Saturday dinner: Roasted Root Vegetables

Quinoa with roasted root vegetables: sweet potato, white Tokyo turnips, and red carrots.

Roasted root vegetables are an extremely easy winter meal. Basically any combination of veggies like turnips or rutabaga, potatoes and sweet potatoes, carrots, parsnips, beets, etc, can be tossed in olive oil (with sage, rosemary, thyme or other mint-family spices if you have them) and spread onto a baking sheet for roasting. This is done at 425F for about 45 minutes to an hour - but the only assistance you need to give it is an occasional stir. Add a couple cloves unpeeled garlic for the last half hour so that it doesn't get too burnt.

Quick Saturday Lunch

Fried spiced chickpeas and roasted acorn squash.

This is a slightly odd pairing, but it made for a nice quick lunch. Sometimes we make fried chickpeas to supplement a meal that needs a protein: it's basically a quick curry. Just heat a little peanut oil in a skillet; add whole cumin seeds and let them brown; then add ground coriander and stir for a second; next add a can of well-drained chickpeas along with a little bit each of turmeric, cayenne, and amchur (powdered dried sour mango - use lemon juice to substitute). Then stir and fry the chickpeas until they are looking slightly crisp and are warmed through. They'll reduce a tiny bit in size when they're done.

These chickpeas are crispy and nice as a side dish or on top of a salad.

Farmer's Market Haul, 10/31/09

VEGGIES:
leeks
mispoona
Yukon Gold potatoes
butternut squash (2)
ambercup squash
acorn squash
wild mustard greens
spinach (first of the year!)
purple carrots
garlic

FRUIT:
apples - several varietals

OTHER:
Womanchego cheese from Cato Corner Farm
apple cider
milk from Milk Thistle Farm
yogurt from Milk Thistle Farm
whole wheat levain bread from Our Daily Bread
more red yarn from Catskill Merino Sheep Farm (that scarf isn't quite done...!)

Friday cat blogging, vintage cuteness edition

Cell phone picture of Oscar squishing himself improbably into a tiny space in the desk; circa 2006.

Thursday: Pasta reprise

Whole-wheat penne with cauliflower-anchovy sauce.

This is another of our standby meals for a weeknight when we don't have much time to cook.

(Can you tell we've been busy lately?)

Wednesday: Weekday standard

Arctic char with quinoa and ginger/sesame Brussels sprouts.

The sprouts were blanched, then sauteed briefly with some ginger and doused with dark roasted sesame oil for flavor before serving.

Tuesday: Prettiest Root Ever

Lotus root korma, with coconut milk and cashew paste, on basmati rice.

A korma is an Indian dish with a creamy, nut-based sauce. This recipe was heavily spiced and extra rich due to its reliance on coconut milk - and it was delicious.

Our loyal readers may remember that D4SA's first encounter with the lotus plant was non-culinary in nature: we visited a few lotuses this past summer at the New York Botanical Garden. But we've actually cooked with lotus root a few times now. We find they're very versatile: they don't have a very strong flavor, but their most unique characteristic is a pleasing crunchy texture that holds up under cooking. They fit well in contexts that suit other firm, plain vegetables like jicama and potato.

Lotus roots themselves grow in a long series of segments - on the plant, they look like linked sausages. The links are sold individually or in pairs; for cooking, they are peeled and then sliced into rounds. The interior of the root naturally has a symmetrical pattern of empty chambers, resulting in the pretty lacy patterns you can see in the picture above.

You have the best chance of finding lotus root in fall or winter at Chinese or pan-Asian groceries; they also pop up in Indian grocery stores. We used to always find a bin of them caked in fresh mud (a good sign!) at a grocery in Boston Chinatown.