Friday: Taco Salad, sans quinoa

Okay, all you quinoa haters. You know who you are. Here's a non-quinoa taco salad just for you.

Seriously, we love this one. Grilled shrimp, roasted corn, fresh romaine - what's not to love?

Here's the recipe from a reader of Cooking Light. It's really good exactly as written -- although if you're making it for two instead of four, you may want to hold out some of the romaine so it doesn't get soggy with the dressing as leftovers.

Also -- do NOT skip the maple syrup. We very nearly did -- it sounded too weird. But seriously, it's so good. Just add it. Trust me.

Out of the box

I'm no fan of processed foods... but when I'm cooking for one, I'm a little more amenable to the idea. Especially with yummy options like Trader Joe's Salmon Belle Mer.

TJ's makes scrumptious little salmon roulades, stuffed with crab, whitefish, and cheese. They're in the freezer section for $2.99 each. They may look small, but trust me - one's plenty. They're really rich. (Also, the fat count is kind of appalling. But they're soooo good.)

I made one tonight with fresh asparagus (Food Lion has beautiful bundles on sale right now for a song) and one of my favorite sides-in-a-box, Near East's Parmesan Couscous. You can find it anywhere, and it goes with anything - I kid you not. (The Pine Nut variety is also really good.)

Total prep time: Almost none.

Salmon: 25 min to cook, plus :30 to oil a pan and get the fish out of the bag. NOTE: These are terrible in the microwave, so suck it up and turn the oven on. You'll be glad you did.

Asparagus: 2 minutes to clean, 5 minutes in the microwave (glass dish, covered in plastic wrap, with 1/4 cup water), then 2 minutes to sit and steam.

Couscous: 2 minutes to boil, 5 minutes to sit.

I put the whole thing together while talking to my Mom on the phone. Now that's the kind of dinner I can get behind.

Hot beans

I'm on my own this weekend. I find it hard to get too excited about cooking for just me, especially since I'll eat pretty much whatever I can catch. But one of my favorite solo weekend foods is Pindi Chane, or Chole.

It's a pretty simple dish, but there are a ton of variations on it. Essentially, it's chickpeas, onion, garlic, ginger, hot pepper, coriander, and garam masala, served over basmati rice. It's "peasant food, " like most of the Indian dishes I love best (including dall, aloo gobi, and paneer), but done right, it's quick, easy, and cheap, and really, really good.

Laura's Chole for non-Desis

2 cans chickpeas (aka garbanzos)
1 medium red onion, minced
1 serrano pepper, minced
3 tbsps veggie oil (think canola, not olive)
1 tsp garlic paste
1 tsp ginger paste
1 tsp coriander
1 tsp garam masala
1/2 tsp red (cayenne) pepper
1 cup water, give or take
Dash salt
Non-fat plain yogurt
Na'an


Chop the onion and serrano fine.
Put the oil in a medium saucepan. Add the garlic and ginger paste. Heat on the higher end of medium heat. (Purists say don't add the paste till the oil's hot, but that kicks up a hot oil splashback, and it doesn't taste any better. So take the easy way out here.) STIR.
After a minute to brown the paste, add the onion. Stir well.
Cook for seven minutes.
Push the onions aside and tilt the pan to get some oil in the clear.
Drop the serrano in the oil. Let it simmer for a minute.
Add the spices. Let them simmer for a minute, too, then stir into the onions.
Add the two cans of beans and 1 cup water. Stir well. Simmer for *at least* fifteen minutes.
Near the end, use a spoon to mash some beans against the side of the pan to thicken up the sauce.

Notes:

• If you don't have paste, you can chop fresh ginger and garlic instead. But paste is fast, cheap, and keeps a long time. Recommended.
• There are a lot of boxed spice mixes in your local Indian grocery for this particular dish. You can always throw some in if you have it.
• A whole clove or two adds a nice touch - but don't break a tooth on it later.
• I like to simmer this for at least a half-hour at the end, stirring frequently. When it starts looking low or sticking to the bottom, add a little more water.
• This is pretty spicy. If you like milder food, you may want to seed the serrano or leave it out entirely, or cut back on the cayenne.

Serve over basmati or jasmine rice, with plenty of nonfat plain yogurt (the Indian version of sour cream) to cut the burn.

I usually make it with na'an (yummy Indian bread you can buy at your local Indian grocery or Trader Joes) and a spinach side salad, and a crisp white wine.

Pistachio Tuna and The Grain

We had some leftover pistachios and some tuna in the freezer, so tonight's challenge was to find a way to make then work together. We *almost* succeeded.

I found this recipe - Pistachio-Crusted Tuna Steaks. We followed the recipe to the letter. It wasn't bad, but it could've been a lot better.

Recipe notes

• We can't figure out why this recipe even calls for pistachios. You can't taste them. So why bother? Bread crumbs will do just fine.
• The recipe tells you to dredge the tuna in the breadcrumb mix. You're going to need to give the mix something to stick to. You can always use egg, but we tried soy sauce and mirin -- not sticky enough to work. Next time, I'll add a dash of honey.
• Make sure you reduce the wine WAY down. Otherwise, it makes an already-not-that-interesting sauce watery. If I had to do this over again, I'd throw half a serrano into the saute pan with the wine, dill, and bay leaf, just to give it a little kick.

Overall, it's totally edible. It's just not all that interesting as written.

The Grains

The side dish was the redeeming factor tonight. Trader Joe's sells a couscous/orzo/quinoa/garbanzo mix called the "Harvest Grains Blend." I call it The Grain, a fact that never fails to amuse Maria, as there's really very little actual grain involved.

Whatever you call it, it's really good.

1. You bring 1 3/4 cups chicken stock to a boil, add 1 tbsp butter and 1 1/4 cup of The Grain.
2. Bring it back to a boil and simmer for ten minutes.
3. In the meantime, chop one-half of a pepper (we like red, but whatever) and a couple of green onions.
4. Add to the Grain just before serving, so it stays crunchy.

It's just about my favorite side - textured and interesting, especially with the added veggies - and it gets along with just about any entree.

Hooray Leftovers! and Easy Zucchini

It was Maria's staff meeting night, so we heated up some leftover BBQ'd chicken from Sunday, along with some box noodles (Pasta-Roni white cheddar and broccoli, my weakness, and not all that bad for you, either) and some fresh-off-the-stove dilled lemon zucchini.

The zucchini is a recipe I've had for years, and seriously, you cannot go wrong.

Two zucchini, sliced in spears
Two tbsp EVOO
One handful dried dill
Half a lemon, split

Zucchini, like beer, is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. It's plentiful, versatile, and SO easy to cook.

Warm the oil in a big saute pan
Throw in the zucchini spears.
Dust with half the dill. Stir.
Give it 2 minutes.
Flip the zucchini.
Dust with the rest of the dill.
Give it 2 more minutes, then turn off the heat and squeeze the lemon quarters over it. Serve ASAP.

Note - don't squeeze the lemon till you're just about ready to eat. It gets bitter if it's on the heat too long.

Pistachio Pesto?

I made this recipe - Penne with Pistachio Pesto and Cannellini - for dinner tonight. Highly recommended.

As I've said here, we try to go meatless 2-3 nights a week. But I don't like pasta recipes that don't involve some kind of protein. The white beans in this one fit the bill nicely, adding body and taking the flavor of pesto without too much conflict.

If you think pistachio pesto sounds odd, price pine nuts these days and then reconsider. I bought an 8 oz pack of roasted shelled pistachios and an 8 oz bag of pignoles at Trader Joe's today. The pine nuts were literally twice the price of the pistachios, but the pesto I made with the latter tasted pretty much the same. And I didn't even have to roast them first. WIN.

Recipe notes:

- You can buy the pistachios whole and shell them if you really want to. But if you're familiar with them, you already know the nut meat is really small, and you'll need a quarter cup, so you're going to be at it for a while. You can get them shelled and roasted, salted or not, for $3.99/bag at T-Joes. It's a buck or two well spent. (I went with unsalted, but this dish could probably handle salted without being overwhelmed.)

- The recipe calls for 6 cloves of garlic. Even as a garlic lover, I thought that was a bit much. But keep in mind you're going to saute it for 2 minutes, which helps take the edge off the garlic. I did 5 good sized cloves, which turned out just about right for a garlic lover. You may want to go a little lower.

- You're going to need more EVOO than the 2 tbsp the recipe calls for. I know "light" food magazines do their best to cut calories and fat content, but sorry -- that's just not enough oil to keep the pesto from burning onto the bottom of the saute pan. Add a splash more and assuage your guilt by telling yourself it's "good fat," which it is.

- I served it with a parmesan-garlic baguette and a lightly-oaked chardonnay, which worked very nicely with the arugula.

Try it - it's good stuff.

Hey, I'm back...with a frittata

I had every intention of keeping this up on a daily basis, but last week was the last week of the legislative session - days of working till 3am, culminating in a 19-hour session that wrapped up just before dawn Saturday.

Much as I love to write about food, you gotta sleep sometime. Hence the hiatus.

But I'm happy to report that the Hons have now gone back to whence they came. Which means I can write about food more, and that makes me happy.

For brunch today, Maria surprised me with a fabulous on-the-fly frittata.

If you're not familiar with frittata, it's Italian for "fried" - basically, it's an egg casserole to which you add whatever you've got laying around that doesn't clash with eggs. (Garlic, for example, is not recommended.) You can bake it or make it on the stove-top. Baking takes out more of the water, but stove-top is faster.

I have a few recipes for frittata, but it really doesn't require too much planning, as today's brunch proves.

Maria's Garden Frittata

4 eggs
1/4 cup milk
2 small shallots, finely chopped
1 small zucchini, diced
1 tomato, diced
1/4 cup basil, loosely packed, roughly chopped
2 Tbsp white wine
1 tbsp butter, unsalted
1/2 cup cheddar

*Note - get your chopping and mixing done before you start.

Scramble the eggs in a bowl with the milk.
Melt the butter in a big saute pan over medium-high heat.
Saute the shallots for about 3 minutes.
Add the zucchini - 2-3 min or till soft
Add the tomato and just warm it up.
Add the wine and let it cook off for a a minute.
Add the eggs-and-milk mixture to the pan.
Sprinkle the basil on top.
Lower the heat to medium, cover it, and let it cook till it starts to set around the edges.
Add shredded cheddar, replace lid, and let it cook a couple more minutes.
When the cheese is melted and the middle of the pan doesn't jiggle any more, you're done.

Serve with toasted english muffins and margarine/butter.

*Note - this is a really delicate taste, so be careful what you add. We used some lemon basil along with sweet (regular) basil. Not recommended. Also, go easy on the cheese - it can easily dominate, and you won't taste the veggies at all. You can throw a *little* black pepper in during cooking, but go light on the salt. And do NOT add garlic. Or vanilla. (Maria tried that once. Ick.)

Black bean, corn, and avocado salad on quinoa

I normally wouldn't look for taste sensations on the back of a quinoa box. Yes, okay, it's a protein-high grain that's really good for you. But that's exactly what it tastes like. I always say I want to eat more quinoa and less meat, but it's hard to get excited about a main course of highly nutritious wallpaper paste. That's a level of virtue I lack.

But we did find this really good recipe on the back of a box of red quinoa from Trader Joes.

The recipe:
1 cup red quinoa, cooked with 2 cups chicken or veggie broth (that's the bed for the salad)
1 15-oz can of black beans, drained and rinsed
2 cups roasted corn kernels (about 2 good-sized ears - more on that below)
1 avocado, cut into 1/2 inch pieces
1 pint grape tomatoes
1/2 cup red onion, sliced
3/4 cup cilantro salad dressing
1/2 bunch cilantro, chopped
1/4 cup olive oil
zest of one lime
salt and pepper

Changes we make:
We use 1.5 - 2 avocados instead of 1.
Skip the cilantro dressing, and substitute the juice of the lime along with the zest.


Roasted corn kernels

This step is SO worth the trouble. Roasted corn is sweeter, better, and doesn't add as much water to the recipe as canned or frozen or boiled corn.

You can roast corn a lot of ways - you can soak the whole ears with husks in water for 30 min and then grill on high, which is essentially steaming the corn in its shuck. Very tender, but takes forever. Or you can strip it bare, paint with olive oil, and then commit to standing over it to turn it every thirty seconds - it burns fast.

We take the middle road: Shuck the ears, paint with EVOO, and then wrap them tightly in foil. Grill on medium for about 15 minutes, turning a quarter every 3 min or so. They won't be as blackened as if you'd grilled them bare, but they won't be as likely to burn, either. After 15 minutes, strip off the foil and grill bare for 3-5 more minutes, bumping up the heat a bit and turning every minute or so. When you start seeing a little black on the ears, they're done.

Let them cool, then slice off the kernels.

Meantime, get the quinoa going. which takes about 20 minutes start to finish, and start chopping. Mix the corn kernels, the beans, and everything else BUT the quinoa in a big bowl. Toss to coat with the oil.

Put the quinoa down as a bed on the plate, add the salad on top, and mix. Salt and pepper on the plate (the quinoa brings some salt, too, especially if you used salty broth.) You'll never notice the healthy stuff.

Fourth of July: Rosemary Potato Salad

We were fortunate enough to be invited to a cook-out with our friends Don and Nancy, no mean overworked foodies themselves. Don is the master of the marinade, and did some really great slow-cooked pork chops with a smoky rub.

When we asked what we could bring, they said a "starch." So after reviewing a few options, we settled on this recipe - a"Danish potato salad" (whatever that means) from Epicurious.

We made a few changes, though. First, we nixed the capers. You either love them or hate them, and we weren't sure how the rest of the guests at the barbecue would feel about them, so a caper-less version seemed safer.

But one thing capers contribute to a recipe is salt. So to replace it, Maria added 8 oz of bacon, under the logic that there isn't much that isn't better for having a half-pound of bacon added to it.

Other changes: per the advice in the reviews, she sliced the potatoes before cooking, not after (it goes much faster that way). We added 5 whole green onions, not just the tops. And we skipped the parsley just because we were running short on time.

It turned out well, I think. Personally, I'm of a fan of creamy potato salad, so I was a little skeptical, and I don't think I can honestly say this recipe converted me. But it was good stuff, went fast, and worked really well with grilled pork.

Sat: Pesto

The basil was just too big and bushy to ignore today, so it was time for a haircut, aka pesto.

Easy Pesto

This is as simple as it gets, but easily customizable. 3, 3, 1/3, 1/3 and 1/3, in alphabetical order - basil, garlic, nuts, oil, parmesan

3 cups basil leaves, rinsed and tightly packed
3 cloves garlic, roughly chopped (4 if they're small)
1/3 cup pine nuts, lightly toasted (low-med heat, no oil, 15 minutes)
1/3 cup olive oil
1/3 parmesan, shredded
salt and pepper to taste

Blend the basil and garlic till it's almost (but not quite) a paste
Add the nuts, then the oil, and last the parmesan, blending in short bursts.
Taste, then salt and pepper.

We make it with penne or farfalle, but any sturdy pasta will do.

I also like to add a chicken breast per person - cut into bite-sized pieces and sauteed with one clove garlic, olive oil, and a hearty splash of white wine. Brown well and mix into pan with pesto and pasta before serving.

Top with more shredded parmesan, and serve with good bread, salad, and a chardonnay.

Catching up - Wed/Thurs

Wed night

Salmon steaks

We took the easy route -- wild caught Alaskan salmon from Trader Joe's, frozen skinless fillets, 5.99/lb.

I have a long list of good but complicated ways to make salmon on the grill. But it was a late night for us both, so we went with a simpler prep.

1 1/2 tbsp olive oil
1 large garlic clove, minced
1 tbsp fresh dill (or 1 tsp dried)
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp ground black pepper
1/4 tsp lemon zest, plus wedges for serving

Mix it all together, and rub into fillets. Grill in a fish basket (I learned this the hard way - no skin means your fillets will disintegrate on the grill) for maybe 2-3 minutes a side. They're done when you can pull off flakes with a fork without trying too hard.

Lemon Orzo

We made a recipe that was a total waste of time, one I won't compound by documenting it here. Let's just say that "orzo" is a kind of rice-shaped pasta with all the presence of beige wallpaper.

We made it because it sounded like a nice light side for fish. If by "light" you mean "tasteless," it was a huge success. Any future orzo recipe I make will damn well include more compelling additions than lemon juice or green onion. FAIL.

We had it with a nice herb salad, which was way better than the orzo.


Thurs night

Chipotle chicken hoagies

We found this recipe in Cooking Light, and I gotta say, it's really good. But do NOT make the mistake we made.

The recipe centers on chipotles in adobo. Maria had never had adobo before. After tasting it, she understandably fell in love with it. But less understandably, she decided to TRIPLE the amount of pepper and adobo in the recipe.

This is not recommended, even for people like us who like spicier food than most people do. Adding some sour cream on top on the mixture helped cut the burn a little, but it also made the sandwich fall apart.

Learn from our mistake. : ) But make this recipe anyway. It's really easy and so, so good.

Fri: Sorry I'm so behind...

Let's just say I underestimated the work required to maintain two blogs, run a national organization, and also report on the last two weeks of legislative session. Sue me. ;)

Tonight was one of my favorite meals - steak, white pepper pilaf, and grilled asparagus. In terms of effort vs. reward, it really doesn't get much easier.

Rare Steak

(Food Lion strip. consistently the best steak I've had here in NC)
Sprinkle lightly with salt, pepper, and garlic powder. Stab with fork to push the spices inside the beef.
Warm up grill on high for 3-5 minutes.
Grill steak on high for 2-3 minutes per side.

*Tip - if you push on the steak on the grill with your finger and it doesn't spring back at all, it's still raw. If it springs back kind of slowly, it's rare. If it pops right back up, it's medium. And if you can't make a dent in it with your finger, it's well-done - though why anyone would do that to a decent steak is beyond me.

Grilled Asparagus

Get a nice bunch - skinny, with purple on the tips and ends that aren't desiccated.
Rinse bunch. Snap off bottoms of stems wherever they naturally snap - that's the fibrous stuff you don't want to eat anyway.
Get a big piece of foil. spread out the asparagus a little, drizzle with a LITTLE olive oil, and add some sea salt. (You can also use an oil-based Italian dressing, but why would you, really?)
Fold up the foil in a packet that won't drip oil into your grill. (Wider is better for grilling.)
Start it about 5 minutes before the steak. I usually start it on the rack closest to the heat for a few minutes, then move it to the top shelf when I put the steak on, and take it all off the heat at the same time. (If the asparagus is thick, you may need to start it even earlier.)


White pepper pilaf

1 sm-med yellow onion, finely diced
3-4 cloves garlic, minced
3 tbsp butter (unsalted)
1 1/4 cup rice (we do basmati)
2 1/2 cups chicken bouillon, broth. stock, whatever
1/2 -1 tsp ground white pepper (start low - you can't take it out)

Melt the butter and saute the onion in it till it's translucent.
Add the garlic and saute till it's golden.
Add the rice. Stir it into the butter mixture to coat it.
Add the pepper.
Add the bouillion.
Bring to boil, then cover and simmer for 20 minutes, checking and stirring periodically.