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

Rotini with Spinach & Ricotta

So Simple, So Good.

Put the pasta water up to boil.

Chop an onion and start it sweating in a tad of olive oil.

Wash and chop a bunch of spinach.

Drop the pasta in the pot.

Throw the spinach in with the onions and cook until it wilts.

Remove the pasta from its pot to the pan with the spinach and onions, using a slotted spoon.

Stir in 1/2 - 1 cup ricotta cheese (use the purest you can find - read the ingredients - there should be only milk, vinegar, and salt).

Add a little pasta water to thin if you like.

Salt & Pepper to taste.

Top with a dollop of ricotta and little grated Parmesan if you like.

 

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.

Panzanella: My Version

THIS is why I LOVE summer. Jersey tomatoes, fresh mozzarella cheese, and basil cut from a pot on the deck.

 I use fresh bread - the best I can find - ciabatta or other Italian or French bread is fine. Tear it into bite size pieces. I like a bed of lettuce in the bowl - romaine or red or green leaf, (I used red leaf here) top with 1 cup torn bread, 1-2 ounces fresh mozzarella - cubed or something near that - 1 large perfectly ripe tomato cut into chunks goes on next, a couple of Calamata olives if you like - but not altogether necessary. Top with a handful of fresh basil - just cut is best - (I used purple basil here) shredded or whole - I like my leaves whole. Dress with salt, pepper, olive oil (I use just 1 tsp) and lots of good balsamic vinegar.

Delightful. MY favorite summer meal.

Pasta with Garlic Scape Pesto and Roasted Beet and Orange Salad

A couple of weeks ago, the CSA box had something in it I have never cooked (or even seen) before - Garlic Scapes. These are the shoots that grow up out of the garlic bulb as it tries to become a plant. We eat the garlic bulb, so the farmers cut off the scapes before they flower and leave the bulb to continue to grow. I have read that the scapes have a "delicate" garlic flavor. Our experience was that they pack a serious punch of garlicky power. They are lovely to look at as well.

There are dozens of recipes (maybe hundreds) on the web for garlic scape pesto. I used less oil than called for - a trick I learned from Weight Watchers - I substituted vegetable broth for some of the oil..

Ingredients

1 cup chopped garlic scapes (about 1/2 inch pieces)

1/4 cup pine nuts

2 tablespoons olive oil

1/4 cup vegetable broth

1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesean Cheese

Pulverize everything in the bowl of a food processor.

It come out a lovely light green color. We did not add basil - but someone told me it is a nice addition.

We had our pesto with spiral pasta (Barilla Plus - for protein)

Our side dish was made from another stand out in the early summer CSA share - beets. I usually roast them whole, but D.has a new cook book, called Fast Fresh & Green by Susie Middleton


She recommended "quick roasting" the beets by slicing them thinly crosswise, tossing them with olive oil, coarsely chopped fresh thyme and a little salt, and roasting them at 475 degrees for 16 to 18 minutes. We did them this way and they were fabulous. We served them on top of some leaf lettuce with chopped navel orange slices and just a little Feta cheese.This should have been topped with a little fresh mint as well - but we got hungry and skipped right to eating.

Day 27: Potato, Zuchinni, & Feta Latkes

It is the fifth night of Hanukkah and I have not fried anything in oil yet. I made something I will call Latkes with a Greek Twist - or Twisted Greek Latkes.

2 potatoes
1 onion
2 small/medium zucchinis
2 eggs
2 tablespoons flour
salt & pepper, oregano, basil
1/2 cup crumbled feta cheese
olive oil

Grate the vegetables together - always put onions and potatoes together in the food processor chute to keep the potatoes from turning that ugly grey/brown color. Squeeze out the excess liquid.  Beat the eggs, then mix them into the vegetables with the flour and seasonings, then add the cheese and mix that in. Heat a heavy pan, coat with thin layer of oil, drop tablespoons of batter - keep the latkes small so they cook through. Cook until brown on both sides. Keep warm in the oven until you eat them. These are a little soft - as opposed to crunchy - because of the zucchini and the feta - but very good.

To go with the Twisted Greek Latkes:
Chick Pea Salad (1 can chick peas, 1 cup halved cherry tomatoes, 1 cup chopped celery, 1/2 c chopped flat leaf parsley, S&P, 2 tsp EV Olive oil, some balsamic vinegar)
Braised Red Cabbage with apples and onions from the freezer (prepared and frozen in August)
Apple and Cranberry Chutney from Thanksgiving

Day 22: Leftover Vegetarian Chili plus

This batch of chili was so good - we wanted more the second day - but there wasn't quite enough to go around - so we each added our own little something extra. I had a little chili with this sandwich on lightly toasted tomato basil bread:
fresh mozzarella cheese
sun-dried tomatoes - re-hydrated in hot water and sliced
a handful of calamata olives, chopped
a drizzle of olive oil & balsamic vinegar
salt & pepper
arugula and red leaf lettuce
Yum.

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 8: Veggie Strata

On hand: red onion & broccoli from the CSA share, mushrooms, fresh eggs from a friend at work, stale ends of white & whole wheat Calandra sliced Lanella bread, various cheeses to choose from.

What to make?  Strata

How I did it:

• Diced the red onion, sliced the mushrooms, sauteed them in 1 tablespoon olive oil till starting to brown
• chopped the broccoli - smallish pieces. steamed it till bright green and still a little crisp and mixed it with the onions & mushrooms and added 1 tsp Annie's Organic Vegan Worcestershire sauce
• cut the bread into cubes
• grated 1 1/4 cups low fat cheddar and 1/2 cup Parmesan cheese
• sprayed a large shallow casserole dish with Olive oil cooking spray, then layered: 1/2 bread, 1/2 veggies, 1/2 cheese - repeat
• Whisked 1 3/4 cups almond milk, 6 eggs, 1 1/2 tablespoons Annie's Organic Dijon mustard, and a little more  Worcestershire sauce, then poured that over the bread and veggies.
• Put in the fridge for about 5 hours, then baked at 350F for 1 hour

Result: "Tastes like dinner and dessert at the same time"

I don't know what that means - but the strata was good.

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.