Vegan Minestrone

Minestrone can be anything you want it to be.  It's super flexible, adapting to what's in season.  In the summer, your minestrone can be full of zucchini and fresh tomato and herbs, and in colder months minestrone can be a refuge from thick, pureed vegetable soups while still providing an outlet for the squash, potatoes and hearty greens of winter. 

Minestrone can easily be made vegetarian or vegan.  Many recipes call for pancetta or beef both, but a dab of extra oil and a bit of sundried tomato can fill in for the rich flavor and texture provided by the meat.  If you don't use butter and don't sprinkle the top with parmesan, it's a vegan soup.  If you leave out the pasta, it's gluten-free.  Minestrone is what you need it to be.

The recipe below is an amalgam of all the recipes out there, skewed towards what was in my fridge on Sunday.  Yes, this was superbowl minestrone.  It's vegan, and while I threw some pasta into mine at the last minute, it's portioned to result in a rich soup with plenty of chunky vegetables and beans and no need for pasta.  (Though, if you'd like to add pasta, just add more stock). 

Hot Tip: Fluffy Pizza

I really like the pizza I make at home.  We're pizza people, and having it available on-demand without delivery is fantastic.   I make big batches of dough in advance and divide them into pizza-sized baggies and then there's almost always dough around. 

Vaguely Italian Couscous with Artichokes and Dried Tomatoes

It's weird how little I talk about couscous.  Couscous means quick, easy, vegetarian dinner here.  So we were having one of those nights where you sit on the couch and go back and forth with, "I don't know, what do you want to eat?" And I listed off ingredients we had handy and Sous Chef Brian was like, "Couscous!  With artichokes! And spinach!"  All irritatingly enthusiastic, and I was like, "Ok, with sundried tomatoes?" And he was like, "Yeah!" All irritatingly enthusiastic.   And ten minutes later, we had dinner.  Couscous is what we do around here when we're dangerously close to saying, "There's nothing to eat."  Are there veg in the freezer?  Is there couscous?  There's dinner. 

Turn your regular pasta sauce into vodka sauce

There's a whole debate over whether vodka sauce is really a food, or if it's a 1980's food trend that refuses to die.   Chowhound has some decent conversation on the topic, and folks land on both the "vodka makes tomatoes taste better" side and the "this isn't really food" side.  More than 10 years ago, NYT said it was food, but that might have been too close to the 80s.  If you were to Google it, you'd find additional sources on the debate.

I think it's food.  But since I wasn't all that aware of what was food before the 80s, what do I know?  I make cream sauces without vodka, and they're good, but in my silly little opinion, vodka sauces get you to the magical place of pepperyness balanced with sweetness, and I don't think a sweet cream sauce with some pepper in it does that as well.  

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.

Pasta with Broccoli and White Wine Sauce

When it's cold out, I want food with rich sauces.  Two weeks ago I said I wanted lasagna or beef stew or something like that and ended up pretty happy with barbecue seitan.  This was like that.  I wanted mac and cheese or pasta with meat sauce or ... mmm ... white wine sauce.

I don't think you're going to dig through your pantry and pull out the same experimental spelt noodles I used, and I don't think you're going to have one inappropriate mushroom to add to the dish either.  But you can do this with what's in your fridge.  Let's focus on the wine sauce and leave the rest aside for now.

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.  

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.

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. 

Just Some Pizzas

Yeah, I make a lot of pizzas.  Some are winners, some are not.  In a week where I make pizza, I typically make two, because my dough makes two crusts.

Creamy Italian Dressing

Several months ago, when we were in the grocery store, Sous Chef Brian mentioned he wanted to get some salad dressing.  I fought him on it.  I make the salad dressing around here, damnit. Why would we want storebought?


Honestly, most of my "salads" are piles of lettuce with maybe one other vegetable, if it's handy and cut up, topped with straight balsamic vinegar.  Or I'll put in cheese and fruit and skip the dressing.  But for dinner, typically I'll put some sort of a half-hearted vinaigrette together.   Sous Chef Brian, however, prefers a little salad with his dressing.  So when we were in the store those months ago, I challenged his request for storebought dressing, and he had a reasonable answer:


"You don't make ranch dressing."

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.

Basic Tomato Sauce

A few weeks ago I got all those tomatoes, remember?  I had seeded and drained them and hidden them away in freezer bags.   So it was time to make sauce.  A while back I made my "winter sauce" from canned tomatoes, and this is what I do in the summer with real ones. 

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. 

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.

Three Cheese Garlic Fennel Pizza

I posted on Facebook that I should rename my blog Fajitas and Salad Dressing, because it feels like that's all I make, but I do make a lot of pizza too.


Speaking of Facebook, are you doing the Google+?  How's it working for you?  I have these high hopes that it can replace everything else on the interwebs.  Rather than follow folks and be followed on Twitter, I can connect with all of those people on G+, and also have my friends, colleagues and family circles, replacing Facebook.  But it's not there yet.  I'm connected to a number of food people on there, and it seems like we're collectively not sure how G+ fits in.   I never set up a Saturday's Mouse Facebook page, but that means that I post links on my regular personal page and get comments and input that other readers don't get to see.  Maybe G+ is the answer.


But what are we supposed to do with it, all have a hangout and knead dough on webcam together?


So for now, I post these things here, and link to them on Twitter, FB, G+... I'm trying to keep the Saturday's Mouse-related content fairly consistent between the three.


Anyhow, I make a lot of pizza, right?  Because pizza is good.   Start with dough.   Also preheat the oven.


I got fennel through the CSA, specifically for pizza.   I'm not into licorice, anise, fennel, etc, but when you saute fennel for just a bit it gets sweet and peppery and loses that love-it-or-hate it intense flavor.   The fennel bulbs were super small - weirdly flat too.

Grilled Pizza, again.

I contacted Maya, the winner of the bowl covers, and she said the following:

I can't even remember the last time I won a contest! My senior year in high school my name was picked first out of a hat to choose a passage from Hamlet to memorize. But I don't think that counts.

She selected this bold, fun print and they're on their way. 

Anyway, I said there'd be food. 

Sometimes you and your friends get together and make your own ricotta, make up some pesto, and grill up fantastic pizza, but you're not at home and you don't take photos of the process and then somebody jumps in and takes photos once it's over and tells you you should post it.  And you know, it's good pizza and people like to hear about good pizza, so you post it. 

Sometimes that happens.  And it's nighttime, and you're grilling and you're eating outside, so the photos look like this.

And sometimes one of your friends makes a salad that sounds mind-numbingly simple but might be life-changing. Chickpeas. Red Onion.  Tomato. Oil. Vinegar. Scapes. Nom.  

And sometimes eggplant gets that rich smoky flavor that makes it seem like it's not just a veg with a bit of tomato sauce and a blanket of mozzarella...like there's something way more complicated going on.

Hot tip on pesto.  

I used a ton of basil and a good amount of parmesan and pine nuts and olive oil... it was like two a half cups of basil, 1/3 cup oil, 1/3 cup pine nuts and 1/2 cup parm...one garlic clove, black pepper, salt...  and it was kind of lame. I mean it tasted good, but not super basily.  A little too salty.  Then I let it sit an hour and it got awesome.  Like fight over the leftovers awesome.  Dip your finger in the bowl, again, awesome.   So let your pesto develop. 

Garlic Scape Pesto Chicken Pasta

Yeah, the title of this one is just a bunch of food words strung together.  I could have used the word tomato too, but I thought that would be pushing it.

I made a ton of garlic scape pesto a few days ago.  I mixed it with red wine vinegar and a bit of oil and called it salad dressing for lunch, and then heated it up with my pasta and chicken and called it sauce for dinner.  

Garlic Scape Pesto Spread

Garlic scapes come around for this brief window in June before garlic is harvested.   When they're here, they seem to be everywhere, and then they vanish, not to be seen for another year.  I showed up an hour too late to the farm market two weeks ago to find one scape for sale.  Like one scallion.  One radish.  One sad scape.  Because when they're here, they're in demand.