fredrikegerman

And with apologies to mathhobbit for stealing her "things I make with the farmshare" title.

We had a mess of turnips and beets with their greens. What to do with all that ere it goes all wilty? Why, make a pilaf with the quinoa that desireearmfeldt bought! It turns out quinoa makes a fantastic pilaf, and you can cook it up in a rice cooker. This is great, because I find quinoa on its own kind of oppressive.

I ran across this big bottle of dregs from my Berliner Weiße sitting in the fridge. Could I use that to deglaze a frying pan, and substitute it for broth? Why yes, yes I could.

( Recipe-ish thingy )

Round about June I posted a successful pasta sauce in which I oven-braised fennel with red wine and herbs, roasting garlic and sausage above. This gave a much better fennel flavor than cooking it in the sauce or sauteing seems to yield.

Friday I decided to give it another shot, this time with half (or more) of a farmshare cabbage. Yep, a pasta sauce with cabbage. Really, I'll do most anything to avoid making boiled dinner. And this came out pretty well.

Revised: I left out the eggplant!

( The recipe )

Tried another oven-braising experiment sometime this summer, but I can't remember what I was trying to make except that it was mostly a failure. This recipe seems to turn on the layer of sausage on top, effectively basting the veggies underneath. Any suggestions of meatless methods welcomed (alternative meats, like "just use bacon" or "try ox tails", are OK too but less tricky).

Speaking of ox tails, I haven't put my Iron Chef caribbean-style oxtail and squash soup recipe up here yet, have I?

Brining (especially of pork chops) has become very fashionable these days. McGee assures us that this is because our meat is leaner than it used to be, and this helps to compensate. He also gives the proportions of salt for getting different levels of softening.

Brining usually calls for 24 hours; I did it in more like 12, but I think the pork chops I got were rather less thick than gourmet cookbooks assume. They were the thickest center-cut chops I saw at the grocery store...

Looked at a couple of recipes and realized that it involved making this really tasting looking brine which would be too salty for anything else. What to do? Cook something that doesn't mind salt, of course, then toss just the liquidy part and keep the herbs and spices!

( Recipe )

Result: quite yummy. The potato doesn't get salty if you pull it out of the brine when the brine boils, and the oven roast slows the cooking so the centers really get sweet. The residual spices make it all taste yummy. The brined pork chops were tender and divine. A notable success all round, I think. If only there had been more leftovers! Next time if I have more advanced prep time I'll try doing a big hunk of pork and several days in the fridge.