Friday 3/20: Rotini Verde
Friday 3/20: Rotini Verde
I came home from my weekly massage to a dark, empty apartment.
*sigh*
In my experience, few things combat dark emptiness like carbohydrates. And there ain't no better kind of carbohydrate than cheap, white pasta. Just seeing the Kroger ad putting the Creamette on sale "10 for 10" makes me giddy.
Also helpful is cranking up some Kelly Clarkson - the carbohydrate version of a pop singer if ever there was one.
So, Rotini Verde is basically pesto pasta with every green veggie in my fridge on the verge of spoiling. Note how my use of the Spanish/Italian for green really classes the recipe up. Nobody wants to eat, "Rotini with Mostly Spoiled Veggies."
To begin, I chopped up, then briefly sauteed (in a garlic-infused olive oil I got for Christmas) a bunch of asparagus (all but the toughest end parts), a green pepper, a zuchinni, a yellow squash, a handfull of snow peas, and 3 big shallots. A pet peeve of mine is overly oily, soggy sauteed veggies. So because they take the longest I cook the onion/shallot and peppers first for a few minutes - and only until the onions just start to turn translucent. The other veggies I toss in and only cook until the peas and asparagus are bright green. Remove from heat and cover while the pasta is cooking to keep warm and to steam just a bit more.
Boil a box of rotini (or any kind of non-long pasta) according to the box. I'm a sucker for al dente. The less done everything in this dish is, the verde-er it tastes. Drain pasta and return to the pot (or put in a big pasta bowl if company's coming. Though, any kind of company that can't serve themselves from a pot, doesn't usually get a second invite to my place). Mix in the veggies and then three or four rounded tablespoons of my Pointer-Thumb-Pinky Pesto (so named because this pesto is so easy, you could make it lacking all but the aforementioned digits):
2 ish cups of fresh basil
3 heaping tablespoons of pine nuts (My roomie "borrows" 'em from work for me! If money's too tight for pignoli, you can use walnuts or slivered almonds but I don't guarantee the results )
2 tablespoons faux parmesan (I use the Galaxy Foods kind)
2 heaping tablespoons nutritional yeast
2 heaping teaspoons of shortcut garlic
1/2 cup olive oil
Blend up all the basil and slowly add the other ingredients by thirds. Once everything is in the blender, hit the switch and blend continuously on high for 45 seconds or so.
If you use it immediately, this is a very smooth and creamy pesto - better for sauce than for dipping. An overnight stay in the fridge thickens things up a bit, giving it a more tapenade-like quality. Also - depending on how salty you like your pesto, you can adjust the parm-to-yeast ratio. The more parm, the saltier it will be.
This was creamy, filling, and comforting. My life might suck without my roommate around, but good pesto certainly helps.
Sunday 3/22: Sunday Morning Raw
Sunday 3/22: Sunday Morning Raw
When I was still in school, Sundays used to be “Soup & Salad Dressing Day.” It was the day that I would whip together some food for the upcoming busy school week. It was usually soup, because soup it easy to re-heat for a fast and lazy dinner when there are still 30 pages of Derrida to read and you haven’t understood the first 10. And salad dressing because having 6 different kinds of salad dressing on hand keeps raw veggie-centric lunches interesting. And I don’t know the last time you priced vegan/organic salad dressings, but a girl could go broke eating Green Goddess.
This morning started out with a 9 mile run. I was a bit nervous as this was the longest I had run since hurting my ankle. But it went well. Half-marathon here I come!
Anyway, the best reward for a run well ran, is a creamy salad dressing. And this is one of the best I’ve found that doesn’t have a vegan mayo or soygurt base. It's a recipe from The Raw Food Detox Diet cookbook, but I altered some of the seasoning levels and juice types.
Tenth Mile Raw-nch
½ cup lemon juice
1 scant teaspoon salt
½ tablespoon dried chives
½ tablespoon dried rosemary
½ tablespoon dried oregano
½ tablespoon dried sage
1 cup whole, raw macadamia nuts
1/3 cup olive oil
Blend the juice, oil and half the nuts until semi-smooth. Put in the spices and the rest of nuts in and blend, blend, blend. You may need to scrape the sides a few times. Depending on your taste, feel free to add a little water to make this thinner or a few grinds of some black pepper for a little kick. I’ve also made this with half orange-half lemon juice which makes the Raw-nch a bit sweeter. You can also use half lemon juice-half water which makes for a more savory dressing.
Does this taste anything like ranch? Well, that depends on how long it has been since you’ve had ranch dressing. I’m approaching the 15 year mark (I gave up Ranch for Lent one time before I was vegan and never went back) so to me this is “just like the real thing! oh my gosh! you have to taste this!” More often than not this reaction is met with eye rolls. They agree that my concoctions are delicious but taste nothing like the "real" thing.
The last time I made this for Roomie, though, he actually said he preferred my dressing to dairy-based ranch. This is in part because he knows how ranch dressing is made. Roomie works at a local sandwich shop (which for discretion’s sake will remain nameless) that also sells salads. They make their ranch by mixing a gallon of buttermilk with a gallon of full-fat mayonnaise and a packet of Hidden Valley Ranch seasoning. This turns my stomach a little bit just thinking about it.
The soup was just a couple of tablespoons of store-bought red miso dissolved in some broth and tamari and then tossed into some veggies (celery, carrots, napa cabbage, the leftover bok choy and green onions from last night, a few mushrooms, some snow peas) I had sautéed briefly in sesame oil and then boiled in broth. Having my mandolin made this soup-er easy.
Yes. I totally went there.
It was pretty funny when I said it out loud to myself in my kitchen.
9 miles might be good for my heart and legs, but it plays heck with my sense of humor.
Tuesday 3/24: It Never Tastes as Good Coming Back Up
Tuesday 3/24: It Never Tastes as Good Coming Back Up
No cooking Monday night. Kev took me out for birthday sushi at Restaurant Hama in Columbus. I could very probably eat seaweed salad every night and never get tired of it.
And I wasn’t really planning to cook Tuesday night either. It was my birthday so eating wasn’t really high on my list of things to do. But I had been invited over to a friend’s for a pre-bar chin-wag and it is the height of rudeness to arrive at someone’s house empty-handed.
My phone had been ringing and jingling all day with texts and calls wishing me well. Funny how the older I get the more technological my birthday greetings get. The first one of the day is invariably my mom. Since she gets up at 4am to workout, I can count on a 6am wakeup/birthday call. The last one is usually from my BFF HoneyBunny who lives in Alaska. The 4 hour time difference means that when he’s on his lunch break, I’m just getting off of work.
I wasn’t about to cut my HB-talk time short, so I had to figure out something I could cook quickly with a phone stuck between my ear and shoulder.
Couscous to the rescue!!!
Like noodles, couscous is fun to eat in part because it’s fun to say. Alliterative and assonant foods are almost always delicious. Green beens (more delicious if you change the spelling), cupcakes, pesto pasta, white wine, and so on. The exception being creamed corn. Blech.
But back to the cous. Since it only takes 5 minutes to cook once the water is boiled, couscous seemed the logical choice. While I was waiting for the water to boil, I opened, drained, and rinsed a can of garbanzo beans. I then put them in a bowl to marinate with the leftover cukedillgurt sauce from Saturday night. While the couscous was cooking, I mandolin-ed (I am so addicted to that thing now) a bit more than half an onion, a small zucchini, and a small green pepper. All the chopped veg plus a large handful of snap peas went into my giant Longaberger bowl I got for Christmas. Hot, fork-fluffed couscous went on top of that, and the garbanzo bean mixture on top of that. I gave it all a good stir and stuck it in the fridge while I showered.
For taking all of ten minutes to put together this was pretty good. My friend made lentils cooked with cumin seeds and a huge green salad with home grown sprouts, all of which we paired with “Royal Bitch” Chardonnay. A fine birthday dinner indeed. What wasn't so fine, perhaps, was that I chose to pair all of that with double fists of gin and tonic, a round of Lemondrop shots, a horrible shot with Lightning 101 in it, at least two shots I can't remember, two Hater-Ade shots, and two Bud Selects.
It wasn't the worst food I've ever thrown up (there's a tie for that fun distinction between zucchini brownies w/Jack Daniels and Popcorn w/2 bottles of riesling) but it was certainly better the first time around.
Happy B-Day to me.
Only the Lonely
Only the Lonely
Much to my consternation, Roomiewas gone for the entirety of Spring Break. He's always gone over Spring Break. If it's not middle-of-nowhere South Carolina, then it's Austria by way of Ireland.
His absence meant that, in addition to being terribly bored and terribly lonely, I had no one to cook for. Did I let this stop me? Of course not! When it comes to alleviating loneliness and boredom it's either working out or cooking and I can only run so many times a day. When he would call to check in, I'd regale him with tales of what he could be eating if only he was home. He didn't feel too bad though. He knows that I can't cook for only two people, let alone just for myself. He was sure there'd be plenty of leftovers.
This section, then, is a record of my solitude-combatting kitchen adventures from the last week in March.
Saturday 3/21: I Hear the Sound of Mandolins
Saturday 3/21: I Hear the Sound of Mandolins
So tonight I wasn’t going to be completely alone in the kitchen. Kev was planning to come over and watch movies. Despite the fact that he in no way requires impressing (or even for me to put more than pj’s on), a guest is a guest so the menu had to be something fun.
Random ethnic food is fun.
A quick survey of my fridge revealed a few cucumbers on their last legs. Also hiding in the back behind the leftover frosting and jars of homemade salad dressing was a carton of soygurt. I did the math and in this case 2 + 2 = falafel with cuke-dill-gurt sauce.
I scooped the yogurt into a wire mesh colander lined with a half dozen coffee filters. If you can find vegan Greek-style yogurt (and please let me know if you do!) you can skip this step.
I then began to chop up the cucumber, but stopped mid-slice with an epicurean epiphany. Somewhere, somewhere in my kitchen, was a hand-held mandolin. Considering I only have about 4 drawers in my entire kitchen, I’m not sure how I could forget I had this little time-saver. But until that moment, I had. After digging it out from the back of the measuring spoon drawer, it made short, neat, evenly sliced work of those two cucumbers. I placed the cukes in a paper towel-lined colander and placed a bowl weighted with a large jar of spaghetti sauce on top of the cukes to press out more of the water.
I left my yogurt and cucumbers draining their respective juices and went on a 15-mile bike ride. I haven’t found a much better bike riding environment than Athens in early spring. I was gone probably an hour.
Back in the kitchen, I put together my Gone Biking Cukedillgurt Sauce:
In the blender, coarsely pulse-chop about half the cukes and set them aside in a separate bowl.
Then blend very well the rest of the cucumbers with:
1 heaping teaspoon of dried dill
1 tablespoon of shortcut garlic
the drained yogurt
Add this to the first bowl of coarsely chopped cukes and stir well. Refrigerate for an hour if you can so the flavors can meld but if you’re in a pinch, you can eat it right away.
I prepared the falafels (using the Fantastic Foods from-a-box kind. Cheap, easy, and broil-able. More about that in a bit) and left the mix to sit while I boiled noodles and chopped veggies for Not-Peanut Soba Salad:
6 green onions, green parts only, chopped (but save those white bottoms for soup!!)
4 bunches of baby bok choy, leafy parts only, chopped thin (but save the tough white bottoms for soup!!)
1 ½ handfuls of cheater (read: store bought) matchstick carrots
1 red bell pepper, cut in fifths, and mandolined
Prepare the above veg and put into a large, large bowl while the water is boiling and the soba noodles are a-cooking. I love noodles. Even the word is awesome. Noodle. Noo-oo-oo-dle. Noodley, noodley, noodley. I love words that look like they taste.
I used Eden Foods soba noodles. They were very hearty. Prepare according to the package but do not rinse with cold water. Just drain and toss the hot noodles onto the chopped veggies. This heat will wilt the bok choy and carrots a bit and bring together the flavors. Top this mixture with a cup (or more to taste) of Not-Peanut Sauce.
1 cup almond butter
2 tablespoons of wet (or 1 tbs of dry) ginger
½ cup water
4 tablespoons lemon juice
¼ cup maple syrup
3 tablespoons tamari
4 teaspoons sesame oil (you can replace up to two of these teaspoons with spicy chili sesame oil, depending on how much kick you like. I put in about ¼ tsp because I’m a wuss. I’d put in a whole tsp next time)
1 tablespoon shortcut garlic
Put everything in the blender and whip on high until smooth. I had this made ahead of time so it was cold when I put it on my noodles. Mixing it in at room/blender temperature would make it less salad-like and more main-dishy.
While the soba salad was sitting, I put together the falafels. I like using the Fantastic Food mix because they hold together very well without having to deep fry. My kitchen is just too small, my stove top burners not large enough to fry up something like falafels properly. Broiling falafels made from scratch (at least for me) leaves them crumbly and dry. So I use a mix. Note that falafels also taste better when you pluralize them.
Kev arrived in between the salad mixing the the falafels broiling, bearing two delicious bottles of wine. The first, an Argentinian Chardonnay "Clara Benegas" we drank while cooking. I like to cook with whites and eat with reds. The Benegas was really quite good for a Chard, many of which I find too one-dimensional. The red for dinner was the 2007 Layer Cake Malbec. This is one of my go-to reds. Argentinian malbecs were all the rage last year and the 2007's are pretty solid. It paired well with the slightly spicy falafels and cool soygurt sauce.
Random ethnic-type foods with 18 dollar bottles of wine taste best when accompanied by random David Bowie movies. Tonight was no exception. I’m sure my noodles and falafels would be delicious in any context, but there’s something about D.B. in a cod piece dancing around with Muppets that works up a gal’s appetite. I’m not sure if he had the same effect on Kev.
Thursday 3/26: Many Colors of the Lasagna Rainbow
Thursday 3/26: Many Colors of the Lasagna Rainbow
Whenever he works back-to-back 24 hour shifts, the Doc (my dad) comes to stay the night at my apartment. It's less of a drive, so that way he gets more sleep.
I like to cook when he's in town because it makes me seem more like a well-adjusted grown-up living on my own. There may be nights when dinner is a box of cereal and swigs of soymilk from the carton, but the Doc doesn't have to know that.
I'm not sure why, but I had been craving lasagna. I found a really great tofu ricotta recipe a while back and am always looking for an excuse to make it. Plus, now armed with my trusty mandolin, I could add lots of layers of thinly sliced veggies.
Here's the ricotta recipe (a spin off the basic Tofu Ricotta recipe from the Veganomicon). I leave lasagna construction decisions up to you. I used San Giorgio no-boil lasagna noodles and Prego jar sauce (vegan!) for efficiency's sake, I tossed in a layer of mandolined yellow squash, a layer of orange peppers, a layer of the last of the pesto from last Friday and plenty of Galaxy Foods "faux-zerella" cheese.
Tofu Ricotta
(you may want to double this recipe [as I did] for a 9x13 pan of lasagna. The single recipe is enough for a loaf pan)
1 package of Mori-Nu tofu, extra firm
2 teaspoons of lemon juice
1 tablespoon of cheater garlic
2 or 3 turns of the pepper mill
a dozen or so fresh basil leaves, chopped well (about 1/2 cup or so)
a bunch of fresh parsley, chopped fine (about 1/2 cup or so)
2 teaspoons of olive oil
1/4 cup of nutritional yeast (if you don't have n.y., you can sub bread crumbs or parmesean shake cheese or a combination of all three)
Mush up the tofu with a fork until it's crumbly.
Add lemon juice, garlic, pepper, basil, and parsley. Mush using your hands now so the mixture gets very sticky. It can take up to 5 minutes.
Add the olive oil and mush with a fork because now it will be gooey.
Add the yeast (or breadcrumbs/cheese) and stir it up so everything is evenly distributed.
You can use this right away but it's much easier to handle if you refrigerate at least an hour before putting the lasagna together.
The Doc says he wouldn't have known it was vegan if I hadn't told him. Success!
RSS
