Recipe: Moroccan Lemon Lentil Soup - Dark Days Challenge

MOROCCAN LEMON LENTIL SOUP WITH RICE
Serves 3-4

1 cup dried lentils
1/2 cup wild or brown rice
1-6 cloves of garlic (I used 6!)
2-4 pieces of Moroccan Preserved Lemon, seeds removed
Salt to taste
1/2 cup of yogurt or sour cream

This makes a very simple, meatless meal. It looks kind of funny, but it tastes really good. At least, we thought it did. For a full meal, add some fresh bread and a salad and you're good to go.

I get to cheat on this recipe a bit - the lemons in this recipe are home-grown! I have a potted Meyer lemon tree that lives in my greenroom half the year and outside in the garden during the other half.*** Last year I got quite a few lovely little fragrant and thin-skinned lemons and - not wanting to waste one precious bite (not even the peels) I decided to make Moroccan Preserved Lemons (click to view the recipe I used.) Here's what they look like.



If you don't have preserved lemons, you could probably just add a bit of fresh lemon pulp and some grated lemon peel. It won't be the same, but it should still be good. In the meantime, if you have access to any Meyer Lemons (or another thin-skinned variety) then click on the recipe link above and get some started for next time! They really are wonderful. I sometimes make a very simple vegetable stir fry with rice dish and just one of these preserved lemon sections diced finely really peps up the flavor all by itself.

So, back to the recipe. Start the wild rice first, because it takes the longest to cook. Cook it according to the directions on the package. Make sure it is fully cooked and tender, because it won't be cooked any more. Cook the lentils, lemon pieces and garlic cloves in enough water to keep them covered. Stir often to prevent sticking. When the lentils are tender, get out your hand blender (or cool them a bit and use the regular one) and puree until nice and smooth. Drain the wild rice, and add to the pureed lentils and lemons. Add the yogurt or sour cream, stir to blend and add salt to taste. Garnish each bowl with a dollop of extra yogurt or sour cream if you wish, and chopped chives or parsley.



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*** I also have a lime tree, a pomegranate tree, a fig tree, three banana trees, a pot of lemongrass and a pot of galanga root. And fifty saffron crocuses, some of which bloomed this year. And a rosemary shrub. And a big pot of lemon thyme, which isn't hardy here. And a bay laurel tree. And an olive tree. And a tea plant. And a tea jasmine bush. I still want a condo mango and a kumquat. And a Key Lime or a Limequat.

I need a bigger greenroom. And more self-control, I'm afraid.

Recipe: SasSquash Curry - Dark Days Challenge

Don't ask me what I was thinking when I bought this monster last October.



It was a lovely fall day. I was running around one of the the last Farmer's Markets of the year with my little hand-truck piled high with boxes of Idaho Russett potatoes, pumpkins, and squash of all types. All the normal-size squash I bought that day have already been used up. Not this one. After I lugged it home, I realized - too late - that because I'd bought the silly thing, that meant I'd someday have to cut it up and cook it. I've been avoiding looking it in the eye ever since.

But earlier this week I decided that I was tired of seeing it squatting like a gargoyle on a shelf in the storage room, sticking nearly a foot out into the walkway, mocking me for my impulsive purchase every time I walked in. I noticed the skin was starting to mottle, which told me the behemoth was beginning to age a bit. I still didn't really want to mess with a ton of squash, but I also didn't want to waste it. So I figured it was probably time this weekend to buckle down and finally deal with the SasSquash.

Off to the Internet I went, searching for and bookmarking winter squash recipes as I found them, and trying to decide just how I was going to use some of this for a meatless Dark Days Challenge meal this week. We love Indian food, so a squash curry recipe sounded promising. But then there was that lovely lentil dish... And I still had a pint and a half of homemade sour cream sitting in the fridge. And a monster white carrot left over from this fall that we found in the garden while we were outside earlier in the day...

By the way, this picture has absolutely nothing to do with this recipe, except that my usual "kitchen crew" was hanging around at my feet the entire time I was cooking, begging for squash chunks. So I snapped a picture of them while they were on break.



This recipe is an amalgamation of several that caught my eye with a few extra touches thrown in for good measure. It actually turned out quite well - the tastes are very complex and unexpected. It's also pretty nutritious, with the rice and lentils forming a complete protein, plus the squash, onions and carrot for vitamins and minerals, and the sour cream for calcium and creamy dairy goodness. The sour cream also helps cut the spice a bit, mellowing the dish out. If I'd had some spinach ready, I would have tossed that in as well at the last minute for even more flavor and nutrition. Maybe next time - I definitely plan to make more of this. My family wants me to make more TODAY. Since I have plenty of ingredients left, I will probably do just that. Because that's how you eat a SasSquash - one meal at a time.

SAS-SQUASH CURRY WITH LENTILS AND WILD RICE
Serves 4-5

4 cups cooked, cubed winter squash
1 cup dry lentils
1 cup wild rice
1 large or two small carrots
1 large or two small onions
2 Tbsp butter or olive oil
Curry Powder or Indian vegetable masala powder, whatever you prefer
Mild or hot red pepper flakes
Sour cream or yogurt
Chopped chives, green onions, or shallot tops for garnish
Salt to taste


Dealing with SasSquash: Cut whatever winter squash you are using into largish chunks, and scoop out the seeds. Don't worry about taking out all the seed cavity fibers - you can remove those after it's baked and it's a lot easier to do it then.



Place the chunks into a baking pan, add an inch of water, and bake at 350 degrees until the squash is tender enough to stick a knife into, but still firm enough to cut into solid chunks. Just keep poking a knife into the skin side now and then until it goes in without too much effort. Remove the pan from the oven and let the squash cool enough to handle without burning yourself. Peel the skin from each piece, remove the inner strings, and cut the squash meat into 3/4 inch cubes. Set aside four cups for this recipe, and if you have a very large squash, put the rest of the meat into freezer containers for other meals. We'll come back to it - I promise. We have to. I now have nine bags of leftover squash sitting in my freezer.



Here are the main ingredients: clockwise from high noon - bowl full of SasSquash chunks, Idaho grown organic wild rice, onions, a large carrot (yes, I know it looks a lot like a daikon radish, but it's really a leftover white carrot from the Rainbow Carrot seed pack we planted last year) and a jar of dried green lentils from our storage room.



While you are finishing up with the squash, start the 1 cup of wild rice in a saucepan on the stove, following the directions on the package. Make sure the rice is fully cooked as it won't be cooked again later. This should take about 45 minutes. Rinse the lentils, and place them in another saucepan with water to cover and simmer for about 30-45 minutes. You want the lentils to be tender, but still firm enough to be slightly chewy. Keep them covered with water until they reach that point - they don't take long to cook because they are so thin. When they are fully cooked, remove them from the stove and rinse them in cool water, draining the excess, and set them aside in a bowl for later.

While the lentils and rice are simmering, cut the carrot(s) and onion(s) up into bite-size chunks. Sautee these in melted butter until the onion begins to become transluscent. Add about a cup of water, and simmer until the carrot starts to soften, about 10 minutes. Add more water if necessary, but only a little bit at a time. You want enough water to cook the carrot to tenderness, but not so much that it turns into a soup. When the carrot is crispy tender, add your seasoning to taste, then add the squash and gently simmer until all vegetables are fork tender but still firm enough to hold shape. Allow the water to cook away towards the end so you have a very chunky, thick mass of vegetables in the pan. Taste and adjust seasonings, and turn the fire off. Ok, we're almost finished!



To serve: place about 3/4 cup of wild rice in the bottom of a bowl or on a plate. Spoon about half a cup of the cooked lentils on top of that. Mound about a cup of the squash mix on top of the rice and legumes, then spoon a couple of tablespoons of sour cream or yogurt on top of the squash, letting it melt and trickle a bit down the sides of the squash mound. Sprinkle everything with chopped onion greens, then the dried red pepper flakes. Serve immediately, with more sour cream if anyone wants it to cut the spicyness a bit more. Wimps.



Totally local, and meatless (or vegan, if you used olive oil and forgo the dairy on top) as well. And very, very tasty!

Recipe: Idaho Onion Soup - Dark Days Challenge

HEARTY IDAHO ONION SOUP (with ELK)
serves 4 - 5

2 lbs. elk (or buffalo, or beef) "osso bucco" (shank or leg steak)
2 large or 3-4 medium or small onions
1 large or two small carrots, chopped into largish chunks
1 cup diced celery, or 1/2 tsp celery seed, or 1/4 cup dried celery
1-6 cloves garlic (I used 6, we like garlic)
1-2 bay leaves
fresh herb sprigs - thyme, rosemary, etc.
6-8 whole peppercorns, optional
1 small bottle of beer, optional, your choice of style (here I'm using some wheat beer I made this fall)
1 Tbsp meat drippings, saved from the roasted meat, or 1 Tbsp olive oil to be used for sauteeing onions
salt to taste


This is a type of not-quite-classic French onion soup. Definitely winter comfort food! The flavor of homemade beef (or in this case, elk) stock is nothing like canned stock or that made from instant bullion. It has a complexity and depth of flavor that only slow roasting and slow cooking with aromatic vegetables and herbs can give. Because there is a fair bit of meat on the bones this makes a nice, light one pot meal with the addition of some bread and a salad. This recipe also finishes just as well in the crockpot, for those of us who have to be away all day and can't mind the stove.

Ingredients round up: Clockwise from high noon (okay, "high eleven-thirty"...) we have a bowl with some no-knead bread dough patiently doing its thing, a small bottle of home-made beer, three onions (storage sprouts and all), osso bucco elk leg shank steaks waiting to go into the oven, and one 2 lb. wheel of our inaugural farmhouse white cheddar cheese, ready to be opened and (hopefully) melted on top of the finished bread we'll be eating with the soup. I forgot to set out the herbs, spices and carrots for this picture, but they made it in later!



Roast the osso bucco in the oven at 400 degrees until nice and brown. If the meat looks like it might burn or become too dry before the bones are roasted, haul the whole thing out of the oven and cut the meat from the bones. Hold the meat aside until you assemble the stock, but roast the bones a bit more. The darker you can get the bones at this point (without burning them, of course) the richer the flavor and color of the stock will be when you are through. If you like the taste of roasted garlic and carrots and want to boost the flavor of the stock even more, throw them into the pan with the meat about thirty minutes before you take the pan out of the oven. Be sure to watch so the veggies roast but don't burn. Burnt garlic, in particular, tastes rather nasty.

If you want to use the crockpot method and don't have time to do all of this in the morning before you leave, try making the recipe up to this point the night before, then cool and refrigerate everything. The roasted meat and bones (and vegetables, if you decide to roast them first) should look something like this when you are finished.



Round up the rest of your stock ingredients, and set out the crockpot or stock pot you plan to cook everything in. Remove the meat from the roasting pan (reserving any drippings if you want to sautee the onions in them.) Place the roasted meat and bones into your crockpot or stock pot, adding enough water to cover all by a good couple of inches. Add the chopped carrot, garlic, celery or celery seed, the peppercorns and the herbs. Slice up the onions now into thin rings, throwing the clean skins and peels into the stock for flavor. Pour in the beer (I used it to deglaze the roasting pan first.) Put a lid on the crock pot or stock pot and let the whole thing simmer on a back burner for at least a good 6-8 hours or in the crockpot for 8-10 hours. If cooking on top of the stove, be sure to keep an eye on the liquid levels so you don't run dry.



(Don't wander off for an hour to read your favorite food blogs, and forget to plug your crockpot in, like I did. Oh, well, at least it's a long weekend! And, as I told myself when I discovered the problem, it could have been worse - I could have decided to take a nap.)

In a medium skillet, add the reserved fat drippings or the 1 Tbsp of olive oil, and sautee the onion rings until they are transluscent and lightly caramelized. (If you don't have enough meat drippings to make a good tablespoonful, add some olive oil to the pan.) At this point you can put the finished, cooled onions into a covered dish and refrigerate them until the stock is ready.



With the bulk of the work out of the way, you can now take some time to work on your bread. You want to time your recipe so that it comes out of the oven about half an hour before the stock is finished. Ideally, your bread should be well baked and "settled," but still fresh and warm when the time comes to assemble the meal. If you will be out of the house, but have a bread machine, you could start your favorite bread recipe in it now and set the timer so that it begins to bake right after you arrive home (for safety reasons, you probably don't want it to go through the bake cycle with no one there.)

Here's a picture of the finished loaf from that bowl of bread dough goo in the first picture. I've got to tell you, that no-knead bread recipe is amazing. It's quite simply become the backbone of our meal menu these days. It could hardly be any easier than it is. Mix three dry ingredients with enough water to make a wet dough, let sit for 12 hours or more, half-heartedly shape the loaf, let it rise again, and bake. If you spend more than 10 minutes, hands on, actually making the bread, you're probably doing it wrong. I've had the goal of baking all our own bread for years, but with the usual recipes I could never manage it often enough to keep up with the demand for fresh bread around here. With this recipe, finally, I can. And as you can see, the technique produces the most amazing crust...my husband goes into raptures every time a loaf comes out of the oven, and he's got pretty high standards for bread.



To serve, strain the meat stock, reserving the meat chunks and if you wish, the carrots (and, of course, the stock!) for the table. The garlic will most likely have been liquified by the roasting and long cooking, so if you can no longer find it, that's where it went! Dice the meat and any retained vegetables into manageable sizes (I like approximately 1/2" dices) and put them back into the pot. Remove the sauteed onions from the refrigerator and gently stir them into the very hot broth. You want the onions to remain as intact as possible, so don't stir too vigorously. Taste and adjust for seasoning - it will probably need some salt.

Slice your bread and sprinkle your choice of grated cheese on top (or use thin slices to cover each piece) then run the breads briefly through the toaster oven or under the broiler until the cheese has melted and begins to turn golden brown around the edges. Ladle the hot broth and vegetables into soup bowls and either float a slice of the cheese bread on the top to sop up juices until it becomes "spoonable," or serve the bread dry on the side for dipping.

Recipe: Hmmm, Corned Elk?

Now that I've found some good local sources for elk and buffalo meat, I've started thinking about all the things I could do with it. One of the areas of cooking that I've been experimenting with is making our own deli-type sandwich meats. Corned Beef is one of the deli meats I've been making for years. It's very, very easy, and much tastier than the corned beef in the store. So, I wonder - how would it work with Elk or buffalo meat? Would it be as good? Better? Well, I plan to give it a try!

In the meantime, here's the basic corned beef recipe we always use:

* Morton's TenderQuick salt - navy blue bag in the spice section, usually on the bottom shelf.
* Lean uncooked beef roast - that's the beauty of making your own - you can use *good* beef
* water - plain cold tap water is fine
* "Pickling spice" (or if you can't find that, mix peppercorns, red pepper flakes, crushed bay leaves, cloves, cinnamon chunks, whole coriander and mustard seed in a combination that pleases you.)

Find a large, non metallic container with a lid. A gallon glass jar or a couple of half gallon canning jars with lids work well. Or you can use a small, clean, plastic food grade bucket, or even a large, deep ceramic or plastic bowl with a makeshift cover. Just remember that whatever you use, it has to be deep enough for the meat to stay submerged in brine, and the whole thing needs to be able to fit into your refrigerator.

Cut the meat into chunks, or leave it whole. Chunks 4 inches on a side or thereabouts cure faster than a whole roast, but it's up to you whether to cut the roast smaller or not. Rinse the meat in clean, cool water and put it into your clean non-metallic container. Mix enough brine in a 1:8 ratio of Morton's salt to water to fully cover the meat, and pour it in. Throw in a handful of spices, put the lid on, and set it in the fridge to cure. Chunks will be ready to eat in about 4 days, but larger pieces might take up to 10. Fish out what you want, cook it however you like, and leave the rest in the brine for later. Up to a point, it just keeps getting more flavorful.

That's it! Corned beef at home is so simple and fast there's no reason to pay exorbitant prices for fatty, low quality corned brisket packed in brine at the store. Making your own means you control how much fat is in the final product, and also how spicy it is. You don't even have to add spices if you don't like them, it's your choice and won't affect the curing at all. You can also use plain kosher or canning salt instead of the Morton's, but it won't look like, and may not taste like, the corned beef you've had in the past. But if you have a thing about nitrates, give it a try on a small scale and see how you like it.