Buckwheat pilaf

Buckwheat is hardy grass like plant that used to represent a large part of diet in areas where harsh climate or low-fertility soil did not support growing wheat. It is also delicious, nutritious, has low glycemic load, and has no gluten. But most of all, it is delicious.

One can use buckwheat groats in soups of course, buckwheat crepes are amazing, there is a dish called zganci for which I need to record a recipe one day, we put cooked buckwheat groats into home-made sausages, and of course buckwheat gives bread an amazing flavor.

But here, we focus on a simple buckwheat pilaf. It's great as a starch in your meal, and it is cooked so fast that you can make it with your scrambled eggs in the morning. The look below may not be most appealing - do not be mislead, this is top-shelf kind of food in my opinion.

Ingredients:

• 1 TBS cooking oil. My preference is coconut or avocado oil, by far.
• 1/2 onion, chopped
• Optional: 1-2 cloves of garlic, chopped finely.
• Buckwheat groats, non-toasted. About 1/2 cup for 2-3 people. I find toasted groats, sometimes sold as buckwheat kasha, awful as they seem to retain no bite when you cook them.
• 1 cup of chicken/vegetable stock, or water.
• 2 tsp dry marjoram
• A pinch of allspice
• Salt to taste.

Method:

• Heat oil in a pan on a medium heat, add onions when the pan is hot - well before it smokes.
• Cook the onions on medium heat, stirring occasionally, until the onions start to brown, or at least until they become translucent.
• If using garlic, stir in the garlic and cook for 30 secs
• Add buckwheat and stock.
• Rub in the marjoram and add allspice.
• Cover, bring to boil, and cook on medium-low heat for about 10 minutes.
• When done, the groats will have just a little bite to them. Taste and adjust the seasoning as desired.
• Note, if there is just a bit of liquid left in the pan when the buckwheat is cooked, the groats will soak it. If there is lots of liquid left, it is better to pour it away.

Variations:

• Fry chopped mushrooms along with the onions.
• Stir in scrambled eggs for a complete meal.
• Use half millet half buckwheat. If you don't have a fast-cooking millet, which in the USA you likely will not have, start cooking millet first and add buckwheat when the millet is almost cooked.

Tomato lentil soup and many other soups

My initial encounter with lentils was forgettable. That was when all I knew were French lentils for which I thought they were simply too much trouble to cook and yielded too little flavor. My opinion changed drastically especially when we encountered red lentils and mung lentils. Nowadays, I rarely make a soup without lentils, I see them as a much tastier and healthier thickener, especially when one blends the soup.

The main trick I learned about cooking red or mung lentils is to start cooking by washing and soaking the lentils when I start cooking. By the time I am ready to use them, they have usually doubled or tripled in size, making the cooking process easy. Of course you can soak them in a closed container in a fridge, overnight, or starting in the morning for an evening meal, or even over a couple of days if your plans change. This is what I do with dry beans - I leave them soaking in the fridge for at least one day, sometimes three days, depending how the cooking plans go. Lately I tend to put two kind sof beans into the fridge to soak, in separate containers, of course, and then we cook them as needed in a couple of days - it's handy to have soaked beans or lentils readily available.

This recipe is for a super basic yet uber tasty variety of thick soup that I could eat pretty much every day. I see it as an example where basic cooking with a few good ingredients mops the floor with fancy stuff that many if think represents good cooking. On top of all, this soup is a complete meal, and works for people with gluten intolerance, diabetis, of candida overgrowth. This soup makes incredible leftovers. In fact, I think it is better the next day.

Ingredients:

• 1 TBS of coconut oil, or any other cooking oil. Coconut and avocado oils are my favorite.
• One onion, chopped. I prefer sweet onions, but any kind will do.
• A knob of fresh ginger. Peeled and chopped finely. I like quite a lot of ginger here, maybe even 1/4 cup.
• Two garlic cloves, chopped finely.
• Tomato sauce, 1-2 cups. Use the best sauce you can make or buy. If you buy tomato sauce, I recommend highly looking at ingredients: Look for a very short list with no sugar or corn syrup on the list, and with not too much salt - onions, tomato, salt, and maybe a few spices is all that is to a tomato sauce.
• Soaked mung lentils/dal, about 3/4 cup to 1 cup. Soak the lentils for at least half an hour to an hour at a room temperature, or in a fridge up to three days.
• One packet, about 8oz, of extra soft tofu. If you are using another kind of tofu, chop it up.
• Chicken or vegetable stock, quantity as needed.
• 1/2 TBS gochu - the sweetish not too spicy Korean dried chili. You can use a smaller quantity of chili flakes, or simply skip that.
• Optional: 3-4 chopped celery stalks.
• Salt, pepper, to taste.

Method:

• Add the oil to medium-sized pot and heat it on medium heat.
• When the pot and oil are hot, add chopped onions, a pinch of salt, and a grinding of black pepper. Watch out for salt if your tomato sauce contains lots of salt.
• Soften the onions, stirring occasionally, on medium heat.
• When the onions start to brown, add chopped ginger and garlic. Stir and cook for a minute.
• Add tomato sauce. turn the heat to medium high and bring the sauce to boil.
• Mix the lentils into the tomato sauce, and add some chicken or vegetable stock. The quantity depends on how thick or thin you want the soup to be. You could start with about one cup and then adjust as needed.
• Add celery stalks. 
• Add tofu. If using extra soft tofu, break it up with a spoon.
• Cover, bring to boil, reduce the heat to medium low and simmer for 20-25 minute or until the lentils are cooked. You can leave them with a bit of a bite or not, your call.
• If the soup is too thin, cook it uncovered, and if it is too thick, add some more stock.
• When the lentils are cooked, adjust the seasoning.

Serve as is in a bowl, optionally garnished with cilantro, and you can add some cooked beans if you have them in the fridge. If you are up to it also garnish with chopped raw garlic - I think it goes deliciously with this soup. Here is what we did today - we do like cilantro!

Variations:

• Green onion works great as a garnish too.
• Red lentils work great. You cab reduce the cooking time to 10-15 mins.
• Spit peas works great too. I also soak it and I think it cooks for about the same amout of time as mung lentils.
• Use chick peas or any other kind of bean, I think the light-colored beans are more appealing. When using beans, I coarsely grind the soup in a blender or with an immersion blender.
• If you choose to use green or French lentils - or any kind that has more skin, grind them too, otherwise the skin dominates the texture.
• If you don't have tomato sauce, use some tomato paste, and add extra stock because the paste will thicken the soup considerably.
• You can also add buckwheat groats, or steel-cup oats, or even millet. You'll have to adjust the amount of liquid and cooking time.
• You can add additional vegetables or use them instead of celery: cauliflower, chopped celeriac, chopped potatoes, chopped kale or collards, chopped broccoli, shreded savoy cabbage or plain green cabbage and so on.
• If you want a non-vegetarian version, you can go extreme and stir in chunks of braised pork belly, or chunks of cooked pork hock. Or cook the soup with some smoked meat, e.g. turkey drumstick or pork chops.

Stove-top carrots (and parsnips, and squash)

When my colleagues mother from Turkey was visiting Waterloo, Ontario, I first had carrots fried slowly in olive oil and served with yogurt. It was memorable, the combined sweetness from carrots, peppery hint from olive oil, and tartness from yogurt came together perfectly. I had to learn how to make it.

Thankfully, making this magic does not require spending years in a school of witchcraft and wizardry. All it takes are good ingredients and patience to cook the carrots slowly. Using a good pan helps, too. I have had success with cast iron, stainless steel, and ceramic non-stick.

Ingredients:

• Carrots: washed, scrubbed, cut into about 1/2 inch pieces. Use the freshest ripest tastiest carrots you can get your hands on. Quantity: 2lb or as much as you want.
• Extra virgin olive oil: Something reasonable to cook with, no need for anything fancy. Quantity: enough to generously cover the bottom of the pan, and more if needed.
• Salt: a pinch or two, adjust as needed

Method:

Heat a pan on medium heat. The pan should be large enough to accommodate carrots comfortably, a single layer is best, two layers is OK. Cover the bottom of the pan with oil. Start adding carrot pieces a bit at a time so that the pan doesn't cool down. Sprinkle with salt as you are adding carrots. Mix well to coat carrots with oil. Add more oil if needed. Cover, cook on low to medium heat for 1/2 hour, until the carrots are soft. Uncover. Keep cooking on medium heat until carrots start to brown and caramelize. 

Serve slightly warm with a dollop of good yogurt. Add more olive oil if you feel like it.

Variations:

• Parsnips can be mixed with carrots, or cooked on their own.
• Butternut squash works very well. You can add the depth of flavor by first frying onions or leeks, or both, in the olive oil before adding the squash. I have tried this with coconut oil too - while it changes the flavor significantly, it was very good.

Stove top pizza

The worst thing about making pizza, in my opinion, is firing up the oven. To avoid that, I learned how to make pizza on BBQ. Which also has to be fired up. And is somewhat messy if one is not super careful. But the BBQ pizza inspired me to try baking pizza on the stove top, and when I had adopted cast iron pans, that became a real possibility. When I have the dough prepared in the fridge, it takes me likely under 20 minutes to have a simple pizza on a plate. You can do it too :)

Dough

This is the same dough that I used in my old post about pizza:

• 1 cup firm sourdough starter
• 1 cup flour
• 1 TBS drier oregano (optional)
• 1 tsp salt
• 1-2 TBS olive oil
• water, as needed, likely just a few TBSs

In a food processor, using a kneading blade, knead all the ingredients. Add just enough water to get a soft dough, but don't go too far to make it super sticky. The kneading time in my food processor is about 5 minutes.

Take the dough out of a food processor, fold it repeatedly to form a ball, and place the ball into an oiled bowl. Cover with plastic wrap.

You can use the dough right away, or let it rise a bit, or keep it in a fridge for up to a week.

Pizza

Take about 1/2 to 3/4 cup of dough, or whatever quantity works for you - I like pizza with a pretty thin crust, and your taste may be different. Important: The dough should be at a room temperature. Cold dough is hard to roll out and it doesn't rise that nicely when you bake it, and you risk your pizza to be super hard.

Take a clean, dry, well seasoned 10 inch cast iron pan, and set it on medium heat for 5-15 minutes, just before is smokes. While the pan is heating up, roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface. Making a lip is your choice. I tend not to bother.

Place the dough in the pan, cover the pan with a lid, and bake for about 4-5 minutes on medium to medium low heat .The time really depends on the thickness of the dough, and on your stove, so this is one place where you have to experiment. When the top of the dough starts looking dry and shows bubbles, and the bottom starts to develop brown blisters, flip the dough over. 

What you put on the pizza is up to you. I like to spread some good tomato sauce, sprinkle it with capers, and add a few slices of mozzarella. Take it easy with the quantity of the toppings - this is a thin pizza that does not need much.

Cover the pan, and cook until the sauce is hot and the cheese is melted, for about 4-5 minutes. It is OK to check before that.

With tongs, slide pizza on a cutting board, make your slices, optionally decorate with pesto, and enjoy. It turns out this pizza goes very well with smoked salmon. This is how we consumed it.

Smoked salmon pizza

Here is my variation on the famous Wolfgang Puck's recipe: Use sauteed onions as your only topping. When the pizza is baked, cool it off a bit on a cutting board. Then spread over some sour cream that you mixed with a few TBSs of lemon juice and optionally some dill, dry or fresh. Finally, spread over thin slices of smoked salmon. If you have some caviar, use it to decorate the pizza.

Super simple chocolate mousse

I remember vividly the first time I made chocolate mousse. The recipe involved making chocolate custard and then folding whipped cream into it. The preparation was lengthy as it required making and cooling the custard, then folding in the cream, and cooling it all again. Too long. Too complex, hence I always go for a simpler version.

This recipe uses tempered chocolate, and some rum-flavored whipped cream. Tempering the chocolate may be the most challenging job, but even that is done in under 10 minutes.

Ingredients:

• dark chocolate, 72% is good, about 3 to 4 oz
• approximately 3/4 cup heavy cream
• approximately 1-2 TBS rum
• 1 TBS sugar. Coconut sugar works nicely.

Procedure:

Heat about 1/2 inch water in a medium-size pan, maintain the heat at medium. Improvise a bain-marie by putting a metal bowl on top of the pan, so that the bowl is heated by the steam of the water. Add 3/4 of the chocolate to the bowl, stir with heat-proof spatula until the chocolate is melted.

To temper chocolate, take the bowl off the pan, add the remaining chocolate, and keep stirring an scraping until the chocolate cools to about the body temperature or a bit higher. This takes a few minutes. The bowl will originally be hot, so use an oven mit or a protective glove.

In a separate bowl add the sugar, rum, and the cream Whip the cream to a soft peak. Then fold in the tempered chocolate. Mix gently until the chocolate and the cream are incorporated.

At this point you can put the mousse into serving glasses and cool it in a fridge. On the other side of the spectrum, one can always eat the mousse right away.

Ground beef with padron peppers

I love cooking with padron peppers - they are just spicy enough to flavor the dishes nicely, and they are not so spicy to call for removing the seeds. This makes using them a very simple proposition! In this dish, the peppers elevate the flavor of simple ground beef to levels I have experienced rarely. Marjoram and lemon juice round up the dish nicely. The key to the dish is to tear the ground beef into a skillet. This results in nice bite-size pieces, and eliminates the arduous task of "crumbling" a block of ground beef while it is being cooked.

Ingredients:

• 1 lb lean ground beef. I used 85% grass fed beef.
• 1 onion, chopped finely
• 4 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 cups of so chopped padron peppers, stems removed
• 1 cup chicken stock, definitely use low-sodium variety
• 1 TBS dry marjoram
• juice of half a lemon
• salt, pepper to taste
• 2 TBS oil

Procedure:

Heat oil in a skillet. Add the onion, a pinch of salt, a few grinds of black papper, and sautee until the onions soften and are translucent. Tear the ground beef into the skillet - aim for about 1/2 inch size pieces. Season with salt an pepper. Brown the beef on a medium high heat, stirring frequently enough that the meat does not burn. Some fat will render from the meat. Turn the heat off and use a paper towel to absorb the excess fat. This will make the final dish much lighter as it removes heaviness of the beef fat.

Turn the heat back on, add padron peppers and sautee briefly to warm up the peppers. Add garlic, and within a minute add the chicken stock. Rub in the marjoram, and stir. Simmer until the stock boils away.

Turn off the heat and stir in the lemon juice. 

Savory corn and ricotta pancakes

Savory pancakes are a nice twist to the more traditional sweet version. Though, the sweetness of corn can turn these pancakes into a sweet version - omit parmesan cheese and salt, and add a tablespoon of sugar.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 TBS baking powder
• 1/4 cup grated parmesan
• a pinch of salt
• kernels cur from 1 ear of corn, fresh

• 3 eggs
• 3/4 cup buttermilk, or a mix of milk and yogurt
• 1/2 cup ricotta
• oil or butter for pan frying

Procedure:

Mix dry ingredients in a bowl. In a bigger bowl whisk the wet ingredients. Whisk in the dry ingredients. Fry pancakes on a skilled on a medium-high heat using 1/4 cup of batter per pancake. Turn the pancakes after 2-3 minutes and cook on the other side for the same amount of time.

Serve with a dollop of ricotta along with some vegetables: Sauteed zucchini and tofu work great, or garlicky chard is also a good choice. Of course you can go for bacon as well.

Miso braised fennel

We love eating fennel raw in a salad. When it is sliced finely with a mandoline, the flavor becomes milder, and the crunchiness makes it a spectacular salad ingredient. Braising fennel bulbs transforms them into sweet tenderness that is hard to pass by. Here is a simple way to try this goodness...

Ingredients:

• fennel bulbs, cut into 2 inch pieces, e.g. in quarters
• 1TBS or so miso paste
• chicken stock
• oil for high-heat cooking, e.g. avocado or corn

Procedure:

Heat oil in a pan. Brown fennel pieces. Add chicken stock half way up the fennel pieces. Add miso paste - 1 TBS is a good start. Cover, simmer slowly for about 30 minutes. Turn the fennel every 10 minutes or so. Add more chicken stock if too much liquid evaporates. The fennel is cooked when one can pierce is easily with a fork.

The cooking liquid should turn into a fairly thick sauce by the time fennel is cooked. If it is too runny, take the cooked fennel out and boil some of the liquid off.

Serve with the sauce in which the fennel was cooked.

Paprika chicken stew

My mom's goto dish. The amount of cream used is something I still dream about. No way I could eat it that way any more, and my mom also mended her ways and reduced the amount of fatty goodness. One does need to use some good full-fat sour cream though to balance the flavors.

This is best eaten with bread dumplings, nothing, I mean absolutely nothing beats the combination.
Other options are crusty bread, mashed potatoes, spaetzle, pasta, even rice.

Just the chicken!

This is a great way to prepare chicken to be used with other dishes. Even the much lighter version of the paprika sauce is pretty heavy, so you may not want to always make it. Simply let the chicken cool, and then pull the meat off the bones in nice chunks. Here is how one can use it with spinach sauce and mashed potatoes.

Chicken drumsticks that I like to use in this recipe have a wonderful property that it is really hard to dry them out. When you remove the skin, the drumsticks become fairly lean as there are no pockets of fat that I always find in thighs. Chicken breasts are simply too lean for this preparation - lately I have only been making them sous vide to avoid drying them out.

Ingredients

• Chicken pieces - I like using drumsticks with skin removed. Quantity - you need to be able to have them in one layer in your pan.
• 1/2 onion, finely chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
• 2 TBS butter or oil. Coconut oil works very well.
• 1/3 cup paprika, or adjust as you wish
• 1 TBS ancho chili, optional
• 2 TBS tomato paste (approx)
• 1 TBS or more dry marjoram, optional
• low sodium chicken broth, enough to cover the chicken half way
• 1/3 to 1/2 cup full fat sour cream. Sorry, no-fat cream will yield a miserable result.
• 1-2 TBS of flour

Preparation

Select a wide preferably shallow pan for which you have a lid. In the pan, on a medium heat, saute onions until they become translucent. Then add garlic, and saute until you it starts to release fragrances. Add paprika, stir and cook for a minute of two. Make sure the heat is not too high so that the paprika does not burn. The flavor of paprika changes substantially to the better when you fry it for a bit.

Arrange chicken in one layer in the pan and season each piece with salt. Add enough chicken broth to cover the chicken half way up, or a bit more. Also add rubbed marjoram and tomato paste. Cover and simmer until the chicken is cooked, turning the chicken every 10 minutes or so. After about 30 minutes the chicken should be cooked.

Take the chicken pieces out and collect them in a bowl. Pour the braising liquid into a gravy separator and wait until the fat collects at the top. 

Carefully pour the liquid from the gravy separator in a fresh pan, leaving the fat behind. Add flour, about 1TBS per cup of liquid, or less if you want a runnier sauce. Add sour cream. Mix everything with an immersion blender - this is a sure way to avoid flour clumps, and also a sure way to get rid of any onion piece that was not caught by the gravy separator.

Alternatively, mix flour, sour cream, and some cold water to make a slurry.

Bring the liquid to a boil on a medium-high heat while whisking slowly and continuously, preferably with a flat whisk. Cook for a couple of minutes so that the gravy thickens. Return the chicken to the pan, heat it up and serve a piece of chicken on top of some gravy. 

Quick rhubarb sauce

Rhubarb!!!! Kind of hard to get in the Bay area, and also kind of pricey for funny looking stalks few people know how to use. No idea why. Milk Pail has it when it is in season, which is the case now. I was going to make some rhubarb crisp, and I ended up using some rhubarb to make a quick sauce to go with the trusty ricotta sourdough almond pancakes.

The good thing about rhubarb is that it is so tart, and one can use that to balance out the flavor of the dish. For example, plain apple compote tastes, well, somewhat plain. Add some rhubarb, balance out the sweetness, and the whole dish goes from plain to ballistic.

That was lots of rhubarb sauce, a bit less may be more reasonable

Ingredients:

• 1 TBS butter or coconut oil
• 1/2 cup sugar; use a bit less or more, to taste
• 2 cups of thinly sliced rhubarb, about two stalks
• a dash of freshly ground nutmeg
• rind of one lemon or orange, or a few drops of orange flavoring

Preparation:

In a pan dissolve sugar in the butter over medium heat. Add rhubarb slices.  Initially some caramel may form, but it will dissolve as the cooking goes on. Stir occasionally until the rhubarb is almost cooked. Add the nutmeg and citrus rind, stir well and cook for another minute or so until rhubarb is cooked.

Eat with pancakes, as a jam on bread an butter, use as crepe filling, ...

Clafoutis

A couple of months ago I found a collection of recipes for, so they said, simple but extraordinary French food. I forgot where I found that collection, I forgot about all the dishes but one - clafoutis. A custardy goodness that really is trivial to make, yet the result is nothing short of extraordinary. I cannot believe I was not familiar with that.

Basically, all there is to clafoutis is a simple custardy batter that one bakes slowly with some fresh fruit. The classic seems to be a cherry clafoutis, which I tried immediately using frozen cherries. My mom happened to be visiting and she was seemingly in heaven.

I got a box of very nicely ripened ataulfos mangoes, speculating that mango clafoutis may be the thing to do. Mango has a nice mix of sweetness and acidity that I expected to go very well with the custardy batter. A short poke around Google search, and I quickly learned that I was not the first person to have this idea. I decided to make a simple basic variety of clafoutis, and next time I might play with adding some grated ginger and other goodies, and possibly baking it in individual ramekins.

If you have gluten intolerance, clafoutis is still within reach. Instead of using all-purpose flour, use gluten-free flour. If you are fortunate to have a grain mill, I recommend a making millet four and combining it with almond flour. It does change the texture - I think to the better.

Ingredients:

• 3 eggs
• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour. For gluten-free version use gluten free flour. I used 1/2 cup almond flour and about two TBS millet flour. 
• 1/3 cup sugar, or honey. 1/4 cup is likely enough.
• 1 cup milk. Buttermilk adds to the experience.
• 1 tsp vanilla
• Recommended: rind of one lemon and juice of the same lemon
• Optional: 1/2 cup fresh coconut or 1/3 cup shredded coconut. Blend at high speed with milk for a completely smooth texture.
• 1-1.5 cup fresh or frozen pitted cherries for classic clafoutis, or 2 -3 mangoes, peeled, cut into about 3/4 inch chunks, or pineapple chunks
• Recommended: A splash of grand mariner
• 1-2 TBS butter or coconut oil

Preparation:

Preheat oven to 350F. Set a 10 inch cast-iron skillet on a medium heat on a stove. In a bowl, whisk the eggs, the flour, and the sugar. Gradually whisk in the milk, this way it will be easier to keep the batter smooth. Also add vanilla and lemon rind.

Add the oil or butter to the skillet, when it melts, add the cherries. Stir gently and cook just enough for the fruit to warm up some, maybe for a minute or two. Pour in the batter.
Note: If you are using pinepple, you may choose to brown it a bit, or even sprinkle lightly with sugar and then brown

Bake for 40 minutes until the custard is set and the clafoutis is nicely browned on the top.

Serving:

I prefer clafoutis at a room temperature, dusted with powder sugar You might like it either hot or cold, you never know until you try.

Cream of kohlrabi

I agree that kohlrabi has an odd name. According to Wikipedia the name kind of means cabbage turnip, and is popular in German speaking countries and Vietnam. Now we know.

Typically we ate it cubed in vegetable soups, though raw and roasted are both tasty way to consume this vegetable. When I was growing up, we would only eat the root. Eating green leaves was never even considered. It took many years and a move across the ocean to start to appreciate the goodness of leafy greens!

This is a full-meal cream of kohlrabi with no cream. I added some carrots, steel-cut oats and cooked kidney beans to add some carbs and boost the fiber, even though kohlrabi itself already has lots of fiber. Extra smooth tofu is there for proteins, onion and garlic help with the depth of flavor, and lemon balanced everything out nicely.

With any cream of X soup, I have learned that having the best blender one can afford makes an enormous difference. We have been using our VitaMix for almost 10 years now and every time we make a soup, we still marvel in its smoothness. The VitaMix run has not been totally issue free, we are on the second blending jar and I replaced the potentiometer, but the motor is still going as strong as when it was new.

Ingredients:

• 1 bunch of kohlrabi, I used 4 roots and also the leaves
• a handful of carrots, brushed or peeled, and chopped roughly
• a handful of quick-cooking steel-cut oats; use rolled oats if that is what you have in the pantry
• a handful of cooked kidney beans
• 3-4 cups of low-sodium vegetable stock, chicken stock works fine too
• 1 medium size onion, chopped
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 package (11oz, 300g) of extra-soft tofu (Soondubu), liquid discarded
• juice of one medium-sized lemon
• vegetable oil or coconut oil, a couple of TBS

For mise en place chop kohlrabi roots, no need to peel them, just wash them well. Wash and chop roughly kohlrabi leaves. Also clean and chop the onion, carrots, and garlic.

In a 3 to 4 quart pan heat the oil, add onions, season with a pinch of salt, and sautee until the onions soften a bit.

Add chopped carrots and chopped kohlrabi root, sautee some more until the vegetables start to soften.

Add the garlic and sautee for another minute.

Add the vegetable stock and steel-cut oats, cover, bring to boil and simmer for 5 minutes.

Add the chopped kohlrabi leaves, cover the pot and simmer for another 5 minutes.

Transfer the soup to your blender.

Add tofu and cooked beans.

Add lemon juice.

Blend until smooth. Taste, add salt if necessary.

Serve in a bowl with some nice garnish. I used pine nuts and a touch of pumpkin seed oil - the green-on-green combination worked well.

Crepes

Crepes are a tough memory for me. One time, way way back when I was still in undergraduate, I had a bunch of friends over, and the plan was to make crepes. Easy, right - mic flour, milk, eggs, and butter so that you get the right consistency, then fry them up. The batter I made was a complete disaster, now I know there was not enough flour, but then I was extra clueless. That experience left believe that crepes were hard and that I don't have skills to make them. So for years, I relied on Jasna to make crepes.

I was wrong. Very wrong. Crepes are easy, all it takes is a good base recipe which one can adjust pretty liberally, and things still work. My basic recipe is as follows:

Whisk:

• 3 eggs
• 1 cup flour
• 1 cup milk
• pinch salt
• 1 TBS sugar - optional, skip for savory crepes

When the mixture is smooth, add

• 1 cup water (or milk)
• 1/4-1/3 cup melted butter

Whisk well. Let rest in the fridge for a couple of hours, overnights is fine. If you are in a rush, leave out for about 1/2 hour and make crepes right away.

To cook crepes, preheat a crepe pan on a medium-high flame. My favorite pan is a 10 inch cast iron griddle. When I am in a rush, I reach for non-stick pans like this one, mine is a discontinued model from Calphalon. Traditionally, one uses shallow steel pans - just like a carbon steel wok, these need to be seasoned before use, or the result will be a complete disaster. The truth is that any pan will do - non-stick ones are a bit easier to start with, but not really needed.

When a pan is hot, I usually add some cooking oil - avocado oil is my choice because of it's high smoke point. Swirl the oil around the pan, and make sure the pan is not so hot that the oil smokes.

Ladle some of the batter into the pan. For my pans, I use about 2.5 ounces of batter. I got a 3 oz ladle for this, it makes things easier when I use 3 pans at once. Swirl the batter to spread it evenly around the pan, or use a crepe spreader that you have dipped in water.

Cook on one side for 30 secs to a minute, depending on how hot your pan is. Flip with a heat-safe spatula, cook for another 20-30 seconds, and remove the cooked crepe off the pan. I like to stack cooked crepe on a large plate.

One can get fancy and flip a crepe with a wrist flick. I am faster with a spatula, no fat is splattered, and no crepe ends up on the floor. Your choice!

Repeat until you use all of the crepe batter. I do not add any oil or butter after making the first crepe, but you can if you wish. I get 12 to 20 crepes out of this recipe, depending on the size of the pan I use.

Fillings

While one can eat crepes as is, fillings are what crepes are all about. Here are a few options:

• spread some jam over the crepe and roll it
• Nutella is always a favorite with my friends
• melted and preferably tempered chocolate, whatever kind you like
• sliced fresh fruit is awesome, and you can add some whipped cream on the top
• mix sour cream, some sugar, and some ground almonds - ratios are your choice, I go heavy on almonds, lighter on the cream, and light on sugar
• lemon juice and sugar mixture
• orange butter, and if you choose to flambe the crepes, you get Crepes Suzette
• a mixture of ground walnuts, sugar, cinnamon

For savory fillings, I really like a simple slice of cheese, and sometimes a slice of prosciutto or ham. I like to fold the crepe in half and toast it on the pan so that the cheese melts. Yum! Pretty much anything goes here - sauteed mushrooms are great, scrambled eggs are fun, steamer vegetables, steak and avocado... Really, crepes are an awesome vessel for a variety of flavors, only our imagination is the limit.

Variations

I almost never use the base recipe, but tend to go for a variation. The basic ratio of eggs to flour to liquid to fat remains pretty much the same throughout. Here are a few options - note that one can combine them:

• Use melted coconut oil instead of butter. I almost always do this.
• Add 1/3 cup of almonds to the batter.
• Use coconut milk instead of cow milk. If you use full-fat coconut milk, you can skip on adding the butter to the batter.
• Use soy milk instead of milk.
• Replace some or all of the flour with buckwheat flour. Pay attention to the liquid so that the batter consistency is good.

Note that one can make buckwheat crepes without eggs. I have not tried that yet - I do not mind adding the egg for some protein to this carb-heavy dish. Besides, if David Lebovitz doesn't bother, I feel that I can postpone that experiment.

Walnut cookies

We love tea and coffee, and sometimes one just needs a cookie to go with a warm beverage of your choice. We find these cookies to fill that role quite perfectly. On more decadent days we were surprised pleasantly how well these cookies pair with the silky chocolate custard.

Apart from tasting great, making these cookies is so simple, the dough can even be made ahead of time, there are just a few ingredients, there is nothing complex in the recipe. Leftover egg yolks beg for a making a custard or brioche!

• 6-8oz (170g - 225g)shelled walnuts
• 3/4 cup (170ml) sugar or honey (feel free to reduce to 1/2 cup - 120ml) 
• 4 egg whites
• 1/2 cup flour (120 ml)
• 1 tsp (5 ml) vanilla extract 
• pinch of salt

In a food processor grind the walnuts and 1/2 cup sugar, or 1/4 cup if reducing the sugar.

Beat egg whites to a soft peak, add 1/4 cup sugar, and beat some more to get firm peaked meringue.

In a bowl mix, gently, egg whites, the ground walnuts, pinch of salt, vanilla extract, and the flour.

Store in a air-tight container in a fridge for at least an hour, up to a day - this is a very simple make-forward kind of a cookie.

Preheat the oven to 375F. When the oven is hot, line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat a-la Silpat, and arrange heaping tablespoon sized dollops of cookie dough. I like to use an ice cream scoop to measure equal quantities of dough.

Bake for 15-18 minutes, until cookie edges and tops start becoming brown. Cool on a rack, consume right away, or store in an air-tight container for up to three days.