Saturday lunch: Saag story

 

Saag and hulled moong dal, served with basmati rice.

We're a little shocked that we haven't made saag for an entire year, since it's a classic and one of our favorite comfort foods.  It can take many forms: made with spinach (as we did here) or some other local greens; pureed or merely cooked down to a soft texture; studded with paneer, meat, or something more unconventional, like tofu.  This spinach had a particularly deep, rich flavor - it seemed to be a different variety than the usual one you find in salad mixes, as it had slightly lance-shaped, angular leaves.

Dessert was this beautiful bowl of black raspberries (not the same as blackberries), which are so soft and easily ruined in transit that they are hard to find in grocery stores, but are widely available at the farmer's market during this season:

Thursday: Jackson Pollock soup

Chilled sorrel and spinach soup (with a little drizzled yogurt).

For this recipe, the greens are simmered together for about five minutes:


















The sorrel turned a pretty olive-green color after a few minutes in the pot.

When the greens are soft, they are pureed.  Finally, the soup is reheated and thickened with a little cornstarch, and flavored with some nutmeg, lemon juice and a little zest.  As you can see above, we "decoratively" drizzled in a bit of yogurt to serve.

Christmas Dinner 3: Return of the Brisket

Philadelphia Christmas 2009, clockwise from top: beef brisket, garlic-sauteed chard, butternut squash with mustard seeds, Lukas's cabbage, spinach-mushroom kugel, and mashed potatoes with gravy.

Well, you all KNEW we had left the door open to a sequel, didn't you?

We helped Lizz's parents with Christmas dinner in Philadelphia. They were mainly responsible for the brisket, cooked with 36 cloves of garlic (from the Gefilte Variations cookbook), and the mashed potatoes. You'd think we'd have tired of kugel by now, but we really liked this variation in which we swapped out the leeks for fresh wilted spinach. The squash recipe was a particularly nice addition to this meal since it is cooked with some brown sugar and is very sweet - it filled the spot typically occupied by something like a sweet potato casserole. (Which comes with marshmallows, if you are in Ohio. Which we luckily are not.)

Dessert was once again a couple of lovely pies made by Lizz's dad: one made with real mincemeat, and one pecan.



Merry Christmas everyone!

Sunday: Steamed squash

Steamed ambercup squash on spinach greens, with walnuts and sherry-honey-shoyu dressing.

Often the skin of winter squashes isn't eaten, but in this recipe you peel off half the skin (ideally in a pretty pattern - not as easy as it sounds) before steaming the squash slices. The remaining skin ended up tender and nice to eat.

Spinach has finally started to show up at the market! - this is the first time we've bought it this year. Before we started going to farmers' markets we didn't know spinach was really a winter vegetable. Here it's used raw as a bed for the squash, though it wilts a little from the squash's heat.