Rainy Day Crockpot Chili

This is a work-in-progress, one-pot recipe that is perfect for simmering while you do anything else. The result is hearty and warming and can be served as is, heaped in a bowl with some shredded white cheddar on top or not, but definitely with some rustic bread. This is perfect for the day-old leftovers of The No-Touch, Quasi-Sourdough Recipe and a glass of farm-fresh milk.

This recipe is small-batch, written for a 2.5 quart crockpot, but it could easily double.

Ingradients

1 pound lean-ish ground beef (raw, but not frozen)

1-2 jalapeno or chili peppers

Chili powder

Cumin

Red pepper flakes (optional)

1/2 onion (or the whole thing, depending on your preference)

1 28 oz can tomatoes, whole or diced

1 15 ounce can dark red kidney beans

Olive oil

Method

Coat the bottom of a 2.5 quart crock pot with olive oil and set on high.

Chop the jalapeno peppers and onion and add to the oil, stirring to coat.

Add cumin and red pepper flakes and stir, then cover and cook for about an hour.

Add the ground beef, using a wooden spoon or the like to break into small chunks.

Stir to mix and cover. Let cook for at least two hours.

Add the kidney beans, tomatoes, and chili powder.

Stir to blend and cover. Let cook for at least two hours. If you need to leave it more than six hours, I'd recommend turning the heat down to low.

Stores well, if there are any leftovers.

Quinoa Tabouli

I love tabouli, especially when I use quinoa instead of bulgur as the base. It's refreshing and light, perfect for taking to a potluck, and an all-around amazing side dish whenever the ingredients are available, which is most of the year where I live. Cucumbers, parsley, and grape tomatoes are a staple all summer into early fall. We don't have lemon trees here in the mountains, but everything else is grown in the yard or at a farm nearby. 

If you haven't tried growing quinoa for yourself yet, I highly recommend it! This superfood is super easy to grow, takes very little land, is simple to harvest, and stores like a dream. And it cooks as quickly as pasta! You can even get more than one crop in a season most places if you plan accordingly. The quinoa cooks in the amount of time it takes to prep everything else (less than 30 minutes), and it's gluten free. You can use any quinoa variety, but the darker the color the stronger the flavor. I tend to use red or black quinoa during spring and fall, and use white when it's blisteringly hot out. But they're all just great.

Note: This recipe, which is really more of an assembly, scales beautifully. Need to feed an army? Just multiply! Need to make a smaller batch? Divide in half and enjoy.

INGREDIENTS

1 cup dried quinoa, any color

1-2 cucumbers, diced 

1 pint grape tomatoes or cherry tomatoes, diced

1 teaspoon fine sea salt, divided

1-2 medium bunches parsley

1 bunch mint (I use a hearty amount, but technically the mint is completely optional. Use as much as makes sense to you for you taste.)

3-4 scallions, or red onion if you're out of scallions, thinly sliced

⅓ cup extra-virgin olive oil

1 lemon, juiced and strained for seeds

1-2 medium cloves garlic, pressed or minced 

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Fill a saucepan with 1.75 cups cool water. Stir in the quinoa and heat to boiling, then reduce to a simmer and cover, simmering for 15 minutes. Remove from heat and remove cover, letting it stand for another ten minutes or so. Fluff with a fork.
2. While the quinoa is cooking, dice the cucumber and tomatoes. Combine the diced cucumber and tomato in a medium bowl with ½ teaspoon of the salt. Stir, and let the mixture rest for at least 10 minutes, or until you’re ready to mix the salad.
3. To prepare the parsley, cut off the thick stems. Then, finely chop the parsley and remaining stems, transferring the chopped parsley to a large serving bowl before proceeding with the next.
4. Add the chopped mint and onion to the bowl with the parsley.
5. Strain off and discard the cucumber and tomato juice that has accumulated in the bottom of the bowl (this ensures that your tabouli isn’t too watery), and add the strained cucumber and tomato to the bowl.
6. In a small measuring cup or bowl, whisk together the olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, and remaining ½ teaspoon salt. Pour it into the salad and stir to combine. Taste, and adjust if necessary—add more lemon juice for zing, or more salt for more overall flavor.
7. Gently fold the vegetables and herbs together, then fold in the quinoa until combined.
8. You can serve it immediately but it really benefits from an hour or more for the flavors to blend. I like to chill it in the fridge, covered, for at least an hour.
9. Tabouli will keep well in the refrigerator, covered, for up to 4 days, or so I hear. Mine is always gone before I can blink.
10. Perfect for taking to a pot luck!

Basil

Today I sowed the basil seeds. We are supposed to have chilly weather tonight, but I think it will all be good, and that we can probably count May 15 as the Last Frost Date, which is weirdly in accordance with the estimation that I use for my zone. My friend asked how much basil to plant for a person, and that is a tricky equation. Some folks use less than a single, small herb pot plant for the whole season, for a whole family, while I can use a garden of the pungent leaves all on my own in a week.

So here's my recommendation:
Start with a single plant. For me, that is nowhere near enough, and I usually end up buying a packet of seeds and planting a row or two. I could harvest it darned near daily. Also, it's a handy plant in the garden. Plant it around tomatoes and it will repel various predators, including deer (nothing is guaranteed when it comes to deer, but they seem to avoid the stinky plants), and it will also keep fruit flies away when the vegetables are harvested. Pick a bowl full of sunshine-ripe vegetables and throw a few leaves of basil over it all to repel the fruit fly. Then, in the kitchen, warm some garlic in some olive oil and tear the basil leaves into the pan. Let it all warm gently while you wash and dice the tomatoes, which you throw into the pot and let simmer until the whole thing is warm, while the water for angel hair comes to a boil in a different pot. By the time the angel hair is ready, the tomato has released its juices and the whole thing is herbalicious. Ladle the tomatoes over the pasta and enjoy!

Bagels

These beauties take some foresight and planning, but they are absolutely worth it. And while the recipe is a bit of a task list, nothing is difficult or fiddly - feel free to include chefs of all ages and experience levels. Simply perfect for a Sunday brunch in January. Serve warm with butter, or as a base for a spread involving cream cheese, roast beef, smoked salmon, cheeses and spreads of all kinds. The best part is that most of the work is done the day before. The batch makes 16, and you can season them as you choose before baking. If you are expecting a crowd, double or even triple the recipe; for a weekend batch for two, make half as much. My family and I were thrown by the ingredients in weights, as opposed to volume. I will make a note next time we make it of what volume we used. We made some other changes as well, listed below.

Ingredients
4 cups all purpose flour instead of bread flour
1 tablespoon Barley malt syrup used instead of malt powder

Directions
We made bagels from scratch. We are almost as impressed with ourselves as we are with the results.

Sponge stage. We set this up in a few minutes and then went to the gym and went to a movie (All the King's Men - it was pretty good, too).  When we got back, it was perfect and ready to be made into dough. We used the stand mixer, and it was exceedingly simple.

After the dough cures in the refrigerator overnight, the bagels are ready to cook. Step one is boiling in water with a tablespoon of barley malt syrup and a teaspoon of baking soda, one minute on each side.

This is the part Vivian really likes: adding seasoning on top of the boiled dough before baking. Note: the foil was a bad choice. A little vegetable oil on the pan is a better  way to go, or parchment paper if you need to keep the dough off the pan.

Yummy goodness.

Shepherd's Pie

Shepherd's Pie is one of the greatest comfort foods of all time. The fact that it can be assembled from on-hand staples and be prepared in the crockpot make this a real winter keeper. It is as crowd-pleasing as it is simple, and if you have a group heading out to shovel snow, construct a snow fort, or wage snow-war, this dish goes far to replenish bodies and souls. Serve with crusty bread and a large glass of milk.

Since this recipe is constructed more than it is cooked, it's a simple matter to make more or less depending on how many people are served. Have a crowd? Put it in a (much) larger crockpot and have twice the amount of ingredients on hand. Just serving yourself? Grab the two-quart vessel and go from there. If you want to put it into the oven instead of the slow-cooker, that's certainly acceptable: layer as directed in an oven-safe baking dish and cook at 350° until warmed through. The beauty is that since the elements of the recipe are all cooked beforehand, the "cooking" part of this is really more a "warming and marrying" event.

Ingredients
• 1 pound browned and drained ground beef
• One medium-sized yellow onion, diced
• Two - Four cloves minced garlic
• 2 cups shredded cheese
• Fresh ground black pepper
• 3 cups mashed potatoes (for a paleo version, use mashed parsnips)
• 2 cups vegetables (frozen is fine)

Recipe: Saute the onion, garlic and pepper in oil until onions are transparent. Add any spices you feel like, including a dash of red wine or beef broth, to make a stock. This can be made in advance and stored in the refrigerator or freezer until needed.

Put the stock in the crockpot, followed by the beef, and stir the two together. Add the vegetables and stir again. Layer the cheese over the beef mix, and layer the potatoes over the cheese. Cook on high for 4 hours, with the lid vented for the last hour to get the potatoes crispier.

The paleo version of this recipe has the added benefit of being much higher in nutrition and much lower in carbohydrates. You're welcome.

My coworkers and I made this a community event: each of us brought an ingredient, plugged in the crockpot in the work-kitchen and let it marinate while we went about the tasks of the day. Four hours later, we reconvened and enjoyed the results. Hearty, warm and warming, it served the five of us quite nicely. In theory, this serves six, but I swear I have never, ever seen leftover Shepherd's Pie. I'll keep trying. I'm pretty certain the coworkers won't mind at all.  

By having a group put this together, it was interesting: I usually use cheddar cheese, but our crew brought pepper jack, which kept things quite lively. The vegetables were frozen peas, frozen corn and fresh diced carrots. Anything would do, though I would probably steer clear of beets and rutabagas (though if you have to eat them, this might be the ultimate method). Our experimental efforts were met by the following real quotes:

"Ermuhgerd, erts erserm!"
"I proclaim VICTORY for the crack creative capable crockpot collective crew"
"Absolutley F'n A W E S O M E. "
"It was fabtabulous!"