Cabbage Soup

Cabbage Soup

Olive oil

2 cups chopped cabbage

1 onion

1 sweet potato

5 c. beef broth

Saute the cabbage, onion and potato in the oil on low heat for10 minutes or so—until the veg is getting tender. Add the broth and simmer for 20 minutes or so. Stir in a little fragrant cheese or whole wheat croutons, and voila!

Becca's...Red...Rice....

This was a shockingly easy beautiful little side dish the other night.
Red...Rice....

2 tbsp or so olive oil
2 cups cooked rice
3 tbsp or so tomato paste
sea salt
pepper
fresh cilantro, chopped

Heat the olive oil in a saute pan, add the tomato paste and spread it around, let it cook for 30 seconds or so. Add the cooked rice and the salt, combine it all thoroughly, and stir it until the rice gets a teeny bit carmelize. Grind some pepper and toss with cilantro, and voila. Practically instantaneous.

Becca's Bean Gunk

Originally published at Run and Not Be Weary

Matt and I fell in love in our dingy student apartments over steaming bowls of this stuff. It's fast, easy, made of cheap ingredients, and tasty too!
Bean Gunk

olive oil
sea salt
one onion, chopped
garlic
2 or 3 cups of vegetables: celery, carrots, peppers--even fennel or hard squash would be good, too.
1 can of stewed tomatoes
1 can of black beans, with their juices
fresh herbs-- cilantro is my favorite
other possible additions: chipotle tabasco, cumin, smoked paprika, turmeric

Saute the onion, garlic in the olive oil until they're a little bit carmelized. Add whatever spices and the veg and cook for a few more minutes until everything is really combined and smelling amazing. Then add the tomatoes and the beans and let the stuff simmer for 10 minutes or so, until it thickens a little bit and everything is thoroughly combined. Add the chopped fresh herbs and voila!
I like to serve it on rice, with maybe some cheese or sour cream on top.

Note: You could expand this into a soup easily-- just add broth and/or white wine when you add the tomatoes.
I hope you enjoy it!

Happy Birthday Matt Trifle

Trifle is Matt's favorite, and this year I made a good 'un.
Happy Birthday Matt! Trifle

Pound cake
couple teaspoons of rum (or more, if you're WILD and WICKED. Or a pirate.)
Doubled recipe of vanilla pudding
Strawberry preserves
Thinly sliced green apples
purple seedless grapes, cut in half

In a glass bowl, put down a layer of cake slices, and sprinkle them with the rum. Around the edges of the bowl, arrange a layer of the apple slices and grapes so they're visible. Then pour on half of the pudding (still warm and unset is fine). Then another layer of cake slices, more jam some more fruit, and the rest of the pudding. Arrange the rest of the fruit artistically on top. Chill a bit before serving. Voila! You may get reviews as spectacular as I got: "Wow, Becca, this is a good--fruit salad?"

Hawaiian Style Enchiladas

Hawaiian Style Enchiladas

1 lb kalua pig, already cooked and shredded (or, okay, any other cooked meat.)
3 c. of cabbage, green or red or both
6 tortillas, or more, whatevahs
1/2 c. grated monterey jack cheese
chipotle tabasco to topper.

Preheat the oven to 400. Throw the tortillas in there to get soft-- just 5 minutes. Meanwhile, saute the pork and the cabbage in a heavy skillet. Grease a casserole dish, then put a bunch of the pork and cabbage in each of the tortillas. Roll 'em up, put 'em in the casserole dish. Dump any extra pork-cabbage stuff on top, and then put the cheese on top. Bake for 10 minutes till the cheese is nice and melty. Voila! Too easy!

Coconut Rice Pudding

With coconut water, rather than milk or cream, this is a really light-tasting pudding. The intensity of the coconut flavor will depend on your liquid. We have a samoan coconut tree that makes huge generous coconuts full of very mild flavored water-- about a half gallon per nut!

Coconut Rice Pudding

1/2 c. sugar
3-4 c. coconut water
1-2 c. cooked white rice
Splash of Cream

Combine everything in a saucepan, and simmer for a long time. Maybe 40 minutes? Until the rice expands and absorbs all the liquid, and the pudding plops and glops (technical culinary terms, those.) Garnish the servings of pudding with drizzles of cream.

Salt Grilled Akule fish with Savory Cabbage

Two gorgeous whole hooked Akule were at our grocery store. Here we are living on an island and I almost never cook fish-- I just don't really know how! Plus their goggly eyes looking up at me through the saran wrap, it's almost too much. But these guys called my name. They're a small fish-- about 1/2 lbs each-- with nice white flesh.
We got them home and Matt cleaned them out for me and scraped off their scales(one of which I see lodged in my cookbook), and left the heads on . I patted them dry, rubbed them all over with red sea salt, and dredged them in flour. Then I heated about 1/4 cup of olive oil in a big skillet over medium high and threw the suckers in to brown. They cooked for about 6 minutes per side and got a nice golden crust on them.
Meanwhile I chopped up a quarter head each of green and purple cabbage, threw those in a little saute pan with 1 inch of chopped fresh ginger, about 3 tbsp mirin, and a tablespoon of hoisin sauce. I stirfried that for about 2 minutes-- until the cabbage is still crunchy but warmed through and the sauce is bubbling.
I served the fish whole on a bed of the cabbage. Yummmmmmy.

Becca's Coconut Rice Pilaf

I found a dusty and foreign smelling 5 pound bag of basmati rice on the "deep discount" shelf of our local grocery store. I couldn't resist its burlappy charms. Here's what I did with it when I got it home, inspired by Ajanta.

Coconut Rice Pilaf

3-5 tbsp oil
1 onion
1 chopped carrot
2 c. basmati rice
4 c. coconut water
1 bay leaf
1 stick cinnamon
pinch salt

Saute the onion and carrot in the oil until nicely carmalized. Add the rice and stir fry for 3 minutes. Add the coconut water, bay leaf, cinnamon and salt, and bring back to a boil. Cover, reduce heat to Very Low, and cook for 18 minutes. Voila!

Becca's Tortillas

The first time I made tortillas was on the floor of my freezing cold apartment in Ueda, Japan. My companion was Karina Maqueda, from Mexico City, and we had no languages in common. We communicated in hugs and earnest gestures and feeble monosyllabic Japanese.
She was a real cook-- she would put her finger right into a simmering pot to taste, and then suck on it thoughtfully, then splash in salt or cream in a cascade, a foot above the stove. She had drama and flair. And she gave me a very stern look when she caught me eating my asparagus right out of the cooking water. "Do you always eat it like THAT?"
I wish these were her tortillas, which she threw together and rolled quickly with her palms, and spread into even perfect circles. But they're not.
I like to make these in huge batches and freeze whatever I don't use that day. So this recipe makes about 3o.

Becca's Tortillas

2 c white flour
2 c wheat flour
2 c corn meal
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/2 c. lard
2 and 3/4 c. hot water

Knead these together with your hands until it comes together into a ball and holds together, about 5 minutes. Then roll the dough into balls of about 2 tbsp each, flouring your hands and the board if you need to. Cover with plastic wrap and rest for 20 minutes.
Then heat a skillet or two to medium. Roll the balls out into even thin circles and cook in the hot pan (ungreased!) for a minute on one side, 20 seconds on the other. Adjust the heat if it takes too long or blackens too quickly. Juggle rolling pin, flour, hot pans, dough, and spatula until you have a small mountain of tortillas. Let them cool, then freeze 'em!

Becca's Sweet Potato Soup with Crusty Toasts

Sweet Potato Soup
Saute in a pot:

Olive oil
1 stalk celery, chopped
1 big or 2 small bell peppers, chopped
1/2 onion, chopped
salt

Add and stir until well-combined:

1/2 to 1 tsp turmeric
fresh ginger
2 cups shredded sweet potato

Add:

3 or 4 cups Beef Broth
Simmer for 15 minutes or so, until all the flavors are combined. Serve garnished with chunks of cheese (I had sheep feta on hand, yum!) and chopped basil.

Crusty Toasts

whole wheat bread slices
olive oil/butter or both
sea salt
black pepper

Preheat oven to 400, slice whole wheat bread. Drizzle with olive oil or spread with butter. Sprinkle with sea salt and pepper. Toast for 5 minutes or so.

Becca's Creamy Coconut Curry

Becca's Creamy Coconut Curry

Some olive oil
1 tbsp fresh turmeric
1 tbsp fresh ginger
1 tbsp fresh garlic
some cumin
some salt (red, thanks!)
some paprika
some pepper
2 carrots
an onion
3 potatoes
handful of corn
2 c. sweet potato
3 cups coconut water (if you don't have, leave out the cream and use coconut milk)
1.5 cups cream
1.5 cups chicken stock
Some cheese (I used Gouda)

Heat the olive oil, add all of the spices until they combine into a fragrant paste. Add the chopped vegetables and saute them until they are nice and browned and coated in the spices. Add the coconut water and cook the vegetables until they are almost done. Add the cream and the chicken stock and simmer gently (no boiling the cream) until everything is nicely combined and the veg are soft.
Serve with cubes of cheese.