Ode to a Swedish salad spinner

Ode to a Swedish salad spinner

'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all 
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.' 

John Keats- “Ode to a Grecian Urn”

Its cheap plastic contours will never be confused for the smooth white marble of Athens and it has none of the pastoral carving that inspired Keats’ “Ode to a Grecian Urn” but there is no kitchen implement that makes eating from the garden easier than a salad spinner - and that includes a pot.

I got mine at Ikea (www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/60148678/) where it is currently on sale for less than $2.

(Mine actually looks less like a Grecian urn and more like a misplaced Storm Trooper helmet but Keats didn’t write an elegy to a Storm Trooper helmet, so an urn it is.)

The one thing that grows year round in the garden is leafy greens – kale, collards, mustard, lettuce, arugula, malabar spinach, bok choi and on and on. All these things can be cooked in any style you like or eaten raw but they all need to be washed and that is a pain in the ass.

The folds of mustard hold dirt like Velcro and, despite our best organic efforts, pests like aphids and caterpillars still set up house in the nooks and crannies of our curly leaf kale.

I almost always wash and package everything I pick all at once into bags of larger greens for cooking and lettuce/baby greens to eat raw.  

For a little extra time on the front end, I have greens and lettuce ready to go. It means I am more likely to throw in some greens when I am cooking dinner or lets me whip up a quick salad for lunch before I head out the door for work.

The easiest and most thorough way that I have found to wash anything from the garden is to soak it in the sink for 15 to 30 minutes. A shorter soak is fine but a longer one gets off more of the dirt without having to touch up individual leaves by hand. 

A longer soak also ensures that any bugs that might be hiding on the under sides of leaves can’t hold their breath through the wash cycle and end up in the sink instead of your salad.

Let the water do the work.

But a long soak and curly leaves also means a wet mess when you drain the water, which brings us back to that sexy little salad spinner.
Put on some music to get you pumped up, maybe do a couple stretches and then pull the greens out of the sink, drop them in the spinner and go to town.

When the water stops pouring out the bottom, stick your newly washed organic greens in a ziplock bag in your fridge and get ready to have an amazing week.

But, before you give it a quick rinse and put it back on the shelf, take a second to appreciate supple curves, the simple physics and the timeless beauty of that white plastic Swedish salad spinner.

Atchara - Pickled green papaya

Atchara!

 

I  am a huge fan of pickling things and am on a mission to use green papayas after our trees froze in last week's polar vortex, leaving a ton of green fruits that I don't think will ever ripen.

Put that all together you get atchara – a pickled green papaya dish from in the Philippines. I guess there are lots of regional variations of this from neighboring countries like Indonesia and Malaysia.

It’s a refreshing combination of spicy sweet and sour that nicely accents the salty savory dishes from the islands and archipelagos of Southeast Asia.

I found the recipe at this pickling blog.

http://jarheadpickling.blogspot.com/search?q=papaya

I followed it pretty much word for word except that I did larger but very thin slices of vegetables rather than grating or julienning them because it was easier for me. I used a mandolin and ripped through everything quickly but if you don't have a mandolin and aren't a professional with a knife I would go ahead and grate everything.

I’m sure if you wanted to mess around a bit with other vegetables to accompany the papaya that it would work just fine – I even saw one recipe that called for raisins.

Atchara is served as a side dish for all kinds of things in the Philippines including fried fish, grilled meats and rice and noodle dishes. I like it as an accompaniment to takeout pot stickers, dumplings and egg rolls.  It can also spice up a sandwich

What you need:

• 1 large green papaya
• 1 onion
• 2 carrots
• 8 cloves of garlic
• 1 jalapeno (or more if you want it hotter)
• 1 thumb-sized piece of ginger;
• 1/3 cup salt
• 2 cups white vinegar;
• 1 1/2 cups of sugar;
• 2 tablespoons peppercorns;

What you do:

Slice the papaya, onion, carrots, garlic and jalopeno as thinly as possible

            The mandolin saves a lot of time and a few cut fingers or just grate it

Sprinkle the salt over the green papaya in a bowl. Mix it up with your hands to evenly cover the papaya slices and put in the fridge overnight.

Put the other vegetables in a bowl or bag in the fridge

The next day, pour the excess water out of the bowl and put the papaya in a strainer. Press out any remaining water and then rinse off the salt. 

Put the vinegar, a large pinch of salt, peppercorns, ginger, garlic and chilli (if using) in a pot and simmer the brine for 5 minutes and then cover it and let it cool a bit.

Fill clean jars with the papaya, onion, pepper and carrot, then top them off with the pickling brine

Cap the jars and store them in the fridge – technically you can keep atchara at room temperature but it will last longer in the fridge. If you want to do the room temperature thing for some reason then I would sterilise whatever jars you are using by putting tin foil on the top and sticking them in the oven at 350 degrees for 90 minutes and then let them cool in the oven over night. DO NOT TAKE THE JARS OUT OF THE OVEN EARLY because cooling the glass too quickly can shatter it.

Kale and White Bean Pasta

Kale and White Bean Pasta 

This is one of my standard dinners. It is quick, easy and cheap but best of all it takes advantage of what we always have growing in the garden – greens. The white beans soak up the flavors of the onions and herbs while the kale adds color and a bit of crunch. I usually serve it as a main course but it could easily be a side dish to something light like grilled chicken or fish.

This recipe calls for kale but you can use other greens as well or a mix. I regularly use curly kale, dinosaur kale, swiss chard and arugula when I cook this depending on what is available. Collard and mustard greens and bok choi generally don’t work as well.  

It is really hard to measure greens. They are really bulky when they are raw but they cook down to a quarter the size or less. My rule of thumb is to chop until I think I have enough and then add another handful. If I had to measure I would say take your standard plastic grocery bag and pick enough to fill it half full. By the time you pull out the middle ribs and chop them up that should be about right.

For the herbs, I always use rosemary because I like it and always have it in the garden. Other herbs that I have use both fresh from the garden and dried include basil, oregano, garlic chives and parsley. If you don’t have fresh ones, use dried. Also, don’t be afraid to use a lot. It’s pretty hard to ruin a dish with too many herbs and pretty easy to not put in enough.

What do I need?

Lots of Kale or other greens

¼-1/2 cup Olive oil

1-2 cups White wine

1 Onion

1 can White beans

1 large sprig Rosemary and other herbs

1 pound pasta - cooked

Salt & pepper

Parmesan cheese

What do I do with it?

~ Put the oil in a pan and put it on low.

                If the pasta is not already cooked, then cook it while you make the sauce.

~ Chop the onion and add it to the pan

Make the onion pieces as big or small as you like. You don’t want the onion to sizzle so much as sweat.

~ Clean the kale, take out the center rib and chop the leaves.

                Again- the size of the pieces is up to you but for this recipe I often like to cut them small so they get evenly distributed through the pasta.

~ When the onion starts to get translucent, add the wine, beans and kale

~ Strip the leaves off the rosemary sprig and throw them along with salt and pepper and any other herbs you are using

~ Cover it and let it simmer gently for 10 minutes or so.

                The greens should turn a darker shade of green and wilt when they are ready.   

~ Taste it. Add any additional salt/pepper/herbs it may need

                The consistency of the sauce is up to you but you want to make sure it will cover your pasta. It is easy to thicken it by mashing up some of the white beans in the pan. If it looks too thick add a little wine.

~ Put the pasta in a large bowl and add the sauce on top and give everything a stir to get the pasta coated evenly.

~ Put into bowls and top with Parmesan cheese and additional fresh herbs.

Green Papaya Curry

Green Papaya Curry

Green Papayas are my new favorite vegetable. They have a similar flavor and consistency to an orange fall squash or maybe a sweet potato but they are so much better.

Papaya trees take up a fraction the space of sprawling squash and sweet potato beds and pretty much care for themselves. They have few pests and provide shade from the summer sun. One papaya tree can produce 60 to 80 pounds of fruit per year and they fruit continuously - so learn to love green papaya.

Green papayas can be eaten raw in dishes like a Thai green papaya salad but I like cooking them.

Cooking the papaya also seems to diminish the fruit’s somewhat musty flavor. My favorite papaya-hater actually loved cooked green papaya as long as I told her it was squash.

For this dish, the green papaya adds a nice sweetness to offset the spice of the curry. I like to leave the chunks a bit larger than usual – maybe 1-inch by inch square to give it a little more substance and texture. The greens give the dish more variety and color but feel free to add in different or additional vegetables like red peppers or peas.

I used to make a sweet potato curry but the green papaya actually holds together a bit better than sweet potatoes so the sauce is less likely to get too thick.

Serve it over rice and if you want to make it more authentic grab some naan from the store as well. 

This recipe is vegetarian but if you want to get carnivorous you can dice and sauté a couple chicken breasts with the onion or use the curry as a base to serve chicken or fish off the grill.

What you need

A little olive oil

1 Green papaya 

   This will probably be too much but just clean and cook the whole thing and keep any leftovers for another recipe.

1 Onion

Some greens

1 can/jar of your favorite curry sauce

   I used an Archer Farms green curry sauce for this recipe. For a yellow curry I like S&B Golden Curry Sauce blocks.

Hot peppers (optional)

What you do with it

~ Boil about 2-4 cups of water- just enough to cover your papaya

~ Take off the outside skin with a carrot peeler and cut it into bite sized chunks. 

    Green papayas will give off a milky white fluid so I peel it right in the sink.

~ Boil the papaya chunks for 10-15 minutes and when they are done drain them and set them aside

   To see if they are done, stab a piece with a sharp knife. If it sticks to the knife they need more time but if it slides right off then it’s done.

~ Heat a little olive oil in a sauce pan on low to medium low

~ Chop the onion and add it to the pan

~ Clean and chop the greens and add the hot pepper if you like

~ Sauté until the onion is clear and the greens darken

~ Add as much papaya as you want to the pan. About half should be fine but it depends on the size.

~ Add the curry sauce and simmer a minute or two over low to medium-low heat

~ Stir and serve