Tag Archives: cooking

Chickpea and Tahini Salad

8 Aug

Regular readers know my love for chickpeas. I love my Gingery Marinated Chickpeas (Greta Garbanzo https://hotcheapeasy.wordpress.com/?s=greta+garbanzo&submit=Search,) but decided it was time to freshen up my outlook.

Thus, this Chickpea and Tahini salad…perfect to accompany summer BBQ or Mediterranean buffet, an excellent side dish to just about anything, and best of all, easy! I made this a few hours ahead, and the little bit that remained made for great leftover snack lunch!

Chickpea and Tahini Salad

2 29 oz cans of garbanzos/chick peas/ceci, rinsed and drained

½ red onion, sliced thin

2 ripe tomatoes, seeds and gel removed and chopped

1 Tbs cilantro leaves (can go to two if you like) chopped fine

1 Tbs mint leaves (can add another Tbs if desired) chopped fine

4 Tbs tahini

4 cloves garlic, pressed or minced super-fine

4-6 Tbs lemon juice

2 Tbs water

Salt to taste

Place chickpeas, onion, tomato, cilantro and mint in a bowl

In a separate bowl, whisk tahini, garlic, lemon juice and water until blended

Toss dressing in salad. Salt to taste.

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Slow-Roasted Grape Tomatoes (For pasta, bruschetta or sandwiches)

3 Aug

Here is more to do with those gorgeous tiny tomatoes that are so abundant and sweet at this time of year!

I’ll give you the link for the original recipe which I didn’t have time to do completely. I saw it in The New York Times recently, but didn’t have time nor basil to prepare the special oil, so I modified to suit what I had at home, basically eliminating a step and that’s the recipe you’ll find below. Here’s the original  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/26/health/nutrition/26recipehealth.html

My version is lovely summer fare – bright and sweet and yet with depth. It also requires very little work and I did it successfully in the toaster oven, limiting the heat index in my kitchen! You can serve it on crusty bread or over pasta, but I popped a fair few into my mouth just as they were….
Slow-Roasted Tomatoes with Italian Seasoning

1 pint grape/cherry/Sun Gold tomatoes

1 pinch salt

1 pinch sugar

2 Tbs extra virgin olive oil

1-2 Tbs Italian herbs/Provencal herbs

Preheat oven to 300°F. Line an oven dish with aluminum foil and spread tomatoes in a single layer. Sprinkle with sugar and salt, then coat with olive oil. Sprinkle with herbs and roast for about 30 minutes, so that tomato skins are crinkling and splitting, but not fallen apart. Cool and serve on garlicky toast as bruschetta, as sandwich spread or mixed into hot pasta.

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Spider Dogs – a kid-cool way to grill hot dogs

1 Aug

Hot dogs are quintessential BBQ and camp favorites – easy and convenient, tasty and filling. But we stepped the fun up a notch at our latest beach camping adventure with a recipe culled from a most excellent camping prep book called Camp Out! The Ultimate Kid’s Guide by Lynn Brunelle.

Called Spider Dogs by Brunelle (and Octo-Dogs by us when we are making them at the beach)  they are skewered hot dogs skewered, sliced and cooked so that they become eight-legged spiders (or in our recent case of camping: octopii).

Your kids will really dig them, you will raise your cool quotient and they are still as easy as throwing a few dogs on the grill.

 

(Note: There is quite the fire storm about the relative healthfulness of hot dogs. Nitrates and nitrites may or may not be bad or good for you…I really don’t know. We use Applegate Organic hot dogs, which apparently have as much nitrite and nitrate as conventional brands, but are made with organic meat and “natural” curing sources. Does it make a difference? Who knows? But Leandro likes them. I find the whole thing confusing, so I can’t offer solutions, but here’s a New York Times article that can at least explain the source of the confusion: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/02/business/02hotdog.html?_r=2&ref=health)

Grilled Spider-Dogs

Packaged hot dogs

1 skewer for each hotdog

You’ll want a hot grill going for this.

Stick a skewer halfway through each hot dog lengthwise.

Carefully cut the free half into quarters, lengthwise.

Lay the sliced ends of the hot dogs on the grill. The slices will curl back away from each other as they cook. When the sliced end is cooked and curled, carefully remove the dogs from their skewers, skewer through the cooked end and slice uncooked half into quarters lengthwise. Lay the uncooked ends of the dogs on the grill and cook until they are also curled back and you have a spider (or octo-) dog!

You may also like:

A Camping Week Come A Cropper – And What We Cooked

Spaghetti A La Carbonara for camp stoves

Spanish-style Tortilla adapted for camp stoves

Quesadillas adapted for camp stoves

Aglio Olio et Peperoncino (simple garlic and hot pepper pasta dish) for camping

Better Scrambled Eggs for a Camping Trip

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Best Book for Maximizing the Farmer’s Market/CSA Experience!

28 Jul

 

DON’T PANIC and Always Bring a Reusable Bag

The more farmers markets and Community Supported Agriculture farms that pop up all over Long Island and its environs, the better we like it. There is better, fresher produce, we can support the local economy and we can feel healthy and virtuous as we bring our boxes of glorious stuff into our kitchens to be converted into all manner of delicious dishes.

But ‘fess up…sometimes you have no idea what that lump of vegetable with the fan-like greens is, much less what to do with it. How do you store it? How do you prepare it? What is it called?

Well, DON’T PANIC. As The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is to interplanetary travelers, so is the Field Guide to Produce to intrepid locavores.

This handy guide to most any fruit or vegetable you might encounter at a greenmarket or specialty supermarket will fit in your backpack or good-size handbag (or your reusable bag). It has more than 200 color images of produce, as well as information on the history and lore of each (e.g. “The ancient Egyptians and Greeks ate wild asparagus shoots as a rare spring delicacy” and “In the Old Testament, Adam and Eve covered their bodies with fig leaves, and Cleopatra hid the poisonous asp she used to take her life in a basket of figs”).

The nitty-gritty is right there with the history lesson; Green tells you how to select the produce at its peak, how to store it (and whether it can be frozen) and basic guidelines on what to do with it when you are ready to slice, dice and create something delicious. For the independent traveler, she includes flavor affinities for each item (e.g.  parsnips: “apples, brown butter, brown sugar, cream, curry, leeks, oranges, root vegetables, stews and ragouts, truffles.”)  setting you off on your own path to culinary greatness.

Before Field Guide to Produce, I pretty much sautéed anything I didn’t recognize from my C.S.A. pick-up in garlic and oil and called it a day. If it was particularly nice-looking, I’d stick it in a vase for a centerpiece that looked great, but never got eaten. Now, emboldened by my trusty Guide, I am roasting, stir-frying, steaming and experimenting with great confidence and a certain savoir faire that I didn’t have before. And where I used to ignore the vegetables that stumped me until they got rather nasty in the fridge, now I am using every bit of my weekly take, either fresh or in frozen form. Come the long, cold winter, I will be pulling great Long Island summer flavors out of the ice box, thanks in part to Aliza Green. Share and Enjoy.

Field Guide to Produce: How to Identify, Select, and Prepare Virtually Every Fruit and Vegetable at the Market by Aliza Green, Quirk Books 2004

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Asian Stir Fry Sauce (this time with vegetables and your choice of noodles or rice)

27 Jul

One of my favorite prepared sauces comes from Sang Lee Farms in Cutchogue, on the North Fork of Long Island http://sangleefarms.com/. Their Asian Stir-Fry Sauce is all organic and adds incredible Asian pop to stir fry dishes, without the annoying cloying sweetness and goopiness of other seasonings in a bottle.

However, I run out of it pretty fast, so I am in the process of trying to recreate it at home. I haven’t quite got it, but this version is very yummy and does the job pretty damn well. When I hit exactly the combination I want, I will make larger batches, but for now, the amount in this recipe will season a couple of pounds of vegetables – enough for two to four people, depending on what you serve it with.

We used soba noodles (Leandro’s request, cause the curly noodles and Japanese writing on the package caught his eye and he absolutely loved them). We also had enough left over to drizzle over some cold chicken wraps I made the next day (and which will be the next post, haha!).

Do you make your own stir fry sauce? Please add your ideas in comments in this post!

Soba noodles make a worthy (and fun) accompaniment to stir fry veggies

Asian Stir-Fry Sauce

¼ Cup soy sauce or tamari (preferably low-sodium)

½ tsp crushed garlic

Scant ¼ tsp sesame oil

¼ tsp grated ginger

½ tsp lemon juice

Mix ingredients together and refrigerate overnight if possible.

When you are ready to cook the dish, begin preparing a cup or two of white rice or a package of soba noodles or other pasta of your choice, following package instructions.

Vegetables

2-2.5 lbs mixed stir-fry vegetables, cut into ¾ inch pieces (we used onions, carrots, some leftover chard stems and a beautiful purple pepper, all from Restoration Farm, plus broccoli from the supermarket)

Generous ½ tsp sugar

Heat the  vegetable oil in a 12 inch skillet with a heavy bottom, until just rippling and just beginning to smoke. Add vegetables and sprinkle the sugar over, coat with the oil and cook, stirring frequently, for about eight minutes, looking for caramelization on the vegetables. Lower the temperature to medium if you get a lot of sticking.

Push vegetables to the side and add a tablespoon of the stir-fry sauce , stir to heat, then mix with the vegetables. Add two to three more tablespoons as desired, being wary of making it too salty.

Serve over rice, noodles or pasta.

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Asparagus, Tomato and Hummus Wraps

25 Jul

I love asparagus and red pepper and especially love them with hummus. The following recipe is an easy wrap that tastes delicious and feels virtuous going down. It is easy to assemble, quite portable and looks very nice when you serve it (or eat it with shameless gusto in front of your admiring colleagues at the lunch table). The slightly charred tomatoes really give it a depth of flavor you will like, especially in this season when they are abundant and ultra-sweet.

But first: a confession.

Ready to roll

It has been a very, very long time since I made my own hummus.

When I lived in Puerto Rico and there wasn’t any readily available, I made my very own, very yummy hummus using (expensive) tahini from the health food store. Today, I have to admit, I buy the Sabra stuff from Costco in big tubs; it’s my In Case of Emergency Break Glass (or plastic seal) lifesaver for surprise guests or a snack for watching the news before dinner with my folks. One day I will go back to making my own (and of course I will tell you all about it and look forward to any recipes you would like to share), but for right now, Sabra is a shortcut I feel pretty comfortable with.

In this recipe, I give the ingredients to make four or five wraps, but you may want to double the vegetables so that you can have some as an appetizer and make the wraps for next day fare.

 

Wrap and go

Asparagus Wraps

1/2 lb asparagus spears, bottoms snapped off and set aside for stock/another day

1 red pepper, top and seeds removed, sliced long

1 Tbs extra virgin olive oil, plus a smear of olive oil for the skillet (only if sauteing the peppers_

½ pint small tomatoes (grape, cherry, Sungold), halved

1-2 Tbs hummus per wrap (about 1 Cup)

4-5 wrappers of your choice (tortillas for example)

If roasting the asparagus and red pepper, preheat oven to 400°F. Coat vegetables in olive oil and roast 20 minutes, turning once or twice, until fairly tender. You may also simmer the asparagus for five minutes in water instead and follow skillet instructions for red pepper.

In a skillet, warm each wrap until soft and pliable and keep warm on a plate, covered (may also be heated in microwave, following package instructions).

In the same skillet, warm a bit of olive oil on medium to cook the red pepper (if you haven’t already roasted it) until tender. Add the roasted vegetables and the raw tomato halves to the skillet and cook on high about three minutes, until the tomatoes look slightly charred and softened, shaking the pan frequently. Go back to the wraps, smear one half of each with a tablespoon or two of hummus. On the half that has the hummus, place a few vegetables. Roll up and serve, or pack up for an excellent work lunch or beach snack.

 

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Heat Wave Solution: No-cook Pasta Sauce – with tiny tomatoes!

23 Jul

Oh this heat wave is tough. I’ve been cooking as little as possible, trying to limit turning on the stove and oven and trying not to eat food that is hot and heavy. Simple wrap sandwiches of veggie spears and hummus, apple slice dipped in hummus, cherry and Sungold tomatoes just popped into my mouth straight from the fridge.

This is a go-to no-cook pasta sauce that, yes, requires you to cook the pasta, but is fresh and cool going down. It’s done in an instant, and takes full advantage of the sweet little tomatoes and basil that are starting to hit their stride right about now. This sauce ends up with a silky sweetness that is almost buttery, but there is no dairy involved – unless you choose to add cheese…

Here’s wishing you a cool weekend!

Cool pasta for hot days

Raw tomato sauce for pasta

1 pound pasta (penne or other short pasta preferred)

2 Tbs extra virgin olive oil

1 pint cherry/grape or Sungold tomatoes, cut in half (the sweeter the better)

3 cloves garlic, minced

¼ cup basil leaves, chopped

Salt to taste

(Grated cheese for serving, optional)

Prepare pasta according to package directions. Drain (reserving a few tablespoons of pasta water, just in case) and place in large serving bowl. Stir in remaining ingredients (including pasta water if the mix seems too dry). Serve with optional grated cheese.

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Fast track Spanish-style tortilla (camping friendly, no potatoes)

22 Jul

I love me some camp stove scrambled eggs, but it is not hard to step up the game a bit and make something fancier and more satisfying, even in the minimalist camp kitchen. The following recipe makes for rocking outdoor breakfast/brunch eggs: a cross between an omelette and a tortilla.

This is where you learn that it doesn’t have to have potatoes to be a tortilla…this one celebrates the zucchini season, but amps up the wow factor with a bit of spicy chorizo. It does justice to that big appetite that the outdoor life gives you, but cuts cooking and prep time in half.

(Love that fresh local flavor: my eggs come from Makinajian Poultry Farm in Huntington. It is hard to mess up eggs when they are that good)

Take your omelette to a new level....

Shortcut tortilla for camping

6 eggs, lightly beaten

1 Tbs extra virgin olive oil

½ medium onion, peeled and diced

½ medium zucchini, diced

3-4 oz Spanish (hot, dry) chorizo, peeled and diced

Salt and pepper to taste

Set aside the lightly-beaten eggs in a large bowl.

Heat half the olive oil until fragrant in an 8 or 9 inch skillet, then add onion and zucchini and sauté until tender. Remove from heat and stir vegetables into the egg mixture.

Wipe skillet (leaving a bit of grease) and add chorizo, cooking at medium until it begins releasing its oil. Then add to egg mixture and allow to rest five minutes. In the meantime, wipe the skillet and add remaining oil. Heat the oil on medium high until fragrant and add egg mixture, seasoning with a bit of salt and pepper.

Once the bottom of the egg mixture begins to set, shake pan to loosen and lower heat to medium. Cover and cook five minutes or until the whole egg mixture looks mostly set. Uncover and place a flat plate on top of the egg mixture and carefully turn skillet over so tortilla comes out. Slide tortilla back into the skillet and cook the other side till set. You may flip it several times until completely set.

Flip finished tortilla out of pan and onto plate. Allow to cool somewhat before cutting into wedges and serving.

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Zesty Zucchini and Sizzling Squash with lemon and oregano

21 Jul

This is a simple seasonal recipe that highlights the flavors and freshness of summer (and can be done in a jiffy at a campsite).

Summer squash refers to vegetables such as zucchini and yellow squash, that look like gourds, but have thin, tender skins. Right around this time of summer backyard gardeners start to harvest so many of them, they will be giving them away. This is a fast and easy way to take advantage of the bounty without working too hard!

How this dish looked at our campsite on the beach

Sauteed Summer Squash with Oregano and Lemon

1 Tbs extra virgin olive oil

1/2 medium onion, peeled and diced

2 medium summer squashes (yellow/zucchini), quartered lengthwise and sliced

Tsp dry oregano

Juice of half a lemon (you may add by teaspoon to taste)

Salt and pepper to taste

Heat olive oil in a skillet at medium high until liquid and fragrant. Add onions and stir to coat. Add zucchini and stir to coat. Lower heat and cook until just tender, about 5 minutes. Add oregano, lemon and salt to taste and cook until flavors are blended, just a minute or two, longer if you want it very tender. Serve over rice, with pasta or just on its own.

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Roasted Beet Salad with Orange and Beet Greens

16 Jul

We’ve been away on a camping trip for a week, but starting back up with a bang….BEETS!

Wacked-out color, floppy texture, weird vegetable discs out of a can. Ick.

That about sums up what I knew about beets as a kid. Later I got into the occasional fresh carrot, beet and apple frappés at farmer’s markets in Puerto Rico, but that was more a Saturday morning hangover-helper type thing as I was shopping for vegetables than a real affection for beets themselves.

It wasn’t until many years later that I had a food revelation at Blue Hill restaurant in Greenwich Village. I was doing a story on Chef Dan Barber for Le Connoisseur, a Puerto Rico food and wine magazine. He is a locavore chef in the tradition of Alice Waters and even owns his own farm. His other Blue Hill is located at Stone Barns, the Rockefeller organic farm center right by Sleepy Hollow, north of New York City http://www.bluehillnyc.com/.

So the chef trotted out a number of tiny dishes, including a single square of beet on a skewer. It looked like a precious jewel and the flavor was giant: intense, concentrated, sweet. I was hooked in a single morsel.

However, it wasn’t until getting involved in CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) that I actually had to figure out how to prepare them myself. Like, do you actually cook them? How? Do you peel them first? What about the greens?

Here are some short answers, followed by a showstopping roasted beet recipe.

Trim off the greens about an inch from the actual beet. You can eat them and they should be used within a day or two, taking out larger ribs before cooking. They can be used like most other leafy greens.

The unwashed beet roots will last about three weeks in the fridge. To use, scrub gently and do not remove the root. Do not peel before cooking. You can wrap in foil and roast at 400°F for 1-1.5 hours or simmer in salted boiling water for 30 minutes to 1.5 hours. Another option is to steam in a vegetable steamer for 30-45 minutes. the beets are done when a fork goes easily through the center. The skins will come off easily and should be removed while the beets are still warm. Use kitchen gloves or put your hands in plastic bags to handle them, as they will stain*. Flavor affinities include goat cheese, tarragon, herring and ham.

I have toyed around with this next recipe for several years now, and I think I have finally hit just the right balance of sweet and sharp. It also takes advantage of the beet greens. It is a gorgeous looking salad and the taste is, well, revelatory.

El amor entra por los ojos -- This dish is love at first sight!

Roasted Beet Salad with Orange and Beet Greens

6 medium beets with beet greens attached

1 large navel orange, peeled, separated into segments, pith and white removed

2 shallots, peeled and chopped fine

¼ -1/3 Cup red wine vinegar

¼ Cup extra virgin olive oil

3 cloves garlic, peeled and minced

1 tsp grated orange peel

Preheat oven to 400°F. Trim greens from beets. Cut off and discard stems. Coarsely chop leaves and reserve.

Wrap each beet loosely in foil. Place on oven rack and roast until tender when pierced with a fork, about 1 hour 20 minutes. Cool, then peel beets (use gloves or small sandwich bags to protect fingers from stains. Cut into eight wedges and place in medium bowl.

Bowl four cups of water, then add beet greens and cook until tender, just 2-3 minutes. Drain, cool and squeeze out as much water as possible. Add greens to beet bowl. Add orange segments (you may break them up) and shallots to bowl. Whisk vinegar, oil, garlic and orange peel in a small bowl to blend well and add to beet mixture. Stir to coat, season with salt and vinegar and allow to stand for at least an hour at room temperature before serving.

*You may notice that beets add color to your subsequent bathroom visits. Do not be alarmed! And kids find it very amusing.

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