Ginormous farmer's market vegetable stew

I spent my Sunday listening to records and fiddling about the house. I love watching the needle touch down.

It was lovely until the neighbour decided to deafen me and everyone in Perth with her doof doof. Oh well, I played records all day yesterday too :)

This is today's farmer's markets haul. From bottom left clockwise: the best bananas in the world, 1/4 jap pumpkin, celery, kale, brazil nuts, bunya nuts (no idea of what to do with these yet!), parsnip, turnips and potato.

Almost all of the above turned into a gigantic stew!

BIG HONKING ROOT VEGETABLE STEW.

Serves 6 (big)

Ingredients:

400g turnips

700g potatoes

200g carrot

600g pumpkin

250g parsnip

250g celery (about 4 stalks), sliced

1 1/2 cups cooked kidney beans

500g brown onion, quartered

5 cloves garlic, roughly chopped

2 tbsp whole peppercorns, crushed or cracked

1 thyme stem left whole

2cm long stem of rosemary left whole

3 bay leaves

2 heaped tsp wholegrain mustard

8 cups weak chicken style stock (or water)

125g short pasta (any shape!)

The method is very simple, as with all stew/soup type dealies.

First, I peeled things that needed peeling (I peel parsnips because we find the skin bitter, and I peeled the larger turnip but left the skin on the smaller one as per the Internet's reccomendations).

Chop everything into large chunks, try to keep the size uniform.

Put everything into a large stock pot, except the pasta shapes and cooked kidney beans. (As you can see, mine was ALMOST too small. [5L] I could have used a smaller potato or something!)

Give it a gentle stir, so as not to overflow the pot, unless yours is ginormous.

Bring pot to a boil, then turn down and simmer for half an hour.

(At this point I turned it off and left it for about an hour while I went to pick Nadine up from work, so if you don't need to leave it just check to see if the vegetables are cooked.)

The pumpkin will be falling apart - this is good. If you want your pumpkin chunks to stay whole, don't put them in at the beginning.

I found that it was too watery still, so I thickened it with a bit of cornflour. This is optional.

Bring back to a boil and add the pasta and beans. Cook until pasta is ready (about as long as the packet says!) Cooking the pasta in it also helps to thicken the gravy!

Serve and enjoy! I served ours with some sauteed kale and silverbeet, but feel free to go for bread or something.

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This was so hearty and flavourful. If you aren't into spicy, cut down the pepper to half. It was very peppery, just how I like it! The herbs were light enough for us to be able to taste each different vegetable, which was good. I liked how the pumpkin turned into mush and spread through the whole thing, making it soupy. 

For something that I just made up on the spot, I'm quite happy with the results! I think this is the first time I've had turnips cooked properly. Last time I tried they were pretty thick and raw haha. I like them. I'll probably buy more next week and do something different.

This would be awesome to chuck in a slow cooker to come home to after work! Unfortunately I don't have one. One day I will, when I have more storage!

Cheap cheap produce

Because I now have a job (woe! jk) that usually involves working Sundays (good thing = extra pay) I don't get to go to the farmer's market as often. I suppose I could go before I start work (market 6am, work 9am...) but I usually don't have the energy. So I go on my sundays off :) (Though I will probably start going before work starts. I need to get off my lazy ass.)

Anyway! Last Sunday I went, and I got a little excited about this bunch of beetroot.

This thing weighs a freaking ton and is about as big as two of my head. I was struggling to hold it up for the photo!

It cost me $3! 3!!! That's amazing. Loose beetroot (ie: without the tops, sold singly) usually costs from $4-$5 a kilo. I always bought those in the past because I was unaware that you could eat the tops (headsmack) and thus thought it would be a waste.

Except, now I don't know what to do with them. I was intending to juice most of it with carrots (yummm) but it's literally been pissing down with rain for a week and it's really not juice weather.

So now there are giant beetroots in my fridge waiting for me to use them. I am sure I will think of something :)

Also at the markets I went a bit crazy with the leafy greens. I bought a kohl rabi that had huge leaves, the beetroot greens of course, also a silverbeet and a bunch of kale (a different kind that I hadn't tried before - I prefer the curly leaved variety but it's still good). AND some dandelion greens because I like them. My fridge is full to bursting - luckily I can chuck it all in pretty much anything I cook because it all wilts down to pretty much nothing. I've been eating whole wheat pasta with sauteed random greens for lunches lately. It tastes good to me, and that's what matters.

The nicest thing about this market is that everything is organic - and works out to be so damn cheap! I literally filled an empty fridge for $23. That's one hour's work on a Sunday for me.

Go to your local farmer's market (they are everywhere - even in the middle of the city) to buy your fresh fruit and vegetables - it costs so much less than going to a supermarket, and the people probably picked it that morning or the day before - it hasn't been in cold storage for months before ending up in your fridge and on your plate.

Mock tuna salad!

This is what some of my lunches have been this week...Mock Tuna Salad from here. I obviously had it with sliced raw vegetables...it's been hot this week here. In there I had: kohl rabi, carrot, cucumber and celery, all from the farmers market. The Mock Tuna Salad was awesome, I'll definately make it again. Texture-wise it was quite tuna-y, but not too much in taste which is good because I always thought tuna was icky. I could have made it more fishy by using more seaweed (I finely chopped up some nori for sushi), but this was fine for me!

Speaking of sushi, this salad would be really good inside it! 

Kohl rabi is amazing by the way. Every week at the market I buy one thing that looks interesting or that I really like. Kohl rabi has always intrigued me but I could never afford it! But this one was only $2.70. I didn't take a photo of it because I forgot. But it was bright purple. It tasted like radish, but without the spicy! Yum.

Nyah to those people who think I MUST be anaemic and calcium deficient purely because I don't eat animal products. This is what I choose to snack on a fair bit. It's may favourite way to eat kale. Very lightly sautee it in vegan margarine until it turns bright green. Grind some black pepper on top. Then eat! This time I added the greens from the kohl rabi. Pretty good - they tasted a lot like regular spinach. I find a lot of people think kale is bitter or tough, I don't think so...I also try not to cook it to death. But that's just me :)

Mmmm basil pesto...

I've never made pesto before. When I was vegetarian and just moved out of home, I literally lived off jars of Coles Homebrand basil pesto on angelhair pasta. If I splurged and bought fancy pesto I bought 60c homebrand spaghetti!

I made this specifically for an ingredient in dinner tonight. I got a nice big bunch of basil from the farmers market this morning (I'd have taken a picture but I put it in the coldest part of the fridge, unwrapped - mistake, don't ever do that. A couple of hours later when I got it out of the fridge to make the pesto it had started to turn black and go a bit goopy! Oh well, it's still good...just not photo quality.  I'd have made it out of my own homegrown basil but it really sucks at the moment. One little plant is powering on but the others are giving up on life. No sun! Dammit. I will be moving my pots to a sunny spot soon - hopefully no one moves/steals/knocks them over.

Anyway - to the pesto. I based it off a recipe in Vegan Italiano by Donna Klein. I love this book.

Basic basil pesto

Makes almost 2/3 cup

2 1/2 cups loosely packed fresh basil

3 tbsp almonds

3 garlic cloves, chopped

Few sprigs of parsley (I used curly-leaved, but Italian flat leaved would probably be better)

Few stems of garlic chives (my parsley isn't doing fantastically either)

1/4 cup rice bran oil

Put everything but the oil into a food processor and blend. Add the oil and blend until smooth :)

This was pretty good for a first attempt! I can't afford olive oil - I assume it would be much better to use than rice bran. Next time I might add a cup of spinach to it :) I can afford pine nuts even less. But I thought almonds were nice here :) It's not like you can really taste the nuts anyway.

We decided to have some on spaghetti for lunch. We can't resist pesto when we have it!

I fully intend on growing heaps of basil this summer so I can make big batches of it and freeze it into little individual portions to enjoy through winter :)

A take on Tuscan Beans and Tomatoes

Every single radish seed I planted sprouted! Very exciting. Soon I'll be able to prick them out (I put two in each hole just in case). And then have radishes! I'll have to protect them from birds.

I got some very nice looking rainbow silverbeet (chard) at the Farmer's market this Sunday. Funny how I can drag myself out of bed at 6am on a Sunday but struggle to wake up to go to school? It wasn't on my list, but the bright colours made me buy it! Rainbow silverbeet is very very awkward to carry while riding a bike. I ended up putting it in my front basket on top of potatoes and beetroot and tying it down with the chain lock! It didn't come out nor was it damaged in any way :)

Tonight for dinner I made a sort of beans and tomatoes thing from Vegan Italiano. I was originally going to follow the recipe exactly but this morning we were hung over (lots of gin last night! date day!) so we decided to buy some vegan sausages and have a fry up. So I put the leftover sausage in dinner tonight so they didn't go to waste.

Italian style beans and tomatoes with polenta

Serves 4

Ingredients

About 1 1/2  cups of dried white beans, cannellini beans, cooked

3-4 cloves garlic, chopped

3 vegan sausages of choice, sliced thinly

3 cups cooked tomatoes (about 1 800g can)

1 cup weak chicken stock (I use Massel Chicken Style)

3 large leaves and stems of silverbeet, stems sliced thinly and leaves torn

1 tbsp ground dried sage

Salt and pepper to taste

1/2 cup polenta*

1L water/weak stock

1 tsp vegan margarine

pinch nutritional yeast

Method:

Fry garlic, silverbeet stem slices and sausage slices in a bit of oil until sausage is browned on both sides.

Add beans, tomatoes, stock and sage. Stir to combine. Let cook for a while.

When it's near to serving time, bring a medium saucepan with 1L of water/stock in it to boil. Slowly whisk in polenta until it's thick and creamy looking. When cooked stir in margarine and nutritional yeast.

Add the silverbeet leaves and cook until wilted.

Serve!

This was quite delicious. And would have been cheap if I didn't use sausages!

*1 cup of polenta to 4 cups water works better. I just didn't have enough left and tried to make it stretch - it turned out quite thin so it was soupy. Which is OK if that's what you want :) Also it only made enough polenta for 3.

Pumpkin, Potato and Kidney Bean Stew

I got this potato from the farmers markets. It was called a red-something...only $3 a kilo! I was hoping it would be red inside (I've seen purple ones in seed catalogues) but unfortunately it was white. It tasted like a regular potato but with an earthier skin (I never peel mine).

So I decided to put it in a stew - I adapted this recipe, and changed most of it to suit me, I think.

Pumpkin, Potato and Kidney Bean Stew

Serves 8 with grain base or 10 without

Ingredients

4 cups cooked kidney beans (about 2 cups dried)

1 cup stock (I used Massel Chicken Style)

Oil for frying

4 cups roughly diced onion

4 cups mixed diced: pumpkin, sweet potato, regular potato

1 cup chopped carrot (about 2 medium)

1 chopped jalapeno chili*

2 tsp dried sage

1 tsp dried thyme

1 tsp smoked paprika

3 cups cooked tomatoes (about 1 800g can)

Method

1. Put some oil in a large stock pot and add onions, carrot, chilli and pumpkin/potatoes until onion starts to soften - about ten minutes.

2. Add beans to this mixture. Add sage, thyme, and paprika and then tomatoes and some of the stock. Add more later if it starts to dry out a little. Stir well and bring to a boil.

3. Cover and reduce heat to a simmer. Simmer until vegetables are tender.

*It could have done with 2 or more!

I served ours with a mixture of unpearled barley and brown rice. I did 2 parts rice to one part barley.

It also would have a little tastier with just sweet potato or pumpkin - or a few extra herbs. I also forgot to put pepper in.

Unpearled barley is whole barley. It takes a LONG time to cook (about 1.5 hours) but I think it's worth it. I cook in the same way as dried beans: Put barley and water to cover in saucepan, bring to boil. Turn off heat and let stand for a few hours (at least 1). Drain barley and put new water in. Bring to boil again then turn down and simmer until tender (this really does take about 1.5 hours - maybe 2!). I just like making life difficult for myself :) It took a few forkfuls to get used to - just remember to chew it well, and not breathe in the husk. We really like the taste and texture, actually. I love regular pearled barley but this adds a little more.

I'm actually trying to gain some weight (only 4-5kg or so) and I figure I should eat more carbs than I burn. Unpearled barley, brown rice, lots of bread etc. They are cheaper for me to buy than good fats such as avocado, peanut butter, other nuts. 1kg of this unpearled barley only cost me $2.60! I'll still be eating my nuts etc occasionally when I can afford it too though.

Eggplant Cacciatore

I decided to get up at the crack of dawn (actually it was still dark) to ride my bicycle to the local organic farmer's market which I only just found out about...yesterday. It was a lovely bike ride (I left once the sun had come up) I saw 2 ducks and their ducklings (no picture cuz I didn't take a camera...next Sunday I definately am) it was FREEZING and riding through the slight breeze made my ears ache - next time I'm wrapping a scarf around my head. But it certainly woke me up!

Anyway, I got this nice little eggplant and some other goodies (including dandelion greens - not much of an idea of what to do with them other than salad!) and so decided to make Eggplant Cacciatore tonight for tea.

This is adapted from a recipe in Vegan Italiano by Donna Klein.

Eggplant Cacciatore

1 med eggplant diced (you can peel if you want, I don't)

1 large onion diced

3 or more cloves garlic, chopped

1 green capsicum, chopped (or red, or yellow)

1/2 recipe of this marinara sauce from OrganicallyMe*

1 tsp dried oregano

1 tsp dried thyme

Handful of kalamata olives

Freshly ground black pepper to taste

Cooked pasta of choice (I used spaghetti)

Make the marinara sauce (or you could use pre made - I hate when recipe books call for pre packaged ingredients!)

In another pot (large stockpot) lightly fry onion, garlic and capsicum on med-low heat. Add the eggplant and herbs and cook for a few minutes until eggplant starts to soften a little. Stir in sauce and let simmer until eggplant is tender.

Serve over pasta!

It's quite tasty and pretty easy to make. You don't really have to pay much attention to it while it's cooking, unless the water boils out and it burns!

We had ours with Oxford Landing Shiraz - a nice, easy to drink vegan wine that is very, very cheap at $6 a bottle! The company who makes/owns this is in the process of changing most, if not all, their wines to vegan friendly. Very excited :)

 *With the marinara sauce, I used tomatoes that I had cooked a while ago and froze. I just eyeballed the amount - I figured it to look like one can of tomatoes would look like! I also left out the onion because there was already one in the other part of the recipe.