Kale Salad with Strawberries and Candied Walnuts

I'm not over kale salad yet.   

I'm worried that kale season might be over, as it wasn't offered in my buying club this go-round and typically there are two producers offering kale.  


What will I do this winter?

French Onion Soup

I love this soup.   Who can beat cheese and onion in rich broth?


But like so many restaurant foods, when we started cooking at home a lot, the restaurant versions all seemed too salty.  I don't order it anymore because there is just too much risk of it tasting like a salt lick.  Soup's tricky that way.  But if I make it, I'm in control. 


There are a lot of onion soup recipes out there, with some variation.  Some folks insist you need to use yellow onions, or white, or Vidalia or red.  There's the white wine camp and the red wine camp and the cognac camp.  There's apple cider in some, and balsamic vinegar in others.  Some recipes include three hours of baking onions.   Some use chicken stock, some use beef stock and some use a mix. 


This is a fairly quick*, delicious soup.  It's hearty and cheesy and warm and rich and a bit sweet.  You could even make a vegetarian version with mushroom stock. 


Let's do this, shall we?

Seitan and Collards Quesadilla

Do you know what goes inside a quesadilla?  Whatever you want.   That's the beauty of it.  Ok, so really, it's whatever you want, plus cheese, but you wanted cheese, right?


It's a grilled cheese sandwich on a tortilla.  With stuff inside.  And it's great for using up what needs to be used.  Last time I posted a quesadilla, it was a clean-out-the-fridge meal.  This time it was just the collards that needed to be used.   And of course, we bought five pounds of seitan a while back, so we're all set on proteins.

Gorgonzola and Caramelized Onion Pizza

Yeah so I've been on the road.  At one point, my GPS said I was nowhere, which freaked me out.

Butternut Squash and Goat Cheese Dip

I had this butternut squash, and I didn't want to make soup, or lasagna, and it was sitting on the counter for a little while, in fact, it was from the CSA, so it was getting on in weeks.   It was time to roast it up.  I also needed to make some appetizery-things for an event.


Butternut squash is sweet, but it goes very well with savory things.  It likes to be with cheese.  It likes to be a little bit spicy.  I'm not one to make up sweet potatoes and top them with marshmallows, so while other people swear by adding brown sugar to winter squashes, I like to add onion-y flavors and saltiness and heat.  This is that, on a cracker.

Whole Wheat Ravioli with Roasted Vegetables and Ricotta

 

It's half whole wheat and half AP flour, stuffed with roasted vegetables and some ricotta.  There's just something about roasted veg, the nutty sweetness, that works so well with whole wheat pasta.  This isn't a recipe, per se, since you'll use whatever roasted veg you have on hand.  It's more of a story of how I made ravioli for the first time, and how you can do it too. 

Eggplant Parmesan Pizza

Typically on weeknights, I will either see Sous Chef Brian for a moment between work and his class, or speak to him on the phone for a minute.   I've said before, I'd almost rather not have that moment, because there's a whole lot of, "I paid that bill," "Did you call the vet," "Don't forget it's trash night," "Have you seen my good pants?" being fired off in both directions, and there just isn't enough time.  So, to add stress to that conversation, I'll often ask him what he wants for dinner.

Worse than that, I'll ask him if he's "had a chance to think about dinner," and the answer is always, "no."  Of course not. Who would?  He's looking for his good pants, and I'm digging my heels in and making it clear that class or not, trash night is his problem.  So I asked the other day and he said, "Is lasagna out of the question?"


How dare he?  I mean, really?  It's a weeknight.


I don't know why lasagna has such a bad rap.  Really, if you already have sauce made, and like me, you don't boil your noodles, lasagna takes 15 minutes to prepare your veg, 5 minutes to layer, and then it's all oven time.  Lasagna is not such a time suck.  But it has that feel to it.  "I made a lasagna," is often received with oohs and aahs.  Really folks, it's pasta with veg, but you made it in the oven.  


Anyhow.  He actually said, "Is lasagna out of the question, and do we have eggplant?"  These aren't words that are commonly linked in our home.  I've never made or eaten lasagna with eggplant.  But OMG did eggplant lasagna sound good.  And I have a freezer full of diced eggplant.  This was going to be spectacular.  On a weeknight, no less.


I got my eggplant defrosting, realized I had no sauce so started making my quick-ish winter sauce, and turned on some music from my youth.  It was on.  On a weeknight. 


Then I opened the cabinet and saw that I had four (4) lasagna noodles.  It was pretty obvious, I keep them in a big glass jar.  Lasagna was out of the question.*


The pizza place by my office puts anything on pizza.  It's amazing to me that I can point at a slice and say, "What's that?" and they'll say, "Ranch" all matter-of-fact and slightly irked that I can't recognize the white sauce, and I'll be like, "Ranch and what?" And they'll just say, "Fried chicken."  Oh yeah, that goes on pizza.  Sorry I didn't recognize that traditional classic.  These are the same folks that make cheeseburger pizza, taco pizza, and french fry pizza.  One thing I've seen, but not had, is eggplant parmesan pizza.  I had a pizza dough in the freezer.  Luckily, it was Sous Chef Brian's late class, and I had defrost time.  

Scalloped Potatoes with Kale and Sundried Tomatoes

I've had less time to spend in my kitchen lately, and it shows.  My fridge is still hooked up by extension cord, the eggs are still in the mini-fridge, and the dishes have lingered.  Not in the creepy, crusted-on food kind of way, it's more like there's an accumulation of plastic baggies to be washed out, and jars that need their labels removed for storage, and lunch bags that have really reached the end of their useful life without a good cleaning.  Just neglected kitchen and food related maintenance.  In the next two weeks I'll have even less time to do that, so I'll cook when I can, and show it to you when I can, and we'll be back on schedule soon enough, but I don't think I'm going to the grocery store before November. 


But we still eat.  I mentioned in my CSA post the other day that I had hasselback or accordion potatoes on my mind.   I guess it was just thin slices I was excited about, because a few nights ago I made scalloped potatoes.  Scalloped potatoes aren't something I make a lot of, but neither are potatoes in general.  I think I wrote about my unsubstantiated fear of them a few months back.  They just seemed so unnecessary, like that side of starch that was mandatory on our plates growing up.   


Several months ago, my friend Kristina shared a picture of her family's au gratin potatoes, and I was like "Whoa, must make," and she was all, "You sure? It's a pound of cheese," (Ok, I'm paraphrasing) and I was like, "Hell yes."  And I've been staring at that recipe since May and yeah, I'm never going to make it. 


But I don't know, something about potatoes that have been sliced super thin is appealing to me this week. So scalloped potatoes with sundried tomatoes and kale happened.   Why sundried tomatoes and kale?  Potatoes don't have a world of flavor on their own, so sundried tomatoes are my easy answer to a lot of flavor without adding anything terrible for us.  Kale, because I still had last week's farmshare kale on hand and it was withering and starting to scare the other produce. 


The first thing I did was steam up that kale.  

Same Dinner Different Day: Ricotta Quiche Muffins

Ricotta quiche muffins?  Seriously, I had a hard time figuring out a name for this that made even that much sense.  It's muffin shaped, and has a lot of ricotta, and it's sort of the texture of quiche.   You're welcome to call it whatever you want. 


A few days ago I made the eggplant rollatini for an event.  Only I misjudged in the doubling/tripling, and ended up with way more ricotta and swiss chard than I needed.  Nearly two cups more.   It's about a cup of ricotta, a quarter cup of mozzarella, a half cup of swiss chard and a bit of black pepper. 

Spinach and Pepperoni Calzones

My husband, who enjoys pizzas and pastas of all kinds, and believes that cheese is a food group, does not like calzones.  Calzones.  Pizza dough filled with ricotta.  And other stuff.  He does not like this.  So, I think I've had a calzone three times in the last more-than-a-decade.  Because you don't order a calzone on your own, and it's sad to watch someone force his way through a piece of calzone... it's not like it's lima beans, or beets.


So when I was planning out meals for the week, I was like, "Oh, and I'm gonna make calzones," and he was like, "Ok.  I guess."  


Seriously, cheese in dough gets an, "Ok, I guess." 


He thinks they're unwieldy.  Too much cheese in one spot, too much crust in the others.   Seriously. 


But we can make them at home, just as cheesy and delicious but more, um, wieldy, right?


I started with regular whole wheat pizza dough.

Thoughts on Strata and Doing it Right

*


I wasn't planning to tell you about Sunday dinner this week.  We just had some friends over for a casual meal, and the plan was to cook pretty simple foods and just have a nice time.  The half-vegan was originally planning on coming, and so the menu was set to include some foods she could eat.  We made up the buffalo seitan, and a kale salad, and I made some of David Lebovitz's blue cheese dressing,** and wanted to make another entree.  And I had all those farmshare eggs.  And I wanted to prep in advance as much as possible. 


Oh yeah, strata.   Sure, it's not for the half-vegan, but she didn't come anyway so we were able to use cheese.  So, like I said, I wanted to prep in advance.  Classic strata is made the night before, but last time I made strata I made it  a few hours in advance and it came out fine.  Classic strata is made with a ton of eggs, but last time I used just three eggs and two whites and it came out fine.  


So, I wasn't going to tell you about Sunday dinner this week, which totally confused MSNDG.  Midway through prep, she asked where the camera was.   She knows what cooking in my house usually looks like.  But I was all, "Oh, I've written about all this before, nothing special here."  

Black Bean Layer Dip

Everybody and their aunt/neighbor/colleague has some sort of a seven layer dip.  Really, how many different ways can you do salsa and canned refried beans?

"My secret is that I put the olives between the beans and the cheese."

"My secret is that I put the cheese between the olives and the beans."

I mean, really. 


And canned refried beans bug me.    I enjoy really good refried beans, the kind we get at the local taqueria, where you imagine someone's Abuela has been using the same recipe for decades, but in a can, that's a bit too cat-foody. 


Maybe it's the lard.  The idea that my canned veg are supplemented with lard doesn't work for me.   So I make layer dip with black beans.  I prefer them anyway, to pintos.  


This is sweeter, fresher, brighter, than what comes to mind when I think of seven layer dip. 


We're in one of those situations with terrible photographs of delicious foods.   We made this during the hurricane and everything felt rushed.  Food did not pose.  See the above, that's the "best" shot of it.  Yeah. 

Basil Parmesan Salad Dressing

 

Yes, the title is salad dressing and the photo is salad. Or pasta.  Pasta salad, really.  Because you never want to look directly at salad dressing.  It's like an eclipse.  Or just ugly food.  But it's delicious.  

It's like basil pesto, in dressing form.  You want that. Your salads want that. 

Chipotle Chicken Enchilada Lasagna

Enchiladasagna?


I just hate the word "casserole."  Casserole sounds like a can of cream of something soup with crumbled potato chips on top. Or corn flakes. And I intended to make enchiladas, really I did, but my corn tortillas did not hold up in the freezer, so after I defrosted them, I started rolling, they started crumbling and this was plan B.  And it was delicious, and just like an enchilada, except for the shape.  


Step one: make enchilada sauce.

Eggplant and Chard Rollatini in Basil Cream Sauce

Eggplant rollatini is among my favorite dishes.  Smoky eggplant stuffed with creamy ricotta in a flavorful sauce.   How could you go wrong?  It's also something I'm more likely to buy than make.  When I was in school on weekends (the aforementioned days when I'd come home at 4 or 5 and Sous Chef Brian was home all day and he'd tell me he forgot to eat), sometimes I'd pay a million dollars to get eggplant rollatini from this place a lot of people have heard of that I won't name.  And we'd bring it home and heat it up and it was the best dinner ever.  Then one time I got it and it was fuzzy.  Like, blue mold fuzzy.  So that ended that.  Mmm, hungry yet?  

This other time recently I went to this Italian place (I'm in a neighborhood with a lot of that) and ordered the eggplant rollatini and it was A. stuffed with mozzarella or some other gooey, flavorless cheese and B. full on drowned in a thick cream sauce.   I'm all for creamy and cheesy, those are two of my favorite things, but if it makes it so you can't taste the rest of your food, what's the point?  

So I got these eggplants, and I had that sauce and I had a plan.

Warm Polenta Caprese

It's August, and that means tomatoes, so the first word that comes to mind whenever I'm trying to pull together a simple dinner is caprese.   There are few food combinations that work as well as mozzarella, basil and tomato.   You can melt them all together in a sandwich.  You can toss them all together with pasta.  You can stick them on skewers and call them appetizers, or just stack them in slices and call it a side salad.  


I wanted to make a more substantial meal of it, and one easy answer for that is polenta.   I had beautiful basil that I got at the farm market because I have officially killed my fourth basil plant of the season. 

Roasted Corn Dip Stuffed Cucumbers

There's a special kind of pressure when someone says, "bring your favorite snack," because I'm probably not coming to your house with a jar of sweet pickles and some slices of muenster.   So last weekend, when this came up, I looked at the fridge and all I saw was cucumbers.  


But cucumbers are fun party food vehicles.  They're crudite you can stuff.  Dip and dipping thing in one. 


When I started thinking about posting this, I was surprised that I hadn't posted appetizers/party snacks/whatever before, but I guess I started this blog right after the last big party I had and even though for months Sous Chef Brian and I have been repeating, "Let's have a brunch event," it still hasn't happened.  Appetizers and party snacks are my favorite foods.  When it's too hot to cook, cheese, crackers, raw veg and some mustard and jam on a cutting board is dinner, and it's generally awesome.   Sometimes when I'm not inspired to pack lunch and there are no leftovers, that's what I pack.  I like small plates.  I like snacks.  I'd much rather hang by the hors d'ouvres at the cocktail hour than sit down to the real dinner.   This was actually one of the first conversations I had with the guy who said, "bring your favorite snack."


The first thing I did was hollow out some cucumbers.

Stuffed Poblano Peppers

I had these poblanos, because I went to Headhouse for one poblano (and other things) and they were going for next to nothing by the pint.  This is how I ended up with all those jalepenos that one time.  But poblanos are nothing to worry about.  They're a notch or two above a bell pepper, in terms of heat.  But what to do with them?  Luckily it rained.


Why is that lucky?  Because poblanos do well roasted or baked.  They get slightly sweet and tender and they just want to be cooked in the oven.   And finally, we had a cool night.   I mean right now, it's 72 degrees out.  Quick, make a lasagna!  Put on a sweater!  We'll be back to the 90s tomorrow.   

Caprese Pasta Salad

Dude, it's hot.   I mean, really.


But it's basil time, and tomato time.  Time to send Sous Chef Brian to three stores to find good mozzarella.  


So this is less, "whoa, here's a recipe for a thing I've never made," or "that's an innovative approach to..." and more, "oh yeah, that one had slipped my mind."


Because who can think?  It's hot. 


4 ounces pasta, boiled, rinsed, cooled.


15 basil leaves, rough chopped.


3/4 pint of cherry tomatoes, sliced.


1 tiny red onion, minced.


2 tablespoons balsamic


1 tablespoon olive oil.


Fresh mozzarella, little balls torn in half.


Pinch of salt.


Three pinches of fresh ground black pepper. 


30 minutes in the fridge. 


Dinner. And Lunch.

Green Beans with Feta and Lemon Vinaigrette

This is a nothing recipe.  That's the chipotle shredded beef from last week, and this is just a quick something to do to your beans before they hit the table.  The lemon heightens the crisp brightness of fresh beans and the feta, well, feta is delicious, and friendly with lemon.

I started with about two cups of fresh beans (flat roma snap beans), cut into one to one-and-a-half inch pieces.   I then steamed them quickly - just 3 or 4 minutes - keeping them crisp.