Son Eric posted a recipe for Beet Borscht on our family blog recently. He and his wife, Alison, have made it many times, and as the accomplished cooks they are, often freelance with both ingredients and methods—hey, you can’t screw up a soup if you’re using good ingredients. Cooking it for the first time, I went strictly by the directions, which included the use of a food mill, which is messy and cumbersome. We had it for dinner Sunday evening, and I gotta say, it was really good.

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(Cranberry) Beans and Greens with Cod

A one-pound bag of Rancho Gordo Vallarta beans has been lying in my rice-and-beans drawer for a good while. Rancho Gordo, of Napa, California grows “New World Specialty Food featuring glorious old-fashion vegetables.” That’s what they say of themselves. I know them for their stall at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market, which features heirloom beans with intriguing names such as; Runner Cannellini, Anasazi, Ojo de Cabra (eye of the goat), Yellow Indian Woman and Eye of the Tiger; among their 28 varieties. Vallarta is a small bean, a rich mahogany color, about the size of a navy bean. When I bought them, the Rancho Gordo folks said I could cook them like a navy bean.

Sauteed Beans and Greens

The Farmers Market is in a winter mode; root vegetables, citrus, beans and greens. I saw some fantastic mustard greens at the Mariquita Farm stand, and knowing I had a stash of beans, snapped them up. I love beans and greens as a comfort food side dish to have on hand. They are good with any kind of pork—maybe especially ham—but I like them best with fish. I got turned on to that idea in the 90’s with the recipe, Cod with Radicchio, White Beans, and Lemon Vinaigrette from Danny Meyer and Michael Romano’s Union Square Café Cookbook. (That is one of my Top Five cookbooks. We had dinner at the Union Square Café in New York in ‘02, and I dragged along my tattered, food-stained copy to ask for the authors to sign it. They weren’t there on that Sunday evening, but the sous chef, Ted Habber, was good enough to sign it for me.) Who knew you could combine fish (protein), beans (starch) and radicchio (vegetable) in one glorious dish?
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At the risk of belaboring the PIZZA! thing, I finally got around to making a great pizza for Sunday breakfast and taking pictures.

In the first picture you see a Vicolo cornmeal pizza crust on my pizza peel with a little olive oil applied, a cheese grater, my Early Girl tomato sauce, some Spanish olives, Mike’s cheese curd, a leftover red onion and smoked mozzarella.

Then it’s fully topped, then baked.

That was so good I ate way more than my normal 1/3, and then Carol polished it off.

Based on Bill Neal’s Southern Cooking

This is the third version of Brunswick Stew served at my Super Bowl Party. It is unique in that it includes rabbit, carrots, celery and cabbage, as well as the “usual ingredients.”

Finding a rabbit was a bit of an adventure. Continue reading →

Pork… Left… Over, or

Fabulous Pork and Vegetable Saute  

The pork wasn’t that great to begin with. It was a so-called Country Rib, which is the first two ribs from the top of the loin. Carol almost always rubs and roasts that, and there are always leftovers. It tastes more like a pork roast than a tenderloin or pork chop, and it’s fatty enough to be nice and moist and juicy. Yum. But this one seemed like a different cut, with a different texture, more dry and chewy. It was okay, but not Yum.

It’s Saturday evening, not much goin’ on, “What’s for dinner?”

“I want to make this lettuce wedge with Roquefort dressing I saw on TV,” Carol said, “and there’s that leftover pork, but I don’t know what to do with it.”

“I’ll do something with it,” I said, “give me 20 minutes notice before you want to eat.”
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