Frittata with roasted peppers, potatoes and zucchini

Making this up on Sunday proved to be very handy — it’s a very busy work week for me with the end of the quarter and school year happening, so I wanted to make sure whatever the main dish was was something I could make and store for a bit in the fridge or freezer. This turned out to be perfect for that, using potatoes, zucchini and parsley from my basket along with some other items. There are a slew of such recipes out there — I ended up using this one, only substituting roasted red peppers for the poblano chiles. Worked my way through a good amount of it already and should polish off the rest tonight or tomorrow.

A couple of new recipes tried

So a little catching up here — over the weekend, I did something which I thought I had tried before but apparently not, a zucchini, fennel and white bean pasta:

Quite delicious — the recipe is here, and as always I removed the salt (seeing as the goat cheese would add enough as it stood).

The other day, wanting something a little lighter, I settled on a snow pea and carrot salad with miso-tamari dressing:

Now this to me was the real winner, good as the pasta was — a wonderful blend of flavors and textures all around, and a very simple recipe at that. More stuff to come later in the week…

Orzo salad with radish and fennel

This was kinda nice to find, a good way to use a variety of different things I had around at once. Here’s the recipe — a great dish for the hotter days.

Sauteed radishes and chard with rice

So I got this one via Farmer John’s Cookbook, a regular standby of mine — the recipe calls for arugula rather than chard, but I followed the recommendation to add a touch of mustard towards the end for bite. Pretty much just chop and cook the radishes first, move them to another bowl, add the greens for a couple of minutes until they wilt, add the radishes back along with fresh lemon juice, stir and serve. Can’t beat that!

Two recent cooking experiments

Of sorts — the other day, unsure of what to do with a green panther cauliflower I had, I scrounged up this recipe for a spicy/strong cauliflower pasta. Did a couple of adaptations — no anchovies, for a start — but the end result was mighty fine, and really, whatever the sauce/seasonings you want to be is what counts. Going whole wheat with the pasta never hurts either:

Last night, meantime, having caught up on a variety of work and at a slightly loose end, I wanted to bake something to use up some ingredients and decided to go the savory muffin route. I turned up a recipe for something called fabulous fargozas — and while I suspect the name is some random thing dreamed up by someone, it is pretty nice. Had no mozzarella to hand so the only cheese was the parmesan, but it did work — also used almond milk instead of the real thing:

Now to ponder what next…

Udon with tofu, bok choy, tomato and more…

It’s been a while — far too long, really! — since I put up something I’ve cooked, and tonight was time to rectify that. Having picked up my latest basket and seen some baby bok choy, I wanted to do something with that, and a scrounge online turned up this really fantastic recipe — seriously, check it all out, lots of photos, plenty of detail, the works.

My big change here was to use udon rather than the thick rice noodle indicated, in that no such noodle as described was available in my local Japanese market (I could have easily have missed it). Other than that I went at it, adjusting portion sizes down for a single-person dish. (I used some minced ginger I had to hand as well rather than julienning, FWIW.)

Quite delicious, very filling — give it a whirl!

Savory greens stir fry

Such is the name of the recipe — it’s a fairly basic enough stir fry on the one hand but on the other it’s a nice way to use a lot of different things in tasty fashion. Recipe from my CSA mailout:

—

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 clove garlic, minced
1 small onion, halved and sliced thin
1 (7 ounce) can water chestnuts, drained and thinly sliced
3 shiitake mushrooms, sliced (if using dried, soak, discard the stems and slice)
1 pound kale, washed and cut into large pieces
1 teaspoon mirin (or seasoned brown rice vinegar)
1 teaspoon tamari (or high quality soy sauce)
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Ingredient Options:
Combine several types of greens. Add 1 tablespoon of brown rice syrup along with the tamari. Use chard and add a cup of drained, chopped tomatoes after adding the greens. Top greens with chopped, roasted walnuts.

Method:
Heat oil in a large skillet over medium high heat. Add garlic and onions and sauté until onions are translucent. Be careful not to brown garlic or it will give a bitter taste.

Add water chestnuts and shiitake mushrooms. Sauté for 3 minutes. Add kale and sauté for 1 minute. Add mirin, tamari and pepper and continue cooking until kale is just tender.

Honey roasted potatoes

Roasting potatoes is an easy and common enough thing but the honey glaze suggested in the recipe following, which I received from my latest CSA mailout from who knows what source, was a very nice variant. Officially for red potatoes but hey, I just used what I had to hand. So:

• 1 pound red potatoes, quartered
• 2 tablespoons diced onion
• 2 tablespoons butter, melted
• 1 tablespoon honey
• 1 teaspoon dry mustard
• 1 pinch salt
• 1 pinch ground black pepper

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Lightly coat an 11×7 inch baking dish with nonstick cooking spray.

2. Place potatoes in a single layer in prepared dish, and top with onion. In a small bowl, combine melted butter, honey, mustard, salt and pepper; drizzle over potatoes and onion.

3. Bake in the preheated 375 degrees F (190 degrees C) oven for 35 minutes or until tender, stirring halfway through the cooking time.

Sweet potato and fennel soup

Meantime, this is really what I was all about this week. The recipe itself is a fine one but I really wanted an excuse to finally test out a Christmas gift I was really excited about, this Bamix professional immersion blender. My old blender died a while back and I wanted to make the switch to a hand blender for ease and to not have to worry about shlepping things back and forth. Worked like a dream and damn if this wasn’t good. (And a little crispbread to go with never hurts.)

Squash-Swiss chard gratin

Mostly hidden under the bread crumbs there, I realize. Anyway, this was done as I had a surfeit of butternut squash and chard to get rid of before this week’s basket and some random browsing around turned up this handy little recipe. Frankly I didn’t precook the chard as they suggest so just skip the first paragraph, it’s not needed and makes things a little simpler.