Cast Iron Pot Roast

Chuck roast in my vintage Wagner Ware pan, ready for the oven. 

We finally un-glutened and re-seasoned my favorite vintage cast iron pan. Some cookware can hold on to traces of gluten, which can transfer to the food you cook in it. If you're celiac like R, even that trace of gluten could make her sick. My stainless steel All-Clad Dutch oven and smaller saucepans are fine. But nonstick pans can have tiny scratches where gluten can linger even after repeated washings, and cast iron is porous.

So we replaced our Teflon skillet, and put the cast iron through the oven's self-clean cycle. This takes the pan down to bare metal, and burns off all the gluten. It also burned off the careful seasoning we've built up. This is an old pan, that we got second hand and already beautifully seasoned. But it was easier to heat seal and re-season it than I thought it would be. I'll do a post about that process soon.

This is by far my favorite pan, and it's great to have it back again and safe for R. It makes the best pot roast. Get the skillet piping hot and sear the salted and peppered beef (this one was a chuck roast) in a little oil (I used avocado oil). Take the beef out, add more oil if necessary, and layer thinly sliced potatoes on the bottom of the hot skillet. After the potatoes start to brown, add sliced onions, carrots, and a bay leaf or two. Put the roast back in the skillet, and almost cover it with a mixture of tomato paste (or ketchup), gluten free beef bouillon, and hot water. Add a bay leaf or two, and other herbs if you like. Cover the pan with aluminum foil, or a pot lid if you have one big enough.

This is what it looks like after 3-4 hours of slow roasting, at 250 or 300.

I brightened the flavors with some grape tomatoes and parsley, and served it on top of a green salad. We also had kiwi, strawberries and tangerine segments.

Happy St. Patrick's Day! Here is an old Irish blessing for each of you:
May the blessing of light be on you
light without and light within.
May the blessed sunlight shine on you
and warm your heart
till it glows like a great peat fire.

 Tonight we had corned beef; carrots, turnips and apples glazed with apple cider; colcannon with cabbage, potatoes, spinach and scallions; and Irish soda bread. And Guinness of course.

One more blessing for good measure. This one was on the favors at our wedding:
Deep peace of the running wave to you.
Deep peace of the flowing air to you.
Deep peace of the quiet earth to you.
Deep peace of the shining stars to you.
Deep peace of the Son of Peace to you.

Chicken Pot Pie

The first chilly, rainy days of the fall make me feel like comfort food. Chicken pot pie was my favorite meal when I was little. Everyone got his own little Swanson's pie in the metal pan, and the steam billowed out when you broke through the crust with your fork. Here is the pie unbaked and egg-washed:


And here it is baked, with the filling. I didn't use a recipe. I roasted a chicken, made a bechamel sauce and mixed it all together with onions and mixed vegetables, fresh sage and thyme and parsley. The crust is whole wheat. It didn't brown as nicely as I would have liked. I think that's partly because it's whole wheat, and partly because I used the convection oven.


I made some little tarts with the leftover dough and filling, with vegetable and leaf cut-outs. Fresh tomato and parmesan tarts used up the last of the dough.

I think I can put these in R's lunch, but I would have to put them in a thermos and break up the decorative crust. She still had fun rolling out the dough and cutting shapes with me. She keeps these tins in her play kitchen downstairs, and I always have to go retrieve them before I bake with them. I bought them when we were planning our wedding, thinking the caterer could use them, and I remember how the man at the garage sale said, "I would think you would not want any little tarts at your wedding." We bought a giant crystal ice bucket at that same sale. It broke when R was a baby and I still grieve for it.

Pizza Margherita with Our Tomatoes

The best thing about tomato harvest:  Pizza Margherita with a whole wheat crust. I bake it on a terra cotta stone at 500 degrees. D likes it with half the basil cooked, and half fresh on top after it comes out of the oven. We didn't even get smoked out last night--usually a cheese drip hits the blast-hot oven, but this batch was very tidy.

Winter Citrus

Tonight we had Italian sausage with caramelized onions and apples; toasted millet with scallions, spinach, cashews and red pepper; and windowsill greens. I like millet, but I can't get over the association with feeding my childhood parakeet, Blue Boy. There was always a feathery layer of chaff at the bottom of his cage after he extracted the insides.

There is so much wonderful winter citrus in the stores. We had a salad with blood oranges and navel oranges, greens, mint, Asian pears, strawberries and blueberries.

Acorn Squash and Tempeh

Tonight we had roasted acorn squash with tempeh, brown rice and vegetable stuffing. I sauteed onions, carrots, red and yellow peppers (frozen, from our summer garden), scallions and walnuts, with some brown rice and cubes of tempeh that I brushed with soy sauce and browned. I hollowed out the squashes and baked them with the stuffing inside. The squash was soft and buttery and the stuffing was rich and crunchy. We had also had a spring green salad, mangoes, blueberries and little oranges.

And here is a picture that R drew for our wonderful neighbor Bernie. D's car that he drives to the train is not that good in the snow, and Bernie lent him his big SUV the past two days when we had a lot of snow and slick roads. R drew a picture of Charlie holding hands with Katie, Bernie's German Shepherd puppy. Charlie and Katie are the best of friends. If any dogs would hold hands, it would be those two.

Spinach Polenta Lasagna

Tonight we had polenta lasagna, lemon broccoli, and grapefruit with pomegranate arils. This is such a free-form recipe. It can be infinitely expanded or contracted, and adapted to what you have on hand.

Spinach Polenta Lasagna
• 1 red onion, chopped
• 4 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1/2 cup chopped scallions
• 2 cups chopped fresh spinach, or 1 1/2 c frozen that has been thawed
and squeezed dry
• 2 cups ricotta cheese
• A few gratings of nutmeg
• 1/2 cup fresh basil, chopped in a chiffonade, or thin ribbons
• 1 egg
• 1 sheet pan of polenta
• 1 cup grated mozzarella cheese
• 1 jar or 4 cups tomato sauce

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375.

Brown the onion and garlic in olive oil and cool slightly. You could add other vegetables--zucchini, peppers, or mushrooms. Mix with ricotta, egg, spinach, salt and pepper to taste, and grated nutmeg.

Spoon tomato sauce into bottom of a square or round pan.

I made polenta the day before from the recipe on the Bob's Red Mill package, spread it out on a buttered sheet pan in a layer about 1/2 inch high, and refrigerated it. You could also make the polenta the same day, or use the ready-made tube of polenta from the grocery store. Cut this polenta into squares or circles, whatever shapes will fit best in your pan, and lay it on top of the tomato sauce in one layer.

Top with a half of the ricotta mixture, a layer of basil ribbons, and half of the mozzarella. Top with more sauce, and then repeat the layering. Polenta, ricotta, basil, mozzarella. Finish with the last of the sauce and a sprinkle of cheese. Parmesan would be nice here if you have it.

Cover the baking dish with aluminum foil and bake for 50 minutes. Remove the foil, and bake for 10 - 15 minutes to brown the top.


We also had Yogurt Cake from my favorite blog and cookbook and source for recipes, Chocolate & Zucchini. I make this cake so often. My adjustments are half whole wheat pastry flour and half all purpose flour, with some flax meal, and equal parts sugar and honey. The original recipe uses yogurt containers as measuring cups, and that's the way I memorized it. So that I can throw it together in the right proportions without thinking about it. I folded in some frozen mixed berries. The honey and wheat make it bake up browner than the original and with a crisper crust. I can also give it to R for breakfast, with fruit and maybe a little more yogurt--which I wouldn't do with white cake.

It's wonderful with whipped cream and berries on top, and a little windowsill mint.

S'mores

More snow today, a wet, heavy snow that hung off the branches.

Dinner was lemon chicken breaded in panko; sweet potatoes with oranges and cinnamon; spinach, and polenta cut into flowers and browned in a cast iron skillet.

We had a fire and made s'mores.

This is what it looked like under the streetlight at 7:30 p.m.

Roasted Beets with Lemon Ricotta

Dinner tonight was salmon on spring greens with a honey dijon marinade; beets and carrots wrapped in foil and roasted with a head of garlic; the greens and red stems from the beets chopped and sauteed with olive oil and garlic; plain brown basmati rice; and another whole grain quickbread. My new favorite thing with roasted vegetables is mixing a little lemon zest into ricotta cheese and letting dollops of it melt onto the vegetables. Tonight I mixed in some of the roasted garlic, and some chopped chives from the windowsill.


This bread is my favorite quick bread yet, from the New York Times. I made the lighter version without molasses, and with part white flour. I used agave instead of honey, and added some flax meal. It's quick to mix up, and then there's warm fresh bread on the table in an hour. It has a beautiful crust. The cornmeal gives it some crunch. It's fantastic with butter and honey on it, or plain like D likes it.

I'm getting discouraged at how long it's taking me to figure out how to take good pictures with the new camera. I'm still happy that I can get usable shots in such low light. I finally broke down and ordered the full version of Photoshop to replace my old, unusable one. And it seems to be lost in transit. Now there's a delay to confirm that it hasn't been delivered, and to send a replacement copy . . . after waiting for it for so long, this last part is frustrating.

Fear of Frying

My R loves eggrolls, and I make them for her with a filling of carrots, cabbage, ginger, garbanzo beans, scallions and ground turkey. I lay spinach leaves on top of the filling and sprinkle ground flax seeds on top before I roll them up. I brush them with olive oil, sprinkle with sesame seeds, and bake them in the oven.

I don't really like them this way--they don't cook evenly, and much of the skin stays tough and chewy or worse, bakes to sharp edges that can cut your mouth. I have a fear of deep-frying, but I can't seem to replicate the bubbly, shatteringly crisp skin of a fried eggroll in the oven.

So today I emptied a quart of canola oil into my favorite All-Clad dutch oven, waited for it to get up to 350 on my jam thermometer, and put the eggrolls in.

R said, "That's what I'm talkin' about. This is just like Chinese Dinner." Which is what she has called take-out since she was two.

I made a batch the old way, to compare. This time I steamed the unbaked rolls for a few minutes, like you do with gyoza dumplings. That seemed to make the skin more tender once it baked, but half of them fell apart while they were steaming, and it's an extra step.

Here they are, baked on the left, fried on the right. I wonder how much oil they really absorb in frying, versus being slathered before baking. If they have so much good stuff inside and we don't have them very often, I think it's ok that they're fried. The bubbles and the crispy skin really are beautiful.

I also broke down and bought a new camera, with some help from my generous parents. I'm embarrassed to mention it because I have such a steep learning curve and it will be awhile before I can take competent pictures. But I'll keep practicing, and I'm excited to have a 35mm f/1.8 lens that works so well in close-up and low light.

Saltimbocca

Tonight we had chicken saltimbocca. Organic chicken breasts pounded thin, coated in flour, paprika, and lemon zest and browned in olive oil and butter. The sauce is shallots, vermouth, lemon juice, herbs and capers. I served it over whole grain spaghetti.

We also had grapes, lacinato kale and a salad with spinach, blueberries and pears in balsamic vinaigrette. Dessert was a whole wheat and flax banana muffin sweetened with agave and honey. I love the sparkle and crunch of turbinado sugar on top.

Orange Ginger Seitan

Tonight we had ginger-and-orange-glazed seitan on quinoa; spring greens with blueberries and apples; and roasted sweet potato puréed with a little agave and my favorite spice for baking or for seasoning winter squash or pumpkin:

It's from Penzeys, and the star anise is what makes it brilliant.

I made the seitan from scratch, from the Real Food Daily Cookbook Chicken-Style Seitan recipe.

I like this recipe because it uses cannellini beans and garbanzo bean flour in addition to the wheat gluten, so it seems less like a hit of pure gluten. None of us has a problem with gluten, so I think seitan is a great high-protein occasional meat alternative, especially when I make it at home. Most of the supermarket meat alternatives don't seem like much of an option, with their highly processed soy, and sodium, and preservative chemicals.

I browned it in a cast-iron skillet and then made a quick glaze with freshly squeezed orange juice, grated ginger and tamari. I served it with stir-fried carrots, cauliflower, scallions and rainbow chard stems over quinoa. The organic rainbow chard was so beautiful at the market today, the stems were all shades of lavender/violet pink and bright golds and red and deep purples. It's always such a scramble right at the end to get it on the table while everything is hot. Especially since R asks for miso soup with every dinner now. I'm glad she likes it, but there is another extra step. I cut the scallions on the fly. They taught us in cooking school to cut our scallions so elegantly, into slender little O's. I didn't realize how shameful these are until I took a close-up picture. But it's just family dinner on a Wednesday, and it was good.

Bean Soup

I am trying to be better about making whole-food meals from scratch, and eating less meat, more whole grains, and more fruits and vegetables. More colors on the plate, for variety and nutrition. Taking pictures in the wintertime is another story, when it's pitch dark by the time dinner is on the table.

Tonight was 16-bean soup that simmered all day in the slow cooker; peach and Rainier cherry cobbler from the peaches and cherries I canned over the summer; kale with caramelized onions; steamed carrots and oranges. I put out some preserves I canned in June, strawberry preserves with black pepper and mint. The black pepper just gives it a hint of heat, more like a warmth at the end of a bite, and the mint is un-identifiable, something fresh and grassy under the straight-ahead sweetness of strawberries.

The preserves were so good with this Oat Soda Bread from 101cookbooks.com. You make the oat flour by whizzing rolled oats in the food processor. I substituted white whole wheat flour for the all purpose flour. What a great recipe! It's a whole grain quickbread, no yeast or rising, a way to have warm homemade bread on the table for dinner without planning ahead very much.

Cooking beans at high altitude can take forever, but this soup went into the slow cooker at 9 a.m. and the beans were soft by dinner at 6.

I have big plans too, to get back to taking pictures of the bento lunches. Over the weekend, I made and froze brown rice onigiri, baked egg rolls, some healthy muffins and cookies, and two batches of homemade seitan. I still take a lot of time with R's lunches, but it seems like we're busier this year, and taking photos before we leave for school at 7:20 has eluded me since September.