Here we are on Day 12… while as of this moment, the official end to the local quarantine will be Tuesday night, a mere 4½ days from now, the expectation is that sometime today, the president here will be announcing some kind of extension. He’s already announced as of last night that our borders are completely closed – whereas up until last night air traffic was restricted to only certain flights, all other ways of entry and exit were still open; effective today, all borders are closed, in or out, until Tuesday night. I’m not sure what a sort of last minute long weekend closure of them achieves, I doubt anything, but, so be it. It’s probably in preparation for the same continuing through another 1-2 weeks when he holds his press conference later today.

So what’s on the front burner in the kitchen? A cauliflower was the inspiration. And one that came with all its leaves intact. So I split it up and here we have two recipes to play with during your kitchen isolation.

First, a Korean inspired stir fry. Cut the cauliflower into bite sized pieces, dice a couple of potatoes, and start sauteing them in oil over high heat. Keep them moving so that they don’t stick to the pan, especially the potatoes. Use minimal salt, if any, at this point.

When you’re starting to get a little bit of golden brown color on the vegetables, it’s time for the spice. Add a good dollop of Korean chili paste, gochujang, and a similar one of the Korean version of miso, doenjang. Of course, if you have neither, use your favorite chili paste and some miso. Continue stir-frying for a couple of minutes.

Add some slivered cabbage and carrots (I had a bag of coleslaw mix in the fridge that I’d bought thinking I’d add it to a salad this week). Cook for about two minutes. Then add a couple of tablespoons of honey, and a couple of cups of vegetable stock. Cover, turn the heat down low, and simmer until…

…the potatoes and cauliflower are soft.

Add a can of chickpeas and some chopped green onion, cook just long enough to heat the chickpeas through. I could also have added them earlier when I added the cabbage mix, it was more of a last minute whim to add to the dish. Check for seasoning, but if your vegetable stock was well seasoned, along with that doenjang paste, you shouldn’t need any salt here.

At this point, this dish is done. It can be served as is, or over rice it’s absolutely delicious. Or, as a side dish to whatever you have that will stand up to a spicy vegetable stir-fry with a hint of sweetness.

We went with pan-sauteed pork chops sprinkled with salt, pepper, and cumin.

And we ate well. Yes, we ate well.

 

And, we had all the leaves. This could be done with pretty much any sturdy greens, like chard, beet greens, broccoli greens, turnip greens, collard greens, hey, even, dare I say it, kale.

This was totally an in the moment “invention” with things that I had around. The leaves, washed well. A little pack of mushrooms that needed to be used, also washed. To accompany…  let’s see, we’ll make a pasta, so some spaghetti. Garlic, obviously. Pickled chilies, obviously. Fish sauce. I have Italian colatura di alici that I picked up back in July in NYC. Feel free to use Asian fish sauce, it’ll work too. If you want to make it vegetarian, use soy sauce, or better yet, Chinese mushroom sauce, which is the sort of vegetarian version of Chinese oyster sauce And, reggianito, the Argentine spin-off of parmesan. Quick and simple.

Chop up the various ingredients that are meant for chopping – the leaves and stalks, the mushrooms, the chilies, the garlic. Olive oil into a hot pan, in with the garlic, stir it about until it just starts to color, then in with the leaves and stalks. These are somewhat tough, they’re going to take a little cooking time. We’re starting over fairly high heat. Once they’ve wilted down and the stems started to soften, I added the mushrooms and chilies.

Covered the pot, turned the heat down low, and let it cook, just opening it up and moving it about now and again. A good twenty minutes to really cook those leaves down soft. Added a splash of the fish sauce, a lot of ground pepper, tossed it with some of the pasta water (the spaghetti went into the pot about halfway through the cooking process of the greens) and then the pasta and a good amount of grated cheese.

Again, we ate well.