Kohlrabi and Kale, the K Vegetables

The boy got Scattergories for Christmas. It's a board game I used to play with my siblings all the time when we were kids. There is a list of items and a 20-sided die filled with the letters of the alphabet. Then, you roll the dice, it lands on a letter, and everyone has to think of a word for each list item that starts with that given letter. We've been playing it all week, and it's just as fun as I remembered it.

Well, the last few weeks of food in this house could easily fill up a list of words for vegetables that start with the letter K. The weekend before Christmas, my husband and I happened upon a lovely purple ornamental kale at the supermarket. It was bright and crisp and looking at it, I knew what I needed to do. I bought the kale and delightedly took it home to make some delicious, homemade lentil soup.

Lentil soup is one of my favorite things, especially with some french fried onions floating on the top and a handful of shredded cheese melting into the broth. Thus, while I was working my last day before my work winter break (which lasts from Christmas Eve to New Years Day), the husband took my recipe and made lentil soup with a bag of dried lentils and the purple kale. Or rather, he was supposed to make soup.

Having left the soup to boil down too long (the man is just not a soup fan), he created something slightly more dense than a stew, but it still tasted lovely. Thus, it went into a big Tupperware container and I served it to myself as gravy on my Christmas whipped potatoes, for the much needed protein I, as a veggie, don't get from the Christmas turkey (my family doesn't have Christmas ham, as my sister, having puked up ham with a case of childhood flu, refuses to eat most pork products).

Sorry I was too busy eating it to take a Lentil soup picture. Besides, it was so thick, it didn't really look like soup anyway.

Lentil Soup with Purple Kale
What you need:
olive oil
1 onion, chopped
1 stalk of celery, chopped
1 large carrot, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 1/4 c dried lentils
6 c worth of vegetable stock
1 T soy sauce
One bunch of purple kale, minus the stems, chopped

1. Stir fry the onion, celery, carrot, and garlic for about 10 minutes in the bottom of a large pot.
2. Add the lentils, stock, and soy sauce to the pot and bring to boil. Then, cover and simmer for an hour or two.
3. When the lentils are thoroughly cooked, bring back to boil and add kale to pot. Let boil for several minutes until the kale is soft.

When the dog bites, when the bee stings, when I'm feeling sad, I just need some lentil soup. And really, it only gets cheerier with those flashes of purple. The lentil soup was pretty to look at, but it's also packed with flavor from the garlic, lentils, and stock. Of course, I,  being the lentil soup lover I am, knew it wouldn't disappoint.

The big shock of the pre-Christmas season was the Kohlrabi Risotto recipe the husband found on the New York Times website. The ten-year-old scarfed this stuff down, even after hearing the word "Kohlrabi," which is a miracle in itself. We subbed in apple cider vinegar for the wine and brown rice for the arborio, but stayed fairly faithful to the original recipe otherwise.

Kohlrabi is a rather mild root vegetable, with a slight tang to it that really contrasted nicely with the slightly sweet taste of the Parmesan cheese. It made for a complex meal that didn't feel overbearing. Both meals were a big success and left us with plenty of leftovers to skimp on meal-planning for the rest of their respective weeks (Kohlrabi, the week before Christmas and lentil soup, the week of). This left more time for such things as Scattergories and reading the new Russell Banks and George Saunders.

There were just no downsides, really.

Butternut Squash Risotto

Here in Cleveland, we are still making our way slowly through our bushel of squash, purchased at the very end of October. We were making excellent progress, but after awhile, you just get sick of squash. All the time squash. So we took a squash break. Last week we brought the bags back out from the dark space beneath the cupboard. One thing we found out: acorn squash does not hold up as well as butternut. In the bag farthest back was a shriveled black mound that once was an acorn squash. I threw it and its three other bag companions in the trash. Four squash down by default. The rest, though, are holding their own, including a few acorns. But mostly, it's butternut.

And due to the find of the beyond-saving acorn husk, I got to thinking: perhaps it's time to use up all this squash.

Butternut Squash Risotto
-adapted from Simply Recipes-

What you need:
7 c. veggie broth
5 T butter
1 small onion
2 c. butternut squash, peeled and diced
2 c. long grain brown rice
1 c. diluted apple cider vinegar (1/2-3/4 vinegar and the rest water)
1/3 c. grated Parm
a sprinkle of Italian spices (parsley, rosemary, oregano, basil)

1. For broth, I always turn to my trusty jar of Better Than Bouillon. I particularly enjoy how its ingredients include nothing but a list of vegetables and how its taste reflects that list. I put 7 c. of water in a small saucepan and heated it to boil. Then, I added the necessary amount Better Than Bouillon paste. Voila: Veggie Broth.

2. Keep the broth on low so it stays heated. Melt 4 T of the butter in a large pan. Add onion and squash. Cook over med heat about 5 min.

3. Add rice to the veggies. Cook 1-2 minutes. Add the vinegar. Cook, stirring until it is absorbed in the rice. Add enough broth to just cover the rice. Cook at med heat until broth is absorbed. Add more broth and repeat the process for the next 20 minutes. At this point in the recipe I had, the risotto was supposed to be done. Of course, that recipe called for arborio rice and I had only brown. So it still looked like this:

Thus, at this point, I dumped the remaining broth in the pan and put the lid on it. Brown rice, unlike arborio, takes more like 40 minutes to cook. Sure enough, in another 20, the rice was ready to go.

4. During the last minutes of cooking, remove the lid. When the broth is all absorbed, add remaining T of butter and the grated Parm. Sprinkle Italian spices on the top. The rice should be a creamy consistency. Add salt to taste and serve more grated Parm.

I had never made risotto before and frankly, it was a pain in the butt. However, the taste of the completed dish is worth the effort. Because all that broth is slowly absorbed into the rice, it is extremely flavorful, almost decadent. And it looks quite pretty on a plate.

Pictured here with a dolphin-safe tuna melt on wheat.