Tag: vegetables

Almost Fat-free Calabacitas

Our niece Susie brought one of her favorite cookbooks to a family gathering in Kansas earlier this summer. When she handed me Jane Marsh Dieckmann’s Use it All: The Leftovers Cook Book, I grabbed it like a hungry trout after a tasty mayfly. The first two sentences of the introduction set the hook:

“How often have you opened your refrigerator and looked at some small amount of leftover roast, or cottage cheese, or dairy sour cream, or boiled potatoes? How often have you wished you could use it up simply, economically, and tastefully?”

We try to use every leftover that remains after a meal. We package them, put them in the refrigerator or freezer and do our best to remember where they are. One time, when he was about ten years old, our son made a “freezer map” which helped for a while, but today we just rummage through the packages looking for inspiration.

If something gets lost, we think of Jerri’s grandmother, a frugal Mennonite housewife, who explained as she was putting a few tablespoons of gravy in a dish to go in the ice box, “I don’t like to waste anything, but if I forget about it and it spoils, I don’t feel so bad throwing it away.”

Our sentiments exactly.

But it really is better to use those leftovers whenever you can. The calabacitas recipe below calls for cooked corn. Most of us probably have had the experience of cooking a dozen ears of corn and having three or four left over. Jane Dieckmann’s recipe calls for three ears of cooked corn. I used uncooked ears, and the calabacitas was delicious. I am sure that it would be just as tasty made with the leftover corn.

Calabacitas is another one of the great dishes invented by native Americans. It is a traditional dish of the Pueblo people of the American Southwest and also very popular in Mexico. If you made the mistake of planting more than one hill of zucchini, it may become a popular dish on your table as well.

Calabacita is the Spanish word for zucchini and calabacitas refers to a dish of stewed or sautéd corn and zucchini. There are scores of variations on the basic recipe. Some add sweet bell peppers, others, hot chile peppers; some omit the onion entirely, others add scallions. Most use a little oil, but some do not. Cheese is optional or required, depending on the cook.

I was a little skeptical about this recipe, since it uses no oil. Instead, you simmer the vegetables in a small amount of water. The cheese provides just enough oil to enhance the flavor of the vegetables, so you end up with a side dish that is very low in fat but high in flavor.

INGREDIENTS:

3 ears of sweet corn
1 medium onion (about 2 1/2 inches in diameter)
1 large clove garlic
2 – 3 T water
1 medium zucchini (about 2 inches in diameter)
2 medium tomatoes (2 1/2 to 3 inches in diameter)
1/2 cup grated Cheddar or Monterey Jack cheese
1/4 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. freshly ground black pepper

PROCEDURE:

Cut the corn off the cob and remove the dry outer husks, stem and root ends from the onion and garlic. Slice the onion thinly and mince the garlic. Put the corn kernels, onion and garlic into a saucepan along with two or three tablespoons of water. Cover the pan and bring it to a simmer over medium to low heat. Cook for about five minutes.

Wash and cut the stem and blossom ends from the zucchini. Cut the squash in half lengthwise, then cut quarter-inch-thick slices Add the zucchini to the saucepan and cook for another eight minutes.

Wash and chop the tomatoes into a fine dice and grate the cheese. After the squash and onion mixture has cooked about eight minutes, stir in the salt, pepper and tomatoes and cook another two or three minutes. Remove the pan from the heat and fold in the cheese. Taste the calabacitas and adjust the seasoning with a little salt if necessary.

NOTES: You can use either fresh or cooked sweet corn. Since “medium” means something different to each of us when we are discussing vegetable sizes, chop vegetables until you have generous cups of corn and onion and a cup and a half each of zucchini and tomatoes. This will produce enough calabacitas to serve four to six adults or two adults and one hungry vegetarian grandson.

Jane Dieckmann advised against adding salt and pepper, but our grandson agreed with Jerri and me that it needed a little. You can omit it from the recipe, and diners can add as much as they wish at the table.

Rhonda’s Rice and Broccoli Casserole

This is a recipe from Kansas, a statement which you might want to interpret as a gourmet alert. The ingredients include Velveeta. But though I hate to admit it, in spite of that this recipe makes a delicious side dish.

Rhonda, the wife of one of Jerri’s cousins, contributed the recipe to a cookbook compiled by the Farm Bureau Women of Butler County, Kansas. As I have mentioned elsewhere, my mother-in-law gave us the cookbook for Christmas many years ago, and Jerri has made many of the recipes. Some have become favorites, like and this one from Rhonda is going to be added to the list.

When I warmed up the leftover casserole to go with the hot dogs and pasta salad we set out to feed my brother-in-law and his work crew at the cabin, he remarked how well the broccoli went with the rice as he took a second helping. It is indeed a tasty combination.

When I confessed that the sauce was made with canned soups and Velveeta, he guffawed and asked me if I finally was abandoning my purist policies.

One of his grandsons and a member of the work crew looked puzzled. “What’s Velveeta?” he asked.

“It’s like American cheese, like the single slices you get on cheeseburgers,” I said, “but it comes in a box.” I got the box out to show him.

“It’s a brand name,” my brother-in-law explained to him.

“OK,” said he, and took a serving.

I can remember the box of Velveeta in the refrigerator at home. Like Rhonda, Mom used it in cooking because it made really smooth sauces. Velveeta was invented in 1923 in Monroe, New York, and was named for its velvety smooth texture. It is a dairy product, so even Wisconsinites can admit to using it without shame. It is not, however, to be confused with a good Wisconsin brick, Cheddar or Colby.

When Jerri and I were first married, most Kansas supermarkets offered Velveeta, ground Parmesan, and a handful of other cheeses, nearly all from Kraft. Last summer, when we stopped at Emporia, Kansas, to stock up on the best flour I know (Hudson Cream), I made a point of inspecting the cheese case.

There were probably a hundred different varieties and brands of cheese made by cheese makers from Oregon to Vermont as well as Wisconsin, an enormous improvement in the last four decades. I almost felt like I had wandered into a good Wisconsin supermarket.

Velveeta was still in the cheese case, but my attitude towards it had changed. Even the ancient Romans used some processed foods including fish sauces and cheeses flavored with garlic or sweetened with honey as well as salted cheeses shipped to Rome from across the empire, perhaps to be eaten with the hams imported from Belgium. We have chemists today to make fancier processed foods, but maybe that’s just progress.

Even without scientists, our ancestors were pretty clever when it came to inventing new foods. For instance, yogurt, tofu and most of the cheeses we enjoy today have been around for thousands of years. What I finally have come to understand is that Velveeta is really just another in the long list of foods that start with milk. Not my favorite to eat on crackers, but a good ingredient in some recipes.

Like Rhonda’s Rice and Broccoli Casserole which makes six to eight servings of a delicious side dish.

INGREDIENTS:

3/4 cup white rice
1 1/2 cups water
Scant 1/2 tsp. salt
1 1/2 lbs. broccoli crowns
4 T butter
1/2 cup chopped celery
1/3 cup chopped onion
1 can condensed cream of chicken soup
1 can condensed cream of mushroom soup
1/2 lb. Velveeta cheese

PROCEDURE:

Rinse the rice, then put it in a saucepan with the water and salt. Bring to a boil, then stir and reduce the heat to a low simmer. Cook the rice covered for fifteen to twenty minutes until the water is absorbed. Remove the pan from the heat.

Prepare the vegetables while the rice is cooking. Wash the broccoli, discard the tough bottom part of the stems and divide the crowns into bite-sized pieces. Clean and chop the celery and onion into a quarter to half-inch dice.

Preheat the oven to 350º.

Blanch the broccoli in a microwave oven or covered saucepan with a little water for four or five minutes until it is crisp but tender. Drain and set aside the broccoli. Cut the Velveeta into half inch cubes.

Melt the butter in a two quart saucepan over low heat. Add the celery and onion and cook them for about four minutes until they are soft. Add the undiluted soups and Velveeta and stir until you have a smooth sauce. Remove the sauce from the heat.

Spread the cooked rice evenly over the bottom of a two quart baking dish. Spread the broccoli on the rice and spoon the sauce over the broccoli. Put the dish on a center shelf in the oven and bake the casserole for about thirty minutes until the rice is bubbling around the edges and the sauce is just beginning to brown.

NOTES: Rhonda’s recipe calls for two ten ounce packages of frozen broccoli spears and butter or margarine. I prefer butter and fresh broccoli when you can get it.