Citrus-y Pepper Pasta to brighten your winter night
In advance of our Oscars party, we revisited a classic recipe, adapted from The Red Cat restaurant cookbook – Spaghetti with Citrus-y Pepper Sauce.
I used
rozen bell peppers from our CSA. And as the peppers are already sliced up, we put this delicious dish together in about 25 minutes.
If you’ve got some peppers in your freezer, try this recipe. For your consideration.
Charmoula-Rubbed Mahi-Mahi and Shallot Bulgur. Courtesy of Bon Appetit
Looking for a fast, healthy and tasty weeknight meal? This is it, and don’t be put off by the unfamiliar spice concoction. Charmoula-rubbed Mahi-Mahi is easy peasy, especially when paired with Shallot Bulgur. You must be thinking that I am on a spice-rub kick. ‘Tis true. This recipe, likes others from the so-called cleanse, took me out of my cooking comfort zone, requiring the use of unusual spices and various healthy, whole grains…like bulgur! How exciting – I had not prepared bulgur before, so it was great to discover another high-fiber whole grain, easy to prepare and even Hubs-approved. Sara Dickerman pairs the Mahi Mahi with a sliced orange salad. Visually, it is a treat (see below), but really not worth the effort. It makes the whole meal more complicated to prepare, and I suggest skipping it in lieu of a sliced orange for garnish.
Read More http://www.bonappetit.com/recipes/2013/01/charmoula-rubbed-mahi-mahi#ixzz2LdItTwnO
Good Color: Prepped for the Mason jars
After my first fermentation attempts 2 weeks ago, I was eager to try more. And what are long weekends for, if not fermenting with friends? And, might I add that my first batch of Slaw was long gone? We consumed all that probiotic yumminess in about a week. Using the simple “add salt and let sit” method, I used the second half of my red cabbage for another batch of Fermented Red Cabbage Coleslaw. This time, I put some elbow grease into it and left the Cuisinart in its cupboard. Here’s my recipe for fast and easy fermented slaw, inspired by Feedmelikeyoumeanit.
Fermented Red Cabbage Slaw
1/2 red cabbage, thinly sliced
1 yellow onion, sliced into rings
1 bell pepper, sliced into thin strips
1 carrot, peeled and shredded
Kosher salt
Special Equipment: Kitchen scale, 2 1-pint mason jars
Fermented Coleslaw: red cabbage, onion, bell peppers and carrot
Mix all vegetables in a large, non-reactive bowl. You can use your Cuisinart to chop the vegetables, or simply chop up by hand. Weigh the bowl of vegetables and for every pound, add 2.5 teaspoons kosher salt to vegetables. Mix well. My batch weighed about 3 pounds, so I used ~8 teaspoons of salt. Using your hands, begin to pack the vegetables into a mason jar. After every handful, press down, making space for more. You want to pack the vegetables in tightly, and may be surprised at how much goodness you can fit into one (relatively small) jar. Leave about an 1″ space at the top and seal tightly. Repeat to fill other jar. Set aside in your kitchen on a countertop or pantry for 4-5 days. Taste after 2 days, opening the jar carefully over a sink. When you open, the contents may be bubbling, so do be careful. The slaw is ready when you like the taste of it. It will be sour and crunchy.
Place in the refrigerator and use within 3 months. You will be surprised at how crunchy and tasty the vegetables are (and remain!). Enjoy!
Spice-rubbed Seared Salmon
Happy day after Valentine’s Day. Perhaps it is my long-term love/hate relationship with Valentine’s Day that caused me to ignore the day itself, but allow me to acknowledge it a day after. Having spent many a Valentine’s Day solo, I learned to downplay, even ignore it, long ago. And once Hubs came around (pre-Hubs moniker days), I was certainly pleased to have someone special to share the day with, but I still couldn’t get overly excited about it. After all, it’s the day-to-day that matters in life, right? So, Hubs and I started a Valentine’s Day tradition – select and prepare a menu together at home. No posh restaurant, no flowers (I wouldn’t turn them down, mind you), but a shared experience, maybe with some candlelight and a bottle of good wine. It has suited us just fine, and we have adapted over the years, too.
While I was researching our menu, I took a peak into the vault and decided to repeat a previous hit. Spice-rubbed Seared Salmon: it’s a great recipe from either our first or second Valentine’s Day menu. And I love that I found it handwritten on paper, old school style. In fact, this recipe is so simple, I am amazed we thought this was a special occasion dish (guess I cooked a lot less back then than I do now). So, in honoring the love of the everyday, I am sharing this recipe with you now, post-holiday. Try it and let me know what you think
Spice-Rubbed Seared Salmon
Instructions
Heat fry pan on medium heat. Add spices and toast 2-3 minutes. Grind spices in spice mill, or use mortar and pestle. Pour into small bowl and add brown sugar and kosher salt to make the rub. Place salmon on a plate and press rub into salmon. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 1 hour.
Spice-rubbed salmon searing
Preheat oven to 400F. Heat cast iron pan or other oven-proof pan and add olive oil. Heat until smoking, then place salmon skin side down on pan and sear for 4-5 minutes depending on thickness of fillet. Flip salmon gently using tongs (keep skin intact), and place pan in oven. Cook 4-6 minutes until cooked through.
Please don’t wait til next Valentine’s Day to try this!
Poached Eggs with Tunisian Red Pepper Sauce & Chickpeas with Leeks, Spinach and Smoked Paprika. Courtesy of Bon Appetit
And it looks and tastes a heck of a lot better, too. This is post #2 in my series on the “So-called Cleanse” for food lovers. I found this dinner recipe mid-way through the 2 week menu from Bon Appetit’s Food Lover’s Cleanse and fell in love. High-protein, vegetarian, healthy: Poached Eggs with Tunisian Red Pepper Sauce & Chickpeas with Leeks, Spinach and Smoked Paprika. I have already prepared this meal 3 times, sometimes with the accompanying chickpeas, sometimes without, and it is a hit. The red pepper sauce is delicious, with many flavors layered upon one another, and the real kicker is the harissa paste. Also, I have tons of bell peppers in the freezer from the CSA so finding this recipe was a bonus for me.
Harissa Paste in tube
I had never purchased or used harissa until now, and I am intrigued. was very glad that this recipe pushed me out of my comfort zone and exposed me to this new ingredient – spicy, smoky, colorful. All good. Harissa comes in a tube or glass jar. And, WARNING! The level of spiciness can vary dramatically. I speak from experience. Have you used harissa?
The accompaniment, Chickpeas with Leeks, Spinach and Smoked Paprika, is also a great stand-alone dish. It takes about 10 minutes to prepare, is high-protein, vitamin-packed and flavorful. I enjoyed leftovers for lunch the next day and have prepared it for a quick meal without the Poached Eggs dish. I did make a few modifications to these recipes. Hubs is not a fan of poached eggs, so we substituted scrambled eggs and it worked. He seemed to enjoy his meal as much as I did, even without the richness of the poached egg’s yolk mixing with the spicy peppers. Hubs also seemed to enjoy the meal without the accompanying Chickpeas, as that remains a verboten food. Hubs was a good sport about the Cleanse overall, but apparently there are limits. See my modified recipe below.
Yield: 2 servings
Happy eating!
Who out there has tried a cleanse?
(I’ll bet a few of you nodded yes)
Who out there has THOUGHT about trying a cleanse?
(I bet many of you nodded yes and raised your hands to that question)
Green juice – not so appetizing
Cleansing has been an on and off topic in our household for at least a few years. We have fanatical friends who go on radical juice cleanses once a month (or so it seems) and family members who have committed to month-long “gentler” cleanses that include solid food and smoothies galore, not to mention that a raw foods & fresh juice retailer opened around the corner last year, taunting us on a daily basis to give starvation a shot for the low price of $60 per day. All participants claim to feel fabulous afterwards: clearer skin, leaner waist lines, higher energy levels. And despite all this, I’ve shied away from it. Until…
I read about Bon Appetit’s Food Lover’s Cleanse. I fell for it hook, line and sinker over the winter holidays as I overindulged meal after meal, and gluttonously flipped through the magazine in my limited time away from the table. The principles are simple: tons of fruit and vegetables, lots of whole grains and healthy fats, limited caffeine and alcohol, and only natural sweeteners. 3 square meals + 2 snacks per day. It’s a non-cleanser’s cleanse. Sounds pretty good for 2 weeks, right? Here’s the tough part: no dairy, no refined bread, no pasta. For 2 weeks. Ouch. But, still, a heck of a lot better than all liquid, all the time for a week, right? That green juice scares me.
Black Cod with Swiss Chard, Olives, and Lemon with Red Quinoa on the side (photo courtesy of Bon Appetit)
The magazine hooked me on Day #1’s recipe for Cod with Swiss Chard and Red Quinoa with Pistachios. Doesn’t sound like a painful meal to consume to me. The rest of the recipes were online, along with a shopping list to help plan your meals. Hubs and I discussed, and he agreed to commit. We decided to give it a whirl, and roughly followed the plan for about 2 weeks. I know, that sounds pretty loosy-goosy, but it was a start. I probably prepared about a dozen recipes altogether from the 14 day Cleanse (thank you author Sara Dickerman), several of which I have repeated (voluntarily) since, and a few that are now permanent additions to my repertoire. I’ll be writing about these new additions in upcoming posts.
Few other comments on the Cleanse: This is not a raid-your-pantry undertaking. Quite a bit of shopping was required, which I found to be a pro and con. The cleanse took me out of my comfort zone cooking-wise, incorporating quite a few new ingredients like harissa, red quinoa, hazelnuts (who buys hazelnuts on a regular basis?), but that was also fun. From a time investment, many of the dinner recipes were time-consuming. As a huge fan of the Minimalist, Mark Bittman, I like simple meals and some of the dinner recommendations were complex, and took a lot of prep. Hubs reminded me that the plan didn’t portend to be “fast and easy weeknight recipes,” but I still thought it worth mentioning.
In the meantime, a few words about the teaser recipe that got me hooked – Black Cod with Swiss Chard and Red Quinoa. Delicious! What a satisfying and flavorful meal – Hubs even tasted the swiss chard. I tried a few substitutes for black cod, since it is hard to come by – regular cod, sea bass. All worked fine. And the Red Quinoa with Pistachios recipe is just delicious. Red quinoa does taste different from your standard quinoa – it’s also more expensive and harder to find. This was my first dish with it and it’s worth a try. I’ll post the recipe below for you as well. Hubs loved it, too,
Yield: 4 servings, or as a side dish for 2 with leftovers
With the new year, I’ve been motivated to try a few new things: fermenting, healthy cleansing (read: no juices or starvation), and taking real food cooking to a new level. I’ll start on fermentation and why it’s piqued my interest.
Hubs and I started taking a liquid probiotic supplement every morning last fall. We both agreed that we felt better after taking it – helped to keep us balanced and the digestive tract functioning more smoothly. I became a fan and a repeat customer. Two issues: it’s hard to find and pricey. Well, what’s in this magic elixir but the extract of fermented real foods?
I found inspiration from many fellow bloggers in the real food community about fermenting:
And so I began last week. I started with lacto-fermentation, straining a container of whole milk plain yogurt and reserving the liquid that resulted (whey). Thanks to OhLardy! for the step-by-step instructions here. A fun by-product of this was ultra-rich homemade Greek yogurt, which I had for breakfast this week. With my homemade whey, I tried making sparkling orange juice – add a few tablespoons of whey to OJ for a probiotic rich drink. And then, I moved on to fermented coleslaw.
Red Cabbage Fermented Slaw
Red Cabbage Fermented Slaw
Roughly following the Fermenting Vegetables recipe from Feedmelikeyoumeanit, I made my first batch of slaw using salt as my fermenting agent. Super exciting. I used my Cuisinart to shred 1/2 head of purple cabbage and slice 1 whole yellow onion, grated 1 carrot by hand, and then used the equivalent of 1 sliced red bell pepper that I had “put up” over the summer from Wolfe Spring Farm‘s CSA. Felt like a regular homesteader, I did.
The recipe filled 2 – 1 pint Mason jars. After 2 days of rest, I carefully opened one jar to test it and tamp it down. As forewarned, open carefully! There are live cultures inside and pressure builds. The concoction bubbled up and spilled ruby-colored juice on the counter, but it needed a few more days to “cook.” I sealed the jars back up and left them alone. By day 5, we were ready. Shifted to the fridge, my fermented slaw was ready to go. Crunchy, salty, savory, I ate several forkfuls with my dinner last night and loved it. I can’t say that the digestive benefits were felt as immediately as with taking a supplement, but I knew I was eating something real and homemade.
Taste the goodness
Have you ever fermented?
That’s a declarative statement, recently transformed from a question.
Solid state
I found it hard to believe when I started reading about the health benefits of cooking with coconut oil. It was difficult to comprehend. Firstly, because I still have memories of slathering coconut oil on my body while suntanning in high school (speaking of difficult things to comprehend – did I really do that?), and secondly, isn’t it a highly processed/hydrogenated fat? Well, turns out I was wrong on both account. I doubt it was real coconut oil I was using back in the day – likely something scented with coconut oil – and coconut oil is really, really good for you. There are people who claim it does everything from reducing inflammation to reversing food allergies. I am not about to make any of those claims here, but I was excited to cook with it because it supposedly tastes great. Incidentally, if you do want to read more on the health benefits, check out Dr. Joseph Mercola’s thoughts on coconut oil’s health benefits from the Huffington Post and fellow food blogger Coconut Mama’s post.
I had read that coconut oil adds secondary flavors of sweetness and nuttiness when used in cooking. That’s what really intrigued me (more so than the health benefits), and it didn’t disappoint. I prepared a simple dish of roasted butternut squash and was super excited to crack open my jar of Trader Joe’s Coconut Oil. I was a little alarmed at first to see the coconut oil in a solid state, looking more like marshmallow fluff than a fat to roast my veggies with. But it scooped out easily and started softening within seconds, without any supplemental heating. And, oh, the scent. My kitchen and entire apartment smell heavenly – even luscious – while we await the snowstorm of the season. Here’s my simple recipe testing out the new wonder ingredient – coconut oil.
Butternut Squash Roasted in Coconut Oil, with Roasted Red Onion
Butternut Squash Roasted in Coconut Oil
![IMG_3314[1]](http://www.adventuresineatingandeverythingafter.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/IMG_33141.jpg "Butternut Squash Seeds")
Ready for the oven. Dab of coconut oil, salt and a sprinkle of cheyenne pepper
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Toss butternut squash and onion, if using, with coconut oil in 9X11 baking dish. Sprinkle salt and toss again. Place in oven and roast for 30 – 40 minutes, shaking pan every 10 minutes or so. Check for doneness – the squash should be tender and you should be able to easily spear it with a fork.
I used the onion because I actually had 1/2 an onion hanging around in my fridge. It is not essential, but added some nice color. Enjoy the tastes and aromas!
Healthy, homemade snack