Preserving - and Using - Leeks (and other aromatics) Conveniently

This was a difficult week for me. A huge cold front came through, which is always hard on my body - especially my head. (Major, major migraine trigger.) So I didn't write my blog.

We were still eating, mind you, and I was still cooking (since we had to eat) and we were still getting large amounts of produce from the CSA, and I was still dealing with that, and I even cooked publicly! (I sometimes demonstrate cookware or kitchen appliances professionally, and I had a gig.) I just wasn't writing about any of it...

So, I'll do a quick list, here, of some of the things I did with vegetables - and discuss leeks further.

Starting with the leeks. I did mention this when I grilled a leek with the eggplant and other vegetables. Farmers growing leeks pile sand around them, in hills, to get the long white part, as any parts exposed to the sun are green - and tougher. This means that leeks are very sandy... and a bit of a nuisance to clean. Leeks are also often quite large, and you usually buy them in bunches, and one leek is usually more than I want for just two of us. All this makes it a perfect choice for a preprep - cleaning three is no more fussy than cleaning one, I get it all over with, and I can use just the amount I want.

First, you trim the leek. Cut off the tougher green leaves. Exactly where you cut is up to you - most directions tell you to discard all the green, but I find I can use all of the light green part and sometimes several inches of the leaves before it gets too tough. (The leaves are great for soup stock, by the way...) Also cut off the root end. (Just discard that.)

Cut the leek lengthwise. This gets you in all the little crevices that sand has gathered in. Then, slice the two halves across, in half inch or so pieces. Put them in a bowl or sink of water, and swish them around like crazy, using your fingers to separate the rings. The vegetable floats, and the sand sinks, making it easy to lift out the leeks into a strainer.

I usually wash the whole bunch like this, then let them drain and dry. Then I use a large fry pan or saute pan to saute them in olive oil until they are soft. (If there is a lot, or my pan isn't big enough, I do them in a couple of batches.)  I then use some that day - but set the rest aside to cool, and freeze them in freezer bags,. I find the bags work best, as I can break off the amount I need.

Another vegetable I preprepped this week (but didn't get pictures of) was celery. When I first got celery from the farmer's market, I was disappointed. I was used to big bland ribs that mostly contributed crunch in a salad, or filled with peanut butter. These had too much taste! Then I realized - they're *supposed to*... There's a reason celery is used as an aromatic in mirepoix or in Cajun cooking...

So now, when I get a bunch from the farmer, I cut off the end, keep the tender center for celery sticks and salad and all - but chop and saute the big ribs. Again, I do it all at once - we just don't use enough celery in a week to finish it while it's fresh, but we like having the addition to our meals for the next month or more. Again, I saute a pan full at a time, and freeze it, and break pieces off when I need them.

When I had a little time - and some energy - I chopped and sauteed leeks, celery, and onions. I chopped and froze more hot peppers. I could do that with sweet peppers, too, but I haven't - I just wash and chop enough for my salads. Which I also did - I filled my little containers with sweet peppers, celery hearts, radishes, scallions, and cucumber, for salads.

When I didn't have energy, I pulled containers from the freezer with cooked ground meat or shredded cooked pork. I put precooked onion and celery, and frozen peppers, in a pan, heated them, cut up a zucchini or something equally easy, and sauteed it. Then I added the cooked meat, perhaps a tomato, heated it through, and called it dinner...

So, even on the days I felt horrible, I ate reasonably well. When I did have energy, I used small amounts of time to get ahead a step,  so that when I didn't have energy,  I had options. And we always had a nice meal.

Peanut Sauce, over Tofu and Broccoli, and Tofu Tutorial

The fastest and easiest way to pull several disparate foods together into a Real Meal is to add a sauce.

You can pour it on top. (Gravy.) You can cook one or more components in it, for the flavor. (Spaghetti and meatballs, macaroni and cheese.) You can use it to hold everything together. (Mayonnaise in countless salads.) Sauces add seasoning to bland foods, moisture to dry foods, and interest to everything.

A very quick and easy one I learned many years ago is a simple peanut sauce. This was making the rounds of vegetarian sources back in the 80s - inspired by an Indonesian dish, gado-gado. Well - most books called it gado-gado, but it isn't, really...  (With the wonders of the internet, you can look up real gado-gado. It looks delicious - but it's not this quick and mindless...)

That said - here is a simple vegetarian dish made interesting by an easy sauce, which, several levels removed, was vaguely inspired by an Indonesian food...

I used tofu. Chicken works well, too, or, really, almost any meat or fish I can think of. Tempeh has the advantage of being, even... Indonesian! The basic meal is some kind of protein, with some kind of vegetable, cooked in, or served under, a peanut sauce, the whole thing served over rice. In this case, I cooked the sauce separately from everything else, and poured it over.

For this, I prefer a firm tofu. For years I read, and ignored, instructions to put slabs of tofu on a slanted board with weights on it to make it firmer. Do it if you want - too much fuss for me... Then I learned a method of simply wrapping it in a clean kitchen towel (or even paper towels, if you must, but the paper gets soggy) and letting it sit on the drain board while you chop onions or start the rice or whatever your first step in cooking is. I find that just that little bit of time and attention makes a big difference in the end product - it's firmer, and browns nicely, and seems to get a bit more flavor from whatever it is cooked with. (If you prefer a soft tofu, don't do this - that's a different method, I'll talk about it another time.)

So, I wrapped my tofu and set it aside. Then, I sauteed an onion in a little olive oil, and added a bit of the chopped hot pepper I froze. I let them cook until just soft. Then I unwrapped my tofu, diced it, and added it to the pan.

If you use a stainless steel or enameled pan, the tofu will stick, at first. If you try to stir it too soon, the cooked browned bits will peel off the cubes, and it's messy looking (though fine to eat.)  It feels counter-intuitive - but if it sticks, leave it for a while longer. When the side touching the pan becomes firm and golden, it will magically release, and you get the nice cubes (or slabs) of browned tofu. *Then* stir it around, so the other sides have a chance to do the same - and the vegetables also move around and soften.

Meanwhile - I heated brown rice, and steamed broccoli... (If I'd been cooking the rice fresh, I'd have started it first.)

Once the tofu and aromatics were nicely cooked, I put them over rice on the plates, and arranged the broccoli around it. Then I started the peanut sauce (Yes - it's that fast...)

I used natural peanut butter - just peanuts and salt, thank you...  I scooped up a big spoonful for each of us - a heaping tablespoon per person, basically - and put it in the pan with about a cup of water, and a splash of soy sauce. (OK - true confession - this was more than a splash. There is something wrong with the plastic insert in my soy sauce bottle... This was Way Too Much soy sauce. Tasted OK, but... not Great... saltier than we'd usually want... This means that, when you do it, the sauce will have a lighter peanut color. Don't be surprised.)  Normally, at this point, I'd also add some Tabasco or other hot sauce, but this time I'd put hot peppers with the tofu, so I skipped it.

I heated the mixture, stirring. (I use a silicone spatula - it's great for scraping the pan.)  At first, it looks pretty awful, with blobs of PB in the liquid, but it emulsifies quickly, and then thickens surprisingly. You may even find that you want to add more water, in a bit, if it gets too thick. Once it is heated through, and smooth, just pour it over the rest of the food. For family service, it can be put in a sauceboat on the table - let everyone help themselves.

I did this separately, so you could see how the sauce itself works, and that it can be used in many ways. I often, though, just add the water and peanut butter to the tofu or chicken or whatever in the pan, and go from there. I may even have all  the vegetables in that mix, as well. That probably works better for just one or two, though.

Peanut Sauce

Per Serving - 

1/2 c water
1 1/2 T natural peanut butter
1/2 t soy sauce
dash hot sauce - opt.

Put all ingredients - using roughly those amounts per person - into a pan over medium heat. Stir while heating, until sauce becomes smooth and thickens. Add more water, if needed.

Vegetables From Space!!!

Some vegetables just look so... Cool. Or do I mean weird? Kind of a great still life, but... does anyone really know how to cook them? Or even what they are?

And are we sure they're not some alien life form? All right - I'm going to date myself, here - child of the Sixties that I am, that picture looks to me as if those things landed from outer space to sit on my dish towel. (Though they're a bit more colorful than most pictures of UFOs I remember seeing... let alone real space capsules.)

The Flying Saucer - on the left - is a patty pan squash. It's a regular summer squash, just like zucchini, or crookneck. Just cut it up and cook it the same way. No, I do not have pictures of a suggested way to cut it - I've never found a way I was particularly pleased with - just hack it into chunks.

If you get some that are small enough, they can be cooked whole, and that's really attractive. I was even served them as an appetizer at a very nice wedding, once! Specialty stores do sometimes sell baby squash (at a premium, of course) for the purpose. I have not had luck with cooking a standard one whole - the outside seems to get soggy before the middle is done. One of these days, I'll experiment with stuffing one, as people stuff large zucchini, but I've never really stuffed vegetables much, so don't have anything yet. I can see it being a very nice presentation, though...

Sputnik, on the right (no, I don't actually remember Sputnik, but it was part of the general culture of my childhood) is a kohlrabi. Actually, the stems have been snapped off this one - the resemblance is much stronger when it still has stems sticking out at all angles! And they come in purple, too - one of the farmers here had piles of green and purple ones all winter.


(Ah - here's a purple Sputnik...)

Five years ago, I'd heard the word Kohlrabi, but could no more have told you how to cook it than, in fact, how to build Sputnik. I was walking past them at Greenmarket... and then I got some, at the CSA. Time to learn.

Well, I was missing out.

It's almost two different vegetables. Now, in Summer, the kohlrabi I'm getting are young and tender, crisp and juicy, and I cut them up raw for salads. They have a very slight bite - much less than a radish, but enough to be interesting, and they are very pleasantly crunchy. As the year goes on, though (and as we move out of salad season... see, it works...) they become harder and more fibrous, and need cooking. A light saute at first, and then, in winter, I simmer them as I would a carrot.

Even the young, tender ones need to be peeled, though. I'm normally all for scrubbing vegetables instead of peeling them, as so much of the nutrition lies in or just under the skin, but some peels are just inedible, and this is one.

I can't even use my swivel peeler for a paper thin paring... this peel is thick and tough and fibery, and if it gets into your dish, you find yourself spitting out stringy bits - very unpleasant. Luckily, once you cut it, the peel is quite visible - no guesswork needed. It is a darker color, and the tender center is very pale. (And the purple ones are only purple in the peel - the middle is very pale green.)

Once I peel them, I just cut them in cubes or rectangles - again, rather like carrot sticks. Right now, the texture is more like a very juicy radish, so I want them bite sized for my salads - not a thin slice, but enough to crunch. A half moon shape would be fun, too, if you have some small enough.


What vegetable have you seen at the market (or gotten at the CSA!) that intimidates you? Or that you just don't have a clue about... what is it, how do you cook it, will you even like it???

I now must go forth and venture where, well, where *I* have never gone before, though many fine cooks have... the tomatillo. I just saw an intriguing recipe on another blog - Not Eating Out in NY . It is, logically, perfectly seasonal here - but I'll probably tweak it... my CSA doesn't give me many beans.  (Eggplant, now... I wonder what it would be like with eggplant...) But, for the first time, I feel I can make something other than salsa verde.

Adventures in vegetables!

Summer Saute - Theme

Sometimes a meal just tastes like a season, to me...

We have corn, now, and zucchini... We have the first tomatoes, now, and are glorying in them raw in salad, but I'm not cooking them, yet. That comes later, with abundance.

I get most of my vegetables from the CSA, but I stop at Greenmarket to buy fruit, and occasionally fill in something specific I need. Last week, one of the farmers had beautiful shallots - at the same price as yellow onions! So I bought some.

When I started to cook, I chopped a few shallots and dropped them into my prepared pan.  My what?

I put a frying pan or saute pan over medium heat, and let it heat for a minute or two, while I chop my onion/garlic/shallots. Then I pour in a very small amount of olive oil, and rotate the pan - the heated pan warms the oil and lets it spread all over the pan quite easily, so there is a film of oil covering the surface. I really use a teaspoon or even less... even in multi-ply stainless steel or cast iron.

Then I add the aromatics. That's a handy phrase for a variety of vegetables used, in this context, mostly for flavoring. Onions and garlic, other aliums such as shallots, or leeks, but also peppers (either sweet or hot,) celery, sometimes finely diced carrot... Which ones you choose strongly affect the flavor of the finished dish - enough that simply varying them can change a whole meal.

I've mentioned combining flavors in traditional ways. The choice of aromatics is so traditional that it has names in several cultures. French mirepoix is onion, carrots, and celery. The sofrito I've heard about from neighbors was onion, garlic, and hot pepper - but I gather that varies widely in different Caribbean cultures, and is different still back in Spain. The Cajun combination (sometimes referred to as the Holy Trinity) is onion, garlic and green pepper. And, of course, you can use your own selection, dictated by family tradition, desired taste on the day, mood, or simply what you have on hand. (The latter, of course, is a major influence on all the traditional mixtures - we're fortunate enough to have choices.)

So, anyhow, I cook the aromatics, usually just until soft. (And, in this case, I only used the shallots, not a mixture.) Then I add the rest of the vegetables.

I had zucchini from the CSA.

This is a Japanese cutting technique called a roll cut. I learned it back when I was first cooking, and have used it routinely ever since for round vegetables like carrots and summer squash. It creates irregularly shaped chunks with a lot of surface area, and I find it allows the vegetable to cook very evenly. When I was a child, I didn't like zucchini, because it was often cooked to mush. This technique helps prevent parts becoming mushy before the  rest is soft.

Basically, you cut the vegetable at an angle, instead of slicing it. Then you roll it slightly, so the knife, held at the same angle, is now cutting the vegetable at a different angle. This gives you oddly shaped chunks, with a great deal of surface.

And, of course, you can slice or cut your vegetables into cubes - it's your cooking, do whatever you and your family like!

I then added the zucchini to the hot pan with the onion. (This all took much less time to do than to explain...) I stirred it around, and let it cook.

The abundance of summer... corn... We've had corn on the cob, but sometimes we have a single ear, sometimes I can't use it for a day or two (so even supersweet isn't at its peak,) sometimes I just want it off the cob... And it is (not surprisingly) a wonderful combination with the other midsummer vegetables.

In this case, I took an ear of corn, microwaved it just three minutes, and let it cool a little still in the husk. I then cut off the kernels. You can, of course, cut it raw, but I've found that cooking it slightly makes them easier to cut (without getting them all over your kitchen...) I added the corn to the pan with the now softened zucchini, and scraped the ear to get all the germ and milk.

The corn was already mostly cooked, so I stirred it around until everything was heated through, and cooked to our taste.

Then I served it with small boiled new potatoes, and a piece of roast chicken. The perfect summer meal!

Summer Saute

olive oil for pan
4 shallots
2 small zucchini
1 ear of corn, slightly cooked if desired,

Heat the pan over medium heat while chopping shallots. Oil the pan, add shallots. Stir.

Cut up zucchini. Add to pan. Stir.

Cut corn kernels from cob. Add corn to pan when zucchini and shallots are almost cooked to your taste. Stir.

Cook until all vegetables are cooked to your taste - usually just another few minutes.

Corn on the cob - in the microwave?!

I grew up eating fresh corn only when we went to my grandmother's in the country. That was dairy country - Central New York - and all the farmers grew huge fields of field corn, as well as hay, as winter fodder for their cows. And around the cornfields, they would plant a row or two of sweet corn, for their own use, and for sale. The stalks weren't as tall, they ripened a little earlier, and every August, you'd see stands selling them. We could buy it from the grocery store in the little village, we could buy it from the farm stand where we bought most of our vegetables - but you'd also see, at the edge of the road along a field,  an overturned crate with a bushel of corn and a handwritten sign - "Sweet corn - $1/dozen." (Yes, this was when I was a girl - it's higher, now.) You left your dollar in the mason jar next to the bushel basket,  picked out your dozen, rushed them home and  into the fridge, and ate them that night.

Granny had a big old pot - I think she may have used it for canning when she was younger. We would fill it with water, put it on to boil, and my brother and I would shuck the dozen ears, right before cooking them. There were five of us, so we'd cook five ears at a time, for about five minutes at a time, putting the second batch in when we pulled out the first, and usually he and I got the extra two... We never ate corn unless we knew it had been picked that day - and usually went to the farm stand, where we knew it hadn't been sitting in the sun. Even a few hours made a difference in sweetness, as the natural sugar in the corn turned to starch.

Enter the new supersweet corn varieties. They don't turn to starch as quickly as the old cultivars, but still have good flavor. I still don't buy them in a supermarket, but if I can't eat them the very day I get them from the farm market or CSA, they're still good - and that day, they're sweeter than the ears that sat out in the sun in those bushel baskets, when I was a girl.

I have bought corn at Greenmarket, or eaten it from the CSA. I shucked it right before cooking, as I'd been taught (Don't ever remove the husks when you buy them - they help keep it fresh!) and boiled it in my soup pot - two ears at a time, for just two of us, now.

Then,, we were visiting Rich's parents, and they had corn bought at the supermarket. (I was polite, but not hopeful...)  I offered to shuck it, but his mom said no - she was cooking it in the microwave. (Now I was really skeptical...)

Well - I was wrong. It was astonishingly good, and quite easy. And I said "Please, ma'am, teach me!"

Basically, I leave the ear in the husk, and the steam generated from the kernels itself cooks the corn. I don't need to cook the cob, after all, just the kernels themselves. This method doesn't lose any flavor to the cooking water, it means I don't have to boil a large pot of water in midsummer, the steamed silk comes off easily. Removing the hot husks is a bit tricky - though I cheat - I get Rich to do that...

I take each individual ear of corn. If I bought it from Greenmarket, I will have pulled the end open a little, to make sure the ear has filled out - and that there are no bugs (left over caution from those bushels on the side of the road - I don't think I've ever found bugs in corn at Greenmarket.) For this method, though, I need to make sure I don't open it very far, and straighten it up, and close the end, as it has to hold the steam.

Then I use a heavy knife to trim the ends - cut off most of the stalk (but leave a bit for a handle) and much of the silk at the end. Again, though, I make sure the husk encloses the corn.

Now, the problem with microwave recipes is that the timing varies a great deal. Some microwaves have more power than others, cooking three ears will be totally different from cooking two, and so on. So, all I can tell you is what I do. I find that, in our current microwave, cooking two ears for five minutes seems about right. The first ears of the season - still milky,and so tender - I cooked about four and a half minutes. Corn I get late in the season (or an ear that has sat for a few days, if I have schedule problems) gets five and a half or even six, if I think it is getting starchy.

Then Rich takes over... That blue thing in the picture below is a silicone pot holder, which is the best choice for holding anything steamy, as it does not itself get soggy and scalding. He holds the ear with it in one hand (sorry - I forgot to get pictures...)  and, very carefully, pulls the husk back with the other, carefully avoiding the steam rushing out. The steam is really the only hard part, though, as the husk peels off much more easily than it does on a raw ear - it has been softened in the cooking. The silk also just mostly peels right off with the husk, and any left just comes off with a brief rub with a clean dishtowel.

This ear is a  butter and sugar or bicolored type, which I've always fancied - often thought to be less starchy, though I'm not sure I've really found a difference. Brings me back to childhood, though...

Butter, salt or a seasoned salt, freshly ground pepper... and I know that it is midsummer, and that, even in the heat of the city, that is a wonderful thing.


Edited to add: In the interests of giving credit where it is due...

Rich read this, and told me his mom learned the method from Microwave Gourmet by Barbara Kafka. (That's a link to one edition on Amazon, so you can see the book - it doesn't appear to be currently in print. They seem to have several editions, from several vendors. And no, that's not an affiliate link - I don't have an affiliation...)

Theme: Basic greens

Just as I started getting this going - wouldn't you know, my computer died. And took two weeks worth of pictures with it... Oh, well, this was the stage to have that happen - and learn how to make sure it doesn't happen again!

I do now have some computer access again - and some new pictures. And here I start, yet again.

The CSA is well under way, and we've had many bunches of cooking greens. Chard, kale, broccoli rabe, beet greens, mustard greens, turnip greens, radish greens (Yes, you can eat them - I didn't know that myself, until recently!) and collards. This is my preferred basic cooking method for all but the toughest. I don't personally like mature collards cooked this way - but some do. (A friend just ate the first collards she ever liked, sauteing them with this method...) I'll write about them, later.

The washing method is key. I use this to wash lettuce and other salad greens, too. Vegetables from a CSA or farmer's market haven't usually made the detour supermarket vegetables may have made to a washing plant - where everything is made nice and clean, at the loss of another day or so of freshness, more handling, another layer of expense... I don't mind washing the sand from my own kale, but I need to be sure I actually do so.

Take a bunch of greens. I prefer to chop them before washing, though you can do it the other way around. Trim the ends and any tough parts of the stems.  I eat most of the stems of most vegetables, but I remove them if they are getting stringy. Chop the greens if desired.

Fill a sink or a large bowl with water. Place the greens in the water, swish them around, and lift them out. This does a much better job of leaving dirt and grit behind than rinsing them in a colander does. Then place the greens in a strainer or colander to drip dry. Chop them now, if you wish, and haven’t already.

Take a large saute pan or frying pan, and heat it. Add a little olive oil (about a teaspoon or less) to the pan, and let it heat slightly. Put the greens in the pan, with still just a little water clinging to the leaves, and toss them around in the oil. (A pair of cooking tongs is the easiest way to do this, but you can stir with a spatula or spoon, as well.) You want all of the greens to come into contact with the oil.

As they cook, you will see them start to become a darker green. When they are thoroughly tossed, let them continue to simmer over low heat, stirring occasionally, until they are cooked to your taste. (I prefer a dark but bright green, not yet olive colored. If you are not sure, cook less to begin with - you can always cook more later.) Note that the vegetables also cook down considerably - a large bunch usually gives us just two or three generous servings.

Variations of this are very easy. The simplest is to saute onion, garlic, or other aromatics in the oil before adding the greens - I almost always do this. Other, flavorful cooking fats, such as a single chopped slice of bacon, substituted for the olive oil,  add flavor. (Butter burns too easily - if you really want that taste, say, with a delicate green such as spinach, mix half olive oil and half butter.)  A splash of good vinegar or pepper sauce at the end is tasty.

And, of course, each different vegetable itself has a very different taste. Spinach, for example, is radically different than the equally tender but slightly bitter broccoli rabe - and they are both different from kale.  It can even be interesting to mix several kinds, such as assertive mustard greens with milder, sweeter chard. Even though we have some form of sauteed greens several times a week, it never feels repetitive - too much variation in taste.

Convenient foods - and Basic Onion Tutorial

I see a lot of discussion - well, argument... indeed, perhaps battles - about Convenience Food.

One the one hand, some claim it to be the Root of All Evil. Additives! Sodium! Fat! Ingredients your grandmother never heard of! (That one confuses me, mildly. My grandmother never heard of many foods I eat... urad dal, miso, nachos... I know what people mean, but it's not what they say.)

On the other hand, many people have no idea how to manage without frozen dinners, canned soups, and takeout. Some never really learned how to cook, some never really liked to cook (which is, you know, valid)  and some think cooking must be elaborate and complex - something you do on a weekend, as a hobby,  for guests, but not something they have the luxury of doing on a weeknight, after a long day at work.

I'm trying to hit the middle, here. I want to keep control of what I am eating, and I don't want to pay a lot for  Corporate Food to do my thinking (and some prep work) for me. I do, however, need to get dinner on the table every night. And I have chronic migraine, which means that I sometimes need to either cook with some level of pain, low energy and a fuzzy brain, or point my (non-cooking) Richard at the kitchen and tell him to make dinner happen without direction. Both require simplicity.

The first part of this is defining which commercial convenience foods I am willing to use, and in what circumstances. One thing we have to remember is how many of our basic foods really are convenience foods, even though we don't usually think of them that way. Take bread. Bread has been baked commercially for millennia. Ancient Romans bought bread. Ancient Egyptians bought bread, even earlier. It is something that has always been easier and more efficient to make in bulk, so, in cities and towns and population centers of any kind, it was baked by bakers.  On the other hand,  I often bake bread, doubtless some of you have done the same. I can do without commercial bread - but I do not *have* to. If I'm busy, if I don't feel well, if it's too hot to light my oven, it is easy for me  to buy a loaf. That's convenient.

Then I put butter on that bread. Oh - I bought that, too. My mother taught me to churn butter, which she learned on her grandparents' dairy farm, but it's not something I normally do. If I decide I want to go back to basics, I can bake bread - from flour someone else milled - and churn butter - from cream someone else separated. At the very least, someone else grew the grain and milked the cow...  It is *possible* to do all these things oneself, but... I have other things to do with my time. And the farmers who do grow the grain buy other products that people like me design, make, transport, and sell - it is all cooperative.

So, yes, I use some commercial convenience foods. I buy some of my bread, and all of my butter... and a few frozen or canned products, choosing on a case by case basis. Canned tomatoes, for instance. They're not the same as really fresh tomatoes, of course - but they're a lot better than the pink plastic objects one finds in stores in the Northeast most of the year. Our tomato season is glorious, but short - and, though I know how to can tomatoes, and I *have* canned tomatoes, I don't feel that it is the most rational use of my time, money, and space, here in my life,  here in Manhattan. (Others may choose differently, for their lives. That's fine.)

I even always have a few canned soups and sauces. I can, and often do, make a lentil soup very easily, and keep quarts in the freezer - but a can of lentil soup is a good base for an emergency meal if I'm not well. The same for a jar of pasta sauce. I read labels carefully, then I usually add protein and vegetables, but it's a place to start. A can of pasta sauce, commercial pasta or polenta, and a few additions from my freezer make a good meal, without having to call for takeout.

Ah, but the additions...  they are the key to cooking the way I do. These are my own Convenient Foods - foods I have cooked, and frozen to simplify later meals. I already wrote about doing this with chicken.  I will, as time goes on, write about other foods I prepare to keep on hand.

Today, I'm talking about the humble onion... I suppose I could cook without onions - but I certainly don't. The vast majority of my meals start with sauteing an onion. But that does take some time and effort - not much, but if I get home late from a job, any time matters, and when I'm cooking with a migraine any effort matters. And sometimes I have onions that are larger than I really want, cooking for just two people. I do usually chop and saute the onion fresh for each meal - it just smells so appetizing...

Sometimes, though, I do not have the energy, or much time. And I have found it remarkably useful to have sauteed chopped onion already in the freezer. I can toss it in a skillet and skip the whole first 5-10 minutes of cooking. Or, even better, I can drop it into a soup or sauce, and have the caramelized flavor of the browned onion without having to use a separate pan, or spend the extra time. To make my life easier, I simply replenish as I go - when I do start with a fresh onion, I often just go ahead and chop and saute 2 or 3 of them... As long as I'm using a large enough saute pan, this is not a problem. Then I pull some out, put them aside in a heat resistant bowl to cool, and later, transfer them to a zipper bag I keep in the freezer.

Since I'm talking onions - here is a basic tutorial on preparing them for those who are interested.

I find that the easiest way to peel an onion is to cut off the stem and base ends, and then cut it in half, from top to bottom. The peel usually then slips off pretty easily. If part of a layer is papery and part is still oniony, I may, if I'm being finicky, cut off the papery parts - or I may just discard the whole layer... depends a lot on time. The important part is to discard the papery parts.

Then, I lay the onion flat on its cut side. Holding it carefully (note the position of the fingers - away from the blade) I slice lengthwise from near the root end to the stem end. I leave the base attached so that it doesn't fall apart while I am cutting. The number of cuts I make depends on the size I want my chopped pieces to be - this is a fairly coarse chop, useful for most cooking. If I were mincing the onion, I would slice it more. Occasionally, I want finely sliced threads - for, say, French onion soup, or some Indian cooking. In that case, I either omit this step altogether, or just make one slice down the center of a large onion, to keep the slices manageable. 

Then I slice crosswise. Again, the size of the slice depends on the size I want the chopped pieces to be. When I get close to the stem end, I flip it over onto what is now the larger cut side, and slice from there.

Notice that the top layer is slipping a bit. Be careful - I often remove the slipping layer, to be sure my finger does not slip under the knife. Notice also that I said slice not chop. For safety's sake, use a sharp knife, and cut in a sliding, slicing motion. If the primary force is down, you are more likely to have a knife slip. If the knife doesn't easily slide through the onion, sharpen it...  you can easily get commercial knife sharpeners in any cookware department (even in many hardware stores.) A steel along does not sharpen a knife - it smooths the burrs on a freshly sharpened knife, but you need a stone (which is set into a sharpener, if you don't know stone and steel technique.) A dull knife is a dangerous knife - it will slip and cut you.





After chopping the onions (yes, I said to slice them - but the process is called chopping, and they are referred to as chopped onion - sliced onion implies the long threads you get without the lengthwise cuts) heat some olive oil in  a saute pan or fry pan.  I use a medium flame, heat the pan first, so a small amount of oil spreads out nicely, and add the onion. It takes a little attention - you can't just walk away more than a few steps, and you do need to stir periodically. Adjust the heat to be sure it doesn't burn. Depending on what you are cooking, you may stop the process when the onions are soft, or a light golden color, or you may lower the heat and cook them until they are truly browned. When I'm cooking to use later, I stop at soft and just turning golden - I can always cook them more when I use them.

Then, as I said, if I cooked more than I needed for this meal, I put some aside to cool, then package them and freeze them. I like to use zippered bags, and flatten them out - then it is easy to break off as much or as little as I want.

I really like to use just a little if I'm scrambling eggs or making an omelet - it takes longer to brown onions than to make the omelet, so I used to just leave them out, but they do add a lot of flavor...  quickly, and conveniently. Or I drop some into a soup, or a can of tomatoes, to make a sauce. Or I toss some in a pan, add the already cooked chicken, add the frozen vegetables, heat up, serve over microwaved cooked ahead rice - and I have a complete meal in about 10 minutes. There are nights when I need that...

So, I do use some commercial convenience foods - though I read labels carefully.  But mostly, I make my own convenient foods.