Simple. Wonderful.

I feel like I've been trumpeting the glories of roasted vegetables pretty constantly lately, though I can't remember if I've been doing it on my blog, or just verbally to friends, co-workers, whoever is willing to listen.  So let me just praise the roasted vegetable one last time, because a roasted veg will turn a bland, basic meal into a nutritious feast.  See above photo.  Carrots and rice, basically.  How would you feel if you walked in the front door one evening, asked your beloved, "What's for dinner?" and got the response, "Carrots and rice"?  You might lobby to go out for sushi.

But if you hear "Roasted carrots," you'll probably have a seat at the table and tuck the napkin right into your collar.  If you don't recall, the secret to roasting is no secret at all.  Set the oven to 400, chop your veggies into comparably sized pieces, toss to coat thinly with olive oil, and season however you choose.  Remembering a dish from many years ago, I tried thyme and cinnamon on my carrots.  I found some leftover homemade pesto languishing in the freezer too, which went great mixed with wild rice (and felt significantly healthier than pasta).

I made a wonderful veggie roast the other night too, with fennel, a veggie I'd never used before.  The dish was absolutely delicious and was gone before photos could be captured.  So try these veggies in your first vegetable roast: fennel (green stalks discarded, and white bulb chopped), butternut squash, red potatoes, carrots, and garlic.  Do as I did.  Celebrate the winter cornucopia... before bidding it good riddance for the season.

Lasagna Part Deux

I'm learning the art of winning friends by cooking for them.  This weekend I made a batch of lasagna for my friend Lynne as a belated housewarming/Superbowl gift.  This morning in my email box I found such tickling statements as "Truly that was the BEST lasagna I've ever eaten" and "everyone raved about it."  And at the end was a plea for the recipe.  Well!  If one person thinks it was that good, then maybe others will too.  I've spent some time honing my vegetarian version of this dish, so if you're looking for a change of pace from the old ground beef game, then give this a shot.

The way to make veggie lasagna is start about four or five individual cooking projects (make this recipe, by the way, on your day off-- it ain't no 30-minute meal).  At the end each of these projects will come together, each its own layer.  Work on each project as simultaneously as you can.  As you develop your technique you'll be dancing like a prima ballerina from one burner to the next, to the cutting board, to the cuisinart, and back again.  It's really fun.

*Sauce.  Dice one onion and garlic to taste and saute in olive oil.  After a few minutes, add one large can of tomato sauce (cheap stuff=fine) and one can of diced tomatoes.  Season to taste with pepper, oregano, thyme.  Do not add salt!  Those canned tomatoes are very salty already. (Although Lynne, you might need a 1/4 cup of salt or so here...)  The key ingredients of yumminess: a splash of red wine, and a pinch of sugar.  Let simmer.

*Pesto.  This element is optional, but well worth the effort.  Wash and pluck the leaves from a large container of basil (my store sells them in large tubs).  Place leaves in the waiting Cuisinart and add two cloves of garlic (don't need to chop 'em), a large splash or two olive oil, about 1/4 c. pine nuts, two big pinches grated parmesan, salt and pepper.  Blend till a thick paste (add a little water if it balls up).

*Veggies.  Thaw two 10 oz. boxes frozen spinach.  This is one of the few cases where frozen is better than fresh.  Trust me; I've tried it with fresh leaves and they come out like bloated dental floss nestled between the noodles.  Rather unappetizing.  When totally de-thawed, squeeze spinach as dry as you can through paper towels.  [If you really want to waste not want not, reserve the squeezed water for future pasta or rice water, or soup stock.  There's some major nutrients in that green juice.]

Also, chop whatever fresh veggies you want.  A couple zucchinis, halved lengthwise and sliced.  Sliced mushrooms, squash, artichoke hearts, grated carrot.  Chop what you love.

*Cheese.  Mix one large (not huge) container of ricotta cheese with two eggs, a couple pinches of parmesan, salt, and pepper.  If you have made pesto, stir it in too.

Grate a whole wedge of fontina cheese.  It's more expensive than mozzarella but infinitely tastier, and not at all rubbery like our childhood pizza friend, Mozz.  The fontina's too good to waste between the layers, so save it all for the top.

*Assembly.  Spoon enough sauce on the bottom of the baking dish (at least 9x13) to create a thin layer.  Lay out enough no-boil lasagna noodles side by side to cover the whole surface, but don't let the noodles overlap.  Spread half the ricotta mixture on top of the noodles.  Sprinkle half the spinach.  Do another layer of noodles.  Spread another layer of sauce.  Sprinkle your veggies.  Are you getting the idea here?  Continue the layering till the ingredients are gone or the dish is full, with the idea that dry and wet ingredients should alternate.  Make sure the last layer of noodles is covered with sauce so they don't dry out, and then sprinkle all of the fontina cheese over the top.  Bake, covered, at 375 for 45 minutes.  Uncover and bake 15 minutes or so more, until cheese is browning at the edges.

Phew.  That's a large recipe, sorry.  I'll be as succinct as I can when describing the ideal side dishes

Salad.  Garlic bread.  Red wine.

Motley Meals

2009 has been a productive year so far, but in one respect only: food.  I've been making so much of it, I have to cram four different dishes into one blog post.  As for doing ANYTHING that involves going outside (and you'd be surprised by how much of our lives we conduct outside of our homes), there is nothing doing.  The roads are icy, it continues to snow every other day or so, and when it's not snowing, it's raining and leaving a very depressing slush on the ground.  Having hit the bottom of the barrel of my cabin fever yesterday I called a friend to see if she had any snowshoes I could borrow, and happily she did!  I took Cally out to the Post Canyon trail and had a blast-- I'm definitely getting me some snowshoes.  Our trip was cut short when a couple of yahoos started shooting a gun in my general direction, so I came home and made soup (see below).  When stuck or driven indoors by wayward firearms, make soup.  It seems like a good enough answer to the problems of life and winter.

Anyway, here are those shrimp I described in my last post.  The marinade was delicious, but I made the mistake I'm not going to make anymore of buying frozen shrimp.   I can never get frozen seafood to lose its fishy flavor upon cooking.  But here's the marinade.  I'm sure it would be good on any ol' fish or tofu.

1 garlic clove, chopped

1 bird's eye chili, deseeded (if you wish) and chopped

1 Tbsp. tamarind paste/concentrate

1 Tbsp. sesame oil

1 Tbsp. soy sauce

2 Tbsp. lime juice

1 Tbsp. brown sugar

Put the lot into a small saucepan and stir over low heat until the sugar melts.  Cool completely.  Marinate your food item of choice for as long as you can, even overnight.  Recipe from What's Cooking Thai.

Here is a beautiful batch of roasted cauliflower, the idea for which I took from Hilary Kooks.  It's super easy: chop a head of cauliflower into chunks and stir into it several cloves of chopped garlic, some chili powder, dried basil ("or other green herb," says Hil), s&p, a few Tbsp. sesame oil, and a couple Tbsp. tahini.  Spread out in a pyrex dish and roast at 375 for as long as an hour (I cranked it up to 400 for the last ten minutes).  It was good served over quinoa.
This is the best thing I've made recently: Brazilian Black Bean soup.  Inspired by the Moosewood recipe but much tampered with, it goes like this.  And I'm going to be quite general here, because the best soup will contain the ingredients and proportions that YOU like (I know, I know, Hilary is starting to rub off on me here).  

Soak 2 or 3 cups of black beans over night.  When you're ready to start cooking, put the beans (drained) with 4 or 6 cups of clean water to a boil in a big soup pot, then simmer and cover for an hour or hour and a half.  Your life partners will thank you for changing the water-- it reduces gassiness.  

Meanwhile, chop a BUNCH of onions-- three cups or so-- and a BUNCH of garlic-- I used about ten cloves, crushed.  I was weirded out to see the recipe call for that much garlic, but I'm glad I went with it.  Garlic=good.  Then chop a carrot or two.  Toss onions, carrots, and HALF the garlic to saute in evoo over medium heat until carrot is barely tender.  Stir in cumin, salt and pepper.  This'll need to season the whole pot of beans, so don't be shy.

Add the rest of the garlic, and a chopped red pepper and saute for another ten or fifteen minutes.  Scrape all the veggies into the beans.  Add a couple chopped tomatoes if you like.  Add a cup and a half of orange juice.  Simmer for as long as you can stand it.  Stir in some leftover quinoa or rice if you like-- this was my random idea, and an excellent choice if I say so myself.  Garnish with any combination of green onion, cilantro, cheddar, crumbled tortilla chips, hot sauce and/or sour cream.  Oh boy this was good, and it'll be even better today.
And lastly, oatmeal cinnamon waffles.  These were pretty good, but not good enough to share the recipe here.  Email me if you absolutely need the recipe.
Sorry for cramming so much food into so little space.  This blog is starting to look like my fridge.

How to Clean Out Your Fridge Without Making Soup; Or, Casseroles 101; Or, If You Need To Fake It, Bake It

Some people are just cuckoo for soup.  Not me.  I did make soup this season as my faithful readership knows.  It even came out good, not to mention served as a perfect final resting place for some celery that was really starting to confound me.  But, there's something about soup that's just so insubstantial.  So... thin.  I like to chew my food.  So imagine my happy surprise when I discovered that a casserole is just as perfect a place for all the random tidbits in the fridge as soup is.  Even more perfect, really, if you're like me and don't love to drink your meals.  So the above three pictures are examples of casseroles I've made over the past couple weeks-- some were loosely inspired by recipes, but all were made mostly with what I already had on hand.  By the time I got to casserole #3, I was so intrigued by the possibility of baking something delicious without doing ANY shopping, that I deliberately stayed away from the store, even though I might have thought it would benefit from some this or some that.  Self-reliance, people.  That's what we're going for here.

Casserole #1: Rice (pre-cooked), crumbled tofu, chopped kalamata olives, spinach, some kind of cheese (I forget), a couple eggs for a binder, and chopped red onions and toasted chopped almonds both inside and reserved for garnish.  Except for the garnish, mix all of the above and bake in a large dish till crispy and golden.  This one got high marks for flavor, but low marks for moisture.  Next time I'll add another egg, maybe some milk.  

Casserole #2: This really is no different from potatoes au gratin, so I won't trouble you with how to make it, since there are probably several thousand such recipes available on the internet.  Three things I did somewhat creatively, and that I'd recommend: use Fontina cheese (a whole wedge of it, half mixed with the milk and poured in with the sliced potatoes, and the other half sprinkled on top 3/4 of the way through baking); season it with pestled cumin seeds; and garnish it with salsa.  It was a gorgeous, Latin rendition of a classic American dish.

Casserole #3: This one was by far the best, and I'm most proud of it because it was based on no recipe whatsoever, and like I said, I refused to shop for it.  Last night I prepped everything: I made 2 cups (uncooked) rice.  And the best way to make rice is to start out sauteing onions and garlic, then add the rice and water and prepare as usual.  I roasted chopped carrots and, after 15minutes, added green beans to the pan.  In a separate pan I roasted large chunks of tomatoes.  I went to bed.  

Then tonight when I got home from work, I put the rice in a huge bowl and dumped in all the roasted veggies (WITH juices!).  I whisked two eggs with about a half cup of sawdust parmesan (like I said, I refused to go to the store), a half cup of milk, some cumin, oregano, s&p, and then stirred that in with the rice and vegetables.  When the mixture is uniform, spoon it into your baking dish (which I deliberately hadn't washed after roasting the carrots and green beans in it).  Sprinkle with Panko and more parmesan.  Bake at 375 till golden!  Oh, man it was good.  Due to the roasted tomatoes and parmesan, it was faintly redolent of pizza, but is there anything wrong with that?

And just as an aside, I have to point out this tomato (see below).  This came from one of Adam's coworker's gardens, and I used it on the 4th of NOVEMBER.  This is a very late tomato, my friends.  It's an Election Day tomato.  Notice, too, how the tomato is in the shape of a heart.  As in, I (heart) Obama. 

Quick Tip

If you've ever made homemade macaroni and cheese, then you know one of the great pleasures of life.  I always make a whole lot so I'll have plenty the next day for lunch.  I'm always bummed, though, when a night in the fridge turns the mac tough, pasty, and bland.  Even a good stint in the microwave and a pinch of salt doesn't do much.  But today I discovered a way to make your mac n' cheese very good the next day-- after you reheat it, mix in a couple tablespoons of fresh salsa!  If there be no salsa, then a few dashes of your finest hot sauce will do nicely too.  Stir it all up!  The moisture and flavor will be re-introduced and then some.