Collard Greens Braised with Bacon, Tomato and Rice

This is hearty, healthy comfort food - yeah, I just said bacon and healthy in the same breath. It only takes a tiny bit of bacon to get that delicious flavor; tomatoes and a little chicken broth add to the umami. I used oven-roasted tomatoes in had in the freezer from last year's garden. Collard greens are great tasting and great for you. I don't think they're bitter at all, but maybe it's one of those genetic things where people have different tastebuds. Rice soaks up the flavor and makes this a full meal. It's fast, too!

1 or 2 strips bacon, chopped
1 bunch collard greens
1 T. olive oil
1 small onion, diced
1 can (14 oz.) tomatoes or 1/2 C. roasted tomatoes
1 can (14 oz.) chicken broth
1 C. rice
Salt and pepper

Brown bacon in a large skillet on medium heat. Remove stems from collards and chop into 1-inch pieces. Add olive oil, onions and collards to the skillet, and cook until softened. Add tomatoes, broth and rice, and simmer for 20 minutes, until rice is cooked through. Season with salt and pepper as desired. Serves 2.

Savory Stuffed Apples

Baked apples don't have to be limited to dessert! When I saw a recipe for savory baked apples in Cooking Light, I knew I had to try it. The original recipe called for brown rice, but I substituted farro for a nuttier taste; quinoa would also be delicious. These unusual grains may seem exotic, but I've seen them at more and more stores, even at Costco recently. If you want to use brown rice, just start it cooking when you start preheating the oven. For a vegetarian version, leave out the sausage and substitute mushrooms, or more walnuts. Use the biggest apples you can find, and search out some of the tangier varieties like Pink Lady or Honeycrisp.

1 C. chicken or vegetable broth

1/2 C. farro or quinoa

1/2 t. dried sage

2 T. olive oil

1/4 lb. sweet Italian sausage

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 medium onion, finely diced

1 large carrot, finely diced

1/8 t. red chile powder

1/4 t. cinnamon

1/2 t. salt

1/4 C. chopped walnuts, toasted

4 large apples (or 8 small to medium apples)

1/2 C. shredded Swiss or cheddar cheese (optional)

Preheat oven to 350F. Carve out the center of each apple, leaving a shell about 1/2 inch thick (be sure to leave the bottom so the stuffing doesn't fall out). Chop the apple flesh finely and reserve it. Bake apple shells about 25 minutes, until just tender.

Meanwhile, combine broth, grain and sage in a small saucepan and bring to a boil. Turn heat to low and simmer about 10 minutes, until grain is tender. Heat oil in a large skillet on medium flame. Add sausage and brown, breaking up into very small pieces with a spatula. Add reserved apple flesh, garlic, onion, carrot, red chile, and cinnamon. Cook until tender, then season with salt as desired. Mix with cooked grain and toasted walnuts. Fill apples with grain mixture. If desired, top with cheese and broil 5 minutes to melt. Serves 4.

Green Chile Biscuits and Gravy

This is great comfort food for a cold February morning, and easy to whip up if you still have some green chile in your freezer – our supply always seems to be getting low this time of year.

The gravy is just a traditional sausage cream gravy, with a New Mexico twist. With the addition of cheddar, it's a lot like the Flying Star's Southwest Bennie - one of my favorite breakfasts around town. The biscuit recipe is adjusted for high altitude, so they come out nice and fluffy.

Biscuits:

2 C. all purpose flour
1 T. baking powder
3/4 t. salt
6 T. cold unsalted butter cut into small pieces (or 1/3 C. shortening)
1 C. buttermilk (or milk with juice of half a lemon)

Gravy:

1/4 lb. sausage

2 T. flour

2 C. milk

1/2 C. chopped green chile

1/4 C. grated cheddar

Salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 450F. Mix flour, baking powder, and salt in a food processor. Add the butter and pulse a few times until the mixture resembles cornmeal, with a few pea-sized chunks remaining. (If you don't have a food processor, just cut the fat into the flour mixture with a fork.) Add buttermilk and pulse until the dough comes together in one large piece. Do not overmix. On a floured surface, fold dough over 2 or 3 times to bring it together. Gently flatten to about 3/4 inch thick. Cut dough into circles with a can, or 9 even squares. Place biscuits onto a cookie sheet and bake 15-17 minutes, or until well-risen and golden brown.

Meanwhile, fry the sausage in a large skillet, breaking it up into small pieces with a spatula. (Many locally produced sausages are quite lean – you may need to add a little oil to keep it from sticking.) Add flour and stir to coat the sausage. Whisk in milk and cook until just thickened. Stir in green chile and cheese, season with salt and pepper, and remove from heat.

Split biscuits in half and top with gravy. Enjoy the rest of the biscuits with butter and jam. Serves 2-4.

Lemony Parsnip Soup with Rosemary and Crispy Leeks

Parsnips seem to have something of a bad reputation and I can't imagine why. They are sweet and delicious, like a white carrot. I picked up a few pounds of them, along with a few rutabagas, from Root Cellar Farm at the Los Ranchos winter growers' market. 

Not many farmers grow them, because they take all season to mature, but the great thing is that they can be stored in the ground all winter. They become sweeter after the frost, so you just leave them where they grew until you're ready to dig some up and eat them.

This delicate soup is dairy-free and takes only 20 minutes to prepare. Lately I've come to believe that garnishes are the key to a really great soup experience. The soup is very tasty on its own, but with the garnish it's truly delightful – don't skip the leeks.

2 T. olive oil

1/2 C. diced onion

3 C. diced parsnips

1 sprig rosemary

1/4 t. black pepper

4 C. chicken or vegetable stock

Salt

1 leek, thinly sliced white and green parts only

Juice and zest of 1/2 lemon

Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil over medium flame. Add onion and cook until just softened. Add parsnips, rosemary, pepper and stock. Bring to a boil, then simmer about 15 minutes, until parsnips are tender. Meanwhile, heat remaining oil on medium flame. Add sliced leeks, season with salt and fry, stirring often, until bits begin to brown. Remove from heat and reserve. Remove the rosemary and puree the soup. Add the lemon zest, then add lemon juice and salt to taste. Garnish with leeks. Serves 2 to 4.

Beet Salad with Fennel and Lemon Relish

I just recently realized that beets and fennel are a great combination, and beets also go well with lots of the other anise-flavored herbs like tarragon and caraway. The lemon-fennel relish is especially nice with Meyer lemons, which taste like a cross between orange and lemon. The recipe makes more relish than you need for the salad, so save it to serve with fish or chicken for another meal.


1 lb. beets
2 T. olive oil

1 fennel bulb
1 lemon, preferably Meyer variety
1 onion
1/2 t. fennel seeds

1 T. honey
1/2 C. water

1/2 t. salt
1/4 cup chopped parsley


Preheat oven to 400F. Scrub beets well, and trim off tops and tails. Cut small beets into quarters or halves, or larger beets into 1-inch chunks. Toss with 1 tablespoon oil and a little salt on a baking sheet. Roast about 45 minutes, until the beets are tender.

Meanwhile, chop lemon and onion into about 1/4 inch dice. Trim the bottom and the stems from the fennel bulb, slice it in half lengthwise, then slice crosswise into thin strips. Heat 1 tablespoon oil in a large skillet on medium flame. Cook onions, lemon and fennel slices with fennel seeds until soft, about 5 minutes. Add honey, water and salt, and simmer until most of the liquid is absorbed, another 5 minutes or so. Adjust the amount of salt and honey as desired.



Set a handful of beets on each plate, top with some of the fennel mixture, and sprinkle with parsley. Serves 2 to 4 as a side.

Carrot, Spinach and Chickpea Saute

This is a deceptively fabulous winter dish. Chickpeas and spinach just don't sound that exciting, even with a few carrots thrown in, but somehow it turns out to be incredibly tasty!  I love it when I find a recipe that is more than the sum of its parts - this one is adapted from Yotam Ottolenghi's wildly popular vegetarian cookbook, Plenty. It's super quick, and makes great use of some of the most common winter vegetables.

1/4 cup olive oil

4 medium carrots, diced

1 t. caraway seeds

1 can (14 oz.) chickpeas

1 garlic clove, minced

1 t. dried mint

1/2 t. ground coriander

1 T. lemon juice

Salt and black pepper

1/2 C. Greek yogurt

1 T. olive oil 

Heat the oil in a large skillet. Add carrots and caraway seeds, and cook 5 minutes or so. Add chickpeas and spinach and cook about 5 minutes more, until carrots are tender. Stir in garlic, mint, coriander, and lemon juice. Cook for a few more seconds, then season with salt and pepper. Mix yogurt and olive oil with a little salt and pepper. Pile vegetables on plates, and top with yogurt. Serves 2 as a main dish, or 4 as a side dish.

Buddha's Hand Citron

The first time I ever saw one of these, on a tree outside a hotel in New Zealand, I thought - what the heck is that, a mutated lemon??  Basically, yes... but it wasn't just that one tree. It turns out this is a very old type of citron called Buddha's Hand, native to China or northeastern India.

We picked these up at a citrus farm stand outside of Bakersfield on our way home from California last month, for super cheap. They are huge, compared to the ones I'd seen before - more than a pound each. They have almost no pulp or seeds, they're just all pith and rind. The taste and smell of the rind is just incredible, more fragrant and floral than regular lemon. They're just so wacky - like a squid crossed with a lemon - I had to have them!

After admiring them for a couple of weeks, I made them into citron vodka and candied citron. I know, I've been making a lot of candied citrus lately, but they're all different!

Buddha's Hand Vodka or Limoncello
1/2 lb citron
750 ml of decent vodka
2 cups sugar (if making limoncello)
2.5 cups water

Chop citron coarsely, or slice fingers in half lengthwise for a prettier presentation. Combine citron and vodka in a quart jar and leave to infuse in a dark place for 2 weeks. If you just want infused vodka, you're done! For limoncello, combine sugar and water, stirring to dissolve. Remove citron and add syrup until it's sweet enough for you. Age for 2 more weeks, until silky-smooth.

Candied Buddha's Hand
This is like the candied citron you'd use for fruitcake, but better! The corn syrup is important because it keeps the sugar from crystallizing, so the pieces come out soft and chewy.

2 lbs citron
Water
3 cups sugar
1 tablespoon light corn syrup

Cut the citron into 1/2-inch cubes and put them in a large pot. (A 2-quart saucepan is not big enough, because when you boil them with the syrup it bubbles up a lot.) Add water to cover, and bring to a boil. Simmer 30 minutes or so, until the pith is translucent, to remove bitterness. Some say the pith of citrons is not bitter like orange pith, and maybe sometimes it's not, but... when I tasted it uncooked, it was not bitter; after I boiled it a bit, it was definitely bitter. When I boiled it longer, the bitterness went out of the pith and into the water.

Drain the citrons, then put them back in the pan with 2 cups water, sugar and corn syrup. Cook on medium-low heat, stirring frequently especially toward the end, until the temperature of the syrup reaches 230ºF. The syrup should be very thick; almost all the liquid must evaporate for it to reach this temperature. (It can take a really long time if you have the heat too low, and I think this is why mine have a slightly caramelly-burnt taste, so next time I'd let it bubble a lot so that it reduces quicker. I think for fruitcake or similar purposes, it wouldn't be a disaster if it wasn't quite up to 230ºF, the finished pieces would just be softer and stickier.) Don't worry if they still have some white color to them at this point. Turn off the heat and let the pieces sit in the syrup for another hour. Drain the citron pieces thoroughly in a colander, then spread on a cookie sheet to cool.