Roasted Turnips

There are some root vegetables I'm not that familiar with; turnips are one of them. They're similar in texture to potatoes and can be prepared with similar methods: roasting, boiling/mashing, adding as chunks to soups, even making turnip fries!

So far, I've only tried roasting and am definitely excited to try more turnips. Although, roasting any vegetable seems to make it delicious (except radishes...): brussels sprouts, green beans, potatoes, squash, tomatoes, and even kale.

Roasted Turnips
from Taylor Takes a Taste

1 large or 2 medium sized turnips (peeled)
1 tbsp olive oil
2 tsp balsamic vinegar
Salt and Pepper

Preheat oven to 415F. Cut your peeled turnip(s) into about 1 inch or bite sized rectangles. Place cut turnips into a large bowl. Pour olive oil, balsamic vinegar, a dash of salt and several turns of a pepper mill into the bowl. Mix turnips with other ingredients, so they are well coated. Spread turnips onto a parchment lined baking sheet. Roast in the over for 25-30 minutes until fork tender.

Pumpkin Bread

I am so out of the cooking mode. Being away from home and not having to cook dinner each night really gets me out of the habit of being in the kitchen. I'm slowly returning, and in the meantime, I feel pretty hungry.

I made this bread quite a few weeks ago, but I want to make it again soon. Pumpkin bread is the best, and this may be my new go-to recipe. It is sweetened with only honey or maple syrup (I used maple syrup), but the lack of sugar is an improvement. I'm gradually learning to be more in tune with my body and am actually connecting eating poorly, like too much sugar, with not feeling well. I'm hopeful that natural, unrefined sweeteners really are better for me than refined white sugar. This bread doesn't give quite the sugar rush that the traditionally sweet pumpkin bread does. If you make it, let me know if you miss the sugar or not.

Spiced Honey Pumpkin Bread
from The Flour Sack

1 1/4 cups whole-wheat pastry flour
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon sea salt
1 tablespoon cinnamon
2 teaspoons freshly-ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon cloves
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1 1/4 cups pumpkin puree
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil or melted coconut oil
1/2 cup honey or maple syrup
2 eggs, room temperature

Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease a 8 1/2 x 5-inch loaf pan with olive oil. Set aside.
In a medium bowl, whisk together the flours, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and spices. Set aside.

In a large bowl, whisk the pumpkin puree, olive oil, honey, and eggs until well-combined. Add flour mixture to pumpkin mixture and whisk for 10 seconds, just until the flour disappears and the batter is mostly smooth.

Pour batter into prepared pan. Bake for 40-45 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center of the bread comes out clean.

Let the bread sit in the pan for 10 minutes on a wire rack, then remove bread and finish cooling on the wire rack. Slice the bread once it has cooled for at least 1 hour.

Fish Tacos

I apologize for the lack of posts. I had a visitor and now am visiting my parents. My mom left my dad and me tonight to fend for ourselves, but suggested we make fish tacos. She had a recipe which was easy and delicious. I often order fish tacos when they're on the menu in a restaurant, so I'm glad to have my own recipe now.

Someday I will post my method for homemade corn tortillas made from masa harina. They're really easy and way better than store-bought corn tortillas. You can buy a bag of masa harina (corn flour for tortillas) in the mexican area of the grocery store. You add water, knead, roll out, and cook in a pan. The directions are on the bag. Totally worth the effort anytime you need corn tortillas.

Fish Tacos
adapted from Pampered Chef

1-2 limes, juiced
2 plum tomatoes, diced
1 small onion, diced
1/3 cup cilantro, chopped
1/4 c. mayonnaise
1 Tbsp. milk
1 small garlic clove, minced
1/4 tsp. salt
2 c. thinly sliced cabbage
1 avocado, sliced
8 6-inch corn tortillas
1 lb. tilapia filets
salt and pepper
1 Tbsp. olive oil

For salsa, combine 1 Tbsp. lime juice, tomatoes, onion, cilantro, and salt in a small bowl. Set aside.

For sauce, combine 1 Tbsp. lime juice, mayonnaise, milk and garlic in a another small bowl and whisk until smooth. Set aside.

Heat saute pan over medium-high heat. Season tilapia filets with salt and pepper. Add olive oil to pan. Add tilapia and cook a few minutes until lightly browned, and flip over. Cook until the fish flakes easily with a fork. Remove from pan and flake into bite-size pieces.

Warm corn tortillas. Top with fish, sauce, salsa, cabbage and avocado.

Chocolate Coconut Ice Cream

I found a recipe similar to this one - chocolate and coconut milk - but it had sugar as the sweetener. Then this recipe came across my screen, and I was sold. Ice cream with only honey as the sweetener?! I've been on a natural sweetener kick lately; if I'm gonna talk the talk, I better walk the walk, right?

This ice cream was excellent! I definitely didn't miss the sugar, though my local raw honey is super fragrant, and I could taste it. That's not a bad thing, but it added a dimension that less complex honies may not. Seriously, this is the most delicious honey I've ever eaten. It's like I can taste the many varieties of flowers that the bees touched. Back to the ice cream...the texture was less creamy than custard-based ice creams, but still very acceptable.

Chocolate Coconut Ice Cream
from A Couple Cooks

1 14-ounce can full-fat coconut milk (refrigerate before using if possible)
1 14-ounce can light coconut milk (refrigerate before using if possible)
1/2 cup honey
2/3 cup cocoa powder
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
Pinch kosher salt

In a medium bowl, whisk together 2 cans coconut milk and 1/2 cup honey. Whisk in 1/3 cup cocoa powder until it is fully integrated (it will take about one minute to mix in). Then mix in the remaining 1/3. Add 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon and a pinch of kosher salt.

Freeze the mixture in an ice cream maker (it helps if the mixture is cold before freezing; as noted above, keep cans of coconut milk in the refrigerator so they are already cold). Or, make it without the machine.

You can eat the ice cream right away for a soft serve texture, or freeze it for about 2 hours for a harder texture.

Canning Tomatoes

A few weeks ago I scored a bucket of roma tomatoes for six dollars at the farmer's market. I canned tomatoes last year, but never posted about it. Those canned tomatoes didn't last long. Here's this year's yield, but I just received more tomatoes from my cousin's beautiful garden, so more canning this week.

It took almost 2 hours to prepare the tomatoes (blanching, peeling, coring), but the rest of the process was much less labor intensive. If you've never canned before, you'll need more information than this recipe, especially about preparing the jars. Also be sure to use bottled lemon juice, not fresh.

Raw-Pack Canned Tomatoes
from Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving by Judi Kingry and Laruen Devine

tomatoes
bottled lemon juice or citric acid
salt (optional)

1. Prepare canner, jars, and lids.

2. Working small batches, immerse tomatoes in boiling water for 30 to 60 seconds or until the skins start to loosen or crack. Immediately plunge into a bowl of cold water and slip the skins off. Remove cores and any bruised or discolored portions that become apparent after blanching. Leave whole, halve or quarter.

3. Prepare tomatoes for packing: Bring about 4 cups water to a boil and keep hot (you will use it to fill the jars). Do not heat the tomatoes.

4. Before packing each jar of tomatoes, add lemon juice or citric acid to the hot jar in the quantity specified below:

bottled lemon juice
pint - 1 Tbsp
quart - 2 Tbsp

citric acid
pint - 1/4 tsp
quart - 1/2 tsp

5. Add salt, if using, in the quantity specified below:
pint - 1/2 tsp
quart 1 tsp

6. Pack tomatoes into prepared jars to within a generous 1/2 inch of top of jar. Ladle boiling water into jar to cover tomatoes, leaving 1/2 inch headspace. Remove air bubbles by inserting a wand into the jar several times. Adjust headspace, if necessary, by adding hot liquid. Wipe rim. Center lid on jar. Screw band down until resistance is met, then increase to fingertip-tight.

7. Place jars in canner, ensuring they are completely covered with water. Bring to a boil and process pint jars for 40 minutes and quart jars for 45 minutes. Remove canner lid. Wait 5 minutes, then remove jars, cool and store.

Chocolate Cake (with beets...shh)

Of course, this is my favorite beet recipe so far - chocolate cake! There was just a hint of beet earthiness in this super moist cake, which gave it depth. I never told my husband the secret ingredient, and he said it was the best chocolate cake I have made. Also he gave a piece to a co-worker who said "This is so good I'm going to hug myself."

I'm overloaded on beets right now from my CSA, so to preserve them I think I'll make some more beet puree and store it in the freezer. That way, I can make this chocolate cake any time!

Here I made the ganache as posted by Naturally Ella, where I got the recipe. However, it was a little runny, and I'm not sure what went wrong. This cake would be excellent with any topping you'd like: powdered sugar, chocolate buttercream, ganache, etc. Pictured here is my favorite ice cream: salted caramel.

Chocolate Beet Cake
from Naturally Ella

1 cup butter
1½ cup brown sugar or sucanat
3 eggs
2 ounces semi-sweet chocolate
2 cups pureed beets (roughly 3 large beets)
1 teaspoon vanilla
1½ cups whole wheat pastry flour or white wheat flour
½ cup cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
¼ teaspoons salt

Pull butter and eggs and bring to room temperature. Also, butter and flour two 8″ cake pans.

First, peel the beets, cut into small pieces and cover with water (just enough that the beets are barely covered) and cook until beets are tender (30-40 minutes). If you have a lot of excess water left, drain so that only ½ cup remains with the beets. Puree beets in a blender until no large chunks are left. Set aside to cool.
While beets are cooking, combine ¼ cup of the butter with the ounce of chocolate. Melt and whisk the chocolate and butter together. Set aside to cool slightly.
Preheat oven to 375˚.

In either a large bowl or your stand-mixer bowl, combine remaining softened butter and brown sugar, beating with a paddle until well combined. Next, beat in eggs and vanilla until the mixture comes together, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed. Add in melted chocolate/butter and beet puree and continue to beat. Sift together the dry ingredients and add to the batter, beating until everything is well combined.

Pour evenly into cake pans and bake for 25-35 minutes (a toothpick should come out clean when the cake is checked.) Set aside for 10 minutes, then loosen both cakes around the edges and flip onto pieces of parchment to let cool.

To assemble the cake (once the cakes are cooled), take one cake and place on your serving plate. The cake is really moist and you may have to take a knife to loosen the cake from the parchment paper. Cover the first cake with a layer of desired topping and place the second cake on top. From here, take a healthy scoop of topping and crumb coat the cake with a thin layer. Place in refrigerator for 15 minutes, remove, and cover cake with remaining topping. If using ganache, keep in refrigerator until ready to serve.

Curry Roasted Red Pepper and Eggplant Soup

I saw eggplants at the farmer's market and thought I should be dutiful and buy one. Eggplants, like beets, are not something I grew up eating, but I'm convinced I can learn to like them. This soup was quite delicious, but the eggplant flavor was almost undectectable. So this may not have helped me learn to like eggplant, but three cheers for anything flavored with curry!

See this salad for another adventure with eggplant.

Curry Roasted Red Pepper and Eggplant Soup
adapted from Pinch of Yum

2 small/medium eggplant (or 1 large)
1 red bell pepper
1/2 red onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoons olive oil
2-3 cups vegetable broth
3 tablespoons tahini or natural peanut butter
1/2 teaspoon curry
1/2 teaspoon garam masala
1/2 teaspoon chili powder
optional: 1/2 teaspoon lemon juice, cayenne for sprinkling

Preheat oven to 450. Chop red peppers and eggplant into 1-inch pieces. Cover a baking sheet with tinfoil and spray with nonstick spray. Put vegetables on baking sheet and sprinkle with salt. Roast for 25-30 minutes.

In a large saucepan, saute onion with oil until translucent. Add garlic and saute for 30 seconds. Add 2 c. broth, tahini, and spices. Add roasted vegetables. Let simmer for 5 minutes.

Remove from heat and transfer to a blender (or use an immersion blender right in the saucepan). Puree until soup reaches desired consistency. Add more broth if needed to thin out soup. Stir in lemon juice. Sprinkle with cayenne and serve with warm bread.