Happy Pi/Pie Day! I know that most people are probably celebrating with desserts, but what about a savory pie? Or rather a savory dish with pie in the name that isn’t actually a pie? Whatever, don’t judge me. It’s time for another vegetarian lunch with Melissa from Smells Like Brownies. Be sure to check out her delicious Pi Day Coconut Cream Pie, it is sooooooo good!
This vegetarian version shepard’s pie is packed with veggies, topped with creamy goat cheese, and perfect for St Paddy’s Day (which is never St Patty’s by the way). I mean, just look at that gorgeous green topping.
The base is made with roasted beets, eggplant, sundried tomatoes, and cherry tomatoes simmered in vegetable stock with thyme, caraway seeds, and fennel seeds. I was a little scared that the fennel and caraway would be really strong and take over, but they added just the right amount of depth and a real Irish flavor. (more…)
Here’s a quick little semi-homemade cold weather meal, perfect for weeknights. I took some store-bought fresh spinach fettuccine and thick sliced roasted turkey from the deli counter, and tossed them with a homemade pumpkin goat cheese alfredo. It’s interesting enough to not be boring, but it’s easy enough to not cause a headache.
The homemade part is the decadent sauce, which involves butter, garlic, cream, pumpkin, goat cheese, sage, and pumpkin pie spice. I wanted to do something a little different, which is why I went with turkey, but chicken would work just as well. And I like how the spinach pasta brought a little color to the table.
Pumpkin Goat Cheese Alfredo
adapted from Closet Kitchen
serves 2
8 oz pasta of choice (I used fresh spinach fettuccine from the refrigerated section), cooked
8 oz cooked turkey or chicken, diced or shredded
1 tbsp butter
1 clove garlic, minced
1 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup pumpkin puree
4 oz goat cheese
1/4 cup Parmesan, grated
1 tbsp sage, sliced thinly (or dried)
1/4 tsp pumpkin pie spice
salt and pepper to taste
Melt the butter in a small saucepan over medium heat. Add the garlic and cook until fragrant, about a minute. Add the cream, pumpkin puree, goat cheese, Parmesan, sage, and pumpkin pie spice and simmer until the cheese has melted.
Add in the poultry and allow to warm through. Remove from heat and season with salt and pepper.
It’s been a while since I’ve posted a Smells Like Brownies & Well Dined vegetarian lunch team-up recipe, what with holidays and traveling and all. Now I return to you with this delicious flatbread made with hearty whole-wheat dough, tender brussels sprouts sauteed in brown butter, creamy goat cheese, and salty Parmesan and capers. So good.
We called it a flatbread instead of a pizza simply because the toppings seemed more along those lines, and they were a bit loose and not glued down by cheese. But it doesn’t really matter what it is called.
I think brussels sprouts got a bad rap in the 80’s when everybody was boiling them to death, gross. But when they are roasted until they caramelize or shaved thin and served raw – yum. Here we saute them quickly in some brown butter and toss them with goat cheese and capers – double yum.
Lots of freshly grated Parmesan goes on top (plus more when it comes out of the oven). It’s just beautiful. (more…)
Chicken Parmesan without the guilt? I saw a really yummy looking recipe for Chicken Parmesan Meatballs that I wanted to try, but didn’t want to eat all the carbs involved in pasta. I had also been seeing cheesy spaghetti squash casseroles that looked really good, so I had the idea to combine them.
Ground chicken, onion, Parmesan, parsley, lemon zest, breadcrumbs, garlic, and egg are combined to make the meatballs, which are basted with tomato sauce and cooked in the oven.
Spaghetti squash goes into a casserole dish (I cook mine in the microwave). This is from two medium squashes.
Place the cooked meatballs on top, then the tomato sauce. I forgot to season the squash, oops! So I added more salt and pepper here. (more…)
The January pick for Food ‘n Flix is the 1987 Danish film Babette’s Feast (now included in The Criterion Collection), chosen by Culinary Adventures with Camilla. This is the story of two deeply religious and puritanical sisters who live on the remote coastline of 19th Century Denmark. They give up much in their lives in order to live the way that they were raised and to help the people of the village. Late in their lives, a French refugee comes to stay with them for many years and cooks them a fabulous meal to thank them. The sisters and villagers are afraid to give in to the decadence of the meal, but it ends up healing many of their wounds and rifts. It is a story about the healing power of food and how it can show love and thanks.
The food cooked in the movie is quite extravagant and I didn’t think I could take on turtle soup or quail stuffed with foie gras and truffles, so instead I decided to just go French in general. I must have been influenced by all the soup that the Danish villagers ate (and the stew meat in my freezer), because I made a French stew with beef and red wine – cooked low and slow in a crockpot.
Beef is seasoned with salt and pepper and placed into a bowl with onion, garlic, shallot, celery, carrot, thyme, bay leaves, and lemon zest.
This is the fun part – a whole bottle of red wine is poured over the ingredients and then left to marinate (refrigerated) overnight. The wine is the stock for this stew, and the flavor permeates everything. So make sure that you use a good one! I suggest a Cotes du Rhone for this. (more…)
Oh my gosh, you guys, I am in kale heaven. Now I already like kale – raw in salads, in a Tuscan white bean soup, baked into crispy chips. But this, THIS, is the single most delicious way to eat kale ever.
Cooked down with garlic and shallots in butter, then finished with sherry, cream, and miso – swoon.
But we don’t even stop there, oh no, we add buttery mushrooms with soy on top – oh my gaaaaaaaaaaawd.
I served it as a side with teriyaki salmon, which I’m not even going to talk about because the kale totally stole the show. If you like kale, go make this right now and rejoice. If you don’t like kale, go make this right now and become a believer. And then invite me over, so that I can eat some too. (more…)
Normally, I wouldn’t advertise for warm avocado. I mean, that’s just weird. But combined with a soft egg and runny yolk? It becomes like butter. This is the breakfast of champions, friends.
First you will need to scoop out enough of the flesh so that your eggs will fit. Go ahead and just eat that scooped out avocado plain, yum. Place the avocado halves into a muffin tin or ramekins to hold them in place and catch any egg drippings. If you want, you can add a teeny bit of water into the ramekins to prevent the spilled egg from burning.
I find that the best way to get the eggs into the avocado is to crack each one into a small bowl. Then, carefully scoop up the yolk with a spoon and place it in the hollow. Then spoon the white on top until it is full. Save any leftover white for another use.
Season with salt and pepper and bake in a 425 deg F oven for 15-20 min, until the whites are set. The yolks might cook on top, but the bottom will still be runny. Grab a spoon and dig in!
If you want to totally ignore the fact that you were trying to have a grain free breakfast and spread that sucker on some buttered toast, I wont blame you.
In the ever continuing quest to eat less grains, I decided that I wanted to see how lentils paired with salmon. I found a couple recipes that I liked and combined them into one that worked for me. The lentils are cooked up nice and tender with veggies, and then mixed with the same mustard and herb butter that tops the salmon. This butter, you guys, it’s outstanding. I had a little bit left over and I spread it over toasted sourdough and savored every bite with eye-rolling pleasure. I want to make more of the butter just to do that again. This meal is so healthy and so yummy that I can’t stand it.
Salmon and Lentils with Mustard Butter
adapted from Ina Garten and Gourmet
serves 4
1⁄2 pound French green lentils
1⁄4 cup olive oil
1 yellow onion, chopped
1 leek, white and light green parts only, sliced into half moons and thoroughly washed
few sprigs fresh thyme
2 tsp kosher salt
3⁄4 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 tbsp minced fresh garlic (2-3 cloves)
4 stalks celery, chopped
3 carrots, chopped
1 1⁄2 cups Chicken Stock
2 tbsp tomato paste
bay leaf
2 tbsp good red wine vinegar
4 (8-oz) center-cut salmon fillets, skin on
2 tbsp butter
Place the lentils in a heat-proof bowl and cover with boiling water. Set aside for 15 minutes, then drain.
Meanwhile, heat the oil in a saute pan, add the onions, leeks, thyme, salt, and pepper and cook over medium heat for 10 minutes, until the onions are translucent. Add the garlic and cook for 30 seconds more. Add the drained lentils, celery, carrots, chicken stock, tomato paste, and bay leaf. Cover and simmer over low heat for 20 minutes, until the lentils are tender. Remove the thyme stems and bay leaf, add the vinegar, and season to taste.
Stir together the softened butter, chives, grainy mustard, and lemon juice with 1/4 teaspoon each of salt and pepper. Add 3 tbsp of the butter mixture to the lentils and stir to combine.
Pat salmon dry and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Heat butter in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat until foam subsides, then sauté salmon, turning once, until golden and just cooked through, 6 to 8 minutes total.
Serve salmon, topped with remaining 2 tbsp mustard-herb butter, over lentils.
Remember last week when I posted about the Butternut Squash and Kale Pizza? And I told you that I had leftover kale? Well, here’s what became of it. I massaged with raw kale with a homemade dressing (olive oil, lemon juice, champagne vinegar, salt and pepper) and let it sit for 15 minutes to break down and lose the bitterness. Then I topped it with some burrata cheese, more olive oil, sea salt, and black pepper. Simple and delicious.
I served the salad as an appetizer, and for dinner we had steak (here’s my method) and orzo with broccoli pesto. I actually like this version of broccoli pasta sauce better than the other version I’ve made, and it has a lot less fat! (more…)
I had a plan to make spinach and butternut squash lasagna roll-ups last week. But then I decided to add chicken so that Jasper would be more likely to eat it (note that this plan failed, ha). And then I thought it would be good to make my own spinach whole wheat noodles, which turned out to be too fragile to roll up, especially with the heavy chicken added. So it turned into a regular layered lasagna instead, and I’m not even sad. The colors were so pretty, and it was gooey and cheesy and filling.
So here’s where I made a mistake – I thought I would be clever and puree the spinach in the food processor instead of the blender before adding in my flour in order to reduce the number of dirty containers. Except that the food processor didn’t really puree the spinach very well. I even had a moment where I stopped and thought I should transfer it to the blender and decided against it, *sigh*. All those little flakes of spinach made the dough very fragile and difficult to work with, but I stuck it out.
The noodles turned out fine (and they certainly tasted good) when cooked, but they were still too fragile to roll (and not very pretty).
So I just layered them instead and all was well. Now, remember earlier this week when I talked about having leftover butternut squash? Well, this is where it went. I pureed the roasted squash and shallots together to make a sauce. A little of that went on the bottom of the pan, then a layer of noodles. (more…)
