A Quick Quinoa Salad

Say that five times fast! I can barely say it once. But cooking it up is far less difficult. This is a quick lunch I made this week. It keeps well in the fridge for a few days and packs well for lunches. You can eat it as one-bowl meals like this or use it to stuff winter squash. One night for dinner last week, I made stuffed acorn squash with the quinoa-pistachio-cranberry combo. It was really good!

Quinoa Salad

1 cup dry quinoa
olive oil
1 onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 zucchini
1 red pepper
1 yellow squash
(any other veggies you like)
1 can pinto beans
1/2 tsp chili powder
1/4 tsp cumin
dash of cayenne or crushed red pepper
salt and fresh cracked black pepper

Cook your quinoa as per the package directions (or with slightly less water for a firmer bite). Chop your veggies into bite sized pieces. Then, in about a tablespoon of olive oil over medium heat, saute your onion until golden. Add garlic, stirring until aromatic (about 30 seconds). Stir in your spices and cook for another 30 seconds. Add your veggies and a splash of water or broth. Cover and cook until tender. In a large bowl, combine cooked quinoa, veggies, and beans. Serve with fresh cracked salt and pepper.

This is easily modified for a variety of flavors. Try these combinations:

Lemon juice, oregano, broccoli, and white beans
Orange zest, a dash of cayenne, pomegranate nibs, and chickpeas (I think that will be lunch tomorrow! yum!)
Curry powder, lentils (or mung), and butternut squash
Pistachios, cranberries, and thyme

Quinoa is a great source of protein and an incredibly versatile grain. It can take on a wide variety of flavors and even be used in gluten free baking. If you've never had it, give it a shot.

Is it a sweet salad????

That's the first thing my six year old asks whenever I say we are having salad. He will eat anything, but has a decided preference for SWEET things. He thinks dried fruit is candy, so when I make this salad it's like he's getting candy for dinner, ha! Parenting win!

Sweet Balsamic Salad with Cranberries and Walnuts

1 head each, Romaine and Red leaf lettuce, chopped
1 red onion, thinly sliced
1/4 cup dried cranberries, chopped
1/4 cup walnuts, toasted
2 small or 1 large sweet apple, diced

For the dressing:
1 tsp dijon mustard
1 clove garlic, minced
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar*
1 tbsp honey (or sugar, for vegan)
1/2 cup olive oil

*for balsamic vinegar, the ingredients should just be grapes and/or vinegar, no coloring or flavoring nonsense. Costco actually sells a really nice one under their Kirkland label.

Salad dressings are super easy to make at home. People get addicted to all the crazy crap they put in processed foods, namely all the sugar and salt. But try making your own and give your taste buds some time to chill out. It's also much easier on the wallet. A basic vinaigrette is dijon + garlic/shallot + vinegar/juice + oil. For a "sweet" salad, add a little sugar or honey. Combine all the dressing ingredients in a small food processor bowl and process to combine or simply put in a jar and shake vigorously.

Toss your lettuce with your dressing, then top with apples, cranberries, onions, and walnuts.

mmmm....Lasagna!

I love, love, love lasagna. But who doesn't? My absolute favorite was from a restaurant in St. Louis, Schlafly Bottleworks. It was this perfect cheesy veggie lasagna and they took it off the menu! Gah! (sad face) But guess what? I asked nicely for the recipe and they gave it to me! Bless 'em! Unfortunately for you, this is not it. Ha! I can't eat dairy right now, so I'm not posting any cheesy goodness (maybe some other time...next year?) This is, however, inspired by that one, using a similar broccoli-ricotta filling that has been cleverly vegan-ized. It's a delicious dairy-free and gluten-free lasagna sure to please vegans, vegetarians, and ominvores alike.

Vegan Lasagna

1 box of lasagna noodles (I used Tinkyada Joy Pasta Organic Brown Rice noodles)
1 15oz can, or two cups diced tomatoes
2 24oz jars tomato puree (not sauce, we don't want any added salt or seasonings)
olive oil
2 cloves garlic
1/2 tsp dried basil
1/2 tsp dried oregano
salt
1 large russet potato, sliced into 1/4" thick rounds
1 zucchini
1 yellow squash
4 cups baby spinach

for vegan "ricotta" filling:
1 cup raw cashew pieces, soaked overnight
2 cloves garlic
1/2 tsp dried basil
1/2 tsp dried oregano
juice of one lemon
salt and pepper
water
1/4 c ground golden flaxseed
1/2 lb frozen broccoli florets, thawed and finely chopped

So, first let's talk about this vegan ricotta. Cashews are an amazing thing. You will find them in many different vegan recipes as a dairy replacement. You can make cashew milk, "cream" sauces, and add texture like in this ricotta substitute. You cannot substitute other nuts for this. Just trust me, don't do it.

Put your soaked cashews, garlic, and herbs in the bowl of a food processor and process until it looks grainy. It will sort of look like ricotta already, just drier. Add your lemon juice and a couple tablespoons of water. Pulse a few times to combine. You don't want it to get totally smooth like you would to make cashew butter. Now dump that out into a big bowl. Process your broccoli, if you haven't already chopped it. Combine the two and add some water, or even a little (1/2 cup) non-dairy milk, and the flaxseed. Stir well to combine. Add salt and pepper to taste. Now it should really look like a ricotta filling!

Would you know by looking that it wasn't ricotta??? I wouldn't.

Set that aside, and cook your noodles according to the package. When they are not quite al dente, so still a little more firm than you'd want to eat, drain, rinse, and put in an ice water bath. Do the same for your potato slices. Toss your zucchini and squash slices with a little olive oil and roast for about 20 min in a 400 degree oven. Roasting the veggies really adds a great flavor. (You can use any veggies you like in this, too, even leftover roasted veggies from another meal.) I left my spinach raw to layer, but you could saute it with some garlic first and that would be delicious! 

Now, while those things are cooking, go make your sauce. For the tomato sauce, you could go the easy way out and use a canned or jarred pre-seasoned variety. I won't hold it against you. But making your own is super simple and wonderfully flavorful with none of the sugar that is often hiding in pre-packaged sauces. I learned how to make simple marinara while I was in Italy. I was puzzled for the longest time because I'd order pizza and the sauce would be perfectly smooth with no evidence of garlic...yet I could taste the garlic. Well, finally, I took a cooking class and learned the trick. They infuse the oil with the garlic and then toss out the cloves. Sneaky. For the tomatoes, you can use whole canned/jarred and puree them yourself, or buy "passata", which is what they use in Italy. These are the tomatoes I like: 

The jar on the right is the passata. Good stuff. 

Heat your olive oil (a couple tablespoons) in a small skillet over low-med heat. Peel and cut in half lengthwise two cloves of garlic. Or you can just smash them. You want to expose the "heart" of the garlic to release the flavor. Toss the pieces into the hot oil and stir occasionally until they turn golden. Then remove the pan from the heat and remove the garlic from the oil. Feed it to your husband, if you'd like. Or compost it. Whatever. Allow the oil to cool off a little bit so that it doesn't go crazy and splatter when you add the tomato puree. Now add your tomato puree, your diced tomatoes, and the basil and oregano and about 2 tsp of salt (start with one, taste, and add if needed...the "saltiness" depends on the variety of salt). Salt is the magic ingredient here, it is what takes the acidity and bitterness away from tomatoes. It's what makes them good! So don't skimp.

Time to assemble: 

Sauce
Noodles

"Ricotta" filling
Potatoes

Sauce
Noodles

"Ricotta" filling

Spinach

Sauce
Noodles

"Ricotta" filling

Zucchini & Squash

Sauce

Noodles

Sauce

If you like nutritional yeast, sprinkle that over the top. Personally, I hate the stuff. 

Once it is all assembled, cover with foil, and you can cook it right away, put it in the refrigerator until later, or do what I did and leave it sitting out on the counter while you go pick up the kids from school. Yay for vegan! No food-borne illness!

When you are ready, pop it in a 350 degree oven for about 45 minutes. You can remove the foil for the last 10 minutes or so. The sauce should look bubbly. Yummy!!!

And here's what was left of ours:

Um, yeah. I seem to have a problem remembering to photograph the food before we eat it. Glad there was some left! As with most lasagna, it was even better as leftovers.

This weeks haul:

Red potatoes
Zucchini
Red Peppers
A big purple sweet potato
onions and garlic (weekly staples!)
Carrots
Romaine Hearts
Swiss Chard
Acorn Squash
Lemons
Bananas
Apples
Grapes

No-Cream of Broccoli Soup

I was going to call this "Vegan 'Cream' of Broccoli Soup" but I used homemade chicken stock, instead of vegetable stock. So, this is not vegan, but easily could be by substituting vegetable stock. 

We eat very little meat, maybe a pound a week in the form of organic chicken breasts, and about once a month I cook up a whole organic chicken. I save all the bones to make stock. It's so much richer and more flavorful than the store bought kind. I used to buy vegetable stock, but it is difficult to find yeast-free (yet another food intolerance in our household). Making vegetable stock is so much more difficult than chicken stock, and you end up taking fresh, otherwise edible vegetables, boiling them and then throwing them away, which to me seems wasteful. This as opposed to using the leftover bones that you were going to throw out anyway. 

I was a strict vegetarian for a few years, but I relaxed a bit for a variety of reasons. It is important to buy the healthiest meat possible, so get organic, lightly processed, local if possible, etc. That kind of meat is generally more expensive (but not always!). Either way, beans are cheaper, so we eat very little meat. Now that I'm done with my "flexitarian" disclaimer, we can proceed with the recipe!

This is similar to a cheesy, creamy broccoli soup, without said cream and cheese. The trick is in the potato and carrot base. The carrots give you a nice color and sweetness, and the potatoes give it creaminess. Don't be shy with your salt. Salt brings out the flavor in foods. I read an article just the other day by someone who'd recently been to culinary school. She said one of the important things she learned was to use more salt, that most people under-salt while cooking. I'm pretty sure I've never had that problem, ha!

No-Cream of Broccoli Soup

2 Tbsp olive oil

1 medium onion, diced

2 cloves garlic, minced

1/4 c flour

3 potatoes, diced into 1/2" pieces

3 carrots, sliced

2 lb frozen broccoli florets (or 2 fresh heads)

6 cups chicken or vegetable stock

2 cups water

salt and pepper

First, in a large pot, fry up your onions until golden. Do it right. Then add your garlic. Now toss in the potatoes and carrots and mix 'em up with your onion and garlic. Add the flour and stir to coat everything really well. Now, slowly add your stock, stirring as you go. The flour will gradually pull away from the veggies and leave you with a smooth soup base--no lumps! (If you want gluten free, skip this step with the flour. Mix starch of your choice and add to the stock. Or just try it without the thickener, as the potatoes thicken it up quite a bit.) Cover and bring to a high simmer, allowing the potatoes and carrots to cook for about 10 minutes. 

Meanwhile, separate out about 1/2 lb of your broccoli, and chop into bite size pieces. Set aside. When your carrots and potatoes have cooked for about 10 minutes, add your broccoli. Cover and cook until heated through and all veggies are tender. 

Transfer to a food processor or blender. (I used my Vitamix.) Or, if you don't mind it a little less smooth, an immersion blender works, too.  You will probably need to do this in batches, so a big mixing bowl comes in handy for holding the puree while you are working on the rest. After it is all smooth, return to pot and add the broccoli you had previously chopped up. Add some salt if needed. You probably need it, unless your stock was very salty. Heat through. 

Serve with fresh cracked pepper. Make it a meal with No-Yeast Wheat Bread. 

Eat your veggies!

A week's worth of produce for us:

Carrots
Potatoes
Onions
Red Peppers
Red Leaf Lettuce
Red Chard
Spaghetti Squash
Zucchini

Not shown:
Oranges
Garlic
Romaine Hearts
(and more potatoes and onions)

No Yeast Wheat Bread

One of my kids has a sensitivity to yeast. Actually, I do, too. I can handle some, but if I eat much it leaves me feeling gross. Occasionally I succumb to the craving for a beautiful loaf of rustic yeast bread or a Vera Napoletana pizza from Marco's in Denver. I feel better without it though. Truthfully, I feel best without any wheat either, but almond flour and other sneaky gluten free baking ingredients elicit cries of protest from certain members of the household. 

This bread, however, is always a big hit. It has a light biscuit-like texture. You can use more wheat/less white flour, but it will be more dense. Still tasty, though. It is prepped in the food processor, cooked in a pan (I like an iron skillet for this), and can be on the table in an hour. One day I'm going to try to  make some rolls out of this dough, as I think it would work for that, too. I found the recipe here and have tweaked it just a bit for the altitude. If you are not at altitude, increase your baking powder by 1 tsp and your oven temp by 25 degrees.

No Yeast Wheat Bread

2 cups white flour

1 cup whole wheat flour

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

1/3 cup, plus 3 tbsp olive oil, divided

1 cup water

dried herbs

salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. 

Combine flour, baking powder, and salt in bowl of food processor outfitted with dough blade. Pulse to blend. With processor running, pour in the olive oil and most of the water. The dough should come together into a ball. You may have to rearrange it a little to get it evenly moist. 

Spread about a tablespoon of olive oil into your iron skillet (or you could use a pie pan). Pat your dough out into the pan. It doesn't need to be perfect, just try to get it to the edges. Then I like to poke it all over with my fingertip, like you would a foccacia. Pour over the remaining 2 tbsp olive oil. Sprinkle with basil, oregano, garlic powder, onion, salt, and pepper.

Cover with foil and bake for 20 minutes. Remove foil and bake for 20 minutes more. If it's not brown on top, you can pop it under the broiler for a minute. Just keep a close watch so you don't burn it!

If you can control yourself, allow to cool before slicing. 

Cooking Basics - Onions and Garlic

Nothing compares to the aroma of frying onions and garlic. I'll just be starting dinner, and hubby will walk in saying, "that smells so good! whatcha making?"  Um, an onion?

But really, knowing how to create a good onion base for your meals is important. I've read many recipes calling for onion and garlic that advise one to put those two things in the pan at the same time. Please, for the love of Food, do not do this. Garlic only needs to be sauteed until aromatic, which takes about 30 seconds. Any longer, and it burns. Onions, on the other hand need to cook several minutes to really bring out their flavor. I always thought I didn't like onions, but I was eating undercooked onions, which are gross. An onion slowly sauteed in olive oil (or butter) until golden is a marvelous thing. It will add a wonderful richness to all of your savory recipes.

The key is not to stop when onions are softened or translucent:

...but to keep cooking until they really start to look golden, and even slightly browned around some of the edges:

Only then should you add the minced garlic. Stir it around for about 30 seconds until you smell that garlicky aroma. Then, proceed with the rest of the recipe, frying some spices or adding liquid as required.