.

This version is adapted from a recipe in Simply in Season by Lind and Wockman-Wert (Herald Press: 2005), a wonderful cookbook by the Mennonite Central Committee, in the spirit of The More with Less Cookbook by Helen Janzen Longacre, also on Herald Press.

In my recipe, I’ve cut the oil. That small change lowers the calorie and fat content without any loss of flavor or texture. I’ve also decreased the amount of poppy seeds; for me, this measurement adds just the right amount of texture and crunch, but they could also be omitted, if desired.

Ingredients
1/2 cup maple syrup
1/4 cup oil
1/3 cup fresh lemon juice
1/3 cup raspberries
1 teaspoon dry mustard
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 tablespoon red onion, sliced thin
1 tablespoon poppy seeds

Method
1. Place maple syrup, oil, lemon juice, raspberries, dry mustard, salt and pepper in blender or food processor and blend until smooth.
2. Add red onion and poppy seeds to blender or food processor and pulse.

We may have fresh kale for our dinner and there’s at least one acorn squash to bake. All in all, an impressive Michigan garden contribution to a Christmas dinner.

My personal analysis of holidays is that they are composed of essential and optional parts. For example, in our celebration of Christmas, the essential elements are a joyful time with family, exchanging gifts made or bought specifically for each member, and eating a special meal together. A full-size fresh Christmas tree is optional. When we haven’t had space or had travel plans, we’ve instead decorated a Norfolk Island pine, a small live potted pine, and — this year– a whimsical vintage table-top silver tree with tiny antique bulbs.

Another essential element is cookies. It isn’t Christmas without them.

Here are two upcoming local events where you can make or otherwise score some excellent Christmas cookies. Should you miss out on these, my easiest but best Christmas cookie recipe follows.

Bake-and-take holiday treats
This is a baking workshop hosted by Preserving Traditions at the Pittsfield Grange at 3337 Saline-Ann Arbor Road in Ann Arbor. The event will be on Sunday, December 11, 2011 from 2:00 PM to 5:00 PM. Participants will work together to make three holiday treats: Triple Chocolate Bar Cookies, Gingersnaps, and Bourbon (or Vanilla) Balls. All ingredients will be provided, and you’ll go home with a nice selection of each item. The cost of this workshop is $15 ($10 for Grange members) and you need to register here. Act quickly as the workshop will likely fill up.

18th Annual Cookie Walk
This cookie sale event takes place at the First United Methodist Church at 120 South State Street in Ann Arbor. The sale runs from 9 until 11am– or until the cookies sell out, and that does happen! Prepacked or ‘select your own’ homemade cookies will be available for purchase. Choose from an array of decorated sugar cookies, Russian tea cakes, snicker doodles, peanut blossoms, and many, many more. The proceeds from the Cookie Walk benefit local, national, and international missions.

A family tradition
My dear grandmother was a loving and generous woman (trying to pass off liver as beef was the only unkind thing I ever knew her to do) and a wonderful cook. All of my memories of visiting her home are tinted with delicious scents. She didn’t cut corners or skimp on salt or fat. This cookie in no way qualifies as healthy, but, then again, that’s not the attraction of cookies.

She made these cookies. Actually, everyone in our family makes these cookies. They are easy, fast, and delicious.

Toffee Bars

1 cup margarine (2 sticks)
1 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups flour
6 Hershey bars
Festive sprinkles or chopped nuts

1. Beat margarine, brown sugar, egg and vanilla.
2. Add flour and mix thoroughly.
3. Spread in a 9” x 13” pan. Bake at 350 F oven for 20 minutes.
4. Unwrap candy bars and have them ready. Now take the ban out of the oven and place candy bars on top of the hot cookie dough. Put the pan back in the oven for 60 seconds.
5. After you remove the pan from the oven, quickly spread the melty chocolate evenly over the top. I like to use the back of a spoon. (Let it cool before you attempt to lick it off).
6. If you like, sprinkle nuts or sprinkles over the chocolate.
7. Let the cookies cool slightly, and then cut into squares.

Do you have a favorite holiday cookie that you simply cannot do without?

A couple of days ago, I had 2 huge zucchini still hanging around. My plan was to shred them. I was just waiting for some inspiration.

I complained to Jim that I wasn’t excited about the prospect of shredding all that zucchini, and he directed my attention to a mysterious kitchen object that we inherited some years ago and promptly stored unused in our basement. The promise of a task made easier was enough motivation for me to dig it out to give it a try.

I didn’t know what to call this device, but some quick research on the internet revealed that we own a vintage Saladmaster food processor. Very easy to assemble and use, it made relatively quick and easy work of my lingering zucchini and for that I was pleased.

Unlike most gardeners, we have never had a zucchini bounty to contend with–until this year. In the past, we’ve averaged maybe one zucchini per plant– nothing to get alarmed about! This year, the zucchini just kept coming. I don’t know what we did right to make our plants so happy, but I’m afraid we have to chalk it up to part of the mystery that is gardening.

We enjoyed some delicate zucchini dishes with small, tender zucchini stir-fried among veggies eaten over rice or sauté with a pasta sauce. A few zucchini managed to hide themselves under those huge leaves or otherwise elude us until we had a whale on our hands.

Fortunately, we discovered a zucchini bread recipe that we like. The tasty loaves disappeared almost as quickly as banana bread so the recipe is a keeper. I’ve popped the 2 cup freezer bags of shredded zucchini into the deep freeze to keep us in zucchini bread all winter long.

Zucchini Bread
(adapted from a low carb zucchini bread recipe from the Livestrong website)

Ingredients:
2 eggs
¼ cup vegetable oil
½ cup brown sugar
2 cups shredded zucchini
1 teaspoon vanilla
? cup almond flour
½ cup pecan meal
¾ cup flour
1 scoop whey protein powder
1 teaspoon salt

Method
1. In a large bowl, beat eggs.
2. Add oil, sugar, zucchini, and vanilla.
3. In a separate bowl, combine remaining ingredients.
4. Add dry ingredients to wet, mixing well.
5. Pour into a prepared loaf pan.
6. Bake at 350 F for about 60 minutes. Test center with a clean knife to make sure it’s done.

Cool, slice and enjoy!

Are you tiring of candy season and longing instead for the spiced and subtly sweet flavor of that Thanksgiving dessert of choice? If you love pumpkin pie as much as my friend Chris, you might be interested in joining her grassroots campaign to make pumpkin pie the official dessert of Halloween. It makes good sense too because pumpkins and Halloween do go together– as long as we keep in mind the difference between jack-o’-lantern pumpkins and pie pumpkins.

For carving pumpkins, most people want large pumpkins. Smaller, sweeter “pie” pumpkins, however, are best for baking and cooking. When shopping for a pie pumpkin, look for one in the 3 to 8 pound range. This year, we grew Small Sugar Pumpkins, an heirloom variety from Seeds of Change. We started them from seeds outdoors directly in the soil, and once again, we were delighted watching the substantial vines and leaves grow and counting the many pumpkins they produced. Other popular pie pumpkin varieties include Baby Bear, Baby Pam, and Sugar Treat.

Growing pumpkins is fun and easy. The plants make for an endlessly amusing topic for garden walks. For the last 2 years, we’ve grown pumpkins along a fence, which has turned out better than we could have imagined. Pumpkin vines are strong and easily grip onto the support of the fence with just a little encouragement. That way, the pumpkins are kept off the ground so they develop nice and round with no soil contact spots. For most of the growing season, our pumpkins were safe from the neighborhood squirrels, who had plenty of other stuff to eat. Come mid-October, however, these ravenous squirrels will eat anything so as soon as we noticed nibbling, we picked the remainder of our pumpkins — both fully orange and those still somewhat mottled orange and dark green — and brought them inside. Happily, the pumpkins stored inside finished turning and are all now completely orange.

Making a pie pumpkin into a pie is a multi-step process, but not a particularly hard one. The result is a pumpkin pie that is superior, I will assert, to what can be purchased in a store or even made from canned pumpkin.

Roasting the pumpkin
The first step is roasting the pumpkin. Wash the outside well and scrub off any dirt. Slice the pumpkin in half with a large, sharp knife.

At this stage, I take the time to poke out all of the seeds because we enjoy roasting them too. The seeds can be quite easily prodded loose from the pulp and then soaked or rinsed clean. Recipes for roasting pumpkin seeds can be found here and here.

Then scoop out all of the stringy bits of pumpkin insides. I like using an ice cream scoop or kitchen scoop to do this task. A sharp edge makes the clean-out process easier.

Place the pumpkin cut-side down in a shallow roasting pan or glass dish and add enough water to have ½ inch in the pan. Bake in a 350 degree F oven for about an hour. This is the technique I use for roasting most squash. It requires very little effort and attention. Others advocate microwaving or using a crock-pot, but I like oven-baking best.

When the baking is finished, allow the pumpkin to cool to near room temperature for easy handling. Then scrap out as much of the soft pumpkin as you can. To get a smooth texture, you can mash the pumpkin, or use a hand-blender, or pulse in a food processor. I like putting the pumpkin through the food mill.

Finally, the pie
Here’s my favorite pumpkin pie recipe. It calls for 3 cups of homemade pumpkin puree and makes two 8 inch pumpkin pies or one larger pie. If you have more filling than fits in the pie(s), you can bake it separately in greased or cooking-sprayed ramekins or other glass dishes. Then you can sample your delicious homemade pie filling straight out of the oven while leaving the pumpkin pie intact for showing off.

Homemade Pumpkin Pie

Ready to fill unbaked pie crust
3 cups of homemade pumpkin puree, cooked and mashed
1 cup of sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
¼ teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg
¼ teaspoon freshly ground allspice
¼ teaspoon freshly ground cloves
¼ teaspoon ground ginger
¼ teaspoon salt
3 eggs
½ teaspoon of vanilla extract
1-12 ounce can of evaporated mlik

Combine ingredients and mix well using a whisk or hand blender. Filling may seem runny, but that’s fine. Pour carefully into a prepared pie shell.

Bake in 400 degree F oven for 50-60 minutes. Pie is done when a knife inserted into the custard comes out clean.

Some people claim that you can make a fine pumpkin pie out of any pumpkin. If I’m going to the effort of making a homemade pumpkin pie from scratch however, I will use a pie pumpkin because I know that works great. I’ve heard that other squashes like acorn or butternut make perfectly good “pumpkin” pies. I’m not a fan of secret substitute, however, since the unfortunate childhood incident wherein my dear grandmother tried to pass off liver as “just another cut of beef roast.”

If you haven’t grown your own pie pumpkins this year, you can find them at many groceries and at farmers’ markets. You may consider growing a vine or two next year to make your own Halloween or Thanksgiving pumpkin pie.

Broccoli is an easy to grow crop that continues to produce late in the growing season in Michigan. If you’d planted broccoli this summer, you could be having this for dinner, even in late October:

Broccoli is an attractive, sturdy plant that likes full sun, adequate water and good drainage. The main stem holds the plant upright, and staking is not necessary. We’ve found that broccoli has very few pests or growing problems. Our usual cultural practices of close planting, rotating crops, heavy mulching, and monitoring for pests work well for broccoli.

One of the cool things about broccoli is its productivity. You can usually harvest a good central head in August, depending on planting time and weather conditions, but your broccoli plant is not yet done. If you let the plant continue to grow, you’ll be able to harvest a succession of florets of various sizes from around the main stem.

One strategy I’ve learned for continuing broccoli growth is to examine the plant regularly for flowering or bolting. If too much time lapses, the side stems can go to flower; the delicious green buds become rather pretty yellow flowers that do attract pollinators like bees but are not what I want to eat. Broccoli is fairly forgiving, however. If flowers are trimmed off, the plant will return to making small broccoli heads. Broccoli can also bolt if the weather gets too hot, although it seems pretty tolerant of Michigan’s sometimes toasty summers. Again, if a plant starts sending up long bolting shoots, those can be trimmed and eaten, and the plant will return to its small head production. The plant gets rather leafy late in the season, so be sure to check under and behind leaves for buds.

Broccoli from the garden is best eaten raw or lightly steamed. Even the smaller leaves can be eaten as they are tender and delicious on homegrown broccoli plants. We generally avoid turning our wonderful, healthy broccoli into cheesy or creamy dishes and instead enjoy its flavors and nuances in simpler dishes.

Sometimes we like to dress-up steamed broccoli with a quick, easy and healthy dressing. Here are two of our favorites. Both start with broccoli either steamed or light boiled for 2 minutes then cooled under cold running water and drained.

Honey Mustard Dressing
(from Everyday Cooking with Dr. Dean Ornish: 150 Easy, Low-Fat, High-Flavor Recipes)

1 tablespoon white miso
1 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon mustard, preferably Dijon
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1/4 cup water
pinch black pepper

Combine all ingredients in a small bowl and whisk to blend.

Dress broccoli just before eating because the sauce will dull the broccoli’s bright green color.

Broccoli Chinoise Dressing
(from Jane Brody’s Good Food Book)

2 tablespoon Oriental sesame oil
¼ cup rice vinegar or white whine vinegar
1 tablespoon soy sauce
½ teaspoon sugar
fresh ground black pepper to taste
red pepper flakes to taste

Combine the ingredients and pour over the broccoli. Toss to mix well.