Borscht

I promised to post the borscht recipe from last night... a few explanatory notes first, though. This isn't a traditional family recipe. As far as I remember, I never had borscht as a child. I'd eaten it as a college student, though, and both enjoyed it in the simple straightforward happy tummy sense, and in the somewhat more abstracted good local seasonal food sense. It is all about late autumn or winter.

I liked having a soup course with Thanksgiving. I mean, hey, it's late November, don't you want soup? Maybe it's just me... So we tried a few different things. The tortilla soup was awfully tastey, though indifferently to non- seasonal. The salmon chowder... well, that's another story. Maybe I'll post that recipe next.

Anyhow, eventually I came around to trying borscht for Thanksgiving, and that really works for me. I mean, culinarily, seasonally, nutritionally... good stuff.

Borscht of no particular lineage

One bunch beets*, chopped into cm cubes
One to two onions, similarly chopped
One leek, chopped against the grain (optional, but I like leeks)
Half a large red cabbage, or all of a small one, chopped
One good sized bunch of carrots, also chopped.
Some vinegar
Salt

Put all the vegetables except for the cabbage into a pot and just barely cover with water. Heat to a gentle boil.
Add the cabbage a double handful at a time. Mix in carefully -- it will shrink a lot as it gets cooked, so don't worry if it doesn't seem to fit at first.
Cover, and simmer for at least an hour (two is also fine, borscht is sturdy stuff)
When all the vegetables are tender, and everything is beet colored, add a glug or so of red wine vinegar (or apple cider vinegar, or whatever you have on hand) and salt to taste.

This is traditionally served with a dollop of sour cream. (I don't do dairy, however, and I think it's just fine without.)

* If you have the beet greens, they also can be chopped and added into the borscht. Ours from last night were so ravishing that we sautee'd some garlic in a little olive oil, threw in the beat greens, and then a little red wine and had them as an afternoon snack.

Salmon Chowder

Some years ago we had salmon chowder as the soup course at one of our Thanksgivings. I'd been wanting, you see, to incorporate salmon into the meal. Salmon was probably served at the first Thansgiving (not that I'm really interested in a strong connected with that) and more to the point is about as thoroughly northwest as you can get. And I like salmon.

The chowder was a great success, and I never served it at Thanksgiving again. The problem is that it is a rich, creamy wonderful soup, that really goes well with the bread we served with the first course. People at multiple servings of chowder. And then they were done. With turkey, lamb, stuffing, potatoes, and dozen other things yet to come. So, it's great chowder, but a lousy first course.

Not sure when next I'll be making this. I've made it a few times for Yule (I usually make a couple of vats of soup and lots of bread for Yule) but being off dairy does kind of take the fun out of it for me... (And while I eat fish, I don't eat it all the time.)

Salmon Chowder

A generous double handful of potatoes (yellow potatoes are my favorite)
Several stalks celery
An onion or two
1/2 to 1 head garlic
salmon (I usually pick up a decent sized filet and cut it into bite sized chunks)
whiskey
cream
roux (optional)
salt and pepper

Put potatoes in a pot, cover with water, simmer until they're just thinking about getting tender. Add onions, celery and garlic increase water if necessary, cook until tender.
Add salmon, and add a generous glug of whiskey. Simmer until the salmon is cooked, which is to say only a couple of minutes.
Add cream. More or less to taste, but hey, this is the tastey part, right?
Add a roux (or some Wondra...) if you'd like to thicken the soup.
Salt and pepper to taste.

Pecan Pie

This is mostly for my reference, as I've been tweaking the recipe a bit, and think I've come up with a variation I like.

Pecan Pie

One pie crust, half baked*
1.5-2 cups pecans
3 duck eggs (four and a half hen eggs -- I'd say four big ones or five small ones)
1/2 cup sugar
5/8 cup honey + 1/8 cup molasses (okay, 3/4 cup total, one glug molasses, the rest honey)
2 tbsp melted butter (or in my case vegan shortening, or a good oil, or whatever)
1 tsp vanilla (or something like that)

Mix together sugar, honey and molasses. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Beat in fat.

Pour pecans into pie crust. Pour everything else over them.

Bake at 375 for 50 minutes.

* I usually make a pie crust with shortening, refrigerate it so it's nice and cold, and then put it in the oven for a few minutes before putting in the pie filling. This is for a nine inch pie pan... or my smaller but much deeper pie pan.

(no subject)

I've been thinking recently that I've been missing writing about food a bit, and that it might be fun to take on some kind of food project. What I was thinking about was aiming to post once a week around the basic theme of healthy food that could be made quickly (or healthy staples that could be eaten over a long period of time). More specifically, I'd be posting about mostly but not strictly vegan food, with an emphasis on vegetables and whole grains, and again an emphasis on things that are local, seasonal, and sustainably grown. And focusing on how to eat this way on a daily basis if you can't spend half your life in the kitchen. I was kind of thinking of a mix of recipes, techniques and general discussion -- I don't think cooking is really about recipes, though they can be entertaining.

By default, this is the kind of stuff I'd just post publicly to my LJ. But it occurs to me that I know a lot of people who are working on the same kind of thing, and that it might worthwhile to create a community so that we could all post to it. OTOH, I can't see that creating another LJ community that mostly won't be used has much point, so I figured I'd throw it out to all of you.

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