Thai red coconut curry stir-fry

I made this Tuesday night (leftovers were gone by lunch Wednesday) and I'm just now getting around to blogging about it.  It's been a very lazy week at home since I joined the sisterhood of hospital staff who worked on Christmas Day.

A couple of months ago, I made my first Thai coconut curry, based on a recipe I found online, and was disappointed enough with the result that I didn't bother to write about it.  I just ate the leftovers very sulkily at work over the next couple of days.  Later, I got a little curious about this "red coconut curry" that I'd heard about, looked for a recipe that seemed reliable, went out and got some Thai Kitchen red curry paste and some fresh veggies and got down to bidniss.

This recipe was my starting point, and the author helpfully suggests alternatives based on meat-eating status and availability of seasonal produce.  I replaced the chicken and chicken broth with tofu and veggie broth (and skipped the fish sauce), and my veggie selection was different as well.  I picked up a red bell pepper, some baby carrots and a head of broccoli and sliced up the last few mushrooms I had in a package from something else I'd made a few days prior (don't even remember anymore) and pretty much followed their instructions.  Oh, I also used lime juice instead of lemon and didn't worry about the basil.  When the stir-fry was ready (I took a picture of it in the pan because it was just so pretty!), I served it over a bed of rice noodles.  Delicious! 

Of course, if you're not a vegetarian, you could make it exactly as shown in the original recipe, but the nice thing about this and so many other recipes is that it lends itself to substitution.  Maybe try it with shrimp instead of chicken?  I dunno.  The only thing I'd say is that if you actually want to have leftovers, use slightly larger quantities of veggies and meat/tofu/whatever, because it cooks down a good bit and there was only one leftover portion for the next day's lunch.  (Guess who ate it?)  And if you use broccoli like I did, be sure to stir it in near the end, since it takes very little time to cook and you don't want it to be mushy by the time the dish is ready to serve.  I added the broccoli at about the same time as the cornstarch mixture, and it came out just right.

Well, this is probably it for 2011.  If you're in the Columbia area, I look forward to seeing some of you tomorrow morning at the Cold Winter's Day 5K or tomorrow night on Main Street, where George Clinton will be kicking off 2012 P-Funk style!

Stay warm and be safe, everyone!

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 Kitchen of Indian Delights

So little time for cooking these days, what with the crazy hours I've been working at the hospital, but somehow I manage...
Before rediscovering some of the Indian recipes that I love but haven't made in a while, I had one more go at gyros on Tuesday, this time using mushrooms.   Since I ran out of Greek seasoning mix the last time I made gyros, I had to whip out my Greek cookbook and figure out an approximation.  It turned out to be as simple as salt, pepper, garlic, coriander and finely chopped onion.  The recipe in the book also called for a little bit of allspice and savory, which I don't have, but I found that the mushrooms did just as well with the seasonings I did have.

Yesterday (my only day off this week, boo) I made a couple of Indian dishes in hopes of getting through the next couple of days on leftovers.  One was a batch of Bell Pepper and Tomato Rice with Cashews, and the other was Zucchini Kootu.  Both recipes are in Healthy South Indian Cooking (see Books, Links, Blogs for biblio reference) and are totally vegan.  Recipes follow this colorful, texturific photo!

Bell Pepper and Tomato Rice with Cashews:
1 cup basmati rice (brown rice works too)
5 oz. frozen lima beans
1/2 tsp turmeric
2 tbsp canola oil
2 small pieces of cinnamon stick (or just sprinkle on some ground cinnamon)
1 bay leaf
1/2 tsp cumin seeds
1/2 tsp fennel seeds
1/2 cup onion, sliced lengthwise
1 cup tomato, diced
1 green chili pepper, finely chopped
1 cup coarsely chopped green bell peppers
1/2 tbsp curry powder
1 tsp salt
1/4 cup cashew halves/pieces

Cook whatever rice you're using according to the package instructions and let cool for 15 minutes so that it's not sticky when you stir in the rest.

Cook the lima beans in just enough water to cover and 1/4 tsp turmeric until they are tender (10 minutes?), then drain and set aside.

Heat oil in a frying pan or large saucepan over medium heat.  When oil is hot, add the cinnamon, bay leaf, fennel and cumin.  Brown briefly, just enough to bring out their aroma, then add the onion, tomato and chili and saute for one minute.

Add the bell pepper, lima beans and remaining turmeric and mix well.  Cook, covered, over medium heat until bell pepper starts to become tender (3 minutes?).  Stir in the curry powder and salt.

Add cooked rice to the mixture and stir until blended.  Stir in cashew halves and serve.

Zucchini Kootu:
1/2 cup toor dal
1/2 tsp turmeric
2 tbsp canola oil
4 to 6 curry leaves
1 tsp black mustard seeds
1 tsp urad dal
1/2 cup chopped onion
1 green chili pepper, chopped
3 cups diced zucchini
1 tsp minced ginger
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp powdered coconut

Boil two cups of water and add toor dal and 1/4 tsp turmeric.  Reduce heat and cook until dal mashes easily with a fork (about 30 minutes; no need to mash it all, just make sure it's cooked to a "creamy" consistency).  Add water as needed until the dal is done cooking.

Heat oil in a saucepan over medium heat.  When it's hot, but not smoking, add asafoetida and curry leaves.  (This is very important when using asafoetida, because if it's added to a pan that's too hot, it could smoke you out of your kitchen.  Take it from someone who learned the hard way.)

Add mustard seeds and urad dal and cook, covered, until the mustard seeds pop and urad dal is golden.

Add onion, chili pepper and the remaining turmeric and stir.  Add the zucchini and ginger and blend well with the other ingredients.

Add the toor dal plus 1/2 cup of warm water (any water leftover from the cooking is fine), cumin and salt.  Stir well, cover and cook until the zucchini is tender, about 5 minutes.  Add the coconut powder, stir and remove from heat.
***

I was glad that the zucchini dish was relatively mild when I served it last night, because it seemed like a heavy seasoning blend might have clashed with that of the rice dish.  However, when I had the leftover zucchini for lunch today as a pita filling, it seemed a little bland all by itself.  The simple solution?  Stir in a little salt and cayenne pepper before nuking.  Easy, delicious lunch, and I still have some of the rice for when I get home from work tonight!

If you don't hear from me again before the weekend's over, have a safe and happy 4th!

Fun with radishes

Here are my radishes - the first veggies I ever grew from seeds!

I was pretty anxious to use them once they were out of the ground and washed, because I've noticed in the past that radishes can dry out after just a few days in the fridge.  So, I replayed the radish sambhar recipe here but left out the bell pepper (didn't have any), used more radish than the recipe called for (all the ones pictured above) and used extra yellow split peas in place of the toor dal that I was fresh out of.  I also had a bunch of cilantro that all went in at the end.  Word to the wise: when making any recipe using yellow split peas plus veggies, start cooking the yellow split peas about 15 minutes before the rest since they take a while to soften completely (about 45 minutes).  Here's how it turned out, served over brown rice:

I also figured I'd be cheating myself if I didn't come up with a use for the greens as well.  I have a recipe on file for a pureed radish green and potato soup, but another use came to mind that also allowed me to dispense of half a block of tofu, a package of mushrooms, a zucchini and about four carrots that I had no other plans for: the hot pots that I first made back in January for Steve's birthday.  The broth was pretty much the same as before.  The rest included sliced mushrooms, zucchini and carrots cut into matchsticks, cubed tofu, the last of my rice stick noodles and radish greens sliced into ribbons.  I sauteed the carrots to soften them up a little before assembling the dish. 

Yummy as always, with or without sriracha!

This week's looking like it will be too hot for soup, so be on the lookout for some sort of salad recipe that will use at least one ingredient from the garden.  Stay cool everybody!

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….

Pasta, pasta and more pasta

I didn't realize until I scrolled through my recent food photos that I forgot to blog this pasta dish from a few weeks back - vegan Italian sausage marinara. 

I was inspired by the occasional offering of real Italian sausages in marinara sauce in the hospital cafeteria where I work as well as the fact that we had some Morningstar fake Italian sausages in the fridge from a recent camping trip.  (They're supposed to be kept frozen, so it seemed like a good idea to hurry up and use them.)  So, I cut the fake sausage into big chunks, browned them, set them aside and then made the marinara and the pasta.  I made what seemed like a mistake when I added the fake sausage to the sauce before it was all the way done, because the fake sausage started breaking down in all the hot liquid.  It still turned out well, though, because the parts that broke down ended up giving it a meat sauce-like texture that I hadn't enjoyed in a long time.  Suffice it to say that the leftovers weren't around for long.

Saturday night, while we (or at least Steve) spent two and a half hours watching the live coverage of Derby hats and Jimmy Fallon rapping in his jockey getup, I whipped together what was essentially a replay of the green olive pesto with chardonnary mushrooms recipe from a few months ago, only this time I used the walnut parsley pesto from the other day and used sauvignon blanc (the usual white wine on hand) for the sliced baby bellas. 

Just as delicious as before, and I thoroughly enjoyed the leftovers at work the next day!

Boo to the fact that said next day at work was Sunday, but such is life when you work in a hospital.  Oh, well - it was still nice to see visitors bringing flowers to the patients whose special day it was.  Anyway, when I got home yesterday, it turned out that Steve had cooked in my absence and that I had a yummy dinner to look forward to! 

We also had some asparagus that wasn't going to last much longer, so he saved me having to figure out what to do with it.

Steve's Macaroni and Asparagus Bake:
10 oz. elbow macaroni
3 tbsp Earth Balance
2 tbsp olive oil
3/4 cup flour
1 cup water (reserved from macaroni cooking water)
2 cups milk
1/2 cup white wine (he used sauvignon blanc)
salt and pepper to taste
1 pound asparagus cut in 1 inch pieces, tips cut off and reserved
1 pound shredded medium cheddar cheese

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Cook the elbow macaroni according to package directions.  Drain and set aside.

In a medium-sized saucepan, melt Earth Balance and olive oil over medium-low heat and stir in flour.  Stir until blended and then slowly stir in water.  When mixture begins to bubble, add all the asparagus except the tips.  Stir in the milk and continue to simmer.  Once the milk has heated through, add the wine.  Gently cook the white sauce with asparagus, stirring often so that it doesn't burn on the bottom, until it reduces down to a thick sauce (up to 30 minutes).

Grease a 9 X 13 inch baking dish.  Add one-fourth of the macaroni.  Cover the macaroni with one-third of the white sauce and asparagus followed by enough cheddar cheese to cover (about one-third).  Repeat the layers two more times, including the aspargus tips in the top layer of the white sauce, followed by the remaining cheddar cheese.

Bake until heated through and bubbly, about 30-40 minutes.  Raise the temperature to 400 degrees and set the pan on the top rack for about 5 minutes, until a crust begins to form on top.  Remove from the oven and let cool for 15 minutes before serving. 
***

In our case it was more like a couple of hours before we sat down to eat, so the pan spent some time in the fridge and we reheated portions in the microwave for about a minute.  Yum!

And without having had any of the leftovers for lunch, I can say for sure that it's just as good the next day! See, after my brisk 7-miler with the Ninjas this morning, I needed more sustenance than a bowl of yogurt and some ground flaxseed could provide.  When I opened up the refrigerator door to grab the orange juice and saw the leftover macaroni and asparagus staring me in the face, I couldn't help cutting out another slab and heating that up for breakfast!  Just what the doctor ordered.

In the very near future - fun with radishes!  I started growing them from seeds last month, and they'll be ready to harvest any day now.  I'm also trying to figure out what do do with all the lemon balm growing beside the basil.  Tea?  Stuffed shells?  Perhaps another pesto?

Stay tuned...

Sunday Double-Header

For the first time in ages, I cooked for lunch and dinner yesterday, having been inspired by the wealth of culinary insight to be found in the blogosphere and the Food Network website.

Lunch was black beans and rice with pineapple.  I got the idea from The Runner's Kitchen, who apparently got the idea from someone's forthcoming book.  My recipe differed a little from both:

2 cups water
1 cup brown rice
2 tbsp olive oil
1 onion, chopped
6 dried red chiles, cut in half
2 cloves garlic
1 tsp cumin
1/2 of a 12-ounce can of pineapple chunks
1/3 cup of juice from canned pineapples
2 cans of black beans, drained
salt to taste
1/2 cup chopped cilantro

Bring water to a boil and cook rice according to package instructions (usually about 45 minutes on medium-low heat).

In a separate saucepan, heat the olive oil over medium heat.  Add the next four ingredients and cook until onion has softened, about 3-5 minutes.  Add pineapple juice and cook until most of it has evaporated and chilies have plumped up slightly, another 3-5 minutes.  Add remaining three ingredients and cook until pineapple and black beans have heated through, another 5 minutes.  Stir in chopped cilantro and serve over a shallow bed of the brown rice.
****

And I guess I'd grown tired enough of having to eat 280-calorie frozen dinners on nights for which I had failed to meal-plan that I went ahead and filled my new (as of Thanksgiving) 9 x 13-inch casserole dish with a vegan shepherd's pie inspired by Rachael Ray's recipe. 

Mine, unlike hers, also features textured vegetable protein (TVP).  For the unfamiliar, this is a soy product that you buy dry and have to soak covered in warm water (like couscous).  From there, it takes on the flavor of whatever else you mix it with, but the idea is that it's a handy vegan substitute for ground beef.  I don't love it, but someone from my office gave it to me and I didn't want it to go to waste.

4 Russet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1.5-inch cubes
4 tbsp Smart Balance, divided
1 tsp white pepper

salt to taste
3 medium carrots, cut in half lengthwise and thinly sliced
1 onion, chopped
1 pound frozen green peas, thawed
pinch of nutmeg
salt and pepper to taste
1.5 cups textured vegetable protein
1.5 cups water
12 ounces baby bella mushrooms, finely chopped
salt and pepper to taste
paprika

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Place potatoes in a large sauce or soup pot, cover with water (1-2 inches above potatoes), salt generously and bring to a boil.  Boil covered until fork tender, then remove from heat.  Drain off as much water as possible and mash with a hand masher.  Stir in two tablespoons of the Smart Balance, white pepper and additional salt to taste.

In a separate pot, heat Smart Balance over medium heat.  Add carrots and cook until softened, about 5-7 minutes.  Add onion and cook until onions have softened, about 3-5 minutes.  Add next three ingredients, stir well and cook until peas have heated through, about 5 minutes.  Remove from heat.

In a mixing bowl, cover TVP with hot water and cover with a plate for 5 minutes.  Stir in mushrooms, salt and pepper.

Grease a 9 x 13-inch baking pan and spread mushroom mixture in an even layer across the bottom.  Follow with an even layer of the peas and carrots mixture, then top with an even layer of the mashed potatoes.  Sprinkle paprika over the top of the mashed potatoes and bake for 45 minutes.
***
The prep work takes more time than anything with the shepherd's pie, and this ended up being another casserole that I started at 5:00 but that wasn't served until just after 7:30.  I'm just glad I managed to stay up for another hour after eating, having gotten up early yesterday to run. 

So now I'm set for leftovers for the rest of the week.  I think I'll have some now!

Vegan Spinach Lasagna

Like the title says, it's vegan.  You've been warned...

This post had to wait a day because it took longer than I expected for this thing to come together.  I'm never, ever hungry past 7:30 p.m., and I realized when this went in the oven that it wouldn't be done until almost 8:00.  So, I let it do its thing and ate hummus and tortilla chips again while a computer handed his competitors' asses to them on Jeopardy.

I was a bit skeptical as to how a tweaked version of this recipe would turn out, but I was curious to see exactly what flavor combination would be produced by the ingredients for the tofu ricotta cheese.  Plus I still have a bunch of lasagna noodles left over from the two or three times I've made it over the past year (in a bread loaf pan, which only takes four or five noodles for three layers), I'm not a fan of ricotta cheese, and I was intrigued by the notion that the marinara sauce didn't have to be cooked down for over an hour and the lasagna noodles didn't have to already be cooked as long as the steam was held in.  Suddenly, lasagna seemed to have gotten easier.

Well, the sauce part was easier, and I just used frozen spinach and fresh baby bella mushrooms instead of the more complicated vegetable layer described in the original recipe.  Still, the time got away from me while I was blending the ingredients for the "cheese," thawing packages of frozen spinach, draining them, mixing in a little salt and pepper, then thinly slicing mushrooms and having the time of my life stirring the contents of a brand new can of tahini until I achieved an even consistency.  Think of stirring all the oil back into a deep jar of all-natural peanut butter and multiply that times 5.  No, make that 10.  So, despite having started this thing just after 5:00, it didn't go into the oven until 6:30.  So, tonight was the first opportunity I had to taste the end result while I had any appetite.

The result?...To be honest, I was expecting the "cheese" to be a little funky, but it actually wasn't!  Steve even finished his helping before I finished mine.

I do think that if I use my 9 x 13-inch baking pan again instead of the usual bread loaf pan, I'll make more sauce.  Maybe not the half-gallon used in the original recipe, but more than I did for this lasagna.  I only had two 15-ounce cans of diced tomatoes on hand; one I pureed, the other I left diced because the dice were small.  However, since it took more sauce than usual to cover each layer of veggies, etc., I hardly had any left to cover the top layer of noodles and half expected them to come out uncooked.  Thankfully, the sauce and everything else produced just enough steam (held in by foil) to keep that from happening, but next time I'll at least go up to three 15-ounce cans' worth of tomatoes so that I can have an equal layer of tomato sauce on top to swirl with the cheese mixture.

Off to watch three humans compete in tonight's Jeopardy teen tournament and to enjoy a nice long weekend.  Good night!

Supreme Pizza Pasta

...minus the pepperoni and sausage.  Maybe I should have named this after the veggie lover's pizza, but that doesn't sound as fun.

I've had this idea for about a week and finally got around to making it tonight.  Why tonight, you may ask, when Friday's such a great night for going out and enjoying food prepared by other people? 

Because I plan on going to bed at the usual (early) time tonight, having consumed no sugar or alcohol this evening, so that I can get up tomorrow bright and early and embark upon a running tour of Columbia that will begin at my house in Northeast Columbia and end at the All-Local Farmer's Market on Whaley Street!  (Many thanks to Steve for agreeing to drive down there and meet me at my anticipated time of arrival.)

1/2 of a 1-pound box of whole wheat rotini pasta
2 tbsp olive oil
1 medium-sized onion, chopped
1 cup frozen green bell peppers, thawed
1 cup frozen sliced mushrooms (as far as I know, only Publix has these in Columbia)
3 cloves chopped garlic
2 tsp dried Italian herb mix
crushed red pepper to taste
1 can diced tomatoes
1/2 of a 108 g can of Mario's sliced black olives, drained
15 manzanilla olives, cut in half crosswise

Bring 5-6 cups of salted water to a boil.  Add pasta and cook according to package instructions.

In a 2-quart saucepan, heat olive oil over medium heat.  Add onion and cook until softened, about 3 minutes.  Add garlic and green peppers and cook for another 3 minutes.  Add mushrooms, dried herb mix and crushed red pepper and cook for another 2-3 minutes.  Add tomatoes and raise heat as needed to boil off some of the liquid.  Stir in black and green olives. 

Serve when pasta is ready and sauce has reached the desired thickness.

***
I was even planning to garnish Steve's plate with some of the pepperoni slices he likes to snack on, but it turns out that he ate the last of them a day or two ago.  Oh, well.  A sprinkling of Parmesan or Romano also would have been nice, but I didn't want it enough tonight to grate it myself.  Next time?

Off to fall asleep in front of the TV and then get up tomorrow and blaze a trail from one end of this town to the other.  Good night!

Stuffed Portabella Mushrooms and Broccoli Risotto

Last night's dinner and today's leftovers.  I bought a package of portabella mushroom caps on impulse at Earth Fare early in the week, and stuffing them just seemed like the thing to do.  The original plan was to make a stuffing mixture out of spinach and breadcrumbs (the incidental ones from when I made my own croutons for our Thanksgiving stuffing), but I made the mistake of adding too much of the nasty Chardonnay from last Friday to dampen the breadcrumbs, and the result was...nasty.  I realized this just as I was getting ready to spoon it onto the mushroom caps and ended up scrapping it and starting over sans breadcrumbs.  It was just as well - I wasn't sure how much stuffing these mushrooms would hold with the gills intact, so I just chopped up the spinach as finely as I could and mixed in a little lemon juice, pepper and feta.

Spinach and Feta-Stuffed Portabellas:
3 Portabella mushrooms, stems intact
1/2 cup fresh spinach, finely chopped
1/2 tbsp olive oil
1/2 tbsp lemon juice
pepper to taste
1/2 cup crumbled feta cheese

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Remove and finely chop stems from mushrooms.  Combine chopped stems with spinach, olive oil, lemon juice, pepper and about half (1/4 cup) of the feta cheese.  Spoon onto mushrooms, packing it with spoon.  Top mixture with remaining feta cheese, place on greased (or foil-covered) cookie sheet or shallow baking pan in oven for 20 minutes.

The risotto seemed as good a pairing with the mushrooms as any, plus I haven't made it in a while.  This didn't use anything out of the fridge except some veggie base, but it was still an easy side dish to whip up while the mushrooms were in the oven.

Broccoli Risotto:
2 tbsp Smart Balance or Earth Balance
1 cup onion, chopped (I thawed some chopped onion from the freezer)
1 cup arborio rice
3 cups vegetable broth (I used Better than Bouillon vegetable base)
1 cup frozen broccoli florets, thawed
1/2 cup freshly grated Romano cheese
fresh ground pepper

In a 2-quart saucepan, heat the Smart Balance over medium heat.  Add onion and saute until softened, about 3 minutes.  Stir in arborio rice and cook for one minute.  Begin adding hot broth to the rice mixture 1/2 cup at a time, stirring often, until the rice has absorbed that amount of liquid.  Repeat until the rice has absorbed all the broth.  Broccoli may be added at this point or at the same time as the last addition of broth.  Stir in Romano and pepper and serve.

Next up: something to dispense of all the parsley, cilantro, red cabbage and carrots in the bottom drawer...

Garden Pasta with Green Olive Pesto and Mushrooms in Chardonnay

I just have to toot my own horn - tonight's dinner was the nuclear bomb!

I knew I wanted to fuel up for tomorrow's long run with a pasta dish and was inspired by this recipe for pasta tossed in a green olive pesto.  It calls for basil, which I wasn't able to find at three different supermarkets, but I did find some Italian parsley and figured I could slightly alter the pesto recipe.  Then I got to thinking that it might also be neat to transform the Barcelona Chicken I made back in June into a pasta dish with green olives (in the pesto), mushrooms and very dry white wine.  So, I made the pesto as described in the above link, but with about a cup and a half of chopped parsley and without the lemon juice - just because I forgot to add it amid all the stress of learning to work the new Cuisinart food processor.  Then I heated a couple of tablespoons of Smart Balance in a frying pan, added about 12 ounces of sliced baby bellas, salt and pepper and let them cook on medium heat until they started browning.  At that point, I added about half a cup of Turning Leaf Chardonnay, which Steve cheerfully surrendered for this purpose after discovering what a nasty wine it is to drink. 

It was much better in the mushrooms!  After tossing the pasta (we had garden pasta on hand, hence the title of this post) with the pesto, I plated it up, spooned the mushrooms on top of that and added the garnish.  Before I made this, I was afraid the pesto would be too strong.  Turns out that if you use enough greenery, the olives don't really register.  If I make this again, I might change the ratio of olives to parsley, or basil, or whatever.  But it was still good this way, and the mild flavor of the pesto really set off the delicious mushrooms, which had time to start caramelizing after the wine had reduced down and been absorbed by the mushrooms.

Turning Leaf Chardonnay - nasty to drink, good for cooking mushrooms!

Steve's Birthday and Week in Review

Hmm...blogging more than once per week is turning out to be easier said than done.  I suppose that if this blog covered more than cooking, like my workouts and restaurant experiences, I'd have more to blog about.  As it turns out, last week's sambhar plus some other leftovers carried me into the middle of the week, so I quit cooking for a while so I could dispense with the leftovers.  By Thursday, I was getting too busy to cook again, so I actually ate frozen dinners, like, three nights in a row.  By Friday I decided that I was sick of frozen and I wanted to cook, so I skipped yoga in order to stay home and replay the sweet potato spinach praram.  Excellent fuel for the 10-mile run I did on Saturday morning!

For Saturday's lunch, I borrowed this recipe for garlic greens and white beans (pictured above) to finish off a big bag of kale but substituted black-eyed peas for the white beans because that's what I had in the cupboard.  And Romano cheese instead of the Parmesan, not that there's much difference between the two.


I didn't cook again over the weekend because we had ample lunch leftovers and we dined out on Saturday, Sunday and Monday for our birthday weekend - my birthday was yesterday, and Steve's is today.  So...I cooked for Steve and presented a couple of options for which I had already grocery shopped.  Steve's preference was the Chinese hot pots, so that's what I made.  The only deviations from this recipe were that I made it vegetarian (skipped the chicken pieces and used Better than Bouillon vegetable base instead of chicken broth) and made about a third of this recipe, since I didn't know how well any leftover rice stick noodles would keep.  I also added broccoli and cilantro as recommended in this spicy Thai soup recipe.  It turned out well, and for having over a dozen ingredients, it came together pretty fast.  Which was good, since we were both hungry early this evening.

Soon to come...more seasonal veggie goodness!

Chicken cacciatore-style pasta

I was going to make this for lunch on Friday but met a friend for lunch at Pho-Viet instead.  One of the upsides of ordering their #31 (noodles, cabbage and tofu in broth) and always leaving hungry is that it left me more inclined to cook something substantial that evening.  Since I still had a carrot, a red bell pepper and some of the $1.99 rotisserie chicken (Steve's lightning-fast lunch breaks during the week had apparently consisted of big chunks of chicken breast ripped off the carcass and gobbled down between calls), I thought it would be easy enough to chop and drop those ingredients, plus some canned mushrooms and black olives, in a saucepan with some crushed tomatoes and herbs and let it do its thing.  And so it went:

2 tbsp olive oil
1 carrot, peeled and sliced
1 red bell pepper, chopped
4 cloves garlic, chopped
2 tsp dried Italian herbs
1 28-oz can of crushed tomatoes
1 8-oz can of sliced black olives
1 8-oz can of diced portabella mushrooms
2 chicken thigh quarters, cooked, deboned and coarsely chopped

random pieces of chicken breast, cooked, deboned and coarsely chopped
8 oz. Barilla wheat spiral pasta
salt and pepper to taste

Heat olive oil in a saucepan over medium heat.  Add carrot and saute until slightly softened, about 3 minutes.  Add bell pepper and garlic and cook another 3-5 minutes.  Add crushed tomatoes, herbs, olives, mushrooms and chicken and cook until sauce has thickened and all ingredients are warm, another 5-7 minutes.  Check seasoning and add salt and pepper to taste.

Meanwhile, bring some salted water to boil in another pot.  Add pasta and cook until al dente, about 9 minutes.  Drain and serve with a generous helping of the sauce over the top on each plate.

Humble confession and word to the wise: this was great the night I made it, but I had the leftovers for lunch on Monday and gave myself a mild case of food poisoning:(  If you use leftover chicken in a casserole or sauce or whatever, immediately freeze any leftovers from that meal.  Oh, well - now we know why I only got a B in microbiology.  Now that I'm feeling well enough to cook again, I'll probably resume my meatless ways so as not to have a repeat occurrence.  More new recipes are on their way!