soup swap, part II: Cabbage Borscht and Green Soup

 This is part II of our colorful winter soup swap. Part I included Carrot Ginger and Black Bean. Lots and lots of soup... The best thing was that we got our little kitchen cranking out so much soup, did the dishes, and it was done. And through the swap we got so much variety! And lunches for the week! (And dinner...) Click below for recipes.

just a friendly little winter soup swap: black bean and carrot-ginger

This weekend I participated in a little soup-swapping with some friends (thanks so much to Rachel for organizing!). We each made 8 servings of a soup, and then gave 2 servings to each of three friends. So we ended up with 4 different soups - lots of meals! Mine is the ugly one on the top left... a "green soup" gone slightly purple with the addition of purple kale. Going clockwise: Sara did a spicy Carrot-Ginger with coconut, Rachel made a black bean soup, and Jessica a cabbage-borscht.

Keep reading for the recipes for Carrot-Ginger and Black-Bean:

homemade garlic naan to go with all that soup

So it's winter and we're making a lot of soup...By "we" I mean everyone, right? :) I finally wanted to try making garlic naan at home to serve with some leftovers I was heating up. It really did hit the spot. Although anything you pull fresh and warm from your oven, spread butter, garlic, and cilantro on, will probably be pretty tasty.

I am not at all claiming this is authentic naan, but it's a pretty good, and super fast flatbread (and this recipe - no yeast!). Plus, it involves making some garlic paste, which is a great skill. :) Jennie and I learned that one at our knife skills class as well.

P.S. If you're in Ann Arbor, check out LifeLong Learning at Washtenaw Community College for their cooking classes, including the basic knife skills class we did. The instructor, Natalie, is really great!

Mexican Chicken and Potato Stew served with Green Rice

 Tonight I was cooking as my friend Katie's sous chef in her amazing kitchen. Peter was pouring the wine. Raffa was just being super cute. :) My friends are all better cooks than I am, truly, and I love learning new ingredients and flavors I had never known from them. Tonight I discovered the flavors of chipotles in adobo sauce.  There are some meals that photos can just do no justice. Make this. If you're vegetarian, it would be good without the chicken. The flavors are just so unique, and so warming. The pineapple is a wonderful surprise.

Swiss muesli: mix and match oats, fruits, nuts, seeds

Swiss Müsli is slightly different from American granola: it's a combination of raw (unbaked) oats, nuts, seeds, and dried fruits. Because it's not baked into crunchy bits, there is no added sugar. And because it has no sugar, you can add a bit of maple syrup or honey when you prepare it. (Also faster than granola: all you do is combine the ingredients.)

I'm lucky: Ann Arbor has a great bulk foods store called By The Pound, where you can re-stock on all muesli/granola ingredients, in large or small quantities. One of my favorite shops here.

 Does anyone else have a favorite müsli combination?

roasted beet salad with oranges, candied pecans and goat cheese

Ohh, this salad was sooo good. Best beet salad ever. The combination of roasted beets + citrus + pecans = delicious. It's another recipe using some of our CSA beets as well as winter greens (thanks, Sunseed!).  It was so beautiful to eat, as the beets colored the oranges bright pink - so pretty. I also got to keep practicing those knife skills, this time cutting an orange. (fun!)

vegetable chips: sunchokes and beets

 Have you ever had those root vegetable chips from the store? The beets and sweet potatoes are my favorite...so I finally attempted the experiment at home. I roasted beets (from our CSA) and sunchokes (local, from the co-op), which have a great flavor when roasted. If you have a mandolin (I know I keep going on about how much I love mine...I really do...), this whole prep process takes five minutes, tops. Cut into thin slices, swirl in a bowl with a splash of olive oil and a bit of salt (I added rosemary to the sunchokes), and bake at 350-400 and keep an eye on them. ta-da! homemade vegetable chips!

I roasted the sunchokes at 400 for 15 minutes. Check after 10 minutes and take out any that are already done. I did the beets at 350 for 35-40 minutes, flipping after 20 minutes.

Update 1/29:
we have also done this with sweet potatoes, and purple potatoes from the CSA:

"the comfort of soup in deep winter": caramelized cabbage and leek soup

brrrrrrrrrrrrrr... Duluth schools were cancelled today due to "extreme cold temperatures and wind chills."  Doesn't that make you want to stay home next to your fireplace (hi, mom) and make a hearty soup? This one is based on a recipe from a new cookbook in my collection, recommended by Synne, Love Soup by Anna Thomas.  160 vegetarian soups! That should get me through the Michigan winter! They are also arranged by season: "green soups," "winter squash soups," "the comfort of soup in deep winter"... yes, that's what we need.

 For this one, you oven-roast cabbage, until it's starting to brown and caramelize, and slowly brown onions and leeks in the meantime, practice those julienne skills while making fine-dice carrots...

saucy winter soba noodle stir-fry: with kale, cabbage, and carrots

I was inspired by this recipe for a hot buckwheat noodle salad with peanut tamarind sauce from The Guardian's "10 best winter salad recipes." I threw in kale, because it's delicious and the thin ribbons stick perfectly to the noodles. And I got to practice my julienne skills from the knife skills class I attended Saturday (carrots) as well as the chiffonade (kale ribbons). I made extra sauce so that I could re-do the dish or some variant later this week.

cherry-ginger oatmeal cookies with pecans for Nic

Oh yes, I was thinking about this combination for a long time, and it did not disappoint: candied ginger plus cherries...mmm...The opportunity presented itself when my friend Nic hosted a "dessertavaganza" celebration of being done with his exams this week. Congrats, Nic! :)

chicken curry with cashews

I discovered this recipe through the "best of epicurious." In my mind, this is the best thing about the internet: you can see that a recipe has 660 reviews and 94% would make it again. That's always a good sign. It's a great meal to warm you up on a cold winter night. Also the closest I've ever come to making melt-in-your-mouth chicken curry that tastes like the stuff in restaurants.

beets for breakfast

 If there's anything I have to splurge on in the US, it's good bread. After living in Germany, I'm spoiled by amazing 1-kilo loaves with crispy crust. Luckily, Ann Arbor has one of the best bakeries/delis/cheesemakers in the US - Zingerman's Deli. Unfortunately, you pay for that quality, at about $5-$6 a loaf. It's crazy how difficult it is to find bread with crust in the States. Crazy.

But if you have good bread, you can make a good meal so easily: good bread with soup, good bread with avocado or tomato or radish sliced on top...This simple breakfast with beets would also be a great quick lunch.

I sliced raw beets paper-thin with my mandolin, and put them on warm toasted bread with cream cheese. Zingerman's cream cheese is amazing: it's salty and savory, airy and creamy. Very different from Philadelphia cream cheese. If you can't get fresh cream cheese, this would be good with ricotta, too. Good way to get a vegetable in the day already, and the way the beets turn the cheese magenta is so gorgeous.

red lentil soup with squash and panch phoran

 I have been on the move and traveling the past two months - which has been wonderful, don't get me wrong - but it also feels good to be back home in Ann Arbor. Even if it's one of the many places I feel at home. For me, coming home means I get to use my favorite knife and favorite bamboo spoon again. And mandolin. And my wonderful roommate made the transition that much easier by welcoming me with a stocked kitchen, with fresh coffee for the morning and a treat from Zingerman's. :)

Jessica and I subscribe to a bi-weekly CSA share from Sunseed Farm, so there were also beautiful vegetables waiting at home. This week we got cute little hard winter squash with a pretty green-yellow pattern. I looked it up on localfoods and I'm pretty sure it's Sweet Dumpling Squash, which they describe as "starchy with a slight corn flavor." (After tasting, I definitely get that.) 

get your vitamins: grated carrot salad with parsnips, feta and mint

Don't you love it when you're walking/biking home from the grocery store/market and your bag/basket has vegetable greens poking out? I love it.

This salad is a classic in France and Germany, and is a quick and healthy side for lunch. Without the feta it's vegan, and still delicious.

We've been eating rice and beans leftovers from a ginormous pot of moros (Cuban black beans and rice) Michael made, so I needed to make something fresh to go with it. If there are a few lonely carrots sitting in your vegetable drawer...this is a good way to use them up! I also had a few parnsips, so I threw that in. The apple adds a little natural sweetness, and there are lots of variations for the dressing. This one's a good base idea for getting some fresh veg in your day. And the grating is a nice arm workout :)

Garlicky Sage-Parsley Chickpeas and Pasta with Gruyere

The combination of chickpeas and pasta sounded weird to me at first, but the fresh herbs, red pepper flakes, garlic and a bit of gruyère cheese make this a really delicious - and super quick - lunch. If you haven't yet, listen to the latest show of NPR's Wait Wait Don't Tell Me while you cook. It has a food theme and has some really amusing moments. We especially enjoyed the White House Chef Sam Kass (apparently the President has to pay for his own groceries?), and skipped over Paula Deen ("no honey, i just wanted to be a wife and a mama")...

heisse Zitrone: lemon, ginger, mint "tea"

At many cafés in Germany you can get a "heiße Zitrone": hot water with lemon slices (yeah, people pay money for that...you can also order just plain hot water...). I have seen other variations: with fresh peppermint or fresh ginger. When Jessica came to visit last year for New Year's we both got colds and drank lots of fresh ginger tea. I just love the taste of this lemon/ginger/mint combination, healthy or sick, but if you have a cold, this trio with a teaspoon of honey would be just the thing. I've also heard peppermint is good for concentration and memory, so this is what Michael and I were sipping today while writing our brilliant dissertations. :)

recipe:
bunch fresh mint / peeled, sliced ginger / lemon slices

Careful: the ginger gets quite spicy if you let it sit in the bottom of the glass too long!

lomo saltado para Olguita: Peruvian stir-fried steak

I don't usually cook with red meat, in fact, I don't think I've ever bought steak at the store before. But lomo saltado is one of Michael's favorite Peruvian dishes, and I wanted to make something Peruvian this week in honor of his mother. Lomo saltado is marinated beef, stir-fried and served with thick potato wedges, as well as rice. Being a post-Atkins American, the idea of carbs-on-carbs is a bit hard to execute, but Michael wanted the authenticity. And it was pretty good. (Although you could leave out either rice or potatoes if you'd like.) The sauce is so delicious - it comes together with the vinegar, soy sauce, the liquids released while cooking, garlic and pepper. Wish I could send this smell wafting through the internet.

green on green: kale and brussels sprout salad with dijon viniagrette

I think my friend Synne is the first one who made me reevaluate brussels sprouts. For our Thanksgiving dinner in Berlin she brought a salad made of "whisper thin" shaved brussels sprouts with lemon, thyme, hazelnuts and parmesan cheese. It was delicious, and so different from overcooked from-frozen soggy sprouts. I don't think I had ever eaten them raw before. The recipe is here from 101 cookbooks.  For Thanksgiving this year I made a brussels sprouts hash from epicurious. Lots of butter, and on the softer side....but it was a big hit and we had no leftovers!

asparagus mozarella pizza with a bowl of spicy soup on the side

Homemade pizza is the best. I mixed the dough while making breakfast and it was ready for me a few hours later when I was hungry again. The dough is made with ingredients you have lying around (flour, water, yeast, salt), and the toppings use up leftover veggies. Just keep cheese on hand and presto - delicious and fresh lunch, with excellent leftovers. The shaved asparagus/mozzarella combination is taken from Deb Perlman's pizza from The Smitten Kitchen , but I added a pesto base and some heat, here in the form of harissa paste, but red pepper flakes would be just as good.

know your kale, and a winter pasta recipe

 In her book My Berlin Kitchen, Luisa Weiss mentions the lack of dark leafy greens in Germany. From my experience, it's true. My (vegan) friend Alan first pointed out to me how hard it is to get kale there, before I had done much cooking with it myself. And I recently had a discussion with a German friend about it--who was trying to defend Germany but gave up.  It's very hard to find fresh spinach in the grocery store (although in the US as well - when it's not baby spinach), or fresh kale (found in the frozen section), collard greens or chard. They do love their kale in the winter - but only if it's been cooked to death into a mush and served with sausage (see photo below). Which is good, don't get me wrong, but only one of the many good ways to cook it. You can often find it fresh at the Turkish markets and local farmer's markets.  Left to right, in the photos above: curly kale, red kale, and black kale (also called dinosaur or lacinato kale). These are the kinds I've seen in US grocery stores.

parsnips gone wild: or, farro-carrot-parsnip salad

So I am roasting parsnips and carrots for this dish from the smitten kitchen cookbook and I hear the cookie sheet in the oven go BANG... uh oh, parsnips gone wild. (I just learned that cheap cookie sheets warp and go BANG, and that you should probably spend the extra $$ to get one like this that is heavy-duty and even claims to prevent warping. But I am just going to deal with it and keep the ones I have. For now.)

frohes Neues! happy new year!

I have decided to start the new year off with -- like so many of us -- some new goals and the best of intentions of keeping them. Cooking is one of my true joys in life, bringing balance to my life and making me healthier and happier. So why not start documenting some of the meals worth documenting?

I got several new cookbooks for Christmas and can't wait to cook my way through them. I'm mostly a follow-the-recipe cook, inspired by some of my favorite cookbook authors and bloggers (see the list in the sidebar). I try to incorporate seasonal and local ingredients, and am a member of a CSA, which forces me to eat more vegetables.

Oh, and the name of the blog? Zweites Frühstück. In Germany after your early "first breakfast" there is sometimes a second...what we might call a "mid-morning snack." It's for people who get up early and are so productive they're hungry before lunch. :) I love how some cultures have these other meal traditions...in Germany it's not only the second breakfast but also the mid-afternoon Kaffee und Kuchen, one of my favorite things about that country which has become a second home to me. So aside from the cookbooks I read like novels before bed, and the recipes I find online or from friends, my cooking is also inspired by my time spent abroad and the meals I've had there.

I hope you enjoy!

K.