Tag Archives: food

Jewel Tone Winter Pasta

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I have mentioned before that orange vegetables have favored status with the children in our household.  Which is why, when I have a butternut squash around, my first thought about dinner is usually that I should dice it up and roast it.  My oldest calls the carmelized bites “squash candy,” which isn’t at all wrong (although I don’t go this far).

I, however, am not picky about the color of my food, so long as my plate contains an array of stunning hues.  Ok, so I am picky.  It’s worth it.  Beautiful tastes better.

Luckily, we eat a lot of vegetables, and vegetables are gorgeous.  This pasta has a combination of veggies that I love for their jewel tones almost as much as I love them for their flavor together: butternut squash, kale, red onion, and mushrooms.

I am not an evangelist on this point, but I think this combination is worth trying with whole wheat pasta.  At this time of year especially, I like the robust savor of whole wheat noodles underlying the sweetness of caramelized winter vegetables.  But hey, if that’s not your thing, go ahead and use whatever you’ve got on your shelf.

Jewel Tone Winter Pasta begins with the roasting of a peeled, diced butternut squash tossed with a spoonful of olive oil and a few good pinches of salt.  Roast it at 450 and stir every 10 minutes or so until the cubes start to candy at the edges (about 40 minutes for 1/2″ cubes).  Meanwhile, heat a pot of water to boil pasta.  While it’s heating, find a pan large enough to hold the finished dish and saute a sliced red onion in olive oil on high heat with a pinch of salt until it begins to really brown.  Add a pile of sliced mushrooms and continue cooking until the liquid evaporates and they shine like gold.  Now toss in a big pinch of salt and a shredded head of washed kale, with a few additional spoonfuls of water if necessary to deglaze the pan, and cook until the kale is tender but not mushy.  (Take the pan off the heat if your pasta and squash aren’t ready yet.)  When your squash is nearing perfection, cook whole wheat spaghetti (or your noodles of choice) in salted water for 1 minute less than usual and then drain, reserving a cup of cooking water–the pasta will finish cooking in your pan.  Put your pan back on the heat and combine everything: sauteed veggies, roasted squash, noodles, a splash of olive oil and some good grindings of pepper.  Taste for salt and serve with more pepper at the table, and a little bit of cheese if you’re so inclined.  I love this dish with blue cheese, but fresh goat cheese or grated parmesan would be perfectly acceptable alternatives.

We served this pasta with a spinach salad with fresh pears, dried cherries, sunflower seeds and Creamy Pear Vinaigrette, but it would also be delicious with this lemony Romaine salad with homemade croutons.

Romaine Salad with Handmade Croutons and Bright Lemon Vinaigrette

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Like you, I have never understood people who only eat salads.  I like them–a lot–but I also need heartier fare, like chili and pizza and deeply chocolatey cookies.  That said…I also eat a lot of salads.

I find it unfortunate that salad is an afterthought on so many tables.  Wilted greens, carrot rounds, and a bottle of storebought Italian dressing do little to improve a meal.  It takes so little thought and love to elevate a salad to delicious heights.  A careful choice of greens, a few toppings sprinkled like precious gems, an old jar glistening as you shake a freshly-made slick of dressing.  Those are the salads I prefer.

Winter in Seattle means short, dark days.  “Sunbreaks,” the local term for momentarily clear skies, are reported in the weather news.  (Did you know that?  It’s true.)  We have to take our sunshine where we can get it.  This salad is a great place to start.

To make this Romaine Salad with Handmade Croutons and Bright Lemon Vinaigrette, first preheat your oven to 375.  Cut or tear a few slices of bread into small (1/2″ to 3/4″) pieces and toss them on a baking sheet with a Tbsp. of olive oil and a minced garlic clove, then bake about 8 minutes, until crisp and golden.  Set your croutons aside to cool.  In a jar, combine and then shake together the zest of one lemon plus 3 Tbsp. lemon juice, 1/4 tsp. salt, another minced clove of garlic, and 5 Tbsp. olive oil.  Wash and dry a head of crisp Romaine lettuce, then slice it into 1/2″ ribbons and transfer to a big salad bowl.  Top lettuce with a handful of pitted and torn Kalamata olives and a few spoonfuls of the lemony dressing.  Toss the salad well.  Add the croutons and a few coarse gratings of parmesan cheese, then toss again.  Taste a leaf to make sure the salad has a bright lemon flavor, then serve.

We love this salad, which was adapted from Annie Somerville’s fantastic Fields of Greens cookbook, with pasta or a pizza (like this one or that one).

Breakfast for Dinner, Grownup Edition: Eggs and Kale on Sweet Potato Pancakes

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Weekends sometimes demand fancy, special-occasion, I-cooked-all-afternoon-because-it’s-Saturday fare.  And sometimes just the opposite.  This recipe is dedicated to a Sunday spent doing better things, like collecting sticks outside with the kids for hours,  or reading by yourself all afternoon to the exclusion of any other activity whatsoever.

If you saved some batter from making sweet potato pancakes for the kids this morning, you’re ahead of the game for a simple dinner tonight.  If not, go ahead and whip some up now, it won’t take long.  While you’re doing that, put a washed and torn bunch of kale in a pot with an inch of water and a teaspoon of salt to simmer until tender, about 5 minutes.  Start warming your griddle now for the pancakes.  Drain the kale well, toss it into a hot pan with a touch of olive oil and sautee it for a few minutes.  I recommend a splash of fish sauce at this point, but you could just salt it to taste instead.  Then smoosh the kale over to the side of the pan, where it will work on getting some crispy edges while your eggs are cooking (don’t forget to turn the greens occasionally with a tongs).  Lower the heat in the pan, add some oil or butter to the now-empty part, and crack in your eggs. Let the eggs cook to your liking while your pancakes bake, then pile everything at once onto a plate: sweet potato pancakes, then kale topped with a soft egg.  Serve with, no joke, maple syrup and your favorite hot sauce.

This Weekend, Make Sweet Potato Pancakes for Someone You Love

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It’s never the wrong time to make sweet potato pancakes for someone you love.  So make them this weekend.  Or you could file these pancakes away for Valentines Day.  Or, better yet, make them the next three weekends in a row to perfect your technique, THEN make them for Valentines Day.  If you’re cutesy like that, you can shape your pancakes into a heart using a cookie cutter or pancake mold, or you can use a squeeze bottle of batter to bake a heart-outline shape.  If you’re not cutesy like that, these are still great pancakes to make for the ones you love because they’re healthy for the ol’ ticker, full of beta carotene and whole grain goodness.  And they have “sweet” in the name.

Anyway, my kids found MY heart-shaped pancake mold (where did THAT come from?) in a bag of Valentine-making supplies a few days ago.  They have been requesting heart-shaped pancakes for breakfast every morning since.  But anyone who knows me knows that I don’t roll that way.  Instead, like this writer, I stay up way too late and come morning it’s all I can do to roll out of bed in time to (drink a pot of coffee and) get the kids out the door.  So the idea of pancakes on a weekday, unless J makes them during his cheery morning revelries with the children, is a no-go.

Enter Breakfast For Dinner.  I told you how we mostly just ate scrambled eggs for a while there, so pancakes for dinner shouldn’t be such a big deal, but the kiddos were gleeful.  That’s always nice.

To make these Sweet Potato Pancakes, first peel, dice, steam and then mash or puree one large sweet potato.  That sounds like a big deal, but it’s not.  Just get it started while you mix the rest of your ingredients.  In a large bowl, mix 1 c. all-purpose flour, 1 c. whole wheat flour (pastry if you have it), 4 tsp. baking powder, 1 ½ tsp. cinnamon and a big pinch of salt.  In a separate bowl, whisk 2 eggs with 2 c. milk, 4 tsp. canola oil, 2 Tbsp. brown sugar and 1 tsp. of vanilla.  Whisk in that sweet potato puree, then mix into your dry ingredients until blended.  Bake on a buttered griddle for a buttery crispy crust.

Serve with your favorite pancake fixings.  Mine–with these pancakes, at least–are vanilla yogurt, toasted pecans and a drizzle of maple syrup.  Yours?

p.s.  Did you know you can replace the butter/oil in lots of baked goods with sweet potato puree?

p.p.s. Save some pancake batter in the fridge.  You might want to make these again for dinner.

Everyone’s Doing It: Sweet, Salty, Savory Olive Oil Granola

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I have been reading Melissa Clark recipes as my bedtime stories this past month, and I was intrigued by a recipe she described for a granola made with olive oil.  Sweetness from brown sugar, earthy undertones from the olive oil, you understand why I bookmarked the page.  But you know that thing that happens sometimes, where you never heard of something and then once you learn about it you see it EVERYWHERE?  Turns out, suddenly there are variations on this recipe for olive oil granola all over the interwebs.

And tonight I learned why.  Because it’s good.  So good I could hardly stop stealing pinches off the tray–and that was before it was baked.  You might want to make it this weekend–if you can wait that long.

Of all the nearly-identical recipes, I started with this one, which was pretty much pared down to the essentials already, but I simplified it one step further by eliminating the coconut, which is not my thing.  If it’s yours, add a cup of coconut flakes to the recipe below.  Like most granola recipes, you can vary the nuts and seeds and/or add fruit to suit your taste.

Preheat your oven to 300 while you get a big bowl and mix 3 1/2 c. oats with 1 c. each of raw pumpkin seeds and raw sunflower seeds and 1 1/2 c. whole pecans.  Pour over 1/2 c. brown sugar, 1/2 c. olive oil, 3/4 c. maple syrup and 1 tsp. kosher salt and mix well.  Divide between two sheet pans and bake until nice and toasty, about 30 mins., switching the pans and stirring well every 10 minutes.  Let cool completely before storing in an airtight jar.

Eat by the handful from said jar.  Or, if you want to get fancy, you could put your handful of granola in a little bowl first.

 

 

 

p.s. As you may have guessed, this granola is not exactly health food.  If you’re looking for an everyday recipe with a lower proportion of sweetener and fat, you might like this Almond and Dried Cherry Granola recipe.

Quick Thai Green Curry

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I understand that there are cooks who plan out menus and then peacefully prep their ingredients in advance.  Come dinnertime, these lucky souls simply slip a dish into the oven and then casually toss a salad with one hand while sipping an aperitif with the other during the few moments it takes the meal to finish cooking to perfection.

I don’t cook like that.

(Come to think of it, I don’t live like that.  Perhaps the two are related.)

Instead, as dinnertime approaches at my house, my first order of business is to plonk the baby in her high chair so she can’t eat all the crayons while my back is turned.  Then I have a few great ideas in rapid succession and discover that I’m out of one key ingredient for each.  Then I draw some half-hearts on folded paper for the big girls to cut into Valentines and opine as to whether now is a good time to start a watercolor painting project on the dining room table, which is already almost buried in tiny scraps of paper, glitter, and stickers.  Then I wonder what to make for dinner. (Remember how I said I was going to plan more?  Still working on that.  But I have been cooking more lately, as you’ve seen!)

Finally, I consider how much more time I have before I want dinner on the table.  If I have an hour, maybe I’ll start a pizza crust and start roasting some potatoes.  If I have two, I might start a soup with long-cooking legumes.  But if I want dinner on the table in 20 minutes, I might make this quick curry.

If YOU want to have dinner on the table in 20 minutes, go put on a pot of jasmine rice and then check back with me.  Ready?  Ok.  It’s a Thai green curry, and I made mine with a thin filet of cod that went straight from the freezer into a bowl of hot water to defrost in minutes (don’t worry, Harold McGee says it’s ok).  You could go the fish route too, or you could use shrimp or chicken or tofu.

Sauté a thinly-sliced onion until it starts to soften, then add 2-4 tsp. green curry paste and sauté for a moment to release the fragrance.  Pour in a can of coconut milk and add 1 Tbsp. each of fish sauce, brown sugar, and lime juice.  Bring to a simmer, then add a pound of white fish in 1” chunks (I used cod; you could also use shrimp, chicken, or tofu) and sliced veggies (I used a green pepper, a stalk of celery and a small zucchini).  Simmer, stirring occasionally, about five minutes or until the fish is cooked.  Toss in a big handful of cilantro and chopped tomatoes for the final minute, then give it another squeeze of lime and adjust the flavors to taste with more lime, brown sugar and fish sauce.  Serve over hot jasmine rice.

p.s. This Noodle Curry with Tofu, Sweet Potatoes and Chard is pretty quick too, and also delicious.

Sunny Side Up Pizza With Potatoes and Eggs

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Making pizza is often an improvisational affair at our house.  There are tried-and-true combinations that we like, sure, but often we decide to get a pizza crust going before we check out what’s in the fridge.  One of our usual favorites is a potato pizza, and if you think that doesn’t sound delicious, please go straight to Tom Douglas’s Serious Pie and then stand corrected.  (If you don’t like it, which I believe to be impossible, you’ll still have lots of other amazing options to choose from.  Pro tip: go with a crowd at happy hour when they make mini pizzas so you can try them all.)

This post is not about potato pizza, however.  Because after J roasted a pound of thinly-sliced fingerling potatoes until nearly crisp, I made the mistake of piling them within the children’s reach, where the heap of “chips” was quickly decimated.  So I’ll give you a recipe for potato pizza another time.

Left with only a handful of potatoes, it was back to the fridge, and this Sunny Side Up Pizza was born.  Crank your oven as hot as it goes and put in a pizza stone if you have one.  Layer your thin pizza crust (recipe here if you want one) with thinly-sliced potatoes (first roasted at 425 until just beginning to crisp) and a sprinkling of mozzarella. Pile on chunks of goat cheese and a big handful of rinsed capers.  We crumbled on some smoked salmon, but you could skip that step and just go with a big sprinkle of salt over the whole pizza if you prefer.  Finally, we broke two eggs over the pizza, but they were so good that we later wished we’d used four.  Getting the eggs perfect will depend on your oven temperature and how thin you stretched your crust (because that has to cook through, too), so you might need to experiment a little.  Baked in our oven at 550 for almost 6 minutes, the whites were set and the yolks were lusciously runny, perfect for wiping up with the last piece of pizza crust.

We served the pizza with a simple green salad with Creamy Pear Vinaigrette and bowls of leftover Cauliflower Soup–which, like most soups, was even better after a day in the fridge.

Creamy Pear Vinaigrette

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At this time of year, there are often two things happening in my kitchen.  First, I am eating a lot of salads made from crunchy winter vegetables, because, well–even here in temperate Seattle–I know that tender lettuce is out of season in the dead of winter.  And I am starting to crave a salad that speaks of springtime, full of lettuce’s delicate crunch.  The second thing that is often happening in my kitchen right about now is that a pear is lingering in the fruit bowl that is five minutes too ripe to be considered absolutely perfect.  When these two events coincide–which, as I said, they often do at this time of year–I take it as an omen and make this salad dressing.

This Pear Vinaigrette is creamy, sweet, and lower in fat than more traditional vinaigrette dressings.  Tonight I just tossed it with lettuce for a very simple green salad, but you can also use it to doll up a fancier salad by including nuts, fresh or dried fruits, cheeses, you name it.  In your blender, just whizz a chopped super-ripe pear, 1/3 c. olive oil, 2 Tbsp. apple cider vinegar, 2 Tbsp. apple juice (or water), 1 tsp. dijon, 1 tsp. fresh thyme leaves, a few grinds of pepper and 1/4 tsp. salt.  A very-ripe pear makes this dressing plenty sweet for me, but you can also sweeten it to taste with maple syrup.  (I haven’t tried this, but the gorgeous vegan blog v:gourmet recommends it.  Although I only met her–I mean her website–moments ago, I trust the writer implicitly because we have almost the exact same favorite cookbooks.)

Speaking of cookbooks, this recipe is from Moosewood Restaurant’s Cooking for Health.  Of the many recipes I tried in that book when I first got it, I think this is the only one that stuck in my regular rotation.  It probably says a lot about my expansive cookbook collection when I keep a cookbook for just one recipe.  Although now that I’ve jotted the recipe down here, maybe I will move it along to make room for a new cookbook.

If you were making room on your shelf for just one great new recipe collection, which would it be?

Soup Swap Magic

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Tonight, I magically turned six quarts of my Lentil Rosemary soup into six OTHER quarts of soup by attending a Soup Swap in my neighborhood.

As a bonus gift with my soup, I included the bread recipe I posted here, which makes just about any soup into a hearty meal.

My 6 quarts of lentil soup became one quart each of French Onion soup, Cream of Wild Mushroom soup, meaty chili, Mushroom and Barley soup, Beer, Cheese and Bacon soup, and Lively Up Yourself Lentil soup.  And I made a bunch of new friends at the same time.

Magic!

White Winter Dinner: Cauliflower Soup and Pizza Bianca

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The children in my house–those who are old enough to exercise free will, anyway–have developed a color-based hierarchy to determine the acceptability of vegetables.   Orange: yes! Green: probably not!  Yellow: yes!  Red: no way unless it’s pizza sauce! Or something like that.  It’s hard to keep track.  I thought this was ridiculous until I stopped and considered my own palate’s prejudices, which usually demand a variety of colors to find a meal delicious.

Digging through the fridge for tonight’s dinner, though, a single-hued meal started to take shape in my mind.  Maybe all the white, white snow was getting to me.  Cauliflower soup.  A a pale celery salad.  A garlicky white pizza.  I was going to do it.  I got right up to the point of piling on pizza toppings when my resolve failed me and I had to saute a pile of chard and spinach (what is a meal without green?!) and then, having already jumped off the white-meal rails, I crumbled a chunk of smoked salmon over the half the pizza as well and breathed a sigh of relief.  A little color makes the meal, I say.

First, the creamy, delicate, 5-ingredient (counting water and salt!) Cauliflower Soup: Sweat half a thinly-sliced onion in 3 Tb. olive oil for 15 mins without letting it brown, then add a broken-up head of cauliflower, a tsp. of salt and 1/2 c. water.  Cover and cook 15 mins, then uncover, add 4 1/2 c. hot water, more salt to taste, and simmer uncovered 20 mins.  Puree and let stand 20 mins. to thicken; add 1/2 c. or more additional water to thin the soup if desired as you reheat it, season to taste with more salt, and garnish each bowl with cracked pepper and/or a swirl of olive oil.  The recipe is from Food52, a website that I find myself increasingly enjoying.  Is this where all the Gourmet Magazine readers have gone?

While the soup is simmering, make a Spicy Garlic Oil by mixing 2 Tbsp. olive oil with a big minced clove of garlic and 1/4 tsp. red pepper flakes.

Then get your pizza crust started.  Our go-to recipe is from Annie Summerville’s Fields of Greens and makes way more than you need for one pizza, so halve these amounts if you don’t want a pizza crust to use later in the week (you can also freeze it).  Or, hey, use your favorite recipe or a purchased crust.  If you’re doing as I did, whisk 1 Tbsp. yeast into 3/4 c. warm water and set aside.  In the bowl of your KitchenAid, combine 3/4 c. milk, 1/4 c. olive oil, 1 tsp. salt, and a couple Tbsps. each rye flour and fine cornmeal (if you have either handy) for texture.  Stir in your now-foamy yeast mixture then put in the dough hook and incorporate 3 1/2 c. flour (you can use some whole wheat, if you like; we like to use at least part Italian 00 flour for the incredible texture it gives the dough).  Anyhoo, let your machine knead it into a nice ball (add more flour if it is too sticky), then oil the bowl, roll your dough ball around in it, and let it rest covered while you get your toppings ready.

Preheat your oven as hot as it goes, and put your pizza stone in if you have one.  For the Pizza Bianca you can roll the dough nice and thin because your first layer is cheese rather than sauce, which will protect the dough from getting soggy.  So roll or stretch out a nice big thin crust onto a piece of parchment paper, which will make moving it easier later, and layer on shredded mozzarella, chunks of goat cheese, some winter greens sauteed with garlic until fairly dry, and some hot-smoked salmon if you are inclined that way.  Then brush the crust of the pizza with some of the spicy garlic oil (this great tip came from a recipe on Epicurious, although I had made a very similar pizza many times before) and scoop most of the rest of it over the pizza.  Slide pizza, parchment paper and all, onto a pan or straight onto your pizza stone and bake until the bottom is crisp, about 7-9 minutes if the crust is thin. When it comes out of the oven, brush the crust again with the remaining garlic oil.

Serve the soup and pizza with a crisp salad; ours tonight was celery and blue cheese but I think this meal would also be great with another of my favorite winter salads: just celery, a fennel bulb and/or a sweet pepper, and an apple, all sliced paper thin, with the juice from the apple as the only dressing.