Archive for the 'vegetarian' Category
Have you ever panicked that there is just so much food and so little time? I do. Frequently.
I remember the first time I felt a pang of THERE IS JUST SO MUCH TO EAT AND ONLY SO MANY DAYS IN A WEEK AND HOURS IN A DAY! AND MONTHS IN A YEAR! EVERY DAY I HAVE TO DECIDE! I’M NOT GOING TO HAVE TIME TO EAT IT ALL! THE MATH JUST DOESN’T ADD UP! – it was triggered by a coconut cream pie. So now every time I get overwhelmed by the food possibilities out there (eating in and out), or unreasonably angry that I’ve wasted valuable space and calories on something that was not all it should be, I think of coconut cream pie. OK, not really every time. But sometimes I have my coconut cream pie moments.
I get this feeling a lot when I get sucked into the vortex of food blogs – skipping from one to the next, bookmarking stuff and taking mental notes that invariably more mental notes get loaded on top of until I go a little bit mental. Once in awhile something I see jumps the queue – this was one of them. And I had a bag of the daintiest little Canadian du puy lentils that remind me of smooth, speckled green river stones that I was dying to use.
A Gourmet recipe, it was originally titled “Fried Eggs Over Warm Lentil Salad with Lardons”, which sounds appealingly rustic and British, but of course we don’t generally use the term lardon to describe the bacon in our skillets, and because I’m trying to be a little bit less lardon I poached my eggs instead of frying them. Every little bit helps.
This was actually lunch and dinner; at 6pm I tossed the leftover lentil salad back into the skillet I had just cooked plain old pork chops in, tossing them around to warm them and get some of those flavourful bits. It made a great accompaniment; ditto pork tenderloin or roast, I’d imagine.
Poached Eggs Over Warm Lentil Salad with Bacon
Thanks again, Gourmet. (This of course has been adapted – I also tossed the spinach right in and wilted it, rather than scattering it overtop the eggs as per their instruction.) If you want to throw a peeled clove of garlic into the pot of lentils while they simmer, go right ahead.
3/4 cup dried lentils (I used little green du Puy lentils)
4 slices bacon, chopped
2 leeks (white and pale green parts only), finely chopped
2 celery ribs, finely chopped
1 carrot, finely chopped
2 Tbsp. red wine vinegar, or to taste
1 cup baby spinach
1 Tbsp. finely chopped fresh tarragon (optional)
salt & pepper
4-8 large eggs
In a small saucepan, cover lentils with about twice as much water, bring to a simmer and cook uncovered for about 30 minutes, or until just tender. (You can do this ahead of time and keep them in the fridge until you’re ready for them.)
While the lentils are simmering, cook the bacon until crisp in a large, heavy skillet; transfer with a slotted spoon to a plate, leaving the drippings in the skillet. (If you like, pour them out and add a drizzle of canola or olive oil.) Add the leeks, celery, and carrot and cook, stirring often, for about 5 minutes. Add vinegar and cook until it’s mostly evaporated. Drain the lentils well and add them to the skillet along with the spinach and tarragon; cook, stirring, until heated through and the spinach wilts. Season with salt and pepper and stir in the bacon.
Meanwhile, poach your eggs. Divide the warm lentil salad among 4 plates and top with the eggs. Serves 4.
One Year Ago: Roast Chicken and Hummus Wraps and Mandarin Milkshakes
January 11 2010 | beans and eggs and one dish and vegetarian | 25 Comments »
I feel like a better person already.
So yes, we’re cleaning out the fridge to take off to Jasper for a week for Christmas in November, a week if eating, drinking and being merry like no other. I CAN’T WAIT.
One thing that had to go was a big bunch of kale. I had seen something, somewhere, made with kale that made me want to eat it. Where was that? Wading through torn-out magazine pages (which are scattered through my house like – I fear I’ll decades from now become a spinster with a house full of torn-out recipes instead of cats) I spent a couple days scrolling through my memory to try and retrieve the file. Fortunately, the world-wide inter-web makes a fine filing system, and if I can at least trigger the memory of which publication it was in (I knew it was Molly, and she has a new column in Bon Appétit – the first I flip to), I can look it up. Bingo.
Spaghetti with Braised Kale
adapted from Molly’s column in the October 2009 issue of Bon Appétit
1/2 lb. spaghetti
canola or olive oil, for cooking with
1 large onion, chopped
1 head of garlic, cloves peeled and chopped
1 large bunch of kale
a squeeze of lemon juice
grated Parmesan cheese
salt & pepper
Put a big pot of water on to boil, and cook the spaghetti. Meanwhile, heat a drizzle of oil in a heavy skillet and saute the onion for about 5 minutes, until golden. Add the garlic and cook for a few more minutes.
Rinse the kale, pull out the tough ribs and coarsely chop or tear apart; add another drizzle of oil and then the kale to the onions and garlic. Add about 1/4 cup of the pasta water, straight from the pot, to the pan as well. Cover, reduce the heat to medium-low and cook for about 10 minutes, until tender.
Drain the spaghetti, reserving a bit of the cooking liquid. Add the spaghetti to the kale mixture. Add lemon juice and a few spoonfuls of the reserved cooking liquid; toss to combine, adding a handful of Parmesan cheese and more liquid by tablespoonfuls if it’s too dry. Serve immediately.
W maturely dined on plain pasta drizzled with good olive oil and a sprinkle of coarse sea salt. Snif.
Next time I’m starting out with bacon.
One Year Ago: Beef Tenderloin Panini
November 03 2009 | pasta and vegetarian | 20 Comments »
There’s this girl I know (if you count obsessively reading their blog as knowing someone) who besides being a brilliant writer and photographer, has great taste in food. And besides that, she’s at a constant trot one step ahead of me in the kitchen.
I have a running list of things I want to try, and while it’s a fluid list, with items constantly being added and falling off as I forget about them/lost interest, some have been gathering dust on that list for eons. Blueberry Boy Bait, for example, has been knocking on the door since I flipped past it in one of Nigella’s books (along with Bang Bang Turkey, which I’ve managed to scratch off my list), and she beat me to it. And I know there were others, but I forget them, and now Laurie Colwin’s Tomato-Corn Pie, which I’ve read about approximately a hundred times (Laurie’s Home Cooking and More Home Cooking take up permanent residence beside my bed – they are the epitome of comfort) and have truly meant to make every single summer since I first read MHC, but never have. Laurie describes – as part of a story about a woman named Mary O’Brien who owned a tea shop called Chaiwalla in Salisbury, Connecticut – a pie built in a biscuit crust, thickly layered with tomatoes, corn scraped from the cob, basil, chives and grated cheddar, then topped with lemon juice-spiked mayo, topped with another biscuit crust (which is rolled thin, so it’s not too doughy) and baked. Every time I see a glut of ripe tomatoes, I think to myself: I really ought to make that tomato pie. But then I don’t. Because really, if you’re going to bother making a late-summer pie from scratch, oughtn’t it be peach, cherry, or plum?
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September 02 2009 | one dish and vegetarian | 11 Comments »
I think if one is going to discuss tomatoes, the issue of classification (fruit or vegetable) should be cleared out of the way at the outset.
Botanically, tomatoes are indeed fruit. This is a fact of common knowledge, yet although people are quick to point it out, they hardly consider treating them as such. One would no more make a sweet and cinnamon-scented crisp out of tomatoes than they would stuff an apple with crumbs and top it with cheese. (Although come to think of it, either one might be quite tasty. I have, after all, discovered this year that tomato paste makes a more than suitable addition to a spicy Jewish apple cake, and I’ve for a long time added a spoonful to carrot cakes.)
And that’s because tomatoes are – ready for this? – vegetables. The term is purely culinary, referring to any plant whose fruit, seeds, roots, tubers, bulbs, stems, leaves, or flower parts are used as food. So from a culinary standpoint, from the arena in which it matters (the kitchen), a tomato is a vegetable. But whatever you call it – I’m just happy that my plants are producing some.
(And in case you do get pulled into the fruit vs. vegetable debate, you can play the Supreme Court card: legally, tomatoes have been considered vegetables since the late 1800s when the US imposed tariff laws that included a duty on vegetables but not fruit, forcing the court to decide; furthermore, tomatoes are the state vegetable of New Jersey – 8,682,661 New Jerseyers can’t be wrong.)
So yes, it’s Tomato Week, the final installment of Summer Fest 2009, and I’m late to the party again – last week seemed to completely blow by without much more than roasted beans, let alone greens.
This week though, my tomato plants are bursting. Bursting! I no longer have tomato envy. I am the proud mama of two flourishing plants, picked up around May/June from Home Depot with high hopes and replanted (at about a foot tall) in the old double sink propped up against the fence and filled with dirt. They are now over-the-fence-high; over the summer as they grew I propped them up with bamboo sticks and chunks of hockey sticks, secured with twist ties, and maybe it’s all that Canadian karma, but it worked. One is heavy with cherry tomatoes, not all ripe at once but promising a tomato-heavy month; the other produced small “patio” tomatoes, sort of like a cross between a Roma and a regular beefsteak. They are still green, but they’re there. And there are lots of them. And I grew them. Or at least, didn’t kill them.
One of my favourite things to do to a cherry tomato is roast it; drizzle with oil, scatter with garlic and sprinkle with salt, then roast at 400F or so until they release their juices and shrivel, then start to get sticky, dark bits. There are so many things you can do with roasted tomatoes: scrape out of the pan onto hot pasta with crumbled feta or goat cheese and tear some fresh herbs over top; add chicken or veg stock and puree for roasted tomato soup (add a splash of cream at the end); scatter over pizza; or make a savoury clafoutis.
Roasted Cherry Tomato and Goat Cheese Clafoutis
A clafoutis is a baked French custard usually studded with cherries and sweetened with sugar; this one is savoury, but resembles the original with cherry tomatoes. Serve it warm or cold, in wedges. It’s probably great as a sandwich, tucked between buttered toast.
1 pint cherry or grape tomatoes
2-3 garlic cloves, left whole
canola or olive oil, for cooking
salt and pepper
4 oz. soft goat cheese
2 Tbsp. snipped fresh chives, parsley or basil
3 large eggs
1 cup half & half
3 Tbsp. flour
Preheat the oven to 400F. Spread the tomatoes and garlic in a single layer on a rimmed baking sheet; drizzle with oil, salt and pepper, roll around to coat and roast for 20-30 minutes, or until the tomatoes start to shrivel and turn golden.
Scrape into a pie plate or other shallow baking dish that has been sprayed with nonstick spray. Turn the oven down to 350F. Crumble over the goat cheese and sprinkle with chives.
In a medium bowl, whisk together the eggs, cream and flour; pour over the tomatoes and cheese. Bake for 20-25 minutes, until puffed and pale golden. Serve immediately, wait until it cools to room temperature, or chill and serve cold.
A lot of tomatoes are finding their way into kitchens this week:
Margaret of A Way to Garden made some quick tomato sauce, ever so slowly; Matt of Matt Bites shows off his Tomato Top Ten. Shauna of Gluten Free Girl slices them up and makes a smoked salsa. Marilyn of Simmer Till Done made us an upside-down tomato-basil bread. Paige of The Sister Project simmered tomato soup. Jaden of Steamy Kitchen (thankfully!) made a Caprese salad with basil vinaigrette. And Diane and Todd of White on Rice Couple simmered some tomato jam – yum.
Check them out – Summer Fest 2009 – like summer itself – is coming to an end.
One Year Ago: Grilled Cheese with Elk Pepper Salami, Pickled Beet and Apple Salad
August 18 2009 | appetizers and eggs and vegetarian | 21 Comments »
It would appear I’m becoming a slacker again, especially on weekends. This time I have an excuse though: I got stung by a bee and swelled. No really. Actually it was a wasp, and it wasn’t so much the swelling as the ensuing sensation that my gut was being stomped upon by angry transvestites in stilettos (stilettos with real-size women in them would be far too small and dainty).
Although I do like the excuse that I’m actually only 120 pounds, I just got stung by a bee. (Or perhaps several – mostly in the muffin-top and thigh area.)
I was so honoured to emcee the first annual Sugar Bowl last night. Immediately upon walking in the door of the lawn bowling club I was chatting at the registration desk, not hassling any wasps at all, and one flew up my capris and stung me above the knee (as one might do if one was trapped in my pants). Ironically, I’ve been killing wasps all over our house and yard for days without being stung – in fact I assassinated 4 in the bathroom immediately before leaving for the event. (Clearly this is payback – either the offending wasp followed me there, or got texted by his second cousin over in Ramsay that half his family was just obliterated and flushed down the toilet.)
So it hurt, yes, and swelled into a second knee. But as I was dabbing some ointment on it my stomach must have got wind of what happened, cramped up and remained that way for the entire evening, so much so that it was hard to stand up straight. I’m sure some attendees wondered about the pained expression on my face; surely I couldn’t be that passionate about lawn bowling?
It was a really really fantastic, fun event, and I’m already looking forward to next year. But when it was over I got myself home, into my PJs and the fetal position and stayed that way until this morning. Stupid wasp.
So last night: no dinner. I have no idea what M fed W, but this morning the latter fessed up to eating a bag of whole wheat hot dog buns, and I estimated there were at least 6 in there when I left (I took note for a fall-back dinner: a whole wheat hot dog bun spread with peanut butter and stuffed with a banana. Guess he didn’t make it that far.)
Tonight we ate grilled Spolumbo’s sausages and leftover ratatouille, but I do have to tell you about those kale chips. Turns out fresh kale, when oiled, salted and roasted, turns into crispy, salty kale, and although it is completely delicious, and finally helped me to understand why people go around eating sheets of nori, I think calling them chips are a bit of a stretch. I will totally make this again, though – my sister and I polished off a bowl of crispy, ruffly “chips” in under 10 minutes. The kids unfortunately didn’t fall for the ruse.
Thanks, you guys, for all the recipe links! It was interesting to compare; oven temperatures ranged from 250°F to 400°F (I did a middle-of-the-road 350°F) and while all were tossed in oil, a couple also had lemon juice or apple cider vinegar, which I opted against. (In order to get veggies nice and crispy you want to avoid any moisture, and I really wanted them crispy.) Wash your kale, dry it in a salad spinner or between tea towels, pull out the tough stems, tear it into chunks (if you like – some recipes roasted whole leaves) and toss with a drizzle of canola or olive oil, then sprinkle with salt. Make sure the leaves are spread out in a single layer on your baking sheet; when they get bunched up they tend to not crisp up. The higher temp recipes took only 5 minutes; the low took half an hour; mine took about 15 minutes. You just want them crisp, but not burned. It’s pretty simple, really.
And I thought it was about time I mentioned the ratatouille; I’ve gone through a couple batches in the past weeks, keeping it in the fridge to dip into for pizza, sandwiches, lasagna, or to balance a grilled sausage. It seems more like an end-of-summer dish, but the markets are loaded with tomatoes, peppers, zucchini and eggplant right now. I love this recipe because you can start with the onion and then just chop and add veggies to the pan as you go, and measurements are approximate – feel free to add more of this or that, and sometimes I add a big spoonful of tomato paste to enrich it a little.
Like chili and soup, ratatouille is even better the next day, and the next. And once you have a stash of it, you can toss it with hot pasta (and crumbled feta or goat cheese), layer it between lasagna noodles, spread some into a panini or grilled cheese, or gob onto a pizza crust or pita and top with cheese.
Ratatouille
canola or olive oil, for cooking
1 large onion, halved and sliced
4-5 big garlic cloves, crushed
1 small eggplant, chopped into bite-sized pieces
1 red, yellow or orange pepper, chopped
1 zucchini, chopped into bite-sized pieces
3 ripe tomatoes, coarsely chopped
a couple tablespoons tomato paste (optional)
1 tsp. oregano or dried Italian seasoning
a handful of fresh spinach or basil, chopped (optional)
In a large skillet, heat a generous glug of oil over medium heat. Saute the onion, stirring occasionally, until soft and starting to turn golden. Add the garlic and cook for another minute, then add the eggplant and cook for another 5 minutes, adding more oil if needed, until the eggplant is soft. Add the pepper and zucchini, season with salt and pepper and cook for about 10 minutes, until everything is nice and soft and you’re starting to get some golden edges. Add the tomatoes, tomato paste and oregano and cook for 5 more minutes.
Taste and adjust the seasoning if you need to; if you’re adding fresh spinach or basil, stir it in and let it wilt. Serve immediately or refrigerate overnight and reheat as you need it. Serves 8 (or so).
One Year Ago: Seafood Chowder
August 09 2009 | snacks and veg and vegetarian | 29 Comments »
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