Simple and Delicious Roasted Leek, Potato, and Garlic Soup

There are just 4 ingredients in this recipe besides a little olive oil and salt and pepper.  So simple, yet so delicious.  Me raving over anything made with potatoes is really unusual, so this must be good!

I made this soup tonight for a holiday party in 2 weeks and hope it is as good after being frozen as it is now.  It turned a butter yellow color, and tastes buttery and creamy,  yet has no butter or cream in it.  It would be vegan if it wasn't for the homemade turkey bone broth.  I could have used vegetable broth, but it may be this particular turkey broth is what made this soup so good.  Or it could be the locally grown Norwis Potatoes from the Carrot Barn in Schoharie, or our own-grown Leeks and German White Garlic.  Other than that, the only other ingredients were a little bit of olive oil and dash of sea salt and pepper.   These directions are exactly what I used, but no reason these particular varieties need to be used-I am sure it would be good with vegetable broth, and different kinds of potatoes and garlic.

This is a double recipe, so cut in half if you don't want feed 2 for dinner and 10 cups more.

Preheat oven to 400 or 425 degrees.
To large roasting pan add:

• 5 lbs norwis potatoes, peeled and cubed small (about 3/4 inch) (not all of the potatoes fit in my pan)
• 5 cups leeks, sliced and diced
• 2 german white garlic heads.  I removed the paper because of dirt, but it would be easier to leave cloves connected and slice off top so cloves stay together.  These garlic each had 4 giant cloves-6 cloves went into the roasting pan. 
• olive oil
• sea salt

Pour some olive oil on the vegetables and mix with hands till all coated.  Sprinkle with a little sea salt.  (I didn't measure- 2-4 TBSP of olive oil?)

Put in oven, stir occasionally, roast until done (everything is soft and smells good- 30-40 minutes?)
While the veggies are in the oven, Heat in Large Soup Pot:

• 12 cups reconstituted homemade Turkey Broth- about 12 large ice cube sized frozen cubes, plus water.
• 2 Bay Leaves
• 2 Garlic Cloves, minced (or minced tops cut from garlic heads).
• When hot, add any potatoes that wouldn't fit in the roasting pan.  In my case, that was about 1.5 - 2 pounds.

Simmer until potatoes are soft.  Remove the bay leaves.
The roasted vegetables should be done about the same time.

• Remove the roasted garlic first. 
• Add the roasted vegetables to the soup pot.  
• Squish some of the roasted garlic into the soup.  I reserved 2 of garlic roasted garlic cloves because I didn't want it to be too garlicky.
• Deglaze the roasting pan by adding a cup of water and heating it on the stove just enough so the  browned bits detach from the roasting pan and color the water.  Add this liquid to the soup pot. 
• Stir and simmer until the flavors start coming together.
• Add a little fresh finely ground black pepper (I would probably use white pepper next time) and more sea salt if needed.
• Blend with an immersion blender.  Stop whenever it is consistency you want.  I kept blending until really smooth. 

I was going to add sour cream or milk to it (later to the portions being frozen), but it was so creamy and delicious as is, it didn't need anything more.

Serve with choice of toppings typical for baked potatoes - fresh chives, shredded cheddar cheese, bacon bits, and sour cream.

Note: The turkey bone broth was made from the carcass of our 20 pound fresh Thanksgiving Turkey we ordered from Honest Weight from a farm in PA that was certified as humanely raised.  What a difference than the mass-market frozen turkeys. Slowly simmered for about three hours with some carrots, celery, and onion, it made fantastic broth with no fat or scum at all.   I think it was $2.50/lb. Worth the $50 to feed the family on Thanksgiving and send everyone home with lots of leftover turkey.

Strawberry Orange Spinach Salad with Pecans

Spinach fresh from the Spring garden doesn't need any embellishment, but I made this oil-free and pretty strawberry-orange dressing for it tonight that was light and naturally sweet.

In food processor, pulverize 1 orange.   Add 1 tsp chia seeds, 2 tsp apple cider vinegar, and 3-4 strawberries.  Add water as needed to consistency.  I added about 1/4 cup water.

Dice 1/2 a red onion and slice a few strawberries onto the raw spinach leaves. Add salad dressing.  I was going to add pecans but didn't remember until after I starting eating it. It was good either way.

If just orange juice was used, the chia seeds would act as a gel to hold the dressing together.  By using the whole orange, the chia seeds weren't needed for that purpose, but are still good for nutrition (rich is omega 3 fatty acids- the good kind).

Vegan Cornbread

I have finally created a cornbread recipe I like, by combining the best of two vegan cornbread recipes.    It was moist with great texture warm out of the oven. It was basically this vegan-cornbread from healthy family and home combined with the flax seed and water technique from vinogirl's vegan cornbread on food.com

• 6 T water 
• 2 T ground flax seed

1. Boil water in a small saucepan, add ground flax seed, and simmer 3 minutes. Remove from heat.

2. In medium bowl, combine and set aside:

• 2 cups cornmeal (non-GMO)
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 T aluminum-free baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt (pink himalayan if you have it)

3. In another bowl, mix together:

• 1.75 cups almond milk
• 2 tsp apple cider vinegar (or lemon juice)
• 1/3 cup coconut oil (melted in the 8x8 pan while the oven is preheating).
• 2 T maple syrup or other sweetener

4. Add the flax seed mixture to the wet ingredients and then mix wet and dry ingredients together. Batter will be thick.

5. Transfer to 8 x 8 inch baking pan that has been slightly oiled from the coconut oil.

6. Bake at 350 degrees for 30-35 minutes.  Cool 10 minutes.

Juicing and Recipes to use the Leftover Vegetable Pulp

The pulp from the first vegetable juicing this week went to feed the worms busily making compost. Tonight I decided to make something with the second batch of juice. Half a cup went into a millet and cherry tomato salad because I cooked 3 times as much millet as I needed the other day.  1.5 cups went into a quick bread recipe (which was not very good) First the juice recipe.

The basic Recipe for Beet/Carrot/Ginger Juice

1/4 bunch of fresh parsley (optional)
a few cups of kale, dandelion greens or stems, beet greens or stems (optional)
5 carrots
1 small - medium beet
3 -5 celery stalks
1 cucumber
1 apple, cored, medium
2 inches fresh ginger

This will produce 25-30 oz of juice.  Drink half right away, chill the rest and drink within 12 hours.
It also produces about 2 cups of vegetable pulp. I ran it through the food processor to smooth out some dandelion stems and it turned a beautiful red-purple color.

Not knowing what I was doing I made the first millet recipe I saw which called for cooking 2.5 cups of millet in 4 cups of chicken broth.  The recipe that said this would serve 6 produced 10 cups of millet!

After we each ate 1/2 cup of millet with olive oil, parsley, lemon juice and were not impressed, the rest went into the fridge and I did a little research about millet. 1 cup dry = 4 cups cooked which is still about 6 servings-millet is dense.  Fortunately there are lots of things to do with millet, if not vegetable pulp and millet.

Millet, Beet-Carrot Pulp, and Tomato Salad

• 3/4 cup leftover millet cooked in chicken broth with olive oil, lemon and parsley, cold
• 1/2 cup beet-carrot pulp leftover from juicing
• fresh parsley
• olive oil
• rice vinegar
• orange cherry tomatoes, sliced in half

This salad was much better than the original plain millet recipe with just olive oil, lemon, and parsley.  However, this is not something I would repeat again. One or two servings was good for a lifetime.  Same for the Quick Bread.  Vegetable pulp is really best served to the worms.

Beet-Carrot Pulp Quick Bread 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Grease a 9" bread loaf pan.

In one bowl, combine

• 1.5 cups flour  (I used 1 c white whole wheat and 1/2 c white flour)
• 1.5 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 3 T flax seed flour (because I did not add any oil in next step. I did not add oil because I knew I would put butter on my slice!)

In another bowl, stir to combine

• 1/4 - 1/2 cup mashed banana (almost 1 whole banana) or similar amount of applesauce or oil
• 1/4 cup ginger sugar (or other sweetener, such as white or brown sugar, honey or agave or stevia blend)  Next time, add a little more sweetener, up to 1/2 cup.
• 2 T blackstrap molasses 
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 eggs
• 1.5 cups vegetable pulp
• 1/4 cup coconut milk (or any milk type liquid)
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts (or other nut)- add nuts after combining with the flour.

Stir the dry mix into the wet mix.  It will be thick, but a little more milk may be needed to get the flour to combine.  Stir in 1/2 cup chopped nuts. Bake 45 minutes or until done.

The molasses made it very dark, it would have been a prettier red color without the molasses, but blackstrap molasses has iron and other nutrients I wanted to include in the bread. The quick bread came out a little too "virtuous". It could benefit from a bit more sweetener. Although it was moist, it was a bit dense and has the texture that breads can have without oil or butter. On the other hand, because it isn't fabulously good, we won't be tempted to eat more than 1 slice at a time.

Inspirations for this recipe came from the NYTimes for the enormous amount of cooked millet, Erin at Plantoeat.com for ideas for using juicer pulp, especially her link to the whole-wheat-zucchini-or-carrot-bread receipe, and also to hillbillyhousewife for her pulp bread recipe that confirmed for me that I could  add milk and replace the oil with bananas.  I decided to also add flax seed flour to replace 1 T of oil.  It is my fault that I used less sweetener and than both these recipes and to use black strap molasses because I thought that since my pulp had sweetness from the carrots, beets, and apple, which a regular zucchini recipe would not have, that it would be sweet enough. It is not sweet at all, which is a good thing after all.

Sometime when I have pulp and have time, I want to make Genas Juice Pulp Crackers.  Although Gena used a dehydrator to make the crackers, at Plantoeat, she wrote that she uses her oven at the lowest possible setting for 12 hours to make them almost dry, then cuts them with kitchen shears, and then bake another hour or two until crispy. Change spices to suit preference.

Thai Bok Choy Salad with Ginger Peanut Sauce

This recipe came from here- thai-bok-choy-salad with ginger peanut dressing, except I did not add ramen noodles, sesame seeds or peanuts.  I did marinate the chicken in her Ginger Soy marinade from another of her recipes, but it is not necessary.  The day I made this I happened to have exactly 1 cup of fresh coconut milk from a green Thai coconut that I had finally gotten around to opening.  I put all of the coconut flesh (which is very little) with a bit of the coconut water in the food processor and it made 1 cup coconut milk-just enough for the dressing.

Thai Bok Choy Salad
5-6 cups thinly slice baby bok choy (or chinese napa cabbage)
6-8 radishes, thinly sliced
2 carrots, julienned
2-3 green onions, thinly sliced
2-3 cups cooked chicken (optional)
Optional: halved grape tomatoes, bean sprouts, cucumbers, jicama

Thai Ginger Peanut Dressing
8 oz light coconut milk
1/4 natural peanut butter
1/4 T fish sauce
2 T Thai red curry paste
1 T brown sugar or honey
1 t rice vinegar
1 t lime juice
2-3 tsp minced fresh ginger
1 T soy sauce
1/2 tsp Sriracha sauce or cayenne

Vegetable Tian

 I just realized that I had not posted the prettiest vegetable dish made from the 2012 garden. 

I made this Vegetable Tian Sept 9, 2012, when for the first and only time ever, our garden produced a green zucchini, a yellow squash, and tomatoes, all with the same diameter.

Underneath the summer squash and tomatoes are sautéed onions, garlic, and sweet red pepper (a little salt and pepper). On top, fresh thyme and rosemary drizzled with olive oil.

Cover with foil and bake for 30 minutes at 350-375 degrees, remove foil, add a sprinkling of fresh grated parmesan cheese on top, and bake for 10-15 minutes more.

This tasted wonderful-so fresh! Most recipes taste great when the ingredients are picked from the backyard garden minutes before cooking, but this one is especially pretty. Its good looks didn't stop the two of us from devouring almost the whole thing at once.

Update: Aug 22, 2013.  While not quite as equally sized as last year, today's garden brought forth one yellow squash, one green zucchini, one striped zucchini, and some tomatoes that were sort of close in size.  It is in the oven now. mmm.

March of the Penguins

I made these cute appetizers several times between Christmas Eve and New Years Day.   They take a lot of time to assemble, but it goes quicker if you cut all the olives and roasted peppers and let them dry on paper towels while you cut the carrot feet and beaks, and then assemble in assembly line fashion.  The penguins are sitting on turnip skis or ice floes in 1 picture. In the other picture, they are adoring a Broccolini Christmas Tree!  Cream cheese at room temperature with a little butter added and a few seconds in the microwave will help it spread easier into the penguin's olive tummy. Large olive for  body and small olive for head.

Raw Beet Salad

My raw beet salad is so simple - lemon juice and parsley with shredded beets.  There are other recipes out there that have a more traditional dressing with olive oil, perhaps dijon mustard or garlic, but I like the acidic balance the freshly squeezed lemon juice provides to the sweetness of the beets without any other mediators except fresh parsley.  A very healthy, simple, quick salad.

Ginger Molasses Cake

The first recipe I posted here was a slight adaptation of a ginger sour cream bundt cake with ginger-infused strawberries.  My latest favorite ginger cake uses molasses and is a slight adaptation of David Leibovitz's Fresh Ginger Cake. My version replaces 1/2 the oil with homemade applesauce, replaces some of the white flour with coconut flour, replaces the sugar with a stevia baking blend.  The gingered strawberries from my original recipe are replaced with a strawberry-ginger jam that is used as frosting.
Because this recipe uses so much molasses, it also calls for baking soda dissolved in boiling water to counteract the acidity of the molasses.  Molasses is less sweet and has more vitamins and minerals than pure cane sugar.

The easiest method to grate ginger is to freeze it and then send through a food processor. It works even unfrozen.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Butter a 9x 3 round pan, or a 8inch square pan or a heart shaped pan.  There may be too much batter for the last 2 options, so be prepared to make a cupcake or two.
Sprinkle turbinado sugar in the pan.

Sift together:

• 2 cups flour
• 1/2 cup coconut flour
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ground cloves
• 1/4 to 1/2 ground black pepper

Mix together:

• 3/4-1 cup mild molasses (DL's recipe called for 1 cup)
• 1/4 c Truvia Baking Blend (stevia and sugar mix) 
• 1/4 cup Truvia = 1/2 c sugar. (DL's recipe called for 1 cup sugar) I added a few Tablespoons of ginger sugar (fell off the candied ginger) 
• 1/2 cup peanut oil 
• 1/2 cup applesauce 
• 4 oz grated ginger 
• 2 eggs, room temperature

Add baking soda to boiling water and then add it to the molasses mixture.

• 1 cup boiling water
• 2 tsp baking soda

Stir the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients.
Pour into prepared pan.

Bake at 350 degrees for about 50 minutes or until cake springs back when pressed lightly or inserted toothpick comes out clean.

Serve with gingered strawberry jam and greek or plain yogurt.

Note: the heart shape cake pictured is actually a more traditional ginger cake I baked for Phil's parents with less molasses, which is why it is lighter in color than the slices on the left.  I forgot to take a picture of the whole molasses cake both times I made it.  The first time I baked it in a square pan and Phil and I ate the whole thing ourselves!  The second time I baked it in a heart-shaped pan and brought it to work on Valentine's Day.  There was too much batter to fit, so the extra made 3 cupcakes which was just the right amount for two people.

Smoky Orange Chili with sweet potato, beans, beef

While experimenting with the recently purchased smoked paprika and dried chipotle chili peppers, and  trying to empty the cupboards and freezer of ingredients that needed to be used, I came up with this unique chili.  Adding orange zest and corn balanced the smokiness of the paprika and chipotle that I am not quite used to yet.

Saute: 1 pound ground beef in large pot. Remove cooked beef and and sauté:

Large red onion, diced

2 red or green peppers, diced

3 garlic cloves, diced

Add spices:

1 T chili powder

2 tsp cumin

2 tsp smoked paprika

1/2 dried chipotle pepper, seeds removed, diced

Add: 

Large sweet potato, diced.  

Red kidney beans, a very large can and a small can (about 40 oz and 15 oz), rinsed and drained.

Tomatoes, 1 qt of home-canned tomatoes and 1 large can (28 oz) of diced tomatoes.

Add the cooked ground beef back into the pot.

The Correctors: Orange Zest and Corn

After simmering for a while, I decided it had too much of a smoky flavor for my taste.  There was 1 small orange wasting away in the bin. I added the zest and juice from the little orange to the chili and simmered it for about 30 minutes more.  

Add 2 cups frozen corn and simmer until heated through, about 15 minutes more. Let it sit for a little while. 

The orange zest and the sweetness of the corn mellowed out the smokiness. I liked it even better the next day.