Tag Archives: homemade

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)

Simple Lentil Soup

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I haven’t posted a lentil soup here in weeks.  Weeks!  Hopefully you’ve been managing to get by alright with that red lentil soup from last month.  And did I ever mention that you can and should make The Best Soup of 2011 with green lentils?

But what do you think I EAT around here, people?  Oh, right, that kale salad.  Every day.  But also: lentil soup.  And this week it’s this lentil soup.  It’s a recipe that’s been in my life for a long time, but I never get tired of it.  I try out a lot of recipes, as you might have noticed.  Some are duds (you’ll never hear about those, shhh).  Some are momentary infatuations.  Some I make season after season, year after year.  This soup falls into that last category.

And since it’s late April and I’m talking lentil soup, I guess it’s time to come clean about something: seasonality be damned, I make soup year-round.  Avert your eyes if you must, or haul your laptop over to right in front of your air conditioner to read about it.  I live in Seattle, after all, and feel that I am entitled to take advantage of the few meteorological perks available in this region.  So I will be making soup as the weather permits (i.e., all summer long).

This is one of those recipes that I got from a friend a long time ago and I don’t know where it came from before that.  So if you are the inventor of this precise combination of ingredients, thank you.  It’s perfect.  I haven’t changed a thing.  My friend says the Parmesan rind is what makes it so good, which may be true, but if you don’t have one handy I imagine that you could add the flavor by stirring in some finely-grated Parmesan cheese at the end.  And if you’re vegan I am pretty sure that you could get away with leaving the Parmesan rind out and adding one pinch more salt–but I haven’t tried that.  I don’t want to mess with perfection.

Finally, don’t forget that in the time it takes this soup to cook you can easily bake a homemade bread.  This week I’ve been baking this easy little oat bread, but a whole wheat soda bread or even a beer bread would be perfectly nice as well. Continue reading Simple Lentil Soup (click for recipe)

Arugula Pesto

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When I got home from the farmers market this weekend, my fridge was brimming with greens.  Cooking them is always good for freeing up storage space–but pureeing them is even better.  (Eating them, of course, is the very best!)

As I was chatting with my friendly local farmer, Siri, she mentioned that she posted seasonal recipes on the Local Roots Farm blog.  So of course I had to check them out right away.  This pesto recipe, like the arugula, comes straight from Local Roots.  It’s as good–and as green–as it looks.  Tonight we had it on pasta, but I’m looking forward to having it in my fridge this week to spread on an egg sandwich and drizzle over a tomato salad.  What else should I do with it? Continue reading Arugula Pesto (click for recipe)

Jeweled Rice with Golden Raisins, and Hey, What Cooking Magazines Do You Love?

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What cooking magazines do you recommend? I loved Gourmet and miss it every time I get the Bon Appetit that comes now instead.  I also get Everyday Food, the source of today’s recipe.  And I received the Canal House series as a gift this year and can’t wait for the next one.  But my all-time favorite cooking magazine comes from New Zealand: Cuisine.  It’s beautiful and glossy and equal parts fussy and laid-back, with delicious recipes and cute names for vegetables (Swiss chard is called silverbeet, and zucchini are courgettes).

But more, I want more!  Or, more precisely, I just want to know if there’s something great out there that I’m missing.  I like good food, reliable recipes, smart writing.  Any tips for me?  I’ve gotten so much good advice from you people lately that I just thought I should ask.

I made this rice to accompany Indian food that our neighbors lovingly brought home from Vij’s in Vancouver (eat there if you ever get a chance).  I think a sweet-and-savory combo is just the thing with spicy food, and it was quick and easy to make–although now that I’ve read this I may pop it in the oven to finish cooking next time.  It would also be great made with brown rice. Continue reading Jeweled Rice with Golden Raisins (click for recipe)

Radishes with Butter and Salt

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Today was the first day of the season for the farmer’s market in my neighborhood.  The five of us meandered over the hill in the sunshine, with frequent breaks for ant-watching, water-drinking, and rock-, stick-, and leaf-collecting (“for our nature collections!”).  The round trip, about three miles, took nearly four hours.  To mix metaphors rather unforgivably (forgive me!), we were living the good life in the slow lane.

I think I expected to find a few beat-up storage carrots, early radishes, and a lot of dried apples, but I was pleasantly surprised.  Those farmers have not been lollygagging about in their gardens as I have.  There were tables brimming with greens, radishes, turnips, leeks, rainbow chard, and rabes!  Plus plenty of baked goods, of course, and delicious local honey.  I wanted one of everything but I contented myself with a few big bags of veggies (we could only hang so many bags off the stroller and still have room for children).

I realized a few years ago that, to my surprise, I had grown to love radishes.  Eating them with good butter and flaky salt is one of life’s simple pleasures.  Even if you don’t think you love radishes, give it a try sometime.  You might be pleasantly surprised to find that you love a new vegetable. Continue reading Radishes with Butter and Salt​ (click for recipe)

Smoked Salmon Salade Nicoise

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Dinner outside again!  I lived in LA for three years and appreciated the weather every single day.  You can be sure that I’ll also be able to sustain this glee through every single outdoor meal of Seattle’s short summer.  Especially since it’s supposed to go right back to raining this week.

I took the picnic theme one step further by making a big main-dish composed salad, isn’t that summery?  And I was quite pleased to be one-upped in the pretending-its-summer department by our friends who served a rum punch on the deck before dinner.

Continue reading Salade Nicoise (click for recipe)

Kale Salad with Apples, Currants, and Gorgonzola

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It’s time for another hearty vegetable salad, although if you want this one last long enough to have for lunch the next day you had better at least double the recipe. It’s that good, and beautiful to boot.

Raw kale salads are run-of-the-mill these days, but this salad hails from an era when even people like us were a little skeptical about eating raw kale. It is a “massaged” kale salad that appears to have been all over the internet in 2009 with earnest promises that massaging the kale with salt would break down the cell wells and render it so tender as to be virtually cooked.

Somehow, however, this precise salad didn’t come to my attention until today, when my friend sang its praises and urgently requested the recipe from his sister via text message. Thank goodness. And now I’m sharing it with you in case it also escaped your notice in 2009.

As far as I can tell, this recipe is originally from Feeding the Whole Family by Cynthia Lair, and she got it from a colleague of hers at Bastyr University. If you want a demo of the technique, you can watch her video here, but it’s pretty basic: add salt to kale ribbons and gently knead and squeeze it in for a couple minutes, then add a ton of other delicious stuff, too.

Continue reading Kale Salad with Apples, Currants, and Gorgonzola (click for recipe)

Granola with Orange Zest, Currants, and Walnuts

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I mean to bring something nice over when you invite me to your house. Hopefully I will at least show up with a bottle of wine or a six pack of drinkable beer. But sometimes getting out the door with shoes and coats and all three children is all I can handle and on those occasions, sorry, I owe you. I’m lucky to have understanding friends (and reciprocity agreements in place).

Last weekend, I got about halfway to my goal of bringing some kind of nice baked good to our weekend hosts. Which brings us back to the topic of traveling with oats. I didn’t manage to actually bake the batch of granola I meant to take to our friends in Portland, but I did get as far as packing two jars with the ingredients for this olive oil granola: one big jar of dry ingredients and another smaller jar of wet ingredients. It wasn’t quite like showing up with a perfect cellophane-wrapped treat with a ribbon on it (just kidding, I’ve never done that), but at least the house smelled good while it baked.

We have eaten a lot of that olive oil granola in recent months.  (Here’s a variation with pistachios, dried apricots, and cardamom.)  J claims he could eat it for every meal, but it’s so sweet that his teeth might fall out. Here’s another option, a bit less decadent and perhaps therefore better suited to eat as an everyday breakfast.  Or for three meals a day, your call.

I am an orange zest junkie (have you made this bread yet?), so this recipe appealed to me immediately. Orange zest, currants, walnuts. I was intrigued by the fact that the recipe (mine is adapted from Heidi Swanson’s Super Natural Every Day) calls for butter in place of oil, but I really didn’t taste any difference and will probably just make it with oil next time. Maybe even olive oil.

Continue reading Granola with Orange Zest, Currants, and Walnuts (click for recipe)

Eggs and Rice with Harissa

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I love the harissa oil from that Broccoli and Ravioli salad.  When it’s in the fridge, I drizzle it on everything (including green salad).  It’s the perfect combination of spice, lemon, oil, and salt, an all-around upstanding condiment.

It’s great on roasted potatoes or fish.  Try it smeared onto whole wheat bread and topped with a slice of leftover frittata.  Or stir it into scrambled eggs, of course.

I know I promised to stop making scrambled eggs for dinner all the time, but two things: first, I made this for lunch, and second, of course YOU can still make scrambled eggs for dinner!

Use what you have, as usual.  One of the many benefits of being a cook is that you usually have pretty good things hanging out in your fridge.  I had this harissa oil, leftover jasmine rice, and the bottom half of a bunch of green onions.  And eggs, of course. Continue reading Eggs and Rice with Harissa (click for recipe)

Overnight Oats with Apple, Currants, and Walnuts

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When we travel, we like to have a fridge in our hotel room.  You know?  Scoping out the local restaurant scene is all well and good, but a family of five (with three members under the age of six) emphatically does not want to spend too much time in restaurants.

So we stock up on arrival: milk and cereal for the morning, PB&J fixings for lunch, a pile of fruit and some choice snacks to keep everyone’s energy up for adventuring.  But this time I had a little idea when I stopped into the natural foods store and I swung by the bulk bins for the fixings to make overnight oats.

A handful of oats, milk and/or yogurt (both could easily be vegan–or water or juice, for that matter), toppings.  The oats get creamy with an overnight soak in the fridge, and although I sweetened mine with fruit, it wouldn’t be wrong to drizzle a little maple syrup or honey on your bowl.  If you travel with that sort of thing.

This is definitely going to be my new breakfast of choice on the road.  What’s yours?  What are your travel tips for eating well?  I am really enjoying all the good ideas and advice I am getting in the food blogging world.

p.s. I should really let you know about the great latte and ace baked goods I found at Sleepy Monk Coffee Roasters in Cannon Beach, OR.  Check it out if you’re passing through!

Continue reading Overnight Oats with Apple, Currants, and Walnuts (click for recipe)