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magidI had a couple of heads of cabbage, and no inspiration for what to do with them for immediate eating, so I found the sauerkraut recipe from Wild Fermentation (which I really should read; anyone have a copy I can borrow?) to use. As l did last year, it's in a big glass jar (snagged years ago after some vendor sent a bunch of wrapped Ghirardelli chocolates to my department), the wooden lid currently not used as a pint jar of water holds the cabbage under the level of the brine (made with kosher salt). It's just the right size to fit in the opening without hitting, and is easy to press down. Not that I need to so much for this batch: I had extra brine by the time I finished packing the cabbage down in all the corners. For the record, two medium heads of cabbage can fit easily (when tamped down). I had thought about adding apple (I have some aging ones in the fridge), but decided it was adventuresome enough for the first batch of the season to mix green and red cabbage. Of course, this leaves me with the question of what to do with sauerkraut other than eat it straight, since I was not brought up in a sauerkraut-cooking home. I have seen recipes for stew-things with sauerkraut and meat; any specific pointers are welcome.
When I came back from the Cape, I brought some rose hips with me; they were growing abundantly near the cottage. I wasn't sure what to do with them, and discovered when consulting Chef Internet again that they're best picked after the first frost. Ah, well. What I ended up doing was peeling the flesh from around the large seedy core (everyone agrees that there's stuff with the seeds that is Not Good To Ingest, so I was particularly careful), putting that in a pot with some cranberries and sugar. For the record, it was a lot of work, and not much return, given how much of the volume of rose hips is seeds. It's unlikely I'll be inspired to play with them again, unless there's some variety that has more flesh than seeds. The resulting stuff (not sweet enough to be jam, not soupy enough to be compote) was very tasty, though.
Sunday evening I was exhausted after the ride and walking and such, and needed dinner fairly quickly. Again, no particular inspiration hit, so it was a use what's in the fridge sort of meal. Which in this case, meant sauteeing red onion, carrot, sweet potato, a lonely little beet, the corn off two ears of corn, and a pound of ground turkey together, then inhaling rather a lot of it once the diced root veggies were cooked enough.
Last week's other experimentation involved corn meal. I boiled water, then stirred corn meal in to make polenta. Yeah, rather basic, but I hadn't actually done it before. Since I was attempting to make dinner, I added the end of a jar of roasted eggplant and red peppers, the last of the cheddar cheese, some frozen baby peas, and a can of chickpeas. That last turned out to be not right; I should've used black beans instead, mostly for texture, and partly for size. The resulting mass was merely ok; I have to think about whether it's worth mixing things into the polenta as if it were a casserole, or use it as I would a polenta log.
The unifying theme in all this seems to be lack of inspiration to make anything. I wish I could change this. I have leeks and winter squashes, also a red pepper and some Hakurei turnips, all awaiting their final destinies, and nothing springs to mind as being what I want to make, though I could bake the winter squash and mash it with maple syrup, or rebake it with frizzled leeks, or make a pie, or something.
When I came back from the Cape, I brought some rose hips with me; they were growing abundantly near the cottage. I wasn't sure what to do with them, and discovered when consulting Chef Internet again that they're best picked after the first frost. Ah, well. What I ended up doing was peeling the flesh from around the large seedy core (everyone agrees that there's stuff with the seeds that is Not Good To Ingest, so I was particularly careful), putting that in a pot with some cranberries and sugar. For the record, it was a lot of work, and not much return, given how much of the volume of rose hips is seeds. It's unlikely I'll be inspired to play with them again, unless there's some variety that has more flesh than seeds. The resulting stuff (not sweet enough to be jam, not soupy enough to be compote) was very tasty, though.
Sunday evening I was exhausted after the ride and walking and such, and needed dinner fairly quickly. Again, no particular inspiration hit, so it was a use what's in the fridge sort of meal. Which in this case, meant sauteeing red onion, carrot, sweet potato, a lonely little beet, the corn off two ears of corn, and a pound of ground turkey together, then inhaling rather a lot of it once the diced root veggies were cooked enough.
Last week's other experimentation involved corn meal. I boiled water, then stirred corn meal in to make polenta. Yeah, rather basic, but I hadn't actually done it before. Since I was attempting to make dinner, I added the end of a jar of roasted eggplant and red peppers, the last of the cheddar cheese, some frozen baby peas, and a can of chickpeas. That last turned out to be not right; I should've used black beans instead, mostly for texture, and partly for size. The resulting mass was merely ok; I have to think about whether it's worth mixing things into the polenta as if it were a casserole, or use it as I would a polenta log.
The unifying theme in all this seems to be lack of inspiration to make anything. I wish I could change this. I have leeks and winter squashes, also a red pepper and some Hakurei turnips, all awaiting their final destinies, and nothing springs to mind as being what I want to make, though I could bake the winter squash and mash it with maple syrup, or rebake it with frizzled leeks, or make a pie, or something.
no subject
Date: 2008-09-23 11:38 pm (UTC)Sauerkraut!
How about using the aging apples and some of the squash in a soup?
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Date: 2008-09-24 02:48 am (UTC)I usually use only butternut squash in soup, because it's the only kind I'll peel raw. I could bake the squash, then soupify it, I suppose. Really, I just need the inspiration to do something. (The only down side to soup is that I won't get through a whole pot of soup. Perhaps for R"H next week, though...)
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Date: 2008-09-24 03:38 am (UTC)May inspiration come to you soon.
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Date: 2008-09-24 01:09 pm (UTC)