Give your greens a squeeze for more tender salads

This week I tried a new technique for making kale. It really made the kale taste good and took away the rough texture.

Here's the link to the full article: http://www.examiner.com/article/give-your-greens-a-squeeze-for-more-tender-salads 

http://www.examiner.com/article/give-your-greens-a-squeeze-for-more-tender-salads 

Cool down with some spicy cucumber salad

A new article posted on Examiner.com shows you a spicy, sweet way to eat your cucumbers:

http://www.examiner.com/article/cool-down-with-some-spicy-cucumber-salad

Spring greens - Creating your own dressing

I received my first CSA box today and I was a little bit disappointed. With the cold spring we've had, I shouldn't have been surprised to see so many greens. I received salad mix, spinach, kale, bok choy, radishes and turnips.

With those ingredients, there were a lot of salads in my future. More than I was sure I could eat. But it did inspire me to try a new salad recipe: Spinach and Radish Salad with Sesame. I used my salad mix because I knew it would wilt the fastest. The light salad mix was the perfect backdrop for the dressing which was a mix of soy sauce, rice wine vinegar and sesame oil.

I actually didn't have any rice wine vinegar so I used white wine vinegar instead. When you're making dressing at home, you can do the same type of substitution. Any vinaigrette is made up of basically three types of ingredients.

You can find that post on Examiner.com or by clicking this link:  Make your own healthy vinaigrette without hitting the (store-bought) bottle

New Posts on Examiner.com

If you're looking for more information on CSAs I'm writing articles for Examiner.com. Here are a few to check out until I write another blog post:

Freezing tomatoes  - ideas for preserving any extra tomatoes you have on hand
Get closer to your food with a CSA - more information on CSAs and how to choose one, includes resources for Wisconsin
Check out the Food for Thought Festival - if you're in Madison, don't miss this fun food event sponsored by REAP, happening Sept. 15 from 8:30 a.m. - 1:30 p.m.

Parmesan-Crusted Goodness

I wasn’t planning on having a Parmesan-crusted theme dinner this evening, but sometimes that’s just what happens. For me it started with a recipe for Zucchini Oven Chips from Cooking Light. This is one of my favorite ways to use zucchini.

Oven Zucchini Chips

I made the recipe as noted, except I used buttermilk instead of milk, since I happened to have a leftover carton in the refrigerator from a weekend batch of buckwheat pancakes. When they were done, they taste tender on the inside and crispy on the outside and so good you would think they were deep fried.

But before I got there, I had about a half cup of leftover breadcrumb, Parmesan, salt and pepper breading left over. I didn’t want to throw it away and that’s what would likely happen to it even if I saved it for a few weeks in the refrigerator. Instead of dumping it, I decided to make baked tomatoes with it. I added a little dried basil to the mix and cut a tomato in half before pouring the leftover breading on top. To add a little moisture, I poured a bit of olive oil and balsamic vinegar on top. I slipped them in the oven to cook alongside the zucchini. When they were done, they were the perfect combination of the tart, cooked tomato and the crunchy topping.

Baked tomatoes, the black is balsamic vinegar

The zucchini and the tomato would need about a half hour to cook, so I turned my attention to the bag of beans in the crisper. Similar to green beans, I had received flat Romano beans in my box last week. I had received them in previous years and the Two Onion newsletter reminded me that I could use them similarly to other green beans, but that they may require a longer cooking time.

For these I decided to adapt a recipe I came upon this morning in the gym while reading my Oprah magazine. Ina Garten's Green Beans Gremolata recipe looked good as is, but I needed to adjust it a bit to adapt for what I had in my pantry. Instead of topping beans with pine nuts, garlic, Parmesan, parsley and lemon juice, my beans were tossed with pecans, garlic and Parmesan.

Romano beans with pecans, Parmesan and garlic

The final result was amazing. I still may make the Barefoot Contessa’s some other time, but my combination wasn’t too bad either. I forgot to weight the beans, but guess I had less than a full pound. I still used two cloves of garlic, so they were garlicky, but really good.

Surprisingly or not, all three dishes worked together. Though they had most of the same ingredients (especially the zucchini and the tomato) they tasted different enough. And since they did have a lot of the same ingredients they didn’t compete with each other.  

So the next time an ingredient speaks to you, go for it. You may just end up having a theme dinner you didn't plan on. 

Is it me or does this bean look like a bird?

Want Easier Stuffed Peppers? Don't Stuff Them

I like stuffed peppers mostly for the stuffing inside. It’s an easy way to use peppers, but sometimes the peppers can be a little overwhelming when you eat the final dish. Also, sometimes the peppers don’t get done all the way through. As a result, usually I’m pretending I like the dish more than I do as I try to ignore the fact that the outside is raw even while the inside is really good.

So tonight, instead of making real stuffed peppers I decided to make “inside out” stuffed peppers. It would still have all the ingredients, just be served up more like a casserole. It would also be an easier dish to make on a weeknight, since stuffed peppers can take a long time to make. With a plan in mind, I only had to decide just what kind of stuffed peppers to make.

That brings me to another great thing about stuffed peppers. They are easily adaptable to whatever you have on hand. I’ve made Middle Eastern varieties, with couscous, Indian varieties heavy on garam masala, and stuffed them with lentils, rice, bulgur, and everything in between. Last night when I surveyed what I had on hand, I decided these would be Mexican stuffed peppers. My stuffed pepper casserole would consist of chorizo, brown rice, enchilada sauce, salsa and cheese.

Unstuffed pepper casserole 

I had all the ingredients on hand, so to get a jump on tonight’s prep, I decided to make the rice. That way when I came home from work tonight I’d be able to brown the chorizo, mix everything together and pop it in the oven. Doing some of the prep work in advance and cutting out the long cooking time for stuffed peppers which can take more than an hour, made this a do-able dish for a weeknight.

All in all, prep took about 10 minutes, and the casserole was done in about 35 minutes. The peppers were tender and it was a whole lot easier to eat than stuffed peppers. It also had more portion control than whole stuffed peppers. When I make those, I tend to eat at least half or the whole thing, since it’s easier that way. That would have amounted to about 2 – 4 servings had I made the peppers that way. The casserole looks more like at least 6 – 8.

The Unstuffed Peppers Casserole is definitely going in my pepper recipe file. I like the Mexican variety quite a bit, but I’m looking forward to seeing what other varieties I might make. I’ll have to see what’s on hand the next time I get peppers in my CSA box. 

Eggplant Meet Crockpot

One of my favorite parts of getting a CSA share has been learning to cook and like vegetables I wouldn’t necessarily eat if they didn’t show up in my kitchen. One has been eggplant. Judging from the swap box yesterday, I can say that I’m not alone. I looked inside to see what I might swap my own eggplants for and found nothing but eggplants inside.

I received them in my last box too and instead of hiding them at the bottom of the crisper, decided to try to use them up right away. I did the same this week and I’m proud to say I have two new recipes I love for one of the vegetables I’m most likely to avoid. And as a bonus, they both use the crockpot and made tasty meals that I didn’t have to cook after a busy day.

Crockpot Spiced Eggplant and Lentils

Last week’s was inspired by a recipe I found in an Indian cookbook I picked up at a garage sale earlier in the year, Indian Home Cooking by Suvir Saran and Stephanie Lyness. I stole the idea of their recipe for Smoked Spiced Eggplant, by using some of the same ingredients and spices, adding lentils to make it more of a main dish, and adapting it for the slow cooker.

It worked out perfectly. It made a spicy dish that was good warm or cold. The best part was the eggplant. Sometimes eggplant has a slimy texture to me that isn’t appealing. In this dish the eggplant took on a firmer texture that tasted very good. Here is the recipe for Crockpot Spiced Eggplant and Lentils.

Crockpot Moussaka

For tonight’s dinner, prepped last night, I made crockpot moussaka. I already wrote about moussaka in this post, but I was looking for a quicker and easier way to enjoy one of my favorite meals. I found this recipe and adapted it a bit by using cinnamon instead of oregano and fresh tomatoes instead of canned.

It cooked all day while I was at work and tasted amazing. Although it didn’t have the béchamel crust it was still really good. If you want, you could add feta cheese for a bit more flavor, but I thought it tasted fine without anything on top.

I don’t know if I’ll be getting anymore eggplant this season, but if I do, I’m sure I’ll be able to find more recipes to enjoy it in. I think I might even be sad if I don’t get the chance. Who would’ve ever thought I could feel so strongly about eggplant. 

Convenience versus Homemade

I had every intention of making the crust by hand. But just in case, I picked up one from the refrigerated section of Copp’s on my way home from work with the rest of the staples I needed for the week.

After all, the recipe I was planning to make, Summer Squash and Ricotta Galette, featured a light flaky crust made with olive oil. I had read the directions a few days earlier and it looked pretty simple. I barely ever bought those store-bought crusts. Eating them made me think about all the trans fats and preservatives I was sure were inside making it so flaky. But still, I had a bit of headache, the heat had eased a little, but I was still hot, and convenience won out.

Squash galette assembled

After that, the rest was easy. All I had to do was cut up some summer squash (I used two instead of one and one zucchini as the recipe called for) and add it to some crushed garlic and olive oil. In another bowl, I combined the ricotta, egg and spices. To assemble, you put the ricotta mixture on top of the crust and top with the squash. Instead of combining my own ingredients, waiting for them to meld together and rolling them out, I simply rolled out the store-bought crust and could fill it immediately.

Squash galette fresh from the oven

I will definitely add this recipe to my rotation. But after eating it all week for more than a few lunches and dinners, and even one breakfast when I found my milk had inexplicably gone sour more than a week in advance of its expiration date, I have to say next time I’m going back to homemade.  The store-bought crust tastes fine, but it’s almost too perfect. I’m almost missing the imperfections of a homemade crust. I imagine they would go better with the fillings.

The perfectly flaky store-bought crust seems almost too perfect for this rustic dish. Plus, the crust is so flaky it keeps peeling right off the bottom, leaving flat cardboard pastry-colored pieces on my plate, which I haven’t been eating, but scraping into the trash can. I may have saved a few calories this way, but the homemade crust definitely would have been more enjoyable.

I’m not surprised, but it’s a good reminder that homemade does win out most of the time. It takes a little more effort, but somehow it’s worth it. 

Yin and Yang Cooking

Banh Pho Noodles

As I mentioned a few posts ago, I’ve been reading a book about the Chinese way of eating and cooking, Why the Chinese Don't Count Calories by Lorraine Clissold. I have to admit I didn’t have time to read the whole book before I had to return it to the library today. I skimmed the last few chapters, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t continued to inspire me.

It inspired me to visit one of Madison’s Asian grocery stores, Viet Hoa Market. Someone at work had mentioned it and when I passed it on my way from dinner with friends I had to stop. Inside I found everything I could ever want to make an authentic Asian meal, if only I knew how to read Chinese.

Peanut Sauce

Peanut noodles with carrot and cucumber

I perused the exotic meats and frozen fish, marveled at the produce, and picked up nearly every box of tea I passed. I ended up purchasing a hodgepodge of items including some coconut flavoring for my coffee, a tea ball, chrysanthemum tea, some noodles and some sesame cookies that had been delivered from a bakery in Chicago’s Chinatown.

Because I don’t usually cook Asian cuisine, it took a little research to figure out what kind of noodles I bought. They were banh pho, a type of rice noodle used in Vietnam for soups. I decided to make some peanut sauce and use them that way because I knew it would be a good complement to the carrot and cucumber I had recently received from Two Onion farm.

The dish seemed to be a perfect way to put a few Clissold’s secrets into practice: Bring yin and yang into your kitchen and Balance the flavors. Basically these two secrets discuss how the Chinese vary ingredients and cooking methods and eat foods with varying tastes and textures together.

Peanut sauce is a good example because it contains peanut butter (sweet) and curry paste (hot) and does not need to be cooked. I served it with the noodles, which needed to be soaked before they were cooked, and raw carrots (crunchy) and thinly sliced raw cucumber (slimy/soft). All in all, it was a combination of a lot of textures, tastes, and heat/cool.

The dish was perfect for a day when the mercury rose to more than 100 degrees and when it feels more like southeast Asian than Wisconsin. Although I had to return the book today, I did copy a  few of the other recipes, so I’m looking forward to trying out more of her secrets as CSA season continues.

Easy Season

This week my CSA box included:

Crustless broccoli quiche

• Broccoli (three heads)
• Red Onions
• Cucumbers (two large)
• Carrots
• Peas

That list is a little more streamlined than the original box, which included lettuce, mixed greens, and spinach but that were left behind in the swap box.

This is an easy box. I don’t need recipes for these veggies because they are pretty “normal” and ones I like. Although having a CSA share can be a fun way to try new recipes and eat vegetables that you don’t eat very often, sometimes it’s nice to keep it simple. This box is perfect for this time of year when I’d rather be at the pool than in the kitchen.

Cucumber salad

Without any need for research, I got right in the kitchen Tuesday night when I picked up the box. Before long the first head of broccoli was added to a crustless broccoli quiche. It was an easy recipe that did involve the oven, but not much planning or forethought. I also ate about half of the carrots as a snack with some hummus while I made the quiche.

Last night I still had leftover quiche, but needed a little something extra to go with it. I sliced one of the cucumbers very thin, did the same with one of the red onions, added some vinegar, water and a little sugar and I had salad to eat as a side.

Stuffed vegetable bread

Tonight I was feeling like junk food. Namely, a delivered pizza, but instead the veggies came through again. I decided to return, in a way, to the stuffed spinach bread of last week, with a baked stuffed sub. To do so, I sautéed some broccoli, plus some mushrooms and spinach I had on hand and added it to some jarred spaghetti sauce. I hollowed out some French bread and stuffed the vegetable the mixture with some mozzarella inside. I wrapped it up in foil, baked it and in about 15 minutes I had a somewhat healthier way to conquer my pizza craving.

It’s hard to say what has been my favorite dish this season so far, but the baked sandwich was right up there. It’s a good reminder that good food doesn’t always have to take a ton of effort.

Stretching Ingredients and My Creativity

Beet, feta and walnut quesadillas

Right now I’m reading, Why the Chinese Don’t Count Calories, by Lorraine Clissold. It summarizes Chinese food culture into 15 secrets. The secrets help the Chinese eat in a healthy way and still enjoy their food. Secret 2 is Think of Vegetables as Dishes. She says the Chinese give vegetables the same attention as meat. Instead of a dinner of meat with a small side of vegetables, the meal is mostly vegetables and many different kinds at that.

Secret Number 4: Eat Until You’re Full is accomplished through something called multi-dish eating. Instead of eating a few things in great quantities, they eat a lot of different things in small quantities. Instead of a plate with chicken, vegetables and a potato, Chinese diners sit down to many different plates of different types of vegetable dishes that they all share and end up taking small bites of a lot of different things.

Beet, feta and walnut spinach salad

Clissold says Western diners can do the same by putting individual ingredients on the table and letting those at the table choose to create their plate and how the items go together. Instead of creating a meal of chili and a salad, she suggests making a bowl of chili, stir frying some mushrooms, slicing up some vegetables like tomatoes or cucumbers, and roasting some chopped butternut squash, and putting it all on the table. Each person gets a bowl of rice and then digs in to a little bit of each.

In a way, I’ve been putting these two rules to work this week, first with beets and then with garlic scapes, green onions and spinach. Earlier in the week I roasted some beets in olive oil and balsamic vinegar. First I made a beet and spinach salad topped with walnuts and feta cheese. When I was still hungry after that I put the same ingredients, minus the spinach, inside two tortillas and grilled it. Both dishes highlighted the beets, which were caramelized and a bit crispy, and left me satisfied, but not stuffed.

Baked spinach with roasted garlic scapes and green onions

Later in the week, after reading a friend’s Facebook comment about her disappointment in the garlic scapes in her own CSA box, I remembered I had some of these strange things to use up. Determined to use them instead of letting them grow into some other form over the summer forgotten at the bottom of my crisper as I’ve done in the past, I decided to try roasting them.

I cut the scapes into two-inch pieces and did the same with my remaining green onions and poured a bit of olive oil on them. I roasted them until they were brown and almost crispy. They tasted amazing, almost like chips, and I was tempted to eat them just like that, but wanted to be a little more creative.

I put them in the chopper until they were broken into small pieces. Then I added them to a pan with about two big handfuls of spinach and sautéed the spinach. Next I added some milk to the pan and scraped up the remaining brown bits. I added a pinch of Parmesan and transferred the spinach mix to a baking dish and baked it until the liquid was almost absorbed. The baked spinach was wonderful with the roasted scapes and onions adding an extra level of flavor to it.  

I spread a little of the extra roasted scapes and onions on some bread and toasted it in the oven and served it with the spinach. With the other half of the portion, I hollowed out a piece of French bread and stuffed the spinach inside. I wrapped it in foil and baked it for about 10 minutes, something I’ll be doing again.

Stuffed French bread

I’ve only started to read about secret 5 so I’m hoping to learn some more rule I can put in practice this CSA season.  The book also has a few recipes, which I want to try, but even if I don’t, I’m looking forward to cooking more creatively this season, thanks to the book.

Ready, Go - Week 1

I picked up my first box of veggies this week. I had big plans for my first box, which didn’t pan out. During the off-season I meant to research new recipes I wanted to make this summer and organize them into a blog post I could refer to throughout the CSA season. Instead they are in the usual places, in stacks of pages ripped out from magazines and saved as favorites on my computer. I also wanted to recategorize the recipes posted on my blog by vegetable, but that never happened either. I also read a great book on organic farming, Turn Here Sweet Corn by Atina Diffley, and meant to write a review of that.

 Oh well. I may return to those projects this summer, next fall or next winter, but for now it’s on to the vegetables I’m picking up every two weeks. Here’s a list of what I received this week:

• Kale 
• Beets
• Green Onions
• Garlic Scapes 
• A number of different types of lettuces/greens 
• Carrots 
• Broccoli 
• Salad Turnips 
• Cucumber 

On Tuesday, after I picked it up, I put the kale to use right away with some leftover pasta I had in the refrigerator. I don’t really have a recipe. All I did was sauté the kale with some thinly sliced garlic scapes until it was cooked down. Then I added some store-bought pesto to the pasta, stirred in the kale mixture and topped it with some grated Parmesan. It was quick and simple, but tasty.

I’ve eaten most of the rest in variable salads in the past couple days. The surprise of the box was the salad turnip. The Two Onion Farm newsletter described these as “extremely tender, juicy, and sweet, with just a hint of mustardy, turnipy taste.” They also called them the most delicious vegetables they grow. They were absolutely right. I peeled one so far and ate it raw. The flesh is more tender and moist than other root vegetables and the taste is very mild, but distinct. I can’t wait to eat the other one.

Finally, tonight I decided to put a few of the beets to use. I traded some of my greens for more beets, thinking I was going to make some beet burgers. Since I haven’t had time yet, I decided to try a new recipe. I was gone all day, so soup in the crock pot won out. Although I didn’t follow the directions exactly for the Roasted Beet and Potato Soup, it was a nice surprise. When I came home tonight my house smelled almost like I’d been cooking tomatoes all day. The beets were an unexpected acidic compliment to the potatoes. 

So even though I didn’t do all the planning I wanted, the CSA season has started out well. I’ve learned to love a yummy new vegetable, eaten a number of healthy dishes and found another new way to like beets. I shouldn’t be surprised. It’s what CSA season is all about.

One Squash Two Recipes

I’m always intrigued by those articles in magazines where you make one chicken and eat for a week. Not because you’re eating leftovers, but because you use one main ingredient over and over again in multiple recipes. I’ve seen a number of themes played out with a whole chicken or a roast, but since the I cook meat that’s pre-portioned, de-boned and skinless, those articles have never done me much good.

But over the weekend my own “cook once eat many times” idea took hold. It started on Saturday when I roasted a butternut squash in preparation for making Butternut Squash Ravioli recipe using wonton wrappers instead of pasta. The recipe appeared in the Wisconsin State Journal the day before. I had all the ingredients, including a butternut squash from one of my last CSA deliveries.

After the squash was roasted, I put it in the refrigerator to cool before I’d finish the recipe either later that day or Sunday. I didn’t feel like getting back to it until Sunday morning, when I added the ricotta, sage, nutmeg and Parmesan and mashed it all together. After that I put it back in the refrigerator for later.

I worked up an appetite for ravioli at dinner by Christmas shopping most of the afternoon. Luckily it didn’t take long to fill and cook the ravioli. I made or dinner and lunch today, but stopped after that. I figured the ravioli would taste better if I filled and cooked them right before dinner today.

I strayed from the original recipe, skipping the sage cream sauce it suggested and instead opted for browned butter with some garlic in it along with some toasted walnuts. The dish was as wonderful as I imagined, and tasted just as good today for lunch.

But by then the idea of stretching my creativity by making a different recipe with my butternut squash mash had taken hold. I wanted to make something that didn’t require a trip to the store, or at least too many ingredients I didn’t already have on hand. Because I always have black beans, they came to mind first. I knew black beans and squash paired well together, having used them together in at least one other recipe. Add them together with the corn tortillas I also knew I had and quesadillas it was.

I didn’t have any feta cheese on hand, a good substitute for Mexican cheese like queso fresco, so I did have to stop at the store, but it only took a few minutes. I was amazed at the number of different choices, but settled on quesadilla, which I assumed would be perfect for my quesadillas.

At home with the squash already cooked, the quesadillas were easy to make. After spreading it on the tortilla, I topped with some beans and cheese. In only a few minutes I had a yummy and pretty healthy meal. Plus by changing it up a bit, the squash ravioli won’t go from really good to really boring by eating it too many days in a row.

Dreaming of Next Season

So it’s been awhile. I was surprised when I came back here today to see that my last post was at the beginning of October. Since then I’ve been cooking all the fall vegetables that have been appearing in my CSA box.

There’s been lots of squash, some potatoes, bunches of leeks, kale, and carrots, plus beets, broccoli and Brussels sprouts too. I’ve managed to eat it all, so I guess I’ve been too busy cooking to write.

Sadly, though all things must come to an end. I realized that as I picked up my last box of vegetables for the season last Tuesday. In a few days I’ll have eaten them all and the CSA season will close for the year. Then I’ll have to make due with what I’ve frozen and begin dreaming about next season. But before I do that I wanted to be sure to capture two new favorites from the last month.

The first, Orecchiette With Braised Kale And Cauliflower, was good enough to be served at an Italian restaurant. I made only a few substitutions, including cutting out the currants and substituting chiocciole for orecchiette pasta, because I couldn't find it. I also planned to substitute almonds for the pine nuts, but forgot to add them before serving and found it was just as good without them. The recipe was a little more complicated than I usually make, with a few ingredients I don’t tend to have on hand such as anchovies, but completely worth the effort.

The second, Ravioli with Brussels Sprouts and Bacon, which I made this week, was from Real Simple. The Brussels sprouts are shredded and tossed with bacon, pecans and a little vinegar before serving with the ravioli. Again, this is a restaurant-quality dish, if I do say so myself, but a little less complicated than the orecchiette.

Of course both dishes are pasta-based, so it’s no surprise they turned out wonderful, but the addition of the farm-fresh vegetables made them even better. I could make these dishes again over the winter with store-bought produce, but I doubt they’ll be the same. Instead, I’ll dream about having them both next summer.

A Lentil Surprise

For as long as I can remember I’ve been trying to recreate my favorite dishes at one of my favorite Middle Eastern restaurants in Madison, Shish Café. The recipe is mujadara, deceptively simple from the description on the menu: lentils and bulgur wheat, topped with sauteed onions, served with yogurt.

Yet again and again I’ve tried to make that dish to no avail. In my search to recreate it I learned it was a staple of many countries of the Middle East and had a number of variations, some with rice or groats, and using different spices from allspice to cumin.

First I varied the spices, but all of them seemed to overpower the dish. I began to wonder if a different type of lentil would make the dish. The lentils in the Shish Café’s dish seemed small, but not tiny, and held their shape much better than the lentils I was used to buying. I switched to smaller green, pardina lentils, and found them a better match for the texture, but the taste was still off.

Next I set my sights on the onions. They really are the best part of the dish. They are soft and caramelized with the right amount of olive oil. But try and try as I might I just couldn’t get those right either. I fried them in olive oil and either they were not done enough, or fried to a crisp. Neither matched the perfect soft, sweet combination of the mujadara at Shish Café.

So for a while I’ve given up on trying to recreate the recipe, vowing ordering it at the restaurant instead so as not to ruin my affinity for it. Instead I use lentils in other ways as I was tonight, for a recipe of roasted fall vegetables and lentils.

And that’s exactly where I discovered the secret to to mujadara. It isn’t the spice. It isn’t the lentils or even the bulgur. It is the onions. But not carmelized. Roasted.

The recipe I set out to make was simple enough: roast squash, carrots and an onion and serve them over cooked lentils in a sauce of cider vinegar, Dijon mustard, and olive oil. But when I took the first bite of lentil and onion I discovered a nice surprise. I had finally made mujadara.

Now next time I visit Shish Café I can discover a new favorite. I’m sure it won’t be long until I’m trying to recreate that.

I Wanted Pizza, but I Ate This Instead

My craving for pizza hasn’t abated since this summer. Today seeing someone eating a piece of leftover Uno’s pizza at lunch set me off. I forgot about it for most of the day, but saw the box in the recycle bin at the end of the day when I threw my soda can in there.

Before the pizza box incident I was planning to make spicy carrot soup with the carrots I received in yesterday’s CSA box. On the drive home the battle waged between carrot soup and pizza.

“I could order the pizza and still make the soup tomorrow.”

“But carrot soup would be healthier.”

“But I really want pizza.”

“It’ll take too long to make soup.”

I finally made my choice in my kitchen with the carrots in one hand and the phone in the other. Not so much because I thought the carrot soup would be better, but because I wanted to prove to myself I could cook a healthy meal in about as long as it took for the pizza to arrive. I might even be surprised about how good the soup would be.

I put the phone down and began peeling and chopping the carrots while the water boiled. After that I chopped an onion, minced a clove of garlic and sautéed them both in a spice mixture of cumin, ginger and cinnamon.

In about 15 minutes both the carrots and onions were tender and I was way ahead of the pizza guy. Until I took out my new immersion blender. It wasn’t new, but new to me, a hand-me-down from my sister’s kitchen. I hadn’t used it yet and thought this would be the perfect occasion.

Since I was in a hurry I didn’t bother to read the directions. How hard could it be? Not hard exactly, I found out, but rather a bit messy. I glossed over the “immersion” part of the name and ended up with splatters of orange puree all over my kitchen. But never a slow learner, I got the hang of it after lifting it out of the bowl without turning it off about 10 times. Finally, on number 11 as the soup was done, I managed to remember to turn it off before lifting it out of the bowl.

With only an additional 5 minutes added on for searching out splatters and wiping them off my wall and countertops my soup was almost done. I had one final step. I didn’t want to be too virtuous so I topped it with some chopped cashews and it was ready to serve. All told from refrigerator to table it took about 30 minutes.

And it was very good. So good, I wasn’t craving pizza anymore. One other benefit was the wonderful aroma the spices left behind. When I returned from an after dinner walk they greeted me at the door. That’s something a pizza box can’t deliver.

Giving Broccoli a Run for the Money

In the list of my most to least favorite cruciferous vegetables, cauliflower falls somewhere in the middle. So similar to broccoli (my favorite) in so many ways, it lacks not only the color, but the panache in my eyes. As such, and since I don’t like to eat it plain, I always have a hard time coming up with recipes to use it when it appears in my CSA box.

As a reminder, cruciferous vegetables are thus named for their cross-shaped flowers. They are the ones in the cabbage framily, from broccoli and cauliflower to greens and radishes and are known to have cancer fighting qualities. The same compound that is responsible for their bitter or pungent flavor has proven anti-cancer properties proven to remove carcinogens, kill cancer cells, and prevent tumors from growing.

Knowing that, this week I was bound and determined to do something great with the great white head. I found my answer in my Bon Appétit Vegetables cookbook. I bought the book for $1 last year and it has turned out to be the best dollar I ever spent. It is arranged by type of vegetable and each vegetable only has a few choices unlike the thousand or so I can find on the Internet. It’s also much more organized than my stack of recipes.

The recipe was for a Cauliflower and Ham Tart. It’s basically an egg, cauliflower, and ham quiche. I cut down a few of the steps (using a store bought crust) and lowered the amount of fattening ingredients (substituting milk for the whipping cream), turning it into a dish I’ll make again. I also skipped a few steps, by just parboiling the cauliflower and skipping the step of lightly browning it and the ham. The changes cut down the prep time and I think resulted in a fine dish.

I might even say it gave broccoli a run for the money.

The Easiest Soup Ever

I love my slow cooker. During the week there’s nothing like coming home to a hot, home-cooked meal after a long day at work. But it seems that most recipes for the Crock-Pot are high-fat or unhealthy. Most call for fatty cuts of meat or if they do call for chicken, they call for chicken thighs.

I understand that for some dishes, these juicier cuts of meat are used to keep them from getting too dry, but I’d rather use boneless, skinless chicken breasts. And when the recipe did call for boneless chicken breasts the recipe usually used some sort of cream soup to add in the extra moisture. To avoid any mishaps, up until now I stuck to recipes that called for ground beef or that were vegetarian.

But I recently came upon a recipe this recipe for Crock Pot Chicken and Rice Soup which not only used chicken breasts, but used them raw. Instead of cooking them first, they were cooked in the broth over the course of the day.

In addition, the recipe used raw rice and let that cook in the soup instead of cooking on the stove and adding later, as some recipes have you do.

With that discovery a new recipe was born. I stole the chicken and rice from the original recipe and turned my soup into a Broccoli Carrot Chicken and Rice Curry Soup. It couldn’t have been easier to make. I combined chicken broth, curry, ginger, broccoli and carrot to the slow cooker. Then, with a little trepidation, I cut up a raw chicken breast and added that to the pot. Next, this time fearing I’d come home to a starchy mass instead of soup, I poured in the raw rice. I flipped the slow cooker to low and left for work.

Ten hours later I came home and immediately smelled the soup from downstairs. Because I’d been gone so long I didn’t have a chance to check it right away, and instead took my dog Frisbee out for a quick walk. Back in about 10 minutes I ran up to the stairs for the moment of truth.

When I took the cover off the slow cooker I could see that everything had cooked together perfectly. I lifted out a piece of chicken and cut it in half. I was cooked all the way through and after it cooled a bit, a taste revealed that it was very tender.

I scooped out a bit of rice after that and it was cooked through, without any hard uncooked center as I also thought might happen. Although the rice was cooked through it did have a bit of an odd consistency in that it seemed to have fallen apart a bit. Instead of being regular rice-sized pieces, the rice seemed to have fallen apart into a couple pieces. I actually liked the consistency because it made the soup creamier. Alongside the broccoli it almost reminded me of the consistency of broccoli cheese soup, but at a lower calorie count.

All in all the soup tasted very good. I will make it again, but I’m also excited to come up with other new recipes now that I know I can cook chicken and rice raw in the slow cooker.

5-Spice Lentil Soup

It’s not exactly soup weather. It’s 90 something today, with a heat index of 100 something. Which means the air conditioning is on, so maybe it is soup weather? Plus I hear by Labor day it will be 68, so I don’t feel too silly that yesterday I pulled out the crockpot and made my first lentil soup of the season.

I received leeks in this week’s CSA box, which are a perfect soup ingredient and a great match for lentils, one of my favorite ingredients. In fact, as I look at my recipe index I realize I must have had the exact same idea last year at this time when I started to embrace fall and the wonder that is soup. I even made Curried Leek and Lentil Soup which calls for many of the ingredients in my CSA box this week including kale.

I’m saving the kale for another recipe, so I kept the leek and lentil soup simple this time, using a tomato and a red pepper in addition to a cup of lentils, one leek and some water. But the magic ingredient was Chinese 5-spice powder.

My friend Heidi picked it up on a trip we took to Chinatown in Chicago this spring and was nice enough to share some with me. I hadn’t thought about it since before I moved and was glad to find it hiding in the back of my spice drawer.

She had made a point of asking the owner of the store what the blend included, since recipes for 5-spice powder can vary, but I can’t remember what he said. Five-spice powder mixtures seem to vary with some including star anise, cloves, cinnamon, Sichuan pepper, and ground fennel seeds, and others including ginger or nutmeg.

In any case, the 5-spices added the perfect blend of spicy, sweet and salty against the tangy tomatoes and Earthy lentils. I used a full teaspoon, which I worried might overpower the soup as I poured it in, but it turned out to be the right call. I’m anxious to use the rest of my 5-spice blend in more soup recipes this fall.

The Summer of Pizza

This summer I’ve been craving an inordinate amount of pizza. I’m trying to avoid becoming a regular at the pizza restaurants in my new neighborhood so I’ve been making a lot of pizza. I’ve already blogged about BLT pizza on super flat bread and my failed beet pizza, but since then I’ve made at least two more interesting pizza recipes.

The first was a pizza potpie I read about in another blog I read, Plain Chicken. She made Chicago-Style Pizza Pot Pies, but I tried to make them with some veggies I had on hand. The concept is similar to an upside down cake. You put the ingredients on the bottom of a ramekin, starting with the cheese, then the vegetables and meat, then the pizza sauce. Finally, you lay a circle of dough over the top of the ramekin.

You bake it like that, then flip it over onto a plate when it comes out of the oven. We made these when my sister and her family were visiting and they were a hit. Everyone got to make their own pizza and it was a fun way to eat an old favorite.

I also tried something a little different for my most recent pizza, although I cooked this one right side up. I started by mixing fat-free ricotta with some homemade pesto. I put about a half cup on the crust and then topped that with about an eighth of a cup of pizza sauce. I topped that without a half cup of reduced-fat mozzarella cheese. Then I topped it with some chopped zucchini, mushrooms and cherry tomatoes.

Because it was a heavier pizza, I used a thicker crust. I cheated again with a store-bought frozen loaf. The key was pre-baking it for about 10 minutes before adding the ricotta and other toppings. It was crispy enough to stand up to the heavy topping.

It was good the first time I ate it and made tasty leftovers for two lunches. It was definitely better than the beet pizza and in the same league as the BLT.