Glass Jars, Kimchis, and what to do with those greens

We've been getting piles and piles of leafy greens in the CSA box, way more than we can handle honestly. It doesn't help that we don't eat much raw salad. However, faced with this problem, I've explored a few successful options, including adding a pile of greens to my beet chili recipe, as well as experimenting with a variety of kimchis. So far I've only made a "standard" chili kimchi and a curry kimchi (both from the recipe I posted previously), but those two made me realize how easy it is to use up a lot of salad greens with a healthy food that never goes bad.

You can essentially use any veggies/spices in your kimchi as long as you use a green with the consistency of cabbage as the base (my second attempt was with bok choy), and modify the amount you use to accommodate your supplies. Soak it overnight in some salt water, toss it all in a jar with your paste, the brine, and extra veggies, and let it sit out for about 7 days. Seriously, how easy is that? (The answer: extremely) Oh yeah, and did I mention cheap? If not, I should have. It's seriously hella cheap.



A word on glass jars. They are so handy for such a wide variety of tasks I would dare claim that no kitchen can be complete without a sizable collection. They're easy to clean, make great storage containers, are fantastic to pack a lunch in (especially if you're a cyclist like me and can't deal with spillage), and will almost certainly last far longer than tupperware if you treat them right. Besides that, you're cutting a major source of plastic out of your life, which is always a good thing.

Although you can certainly buy canning jars in the store for a fairly reasonable price, I would recommend trying to replace some of your current staples with ones packaged in glass jars. For example, I've been buying a local yogurt that comes in a glass jar rather than the yogurts that come in plastic containers (though those are wonderful in their own right). The extra money is worth it, as the glass is far easier to keep clean, you eliminate the risk of your food being tainted by plastic, you're throwing out far less plastic, AND you have some great containers to put all your tasty kimchi in (not to mention any stuff you'd like to pickle)! That, my friends, is how you win at winning.

Beet Chili

Vegetarian and vegan.

We have a ton of beets and some canned tomatoes, so I decided to whip up a beet chili last night for dinner. I was concerned the beets would make it too sweet, but this concern was entirely unfounded; in fact, I found quite a few beet chili recipes, and a few of them used very dull-tasting meats like chicken, which made me pretty confident the chili taste would overwhelm any sweetness the beets added. I Googled a few different beet chili recipes, and one that included wild rice, to get a general idea of the cooking process and ended up improving my own recipe.

olive oil
garlic (a ton)
peppers (I used pablano, habanero*, and chipotle)
carrots
1 cup wild rice
2 cups water
1 cup beer (I used a brown ale)
Italian spices (oregano, etc...I have a tin of "Italian Seasonings")
1 large glass bell jar of canned tomatoes
beets (about a pound or so)
1 can black beans

Cover the bottom of a large chili pot with olive oil and heat up the oil on medium heat (you want it to heat up pretty slow). Put in the carrots first, then the fresh peppers (save that chipotle for later), and finally the garlic. Saute that up for a bit until everything is starting to get soft, but not too soft. Add the water, beer, rice, spice, canned tomatoes, and beets. Turn the heat up just a little, get it to boiling, then take it back down to medium heat. After about 30 minutes, once the beets are getting soft, toss in the black beans and let it cook for another 10 minutes or so.



I served mine with a dollup of plain yogurt and a pretty good amount of hard cheese (Gouda and Farmhouse Chedder) to cut the heat. Paired it with a mild IPA; again, great for hot food. I only used one habanero (the only really spicy pepper), and that was about the perfect amount of heat. Even though I felt the rice was slightly underdone, overall this chili had a fantastic texture and a much "meatier" taste than I expected. I'm going to be adding this to my regular recipe rotation for sure.


Helping!

* If you do end up using habaneros (which I highly recommend), WEAR GLOVES WHILE YOU CUT THEM. Seriously. My fingers burned like crazy all night, and were still burning the next morning, even after washing my hands multiple times.

Using Leftover Dairy from Cheese, Pt. 2: Soup

I sort of followed this Lentil soup recipe from Alton Brown, but really ended up making my own weird mess of tomatoes, lentils, and peppers.

olive oil
green onion
garlic
carrot
poblano pepper
chipotle pepper
salt
lentils
tomatoes (I used some that my roommate's dad canned)
3 cups water
1 cup beer
1/2 cup leftover dairy stuff
some spices (I used curry powder)

Heat up the olive oil in a large pot and sautee the veggies for a bit. After they've softened, add in everything else. Bring the mixture to a boil, then put it on medium-low heat and let it simmer until the lentils are cooked, about 30-45 minutes (at this point consider making some biscuits! ;)). Once it's all cooked up dump it in a blender and go to town. You can make it as chunky or non-chunky as you like.



When I was finished, I put all my soup into the glass jars I keep around (seriously, keep ALL your glass jars, they're invaluable) and stuck it in the fridge. It's perfect for lunch at the office.



I really feel like the soup could have used a lot more spice; it was certainly hot, thanks to all the chipotles I added, but still seemed a bit on the bland side.

Using Leftover Dairy from Cheese, Pt. 1: Baking

So obviously, I have previously used some of my leftover dairy stuff to make delicious honey corn bread/muffins, and they were pretty delicious. However, I still had a ton of that stuff leftover and little idea of what to do with it. So...more baking! This time, Biscuits (courtesy of my all-time favorite, Alton Brown)!

Once again, I was facing a situation where I didn't have certain supplies on hand, so I improvised. My recipe is as follows:

2 cups flour
1 packet active dry yeast, proofed*
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup buttermilk, chilled (if you have any)
1/2 cup leftover dairy stuff (1 cup if you're out of the buttermilk at this point)

* Proofing just means letting the packet of yeast sit in a bowl with a 1/4 cup warm water and 1 tbsp sugar for about 15 minutes. It starts to get all poofy.

Preheat your oven to 450 degrees. Toss in all the dry ingredients, stir, then cut up the butter into fairly small pieces, and rub it into the dry stuff, until you feel like it's pretty evenly distributed. Try not to allow large chunks of butter. Then add the buttermilk, dairy stuff, and your proofed yeast. Mix it all together and turn it out onto a cutting board dusted with corn meal (I would have used flour except I used it all in the biscuits. go figure). Turn the dough about 5 or 6 times, then roll them into balls, put them on your baking sheet, and toss them in the oven. They should be done in about 15 minutes, or once they start to brown on the top!


(only an "after" picture because my hands were literally caked with dough)

This experiment was a bit less of a success than I had hoped. The dough was EXTREMELY wet due to the yeast and extra water, the corn meal added a bit of a weird crunchy texture, and overall the biscuits turned out a little flat, probably due to the lack of baking powder (I need to buy baking powder, obviously). However, they still taste pretty good and complimented the soup I made pretty well.

I'm going to keep experimenting with baking in the near future because I am extremely uncomfortable with it. I don't understand how the ingredients effect the texture or flavor (obvious with my attempts to sub yeast for baking powder...completely changes the texture), and I feel like I need to follow the recipe meticulously. It ends up being a lot of work (in my mind) and extremely intimidating. I'm going to change that. I hope my experiments encourage you to try and tackle the areas of cooking you feel uncomfortable with as well.

Kimchi/Cheese Update

So both the kimchi and cheese came out amazing. Winning? You better believe it. Only problem with the cheese is you end up with a ton of leftover almost-yogurt cream stuff, but the next few days I'm going to be attempting to use it in various dishes and writing about how it came out (the most obvious use is just dumping it into fruit smoothies, which I have done, but that only uses so much. Meaning very little.). But I mixed in some salt and herbs-du-province, and the cheese is really fantastic. Could hard cheese be next? Stay tuned to find out.

But this post is only a little bit about cheese. Time for the kimchi!

1 Napa cabbage
1/6 cup of salt* (I know, see my notes below)
1 tbsp Soy sauce
1/8 cup of fish sauce
3/4 cup Korean chili powder (yeah, you actually need that much. sheesh.)
1 bunch scallions
a lot of garlic
ginger
some carrots (optional)



Cut up your cabbage and put it in a big bowl with the water and salt. Do this the night before, because you need to let it sit like that overnight. The next day, pull the cabbage out of the brine (keep the brine!!) and put it into another large bowl. In a small bowl, mix together the chili powder, soy sauce, and fish sauce to make a paste. Add the paste and the rest of the stuff (scallions, garlic, ginger, etc) to the cabbage. Mix all that together, then spoon the mixture into glass jars (pack it in!), and cover it with the brine. Now let it sit for at least 3-4 days, so it can ferment. After that time, keep checking on it; when it tastes good to you it's done. Leave it in the fridge after you open it.



The stuff I made is nice and spicy and tangy; it's obviously better than store-bought, it makes a TON*, and the ingredients are hella cheap. This kind of thing is a perfect work-snack (if your workmates don't mind the funky smell!), or as a healthy topping to rice and so on.

* If you read the original recipe, you'll notice I cut it in half. Take a look at the picture of the cabbage in that bowl and I think you'll be able to figure out why pretty quick. Another hint? That's literally the largest bowl in our apartment.