My Fan in Japan

Just look at this beautiful bacon and cheese etc. frittata made by a reader in Japan (ok, it's my sister).

Thanks Dr. Evans!  Any requests?  Gotta love this internet thingy ;-)

Black Bean Burgers

Rough night.  The girls were determined to be underfoot.  The 1 yr old tries to drag a dining room chair into the kitchen so she can climb up on it and either scald herself on the stove or fall off and knock her teeth out on the tile floor.  Good thing I had an easy dinner planned: Southwestern Black Bean Burgers in whole wheat pitas.  I don't have much for you in the way of photos, though, which is a shame, because I wanted to show how simple this healthy meal is to put together.

If you like falafel, you might consider giving these a try.  Unlike falafel, though, they have a smooth, almost  creamy interior which contrasts well with the pita and veggies.   Here are the ingredients I planned to use, but I made a few adjustments as I went along.   

Black Bean Burgers

1 slice of bread 

1 clove of garlic

1 small shallot, or scallion, rough chopped

1 can (15 oz) black beans, drained and rinsed

1/4 c chopped cilantro (loosely piled in there)

salt

chipotle peppers or hot sauce

1/2 t cumin

3 T mayonnaise

1/2 c melty cheese like jack, mozzarella, cheddar

Fine, dry breadcrumbs

Oil or -Mmm, bacon fat -for sauteeing

For Serving:

Pitas 

Tomato slices

Lettuce

Salsa

Roasted peppers

               Sour Cream          

Get out your food processor.  Tear up the bread and run it in the processor until it's like bread crumbs.  Drop the garlic and onion in, and pulse until minced small.

Add the beans and seasonings and pulse until the beans are in small bits.  Add the mayo and cheese and pulse just until well incorporated.  You want the beans to retain some texture, but overall not too chunky.

Heat a nonstick saute pan over med, then film it with your fat of choice.  Meanwhile, put some dry breadcrumbs into a dish and glop 1/4 of the bean mixture onto it.  Gently roll and shape it into a patty, and transfer it gently into the oil.  Repeat.  These are fragile, they seem to get softer as they heat up, and you may need to add more fat when you flip them.  The best is to get a nice crusty exterior and a creamy, melty interior.

Planning Ahead

Kind of boring tonight.  Roast pork loin with buttermilk mashed garnet yams and haricots vert (little green beans- sssh, they were frozen from Trader Joes).  I have ulterior motives for the pork.

I like Penzey's Bavarian seasoning for this.  Plenty of salt, too (kosher), then I brown the thing on all sides in my  beat up old restaurant supply saute pan, and throw it in a 400' oven for about 50 minutes.

Sweet potatoes ready to be mashed with butter and buttermilk.  The tang works well with the sweetness of the potatoes.

The frozen TJ's beans.  I blanch them in that pan in shallow water, then drain the water off, add some cherry tomatoes, more butter (but not too much!) and Mrs. Dash.  You know what I like about Mrs. Dash?  I have no aversion to salt, believe me.  But Mrs. Dash leaves all these appetizing looking specks of seasoning on your food.  I dig that.

Make sure you let your roasts rest before slicing.  This 2.25 lb roast (before cooking) needed about 10 minutes.

I just used the pan juices with a little white wine to dissolve them for a sauce.  Usually that doesn't make enough, but we were only eating half the pork tonight.  The leftovers I have in mind don't require sauce....

Teriyaki Glazed Salmon

This is a great way to prepare salmon fillets.  It's easy and flavorful- the salmon has a sticky, intense, sweet and salty glaze clinging to it.  It's not the kind of sauce you want to pour all over rice, so I served a nice warm potato salad and some steamed broccoli with it.  And yes, that IS a huge-ass serving of salmon.  I cut the fillet into 2 pieces to facilitate cooking it, then we cut the girls portions off the more done ends of ours (after this pic!).

This goes together fast so I have everything at the ready:

The vegetables?  That's boiled new potatoes, and thinly sliced fennel and scallions.  A little parsley waits on the side.

Right, that's a fennel bulb.  Just cut off the stalks, halve it,  pare out a central core which you will see, and the rest is fully edible raw or cooked.  The teriyaki glaze is simply about 3T each brown sugar, sake or water,  and soy sauce, and 1t each fresh garlic and fresh or ground ginger.  

The salmon is seared on the first side on med high heat, about 1 1/2 minutes.  With a good nonstick pan, you don't even need to add any oil: 

As soon as it is flipped, the glaze is added.  It will boil up violently.  Turn down the heat to med. You can control the outcome of this dish with 2 things-  a cover,and some water.  If your glaze is boiling away too fast, that is, before the salmon is cooked, either add water or slap a lid on it to both prevent evaporation and raise the cooking temp. 

Ideally the salmon should be a perfect medium rare just as the glaze is reduced to a deliciously syrupy consistency.  Plan on about 8 minutes total cooking time.  Flip the salmon over a few more times to really coat it with the glaze. 

Meanwhile, I browned the potatoes in butter, then tossed in the other veggies just until crisp- tender.  Steamed the broccoli- done.

Adults Only Pasta

This is my husband's favorite pasta, and since he had to work beyond the girls' bedtimes last night, I made it for him:  Cavatappi with Rapini, Italian Sausage, and Parmesan.

Rapini, AKA Broccoli Rabe, is a slightly bitter, sturdy green vegetable.  It's packed with good nutrition but I find it's at it's best when  not treated like a health food.  It needs plenty of fat and salt (much of which comes from the sausage and the cheese), and it's best when cooked beyond al dente.  On the left is the rapini with just the bottoms chopped off, the right has been stripped of the biggest, toughest, or bruised leaves.  It's ready to cook.

Boil a big pot of salted water.  Blanch the rapini for 3-5 minutes, until mostly tender.  Remove the rapini and cook the pasta in the same water to save a pot.

Brown an Italian sausage in some olive oil, and break it up into small pieces.  I use a spoon to smush it flat, and then  I chop it with the edge of a wooden spatula.  Add a couple cloves of chopped garlic and a dash of hot pepper flakes.

Right when the garlic starts to brown, add a glug of white wine or Vermouth.  Then add half a can of chicken broth.  When the pasta is nearly done, add the rapini and thicken the sauce with a bit of cornstarch (approx 1 T) dissolved in cold broth or water:

Ready for the pasta.  Taste it.  You might need salt, and a grind of pepper would be good about now.  After the pasta is mixed in, you add a big handful of Parmesan and just let it soak up and get flavor- melded there in the pan for a minute or two.  Serve more cheese on top.

I love this little tool.  It's called a spider or a skimmer and it's so much more convenient than hassling with a big colander.  The one in this picture is old enough to get married, in most states.

Chicken Breasts Tonight

Tonight I made what I guess you could call a "Supreme du Volaille Nicoise" except for two things:  I used Kalamata, not Nicoise, olives- and nobody would know what you were talking about.

 I've never been big on naming my dinners.  This was based on flavors you might find in the south of France, as well as Mediterannean Spain, Greece, and Italy.  Or, as the case may be- kicking around the back of my fridge.

Chicken breasts

Olive Oil

Onion and garlic

Splash of white wine

Tomatoes

Stuff like- roasted peppers, artichokes, olives, sun dried tomatoes, capers, fresh basil.....

Chicken broth

I cut the chicken like this to get pieces that cook quickly and evenly.  They get seasoned and browned in olive oil.  Then they are removed from the pan, and the onions and garlic are lightly browned in the same pan.  Turn the heat down and salt them to help them get soft before they burn.  Then, you just pour in the wine and boil ot briefly, add the other stuff, and simmer about 10 minutes.  Add the chicken back and cook it another 5 minutes:

Do you like polenta?  It's such a tasty easy side.  If you can make oatmeal on the stovetop, you've practically already made polenta.  It's just a coarse ground cornmeal that cooks up in salted water to a kind of mush- but then you add butter and cheese (parmesan, here).  Mmmm. 

Make sure you cook it as long as the package says, and don't be afraid to add more water as it cooks.  

Maybe you noticed I seemed to have cooked way too much zucchini last night?  I did.  So tonight, I topped the sauteed slices with Panko bread crumbs, parmesan, and olive oil; and broiled them:

It was good :)

Speaking of leftovers, I took a lot of the veggies I used tonight and the grain mix from the other night, and got a head start on my husband's lunch for tomorrow.  I'll add some goat cheese and dressing before I pack it.

Hummus- don't buy it, make it!

You can make the best Hummus at home, as long as you have a food processor.  The secrets:  blend it long enough to make it really smooth and creamy, and add plenty of extra virgin olive oil at the end.

Hummus 

1 small can chick peas aka garbanzo beans

1/4 cup tahini (sesame paste, keeps months in the fridge)

juice of 1 lemon or to taste

1 clove of garlic or to taste, roughly chopped

1 t salt or to taste

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

Drain and rinse chick peas.  Put them in the food processor with everything except the oil, and process for a minute or two until really creamy.  You may add about 2T warm water to get things moving.

Pour in the oil with the blade running and then turn it off.  Overworking olive oil can give it a bitter flavor.

If you're too skinny, or looking to impress someone, (not, and not) - you can drizzle more oil on the top of the plated hummus and sprinkle it with paprika, parsley, or chopped olives.

Often you see hummus in pitas with raw salad vegetables- lettuce, tomato, cukes.  I tend to prefer it with sauteed or grilled zucchini and roasted peppers.

To roast a pepper, those of you with gas stoves, put the thing right on the burner and blacken it on all sides:

When it's cool enough to handle, rinse the skin off under running water.  If a chef asks, tell them you just scraped the skin off with a paring knife so as not to lose any of the flavor (eye roll).
Again, I quickly heat any kind of flatbreads right over the open flame.  These pitas were in my freezer, and this technique really seems to freshen them up.  

Dinner is served:
This meal is healthy, but don't kid yourself that hummus is low cal or low fat.  It's not.  So load up on the veggies, too.