Spanish rice

Spanish rice
Originally uploaded by wbajzek

Brown rice, pomi chopped tomatoes, cilantro from the garden, and an onion. Toasted the rice, added the rest, and cooked it in the pressure cooker for about 20 minutes or so, I think. Nice rich flavor and creamy texture!

recent soups

So far we've been dealing with the Two Small Farms deliveries by making stock with everything that we don't understand, and then using that stock to make soup with the rest. Unfortunately, I don't remember the details of the second stock, plus it contained at least a few items that I'd never heard of anyway. 

The first soup contained turnip, onion, leeks, squash, and escarole. This was very good, which surprised me because I felt that the stock didn't turn out so well. A bit of salt and nutritional yeast did wonders with it. I know you think I'm weird for using the stuff, but it's pretty good. The second was a coconut curry with squash and fennel. I was rather fond of that one; it was pretty simple but came out very well. 

The third is in progress now; squash, golden beets, onions, bell peppers, oyster mushrooms, and possibly some escarole as well but it's might crowded in the pot as it is. 

Update, 9:43pm: This soup is excellent!

stock

I'm making stock for the first time. Who knows how it'll come out? But here's what I put in it, so I don't forget in case it comes out well. 

• 1/2 onion
• 5 carrots
• 1 large parsnip
• most of a head of cabbage
• 1 tangerine
• 1 small (6 inch) butternut squash
• 6-8 stalks of celery

I think that's it. Oh yeah, and lots of water. Basically, I just put as much of what was available in as would fit in the pot. 

Pressure cooker madness

I bought an old pressure cooker a month or so ago and have been using it primarily to make rice and beans. The other day, I made some saffron rice in it and then stirred in some ginger, spices, mixed veggies, and raisins to make a pulau kind of dish. It was pretty good. I attempted the same thing today, this time with a chopped up onion added to the rice and some of Angeline's veggie stock instead of water. I also threw in some bell peppers, star anise, fennel and cumin seeds. At that point, it looked like there wasn't enough water, so I added more, perhaps totally 3.5 cups of liquid. It was WAY too much to produce the intended dish, I'm afraid, as the rice was fully cooked while the whole thing was still swimming in liquid. I tasted it and it was pretty good as it was, so I added salt and pan-roasted cashews and served myself a dish of it. Wow! It turned out very tasty in a subtle and complex sort of way. I like it enough that I will probably try to make it this way again sometime.

Angeline made a vegan lasagna, some of which I am also having for lunch. It's pretty great, too, hopefully she will write about it.