Steel Cut Oatmeal with Fresh Ripened Pear

This morning was looking a but chilly out.  A storm is apparently due to come through, bringing our first winter's snow.  So, I decided to make a comfort food dish that would warm our insides up for the day ahead. Now the real star of this meal was the pear.  I think it is of the utmost importance to use a well ripened, good quality pear.  Now with steel cut oats a common complaint is that it takes too long to cook; but with a little forethought you can cook the oats the night before, so that when you are blow drying your hair, putting on your socks, looking for your keys, and packing your lunch with no time to spare, you can still eat an amazing breakfast.  Now I know that this dish is not a huge departure from the classic bowl of oatmeal, but using high quality fresh ingredients can make an otherwise overlooked breakfast into something quite memorable.

Steel Cut Oatmeal with Fresh Ripened Pear

serves 3

3 cups Filtered Water

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup Steel Cut Oats (Bob's Red Mill)

1/4 cup Brown Sugar

3 pats Butter

1 Ripened Pear, sliced into sticks

1/2 cup Golden Raisins

1/2 cup Walnuts

pinch Ground Cinnamon

To cook the oats, bring the water to a boil in a medium sauce pan.  Add the salt and oats. Reduce heat to a simmer. Cover and cook for 15-20 minutes.  Remove from heat and let cool to room tempereature if storing overnight.  If you are eating it right away, remove from heat, stir in the brown sugar and serve into bowls.  Top each serving with 1 pat of butter, pear, raisins, walnuts and ground cinnamon to garnish.  Eat!

Corn, Tomato, and Zucchini Soup

This week we were lucky to catch the seasons very last zucchini's at Farmer's Market.  It is notably out of season, but we love fresh zucchini, so we bought them up along with some other fall season veggies.  It is getting cold here in Michigan, so soup is on the mind.  For a base recipe to start from, we went to one of our staple cookbooks, Mark Bittman's How To Cook Everything: Simple Recipes for Great Food.  Sometimes it helps to have a recipe from which to edit, change and make your own, especially when you are tired after a long day at work.  We happened to have a fresh french baguette to accompany, which was a perfect compliment, but any light crunchy bread should do fine.

Corn, Tomato, and Zucchini Soup
Makes 6 servings

4 cups vegetable stock
3 ears fresh corn
2 tablespoons butter
1 medium yellow onion
3 medium tomatoes, chopped
2-3 small zucchini, diced
1 tablespoon garlic
salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
1 28-ounce can kidney beans
2 teaspoons basalmic vinegar

Heat the stock in a large saucepan.  Strip the kernels from the corn cobs and add the cobs to the stock.  Simmer while you prepare the other vegetables.
Place the butter in a medium saucepan, heat over medium.  Add the onion and cook, stirring until soft, about 5 minutes.  Add the tomatoes, zucchini, garlic, salt and pepper, and cook, stirring occasionally for about 10 minutes.
Remove the corn cobs from the stock. Add the vegetables and cook until the zucchini is tender, about 5 minutes.  Stir in the corn kernels and kidney beans.  Add the vinegar.  Taste and season more as needed.  Serve warm with some great bread.

Jamaican Veggie Hand-Pies

After last night's root vegetable curry, we just couldn't get enough of that flavor. So while our curry mixture is still freshly ground, we decided to utilize what we have around from the farmers market to create one of my fall favorites.  These hand-pies scream fall flavor while being a bit off the beaten path of a traditional American dish.  You may find the prep time for making the dough and filling to be somewhat of a time commitment, but we take half the batch and freeze them for later, making this dish well worth it in the long run.  When you are ready to cook the frozen hand-pies just thaw at room temperature for 20 minutes and bake as usual.  If you are on the go, take a hand-pie hot out of the oven and wrap it up in a tea towel.  It should stay hot for a good 20-30 minutes.  Best part is there is nothing to go into the landfill, just wash the towel when you get back home!  Enjoy.

Jamaican Veggie Hand-pie

makes 8 turnovers

Dough

3 cups all-purpose flour

3 teaspoons curry powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup unsalted butter diced

3/4 cup water plus 0-4 tablespoons cold water

Filling

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 medium red bell pepper, seeded and chopped

1 medium carrot, peeled and chopped

2 cups peeled and diced butternut squash

1 medium yellow onion

1-1/2 teaspoons jerk seasoning blend (see below)

1/2 cup mild vegetable broth

1/2 cup frozen corn, defrosted

1/2 cup canned black beans, rinsed and drained

3 green onions, chopped

salt and freshly ground pepper

1 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese (optional)

To make dough: In a food processor, pulse the flour, curry powder, and salt. Add the butter and pulse until the butter is in little bits no larger than a pea.  Turn the mixture out into a bowl and add the 3/4 cup water. Add additional water one tablespoon at a time, tossing until the dough comes together.  Gather the dough into two disks, wrap with plastic, and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

To make filling: Preheat oven to 375 degrees and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.  Heat the oil in a large lidded stock pan over medium-high heat.  Add the bell pepper, carrot, squash, and onion stirring frequently, until the vegetables begin to brown, about 5 minutes.  Reduce heat to medium-low and stir in the jerk seasoning and broth; cover and simmer until squash is fork tender, about 5 minutes more. Turn filling out into a large bowl, stir in corn, beans, and green onions and season with salt and pepper.  Allow to cool for 10 minutes.

Divide the dough into 8 portions and form them into balls.  On a lightly floured surface, roll each ball into an 8-inch round. Divide the filling evenly amongst the rounds, placing it on half of each round.  Top with cheese, if desired.  Bring the uncovered dough up and over the filling to meet opposite edge of pastry.  Crimp edges with a fork and carefully transfer hand-pies to baking sheet.  Bake until crust is golden brown, about 40 minutes.  Serve hot or at room temperature.

Jerk Rub

makes approximately 1/4 cup

4 teaspoons coriander seeds

1 tablespoon onion powder

1 teaspoon garlic powder

1 teaspoon allspice berries

1 teaspoon ground ginger

1 teaspoon dried thyme

1 teaspoon black peppercorns

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon granulated sugar

1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/4 teaspoon whole cloves

1/2 teaspoon habanero chile powder (or any other chile powder)

Combine all ingredients in a small food processor or coffee mill, and grind thoroughly.

Root Vegetable Curry

It is early November and the local farmer's market is winding down for the season, but before the snow comes we decided to make a run down and grab what we could, which happens to be root vegetables and peppers. It's the time of year for soup and on a budget soup is a beautiful thing. We compiled three seperate recipes that we will be making throughout the week, but tonight we cooked a delicious root vegetable curry recipe from The Spice Lover's Guide to Herbs and Spices.  In the recipe below I used fresh cayenne peppers from the farmers market for my pepper of choice, which worked well.  Although this recipe has good flavor, I found that it is missing some notes that I look for in a good curry. So at the bottom of the list of ingredients I posted my additions as optional.  I encourage you to try your own variations of root vegetables, peppers and additions to this terrific fall curry stew.

Root Vegetable Curry
3 tablespoons peanut oil
2 teaspoons ground indian coriander
1 cup peeled, diced turnips
1 cup peeled, diced carrots
1 cup peeled, diced parsnips
1 cup diced yellow onions
2 tablespoons freshly ground Madras-style
curry powder
2 cups chicken or vegetable stock
1 cup diced potato
1 tablespoon finely diced fresh hot red chiles
salt to taste (optional)
2 tablespoons lime juice or apple cider vinegar (optional)
1-2 teaspoons brown sugar (optional)

hot cooked rice, for serving
minced scallions, for garnish
minced cilantro, for garnish
yogurt, for serving


Heat the oil and coriander in a medium sauce pan over medium high heat.  Add the turnips, carrots, parsnips, and onions, and cook, stirring until slightly camelized, 6 to 8 minutes. (At this point you can transfer the ingredients to a crock pot if desired for the rest of the cooking time, or if your sauce pan is sufficiently big enough you can just keep on following along.) Stir in the curry powder.  Add enough water to completely cover all the vegetables.  Lower heat to a simmer, and cook covered for 2 hours.  Add more water as needed to keep vegetables covered. 

Add the stock, potato, and chile peppers.  Simmer for 1 hour more, until the liquid reduces, and the potatoes break apart.  Salt to taste.  Serve over rice with cilantro, and scallions.

Prologue

The Sir Katser Kitchen is a collaboration between the best of friends, L + M. We decided to start this blog as a way to keep an open journal of our culinary explorations, so that as we try cooking new dishes, our friends can chime in, keep tabs and offer feedback on what is working and how each recipe can be improved. As our fascination with a variety of cuisine's has expanded, so has a growing list of food allergies, intolerance's and monetary constraints.  Our goal is to work within our limitations of diet and budget; while striving to buy locally grown food (ie:CSA and farmer's market), eat seasonally, stick to a rotational diet and eliminate waste of unused ingredients. The list of food allergies that we plan to work around and of which you will see very sparingly on our blog are as follows; beef, milk(not all dairy, just unprocessed milk), eggs, sesame, brewers yeast, mushrooms, cranberry, almonds and shellfish.  We are also well aware of the constraints of a gluten-free diet so we will be paying due attention to posting alternative baking recipes.
As a monetary guideline to eating we are looking at a standard budgeting guideline worksheet which we have combined with a standard miscellaneous category (ie: hygiene products, household supplies, subscriptions, gifts, and postage) to help the ease of not having to itemize all receipts. The worksheet suggests spending between 14-23% of your net spendable income on all food and misc. related items, which for us is going to start at $140 a week. Our $10 a day each allowance will include going out to eat, potluck parties, alcohol, dessert and other expensive vices.
To learn more about eating seasonally we encourage you to check out a book titled From Asparagus to Zucchini written by the Madison area CSA.
Thank you for reading our blog!