It's Fall! Squash, Beans, Chard and Bacon with Cinnamon

Happy post-Hallowe'en! Does anybody spell it that way any more? "Een" at the end of "Hallow" without the apostrophe means nothing. Yes, I know that Hallowe'en is (in turn) a contraction of "All Hallows’ Evening"

Man, I sound like an old grump. Hang on - I have to yell at some kids to get off the lawn. Or, rather, my sister's lawn. I am spending the week surrounding Hallowe'en visiting family in and around Tacoma/Puyallup, WA.

Even though it was a school night, the All Hallows Evening weather was fine and there was a constant stream of kids for a good 2 1/2 hours. My nephew parked himself, and his video game equipment next to the front door. I've had to fight him for the last couple of years to hand out candy. He's just likely saving himself the embarrassment of having his aunt answer the door wearing a t-shirt of zombies riding Segways ("We've Upgradead!).

This dish was so good, I made it two nights in a row on request. It tastes great warmed up for breakfast, with an egg on top. There's quite a bit of cinnamon, but it balances with the bacon and beans in a way that it's just savory and aromatic and not at all sweet, even with the roasted and caramelized butternut squash.

This isn't an original recipe but I cannot remember where I saw it. If I can locate the source, I'll come back and update the post.

Everybody, okay everybody who likes squash (good - more for the squash lovers!), loved this dish.
You can easily substitute smoked paprika for the bacon, or just leave it out. The dish won't suffer.

The first night I just used butternut squash, The second night, I combined the extra butternut squash
from the previous night with a large sweet potato.

Sun - the natural frost defroster, in the backyard.

RECIPE: SQUASH, BEANS, CHARD and BACON with CINNAMON

Serves: 4-6 as a side
This dish can be modified to be vegan by omitting the bacon, and the rendered bacon fat.

Ingredients

• 1/2 lb thick cut bacon cut crosswise into 1" lardons
• 1 medium onion (red, yellow or white), medium dice
• 4 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 large pinch of red pepper flakes (optional)
• 2 cups black beans, cooked, reserving 1/2 cup cooking water or 1 can (approximately 1 1/2 cups), drained.
• 4 - 5 cups butternut squash (or other squash, or sweet potatoes), 1/3" dice (2 1/2 - 3 lbs)
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 - 2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
• 4-6 cups of chard or kale, washed stemmed and cut into 1" pieces, loosely packed. If you're using chard, chop the stems (above the woody part) into small dice and use that as well.
• kosher salt and fresh ground pepper

Preparation
Preheat the oven to 400F, rack 1 position below the middle. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper or foil.

Toss the diced butternut squash with 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Season with kosher salt, fresh ground pepper and the ground cinnamon. Toss so that the seasoning is evenly distributed.

Pour the seasoned squash dice onto the baking sheet and roast in the pre-heated oven for 30 minutes, stirring halfway through the cooking time. You want the squash dice to have some browned edges and be tender, but not overly squishy. When it is cooked, remove from the oven and set aside to cool while you're preparing the remainder of the dish.

Cook the bacon lardons until crispy in a large saute pan or a dutch oven (at least 3 quarts or larger). Remove to a paper towel-lined plate to drain. Reserve the leftover rendered bacon fat to cook the onions and garlic.Wipe any left over bacon bitlets out of the pan with a paper towel - you don't want them to burn while you're preparing the remainder of the dish.

In a large saute pan, heat it up for a 6 minutes on medium.  Add in 2 tablespoons of the reserved, rendered bacon fat making sure to pour off the top, leaving any solids behind. Add the onion, plus a pinch of salt and saute, adjusting the heat, until the onion dice is golden and some of the edges are golden brown. Add the garlic and saute until it is the color of straw.

Add the drained beans and about 1/4 cup of the cooking liquid, or 1/4 cup water and another pinch of salt and fresh ground pepper to taste. Go easy on the salt if your beans are canned and taste after a few minutes of cooking. Simmer the beans for 5-10 minutes on medium low.

Add the prepared chard to your pan and toss with tongs to combine it with the beans, onions and garlic. Do not cover the pan. Alternately, you can microwave the chard in a microwave-safe bowl for about 2-3 minutes and then add it to the pan and cook on medium for a few minutes. If the pan is too dry, add 1/4 cup of the reserved bean cooking water or plain water.

Add the roasted squash dice that you've set aside to the pan and use a large perforated spoon to combine all of the ingredients. Adjust the heat to medium low and heat. Right before serving, add-in the bacon and combine.

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Get Yer Grains & Legumes: Chickpeas, Barley, Tomato, Avocado + Bacon Bowl

This post isn't so much about a recipe as an example of how I eat on (very nearly) a daily basis, inspired by a couple of folks and some basic decisions I made a few years ago about how I wanted to eat for the rest of my life - more on this in another post.

Hulled black barley

Just about once per week I cook up a batch of chickpeas (1 cup dry). Drained, they store beautifully, if kept refrigerated, for up to a week. I'll generally do another grain or legume and this week it was black, hulled barley. Black hulled barley tastes the same as regular hulled barley. I don't cook it to the point where it fully opens up, but just prior to that. It's nutty and (I think) delicious - I prefer it over pearled barley in many applications - although beef barley soup is one example where pearled barley tastes great. Pearled barley is polished to remove the outer bran layer. It cooks more quickly and isn't as chewy as hulled (I like the chewy). Hulled barley also keeps well if completely drained and refrigerated for 4-5 days. There are many hot and cold dishes I prepare where I throw in a handful of one or the other - or both.

Everything but the almonds I added as garnish are shown here. While I usually store chickpeas fully drained, yesterday
I cooked some with bay leaf, garlic and a little olive oil and stored them in their cooking water since
I knew I'd be using them within a few days.

Recipe: Chickpeas, Barley, Tomato, Bacon and Avocado Bowl

Serves: 2 as a main

I really love the taste of whole toasted cumin seeds. If you only have ground cumin, start with a moderately heaping 1 teaspoon. If you want to go vegetarian or vegan, substitute strips of braised, smoked or baked tofu for the bacon and add it when you garnish. Some sweet or hot smoked paprika can substitute for the smokey bacon flavor if you wish. The parsley is the main "greens" ingredient but you could use chard, kale, spinach or any other green of choice. This salad tastes best if you can let it sit in the refrigerator for a couple of hours. If you do that, take it out before you eat - it's best served at room temperature.

Garnish:

• 3 slices thick-cut bacon cut crosswise into 1/2" lardons


• 1/4 cup reserved, sliced scallions


• 1/4 cup finely chopped parsley


• 1 dozen large roughly chopped raw (or toasted) almonds


• 1/2 (large) avocado, diced (do this right before you serve)

Ingredients:

• 1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon of whole cumin seeds


• generous pinch of red pepper flakes


• 1 large, or 2 small cloves of garlic, minced


• 4 scallions, sliced or cut in 1" julienne strips. Reserve about 1/4 cup for garnish


• 16 cherry tomatoes, halved


• 1 cup roughly chopped parsley


• 1 cup cooked chickpeas


• 1 cup cooked hulled barley


• Juice of 1 lime or 1 small-ish lemon

salt and fresh ground pepper for seasoning.
olive oil

Instructions:

Add the chickpeas and the barley to a microwave-safe bowl large enough to toss along with the other ingredients. If your chickpeas and barley came out of the refrigerator, stick it in the microwave and heat it up for a couple of minutes.

Heat a 10" non-stick skillet on medium high. If you are using a regular skillet, add a couple of teaspoons olive oil to the pan and when it begins to shimmer, add the bacon. Cook until it's browned, but not too crispy and somewhat tender. Remove, and drain on a paper towel-lined plate. Pour the fat from the pan into a heat proof bowl and reserve. Wipe out the pan with bunched-up paper towels to remove the tiny crispy bits of bacon. Set the bacon aside, but don't put it in the refrigerator.

Put the pan back on the heat and add 1 teaspoon of the reserved fat. After about 15 seconds, add the cumin seeds and the red pepper flakes and toast  over medium heat for a couple of minutes. The cumin should be a little darker and will be very aromatic. Clear a little spot and add the garlic. Saute for 1 minute. Add 2 more teaspoons of the reserved fat, then add the scallions and the halved cherry tomatoes to the pan with a pinch of salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste, stir and cook for a couple of minutes. The scallions should soften, but the tomatoes should not be cooked so long they begin to break down.

Remove the skillet from the stove and add the mixture to the combined chickpeas and barley. Toss and adjust the seasoning as necessary. Squeeze in the juice of one lime (or lemon); toss and taste again. Cover the bowl and place in the refrigerator for 2 hours.

At least 1/2 hour before you serve remove the salad from the refrigerator. When you are ready to serve, taste it once more and adjust the seasoning if necessary then divide it into two bowls. Dice the avocado and garnish each bowl with the avocado, chopped almonds, reserved chopped scallions, parsley and top with the crispy bacon lardons.

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Tunip and Beet Soup - Pink Food! With Bacon!

...taken with my cell phone - the battery contact problem well known to Canon for years before I bought my Powershot got me.

I am so far behind with posts it's not funny.  Very soon, we'll be celebrating Cinco de Mayo with a Posole post - see? In the mean time, since we've been having a (very) cool, cloudy and rainy spring (for us - I don't want to hear any bitchin' from the NW or wherever your weather's crappy, okay?) a root vegetable soup seemed like a good idea.

I made this soup because I had a bunch of leftover beet scraps from my failed baked beet chip experiment. Failed because while I have awesome knife skills (it's true), I am not (yet) a human mandoline able to cut identical, perfect even slices and the chips were either leathery (too thick), too crispy (too thin - read: burned on the edges) or uneven (leathery on one side, burned on the other). I also had the scraps from three turnips I cubed and roasted - in total about 3/4 cup of leftover diced beets and 1 1/2 to 2 cups of diced turnip. What to do? Make soup.

Oh - I think the golden turnips are referred to as rutabagas. The purple and white turnips are, turnips.

I like beets, but a huge bowl of exclusively beet soup can be a little overwhelming as much as I admire the earthy taste. The turnips do a nice job of mellowing that out a little. Oh and I garnished it with bacon and two of the too-leathery but perfectly good tasting beet chips.  This is very simple but it was very satisfying.

Recipe: Turnip and Beet Soup Garnished with Bacon

Serves 2 as a starter - easily doubled

Blender or food processor. An immersion blender will do, but the soup will have a little more texture
Sauce pan 2 quart
Small saute pan

Ingredients

• 1 3/4 cups peeled, diced turnip (I used golden turnips a/k/a rutabagas)
• 3/4 cups peeled, diced beets
• 2 medium garlic cloves, minced
• 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, divided (plus a little extra)
• hot water (about 1/2 cup)
• 2 cups stock (vegetable or chicken - water will do just fine, too)
• 3 slices smoked bacon cut crosswise in 1/4" lardons, i.e. strips.
• salt
• ground pepper

Method
Heat a little over one tablespoon of the olive oil in the sauce pan on medium-high. When the oil starts to shimmer, add the diced beets and turnips along with a couple of pinches of salt. Adjust the heat down if necessary and cook the turnips and beets but don't let them caramelize (brown) for about 5-6 minutes or as long as the pan doesn't dry out. Clear a spot in the middle of the sauce pan and add the minced garlic. Pour about two teaspoons of olive oil on top of the minced garlic and let it cook until the underside is the color of  light straw - watch that it doesn't burn.

Stir to incorporate the garlic with the turnips and beets (Burnips? At least it's better than "Teets", agreed?) and cook 3 more minutes on medium low. Add one-half cup of hot water, cover and turn the heat down until the water is at a low simmer. Cook until the turnips and beets are quite tender - maybe about 5 to 8 minutes.

Heat up the small (8" will do) saute pan with a teaspoon or so of olive oil on medium high. When the oil shimmers, add the bacon lardons and cook until done. Drain on paper towels.

Stir-in 2 cups of stock, bring the mixture back to a full simmer (uncovered) and cook for 5 more minutes. Taste and adjust the seasoning - definitely add some pepper. If you do add seasoning, simmer for a couple more minutes. The vegetables should be quite soft.

Take the pan off the burner and let it cool down or even refrigerate it up to a day ahead of time. Make sure your soup has cooled down considerably. Don't fill the food processor or blender more than halfway and start it on a very low speed and hold a folded up towel tightly on the lid (if you're using a blender) before you start the machine. THAT kitchen accident would look like a bad road accident with you as its primary -and scalded- victim. You know, I was going to reference "wood chipper" in that last sentence, but since we're talking about food and all, now that you have that lovely image in your head...

Puree the soup until very smooth. Taste and adjust the seasoning and reheat. Serve in bowls garnished with a generous handful of the crispy bacon.

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