Earthy Rice (Rice with Beet Tops and Chicken Giblets)

Ever been at a bit of a loss for what to do with beet tops? (You wouldn't buy a beet without its top, right? Good for you.) So the garden is producing some beets, and while I grated the beets themselves into a nice salad, I had the leafy tops, with their sturdy red stems and distinct earthy flavor, left over.

Coincidentally, I also had a bag of chicken giblets. (You wouldn't buy a chicken without the giblets, right? I've trained you well.) Now, ever since I learned about dirty rice that's been my go-to giblet dish, but I didn't have celery or green pepper. I cast my eye toward the beet tops...

(Can I interrupt myself for a minute to talk about how much I love chicken gizzards? I love chicken gizzards so much. They're so meaty and robust. What a pity a chicken only has one.)

I would not be bringing you this recipe if it were not a RESOUNDING success. The rice is hearty and rich and flavorful, and the beet stems and greens bring it this combination of earthiness, sweetness, and just a hint of bitterness. It's not dirty rice, though it's a bit like that. It's not a pilaf, though it's a bit like that too. This is its own thing, and I think this just might be my new go-to for beet tops.

Ingredients:

• 1 bag assorted chicken giblets (usually neck, liver, gizzard, heart)
• 1 med onion
• 3 beet tops
• 1 tbsp creole seasoning (it's quite easy to make your own and it's delicious on so many things; just go mix yourself a big jar of it.)
• 2 cups rice (most kinds will work although they will give you a different result in terms of texture)
• Generous splash of oil

Instructions

Dice the onion. In a pot large enough to hold your eventual volume of rice, saute the onion in a bit more oil than you usually need to saute an onion. Once the onion is turning golden, add the giblets. Yeah, bony neck and all. Stir 'em around. Let them continue to cook while you...

Chop the beet tops. Slice the stems like small stalks of celery, and shred the leaves. Once the giblets have browned on the outside, add the chopped beet tops, and stir thoroughly.










Add the rice. Exactly, without water. Stir it around until it's all coated with oil and the blended juices from the onion, meat, and vegetables. Add a bit more oil if you need to. You want to toast the rice just the tiniest bit. Add the seasoning.

Add enough water to cover the rice to the depth of one inch. Bring to a boil, turn down to a simmer, and let it cook until the rice is tender enough to eat.

Cost:
Giblets: Calling them about 1/5 of a chicken, around $2.00
Rice: $1
Beet tops: $1.50
Onion: $.10
Total: $4.60

Serves: 2-3.

Grilled Meatballs Variation 2 - Lentil Collard Meatballs

So last week we brought you the grill variant of Brooklyn Farm Girl's Baked Lettuce Soy Sauce Meatballs, but you know that I never make just one recipe at a time. So here's another variation on the grilled meatballs idea. As you can see from my garden box, I have lots of lettuce, but I also have lots of collards. Could they also be incorporated into meatballs?

Pictured, top to bottom: beets, collards, kale, lettuce

I think I'm trying to see how far from meatballs I can take this and still call it meatballs. Certainly meat is not the main ingredient here. It adds some nice flavor and holds things together.

These come out a bit blander and a bit drier than last week's variant - not unpleasantly so by any means, but they're less conducive to just popping in your mouth. These I would serve with some sort of sauce - maybe a garlicky yogurt-based one, maybe a chutney. Alternatively, you could just cut down the proportion of lentils and collards to meat.

Ingredients

• 1 lb ground meat (I used beef, you can use whatever you like)
• 2 cups cooked lentils
• 2 cups cooked collards
• 2 eggs
• 3 cloves garlic
• splash of oil
• splash of soy sauce
• seasonings (I used about a tablespoon of creole seasoning mix)

Instructions

Wash your collards and slice them finely. You can wrap your bunch of collards to form a tight roll and cut thin slices right through it; that'll give you about the size you need. Depending on how big and tough your collards are, you can also include the stems if you cut them finely enough. If they're particularly robust, though, tear out the stems.

Heat the oil in a large skillet, saute your garlic, dump the collards in and start cooking them down, stirring frequently. You may need to add a splash of water to help them cook down. Add a splash of soy sauce, at least two tablespoons worth. You want the greens to be thoroughly wilted. They won't lose as much volume as the lettuce you cooked last week, but they will shrink a bit.

Cook your lentils, if you haven't already. Actually, if you're not starting with cooked lentils, you'd better do that as the first step. Lentils don't take as long as other dried beans, but they'll take you at least half an hour.

Mix all ingredients - meat, lentils, collards, eggs, seasonings - together. If you want to, blend everything in a food processor. I didn't, in this case, but I would next time. It's a pain to clean and sanitize a food processor after having meat in it, but it does give a very fine even texture to the mixture.







Form the mixture into golf ball sized meatballs, and place them on a greased cookie tray.

Cook in a 350 oven or a medium grill for 30-45 minutes or until cooked through.

Sort of Sushi

First of all, get it out of your head that I'm going to tell you how to make the sort of sushi you're familiar with. Not restaurant sushi. Not grocery-store sushi. Not even convenience store sushi (and I'm not judging you for being familiar with that; we've all made questionable choices in convenience stores and we're stronger people because of it). No, this is what happens when I make an attempt at a particular dish over and over again, until it gets into an idiosyncratic but highly satisfying final form, one that's adaptable to myriad what-I've-got-in-the-fridge situations and one which offers the possibility of further adaptations yet undreamt of.

Second, your two objections, addressed:

1. But isn't sushi raw?! Are you trying to give me salmonella?Even I wouldn't eat raw fish I'd prepared myself, and I have an iron stomach and a taste for adventure. Nope. Nothing raw in this except the vegetables.
2. Sushi is, like, the definition of expensive food! I thought you were into affordable stuff!
   This is one of those dishes that can be priced up or down depending on what you want to put in it - kind of like a sandwich. At the heart of it, my Sort of Sushi is grain+vegetables with a bit of fish in for flavor, and that's a recipe for affordability. 

All right. Are we good? Onward!

Ingredients:

For the Rice

• 2 cups rice (You can use sushi rice, of course, which isn't hard to find though it can be expensive. You can also use short-grain rice, and I've tried it once with arborio rice with a high degree of success. This time around I used quinoa, which worked just fine. Whatever grain you go with, don't buy it in those little pre-packaged bags. Go round to the bulk food aisle.)
• 1/2 cup rice wine vinegar (If your regular store only sells one kind of this, it's probably overpriced. In fact, it's worth hitting up an Asian market in your area to stock up on staples you're going to be using)
• 1 tbps sugar
• 1 tsp salt

My fillings

For the Filling (pick 3-5)

• Avocado
• Cucumber
• Carrot
• Smoked salmon
• Canned Salmon
• Nice Canned Tuna (by which I mean, step it up a grade from the tuna-salad stuff. It's worth the extra expense and doesn't taste like grade school.)
• Barbecued eel (if you're prepared to splurge)
• Imitation Crab Sticks (if California rolls are your jam)
• Fried fish from the grocery store steam table (WHAT. It is delicious.)
• Fried egg (further details on the frying to follow)
• Cream Cheese
• Further Items as Inspiration Strikes or the Fridge Warrants.

For the Rolls

• Sheets of nori seaweed (look, you're going to have to go to an Asian market for this. They might have them in your fancy hippy store like Whole Foods but I will bet you dessert they're overpriced. Go ahead, get a big pack of them. You'll be making this a lot. And if for some unfathomable reason you don't, then you can just snack on them out of the bag)
• Sesame seeds

For the Garnish

• Wasabi (powder or paste, whichever you can find first/cheapest)
• Soy sauce
• Pickled ginger (you can totally pickle this yourself, by the way; it's a disgracefully easy refrigerator pickle, but I'll save that for another post, ideally after I've gotten a mandoline or better knife skills)

Rice Cookers: Get One

If you're using rice, soak it for half an hour. You want it to get all mushy and sticky when you make your rolls, the better to hold together. The quinoa you can just stick in the rice cooker. (Get a rice cooker. They're one of those kitchen appliances that you can get brand new at yard sales and thrift stores because people like to give them as gifts. If you are like me and find new ways to ruin rice every time you cook it, a rice cooker is absolutely worth $5 and/or getting married and putting one on your registry.) Cooking should take about 20 minutes, rice cooker or no rice cooker. In the meantime....

Start cutting up your vegetables. Cut 'em into matchsticks. Nice and skinny. You're going to be rolling these up; make 'em too chunky and they will fall right out or be hard to bite through. Practice your knife skills. Have some fun.

Prepare your protein. If you're using a canned fish, I like to mix it with a little mayonnaise (not as much as you would add for a tuna salad, just enough to get the fish to hold together when you stir it up) and then add a dash of teriyaki sauce, sesame oil, and/or hot sauce. Do this to taste; you're going to be eating it.

If you want to prepare an egg or two tamago-style, here's a tutorial. Definitely worth it if you're going for presentation and authenticity! I, on the other hand, am lazy and almost always out of mirin, so I just put a dash of rice wine vinegar in when I'm beating up the egg, put a drop of sesame oil in the pan, fry the egg gently on low heat, cut it in strips, and call it a day.

Why use white sugar
when you can use raw or brown sugar?

Hey, the rice should be done now! Check and see if it's nice and sticky. If it is, take if off the heat, and mix together the vinegar, salt, and sugar. Add the mixture to the rice and mix it in thoroughly. Let it cool. (This is another delay in the process. If it's winter, I like to stick it outside.) Go chop up some more things, and get out your rolling equipment!

You don't actually need a sushi-rolling mat to make sushi rolls. You just need something firm but flexible enough to roll up. I had perfectly fine results with plastic placemats for years. But the sushi-rolling mat is fun. Get someone to give you one of those kits for a birthday present, and you're set. Or add it to your registry, since you're already getting married for a rice cooker.

Ready to roll

Get a square of nori and set it down on your mat, shiny side down. Get yourself the sharpest knife you've got, and a little bowl of lukewarm water. Get your rice, and spread it over the seaweed, leaving about an inch near the top uncovered at the top. Don't try to spread it like butter; you may tear the seaweed. Squish it down with your fingers or the back of a spoon. Is it sticking to your fingers? That's why I told you to get the water. Rinse your fingers off but don't dry them. A bit of water will help as you squash down the rice in a nice even layer, maybe 1/4 inch deep, over the seaweed.

The quinoa wasn't as sticky as I'd like, and got all over the place.

Add your fillings! This is the fun part. Lay your fillings in a horizontal line across the rice about 1/3 of the way up. Mess around and see what combinations you like! Smoked salmon and cucumber is classic. So is eel and avocado. But I find it's hard to make something that really doesn't work. If you're using something that's wetter than other ingredients, like your canned tuna or salmon mixture, be sure not to put too much of it on there. And one creamy ingredient, like avocado or cream cheese, is usually enough. Don't fill it too full. You're going to be rolling all this up.

Cucumber, cream cheese, salmon

Cucumber, tuna, carrot

Carrot, eel, avocado

Starting at the bottom of your mat, roll up the seaweed and rice around the fillings. Dip a finger in the water, and run it across the strip of seaweed you left bare at the beginning. When your roll gets up to the top, press the dampened strip across the roll, just like sealing an envelope. Wrap your mat around the roll and squeeze the whole thing together. If ingredients pop out at this stage, you either made your roll too loose or you're squeezing too hard.

Run your sharp knife under water briefly, then slice your sushi-log into rounds - 6-8 of them. Don't press the knife down, you'll squash it. Draw it towards you. 

Repeat until you are out of everything. If you have anything left over or if any of the rolls fall apart beyond salvaging, chop it up, put it on lettuce, and call it a salad. Serve it on little dishes, provide soy sauce and wasabi for dipping and pickled ginger because pickled ginger is great and should be served all the time.

Eat 'em with chopsticks. It's more fun.

Price: 

Quinoa: $2

Nori: $1.50

Carrots: $.25

Cucumber: $.50

Avocado: $.50

Smoked Salmon: $1

Cream cheese: $.50

Eel: $3.25 (told you I was splurging; it cost $6.50 but I used half of it and ate the rest on salad the next day)

Nice Tuna: $.75 (the can cost more, but I only used part of it)

Total: $10.25

Serves: 2-3

Butternut Lasagna with Vegan Bechamel Variation

Or, Almost But Not Completely Entirely Unlike Lasagna

This is the first variation - kale and sausage

What with folks shying away from refined wheat products these days, I'd naturally come across a variety of ways to approach the delicious and reliable pasta standards. What is both as cheap as pasta and can get its job, in terms of filling the stomach and the structure of the dish? Well, vegetables, naturally, but which ones? Zucchini ribbons make admirable substitutes for lasagna noodles, but zucchini are hardly worth the eating in winter. What we do have, however, is an abundance of winter squash. I wondered about what would happen if I replaced the lasagna noodles with thinly sliced winter squash, and the result was - this.

I'm going to take you through two variations on this dish in this post. There are two main components to this dish (besides the butternut): the Filling Stuff, and the Creamy Stuff. In the first variation, the Filling Stuff is kale and sausage, and the Creamy Stuff is ricotta and mozzarella. In the second, the Filling Stuff is kale and mushrooms, and the Creamy Stuff is a bechamel sauce made with coconut milk. You want to get really crazy, you can combine them, why not.

Ingredients - Base
1 large winter squash. (I prefer butternut. Something easy to peel; you're going to be slicing it.)

Ingredients - Filling Stuff*
1 large bundle of robust greens. (I prefer kale; spinach works just fine, collards would probably do.)
2 large onions
3 cloves garlic
1 8oz box of mushrooms, and/or
2 sausages of your choice (these are leftover chicken-and-apple), and/or
some additional vegetables. Peppers, cauliflower, broccoli, why not.
2 tbsp olive oil
Ingredients - Creamy Stuff
2 cups ricotta or cottage cheese
2 med eggs or 1 large egg
1/2 bunch parsley
1 tsp thyme
1/2 lb mozzarella
1/3 cup grated parmesan or other hard savory cheese
Ingredients - Creamy Stuff (Vegan Variation)
1 can coconut milk
2 tbsp oil
4 tbsp flour. I use whole wheat.
1/2 tsp nutmeg

*This makes enough filling for both variations. If you want to do just one, either cut the filling down, or increase the creamy stuff. Or just save the extra filling and eat it for lunch tomorrow.

Instructions

Stab the squash a bit with a knife; you don't want it to explode. Microwave it on high for three minutes. This'll make it easier to cut.

Peel the squash and slice it into rounds, as thinly as you possibly can. When you reach the seeds, scoop them out. You'll be slicing crescents now; that's fine.  Set your squash aside.

Dice your onions, chop or crush your garlic, and start it sauteeing in the olive oil.

Once the onions have started to become soft, add the mushrooms, sausages, or other filling ingredients.

Wash the greens, chop them finely, add them to the onion mixture. Cook them until they are just starting to turn tender, but not so long they lose their shape. Add a splash of water to the skillet if they are dry or sticking. Set your filling aside.

Ricotta variation

Ricotta variation
Mix the ricotta, eggs, and finely chopped parsley in a bowl. Add thyme and salt and pepper.

Vegan variation
Heat the oil (I confess, I used butter, but that wouldn't be vegan, would it?) in a small skillet. Add the flour and stir briskly. When it starts to darken and smell like toast, start stirring in the coconut milk, a little at a time until you have added the whole can. Add the nutmeg, and salt and pepper. You should have a thick bechamel sauce.

Coconut Milk Variation

Assembly

This is the really fun part about lasagna. Lay down a layer of your filling, pour or dab 1/3 of the creamy stuff over the top of it, grate 1/3 of your cheese over it (if you're using cheese), and then arrange your squash slices artfully in a layer over all that. Repeat until you run out of layers. Place in oven heated to 400 degrees and bake for 40 minutes or until the whole thing is bubbling. Let it set for at least ten minutes before trying to serve. It'll be looser than a regular lasagna, and is even better the next day (especially the coconut one).

Price - Variation 1
Butternut squash - $1
Kale - $.75
Onion - $.25
Ricotta - $2
Mozzarella - $2
Sausage - $3
Parsley - $.50
Total: $9.50

Price - Variation 2
Butternut squash - $1
Kale - $.75
Onion - $.25
Mushrooms - $2
Coconut milk - $1
Total: $5

Both serve 4-6 people.