Roasted Greens: Beans, Onions & Tomatoes

For sheer ease of elegance, you can’t beat roasted veggies. Grilling is another great way to concentrate their flavor, but now that we’re moving into a less-sun-and-more-chill time of year, roasting veggies in the oven (or anything else, for that matter) is more appealing than standing outside in the rain tending to a grill. Unless maybe you have a covered and heated outdoor grilling structure, in which case I am beyond envious. And if you live someplace where it’s warm year-round and grilling is always a pleasure, double that envy! At least, until I have my tiki hut in paradise…[sigh]…one of these days…

For this batch of oven-roasted veggies, I went with a green theme: beans, onions, and tomatoes. Leaving the seeds and skin in the tomatoes means they’ll deepen even more in flavor — that savory gotta-have-it umami flavor is concentrated in the thick juice encasing the seeds — and cutting the tomatoes into thin slices will give them a chance to become deliciously and lightly singed around the edges. Just be sure to use parchment paper to protect your baking sheets from any stubborn tomato seeds or skin that might get baked on and extra clingy.

Roasted Greens: Beans, Onions & Tomatoes

Preheat oven to 375F. While oven is heating, rinse and trim green beans and green onions. Cover three baking sheets with parchment paper and lay the onions on one and the beans on another. Cut green tomatoes (or red or yellow or whatever color you like) into 1/8″ thick slices and spread them out on the remaining baking sheet.

Drizzle a little extra-virgin olive oil on your veggies and sprinkle them with sea salt and some freshly ground pepper. Toss each individual sheet of veggies well with your fingertips to combine. It’s better to keep the veggies segregated so that you can pull them out of the oven as each one hits the sweet roasted spot — they’ll need different cooking times.

Put all three sheets in the oven and roast for 25 minutes. At that point, the tomatoes and onions will probably be looking browned and a tad crispy, so pull them out. Keep roasting the beans for another 10 minutes or until they’re also browned and a tad crispy. Note that while a bit of singeing is nice, you do not want outright burnt-and-blackened veggies. If in doubt, taste one and then decide if you want to keep roasting it or not.

Toss all veggies together and serve. The tomatoes will give off plenty of juice and flavor that will act as a dressing for the dish. You could also toss your veggies with whole-grain pasta if you like, or try serving them with free-range chicken, a light wild fish like trout or perch, or U.S.-caught wild shrimp.

Enjoy!

Garden Corn & Tomatoes with Curried Sunflower Seeds

You know what’s great about all the specialty cuisines nowadays? By “specialty,” I mean those that cater to niche — but growing! — interests like vegan, raw, gluten-free, etc. Everyone can sample these cuisines and ideas and benefit from them no matter what our personal food philosophies are. Take raw food, for example. Raw food chefs are incredibly inventive and tasty (if you don’t believe me, try a raw cake made of macadamia nuts and spices and raw cocoa some time) and I’m seeing more markets and restaurants offering raw dishes and desserts.

One of my recent favorite specialty-cuisine finds is Kaia Foods. They make fabulous raw kale chips by dehydrating the kale (or you can make your own by baking the kale with this recipe), and they also make darned delicious spiced sprouted seed mixes and granolas. All of their products are raw and fantastically crunchy to boot. Their foods are typically sold as snacks, but I’ve found that they make great additions and garnishes to main dishes. The sprouted seeds I used in this recipe are so delightfully spicy that they flavor the entire dish. Or if you don’t have any Kaia seeds on hand, you could accomplish a similar effect with curry powder and sunflower seeds.

Garden Corn & Tomatoes with Curried Sunflower Seeds

Fresh market corn (figure on one ear per person)
Garden tomatoes (figure on one or two large tomatoes per person), chopped
Thinly sliced red onion
Kaia Sweet Curry sunflower seeds OR roasted sunflower seeds + a sprinkling of curry powder to taste + a dash of tamari*/soy sauce + a drizzle of honey

Get a very large pot of water boiling while you shuck the corn. (The ears need to fit into the pot, so you might want to eyeball the proportions before filling the pot halfway with water and bringing it to a boil.) When the water is boiling, place the ears in the pot and boil them for 3 minutes. Promptly pull them out with tongs and allow them to cool enough to handle.

Hold the ears above a large bowl at an obtuse angle (more than 90 degrees) and use a sharp knife to free the kernels from the cob, gripping the ear at one end and starting to cut the kernels halfway down the ear. Flip over and repeat with the remaining kernels.

Add the tomatoes and sunflower seeds to the cut-off kernels and toss well to make sure that a good amount of the spices come off the seeds and go onto the other ingredients. (The tomato juice will speed that process along.) If you’re not using the Kaia seeds, you might want to whisk together the tamari, honey, and curry powder before tossing them in with the veggies. You could add more veggies if you want — great candidates would be cooked potatoes or green beans or cauliflower. Or you could add whole-grain pasta or whole grains themselves. (Corn kernels are whole grains, by the way.) Sautéed chicken or shrimp would be another welcome addition. Garnish with parsley if you like.

Enjoy!

* Make sure to use wheat-free tamari if you want to make a gluten-free dish.

Maifun Noodles with Garden Veggies & Bacon

This post is a two-for-one deal: it’s a continuation and an introduction! The continuation is the part where you make darned tasty use of your leftover high-quality, no-mess, baked bacon from the previous recipe. The introduction part is to let you know about brown rice maifun noodles. I stumbled across them at Westborn lately and have since seen them in a few other places (although they certainly aren’t — yet — mainstream). I daresay they’ll catch on fast given their delicate texture and quick cooking time. And the brown rice variety I found was 100% whole-grain! How fabulous!

Maifun is the Chinese term for what we’d call vermicelli noodles…although that’s actually an Italian word that means “little worms.” I promise that they’re far more appetizing than their Italian name implies. I think I’ll stick with the Chinese term. Can’t go wrong with a word that has “fun” in it.

You also can’t go wrong with a whole-grain (and gluten-free, since it’s made entirely of brown rice) noodle that cooks in 3 minutes flat. Its elegant appearance and mild flavor makes it a great choice to use as a basis for light, summery pasta dishes like this one.

Maifun Noodles with Garden Veggies & Bacon
Serves 2, although recipe can easily be doubled

Double handful green beans, trimmed and coarsely chopped
2 servings brown rice maifun noodles
1 mild pepper such as banana or bell, minced (if the banana peppers are smallish, you might want to use 2)
At least 12 cherry tomatoes, halved
2 to 4 strips leftover cooked bacon, crumbled or minced, preferably from pastured hogs (Applegate Farms is my #1 pick for bacon)
About 2 T. minced fresh herbs (such as basil, chives, or thyme; I used lemon thyme from my garden)
Drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil
Dash of sea salt & a few grinds of freshly cracked pepper

Bring a pot of water to boil. Add beans and reduce heat to medium-high or medium, whichever gives you a calm simmer instead of a furious boil. Simmer beans for 2 minutes. Stir in noodles and simmer for an additional 3 minutes.

Drain beans and noodles immediately and toss with remaining ingredients, seasoning to taste with the salt and pepper. Serve promptly.

Enjoy!

Two-Minute Salad with Herbed Yogurt Dressing

Remember the Ranch days? The days when everything was dipped in and topped with Ranch dressing? Ranch fries, Ranch burgers, veggies swathed in a sea of slightly speckled white. There’s no denying Ranch’s creamy, herby appeal…but you can create a much tastier, much more nutritious version of it using plain Greek yogurt and fresh or dried herbs. Considering that the first ingredient in Hidden Valley Ranch dressing is [probably heavily refined] soy oil and that other ingredients include mass-produced-food-world darlings like MSG, modified food starch, artificial flavors, and unpronounceable additives like disodium guanylate, it’s a sure bet that your homemade version of Ranch is going to bring home the proverbial prize.

Another beauty of taking a minute (literally) to whip up a DIY version is that you can spice/herb it the way you want to — if you’d like an Italianized version, shake in some Italian seasoning; if you’d like your dinner to have a Mexican flair, add a dash of chili powder. For this batch of dressing, I opted to use some of my fresh garden herbs.  Feel free to toss your dressing with the salad pictured here, or use it as a dip or topping the way most of us grew up using Ranch.

Two-Minute Salad with Herbed Yogurt Dressing (a.k.a. Ranch-Made-Better Dressing)

For the dressing:
Plain whole-milk Greek yogurt (the whole-milk version will give you the thickness and creaminess you’re looking for; Fage whole-milk yogurt is a great choice)
Red wine vinegar
Herbs/spices of your choice (if you use fresh herbs, mince them)
Sea salt & freshly ground pepper
Garlic, minced (optional)

For the salad:
Torn lettuce leaves (I used arugula and baby spinach, but any tender green will do)
Cashews
Red grapes, sliced in half
Raw green beans, chopped (or simmer them for 5 minutes, then promptly submerge in cold water, drain, and chop)
Mild pepper such as bell or banana, minced

To make the dressing, stir yogurt and vinegar together, using about 1 T. for every 1/2 cup of yogurt. You want a creamy, smooth consistency that will be easy enough to toss with the salad — i.e., not too thick — but also one that is creamy and has some body — i.e., not too thin. I usually drizzle in some vinegar, stop to stir, and then add another splash of vinegar before I do another consistency check. Stir in herbs/spices, a dash of salt, and a grind or two of pepper. Dried herbs are more concentrated than fresh herbs, so start with 1 tsp. dried herbs per each 1/2 cup. Use 1 T. of fresh herbs…or eyeball it, tasting as you go. (Frankly, that’s easier.) If you do add garlic, start with half a small clove — a little raw garlic goes a very long way. Do a taste test to see if you want to include more.

Toss salad ingredients together, then re-toss with dressing. I would use equal amounts of nuts and grapes; you might want to use a little less raw beans and peppers in comparison since they have a stronger taste. Feel free to add cooked chicken or shrimp to this salad — either would pair well with the creamy dressing. (Note: cheap farmed shrimp from Central American and Southeast Asia continues to be a big environmental problem, so when buying shrimp, I go with seafoodwatch.org’s recommendation and choose wild-caught U.S. shrimp.)

Serve promptly. Leftover dressing can be refrigerated for at least 4 days. If your yogurt is fresh, the dressing will probably keep for a week.

Enjoy!

Mung Bean Pasta with Curried Yogurt

When I was a kid, I thought the only difference between pastas was that some were long and skinny and others were tubular and short. Or looked like shells. But nowadays, the more I troll through the pasta aisles, the more I realize that while shape is important, the biggest difference between one pasta to the next is what it’s made out of: it can be grains (wheat, corn, brown rice, quinoa, amaranth), it can be legumes (mung bean, black bean), or it can be made from a tuber (sweet potato noodles). It can even be made of sea vegetables! Once I had a delicious dish that looked like it was going to be wheat noodles tossed with sour cream…but turned out to be almost-translucent seaweed noodles tossed with spiced cashew cream. Talk about a tasty, unique, and gluten-free surprise!

While I’ve seen plenty of non-wheat pastas pop up during the past few years, they all seemed to be grain-based. It’s just lately that the bean-based pastas are entering the ring. Sure, Asian stores have always stocked the bean starch noodles (also called “glass noodles”), but I hadn’t come across pasta made with the full bean before — i.e., the starch PLUS everything else, which is a much better nutritional bet than just eating the starchy part and ignoring the rest. Turns out to be a tastier bet, too, since the whole-bean noodles are much more flavorful. That means they’re more fun to pair with ethnic dishes: the black bean noodles are great tossed with corn and salsa, for example, while the mung bean noodles are ideal when you’re in the mood for an Indian dinner. Look for these slightly-off-the-beaten-track pastas in health-oriented grocery stores or well-stocked independent grocers.

Mung Bean Pasta with Curried Yogurt
Serves 2. Recipe can easily be doubled or tripled.

For the yogurt:
1/2 cup whole-milk Greek yogurt
Curry powder

For the pasta:
2 servings mung bean pasta OR any whole-grain pasta of your choice
Handful of green beans, trimmed and rinsed
2 banana peppers or 1 bell pepper (feel free to add a jalapeño if you’re really into spicy-hot dishes), ribs and seeds removed, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
Handful of roasted pistachios, chopped OR handful cashews, chopped
Handful of cherry tomatoes, halved or quartered

To prepare the yogurt, simply stir some curry powder into the yogurt, starting with 1/2 tsp. and adding more to taste if you’d like.

Prepare the pasta according to the package directions. Meanwhile, get another pot of water boiling for the beans. Add them, reduce heat to a simmer, cover, and simmer them for 5 minutes. Drain promptly. When they’re cool enough to touch, you may want to cut them into bite-sized lengths. (You can also plunge them in cold water to speed up the cooling process.)

Place a bit of extra-virgin olive oil, coconut oil, or ghee in a large skillet. Sautée the pepper over medium heat for 2 minutes, then add garlic and nuts. If you’re using salted nuts, you probably don’t need to add salt; if you’re using unsalted nuts, you might want to shake in a sprinkling of salt. Sautée the pepper, garlic, and nuts for about 3 minutes, stirring often, or until garlic is soft and fragrant.

Toss cooked pasta with green beans and the pepper mixture. Top with tomatoes and serve with a side of curried yogurt. This would also be great tossed with lamb or chicken.

Enjoy!

Wild Rice Spring Soup

It’s almost summer, things are finally green, and I’m actually excited about mowing the lawn again.  It’s a lot better than shoveling snow! Or mopping the basement floor with an old towel when the heavy early-spring rains hit and you get water in places you don’t want to get water.  Hot summer days sound pretty darned appealing right now.

With spring firmly here and summer on the way, I thought I’d usher in the growing season with a fittingly green soup.  And seeing as Michigan is the preeminent Great Lakes state (yep, we’ve got more coastline than California!), I used true wild rice in this recipe, the kind that grows along the banks of the Great Lakes and is still harvested by hand the way indigenous people have been harvesting it for thousands of years.  True wild rice is hard to find, though, so if you don’t have any on hand, use brown rice or standard wild rice instead.  (Brown rice is closer in flavor to true wild rice — cultivated wild rice has a stronger, nuttier flavor than its grassier- and milder-tasting lakeside cousin.)

Wild Rice Spring Soup
Serves 4, particularly if you include a light side such as a salad or some fresh fruit.  Recipe can easily be doubled or tripled.

1 zucchini, cut into half-moons (slice it into rounds, then cut them in half)
4 oz. button, baby bella, or crimini mushrooms, sliced
3 cups vegetable or chicken stock (if it’s chicken stock, try to get stock made from free-range chicken)
8 stalks asparagus, rinsed, the tough ends snapped off, and then cut into 1″-long pieces (the more slender the asparagus, the more tender and less fibrous it will be; the bottom half of thick stalks may need to be peeled with a vegetable peeler before you cut them)
1/2 lb. green beans, rinsed, stem ends snipped off, and cut into 1″-long pieces
2 green onions, minced
1 T. dried thyme
1 tsp. dried sage
Handful of chives, minced
1 1/2 cups cooked wild rice or cooked brown rice*

Drizzle a little extra-virgin olive oil into a large soup pot and place over medium heat. Add zucchini and mushrooms and sautée, stirring occasionally, for 7 to 10 minutes or until the mushrooms are quite soft. Pour in broth and add asparagus, beans, onions, thyme, and sage. Simmer for 5 minutes. (You may have to turn the heat down once the soup begins to burble.)

Stir in chives and cooked rice. Simmer for another 5 minutes to heat the rice through.

Serve immediately, topping with grated Parmesan if desired. Leftover soup can be kept for up to five days in the refrigerator; frankly, I think it’s delicious served chilled.

Enjoy!

* It’s best to cook the rice separately, then add it to the soup — if you cook it along with the soup, you’ll have very starchy, cloudy broth rather than a clear, light-tasting spring soup.

Summer Pasta with Bacon

Good bacon goes with everything — I have a sneaking suspicion that bacon ice cream would be a hit.  (Especially if you paired the bacon with pecans.)  When I say “good” bacon, I’m referring to bacon from pastured hogs that snort and snuffle about on an actual farm.  You can find this kind of bacon at your farmer’s market, online, or at your favorite well-stocked grocery store.  My current easy-to-find favorite bacon comes from Applegate Farms.  They also make darned tasty hot dogs, deli meats, and sausages.  Eatwild.com has plenty of suggestions for finding pastured animal products at farms in your area.

Aside from improved flavor, better nutrition, and a much more pleasant effect on the environment, one of the big perks of good-quality bacon vs. conventional bacon is that it has not been injected with brine to make it taste better.  (It already tastes great!)  That means splattering is kept to a minimum when you’re cooking the bacon…and that means you can use the bacon grease to fry and flavor other ingredients.  In this case, I chopped up a variety of veggies from my garden and tossed them into the pan with the bacon a minute or two before the bacon was done.  Those four strips of bacon were all I needed to have a single-skillet, deliciously-bacon-seasoned dinner!

Summer Pasta with Bacon
This recipe serves 2 but can be easily doubled or tripled.

2 servings of whole-grain pasta of your choice (I used Tinkyáda’s tricolor vegetable brown rice spirals)
4 strips of bacon, preferably from pastured hogs
Assorted summer vegetables of your choice (I used 2 small cucumbers, 8 cherry tomatoes, 2 small peppers, and 12 green beans), chopped or sliced*
Fresh basil, thyme, rosemary and/or sage as garnish (optional)

Prepare the pasta according to package instructions. When the pasta is al dente, drain it, rinse it with tepid water, and set it aside.

While the pasta is simmering, cook the bacon in a covered skillet over medium heat for about 8 minutes, occasionally turning with tongs. If you’re using good-quality bacon, this shouldn’t be too messy; if you’re using the value-pak variety, you might want to use a very deep pot and long tongs to avoid making a mess out of your stove and burning yourself. Value-pak bacon is also probably going to take longer to cook because it will have more saturated fat than bacon from pastured hogs. (Looking for and buying the good stuff is really, really worth it!)

Add the vegetables and cook for 2 more minutes or until vegetables have softened. Turn off the heat.  Stir the drained pasta into the skillet to warm the pasta and mop up the flavorful bacon grease, then serve promptly.

Enjoy!

* Other tasty summer vegetables include zucchini, eggplant, corn, and anything else you find in abundance at the farmer’s market, in the produce market, or in your garden.

Ensalada España con Fabas y Pimientos

Spaniards have some delectable culinary customs, among them “giant” beans and “giant” corn.  (I found the latter — salted and roasted, no less — in a flamenco bar in Cádiz, sold in cocktail-peanut-style canisters in a mini rotating vending machine.  Like most bar snacks sold in disposable canisters, they weren’t very good, but still, I could tell the idea had potential.)

There are a few varieties of oversized beans, some called “gigante” and some known by their place of origin, like the fabas asturianas (Asturian fava beans) in this salad.  Unfortunately, this deliciously buttery and rich bean is tough to find in the States.  (But easy to find on Spanish-food web stores like www.latienda.com.)  In a pinch, you can substitute giant butter beans or the more-normal-sized-but-creamier Great White Northern beans.  Either way, you’ll have very satisfying salad…or soup or stew or casserole.

For this salad, I balanced bitter arugula and a tart vinegar-based dressing against the creamy smoothness of the beans and the sweet smoothness of roasted red peppers — piquillo peppers, to be exact.  (Another specialty of Spain, although roasted red peppers will also do quite nicely.)  Not only is this salad very simple and easy to toss together in minutes, you can also use it as a base and add whatever else you’d like:  hard-boiled eggs, tuna, grilled chicken, a salty cheese like Manchego or Stilton (or Valdeón, if you’d prefer to stick to the Spanish theme), more fresh vegetables, perhaps even crisp fruits like apple or pear.

Ensalada España con Fabas y Pimientos

(Spanish-Style Salad with Beans and Peppers)

Note: this recipe serves 2 for lunch or 4 as a side dish. Double as necessary.

Toss together:

Several handfuls arugula and/or mixed baby lettuce mix
1/2 cup roasted piquillo peppers or roasted red pepper strips
1 cup green beans, simmered for 5 minutes, then drained and cut into three pieces
1/2 cup (4 oz.) fabas asturianas or Great White Northern beans (or giant butter beans)
1/4 almonds or pine nuts (optional)

Drizzle extra-virgin olive oil onto salad, then drizzle on either sherry vinegar or balsamic vinegar to taste. (Most people prefer a 2:1 oil-to-vinegar ratio; I prefer 1:1.) Season with a few grinds of fresh peppercorn and sea salt.

Toss again and serve immediately.

Enjoy!

2 hardboiled eggs (see “Hardboiled Eggs” under “Ingredients & Staples”)

1/2 pound to 1 pound of green beans

Feta cheese, preferably in brine

2 medium tomatoes

fresh cilantro, torn or finely shredded

balsamic vinegar

olive oil

Clean and trim the ends off the green beans.  Add them to a pot of simmering water and cook for 5 minutes.  While they’re cooking, chop the beet, eggs, tomatoes, and Feta.  When the beans have cooked, rinse them in cold water, drain, and chop.  Combine all ingredients in a salad bowl and toss with cilantro, balsamic vinegar, and oil.  (I prefer more vinegar than oil, but your tastebuds may be different.  Experiment to find out what ratio you like best.)

Enjoy!

Ingredients

1 can tuna

1 large tomato

1 avocado

1-2 hardboiled eggs

handful of fresh green beans

fresh basil, cut into thin strips (chiffonade)

thinly-sliced red onion for garnish

Balsamic vinegar

Olive or flaxseed oil

salt & pepper

Put the egg(s) into a pot of water and set it on the stove to boil.  When the water starts to bubble, turn the heat down to a simmer and set your timer for 5 minutes.  Snip off the stems of the green beans.  At the 5-minute mark, add the green beans and cook for another 5 minutes.

While the egg(s) and beans are simmering, mound the tuna in the center of the plate(s).  Chop or slice the tomato and arrange it along one side of the tuna.  Do the same with the avocado.  Slice the onion and basil and scatter them over the top of the tuna.

After the egg has cooked for a total of 10 minutes and the beans for 5, put the pot into your kitchen sink and run cold water into the pot.  This will stop the cooking process.  When the beans and egg are cool enough to handle, drain the beans, cut them into smaller pieces (or leave them whole) and arrange them alongside the tuna.  Chop the egg and sprinkle it over the top of everything.  Dribble on the vinegar, oil, salt and pepper, tasting along the way if necessary.  Bon appétit!