Green Potato Leek Soup with Mushrooms

INGREDIENTS

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

2 to 3 large leeks, thinly sliced

3 to 4 cloves of garlic, sliced

3 to 4 cups greens, thinly sliced and then chopped up into small short pieces (Here, you can consider using up all the limp celery you didn’t get to in the last weeks, leaves and all! Kale, collards, spinach, turnip or beet greens, chard all will work. Mix and match. This is your chance to clear out the old greens to make space for the new!

2 to 3 potatoes, sliced into 1-inch slices and then cut into half moons (No, I don’t peel my potatoes! But I do make sure they’re organic. If you don’t have access to organic potatoes, maybe it is worth the trouble of peeling them. Potatoes are amongst the heaviest-pesticide-carrying crop in the industrialized agriculture fields.)

salt and pepper to taste

2 to 3 bay leaves

1 to 2 tsp thyme

8 to 10 cups veggie broth (or chicken broth if that’s your jam) If I’m using bouillon cubes, I will use 2 cubes Edward & Sons Not-Chick’n and 2 cubes Garden Veggie.

10 to 12 mushrooms (or more!), sliced in fourths (This is about what you’d find in an 8oz box at the grocery store)

fresh parsley leaves and/or microgreens for garnish

INSTRUCTIONS

Place mushrooms in a single layer on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper and bake in oven at 400 for about 10 minutes, or until beginning brown, sizzle and crisp a little bit.

Heat oil in pan and saute sliced leeks sprinkled with salt and pepper on medium-high heat for about 5 minutes. Add garlic (and celery, if you’re going with that!) and stir fry for a couple more minutes.

In a pot, add the veggie broth or water and bouillon cubes, bay leaves, thyme, potatoes, greens and your sauteed leek and garlic goodness. Bring to a boil, then cover with a lid and simmer until potatoes are cooked through. Turn off heat when ready.

Now, the quick and easy way to finish up is to get your potato masher (metal please! Don’t stick plastic into your boiling liquid!) and semi-mash your potatoes directly in the soup pot. This leaves you with a soupy/chunky mix that I love to serve topped with croutons and pan-fried veggie italian sausage. Although, doubling the mushrooms is healthier and often filling enough for me to skip the sausage.

Alternatively, and perhaps, more traditionally for a potato-leek soup, you can blend it smooth. An immersion blender works great and you can better control how smooth you want the soup to be. The last method I would suggest, if you love your soup smooth and creamy, is to let it cool a bit, then transfer into your blender. The big blender is faster than the immersion blender, gets it smoother, but takes more patience waiting for the soup to cool enough to transfer to the blender, and then, of course, there’s more clean up because you’re stuck washing the blender. Blend and return to your pot (reheat if necessary) and serve topped with your garnish and mushrooms. The upside of blending to me, is that the kids tend to eat more greens this way. Can’t pick them out if it’s all blended up!

Stir-Fried Greens with Apple

INGREDIENTS

1 bunch greens (this week, it could be collards, kale or arugula, but many other greens could work, too!)

3 tbs olive oil

1 cup vegetable or chicken broth

1 large apple or 2 small ones, sliced

4 tbs apple cider vinegar

salt and pepper to taste

almonds or other seed or nut of choice (optional!)

INSTRUCTIONS

Rinse slice your greens

Stir fry them in oil for a bit. Sturdier greens like collards, I would do for two full minutes, kale, for just one, spinach even less!

Add broth and apples and stir fry for a tiny bit more.

Add apple cider vinegar, salt and pepper to taste.

Sprinkle with almonds or other seed or nut of choice to give this dish a protein boost and some extra crunch!

Sesame Roasted Kabocha Squash Over Bed of Greens

This Kabocha roast is inspired by this Korean Braised Kabocha Squash recipe. Although the original looks delicious and I’d like to shop for and try it some fancy day, this one is simplified (no time for shopping, roasting AND braising today!) to work within my busy home-schooling, home-working day. Ok, here goes!

INGREDIENTS

1 kabocha squash

3 tbs sesame oil

3 cloves garlic, finely chopped

1 inch ginger, finely chopped

3 green onions, chopped

2 tbs brown sugar

4 tbs soy sauce

4 tbs rice wine vinegar

1 tbs dried chile (korean chili flakes, or, in our case, crushed chiltepin!)

sesame seeds (optional)

microgreens (optional)

1 bunch collards, thinly sliced

1/2 tsp cumin

salt and pepper to taste

INSTRUCTIONS

Preheat oven to 400.

Cut the kabocha squash in half, scoop out the seeds and then slice into 1-inch slices. This is the hardest part because it takes some strength to cut up this squash raw. The alternative is roasting, then slicing but I think the bit of sweat is worth the time (and dishes) saved when you skip the roast then chop then braise steps!

On a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, spread the slices of kabocha into on layer (it’s ok if they slightly overlap) and drizzle with roasted sesame oil.

In a small bowl, mix garlic, ginger, green onions, sugar, soy sauce, rice vinegar and chile. Then drizzle over the kombucha.

Put in oven to roast until it looks a little crisped and is soft in the middle (test with a fork). In our oven, this takes 30 to 40 minutes, but check it after 20 minutes just in case!

While it roasts, you put a little more sesame oil in a pan (cast iron works great!) and add the cumin. Stir for 30 seconds or so in the hot oil.

Add the sliced collards. Sprinkle salt and pepper and put a lid on the pan so they steam for a few minutes. I like to eat them once they get bright green (after about 5 minutes) but if you are bitter-averse, letting them cook longer makes them softer and gets the bitter out. Bitter balances the sweet of the kobucha, though, so consider going light on the cooking time for your greens.

Serve the kobucha on a plate over the collards and top with sesame seeds and microgreens if you’ve got them around. Eat with your favorite protein (lentils, tofu, tempeh, nuts or meat) on the side.

Cheese Squash Soup with Collards and Fried Pear

This recipe is inspired by this Sage and Apple Soup NYT Recipe, but I’ve slightly modified it to better use what’s in season and in our box this week.

Here goes!

Ingredients:

1 long island cheese squash (any other winter squash could also do!), cut in half

1 onion

6 cups veggie broth

12 sage leaves (good excuse to go on a hike and harvest a few!)

a few collard leaves, finely chopped

1 cup olive oil

2 pears

salt and pepper to taste

microgreens

Instructions:

1. Remove seeds from squash (clean and set aside to roast for a yummy snack!)

2. Rub open face of squash with olive oil, sprinkle with salt. Place on a baking sheet and cover with foil. Bake at 400 for 30 to 45 minutes, or until soft.

3. Chop onion and saute with a bit of olive oil then set aside.

4. Add rest of oil and fry sage leaves for about 8 seconds, then remove leaves and set aside on a plate lined with a paper towel.

5. Add the pumpkin seeds to the sage-infused oil and for about 20 seconds or until they look toasted. When ready, remove the seeds from the oil and place on a plate lined with a paper towel and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

6. Once squash is cooked, scoop out the meat and put in a large pot if you have an immersion blender or place in regular blender with some veggie broth, onion and 1 sliced pear. Blend then cook in the large pot with rest of veggie broth, collards and a spoonful or two of the leftover sage-infused oil for about 10 minutes.

7. Saute rest of pear slices for a few minutes in the last bit of sage-infused oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

8. Serve up the soup! Add the fried pear, squash seeds and microgreens as toppings.

Long Island Cheese Squash is a winter squash named after its shape that resembles a wheel of cheese. If you have the space, buy or save a few seeds to try growing this beautiful pumpkin next year!

Receta de Quelites de mi Nanaita (My Great-Aunt's Quelite Greens Recipe)

Quelites in Mexico

What exactly are “quelites” is a contentious issue amongst some because the plant most commonly known as “quelite” varies from region to region in Mexico. So, my grandmother’s quelites might not be your grandmother’s quelites.

On my quest to find clarity over the years, I came across this poster and this great article. Quelites are a pre-columbian dish indigenous to the americas. The name comes from the Nahuatl word Quilitl which translates roughly to
”tender and edible green”. Another key characteristic is that they are wild-harvested, a weed, not something you plant in your garden. At least that’s how it used to be. The one my father excitedly found growing as a weed in our yard, that his mother called quelite de monte, was green amaranth. The plant my Nanaita used the day I was introduced to this quelites recipe was spinach (not a traditional quelite, but available and delicious nonetheless). I felt nourished and was in love with the simple magic of her recipe. Since then, I make it with whatever I have around, including amaranth, spinach, chard, collards, chaya, beet greens, turnip greens, arugula, kale, and the list goes on. So here it is—-

Ingredients:

1 bunch of greens (try chard, kale, amaranth, chaya, spinach, collards, beet greens, turnip greens, arugula…)

olive oil

1 tsp coriander (ground)

1 tsp sea salt

black pepper (to taste)

2 cloves garlic (sliced)

1 handful of organic corn masa

1 cup water

lemon or lime

Instructions:

1. Thinly slice your greens

2. In a pan (I prefer to use cast iron), drizzle a little bit of olive oil (maybe a tablespoon) and saute the garlic, coriander, salt and pepper for a minute.

3. add water to the pan, then sprinkle the masa into the pan immediately (before water gets too hot) while stirring so the masa dissolves and doesn’t clump up too much.

4. Bring to a low boil, add greens and cover to simmer for just a couple of minutes (unless you’re using some of the tougher greens like collards or chaya, which you’d want to cook for a few minutes longer).

5. Remove from heat, add a little squeeze of lime (or the juice of a whole lemon or lime, like me, depending your preferences!) and serve.