Eggplant Tapenade Pasta

After nearly a month of cooking up a storm and forgetting to post about it, the Clock-Racing Gourmet is back!  This past Saturday I ran my first marathon in four years, the inaugural Columbia Marathon, and crossed the finish line after 3:46:26 of nonstop running.  Hells yeah!

My pre-race meal was at the Good Life Cafe, a place I never would have considered back when I still thought that you had to eat a giant mound of pasta - which they don't serve - on race night.  I had their Mediterranean wrap with a big kale salad on the side and their (sugar-free) strawberry shortcake smoothie for dessert.  The wrap - made of flaxseed? - included an eggplant tapenade spread that I really liked.  After the marathon, Steve and I went to Mezza, the new Lebanese place on Gervais (for those of you who live in Columbia).  Now that I'm vegan, the most obvious choice of lunch plate was their falafel wrap with tabouli and baba ghanouj on the side.  So, having had pureed eggplant two meals in a row, I found myself on a roll and wanting to try my hand at eggplant tapenade.  I'd seen recipes before but never gotten around to it.  I knew I had to for the same reason I would no longer consider buying pesto at the supermarket: it's easy to find, but I'd really rather make it myself so that it won't want for flavor.  I mentioned the idea to Steve, and a lovely eggplant and some Roma tomatoes showed up in the fridge shortly afterward.

After perusing a few recipes, I decided that this one was the most straightforward.  I skipped the balsamic vinegar and agave nectar and substituted half a yellow onion (since it really doesn't matter if it's going in the oven first).  I also spaced out and forgot to add the garlic.  Oh, well - next time.

The result?  Truth be told, it came out a lot like baba ghanouj.  Maybe it's because I just hit the Food Processor button and let it go until it was smooth, but I suppose I had looked forward to something a little chunkier.  Flavorwise, it came out well despite the omission of garlic.  I waited until the food processor step to add about three tablespoons of lemon juice, maybe a teaspoon of salt and about 15-20 turns of fresh ground black pepper.  I also threw most of the fresh parsley into the mix because I got a little carried away, snipping it in the backyard, so I had a lot more than a couple of tablespoons to work with.  The shreds that I used for a garnish are but a tiny fraction of what I used altogether.

I mixed this into some orzo pasta because, expecting a chunkier result, I was afraid that if I used bigger or longer pasta, the tapenade would all find its way to the bottom of our plates without really adorning the pasta.  I needn't have worried, so next time I just might use some linguine instead.  I served this over a bed of fresh spinach because I was too lazy to make a salad.  Once it was all plated up, I drizzled a little more olive oil and lemon juice over the top (paying special attention to the visible spinach leaves) and added a little more fresh ground pepper.  Fabulous!

Now that winter's over in SC, I'm already at work on my spring/summer vegetable garden.  I look forward to blogging in the upcoming months about recipes made with the fruit and veggies of my backyard labor! 

Valentine's Day Plus One

I had to work last night, so Steve and I exchanged gifts while I was home in the morning and skipped the candlelit-dinner-for-two thing.  I think this way was nicer, especially since last year Al's Upstairs' limited Valentine's Day menu had no veg-friendly entrees and I had to talk them into making me a plate of pasta alfredo (or something similar).

Tonight I was off, so I had time to whip up a pasta dish similar to the one on p. 76 of the January-February issue of the Vegetarian Times.  (I'd post the link, but they haven't put it on their website yet.)  Their recipe called for baby spinach and asparagus, but I substituted kale because I had (actually still have) it in abundance.  What I made was basically this:

Black Pepper Linguine with Garlicky Kale and Chardonnay Sauce

Cook 4 ounces of pasta according to package instructions (this is enough for two and you can pretty much use whatever you've got; in VT they used fettuccine).  Drain and set aside.

For the sauce: Puree one cup raw cashews and one cup water in a food processor until smooth.  Simmer one cup of Chardonnay in a small saucepan until it has reduced down to 1/3 cup.  Mix in the cashew cream, one tablespoon of nutritional yeast, one tablespoon lemon juice and salt and pepper to taste.  If the sauce comes together before the pasta or the kale, keep it on low heat and add water as needed to keep it from drying out.

For the kale: Heat one tablespoon olive oil in large saucepan or pot over medium heat.  Add about 4-5 cups of chopped kale plus two cloves garlic (chopped) and salt and pepper to taste.  Cook until wilted (or slightly more than wilted).

Once everything is ready, toss the pasta in about half of the sauce, put it on two plates and cover each bed of pasta with half the cooked kale.  Ladle 2-3 tablespoons more sauce over the kale and serve.
***
In a couple of days I'll do my first 20-mile training run since the foot injury resolved that forced me to take most of January off from running.  Here's hoping I'm still around to tell the tale, and later to tell the tale of when I ran the Columbia Marathon...

Lentils with cracked wheat and wilted kale salad

Well, today was the last of several days off from work before before I go back and - yuck - work straight through the Christmas weekend.  Oh, well.  At least I got over my cold in time to do all the fun stuff planned for this past weekend.

So, being home, I decided to cook for the fun of having a lunch not of leftovers and also so that I'd have ample leftovers for the next few days of lunch breaks at work.  I'm actually at a point now where I have too much in my cupboards, so I'm looking more for excuses to use up pantry items than the relatively scant produce in the fridge.  I asked Steve to pick up some more kale a few days ago because I was starting to want some again, and today I finally cooked it.  Nothing fancy about the kale itself, but the lemon-tahini dressing really makes this wilted salad.  It's also good atop a simple spinach salad.  Try it sometime!

Wilted kale salad:
2 tbsp Earth Balance
1 tbsp olive oil
1 bunch kale, washed and roughly chopped, stems removed
sea salt to taste (regular is okay too)

Heat Earth Balance and olive oil in a four-quart pot over medium heat.  Add kale and stir every 2-3 minutes until wilted.  Season to taste with salt.

Lemon-tahini dressing:
2 tbsp tahini
1 tbsp water
1.5 tbsp lemon juice
salt and crushed red pepper to taste

Combine the first three ingredients in a mixing bowl until smooth.  Stir in salt and crushed red pepper.
***
To pair with the kale, I wanted something at least vaguely North African or Middle Eastern so that no other flavors would clash with the dressing.  I looked up some bulgur wheat recipes (I was actually using cracked wheat from the Indian grocery store; technically not the same, but close enough for my purposes) and decided to go with this one, since it also gave me a reason to cook up the last of my brown lentils.  For Emeril, it's surprisingly simple.

The flavors all came together very well, but if I ever make this again, I'm going to ignore the bit about adding the uncooked bulgur wheat to the cooked lentils and then leaving it to absorb the liquid.  I found it hard to tell if the wheat had enough water or not (since the cooked lentils got pushed to the bottom of the pot and trapped some of the liquid) and kept adding water until it became apparent that there was too much.  The result was a little on the mushy side.  I was able to fix it (kinda) by turning the heat back on for a few minutes once everything had been stirred together, but still.  Bulgur wheat's just as easy to make as couscous and, if you do it right, turns out about the same as whole wheat couscous.  Live and learn.  Nevertheless, nothing was lacking in the flavor department (in part because I added a little more of the dry spices to the final mixture), and I've got leftovers for the next couple of days and a teeny bit more space in my cupboard than I had this morning.

Hopefully I'll find time to cook and blog about it once more before the holiday.  If not, I wish you all a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, etc. and a prosperous 2012!

My initiation into juicing

Over the weekend, Steve and I watched a documentary called Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead, in which the overweight narrator chronicles his mission to improve his health through a 60-day juice fast.  Highly recommended, and if you live in Richland County, they have the DVD at the library.  (At least they will after we return it.) 

Anyhoo, one of the recipes featured in the film is a creation of Phil Staples, one of the people the narrator meets during his quest to lose weight and start feeling better, called Mean Green Juice.  For some reason I couldn't find the recipe on the movie website, but a Google search brought me to the blog of someone also undergoing a juice cleanse, and the blogger very helpfully provides the recipe here.  After seeing the movie and the impressive results achieved by the narrator and others, I figured it was worth my while to at least try out the juicing thing and start with a recipe from the movie.  As luck would have it, Steve inherited a juicer from an aunt who died a couple of years ago, so it was simply a matter of buying the ingredients and getting started.

I'll admit that I never really had any interest in juicing before watching the movie because it looked like more trouble than it's worth, and I'm not really into vegetable juices anyway (except for using V8 to make Bloody Marys).  I mean, if I'm too lazy to deal with the cleanup from making smoothies or daiquiris, why bother making a juice drink that I can buy at the store?

Well, as it turns out, it's really not that bad.  All I had to do was learn my way around the juicer, figure out how thinly the ingredients need to be sliced in order to fit through the chute and then take the juicer apart to clean it afterwards.  Steve was very helpful with all of the above, and the resulting juice was pretty decent.  I used a little less kale than what the recipe called for, just because the bunch that we had only added up to nine leaves and I made a double batch so that Steve and I could both have some.  All the other ingredients were in the same proportions as the recipe.  The smaller amount of kale may or may not have made a difference, but the result was very appley.  I'd actually consider having this for breakfast some time, even though I don't normally consume green things first thing in the morning. 

So now I know one juice recipe that I like, and I'll be trying my hand at some others in the near future.  If you have a juicer collecting dust like we did, break it out and give juicing a whirl!

Hot Vegetable Salad

Well, I made it through all 21 days (23 days, actually) of the vegan kickstart.  I was pretty pleased with that, since I was really only trying to see how long I could last without cheese.  And now I know.

Now that I'm back to being a regular old vegetarian, I decided to attempt a knockoff of California Dreaming's Hot Vegetable Salad.  Mind you, I've never tried it; I was planning to order it at my office's holiday luncheon in 2009 but ended up spending that day at home sick.  Anyhoo, we've had a bunch of produce in the fridge for the past week and I was starting to fret about what to do with all of it when, somehow, I was reminded of this salad.  Mine's not exactly the same (I didn't have any green beans or hearts of palm on hand), but that's all right because the recipe lends itself well to adaptations.

Hot Vegetable Salad:
(Serves two)
1 tbsp Earth Balance
4 tbsp olive oil, divided
1 yellow squash, halved lengthwise and thinly sliced
1 orange bell pepper, seeded and sliced
1 red bell pepper, seeded and diced
1 can artichoke hearts, drained and halved
2 cloves garlic
2 tsp dried thyme
salt and pepper to taste
6-7 ounces fresh spinach leaves
1 vine-ripened tomato, diced
2 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp shredded Asiago cheese
1 tbsp shredded Parmesan cheese

Heat Earth Balance and 1 tbsp olive oil in nonstick pan over medium heat.  Add squash, peppers and garlic and saute until peppers begin to soften, about 5 minutes.  Add artichokes, salt, pepper and thyme and continue to cook until peppers and squash are tender but not mushy, another 3-5 minutes.  Remove from heat.

Meanwhile, combine salt, pepper, lemon juice and remaining olive oil in a bowl.  Add the dressing to the spinach leaves and tomato and toss well.  Place the spinach and tomato on two 9-inch plates, cover each bed of spinach with half of the cooked vegetables and top each salad with equal amounts of Parmesan and Asiago.
***
Did I mention that it's equally tasty and easy to put together?  This is easily one of my shortest blog posts that actually contained a recipe!

Give this a try whenever you have a bunch of veggies you don't have any ideas for.  Maybe even use some of your veggies in the salad and some in a soup recipe on a soup-and-salad night!  If you happen to have veggies (hot or cold) left over from the salad, maybe use them in a wrap the next day with a little more cheese (and/or some drained and rinsed chickpeas or cannellini beans).  So many possibilities!

Have a great week, and hopefully I'll see some you (in the Columbia area) at the Ray Tanner Home Run next week!

Lemon balm pesto orzo with carmelized mushrooms, green olives and eggplant

Wow, that's a mouthful.  I hadn't planned on serving all of this together, but since Steve brought home two medium-sized eggplants earlier this week, I figured I could skip the usual ratatouille/moussaka thing and just saute some thick slices as a side dish.  When it occurred to me that the eggplant would take up a lot of space on the plate, I decided on a more visually appealing presentation with the pasta served on a bed of eggplant and garnished with the mushrooms and stuffed olives.

The recipe was pretty much the same as here except that I used orzo, figuring that short pasta would be less awkward on a bed of something that needs cutting.  I also substituted lemon balm for the basil called for in traditional pesto because my lemon balm plant was in a greater need of thinning.  I thought at first that I had burned the mushrooms, but they still tasted good and were simply a little crispier than caramelized.  It was a fine line, heatwise, with the eggplant; on one hand I wanted it to cook through without it being too mushy, but on the other hand I didn't want to burn it.  Well, at first I thought I was burning it (and that it was just as well to hide it under all that pasta), but it really came out more like it would have on the grill.  All I used for it was a little olive oil in a nonstick pan and generous amounts of salt, pepper and Italian herb mix on each side.

It hit the spot: this morning I did my first track workout in ages - 800 meter repeats at the RNE track - and was able to meet or beat my goal time on all of them!  Hooray for pasta and hooray for eggplant!

Since my long weekend of work begins tonight, I probably won't post again before sometime next week.  Enjoy your weekend off, and I look forward to getting back in the kitchen (and telling you all about it) soon!

My two-day vegan cleanse

So, I had some free time yesterday morning and did a little cooking to get Steve and me through the next couple of days.  After having just a little too much fun during my weekend off, it seemed like a good idea to take a temporary leave of animal products and alcohol.  Nothing major, just a couple of days of austerity to help me feel better.  To that end, I whipped these two things together before lunch:

Summer vegetable soup:

This is loosely based on the summer vegetable soup in my Greek cookbook (The Food of Greece p. 87).  It pretty much amounts to throwing things in the pot and letting them blend until you have soup.  Since we had yellow squash from one of Steve's recent trips to the store and I had radishes and herbs from the backyard, it was easy enough to take what was fresh and add a few more things that were either canned or frozen and throw them in a pot.  So...the soup bowl pictured above contains chopped yellow squash, onion, radishes, one diced cucumber (only because we had one, also from the backyard, and the Greek cookbook said it was okay) crushed tomatoes, about four cups of veggie broth, about a cup and a half of thawed lima beans from the freezer, a few sprigs of thyme, a few chopped basil leaves, lemon juice, salt and pepper.  This ended up being my lunch and Steve's dinner yesterday.

Pasta salad:

This is nearly the same as my usual pasta salad, except that I threw in a bunch of chopped Italian parsley from the backyard along with the artichoke hearts, tomatoes (grown and given to me by a patient's wife!) and sliced black olives.  The "dressing" was just some salt, pepper, lemon juice and olive oil that I drizzled over the pasta and veggies right before they went in the fridge.  I left the optional shredded Parmesan out of the batch but treated myself to the cheese-included helping shown here for lunch today.  So, between that and the yogurt-honey-peanut Balance bar I had for breakfast this morning, my vegan cleanse is officially over (until next time).
***

SO glad we finally got some rain last night and Monday.  It's been about six days, and I've got about five little sprouts so far of the spring mix seeds I planted last week.  Not bad, considering the package said it would take 10-14 days for sprouting to occur.  With any luck I'll be able to make salads with it before summer's out.  Both boxes of radishes are coming along nicely as well. 

Also, for those of you in Columbia who know and love the All-Local Farmer's Market: they've just announced that they're expanding and will also be open on Wednesday evenings from 4-8 p.m. starting August 24.  If you haven't already, go check it out!  For more info, click here:
http://www.free-times.com/index.php?cat=1992912064202144&ShowArticle_ID=12292607112412392

I've still got three yellow squash and two bags of spinach to dispense with in the next few days.  Check back to see what kind of ingeniousness I cook up next time to keep us fed and make good use of what's on hand!

Cleaning out the fridge two meals in a row

When I woke up yesterday morning and poured my customary glass of orange juice, I couldn't help but notice the accumulation in the produce drawer:

Luckily, yesterday was a day off (my typical work "week" now being mostly long weekends), so I decided to cook for both lunch and dinner.

For lunch, the zucchini "moussaka" dish from the July 2004 issue of Food and Wine.  They don't seem to have the recipe on their website anymore, so here's a link to one of the times I made it last summer.

Ingredients from the backyard: three yellow squash (instead of zucchini), one green pepper (instead of the onion I didn't have), parsley and mint.

From the store: two tomatoes, a can of chickpeas, a can of tomato sauce (instead of tomato paste), 3/4 cup dry couscous and the rest of the seasonings (garlic, etc.).

The nice thing about this recipe is that it's so easy: I got started around 12:30, including chopping, and it was done and ready to eat by 1:00.  Steve had some as well, and I got to enjoy the leftovers today for lunch.

Later, after a few pages of the book I'm reading and a nice, long nap, dinner time was suddenly around the corner.  No problem - I've got this!

Dinner was spinach risotto-stuffed red peppers and an Al Amir-style salad on the side.

From the store: two large red bell peppers (99 cents each at Bi-Lo), spinach, arborio rice, parmesan...pretty much everything for the peppers.  For the salad: tomato, olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper.

From the backyard: cucumbers, parsley and mint for the salad.

For those who don't live in the Columbia area, Al Amir is a Mediterranean restaurant that serves a salad that's pretty much like tabbouleh minus the bulghur wheat.  It's a very cool, refreshing summer salad that's easy to make and delicious - especially if you're using fresh, sweet cucumbers from the backyard or fresh from a local farm.

And here's what we ended up with!

So, while I did make a sizeable dent in the produce selection pictured above, I still have one zucchini, one yellow squash and some of the spinach in the fridge, plus the head of broccoli that Steve picked up when he went grocery shopping at the end of the day.  So, in the next day or two I'll figure out what I'm going to do with them...

Stay cool, everybody.  If you live in Columbia city limits and get any significant rainfall (like on Monday night), do me a favor and send those storm clouds to the northeast after a few minutes.  We could use an inch or three up here!

Soup and salad night

I'm a couple of days late with this post but very happy to report that nearly half of the veggies and herbs in Thursday night's soup and salad dinner came from the backyard!  From the store, a big handful of baby spinach, an onion, a tomato and about eight red baby potatoes.  Oh, and feta cheese and lemon juice.  From the garden, a bunch of radish tops, three radishes, two cucumbers, about fifteen oregano leaves, seven or eight basil leaves and another seven or eight lemon balm leaves. 

I'd been looking forward to making this radish greens soup for a while but wanted to wait until I already had the potato and onion before pulling up the one bunch of radish greens remaining.  The radishes were mostly non-performers this time due to overwatering (go figure - they got as much water as the first bunch that did fine), but the greens were all perfectly usable.  So, when Steve brought home the potatoes and onion one day this week, I decided that the moment had arrived and I went to it, substituting veggie broth for the chicken broth.  Also, earlier in the week he had picked a cucumber or two along with the squash and zucchini that are going off gangbusters in the garden, so I figured that a tomato and some fresh herbs and a homemade Greek lemon-oil dressing were all that I'd need to complete a Greek cucumber salad like the one featured here.

I used said handful of spinach because the recipe called for two bunches of radish greens and I only had the one.  Plus, the spinach in the fridge wasn't getting any younger, and I knew that I wanted to use up all eight of the baby red potatoes because I didn't have any other ideas for them and I wanted to soup to be equally potato-y and green or slightly in favor of the greens, which necessitated supplementation of the radish greens. 

The end result  A nice, light dinner for a hot evening!

It's going to be another hot one.  Please do a rain dance for veggie gardens across the Southeast today!

My very first homemade pizza!

Yep, I’m 35 and never made a pizza before Wednesday night.  While I’ve eaten plenty of it in my day (I did go to college, after all), I’ve never considered myself a good enough baker to get the dough right.  Luckily, I recently came across the Brokeass Gourmet’s pizza dough recipe, which really is as easy to make as she says (I used a mixing bowl and wooden spoon, nothing high-tech), and decided it was once again worth trying to achieve success with flour and active dry yeast. 

It was also time to take a bunch of big basil leaves off my plant before they all started turning brown and sloughing off to make room for the ones growing in behind them, so I can say that the sauce on my very first pizza was pesto rather than a regular red sauce.  A quick Google search turned up this traditional pesto recipe, which I followed to the letter except that I doubled the garlic to four cloves; two just didn’t seem like enough for the amount of basil I harvested.

With these two things made, it was just a question of rolling out a little less than half the pizza dough onto a 12-inch pizza pan (which Steve, dear that he is, went out and bought since we didn’t have one), slathering on about half of the pesto (about half a cup), covering it over with thinly sliced mozzarella and the toppings we had.  I didn't have any other ideas for the mushrooms we had in the fridge, so that’s what you see here.  Into the 400 degree oven it went for 20 minutes, and voilà! 

 

I'm not sure if it's because of the pizza pan being non-stick or not, but the bottom part of the crust actually started to brown after about 15 minutes; it was another five minutes before the top edges were brown enough to call the pizza done.  In any case, having a non-stick pan was very handy, since we also don't have a pizza cutter.  With the non-stick pan, it was easy just to slide the pizza off the pan and onto a cutting board for slicing with a regular serrated knife.

Since I ran 9 miles Wednesday morning, I still had a few calories to replace and helped myself to three slices; Steve had two.  The leftovers were just as good for lunch on Thursday after about 40 seconds in the microwave per slice.

So, tonight I made a spinach and feta pizza - just like the one at the Hunter-Gatherer in Columbia - that turned out just as well!  This time I did whip together a quick tomato sauce: eight-ounce can of tomato sauce, half a tablespoon of dried Italian herbs, two cloves of garlic and one pinch each of salt and pepper.  I eyeballed the chopped spinach and crumbled feta, but I pretty much covered the mozzarella before putting it in the oven.  Same as Wednesday: 400 degrees, 20 minutes.

It went in the oven around 7:00, and all of it was eaten before Jeopardy was over.

Pizza, Marian style – homemade sauce and dough.  Who knows?  Maybe when some of the veggies in the backyard have ripened, they’ll also make an appearance atop one of my pizzas!  Tomato slices, mmmm….

Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme

All of the above ingredients went into the dinner I made last night after a very rough day at work.  Cooking was the furthest thing from my mind when I got home; all I could think about was propping up the achy foot I walked around on all day (boo, plantar fasciitis).  I'm glad I did because I was getting sick of settling for a frozen Amy's Kitchen entree (even though they're good), chips and salsa, chips and hummus or a salad consisting of the salad greens and dressing (nothing to chop). 

Until yesterday, I also had a ridiculously overgrown parsley plant in the backyard with stalks - actual stalks, like five or six of them - that were making it hard for the newer leaves to grow in.  So, inspired by necessity, I chopped off all the stalks, snipped all the parsley with normal-looking stems off them and then used all four cups worth to make a parsley and walnut pesto, about half of which went into the risotto (same recipe as here but with ground sage sauteed in Earth Balance with the rice; the pesto instead of spinach; and no nutmeg).  The lentils were cooked in salt, rosemary and a few sprigs of fresh thyme.  Steve found the lentils a nice complement to the brightness of the pesto risotto, and the leftovers hit the spot after my 10-mile run this morning!  I also look forward to using the leftover pesto in a quick and easy pasta dish in the next day or two.

Tonight I made a recipe from this month's Food and Wine magazine that came together really fast by substituting canned chickpeas for dried.  I also left out the caraway and cilantro because I didn't have any and because the recipe seemed to have enough flavor without them. 

I was right!  I also substituted about six big, finely chopped spearmint leaves (one tablespoon?) for the teaspoon of dried mint because I have tons of mint in the veggie/herb garden right now and because the dried mint that I have on hand right now is the cheap stuff from the Mexican aisle that's chock full of stems.  (Double boo.  I should collect some from the backyard and start preserving it myself.)  With canned chickpeas, it only took a little over a half-hour to make, and the combination of wilted Swiss chard and a cool yogurt topping was a lot like something by a Turkish chef they profiled several years back.  Try it out sometime when you don't have a lot of time or energy to cook!  The recipe doesn't mention a starch, but a bed of couscous seemed like the obvious choice.

Hope everyone's enjoying this nice weather - I know I've been enjoying the rain in intervals that keep me from having to water the veggies I'll be cooking with this summer!

Simple dishes that last

This post is a two-for to make up for the blog post I didn't do on Sunday. 

Sunday I made...wait for it...beans and rice. 

Pigeon peas and sofrito sauce with brown rice, to be exact.  There wasn't a whole lot to blog about there.  I basically followed the pigeon pea soup recipe from over the summer except that I skipped the butternut squash and plantain and used frozen diced green peppers because that's what I had.  I think I also forgot to use the same amount of Yucateco because it wasn't as spicy as I expected.  Truth be told, this was good except that I wish I'd stirred in some tomato paste once the pigeon peas and sofrito sauce were combined.  It would have added some additional color and flavor variety that was lacking from this dish without the butternut squash from the soup.  Oh, and don't leave the peas soaking in the fridge for a day in a half unless you don't mind them sprouting a teeny bit.

Tonight I'm fueling up for another 13-miler, so I made spinach and artichoke pasta.  This used up the last of a bag of fresh spinach, some leftover canned artichokes and a lemon.  And the last of a small block of Romano cheese.  Mmm...pasta.

8 oz. whole wheat linguine
2 tbsp Earth Balance
2 oz. fresh baby spinach
1/2 can of artichoke hearts, drained
juice of one lemon
1/4 cup freshly grated Romano cheese
salt and pepper to taste

Cook the pasta according to the package directions.  Drain the pasta, lower the heat to medium and stir in the Earth Balance.  As soon as it melts, stir in the spinach and artichoke hearts and cook until the spinach wilts, tossing the ingredients well in order to blend them.  Stir in cheese and add salt and pepper to taste.

Both dishes this week yielded ample leftovers, and since I haven't been hungry for more than a salad most evenings, the leftovers are all getting eaten for lunch.  And since I'm running long first thing tomorrow morning, I'm sure I'll be loving the ready-and-waiting pasta leftovers when lunchtime rolls around!

Emerald Isle Pasta with Parsley Pesto

I just decided to steal this name from a pasta dish they serve at The Puddlin' Duck.  It's kinda the same based on the menu description, but not exactly the same.  Their menu is all about meat and we don't usually eat there, but if we do, this is probably the only thing on their menu I could order besides some mozzarella sticks or fries.  I'd also say the macaroni and cheese, but they use egg in theirs.  Boo.

So, I had a big bunch of parsley that I bought late last week and still hadn't used by last night, and I was worried that if I didn't do something with it right away, it would all end up in the compost bin.  And organic parsley makes for some needlessly expensive compost.  Without having enough of an appetite to stay in the kitchen and make a meal out of it, I whipped up some pesto.  It went something like this:

1 bunch flat-leaf parsley (about two cups), coarsely chopped
1/2 cup pine nuts
juice of one lemon plus some of the pulp
8 gloves minced garlic
salt and pepper to taste
1/3 cup olive oil

Puree all ingredients in a blender or food processor. 

That's it!  Left it in the fridge overnight, and tonight I added it to some cooked pasta, gave it a good stir and shaved some Romano cheese over the top.  I was also pleased to discover that it firmed up in the fridge, so now it also makes a tasty, garlicky, parsley-y chip dip.  Steve wasn't into the idea, but I'm sure I'll be snacking on it sometime this weekend.

In any case, this was a simple but great way to get ready for tomorrow morning's run. 

Until next time...

Soup and Salad Sunday

Another recipe I've been thinking about and just now getting around to making.  I've been wanting to make something akin to minestrone, but since I didn't have any cannellini beans in the house (they often get used the day I buy them), I made do with a cup or so of dry lentils and some other things on hand.  This was a handy way to get rid of some carrots that have been hanging out in the fridge for over a week as well as one large onion from a bag purchased more recently.   The rest could have been used whenever, and today was as good a day as any.

Lentil soup:
2 tbsp Smart Balance
1 large onion, chopped
2 small carrots, peeled and sliced
3 cloves garlic, chopped
2 tsp dried Italian herb mix
1 cup frozen green beans, thawed
4 cups vegetable broth
1 cup green lentils, rinsed and sorted
1 15-ounce can of diced tomatoes

Heat the Smart Balance over medium heat in a 2-3 quart saucepan.  Add carrots and onions and cook until softened, about 3-5 minutes.  Add garlic and herb mix and cook for another 2 minutes.  Add green beans and cook until warmed, another 2-3 minutes.  Add vegetable broth, lentils and tomatoes.  Stir, cover and simmer until lentils have cooked through, about 25-30 minutes.

And today's salad involved an ingredient I'd never used before: radish sprouts purchased at the All-Local Farmer's Market at the end of my 11-mile run yesterday morning! 

I've been meaning to check out City Roots as well, and, having seen their selection on Saturday, I can't wait to stop by their location this week for some more new veggies!

Spinach salad with black olives and radish sprouts:
2-3 handfuls fresh spinach, washed and torn
1 small bag (1 cup?) radish sprouts
1/2 cup sliced black olives, drained
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp lemon juice
salt and pepper to taste

Assemble the first three ingredients, in order, on two salad plates.  In a small bowl, combine the next three ingredients and pour over the salad.

Good good stuff!  And I'm happy to actually have time to cook when I'm not too tired, like I was all day yesterday.  "Dinner" was me stuffing my face with hummus and spicy blue corn tortilla chips in front of the TV, catching up on 30 Rock and Outsourced.  Yay, Saturday night.

But I've got plenty of leftover soup to enjoy over the next couple of days, and tomorrow Steve and I will be celebrating Valentine's Day at Al's Upstairs!

Enjoy this lovely weather while it lasts!

Mulligatawny

...inspired by the "Soup Nazi "episode of Seinfeld.

I've come across a couple of recipes recently that only vaguely resemble the one I make - with chicken, tomatoes and yogurt instead of coconut milk (their version, not mine).  This recipe here is the first one I ever found, years ago, when I went looking for a recipe on foodnetwork.com.  To date, it's the only one I've ever worked from, and it never occurred to me that anyone else made it differently.  So imagine my surprise when I went hunting for recipes and found that nearly all contain chicken, celery, carrots and apples!

Well, the chicken's out because I think I'm done with it (and seafood and red meat) for the duration.  And I don't have any apples, carrots or celery on hand right now - not that I'd want the apples in a soup if I had them.  Really, the reason I decided to make this is to use up the leftover coconut milk from Friday's praram, a jalapeno (with the seeds) and the remaining cilantro.  I might try it one day with carrots and celery if I ever have everything I need to make it that way, but for now I think this version is just as good as any.  It all gets pureed, the coconut milk is stirred in at the very last, and voila - a lovely, silky-smooth lentil-coconut-curry bisque.  Served over rice.

To keep it totally vegetarian, I used Smart Balance instead of the butter and Better than Bouillon vegetable base instead of the chicken broth.  And Steve's been such a good sport about the vegetarian thing.  He bought himself a rotisserie chicken from the Pig the other day, and I told him he could add some to his bowl of soup if he wanted, but he didn't.  He even went back for seconds!

Worst case scenario, he'll have a bigger appetite for snacks by the time 30 Rock comes on.

Steve's pistachio asparagus pesto

Wednesday's surprise dinner.  All I could think about from 3:00 on was how hungry I was, and after hoping all the way home that I'd have the patience to make something and not just plop down on the sofa with some cashews and beer, I walked in the door and discovered that Steve had just finished making this!  What a treat!

(Loosely based on this recipe.)

1 lb asparagus
3/4 cup pistachio nuts
1 tbsp garlic
3/4 cup shredded Parmesan cheese
4 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp lemon juice
10 oz whole wheat rotini pasta

1. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add asparagus and cook for 4 minutes submerged. Remove from the water and shock in a bowl of ice water. Drain and then place on a cutting board.

Slice off the asparagus tips at about 3/4 inch and set aside. Toss the bottom 1/5 of the stalks.  Finely chop the rest.

2. Add the garlic to a food processor along with 4 tablespoons of the pistachios, olive oil, lemon juice and a pinch of salt. Blend until the pistachios are crushed and the asparagus is coarsely chopped.

3. Add the pasta to a pot of boiling water. Cook for 10-12 Min.. Drain and cool.

4. Add the pesto and stir well. 

5. Chop up the remaining pistachios add with the remaining chopped asparagus

6. Add the grated Parmesan and mix lightly.

Season with salt and pepper to taste. Serve hot or cold.

I had mine hot last night and again for lunch today, and it was delish!  Steve had his as a pasta salad today and added chopped tomato and a dash of cayenne pepper.  Think I'll do the same tomorrow!
Steve hardly ever cooks unless I'm out of town - not because he can't or doesn't want to, but because I usually beat him to the kitchen in the early evening.  And maybe because, I don't know, I'm a little territorial in the kitchen?  He's always asking if he can help with anything, and I always tell him no unless my hands are full and something needs to be stirred.  But he picked a great night for a nice surprise and a nice dinner.  As far as I'm concerned, I got a two-for!

Whiting au poivre with herbed lentils

So, last week I saw where some website had posted French recipes in celebration of Bastille Day.  One of them was "Tuna au poivre with lemon-caper lentils," with tuna being chosen as a healthy substitute for pepper steak.  Well, I almost never have either in the house, but we did have whiting in the freezer.  Also, Steve doesn't like capers because of their unsavory provenance ("they're a garbage vegetable"?), which was just as well because I had carrots and some zucchini from the backyard that needed to be used up.  The link to the recipe this is based on is here, and here's what I actually made (Tuesday night):

2 6-oz. whiting filets and one flounder filet, thawed
salt and fresh-ground pepper
1 cup lentils, rinsed and sorted
1 sprig fresh rosemary, chopped
2 medium carrots, peeled and sliced
2 medium zucchini, quartered lengthwise and sliced about 1/3 inch thick
1 tbsp lemon juice

Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees.  Salt and pepper both sides of each fish filet, pressing in the pepper.  Place the fish filets in a greased shallow baking pan and bake until fish flakes with a fork, about 15-20 minutes.  Halfway through the cooking, sprinkle lemon juice on the fish filets and put them back in the oven.

Meanwhile, bring 2 1/2 cups of water to boil.  Add lentils, carrots, rosemary and salt.  Cover and simmer for 10 minutes.  After 10 minutes, add zucchini, put the lid back on and simmer until lentils are done, another 15-20 minutes.

Easy, huh?  Steve and I both had the whiting on Tuesday night, and I had the flounder for lunch at work the next day.  The flavors of whiting and flounder are different, but I thought it worked either way.

As hungry as I am, I can't believe I'm still typing.  Thank God Steve brought home another rotisserie chicken; now all I have to do is cook up some of the broccoli he brought home a few days ago and we'll be set!

Tabbouleh!

Since I live in South Carolina, it's wicked hot. So hot that I don't always want to cook and sometimes wonder if I could lower my power bill by leaving things outside to cook in the afternoon sun. And since I do the Pinckney's thing, I have a steady supply of cucumbers. And since I grow some things in my backyard, I also have fresh parsley and mint. Hmm...

For this recipe, I did go out and buy some bulghur wheat and a few vine-ripened tomatoes. I'm not always so good at using up cucumbers before they spoil, but I figured that I could use up my whole supply in one go with this recipe (loosely based on the one in the "Algerie" chapter of La cuisine autour de la mediterranee*):

1 cup bulghur wheat (a.k.a. cracked wheat)
3-4 medium, ripe tomatoes, diced
5 small (pickling) cucumbers, or 2-3 medium cucumbers, peeled, seeded and diced
1/2 cup chopped fresh parsley
1/2 cup chopped fresh mint
3 tbsp olive oil
3 tbsp lemon juice
salt and pepper to taste

Place the uncooked bulghur wheat in a mixing bowl (can also be the container in which it will be stored) and cover with the diced tomatoes, transferring as much tomato juice as possible. Add the diced cucumbers, parsley, mint, olive oil and lemon juice and stir until combined. Refrigerate overnight or for at least 6 hours; this will allow enough time for the juices to soften up the bulghur wheat. Add salt and pepper to taste.

If you eat light, this may suffice as a meal. Otherwise, you could serve this with hummus and pita wedges or maybe some blackened chicken or fish. Since it usually takes me a few days to go through it, I prefer to add salt and pepper to individual portions so that the rest of the batch will keep. It can also be made with couscous instead of the bulghur wheat. Using couscous reduces the wait time to an hour or two, but since it's a processed grain, it also breaks down faster. One thing I learned the first time I made this is, despite the directions in the recipe book referenced above, you do *not* want to cook the grain. Cooking the grain, especially if it's couscous, makes for a very mushy salad. Letting the grain soak up the juices from the tomato, cucumber and lemon not only heads off this problem but also allows the grain to absorb their flavors. This is a great, no-cook recipe on a hot summer day!