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Beet (and other) Röstis

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One of the things that we often want in cooking for one (just as in cooking for four or six) is fast and easy, and a technique that can be applied to a number of dishes. I’ve mentioned steam-sauté as a great way to cook vegetables quickly–but here are some other ideas for quick cooking.

Beets image from Swallowtail Garden seeds

beets

Beets can normally take quite some time to cook since they are dense and hard.  One of the ways to speed up cooking is by grating or shredding a dense vegetable–think about hash browns!  You can use a similar technique with beets (or carrots, parsnips, cabbage)–cut them into small pieces so that they will cook more quickly.  Here is an example adapted from Marion Morash’s Victory Garden Cookbook: 

Grated Sautéed  Beets

Ingredients

  • 4 medium beets
  • 4 tablespoons butter, or olive oil
  • Fresh lemon juice
  • Salt and fresh-ground black pepper
  • Chopped fresh dill weed or parsley

Preparation

  • Wash, peel, and coarsely grate beets (If small and tender, peeling is not necessary)
  • Melt butter in a covered frying pan.
  • Add beets, and stir to cover with butter or oil.
  • Cover and cook for about 10 minutes, until just tender.  (You could add a bit of water or stock–like steam-sauté technique if needed to keep from burning.)
  • Season with lemon, salt and pepper and serve.

Although this will serve four, it’s easy to cut this down to a single-serving size–there’s really nothing to measure or adjust–it’s easy to eyeball the amount of butter and quantity of beets needed.  What could be simpler!

If you want to get just a bit fancier with your veggies, you could make röstis.  This gives you different flavor and texture for very little extra effort.

 You’ve probably heard of rösti–maybe just as “potato pancakes”.  A potato rösti at its simplest is just grated (shredded) potato, mixed with a little flour to help hold the potatoes together (and maybe some Parmigiano-Reggiano), which is sautéed  in a little butter until tender, brown, and crispy.  It’s simple, quick, and yummy–and even better, it’s easily made for one or two people as it’s really not a fussy recipe:  small for a side dish, or a bit larger for a main course.

Here is a basic potato rösti recipe from Mark Bittman’s Food Matters cookbook Kindle location 1464).  This recipe makes four substantial servings, or 12 snack size röstis. Röstis are typically shaped into a cake, but can also be baked in muffin tins or on a cookie sheet

Potato-Parmesan Rösti

Ingredients

  • 1/4 cup olive oil, plus extra for greasing pan and your hands.
  • 1-1/2 pounds waxy potatoes (new potatoes, or red potatoes)
  • 1 onion
  • 1 tablespoon coarsely chopped fresh rosemary or thyme
  • 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
  • 1 tablespoon whole wheat flour
  • salt and fresh-ground black pepper

Preparation

  • Heat oven to 350° F and grease nonstick muffin tins or backing sheet.
  • Grate the potatoes and onion (food processor, or by hand).
  • Squeeze dry with paper towels.
  • Put in bowl, add Parmesan, flour, and oil (if baking–omit if sautéing).
  • Sprinkle with salt and pepper.
  • Divide between muffin tins and press down, or press into cakes.
  • Bake or sauté until crisp and golden–about 30 minutes.
  • Let cool for 10 minutes before removing from pan.
  • Serve warm or at room temperature.

Obviously, this technique will work well with other vegetables–such as beets, carrots, squash, cabbage.  You can see that this is easily cut down for a single serving: you’ll want about one-fourth this amount:  1 tablespoon oil, 6 ounces potato, 1/4 onion, a healthy pinch of rosemary, 2 tablespoons Parmesan, and a scant teaspoon of flour for one large cake, and the cooking time should be about the same since the recipe calls for dividing into cakes. Making these in single serving sizes, I opt to sauté them rather than bake them.  I omit the oil from the mixture and add a little to the skillet.

This technique can be used with lots of other vegetables–one of the advantages being that the shredded vegetables will cook more quickly than whole veggies.

Another recipe from Mark Bittman is for beet rösti from his column in the New York Times:

Beet rösti

Ingredients

  • 2 pounds beets (3 very large or 4 to 6 medium)
  • 2 teaspoons coarsely chopped fresh rosemary
  • Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
  • 1/2 cup flour
  • 2 tablespoons butter
  • Minced parsley or a few rosemary leaves for garnish.

Preparation

  • Trim and peel beets as you would potatoes.
  •  Grate them in food processor or by hand (For a single serving, I’d use a box grater.)
  • Begin preheating 12-inch nonstick skillet over medium heat.
  •  Toss grated beets in bowl with rosemary, salt and pepper.
  • Add about half the flour; toss well, add rest of flour, and toss again.
  •  Put butter in skillet; heat until it begins to turn nut-brown.
  • Scrape beet mixture into skillet, and press with spatula to form a round.
  • With medium to medium-high heat–the pancake should gently sizzle–cook, shaking pan occasionally, until bottom of cake is nicely crisp, 8 to 10 minutes.
  • Slide cake onto a plate, top with another plate, invert the two plates, and return cake to pan.
  • Keep cooking, adjusting heat if necessary, until other side is browned, another 10 minutes or so.
  •  Garnish, cut into wedges, and serve hot or at room temperature.

 This can be readily adapted to other vegetables–carrots, parsnips, rutabagas, turnips–which have about the same texture and density as beets. Once you’re familiar with the technique, you can use vegetables with different textures:  summer squash–just squeeze them thoroughly to remove moisture, and remember that they will cook more quickly than beets.

Under-appreciated veggies: Brussels sprouts

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bagged Brussels sprouts at Harris Teeter supermarket

Brussels sprouts

Obviously I’m writing this because I have Brussels sprouts in hand now!  They are a favorite winter veggie in my kitchen but I think they are sometimes under-appreciated and under-used by those of us doing single-serving cooking, possibly because the come in packages that contain too many.  Some of these may be underused because we’ve had them prepared in ways that did not really let them make their best impression.  I thought I’d address some of these, especially the cool weather crops–starting with one that seems to be a love-it-or-hate-it vegetable: Brussels sprouts.  Until I started cooking for myself, I was in the hate-it camp.  Most of the Brussels sprouts that I had were over-cooked, mushy, and bitter; in a word, nasty!

Fortunately, I’ve discovered ways to make Brussels sprouts a desirable vegetable because they have some excellent qualities: they are  inexpensive and readily available in the wintertime.  They are nutritious–I’ll not give you all the details here, but you can find all that sort of information from the Nutrient Database Laboratory.  They are versatile–you can use them as a substitute for cabbage in some recipes, and (a concern if you’re cooking for one), they store well in the fridge.

First, storage:  Brussels sprouts often come prepackaged in a mesh bag that’s about a pound or so.  That’s a lot of Brussels sprouts if you’re cooking for one and had to use them all at one time.  Fortunately that’s not the case–they’re small, separate units so you are not trying to preserve a cut vegetable (always more difficult)–big bonus for those cooking for one.  I store mine with a paper towel that has been dampened and then squeezed mostly dry, in a partly open zipper-lock bag in the vegetable drawer.   I’ve seen suggestions (The Victory Garden Cookbook–see bibliography) that the flavor gets stronger with storage.  I’ve not found that to be a problem, but that may be because I do keep my fridge really cold, and the damp paper towel helps even out moisture. However, if you do find that you don’t like the taste after they’ve been stored for a few days, the other option of something to do with the rest of the bag would be to blanch and freeze part of them.  Blanching is simple:  bring a large pot of water to a boil, salt it heavily (after it’s come to a boil), and put in the Brussels sprouts for about 2 minutes; then “shock” in an ice bath, drain, and freeze.  (The purpose of the blanching is to stop enzyme action, and it keeps the color bright and green.)

Now for cooking them. Personally I’m not a fan of boiling veggies as a method of cooking them (other than blanching before freezing)–there are so many nutrients that are water soluble!  So my preference is for some cooking method that does not involve putting them into huge quantities of water to cook completely.  So that leaves steaming, stir-frying, roasting, and  microwaving.  The best way to avoid having “nasty” sprouts is NOT to overcook them.

I’ve added them to soups, used them instead of cabbage with braised pork, and added them to one-dish meals like roasted potatoes with sausages, and lots of other things.  They lend themselves well to improvisation and substitution.

Recipes for steaming, blanching, roasting and microwaving can be found in a number of cookbooks so I’ll not post here, except for the recipe that I just made to go along with my baked sweet potato.

For more information on how to cook and specific recipes, I suggest you might want to check The Victory Garden Cookbook by Marian Morash (see bibliography).  As I was sitting here at the computer writing this, my e-mail notification popped up and said it had received a notification of a new post from domestic diva M.D., a blog that I think is worth following for anyone who cooks.  I was surprised to see that the subject was  roasted Brussels sprouts.  

Since it was about lunch time, I was preheating the oven to bake a sweet potato (a very large sweet potato so that I’ll have some for another use as well).  I read the recipe and grabbed the last of the Brussels sprouts from the fridge.  I didn’t have the full amount, but this is a recipe that does not depend on the quantity–which is great for us solo cooks.  Since I was baking my potato in a 350 ° F oven, I did alter the cooking time just a bit–I popped the Brussels sprouts prepared as in the recipe into the oven for about 45 minutes right along side my sweet plate with half a baked sweet potato and roasted Brussels sproutspotato, and there was my colorful, nutritious lunch!  This is the kind of improvisation that can make cooking for one easy–many recipes aren’t dependent on how many you have or how many you want to cook and eat right now.

You should check out this recipe.  I’d not used garlic powder with them before, but it was yummy and much easier to use than minced garlic.  One of the comments on this post suggested adding Parmesan cheese–I did not try that because I’m out of Parmigano-Reggiano (horrors!), but it sounds  like something that would taste great!

Another cookbook for single-serving cooking

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Cover of Serve YourselfI’m always browsing cookbooks–especially those that appear to deal with single-serving cooking.  A friend recently mentioned Serve Yourself: Nightly Adventures in Cooking for One to me. True to form, I immediately went in search of it–and was pleased to find it available in Kindle format.

I really identified with a statement made in this book: “…we solo artists deserve just as varied a diet as anyone.  While I love having some leftovers around that can morph into new dishes, I also appreciate the beauty of starting and finishing a single cooking project on a given night.” (Kindle location 173)

One of the things that I find delightful is that there are suggestions and recipes that are incredibly helpful in allowing morphing leftovers.  These include condiments (to use not only on leftovers) but suggestions on using those extra ingredients that seem to be the bane of single-serving cooking–such as what’s left of that bottle of wine that you opened to go with dinner yesterday evening.  Personally I think that this is a book worth having in your library if you cook for one, but I suggest that, at least, you check the local library and peruse this one.

I’d also recommend his website for fun reading of his “Cooking for One” column for more thoughts on cooking for one, and more recipes.  Even cooking for one it can still be a son goût!  

Lemon cake

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Seems that a lot of thing lately have been absolutely screaming summertime to me.  I was browsing some of my favorite websites this afternoon and came across a recipe that looked just fabulous.  As you can tell from most of my posts, I’ve not said much about sweets…but this was one that really made me salivate: Meyer Lemon Lavender Cake.

That link will take you to the recipe on one of my favorite blogs, Former Chef.  That’s a great website to look for recipes.

Where do I find recipes?

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While one of the secrets of cooking for one easily is learning to improvise, I can understand some hesitancy to throw thing into the pot without some guidance–it is a learned skill.  If you are not one of us who avidly reads cookbooks, and owns a few dozen or more, and you are not up to just improvising, where do you find recipes to start with?  I’ve mentioned a few cookbooks that I think are good to get you started on improvising dishes and meals, but I can understand that you might not want to go out and buy cookbooks, so I’m going to suggest some places where you can find recipes.

First, check some of  the blogs that I have listed on my blog roll: Former Chef and Closet Cooking both have some delightful recipes.  Another source that I recommend is Mark Bittman’s column The Minimalist in the New York Times.  The author stresses a few good ingredients for great flavor rather than complicated dishes, so that makes it particularly good if you are trying to work into improvisations of your own.

A neighbor and friend just introduced me to another website that might well be worth exploring:  All Recipes.com.  A neighbor (who also cooks for one) has shared some of the dishes that she has made following recipes from this site, and they have been excellent:  a braised cabbage with keilbasa, and a chicken soup using adzuki beans and kale. This website does require registration, but it is free.  A feature of this website that might be most useful to you if you are just starting with improvisations and changing recipe sizes is a calculator that will do this for you–you do not even have to do the math.  This should help you get a feel for doing this with other recipes.  There are lots of recipes here, ranging from some that use canned ingredients (for example, condensed soup and mixed vegetables) to those using fresh ingredients–you get to choose.

Since I’m a soup lover, and soup usually keeps well, and lends itself to “re-seasoning” and adding additional ingredients to change it, I have found the Swanson Broth website to be useful.  Obviously, I prefer homemade stocks and broths, but there are times when it just isn’t possible; you need some “convenience” ingredients like canned broth in the pantry.  I’ve found Swanson broth to be acceptable.  They have some great, quick recipes which, while they tout Swanson broth and stocks, are very usually use no other processed/prepared ingredients, and can be flexible in quantity.  One of my favorites is the corn and red pepper chowder.  This is quick, easy, and very easy to “refresh” for a different taste from the leftovers.  You might want to change the seasoning:  add one of those chipotle peppers that you froze after you opened the last can.  I particularly like to drop in a few shrimp to poach while I gently reheat the left over soup.  A really quick make-over can be done with a favorite seasoning such as Penzeys Southwest Seasoning.

Other places to look for recipes are purveyors of specialty foods (doesn’t mean you have to buy anything) or cookware.  Cooking.com, Williams-Sonoma, and Penzeys Spices all have recipes on their websites.  Sure, they are touting their wares, but the recipes are good and reliable.

Other sources of recipes are from websites of cooking magazines (and the magazines, too) like Cook’s Illustrated, Cook’s Country, Fine Cooking, and America’s Test Kitchen. Another worthwhile site for those of use looking for single-serving meals is Judith Jones’ Meals for One (at Ophra.com). Her cookbook, The Joys of Cooking for One, is one that’s great for promoting improvisation while cooking for one and eating well.  You’ll find recipes for one on that website.

As you cook more, you’ll find that there are particular chefs whose recipes just seem to click with your style and flavors that you like.  Always check for blogs by these chefs.  One of the latest that I’ve added is Jamie Oliver’s website.  His recipes just “click” for me.  Many websites and/or blogs allow you to register (free) for newsletters or e-mail updates.  If you really like the style of that particular chef, that is a good thing to do.    If there are several, you might consider Google Alerts, or other tools like that.

There are lots of recipes out there–they may not be single-serving recipes, but they will give you ideas for things to try as you learn to improvise.

Fresh-baked bread

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The smell of fresh-baked bread is one of the best that I know (along with bacon and fresh-ground brewing coffee).  I cannot think of anything much more pleasurable than hot, fresh bread with butter and maybe some exquisite (unprocessed) raw honey.  I’ve found that even when cooking for one on a busy schedule it not impossible to bring that wonderful taste and aroma into my kitchen with a minimal investment of time.

Buying bread from the bakery is fine, but for me, I keep ending up with stale bread.  I can make bread crumbs for later use, but that fills my freezer with more bread crumbs that I’ll ever need.  I could freeze part of the bakery loaf, but even though that helps, it’s still not the same as fresh bread from the oven.  I’ve baked bread the usual way: proofing, letting it rise, punching it down, letting it rise…successfully.  I put small loaves in the freezer, and as long as I remembered to pull them out to defrost in the fridge over night, I could have fresh bread with minimal effort and in quantities appropriate for one person.  That was fine when I was a telecommuter; I could use my breaks to knead the bread, and take the few minutes necessary to pop it into the oven.  I had my small loaves; but, I had to remember to defrost it. When I was no longer a telecommuter, that did not work quite so well, so when I heard about the dough being kept in the refrigerator, I had to try it.

Deli-style rye breadThe no-knead, wet-dough technique described in Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois lends itself admirably to cooking for one.  I was skeptical when I first heard about this, but since I love good, fresh bread, I bought the book and gave it a try.  It has made fresh bread for one an easy thing to do.  When I’m in need of an attitude adjustment, nothing does it better than to go into the kitchen and with minimal effort have my home smelling of fresh bread.  The main attraction of this method for me was that the dough could be kept in the refrigerator for about two weeks (less for dough enriched with eggs).  I can reach in and grab a handful of dough, form a small loaf, let it rise (shorter time for small loaf), and bake.  The hands-on time is minimal.  The results are wonderful.

To give you a sample, here is an adaptation of the Master Recipe a free-form boule from Artisan bread in Five Minutes a Day.  For measuring the flour, just dip and then level your measuring cup with a spatula (scoop and sweep)–no sifting required.  You can bake this on a cookie sheet, but if you really get into this, you will probably want to get a baking stone, but even baking on a cookie sheet, you have some good bread.  Be sure to use dry-ingredient measuring cups for the flour. I assuming that you likely don’t have a stand mixer or  a large food processor, so I’m given the hand mixing instructions here.  I think that the only “tricky” part is shaping the loaf; not having the pictures in the book, here is a link to a video which will show you the mixing and shaping technique.

Ingredients for dough to make four 1-pound loaves:

  • 3 cups lukewarm water
  • 1-1/2 tablespoons granulated yeast
  • 1-1/2 tablespoons kosher salt or other coarse salt
  • 6-1/2 cups unsifted, unbleached, all-purpose white flour
  • cornmeal for your cookie sheet or parchment paper

Add yeast and salt to the lukewarm water in a 5-quart bowl or lidded (not airtight) container.  Mix in the flour all at once with a wooden spoon.  If the mixing becomes too difficult with the spoon, use your hands (wet) to work in the flour, but do not knead the dough.  Now, allow to rise at room temperature (covered) for about 2 hours until the dough as doubled, or starts to collapse (flattens on top).  Refrigerate the dough overnight since it’s easier to shape the loaves with cold dough.

When you’re ready to bake, prepare you cookie sheet, or parchment paper with a light sprinkling of flour or cornmeal.  Now, sprinkle a bit of flour on the surface of the dough and pick up a handful (about grapefruit-size for a one-pound loaf). Sprinkle with flour and shape, as if you were pulling a blanket from the top down around it to the bottom side.  Don’t knead–this shaping should take only about a minute.

Place the loaf on cornmeal on the cookie sheet or on parchment paper, and let it rest for about 40 minutes for the one-pound loaf.

Preheat you oven to 450 ° F  with the rack in the middle of the oven.

After the bread rests for 40 minutes, dust the top of the loaf with flour.  Using a serrated knife, slash a 1/4-inch deep cross on top so that you control how the crust breaks open when it expands in the oven.

The crust will be best if you use steam in the oven; you can do this by using the broiler pan on the lower rack, and pouring in a cup of hot tap water when you put the loaf in to bake.  Baking will take about 30 minutes, or until the crust is brown.

Store the remainder of the dough in the refrigerator until you’re ready to make another loaf.

I started with the master recipe, and have now worked my way through a number of others: deli-style rye, brioche, chocolate bread (yum), brioche filled with chocolate ganache, the Portuguese broa (a corn bread–great for the Thanksgiving holidays), olive oil dough, and others.  Every recipe has worked as it should.  It’s great to be able to make myself a crusty baguette one day, and a boule, or sandwich loaf the next time–all from the same batch of dough.  Since I use some bread for sandwiches, I frequently bake mine in an Italian bread pan which lets me have an oval loaf , larger than a baguette, that works well for the kind of sandwiches I make.  This pan is perforated so you get a better crust than using a non-perforated pan.  The pan is nonstick, but with the wet dough you will still need to us a cooking spray to prevent sticking, and the dough will ooze into the perforations sightly, but it can usually be removed easily.

The container that I use to hold my dough is a Rubbermaid that I got from the grocery store.  It has a good lid, and is not airtight.  If you are hand mixing you could , just mix in this container.  The corners are slightly rounded, but I find it’s difficult to get all the dry flour mixed around the edges, so I usually mix in a bowl and transfer the dough into this container.  If the lid on the container fits very tightly, you will need to leave it loose of because of the gases that are formed during the fermentation.

Of course, I was excited when the second book, Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day appeared.  I’ve just gotten the Kindle version of that one, and  anxious to try some of the recipes there.  I’ve been interested to see comments about this technique on other blogs.  An adaptation of the master recipe for whole grain bread can be found on the Former Chef blog, along with some helpful photographs that should make you want to run to the kitchen and bake.   I intend to take this evening to peruse this book and see what gems I can find.  To be on the safe side, I’ll start with the master recipe to see how the dough handles.  Based on my previous experience with these recipes I’m expecting great things.

More recipes and baking tips can be found in Zoe Francois’s blog, Zoe Bakes. New recipes and tips are available at Artisan Bread in Five website as well.

I’m hooked on having fresh bread in such an easy way.  The loaves in the photograph are brioche just out of the oven.  If you really need an attitude adjustment, the smell of the brioche (especially when filled with chocolate ganache) will definitely do it!  More about brioche coming  soon.  Happy baking!

Eat Your Books to find recipes!

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I have  found a resource that I have to rave about: a website called Eat Your Books. For those of us who have LOTS of cookbooks it’s a real treasure.  How many times have you stood, staring at the bookshelves, wondering where  you saw that recipe for beef tongue?  (Okay, maybe not many for tongue, but how about that overflow of tomatoes in the summer and the zucchini and eggplant?)  Well, there’s caponata, ratatouille….but where are the recipes. This site does not provide recipes–it provides the means for you to find them in your own books!

Eat Your Books is a site that has indexes of cookbooks (over 1,200 now and growing).  You put those virtual books on your virtual bookshelf on the website, and you can then search the indexes for recipes.  A friend discovered this and told me about it.  It’s not free, but is definitely worth the price.  I signed up for a trial membership and spent the time adding some of the titles that I own, and took it for a test drive.  I tried some common things (eggplant, tomatoes, and zucchini), and some rather esoteric things (beef tongue, beef heart). Worked like a charm.  (Of course, I did have several cookbooks that had  beef tongue recipes.)  The tomatoes, zucchini, and eggplant were there too.  The search is not quite Google so it made a difference if I searched for tomato-zucchini, or tomatoes and zucchini, but once you get the hang of it, it’s like having the world at your fingertips.

Another great thing that the site does is list the major ingredients with each recipe so that you can evaluate the potential from the list of recipes.  So, though I had tomatoes and zucchini, I did not have peppers, so I could rule out some recipes right at the search point.

Needless to say my test drive was a short one.  I was preparing food for the time when I was having a house guest, so I really gave the “trial” a good workout, and decided this was a must-have for me.  Because it was still in “beta” testing, there  was a special rate for a lifetime membership and I opted for lifetime rather than annual. The beta testing is over now and the “real” version is up and working but I think there may still be a special lifetime membership offer.   I have only entered about 40 of my titles so far, but it’s well worth the effort to do this.  I cannot imagine being without this website now. There is a blog and community pages as well.

At the present time, there are rarer books that are not included, but the numbers are growing all the time, and new features are being added.  You can also suggest books to be indexed.

A new cookbook

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A few weeks ago, I had a friend visiting (as a house guest) from California.  We were out and about doing some things that I don’t usually do: visited A Southern Season to browse for housewares and foods, and we visited The Regulator Bookshop. Both were having their summer sales.  As usual, I came home with things that I did not expect to buy.

One of my “finds” at the bookstore was The Pleasures of Cooking for One by Judith Jones.  This is an admixture of philosophy of eating alone as well as some recipes, and, best of all, lots of tips for not having left-overs.  While some of the recipes are for things that cannot be bought in small quantities (like pork tenderloin) she provides recipes and suggestions about make several different dishes from the “left-overs” so that they really don’t taste like left-overs. While this does require some meal planning, the emphasis here is on flexibility and improvisation.  I was impressed that the recipes here were real meals for real enjoyment.  I think that this is a worthwhile addition to my cookbook library.