Artichoke and Pea Gratin

This week I came across another recipe for a vegetable gratin and decided to give it a try.  While the last gratin recipe I tried involved kale and cheddar cheese, this recipe included artichokes, peas, and Parmesan cheese.  In general, I love anything with cheese, so I was excited to try this dish.

The goal of my cooking adventures was to try to find fresh, in-season vegetables and use them to create new and delicious dishes.  However, with winter upon us, it is getting trickier and trickier to find fresh, in-season produce.  Instead of using fresh artichokes and peas for this recipe, I used frozen.  It would be interesting to try this dish again when fresh forms of the vegetables are available, but for now the frozen will have to do.

 

The good thing about frozen vegetables is that although some of the taste may be sacrificed, the nutritional value is generally conserved.  Artichokes are a food popular in Mediterranean dishes, and the top countries for producing artichokes worldwide are still France, Italy and Spain.  Interestingly, I read that 100% of the artichokes produced in the United States come from California.

Artichokes have several nutritional benefits.  Primarily, artichokes are full of antioxidants.  A chemical compound found in artichokes, Cynara, causes in increase in bile flow, which aids in digestion, strengthens the liver and gall bladder function, and raises the HDL/LDL cholesterol ratio.   Artichoke leaf extracts have also been used to treat people with upset stomachs and irritable bowel syndrome.  

There has been some debate over what type of food an artichoke is:  fruit, vegetable, or flower?  After some research I came to the conclusion that the part of an artichoke that we eat is a vegetable.  The artichoke plant is a member of the thistle family, meaning that it is a flowering plant with prickly leaves.  When mature, the artichoke has a bright purple flower.  However, the artichoke that we eat is harvested before the flower has a chance to bloom.  It is harvested while still in the bud stage.  Still, we can’t say that the artichokes we eat are flower buds.  Rather, what we eat are the leaves that are surrounding the flower bud.  Who knew artichokes were so complex?    

 I did some research on the other main ingredient in this dish, peas, too.  They were kind of boring in comparison.  The most interesting thing about peas is that they were used the research by Gregor Mendel and their genetic information formed the basis of Mendelian genetics.  

To start this recipe, whisk 1 tablespoon butter and 1 tablespoon flour in an ovenproof skillet over medium-high heat for about a minute. 

Next add 1 ¼ cups fat-free milk and whisk until boiling.  Since milk has a tendency to boil over in a matter of seconds, I removed the skillet from the heat at this point to add the next ingredients.

Stir in 12 ounces of thawed frozen artichoke heart and 1 cup thawed frozen peas.  Add ½ teaspoon each of salt and lemon zest.  Bring mixture to a simmer.

 

Add about 2 ounces fresh grated Parmesan cheese and stir until melted.   

At this point it seemed a little soupy to me, so I decided to place it in a 350 degree oven for about 15 minutes, until the mixture is bubbly and slightly thickened.  Unfortunately, it didn’t really thicken.  I removed it from the oven and just decided to let it sit for a few minutes to see if it would thicken as I stirred it.  It kind of did.  

Top with an addition 2 to 3 ounces fresh grated Parmesan cheese.  Broil until golden.   

After taking it out from under the broiler I found that it had thickened nicely.  This dish was very flavorful, with the dominant flavors being the artichokes and lemon.  The pronounced flavor of the lemon was a bit surprising to me since there was only ½ teaspoon lemon zest.  Since I think the artichoke and lemon flavor go together very well I really liked the flavor, but if you don’t like lemon as much, you might want to decrease the zest.  

As for the peas, well, like my research earlier, their flavor was more boring than the artichoke’s.  I really didn’t taste them at all.  They added to the texture of the dish though and gave it a nice little crunch.   

Brown Rice and Kale Gratin

This week my vegetable of choice was a popular fall/winter green – kale.  The decision to use this particular vegetable was fairly easy.  I hadn’t looked for anything in the grocery store, but when I mentioned to my mom that I wanted to cook something for my blog, she told me that there was fresh, organic kale out in the garden ready to be picked.  Perfect!  I had seen a recipe awhile back for a brown rice and kale gratin, so I knew this would be the perfect opportunity to try it out.

First of all, I should start out with a confession.  Having not been a particularly vegetable-loving kid, when I was younger I thought that the broad category of “greens” was actually a specific vegetable.  Collards, kale, mustard greens, spinach – they all looked the same to me, smelled the same to me, and repulsed me equally.  The only experience I had with “greens” was on New Year’s Day when my mom would make me eat a bite of them because, as the superstition goes, eating collards on New Year’s Day will bring wealth in the coming year.  Black eyed peas were another part of the same tradition; eating them allegedly brings good luck.  Well I couldn’t stand the taste of either.  I thought black eyed peas tasted like dirt and “greens” (collards) tasted like vomit.  But every year without fail I would be told that I had to eat these two things on January 1^st.  New Year’s dinner was probably my least favorite meal of the year because of this.  My family would watch as I would cut open a roll, stuff one single black eyed pea in the middle along with one tiny shard of a collard leaf, and then take a bite.  I’d try to chew as little as possible, resulting in my almost literally choking the roll with the vegetable passengers down my throat.  Needless to say, up until today, my experience with “greens” had not been pleasant.

Of course as I got older I came to realize that “greens” was not a single vegetable.  It was in fact a whole group of vegetables that share similar health benefits but have different tastes and growing seasons.  Kale likes cold weather, growing sweeter after a frost.  It can grow well into the winter, earning the nickname “Hungry Gap,” named after the period in winter in traditional agriculture when little can be harvested. Nutritionally, kale has many benefits.  One cup of kale contains 36 calories, 5 grams of fiber, and 15% of the daily requirement of calcium and vitamin B6 (pyridoxine), 40% of magnesium, 180% of vitamin A, 200% of vitamin C, and 1,020% of vitamin K. It is also a good source of minerals copper, potassium, iron, manganese, and phosphorus.

Interestingly, kale has been around since ancient times.  Recently in my classroom we have been studying the ancient civilizations of Greece and Rome.  Last week I wanted to take my students on a “field trip without leaving the classroom” so I had students volunteer to prepare and bring in traditional Greek recipes.  We sampled the cuisine while watching a scenic video on Ancient Greece and I encouraged the kids to use their imagination and pretend that they really weren’t in the classroom but instead were in the valleys in Athens, gazing up at the Parthenon on the acropolis.  At the time I didn’t realize it, but kale was actually a vegetable commonly eaten in both ancient Greece and Rome.  Next year I’ll have one more recipe to add to the list of foods that students can prepare!  There are many different varieties of kale, and it was the Russian variety that eventually moved into Canada and then the United States.

I’m a firm believer that anything tastes better with cheese, so I decided that when trying a kale recipe it was probably a good idea to try one that required large amounts of cheddar.  To start, melt 3 tablespoons butter in a heavy bottomed pan.  (Oh, butter also makes anything taste better.  This recipe just HAD to be good).   Next add one large shallot that has been minced.  Sauté the shallot until it is lightly browned.  Add 2 cups brown rice and sauté with the shallot for about 5 minutes, until the rice is a little toasted.  

  

Next add 6 cups 2% milk, 2 teaspoons beef bouillon concentrate, ¼ teaspoon nutmeg, and ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper.  Bring to a boil, reduce heat to a simmer, cover, and cook for 45 minutes to an hour.  Most of the liquid will be absorbed, resulting in a paste-like consistency.

 

  

Next add 2-3 cups of chopped kale and cook for about 5 more minutes to soften the kale.   

Spoon the mixture into a greased 13x9 inch baking dish.  Top with 8 ounces (or more!) cheddar cheese and ½ cup bread crumbs.  Bake in a 350° oven for 30 minutes or until the cheese is melted and bubbly.  

And that’s it! It’s a pretty simple recipe, but it resulted in a very hearty dish.  I will say that I actually really enjoyed the kale in this recipe, and call me crazy, but next time I think I might even add a little more kale than what the recipe calls for.  It was definitely more rice than kale, and I think a more even balance between the two would be really good.  With that being said, I still thought this recipe was delicious and can’t wait to eat the leftovers the rest of the week.  I’ll also look forward to making this dish again!  I guess I am officially over my fear/hatred of “greens”!

Garlic Ginger Bok Choy

This week I decided that a trip to the Williamsburg Farmer’s Market would serve as my inspiration for deciding what type of vegetable to cook.  While at the farmer’s market, we came across a place called Blenheim Organic Gardens, a 400 acre farm in Westmoreland County.  The farm is family owned and operated, and produces all of their crops without the use of pesticides or chemicals.  They had a nice variety of fresh vegetables on display, and the one that finally caught my eye was the bok choy.

Bok choy is a type of Chinese cabbage first cultivated in the 14^th century.  While it is a vegetable high in vitamin A, vitamin C, and calcium, it is also very low in calories, with one full pound only equaling about 50 calories.  Bok choy also has many antioxidants that have been proven to prevent colon, breast, and prostate cancer as well as lower LDL, or “bad,” cholesterol.

In the past I had tried bok choy as an ingredient in vegetable soup, but I had never tried it as a main dish.  I found a recipe that only called for bok choy, soy sauce, ginger, garlic, and olive oil and decided to go with it.  It sounded easy enough, and this particular night I was in a hurry. 

 

To start, I cut the bok choy into chunks.  Bok choy has a white stem and green leaves, and as I cut the bok choy,  I separated the stems from the leaves, as I knew they would require different cooking times.  After the bok choy was cut, I heated a few tablespoons of olive oil over medium-high heat.

As the oil was heating, I grated about 1 tablespoon of fresh ginger (which smells exactly like ginger ale, by the way), and minced 2 cloves of garlic.  When the oil was hot, I added the ginger and garlic and sautéed until the garlic was soft (careful not to burn it!).  

 

Next I added the bok choy stems and ½ cup soy sauce.  I cooked and stirred this until the stems were soft and slightly translucent.  Finally I added the leaves and cooked just until they were wilted.

And voila! That was it! This recipe was very simple to make, and I found the bok choy to be a great pick for a main dish.  It was very filling and left us feeling satisfied, but at the same time we knew we were eating something very healthy for us.  Plus we really felt good about buying local, organic produce. 

   

Unfortunately the Williamsburg Farmer’s Market is about to end for the year, but we definitely look forward to next spring and summer when we can go back and get some more fresh vegetables!