With Wednesday night showing a supposedly "super" harvest moon during the autumn equinox (and chinese moon festival), we say goodbye to summer and hello to autumn! Then again, I guess that's not really breaking news considering the other day's high was only in the mid 50s.
Anyhow, I've been cooking a bunch of warmer things for dinner lately:
First up, Chinese winter melon soup. Usually this has some pork in it, but seeing as I don't cook meat at home, I have chosen to make it with shiitake mushrooms, watercress, and winter melon
Looks pretty authentic to me ;-)
I guess we have just passed the peak of melon season, but there were still PLENTY of incredibly sweet melons at the past farmer's market. This huge, locally-grown orange honeydew (delicious!) was only $2!
The farmer's market also still had some eggplants ... I mentioned in my last post the piles of eggplants last week. This week there were far fewer, but still enough for me to decide to grab some heirloom eggplants to make eggplant parmesan!
I just sliced the small eggplants into 1/2" rounds, dipped in a beaten egg, and pressed into some homemade breadcrumbs that I had just made from old bread. I baked on one side for 20 mins at 375 degrees F until golden and then flipped to the other side. You can pan-fry if you prefer, but eggplant tends to soak oil up like a sponge, so I chose to bake.
After the eggplants are done baking I put them into a casserole dish with tomato sauce with some cheese, extra breadcrumbs, and oregano from the garden all sprinkled on top. Broil in the oven until nice and crispy! It was so simple, yet I was surprised at how great it tasted!
Has anybody seen these before? I found them at the co-op market ... they're called Seckler pears, I believe ... tiny little things! Supposedly unlike normal pears, you let them sit on the counter until they are really soft, so I'm waiting ...
I've been seeing lots of fresh figs at the co-op market as well, and finally decided to get some. I love how squishy the figs are, but I'm not the BIGGEST fan of them raw. Instead, I decided to cook them in order to bring out their sweetness. In this case, I used some red wine, balsamic vinegar, and the figs to make a sauce for some leftover pasta that we had with the above eggplant parmesan:
Just red wine, balsamic, and fresh figs (I used about half of that little pint)
Funny looking inside ... I later read online that figs are not actually a "fruit" as we normally think ... technically, they are just an inverted flower
Et voilà ... some leftover whole wheat pasta with the fig-balsamic-red wine reduction sauce, swiss cheese, and some garlic chives from the garden (I think the garlic chives were smashing in this dish!). Made for a delicious light lunch
As I mentioned, it's been getting cooler and the days are slowly getting more and more cloudy. It seems to me like the balcony does not get enough sun to truly ripen tomatoes ... since they should be totally ripe by now. Nevertheless, a bunch of beautiful tomatoes did grow - they're just green. Still, I decided to harvest one so far:
My beautiful heirloom green tomato! To think that right when I moved here three months ago, my tomato plant was only 1 foot tall ... now it's over 4 feet tall and I have lots of tomatoes!
However ..... I decided to harvest the above tomato because I am afraid that the bottom would begin to rot since it's been so wet lately
At first I thought it was turning red, but I soon realized that tomatoes don't "ripen" from the bottom up ... It's not mushy at all, just feels a little bumpier in the brown areas. I will probably begin to harvest more green tomatoes soon since it doesn't look like we're going to have a lot of consistently sunny days from here on out. Anybody have any good green tomato recipes? I was thinking of making fried green tomatoes :-p mmmm southern-style comfort food
Here is my cornucopia (haha) ... my first tomato along with the little Seckler pears, donut peaches, lemons, and sweet yams
Bought these beautiful flowers from the farmer's market as well
And now ... one of my all-time favorite meals: split pea soup! Just take dried green split peas, yellow split peas, and some red lentils ...
Cook 'em down for two hours with whatever spices you like until ...
Ready for dinner! With homemade bread, of course ... I put some stronger-tasting hardneck garlic into the dough for this loaf which turned out to be excellent. The garlic nearly melted into the dough for a great flavor. I also decided to experiment with my normal timing of the "lid-on"/"lid-off" sequence of baking this bread in my cast iron pot. Since I knew that high moisture content leads to the crispy crust, I experimented with taking the lid off of the pot 5 minutes early to let moisture out, and baking with the lid off 5 extra minutes. I was successful in creating a crispy, but still soft crust (unlike before where the crust was just really crispy .... of course, that's still great too - just depends on what you like)
Finally, last night's dinner was an excellent use of the leftover split pea soup since it's so filling. I decided to try to make an Ethiopian-style meal, complete with the spongy flatbread called "injera" (my favorite!). It's made from the smallest grain in the world known as Teff, and it grows well in the Ethiopian highlands.
Teff flour is very nutritious ... according to wiki, "The grain has a high concentration of different nutrients, a very high calcium content, and significant levels of the minerals phosphorous, magnesium, aluminum, iron, copper, zinc, boron, barium, and thiamin. Teff is high in protein. It is considered to have an excellent amino acid composition (including all 8 essential amino acids for humans) and has lysine levels higher than wheat or barley".
Just made a simple batter, and cooked them like crêpes (if you want the recipe, let me know). Now I do have to admit that I did unsuccessfully try to ferment the injera the way that you are supposed to in order to get that special "sourdough" taste - I don't think I let it ferment long enough (only overnight). For last night's dinner, however, I just had to make this quick batch. I am, however, currently letting another batch of batter ferment for a couple days to see if I can get it right ... recipes i've looked at tend to say that it should ferment from a couple days to even a week.
Had lots of kale (increasingly becoming one of my favorite greens), so I chopped these into fine pieces and cooked them down with onions, garlic, water and berbere - the signature Ethiopian spice mix, primarily containing dried peppers, garlic, allspice, cloves, coriander, etc. I also added a dash of cumin.
All together - Ethiopian style meal! Just break off a piece of injera and scoop up the various stews. You can see the leftover split pea stew on the left, and the spicy cooked-down berbere-spiced kale on the right . The injera was fun to make ... it gains its widely-known spongy texture only after you let it sit a while after cooking.
I'll also mention that I had my first official Puget Sound Symphony Orchestra rehearsal on Monday night and what a fun time that was! Our music is pretty tough, but the group is made up of excellent musicians so I know we'll get it down eventually. At first I wasn't a big fan of the pieces that we are playing, but after listening to them some more, I think the November 20th concert will be really enjoyable for the audience !
That's it for now ... time to practice violin ...
À Bientôt!
