Pasta Tutto Giardino

Confession: I have a slight obsession with the cream-sauce-plus-tomatoes combination.  I am likewise fixated on fiber-consumption (don’t knock it till you try it, kids!).  So you can imagine my delight when I found this recipe in the Moosewood Cookbook, which makes all my creamy-acidic-fibery dreams come true.

Of course, this sort of description may not strike you as appetizing.  If I were in a grouchier mood, I’d suggest that this is a personal problem that you should work on.  But.  Since I aim to please, let me say this instead: this pasta combines the richness of a white-wine cream sauce with the tangy bursts of flavor characteristic of tomatoes, carrots, herbs and garlic, plus the rich nuttiness of whole wheat pasta.  Now that everyone’s on board, let’s proceed.

This takes a few different saucepans to make, so be warned.  (It turns out that making a roux in a pot filled with diced vegetables is not a good idea.)  The plus side  is that you can make it with whatever veggies you have on hand (it ain’t ‘Tutto Giardino’ for nothing, guys).  So here’s what I did:

First, saute the following in the biggest saucepan you have (later we’re going to toss the pasta in there, and believe me, you need some room):

• 1 onion, diced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 carrot, diced
• 1 red or green bell pepper (or a combination thereof), diced
• Other veggies of your choosing (Moosewood suggests mushrooms, which are great in this.)

Season it (with salt and pepper, or if you’re me, creole seasoning)!  After the onions are translucent, add:

• 1-2 cups diced tomato (and, if you have it,  zucchini)
• 2/3 cup white wine
• 1 tsp dry basil
• 1 tsp dry majoram
• pinch of oregano (you can use fresh herbs for each of these, just increase the quantities to 1 Tbsp.)

Cover it, and in another pot, boil your wheat (or white, if you must) pasta.  While that’s going, start your roux in a separate saucepan.  For the roux:

• melt 3 Tbsp. butter
• Whisk in 1/4 cup flour
• Slowly add 1 1/2 cups milk, whisking constantly.
• Season it!

Once the roux is tasting good, pour it into the veggie mixture, plus about 1 cup frozen green peas and allow this to hang out for a minute or two.   Then add the pasta and toss.  Finally, add a few squirts of lemon juice to up the tang. (Yes, I said “up the tang.”)

Now.  Who says fiber isn’t delicious?

Stuffed Peppers and Hummus

Well, ever since we discovered the awesomeness that is the Lebanese Vegetarian Cookbook, we’ve been Lebanese-stuffed-vegetable-making-fiends.  Or something to that effect.  Josh actually did most of the work here; I was primarily responsible for the hummus–so, I’ll tell you a little bit about what I did there, and then simply relate the recipe for the peppers as it’s presented in the book.

I make hummus much the same way I make anything: putting stuff together and tasting it until it seems right.  So, less measuring than guessing…but you know how it is.  Fortunately, the whole thing is pretty simple: combine the following ingredients in a food processor until smooth:

• 1 can of cooked chick-peas
• 2 (ish) cloves of garlic
• tahini paste (I start with a little more than a tablespoon)
• lemon juice (probably about 1/4 cup)
• pinch of salt
• cayenne pepper (somewhere between 1/4 and 1/8 tsp)

I also usually add a little water in the beginning, which helps to get things moving.  Once these are combined, I taste it, and decide what it needs–I usually like a strong tahini flavor in my hummus, but you might like more lemon juice.  And the beauty of this, of course, is that you could add whatever flavors you liked (roasted garlic or roasted red pepper would be great).  Or you could bypass the whole thing and just buy your hummus in the store (and sometimes that does seem more viable, given the price of tahini)–but I’d encourage trying to make it at home because 1) frankly, it’s better than most of the stuff you’ll get in the store and 2) once you factor in the servings of hummus you can get out of a single jar of tahini and a few cans of chickpeas, it’s actually more cost-effective.

But enough of my preaching.

Here’s what we Josh did with the peppers: Cut the tops off of 4 green peppers (you could use red or yellow as well, of course, but green is cheaper), remove the seeds and rinse.  In a bowl, mix together the following:

• 1 cup uncooked white rice
• 1 large tomato, diced
• 1 small white or yellow onion, finely chopped
• 1/4 cup lemon juice
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/4 tsp. cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp. allspice
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1/3 cup olive oil

When combined, divide the mixture into 4 servings, filling each pepper.  Place the 4 filled peppers into a large pot (in which they can stand up without being overcrowded).  Mix together 1 cup tomato sauce and 1/2 cup water, and pour over the peppers.  Cook for 35 minutes on medium low heat, adding a little water if necessary to keep some liquid in the pot.

When the rice is tender, the peppers are done.  To serve, we removed them (carefully!  use tongs, if you have them) from the pot and topped them with a bit of tzatziki (a lovely yogurt and cucumber sauce that’s great with lemony-garlicky stuff), plus the hummus and some pita bread on the side.  So, it was a garlic-fest–the best kind of fest, incidentally–full of flavor, with a great balance of acidity from the lemon and tomatoes, and creaminess from the tahini and tzatziki.

BONUS: This is super cheap to make, and makes a lot of food.

DOUBLE BONUS: If you want it to be vegan, just leave off the tzatziki.

TRIPLE BONUS: It’s delicious.  What more do you want?

Cabbage Rolls

When Josh was a kid, his great-grandmother used to make traditional Lebanese food for family gatherings.  After she died, the old-style food was mostly replaced with new American fare, and so Josh never learned to replicate Lebanese cooking on his own–a fact which he has bemoaned as long as I’ve known him, especially with regard to his great-grandma’s famous cabbage rolls.  Now, this particular choice always seemed a bit odd to me: when I was a kid, the word “cabbage” itself was enough to send me running for the hills, so it was almost inconceivable to me that a child would not only have eaten cabbage rolls, but loved and remembered them clearly enough to want to replicate them as an adult.  But now, having finally tried them for myself…well, let’s just say that it makes a lot more sense.

Our cabbage roll breakthrough happened with (surprise, surprise) a new Lebanese Cookbook, which we also got for Christmas this year.  It turns out that making cabbage rolls is a pretty complicated and time-consuming process, so most of what I’ll recount for you here comes straight from the book.

The first thing to do is to make the filling, which is primarily a rice mixture.  In a bowl, we combined the following:

• 1 cup rice
• 2 cups chopped parsley
• 1/2 cup chopped mint
• 4 cloves minced garlic
• 1 medium white onion, finely chopped
• 1/2 cup lemon juice
• 2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp allspice
• 1/2 cup olive oil

While that was happening, we put a big pot of water on to boil, in order to commence the most difficult part of the process: unwrapping the head of cabbage with the leaves intact.  Basically, what this involves is blanching the whole head of cabbage in a giant pot of boiling water, taking it out, and removing the outermost leaves.  Once you get these off, you put the head of cabbage back into the boiling water (while trying not to burn yourself) in order to soften the next leaves.  It’s a huge pain in the butt, takes forever, and involves–at least, if you’re like us and have no idea what you’re doing–a bit of flesh-scorching.  If you know of an easier way, I’d love to hear about it.

Anyway, once we got individual leaves off the cabbage head, we sliced the leaves in half, taking out the ribs–to be used later.  Into each half-cabbage leaf, we rolled about 1-2 teaspoons of the filling.  And then it was time to put them all into the pot.

Into the bottom of the pot, we put all of the reserved cabbage ribs, to protect the rolls from direct heat.  We then arranged to stuffed, rolled leaves in layered rows on top, sprinkling sliced garlic between each layer (I never said this was light on garlic, people!).

After everything was neatly (and tightly) arranged, it was time to add the cooking liquid (the rice is uncooked, remember?).  Over the rolls, we poured:

• 1/2 cup tomato puree mixed with 1 cup water
• enough water to cover the rolls
• 1 tsp salt

Of course, to make sure that everything holds together in the water, we needed some way to keep the leaves compressed.  Since we’d not thought ahead enough to realize that we should have used a pot big enough to accommodate a heavy plate on top of the leaves, we used a round Pyrex baking dish that fit inside just enough to keep the leaves snug.  With the dish in place, we brought the whole thing to a boil and then reduced it to a simmer for 20 minutes.

Finally, we mixed together

• 1/2 cup lemon juice and
• 1 1/2 tsp mint

and poured this over the top before cooking for another 5 minutes.  After the cooking time was complete, we set the whole thing aside to cool for about half an hour.

Involved, right?  Clearly this is not a weeknight meal.  I think it’s technically a side dish, but when you’ve put so much effort into something, eating it on its own is pretty satisfying as well.  We ate ours with a bit of tzatziki and crusty bread…and seriously?  They were amazing.  A-mazing.  The combination of lemon and mint and garlic is incredibly satisfying: super flavorful without being overpowering, if you can believe it.  They’re quite similar to the stuffed grape leaves you might get at a Greek restaurant, but–in my opinion–with a better texture, both because of the use of cabbage (which isn’t as stringy or fibrous) and because of the sharp reduction in oil content, which tends to be the overwhelming characteristic of grape leaves, especially if you buy them in the store.  Additionally, this recipe makes so many cabbage rolls that you can have them for several days (they keep well if you stack them in a plastic container in the fridge), so it (sort of) makes up for all the time spent.

And truthfully, I’d make them again tomorrow if I (which is to say, Josh, since he was the one taking burns for the team) could figure out a better way to harvest the cabbage leaves.  If only we could ask Great-grandma M.  From the stories Josh tells, she wouldn’t suffer fools–or scalding cabbage water–gladly.

Vegetarian Soul Dinner

I mentioned in an earlier post that we got several new and exciting cookbooks for Christmas–this meal is one of the first we made using our favorite of the bunch, Bryant Terry’s Vegan Soul Kitchen.  It’s full of really wonderful recipes (complete with soul soundtrack suggestions), which we tend to adapt to make them vegetarian, rather than strictly vegan.  This is partially because we don’t tend to keep things like rice milk on hand, and partially because we’ve never really gotten over our love of butter.

This particular night, we made our own version of Terry’s cumin-cayenne mashed potatoes, greens with lemon-tahini dressing, and rosemary roasted tofu.

I’ll start with the tofu, since it was the simplest.  We cut a package of tofu into large-ish bite size pieces–though, if I were doing this again, I’d recommend going with something a bit larger, since they got pretty crunchy–and gently tossed them in a mixture of olive oil, salt, paprika and rosemary.  We then roasted the tofu in a 450 degree oven for about half an hour.  When they came out, they were golden brown (thanks, Paprika!), with a nice texture and flavor.  Simple, but really good.

We served the tofu over the potatoes, which have quickly become one of my favorite things to make.  While I’m boiling the potatoes (I like yellow or red ones for this), I caramelize an entire yellow or Vidalia onion in olive oil mixed with a bit of salt, a couple of tablespoons of cumin and a little cayenne pepper.  When the potatoes are done, I mash them together with the onion mixture, plus butter and milk (sorry, Bryant Terry and vegans!), and a bit of black pepper for good measure.  The results are seriously amazing.  Your potatoes shall be revolutionized.

The greens we made were a combination of kale and spinach, though the recipe called for Swiss chard.  We started by sauteeing a sliced shallot in butter, then added the greens (minus the stalks) and cooked them for a few minutes.  While this was happening, we made a dressing by mixing tahini with lemon juice, salt, water, minced garlic and balsamic vinegar.  We finished the whole thing by tossing the warm greens in the dressing.  And when we were done?  Well, I really can’t say enough about the virtues of these greens.  Look, I know what you’re thinking:

“That woman is crazy if she thinks I’m putting hummus ingredients on my greens.”

Look, I get it.  I was skeptical too.  In fact, my actual words were, “this is going to taste like we dunked our greens in hummus, and then threw vinegar on them.”  But let me tell you: this is not a bad thing.  I am not going to sit here and claim that the greens didn’t bear a striking taste resemblance to hummus.  Here’s what I will say, though–what if they did? Would that be so bad?  Free your mind, people.  Let your greens be whoever they want to be.  We’ve been letting them be pork-y for years, and lord knows collards don’t taste like fatback in the wild.  Imagine a world in which kale can taste like hummus, tofu can be crunchy and satisfying, and mashed potatoes are earthy, spicy and sweet all at once.

Bryant Terry has seen that world.  I have glimpsed it.  And it is good.

Greek-ish Filled Pasta

And finally, we’re back!  After a week or so of searching and overlooking, I managed to find the rogue camera cable and upload a whole backlog of food photos.  So, now there’s catch-up blogging to do.  I can sense your excitement.

After Josh and I returned from our travels (which, toward the end, got very icy and treacherous), we weren’t in much of a mood to do anything more involved than watching TV and boiling water for a few days–and thus, this simple pasta was born.  The pasta itself is store-bought, with a cheese and vegetable filling.  Bored of the usual marinara, I decided to liven it up with a quick lemon-garlic cream sauce.  I sauteed garlic in some butter, then added a little flour to make a light roux.  After that browned just a bit, I slowly added some milk, salt and pepper, thyme and lemon juice.   To finish the sauce, I tossed in some halved grape tomatoes and roughly chopped kalamata olives–and then tossed the whole thing gently with the cooked pasta.

If I were going to make it more authentically Greek, I’d probably skip the roux and milk, and just make a light sauce of olive oil, garlic, lemon and thyme–but there was something pretty satisfying about the texture of this one.  Plus, brightness of the lemon juice has a way of making the cream sauce taste a bit lighter than it actually is, which is a nice (or not-so-nice, depending on your point of view!) trick.  Either way, it was a tasty combination, and–more importantly at the time–simple.

Lentil Pilaf / Dirty Rice

Sometimes you just don’t know what to cook.  There’s an odd combination of foods in the house, or you really just don’t feel like pasta again, or there’s something you could make, but it would just take too long…and in these cases, if you’re anything like me, you just start throwing things together and hope it turns out well.  Last night was one of those nights, and though I had a few ideas brewing, I had no idea how they’d come together.  Fortunately, what came of my confused kitchen was this:

My primary inspiration for this dish was the Lentils and Rice served at a place called Mediterranean Cuisine in Nashville, which are beyond delicious.  I wanted to cook the lentils and rice together in a garlicky, lemony broth, but this posed something of a challenge, given their different cooking times.  Making things slightly more complicated was the fact that Josh wanted to incorporate some TVP for extra protein, which immediately made me think of one of my old childhood-in-the-South favorites, Dirty Rice.  Fortunately, both Dirty Rice and Lebanese Lentils-and-Rice are variations on a pilaf, so I figured there would be some way to bring the two together.

After some seat-of-my-pants calculations about water content and cooking times, I sauteed some onion and carrots (which I’d chopped up before I decided what to make and included just for good measure, despite the fact that they’re not typically found in either South Louisianian or Lebanese cuisine)  in a bit of oil, along with a hefty amount of garlic.  I then added the lentils, a little cumin, a pinch of cinnamon and a good amount of salt, plus an equal ratio of water to lentils.  I let this boil on its own for about ten or fifteen minutes before adding a cup of rice, another two cups of water, and the juice of half a lemon.  While letting this do its covered simmering thing, I got going on the TVP.  After rehydrating it with an equal amount of water that had been boiled with a whole garlic clove, I added salt and more lemon juice, plus a bit of pepper.

While we waited for the rice to finish cooking, Josh made a quick flatbread using our pizza stone–and buttermilk!–which turned out really well.  Once the rice was done, I added the TVP to the lentil mixture and stirred until it became a Lebanese-Vegetarian-Dirty-Rice feast.  I was actually very pleased with the way it turned out: filling and garlicky without being too overwhelming.

That said, I was a little sad not to have any hummus.