colorful golden beet-lentil-potato salad

This recipe is inspired by the warm lentil potato salad from Smitten Kitchen, plus my friend Biz's legendary pink potato salad with beets. This one has golden beets, which don't dye the rest of the salad pink. It's a perfect mix of salty, crunchy, tangy, and colorful. You pretty much follow the recipe for the warm lentil potato salad, but then add in some roasted beets, cut into small dice.

ingredients:
3 small golden beets, oven-roasted, peeled and cut into small dice
3 medium sized potatoes, boiled and cut into pieces
pickles (or cornichons) chopped small
capers, chopped
1/2 red onion, finely diced
dijon vinaigrette - olive oil, dijon, apple cider vinegar, pressed garlic clove, salt and pepper

tangy lentil potato salad with cornichons and capers

This salad might not look like much - it's brown food - but it tastes amazing. So SO good. I am eating the second-day leftovers right now and they are even better. The dressing is full of diced cornichons and capers, which blend in perfectly with the green lentils and so each bite is a tangy, salty surprise. It also takes just about 30 minutes to make, a pretty quick and easy recipe, and great to take for lunch.

ingredients:
2 shallots
1 bay leaf
1 cup Puy (French) lentils
Salt and pepper
1 pound potatoes (fingerling or small)
2 T red wine vinegar
1 to 2 garlic cloves
1 T Dijon mustard
1/4 cup olive oil
2 tsp capers, roughly chopped
2 T cornichons, roughly chopped
1 to 2 scallions, thinly sliced

I followed the recipe on Smitten Kitchen pretty closely, so I'll just send you there if you want to make it. The only thing I would change is that it felt like a bit too many lentils for the amount of potatoes. I ended up taking out about 3/4 cup for another use.  Also, it says to serve warm, but I think it's also very good at room temperature and makes for a good packed lunch (although then you might want to reduce the garlic slightly).

From our winter farm share: shallots, potatoes

how to use your winter CSA, part II

The selection doesn't look any different yet from last time...The farm is still giving us a mix of some hoophouse greens and fall/winter storage vegetables. I am looking forward to spring! Here's what we made the last two weeks:

butternut squash (from last box): winter couscous and red curry butternut soup
celeriac (from last box): apple-celeriac salad
sweet dumpling squash: quinoa-stuffed squash, and we still have more to use up
carrots: minestrone, plus raw for lunches
kale: crepes and minestrone
red onions: beet risotto, winter couscous, got thrown in everything!
potatoes: minestrone and more of those delicious potato chips
beets: beet stew with lamb, beet risotto, Jessica also made a roasted beet salad, and still more beets....I'm afraid it's turning into a beet blog...

Also, take a look at this recent NYT article, Winter Poses Challenges for Chefs with a Local Ethos
From the article: "Locally grown. Market-sourced. Farm to table: These phrases have become the mantras of the American menu, promising ingredients that are supremely fresh, in season and produced within a tight radius of the restaurant. But what can they possibly mean in the dead of winter, in northerly climes where farms are battened down and the earth is as hard as a raw cabbage?"

see here for our last CSA box and what we made. Preview for next time: beets + greens, carrots, squash, greens, potatoes, kohlrabi

hearty soups III: jamaican jerk chicken chili

 This soup relates to one of my favorite cooking memories with Michael. We were making this chili in Berlin , and in German grocery stores you of course can't buy Jamaican Jerk seasoning. So Michael made the seasoning from scratch, combining various spices and herbs with the mortar and pestle. Very impressive. But then he forgot to check how much of the spice blend the recipe called for - just adding all of it to the soup. It was so spicy we were both crying, trying to eat the (really good!) soup with yogurt on it. haha!  Here is the recipe, with the addition of chicken.  It's a good one...Michael said it's his favorite so far in the hearty soups series. Just watch the spice level. :)

By the way, I could have called this post: no horse meat in this chili. Have you heard about the latest Horse Meat Scandal, aka "Burgergate," in Europe? Horse meat has been "masquerading" as beef across Europe, mislabeled in all kinds of prepared dinners, and now in Nestle products. A poll in Britain found that 1 in 4 people is now eating less meat, and 65% mistrust food labels. See also NPR, Why is some food taboo? and Salon's 5 Lessons from the Horse Meat Scandal. It's strange: in the US I very rarely eat meat that has been processed in any way. In Germany, however, where you can get so much good sausage, I do occasionally do so, in Salami form. Stories like this do make me cringe a bit though. What do you think?

minestrone with kale, white beans, tomatoes

 This recipe came to my inbox from the New York Times Recipes for Health, just when we had fresh kale to use. Pretty much everything else is in the pantry. We had our beautiful purple potatoes and purple kale from the CSA. As I was cooking, Jessica was heating up some amazing smelling smoked bacon next to me, so I threw in some of that, too, and garnished with crispy pieces. It would be vegetarian and vegan without the bacon and the parmesan rind. Yum yum.

how to use your winter CSA: what we made

 Jessica and I get a bi-weekly CSA share from Sunseed Farm, just outside of Ann Arbor. I thought it would be fun to track what we made with our produce, and do this regularly so you can also see how the produce changes as we move from the dead of winter to warmer temperatures. Today they told us this is a "transitional period" at the farm, as the spring stuff isn't up yet and they get to the end of winter storage items. He said in the hoophouses it is now April weather, so they will soon be growing spring veggies.

This is what we got last time and what we made:

Kale and Bok Choy - Green Soup
Carrots -Winter Slaw
Purple Potatoes - Cabbage-Beet-Borscht  also purple potato chips, also pizza with leeks and potatoes
Celeriac -Winter Slaw
Greens - Roasted Beet Salad
Butternut Squash - still in storage...
Beets -Cabbage-Beet-Borscht

and looking ahead, this is what we got today for the next two weeks. Expect recipes with squash, carrots, onions, beets, potatoes, kale... Any ideas for above items are welcome! :)

 

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.

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.

"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...

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.

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.