Lemon balm pesto stuffed shells

As I mentioned last time, my lemon balm plant was getting pretty overgrown before I went out there with a measuring cup and removed all the big leaves until I had two fairly packed cups.  I went back inside as soon as that task was completed, since summer's already here and it's too hot mid-afternoon to spend more time outside than necessary, and promptly washed off the lemon balm and made lemon balm pesto.  This recipe was the inspiration, but I ended up making it more like a traditional pesto by adding a quarter cup of pine nuts and salt and pepper to taste.  A few days later (yesterday, in fact), I picked up some jumbo shells, crushed tomatoes and ricotta at Publix and made stuffed shells using the lemon balm pesto. 

I'm not the world's most enthusiastic baker, especially when it's hot outside, but this was every bit as tasty as my best-ever lasagna (the vegan one) and much easier to make since no layers are involved.  I now also have a favorite brand of crushed tomatoes - Dei Fratelli.  I never would have expected there to be a difference between brands of crushed tomatoes, and I generally buy the store brand or whatever's cheap.  Well, the Dei Fratelli ones were thick enough that I could have used them as the main ingredient in a lasagna sauce without having to cook it down for an hour and make a big mess on the stove, splatter guard or no splatter guard.  But I digress...

Again, the lemon balm stuffed shells recipe at the site above, where the pesto recipe came from, was the basis for last night's dinner, but I used more like one cup of the pesto (one recipe, not a double batch) and a 15-ounce container of ricotta plus another half-cup or so of grated parm.  I skipped the onion because I didn't have any.  And I didn't exactly use an entire box of the shells - maybe 30 out of 36 shells went into the pot, and I still had six left over when I ran out of the stuffing.  Oh, well - 24 stuffed shells filled my 13 x 9 inch baking dish along with the red sauce (half the can of crushed tomatoes, 4 cloves of garlic, salt and pepper to taste and about two teaspoons of dried thyme from the backyard) that I poured over it to keep the shells from drying out.  No foil, just in a 350 degree oven for 25 minutes.

Nice and lemony!  Between the lemon balm and the thyme, this turned out to be a very brightly-flavored dish even without using lemon juice or zest.  Plus, since it doesn't take that long to bake and the pesto and even the pesto-ricotta mixture can be prepared ahead of time, it's a relatively easy dish to make after a long day at work.  Just do some prep work ahead of time, come home and cook the shells, stuff 'em, pour some sauce over the top and in the oven they go!  They also make fantastic leftovers.

It's a hot one out there...stay cool everybody!

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!

Vegetarian Cassoulet

Now that I'm feeling better and ready to eat something relatively mild, I decided on a vegetarian cassoulet recipe that I found on Epicurious. Mine didn't vary a whole lot from the recipe at the link, except that I was interested in trying fennel instead of the celery that it called for. (My typical thought process when reading a recipe with celery in it: "Celery...nah.") I was worried that the anise flavor of the raw fennel might overwhelm the dish if I added the ground cloves too, so I left those out. Also, I used 2 cups of chicken broth and 2 cups of veggie broth instead of a quart of water, and near the end I stirred in about a quarter cup of flour because the mixture wasn't thickening as quickly as I'd hoped (definitely not the 30-minute timeframe the recipe suggests). Lastly, I skipped the breadcrumbs in favor of a light sprinkling of Parmesan and parsley garnish - Steve's preference. Plus I didn't have any baguettes to grate, didn't feel like making a trip to the store, and the Italian breadcrumbs of indeterminate age in my cupboard seemed like they could be a key ingredient in another food poisoning mishap.

That's the rundown of tweaks. And if I do say so myself, the result was delish!

Vegetable soup

OK, I'm gonna say it - this was nothing special; just a use-stuff-up recipe.  I still had most of the potatoes, corn, pink-eyed peas, tomatoes and banana peppers that I received in my most recent Pinckney's stash before Thursday rolled around - and I wanted to ensure that I had something vegetarian for myself on the days when I didn't want any meat or dairy.

2 tbsp canola oil
3 mild banana peppers, gutted and diced
4 cloves garlic, chopped
6 cups vegetable broth
1 lb fresh pink-eyed peas, rinsed
4 new potatoes, peeled and diced
1 ear of corn, cooked
2 large tomatoes, peeled and diced
1 branch fresh rosemary
1 branch fresh thyme
6 basil leaves, torn
pepper to taste

In an 8 qt pot, heat the oil over medium heat. Add the banana peppers and saute until softened, about 3-5 minutes.

Meanwhile, bring broth to a boil in a separate pot. Once it has boiled, add to the pot with the peppers along with the peas and diced potatoes. Cover and simmer 15 minutes.

Remove the husk from the corn and cut the corn off the cob with a serrated knife. Add corn, tomatoes and herbs to the pot, cover and simmer another 30 minutes. Check seasoning and add pepper to taste.

If I make this again, I might make it heartier by using less broth.  (Chris Rock: 'cuz I sho' is hungry!)  Since the potatoes were diced, less liquid was needed to soften them up.  One pleasant surprise, was that most of the thyme fell off the branches while the soup cooked, so when I finally had some on Tuesday, I just had to fish the thyme and rosemary out of the pot and toss them in the compost bin, and the rest I packed up as leftovers.

Calderade

Another Mediterranean recipe from the Portugal chapter of La cuisine autour de la méditerranée.  It would have been nice to include the onions that are mentioned in the book version, but I had no onions and an oversupply of potatoes, plus some nice, ripe tomatoes (thanks Joyce!) and pretty much everything else this recipe called for:


1/2 cup olive oil
6-7 medium new potatoes, peeled and cut into rounds about 1/3 inch thick
1 cup dry white wine
salt and cayenne pepper
2 large, ripe tomatoes, peeled and chopped
5-6 small tilapia filets
1 branch worth of chopped fresh rosemary
1 branch of fresh thyme

Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees.
In a 10 X 14 inch baking pan, add the olive oil and place in oven for 10 minutes. Remove and add layers of potatoes, seasoning each layer with salt and cayenne pepper. (Should end up with 3 layers.) Bake layers of potatoes for about 45 minutes or until fork-tender. Remove, add tilapia in one layer and cover with tomatoes, thyme and rosemary. Bake another 15 minutes or until tilapia flakes with a fork. Serve with white wine.

This made a great dinner last night, and I really enjoyed the leftovers for lunch today! To my surprise, we barely registered the cayenne; maybe it joined with the olive oil and wine in the bottom of the casserole? Also, the original recipe called for cod or another type of fish that is normally sliced thicker than tilapia and said to bake the whole thing for an hour. I went with the tilapia just because we already had it, adding it later so that it would not have time to dry out in the oven.

Completely unrelated, but in case anyone out there is wondering why the emphasis on healthy food, and why I haven't yet fried a single potato (or any other food items in my house) despite the steady supply...well, I haven't been able to run lately because I came away from a half-marathon in April with an IT band injury that's been slow to heal - in part because I put off going to see Dr. Renick. In the meantime, I've been very careful of what I eat so as not to puff up while waiting to start running again. But on Sunday morning, I managed to run for ten whole minutes after walking 20, cleaned house afterward and the IT band still feels OK!