cold-busting lime carrot soup

If you're down with a spring cold like Ria and I are, last night I made a good soup that has lots of cold-killing ingredients (adapted from 1,001 Vegetarian Recipes):

2 c sliced carrots (we used different colours of the Taproot rainbow carrots, so it looked really pretty)

1 c chopped red or orange sweet pepper

3/4 c sliced celery

1/3 c sliced green onions or leeks

1-2 cloves garlic, minced

1 small red or green chili, minced finely

6 cups veg stock

1/2 cup lime juice

1/2 tsp ground cumin

1/2 c fresh mushrooms, quartered

3-4 T chopped fresh cilantro

Sautee the leeks/onion and garlic in a large pot in a bit of olive oil until soft. Add carrots, pepper, celery, chili for 5 minutes, putting a bit of water in the bottom of the pot if they get dry. Add stock (we save the water when we steam or boil vegetables, and keep topping up a large jug in the freezer), lime juice, and cumin. Heat to boiling. Simmer until carrots are tender (about 15-20 minutes). Add mushrooms; cook another 5 minutes. Top with fresh cilantro.

That soup tasted really good on a sore throat and cleared my stuffed-up nose - make it as spicy as you like.

(Kenneth says to say the lime juice came from our own lime trees... I wish!!!)

Tonight we had a repeat of Kenneth's zucchini pasta sauce ... yum.

-Kathy

Thai-style spring rolls

Tonight I experimented. With cabbage, carrots and bean sprouts, I made Thai-style fresh spring rolls. They're a little fiddly but really easy, and you can make them up ahead of time. Ria even helped me soften up the rice paper wraps (and had fun splashing in the water...)!

1 small cabbage, sliced

2 carrots, julienned finely

2-3 slices fresh ginger, julienned finely

bag of Taproot bean sprouts

1 T peanut oil (or other oil)

2-3 T soy sauce

2-3 T rice vinegar

rice paper wraps

Saute the cabbage in the oil for a few minutes. Add ginger. Add carrots, soy sauce and rice vinegar; saute a few more minutes. Add sprouts. Cook until carrots are tender-crisp (don't overcook).

Soften the wraps according to package directions. Spoon a small amount of the cabbage mixture onto each wrap and roll into a spring roll. Cover with a damp tea towel until ready to serve. Serve with Thai dipping sauce and more soy sauce.

Last night Kenneth used up a bunch of potatoes by making a big pot of scalloped potatoes, served with roast pork and steamed beet greens. A feast!

-Kathy

root vegetable chips; parsnip and carrot latkes; beet conserve; sweet potatoes and apples

Friday - and the stove actually worked tonight! Must be because I had the day off. We had seafood chowder (yum - one of the best things about moving to Nova Scotia!) and I made parsnip and carrot latkes or pancakes. These came out of the Eat Feed Autumn Winter cookbook, and were lovely. You grate up carrots and parsnips (about 4-5 of each) and squeeze out some of the moisture. In a separate bowl, mix up two eggs, 6 T flour, 2 T ground ginger, 1 T honey and a bit of salt. Stir in the grated veggies, then cook spoonful-sized pancakes in a pan with enough oil to cover the bottom. (Drop in a piece of grated carrot and when it sizzles and bubbles the oil is hot enough.)

They were really good. The cookbook said to serve with creme fraiche or yoghurt, but we didn't have any, so Kenneth suggested Thai dipping sauce and that went really well. I always feel a little sheepish about frying, but I used less oil than you would in a batch of muffins, so I don't think it's too unhealthy.

Last night was less successful. We still have a lot of root vegetables, and I really like them oven-baked as fries, but I thought I'd try a variation on that. Two summers ago Patricia sent a recipe for oven baked blue potato chips, which were really good, so I sliced thinly some beets, the largest part of some parsnips, a potato and a sweet potato and tossed them in a bit of olive oil and lime juice. I baked them at 400 spread out on a cookie sheet. But I was also trying to cook chicken and stir-fry some cabbage, and Ria was clingy and distracting, and with the different kinds of vegetables some of them ended up a little too crispy! Some of them were okay, but I think if I did it again I would cook the vegetables separately, because they seemed to take different amounts of time. And only try this when you can really keep an eye on them...

Ah, well, can't win every time. The unburnt ones tasted okay.

Wednesday we had lamb with potatoes mashed up from the roast on Sunday, a sweet-potato-and-apple dish and the beet conserve I was telling you about. It's really easy, though you need a bit of time, and even Kenneth, who loathes beets with a passion, will eat it. Ria eats it like candy. Just don't ask about her diapers.

Beet conserve - this recipe is from Lucy Waverman in the Globe and Mail

beets (the recipe says 4-5 but I use way more)

1 T olive oil

1 T water

2 small lemons, chopped with skin on

2 T fresh ginger, grated

1 c sugar

Put the beets on some tinfoil on a baking tray. Sprinkle oil and water over them and seal them in the foil. Cook at 425 for about an hour - until a fork can go easily into the beets. Let them cool then peel them. Grate them or whirl them in a chopper until they're finely chopped. Put them in a medium-sized pot with the lemons, ginger and sugar; stir. Let it sit for an hour so the flavours mix (I will admit I don't always do this since I never seem to start this recipe early enough). Cook it on medium for 5-10 minutes until the juices thicken a little. This will keep for a while in the fridge; it also freezes pretty well if you made too much.

Maple Mustard Sweet potatoes: this is a recipe my Mom makes a lot.

Cook the sweet potatoes until a fork can be inserted in them (boil or microwave). Slice up some apples (we had frozen ones) and saute them in a little butter. Let the sweet potatoes cool a bit then slice them thickly; layer them in a circle in a casserole dish, overlapping one another, and then put a piece of apple between each one (it looks really pretty - this is an 'impress the guests' recipe). Mix up about 1/4 c maple syrup and about 2-3 T grainy dijon mustard, and pour overtop. Cook in a 350 oven until heated through, about 15-20 minutes.

Parsnips - used; carrots - all used (I can't believe it!); still left: napa cabbage, potatoes, sweet potatoes, a beet or two, and a turnip. Kenneth says he's going to make kimchee out of the cabbage ... to add to the huge pickle-jar of kimchee we already have in the fridge, I presume...

Happy weekend!

-Kathy

Box day

Kenneth cooked a great stir-fry tonight, using up the last of the leeks, some carrots, some onions, and a few other things. Yesterday he made pasta with sauteed carrots and squash on the side. So that used up the rest of the squash and leeks. We still have turnip and carrots from last week. Sadly we pitched the canteloupe - guilt guilt guilt - I just didn't have a chance to make muffins on the weekend.

Today: beets - beets beets beets! lots of them; sweet potatoes; parsnips; napa cabbage; carrots; mustard beans. Ria had fun unloading everything from the box to the drawers of the fridge, then insisted on carrying around the last sweet potato rather than putting it in the fridge, occasionally taking a gnaw on it and looking to see if I would tell her 'no'. Hey, kid, if you want to eat raw unwashed sweet potato, be my guest! Especially since all of her dinner went on the floor...

Maybe I'll make the beet conserve tomorrow. A lot of people at the potluck were asking for the recipe, so I'll post that soon.

spaghetti "prima vera" with ricotta cakes

This is a pretty simple way to use up some of the fresher veggies from the farm, if you haven't planned a meal in advance.

"Prima vera" really refers to the first spring veggies, but not being Italian, I can extend the meaning a bit. Tonight we had carrots and leeks, harvested in the fall and winter, respectively.

Fry 1 carrot and 4 small leeks (tonight they were around finger-sized) in a bit of olive oil with pepper and a pinch of salt, just enough to make them soft. Let the pan cool down to the lowest temperature on the burner, and meanwhile whip up a roux with a trusty whisk. You don't need a lot of this, as this is only a frying pan's worth of pasta sauce. I used 1 Tbsp. of flour and an equal amount of butter. This was stirred in with the veggies. Once melted you can add milk or blend cream until you get a white sauce of a consistency that you prefer. Stir in any Italian herbs that you prefer. Tonight I used about 2 tsp. of fennel seed, 2 Tbsp loose of oregano, and 2 small bay leaves. Except for the bay, these were dried from our summer herb garden, and were still packed with their flavours. Delicious.

The ricotta cakes are simpler to make than the above, but the secret is to mix them up before you do the prima vera sauce, and then fry them after. Fry them right before the meal is served, in fact.

Take a cup or two of ricotta cheese, preferably the crumbly home-made version. If you don't make it, then maybe try asking at a specialty deli. Mix this with 2 Tbsp of ground parmesan cheese, 1 Tbsp of flour, 1 egg, freshly ground pepper to taste, and a pinch of sea salt. Fry it at a medium heat for a few minutes, and then flip them for a final minute.

Throw the sauce on top of some spaghetti noodles, and place the ricotta cakes beside and enjoy. Tonight we were at a loss for steamed broccoli, but that is what I would also put on the plate, in a perfect world.

Bon appetit!

Kenneth

roast & roast veg

This post will be short because the last two meals were pretty simple - no real recipes. Last night Kenneth combined the ricotta ravioli with kale, garlic and chilis, a bit of olive oil. Simple but good. Tonight I cooked a roast with potatoes, carrots, green pepper, celeriac chunks, onion and garlic. My first beef roast ever, actually, and I think I pulled it off - again, tasty and simple.

I should mention that our garlic comes partly from Taproot and partly from our neighbour, Lenny, who owns the only seed garlic farm in the province, I think. He is a lovely fellow who regularly drives up and presses garlic into our hands saying either "use in good health" or "for your health."

Brussels sprouts, carrots (which I take in lunches) and that durned squash still left in the fridge. Shoot - I was planning on cooking that with the roast. Ah, well, maybe we'll bring squash muffins or something to the Taproot shareholder meeting on Sunday. (I'm now envisioning an entire potluck made up of various squash dishes!)

Our stove, which came with the house when we bought it, has a really odd quirk: occasionally it just stops working for a few hours, then starts working again the next day with no problems. Amazingly enough, this always seems to happen on Friday nights, so we're forced to order in or go out for dinner. So we'll post again on the weekend!

-Kathy