What To Do With Too Much Cilantro

We let cilantro go to seed in our garden each year, so it comes up on its own year after year.  Which is a good thing for tacos or pico de gallo.  But when the cilantro becomes a jungle of cilantro, what do you do?

It's good!  The flavor is so powerful; the fragrance so pungent.  Some people don't like it and say it tastes like soap, but we like it!

I decided we'd try to find something else to do with cilantro besides the same old same olds.  We love basil pesto.  I wonder if you could make cilantro pesto?  Why, yes you can!  You'll need:

1/2 cup pecans,
2 cups cilantro
2 garlic cloves
1/2 cup olive oil
1 1/2 TBS lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1/4 cayenne pepper

This takes all of about five minutes to pull together.  Mix it up for a bit in the food processor.  It has a nice bright green color to it and is very fragrant!

The wife got some angel hair pasta going and added the cilantro pesto to it.  Delicious!

She also cut some baguettes up into little slices and toasted them to make crostini.  We spooned some cilantro pesto on the warm crostini.  That's a nice little appetizer, I tell ya!

Although the official recipe didn't call for it, I think if you'd grate up some Parmesan cheese into the pesto, it would kick the cilantro pesto into overdrive.  We're going to try that next time.  I don't think it is possible to eat all the cilantro that is out there in the garden, but this recipe gives us another option.  Warm weather will cause the cilantro to bolt to seed.  That means more cilantro for next year!

While Waiting on Our Fall Potatoes to Sprout

Our Fall crop of Irish Potatoes are in the ground.  We used small potatoes from our spring crop for the seed potatoes for the fall crop.  The spring crop has stored surprisingly well.  Firm.  No big growth from the eyes.  Beautiful.

So while we're waiting for the fall crop to grow, we might as well eat some of the spring crop, right?  Here's one of our favorite recipes using Irish Potatoes.  Years ago, I found the recipe for a side dish called Crash Hot Potatoes.  It quickly climbed to the top of the kid's favorite list.  It is simple and tasty.

15 potatoes
4 T extra virgin olive oil

Salt & Pepper

Fresh Rosemary

Heat your oven to 450 degrees.  Boil a pot of potatoes until they are tender, testing with a toothpick.  Put a little olive oil on the bottom of a baking dish and place potatoes in dish.  Get a potato masher and mash down on each potato until it barely breaks open and then turn the potato and mash again.  Drizzle the top of each potato with olive oil.  Add salt and pepper to the top of each "slightly mashed" potato and then put fresh rosemary on top.  Put in the oven for 25 minutes.

We had these for lunch after church on Sunday.  They were so good they made me want to holler.  That's something my grandmother would say if she were still around.

Perhaps by the time we eat the rest of the spring crop potatoes, the fall crop will be harvested.  That would be neat.  Year-round spuds.

By Far Our Favorite Way to Prepare Cauliflower (And Broccoli)

It's been a while since I posted a recipe, but here's one that I've got to share.  It's oven roasted cauliflower (and broccoli) with garlic and oil.  Lately, we have been harvesting a lot of cauliflower.  In fact, we have so much coming in at the same time that we'll have to blanch some (more on that later!)

Cauliflower, when it is ripe, is a beautiful vegetable.  It is a full, white snowball.  I always want to pick it at its prime.  Sometimes I'll let it go a day too late, but it's still good to eat.  In the past, we'd steam cauliflower, and that is doggone good.  But, we discovered a new way to eat it that I think is superior to steamed.  In fact, with all the cauliflower coming in, we ate it three nights in a row last week and I'm still not tired of it.

A big beautiful head of cauliflower

I'll harvest the cauliflower head off of the plant, leaving the big leaves on the stalk.  I use a big knife to separate it from the stalk.

Invariably, the cows will see me in the garden and will come running to beg.  I will relent and feed them the cauliflower greens.  Those girls love fresh garden produce.  They poke their big noses over the fence and stick out their tongues...

I'll harvest the broccoli heads, too, once they've reached their zenith, but I don't feed the cows the greens from the broccoli.  I'll tell you more about that later this week.

So, to prepare oven roasted cauliflower and broccoli, simply break up heads of broccoli and cauliflower into florets.  Don't toss the stalks.  They are good eating, too!  Preheat your oven to 450 degrees.  Layer the broccoli and cauliflower on a baking sheet.  Take a quarter cup of coconut oil and drizzle over the top of the broccoli and cauliflower and toss to coat.  Liberally add sea salt and cracked black pepper and mince 5 cloves of garlic.  Sprinkle it all over the top and toss some more.  Put into the oven and roast for 15 minutes.  Stir and continue roasting for an additional 10 minutes.

Then take out and serve.  I double dog dare you not to taste before you spoon some onto your plate.

I'm convinced it cannot be done!

Our Supper Was Hacked By The Russians!

Russians!  We have had a nice crop of beets this year.  Almost too many to eat. We've been pickling them and roasting them.  We were looking for another recipe to use up some of the bumper crop of beets and I happened to be talking to someone I work with who lived in Ukraine while she was a missionary.  She began telling me that she developed a taste for a Russian dish while there called Borscht. One of the main ingredients is beets and she promised me she would send the recipe.  Sooo....

I picked 3 medium beets.  These are bull's blood beets.

The recipe she gave me does not call for the tops so those go to the chickens.  They ate up the beet tops quickly.

I came in and peeled the beets.  I love the deep red color of beets.

I was told that there are many variations of borscht, but this one is the one that my friend got from the mission in Ukraine.  Here are the rest of the ingredients besides beets:
1 whole chicken, deboned (you can also use beef shank or pork roast)
1/2 cabbage shredded
2 large carrots
3 medium potatoes
Onion
3 cloves of garlic
2 bay leaf
1 can tomato paste
salt
sunflower oil
fresh dill chopped
sour cream

Make broth by placing the chicken in a large pot and bringing to a boil, reduce heat, cover until meat is tender, approximately 1 1/2 hours.  Debone the chicken.  Clean the beets and put in a pot with water covering them.  Boil until tender, once done grate them and set them aside.

A very important thing to do while cooking borscht is to make a zazharka (fry up). While the meat is boiling, saute in sunflower oil, grated carrots & chopped onion, adding the tomato paste to the vegetables after they are tender.

Zazharka

Chop up the chicken after de-boning and put into the pot of broth along with potatoes and cabbage.  When the cabbage is tender, add the carrot mix back to the broth, along with the grated beets.  Add bay leaf, garlic, chopped dill and salt. Simmer for 1 1/2 hours.

This is a VERY RED dish!

I served mine up in a white bowl.

We were told by my friend at work to add a dollop of sour cream to the bowl.  Tricia really likes sour cream, so she added it and stirred.

Borscht is a hearty, tasty soup.  We like trying new things and this helps us to use up some of our inventory of beets.  It was my first time eating borscht and I must say I was surprised and I really liked it.  It seems to get better each day.  I can see how this is a dish, like gumbo, that is extra tasty and nourishing on a very cold day.

Next beet recipe we'll try is a roasted beet hummus...

Another Delicious Use for our Bountiful Supply of Satsumas

With a huge supply of citrus, we are juicing a lot and freezing for later use.  The mild winter means that we still have lots of fresh lettuce in the garden and that prompted me to look around for a recipe for a Satsuma Vinaigrette and I found a recipe HERE.  It was very easy to make and all with ingredients that we had on hand (I did substitute apple cider vinegar for red wine vinegar and subbed olive oil for canola oil):

• 4 Satsumas (juiced, yielding roughly 1/2 cup juice)
• 2 Tablespoons Apple Cider Vinegar
• 1/2 teaspoon sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon coarse ground pepper
• 1/4 cup olive oil

Here are all the ingredients laid out and ready to put together lickety split:

Ingredients for making Satsuma Vinaigrette

Satsumas are very juicy.  Because they are so easy to peel, we normally peel them and eat them.  They are especially tasty if they are chilled.  I think this was the first time I ever juiced a satsuma.

The not-so-arduous task of juicing a satsuma

Once I juiced all four satsumas, I poured the bright orange nectar into the salad dressing container.

Satsuma Juice

To that, I added 2 Tablespoons apple cider vinegar,:

A half teaspoon sugar:

Some fresh ground pepper:

Some salt:

And a quarter cup of olive oil:

I ran out to the garden and picked some Black Seeded Simpson Lettuce and (not shown) some Red Romaine that is growing on the row next to the bok choy:

I washed the lettuce up to remove dust, leaves and critters that sometimes stow away on the fresh-picked lettuce.  Then I shook up the vinaigrette to mix up all the flavors.  I served up a nice plate of fresh salad and drizzled some of the vinaigrette on top.

The vinaigrette was both sweet and tangy with a nice citrus flavor.  It is one of those dressings that you want to have a piece of bread to sop up the vinaigrette that remains on your plate after the salad is gone.  This recipe is a keeper!

Learning to Like Beef Liver!

There are many foods that I had an aversion to when I was younger that I have completely changed my mind on and now absolutely love them - Brussels Sprouts, spinach, mustard greens, are a few that come to mind. There are some food items that I avoided as a kid, like mayonnaise, that I can actually eat in moderation now.

There are a few foods that I am desperately trying to like, but haven't been able to coax my taste buds into enjoying them yet.  Raw tomatoes is one of those things.  I fully realize that admitting to not liking to eat a homegrown tomato, freshly picked and sliced with salt and pepper is akin to a blasphemous or heretical statement.  I can devour raw tomatoes in Pico de Gallo and cooked tomatoes in any form, but sliced, raw tomatoes have not beholden themselves to my taste buds-Yet! But I'll keep trying.

Organ meats are a mixed bag with me.  Chicken livers are wonderful.  It is such a treat to have fresh chicken livers for supper, fried in butter in a cast iron skillet.  I love them.  Beef liver?  Well, that is another matter altogether - until last week.  As noted in THIS POST we butchered one of our grass-fed steers and have all the organ meats - one of those being beef liver.  We figured we'd give it a try and Tricia discovered THIS RECIPE: Beef Liver with Fig, Mushroom and Caramelized Onion Compote.  It came from a blog called the Healthy Foodie.  We'll walk through the steps and review at the end of the post. Here are the ingredients:

INGREDIENTS

• 375g beef liver, sliced
• The juice of 1 lemon
• 2 tsp arrowroot flour (we used regular AP flour)
• ½ tsp Himalayan salt (we used regular salt)
• ½ tsp freshly ground black pepper
• 4 slices smoked bacon, cut crosswise into ½" pieces (we omitted the bacon... GASP!)
• 2 large onions, sliced
• 200g mushrooms, sliced
• 4 dried figs, chopped
• ¼ tsp Himalayan salt (we used regular salt)
• ½ tsp freshly ground black pepper
• 2 sprigs fresh sage, chopped (no sage available)
• 2 tbsp white balsamic vinegar (we used apple cider vinegar)
• 1/4 cup water

Now, we altered the recipe to include only things we had on hand, making the substitutions shown above in parenthesis and also adding butter instead of bacon grease.  First, marinate the liver in the juice of a lemon for a day in the fridge, then while your skillet is heating up with butter, wash off the liver under running water and pat the liver dry.

Washing the beef liver.  Does not look appetizing - At All!

Mix the flour, salt and pepper in a bowl and dredge the liver in the flour//spice mixture until thoroughly coated.

Dredging with flour

When the skillet is really hot, add the liver to the sizzling butter and sear it for around a minute.  Note that the color of the beef liver is an unappealing drab grey.

Searing side 1

Then flip to the other side to allow a good sear on the reverse side.  This takes about a minute as well. You'll note that they turn a nice golden brown.

Searing side 2

Remove the liver to a covered plate to keep it warm.  Now go to work on making your caramelized onion & fig compote.  Over medium high heat, add more butter and add two large onions sliced to the skillet.  Allow them to cook down for a a bit.

Putting the onions on

After allowing the onions to caramelize for about 10 minutes, we added to the onions the mushrooms and then our own dried figs that we showed you that we made in THIS POST.  

Adding mushrooms and dried figs to the mix

Finally we added the apple cider vinegar and water, stir and cook for a minute or so until the liquid is evaporated.

Apple Cider Vinegar joins the party

Then we place the liver back into the skillet atop the onion, fig, and mushroom compote, allowing the liver to heat back up after its siesta in the plate.

The livers are re-introduced

We'll turn the heat off while the flavors mesh together and get cozy.  I spooned some of the onions, mushrooms, and figs on top of the beef liver so they could get to know each other better.

Ready to serve!

The review: It would be a misleading statement if I were to tell you that I didn't have some hesitation in eating it.  It was Beef Liver, after all, a dish that has a negative perception in my mind, for reasons unknown to me.  However, the color was right, the smell was good and the caramelized onions, mushrooms and figs beckoned me to give it a shot.

I placed a piece of the liver on my plate and heaped the onion, mushroom, and fig compote on top, thinking that the 'candy' would mask the underlying liver.  First bite: The liver was surprisingly tender.  I was expecting a texture similar to a shoe sole, but it was anything but.  I learned that it is very important not to overcook beef liver as it gets tough.  The onion, mushroom, and fig compote who played a supporting role, risked over-shadowing the lead actor with its delicious and sweet (thanks to the figs) taste.  A fork-full of liver and the compote was a match made in heaven, though, complimenting one another.  This was a hit at our house.  Two thumbs up from Tricia and I with an abstaining vote from Benjamin (Ha!)  Russ loved it too and actually brought all the leftovers back to college with him along with a package of liver for him to cook while at college.

Not only is beef liver good, but it is good for you!  Here's what the Weston A. Price Foundation says about it:

So what makes liver so wonderful? Quite simply, it contains more nutrients, gram for gram, than any other food. In summary, liver provides:

• An excellent source of high-quality protein
• Nature’s most concentrated source of vitamin A
• All the B vitamins in abundance, particularly vitamin B12
• One of our best sources of folic acid
• A highly usable form of iron
• Trace elements such as copper, zinc and chromium; liver is our best source of copper
• An unidentified anti-fatigue factor
• CoQ10, a nutrient that is especially important for cardio-vascular function
• A good source of purines, nitrogen-containing compounds that serve as precursors for DNA and RNA.

We approve of this dish and will make it often.  I can honestly say I now like beef liver!  Perhaps next summer I'll be able to say the same for homegrown tomatoes???

Making Quiche

Back in the 80's there was a popular book called, "Real Men Don't Eat Quiche" that made fun of male stereotypes.  I have to come clean with you.  I'm a man.  I'm real.  I eat quiche.  There, I got that out of the way.

After Thanksgiving, who isn't looking for new and exciting ways to get rid of the leftover turkey?  Turkey sandwich?  Yawn.  We thought we'd make the bird disappear by incorporating it into one of the more popular dishes in our home - the quiche, a french dish that is an open faced pastry or pie filled with cheese, meat, eggs, and vegetables.  We normally make a broccoli and chicken quiche, but this time, we thought we'd deviate and use chopped up turkey coupled with fresh mustard greens from the garden.  That's the neat thing about this dish - it is versatile, you can throw anything you'd like in it - bacon, mushrooms, tomatoes, just try whatever is fresh in your garden at the moment.

So first I went out to the garden and selected a nice handful of mustard greens, brought them inside and washed them up real good and chopped them.


Fresh mustard greens

For this recipe, Tricia uses a cookbook by Jude Theriot called La Cuisine Cajun as a starting point, but I think she alters a few ingredients:

We heated up a cast iron dutch oven with some butter and chopped onions in the bottom and then added the mustard greens.  I'll admit, I sampled some straight from the pot.  Good stuff!  When I was younger, I didn't like greens.  Now, wow, I didn't know what I was missing.  I could serve this up on some cornbread right now and be happy, but these mustard greens have a "higher calling."



Pot of sauteed mustard greens

So then Tricia made up a homemade pie crust and added the chopped up remains of the Thanksgiving turkey, a cup of the sauteed mustard greens, 2 tablespoons of slivered almonds, 1/2 cup of grated Parmesan cheese, 1/2 cup of Mozzarella cheese and 1 cup of grated Swiss cheese.



A good meal starting to come together

We then take some eggs from our hens that Russ just gathered from their nests and Tricia broke up 5 of them into a Pyrex measuring cup.

If you're gonna make quiche, you gotta break a few eggs

Then we add a cup of Daisy's fresh raw milk to the eggs and scramble it all up real good.


 A heaping cup full of Daisy

To this developing concoction of culinary goodness, we add the spices: Tabasco sauce, Worcestershire sauce, salt, pepper, curry powder, nutmeg.  Be creative.  Your taste buds will thank you for it.

Adding the spices

Then pour into your pie shell.  Preheat your oven to 375 and cook for 30 minutes or until you can slide a butter knife in and it comes out dry.  In the picture below, I'm peeking in the oven, anticipating the first slice.


Almost done

And here is the finished product, ready for consumption.  We accomplished our goal:  The Thanksgiving turkey is gone and in a few short minutes, so will this quiche.  The cookbook says it feeds 6, but who are we kidding?  I'm going to go ahead and loosen my belt up a notch and eat about a third of it all by myself!


"Honey, can you bring me the pie serving thingy and a fork?"

 Gotta run.  Bon Apetit!