Ok, this is a tough dish to name. But I already know you like it, because I made variations on this theme a lot last summer, when it’s too hot in Vegas to even think about eating hot food.
Here’s the basic ingredients: Israeli couscous or this great grain blend from TJ’s. Plain yogurt. I think apples and grapes are required, but sugar snap peas or carrots could be good too. Also, I like crasins and some kind of nuts, like the Rosemary Pecan and Cranberry blend from TJ’s shown above. Chicken, from a can in lazy summer, or from a steamed chicken breast left over from something else, would be great too.
Cook 1 or 2 cups of couscous according to the package directions, depending on how much of this dish you really feel like eating. Chop up apples (1 for 1 cup couscous,2 for 2 cups) and slice grapes in half. Chop any other veggies too. Stir the fruit and veggies into the couscous with enough yogurt to smooth the whole thing. Stir in nuts. Add salt and pepper. Enjoy cold. Leftovers make great cold lunch.
This one is super easy and variable. Buy a spaghetti squash.
1. If you have an oven, slice it in half lengthwise. Remove the seeds and slimy stuff, but leave the squash flesh intact. Bake on a baking sheet at 350 for 30-45 minutes, until flesh is soft to a fork.
2. If you don’t have an oven, you can microwave the whole squash for 10 minutes. Pierce it several times with a knife first so that it does not explode. After 10 minutes, let it rest another 5 or so before you cut it in half. You could also microwave each half separately, like for baking, but I’m not sure how long it would take.
After you have each cooked half, use a fork to pull the squash flesh into spaghetti strings. The results should look like this:
Then, once you have turned the squash into spaghetti, you can serve it with anything you would enjoy with pasta. Tomato sauce and chickpeas. Pesto and sausage. With peppers, onions, garlic:
And Parmesan cheese on top. Mmmm. But seriously, your options are endless. And awesome. Enjoy.
This is a great fall dish with sweet potatoes, apples, and warm Indian spices. You can eat it with rice or pita bread or just by itself.
(Also, I forgot to take pictures for you, but you’ll just have to trust me that it’s lovely)
Ingredients:
2 Sweet Potatoes, 2 Apples, 1 Onion, 3-4 Carrots, 2 Garlic cloves,
Red Lentils (1 c)
Seasonings: small splash of maple syrup, garam masala (cumin, coriander, cinnamon, cardamon, and cloves) ginger, and black pepper. You could do a tandoori spice blend instead of the garam masala.
Directions: Chop up onions, garlic, and carrots. Saute in olive oil. Meanwhile, chop up sweet potatoes and apples in big chunks. Add the potatoes and cook for 5 minutes. Then, add the lentils and about 3 cups of water, and the spices (a good shake of everything) and cover. Stir occasionally, the lentils should take 20-25 minutes to soak up all of the water. After about 15 minutes, add the apples and a small splash of maple syrup. Once the lentils are soft, add a little more of the spices, to taste. Serve with a little spoonful of plain yogurt on top. Or serve on rice. Or just enjoy.
Brandt, do you remember our first sort-of date? We had dinner together at PF Chang’s,way back when before we even went to with Brian to visit Steph, and we didn’t know if it was a date or not? More importantly, we both really enjoyed the eggplant dish. So, tonight I made my version of that dish, and it turned out really well. It’s your pretty common Chinese restaurant eggplant, carmalized a little bit in sweet spicy sauce. It would be good with tofu too. Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures,so you’ll just have to use your imagination for the visuals.
Ingredients: Several japanese eggplant (the long skinny ones) or 1 large regular eggplant. Oil, garlic, ginger, chinese 5 spice, red pepper flakes, soy sauce, oyster sauce, and sugar. Rice, and optional firm tofu.
Start the rice steaming. If you want tofu, fry it first. I have discovered that if you press it dry on paper towels and then toss the tofu chunks in a little bit of cornstarch to coat the outside, and then fry them in a little bit of hot oil, they will brown up nicely like at chinese restaurants. Or if you are lazy, you can always just saute until them plain, they still taste good without the pretty browning. Set cooked tofu aside.
Chop up the eggplants into big chunks. No need to peel. Add a big splash of oil to the wok (or large pan) and get it hot. Eggplant soaks up oil, so you need more than you’d expect. You can always add another splash if they get dry, too. Fry the eggplant on pretty high heat for about 5 minutes, with lots of stirring so they don’t burn, but they get brown and soft. Add either a couple cloves of chopped up garlic and a chunk of ginger, or give an seriously generous shake of each if you are using powdered spices. A smaller shake of the 5-spice, if you have it, if not, just add a little bit of black pepper. Add as many shakes of red pepper flakes as you are in the mood for. Taste and ass more if you need. If you have cornstarch, add a Tablespoon (T) of that, and about a 1/2 cup of water, to make it more sauce-y. If not, it’ll just have less sauce to flavor your rice. Add 2 T soy sauce and 1 T oyster sauce and 1 T sugar. Stir everything up, and keep cooking it on high heat until the eggplant is really soft and a little caramelized looking. Toss in the tofu, if you are having it, and serve with rice. It’s not as good as the eggplant at the Chinese restaurant next-door to my Grandma’s retirement community in Pennsylvania, but it might be just as good, or maybe even better, than PF’s. Enjoy!
This is a great vegetarian dinner option, modified from a Bon Appetit recipe with chicken. It can be as spicy as you want, and the leftovers keep well for lunches. It makes a lot of food, maybe 6 servings. It’s also an easy recipe to vary, depending on what you have at home and what you are in the mood for. So, here’s the basics:
The most important ingredients are a cauliflower, a large sweet potato or two small ones, onion, hot peppers (I used 2 with seeds for slightly spicy), chickpeas (or I’ve made this with tempeh, and that is delicious too), tomato paste, peanut butter, crasins or raisins, veggie broth or bouillon, garlic, ginger, cumin, and optional frozen green peas, cashews, or shredded coconut. In this photo, I accidently included coconut milk instead of shredded coconut, but it is not used in this recipe. Oops.
Start by chopping up the cauliflower and the sweet potato into big chunks. Steam these together in a big pot with a little bit of water in the bottom. While these are steaming, chop up the onion, jalapenos, garlic (3 cloves) and ginger if using fresh (1/2 inch size chunk). Once the veggies are steamed so that they are tender to the fork, take off the heat and set aside. Saute the onions and friends in a big pot in a splash of olive oil.
Once the onions are soft and browning, add the chickpeas, 1/2 a small can of tomato paste, and 1 cup of veggie broth or 1 cup of water with some bouillon dissolved in in, and two big spoonfuls of peanut butter. Season with salt, pepper, and cumin. Stir everything together until the sauce is blended. Stir in a big handful of frozen green peas if you have them. Add in the steamed veggies and a big handful of Craisins, and stir it all up. Give it just a few minutes for everything to get hot, and then you are ready to eat!
Serve on top of rice or without, it’s pretty filling all by itself, although rice is usually nice too. I like it topped with a little bit of plain yogurt and a couple of cashews. Shredded coconut is also nice on top. Leftovers are good wrapped up in naan or good tortillas for lunch. Mmm….lots of leftovers!
Since I started dating Brandt, I’ve been making a lot more spicy dishes, since he loves spicy foods. This vegetarian dish is one of our favorites, and if you make a big batch, it keeps and reheats great for lunches. We like to use the veggie and bean mix as a filling for corn tortillas, with some melted monteray jack or pepper jack cheese. Yum.
The main ingredients are pretty cheap, so that’s another benefit of this dish. 2 sweet potatoes, an onion, a red pepper, black beans, and hot peppers. I usually use jalapenos, but in this batch, I used Anahiem peppers, which are less spicy, so I used a lot more. Not pictured ingredients include salt and pepper, oil, garlic, cumin, and cayenne (optional).
Wash and dice everything into big chunks. I like to start with the sweet potatoes, onion, and garlic first, because they need more time to cook then the peppers. Add a big splash of oil to a big pan, and start sauteing. While the potatoes and onions are cooking, chop the peppers. If you like you food hot, or you are using mild peppers like these Anahiems, keep the seeds. When I use jalapenos, I tend to remove most of the seeds.
Once the sweet potatoes are starting to get soft, add in the diced peppers and the drained beans. Season with salt and pepper and cumin. I like quite a bit of cumin. Taste for spice level, and if you need a little more, add a few shakes of cayenne. Once everything is cooked soft, it’s done.
I like to eat this stuff on corn tortillas like soft tacos, but it’s also pretty good as filling for a big burrito too. A little melted cheese tops it off perfectly.
This is a great easy summer dinner for when it is hot as hell in Vegas, since no cooking is required. Tuna salad is very versatile too, here I’m serving it on a salad, but you can also make sandwiches, tuna melts, or just eat it with any variety of veggies you may have around the house.
So, here are my ingredients for classic tuna salad:
1 large can of tuna (so you’ve got enough salad for a couple of lunches), chopped up celery, hard-boiled eggs, pickle relish (or pickles, chopped up really small) and mayo. And salt and pepper to taste.
Okay, now for the easiest cooking directions ever: mash everything listed above in a bowl. For a big can of tuna I use 2 eggs, 4-5 celery sticks, a big spoonful of the pickle relish, and a slightly smaller spoonful of the mayo (but as you know, I am not a big mayo fan, if you are, you can totally use more….I just like a little bit so that you can barely tell it’s there). A little shake of salt and a few grinds of pepper. Ta Da!
I frequently like to eat tuna salad on salad, like this:
To make this salad, I briefly steamed the green beans, on the stove with just a thin layer of water in the pan for 2-3 minutes, or in one of those fancy microwave bags would probably work too, just don’t over-cook them. Then, it’s red leaf lettuce, sliced up tomato, the lightly steamed beans, a little bit of oil and balsamic, and then a big scoop of the tuna salad on top. But, you can make the tuna and put it on whatever kind of salad that you want, it will probably still be delicious.
Yay for Thai food!! This is one of our favorite quick-night dinners, and it’s super easy. 20 minutes and you are eating. Unless you want brown rice, then start that an hour early. Otherwise, when you are ready to start cooking, start the white rice. 1-1.5 cups of rice should be enough to eat with the curry. This should be enough for dinner for 2, and leftover lunch for 1 or 2.
So, here’s your ingredients:
Crunchy veggies (I like carrots, beans, broccoli, zuchinni, cauliflower, eggplant, sweet potatoes, bell peppers, or pretty much anything), firm tofu, coconut milk, good green curry paste (from a asian grocery), fish sauce, ginger, and a pinch of sugar (I use sweetened ginger paste, but fresh or powdered ginger and sugar works great too).
Heat a wok or big skillet with a big splash of oil. Once the oil is hot, add the curry paste. Add about 1-2 tablespoons at first, so that you don’t make it too hot, and you can always add a little more later. Once the paste is frying, add the veggies and stir-fry.
While the veggies stir fry, chop the tofu. After a few minutes, add it to the pan, and fry in with the veggies. After a few minutes, add the can of coconut milk, a few small splashes of fish sauce, the ginger (Tablespoon fresh, teaspoon powdered, or a full tablespoon of sweetened ginger paste) and a small spoonful of sugar (unless you used the sweetened ginger).
Cook until the veggies are fork-tender. Taste for spice level, and feel free to add a bit more curry paste if you want it hotter. Also, feel free to add more fish sauce and ginger, if you are so inclined. Serve on rice.
dinnerforbrandt 