Farmers Market Dinners

Here are two dinners I made out almost exclusively out of stuff I bought at the market in the park accross the street. They aren't rocket science; just a bunch of sauteed vegetables really; both served with polenta two different ways.
Zucchini, tatsoi, yellow tomato, smoked eggplant, carrots, smoked onions, and polenta cakes coated in panko and baked. Thanks to Bridget for the photo styling! The limes were for drinks.


The corn didn't make the cut for this particular dish, but it was delicious. Precious precious sungold tomatoes, chantrelles and shitakes from ozark forest mushrooms, patty pan squash, kalamata olives, chinese broccoli, pumpkin blossoms stuffed with taleggio cheese on a bed of herbed polenta.

Slightly Out of Control Pumpkin Patch

One halloween pumpkin left to rot on side of house = yard full of pumpkins!

Chilled Spicy Cucumer and Avocado Soup

It is crazy hot out, so much so that the thermostat is ten degrees behind itself. So I had the girls over for dinner for some wine and summery food. Rebecca shown here accenting the soup with her awesome shirt.

2 cucumbers - peeled and seeded
2 avocados - chopped
3 cups water
2 tsp. green curry paste
1 serrano pepper - seeded
10 oz. coconut milk
juice of 1 lime
salt and pepper to taste
cilantro and finely chopped green onion for garnish

Put each ingredient in blender in order until fully blended. Place soup in fridge and chill for at least an hour. Handiest to store it in a pitcher for serving ease.

Smoky Spicy Fava Bean Dip

I recently purchased a stove top smoker and I've been smoking everything I can get my hands on since. I've also got a cherry tomato and jalapeno plant that won't quit, so I have to keep making up recipes that include them. And I'm constantly looking for ways to reinvent hummus, so that's how this recipe came about.

6 cherry tomatoes - halved and smoked
1/2 yellow onion - smoked
3 smoked jalapenos de-stemmed and de-seeded
1 can fava beans - rinsed and drained
1 generous handful cilantro
2 T Braggs liquid aminos
1 t tumeric - just because this might be true

Salad Towers

After my gig at the farmer's market near my house, I bought a few treats for myself and incorporated them all into one dinner, the second course of which I forgot to photograph before I gobbled it. It was whole wheat rotini with fresh chanterelle mushrooms and a light garlic cream sauce. The first course was this salad:

1 large yellow patty pan squash - sliced in 1/8 inch slices and sauteed until lightly browned

1 smoked or carmelized onion sliced - i did smoked

1 homegrown tomato sliced

1 head bibb lettuce

bleu cheese - melted into more of a sauce if you like

black pepper and sea salt

balsamic vinegar (optional)

layer them in the following order - lettuce leaf, tomato slice, squash slice, cheese - then sprinkle the onions all around.

Tempeh Cakes at Terrene

Terrene is one of my favorite restaurants in St. Louis, partially because they always have one reliably delicious vegetarian entree, and partially because the staff there are so sweet and friendly that the dining experience is enhanced by their presence.

These tempeh cakes knocked my socks off! They are smokey, savoury, sweet all at the same time. I think about them all the time now. I am working on getting the chef to give me his recipe. Go eat at Terrene! They will not overload you with butter and salt. And you might just eat something that you can't find ANYWHERE ELSE IN TOWN!

Mashed Frites with Seitan and Mushrooms and Backyard greens

This one was inspired by one of the courses we had at an "underground dinner" a few weeks ago. Now while I found that whole experience culinarily underwhelming, I did particularly enjoy this dish, especially since it was family style and I was able to sneak lots of extra morels onto my plate. This is about as "home cookin" as vegetarian food can get.

Ingredients:

3 large potatoes, boiled skins on

1 cup plain greek yogurt

1 T butter

1 handful parsley

salt and pepper

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1 cup seitan

4 cups shitake mushrooms (or morel if you are lucky)

garlic

shallots

white wine

butter

a pinch or two of flour (optional)

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1 large bunch of your favorite greens

splash of apple cider vinegar

1 t honey

raw veg salad

Inspired by a perfect "fatoosh" salad at The Vine, my favorite local Middle Eastern eatery, I went to the Tower Grove Farmers Market this morning and bought the ingredients for this simple salad. All local and all delicious. It's easy, and you can put in basically anything. Just dice it all up!

Ingredients:

2 tomatoes

1 small red onion

1 zucchini

2 ears corn

1 lemon (juice of)

1 handful parsley

1 handful basil

salt and pepper to taste

A few greens for dinner

I have three large pots in my garden, each with five plants crammed in them. Here you see a ONE DAY harvest of buttercrunch lettuce, rainbow chard, and kale. The lettuce is especially bountiful and I've been making a huge salad every day. All those greens look like a lot when raw, but it took every bit of what you see here to fill my deep pie plate for a crustless quiche I made and forgot to photograph. I can't believe I never grew these before. It's the easiest thing ever. But you will have to wait until early April if you want your own. Greens growing season is drawing to a close.

Lentil Barley Stuffed Peppers

This is not rocket science, but tastes so good and hearty. This is the kind of thing I wish local restaurant chefs would dream up for vegetarians. It is a focal point that you can pair with vegetable sides! If all you can think of is pasta and stir-fry then you fail the assignment! Anyway, enough of my rant.....

Ingredients:

1 cup green lentils

1 cup purple barley (or regular barley)

1 red onion chopped

2 eggs

1 t chopped thyme

truffle oil to taste

As many peppers as you want

Equal # pieces of your favorite sliced cheese - I used provel because I am addicted to it.

salt and pepper to taste

olive oil

Cook the lentils and barley separately. Fluff the barley and drain the lentils and transfer into large mixing bowl. Sautee onion until it begins to carmelize. Add the thyme and sautee for 1 more minute. Transfer onions to bowl with lentils and barley. Add eggs, salt, pepper and truffle oil and mix thoroughly.

Cut the tops off peppers and set aside. Using your hands, grab as much of the seed cluster as you can. If necessary, go in with a knife and clean out the rest of the seeds and white fibrous bits. Set pepper cups close together in either an oiled deep baking dish or loaf pan. Pack lentil mixture inside pepper cups until completely full. Put tops of peppers back on top and bake for 30 mins at 425. Remove pepper tops and replace with 1 slice of cheese per pepper. Broil until cheese is brown and/or bubbly. Serve with salad, asparagus, or anything you want!

Spinach and Bean Empanadas

Empanadas are delicious, but they are never vegetarian at restaurants for some reason. Why is that when these are so easy and obvious?

1 10oz pack of frozen spinach, thawed and drained

1 large onion diced

5 cloves garlic

1 can beans rinsed and drained

1 egg, hard boiled and chopped

queso fresco (or any cheese) to taste

salt and pepper to taste

1 package GOYA "tapas para empanadas" - (lazy, i know)

Saute onion and garlic, then mix with remaining ingredients in large bowl.

Place one tablespoon of filling in center of each dough disc. Lightly wet the edges with water using finger tips. Fold in half and seal edges by pressing together with a fork. Bake for around 10 mins at 350 or until golden brown. You can also fry them if you're in that kind of mood.

Serve with your choice of yummy sauces. Tomatillo chipotle salsa and mexican crema shown here.

Vegetarian Passover Dishes

The Torah instructs a Jew not to eat chometz all seven
days of Passover. "Chometz" is defined as any of the five grains (wheat, spelt, barley, oats, and rye.) The way around that when you want something starchy? Quinoa! It seems like a grain, but it is actually a member of the beet family.

Enter Greens and Quinoa Pie!

1 c. Quinoa rinsed and drained

1 10 oz. pack of frozen spinach (thawed but not drained)

1 large onion chopped and sauteed.

1/2 c. fresh herbs chopped

1/4 c. goat cheese

1/2 c. plain greek yogurt

3 eggs beaten

salt and pepper to taste

Oil a deep pie plate with olive oil. Mix all ingredients in large mixing bowl and transfer to oiled pie plate and bake at 350 for 30-40 mins. Easy!

Serve with Tunisian Carrot Salad:

1 lb. baby carrots chopped

20 kalamata olives chopped

sunflower shoots

olive oil

roasted garlic

paprika

cayenne pepper

lemon juice

chopped parsley

Mix it all together and serve either chilled or at room temperature.

Oh, and since I'm not Jewish, I also had a big slice of whole wheat bread with white bean spread on it. Bean spread recipe to follow.

Whole Foods Rip-Off Dinner

Whole Foods sells all sorts of lovely expensive salads and pies in their prepared foods section. So sometimes I go and write down the ingredients and make them myself! That's what happened with these two items. I winged it on the recipes, so who knows if these tasted anything like the ones I was trying to recreate. All I know is that they tasted good! And a nice departure from what I usually think of as dinner fare.

Greens and Ricotta Pie:

For the crust:

(Cooks Illustrated says to use Vodka in place of half the water in your recipe for a flakier crust)
1 1/4cups all purpose flour
1/2 t. salt
1 T. sugar
6 T. cold unsalted butter, cut into slices
1/4 c. chilled solid vegetable shortening , cut into 2 pieces
2 tablespoons vodka , cold
2 tablespoons cold water

For the Filling:

All the greens in your fridge chopped (I had about a half bunch each of kale and collards, and half a bag of baby spinach.

1 large onion chopped

5 cloves garlic chopped

1 1/2 c. ricotta

nutmeg, salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 425. Crust recipe should yield 2 large crusts, one for the top and one for the bottom. I made four small crusts so I could make individual sized pies. Roll them out on wax paper and refrigerate immediately. Saute the greens, onion and garlic until greens are compacted substantially and most of the moisture has evaporated. Transfer them to blender and add ricotta and spices to taste. Process until greens are well chopped and ricotta is fully incorporated. Press one crust into pie plate, making sure to leave 1/2 inch of overhang beyond lip of pie plate. Fill crust tightly with greens mixture and top with second crust, pressing the edges of the two crusts together to form a seal. Bake until crust is golden brown.

Quinoa Lentil Rutabega Salad:

1 medium rutabega cubed and steamed until tender

1 cup (raw) green lentils cooked until tender

1 cup (raw) quinoa cooked

1 shallot very thinly sliced

1 red or yellow bell pepper thinly julienned

vinagrette - olive oil, balsamic, salt and pepper

Arugula (optional)

Seedy Wheat and Molasses Bread

Garlic and Kale Soup

Ingredients:

1 c. cooked barley

5-6 shitake mushrooms - sliced

8-10 cloves garlic - thinly sliced

brown rice vinegar

at least 4 c. vegetable stock

1 bunch kale - stemmed and chopped

olive oil

Heat oil in large pot. Saute mushrooms (salt optional) for about 8 minutes or until they are slightly browned. Add garlic and saute 2 minutes. Add vinegar and saute until evaporated. Add barley, stock, and kale and cook 10-20 minutes until kale is tender. Add salt and pepper to taste. This soup will warm your bones in the winter time. This soup is the soup most likely to send your cold or flu packing.

Parsnip, Chard and Collard Bake

I got this recipe from a fellow blogger, and changed a few things due to lack of ingredients on hand. I used parsnips instead of sweet potatoes, and collards in place of half the chard. And I didn't have gruyere, so I used fontina. Substitution is my middle name. Here is a link to the original recipe. I didn't use quite as much bechamel as she uses, because I wanted to be sure I could cut it into squares easily. It was delicious and very time consuming. I served it with braised seitan in red wine sauce.

Salade Niçoise

Ingredients for Dressing: Balsamic Vinegar, Olive Oil, Dijon Mustard, Salt and Pepper.

2 parts oil, 1 part vinegar, 1/2 part mustard, salt and pepper to taste - whisk together.

Ingredients: Butter lettuce (not shown,) fresh tofu (cubed,) avocado (sliced,) grape or cherry tomatoes (halved,) hard boiled egg (peeled and halved,) green beans (blanched,) red onion (thinly sliced,) new potatoes (boiled and cut into wedges,) green and black olives (sliced,) capers.

Choose an attractive platter and create a bed of salad leaves. Carefully arrange ingredients symmetrically on top of leaves. I tried to keep the colors balanced on each side. How much of each is up to you. Sparingly drizzle a small amount of dressing over top. Other ingredients could include bell peppers and artichokes. Traditionally this salad contains tuna, but that's just gross.

Roasted Stuffed Pumpkin

recipe somewhat stolen from gourmet.com

I've made this 5 times for various fall parties this month. It's been a hit at every one of them. I didn't have Gruyere or Emmental cheese, so I used Parmesan and fontina. And a couple of times I didn't have cream, so I used milk and it was fine. I left out the nutmeg and added parsley for a more savoury flavour. The only problem is how to serve it. It's an appetizer, but it's not really finger food. You need a plate and a fork to eat it. And a big spoon to serve it.

Butternut Squash Frittata

Then I made the same thing with leftover butternut squash. I really like making these because I am so bad at making omelettes. I don't know how short order cooks make them so thin and perfectly folded. Anyhow, If it's closer to lunchtime when I have breakfast on a Sunday, I usually serve it with salad instead of more traditional breakfast accompaniments.

Corn Mash Frittata

The hot sauce is from my friend Bridget. It's yummy, hot, flavorful, and goes well with eggs.

I had leftover corn mush from when I strained the bisque. It was pretty tasty, so I made up a use for it. Whisk 3 eggs, 1 cup corn mush, 1/2 cup natural yogurt, a little cream, salt, pepper. Saute 1 small diced onion with 1/2 of one diced jalepeno in a cast-iron skillet with a generous amount of olive oil. Once onions are soft, pour in egg mixture and bake at 350 until set. Top with cheese and hot sauce if desired.