lacinato kale with turnips and yogurt

I stare at the vegetables, trying to decide how to satisfy my leafy green vegetables addiction, and I always go home with lacinato kale. This time I grabbed a bunch of greens I'd never seen before. They looked like gigantic dandelion greens, big but tender, their colour a light green. I had no idea what they were. Then this woman came up to me and said that she had asked and found out that they were a variation of kale. Didn't look like it, but what do I know. And she said she cooked them, and they were not good at all. She had the demeanor (and looks) of an old hippie from a commune from the sixties, and I figured I had to trust her on matters of green vegetables. So I dropped it and went home once again with lacinato kale.

I wanted to try something a bit different. I decided to continue my experiments with root vegetables from last winter and combine the kale with turnips. I also wanted to make a yogurt sauce, because I miss the Turkish spinach with yogurt. (I miss it because they don't sell washed, clean, mature spinach here, and I get a severe reaction if I wash the spinach by hand. I swear. So I never make spinach.)

Slice one onion thinly and saute in oil.
Add to it seeded and sliced Fresno peppers (1 or 2, depending on how hot you like it).
Add the washed lacinato kale, sliced into one inch strips.
Add the peeled turnips, cut into one inch chunks.
Season with salt and pepper.
Add a bit of stock or water, and braise until almost done.

Combine about one cup of plain yogurt with one tablespoon of flour.
Add two teaspoons of tomato paste.
Mix well with a whisk so there are no lumps.
Add a quarter cup of the liquid from the kale to the yogurt mixture, to temper it.
Add this mixture to the kale slowly, in a steady stream, stirring continuously.
Bring back to simmer and cook for another 15 minutes.
Adjust the consistency of the liquid in the pan by reducing it if too thin or adding more liquid if too thick.
Enjoy.

You need to make sure that the flour gets cooked. Otherwise it'll be blecchy. Yup, that's a technical term.

So what do I think about the turnips in this dish? Meh. They had very little taste and no interesting texture. I think I'm through with my attempts to come up with something glorious with turnips. I don't mind eating them, but I haven't found a reason to choose them over something else when I'm cooking. I wouldn't crave them unless I was stranded on a turnip farm in the middle of a famine.

developing good breakfast habits

I kicked the cereal/granola habit some years ago. I realized that I do not like sweet stuff in the morning. Lately, the routine has been toast with cream cheese. But regular cream cheese has too much fat, and low-fat cream cheese is too salty for me. Besides, I prefer something less processed.

Now that I make yogurt routinely, I decided to go for strained yogurt, which is marketed in the US as Greek yogurt, and is known in the eastern Mediterranean by its Arabic name labne. It's the easiest thing to make. I have a strainer with a very fine mesh, so I don't even use anything extra like cheesecloth or paper filters. Dump the yogurt in the strainer, place it over a bowl, and let it sit. I end up with this creamy and wonderfully thick yogurt, which accompanies my toast in the mornings. Hope I can keep it up.

If I add tomatoes with a bit of olive oil to this breakfast, it would be close to perfect for me. But it's probably not going to happen because 1) it's not safe to put a sharp knife in my hand when I first wake up, and 2) it's hard to get really good tomatoes and if I get one of those usual sour, tasteless, woody ones, I'd get really pissed off and that would not be a good way to start my day.

I have to say that breakfasts have become extra special because of home-made breads. I've stopped blogging about them because they have been turning out consistently good. The big turning point was starting to use a large stainless steel bowl to cover the loaf during the first ten minutes of baking (I wrote about it here).

Pretty, eh?

chana dal

I found out about chana dal from the blog of David Mendosa, who writes about diabetes. I stumbled onto his blog after I realized that the way I have been eating has a lot to do with a good diabetes diet. David has quite a bit of information about chana dal, along with many chana dal recipes. Apparently, this relative of chickpeas has one of the lowest glycemic indices, with almost no effect on blood sugar. It's also high in protein and very high in fiber. Sounded perfect. So I ordered some from Bob's Red Mill.

Most sources say to soak it overnight or to cook it in a pressure cooker, but on the package from Bob's Red Mill it said to cook it for about 20 minutes. So I decided to treat it like lentils.

Cut up and cook bacon slices until almost crisp.
Saute thinly sliced onions and small chunks of carrots in the bacon fat.
Add one Ancient Sweet pepper (I first mentioned them here), sliced into small bits.
Add one chopped jalapeño.
Add to taste chipotle, ground coriander, garam masala, and black pepper.
Add stock or water, and cook until done.

I served it (to myself) on bulgur, with a small dollop of yogurt for twang. Lovely. I think this legume is going to become a staple in my kitchen.