Fall is officially upon us, and around here the leaves are starting to change to some brilliant yellows and oranges. Root vegetables are a wonderful dinnertime staple in the fall. There's something sort of cozy about cooking with them.
I recently played around a bit with a recipe for roasted sweet potatoes that, originally, calls for honey and rosemary. I had no rosemary on hand, and my honey had crystallized. So I needed to be a little creative.
Enter maple syrup and Italian seasoning.
This recipe is so simple, you can prepare it in less than ten minutes.
Wow, I did not mean to go more than two whole months without posting any new recipes! But school's finally out for summer, and I have a few things up my sleeve to share.
It's still a little early in my neck of the woods for most of our local produce to make an appearance, but one vegetable that has a recurring role at my dinner table is zucchini. There are many, many ways to prepare this veggie, but my favorite (and one of the few ways my husband will willingly eat it), is a sort of Italian-style stew with onions and tomatoes. My mom used to make this all the time when I was a kid, and for some reason we referred to it as "fixed" zucchini. Not necessarily because other ways of cooking zucchini were "broken", of course, but I think because it was "fixed up" with herbs and such.
This family recipe is very easy and can be adjusted for any number of servings. If you serve it with some nice crusty bread, it can stand in as a light main course, perhaps for lunch. It also pairs well with grilled chicken as a side dish. I still recommend crusty bread to sop up all the juices.
I discovered the awesomeness of quinoa several months ago, after hemming and hawing for a while about whether or not it was worth trying. I'm so glad I did. By itself, quinoa is rather unassuming. I think it has a bit of a nutty flavor, but it's not particularly strong. Quinoa is a type of grain that's naturally gluten-free, so this is excellent for people with gluten intolerance or who are trying to reduce their intake of gluten.
In my TurboFire recipe book, one of the recipes calls for a side of quinoa and black beans. I decided to alter the recipe for the side dish just a little, and I think it works well. It's great with fish.
It's ridiculously easy, and there are probably a dozen ways you could change even this basic recipe up to suit your individual tastes.
I'm really starting to think I was born in the wrong part of the country. I'm just in love with my copy of The Savannah Cookbook. Southern food, in general, just seems to make me happy.
When my husband and I went to Georgia during spring break, I ate okra for the first time. It happened to be fried and had this really tangy mustard sauce to dip it in, but I enjoyed it, much to my own surprise. Okra isn't particularly prevalent in my corner of the U.S., but this summer, one of the vendors at our local farmer's market had some for sale.
It was adorable and delightful, and I made this delicious skillet okra gumbo with it.
Now, you can buy okra at the grocery store, but it's not always a given and probably isn't nearly as good as what you'd buy at the farmer's market (or anywhere in the South, for that matter). But I would imagine that, if you're like me, you're willing to do with what you have available.
Served over steamed rice, this recipe is enough to serve as a main course for up to six people. It can also be used as a side dish without the rice, or if you need to stretch it over more than six plates.
There are times when I have leftover ingredients and need to play around in the kitchen to use them up. A while back, I had about half a bag of baby spinach and perhaps half a cup of crumbled blue cheese, and this is what I came up with.
It's very quick to throw together, and the amounts are adjustable depending on how many people you're serving. Here's how I made it for two people.
Ah, lemon sponge! I never know if I should classify this as a dessert or a side dish. It's a type of gelatin salad, the likes of which are usually served alongside a main course item. But it's sweet enough for a light dessert. It's a family picnic favorite. Whenever we're planning to fire up the grill for some serious summer festivities (okay, or turn on the stove for some serious winter festivities), the question always comes up - who is making lemon sponge!
I meant to post this earlier, so people would have time to acquire the ingredients and whip up this delightful dish for tomorrow's Independence Day festivities. Because it's so easy and delicious, and screams summer. In fact, if you're willing to get up early and run to the store, you can get this made in plenty of time for your afternoon barbecues. As long as you have four hours between the time you finish assembling and the time you plan to eat, you're golden.
We always considered this a family recipe, but a few months back we were rifling through my nana's old recipe box and discovered a recipe for ORANGE sponge clipped from a newspaper. Granted, said newspaper was likely from the thirties or forties. Maybe the fifties if we're feeling generous. But I think it's safe to say that this has now become a family secret.
And I'm sharing it with all the interwebz.
So the original recipe called for orange flavored gelatin, and we use lemon. You could use any citrus flavor you like, really, but the lemon is particularly refreshing. Your barbecue guests will rave and ask for the recipe, just like everybody at our choir picnic last week.
A few months ago, I was combing the internet for ratatouille recipes, and came across Smitten Kitchen's version of the baked ratatouille featured in Disney's Ratatouille. You know the one: the spirals of colorful eggplant, zucchini, yellow squash and red peppers that cause the cynical food critic to recall the carefree days of his childhood, when a dish of warm ratatouille, made by his mother, had the power to sooth all ills.
Thanks to the acquisition of an OXO Good Grips Hand-Held Mandoline Slicer (for free from OXO, I might add) and the opportunity to test said mandoline slicer as part of OXO's Healthy Eating product promotion, I had the perfect tool to make the thin slices required for this baked ratatouille dish.
I was pretty excited to get my OXO hand-held mandoline slicer in the mail. I love my chef's knives and am very proud over my steadily improving skill with chopping and slicing. But I'm not very good at uniformity, and had been sort of wanting a mandoline slicer for a while now. I hope my readers are excited about this product, too, because OXO actually sent me TWO slicers - one for me to test and keep, and one to giveaway to a reader in the United States (more on the giveaway in a moment).
There are a lot of great things about the OXO hand-held slicer. It has an ergonomic handle to reduce strain and fatigue in your wrist. There's a non-slip edge on the top of the slicer, so it won't go sliding around your cutting surface - plus there's a little "notch" in this edge so you can set it over a bowl and slice directly into salads, sauces, or what ever else you might be making. It has a food holder to protect your fingers. There are three settings for the cutting edge, and you can lock the slicer so the sharp blade isn't hanging out for all and sundry to accidentally cut themselves on.
Perhaps my favorite part is the fact that it's dishwasher safe. After my foray into ratatouille, and later sweet potato fries, there was a little bit of staining on the white plastic, but it came off pretty easily with just a touch of "elbow grease."
While the pros of this product are vast (easier to store than a traditional mandoline slicer, the non-slip features, the bent handle to reduce wrist fatigue), it's not a perfect product. Though, to be perfectly honest, I only had one major complaint. The food holder has plastic pegs that don't really stick very well in the food you're trying to slice, so unless you're using somewhat small pieces of vegetables or fruit, you're going to have trouble keeping the holder on the food. It would have been a better design to have stainless steel pegs that would actually puncture the flesh of the vegetables I was trying to slice. I had to hold the vegetables in my hand until they were small enough to use the food holder.
Check out this little YouTube video of mine (I apologize for the somewhat bad sound and video, my microphone and camera aren't the best quality) for a demonstration.
I'll get to the recipe for my ratatouille after the jump break, but first, let me tell you about the giveaway!
One lucky reader in the United States (sorry, international fans!) will become the owner of the second OXO Good Grips Hand-Held Mandoline Slicer in my possession! All you have to do is leave a comment on this post, telling me what you like about the mandoline slicer and what you would use it for if you won.
The winner will be chosen via a random integer generator. The giveaway will end at midnight, Eastern standard time, on Monday, May 21st. Only residents of the continental United States are eligible for this particular giveaway.
Now, keep reading for the scoop on that ratatouille!
If there's one vegetable you can count on throughout the year, it's asparagus. While, admittedly, the asparagus you can find locally in season is, by far, the best, most of the time you can get by and be pretty happy with the offerings at the grocery store. I'm not sure how far-flung the produce section necessarily has to search for asparagus in January - maybe California, maybe Mexico, maybe farther south.
Regardless, chances are good you'll find decent asparagus on any given grocery day. A couple tips, though. Asparagus stalks should be firm, the ends compact and lacking the sort of mushy, shiny appearance they can take on when they're getting a little old. You'll want to store asparagus in the refrigerator, either cutting the ends like flower stems and placing in a cup of water or leaving them loosely wrapped in the produce bag, popping a hole in the bag to ensure good air circulation, and you'll need to use asparagus within a couple days. I've gone five days with a really fresh bunch, but three days really is the rule of thumb.
Asparagus can be cooked many different ways. It can be poached, steamed, roasted, grilled, sauteed, or just munched on raw. Whatever floats your boat. If you do decide to cook your asparagus, as with most veggies, the shorter your cook time, the less chance you have of an overdone, limp vegetable that never even heard of being green. Now, I'm a fan from way back of poaching asparagus with a couple cloves of garlic, some salt, pepper, and a drizzle of olive oil, until it takes on a sort of olive-green tone after about 45 minutes. I'm not sure how much nutritional value remains at the end of the cooking process, but I have a soft spot in my heart for this particular style of cooking.
My mom used to poach an egg in the pan for good measure. I never quite understood that part. But then, eggs and I generally don't get along when they're present outside of cakes, cookies, and brownies.
However, I needed a quicker fix for some asparagus. I've done the roasting process, but I wanted to shake it up a bit. I also had some mushrooms and grape tomatoes that needed to be used. So I got a little experimental.
Brussels sprouts are a strange little vegetable. They're like little miniature cabbages - and when cooked improperly, can take on a very cabbage-y taste and smell that forces many people to turn up their noses. I used to be one of those people - not out of personal experience, mind you, just from horror stories of people required to eat Brussels sprouts under duress ("No dessert unless you eat your Brussels sprouts!").
Brussels sprouts actually have quite a bit to do with with Brussels, Belgium, where they were first grown in the 16th century. They're extremely good for you, but most people don't know how to cook them the right way, so the eating of said sprouts is, for many, akin to culinary torture. In fact, I never had a Brussels sprout pass my lips until last Thanksgiving, when my brother-in-law attempted a very tasty recipe. Then I started experimenting and came up with a lovely way to prepare these cabbage-ettes that even my husband, who doesn't normally like a variety of vegetables, will eat.
I've always been a fan of cornbread, but other than a handful of times when I've opened a boxed mix, I haven't made it very often.
All that changed when my sister-in-law (who lives in San Antonio - beautiful city, by the way) gave us Classic Tex Mex and Texas Cooking for Christmas a couple years ago. I haven't had a chance to dive too far into these regional recipes, but the "Plain Ole Cornbread" recipe has become something of a standby.
I decided to give it a little bit of a cheesy twist. It came out moist and so very cornbread-y.
It's really a very basic recipe, and you could probably add any flavors you like - chili powder, garlic, maybe drizzle with honey or maple syrup. (Incidentally, the basic cornbread - sans cheese - is amazing with homemade sugar plum jam.)
I apologize in advance for most of these pictures. The sun decided to shine directly into my kitchen window when I was making this.
