BEET BREAD PUDDING

One of my favourite foods of late summer are beets. Besides the traditional preserves of pickled beets and plain canned beets, here is a favourite recipe.

Beet Bread Pudding can be substituted as a stuffing and this year I cooked it as the dressing with a turkey dinner. The colour is wonderful although the picture is a rather poor reflection of that.

Ingredients:
cooked beets
bread, dried
onion
a bit of chicken stock
seasoning: salt, pepper, then it's up to you. In this version I used italian because that is what I had on hand. You could also use basil, savoury, marjoram etc.

I simply combine:
5 - 6 cups torn dry bread
2 cups chopped/diced cooked red beets
1/2 cup diced onion
1 or 2 eggs, slightly beaten
a bit of stock to moisten
seasoning to taste

Just mix it all and put in a greased baking dish (i used a loaf pan this time) and bake at 350 degrees for about 40 minutes

A new take on Cauliflower Bake

 1 head cauliflower, cleaned and cut into florets and cooked (bring to a boil then simmer until fork tender then drain)
 1/2 cup butter or margarine or to taste
1/2 cup bread crumbs
1/2 cup parmesan cheese or to taste
Leftover red pepper and green onion, about 1/2 cup of each

My version of Cauliflower Bake is a simple vegetarian dish that combines cooked cauliflower with some melted butter or margarine, bread crumbs and parmesan cheese. This time I had some left over chopped red pepper and green onion that I wanted to use up so I just added it. I sprayed a glass pyrex dish with canola oil, covered it with tin foil and heated it in the oven for about 20 minutes while the chicken breasts were finishing cooking.

The pepper and green onion dresses the dish up nicely. One suggestion is to not put too much red pepper as the taste will overpower the other flavours.


Note: Traditional Cauliflower polonaise is similar to this recipe except that the butter is slightly browned and the bread crumbs are then added to the browned butter. Some recipes call for chopped hard boiled eggs.

You could serve this with:
Shake and Bake Chicken Breast
Potatoes mashed with sour cream or baked potato (maybe twice baked)
Cauliflower Bake
Green Peas
A bit of sliced tomato for additional colour
Top it off with some low-cal soy ice-cream for dessert

Kohlrabi

I should not have complained about the heat. 'Cause it's gone. Tonite the temp is supposed to be 8 degrees (Celsius). Not sure what that is Fahrenheit but I know that it's cold for August. A few days ago we were sweltering and now for the past two days its been windy and cold. Ugh! But enough about the weather or this blog will turn into a weather blog instead of a food blog.

Today, I cooked another of my organic-type purchases, Kohlrabi. I am told there are several types; this one was a pale green  and even lighter green on the inside. It's easy to cook. Peel it with a sharp vegetable peeler and cut it into small chunks or slices. Bring it to a boil in very lightly salted water and simmer as you would a potato. It is done when fork-tender. I just put a little butter and pepper on it. The taste is similar to a very mild turnip although its ancestry is the wild cabbage which is also the origin of the common cabbage, broccoli etc.

It would nicely accompany a pork or roast beef dish. Also a nice vegetarian addition. I would think this could be added to any full-tasting soup such as beef vegetable but maybe a bit too strong in a chicken based soup. Again, a welcome addition to a vegetarian soup.

If you would like a lot more info try this link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kohlrabi