Tag Archives: greens

Pesto Pasta with Beans and Greens

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The lifestyle indulgences I go in for might seem quirky, I admit.  In some ways I’m frugal: our cars are old, I usually upgrade my wardrobe only when actual holes in my clothing require it, and we’ll probably never update our very-1980’s kitchen.  But other times, I splurge indiscriminately: finding myself in a new grocery bulk section last week, I bought a bag of every unfamiliar dried bean there.

Yellow beans!  Pink beans!  Speckled beans!  Tiny beans!  And more, many more.  I have only one source to blame for this new obsession: Rancho Gordo.   A local shop carries their beans, which have opened my eyes to the wide world beyond black and white beans, familiar pintos and chickpeas.  I have fallen down the dried-bean rabbit hole and I like it here.Pasta with Beans and GreensThat charmer pictured above is Rancho Gordo’s Ojo de Cabra, a meaty beauty of a bean so succulent that I kept plucking them from the bubbling pot despite the peril to my fingertips.  Like all beans, they’re even better the next day, and that’s when I suggest that you make this pasta.

This dish is fine and dandy with drained canned white beans (maybe add a little chopped fresh rosemary in that case), but it is even better as a showcase for an excellent bean if you cook it yourself and use a few scoops of the bean broth to finish cooking your pasta.

Do you have a favorite bean, or an unusual recommendation that I should seek out?  Please tell me! Continue reading →

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Whole Wheat Pasta with Greens, Caramelized Onions, and Creamy Walnut Sauce

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There’s a new category of food in our house these days that I like to call “decadent vegan.”  Regular vegan food, as everyone knows, is steamed quinoa with shredded carrots and a squeeze of lemon, but decadent vegan food is different.  It’s this creamy, hearty pasta, and my first experiment with deep-frying and that addictive roasted squash salad that we’re still making every chance we get.  In truth, a lot of recipes on this site fall into the decadent vegan category, but for some reason I hadn’t thought of them that way before.  This year, I’m making a conscious effort to cook more vegan meals.  Decadent, delicious vegan meals.

What are your favorite recipes or ideas that fall into the decadent vegan category?  Please share!

Pasta with Greens, Caramelized Onions, and Creamy Walnut SauceIf you keep a jar of caramelized onions in the fridge, as I’ve been doing lately, this recipe can be prepared in the time your pasta takes to cook.  And if you don’t keep a jar of caramelized onions in the fridge, I encourage you to start. Continue reading →

Spicy Peanut Butter Tofu with Greens and Rice

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I know that peanut butter is considered kid food, but I’ve never quite grown out of it.  It’s a great grab-and-go snack on apple slices or crackers.  It’s equally at home in cookies and in oatmeal.  And I’ve long considered the PB&J the ultimate travel food (yes, even before we had kids).  So I’m wondering, why don’t I use it in my savory cooking more?

What are your favorite savory peanut butter recipes? Continue reading →

Savory Oatmeal with Curry, Greens, and Caramelized Onions

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Welcome to Emmy Cooks!  You can see some 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 own reader, or follow Emmy Cooks on Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest.

Seasoned readers of this blog will probably not be surprised to learn that most of my photographs are taken standing on one leg while I use the other to block my children out of the frame.  This dish was so irresistibly good, however, that I failed entirely.The baby (should I start calling her something else now that she boxes me out to dig into a dish of curried oats and caramelized onions?) could not keep her (meaning my) spoon out of the bowl.  And I can’t say I blamed her at all. Continue reading →

Greens with Lemon, Dill, and Feta

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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.

Some days, maybe most days, simpler is better.

I had a plan to make this week’s greens into a tart of some sort, or maybe spanakopita, or at least green tartines.  But those things take time, and some days I don’t have time.  I piled all my greens into a pan to wilt, then chopped and dressed them with olive oil, lemon juice, dill, and a sprinkle of feta cheese.  It was better than good enough. Continue reading →

Baked Eggs with Greens, Yogurt, and Spiced Butter

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

It’s a fact of life: sometimes things go wrong in the kitchen.  Sometimes very wrong.  No big deal, it happens.  Those are the recipes (and there are many) I never tell you about here–except, of course, for when I do.  (Ask me some other time about the all the dull things I’ve done with spinach, the watery attempts at Indian food, or those disgusting microwave potato chips.)  But today, this is a story of redemption.

Last time I combined softly-cooked eggs with greens and yogurt, the dish was a bust.  And you weren’t surprised.  But this time!  Things are different this time, friends.  Or, rather, things are much the same, but a few secret ingredients take the dish in a whole new, and altogether delicious, direction.  (Thank you, Yotam Ottolenghi, for your good ideas.)

The basics are the same: a bed of sauteed greens, perfectly-for-you-cooked eggs, and creamy, garlicky, salty yogurt.  The detail that ties it all together, though, is pure decadence: a generous drizzle of spiced butter in which you’ve crisped a few leaves of sage.  So much for my original plan to make a healthier-than-hollandaise sauce for poached eggs–but it’s so worth it. Continue reading Baked Eggs with Greens, Yogurt, and Spiced Butter (click for recipe)

Sauteed Greens with Garlic

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Although it’s only been a few weeks, I’m feeling pretty proud of myself for staying on top of both of our CSAs.  A CSA is a great motivator to cook vegetables because the more the veggies pile up, the less room I have for my extensive condiment collection and the really good stuff, like chocolate sauce and enough feta cheese to last me until fall.  (What?  It’s pickled.)

At this time of year, our veggie box is full of leaves, and this recipe is my go-to solution for cooking them down to a manageable size for storage or immediate consumption.  These silky greens are great alone or as a component of another dish (try whole wheat pasta with these greens and basil pesto).

This treatment works well for softer greens, including tender kale, and would also work for briefly simmered collards or tough kale.  I made one batch with rainbow chard this week, pictured below, and a separate batch using beet greens, arugula, and radish tops.  Whatever greens you use, start with a lot; one bunch of greens looks awfully puny after a few minutes in the pan. Continue reading Sauteed Greens with Garlic (click for recipe)

Beans and Greens

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I was trying to decide whether to make you black sticky rice pudding with coconut milk or chocolate cookies tonight.  But J, scrolling back through my recent posts, said that I haven’t been feeding you enough protein.  (That’s a dad talking, there.  Fair enough, though, since yesterday’s “recipe” was for ice cubes.)

Thank J, then, for this heartier fare.  We’ve been making this dish for more than a decade and it is always satisfying.  It’s a quick dinner and our regular answer to the question “how am I going to cook down of some of these greens to make more room in the fridge?”

The core ingredients are, as you may have cleverly deduced, beans (white ones) and greens.  The spare supporting cast includes a small onion, garlic, chile flakes, white wine and rosemary.  These bit players can be swapped or omitted depending on availability.  I most recently made this dish with lacinato kale, but any kind of hearty green will work.  I have been known to combine kale, chard, beet greens and radish tops when the fridge is full to bursting.

I like to serve a big bowl of these greens alongside a grainy slice of grilled or toasted bread, preferably spread with a Cypress Grove goat cheese. Now that’s a proper meal. Continue reading Beans and Greens (click for recipe)

Triple-Green Pasta: Spinach Ravioli with Swiss Chard and Arugula Pesto

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You can’t go wrong sauteing a mess of greens with an onion as the starting point for a meal.  Greens, pasta, pesto, done.

This dish would also be delicious with our easy homemade spinach pasta (here’s a vegan version).  And I know I said you need a pasta roller to make homemade pasta, but look at this!  Cooks Illustrated had yet another good idea and a published a pasta recipe that is apparently a dream to roll out by hand.  Let me know if you try that, will you?

Rainbow chard is so pretty.  My five year old picked this bunch out, enraptured by the colors, but declined to eat more than a bite.  Her loss. Continue reading Triple-Green Pasta (click for recipe)