Grilled summer veggie and chickpea salad

We're so lucky to live near the Mountain View Farmers Market.  It's one of the largest farmers markets in Bay Area and has a great mix of Californian and Asian produce, organic and non-organic.  It even includes an amazing fresh seafood vendor--Mission Fresh Fish!  But. This is post is not about fish.  It is about a really tasty, not too complicated, vegetarian, very filling, peak of summer dinner.  Jon, a good Texas man, grew up loving meat with every meal, and even he raves about this, feeling quite satisfied without a bit of meat in sight.

(Although I, too, love my meat, fish, poultry, and game, I'm a huge fan of vegetarian both for taste, health, and environmental reasons, so I try to make sure we have at least one vegetarian meal per week and another one or two meals that are either vegetarian or meat lite.)

There's summer sweetness from the corn and tomatoes offset by the creamy eggplant which soaks up the dressing and releases tangy bursts on each bite.  The summer squash adds smokiness, sugar snap peas gives it some crunch, and of course the chickpeas are sure to fill you up.  Basically, a perfect summer main course salad.


Ingredients
1 Japanese/Chinese eggplant, about 1/2 lb, cut into thick slices*
1-2 small summer squash, any kind, cut into thick slices. Pattypan are really nice for this.
1 ear sweet corn, unshucked
handful sugar snap peas, ends removed, cut into 1/2" pieces
handful cherry tomatoes, cut in halve
1 15oz can chickpeas, drained and rinsed**

3 tablespoons red wine vinegar
2-2 1/2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon finely minced shallot, optional
salt and pepper to taste

Directions
Soak the ear of corn in water while the grill heats. Brush the eggplant and squash slices lightly with olive oil. Heat the grill on high.

Start grilling the corn first.  It will take 20-25 minutes.  The husk will look charred on all sides when it is done. After the corn has grilled about 10 minutes, add the eggplant and squash slices.

While the vegetables are cooking, make a red wine vinaigrette.  We add everything to a small, plastic container with a tight lid that we then shake until well mixed.  You can whisk the olive oil into the vinegar instead if you prefer.  A tart dressing is great for salads like this to balance the sweetness from the corn. As the only salt is in the dressing, we usually make the dressing a bit saltier than tastes good on its own.

Put the chickpeas in a large bowl. Remove the eggplant and squash from the grill and when cool enough to handle, dice them and add to the chickpeas.  Add about half the vinaigrette to the bowl.

When the corn is done and cool enough to handle, cut the kernels from the cob, adding to the bowl.  Add the sugar snap peas and tomatoes and the rest of the vinaigrette. Mix everything together and taste to see if the seasonings need to be adjusted.

Makes 2 large, filling servings.
 Eat!

*Japanese/Chinese eggplants are long and thin with fewer seeds.  If you don't have access to these, use a small eggplant, about 1/2 lb.

** With all the posts about black eyed peas recently, I'd be tempted to try fresh beans (cooked of course!) if I found them at our farmers market.

Peanut Butter Bars

I really like to have something sweet squirreled away at home or else I end up a little sad, seeing the endless parade of tasty-looking desserts that I can't eat at work.

I have a weakness for the combination of chocolate and peanut butter, especially when oats are involved.  It's hard to keep peanut butter bars and no-bake oatmeal cookies around the house--they mysteriously disappear out of the freezer.  I just tell myself that oats and peanut butter are healthy...right?

I was thrilled to find this recipe for peanut butter bars on Whisk: a food blog.  I followed Recipe 2 almost as written, mostly just halving the recipe and substituting peanut butter for some of the light corn syrup.  Here is the ingredient list for half the recipe:

1/3 cup unsalted butter
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 tablespoons light corn syrup AND 2 tablespoon peanut butter
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 cups gluten free oats, regular or quick cooking, uncooked
3 ounces semi-sweet chocolate chips
1/3 cup peanut butter

Follow the directions for Recipe 2. Use an 8x8" pan.  Only bake for 12 minutes instead of 15.  The base will not look cooked at that time.  It's ok. I cut the pan into 18 bars.

Based on my experience I would store these in the fridge--in the freezer they get too hard and discolor a little.  These were super popular with everyone that tried them, so easy to make, and a perfect cool summer treat.  They are my new favorite gluten free treat.  Jon thinks they are tie for first place with our brownies.

Granola bars

I adore oats in all forms--oatmeal, granola bars, muesli, fruit topping, oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, etc.--maybe I'm secretly Scottish? Granola bars are a great snack for busy days.  It's nice to have something other than fruits and nuts to eat if I'm out longer than I was planning.  Sadly, I find the good tasting gluten bars are generally just fruit and nuts.  I end up feeling like a monkey  You can imagine how excited I was to find Smitten Kitchen's post for oat-based, crunchy granola bars.  I love them! They are just a tiny bit crumbly when you bite into them and not too sweet, just perfect. I try to keep a few in the freezer all the time, but since my husband and sister both love them, too, we're often out.

I follow the recipe mostly as written, reducing the honey and substituting a ground flax for the wheat germ.  Here's the ingredient list:

2 cups certified gluten free rolled oats(I like Cream Hill Estate's Lara's Rolled Oats)
1 cup sliced or slivered almonds
1 cup shredded coconut, loosely packed (I use unsweetened)
1/2 cup ground flax
a little more than 1/2 cup honey
1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
1 1/2 cup dried fruit, or a mix of dried fruit and nuts and seeds (I often use ~1/2 cup total  pepitas, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, and any other bits of nuts I have around and 1 cup dried cranberries)

Follow the directions as written--I use a 9x13" pyrex baking dish.  Be sure to press them very flat before baking, just as Deb recommends.  It's really key.  Mine usually take about 22 minutes to bake--be careful not to let the bottom burn.  Don't be like me and get impatient and remove them from the dish before they have completely cooled.  You will have sad crumbly bar bits everywhere.  Enjoy!

PS. If you don't feel like making your own, I do recommend Larabars and Mrs. May's Trio bars.  They are of the 'only fruits and nuts and seeds' variety and are quite tasty.

Mac and cheese with green veggies

A favorite and oh-so-simple meal for me is Annie's Mac and Cheese with a bunch of vegetables added to it (and sometimes a little bit of sliced hot dog).  Adding the greens always made me feel that I was balancing comfort with healthy in a very tasty way.   
Last week I finally tried Annie's Gluten-Free Macaroni and Cheese, and I am so
pleased at how it came out--just like I remembered.
The key thing to remember with any gluten free pasta dish is to use plenty of water since rice and corn pasta tends to give off a lot of starch.  Using Greek yogurt instead of milk makes a thicker sauce that clings better to the pasta and greens.

Ingredients

1 box Annie's Gluten-Free Rice Pasta and Cheese
a few tablespoons Greek yogurt (low fat or full fat)
small head of broccoli, cut into small, bite size pieces
several handfuls of baby spinach

Directions

1. Heat two saucepans of water to boiling.
2. Cook the noodles as directed in one of them.
3. Salt the other saucepan of water and then add the broccoli.  Cook a bit until just barely al dente--the broccoli will continue to cook off the heat and when you add it to the noodles.  It should take 3-6 minutes.  Drain the broccoli and set aside.
4. Add the spinach to the noodles, then sprinkle with the cheese powder and add the yogurt until it's the appropriate thickness.  Stir until all the cheese is dissolved and the spinach starts to wilt.  Add the broccoli and stir a few times more and then serve!

The box claims to make 2.5 servings--we just split into two very generous servings.

Freshly baked chocolate chip cookies

Jon and I have had a nice little habit lately: after dinner, one of us pulls out a couple of cookie dough balls, heats up the toaster oven and makes two perfect chocolate chip cookies--warm, oozy, filling the whole house with the most delicious smell.  These are better than any Tollhouse gluten-y cookie I've ever baked in the past.

These are lightly adapted from Gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies by Shauna James Ahern on Leite's Culinaria.

I've halved the recipe and made much smaller cookies.  I suppose they lose a little of the wonderful texture that Shauna describes, but the smaller size means we can have one most nights after dinner.

Ingredients

68 g sorghum flour (1/2 cup)
60 g tapioca starch (1/2 cup)
72 g potato starch (1/2 cup)
60 g Pamela's baking mix (1/2 cup)
1 1/2 tsp xanthan gum
3/4 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoons kosher salt
1 1/4 sticks unsalted butter (10 tablespoons), at room temperature
1/2 cup + 2 tbsp cups brown sugar
1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoons granulated sugar, superfine is ok.
1 large egg, at room temperature
1 teaspoons vanilla extract
8 ounces semi-sweet chocolate chips

Directions
Follow the directions as written in Shauna's recipe except make each cookie 7/8 to 1 ounce in size. They need much less time to bake, usually less than 10 minutes.  This size makes about 3 dozen cookies.

We roll all the dough into balls and then freeze them.  When baking the cookies from the freezer, it will take longer.  We often bake just two cookie balls from the freezer at 350F in our preheated toaster oven. Somehow the ritual of waiting to preheat the toaster oven, baking the cookies, and then waiting for them to cool makes me satiated with just one.

Sweet crepes

During my vacations to Paris, I grew to love both savory galettes stuffed with ham and cheese and sweet crepes filled nutella and banana.  I was very sad when my first attempt at gluten free sweet crepes a couple years ago were too puffy and fell apart easily.  I just gave up and assumed it was another 'baked good' I'd never eat again.

This recipe I found on About.com changed everything.  The crepes were exactly as I remembered them and not the least bit gritty, even when I thawed the last few frozen crepes a month after I first made them. Even my husband (who can eat gluten) declared them a major success.

My notes:

• I used the Allergen Free basic flour mix for the flours, where 1 cup = 115g.  I believe the superfine brown rice flour is key to the texture. 
• I used 2% milk and butter, not oil.
• I mixed the batter in my blender and let it sit for about 30 minutes.  The blender pitcher made it easy to pour the batter into the pan.
• Since I didn't have a crepe I used my 10" nonstick skillet.  I started with a 8" skillet but found that the rounded sides made crepes that were much too small.  The 10" skillet was perfect, and I didn't have any problems flipping or removing the crepes.

I didn't bother with the raspberry sauce, instead filling them with lemon curd one time and thick strawberry yogurt another.

These freeze really well--next time rather than separating each crepe with a piece of wax paper, I'd just put wax paper between each group of crepes I'd want to thaw.

We'll definitely make these again!

 

Really fast, crispy roast potatoes

From 2008-food

I am impatient. I also love potatoes. This is how to turn potatoes into crispy nuggets of happiness.

1 or more* pounds of waxy potatoes like reds, Peruvian purples, or Yukon golds
1 or more tablespoons olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Poke some holes in the potatoes (so that they don't explode) and either boil in salted water until just cooked through (should be able to stick a fork in the potato without too much resistance) or microwave until similarly cooked through.

Preheat the oven to 425F.

Let the potatoes cool slightly and cut into bite-size chunks. (Gently) toss with oil (about 1 to 2 teaspoons per pound). Spread out on a piece of parchment paper (or silpat) on a jelly roll pan (10" x 15", I think). Sprinkle with salt and pepper--be generous with the salt if you didn't use salted water to cook the potatoes. Potatoes need a lot of salt.

Bake for 15-30 minutes** until crispy on the outside. You may want to flip the chunks over half way through the cooking time so both sides brown evenly.

Serve with ketchup. :)

*Make more. You will eat them all.
** I wasn't paying attention at the time, so I'm not sure how long it took. It was at least 15 minutes and less than 30 minutes.

Other notes:

• If the potatoes are finishing too quickly, remove from the oven when they are just about done. Put them back in 5-10 minutes before serving to re-crisp them.
• You can also use left over boiled potatoes. They may take slightly longer to bake if they are room temperature or colder.
• You can toss the potatoes with other herbs like thyme, rosemary, chives.
• Crash-hot potatoes are another great crispy roasted potato recipe.

A nice (Indian) beef curry

From 2008-food

I love Indian food, but I'm a little more wary of eating it out because I find I have a hard time making sure it's actually safe for me to eat--although most dishes should be fine. I regularly read the blog Tigers & Strawberries* and saw Barbara's post for "a nice beef curry" and knew I just had to try it. It came out really well and seems to be very freezable, so I'm sure I'll be making it again. It reminded me a little of rogan josh, a very rich, meaty sauce, a little creamy, very indulgent...for me it tasted like something I might get a restaurant (that's a good thing). I made it pretty much as written, with a few changes since I'm cooking for one person and I didn't have some of the ingredients at home. My notes:

• halving it turns out about 4 1 cup servings.
• substituted: 2% yogurt for whole milk yogurt, 1/4 cup Muir Glen tomato sauce for the 1/2 cup diced tomatoes, some dried ginger for fresh, and left out the fennel seeds and paprika since I didn't have any.
• Really, really have everything ready to go because you'll burn your seeds if you put them in and hope to quickly chop up the beef before the seeds pop.
  
• It's probably not the best idea, but I pureed the paste and onions in my coffee grinder because I didn't want to dirty another dish. Next time I might just add all the liquid, remove the meat, and use my hand blender.
• I needed to brown the meat in batches since my stove doesn't get super hot, and I didn't have a huge surface area.
• I cut the pieces smaller (closer to 3/4" cubes) which I liked. It was falling apart after about 2 hours of simmering. I had to add some water to thin the sauce.

*I love her blog. Pretty much every week I see something that I'm just dying to make.