Cabbage and Carrot Salad Recipe (CSA vegetables week 26 and 27, 2011)

The first two weeks of summer brought some really nice greens to our dinner table. Introducing a new feature on Graasland as well! But you gotta read on a little for that. ;)

Organic CSA vegetables week 26, 2011

Here’s what we found in our CSA box the previous week.

• Leek
• Spinach
• Radicchio
• Gooseberries
• Celery
• Chinese cabbage (napa, michihli)

It may seem a bit meagre but there’s something missing from the picture! Half a head of Chinese cabbage and a whole head of red Batavian lettuce. We picked up the veggies on our way to my aunt’s and since our fridge was still rather full we decided to leave some of the loot with her.

Organic CSA vegetables week 27, 2011

Now more importantly: this weeks veggies…

• Broad beans!!! Love ‘em!
• Tomatoes
• Kapucijner peas
• Basil
• Iceberg lettuce
• Pak choi (bok choy)
• Savory (bonenkruid)

I hope I won’t bore you by sharing another menu plan?

Menu plan July 7-12 2011

Due to our schedule there’s a lot of ‘easy food’ on the menu this week.

• Vegan Spaghetti Bolognese [Wednesday]
• White bean & tomato soup (freezer stash), baguette, green salad with scapes, radicchio and pinenuts [Thursday]
• In between hike and going to the vets: Indian lentil soup (dahl, freezer stash), homemade pizza, cabbage & carrot salad (recipe below) [Friday]
• Broad bean soup, rosemary focaccia from Broodnodig, leftover mashed carrot salad, radicchio salad [Saturday]
• After a day of hiking: vegan ‘shoarma’ (Vivera roerbakreepjes) with pita bread, garlic sauce and leftover carrot-cabbage salad [Sunday]
• Kapucijner peas with veggies Provençale (adapting recipe for fresh peas), baguette, salad
• Stir-fry of pak choi, leek, mushrooms and tofu with rice

New feature!

Cabbage contours by Jacqueline Tinney

Many people don’t know what to do with cabbage. That’s a pity because it’s such a healthy vegetable; loaded with vitamins A & C, potassium, calcium, phosphor. It is also thought to be anti-carcinogenic! And if you’re a CSA participant like us you’ll often find it in your box. :)

So. I decided to share some cabbage recipes I like as a special feature on Graasland! Starting of with this week’s side dish of cabbage & carrot salad. Other recipes you can expect in the future are ‘Cabbage with Coconut’ and Indonesian ‘Sambal Goreng Cabbage’.

Easy cabbage-carrot salad

This is a veganised version of Eethuis Iris’ recipe from Zonnig zomers tafelen (p.20).

Cabbage-carrot salad & orange juice

Ingredients
Serves 4.

• 350 g pointed cabbage (I used a mix of pointed and Chinese cabbage; you could also take ordinary white)
• 100 g carrot, cleaned
• 3 tbs veganaise
• 0.5 dl fresh orange juice
• pinch of curry powder
• salt & pepper
• 2 tbs of roasted sunflower seeds
• chopped parsley (optional: it’s not in the original recipe but I added it for colour)

Preparation

1. Clean cabbage and cut out the hard core.
2. Shred the cabbage very finely.
3. Grate the carrot — or pulse a few times in your kitchen machine.
4. Make a sauce of veganaise, orange juice, curry, salt and pepper.
5. Mix vegetables and dressing, top with sunflower seeds and parsley.

On the contrary of what you may expect, the cabbage in this recipe is not overwhelming. I will make this salad again, maybe tweaking it here and there looking for an even better version: like adding a dash of lemon juice and possible some sweetener like agave syrup or golden raisins.

Do you have any favourite cabbage recipes to share? I’d love to hear them!

Join Beth Fish’s Weekend Cooking with a food related post!

Recipe submitted to the July Whip Up Something New! Challenge hosted on Joyfully Retired

The End is Nigh

We’re halfway December and the end of our CSA season is nearing. Next week’s bag will be The Last!

But you haven’t even had a chance to enjoy any of this month’s organic vegetables… So, here are my veggies of weeks 48, 49 and (freshly picked up today) 50.

Amelishof organic vegetables week 48, 2010

• leek
• kale
• capsicum
• corn salad
• red beet (waiting for me to make Nigel Slater’s red beet cake…)
• pumpkin

Amelishof organic vegetables week 49, 2010

• brussels sprouts (on the stalk, just for fun!)
• parsnip
• corn lettuce
• kohlrabi
• onions (red & white)
• Elstar apples

Amelishof organic vegetables week 50, 2010

WOW, what a mega bag of vegetables we got today! Remember the Invasion of the Broad-Leaved Endive Heads? This time there were even more! It makes a nice green background for the rest of the veggies ;) And Ringo totally went for it… Crazy cat :)

• kale
• endive
• carrots (not washed, so they’ll keep longer)
• root parsley (on the left of my pile of carrots, hiding behind the…)
• kabocha pumpkin!
• celeriac
• cooking pears
• Jerusalem artichoke

I’m not planning our menus and we’ve been eating out, visiting relatives et cetera so next to this HUGE new batch we still have some veggies of the previous weeks to use up: beetroot — but like I said; I’ve got great plans for that ;) — parsnip, kohlrabi, leek and 1 small pie pumpkin. Maybe I would be wise start planning again ;)

Say, Elsje: if you see anything you’d like to use for our 24 mini-marathon dinner next Friday, just give a shout!

Bento #66 en route

I should have taken my 66th bento on my 13,5 km NS-hike with the Wandelgrrls: Bieslandse Bos, from Delft to Zoetermeer. Why? Because it makes me think of the famous song Route 66! And… MaaikeB brought her first bento ever for lunch! She’s got the most beautiful bento box, a gift all the way from Tokyo. Lucky grrl! :)

Anyway, we took off early (for a Sunday morning) so I didn’t have much time to plan a real lunchbox. That’s why bento #66 only traveled by train from Utrecht to Apeldoorn on Monday ;) And it contained the following…

Upper tier

• Salad of grilled zucchini and bell pepper, lettuce, tomato, spring onion, capers and basil leaves

Lower tier

• Dried cranberries and strawberries
• 1/4 mini quiche made of leftovers: chard, goats cheese (feta) with basil, pine nuts and egg
• Carrots
• Walnut
• Basil and parsley

Asian fusion bento (#63)

Today’s bento is a mix of several Asian dishes. Yes, Gnoe likes her Asian foodies :)

Upper tier

• Indian egg-tomato curry (one of our all-time favourites!)
• Japanese edamame
• Indonesian nasi goreng
• gherkin fox
• cucumber
• two types of parsley
• on a bed of lettuce

Lower tier

• Indonesian emping
• raspberries and red currants
• yoghurt coated apricot
• carrots
• basil
• and another fox

Selamat makan!

Bento #61 for good luck on Monday the 13th

I’m not superstitious and I don’t believe Friday the 13th means bad luck. Hey, on Fridays it’s almost W.E.E.K.E.N.D.! But Monday the 13th… Yaiks, that’s something else indeed! I don’t like Mondays… And now both July and August bring us that black day :(

Today I hoped to balance things out a bit by bringing bento #61 to work: 6 + 1 = lucky number 7! :)

First tier:

• bed of romaine lettuce
• pesto egg with sundried tomato
• carrot
• hot pepper (from the balcony) with houmous
• slice of cucumber
• cauliflower florets
• black olives
• pine nuts

I also added some walnut after making the picture.

Second tier:

• mexican nut mix (‘pepita mix‘)
• carrot sticks
• seedless grapes
• pasta salad (corn, hot pepper, (fresh & sundried) tomato, pine nuts, pesto, basil, red tofu)

This bento really helped me get through my busy day! :)

Of course macaroni rigate is a bit too large for a real pasta salad but I am not small-minded when it comes to using leftovers!

BTW: did you spot the 3 song titles in this post???

Good beginnings bento (#51)

Bento #51 was not only a good beginning of the next fifty (on the way to 100!), but also a great start of the week :)

I’ve been getting questions about preparation time. Well, this bento to me a relaxed 12 minutes in the morning! Could have been quicker if I had been in a hurry! :) Of course I’m only counting throwing in the quiche, not baking it LOL. I also had the steamed green beans ready to go and I cleaned my yellow tomatoes, radishes and a carrot the night before. Nothing I couldn’t have done in a sec this morning :)

Gnoe’s tip: did you know that steaming vegetables is so much quicker and healthier when you do it in the microwave? Do follow instructions though (LOL). It sounds obvious but I know a lot of people who don’t use the microwave for cooking veggies.

Well, I’ve already mentioned some of my bento’s content but here’s the complete list:

• yellow grape tomatoes
• strawberries
• red salad leaves
• spinach pie with blue cheese, leeks, pinenuts and black sesame seeds
• some cranberries
• walnut and hazelnuts
• carrot hiding under green beans
• garden cress
• radishes
• basil
• and… mini rhubarb-raspberry crumble!

As you can see I tried to do something creative with the radishes :-o I had hoped the carefully peeled skin would ‘flower’ after I had put the veggies in some ice water but… it failed ;) And yes, that experiment took place within the before mentioned 12 minutes! ;)

Fireworks for another bento jubilee! (#50)

Well, guess what we had for dinner yesterday… Gado-gado! Since my first — and very succesful — attempt to grow my own bean sprouts (taugeh) we have to think of recipes to use it all. LOL Gado-gado is an all-time favourite and had to go on the menu. It’s a salad of either raw or blanched vegetables, served with peanut sauce as a dressing and emping and (dried) fried onions as toppings. Fried tofu and boiled egg are essential ingredients as well. Can’t get any easier, can it? :)

Our meal was (of course) delicious and I had made enough to put some in bento #50. Yay, a real feast! Unfortunately we were out of fried onions and ate all the emping at dinner :\ In my bento I took a Japanese sesame-soy rice cracker instead; not the same — I knoooow — but something crunchy to bite anyway ;)

For those of you who’ve never heard of emping: it’s a type of krupuk (or kroepoek, as we say) that is made of melinjo nuts. No shrimp, so it’s a good alternative for vegetarians like me :) It seems you have to love it or to hate it (it has a bit of a bitter taste) but I really can’t understand that anyone wouldn’t like it! :\

About my jubilee bento. Gado-gado is a great bento filler because it should be eaten at room temperature. The veggies are either blanched or raw so it’s easy to use leftovers ;) Of course it can be nice to have a hot peanut sauce with it, but roomtemp or cold is fine. So what do you see in my bento?

Top tier (which is actually the bottom tier :\ )

• Japanese grape sweet (Anpanman mix fruit hard candy)
• 3 stars of dried apricot & wild berries snack
  
• mix of cashews and dried cranberries
• sesame-soy rice cracker
• container with peanut sauce
• strips of fried tofu for the gado-gado
• homegrown mustard cress
• little radish stars

The bottom tier contains a mix of the following

• red leaf salad (raw)
• white cabbage (blanched by pouring some hot water over it)
• bean sprouts (raw, but can be poured over with some hot water as well)
• cucumber (raw)
• carrots (blanched)
• green beans and haricots verts (blanched)
• slices of boiled egg (obviously)
• more radish stars
• radishes with gherkin stars

I’ll post a more precise recipe of gado-gado sometime soon… (oh, me and my promises..! :\ )

Tonight we will be having more Indonesian food with taugeh on the menu: loempia (spring rolls) and lalab taugé! Spring rolls and mushroom soup as a matter of fact, because I ran out of bean sprouts! :-o

I’m afraid the recipes are in Dutch (one of them is really Flemish, to be exact ;)

Etappe 1 in de hamsterrace

Voor de maand maart heb ik vast aan mijn opdracht voldaan en 2 dingen uit de hamstervoorraad gebruikt: roerbaksaus van zwarte bonen (die we in huis haalden toen we griep hadden en weinig puf om te koken) en het restant boemboe lemper, wat deze keer wel tot een geslaagd experiment leidde :) Bewijs is bijgevoegd, met excuses voor de weerkaatsing van de flits in het bord.

Van de stir fry sauce ging maar een half zakje op zodat die er deze week nogmaals een roerbakgerecht op het menu komt.

Het is wel lekker (en supersnel), maar ik ben bang dat het iedere keer hetzelfde smaakt. Dan gooi ik net zo lief zelf wat kruiden door elkaar met goela djawa of gembersiroop en ketjap of… Nou ja, gefermenteerde bonensaus zal ik niet snel zelf maken ;)

En zo aten we gisteravond zomaar onbedoeld veganistisch!

Update: inmiddels staat de teller al op 3 want ik gaf ook nog een Zotter drinkchocoladetablet weg ;)

Belofte maakt schuld: in honing geroosterde wortelgroenten

Het is alweer even geleden dat ik het beloofde, maar ik zou het recept voor in honing geroosterde wortelgroenten nog posten. Een lekker gerecht voor mede-groentetas-bezitters die in de winter soms ook hun berg knollen zien groeien… Ik geef jullie het originele recept zodat je een idee hebt van de hoeveelheden, maar eigenlijk is het juist zo makkelijk dat je gewoon kunt pakken wat je voor handen hebt ;)

Nodig voor 4 personen:

• 60 g boter (niemand heeft mij horen zeggen dat het een light recept is ;)
• 2 el honing
• paar takjes tijm
• 3 wortels (evt. geschild), in grote stukken
• 2 pastinaken, geschild en in grote stukken
• 2 zoete aardappels (1 oranje, 1 wit)
• (8 kleine ingemaakte uien, geschild)
• 8 aardperen
• zout & peper
• 1 knoflookbol

Variatie: wortelpeterselie, pompoen, venkel, enz.

Bereiden:

• Oven voorverwarmen op 200 graden Celsius
• Knoflookbol in aluminiumfolie wikkelen
• Boter in een vuurvaste schaal op matig vuur smelten
• Honing en tijm toevoegen en even roeren
• Schaal van het vuur halen en de wortelgroenten toevoegen, met wat peper en zout naar smaak voorzichtig omroeren zodat alles bedekt raakt met de honingboter
• Schaal in de oven doen en de knoflook in folie erbovenop leggen
• Laat de groenten ca. 1 uur in de oven roosteren maar schep ze regelmatig even om voor gelijkmatig garen & karameliseren
• De knoflook is waarschijnlijk eerder klaar: folie eraf halen en teentjes pellen als ze wat zijn afgekoeld
• Knoflookteentjes door de groenten lepelen en klaar!

Wij hebben gewone aardappels gebruikt en rode ui in plaats van ingemaakte uitjes. Ook hadden we een restje venkel over dat erdoor ging, en wortelpeterselie. De knoflook vond ik wat veel zodat we een aantal teentjes — die tot puree waren gestoofd — hebben bewaard voor een roerbakgerecht enige dagen later.

Dit is echt een geslaagd kliekjesrecept om het groentenvak van je koelkast leeg te maken! :)

Het recept wordt veganistisch in plaats van vegetarisch wanneer je plantaardige margarine gebruikt en suiker in plaats van honing. Los de suiker dan wel eerst in de warme boter op. Je kunt natuurlijk ook een plantaardige olie nemen, maar liever geen olijfolie omdat de smaak daarvan teveel overheerst.

Bron recept: boekje VEGAGERECHTEN – van bijgerecht tot hoofdgerecht, Veltman Uitgevers 2005 (isbn: 90 5920 261 9)

Zoek de tien verschillen…

Alwéér een nieuwe ontdekking in ons groentepakket: wortelpeterselie. Nog nooit van gehoord! :-o Het is maar goed dat er een inhoudsopgave in de tas zit, want anders was het als pastinaak de pan in gegaan…

Rechts wortelpeterselie, links pastinaak. Hoeveel verschillen tellen jullie?

Omdát we nog pastinaak hadden, en ook worteltjes, venkel en verse tijm, maakten we in honing geroosterde wortelgroenten; een variatie op een recept uit Vegagerechten van Veltman Uitgevers. Riskant, want uit datzelfde boek was ooit de aardpeer geroosterd met knoflook en rode wijn gekomen waarover ik eerder deze week schreef. Maar dit was heerlijk met een kaasomelet! De smaak van wortelpeterselie heb ik alleen niet herkend… Het waren ook wel erge kleintjes hè. Helaas ben ik vergeten om ze vooraf rauw te proeven, maar ik kan wel zeggen dat ze lekker ruikten roken: een beetje fris naar knolselderij en maggi.

Het recept is op een later moment toegevoegd.