Instant Pot Pork Ragu, Chicken Korma, Goat Kofte Patty Melts, Squash & Mushroom Soup, Crispy Tofu & Sweet Potato Muffins

Lately, it’s been so much delicious home cooking, but so little time to write up blogs about it!

And we’re still reveling in hearty, cool weather food even though it’s been intermittently warming up between cold spells.

There’s a really tasty pork ragu served with pasta, creamy chicken korma with potatoes and kale served with rice, plus fun kofte-spiced goat patty melts with mushroom and squash soup, and crispy tofu and mushrooms as a topping for soup leftovers. Pureed sweet potato made for delicious muffins, studded with chocolate chips and walnuts.

Instant Pot Pork Ragu Pasta for a Crowd

I was going to make a double batch of this for my birthday party at the end of January, but we had to cancel because of severe weather followed by that temperature plunge. So I made a version of it a few weeks later for a potluck instead!

I took a small picnic roast and cut into pieces and seared on all sides in a cast iron pan. I set those in the Instant Pot and then sautéed onions and carrots in the same pan, deglazing with Meyer lemon vinegar, white wine and water. Once the veggies were softening, I added garlic, tomato paste and Italian seasonings, then transferred to the Instant Pot with canned tomatoes and cooked for an hour and 20 minutes on high pressure.

The pork was then falling off the bone and I shredded it all, removed the bone and simmered it to thicken a bit further. Then I added al dente pipe rigate pasta and brought the whole Instant Pot to the potluck! It was really good and the just like the korma, the leftovers were, too!

Cashew Korma with Chicken, Potatoes & Kale

This was one of the best things I made all month! We’ve been processing a bunch of roosters from our late summer and fall hatches, so Grant and I actually have a bounty of chicken in our freezer for a change. I never typically pull chicken breasts for us, so it’s nice to have broken these birds down and to get to use chicken breasts in soup and stew recipes.

I started by sautéing onions in pan with some coconut oil and fat from chicken broth, deglazing with a little broth as needed. Then I added ginger and garlic, plus a little tomato paste and spices (cardamom, coriander, cinnamon, cumin, garam masala and turmeric).

Meanwhile I seasoned the chicken with those same spices and browned the pieces in batches in a cast iron pan.

I then added the onion and spice mixture, plus cashews and more cold broth to the Vitamix and pureed into a smooth sauce.

I added that back to the pot with Yukon gold potatoes and the thick stems from Russian kale. It simmered for a good 40 minutes or so and required some babysitting to make sure it wasn’t sticking and burning to the bottom of the pan.

Once the potatoes were soft, I added back in the chicken and then the chopped leaves of the kale. We ate it with rice and cilantro and like so many curries like this, it was almost better the next day as leftovers!

Goat Kofte Patty Melts

We were in the mood for goat burgers, but had Bellegarde’s sliced honey oat loaf in the freezer versus burger buns, so decided to do a goat patty melt!

I found some inspiration from this lamb kofte patty melt from Food 52, but I had my own lacto-fermented kraut on hand already, so didn’t feel the need to make any quick pickled cauliflower to go with it!

For the spices, I toasted whole coriander, cumin and fennel seeds, along with peppercorns in a skillet, then let them cool a little before grinding with a mortar and pestle. I pulsed the meat in the food processor with some green pepper, cilantro and scallion tops. Grinding lean meat finer in a food processor helps it stick together better without binders like egg and breadcrumbs. It makes the texture denser versus light and fluffy, but that’s what I was going for here for the patty melts.

I then topped the patty with Monterrey jack cheese and after toasting it all together in a skillet on the bread, I opened it up to add kraut and lettuce. It was so good!

Squash & Mushroom Soup

I had a couple of rounds of mushrooms to use up, so I sautéed a bunch one day and used some for a dip to snack on and the rest with a lovely and simple squash soup. I also have a bunch of containers of pureed Autumn Frost and Cushaw squash in my freezer, so this was a nice use of it.

I used some of ALL CAPS Caps & Cream soup mix as the seasonings, along with bone broth and then pureed it all together in the Vitamix.

I get kind of bored with a pureed soup, so I always serve it with a sandwich to dunk in it or lots of toppings. In this case, the goat kofte patty melts were the perfect accompaniment.

Crispy Battered Tofu with Mushrooms & Squash Soup

The other way I like a pureed soup is with lots of crispy and crunchy toppings — it’s the texture that gets too boring for me without a dipper or toppings.

So with the leftover squash soup, we had some tofu and another round of mushrooms to use up.

I did a version of my favorite battered and roasted tofu in the toaster oven. The batter includes nutritional yeast, cornstarch, soy sauce, oil and seasonings. Since ALL CAPS Caps & Cream mix has nutritional yeast, dehydrated mushrooms, potato starch and almond flour in it, I subbed some of that for a portion of the nutritional yeast. It came out so delicious — flavorful and just as crispy as previous versions.

For the mushrooms, I started them in a dry pan, my preferred method to release the liquid without letting them soak up too much oil. Then I added the cooked mushrooms to the tofu pan. We had the leftover soup topped with the tofu and mushrooms, along with a big salad.

Sweet Potato Muffins with Chocolate Chips & Walnuts

We were culling a lot of sweet potatoes with soft spots in January and February and besides adding to soups and stews and curries, I really like to bake with pureed sweet potato.

So this was a quick and easy batch of muffins with all purpose and rye flours, plus chocolate chips and walnuts. They made for great snacks and desserts all week!