Greens & Grains

Wanted: 

Something tasty, quick, and hearty for dinner.

Start with:

Chopped onion, garlic & EVOO.

Saute while you search the fridge for veggies.

Cook Up

Some quinoa, farro, brown rice,

or use what you have leftover.

Add:

Everything green you've got, chopped (I used spinach, broccoli, zucchini).

Saute some more.

Throw In:

A can of chick peas, drained and rinsed

Some Calamata Olives

Some Feta Cheese

Serve

Greens & Feta over Polenta

Step One: Mix up some polenta, spread in a pan, cut into squares, let it set up, then brown in a little olive oil - or - cut up a pre-made roll and brown.

Step Two: Start with the barest amount of olive oil, some garlic and diced onions. Saute while you wash and chop the greens (any combo will do, spinach, kale, Swiss chard, collards, even romaine).

Step Three: Add the greens to the saute and cook them to your taste.

Step Four: Spread the greens over the polenta and top with Feta cheese.

Sweet Potato and Black Bean Burritos

Ingredients: serves 2
2 sweet potatoes

1/2 cup diced onions

2 garlic cloves, minced or pressed
1/2 minced fresh green chile
2 tsp. ground cumin
1 tsp. ground coriander
1 can black beans (15-oz., rinsed &drained)
1/4 C. lightly packed cilantro leaves - chopped - optional
1 T. lemon juice
4 six-inch flour tortillas
tomato salsa for topping

Preparation:

1. Pierce the sweet potatoes several times with a fork, then microwave on high for 6-8 minutes or until a fork goes in easily. Let them cool a bit.
2. Saute the diced onions and garlic in 1-2 tsp olive oil
3. scoop out the potato flesh into a bowl, add the beans and mash together.
4. Stir in the spices, lemon juice and cilantro if using
5. Warm the tortillas in the microwave (wrap in a towel and heat on high for 30-60 second)
6. place 1/4 cup or so of filling in tortilla and roll up.
7. Place filled tortillas in a casserole or baking dish, cover with a damp towel (paper or cotton), then plastic wrap (or the dish's cover if it has one) and microwave on 70-80% power for 5 minutes or until heated through/

I served these with cucumber and radish salad: peel cukes and slice thinly. Slice radishes thinly. Dress with plain non-fat Greek yogurt, dried dill, salt & pepper to taste.

Cavatelli & Brocolli

Family Favorite and another quick supper. D. is practicing his cooking skills before leaving for graduate school. this is one of his favorite dishes. We had some broccoli in the share this week too.

Ingredients:

I large head of broccoli, cut into florets - size up to you - we like them about 1 inch

1-2 bags of frozen cavatelli

4-8 cloves of garlic (we used lovely fresh garlic from the farm market)

salt & pepper

1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan

How to do it

1. Put a pot of water big enough to hold the broccoli up to boil

2. While the water is heating: peel and slice the garlic - or cut each clove into quarters

then put the garlic in a heavy saute pan with some olive oil - we use very little - 2 tablespoons or so - but you can use 1/4 cup or more - cook over medium heat until the garlic is soft and golden brown

3. While the garlic is cooking - cut up the broccoli - and when the water boils throw it in the pot for 3-4 minutes - until it is bright green and still a little crisp

4. scoop the broccoli out of the water with a slotted spoon and add it to the pan with the garlic and oil - turn off the heat on that pan - keep the water boiling

5. add the frozen cavatelli to the boiling water and cook 5-7 minutes. While it is cooking, grate the Parmesan cheese.

6.  Drain the pasta - but reserve 1 cup of cooking water - add cavetelli to the broccoli, garlic and oil

6. Stir in some cheese, add pasta water to moisten - especially if you are not using a lot of oil

We keep the cheese and grater on the table for a little extra on each dish.

Day 29: Black Bean & Polenta Casserole

I like one dish meals. This one has many variations, depending on what is in the house at the time. You can make this with the polenta that comes in a roll, or the "quick" polenta mix in a box, or you can make your own polenta. There are also many versions on line. Here is tonight's version.

Black Bean and Polenta Casserole

1/2 a leftover yellow onion - chopped
4 "spring onions" from the Thanksgiving CSA share - chopped
1 medium zucchini - chopped
1 cup chopped green pepper from the freezer
1 cup corn from the freezer
2 cans black beans (Goya organic)
1 can chopped tomatoes with mild green chilies
1 clove garlic - chopped
olive oil
chili powder, salt, pepper to taste
1 polenta "roll" - purchased - sliced into 12-14 rounds
shredded cheddar cheese  - 1-2 cups - depending on how cheesy you like it - and calorie count

Pre-heat the oven to 350 F. Saute the onions and garlic in about 2 tsp olive oil for about 3 minutes, add the zuchinni, cook about 5 minutes more, add the frozen corn & peppers, cook 3 minutes. Add everything else except the polenta and cheese. Add about 1/3 can of water with the tomatoes. Let this cook together over med-high heat while you prepare the pan & polenta. Spray a casserole with olive oil spray. place half of the polenta slices in the bottom of the casserole dish (or 8 x 8 baking pan) sprinkle half the cheese over the polenta. You can either put all the bean and veggie mixture over the cheese, top with the remaining polenta slices and the remaining cheese OR put 1/2 the beans & veggies, then the polenta slices, then the other 1/2 of the beans & veggies,& top with the remaining cheese (which is what I did tonight). Cover and bake about 1/2 hour at 350 F. This makes about 6 good size servings.

Day 18 : Thanksgiving #2

We traveled to visit my husband's mother - and brought some vegetarian Thanksgiving dishes with us. Once again, the family voted,  and this time it was a split decision, the boys wanted squash with a nut stuffing and the girls wanted stuffed mushrooms.  I made both. First, I modified  Chloe Coscarelli's vegan Harvest-Stuffed Portobello Mushrooms (http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/04/a-vegan-chef-dishes-up-thanksgiving/) by adding a bunch of fresh spinach, chopped, to the onion, cashew, and garlic sauté. Then I added  some grated Parmesan cheese to the finished stuffing mixture. The flavors blended well and the result was very tasty.


For the squash, I started with a nut stuffed Delicata squash recipe from Sunset Magazine (http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=10000001842377). We had acorn squash from our CSA share, so I used that. I wasn't sure I would like the nut stuffing (and it is a little too high in fat and calories for me) so I stuffed my squash with the stuffing I made for the mushrooms - making a total of three different main dishes. For sides, we had the roasted left-over winter vegetables that I made earlier, a big green salad made by grandma, and some of the apple cranberry chutney.

Day 15: Cavatelli & Broccoli

Spent the day cleaning and shopping for Thanksgiving. Picked up the last of the CSA shares for this season. I made stock for the soup I usually make for Thanksgiving (Autumn Vegetable Soup from Mollie Katzen's Still Life with Menu cookbook) and Cranberry Apple Chutney (tried a new recipe from the NYT Well website). Cavatelli & Broccoli is one of our favorite dishes and it is so easy to prepare - and there was broccoli in the CSA share. I sauteed a bunch of garlic cloves in oil (2 tsp oil per person). I cut up the broccoli and threw it in the pasta pot - before the pasta - for 3 minutes, then transferred it to the pan with the garlic & oil using a slotted spoon. I boiled the cavatelli in the same water - then transferred them to the broccoli - added salt & pepper and Parmesan cheese, with more on the side. We had that with some semolina bread and a salad. After dinner, we finished making the Thanksgiving soup - everyone helped chop the many, many vegetables that make it taste so wonderful (leeks, butternut squash, brussels sprouts, carrotts, celery, potatoes, sweet potatoes). I left the last few ingredients (tomatoes, swiss chard, red & yellow bell peppers, tamari, dill) to be added when we re-heat it on Thursday.

Day 2: Pizza with broccoli, red onions, olives, feta & sun-dried tomatoes

Two more reasons I'm doing this - my terrible memory, and my very short attention span. As my family has known for a long time, I never make exactly the same thing twice and I will have forgotten what I made for dinner tonight by this time tomorrow. This is probably because I tend to make things up as I go along, I get bored easily, I don't write down what I do, I don't always measure, and I'm likely to substitute what I have on hand for what I don't (also, I have a notoriously bad memory). I'm already excited that I can make the cauliflower risotto again because I wrote down how I made it here last night. Of course I can't promise it will be exactly the same, even with the recipe recorded here in the ether forever (because I tend to make things up as I go along, I get bored easily, I don't write down what I do, I don't always measure, and I'm likely to substitute what I have on hand for what I don't).

And  - - - - I just thought of another reason! Next week when I am wondering how long  a container of leftover something or another has been in the back of the fridge, I won't have to guess! and I won't have to argue with those who insist it has been there longer than I think it has. This will be, to quote FB, "Cool".

Day 2
Let's Use the Broccoli before it goes to seed Boboli Pizza

The CSA broccoli from last week still looked pretty good - it is amazing how much longer things last here in my refrigerator when they haven't spent weeks traveling across the country in a truck and days sitting in the grocery store - and I'm betting there will be more in tomorrow's share, so I was looking to make something with that. We had cavatelli & broccoli (my absolute favorite thing to do with broccoli) earlier this week, so I was thinking of making some kind of veggie mix to put over polenta. This idea was vetoed by a family member who shall remain nameless - and I found a thin crust, whole wheat Boboli pizza shell in the freezer, so...

• I pre-heated the oven to 450 F - as per the instructions on the Boboli package
• I sliced a red onion, fairly thin, tossed it with a teaspoon of olive oil, put it in a roasting pan and put that in the oven to soften and sweeten it up a bit. The oven wasn't up to temperature yet - I put it in anyway - on the bottom shelf.
• I cut the broccoli up into florets and threw it in a large heavy pan with a tablespoon of oil and a few cloves of garlic - the unmentioned family member said I should just throw the raw onion and broccoli onto the shell and be done with it - but I wanted them a little soft - and not mushy or steamed soft - but flavorful soft - Red onion tastes just wonderful after a little time in the oven but I thought that would dry out the broccoli, so I opted for a short stay in the sautee pan.
• While the onions and broccoli were cooking,  I took a handful of sun-dried tomatoes out of the freezer (they keep longer in there? I've been told - we'll see) and put them in a bowl with hot water. I chopped up the 8 or 10 calamata olives (from the olive bar) left in the refrigerator into quarters, then chopped up the sun dried tomatoes.
• By this time, the oven was up to temperature. I spread the onions on the shell, then the broccoli & garlic, olives, sun dried tomatoes. I spread some feta over the top but I was worried it would be too dry - so I drizzled on a tablespoon of olive oil, then I was worried there wasn't enough cheese - but the block of Parmesan in the fridge has funny white spots on it and we are out of mozerella, except for a couple of "sticks" - so I cut up two of those and threw them on top too.
• Things were piled pretty high on the shell. I put the "pizza" on the pizza stone in the 450 F oven and cooked it about 12 minutes.
• We made a salad with Red leaf lettuce, red pepper, chick peas, and green olives to go with the pizza.

Family Consensus: Pretty Tasty!

PS - Lunch today was Lentil soup made from Mollie Katzen's recipe in the original Moosewood Cookbook, very simple, very, very tasty, one of my favorites - I made a pot last week and put half of it in the freezer - don't forget the vinegar.

PSS - I'm thinking I should run these recipes through the WW calculator and get points totals on them - I am only two months into my lifetime membership, still near goal weight, and I see counting points in my future if I want to stay here.

Day 1: Risotto with orange cauliflower, onions, garlic, and asiago cheese

I've been procrastinating. I'm going to try to blog about 365 days of vegetarian dinners, starting today. I was supposed to start on the first of the month, but today will do just as well, I suppose.

I've been a vegetarian of one sort or another for more than thirty years now and the first question that non-vegetarians ask me has not changed in all that time; "What do you eat?" I'm going to try to answer that question here.

What I eat has changed over time. In the seventies, every vegetarian recipe took out the meat and put in lots of butter, and cream and cheese, as if we had to compensate for what we'd lost. Frances Moore Lappe told us we had to eat the right combination of proteins at every meal, so I built menus around the best amino acid matches. There were no frozen veggie burgers, only TSP (textured soy protein), tempeh and tofu.

When the frozen food industry discovered the vegetarian market, I was seduced by the variety and ease of the new products appearing every time I visited the grocery store and went through a period of building meals around the latest and greatest frozen soy protein - Gardenburger, Boca, Morningstar Farms, and Amy's burgers, various veggie hot dogs, pseudo chicken patties, fake Italian and breakfast sausage, even Quorn "roasts" and tofurky.

I worked my way through every Mollie Katzen cookbook. I've tried ethnic recipes from around the globe and I am a big fan of epicurious.com. Lately, I've joined in on the newest craze; I have a CSA share and for the last twenty four weeks I've been building meals around what is in the box I pick up every Thursday. That has been more fun than I could have imagined, and more work.

For thirty years or so, though, one thing hasn't changed, each evening I answer the question of "What's for dinner?" and the answer never includes meat. So, here goes.

Day 1
Risotto with orange cauliflower, onions, garlic, and asiago cheese



There was a lovely head of orange cauliflower in last Thursday's CSA box. Tonight it morphed into an even lovelier risotto. Here's how it happened.

• I didn't have any stock around, so I put a potato, 3 old small carrots, part of a turnip, half an onion, a handful of green beans, some parsley, and a teaspoon of Verdurette (see below) in a pot with about 6 cups of water and set it to boiling.
• I rinsed and cut the cauliflower into florets which I put into a roasting pan, tossed with 1 tablespoon olive oil and some salt and pepper, and put into a 400 degree oven.
• While the stock boiled and the cauliflower roasted (I stirred it around every once and a while), I minced 3 small cloves of garlic and a leftover half of a white onion and began to sautee that in about a teaspoon of olive oil
• When the onions were soft and starting to brown, I added half a box of arborio rice and sauteed that for a few minutes with the onions and garlic, then I began to add the hot broth (I left it on low and scooped out liquid from around the vegetables with a measuring cup) 1/2 - 1 cup at a time, stirring pretty constantly
• In between stirrings, I grated some asiago cheese - about 3/4 cup I'd say.
• After about 20 minutes or so, the rice was cooked and the cauliflower was starting to brown but not yet mushy. I mixed the cauliflower into the rice, then mixed in the cheese and a little salt and pepper.
• We added a spinach salad (spinach from the CSA box, dried cranberries, walnuts and a little feta cheese, balsamic vinagrette) and that was dinner.
• Yummy!

Verdurette is a recipe to preserve vegetables with salt, French, as you can tell from the name. You can find many versions if you search on-line. I leaned to make this at a food preservation class I took with Leda Meredith http://ledameredith.net/wordpress/ her recipe is basically 4 parts vegetables (1 part each leafy greens, root vegetables, alliums, & fresh herbs) and 1 part salt.