Sunday: Just a fluke

Broiled fluke with baby mustard greens and quinoa.

Back to our usual fish meal, though the lovely mustard green mix from Monkshood Nursery livened things up a bit.

Tuesday: Holiday Antidote

Mustard greens sauteed with ginger and topped with fried cashews, served on quinoa.

Having finally finished the first batch of Christmas leftovers, the last thing we wanted was another rich meal.

Saturday: The "C" word

Celeriac-pink potato mash on field mustard bed with roasted pumpkin seeds.

You might notice one very common grocery store vegetable which is missing from our list of tags at right...celery. Lizz has hated celery passionately for as long as she can remember, so it is basically banned from our house. We have, however, enacted a celeriac amnesty policy.

What is celeriac, you ask? Well, it's otherwise known as "celery root." It is in fact a variety of celery grown for its globe-shaped, knobby underground root rather than the stalk, and it is the default form of celery in some countries, including France. The taste is celery-esque, but milder and a bit earthier, and it has a uniform fine texture similar to that of kohlrabi - none of the watery stringiness of stalk celery.

This is a dairy-free mash of celeriac and potatoes. Both vegetables are peeled and cut into chunks, then boiled for 25 minutes until soft. Finally they're mashed with just a little added oil. We sauteed a couple bunches of wild field mustard in olive oil and used them as a bed; they provided a nice sharp contrast.

Tuesday: Mahanandi's "hoppin' john"

"Indian hoppin' john" from Mahanandi.

We both love mustard greens and are always tempted by them at the market, but sometimes have trouble finding dishes that can handle their potency. Although we've never made the Southern recipe this is based on, we really liked Mahanandi's take on it.

This meal incorporated a tomato that had many an admirer during its time on our kitchen table. We wanted to share it with the rest of you, our faithful readers:


Most amazing tomato ever

Tuesday: Minimalist mustard pasta

Whole wheat pasta with mustard greens and chevre.

This is one of those recipes where you try to just take the edge off of red mustard greens without losing their wonderful bite: half the slivered greens were tossed in to boil for a couple seconds with the pasta just before it was drained, and half were added raw along with the goat cheese when the dish was assembled.

Saturday sandwiches (also, alliteration)

Post-greenmarketing sandwiches: green Southern curly and red mustard greens, Kirby cukes, Brandywine heirloom tomatoes, "womanchego" cheese, and whole-grain mustard on whole wheat levain bread. (With this week's pretty fruit in the background.)

For anyone who's wondering, "levain" is a bread made from a pre-fermented starter, much like sourdough, so no yeast is added.

Monday: Mustard Night

Spicy gingered mustard greens, tofu sauteed with soy sauce and garlic scapes, and brown rice.

Garlic scapes, the green shoots of young garlic bulbs, have to be removed to enable the bulbs to continue growing. Scapes look a bit like curly scallions, but they have a definite garlic flavor. They can be substituted for garlic in stir fries, salads, and other dishes. We had been slowly working our way through a pound of scapes that we bought several weeks ago, which held up admirably:



As for the mustard greens: we bought the curly-leafed variety, which is a beautiful bright green in color. This is one of our favorite preparations for this type of mustard green. Grated ginger and carrot (we used yellow and purple, as you can see below) are sauteed in sesame oil and then the greens are wilted along with sesame seeds. Finally, a honey-miso-rice vinegar-soy sauce paste is added and everything is tossed together.

Here's the mise-en-scène:



Dramatic sesame seed close-up:

Dinners this week

Pardon the prolonged absence, faithful readers. We've been too busy cooking up a storm to actually... update the blog about our cooking. Here's what we've cooked in the past week:


Monday, 7-6-09: White bean croquettes with mashed purple heirloom potatoes




Tuesday 7-7-09: Fresh fava beans sauteed with thyme and sardine-caper toast




Wednesday 7-8-09: Hake with red chard and couscous


Thursday 7-9-09: Curry of golden beet, red cabbage and adzuki beans




Friday 7-10-09: Garlic scape omelettes with a purslane, arugula, and chickpea salad




Saturday 7-11-09: White bean salad with red quinoa and sauteed field mustard greens




Other miscellaneous cooking: a purslane frittata, a blackcurrant cake (sort of a coffee-cake style recipe, using no leavening), and a green gooseberry crumble. Lots of baked goods lately for all of the sour berries that are in season - we have been using local stone-milled pastry flour from Wild Hive Farm.