“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?

Breakfast. This morning. Out came a clean pot and in went organic polenta from the bulk bins for a new batch of porridge. Stir, stir, stir. Then to the garden to round up what have you. A couple scallions. A handful of young fava beans. Back in the hippie kitchen. Choppity- chop for the veggies and into the pot they went. Just a quick stir and then covering to let hot golden polenta turn the greens al dente.

Fry an egg. Grab a couple roasted chiles. Ultrafast. Healthy. Thrifty. Local/Seasonal. Me and Swish were ready to feast.

Oh–and that last fava that turned up in my pocket unchopped and uncooked. I just chomped that down au naturelle, tender and young freshly picked as it was…

In case you haven’t appreciate what a radical tune Jimmy Crack Corn is before, here are the lyrics:

When I was young I used to wait
On master and hand him his plate
Pass him the bottle when he got dry
And brush away the blue-tail fly

Chorus

Jimmy crack corn, and I don’t care
Jimmy crack corn, and I don’t care
Jimmy crack corn, and I don’t care
My master’s gone away

When he would ride in the afternoon
I’d follow him with my hickory broom
The pony being rather shy
When bitten by the blue-tail fly

Chorus

One day he rode around the farm
Flies so numerous that they did swarm
One chanced to bite him on the thigh
The devil take the blue-tail fly

Chorus

Well the pony jumped, he start, he pitch
He threw my master in the ditch
He died and the jury wondered why
The verdict was the blue-tail fly

Chorus

Now he lies beneath the ‘simmon tree
His epitaph is there to see
Beneath this stone I’m forced to lie
The victim of the blue-tail fly

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?

Let’s keep it simple to start. Simple not only for the sake of explanation but also because making food taste good really can be done very simply. The pantry items I used for my New Year’s potluck dish were nothing more than the sacred quartet: oil, vinegar, salt, pepper (as in red chile peper because who says the only pepper in town is black). The key was that they were handy and inviting in their fun bottles and pots. Oil and vinegar sitting out within arm’s reach in blue glass. A pot of coarse salt (the yellow dish from Itay) that I can dip into. Ditto with red chile pepper (in the footed dish of green Depression glass). You can see there’s also a black pepper mill and some garlic there along with kitchen tools ready and waiting.

As far as how it all worked, I had half a baked spaghetti squash waiting in the fridge and a packet of green beans thawing in the kitchen sink (both items, I’m pleased to say, where from my summer garden).

Then there was the end of a pot of homemade veg soup that got a whiz in the blender and then enough whole wheat flour to turn it into goop akin to mashed potatoes. This made veggie patties that I fried up on my cast iron griddle–an item that hangs conveniently on the wall above my stove. Yes, it’s true that if I’d had a couple eggs to stir in they would have been lighter. And also that some wheat sprouts or chopped walnuts would have added interest. But there you have it, my pantry was on the bare side, so I had make do.

If you can picture yourself putting this dish together…here you are at the counter with a nice platter for your arrangement. (In this case an oven proof quiche dish for reheating later on.)

You get the green beans out and give them a nice chop (if you didn’t already French cut them when you froze them last fall as I did). Then grab your olive oil and use your fingers. That way you can tell when your beans are nicely coated. Same routine for the spaghetti squash, your fingers being quite useful for pulling the strands apart as well. Once your lovely green and yellow circles are in place, you can nab the vinegar for a healthy sprinkling. Then some coarse salt and red chile flakes–the secret on the latter being not to over do.

All that’s left to finish this dish is a bowl of dip in the middle and the patties arranged around the edge. For me that day, no yogurt or humus in sight, so it was my home canned plum sauce from the summer that served as the dippity-do-dah. A few more red chile flakes over that for pretty-pretty and the deed was done. Ready for people at the buffet to shovel up some green beans and spaghetti squash, nab a patty and spoon on a little plum sauce.

It was quick to make, too. From start to finish I guess about a half hour including doing the veggie patties. Also yes, it depended on me working right along through the year and putting things like plum sauce up during harvest. Or at least buying things at the store with an eye toward mixing and matching. In addition to the sacred quartet, there’s keeping winter squash on hand. Not only spaghetti but other kinds, and when you bake them always do extra for on down the pike as they’ll keep a good week in the fridge. Same with the green beans or some other kind of green vegetable besides those boring old salad greens. Kale. Broc. Those are my choices this time of year if you don’t have a supply of others put up from your summer garden.

The other part of this equation is frugality. You can see I didn’t make many veggie patties. That’s because there wasn’t much soup left. The key, though, is that I did not throw it out. Why? Because I grew most of the vegetables in the pot and couldn’t bear to see them wasted. More, I thought, was the brew was blenderized, it was perfectly good goop to use for most anything. In this case the patties; another day it might have been the liquid in some homemade focaccia.

That’s the method to the madness around this measure free hippie kitchen. Hope it helps the cause in your kitchen too as the New Year kicks in. Here’s to healthy, wealthy, wise, and rocking & rolling….

If you’ve followed me much, you know that I like getting on a roll. Here’s what my lunch the next day looked like.

Spaghetti squash fluffed up on a plate, dressed with olive oil and fresh lemon juice (once you’ve captured it’s zest). Some gremolata spooned over and Parmesan grated around the edge. So delicious and easy. Healthy. Seasonal. The works. And if you don’t speak gremolata, let me introduce you to minced parsley flavored with garlic and lemon zest.

Cut the stems off your bunch of Italian parsley (nice with its flat leaves but use the curly stuff if that’s all you have) just above the tie thing. Then get your sharp chef’s knife and mince away until you have no visible stems or leaves left–until the parsley brew is fine indeed. Then mince equally fine, a clove or two of garlic. (If you have a deep mortar and pestle you can pound the garlic instead of mincing, but whatever–all roads lead to Rome.) Then take a microplane and zest a lemon or two.

Mix the works into a nice blend, and you just made gremolata–something that goes as easily on fish as it does on spaghetti squash.

As far as crust goes, it’s my usual whole wheat pastry-organic butter version at a ratio of one part flour to a half part butter. For this crust I used a cup of flour to a stick of butter plus a couple good pinches of salt. Here’s more on the technique if you need it.

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

In the photograph above I used conventional mozzarella, unaware two years ago when I shot it, of the abuse factory farm cows are subjected to–ie not seeing the light of day for obscene time periods, basically turned into milk machines that stand with their 1500 pound girths on cemented barn floors as opposed to getting out to pasture daily where they can switch their tails and chew their cud.

Thus, exceptionally pleased am I to have discovered that the reputable people in the Organic Valley cooperative make a mozzarrella. It’s square not round, sorry to say. But it’s taste is all the sweeter since it helps connect the dots between our bioethics and our consumption habits. So if you haven’t connected with a local cheese maker who does mozzarella–or don’t make your own–know that Organic Valley has its products available nationally. The good stuff is ours for the asking–and for paying the extra price it costs dairy people to treat the mama cows well.

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…