Vegetarian « More Cheese More Chocolate

Jun 21 2011

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Sides, Vegetarian

Green Potato Salad

Happy First Day of Summer!

How about some potato salad to celebrate?

Nice, fresh potato salad. Not the kind that’s equal parts mayo and potatoes.

Instead of hard-boiled eggs and celery, how about adding a few handfuls of greens and herbs to the salad?

And perhaps you could swap out that boring mayo for a brighter, lemony aioli. How does that sound?

And then, just for fun, maybe you could sneak in some capers and not admit to it until someone who thinks that they don’t like capers bites into one and asks whether you added capers. Why? Because it might turn out that they do, in fact, like capers.

Who’s with me?

Green Potato Salad

All of the amounts are estimates of what I added, as I wasn’t really measuring as I threw this together. You can definitely play around with the additions – maybe use basil or chives or dill instead of parsley or add green beans or peas or asparagus.

1-1/2 to 2 lbs. waxy potatoes
2 cups fresh spinach, roughly chopped
1/4-1/2 cup flat-leaf parsley, chopped
1 tsp – 1 tbsp capers

Dressing:

1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/4-1/3 cup sour cream
2 cloves garlic, minced
Juice and zest of 1/2 lemon
Salt & pepper

Chop the potatoes into bite-sized pieces. Add them to a large pot, and cover with water. Bring to a boil, and cook until the potatoes can be easily pierced with a fork. Drain and return to the pot or to a big bowl.

While the potatoes are boiling, you can make the dressing. Whisk together the mayo, sour cream, garlic, lemon juice, and lemon zest. Add salt and pepper to taste, and adjust the other ingredients to your liking. I found myself adding more and more sour cream to make it more tangy and less mayonnaise-y, but that’s just my preference. I also used malt vinegar sea salt instead of regular salt, but I don’t think I used enough to make the vinegar flavor noticeable. I just like the feeling of throwing in pinches of fancy salt.

While the potatoes are still warm, add enough dressing to thoroughly coat them. They’ll absorb some of it, so don’t be too stingy.

Add the spinach, parsley, and capers, and mix well. Add more dressing if needed. Serve immediately or chill for a while to let the flavors meld.

We ate our potato salad with a freshly baked baguette and a salami + cheese plate, and we enjoyed every bite.

Mar 30 2011

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Pasta, Vegetarian

Semolina Fettucini with Watercress Pesto

It’s technically spring, but with a few inches of snow still on the ground, it doesn’t really feel like it yet. It doesn’t really feel like winter anymore either, with temperatures stuck around the 30s. While we’re in season limbo, it can be difficult to figure out what to cook. I’m sick enough of winter that heavier dishes are no longer very appealing, but it’s still cool enough that I feel like I should take advantage of cooking with heat before the temperatures shoot up. (Ha. Who am I kidding? That’s still months away.)

The solution? Homemade pasta with a light, fresh sauce. Instead of making a traditional basil pesto, I decided to use watercress (thanks to my New Year’s resolution to use a new ingredient each month). I didn’t have the highest of hopes for the pesto after tasting a plain piece of watercress, but it turned out really, really well. Like some-of-the-best-pesto-I’ve-ever-made well. The toasted walnuts and heavy-handed use of fresh lemon juice definitely contributed to the success, but the watercress was still the star.

For the pasta, I tried a new dough recipe, and it was perfection. It requires two ingredients (semolina and water) and creates a dough that is super easy to work with. It was so easy that we had no problem rolling out the dough by hand and slicing it with a pizza cutter instead of using my KitchenAid pasta discs, which was a relief considering I recently destroyed the disc for making flat noodles.

To finish the dish I added boiled potatoes and blanched green beans (pasta al pesto genovese according to Silver Spoon Pasta). This dish is a keeper, and it will definitely be making more appearances in my kitchen regardless of the season.

Watercress Pesto

1 bunch (or about a cup) watercress
1/3 cup walnuts, toasted
1/4 cup grated parmesan
2 cloves garlic, chopped
Juice of 1/2 lemon (or more)
Olive oil
Salt and pepper

Note: all of these amounts are approximate and should be adjusted according to taste.

Combine the watercress, toasted walnuts, parmesan, garlic, and juice of 1/2 lemon in the bowl of a food processor. Process until you have a thick paste, scraping down the sides of the bowl once or twice if necessary.

With the motor running, drizzle in olive oil until it reaches the consistency of a moderately thick sauce. Season with salt and pepper, and add additional lemon juice if needed.

The pesto can be made hours or a day in advance, covered, and refrigerated. Bring it back to room temperature (or at least take of the chill) before tossing it with the pasta.

Fresh Semolina Pasta

From Gourmet via Epicurious

2 1/2 cups semolina
1/2 plus 1/3 cups water
Flour for dusting

Combine the semolina and water in a medium bowl, and stir until you have a fairly cohesive mass. Turn the mixture out onto a work surface (I used my big, wooden cutting board), and knead for 7 to 9 minutes. The dough may seem dry and you might doubt its ability to pick up all of the semolina, but if you keep at it you should end up with a smooth ball of dough with most or all of the semolina incorporated. Sprinkle a little flour in the bottom of a bowl, add the dough, and let it rest, covered with plastic wrap, for 30 minutes.

After the resting period, you can either run the dough through a pasta machine, or you can hand-roll it with a rolling pin. If you opt for the hand-rolling method, make sure that your work surface is lightly floured at all times (all-purpose flour is fine for this), and keep rotating the dough as you go to prevent any surprise stickiness. Roll the dough into a thin sheet, keeping in mind that it will puff up and out when boiled, and slice with a knife or pizza cutter.

Add the cut pasta to a large pot of salted, boiling water. Cook until al dente. We didn’t keep track of the cooking time, but I’d guess that it was in the 5-7 minute range. Drain the pasta in a colander, reserving about 1/4 cup of the pasta water.

Return the pasta and the reserved water to the warm pot. Add the pesto as well as 1-2 cups of blanched green beans and 1-2 cups of boiled potatoes. Gently toss to distribute the sauce. Season with salt and pepper.

Serve with grated parmesan and yummy buttered bread for an extra dose of carbs. I’d like to note that I refrained from turning the bread into cheesy bread, proving that I do have some self-restraint. Or maybe I was just planning ahead for that hot fudge sundae from Dairy Queen that I ate for dessert.

Nov 09 2010

1 Comment

Pizza, Vegetarian

Sweet Potato Calzones

For the last five years I’ve had this bad habit of tearing out recipes from magazines and then never actually using them. In fact, I have three big binders full of recipes from a variety of magazines, most of which I’ve never made. Since I’ve become aware of my recipe hoarding tendencies, I’ve been resisting the urge to rip out every recipe that I see and think that I might want to make one day. This is one of my first attempts to really change my ways. I saw this recipe in a magazine a couple of months ago, and I decided to try it before ripping it out and stowing it away. It’s a keeper, and since I’m posting it on here I don’t even need to tear out the page. Let’s file that under “success.”

The recipe is originally from Real Simple, and I made a few changes to make it more to my liking. The biggest change was swapping pizza dough for pie crust, transforming the turnovers to calzones. I figured that if the filling didn’t turn out to be that great, at least it would be stuffed inside a pocket of delicious pizza dough. In my world pizza dough beats pie crust. Other tweaks: using Jarlsberg instead of Gruyère because Jarlsberg was a lot cheaper and using dried thyme because I neglected to add fresh thyme to my grocery list.

Sweet Potato Calzones

Adapted from Real Simple, September 2010

*Makes four calzones

Pizza dough
1 white onion
1-2 sweet potatoes
1 bunch Swiss chard, thick stems removed and leaves sliced into 1″ strips
4 oz. (or more) Gruyère, Jarlsberg, or something similar
2 tsp dried thyme

I made a batch of Jim Lahey’s pizza dough (this time I only used bread flour – no whole wheat flour) a few hours before I was going to make the calzones, and then divided into four pieces for four calzones.

In a food processor with the shredder attachment, shred the cheese, then the onion, and then the sweet potato.

Heat a little oil in a large skillet, and sauté the onion for several minutes, until it softens.

Add the chard to the softened onion

Cook the mixture for a few minutes, until the chard wilts.

In a large bowl mix together the onions, chard, cheese, sweet potatoes, and thyme. Season with salt & pepper.

On a floured surface, roll out each piece of dough until it’s roughly 8″ around, or about 1/4″ thick.
Top half of it with a healthy heap of the filling, leaving about 1/2″ around the edge.
Dot the edge with water, fold the top over the filling, and press the edges together to seal.

Transfer filled calzones to a lightly oiled baking sheet, and use a serrated knife to cut a few slits in the top.

Note: I was following the original recipe when I put egg wash over one of the calzones, and then it dawned on me that I was using pizza dough and not pie dough and egg wash isn’t really necessary. Feel free to use it, though. Also, I used a quarter of the dough to make a pizza. I couldn’t resist.

Bake at 425 until the crust is golden – maybe 30 minutes? I can’t remember exactly how long it took.

Egg washed calzone

Non-egg washed calzone

See the filling that oozed out onto the baking sheet and burned? It’s much easier to clean it off of a baking sheet than it is to clean it off of a pizza stone. I’d stick with the baking sheet method if I were you. I’ve scrubbed my pizza stone a few times, and I still haven’t gotten all of the char to come off.

Cherry tomatoes + fresh mozzarella pearls + fresh basil

Dinner

Oct 04 2010

Pesto Veggie Pizza

To go with the beef and sauerkraut pizza from last week, we made a slightly lighter veggie pizza to balance things out. It started with a pesto base and was topped with fresh spinach, sun-dried tomatoes, artichoke hearts, feta, and a mozzarella/provolone mix. The sauerkraut ‘za stole the show that evening, but on any other night this pizza would have been the winner.

Pizza dough + pesto + spinach + artichoke hearts + sun-dried tomatoes + feta + mozzarella + provolone. Bake at 450 for 20-ish minutes or until the cheese melts and the crust is crispy.

And…photos from a busy, fun-filled weekend