Hasselback Potatoes

I dove into my recipe bookmarks this week, because I promised myself and the Internet that I would. 

I needed a side to go with chicken, and I found a picture of "Hasselback potatoes" on my Pinterest board, pinned from a fun cooking blog called Panning the Globe. They were potatoes (always good), they looked fancy, and I had all the ingredients! Well, except for the lemon, but I had lemon juice, and I could skip the zest. Also, I had the wrong kind of potatoes - Yukon Gold instead of the Russets the recipe asked for - but they were the right shape for the job. One of these days, I will make a recipe exactly as it's written. Probably. You would think that I'd have learned my lesson by now, but no.

You see, the recipe called for parsley. Fresh parsley, chopped up into the oil and lemon and garlic, to look pretty and, I assumed, be spectacularly delicious. I do not have any explanation for why I decided it was critical that I head to Wegmans to acquire fresh parsley for this recipe, while neglecting to purchase the other elements that I was missing to make the recipe like I was supposed to. Maybe I should have bought that stuff, because the potatoes didn't really turn out as I'd hoped.

The preparation was easy enough. Most websites that tell you how to do the accordion-slicing will suggest that you put a wooden spoon on either side of the potato to keep it steady and to prevent you from being able to cut all the way through. I tried that, but found it too wobbly for my liking. Instead, I wedged the peeled potatoes between two cutting boards to slice them, which worked really well and felt very safe. I whisked the components of the basting juice together in a measuring cup and brushed it onto the potatoes every ten minutes while they were cooking. 

Oh, they were pretty!

But they were very bland, tasting more like olive oil than anything else, and they stayed a lot firmer than I would have liked.

I can't blame the recipe, though, because, like a fool, I used my Yukon Golds instead of spending a little and buying a couple of Russets to work with. I know better. I've seen the episode of Good Eats where Alton Brown teaches us about waxy potatoes and starchy potatoes and which kinds are best suited to which types of cooking. Yukon golds are on the waxy side of the potato spectrum, which is (I assume) why they didn't absorb very much flavor from the lemon and garlic oil.

So I will have to try this again, using potatoes of appropriate starchiness, and see if it makes any difference. It's possible that some of the other Hasselback potato recipes out there, the ones involving cheese, would have worked better here, since Yukon Golds are supposed to work well in a gratin situation.

Oh well. Even if this recipe wasn't a big winner, at least I can say I've mastered the art of cutting a potato-accordion. I'm sure that counts for something.

What's for Dinner - Garlic Mushrooms

I had more mushrooms than I could reasonably put into a salad, and I didn't want to go to the trouble of making stuffed mushroom caps, as yummy as those can be. Instead, I made a mushroom side dish that tastes like stuffed mushrooms, but is a whole heck of a lot simpler.

Garlic Mushrooms

Mushrooms (white or "baby Bella")

Garlic

Butter

Breadcrumbs

Slice up a bunch of mushrooms. For two people, I cut up about half of an 8oz package. I prefer starting with the whole ones, because the already-sliced ones are usually cut too thick.

Mince a clove of garlic. Or two. 

Toss a pat of butter into a frying pan and let it melt and bubble. I used about half a tablespoon for my 4oz of mushrooms, but more mushrooms will require more butter, so adjust accordingly.

When the butter's hot, toss the mushrooms and garlic into the pan and cook them until the mushrooms start to soften. You want them to retain some texture, so don't cook them down too far. You're looking for a "tender and buttery" endpoint.

When they seem right, add another little bit of butter and couple of tablespoons of breadcrumbs. I used unseasoned, but I'm sure the Italian ones would be wonderful too. Mix everything up and cook it for another minute or two, to let the breadcrumbs get buttered and toasted.

I ended up using this stuff to top chicken breasts, and it was wonderful. I think it would be great as a side for almost anything, and may even be taken to the next level of deliciousness by adding some grated parmesan cheese at the end. I did not have any, so I could not try. Please, try it, for me, and report back!

Purple Potatoes

I had to buy them. A coworker and I visited a farmer's market on our lunch break, and there they sat quietly, piled up in a basket at the far end of the table. Purple potatoes.

They were smaller than the basic red-skinned potatoes I usually buy for roasting and smashing and all other forms of tatery goodness, and they weren't cheap, but they were purple. My inner seven-year-old squealed "purple!!!!" and I forked over the money.

Well, my friends, it turns out that unlike red potatoes, whose beauty is only skin deep, the vivid purple shade of this variety goes right to the core. I don't know what species I purchased; there are several varieties of blue and purple potatoes in existence, and the sign said, unhelpfully, "purple potatoes". If I return to the market, I will ask the farmer about their lineage.

Normally, in the nutrition world, brighter and deeper colors indicate healthier food (Cheez-its and Kool-Aid notwithstanding). So, what's with the purple? do they taste purple? Are these potatoes healthier than red potatoes or Russets, and should I keep shelling out more money for them?

As far as flavor goes, my experiment with roasted garlic purple potatoes resulted in... roasted garlic potatoes. With my eyes closed, I'm confident I would not have been able to tell the difference between a red or a purple potato prepared in the same way. And these looked so incredibly cool on my plate beside the chicken!

I did a little digging, and it turns out that the purple color is from high levels of anthocyanins, which is the same antioxidant that makes blueberries a "superfood". Proof once again that sometimes "ingredients you can't pronounce" and "chemicals" can be damn good things to have in your food.* In all honesty, the jury is still out on whether the antioxidants and other compounds in blueberries and other fruits actually make as big a difference in vivo (in your body) as opposed to just in the lab, but I see no reason not to add as many colorful foods to your diet as you can. My educated guess is that these potatoes are marginally better for me than the average white-fleshed potato, but not by a whole lot and probably not enough to justify the extra cost on a regular basis. 

That said, I bought more. I plan on boiling and mashing them this time, because apparently anthocyanins are water soluble, and I want to see if the purple washes out with boiling. Science!

* I still find myself getting pissed off to an absurd degree when I hear natural-foods people railing against "chemicals". If you're against pesticides, or artificial coloring, or preservatives, say so. Oxygen is a chemical, for crying out loud - don't be dissing chemistry as a whole just because you don't understand it.

The Best Broccoli Ever

Broccoli has a bad reputation.

President Bush (the first one) banned broccoli from Air Force One and the White House for the duration of his presidency, saying:

I do not like broccoli. And I haven't liked it since I was a little kid and my mother made me eat it. And I'm President of the United States and I'm not going to eat any more broccoli.  - George H. W. Bush

That was pretty bad press for the poor cruciferous vegetable (a family that includes cabbage and brussels sprouts, putting the sad members of the Brassica genus among the least favorite veggies on anyone's lists). "Even the president doesn't eat broccoli, Mom, so why do I have to?"

Recently, poor broccoli has gotten dragged into the health care debate in the United States, with a Supreme Court Justice comparing health insurance to broccoli:

Could you define the market -- everybody has to buy food sooner or later, so you define the market as food, therefore, everybody is in the market; therefore, you can make people buy broccoli.

- Justice Antonin Scalia

Do you see a theme here? The president's mother made him eat it. Justice Scalia is worried about people being made to buy broccoli*. Why is it that so many people hate broccoli and see it as something you eat because it's healthy food, and even then you choke it down reluctantly, probably smothered in Cheez Whiz? That's not fair to broccoli. Oh, and don't give me the old "I hate it because I'm a "supertaster" argument, either, because we found out at a science fair that Dave is a "supertaster" and he loves the hell out of broccoli.

Yes, broccoli is good for you. But why do so many maintain the belief that "good for you" and "tastes like crap" are synonyms? You've got goodies like folate, Vitamins K and C, fiber and calcium, all contained in a vegetable that looks like a tiny tree! 

"Broccoli Forest" Artist: Carl Warner

I found a way of preparing broccoli that might, maybe, be able to convert some antibrassicans into broccoli eaters. Voluntary ones. If all you've ever had is floppy, overcooked broccoli, then of course you hate it. Boiling or steaming the life out of something isn't usually putting it in its best light, you know?

RECIPE FOR THE BEST BROCCOLI EVER

Two heads of broccoli
One garlic clove, peeled and chopped
Some olive oil
Salt and pepper
A lemon
A handful of shredded parmesan

Preheat the oven to 425F. Nice and hot. Cut the broccoli into little florets, then toss them with the olive oil, salt, pepper, and garlic. Dump it onto a baking sheet in a single layer, and then put it into the oven for 15-20 minutes. Check it after 10 minutes, stir everything around a little, and put it back in. You're looking for the point after the florets to start turning a little brown but before they get floppy. You should be able to get a fork through the stems, but they should offer some resistance.

Take them out of the oven and toss them with a little lemon zest (just a little) and a tablespoon or two of lemon juice, depending how lemony you want it. I juiced half a lemon into two heads of broccoli and it was too much. Let it cool a little before adding a handful of parmesan and serving it up.

If you hate broccoli because of its bitterness, this is a recipe to try before giving up on it entirely. Roasting at a high heat takes all the bitterness out of broccoli and adds a sweet, nutty flavor. The garlic and lemon and cheese just take it to a whole new level.

Try it, and then come back and tell me if you liked it.

*I know that's not the actual argument he was trying to make. I still think it's silly.

What's for Dinner - Broccoli Cheddar Quiche

Often, when accosted by a head of floppy broccoli, I sentence the limp vegetable to a soupy demise, with delicious results. Broccoli cheddar soup is a wonderful way to use up less-than-stellar broccoli, or an excess of broccoli stems (for those of you who, like me, prefer to eat only the florets), but it's nice to have other options. Enter the alternative user-upper of vegetables in their decline: quiche.

It's an omelet in a pie - what's not to love? You barely even need a recipe for a quiche! Just eggs, some cream (or milk), a frozen pie crust, and whatever you want to throw in. My basic recipe for a quiche is as easy as:

6 eggs
3/4 cup light cream, or milk (skim milk makes it watery, I'd stick to 2% or more)
1/2 cup or so of grated cheese (cheddar, swiss, monterey jack, whatever you've got)
1 cup or so of veggies
1/2 cup of ham or browned and crumbled sausage (optional), or a handful of bacon bits
One refrigerated or frozen pie crust, pre-baked

Bake the crust according to directions for a one-crust pie - mine needed 10 minutes at 425F. If you don't have pie weights to keep the crust down, poking some holes in the bottom with a fork works pretty well to prevent the crust from bubbling up while it bakes.

Cut the veggies pretty small and pre-cook them either by sauteeing (good for mushrooms, onions, spinach, and peppers) or by steaming (best for broccoli). Whisk the eggs and cream together, then add in the other ingredients until you have a thick eggy soup, then pour it into your pre-baked pie shell. Easy as that. If you want to get fancy, you can keep some of the prettiest mushroom slices and arrange them in a pattern across the top, or use thin tomato slices. I never add any seasoning other than salt and pepper, because I like to taste just the egg and veggies. Note: if you're using a salty meat in your quiche, don't add salt!

Cooking time is a little fuzzy, because it will be different depending on how deep the pie plate is, and what kind of cream or milk you used (in my experience, thinner dairy makes a slightly longer cooking time). I usually start checking it at 25 minutes, and then poking it every 5 minutes thereafter until the middle part is set nicely. Nobody likes a runny quiche. Just poke a thin knife into the center of the pie and see if it feels closer to soup or quiche. when you hit quiche, it`s ready.
 

For the quiche I made, I used about a cup of steamed broccoli, chopped small, along with half an onion and half a package of white mushrooms, cooked in a pat of butter. I added some sharp cheddar cheese, and since I didn't have any ham or bacon handy, I kept it meatless. Quiche is always an easy, cheap meal. Also, it's not too far removed from the eternal favorite fun meal: breakfast-for-dinner.


Edited Feb 3 2013 to add cooking time. Thanks to Tasha for spotting that I missed it the first time around.

Maple and Cinnamon Glazed Carrots

Vegetables are a challenge. My husband prefers them in salads, raw and crunchy, but I get bored with having a little salad with every meal and I want to change it up with fun recipes. I had a ton of carrots hanging out in the crisper, so I typed in "carrot recipes" and started the hunt.

Maple and Cinnamon Glazed Carrots
(Modified from Emeril Lagasse, Food Network website)

1 pound carrots, cleaned and sliced on the diagonal (1/2 inch thick)
1 tablespoon butter
1/4 cup maple syrup
2 tbsp orange juice
2 tbsp water
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground allspice
1/4 tsp salt

Mix everything in a small pot and bring the liquid to a boil. Let it simmer for 10 to 15 minutes, until you can poke through the carrots with a fork and the glaze has thickened. If the glaze is getting too thick before the carrots are done, add a little more water.

The cinnamon and maple, together, really made this incredible. Sweet and spiced and warm and wonderful. I'd have never thought of using cinnamon on carrots, but I'm suddenly having a hard time imagining eating carrots any other way, at least for a while!

Caramelized Onions, Crockpot-Style

Caramelized onions are incredibly delicious. All sweet and squishy and tasting nothing like the crunchy raw onions they come from. Food chemistry in action, people! But they take a while to cook properly. And a lot of stirring. I am too lazy to bother with that process most of the time, so I rarely eat caramelized onions.

This is where my crockpot saves the day.

I found this great recipe on a blog called Island Vittles, and I am never going back. To the old way of making caramelized onions, I mean, not to Island Vittles. I'll probably go back, it was a nice blog. :)

The idea is to dump approximately a ton of sliced onions into a crockpot, add some butter and olive oil and maybe some thyme and pepper if you're so inclined, and let it go until the onions are soft and brown and perfect.

I ended up needing about 6 hours on high, with a stir break every few hours. The liquid buildup from the sweating onions was significant, so somewhere around the five hour mark, I took off the lid, tipped the crockpot a little, and spooned out some of the juice so I didn't end up with onion soup.

I mixed some of the finished product into some mac and cheese (awesome), and froze the rest for later.

Tomato update

My tomato plants are enormous.

Also, I desperately need to weed that garden and get the Gaillardia staked up, but that will be a task for next weekend.

I wasn't expecting these tomato plants to get so big, and the cages I bought are much too small to properly support and restrain them! They're also much too close together, which means that finding and picking the ripe tomatoes is a bit of an adventure. I've had some stinkbug issues, but they seem to only go after the leaves and the ripe tomatoes, so picking the tomatoes just as they're starting to blush has been working well for me. I go tomato picking with a paintbrush to flick away the stinkbugs, because it still completely freaks me out to touch a bug.

Here's my current tomato supply:

My husband has claimed these particular tomatoes in the name of salsa, which he will make tonight.

I've been counting and weighing my tomato harvest since the very first cherry tomato came off the vine, because I'm a dork like that and I want to see how much money I'm saving by growing my own veggies. I grew these from seeds, not from starter plants, but I suspect that once I factor in the cost of the special seed-starting soil and the little pots, it would have been just as economical to buy little seedlings and start from there. But I did this for the challenge of growing something edible from a seed, and I succeeded and I'm proud of myself.

What's for Dinner - Chicken a la Provencal

This is a slightly modified recipe from a cookbook lent to me by a good work friend. The cookbook is Super Suppers Cookbook by Judie Byrd and it's supposed to be full of recipes to be made ahead and prepared later when time is short. While the recipes were tasty-looking, most of them didn't have any instructions for freezing or reheating, and they didn't give you an easy guide to scaling up the recipe to make a bigger batch for freezing. I did copy out a few recipes from it that I want to try, but if you're looking for a big-batch cook-and-freeze cookbook, skip this one. I'll be posting a giant cookbook review soon to go over the 5 cookbooks I've recently read.

So. On to the recipe. I figured it was a good one for dinner and I'd try freezing the leftovers for fun and see how it turned out. Stay tuned for that in a week or two. They call it "Chicken a la Provencal" but I'd call it balsamic chicken and peppers with oregano. Or something else equally descriptive and unpretentious. Don't you like knowing exactly what you're getting in a recipe? I had more chicken to use up than the recipe called for, so I scaled everything up a little bit and ended up with:

5 chicken breasts pounded flat
1 red and one green pepper, cut into thin strips
1 onion, sliced thin
2 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp basil
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
olive oil
salt and pepper

I salted and peppered the chicken, then dropped the flattened pieces into a pan (in two batches, because I didn't have room) with some olive oil and cooked them until they stopped running pink juices. About 5 minutes per side, but it will depend on how flat you smashed them. When the chicken is done, remove to a plate and then cook the cut veggies and spices with some more olive oil until the onions soften and brown a little. At that point, stir in the balsamic vinegar, then put the chicken and any juices back into the pan and mix everything up a little to cover the chicken. Put a lid or cover on the pan, and let it simmer on a lower heat for a couple of minutes.


This was fabulous. I didn't have high expectations when I started, but the oregano and garlic and balsamic vinegar made the veggies incredible, and the chicken picked up just enough flavor from the balsamic dunk at the end. I served it with roasted potatoes, but I think I'll do mashed next time.

The Farm Stand

I've been trying to get to the local farmer's markets so I can get fresh yummy produce and support local agriculture, but working a non-standard schedule like I do makes it hard to manage. Most of them run a few hours a day and are mostly after normal people get off from work, so from 3pm-7pm or so. Only one market is both open on the weekend and close enough to be reasonably accessible, and they only have a handful of vendors and not a lot of choice. Last time I was there, only two stands had veggies! One was coffee, one was cheese, and one was baked goods, all of which are great but not what I was looking for.

My mother-in-law recently introduced me to a farm stand near where she lives. I'm unclear on how the setup works but I think they get deliveries every morning from several local-ish farms and this place sells everything under one outdoor roof. I was happy to see that they are open almost all day, every day, so I can get to them before work if I want to make the round-trip in the morning, or I can visit any weekend. The selection was great, and the prices were reasonable. We got a monster cantaloupe, which we split, for $4.25, and I got a remarkable amount of green beans for $2.50. The "jumbo" cantaloupes at the grocery store are about $4 on sale and are half the size of the one we bought, and nowhere near as tasty. When we split up the melon and I brought home my half in a plastic container, it was amazing just how much melon was in that melon. I needed one of my MIL's biggest Tupperwares to fit it all in!

The real score of the day was the "seconds" table, where they had baskets of fruit and veggies lined up for quick, cheap, sale, because they had spots or were funny shapes. A couple things looked pretty sad, but I picked up a basket of potatoes for $2.50 and later compared it to the 5lb bag of red potatoes I had just bought the day before at Giant for almost twice that price (on sale!).

There was garlic hiding in there too! Bonus! I only had to throw out two of the big potatoes because they were too far gone, and I did have to chop black sections out of a couple of others, but in all, this was a fantastic deal. I used the big ones first and left the small ones on the counter for about a week, during which Mojo enjoyed sitting on them and trying to hatch them. I wanted a picture of him doing that, but every time I brought the camera in he jumped off and scattered his potato eggs all over the kitchen. Maybe I need to get a basket. But he'd just sit in that too.

Don't worry, I washed off all the cat-butt germs before I ate them.

First Tomato!

Well, even if it's the only one I get, I suppose this means I can call my attempt at vegetable gardening at least a minor success. I went out to check on my plants this morning, hoping they weathered last night's storms without too much damage, and I saw red! And not the kind that means I was angry!


Aww, look, he's blushing!

So I picked him, because I was so excited about his not being green anymore and I decided that blushing tomatoes belonged in the kitchen.

In hindsight, perhaps I should have left him there to set an example for his peers, because he's the only one out of several dozen cherry tomatoes and half a dozen big tomatoes that has shown any indication that they want to ripen and be eaten. Precocious little guy. I will reward him by having him for dinner and delighting in his deliciousness.

This used to be a seed! And I helped make it into a tomato!

What's for Dinner - Simple Garlic Beans

I bought some gorgeous yellow beans at the farmer's market, and ate the first half of them that day, roasted in the oven the same way I love my green beans. They were, as expected, delicious. But for the second half, I wanted to try something different.


I washed and trimmed the beans, cut the big ones in half, and then piled them in the little steamer basket insert I have for one of my pots. I let them go about ten minutes so they were soft enough to poke through with a fork but not completely floppy. I could have just boiled them but I think they retain more vitamins this way, so I figured I'd make the effort for my health.

When they were done, I put them aside and dumped out the water, replacing it with 2 tablespoons of olive oil and one minced garlic clove. I cooked the garlic for a minute or two until it browned just the littlest bit, then I added the beans back in and stirred them around for a minute. I added salt and fresh pepper, and finished them off with a tiny pat of butter because I couldn't help myself.

OMG yummiest thing ever. I wish I had more beans.

What's for Dinner - Fresh Tomato Salad

I love having a Costco membership, but the danger is that I end up with ridiculous amounts of food every time I go. Most of the time it's frozen or non-perishable stuff, so I've got plenty of time to make my way through it all, but sometimes I'm tempted by the produce section, and with just the two of us here at home, it can be hard to avoid wasting anything. For example, I picked up a huge clamshell container of cherry tomatoes recently, thinking we could use them in salads all week, but honestly, how many tomatoes can you put in an average salad?

That's why I tried making a tomato salad instead, as a side. To be honest, it turned out suspiciously like tomato bruschetta, but the balsamic vinegar and the fact that I am pointedly not serving it with bread is enough to convince me I can call it something different.

Fresh Tomato Salad

40 cherry tomatoes
1 tbsp diced red onion
4 large basil leaves
1 clove garlic, chopped fine
1 tbsp olive oil
1/2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
Generous grind of black pepper


Cut the tomatoes in half, cut the basil leaves in a chiffonade, (little strips) then mix everything together in a bowl or tupperware. Let it sit at room temperature for at least an hour, and mix it up a little to let everything marinate together. It's good cold or at room temperature. I didn't feel the need for salt, but I won't be mad at you if you add some.

First harvest - green beans!

I am totally stoked about the fact that I can tag this post with both "garden" and "dinner".

I love green beans, and I was so excited to try growing some on my deck. I am delighted to report that the teeny things from last week are now all grown up and ready to eat! They look delicious and I can't wait to roast them up in the oven with a little salt and devour them tonight.

Picking them was easy, and I hope I managed to leave the plant unscathed so it can keep making me beans. The ones I picked are all about as long as my fingers and a little fatter than a pencil. I had forgotten how fresh-off-the-plant green beans have that weird fuzzy Velcro feeling to them.

I think I picked them at the appropriate time. My taste-test tonight will tell me if I was right. Everything I read online said to pick them just before they start to bulge, but, not having a time machine, I can't anticipate their bulginess before they achieve that state, so I waited until they looked enough like the ones I buy at the store, and then picked them. The best part is, because the plants have more tiny beans on them, I'll get more beans next week too! I wonder how much these things produce over a summer?

It's cool to be eating something I grew myself, even if these little guys weren't grown from seeds. I paid $1.50 for 6 tiny bean plants, plus some money for fancy dirt for them to grow in, and I'm planning on weighing the useful yield of beans, to see how much money I'm saving versus buying them at the store.

My tomato plants have flowers, but no baby tomatoes yet. I will post photos of tomato babies as soon as they arrive!

What's for Dinner - Cheesy Orzo with Chicken and Broccoli

At one of the restaurants in San Francisco, I had a creamy orzo risotto for lunch, and it was divine. This was my attempt to recreate it.

Cheesy Orzo with Chicken and Broccoli

2 tbsp olive oil or butter
1/2 onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, chopped (or smooshed through a press)
4 cups of chicken stock
1 lb orzo pasta
1 cup Monterey Jack cheese, grated (any cheese will do, but this is what the restaurant used)
2 cups broccoli florets
1 cup diced cooked chicken



Use a big pot - a small one will make it hard for you to stir the orzo well and you'll get a stuck-on mess at the bottom. I did!

Saute the garlic and onion in the olive oil or butter until the onions soften, about 3-4 minutes. Add the orzo and stir to coat with the oil, then add about half of the stock and stir well. Bring up to a boil and then lower the heat. Keep an eye on it, stirring a lot so nothing sticks, and add more stock, about a half cup at a time, as the liquid gets absorbed. Note: you may not need all the stock! Add as needed and check orzo (taste it) each time just before adding more! After about 15 minutes, the orzo shouldn't have any bite left to it, and the liquid should be absorbed leaving a creamy pile of tiny noodles. If it still seems too liquidy but the noodles are done, take it off the heat and let it rest, because a couple of extra minutes will help it absorb any leftover stock.

Meanwhile, steam the broccoli florets:
Put broccoli in a microwave-safe bowl, and add a splash of water. Cover the bowl and cook on high for 3 minutes. The broccoli will still have some crispness to them, so if you like mushy broccoli, leave it in for 4 minutes.

In a giant bowl, mix the orzo, cheese, chicken, and broccoli, and stir well. Eat and then put away your leftovers, because this recipe makes a lot.

Recipe Fail - Roasted tomato slices

I had a tomato. Just one. A big round one. And I wasn't planning to make a salad, or a sandwich, and I wasn't sure what to do with one tomato. So I remembered how I sometimes like grilled tomatoes, and decided to try putting tomato slices under the broiler instead. I am not sure why I thought that was a reasonable substitution of cooking method.

I sliced the tomato into thick slices and sprinkled some salt and pepper on them, and stuck them under the broiler. After a minute or two, they were just barely browning, so I added a little cheese, because cheese makes everything delicious, and put them back. Two more minutes and the cheese was bubbly and the slices looked pretty good. I forgot to take a picture, but it's just as well, because I don't want any poor innocent readers seeing a delicious-looking picture and then trying this sad recipe, because disappointment is guaranteed.

They were incredibly squishy. They completely fell apart into tomatoey, cheesy goo as soon as I tried lifting them off the baking sheet. I have since found a recipe in a book (probably a better bet than the ones that appear in my head) that cautions to only use underripe tomatoes for this sort of thing, lest they fall apart on you.

Lesson learned.

If my tomato plants make it through the summer and start giving me tomatoes, hopefully I will have a chance to test this and many other tomato recipes, as I try to get through what will surely be mounds of giant tomatoes.

What's for Dinner - Braised Sweet Potatoes & Spinach

One of the books I picked up at the book sale was a cookbook. Actually, my aunt picked it up, but when we were back at her place looking through our purchases, I flipped through it and fell in love with half of the recipes, so she told me to take it home. Thank you, Auntie! You'll get it back someday, I promise! I tried a side dish out of the book tonight, but as usual I didn't like half of the ingredients so I adjusted everything and made it different. Here's what I ended up with.

Braised Sweet Potatoes & Spinach

2 large sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into small pieces
One onion, cut so you have thin half-circles of onion
1 clove garlic, minced
2 tbsp oilve oil
1 cup (packed) spinach leaves, torn into pieces
1/2 cup chicken (or veg) broth
1/2 tsp ginger
Pepper

Cook the onion and garlic in oil until the onions are soft and golden. You can use a frying pan but I used my flat Le Creuset dutch oven because the whole thing goes into the oven afterwards. Stir in the chopped sweet potatoes and add the ginger and pepper. Pour the chicken broth over it all and put it into the oven, covered, at 425F for about 25 minutes. Check it after 20, because the cooking time varies depending how small you chopped the sweet potatoes. When you can stick a fork through the potatoes, stir in the spinach leaves and put it back in the oven for 5 more minutes (still covered).
Delicious. A little overcooked (I had mine in over half an hour because I followed the cookbook and forgot to check early), so the sweet potatoes were falling apart, but I didn't mind. Next time I make this, I'll increase the spinach to make it greener - the garlic and ginger really make the spinach fabulous.

Party Pasta Salad

I don't know why pasta salads only ever seem to show up at parties and picnics, because they're easy and delicious. This one, as you can guess from my title, was made for a party. My sister-in-law's baby shower, that is. Because it was made for a big party, it's a big recipe! This will serve a crowd at a party or as a side for a cookout. It's a recreation of a pasta salad I once bought at the deli counter at Giant.

1 box pasta, cooked and drained - I like farfalle or tri-colored pastas
1 pint grape or cherry tomatoes, halved
1 small red pepper, chopped into small pieces
Half a red onion, cut into rings, then cut the rings in half
1/2 cup (packed) baby spinach leaves, chopped
2/3 cup sundried tomato salad dressing
1 tsp dried oragano
1/4 cup shredded parmesan or asiago cheese
salt & pepper

Directions: mix everything, chill in the fridge a while to let the flavors mix, and then eat.

The amount of dressing you need will vary depending on your taste, and on the noodles. I sometimes find I need to add more after the salad has sat in the fridge overnight, because the noodles drink in all the dressing and leave the salad a little dry. I'm sure it would be tasty with other dressings, too, but I haven't played around with that yet.

Because I was so busy with the party, I forgot to take a picture of the one I made this weekend, but I had a picture from the last time I threw it together:

As with all pasta salads, it's flexible and you can change the amounts of the ingredients or omit some altogether. Oh, and because this is meat-free and not made with mayonnaise, it can sit out on the table for a while without poisoning your party. A big plus!

Rescuing Veggies

I buy veggies. That's not the problem. The problem is that we don't always manage to eat them quickly enough and they get soft or moldy or otherwise inedible.

For example: do onions make good houseplants? This one has great aspirations!

I'm trying really hard to get better at this because I hate wasting food. So far, I'm roasting peppers that are too soft for decent salads, and using floppy broccoli, carrots, and celery in soups (broccoli gets its own soup, and the others assist in chicken soup). If I can't do it right away, I try to freeze them before they're past the point of inedibility. When my mushrooms start looking a little sad, I fry them up in butter and eat them that way. But what about onions that are starting to sprout? Or potatoes that are mostly eyes and brown spots? Bagged spinach that's started to wilt? Tomatoes that are too squishy to slice even with the most incredible of infomercial knives? Does anyone have any ideas for using up almost-unusable veggies?

I don't usually have this problem with fruit, except for strawberries, which refuse to last more than a day or two in the fridge, but I'll gladly take pointers on rescuing fruit from the brink, as well!

Roasted Green Beans

Without a doubt, my favorite way to eat green beans is to roast them in the oven with some olive oil.

It's so easy, just chop off the ends, cut them in half if they're really long, and then toss them in a bowl with olive oil, salt, and pepper. Put them on a baking sheet in a single layer, into a 375 oven for 5 or 6 minutes, and then take them out and stir them around, because their bottom sides will be getting brown and you don't want them to burn. Back into the oven for another 5 or 6 minutes, and they're ready to eat.

This makes them a little sweet and gives them a nutty roasted flavor that makes it hard for me to wait until they've cooled off to eat them.


Why would anyone ever eat canned green beans again, when they could do this instead?