Quinoa Salad with Chickpeas, Tomatoes and Squash

Here's a good quinoa dish that I've added to my roster of summer salads. I made this back in June for a party whose invitation jokingly requested no healthy stuff like quinoa. So of course that's what we had to bring. The salad is composed of quinoa, chickpeas, chopped cherry tomatoes, a diced yellow summer squash, diced spring onion, and fresh parsley. It qualifies as vegan and gluten free. Despite their love of meat, everyone at the party ate it up.

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Moving into Spring

The weekend before last, I finally left the apartment where I lived in bed bug fear and moved into my boyfriend's apartment. We both love cooking, so now that we're cohabitating, we are enabling each other to cook a lot (perhaps too much?). In the past week alone, we made quite a few excellent meals sourced mostly from the greenmarkets - because early spring vegetables are here!

Lamb burgers with the whites of ramps diced and mixed into the patties and the greens of ramps sauteed on top with melted cheddar cheese. Fiddleheads were blanched and then sauteed to ensure they were thoroughly cooked (they are poisonous raw). This was my first time trying fiddleheads, which like ramps, are foraged this time of year. I wished we had cooked them long enough to brown and crisp to add more flavor, because I found the fiddleheads too earthy and bland. There were also roasted potatoes.

Friends came over for dinner on Cinco de Mayo, so we made pulled pork tacos. The pork shoulder (from Flying Pigs Farm) was rubbed in garlic, cumin, paprika, onion powder, salt and crushed red pepper. We put it in the slow cooker fat side up with a bottle of black Irish lager and the juice of half a lime and let it sit on high for 3 hours and then low for 4 hours until it was tender enough to pull apart with a fork. For toppings, I prepared a slaw of thinly sliced cabbage and scallions; chopped cilantro; shredded cheddar cheese; pickled radishes and wedges of lime. In the past I've always made pulled pork with barbecue sauce, so this was a refreshing change of pace. Perhaps letting the rub sit overnight would have imbued it with more flavor.

Salad of smoked trout from Max Creek Hatchery, pickled radishes, arugula, lightly oiled and toasted homemade croutons with a dressing of apple cider vinegar and olive oil.

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Thanksgiving 2011

It's been three years since I was last lead cook for Thanksgiving. This year, I made all the side dishes and my own turkey legs. My mom made the big turkey and gravy and pies and my relatives brought the rest of the desserts. I came home Wednesday to give me plenty of time for cooking ahead and wrote out a schedule of food prep to follow on Thanksgiving day, which helped it all go smoothly. Except that I can never get the hang out how my mom's oven is consistently hotter than every other oven I've ever used and doesn't brown when roasting but goes straight to burn.

Roasted turkey legs
Roasted for about 90 minutes at 350, turned over halfway through.

My mom continues to insist on a free Shoprite turkey, so this year I did what I should have done in other years and brought my own portion of turkey from the farmers market to eat.

Rosemary no-knead rolls
Prepare the no-knead bread recipe, double it and add a bunch of diced fresh rosemary. The next day, two hours before baking, grease two muffin tins. Lightly press down the dough, pinch off pieces and roughly form them into balls and place in muffin tins. Bake at 350 for 15 minutes. Makes 24.

These rolls were a little tough on the outside. I think the crunchy crust that this no-knead method can create translates to toughness in rolls. Probably I need to try rolls made all in on day with milk for a fluffier texture.

Green beans with lemon, shallots and almonds
Sautee shallots and almonds. Meanwhile, steam green beans in a few inches of water for 5-10 minutes to desired tenderness. Combine in one dish with the juice of one lemon.

I don't like green beans that much but I liked this just fine.

Roasted Brussels sprouts
These sprouts were small enough that I didn't need to cut them in half first, just roasted at 400 for about 20 minutes on one side and ten minutes on the other.

A classic that pleased my grandfather who thinks boiled brussels sprouts taste terrible, despite being slightly overbrowned.

Mashed potatoes and celery root
I think celery root lends an elegant flavor to mashed potatoes. But I only used one large celery root to about 8 potatoes, so the ratio was off and it should have been more like two celery roots.

Hasselback sweet potatoes with maple syrup and sage
Slice sweet potatoes almost all the way to the bottom. Finely dice one bunch of sage and mix it in with two tbsp olive oil and two tbsp maple syrup with sage. This is messy, butuse your fingers to spread the sage, olive oil and mayple syrup mixture in between the potato slices. Bake at 400 for about 40 minutes. Can be made ahead and rewarmed.

My mom usually makes just straight up baked sweet potatoes, so this is classier and prettier and creates a nice hint of sweetness and sage. However, it was time consuming to carefully slice the potatoes and spread the sage mixture.

Roasted butternut squash with chickpeas and parmesan
Cut one large butternut squash into small one-to-two inch pieces. Roast in olive oil at 400 until browned. Afterward, add one to two cups of pre-cooked chickpeas and grate in a half cup of parmesan. Can be made ahead and reheated the next day in the oven.

A favorite combination of mine.

Stuffing with celery, apple and onion
Dice two red onions, one bunch of celery and three apples. Sautee in one stick of butter (!) until softened. Tear up two day-old baguettes into small pieces. Combine vegetables and baguette in a container of vegetable stock and add sage and poultry seasoning. Let sit in the fridge over night. Use some stuffing to stuff the turkey. The remainder will fill a casserole; bake at 400 until warmed through and browned on top.

This is the stuffing recipe I have been eating my whole life, made with baguette instead of pepperidge farm bread crumbs.

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Sweet and Spicy Sriracha Brussels Sprouts

While I've been away from the blog over the past few weeks, I have been dealing with a NYC rite of passage...bedbugs. My inconsiderate downstairs neighbors got them first but didn't tell anyone so we didn't take any precautions, and my landlord didn't take proper action (which is to spray all apartments in the building immediately and simultaneously), so they escaped to the rest of the building. You don't have to throw out your mattress, but you do have to put it in a cover, run all of your clothing and shoes through the dryer (and yes, as I've learned, even wool and most "dry clean only" garments and shoes and bags and purses will make it through a dryer unscathed if not washed first), and then live out of plastic bags for several weeks, and do your best to clean all other objects and furniture and the floors with alcohol and vacumming, and hope for the best. One good thing is that our exterminator used a potent spray of essential and mineral oils rather than a pesticide. We're now in between sprayings and hoping for the best. When I'm home, I feel like I should be cleaning, or I'm spending way too much time sifting through the plastic bags of clothing, or else I escape to my boyfriend's apartment where it hopefully seems the bugs have not spread.

In these past few weeks, it has also become late fall-almost winter. There is no choice but to embrace vegetables like brussels sprouts. Simply roasted sprouts is one of my favorite winter vegetable preparations, but here we sought to recreate the Vanderbilt's honey and sriracha brussels sprouts. This combination works just as well at home, taking it up a notch with a playful sweet and spicy flavor. They were paired with Wilklow's deliciously fatty pork chops and cornbread using bacon drippings, from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything, which unfortunately and surprisingly was a dense let down.

Sweet and Spicy Sriracha Brussels Sprouts
Preheat the oven to 425.
For a pound and a half of sprouts, trim the ends and chop in half.
In a large bowl, whisk together about 2 tbsp olive oil, 2 tbsp honey, 3 tsp sriracha and salt and pepper. These are the measurements I remember, but you may need to add more honey or sriracha to taste.
Add the sprouts to the bowl and stir until they are all coated.
Roast about 40 minutes, until browned and crispy. But I like mine totally browned and softened and overdone. If you like yours with some green vigor and crunch left in them, check around 25 minutes.

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Fall Locavore Dinner

My gentleman friend's father hunts deer, so his freezer is stocked with various forms of venison (like pepperoni and bologna!?) and sometimes we get to enjoy venison steak. It's a lean meat that reminds me of bison. This back strap cut was particularly tender and added to what felt like an indulgent yet wholesome fall locavore dinner.

I thought a bunch of sage I had picked from my mother's garden would be a nice flavor accompaniment to mashed sweet potatoes, and it certainly was. I wasn't sure how to best incorporate it, so I decided to chop and sautee the sage and then add to the mash. He said the pieces of sage were off-putting in the otherwise creamy mashed potatoes; I didn't mind. Next time, I wouldn't bother cooking the sage and would more finely dice it. On the side was also kale, simply sauteed with olive oil, salt and pepper, because sometimes that's all it needs.

For dessert, we made apple crisp using fruit from the annual upstate apple picking adventure and topped it with vanilla maple ice cream. The boy loves ice cream so much he eats it every day. I love making ice cream and taught him how. Now he's got himself an ice cream machine and can achieve creamy perfection (especially thanks to Milk Thistle Farm), that my handchurn technique can't quite reach.

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In search of better stuffed peppers

Every time I make stuffed peppers, the stuffing doesn't cook much.

For this version, I combined cooked orzo, cooked chickpeas, grated cheddar cheese and raw leeks, stuffed this inside peppers and baked it at 430 F for about half an hour. I figured the leeks would roast inside the peppers, but they didn't really.

Tell me what I am doing wrong. Should it stay in the oven longer? Should the stuffing all be pre-cooked? Do you have a great recipe for vegetarian stuffed peppers?

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Heirloom Tomato Salad

What do you bring to a dinner party at summer's end? We originally planned to bring a green salad, but like many New York area farms impacted by Hurricane Irene*, Evolutionary Organics farm had no greens to offer over Labor Day weekend. Instead, we selected a variety of their tomato beauties, as well as a cucumber and red onion from the market. The vegetables were thinly sliced and carefully layered -  a layer of tomatoes topped with a layer of cucumber, followed by scattered onions and parsley, a sprinkling of salt and pepper and a dash of olive oil and red wine vinegar. Continue to add layers until you've used up the goods and then give it a few hours to marinate. It was part of a impressive spread that included oysters, sweet roasted tomato, honey and ricotta crostini, sweet potato and bacon hash, pork ribs three ways, and peach cobbler (I regretted not bringing my camera to the party). Yum!

* Check out GrowNYC's campaign to help local farmers recover from the losses wreaked by hurricane flooding.

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Squash and Leek Stuffing

I haven't been much in the holiday spirit here, aside from enjoying the brisk December weather. I've been too preoccupied by more big life changes over the past month to be able to pay attention to Thanksgiving or Christmas. I failed in my goal to host Thanksgiving (as happens almost every year) and only contributed one side dish for my mother's Thanksgiving meal (this squash and bean casserole). I haven't procured any Christmas gifts yet (hopefully tomorrow...). There are no holiday decorations up in my apartment, since I should be packing up anyway for another move at the turn of the month. I've even been neglecting this blog, seeing now that it's been a month since I last wrote!

But last week I made a squash and leek stuffing, presented in a hollowed-out squash, which felt ever so seasonally appropriate. I was inspired by a stuffed pumpkin my roommate made this fall, as well as a delicious looking pumpkin with panade on Tea & Cookies. However, I've found that when you bake it all together, the squash remains too firm for my liking. To solve this, I roasted my squash first, and then scooped out the pureed flesh to mix into a stuffing with cubes of crusty bread, sauteed leeks, and cheese, and refilled the squash rinds for a final bake.

I'm taking several days off for the holidays and hoping I'll have time then to get excited about festive baking and cooking, including pumpkin snickerdoodles and almond biscotti. Now the question remains, should I make this stuffed squash, or maybe pizza with a side of swiss chard gratin, for my family's Christmas eve dinner?

Squash and Leek Stuffing

I used one delicata squash, but you could also use any other variety of squash or pumpkin. Slice squash in half, and place it in a pan, flesh side down with a few inches of water. Roast at 450 degrees for 30-60 minutes until easily mashable with a fork. Scoop out all the flesh out into a bowl, being careful not to tear the squash rind (unlike me).

While the squash is roasting, clean one large leek and slice into half moons. Sautee on low heat until softened.

Rip a day-old crusty baguette into small cubes.

Grate about a cup of cheese. Cheddar, gruyere, swiss, or any combination of these varieties would be nice.

Combine squash, leek, bread, and cheese in a bowl, with salt and pepper to taste. Fill empty squash rinds with stuffing and sprinkle additional grated cheese over the top. Return to the oven and bake at 450 for 10-15 minutes until the cheese and stuffing edges turn golden brown.

Makes two servings.

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How to Eat at Summer's End

Somewhere along the way, I forgot to keep taking photos of my farmers market hauls, but I've still been bringing home bags of produce and finding time to cook despite my newly busy schedule. This time of year, I like to focus on tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant, which in past summers, I would have grilled and turned into caponata. Lacking a grill has required me to get a little more creative this year. Below are some dishes I've enjoyed in the past couple weeks, showing how seasonal vegetable driven meals can be as lazy or as complex as you have the time and inclination for.

For a still hot summer night when you don't feel like cooking:
Deconstructed cheese and tomato sandwiches
Top one cube of Bread Alone organic baguette with one slice of Bobolink grass fed cheddar and one cherry tomato (preferably from a mother's garden) and pop in mouth. Chase with a sip of Troegs Sunshine Pils.



For a cooler late summer Sunday when you have time for a cooking project, so that you can eat quick meals with little prep later in the week:
Roasted red pepper hummus
Cook a large batch of dried chickpeas, let cool, drain, and apportion into jars in freezer for future meals. Also roast two or three red peppers until blackened on each side, remove skins, slice into strips, and marinate in olive oil and garlic in refrigerator. Either that day or sometime in the next week, prepare the hummus - thaw one jar of cooked chickpeas, and blend in food processor with 1/2 cup roasted red peppers, a generous stream of olive oil, 2 tablespoons of tahini, juice of 1/2 lemon, and a sprinkling of crushed hot pepper. Serve this special sweet and spicy hummus with warmed pita as an appetizer or as a dinner for one.





For a cool evening when you have time to make a more complicated dinner, company to help, and/or a desire for leftovers:
Eggplant parmesan sandwiches
Slice one large eggplant into thin rounds. Salt heavily and let drain in colander for 30-60 minutes, rinse, and dry with paper or cloth towels. Dredge eggplant in a bowl of beaten egg and then in a plate of homeground breadcrumbs. Fry in a shallow layer of hot oil until browned on each side. As you dredge and fry, have a helper remove the cooked eggplant from the pan and layer it in a baking dish with homemade tomato sauce and grated parmesan cheese. Warm in oven for 5-10 minutes until cheese is melted, alongside slices of Amy's rustic Italian bread drizzled with olive oil. Plate sandwiches, enjoy with a red wine, and remember to thank your helper for doing the dishes.

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Fried Green Cherry Tomatoes and Okra

Unfortunately, I was unable to rehome my tomato plants when I moved, because I had let them grow too tall and spindly, making them cumbersome to transport. These three cherry tomato plants had thus far only produced a few ripe red fruits; given another two or three weeks they would yield a bountiful supply of tomatoes, but under the circumstances, I made the best of it and picked off all the little green tomatoes. When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. When life gives you green tomatoes, you fry them, which likewise transforms the bitter to the sweet.



While I was at it, I decided to also fry okra, which is currently available at the farmers market. Fried okra makes a nice little snack, and I'd always wanted to try making it myself since a picnic long ago, when a bowl was passed round full of crunchy little okra bites perfect for popping into our mouths.





It turns out that cherry tomatoes are not ideal for dredging and frying because there are not enough nooks and crannies for the cornmeal to cling to. You can see below the little green globes devoid of fried goodness. I still enjoyed it, but I'd recommend sticking to full sized sliced green tomatoes and/or okra for this preparation.



Cornmeal Shallow-Fried Okra
Chop okra into 1/2 inch round slices. Chop cherry tomatoes in half. Prepare one bowl with an egg, whisked with a little water. Prepare another bowl with 1 cup cornmeal, salt, pepper, and a pinch of crushed red pepper. Working with batches of okra a handful at a time, stir okra into egg mixture, and then transfer with a slotted spoon into the cornmeal mixture and toss until thoroughly coated.

Many recipes call for deep frying in a pot of oil, but I don't think that's necessary. Instead, I pour a shallow layer of sunflower or olive oil into a pan and heat until sizzling. Let the vegetables fry a few minutes until browned, and then flip to brown the other side. Remove to a plate lined with paper or cloth towel to absorb some of the oil. Repeat with remaining batches. Let cool before serving.

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Warm Farro Salad with Squash and Chickpeas

As cliche as it may be, one of my New Years resolutions was to eat healthier. More whole grains, daily fruits and vegetables, less processed carbs and snacks. A month into January, I can't say I've followed up on that (or any of my resolutions) 100%, but I have cooked a few new healthy vegetarian recipes I thought some of you might like to know about.


First up is this warm winter farro salad inspired by a "fall" farro salad I had a few months ago at The Vanderbilt in Prospect Heights with pumpkin, nuts, parmesan, and poached egg. The farro salad was one of the most memorable parts of that overpriced, small plates evening, so I set out to recreate my own version recently. Squash substitutes well for pumpkin and is just as available at the local farmers market in winter as in fall. I wasn't easily able to find farro at the Park Slope Food Coop (though I now know where to find it there), so I was pleasantly surprised to find it at my farmers market instead - from Cayuga Pure Organics in Ithaca, which isn't exactly local, but probably much closer than the coop's source.


I'm now obsessed with farro. It's plumper and toothier than brown rice, but easier to cook, since it doesn't become a starchy gluey mess like all of my rice attempts. Be prepared to wait a while for it to cook. I didn't soak mine overnight and the cooking felt like forever, probably an hour or so, so I do recommend letting it soak for a day first. More detailed instructions on how to cook faro can be found here.

While researching farro, I also found a similar squash and farro recipe over on 101 Cookbooks. But my version includes chickpeas for protein and lots of garlic for flavor. I make big batches of chickpeas at one time and then freeze them in cup-size portions in old glass jars, so for this I was able to just defrost some pre-cooked chickpeas by running water into the jar to loosen the frozen chickpeas and then heating them up in a small pot of simmering water. (While you could use canned chickpeas, I don't recommend that because the BPA lining in cans is getting more and more attention lately as a potential health hazard.)

The soft and sweet carmelized roasted squash is the perfect foil to nutty, crunchy farro here, and the combination of chickpeas and farro was hearty enough for the resident vegetarian naysayer. I think the zest and juice of half a lemon would be a nice addition to the salad, as well, but I didn't have that on hand.

Warm Farro Salad with Squash and Chickpeas
1 cup farro
1 cup cooked chickpeas
1 small butternut squash
1 small head of garlic
1/4 shaved parmesan
olive oil
salt
pepper
zest and juice of half lemon (optional)

Let farro soak in water in a covered pot overnight. Add enough water to reach the height of the first joint of your index finger above the farro in the pot. Bring to boil and then simmer covered for 20 minutes or more until it reaches your desired crunchiness.
Preheat oven to 450. Peel and cube butternut squash. Toss in olive oil, salt, and pepper and roast for approximately 20 minutes until browned; flip cubes and roast additional 10-15 minutes until other side is browned and squash is fully tender.
Mince garlic and set aside. Use a cheese scraper to shave parmesan into small pieces and set aside.
Combine cooked farro, chickpeas, squash, garlic, and half the parmesan in a bowl.
Season with salt and pepper, drizzle with olive oil, and top with remaining parmesan shavings to serve. Makes 3-4 servings.

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Fall Blur & Pumpkin Roasting

Last week was a blur of too much time sitting on my but at my office desk, bumming in my pjs at home, and sleepless soul-searching nights. So the highlight of my workweek was probably taking the time to roast this sugar pumpkin into pumpkin puree - because it means I get to bake yummy pumpkin goodies. So far I made these pumpkin "brownies," (I recommend baking for 30-40 minutes) and pumpkin cupcakes for a friend's birthday party, which I'll tell you about later. I might be making an extra-special pumpkin treat tomorrow, and I already bought another pumpkin to freeze some puree for future baking. Guess I can cross pumpkin roasting off my fall to-do list!

Roasting pumpkins is an easy alternative to buying canned pumpkin this time of year. And it's a good idea to avoid canned foods, as cans are lined with the dreaded endocrine disruptor BPA, which has been shown to leach into canned products. Make sure you find a sugar pumpkin, not a pumpkin intended for Halloween carving/decoration, as sugar pumpkin flesh isn't as stringy and yields a sweet taste like the canned kind. Sugar pumpkins are available at farmers markets and some grocery stores, but if you can't find one, you can subsitute butternut or hubbard squash.

Stay tuned for more pumpkin recipes on here soon, hopefully.

Roasted Pumpkin Puree
Preheat oven to 400.
Wash but do not peel pumpkin.
Slice the pumpkin in half and scoop out the pumpkin seed goo and stringy flesh (reserve to roast the seeds).
Lay each half in a pan with deep sides, flesh side down.
Add a half inch to an inch of water.
Bake for approximately 40 minutes, until flesh is completely soft and mushy.

Or if the shell is too hard to cut through, simply plop the whole pumpkin on a greased baking sheet.
Turn over halfway through baking, approximately 40 minutes each side.
At that point, you should be able to slice open the pumpkin easily.
Let cool before handling.
Again, scoop out the pumpkin seeds and reserve.

Scoop the soft flesh from the shell, and completely mash it with a fork. Store in an airtight container to cook/bake within two weeks. Or divide the puree into single-cup-size portions and freeze for later use.

My $2 sugar pumpkin yielded 4 cups of puree - a very good deal!

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Heavenly Grilled Pizza

I think I finally found my perfect dough for grilled pizza - from smitten kitchen (and can anyone tell me exactly how she is still cooking and blogging up a storm while a million months pregnant?). Not too thin like this dough and not too soft like another one I tried. Even though I didn't give the dough enough time to rise into pliabe handstretchable dough, I simply used my rolling pin to roll it out to an amorphous circle the size of the grill, and it rose up well enough on the grill.

In true summer style, I topped the pizza with a base of leftover bruschetta - diced tomato, fresh basil, garlic,and olive oil. To that, I added grilled and diced eggplant to make it a little more hearty, and grated parmesan and gouda. My dining companions and I all mmmm'ed our way through bites of this pizza. I think it was the combination of rich gouda, lots of garlic, and fresh basil - a unique flavor profile that really works. Hopefully I can get one more grilled pizza in before tomato - and grilling - season ends.

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Summer Salads

I haven't written about food in a while, probably because I haven't had the time or brainspace to think about cooking.

That said, I'm a big fan of grainy summer salads that can be scooped up with pita chips, like tabbouleh. If you make the chickpeas and grains ahead, these are practically no-cook meals and great for parties. Here are a few I've made this summer. Measurements are approximate - add ingredients like grated parmesan, olive oil, salt, pepper, and fresh herbs liberally and adjust to suit your taste.

Cabbage, Chickpea, & Rice Salad
1 cup cooked brown rice
1-2 cups cooked chickpeas
1/3 - 1/2 head of red cabbage
1/2 onion
3 tbsp fresh mint leaves
1/3 lemon, juice & zest
olive oil
salt
pepper


Israeli Couscous, Chickpea, & Arugula Salad

1 cup israeli couscous
1-2 cups chickpeas
2 red pepers, roasted and cut into strips
2 heads green garlic or 2 cloves regular garlic
1 bunch arugula
olive oil
grated parmesan
salt
pepper


"Bruschetta" Tabbouleh
This mediterranean bulgur salad doesn't have to be all about the cucumber and parsley. Here's a version I made focusing on my favorite flavors of summer - fresh tomatoes, basil, and garlic - thrown in with bulgur instad of topping toasty bruschetta.

1 cup bulgur
1 1/2 cup boiling water
2 tomatoes, chopped
3 tbsp fresh basil, chopped
1 zucchini, diced (optional)
3 cloves garlic, diced
salt
pepper
juice of 1/2 lemon
olive oil

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