Big Salad

This is a favorite at our house and we eat it once a week.  I don't really like to plan it out too much.  I just throw everything salad-y in and it is always good.  The tofu is nice for it's texture but it's certainly not necessary with the chick peas and nuts covering the protein requirement.   Here are the ingredients:

Baked tofu (see shitake stir fry for recipe,) chick peas, crushed almonds, green onions from the garden, avocado, grape tomatoes, sliced carrots, shredded radish, fresh herbs from the garden, sliced red onion, thin sliced beets, julienne red bell pepper, cucumber half moons (not pictured,) bleu cheese (not pictured,) and your favorite dressing - mine is a simple vinaigrette made of balsamic vinegar, extra virgin olive oil, salt and pepper.   Toss all of this with the greens of your choice!  Sadly, my romaine lettuce has already bolted thanks to the heat.  So I used some leftover napa cabbage and spinach for the base of this salad.  Cabbage is more nutritious than lettuce any way, plus it is crunchier, so I highly recommend this for your next big salad!  These are all pretty sturdy ingredients, so go ahead and dress the whole thing, and throw the rest in the fridge for lunch tomorrow.  It will be different, but I quite like my veggies marinated over night. 

Side note, I ended up not using the beets in the salad when I got the idea to make beet crisps.  They were delicious, but I will wait to tell you all about it in a different post.

Rasika Dinner

Rasika is an Indian restaurant in DC at which I recently enjoyed a delicious meal.  It wasn't the standard Indian menu.  They had lots of unique offerings, like flash fried spinach with tamarind yogurt dressing.  I couldn't bring myself to do any frying last night, so we just had raw spinach with tamarind yogurt (yogurt mixed with samosa sauce.)  But the stand out dish of the evening was the Chestnut Fava Bean Korma.  Below is my attempt to recreate it.  It wasn't as quite as dreamy or nearly as creamy, but it was just the right compliment to the salad, aloo gobi, and black rice pictured above.

Clock wise from top:  Crushed almonds, shelled fresh fava beans, cardamon in and out of it's pod, shelled roasted chestnuts.

 

 

 

Chestnuts are hard to find sometimes, but I hoarded a few jars at Thanksgiving time.  I've also had some success finding them at the Asian grocery stores.  Strangely, I never seem to have trouble finding fresh fava beans around here.  But if you do, the canned ones are fine.  The cardamon seeds are what you want.  Break open the pods to remove the seeds, and discard the pods.  A pinch worth of seeds is all you need, as this spice is quite strong in flavour.  Rasika used cashews, but I didn't have any, hence the almonds.

Ingredients:
20 or so cardamon seeds
1 small onion, diced
20 or so roasted chestnuts
1 cups of fava beans
1 cup of chopped nuts (preferably cashews)
1 can coconut milk or cream
1 T oil, butter or ghee

Directions:
In a saucepan, heat oil and toast cardamon seeds for a minute or two.  Add onions and saute for about 3 minutes.   Add beans, chestnuts, and nuts and cook until onions are brown.  Add coconut milk and allow to stew for about 20 minutes.  Keep on low heat until ready to serve.

Quartet of Bruschetta

While in Montalcino last month, we had a very unexpectedly enjoyable lunch at a little wine store that you wouldn't even expect served food.  We had riboletta, bruschetta and a cheese plate, and it was one of the best meals we had in Italy.  So that's what inspired this little plate. 

 

Two are recreations and two are my own inventions.  Clockwise they are: 1) mushrooms sauteed in olive oil and seasoned with thyme and sea salt 2) white beans and garlic seasoned with rosemary 3) chopped green olives, tomatoes and gorgonzola 4) artichokes with parmesan and little bit of mayonaise.  

Stuffed Tomato and Delicata Squash

Simple to make Sunday dinner. I wanted to make "Baked eggs in Tomatoes" but the husband is weird about eggs, so I swapped out the egg for a rice and mushroom mixture. I chose those because that's what I had in the fridge. You could stuff it with anything though. The delicata squash only appears for a few weeks every fall, so every year I mess with the recipe a little more. Serve these separately or together with a salad (frisee and arugala shown here.)

For the tomato:
Sautee mixed mushrooms with diced onion and garlic, mix with a little parmesan and cooked brown rice and set aside.
Cut off top and hollow out the tomato of all liquid and seeds. Then sprinkle the inside with salt.
Stuff tomato tightly with rice and mushrooms and place on oiled baking sheet.

For the squash:
Halfway mash some white beans with some finely chopped spinach and ricotta cheese. You could mix in an egg, but it's not essential.
Halve the squash and scrape out seeds. Pack in the bean mixture and top with panko breadcrumbs. Place on baking sheet.

Bake either or both at 400 degrees until tops are brown.

Vegetarian Cassoulet

So I'm not going to lie and act like I made this up out of my head. Never let it be said that I don't give credit where it is due! I've never even had a regular cassoulet so I had nothing to draw from. The husband has been requesting I try to make a vegetarian one for over a year, so I used this recipe from Gourmet magazine. I did add some Field Roast sausages though, because I knew I would hear about it if I didn't. I served it with roasted brussels sprouts and toasted wheat bread with my guilty pleasure - provel cheese. Sorry about the unattractive squareness of it.

Cannelloni Duo

Ingredients for the red one: 1 cup French green lentils, 1 big onion, thyme, cannelloni shells, watery tomato sauce

Ingredients for the white one: Butternut squash, 1 onion, goat cheese, sage, cannelloni shells and Béchamel sauce

Soak lentils and then cook them for 30 mins. Saute onion until soft, add thyme and saute one more minute. Transfer the onion thyme mix and half the lentils and puree until smooth. Mix remaining whole lentils with puree mixture and stuff into shells.

Finely dice one half of one butternut squash. Saute squash with diced onion and sage for 5 mins. Remove from heat and mix with 4oz. goat cheese. Stuff into shells.

In two separate lasagna pans, cover bottoms with one sauce each. Lay the lentil stuffed shells about an inch apart in the red sauce pan and cover with more red sauce. Lay the squash stuffed shells in the white sauce pan and cover with more sauce. Cover both pans tightly with aluminum foil and bake 30-45mins until shells are fully cooked. Serve side by side adding extra sauce on top just prior to serving. Garnish white one with a fried sage leaf and red one with parmesan sprinkle.

Stuffed Delicata Squash

Ingredients: Delicata squash (1 squash serves 2)

Olive and truffle oil

Garlic

Onion

Kale

Canned white beans

Panko breadcrumbs

Parmesan

Carefully cut squash in half lengthwise. Bake at 350 cut-side up for 30 mins. Scoop out seeds etc and set aside. Sautee 1-2 cups finely chopped kale with 2 minced cloves garlic and 1/2 a minced onion. Mix in 3/4 can drained and rinsed white beans and mush them just a little bit. Mix in some grated parmesan and maybe 1 tsp. of truffle oil. Top with panko bread crumbs and drizzle a little olive oil on top. Bake at 425 for 30 mins and serve with a complimentary salad. Beets, sungolds and arugula shown here. Thanks to Lisa for the inspiration for this one.

Cannellini Cannelloni

Lightly oil the bottom and sides of baking dish.  Next, lay down a thin layer of tomato sauce.  Place uncooked cannelloni shells (that have been stuffed with: 1 can rinsed cannellini beans, 1 egg beaten, sauteed onions and garlic, lots of chopped herbs)  in tight rows until you have filled the entire dish.  Pour enough tomato sauce to completely cover canneloni over the top and bake covered at 350 for one hour, adding parmesan cheese at the half hour mark.

Chili

ingredients: 3 cloves garlic, 1 onion, 1T chili powder, 1 can black beans, 1 can black-eyed peas, 2 cans dark kidney beans, 2 cans diced tomatoes with green chiles.  

in a food processor, puree garlic, 1/2 the onion, chili powder, 1 can kidney beans,1 can tomatoes.  reserve the other half of the onion for garnish.  put all ingredients in a big pot and cook until you are ready to eat.  salt to taste and top with diced remaining onion.  this will make tons of low fat food for less than $5.

options:  you can add morningstar crumbles if you're into that kind of thing.  

top with freshly shredded white cheddar.

top with sliced jalapenos for color and spice.

add a dollop of lebanese "labna" which is yummier and better than sour cream.

serve over brown rice (seen here) or whole grain small noodles.