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.