Heritage Chicken, Organic Potatoes, Garlic Scapes, and Lemon Kale

     As you all know I have an ongoing love affair with my farmer's market.  I plan to do another post soon bragging about the new farmers who have joined the market since last time, but until then, I thought I'd share a meal we had tonight using all farmer's market food!  

     This is a heritage chicken, thus the longer leg and smaller breast.  With heritage birds which haven't been soaked in an anti-microbial water solution, it is important to cook them "low and slow."  Fortunately, the ones I have been buying are also smaller than the other birds I was finding, so they still take about an hour to bake even at 350°.

Roast Chicken
1 Small Heritage Chicken
Salt and Pepper

Preheat oven to 350°.  Pat chicken dry and place in a small oven proof pan.  Season with salt and pepper.  Bake 30 minutes per pound until juices run clear, about an hour.

Roasted Potatoes and Garlic Scapes
4 medium sized baking potatoes, sliced in 1/4 inch slices
1 pound of garlic scapes, cut in 1 inch pieces*
Salt and Pepper
Olive oil

Place potatoes and scapes in a 9X13 inch roasting pan and drizzle with olive oil.  Salt and pepper to taste, then toss with a spoon to combine.  Cover with aluminum foil, bake at 350° for about 60 minutes or until scapes and potatoes are soft, removing foil about half way through.

*The bottom half of the scapes I got were pretty woody, so I had to cut them off.  The thinner the stalk, the more tender it will be, or at least it was in this case.  If you steam your scapes, this is less of an issue than when roasting them.

You can put the pan in at the same time as the chicken, though it may take a little longer for each dish to finish cooking.

Sauteed Kale with Lemon
1 lb Kale, stems removed and roughly chopped
1/3 lemon, juiced
Salt and Pepper
Olive oil

In a large pan, heat a dollop of olive oil then add kale, salt and pepper.  Cook for 5 minutes or so until kale is wilted but not browned.  Dress with the lemon juice.

Review:
     This is a nice, relatively quick meal.  Mostly prep work and shoving stuff in the oven.  My kind of cooking!  My boys loved the chicken and potatoes, but it was a little hard to sell them on the scapes and the kale.  More mature palates will enjoy them, rest assured. 

Claiming Immunity...

     This has been a particularly bad year for germs in the Pacific Northwest.  The kids have been continually sick, their friends have been continually sick, and more importantly, I have been continually sick.  This just doesn't happen.  While it's true that I observe the holy pre-Christmas tradition known as Snotmas Eve, I rarely get sick the rest of winter.  I save my bouts of pneumonia for Summertime when it's pretty outside.  Like God intended. 

     This last cold was the straw that broke the camel's back.  It's my third of the season, the kid's fifth, and my husband's second.  The time had come to boost the immunity in this place.  So I sat on my couch with my tissues in my hand and my pocket and tucked into my cleavage and searched that mighty database of human knowledge known as the Internet for "immunity boosting foods."  And then I went to the store and bought All Of Them. 

The top contenders were:

• yogurt
• leafy greens, particularly spinach
• broccoli
• citrus fruits, particularly oranges
• raw garlic
• fish, beef, and chicken (particularly chicken soup)
• black or green tea
• orange foods like sweet potatoes, carrots, and winter squash
• mushrooms, particularly Shiitake, maitake, and reishi
• apples
• oats
• beans and lentils
• nuts like almonds and cashews

     I didn't want to eat yogurt because it may or may not increase mucus production depending on who you listen to, so I bought probiotic capsules and also a vitamin D supplement since it is good for boosting immunity and it is well known that people in this area are deficient.  One of the main ways to get it through food is salmon, which of course, I don't eat.

     I set to work.  One night we had steamed sweet potatoes with kidney beans and steamed broccoli tossed with raw garlic.  We had oatmeal for breakfast.  And last night the meat eaters had salmon cakes with this salad.

Immunity Salad with Raw Spinach Garlic Dressing
Dressing:
1/2 C raw cashews
1/2 C water + 1/4 C water
1 carrot
1 C raw spinach
Juice of 1/2 meyer lemon, seeds removed
2 small cloves garlic*
1/4 tsp salt

Blend cashews and 1/2 C water in a blender until the cashews are completely liquified (about 1 minute or so).  Add remaining ingredients, using the extra water to help the blending process throughout.  If you want a thinner consistency, another 1/4 C of water would probably do it.

*Taste the strength of your garllc before adding the second clove, some varieties are stronger than others.  You might even want to add a third small clove, depending.

Salad
4 C raw kale pieces
1 large apple, cubed
1 large orange, segmented
1/4 C cashews toasted in a pan

Put all ingredients into a large bowl and toss to combine. 

Review:
     The boys are funny about salad.  My eldest loves kale all by itself so he was upset there was salad dressing on it.  My youngest loved the dressing and the kale, but didn't like the cashews and apples.  In the end, they both ate their entire salads for the promise of splitting the last salmon cake.  Here's to Health!  Oh!  And this just happens to be little green for St. Patrick's Day!  Happy Eatin' o' the Greens!

Resources:
Livestrong.com
Prevention.com
Eatingwell.com
Webmd.com

Have a Souper New Year!

     I hope everyone had a fantastic New Year's celebration, is well recovered, and ready to look 2013 straight in the eye and say "Bring It."  If you're still nursing wounds from last year, or maybe just last year's cold, I've got just the thing for you.

     This soup started out as a Souperhero Soup, Jean Grey aka Phoenix to be exact.  She has a stunning green suit and gorgeous flowing red hair.  The problem is it was darn near impossible to make it look like a super hero the way I have been with the other soups.  Puréed kale just isn't very yummy.  But I love this soup.  It is completely different from soups I normally make.  I love the clear broth, the chewiness of the kale.  It makes me feel like I'm eating a big ol' healthy bowl of health so I'm sharing it.

     There are lots of different varieties of kale on the market these days.  They all have a distinct flavor and color.  My favorite for this soup is called Dinosaur kale.  It's also called Tuscan kale, Lacinato kale, Black kale, or Cavolo Nero and sometimes, affectionately, Dino kale.  The dark green leaves hold up well to the cooking and the color is to die for.  In the end, this soup is a little like Phoenix: bold, beautiful, and dramatic, even if it doesn't look much like her costume. 

Kale and Sweet Potato Soup
12 oz dinosaur kale, washed, stems removed and chopped into small squares
1 sweet potato, scrubbed but not peeled
1 large portabello mushroom including stem and gills, cubed
1 1/4 C diced onion
3 large garlic cloves, pressed
2 four inch sprigs of thyme, stems removed
4 C water
dollop of olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Pierce the sweet potato several times with a fork and heat in the microwave until done.  You can bake it in the oven if you'd like, but it will be much quicker in the microwave.  Remove from microwave and set on the counter to cool.  When it cools enough to touch, peel the skin off and chop the potato into small cubes.  In a large pot, heat olive oil till it shimmers.  Add onion and sauté til the onions have softened and just begun to brown.  Add mushroom and cook until juices release.  Add thyme and garlic and heat just for 30 seconds or so while the flavor blooms in the garlic.  Add water and bring to a boil.  Reduce heat and simmer slowly for about 10 minutes.  The water should be gently flavored.  Add salt and pepper at this time to taste and determine if you want the broth to be more strongly flavored or not.  Cook longer as desired, though I find about 10 minutes to be adequate.  When you are happy with the broth, add kale and stir til combined and all the leaves are moistened. Cook over low heat for 2-3 minutes until kale just loses the raw flavor but has not become soft.  Serve with sweet potato on top.

Notes:

• If you want it to look a little more "Phoenix-y" you can drain the broth through a strainer to remove all the vegetables, but I like the mushroom bits, personally.  
• If you can get your hands on some chanterelles, about a cup would make a terrific substitution for the portabella.
• Adding some white beans like cannellini beans would be a nice touch.  
• This is good reheated but doesn't freeze well.  It gets that "frozen greens" taste.

Review:
This is a favorite of the adults in the house.  The kids, not so much...

Blood, Bandages, and Beet Greens...

I'm a pretty lax parent when it comes to crying kids.  When a kid comes wailing through the front door, my first question is, "Are you bleeding?"  If the answer is "No" my usual response involves the words, "You'll" and  "survive."  Blood gets antibiotic cream and bandages.  Splinters get ice cream.

I stocked up on bandages today.  We're having a party Saturday.  With kids.  At our last Summer party every single kid hit the dirt at least once as the evening wore on, including my youngest who bit it while heading full speed down our steep driveway.  There was blood.  I even had to dig half a tree stump out of the thumb of one of our best friends, who's driver's license claims he's a grown up though his personality reveals a different story.  I can't remember if we scrounged up any ice cream for him or not...

Since this is party week, I am generally preoccupied with planning and details, and invitations, and table cloths, and party games, planning, and seating, and planning, and wondering where in the heck all my time went so my whole decision making process is scattered to the wind right now.  Fortunately, tonight's dinner is staring me in the face every morning when I look out my bedroom window.  

As you can see, our garden is coming along nicely, though it looks pretty scraggly.  The slugs have been voracious this year and the birds have eaten every carrot seed I've planted (twice!) as well as all the slug bait!  Twice!  Then there was the deer who snuck in one afternoon and at an entire chard plant (the largest one, of course).  The result is two empty rows in the middle where the carrots should be, another two rows containing three sad slug bitten miner's lettuce, and a fantastic lopsided end of the garden full of beans, peas, tomatoes, and potatoes bursting forth and making me hopeful for a later season harvest.  But in the middle, between the blank rows, I've got a few chard plants, a couple of beets, a little purslane, and a massive amount of kale. 

I love growing greens in my garden because they (usually) perform the best of any plants in my limited sunlight and because you can eat them right away.  No need to wait for a seed or a fruit to form, just pick a leaf and you've got a snack.  The sight of these greens staring me down every morning makes me think of my very favorite way to eat them: Veggie Quesadillas.

Kale, beet greens, chard, spinach and purslane rinsed and ready to be spun.  You can use any greens in this you want, one of my favorite additions is finely shredded raw beet.  Carrot would be great in this, too.  The ratios in this can be edited based on what you have, this is just a general guideline.

Vegetable Quesadillas
Yield:  4


1 bunch kale
1/2 bunch chard
3-5 beet leaves
6-8 spinach leaves
1/2 large onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 package mushrooms, sliced
1 C shredded mozzarella cheese
4 tortillas
salt and pepper to taste
olive oil
Two large skillets

Wash, spin, and roughly chop greens.  Heat the olive oil in one skillet and sauté the onion until slightly browned.  Add garlic and cook till fragrant.  Add mushrooms and cook until browned.  Last, add greens and sauté until they have wilted slightly.  Salt and pepper to taste.  Load tortillas with greens and top with cheese, fold, and toast lightly in second pan just until slightly brown and cheese has melted.

Review:
My whole family loves this and you know that's sayin' something when my boys will eat it!  I recently served this as a side to some grilled chicken and the meat eaters were very pleased.

Sorry this is sort of a scattered, droopy post.  I've lost my mind, you see...

12 Days Detox

12 Days of cookies was soooo fun!  Thank you all for your following along and leaving me such kind comments!  Whew!  That was a lot of sugar!  Yummy, yummy sugar....  But now it's time to eat something that doesn't make my eyes twitch or float in it's own butter boat.  I thought I'd use some winter vegetables and a throw a little Christmas in there with some chestnuts!

Chestnuts are wonderful in this, but you could substitute hazelnuts.  I'd actually love to get my hands on some chinkapins one day.  Their sweet flesh would be beautiful with the kale.  But there aren't any Christmas songs about chinkapins that I'm aware of...

(Chanterelle mushrooms, kale, shallot, parsnip, chestnuts)

Parsnips are lovely.  If you haven't tried them, they're a little like a carrot.  When they're cooked, they're like a cross between a carrot and a potato.  Fried in a pan, they develop a delicious caramelized crust around the edges and it's just heaven.

I used a combination of chanterelle and yellowfoot mushrooms both of which are at the very end of their season here.

These are yellowfoot.  Yellowfoots?  Yellowfeet...?   Whatever they are in plural form, my forager, David, said that they are related to chanterelles.  They both like living under evergreen trees.  You can really tell when you eat a raw chanterelle.  They're hot and peppery and taste like a pine tree.  Cooked, they mellow out into chewy, earthy bliss.  The yellowfoot have a slight anise flavor raw.  They are smaller, so they cook up much more quickly than the chanterelles.  Very soft, and very similar to a button mushroom in flavor except for the faint taste of anise.  Unlike the chanterelles, I could happily eat these raw.

Pan Fried Parsnips
6 chestnuts shelled and sliced
2 large parsnips
olive oil
6 oz chanterelle and/or yellowfoot mushrooms
1 large shallot
1 bunch of kale
salt and pepper

Shell out your chestnuts and peel off as much of the papery inner layer as you can.  Slice thinly and cook over medium low heat for 3-5 minutes or until the skin begins to flake off.  Remove from pan and remove as much paper as you can.

While the chestnuts are cooking, you'll have time to slice the parsnips to about 1/8-1/4 inch thickness.  Once the chestnuts are done, put about a tablespoon of olive oil in the warm pan and add the parsnips.  Fry on medium-high heat until they soften and begin to caramelize, around 10 minutes for thinner slices.

While the parsnips are cooking, you can peel and slice your shallot and roughly chop the mushrooms.  When parsnips are softened, add mushrooms and shallots.  Cook until the mushrooms and shallots begin to brown (about 10 minutes).

Remove the well cooked parsnips, mushrooms and shallots to a side plate.  If there are any parsnips that aren't thoroughly cooked, leave them in the pan.  Deglaze with a little water or maybe some white wine.  (I didn't have any on hand, but I was wishing I did...) Add kale and steam in the deglazing liquid for a few minutes.  If you like (and I like) you can let the fluid cook away and brown the kale a little.

Stir the parsnips, shallots, and mushrooms back into the kale, salt and pepper to taste, and serve topped with chestnuts. 

Review:
The first time I made this, I only made about half.  Mr. Crackers and I were both really disappointed there wasn't more!  Serve this with rice if you like, I think tonight I'm going to try it with wild rice.  Other things you might try in this are apple, garlic and fresh herbs like thyme or rosemary. 

PS, Do you like that platter?  It's an early Christmas present.  I'm in love...

Purslane Plus Kale Equals Love

I've been trying to put up 40 pounds of tomatoes so please forgive me if this post is a little rangy, disheveled, and rambling.  That's pretty much me at the moment.  (Also, I may be slightly over caffeinated *tremble, tremble*)  Before you ask, no I didn't grow the tomatoes.  My tomatoes are barely larger than an egg and greener than a leprechaun on Sunday.  And there are about 6 of them.  Fried green tomatoes, here we come... =)

 See the tomatoes?  (Pobre tomates.)

Anyway, I am still geeked about finding purslane at the market last week.  I hadn't found any for years and when I saw it, I giggle-snorted like an Urkle and shoved handfuls of it into my shopping bag.  Strange looks from my vendor aside, I've been holding on to this recipe I created a few years ago and was really excited to get to dust if off again.

This is a great recipe for using up leftover quinoa and lentils.

Purslane Stuffed Kale Leaves
Yield: 4-5 servings
1C quinoa
4 C water, divided
1 tsp vegetable bullion
1 C lentils
1/4 medium onion, chopped
2 large garlic cloves, sliced
8-10 leaves kale
1/2 C chopped purslane (stems, too!)
4 sprigs fresh thyme, chopped
1/4 C freshly grated Parmesan (optional)
olive oil
salt and pepper

Bring quinoa to a boil in 1 3/4 C water and stir in the bullion.  (I like Better than Bullion Organic Vegetable or Mushroom.  You could substitute vegetable stock if you like.)  Cover, reduce heat, and simmer on low for 15-20 minutes.  Fluff with fork.

Meanwhile, boil lentils in 2 C water until soft, around 20 minutes.

Sauté garlic and onion in a little olive oil until softened and slightly browned. 

Combine 1 C quinoa, 1 C lentils, onion/garlic sauté, and optional cheese.  Season with salt and pepper as desired and set aside.

In the same hot sauté pan, brown kale leaves slightly, then add remaining 1/4 C of water, stock, or even wine to the pan and cover.  Steam leaves until stems are soft and pliable, around 2-3 minutes.

Remove from heat.  When leaves are cool enough to touch, place one heaping spoonful of quinoa mixture on the leaves, then top with a generous helping of purslane and a little thyme.  Roll the leaf and put it on a plate.  If your leaf is coming unrolled, you can use a toothpick to help hold it together.

Review:
I served this with steamed butternut squash last night and it was fabulous.  This keeper would make a nice side dish for chicken, also.  The hubs and the eldest loved it.  The youngest ate two bites of squash.  *sigh...*