Roasted Brussels Sprouts

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“Eat your vegetables.”

Those words get such a bad rap.  I’d like you to let go, right now, of the nasal, nagging tone you associate with this phrase.  Imagine instead, if you will, the swelling of a great horn section, Rockettes high-kicking, and this ecstatic song:

“Eat your vegetables!”

Isn’t that better?  Hopefully it will be just as easy for you to part with any lukewarm thoughts you’ve ever had about Brussels Sprouts.  Because once you’ve roasted them, you’ll never want them any other way.  (Well, except maybe raw in this awesome salad.)  Roasting does this special thing to Brussels sprouts where the outer leaves get crisp and salty and the inside becomes sweet and nutty, and all it takes to reach Brussels sprout perfection is is one simple secret….

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Kale Salad with Miso-Roasted Winter Squash

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After nearly a year of daily posts, usually dashed off in the moments before midnight, I took a day off yesterday.  It was for a good reason, one that many of you will remember or understand: after a few sleepless nights in a row, I fell asleep snuggling my one-year-old at 7 p.m.  A rare indulgence.  Delicious.

And so today I really should be giving you some menu suggestions for the week, which I skipped over yesterday, but I can’t focus on that right now (see below).  Because Allison told me to make this salad tonight, and it was so good that I have to tell you.  Right now.  Even though it’s hours past my new 7:00 bedtime. Continue reading →

Rustic Apple Pie with Walnut Streusel Topping

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I always make at least one apple pie a year, on Thanksgiving, with the last of the apples from our trees that are tucked away in the fridge.  I always use this recipe.Today, Election Day here in the U.S., seemed to call for an extra apple pie.  There’s the Americana kitch of apple pie, of course, and there’s the fact that a pie is always welcome at a potluck.  But making a pie is also meditative, soothing, distracting.  By the time I arrived at our usual Election Day party with three little girls and a warm pie in my hands, I was calm and confident and I had stopped obsessively refreshing polling data on my phone.  This was our fourth Presidential election in a row with the same savvy, snarky, deeply caring group of friends, and I rather think that we all deserved an apple pie tonight.  So do you. Continue reading →

Savory Oatmeal with Black Pepper, Blue Cheese, and an Olive Oil Fried Egg

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Today’s the day, people. Wake up and vote!

To fortify you, I bring you the second verse of my love song for savory oatmeal. It will have you jumping out of bed, eager for an excuse to begin your day. It’s quick, so you’ll have plenty of time to swing by your polling place on the way to work. It’s easy, so you can save your mental acuity for the important decisions of the day. And it’s clever, so it will remind you where you keep your stamps if you’re in a vote-by-mail state.* (*Not really.)

More important still, it’s a savory, creamy, hearty breakfast. And it’s halfway healthy, because it’s oatmeal. Talk about across-the-aisle collaboration.

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Pasta with Roasted Tomatoes, Roasted Broccoli, and White Beans

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Have you entered this week’s cookbook giveaway yet?  You have until Monday night to enter!

I have a soft spot for those unreasonably large Greek “gigantes” beans.  They’re lima beans, maybe?  They’re fat and meaty and they make their presence known.  Here they nestle into a soft bed of pasta and roasted vegetables.  Small white beans could be fun too, though, especially if you use a shell pasta shape and let them get lost in the pasta swirls.  Either way, the beans and pasta are elevated one step beyond peasant food by the sweet, flavorful roasted vegetables.  Serve with a bracing, crisp, lemony salad for a nice flavor and texture contrast.

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Banana Bread with Bittersweet Chocolate, Whole Wheat, and Olive Oil

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I’m not going to disappoint anyone by telling you that banana bread is really cake, right?  And this banana “bread” is no exception.  It has a couple of healthful flourishes, yes–whole wheat flour replaces some of the white flour, and olive oil and yogurt stand in for butter–but it remains a sweet, dense, chocolatey cake.

And to be honest, I like whole grains in sweet baked goods at least as much for their hearty flavor as for any health benefit they confer (I mean, we’re still talking about cake here).  These whole wheat chocolate chip cookies, this rye flour zucchini bread (also a cake, of course)—the whole grains add a layer of flavor and texture that leave more refined baked goods tasting rather insipid in comparison. Continue reading →

Kale Caesar Salad

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Have you entered this week’s cookbook giveaway yet?  You have until Monday night to enter!

In some circles the kale salad is probably passe already, but let’s just agree not to be so hip that we can’t enjoy a good thing, ok?  I was briefly missing this summer’s Grilled Kale Salad with Ricotta and Plums, but it has already been replaced in my affections by this new winter favorite.  It’s from the Skillet Cookbook, a new release from my local hipster diner, the Skillet Diner.  I go to the diner just for this kale salad.  I bought the cookbook just for this kale salad.  I love this kale salad. Continue reading →

What’s Cooking: November 2012, Week 1

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My thoughts are with the many people still suffering the after-effects of this week’s epic storm. My sister- and brother-in-law extended their visit last weekend to ride out the worst of the hurricane here in Seattle with us, and we were glad to be safe and dry and together. But seeing the aftermath unfold on the other coast, with all its tragedies big and small, is heartbreaking. I hope that you and your families are safe and warm. Let me know if I can send you cookies. And if you are lucky enough to live at a distance and can give $10 or more, please join me in making a donation to the Red Cross.

In The Kitchen

This week I roasted everything. Winter squash, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, tomatoes, carrots. Roasting vegetables sweetens them and makes the house smell good. Menu 1: Roasted squash wedges and roasted Brussels sprouts were finger food straight from the pan before falafel for dinner. Leftover roasted squash became a tahini-laced dip (also good with falafel!).

Menu 2: More leftover roasted squash & the leftover Brussels sprouts went into quinoa cakes, which I served with a kale caesar salad.

Menu 3: And speaking of comfort food, I made pasta with white beans, red onion, garlic, roasted broccoli, roasted tomatoes, and parsley, sauced with some of the cooking liquid from the homemade white beans. I served it with a variation on that lemony celery salad that I’ll be sharing soon.

Complete Fail: I made a gummy, heavy pasta dish with potatoes. For company. Whoops. Sorry, company. I won’t link to that recipe.

And the granola, this week, was a salted maple pecan. I’ve been adding ground flax seeds, I think they’re supposed to be healthy.

Preserving

Remember my first batch of sauerkraut?Yeah, the one I spilled all over the floor? Well, my next batch is well underway. It’s in week 3 of fermenting in the basement and I tasted it today. It’s ok. The taste seems a little…flat. Is that going to improve with time? Help me out, fermenters!

I also made fruit leather under Janet’s tutelage. Oh, it’s good. I think I need a dehydrator of my own.

On My Plate

I browsed back through my archives and pulled together some vegetarian Thanksgiving recipe ideas. More on that topic soon!

And did I tell you that I brought home grape leaves from California last week? I have in mind some kind of grilled grape-wrapped goat cheese thingy, maybe, or the grape leaf pie from Plenty.

Thanks for Cooking with Emmy Cooks!

Kalyn’s Kitchen featured my Green Olive and Celery Salad and my Greens With Lemon, Dill, and Feta. Good choices!

I had a great time cooking with my friends and eating (ok, reading) my way through the offerings in the Virtual Vegan Potluck. I brought a creamy roasted celery soup.

And finally, don’t forget to enter the Cookbook Giveaway this week! It’s a way to say thanks for reading and cooking along with me. Thank you!

Creamy Roasted Celery Soup and Vegan Cookbook Giveaway

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Welcome to Emmy Cooks!  You can see more of my favorite recent recipes by clicking the “My Favorite Recipes” category on the sidebar (here are July, August, and September).  If you like what you see here, you can sign up on the sidebar to receive a daily recipe by email, add the RSS feed to your blog reader, or follow Emmy Cooks on Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest.

Here for the Vegan Cookbook Giveaway?  Head on down the bottom of this post.Hello, friends!  Welcome to my table.  I’m happy to be joining the Virtual Vegan Potluck for the second time today, and I hope you’ll join me in visiting many of the other participating blogs!  (If you’re making your way around the circle, click here to go forward to the tasty blog Cheerfully Vegan, or click here to go back to Cauldrons and Cupcakes, where I love living vicariously on Nicole’s Australian farm with the koalas, platypus, and wallabies–and there’s even a calf named after me!)

I’m serving soup today, and before you turn your nose up at a creamy celery soup, let me just talk to you about the roasted part of this roasted celery soup.  It’s transformative.  It’s sublime.  It makes me revel in all the things that one humble vegetable can be.  Celery is crisp and herbal when freshly sliced.  It’s aromatic and powerful when dried.  And when roasted, as it is here, celery becomes sweet and deeply flavorful, bringing an earthy umami element to this creamy soup.  Aren’t vegetables amazing? Continue reading →

My Favorite Recipes: October 2012

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Welcome to Emmy Cooks!  You can see more of my favorite recent recipes by clicking the “My Favorite Recipes” category on the sidebar (here are July, August, and September).  If you like what you see here, you can sign up on the sidebar to receive a daily recipe by email, add the RSS feed to your blog reader, or follow Emmy Cooks on Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest.

What’s Halloween like in your neck of the woods?  We here at Emmy Cooks are bracing ourselves for a sugar-fueled whirlwind of a day, complete with daytime and nighttime trick or treating (in the rain), hot apple cider, and an unreasonable number of plastic spider rings that will repeatedly turn up in the washing machine for months to come.

And oh, woah, what do you do about the candy?  In past years I’ve simply spirited it away after the one night of debauchery (and by “spirited it away,” of course I mean “I ate all the good stuff”).  But my big girls are older and wiser now, and it seems like the right time to teach them something meaningful about making good food choices and moderation.  So, yeah, any tips you have on that front would be welcome!

Also welcome will be returning to real food after tomorrow’s sugar overload.  The recipes below were some of my favorites this month.

  Italian Parsley Salsa Verde
Homemade Celery Salt
  Green Spinach Soup
  Savory Oatmeal with Curry, Greens, and Caramelized Onions
  A Great Big Pot of Minestrone
  And the readers’ favorite (aside from the recipes above, which were all popular this month): Shakshuka

Thank you so much for reading and cooking along with me!