Sides with a Difference

A friend asked my advice on sides to accompanying Thanksgiving turkey. She had in mind buttered carrots and beans with almonds.

I reminded her that in August, I posted several root vegetable side dishes to go with barbecued lamb. Those sides were:

1) Caramelized shallots

2) Boiled beets tossed in kumquat marmalade & chopped chives

3) Buttered carrots with parsley, and

4) Pan fried baby squash (with blossoms intact).

If you like the idea of caramelized shallots, keep in mind that you could swap out the shallots for regular brown onions. Simply chop onions into quarter chunks for cooking with the brown sugar and butter.

You could also swap out the kumquat marmalade for orange or a lemon or lime marmalade when preparing the beets. And if you don't fancy beets for Thanksgiving, try swapping out the beets for sweet potatoes and or yams; served with marmalade and chives, they're delicious.

If you do like the idea of beets for Thanksgiving, and you plan on buying a bunch, cut the green tops off, wash them, and use them as you would any leafy green. For instance, you could saute them with a little bacon, or saute them with chopped brussel sprouts and bacon, adding some chicken or turkey stock and gently simmering the veggies until tender.

Baby squash with blossoms intact are no longer in season, but you could simply do pan tossed chunks of zucchini with a fresh herb like rosemary or sage; both go well with Turkey.

I also mentioned to my friend that she could toss her cooked string beans in walnut oil and top them with toasted walnuts instead of almonds. Or toss some bacon in with the boiling beans, strain, and top with toasted walnuts, almonds or even pistachios.

Brussel sprouts, as I mentioned above, are extra delicious cooked in either turkey or chicken, stock; it adds lots of flavor to the mini cabbage-like green. For a treat, you might like to top cooked brussel sprouts with prosciutto which it can be spendy, but buy just a few slices and make less stretch further by chopping the rashers into little bits.

If you're a fan of mashed potatoes as a side with Thanksgiving, rather than adding butter and or milk, try adding the some olive oil and the pan juices from your baked turkey, but first pour off the turkey fat. The oil and pan juices will enrich mashed potatoes without adding the dairy-fat calories.

These are just a few simple ideas to make different some of the Thanksgiving sides we're all familiar with.

Kumquat Beets & Buttered Carrots

When I picked the vegetables for the dinner I'm featuring this week, I have to say it was a far more pleasant experience doing so in the tranquility of Barbara's garden rather than at the grocery store.

What a pity that most of us rely on store-bought food over growing our own. However, such is life for people like me who don't have a plot of earth to tend. One day though ...

The beauty of having goats, chickens, and a compost area is that very little went to waste on the farm. I often wish there were something I could do with the tops of carrots, other than chopping them off and tossing them. While at the farm, I fed them to the goats, along with other vegetable trimmings (excluding allium; goats don't do well eating members of the onion family).

The brown or inedible beet leaves, I either tossed out to the free-range chickens or fed to the goats, and the beet leaves that were in good order, I washed, drained, and stored in the fridge. Beet greens are delicious braised in a little oil or butter. Such is the beauty of beets; you can eat both the red bulb and the green leaves.

Barbara's carrots were about 2 -3 inches long. Some were a bit gnarly. Noting the natural imperfection of the carrots' shape, I was reminded of my culinary training days and the tedious hours we spent learning how to shape or turn vegetables.

Because they're dense, root vegetables lend themselves well to the art of reshaping, which is done with a small paring knife.

Traditionally, the vegetable is carved into small oblong shapes, which is the intention of turning -- creating a perfect, symmetrical shape from an otherwise gnarly, misshaped carrot, potato, beet, turnip etc.

The vegetable shavings cut away in the process of creating the oblong shape, were, in my class, never wasted but used to make stock.

Turning was my least favorite lesson. I couldn't help but wonder "why?" "what for?" despite the fact that once cooked and on the plate, I could see that a turned veggie had eye-appeal. In other words, it looks really pretty.

Probably I questioned turning because I wasn't very good at it. Much to my chagrin, there was a woman in my class who was. In fact, she was an artist at turning vegetables and she was apprenticed to a chef at one of Melbourne's top restaurants where she created masterpieces out of gnarled vegetables. I can't believe I was jealous of her talent, but I was.

As you can see from the picture above, I simply cut the carrots I harvested from the garden into chunks. There is not one turned carrot in that dish. In fact if you look closely, you'll see that all the gnarly little bits are still intact.

Buttered Carrots
1) Place carrot chunks in pot of water. Bring to boil. Boil rapidly for about 5 mins. or until carrot is slightly soft on the outside, but still crisp to bite, rather than soft and mushy all the way through.
Note: Root veggies are placed in cold water and brought to the boil, whereas green veggies are plunged into rapidly boiling water.
2) Drain carrots, return to pot, and return pot to a warm hot plate. Toss in a chunk of butter and a handful of chopped parsley. Spoon carrots into a serving bowl as in the picture above.
Note: Here's an easy way to chop parsley: shove a washed and dried handful into a coffee mug, and using kitchen scissors, chop the parsley in the mug.

Kumquat Beets
1) Wash and scrub a couple of beet bulbs, trimming the beets of hairy tentacles. Leave skin on.
2) Toss into a pot and cover with water.
3) Boil gently for about 20 mins.
4) Drain and cool; once cool, peel beets by slipping the tip of a paring knife under the skin and peeling the skin back.
5) Slice peeled beets into quarters.

6) Toss beet quarters back into a pot, return pot to stove and medium heat. Add a glob of kumquat marmalade, or your favorite orange marmalade. Gently stir with wooden spoon till marmalade has melted and coated the beet pieces. Warm the beets through; though be careful not to burn the marmalade.
7) Wash and chop a handful of fresh chives. Spoon beets into a serving bowl, sprinkle chives over beets, decorate with a sprig of green.

Note: There are all sorts of delicious marmalade combination available now: orange/ginger, orange/lemon, plain orange, kumquat/orange, etc. etc. Any of these would work well with beets since it's the citrus bite of the orange, lemon or kumquat that pairs so well with the sweet earthiness of the beets.

Caramelized Shallots

As I mentioned yesterday, root vegetables are ready for harvest now, that is, late summer into early fall.

Unlike the delicate flavor of above ground mid-summer salad vegetables like lettuce, cucumber, tomato, and corn, vegetables that grow under ground are typically denser in texture with an almost earthy flavor.

The earthiness of root veggies means they're great flavor pals to the stronger, sometimes slightly gamey flavor of meats like beef, pork, and lamb.

And as the weather transitions from hot summer days and our inclination to eat cooling, water-dense salads to much cooler early-fall evenings, the warming quality of earthy root vegetables at dinner are a natural.

Hence my reason for picking onion, beets, carrots and squash (though it's an above ground veggie) from Barbara's garden to go with lamb we barbecued last Friday for dinner.

Now, to tell you the truth, the onion I picked and caramelized isn't really a shallot, rather it's a sweet red onion. You can see it in the pic above. It has a reddish-purplish bulb with purplish-green stalk.

I cut away the stalk and peeled away the tougher outer skin to reveal the sweet inner bulb. Often there will be two or three bulbs inside the outer skin. The pic to the left shows clearly the white inner bulbs, and they do look a little like a shallot.

Sweet red onion is already sweet, though it is still pungent. Once caramelized, the pungency diminishes and the sweetness is enhanced, but the onion is still aromatic and slightly crisp.

I love caramelized onion (caramelized anything, actually) I have a wicked sweet tooth so whenever I cook steak or lamb, I love to saute sliced brown onion in butter and toss is a spoonful of brown sugar, which is the basic method for creating the side dish I'm featuring today.

Caramelized Shallots
1) Use either shallots or the sweet red onion I mention above. Peel outer skin to reveal the inner bulb.
2) Pop bulbs into a small pot with a chunk of butter.
3) Put pot on a stove and turn heat to med.
4) Allow butter to melt and coat onion bulbs. Turn heat to low, the onion will gently cook in the butter.
5) At around the 10 min mark, or as the bulbs are softening, add a tablespoon of brown sugar to the pot (about 1 tablespoon of sugar to 1 tablespoon of butter). Stir with a wooden spoon to blend sugar into butter and onion juices.
6) Make sure heat is on low; cook maybe another 5 - 7 mins. You don't want the heat much above low otherwise you'll run the risk of the butter and sugar burning.
7) Pour into a serving a bowl and I think if you do a taste test, you'll find that caramelized shallots don't need seasoning, however, season if you wish.

Garden Fresh Root Veggies with Lamb

When I signed off last week, I mentioned I was about to prepare another delicious feast from Barbara's garden to accompany Australian lamb, which my friend, Catherine (above), offered to contribute to the meal.

Friday was my second to last evening at the urban farm, which means this week I'm writing at a distance, using the photos taken mostly by Julie (in orange top below) as a reminder of the wonderful, late-summer week spent in this verdant oasis just east of the city of Boulder in Colorado.

Prior to dinner, I and my three friends pottered around the property, admiring the garden, playing with the dogs, feeding the goats and collecting the day's eggs from the chicken coop. The 23 chickens laid about 18 eggs a day, most of which I boxed up for Barbara's customers, though there was always some left over for personal consumption.

For last Friday night's meal, there were no eggs involved. And because we were having lamb, I decided to serve root vegetables, plus squash, using herbs again to add flavor to each side dish

I chose root vegetables to go with the lamb in part because it's nearing the end of summer and thus these vegetables are ripe for picking in Barbara's garden, and because they're a great accompaniment to lamb.

The earthy flavors of root veggies compliment the slightly gamey flavor of lamb.

The lamb chops Catherine bought along for our dinner were very thick. Without the time to marinade them, I simply plunged the tip of a knife into the center of each chop and shoving a sliver of garlic and a spring of rosemary into each, and then I seasoned and drizzled them with a little olive oil.

I had Cindy (in blue skirt above), who is more adept than I at lighting a gas barbie, put the chops onto a medium flame until they browned, at which point she turned the flame to low.

At around the 15 min mark, she turned the flame off completely. We left the chops there for another 15 mins or so, gently cooking until they were medium done or pinkish on the inside.

Meanwhile, I finished cooking the vegetable sides:

1. caramelized shallots
2. boiled beets tossed in kumquat marmalade and chopped chives
   
3. buttered baby carrots with parsley, and
   
4. pan-fried baby squash with blossoms intact.

Check back each day this week for simple, method-recipes detailing my approach to cooking each of these sides and for more stories about my week on Barbara's urban farm.

Toward the end of this week, I'll feature a gorgeous photo Julie took of the dessert platter I prepared for the girls, and which we ate sitting around a blazing camp-style fire lit to keep the wretched mozzies at bay.

Coconut-Chili Salmon Kebabs & Beet Salad

This week I've been featuring working mum, Amy Menell.

Amy and her husband, Roger, have 3 children under 13, and two, young-adult surrogate daughters.

That's Amy, rubber-gloved hands in water, with Roger and their middle son in their kitchen. I took the photo at one of their many wonderful, informal dinner parties.

Amy loves to entertain at home; she's incredibly at ease creating in the kitchen while kids, friends, and friends' kids are gathered around.

If you're wondering how a working mum with three children (plus two surrogates) manages to grocery shop several times a week, cook most of the family's meals, plus entertain, Amy has lots of help from Roger and she doesn't stress in the kitchen, rather, she plans ahead and is very organized.

When I met her last Sunday, we went over tips for staying within budget grocery shopping, then Amy showed me her list and informed me of several of the family meals she planned to make over the next few days.

In other words, she had:

1. thought ahead,
   
2. planned a menu, and
   
3. created a grocery list accordingly.

One of the meals she planned to make (and did make) is coconut-chili salmon kebabs with beet salad. She made this on Tuesday evening, and took leftovers to work the next day for lunch. The pic below is her lunch of leftovers.

Amy bought previously frozen Sockeye salmon at WFs fish counter for this meal, it was on sale last Sunday. A cheaper option still, is the Whole Catch Sockeye which is $8.99 for a pack of two 6 oz fillets.

Unfrozen it lends itself well to a flavorful marinade, and made into kebabs, 12 ozs would feed 4 and maybe stretch to feed 6 if served with sides of veggies or salad and or rice.

Coconut-Chili Salmon with Beet Salad

1) For marinade: pour 1 can unsweetened coconut milk into a bowl, add juice of 2-3 limes, two chopped Thai chili, and stir well.
2) Optional: Add chopped raw ginger and garlic, Thai basil, a few shakes of Thai fish sauce (I say optional because these additional ingredients add complex flavor which children might find too sophisticated, so leave them out if you have kids).
3) Slice fillets of salmon into cubes and toss into marinade. Marinade for a couple hours or more, if you have time.
4) Meanwhile, wash and scrub a couple of beet bulbs (remember, buys beets with healthy green tops, that way you can eat both the red bulb and the washed and sauteed green tops--two veggies in one!)
5) Grate raw beet bulbs into a bowl. Add a few glugs of olive oil, juice of one lemon, a handful of fresh chopped mint and a tablespoon of caraway seeds. Taste-test for flavor, adding more oil, lemon or mint if desired. Again, if you have children, consider leaving out caraway seeds if their flavor is too unusual for their palates.
6) Once salmon has marinated, put cubes onto kebab skewers, brush with leftover marinade then either grill or bake in the oven for maybe 10 mins. Salmon won't take long to cook when it's cubed.
7) Consider boiling rice to go with this meal. Once cooked, stir through a few dollops of butter.

Serve family style: Place kebabs on a large platter and decorate with springs of basic. Put beet salad into a pretty serving bowl and top with springs of mint. Spoon boiled, buttered rice onto another platter or into a serving bowl.

Note: I've suggested optional ingredients to add to the marinade with children in mind. Obviously, if you do have small kids, modify the above family meal to suit their palates since there is no point pushing children to eat sophisticated flavors and textures when they're not ready.

However, it's also good to encourage children to try new flavors and textures--to eat the food you're eating.