Ha-loosh-ki

Haluski.

Around here, we eat a lot of cabbage rolls. My husband Ryan is Ukranian, and he makes them at least once a month. He uses brown rice for stuffing and ground turkey instead of pork to lighten up the rolls. Mince a slice of bacon, render it down in a pan and then throw your ground turkey in for browning. Gives a smoky richness while avoiding the heaviness of using a fattier ground pork. And an old family tip is to blanche and then freeze the head of cabbage first. The leaves just fall off and are perfect for stuffing (mind you, sometimes he cheats and just layers the cabbage over the meat, lasagne-style, and doesn't even bother rolling them up. Tops it off with a tin of tomato soup and a smattering of sharp cheddar before baking. Not going to lie, tastes exactly the same).

Here's the dilemma. We always have a half a head of cabbage left over. Cabbages survive a suspiciously long time in the refrigerator of you wrap them up tightly. They sit in silent patience, staring up at you from the crisper drawer every time you open the fridge to get at their more popular friends, carrot and celery. Inevitably I shred the cabbage and make it into soup. If Ryan is feeling ambitious, he uses up the cabbage to make Vietnamese-style pickled salad along with shredded carrots and his vegetable BFF, daikon radish. So imagine my surprise one night when I saw a dish on the food network that featured cabbage as the key ingredient...haluski. Polish food, Diner-style, I have found the answer to my leftover head of cabbage.

Haluski
Adapted from Guy Fieri (who adapted it from Kelly O's Diner)

6 slices bacon, diced
1 onion, cut into 1" strips
2 Tbsp butter
half head of cabbage, boiled until soft and cut into 1" strips
375g bag of egg noodles, broad or extra-broad, cooked
2 tsp garlic powder
salt and fresh ground black pepper
1/2 cup Parmesan or Romano cheese, coarsely grated

Cook down your bacon slowly over medium heat, being careful not to burn the drippings. Remove bacon and set aside. Add onions to the pan with drippings and cook until softened and almost browned, about 5 minutes. Add cabbage to the onions and cook over low medium heat 3 minutes. Add butter and noodles to the cabbage mixture (the original version of this dish calls for twice as much butter, but since our onions were cooked in the bacon drippings, you can use less butter. I suggest adding some of the cooking water from your noodles to "loosen" up the dish too). Top with garlic powder and season with salt and pepper. Serve with cheese.

Semi-Meatless Mondays?

I've been noticing a lot of "meatless mondays" ideas out there. The most impressive so far has been the city of Ghent in Belgium. They have declared one day a week to be vegetarian for its citizens! The idea is that the less meat consumed, the less emissions is the long run. Cue the 'applause' for letting vegetables play a bigger part of their everyday lifestyle. 

Okay, I admit that is a commitment...maybe baby-steps is the way to go. How about if I start the week off with a steaming hot bowl of soup to warm up? Can you say Fasolada? So simple and so hearty, it's a Greek vegetarian soup with plump, white beans as the primary ingredient. I think I love this soup because it tasted like those tomatoey Gigandes Elephant beans. They always come in a little plastic tub from Greek delis (sometimes you can even find imported ones in a tin).

When I was a kid, my dad took me to the Greek Food Festival every year. He thought that lamb was one of the great acquired tastes in life that required training from early childhood in order to develop a full appreciation by adulthood (others include black licorice, spicy food, organ meats, blood sausage, etc). I became obsessed with all the sticky-syrupy pastries that somehow seemed to stay flaky even though they were drenched in honey. We ate a lot of Greek food when I was growing up. My dad thought it was important to try everything at least once (his motto was very much "you don't have to eat it again if you don't like it, but if you don't try it at all, you don't know what you're missing out on..."). He didn't want us growing up going to the same Chinese restaurant every week, eating the same dishes all the time. So instead, we went to Greek restaurants all over Vancouver. Maybe this is why I love making Fasolada. 

Well, also because I usually have most of the ingredients around the kitchen and I can make it without going grocery shopping.

Fasolada

As always, when it comes to soup for me, the quantity of the ingredients tends to vary depending on what I have left over in the fridge. Usually I am pretty liberal to making substitutions too, but in this case, you want to stick to the carrot/ celery/ tomato/ bean combo because they when they meld together with the oregano, delicious.

You can also simmer for longer or less time, depending on how soft you want your vegetables to get. I usually go a full hour and the result is a lovely sheen of olive oil, coloured orange from the carrots being cooked down. Perfect for dunking some homebaked bread...

2 Tbsp olive oil

1 onion, minced

2 garlic cloves, minced

1 shallot, minced

3 celery stalks, diced

3 carrots, diced

19oz can white beans, drained and rinsed

28oz can diced tomatoes

6 cups vegetable stock (or 2 vegetable bouillon cubes and hot water)

1 tsp dried oregano

pinch dried red pepper flakes

seasoning salt and white pepper to taste

Heat oil in stockpot over medium heat and add onion, garlic and shallots. Cook 2 minutes, then add celery and carrots. Cook 10 minutes until starting to soften. Add canned beans and tomatoes along with stock. Cover and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer 45 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add oregano and season with peppers and seasoning salt at the end after the soup has cooked down, because canned tomatoes have a salty kick after simmering for so long. 

Shiny Happy Vegetables

Had a pretty indulgent week, so I spent today trying to make up for the last several days of excess. Started the morning with green tea instead of the usual cup of coffee. Bit the bullet and ate the last brown-flecked banana from the old bunch instead of taking a greeny-yellow one from the new bunch. Took the dog for an extra-long walk at the beach, and then made her a "special supper" of poached chicken breast and brown rice (instead of her usual dry kibble, sort of a restorative day for her too). Thought it best to break out an oldie-but-goodie for dinner with some lemony oven-roasted vegetables and broiled salmon. 

Here's the thing I love about oven roasting. If you line your pans well with foil or parchment paper, the cleanup is so much faster. Less time washing up after dinner = more time to relax.

Can you do a Detox in one day? Maybe...maybe not. This meal might have qualified, except for the fact that it was topped off with a light shower of Parmesan. Sometimes just a little bit of good-quality cheese goes a long way. Gives everything a tiny dose of unctuousness. A smattering of cheese works wonders to hide cooking "blemishes" too (over-cooked pasta...I'm talking about you). Either way, it was a meal that left my conscience and my stomach satisfied.

Garlicky Lemon-Roasted Vegetables with Toasted Almonds 
You can actually sub with any combo of vegetables. Asparagus, Broccoli, Carrots. Here's what, though. If they have different cooking times, so be it. The ones that cook quickly can be thrown in at the end. Nothing I hate more than over-cooked vegetables, except for the aforementioned pasta.* A good trick when oven-roasting vegetables is to blanch them first so they stay soft and smushy on the inside, but sticky with caramelized bits on the outside (*Best remedy for over-cooked, mushy vegetables that remind you of a high-school cafeteria? Smush them with a fork and stir them into mashed potatoes with a little oil, rosemary and, you guessed it, Parmesan. If you don't like the cheese and herb idea, try Sriracha or sesame oil, depending on the vegetable, of course).

6 fingerling or nugget potatoes, blanched until partially cooked for 10 minutes and then halved
1/2 lb green beans, blanched for 1 minute
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 clove garlic, thinly sliced
Coarse salt and white pepper
1/4 cup slivered almonds
1 Tbsp grated Parmesan

Preheat oven to 400. Line a roasting pan tightly with foil. Coat foil with olive oil and drop in potatoes and half the garlic. Toss to coat. Roast 10 to 15 minutes or until they start to brown. Scooch the potatoes over in the pan and add the green beans with the remaining garlic, making sure to coat them with a bit of oil. Sprinkle the almonds evenly over the vegetables. Roast for another 5 minutes to desired doneness but be careful to avoid burning the nuts.

Using coarse salt and white pepper gives you soothing bits and shards of saltiness as opposed to unexpected  black pepper punches. Shower the hot vegetables with the cheese first and then season to taste so you can use a little less salt. Serve with broiled fish.

Enough for three servings (or two hungry people).

BTW: I cooked my salmon fillets in the oven beside the vegetables on a separate pan. More or less the same amount of time, but the fillets were less than 1" in thickness.

Good Versus Evil: Korean-Style. In one corner, we have Cold noodles with Vegetables with hot sauce. The challenger, Pork Hock with fresh Jalapenos and Pickled Anchovy Sauce. The trick is to eat a bit of both...in moderation, of course! My brother's birthday dinner at JANG MO Jib. A tasty Korean meal on a cold winter night never disappoints.

Dinner at Lana's. Bouillabaisse! Not to be mistaken for its close relative Cioppino (different spices..different seafood combo). First time having langoustines. Sort of like teeny tiny lobstery tasting morsels...maybe a distant relative of the crayfish?

Crostini again? This time topped with Parmesan and Saffron Aioli on the side. Washed down with a Kalimotxo over ice. 50% coke, 50% red wine, 100% delicious.

Hot Potting

Hot Pot night at my sister's. A little meat goes a long way when it is plunged into a boiling cauldron of satay-flavoured soup...along with bushels of greens and mushrooms of course! Found a great Gomae mix to add to blanched fresh spinach.

More Vegetables...Less Meat

More vegetables...less meat. If you are going to eat meat at all, let it be the really delicious kind. Take this Bone Marrow for instance. At Mario Batali's Mozza in Newport Beach. Plated with roasted whole garlic cloves and coarse salt along with crostini. You dig out the marrow and smear it on the bread...sort of like "meat butter." Each tiny bite was satisfying.