Smoked Salmon Benedictless

Few things make me happier than the blissful combination of smoked salmon and poached egg.

I feel obliged to note that these lack Hollandaise, because while I want to believe in principle that there is some context in which I would appreciate Hollaindaise sauce, I have not yet found it. Here, the molten egg yolk makes its own sauce, and blends perfectly and richly with the smoked salmon. Tomatoes can provide the slight tang that you'd usually get from lemon in the Hollaindaise, and the tastes end up balancing perfectly.

If you can't picture yourself poaching an egg without calamity striking, go here for a lovely and reassuring tutorial (I do mine slightly differently, but the basics are the same and she has great pictures).

Ingredients, per toast
1 pastured egg
1/2 english muffin or slice of good bread, lightly toasted
Olive oil
1-2 slices smoked salmon
A few leaves baby arugula or spinach (optional)
A few cherry tomatoes, halved (optional)
Kosher salt & freshly ground black pepper

Heat 2-3 inches of water in a pan (a wide saute pan is best—it lets you lower the egg from just above the water). Meanwhile, break the first egg into a small dish.

As soon as little bubbles coat the inner surface of the pan (before the water starts to simmer—go here for a picture), make a gentle whirlpool in the water by stirring in a circle with a spoon or rubber spatula. Lower the egg dish above the water and slide the egg into the center of the whirlpool. Adjust the heat down a bit to maintain the water at just below a simmer, and let the egg cook for 3 to 3 1/2 minutes (you can very gently prod it away from the bottom of the pan with your spatula if it starts to stick after the first 30 seconds or so).

Remove the egg with a slotted spoon and let drain. Repeat with additional eggs as desired.

Meanwhile, toast the bread, then cut each slice into bite-sized squares while keeping the overall shape of the slice (this gives the lovely illusion of a bread slice without the annoyance of sawing your way through a piece of toast for every bite). Top with a layer of smoked salmon, a few greens and/or tomatoes if desired, and then the egg. Sprinkle with salt and freshly ground black pepper, and serve hot.

Fried Chickpeas

Protein in a pinch. These are fast, and easy, delectable, and the perfect way to satisfy a wayward fried street food craving without any of that post-fried-street-food guilt.

You can make this without measuring anything, but I've put suggested measurements in parentheses for those of you with a penchant for teaspoons. You can toss the chickpeas in the flour and spices on a plate first, or (easier still) just add everything to the pan, tossing to coat, in the order listed.

Ingredients
Generous glug or two olive oil (1-2 tbsp)
1 can chickpeas, rinsed well and patted dry
2 generous sprinkles stone ground whole wheat flour (1 tsp)
1 generous sprinkle coarse-ground cornmeal (1/2 tsp)
6 dashes cumin (1/2 tsp)
3 dashes paprika (1/4 tsp)
Aleppo pepper to taste (1/4 tsp, or sub a pinch of cayenne)
Sprinkling of kosher salt (1/4 tsp)

Heat the olive oil in a nonstick pan over medium heat. When hot, add the chickpeas, then sprinkle in the rest of the ingredients, tossing to coat. Fry for 6-7 min until golden brown in places, shaking the pan from time to time.

Serve hot.

Serves 2-3 (but note that if you make them by yourself, you're unlikely to have any leftovers).

Bacon-Infused Beluga Lentils with Zucchini

Don't be fooled by its lentil-like appearance. This dish is like a bowl full of bacon. Only, you know, healthy. And easy. Neither of which you'd ever suspect from the taste.

Adapted from here, and reheats well the next day...if you manage to have any left. 

Ingredients
1 strip Niman Ranch applewood smoked bacon, diced
Olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
1 large or 2 small carrots, diced
2 medium cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
1/2 tsp dried thyme
1 cup beluga lentils, rinsed and carefully picked through for any stones
1 3/4 cups chicken and/or veggie broth
Salt & freshly ground black pepper
2 zucchini, halved and sliced crosswise into semicircles

Heat a smallish pot over medium heat. Add the bacon and cook, stirring occasionally, until it just starts to brown. Add a glug of olive oil and the onion and saute, stirring from time to time, until the onion turns translucent, then stir in the carrot and garlic and continue to cook for 2-3 minutes more.

Add the thyme and then the lentils. Saute for a minute more, then add the broth. Cover and bring to a boil, then turn the heat to low and simmer for 20-25 minutes until lentils are tender but not soft, stirring every 5-10 minutes.

Meanwhile, heat a wide pan over medium heat. When hot, add a glug of olive oil, then toss in the zucchini (you want them in a single layer—if they won't all fit in your pan, do them in batches). Fry until golden brown on both sides and tender (if they are browning without cooking through fully, you can cover the pan for a few minutes and turn the heat down to low). When the zucchini are soft but not soggy, salt to taste and turn off the heat.

Serve the lentils in soup plates, topped with the zucchini and freshly ground black pepper.

Serves 2 (or 4 as a side dish).

One-Pot Pasta with Fresh Basil

If you're anything like me, there's nothing less motivating than the prospect of cooking lunch for one.

Here's what happens. Somewhere around midday, if I'm working from home, I think of something I'd like to eat. And then I think about the number of pots involved, and the fact that I will be the only one eating...and perhaps most significantly, the only one cleaning up afterward...and that dinner comes after lunch, which will mean even more cleaning. Then, in response to this disheartening realization, one part of my mind earnestly tries to convince the other part that a spoonful of peanut butter is really a very well-balanced meal, if you think about it, because it contains protein and um and uh protein and well anyway there would only be a single utensil to wash afterward. (Inevitably, five minutes after I implement this idea, I'm both hungry and glaring at the stupid spoon sitting expectantly in the sink.)

So the other day, I am in exactly this situation—post-peanut butter, pre-spoon-cleaning—and thinking guiltily of the rampant African blue basil on the balcony that has grown to the size of a small elephant in the moist summer heat. A gangly, adolescent elephant. It was gazing reprovingly at me through the balcony door window.

I thought about how I should prune it, and how I was hungry, and how I needed to stop anthropomorphizing plants. (This last part I may have said aloud to our houseplants, Ellie and Beatrix, who nodded knowingly in the circulating air from the ceiling fan.)

And then, less than twenty minutes later, I was sitting down to this. The ingredients can be prepared while the pasta water is coming to a boil. The water boils quickly, because you can use a small pot. And most magically of all, everything happens in that one small pot—leaving you just one thing to clean up afterward.*

Plus it's like mac and cheese comfort meets homemade pesto gourmet deliciousness.

Ingredients (per person):

1 small to medium clove garlic, unpeeled

A bit more than 1 cup whole wheat fusilli pasta**

A big bunch of fresh basil (say, 2 generous handfuls...you'll want about 1/2 cup chopped)

1-2 oz grated extra sharp cheddar (or sub Parmesan, Asiago, or any full-flavored cheese)

Olive oil

Any other pasta-y ingredients that happen to be languishing in your fridge (optional)***

A scattering of pine nuts (optional)

Salt & freshly ground black pepper 

Bring a pot of water to a boil for the pasta (a 2 quart pot is fine for a single serving). Toss in a 1/2 tsp salt.

While you're waiting for it to boil, wash, dry, and chop up the basil (you want enough for about 1/2 cup chopped), grate the cheese, and assemble any other ingredients.

When the water boils, add the garlic clove and the pasta. Boil for 7 1/2 minutes or follow package directions, until al dente. 1 minute before the pasta is done, fish out the garlic clove, rinse briefly under cold water, peel, and smash or chop.

Drain the pasta (directly from the pot if you can, using the lid, to save yourself the bother of cleaning something else), and replace the pot full of pasta back on the stove. Drizzle with olive oil, stir in the garlic and basil and any other pasta-y ingredients you've decided to add, and let sit one minute to warm through. Add the cheese and pine nuts and stir gently until the cheese melts. Sprinkle with black pepper, and serve.


*And the fork, technically. And a plate, if you're being all formal.

**If you're looking for the best store-bought whole wheat pasta by far, ever, look no further than
Eden Organic Kamut spirals.

***e.g., a spoonful or two of roasted red pepper tapenade, a chopped artichoke heart, a little diced tomato, and/or a scattering of chopped parsley.

Sukuma Wiki: Kenyan Braised Sweet Potatoes and Collard Greens

The husband has been cooking up a storm while he's on his own in the wild midwest. Recently, he adapted a recipe from our Kansas produce box for Sukuma Wiki, a common Kenyan dish of braised collard greens. In Swahili, sukuma wiki literally means "stretch the week," and this dish is surprisingly filling (in addition to being deeply delicious).

And, when we each cook it in our respective kitchens for a Skype dinner date, it can stretch the week from here to Kansas City.

Ingredients
Olive oil
1 medium to large red onion, chopped
1 jalapeno, minced
1 large Japanese sweet potato (about 12 oz.), peeled and diced
1 bunch collard greens, lower half of the stems removed, coarsely chopped
1/4 tsp kosher salt
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 to 1 1/2 cups diced Roma tomatoes
Dash or six ground cumin
Scant 1/4 tsp turmeric
1 cup veggie broth
Freshly ground white pepper to taste

Heat a deep saute pan (one that has a lid) over medium heat. When hot, add a generous glug of olive oil. Add the onion and saute, stirring, until it turns translucent, then add the jalapeno and saute a couple minutes more.

Stir in the sweet potato and continue to saute, stirring occasionally, until golden brown in places. Next, add collard greens by the handful, stirring to coat. Sprinkle in the salt, and continue to cook for another 5-7 minutes, stirring from time to time.

Add the garlic, tomatoes, cumin, turmeric, and broth. Stir, cover, and reduce the heat to low or medium-low (you want to end up with a strong simmer). Cook for 40 minutes, stirring every 10-15, until the collard greens are very tender and the kitchen smells amazing.

Adjust seasonings to taste, top with freshly ground white pepper, and serve warm.

Serves 2-4.

Polenta with Sauteed Leeks, Zucchini, and Tomatoes

Deep down, I know I'm a fickle foodie. One moment I'm swooning over green beans; the next, I'm madly in love with fish. But in August, my heart has and will always* belong to tomatoes. And when perfectly ripe heirloom cherry tomatoes keep crowding our co-op in fragrant piles of orange and red and yellow, I feel morally obligated to do my part and make this.

You make it, too. Because you're selfless like that, and you don't want the tomatoes to sit there feeling unloved. Also because it's blissfully delicious.

Ingredients
Olive oil
1 medium zucchini, quartered lengthwise and sliced
About 3" of a medium leek, white and/or light green parts, halved lengthwise and sliced
2 medium to large garlic cloves, chopped
1 cup (half a basket) cherry tomatoes, halved and sprinkled with a pinch of salt
Big handful basil, chopped
1 cup chicken or veggie broth
1 cup coarsely ground cornmeal (polenta)
1-2 oz. grated Parmesan cheese
Salt & freshly ground black pepper
3 tbsp balsamic vinegar, reduced (simmer gently in a small pot until volume reduces by half)
(Optional: If you're in the mood, top with a fried pastured egg)

Bring the cup of broth and 2 cups of water to boil in a pot.

Meanwhile, heat a glug of olive oil in a wide nonstick frying pan over medium heat. Add the zucchini and fry, turning occasionally, until golden brown on most sides. Push to the side of the pan, turn the heat down a little, and add a drizzle of olive oil and the leeks and a pinch of salt to the other side. Saute the leeks, stirring occasionally, for about two minutes or until they soften. Add the garlic and saute for a minute more, then mix everything together. Add the tomatoes and basil, stir, and turn off the heat. Adjust salt to taste.

Add the polenta to the pot of simmering broth in a slow, steady stream, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon. Keeping the heat at medium-low, continue to stir slowly until the polenta thickens and just begins to pull away from the sides of the pot. Turn off the heat, and stir in the Parmesan.

Serve the tomato-zucchini mixture over the polenta, drizzle with balsamic reduction, and sprinkle with freshly ground black pepper.

Serves 2-3.


*Give or take.

Wordless Wednesday: Blog vs. Kansas, Round 2

Sauteed Corn with Cilantro and Avocado

Smoked Bacon and Mushroom Risotto

 

Black-Eyed Peas and Polenta

Sauteed Green Beans with Almonds and Balsamic Reduction

~Shopping Lists~

From Door-to-Door Organics: Local sweet corn, green beans, red onion, parsley, cilantro

From Whole Foods: Heirloom tomatoes, Niman Ranch applewood smoked bacon, yellow lentils and black-eyed peas from a great bulk aisle, baby arugula, beautiful mushrooms

From Trader Joe's: Basmati rice, Trader Giotto's balsamic vinegar, sliced almonds

From Natural Grocers: Avocado, Bhutanese red rice, Imagine chicken and veggie broth, and assorted herbs and spices from a top-notch bulk spice selection.

~

Wild Rice with Leeks and Dandelion Greens

Found at Whole Foods: Local eggs from pastured hens at Campo Lindo Farms (for about half the price of the local pastured eggs we get in California...score another one for Kansas)*
Found at Natural Grocers: More leeks, beautiful local dandelion greens

A few judicious tweaks, and an old simple standby got a trendy new makeover:

 

Ingredients

Olive oil

1 medium-small leek, white and light green parts, chopped

4 cloves garlic, smashed

1 rounded cup wild rice

1 3/4 cups chicken broth

1 bunch dandelion greens, sliced crosswise into 1/4 inch strips

2-3 handfuls baby spinach

Salt & freshly ground black pepper

2 eggs from pastured hens

Heat a glug of olive oil in a smallish pot over medium heat. Add half of the leek and 3 of the smashed garlic cloves and saute until they soften and the leek turns slightly translucent. Add the wild rice and stir to coat the grains, then pour in the chicken broth. Cover to bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 45 minutes (if there's a little extra liquid at the end, you can uncover the pot and raise the heat back up to medium for a minute or two to let it evaporate).

Meanwhile, bring a second pot of water to a boil for the eggs, but wait to cook them until a few minutes before the rice is done (you can either poach them, if you're adventurous like that, or boil them for 7 minutes or until desired doneness...7 minutes will get you a medium-boiled egg with the white fully cooked and the yolk still runny on an average-sized egg).

When the rice is done or almost done, heat a wide saute pan over medium heat. Drizzle the pan with a little olive oil, then add the rest of the leeks and the remaining garlic clove. Saute until very soft, then add the dandelion greens and toss to coat. Saute, stirring occasionally, for a couple minutes until the greens wilt. Sprinkle with salt, stir, and cover to steam for a minute more. Uncover, add the spinach, and turn off the heat. Add the fully cooked rice, and fold everything together.

Serve in bowls. Top with an egg, sliced in half if you'd like, and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Serves 2.

*On the other hand, Whole Foods had only $6 dandelion greens imported from California...which cannot possibly be necessary for growing weeds...and Natural Grocers had nothing resembling pastured eggs. So our co-op still wins for convenience...

The First Priority Herb Garden

One of our first priorities, upon settling into our new apartment, was to plant an herb garden.

Obviously, different people have different priorities when 75% of them move cross-country (or mid-country) with only 5% of their belongings. Some might think first of indoor furniture, like, say, a couch or a bed. Others might instantly shop for appliances and electronics, already missing their toaster and their television.

 

I'm not saying we don't have a toaster. I'm just noting that the first furniture we acquired may have been a pair of bright teal balcony chairs on which to sit while eating dinner, and that a balcony herb garden may have been at the top of the first page of our shopping list. And that technically, we don't yet have a couch.

Now, to plant an herb garden, one needs a few essentials. For example, herbs. Fortunately, with Family Tree Nursery only minutes away, we had easy access to Essential Herb Garden Ingredient #1. The problem came when we had to select which herbs we wanted. Because unlike our local nursery back in sleepytown California, which might carry four or five different types of basil and two different kinds of oregano—a selection that used to seem pretty fancy to us—Family Tree Nursery takes its herbs Seriously with a capital S.

There were, to be specific, eleven varieties of basil. If you wanted Thai basil in particular, you still had three options. There were at least eight types of rosemary, complete with notes on flavor profiles and optimal growing conditions. There was a full buffet of sages, oreganos, and thymes, and side tables full of mint, lavender, dill, tarragon, parsley, and lemon verbena. There were, in other words, choices to be made.

The reason that we had to make choices was because our careful calculations revealed that technically speaking, the entire variety of herbs would not fit into the interior dimensions of our car without violating some basic laws of physics and geometry. Also, we had just the one planter on just the one balcony, although if our car had been bigger, I'm not sure this would have stopped us (the neighbors don't seem to be using their balcony, after all, so surely they wouldn't mind if we climbed on over there and planted a flag...and thirty-five different herbs...on behalf of our expanding culinary kingdom).

But, because the husband irrationally refused to consider my entirely reasonable suggestion trade in our small hatchback for a nice, roomy SUV-herbobile, we had to carefully whittle down our selection to a mere eleven plants (including only three varieties of basil). I can only hope that we do not spend the next year regretting the glaring absence of Thai Siam queen basil and Tuscan blue rosemary from our lives, since all we have now is African blue basil, Thai magic basil, bush basil, and Lockwood de Forest rosemary (not to mention French thyme, flat leaf parsley, variegated oregano, garden sage, and some calibrachoa for color. Oh, and a fuchsia, just because).

Thusly and herbilly endowed, we made our way homewards, where we already had our planter and potting soil waiting for us (for any fellow aspiring balcony farmers out there, you may want to consider a self-watering planter, like the ones you can find here, which save you from having to douse your planters daily by continuously moistening the soil from a reservoir you refill once a week or so). Whereupon we planted ourselves a balcony herb garden.

Plus an auxilliary herb pot. Just in case.

Saffron Zucchini

Found at Whole Foods: Local golden and green zucchini
Found at Trader Joe's: Decently-priced saffron

Together, it turns out, they make the perfect side dish to pair with moujendra or chickpeas or a Spanish chicken recipe...or probably anything reminiscent of a dish you'd find near the Mediterranean Sea.

Ingredients
Olive oil
1 small shallot, halved and sliced
2-3 pinches saffron
2 medium zucchini, quartered lengthwise and then sliced into cubes
2-3 pinches salt
1/4 cup broth

Saute the shallot in a little olive oil over medium-low heat. Add the saffron, stir once or twice, then add the zucchini and stir to coat. Add the salt and broth, stir, and cover the pot. Let simmer for 8-10 minutes or until desired tenderness, stirring once or twice in the middle. If the pot gets dry, add a slosh more broth.

Adjust salt to taste, and serve hot.

Serves 2-4.