What She Cooked in her Rice Cooker and Elsewhere

I've come (late) to the realization that I'm not good at multi-tasking.

Not at work, and much less so in the kitchen. So, if I can cook one part of a meal in the microwave oven, or even in a rice cooker, this is so much less stressful for me!

I'd purchased barley to make a hearty turkey-vegetable soup, but there was lots left. I wasn't in the mood to make something as decadent as a barley risotto (maybe next time!) So I decided to try and duplicate Chef Bob McGee's purslane salad from one of the dinners at his popup restaurant, Plancha. Here's what I did:

I rinsed 2 cups of pearled (dehulled) barley, sprayed my rice cooker pot with oil, and dumped in the barley with 4 cups of water and a splash more along with a generous pinch of salt. I let this soak for ten minutes, then hit the cook button on my very basic 8-cup rice cooker. This was cooked in about 45 minutes, and I let the barley sit for another ten minutes. I had the husband trim the stems from a bunch of purslane, then I made a dressing with 3 Tbsp. olive oil, 2 Tbsp. red wine vinegar, salt, pepper and agave syrup to taste. (About 1 tsp. of the agave.) I took about 1-1/2 to to cups of the barley, added most of the purslane to this, and tossed with all of the dressing. (I put the leftover barley in zip-loc bags in the freezer.)

I had a bunch of beets with beautiful tops. I scrubbed them, then cut them into sections, placed them on a plate, covered tightly with Saran wrap, and microwaved them for about 5 minutes per side. Perfect! Not as tasty as roasted beets, but a LOT faster! The tops were washed well, sliced into pieces one inch wide, the stems trimmed into one inch pieces.

First, I sauteed the stems in a little olive oil, then I added the leaves and chopped garlic. After about 3 or 4 minutes, I added some white wine to the pan, salted to taste and added 2 Tbsp of pine nuts.

I microwaved thin stalks of asparagus and drained them. Then I put salt and pepper on both sides of some very thinly sliced pork cutlets. I rolled up 3 asparagus stalks in each of these pork pieces, then I floured the outsides of the rolls lightly. I browned the rolls in a pan, then added white wine to the pan along with some Worcestershire, water and a touch of agave syrup to make a sauce. Returned the cooked meat rolls into the sauce to warm through.

All of this made a feast for the two of us, and we had marvelous leftovers the next day!

Dragon and other Exotic Tropical Fruit

I just got off the phone with my son. In far-off Minneapolis, the most constant and consistant-found tropical fruit available are mangoes. From Mexico. He assured me that they're pretty good. He also enjoyed some golden raspberries, which I've never seen here in Honolulu. I did have some of those in Portland, OR that were yummy.

Still, we had some awesome locally-grown fruit last week. The DH came home with a large dragon fruit. A colleague said a neighbor found the plant growing in his yard. It looks like it was designed - an ovoid fuchsia fruit with green barbs and "scales". Here's a photo and more information from a website, http://dragon-fruit.biz/ :

I put the gaudy solo fruit in a paper bag for several days, then quartered it and easily pulled off the fuchsia skin. I sliced the fruit into bite-sized chunks, chilled it and served it with lime and mint as a side dish at dinner. The flesh was white, and freckled with seeds. I felt the taste was relatively bland - like a cross between a kiwi and melon or banana. There is also a variety with fuchsia colored fruit interior, and black seeds. I added a drizzle of agave syrup over mine. This turned out to be a good instinct, as with further research I found that the pitaya or pitahaya, the Hylocereus, is a cactus, and agave of course is a desert plant. Dragon fruit flowers look very similar to our lovely and fragrant night-blooming cereus. 

Before that, the DH came home with a rumpled paper bag that he held close. He said, "You won't guess what I have here!" An expensive wine? Truffle oil? Live Maine lobsters?

None of the above! His paper bag held five small Pirie mangoes. I wrote about the difference between the more commonly-found bold-tasting Hadens and the lovely shy sweetness of Piries here. 

The DH gets the job of peeling and slicing these babies, and I just eat 'em! Of course the peeling, etc. also involves sucking the remaining fruit off the peels and seeds. Out of five mangoes, four were solid specimens. The fifth must have fallen from the tree; it was too soft and bruised to eat. The mango chunks were eaten on top of vanilla ice cream, with morning oatmeal, and with a salad of baby mixed greens and shrimp. 

Too yummy!