Dinner - September 8, 2009

I tried the Three Sisters' Stew with Okra and Leeks from Berley's Fresh Food Fast again. This time I backed off on the jalapeno to about a half of a large one. I also made my own pinto beans.

The result was a stew where the spice just added to the flavor of the dish. I could have gone for a little more spice. Since the pepper is the first thing in the pot it is hard to gauge.

Matt rounded out the meal for us this time with some corn chips.

I made the recipe from gathering the ingredients to ready to serve in under an hour. It is a nice one pot meal where you can chop the veggies as you go.

Dinner - September 3, 2009

Again, I revisited a favorite. This recipe is Three Sisters Stew with Okra and Leeks from Berley's Fresh Food Fast. Have I mentioned how much I love cookbooks organized by season?

I used purple okra and tomatillos. I had no cilantro for garnish and of course I skipped the sour cream for garnish. I also used olive oil in place of the butter. Besides this full oil try, I have made this recipe with half the oil and with none of the oil and have enjoyed all.

My notes say start to finish in under an hour and that you can chop the vegetables as you go.

I think that you can consider this a complete meal because of the beans. If I were going to serve this to a guests I would probably add some cornbread or some other starch on the side. I will stick with the taste rating of 4 that I gave it before but this is really good and I hope everyone tries it.

You can find a previous post here.

Dinner - September 3, 2009

I found my high rating of this recipe from two years ago and thought I had better try it again. You can find the old post here.

I believe the recipe still deserves high praise. This time I had the okra. My only substitution was 2 tbsp of olive oil for the butter. I guess we also left off the sour cream garnish.

This turned out quite spicy. The jalapeno I had was quite large.

This recipe is called "Three Sisters Stew with Okra and Leeks" and can be found in Berley's Fresh Food Fast. Berley pairs it with a corn cake that had too much butter and cheese for me to try.

With the beans this stew can be the whole meal but the spice and volume one needs to eat make it a bit challenging. Next time I may try a little bread or cornbread with this to make it an easier meal to eat.

Matt said we should eat this every week. It is the season for this recipe so I may try.

This was quick to make. There is chopping but not very fine and it can all be done as the recipe progresses.

I finally wanted some Okra and I couldn't find it

I made the Three Sisters Stew with Okra and Leeks from Berley's Fresh Food Fast without the okra (page 105). I have never gone looking for okra so I didn't know it was hard to find. Berley notes in the intro to the recipe that you should make the recipe even if you can't find okra and I agree.


While this was cooking I made up some Spicy Summer Bean and Chickpea Salad with Harissa Vinaigrette from the same cookbook (page 125). I was planning for this to be for lunch the next day but it was so good we decided to have some with dinner. We were glad to have it also to have some variety of texture to the meal.

On the stew I left out the butter and the olive oil in the cooking and the sour cream in the garnish. This means we ate a soup of nothing but vegetables, water, and salt. It was excellent. I am going to guess it is the leeks that create the decent broth but the ripeness of the vegetables that carry it the rest of the way. If you can get the vegetables, I suggest making it tonight. In a month you may have missed your opportunity. The chopping on this is not to bad since most of the items remain large. I chopped as I cooked to save time.

On the beans I used 2 Tbsp of lemon juice instead of the 3 since I left out the olive oil. I also only used 1/4 tsp of cayenne pepper. Maybe I will try a little more next time. We found that the chickpeas could use a little salt. Trimming the beans is the biggest time on this recipe.