The Spring recipe scheming begins...

Kate's Renegade Aboveground Kitchen is about to complete a fantastic first winter season, and I am already scheming for the seasons around the corner. Spring '08 will focus on lots of delicious spring veggies like fennel, beets, and young vidalia onions.... Plus, the K.R.A.K. kitchen will be moving around to other people's homes just to spice things up a bit. My friends in Prospect Heights have a large rustic loft with a wood burning stove, and we are planning a Medieval Banquet-style Spring pagan dinner. It will be quite a feast, and we're planning on brewing our own mead. Get ready!

Here's something I cooked up last night with spring in mind: It is a beet pancake with cashew-garlic sauce, layered with steamed green kale, millet, and curried green lentils, with a few caramelized leeks on top. My roommate Alex and I agreed it was totally excellent and surprising-- sumptuously sweet, zesty, and complex! I do want to work on the presentation a bit, but it will definitely find its way onto the spring menu in some shape or form.


Millet is an amazing little whole grain, and one that is worth having around in your pantry. Very few cooks use whole grains directly, and I want to endow you, my readers, with a healthy diverse knowledge about the world of carbohydrates. There is a reason why grains are at the base of our food pyramid, and despite this nation's recent aversion to carbs, we NEED whole grains to provide fiber, B vitamins, and folic acids for healthy digestion. Slowly, I will teach you all about my favorite whole grains that are not wheat, soy, or corn. (I have nothing against wheat, soy, or corn, but they are SO overly grown, done, and pumped into most of the food we eat....) There is so much more out there, and YOU should cook it! Wow, my first blog post and I'm already standing on a soap box and YELLING!

Fun millet facts: The ancient Chinese ate millet as a staple crop before they rice became the dominant crop! Millet is the primary ingredient in bird seed! (Am I telling you to go buy a bag of birdseed and cook it up for dinner?.... Well, maybe I am.) Also, millet is super easy to digest and is gluten free!

Ok, enough is enough, here's the god damn recipe. This is a great way to prepare millet as a side dish, which is how I made it for the pancake. It has an uncanny resemblance to this breakfast dish that I ate a lot at Raghava's house in Bangalore...

South Indian Style Millet:

Spread a cup of millet onto a baking sheet and toast at 300 degrees (toaster ovens are wonderfully suited for this type of stuff if you have one...) until you start to smell a nutty aroma. Millet does not need to be toasted, but it helps keep the grains intact when you boil them and prevents a mushy texture. I think it also improves the taste.

(I don't measure my water for millet, but let's say two cups to start....) Add the millet to a pot, and add about two cups water. Boil for 20-30 minutes, check to see if you need to add water or drain some out once millet is soft.

Chop up a medium size onion, de-seed and mince a few green chillies (you could also use red chili flakes), and mince up about 12 curry leaves. Heat about two tablespoons of coconut oil in a skillet. Add about a half tablespoon of black mustard seeds, throw in the chillies, and let seeds sputter and turn a bit grey. Sprinkle in the curry leaves with a dash of asafaetida (optional, but authentic...) right before you toss in onions. Saute with a dash of turmeric until the onions are a bit caramelized, and stir in the millet. Add salt to taste (salt is very important here... don't forget it...) and serve!

Baffled by some of these ingredients? Well, the park slope food co-op has all of them, but before I joined I shopped a lot at the little Indian grocery on First Ave (between 5th and 6th I think...) in the East Village, in Little India/Jackson Heights/Queens (Patel Brothers), or on Lexington Ave. in the mid 20's. Go get ye some Indian cooking staples! I keep my curry leaves and little green chillies in my freezer so they keep longer and I always have them on hand.