Green Tomato and Corn Soup

I had a boatload of green tomatoes at the end of the garden season this past fall. In the past I've done a variety of things with green tomatoes...pickles (meh), relish (meh), cake (yum but...) ...these just aren't dishes that move real well at my house.

The house favorite remains fried green tomatoes. You can slice, dredge and freeze green tomatoes for quick cooking later.  But at the time of our last garden harvest, I was 38 weeks pregnant and had ankles with the same diameter as my neck so I just didn't feel like doing it. I now have gallons of naked frozen green tomatoes that I still don't feel like dredging!

Some interwebs surfing turned up a suggestion to use green tomatoes in soup. This is my all-green-tomato version of what I found.  It is going on our menu until our green tomatoes are used up, and into next year once our garden starts producing tomatoes.

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Creamed Greens

This recipe works for any type of cooked green...kale, chard, spinach, mustard greens, turnip greens, even collards as long as they're fully cooked first.  This is how I get leftover cooked greens eaten at my house...they go like gangbusters the first night, but tend to linger as leftovers so I recreate them as creamed greens.

The best recipe I've ever had for creamed spinach was a Barefoot Contessa colossus of cream, butter, cheese, more cheese and a lot of salt.  I do love creamy goodness, but not like that every day.  Using milk instead of cream, less cheese, less salt and less butter still produces a yummy dish.  If you want to lighten the sauce further, you could substitute some cooking liquid from the greens for some of the milk.

You can make this ahead up to the point of baking (it will probably take a little longer to brown if the dish is coming out of the fridge) or if you make the sauce and greens at dinnertime, you could skip the parmesan and further baking and just serve it out of the saucepan.

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Konigsberger Klopse, or Poached Meatballs with Lemon Sauce

The original recipe comes from a crunchy-hippie sort of book called "Back to Basics" that teaches all manner of rustic survival skills, including how to make this Midwestern specialty.  I have yet to meet anyone in the Midwest who's heard of this dish, but once you mention that there's a white gravy with some meat, everyone gets real excited.

I prefer to make a double batch of this as it's hard to purchase 1/2 lbs. of ground meat at my grocery stores.  If I've got 1 full pound, then by golly, I'll just make 2 recipes' worth and freeze some.  Why prep twice?

This is going into my freezer, so I'll update later with cookery pics, like this one:

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Easy-easier-easiest: Corn

So it's technically not a vegetable, but when it's plentiful and cheap and fresh in the summer, it's on the menu.  Getting the corn shucked and de-silked, one of my least favorite kitchen tasks, is definitely prep-ahead friendly, as are brining and cutting the kernels off the cob. 

To help cut kernels off a cob, invert a small bowl inside a larger one.  In a perfect world, both bowls have flattened bottoms for minimal slippage.  Hold your cob on the smaller bowl and cut the kernels off with a knife...the knife edge shouldn't bang on the outer bowl and the kernels will fall right into the larger bowl instead of scattering all over your kitchen counter.

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Fish Burgers and Veggie Croquettes

The common theme with these two recipes is that if you make them ahead to freeze, they need to spend some time in the freezer firming up before you squash the daylights out of them with a vacusealer.  Vacusealing will keep them both much fresher-tasting, but they're prone to going completely out of round if they don't freeze pretty solid first.

The veggie croquette is one of my faves for its dual vegetarian main/side dish status, its repurposing of leftovers that usually won't get consumed and its general old-fashioned-ness.  In fact, the original recipe came from a WWII-era home economics textbook that belonged to my husband's grandmother.  Reading old cookbooks and trying out vintage recipes is as close as I get to liking history, but I must say that it is such an insightful history lesson to cook as women did in another time and place.  There's a moment of connection across generations when you realize that the face your husband made about Meatless Monday Rice Patties with Flourless Cheese Gravy is the same face somebody's husband made about the exact same dish in 1944.  But I digress...
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French Beans



Freezer kit

 Sort of a French-style baked bean that can play as either a vegetarian main course (with vegetable stock) or a side dish.  Nearly fat-free and very low sodium if you use home-cooked beans and homemade stock.  And of course, it can be prepped ahead for same-day or next-day cooking, or made into a freezer kit.  You can choose how much of the cooking will be done on the front end and how much on the back end, depending on your personal schedule.

There are three main parts to this dish, each with some options about how much home cooking to do and when to do it.

1. Beans:  If you cook beans from dry, go ahead and cook a whole pound (or two) and freeze them in 1-1/2 cup portions.  You'll need 3 cups of cooked beans for this recipe.  Undercook the beans slightly as they'll get a bit mushy in the freezer.  If you really think you'll have more time to cook beans on Dinner Day, you can also freeze beans after they've been soaked (overnight at room temp, or boil for 1 minute and leave in the covered pot for 1 hour), before they've been cooked.  You'll just need to leave yourself an hour and a half to cook them later.  Or you can use 2 cans of beans.  For a meal kit, label the cans and store them in the pantry.
2. Wine-stock reduction: You'll need 3 cups total of liquid.  At least 1 cup needs to be dry red wine, and 1 cup needs to be vegetable or chicken stock, and the third cup can be whatever ratio of the two you prefer.  If you use store-bought stock from a box, can, cube or granules, only use half the amount called for and make up the difference with water (e.g. for 2 cups stock, use 1 cup boxed/reconstituted stock plus 1 cup water).  Because you're going to reduce the stock and wine, the extra sodium in the store-bought will concentrate to salt-lick levels.  Again, depending on when you think you'll have time, you can go ahead and make the reduction and fridge/freeze it, or fridge/freeze the components of the sauce to reduce on Dinner Day.  Leave yourself 30 minutes for the reduction.
3. Vegetables: This pretty much needs to be cooked last minute, but the chopping and measuring can be done in advance.  Freeze/fridge the vegetables in one container or bag, and the seasoned beurre manié in another (snack-sized ziptop bags are great for this).

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Roast Chicken Véronique

Means with grapes.  The grapes freeze well to eat as is (oh jah, frozen grapes are the best!) and to roast with the chicken.  Even if you don't care to eat the roasted grapes as a side dish, they make ah-maz-ing drippings for even more ah-maz-ing gravy.  Sunday dinner at its best.

If you prep this as a freezer kit, give yourself more time for thawing than you think you'll need.  There's nothing worse than trying chisel frozen giblets out of a bird that felt thawed but isn't.  If you freeze the gravy fixings ahead, combine the milk and stock and freeze in a ziptop bag. 
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Beurre Manié

Say wha?  Not so much a recipe for a finished product as an aggravation-saving hint.  This something I'm convinced everyone should put in their freezer stash if any stews, sauces or gravies are in their future.  It's not hard to cook a roux-based sauce at all, and truly getting out a tbsp or two of butter and flour to start a sauce isn't all that hard either, but due to counter space restrictions, flour lives in my pantry which is a toddler-free zone which in turn means a Royal Cage Match with the aforementioned toddler every time I want to get it out and put it back.  Not worth it for 1 tbsp of flour, know what I mean?

This is THE thickener of French cuisine (and also of cheese sauce and turkey giblet gravy...very important).  Beurre manié is a combination of flour and butter, and is used to thicken a finished stew, cooked briefly to start a sauce or cooked a long time to form a flavoring agent in Cajun cooking. 

Most recipes call for equal parts butter and flour, which is perfectly fine by me, though I do think you can go as high as a 2 -to-3 ratio of butter to flour and still be fine if you want to cut out a little fat. 
Beurre Manié
Makes 8 portions (each corresponds to 1 tbsp flour called for in a recipe)

1/2 cup butter, softened

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

Combine well using a pastry cutter, food processor or mixer. 

Roll into a log and cut into 8 portions.

 
Freeze on a cookie sheet and put into a zip-top bag.

Lower-fat Beurre Manié
Makes 12 portions (each corresponds to 1 tbsp flour called for in a recipe)

1/2 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup all-purpose flour

Same procedure as above.

How do you use this?  Where a recipe says, "Melt X tbsp of butter and whisk in X tbsp flour", use 1 portion of this mixture for each tbsp of flour called for.  An example:

Cheese Sauce
Makes about 2 1/2 cups

2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp flour

OR

2 portions of frozen beurre manié

1 1/2 cup milk
1 cup shredded cheese
salt and pepper to taste

Melt butter over medium heat and whisk in flour, or stir beurre manié until melted and well-incorporated.  Cook 1 minute.  Whisk in milk slowly to avoid lumps.  Raise heat to medium-high until bubbles start to appear.  Reduce heat to medium and simmer 5-7 minutes, until thickened.  Stir in cheese and season with salt and pepper. Pin It