“The beet is the most intense of vegetables.

The radish, admittedly, is more feverish, but the fire of the radish is a cold fire, the fire of discontent, not of passion.

Tomatoes are lusty enough, yet there runs through tomatoes an undercurrent of frivolity.

Beets are deadly serious.”

Great lines…

If you’re inspired, Cooking Beyond Measure has a recipe for roasted beets, blue cheese, winter greens, garbanzos, and toasted hazelnuts. It’s on page 116 if you want the particulars, or just rock and roll with olive oil, cider vinegar, salt, and plenty of black pepper–and if you’re vegan, just leave the cheese off….

Whatever direction you take, you’ll be eating seasonally. Letting nature take it’s course. Going with the flow.

It’s like what time of year other than winter do we need deadly serious food.

As usual, mother takes care if we let her…

A few big spoons of small white Navy beans that were waiting in the fridge all cooked up, oil, vinegar, salt, pepper, and we were there. Grab the Parmigiano Reggiano–that we can afford since we grown our own and eat beans–some homemade Tangled Up Focaccia and we were there. On the deck with a glass of wine eating first class peasant food and loving it. Indeed, we don’t have to be gourmet to eat well, no?

In this case, there were leftover French lentils and quinoa in the fridge–so into the bowl they went with some jarred roasted red peppers, a pear from the season’s end, and a handful of raisins.

Next a quick troll through the garden for a clutch of kale and cabbage leaves and a stalk of immature green garlic that I treated like a scallion. Flip the high heat on under a puddle of water in the cast iron wok. Choppity chop and into the wok. In half a minute the works has wilted nicely, so off goes the heat and into the bowl go the veggies.

Then some olive oil in the work and a bunch of local hazelnuts. Stir-stir while they toast a little, and over the salad they go, oil in tow.

Red wine vinegar, coarse salt, a crack of fresh pepper, and a scatter of red chile flakes.

This baby was done, and boy was it a lip smacker. “Beans and rice” never tasted so fine–just like my new hero Dave Ramsey knows.

Sing it Dave!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

BEANS AND RICE (RICE AND BEANS)
Copyright Scott Dawson Songs 2008

Fannie Mae, GMAC and MasterCard
Had control of me
I was sinking, sinking in a river of debt
When a friend
Shared with me
A radio personality
With a message
That I wouldn’t soon forget

Act your wage, budget the till
Name every dollar bill
Sell the Rolex, the speedboat and SUV’s
The only time you shall haunt
Your neighborhood restaurant
Will be working
As a server for Applebee’s

So I’m squeezing every dime
No fish, no beef, no pork
Now when dinnertime rolls around
I don’t even need a fork

Rice and beans
Beans and rice
Keeps me fed for a modest price
I’m adjusting
To living on beans and rice I got pintos, kidneys, limas too
With a can of spam I got
Poor man’s stew
Thanks Dave Ramsey
For teaching me beans and rice

Rice and beans
Beans and rice
Cayenne pepper and a onion slice
Mighty tasty
I’m cooking up beans and rice

I got long grain, short grain
Wild and brown
This recipe is spreading all over town
I’m making progress
By living on beans and rice Someday soon
You’ll hear me
On the air screaming “I’m debt free”
But until then
I’m living on beans and rice

But my garden squash patch is almost entirely devoted to spaghetti because it’s such a work horse in flash-cooked warm salads. On the previous post, Getting Our Acts Together, I showed how prettily spaghy dressed up a New Year’s potluck dish (that I took to KCC). And how easily I got fed the following day by simply making some gremolata to go with.

Now here’s day three. Still spaghetti squash waiting in the fridge so I got a full blast burner going under my cast iron wok, poured in a puddle of water, grated a broccoli stem and gave the florets a brief chop. Into the steaming heat the good greens went along with some scooped out spaghetti squash. By the time I found some olives to toss in and a plate, the squash was warm and broc al dente.

Dressing was some olive oil poured over, pinch of coarse salt, grind of black pepper, lemon zest grated right on top, lotsa fresh squeeze lemon juice to follow, and a big fluffy grating of parmesan using my hand dandy microplane.

Yup, I could have stopped to mince some garlic but I didn’t and things were luscious with the olives especially saying, “hello.”

So, that’s getting on a roll with spaghetti squash, day 3. You can put it in a blender with eggs and cornmeal to bake up like pizza crust and top it with the usual too. Who knows, day 4 might just roll on out with that little number–or even some big puffy yellow muffins. How about you? Into to getting around and getting on a roll?

On the stove at the moment is a clam chowder. Potatoes and frozen green beans from last summer’s harvest, fresh pulled leeks and carrots, and a can of clams. I even have a few leggy fronds of parsley from the kitchen window pot to add right before serving so it keeps it’s “somewhere-over-the-rainbow color” as I put it in one book or another.

All in all, not bad for the eve of winter solstice when it’s all we can to do keep the home fires burning.

Warm salads are another favorite of mine. Here I rely on garden spaghetti squash that’s keeps all winter in the basement or even in right in the kitchen–and is easy to bake. Then some freshly picked kale, flash cooked with garlic and red chile flakes. Dress with olive oil, fresh lemon juice, and coarse salt. Garnish with ruby pomegranates jewels and a polite chop of walnuts.

Pretty tasty no matter what carb and protein you pair it with. And it even works for the vegans in the crowd. Merry Howdy!

So here you go: a three-part vid you can sample if you’re inclined–plus a bonus clip of me shucking the blue corn I use in the lastavera and reminiscing about my time in Hopiland–as well as a clip from one of the Hopi social dances.

Cheers. Hope you find some simple, healthy, thrifty ideas that inspire you in your everyday kitchen.

Part 1: Lastavera Frittata–Jean’s blue apron on Beyond, skipping the onion, getting the right size pan, eggs from the hens next door, flash cooking, baskets of harvest tomatoes red and green

Part 2: Lastavera Frittata–ratio of vegs to eggs, tomatillos from their papery wraps to the skillet, green chiles and heat, cutting corn off the cob, beans-beanpaste-hummus, GMO.

Lastavera, Winding It Up–blue corn makes for interest, getting up close and personal with your food, the cook counts too, how Hopi cooks roast their green chile, celebrating kale, taking chances with the pan, and pulling it off!

Bonus Clip: Shucking Blue Corn and Talking About Hopi Cooks and Farmers

If you made it this far, here’s a special treat: the Hopi Butterfly Dance that the villages hold for the young people who are coming of age. Don’t the young women look beautiful in their headdresses? And the young men so very vigorous?

and one more–appropriately called The Corn Dance

So here you go.

In these vids I show how to

1. Turn the burner on high with a puddle of water.
2. Put your rustically chopped veggies in, in the order of which takes longest to cook Build your flavor using the sacred quartet: oil, vinegar, salt, pepper
3. Pair with protein and carbs
4. And bring on the goodies to make Plain Jane fare rock your socks!

It’s as simple as that, and the clean-up is too. Plus I talk about eating seasonally, thrift, health, and how delicious this food revolution really truly is. Hope you come along. We’re having a blast…

As you can see, when fava beans are fresh picked young and tender, they are beautifully ready to go straight from the pods. No second peeling needed at all. I discovered this simply by working with fava beans from my own garden, and then was gratified to see Italian and Spanish cooks echoing my experience in their books.

With the double peel debate settled, then what to do with fava beans? First is to think of them like a fresh bean. Once you do that you can rock and roll just like I do in Hippie Kitchen. The official recipe is called Fava Bean Sass, a dish made by flash cooking the favas then tossing them with spicy peanut sauce that includes diced apple and shredded carrot to sweeten things. So simple. So delicious. So thrifty–especially if you planted favas in February and are now about ready to harvest them.

The main thing that makes a measure free hippie kitchen work, though, is getting on a roll with things. So once I’ve got a new vegetable or recipe idea in tow, I play-play. If you try this I think you’ll find that eating with the seasons–as in fava beans for days on end while they are the happening thing–does not get boring.

The second round with favas I suggest on page 54 of Hippie Kitchen is incorporating them into a grain salad with leftover millet, radishes, and raisins. A little dressing and you have a balanced spring primavera in one bowl.

Fun, you say, but there’s more favas coming through the door daily. No problem, flash cook them as always with spring onions and green garlic. Spoon the works into warm corn tortillas and top with blue cheese. Then name this Fava Bean Heaven.

———-I hope I’ve piqued your interest in these early summer beans. They are great since along with the peas they are among the first food to grace our gardens and appear in the markets. And if you aren’t growing them just yet and do have to buy favas that need double peeling, don’t give up. Once they are flash cooked, they pop right out of their casings whether the cook does it all ahead or people do it themselves–together at the table while they slow down to relish the harvest whether it’s in a hash, warm salad, or pizza pie.

Laurel Robertson, who wrote Laurel’s Kitchen with Carol Flinders, is some kind of woman. This salad is adapted from their pages where they titled it “Astonishing.” I’ve made it many times over the years, and it’s my privilege to translate it into a measure free format.

What I especially like about this vegetarian and vegan approach to a spinach salad is that it springs from the more traditional approach which relies on hot bacon fat to wilt the greens. So smart of Laurel and Carol to figure out a different approach to a warm dressing—a dressing that not only succeeds in taming your fresh garden spinach but also one that is pretty darn sexy with its polite pour of dry white wine.