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!

Mashed Potato Cake with a Poached Egg

We’ve all been there: you made too much of a side dish and wound up with more than you could chew. Literally. So you stick it in the fridge and figure that you’ll get around to eating it eventually…but then you don’t, and you wind up pitching your grocery dollars instead of eating them. It happens to the best of us.

That nearly happened to me when I had a pot of mashed redskins in my fridge. Luckily, though, when I was pondering what to have for breakfast one night (yes, I think it about it the night before in order to facilitate the whole getting-ready-in-the-morning process), I remembered those potatoes and decided they’d make a great base for a poached egg. Moreover, I decided they’d make great mashed potato cakes upon which to perch the egg. And the best part? The cakes only take 10 minutes total, so if you time the poaching right, you’ll have piping-hot potatoes and eggs to enjoy first thing in the morning.

Mashed Potato Cake with a Poached Egg

Mashed potatoes*
Egg(s)

Shape the potatoes into hamburger-sized patties no more than 1″ thick. Heat a dab of butter over medium heat until butter is melted, then gently lay on the potato patties. Cook for 5 minutes before very carefully and very gently flipping over the patties. Add another dab of butter if the pan is dry. Cook for another 5 minutes, reducing the heat by a notch or two since now the pan will be very hot and the cooking will be in full swing. Patties should be golden brown on both sides.

While the potato cakes are cooking, bring a medium pot of water to a boil. Crack in an egg (or two) and reduce heat to medium. Stir the egg gently to make sure it isn’t sticking to the bottom of the pan. Simmer it for 3 minutes. Eggs tend to foam over as they poach, so you want to stand right by that pot and keep an eye on it for those 3 minutes. The goal is a gently simmer the egg, not boil it — you may need to reduce the heat to medium-low or even low. Skim any rising foam off the top and discard it so that it doesn’t splash onto the stove and make a hard-to-clean mess.

Remove poached egg from water with a slotted spoon and place on top of the potato cake. Garnish with herbs and/or cracked black pepper if desired.

Enjoy!

* To mash potatoes, cut potatoes — in this case, redskins — into 1″ cubes and simmer them for 10 minutes. Drain well and mash with whatever extras you’d like: a pat of butter, a drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil, a soft cheese such as ricotta or goat, some snipped chives, a dash of dried herbs, etc. I mashed mine with some sauteéd garlic and chopped parsley.

Pan-Fried Smelt

Pan-frying a filet of fish is easy, but pan-frying little smelts is even easier. Talk about the ultimate fish for a fish and chips meal! Just dip each smelt into a dusting of your choice and sautée in butter or ghee for about five minutes. Done.

And the nearly-bite-sized smelt are much less expensive than the bigger filets, too. Not to mention the fact that they’re far more sustainable since they like to eat lower-on-the-chain organisms like zooplankton and tiny shrimp. (The smelt are in turn eaten by larger fish like salmon and trout.) If anything, most seafood monitoring groups report smelt as being underfished. That’s a rarity! So smelt wins on all fronts: it tastes great, it’s easy to prepare, and it’s environmentally friendly. You can’t ask for more from a fish.

I enjoyed these smelt with boiled potatoes tossed with dill, sea salt, and extra-virgin olive oil, but you could just as easily serve smelt with sautéed potato slices (the “chips” part of the fish and chips), coleslaw dressed with extra-virgin olive oil and red wine vinegar, or some sautéed veggies.

Pan-Fried Smelt
Figure on about 6 to 8 smelt per person and serve the fried smelt with any side you like (see above paragraph for suggestions).

12 smelt
About 1/2 cup whole-grain flour* OR a blend of flour and finely grated Parmesan cheese
Pinch of sea salt
Dash of dried herbs such as dill, basil, or oregano (optional)
Butter for frying

Clean the smelt and rinse well with cold water. I was lucky — Superior Fish in Royal Oak sells pre-cleaned smelt with the heads and innards removed. Some folks say they don’t mind the tiny bones in smelt; some say they prefer them boneless. It’s up to you. But if you wind up with uncleaned smelt, at least cut off the heads, and if you like, slit down the belly and remove the bones. Leave the tails, though — they’ll act like handles later on. Pat the smelt mostly dry.

Place the flour and/or Parmesan in a large soup bowl. Add a pinch of sea salt and the optional herbs. Dredge each smelt thoroughly in the seasoned flour and set aside on a fresh plate.

Melt the butter over medium heat in a large skillet. Add the smelt (quite a few will fit into the skillet at once) and sautée them for about 5 minutes total, flipping once or twice. As they cook completely through, one smelt will probably break with the handling, letting you see the opaque inside. If none break, cut the thickest one in half to see if it’s done.

Serve immediately — these little guys are best when they’re piping hot from the pan!

Enjoy!

* For gluten-free fried smelt, use brown rice, sorghum, corn, quinoa or millet flour; for a wheat-based dish, use whole-whole, spelt, or kamut flour.

Corn & Herb Salad

Sweet corn, savory herbs, juicy tomatoes — what more could you want? Summer brings out the best on our plates. (Summer also means that my refrigerator tends to be a bit bare since a lot of my future meals are anchored to my garden dirt.) And now that we’re — sniff! — at the tail end of summer, we’re smack in the middle of corn’s peak season. Your best bet is to buy some freshly harvested corn from a roadside stand, a farmer’s market, or a produce market. Once you have your just-picked fresh corn, cook it ASAP, because the natural sugars in corn morph into starch as the corn ages. Translation: fresh kernels are much sweeter and more crisp than mature kernels are.

The real secret when it comes to corn, though, is not to overcook it. Even the freshest and sweetest of kernels will become mushy and less flavorful if you boil them into oblivion. Short is truly sweet!

Corn & Herb Salad
Serves 2 for a hearty meal, but recipe can easily be doubled or tripled

2 ears corn, husked
Double handful cherry tomatoes, halved
1/4 of a Vidalia or other sweet onion, minced
2 banana peppers or 1 bell pepper, minced
15 oz. black beans, drained (use Eden beans if you’d prefer a BPA-free can)
Assorted baby lettuce leaves
Chives, snipped with kitchen shears or minced
Basil, chopped
Fresh orange or lime juice (depending on whether you’re in a sweet or tangy mood)
Extra-virgin olive oil
Sea salt & freshly cracked pepper

Get a large pot of water boiling. The pot will have to be big enough to accommodate the ears of corn, so you might want to see if they fit in there before you actually fill the pot with water. Add corn and boil for 3 minutes, reducing heat if the bubbles start to erupt from the pot. Lift out ears with tongs and set in a dish drain to cool.

When the ears are cool enough to touch, hold them 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.

Toss with remaining ingredients, using equal portions of citrus juice and oil. (Figure on about 1 T. of juice + 1 T. of oil for 2 people.) If you’d like, serve with leftover cooked chicken or fish.

Enjoy!

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!

Roasted-Garlic Pesto

It’s official: summertime just ain’t summertime unless I have a pesto posting. Or two or three, seeing as I can’t think of a yummier dish to make with my favorite herb! (Although non-classic herbs like cilantro and dill also make great pesto; try pairing the former with almonds and the latter with walnuts.) At this time of year, odds are your basil is bountiful enough to carefully snap off a handful of leaves…or if you don’t have a plant of your own, local grocers and farmers markets are sporting beautiful basil bouquets from now until summer runs out.

If you have so much basil that you wind up making more pesto than you can eat right away, scoop the leftover pesto into smallish freezer-safe containers and stash them in the freezer to enjoy three months from now. Just be sure to leave as few air bubbles as possible in the pesto — use a spatula to smooth out the top, then cover it with plastic wrap, gently pressing the air bubbles outwards from the center as you lay down the wrap.

This tweak on classic pesto came about because my mother recently sent me home with freshly roasted garlic. Talk about a thoughtful culinary treat! Roasted garlic is incredibly versatile — you can include it in dressings, dips, marinades, soups, or even spread it on crackers or bread like butter. Better yet, you can make pesto with it!

Roasted-Garlic Pesto

1 head garlic*
Extra-virgin olive oil
Sea salt & cracked pepper
Fresh basil
Pinenuts
Grated or shaved Parmesan (optional)
Whatever you’re going to include with the pesto: cooked pasta, sautéed chicken or shrimp, pan-fried fish, bread or crackers, even a plate of raw veggies for dipping

Preheat over to 325F and cover a baking tray with aluminum foil. (You won’t be eating the part that touches the foil, so aluminum is fine in this case.)

Cut the very top off of the head to expose most of the individual cloves of garlic. Drizzle a bit of oil over the top and season with salt and pepper. Wrap the foil up and over the garlic, loosely crumpling down the top of the foil to form a foil version of the classic brown-bagged package. Roast the garlic for 45 minutes, then remove from oven and let sit, unwrapped, until completely cool. Roasted garlic is VERY sticky, and you most emphatically do not want to be handling something that’s sticky and hot — it feels like you’re getting burned even though/when you’re not.

Squeeze a few cloves of the roasted garlic out into a food processor. Add basil, pinenuts, a little bit more oil, and a fresh round of salt and pepper. Whirr until you have a mostly smooth pesto. If you’d like to include the Parmesan, you can blend it into the pesto or serve it on the side.

Promptly toss/top whatever your main element is with the pesto and serve. Cut basil oxidizes (turns black) quickly, so it’s best to make pesto at the last minute and serve it right away.

Enjoy!

* Or as many heads as you like — roasted garlic keeps in the refrigerator for a solid week, so you might as well make extra! Wrap each head in its own foil package and space them apart in the oven when you roast them.

Herbs Hung to Dry

If you’ve ever had a garden, wanted a garden, or just had an empty windowsill begging to be populated, you probably already know that most herbs are ridiculously easy to grow.  Just make sure they’re well-watered — poke your finger into the dirt to see if it feels dry and needing water or if it’s already moist and doing just fine, thank you — and be sure to pinch off flower buds to keep your herbs leafy and green.  (Unless it’s the flowers you’re after.  Most herbs, though, are valued for their leaves.)  Hardy herbs like sage, chives, and mint come back year after year with minimal effort.  You just can’t go wrong!

Another huge advantage of growing herbs is drying them at the end of the season, thus supplying yourself with enough dried herbs to get you through to next summer.  In the case of perennial herbs, this means that you can stock your pantry for $0!  Just keep reusing the same jars for the same herbs and give them a good washing in between batches.

To dry your herbs, rinse them in cool water, pat them gently dry with a towel, and gather the ends in a bunch, as though you’re assembling a bouquet.  Tie the ends tightly with a cotton string and then hang the herbs from whatever surface/object in your house is hang-able.  In my case, that’s the finials on my curtain rods.  Thick-leafed herbs like sage take longer to dry than small-leafed herbs like thyme, but generally speaking, they’ll be nicely dried out in about two weeks.  I knew mine were ready when a single mint leaf broke off the dried stem and drifted gently to the floor.

To harvest your dried herbs with a minimum of mess, place a large sheet of waxed paper on a counter top.  Pull your fingers along each dried stem, knocking the leaves off onto the waxed paper, then curve the paper into a tube and slide the herbs into your jars.  That’s it!  Your dried herbs will be much fresher and more flavorful than anything you could buy at the store.

Some great herbs to hang and dry: mint, thyme, sage, lemon verbena, oregano, rosemary, and lavender.  (They make great teas and infusions as well!)

These herbs tend to lose all color and flavor when you hang them: chives, basil, cilantro, parsley.  They do, however, freeze exceptionally well.  Just wash them, pat them dry, chop if you’d like, and spread them out thinly on a sheet of waxed paper.  Place another sheet on top, slip the whole thing into a freezer bag, and tuck the bag into a safe, it-won’t-be-squished-there corner of your freezer.

Enjoy your herbs, both fresh, dried, and frozen!

Lavender & Mint Herbal Bouquet

Herbal bouquets are a great way to dress up your windowsills and your meals.  (Beverages, too!)  Most herbs are sturdy plants that will last a week or more in a vase, especially if you refresh them with cool water every day.  And the best part about having herbs close at hand is that you’re more likely to use them: a few fresh mint leaves in your tea, a sprig of thyme tucked into your chicken and pasta, some fresh lavender sprinkled over your salad.  You can make bouquets out of herbs you cut from your garden or fresh herbs that you buy at the store or farmer’s market.

As cooler days approach, you can keep the indoor herbs tradition going by transplanting some outside herbs into a pot and placing them in a warm and sunny spot inside.  (But be careful not to put them right next to a heat vent, because too much hot air will dry them out.)  Indoor herbs will add natural fragrance to whatever room they’re in.  Some of them — sage and chives come to mind — are so powerfully pungent that you may actually want to leave them outside.  If your formerly outdoor plants don’t take kindly to being shuttled inside, try growing new plants from seeds.  As long as you give them nutritious, well-drained soil, they ought to sprout within 7 to 10 days.

In the meantime, enjoy your fresh-cut herbal bouquets!

Herbed Scrambled Eggs with Brie

An egg is a nearly-perfect food, replete in vitamins and minerals (except Vitamin C) and with more accessible protein than a steak.  It’s comes in convenient packaging and can be eaten in every conceivable way — baked, hard-boiled, scrambled, souffléd, pan-fried, poached, even raw (although the latter is only advisable if you’re on a first-name basis with the hens).

Scrambled is probably the easiest way to prepare an egg and therefore probably the way most of us make our egg-based breakfasts.  But why limit yourself to morning eggs?  This sophisticated version of scrambled eggs with Brie and fresh herbs is best served in the evening.  You won’t believe how delicious a five-minute dinner can be!

Herbed Scrambled Eggs with Brie

Cut a few slices off of the Brie and save the rest for a later meal of crackers and fruit.  (Normally, you’d want to have the Brie at room temperature before serving, but since you’re going to be heating it anyway and it’s much easier to cut when cold, take it out of the refrigerator just before using.)  Whether or not you remove the edible white rind or include it in your slices is up to your tastebuds.

Snip or thinly slice whatever fresh herbs you have at hand — in this case, I used pineapple sage, chives, and basil — and set aside.  Put a non-stick pan on the stove over medium heat and add a pat of butter to it.

Crack two eggs into a bowl, add about 1/2 cup whole milk, and whisk with a fork until well-blended.  Grind in a bit of fresh pepper and sea salt.  (Don’t overdo it — you can always add more later.)  By now, your pan should be the perfect temperature.  Pour in eggs and let set for a minute or two.  When they start bubbling up, use a spoon or heat-proof spatula to move the eggs around and scramble them.  Add fresh herbs and Brie and continue to cook, stirring constantly, until the egg is cooked through and opaque.  Immediately remove from heat and serve, garnishing with tomatoes or more fresh herbs if desired.

Enjoy!

Sunflower Sprouts

Windowsills are a great place to grow kitchen herbs and sprouts.  If you have an unobstructed east- or west-facing window, whatever you choose to plant will have a very happy home; if you give your plant some toothsome kitchen scraps, it’ll have an even happier home.  (In my case, whenever I use eggs, I add a little bit of cold water to the eggy bowl, swish it, and then pour it into the plant.  Crushed eggshells also make great fertilizer.  Just be careful not to overfeed your house plants–if you do, mold can develop!)

This spring, after going on a what-do-I-already-have? rampage through my pantry, I  wound up planting dried Northern beans, some wheatberries, and raw sunflower seeds.  And guess what?  They all grew!  (Which really made me think about that old wives’ tale I’d heard as a kid about watermelon seeds growing in your belly…)  The raw sunflower seeds from Trader Joe’s did the best, so I planted another batch and then gave the seeded soil some windowsill real estate.  I planted them with the intention of snipping off the sprouts and adding them to my salads, but they’re looking so cute that I may have to let them become sunflowers…

…or not.  It is getting to be lunchtime, after all.

The difference between herbs and spices is simple:  herbs are the leaves of the plants while spices are the dried roots, bark, pods, and fruit.  Coriander, for example, is the seed of a cilantro plant.  Vanilla is an edible pod, cinnamon is bark, and cloves are the dried flower buds of S. aromaticum, an evergreen tree.

Both herbs and spices are most flavorful when fresh.  When using fresh herbs, swish them gently in a bowl of cold water to clean them and then pat them dry.  Chop them just before using–many herbs darken when cut.  Oftentimes, it is best to add them at the end of cooking your dish so that they retain more of their true flavor.  Keep dried herbs in a cool, dark place, and right before using them, crush them between your fingers to release their flavor.  Most spices come pre-ground and thus will lose their flavor more quickly than they would if you ground them at the last minute; just be aware of this and replace them as necessary.