Herbed Lentils & Cucumbers

May isn’t just a great month for flowers, it’s a great month for graduation parties and weddings and holiday weekend grilling. And no matter which bash you’re hitting up, you’d probably like to take a dish along with you. But what can you take that will taste great, be fresh and satisfying at the same time, and be able to go without refrigeration for a few hours?

Lentils: they’re hearty, inexpensive, and cook in 20 minutes. Cucumbers: even after cut, they retain their refreshing crunch for hours. Bell peppers: not only are they crunchy, they’re sweet and add a splash of color. Then just throw in a herbs, some lemon juice, and some extra-virgin olive oil. Done! A dish that’s sure to impress despite being ridiculously easy to make. (Note: you could substitute cooked chickpeas for the lentils and/or include different-colored peppers if you like.)

Herbed Lentils & Cucumbers

2 cups cooked lentils (which is about 1 3/4 cups raw)
1 red bell pepper, seeds and stem removed, flesh minced
1/2 English cucumber (the really long kind) OR 1 garden cucumber, chopped
Juice of 1 lemon
1 T. dried parsley OR 1 tsp. minced fresh parsley
1 1/2 tsp. dried mint OR 1/2 tsp. minced fresh mint
Drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil
Sea salt & freshly cracked pepper

Toss lentils, pepper, cucumber, and lemon juice in a large bowl. Add herbs and a drizzle of oil and toss well to coat. Sprinkle with salt and taste to see if you’d like more salt (or herbs, for that matter). Garnish with a few grinds of cracked pepper. If you used an organic lemon and you’re a major lemon fan like me, you might want to add some grated lemon zest, too.

Enjoy!

Scrambled Eggs with Wild Shrimp

One of the many wonderful things about the world of food — perhaps the most wonderful — is that the stuff that tastes the best is also the stuff that’s the best quality and the most sustainable. I’m talking grass-fed beef, eggs from pastured hens, well- managed wild seafood, etc. People who think about the needs of the animals they raise and the land they farm make the effort (and either have or develop the know-how) to produce damned tasty ingredients to put on your plate.

Take wild shrimp, for example. Wild-caught shrimp from Oregon and the U.S. Gulf of Mexico are rated “Best Choice” and “Good Alternative” respectively by the Monterey Bay Aquarium folks. Imported shrimp farmed in open systems are ranked “Avoid” since open farming contaminates ocean environments (and also doesn’t taste nearly as good). In short, what’s best for you is also best for your neighbors. And if you have one of the Aquarium’s handy Pocket Guides with you when you shop for seafood, it’s pretty easy to spot the yummy stuff. Just be sure to read the country of origin and method of production (wild/farmed; sometimes wild is best, sometimes farmed is best) to make sure you’re getting the tastiest seafood.

To make this quick breakfast, I just scrambled some eggs and with some shrimp I had already cooked and enjoyed for dinner the night before. If you don’t have already-cooked shrimp, it’s easy enough to whip some up in three minutes flat.

Scrambled Eggs with Wild Shrimp

Wild shrimp, peeled and deveined
Italian herbs (optional, but nice)
Eggs, preferably from pastured hens

Heat a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil or a dab of butter in a skillet and add shrimp and herbs. Sautée for 3 minutes over medium heat, turning the shrimp halfway through the cooking time to make sure they cook evenly on both sides. They’ll curl and turn pink when cooked. Remove from skillet and cut into smaller pieces.

Add eggs and another drizzle of oil to the skillet and cook over medium heat for 3 minutes or until eggs have cooked to your satisfaction, stirring often to evenly cook the eggs. (I like mine quite soft.) Stir in shrimp and serve immediately.

Enjoy!

Chive & Spinach Pesto

It’s not just the grass and tulips that are in full bloom: the chives are growing like gangbusters, too. Seeing all of those tall-but-still-tender chives put me in a pesto kind of mood. (Green + herb = pesto in my mind.) It’s still a bit too chilly for basil, though, so I opted to use chives and spinach instead. Not only is spinach another early-growing tasty edible, its fresh, sweet flavor offsets the garlicky nature of the chives.

If you’d like to make a raw, spicy version of this pesto, use baby spinach and simply toss everything in a food processor. I prefer a more mellow taste, so I opted to steam the spinach and then wring it out before adding it. (You don’t want watery pesto!) I also adore the nutty, warm flavor of sautéed garlic. Either way, you’ll have a plateful of spring flavors.

Chive & Spinach Pesto
Serves 2. Recipe can easily be doubled or tripled.

2 servings whole-grain pasta of your choice (I used Tinkyada’s brown rice fettucini; be sure to get gluten-free pasta if you’re making a gluten-free dish!)
8 oz. baby or curly spinach (use baby if you’re making an all-raw pesto)
Garlic (optional)
Chives (if your chives are fresh and strong-flavored, start by only using about three individual chives; taste your pesto before adding more so as not to over-chive it)
Handful of pine nuts OR sliced almonds

Prepare pasta according to package directions. If you’re making raw pesto, toss remaining ingredients in a food processor — perhaps skipping the garlic altogether since chives are potent all on their own — and blend until smooth, drizzling in a bit of extra-virgin olive oil and a shake of sea salt before doing the final blending.

If you’re making a more mellow pesto, steam the spinach for 3 minutes or until wilted. Drain well, pressing the spinach into the side of the colander with the back of a large spoon to really get the water out. While the spinach is draining, chop the garlic and sautée it in a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil over medium-low heat for 3 minutes or until just starting to turn golden brown.

Scoop the garlic into a food processor, add drained spinach and chives, and blend. Add pine nuts and blend again, scraping down the sides of the processor. Drizzle in a little more oil if you’d like a richer taste and smoother consistency. Salt to taste. (If you’re serving the pesto with cheese or something salty, you might want to skip salting the pesto.) Serve with cooked noodles, veggies, sautéed chicken, or as a dip for crudites or bread, garnishing with additional pine nuts if you like.

Since this pesto is made with chives and spinach rather than basil, it will keep longer in the fridge (basil oxidizes and turns black very quickly; chives and spinach do not). Leftover pesto can be kept for 4 days and is great for everything from flavoring soups — just stir in a spoonful! — to garnishing roasted veggies.

Enjoy!

African Millet, Kale & Sweet Potato Toss

While attending the International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP) annual conference in NYC earlier this month, I had the pleasure  of taking a cooking class from one of my favorite cookbook authors. Not only is Pierre Thiam an innovative cook, he’s an incredibly genuine and enthusiastic gentleman. He hails from Senegal, a country on the west coast of African known for its abundance of seafood and cosmopolitan cuisine and influences. (Many Senegalese grow up speaking French and Portuguese along with their native language of Wolof.) Since Senegal is a coastal country, it has long been a hub of trading activity. Lots of trading = a glorious influx of ingredients, techniques, and recipes!

One of the dishes Pierre showed us how to cook involved a grain I’d never seen before: fonio. It’s tough to find here, but since fonio is a tiny variant of millet, I’ll be using millet until I manage to find a bag of fonio. (Yay! A new culinary quest! Now that I have not one but two bottles of Moroccan argan oil in my fridge — argan oil was my previous quest — I’ve been itching to embark upon a new hunt.) Americans tend to think of millet as bird food, but millet is actually quite delicious, easy to cook, and versatile. Why should birds be the only ones benefiting from this inexpensive staple? Here’s a case when saying “that’s for the birds” ought to encourage us to check out what we’ve been missing! Millet is also soft enough to grind into flour in a food processor, or you can buy pre-ground flour.

Along with millet, I also included some other favorite ingredients from Senegalese cuisine: sweet potatoes, dark leafy greens in the form of kale, black-eyed peas, and peanuts in the form of peanut butter. I added a touch of red palm oil, too. Since palms are prevalent in many parts of Africa, richly nutritious red palm oil is the preferred cooking fat and seasoning in many African dishes. (It also pops up in Brazilian cuisine since the majority of slaves trafficked out of Africa were brought to Brazil. They brought their culinary traditions with them — and many of their ingredients and plants, too — and nowadays you’ll find plenty of dishes containing dende when you’re dining somewhere on the east coast of Brazil. Dende is the Brazilian term for red palm oil.) If you don’t have red palm oil, you’ll miss out on the uniquely earthy flavor it provides, but you can mimic its red color by including paprika.

African Millet, Kale & Sweet Potato Toss
Serves 4 generously. Since this keeps so well in the fridge and is also good at room temp or even chilled, you’ll enjoy having leftovers. Or perhaps you’d like to emulate Senegalese hospitality by inviting a few more guests to join you!

1 1/2 cups millet
1 large sweet potato, cut into 1″ cubes
Red palm oil OR unrefined peanut oil* OR extra-virgin olive oil*
1 large onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1 T. natural peanut butter
Dash of crushed red pepper flakes OR cayenne pepper
Several handfuls chopped kale
15 oz. can of black-eyed peas (I prefer Eden’s line of canned beans because they’re sealed into BPA-free cans), drained
Dash of sea salt

Simmer millet in 4 1/2 cups water for 20 minutes or until the grains are al dente. (I like mine a bit chewy.) Note that the water-to-millet ratio is 4:1; if you’d rather use less millet, just reduce the water accordingly. Drain millet in a fine-meshed colander. In another pot, simmer the sweet potato for 10 minutes. Drain well and place in a large bowl along with the millet.

In a large skillet, sautée the onions in a drizzle of oil for about 5 minutes over medium heat or until they’re soft and starting to turn golden brown. Add garlic and continue to cook over medium-low for another 3 minutes, stirring often, or until garlic is fragrant. Stir in peanut butter, pepper, and kale and increase heat back up to medium. Cook for 3 more minutes, stirring often, or until kale is wilted and soft. Add to the bowl with the sweet potato and millet.

Stir in beans and salt to taste. Serve immediately or refrigerate for up to 5 days.

Enjoy!

* Add a dash of paprika if you’d like to add the reddish tint the red palm oil would have provided.

Mediterranean Lamb Pizza with Roasted Red Pepper Sauce

If pizza had originated in Morocco rather than Italy, I have a sneaking suspicion that lamb would have been the meat of choice, not pepperoni. (Or perhaps pepperoni made with lamb. Hint, hint… I can only hope the American Lamb Board is reading this!) And perhaps the sauce would have been been made the way I made this one — with roasted red peppers instead of tomatoes. It’s a fun twist on the traditional marinara staple, plus it’s a handy way to go tomato-free if tomatoes aren’t on your dinner guest’s list of favorite foods. You could, of course, go with a combo sauce if you’d like. If you’re feeling particularly brave and happen to have some spicy Moroccan harissa on hand, you can include that, too.

I opted to maintain the Mediterranean attitude by topping the pie with goat’s-milk feta and rosemary-scented asiago cheese. (Sartori produces a sublime version of the latter, made with grass-fed milk and copious amounts of dried rosemary.) You could stick with the tried-and-true mozzarella, but if you’re going to go with generous amounts of herbed sauce and flavorful ground lamb, you might as well enjoy a cheese that makes it presence known.

Mediterranean Lamb Pizza with Roasted Red Pepper Sauce

1 pizza crust (store-bought or this easy whole-grain and gluten-free crust recipe)

For the sauce:
1 medium onion, chopped (1/2 of the onion reserved for the lamb topping)
4 cloves garlic, chopped
16 oz. (1 pound) of roasted peppers, either jarred (drained weight, not the total contents weight — just be sure to DRAIN THE PEPPERS BEFORE USING!) or home-roasted, run through a food processor until fairly smooth
2 tsp. dried oregano
1 tsp. dried parsley
1 tsp. dried mint
Sprinkling of crushed red pepper flakes

For the lamb topping:
1 lb. ground lamb, preferably pastured
The reserved onion from the sauce
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1 tsp. dried oregano
1 tsp. dried parsley
1 tsp. dried mint

Cheeses: about 1 cup of grated/crumbled goat’s- or sheep’s-milk feta AND/OR asiago (I used Sartori’s rosemary-scented asiago)

Prepare crust according to recipe (or package directions if store-bought). To make the sauce, heat a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil over medium heat for 1 minute and then add onions. Sautée, stirring occasionally, for 5 minutes or until onions are starting to turn translucent. Add garlic and reduce heat to medium-low. Continue to cook for another 2 minutes or until garlic is fragrant. Add remaining sauce ingredients and allow sauce to simmer gently for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Reduce heat to low if the sauce starts to boil.

Meanwhile, heat the lamb over medium heat in a different pan. Cook for 2 minutes, stirring often to break apart meat, until lamb is starting to brown slightly. Add onions and cook for another 3 minutes or until the lamb is mostly no longer pink. Stir in garlic and herbs and reduce heat to low. Cook for another 2 minutes or until lamb is browned. Drain.

By now, the pizza crust should be ready to top and the sauce should be simmered. Make sure the oven is at 375F. Spoon sauce onto the pre-baked crust and spread evenly out to the edges. Add meat, spooning it on evenly, and then scatter cheese on top of the meat.

Bake for 15 to 20 minutes or until sauce is bubbling and cheese is melting and starting to turn golden brown. Use a pizza wheel or the tip of a sharp knife to cut the pizza into 8 slices. Serve and enjoy!

Spring-Into-Summer Salad with Strawberries, Asparagus & Pickles

What do strawberries and pickles have in common? More than you’d think! In honor of spring shading (sunning?) into summer, I thought I’d try making a seasonal sweet-and-sour salad by tossing together strawberries and pickles. Roasted asparagus and Romaine lettuce provided the backdrop, and a creamy Dijon dressing tied it all together. It’s simple and quick … and a springtime embodiment of a beloved Chinese food principle.

A note on the dressing: the creaminess comes from hard-boiled egg yolks. If you don’t have eggs on hand or don’t want to hard-boil them, you can skip using the yolks. The eggs are a nice touch, though — both for the creaminess they add and the fact that they act as an emulsifier to help convince the oil and vinegar to stick together — so I think it’s worth hard-boiling them. Besides, hard-boiled eggs can hang out in your fridge for a solid week, just waiting for an opportune breakfast or snack moment.

Spring-Into-Summer Salad with Strawberries, Asparagus & Pickles
Serves 2. Recipe can easily be doubled or tripled.

Asparagus stalks (anywhere from 1/2 lb. to 1 lb.), their tough ends snapped off
2 eggs, preferably from pastured hens
Romaine lettuce, chopped
Pickles, chopped (I vastly prefer dill to sweet, but either would work)
Strawberries, preferably organic (conventional strawberries are heavily sprayed), sliced
1 to 2 tsp. Dijon mustard, depending on how much you like mustard
1 T. balsamic vinegar
2 T. extra-virgin olive oil

Preheat oven to 350 and line a baking sheet with parchment paper or aluminum foil. Lay the asparagus out on the covered sheet and drizzle with a little extra-virgin olive oil. Sprinkle with sea salt and pepper and toss gently with your hands to season the stalks. Roast for 20 minutes or until stalks are turning golden brown and are shriveling. (Very thin stalks might only take 15 minutes; thick stalks could take up to 30.)

While the asparagus is roasting, slip the eggs into a medium-sized pot and fill with enough water to cover them. Cover the pot and place it on high heat. As soon as the water comes to a boil, reduce heat to medium-low and simmer for 10 minutes. Immediately pull eggs off the stove and top off the pot with cold water. Pour out all of the water and refill with cold water. Let the eggs sit for at least 5 minutes in the cold water to cool them. Prompt and thorough chilling is crucial to keep the yolk from blackening around the edges! (Still tastes fine, but blackened/grayish egg yolks don’t look particularly appealing.)

As soon as the eggs are cool to the touch, cut them in half so that you can scoop out the yolks. Slip the yolks into a bowl. Chop the whites and toss the whites with the roasted asparagus, the chopped Romaine, the chopped pickles, and the sliced strawberries.

To make the dressing, mash the yolks with a fork and stir in the mustard, vinegar, and oil. Toss well with salad before serving, or serve the dressing on the side in case you think you’ll have leftover salad that you’d like to keep for the next day.

Enjoy!

Sautéed Sausage & Romaine

Sometimes all you need to make a quick and tasty meal is two top-quality ingredients, eight minutes, and a pan. (And sometimes all you need to come up with such a simple idea is not having many ingredients in your fridge. If necessity is the mother of invention, then needing to make a trip to the grocery store must be the father of recipe creation!)

Seeing as Romaine is a lettuce of all trades — it’s tender enough to enjoy raw, yet it’s crisp enough to retain its crunch after being sautéed or even grilled — Romaine makes a nice counterpoint to sausage. The understated, almost-sweet flavor of the former is especially welcome if your sausage happens to be of the spicy-hot variety. And on the flip side, sausage drippings provide a flavorful base for sautéeing the Romaine, particularly if you choose sausage made of meat from pastured animals.

Note: Applegate Farms and Niman Ranch are national brands that source their meat from truly farmed animals. Since these animals exercise in the fresh air and eat foods they’ve evolved to eat (i.e., foods that suit their natures and keep them healthy rather than making them sick), their meat has about half the saturated fat you’d find in conventional meat. In other words, cook real meat for half the time and at half the heat! You can always keep on cooking if you want your meat to be more well-done. Fixing good meat that’s been overcooked into shoe leather, though, is beyond even the most adept kitchen wizard.

Sautéed Sausage & Romaine
Figure on about 1 sausage and 4 large leaves of lettuce per person.

Sausage made with pastured meat (try Applegate Farms, Niman Ranch, and/or sausages purchased from local farmers), cut into 1/4″ thick slices
Romaine lettuce, chopped

Make sure your pan is large enough to hold all of your sausage slices in a single layer. Cook over medium heat for 3 minutes undisturbed before flipping over a piece of sausage to see if it’s golden-brown underneath. If it is, flip all of the pieces over and continue cooking for another 2 minutes. Remove sausage with a slotted spatula and stack on a warm plate.

Place the Romaine in the pan with the sausage drippings. Cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, for 3 minutes or until lettuce is slightly wilted and browned. Toss with cooked sausage and serve immediately. Leftover sausage can be refrigerated for up to 4 days and eaten as a stand-alone snack or added to meals.

Enjoy!

Triple Allium Pasta

You might not know what an allium is, but you’ve already enjoyed eating one. Or three or four. The allium family includes two of the world’s most popular ingredients: garlic and onions. Plenty of other beloved veggies are members of the allium family: leeks, green onions (often called scallions), chives, shallots, and ramps (i.e., wild leeks).  And of course just saying “garlic” and “onion” doesn’t really do those alliums justice, because eaters enjoy everything from sharply piquant wild garlic with its tiny cloves to mellow, oversized elephant garlic with its giant cloves … and likewise, everything from pungent red onions to sweet Vidalias.

In the spirit of welcoming an early spring with an early round of alliums — they’re one of the first veggies to come up as soon as the weather gentles — I made a triple-allium pasta dish with three of my favorites: leeks, onions, and garlic. In my case, I deepened the flavor by sautéeing them in schmaltz (the drippings off a recent roast chicken that I had collected and kept in a glass jar in the fridge), but a rich-tasting pastured butter like Kerrygold would work, too. Or rendered bacon fat should you have any on hand. I often do since I always save the drippings from bacon whenever I make it. Pastured bacon is much, much more lean than conventional bacon — not to mention FAR more delicious! — but a few strips will still provide a spoonful or two of rendered fat to keep on hand to enrich just about any dish you can think of.

Triple-Allium Pasta
Makes enough for 2 good-sized servings. Feel free to double or triple as needed.

Schmaltz, rendered bacon fat, OR pastured butter or ghee such as Kerrygold or Purity Farms
4 leeks, cleaned* and chopped
2 medium yellow or white onions, chopped (if you want a really sweet dish, choose a large sweet onion)
8 to 10 cloves garlic, chopped
2 servings whole-grain pasta of your choice (be sure to use gluten-free pasta if you want a gluten-free dish)

Place a dollop of schmaltz in a large nonstick skillet and melt over medium heat. Add the leeks and onions and cook, stirring occasionally, for 10 minutes. Add the garlic, reduce heat by a notch or two, and continue to cook for another 10 minutes, adding more schmaltz if the pan starts to get too dry and the veggies start to stick to it.

While the alliums are sautéeing, prepare the pasta according to package directions. I usually simmer my pasta for 8 minutes, so I like to start the pasta during the second phase of the allium cooking so that everything is done at the same time. If your pasta takes more than 10 minutes to cook, you might want to start off the recipe by cooking the pasta.

Drain pasta well and toss with the sautéed alliums. Feel free to serve this dish with a full-flavored aged cheese like Parmesan or even a blue like Stilton. Perhaps you might want to go the sweet route and pair your alliums with bell peppers or tomatoes. Maybe you’d even like to do both. Alliums are so versatile — especially when cooked — that you really can’t go wrong with them.

Enjoy!

* To clean a leek, peel off and discard the outermost layer. Cut off the tough dark green lower portion of the leek and discard. Hold up the leek by the root end and use a large sharp knife to poke through the leek about an inch away from the root end. Pull the knife straight down, cutting the leek in half but keeping it connected at the root end. Turn 90 degrees and repeat. You should have a quartered (but still held together) leek. Fan out under running cool water and hand-scrub the layers gently to wash away any dirt that might be trapped between the layers. Shake dry and chop, discarding the root end.

Shrimp-Crab Cakes with Avocado, Lemon & Dill

Just about everyone agrees that crab cakes are sublime. Just about everyone likes shrimp, too. So why not make shrimp-crab cakes? The tiny and amazingly cute wild rock shrimp that come in cans are ideal for making cakes since they’re already so small, plus they can hang out in your pantry right next to the canned crab until you want to whip up a quick seafood dinner. I like the wild-caught tiny shrimp from Trader Joe’s, but you can use whatever kind of shrimp you’d like. If you have some normal-sized shrimp on hand, you can simply measure out about 3 ounces of freshly cooked shrimp and mince it to approximate the size and texture of the tiny shrimp.

I’ve used almond flour in these crab cakes since 1. the mild nut flavor pairs well with seafood (creates a much richer flavor than standard breadcrumbs), 2. it’s gluten-free, and 3. sliced almonds are a pantry staple shoo-in (they’re a snap to grind into flour with a spice/coffee grinder). If you’d prefer to use whole-grain breadcrumbs, that works, too.

Shrimp-Crab Cakes with Avocado, Lemon & Dill
Makes 6 cakes (figure on 2 cakes for a lunch serving and 3 for a heartier meal). Recipe can easily be doubled or tripled.

6 oz. canned crab
4 oz. canned tiny wild shrimp OR 3 oz. chopped fresh-cooked shrimp of any size
1 egg, preferably from pastured hens
1 T. prepared mustard (my favorites are stone-ground Dijon or German-style mustard)
1 tsp. dried dill
Freshly cracked black pepper
1/4 cup to 1/2 cup almond flour OR whole-grain breadcrumbs (I like to grind sliced almonds in a coffee/spice grinder for about 10 seconds to make fresh flour)
Lemon wedges for garnish
Chopped avocado for garnish

Squeeze the liquid out of the crab and shrimp, then place the meat in a medium bowl. Discard the liquid. Whisk the egg, mustard, dill, and pepper into the crab and shrimp. Stir in enough almond flour to make the mixture dry enough to handle and shape but not so dry that it falls apart. (Hence starting with 1/4 cup and working your way up.) Divide the mixture into 6 portions and shape each one into a patty about the size of a small hamburger.

Heat a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil or a pat of pastured butter in a large nonstick skillet over medium heat for 1 minute. Add 3 cakes and cook for 3 minutes undisturbed or until the bottoms are golden brown. Carefully flip over and keep cooking for another 2 minutes or until both sides are golden brown. Remove to a plate and cook the remaining 3 patties, adding more oil/butter if the pan is dry.

Serve patties with a spritz of fresh lemon juice, some chopped avocado, and a dash or two of additional dill sprinkled over the top.

Enjoy!

Broccoli, Avocado & Sausage Pasta

Want to get more efficient in the kitchen? Make multiple-pot meals. Heck, you’ve got four burners, so why not have them all in motion? If you simmer two ingredients while you sautée a third (and chop a fourth), your prep time will be only as long as the longest-cooking item of the bunch. For this meal, the pasta takes 8 minutes while the broccoli and sausage take 5 each, so we’re talking 10 minutes to make dinner. (That’s including the 2 minutes it’ll take for the water to come to a boil.)

I like my pasta a tad chewy and toothsome rather than mushy, so I tend to cook my pasta (and all whole grains) for less time than the package indicates. It’s easy enough to check the texture periodically and keep on cooking it if it’s still too chewy. Another plus of going with the “slightly undercooked” technique is that it takes more effort to digest chewy pasta/grain, which means less of a spike in blood sugar levels…which in turn is a good idea for everybody. It’s also nice to shave a few minutes off the prep time.

Broccoli, Avocado & Sausage Pasta
Serves 2 and can easily be doubled or tripled.

Cook the pasta according to package directions. While that’s burbling away, simmer the broccoli for 5 minutes. Drain pasta and broccoli separately or together. Sautée the sausage over medium heat for 5 minutes while the pasta and broccoli are simmering; prep the avocado while all three are going.

Toss the pasta and broccoli with the sausage and the pan drippings from the sausage. Add avocado, toss very gently once or twice, and serve immediately. How’s that for a ten-minute meal plan? The dish sans avocado can be refrigerated for up to 4 days.

Enjoy!

* Be sure to get gluten-free pasta if you want a gluten-free meal!

Cilantro-Marinara Pasta

Conceptually speaking, one of my favorite things to do for dinner is to embellish something I already have. Creative embellishing is an ideal way to translate leftovers into new dishes. (Although there’s a lot to be said for the whole idea of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” — i.e., if you loved a dish the first time around, by all means skip the embellishing and enjoy it just as it is.) Creative embellishing is also a great way to use what you’ve got in your fridge rather than ignoring it and then wind up throwing it away a week later.

Incidentally, here’s a hot tip: if grocery economics seem complicated and not worth figuring out, you could always attach what you spend in cold hard cash to each item in your fridge for a week and then see how much $$ you’re literally throwing away on a weekly basis. I guarantee that’ll make you an even bigger fan of re-enjoying and embellishing your meals!

In this case, I had a bunch of cilantro I had initially purchased to make Indian recipes. Half of the bunch had been happily eaten; half of it was still sitting pretty in my fridge. Seeing as I also had some leftover marinara on hand, too, I figured I would put the two of them together and toss them with pasta for a quick meal. Marinara is such an easy-going sauce that it pairs well with almost any fresh herb, so you could use this idea to enjoy whatever kind of herb you might have on hand.

Cilantro-Marinara Pasta

Leftover marinara sauce (home-made or store-bought)
Fresh cilantro, basil, or any other leafy herb
Whole-grain pasta (make sure to get gluten-free pasta if that’s what you’re aiming for)

Cook the pasta according to package directions. While it’s simmering, rinse and then chop/mince the herb (or leave it whole). Although my favorite fresh herbs are cilantro and basil, this would also be nice with dill, oregano, or even mint.

While pasta is draining, heat the marinara in the pot the pasta was in for a minute or two, stirring often, until the sauce has warmed through. Stir in pasta and herb(s), starting with just a handful of herb and adding more to taste if you’d like.

Enjoy!

Sushi Undone

If you have access to sashimi-grade fish, making sushi is a snap. (Sashimi-grade fish is suitable to eat raw. NEVER consume raw fish unless it is sashimi-grade fish and you’re getting it from a reputable fishmonger or grocer.)* Short-grain brown rice and seaweed are available even in most mainstream stores, and nearly every American has soy sauce in her pantry nowadays. And I’ll let you in on a wasabi secret: the stuff we buy here is horseradish that’s been finely ground and dyed green. I just haul out my jar of horseradish whenever I want wasabi.

And if you don’t have a rolling mat to make your sushi — or you’re not particularly gifted at rolling — don’t despair! I often lay out my ingredients rather than roll them; sometimes my seaweed is no longer supple enough to roll (once you’ve opened a fresh package of nori, leftover sheets tend to get brittle and crack easily), sometimes I’m feeling fumble-fingered, sometimes I just want something a little different. That’s when I make sushi undone. All you have to do is arrange the ingredients on a plate — no rolling required. In this case, I had avocado, purple sticky rice, two kinds of fish, and fish eggs. That’s it. Can’t get any simpler than that. Or any tastier!

Sushi Undone

Cooked sticky rice (I adore Thai purple sticky rice, but short-grain brown rice works just as well and is much easier to find)
Sashimi-grade fish (here I’ve included my favorites: salmon and white tuna), sliced into strips
Sliced or chopped avocado
Sheets of nori, left whole or sliced or crumbled
Fish eggs (optional; my favorite is the bright orange and incredibly tiny smelt roe)

Spoon some cooked rice onto a plate and top with fish and avocado. Tuck in or sprinkle on some sliced/crushed nori and spoon on some fish eggs. Serve with soy sauce or wheat-free tamari and a dab of wasabi or a dollop of horseradish. Talk about stress-free sushi!

Enjoy!

* My go-to place for sashimi-grade fish (and all Japanese ingredients) is Noble Fish in Clawson.

Bean, Spinach & Brown Rice Soup with Miso & Oxtail

Nothing screams “SOUP!” like an oxtail or two. Of course, you can still whip up an impressive pot of stew without oxtails, but browning the tails solo and then simmering them into your soup is a fantastically inexpensive way to impart a rich, meaty flavor to your base broth. Individual oxtails are a little smaller than my fist, so they don’t take up much room — I like to keep a bag of them in the freezer and dole them out one by one whenever I feel like making an especially savory stew. Oxtails are typically available at a well-stocked meat counter or — better yet! — from your local farmers.

I’ve also included miso in this soup. Again, it’s an optional ingredient, but miso (fermented soybeans) is another one of those umami-rich ingredients that adds a concentrated hit of savoryness to whatever you’re making. I prefer Eden’s brand of organic miso made with brown rice. It comes in a handy zip-loc pouch and can hang out in your fridge for a solid six months. (It’s already aged for 18.) Just be sure to get a miso made with brown rice rather than wheat if you’re shooting for a gluten-free ingredient. Soy sauce is also often fermented with wheat, so again be sure to get wheat-free soy/tamari sauce if you’re aiming for the g-f version. You’ll find miso in Asian grocery stores or in the Asian-foods section of mainstream stores.

Bean, Spinach & Brown Rice Soup with Miso & Oxtail
This hearty pot of soup makes enough for 4 generous portions…and you’ll have leftovers for lunch, too!

2 oxtails
1 medium onion, chopped
32 oz./4 cups chicken or vegetable broth (if it’s chicken, shoot for free-range)
1 T. miso
15 oz. navy beans (I prefer Eden’s beans since they’re in BPA-free cans)
1 cup frozen peas
8 oz./1 cup (or more) frozen spinach
1 cup cooked brown rice (this is a great way to use up leftover cooked rice)

Melt a dab of ghee or butter in a large stockpot over medium-high heat. Add the oxtails and onion and sautée, stirring occasionally, for 10 minutes or until the oxtails are browned on both sides and the onion is translucent and turning golden brown. (You may want to reduce the heat to medium if the onions are browning too quickly.)

Pour in the broth and whisk in the miso. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to medium-low and simmer for 10 minutes. Stir in the beans and peas and let the soup simmer for another 10 minutes. (It’s better to add these midway through rather than at the beginning to make sure they don’t get too mushy.) Add the spinach and rice and simmer for a final 10 minutes. Season to taste with sea salt or add a dash of soy/tamari sauce if you like. Leftover soup can be refrigerated for up to 5 days.

Note: pull out the oxtails and discard them before serving the soup — like bay leaves, their purpose is to impart flavor rather than to be served with the final dish. As long as I have leftover soup, though, I like to leave the oxtails in the broth to keep on imparting their rich flavor while the soup waits for you to polish it off.

Enjoy!

Roasted Cauliflower & Caramelized Onions with Balsamic Vinegar

Some recipes don’t take long to make; others will require a slot in your schedule. When it comes to the time-hungry recipes, though, there are those that require hands-on attention and those that can pretty much fend for themselves while you do something else nearby: relax with a book, check your email, get caught up on your phone calls. This savory and simple dish of long-cooked veggies (one roasted, the other caramelized) falls into the “not-much-tending” needed category.

Cauliflower is a great candidate for roasting: it’s easy to prep, it’s inexpensive to buy, and it takes on an entirely new nutty flavor when left in a 375F oven for about 30 minutes. I like to toss mine with unrefined peanut oil since peanut oil adds to the overall nuttiness and also handles up to 395F. You’ll get a more even browning effect with an oil that can handle the level of heat you’re subjecting it to. (Extra-virgin olive oil goes up to about 325F.) Other good candidates for roasting veggies at 375F would be coconut oil, melted butter, and/or melted ghee.

Roasted Cauliflower & Caramelized Onions with Balsamic Vinegar
Serves 2 as a main course or 4 as a side, especially if you serve a wedge of cheese along with it. Aged, flavorful cheeses like Parmesan and Asiago would be perfect partners for the sweet/nutty flavor of this dish.

1 sweet onion, sliced thinly
1 T. butter, preferably from grass-fed cows
1 head cauliflower, cut into florets
1 T. unrefined peanut oil
Salt & pepper
3-4 campari tomatoes, chopped, OR a handful of grape/cherry tomatoes, halved
Drizzle of balsamic vinegar & extra-virgin olive oil

Preheat oven to 375F.

Cook the onion in the butter in large nonstick skillet over medium-low heat for 45 minutes, stirring occasionally. (It’s better to use a nonstick skillet for this since the onions will stick to the skillet’s surface as they brown, and it’s easier to scrape a nonstick skillet to bring up these concentrated flavors.)

While the onions are cooking, toss the cauliflower with the oil in a large bowl and season it with salt and pepper. Spread out the florets on two baking sheets that you either don’t mind cleaning thoroughly afterward or have covered with parchment paper. Roast for 30 minutes or until florets are browning.

In a large bowl, toss the caramelized onions and roasted cauliflower with the tomatoes. Season with a drizzle of vinegar and olive oil and toss again. I like to use a 2:1 ratio of vinegar to oil, but you may wish to use a 1:1 ratio. Leftovers will last for 4 days in the fridge.

Enjoy!

Chili-Spiced Pork & Collards

Collards are my favorite winter greens, although kale is a close second. It’s probably not a coincidence that the two are closely related. (They’re also related to cabbage and broccoli.) The textured wavy/curly nature of kale makes for better chips, but the flatter, thicker collards are easier to chop and then steam, simmer, or sautée. Both kale and collards are at their best during the winter months — they don’t grow well under hot conditions, plus the heat tranforms their sweet nature into a slightly bitter-tasting one — and both will last a week in the fridge if you loosely wrap them in a paper towel and then tuck them into a loose, open-ended plastic bag.

For this dish, I opted to sautée and then steam the collards in the pork drippings. I used pastured pork, which is naturally leaner than conventional meats are, so my collards weren’t swimming in drippings. If you’re using conventional pork and wind up with more drippings than you’d like, feel free to drain some off before cooking your collards.

Note: all pastured meats are leaner than conventional ones. This is because animals that are exercising and eating the foods they’ve evolved to eat are going to be leaner and healthier than animals kept inside and fed a diet of cheap starches laced with just enough protein to keep them going. Think of the difference between a human who eats a variety of non-processed foods and exercises on a regular basis vs. a human who is chained to the couch and fed nothing but cheap starches and the occasional protein shake. We’re all what we eat, non-human animals included.

Chili-Spiced Pork & Collards
Serves 4 for lunch or 2 or 3 for a hearty dinner.

1 lb. ground pork, preferably pastured
1 medium yellow onion, sliced
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1 T. chili powder (I adore Spice Hunter’s blend)
Dash of sea salt
About 12 collard leaves, chopped

Cook pork and onion in a large skillet over medium heat, stirring often, for about 4 minutes or until the pork is mostly opaque. Add garlic, chili powder, and salt and continue to cook for another 2 minutes, stirring occasionally, or until pork is cooked through and garlic is soft and fragrant. Use a slotted spoon or spatula to remove pork to a plate.

Add the chopped collards to the skillet and stir well to coat the greens with the pork drippings. Reduce heat to medium-low and cover. Steam for 8 minutes or until collards have reached a nice texture. (I like mine a bit chewy.) Lift the lid and stir the collards at the five-minute mark to make sure they’re cooking evenly and to see if they’re getting near your desired texture. If you’d like to spice the collards as well as the pork, feel free to add a tablespoon of chili powder to the collards.

Serve the pork atop a bed of collards. Leftover pork and collards can be refrigerated — separately or together — for up to 4 days.

Enjoy!