Baked Vegetables with an Eggplant Sauce

This is the first recipe I made from Tender.  Too bad I didn't like it very much.  Basically, you roast zucchini, onion, tomato, and red bell pepper, adding harissa and cumin near the end of cooking.  Meanwhile, you also roast eggplant, which you mix with yogurt, olive oil and mint (I used cilantro) to make a sauce for the vegetables.  It wasn't as exciting as it sounded.  My eggplant also didn't roast enough, I think, because I ended up pureeing the eggplant sauce in the food processor.  This is not something I will make again, but at least it exposed me to the book and the way the recipes are written - I thought I'd need a little more guidance than the book provided, but I found myself getting more involved with the cooking and looking at the book a little less.  On the other hand, I didn't like the way the recipe turned out, so maybe I need that extra guidance after all...

Harissa Ravioli

The Harissa Ravioli is this week's second Super Natural Every Day recipe.  It's somewhat similar to the Harissa Spaghettini recipe I posted last month - they both have a spicy, lemony harissa oil dressing.  This one, however, uses ravioli as the pasta (we used a spinach/ricotta stuffed ravioli) and broccoli florets.  We added feta to the Harissa Spaghettini, and this recipe actually calls for it.

We liked this a lot.  We are really digging the stuffed pasta dishes.  Here, I could have swapped out some of the broccoli - maybe for some of the leftover asparagus from the Tortellini Salad.  I used half of the harissa called for, and it was plenty spicy - this stuff is pretty strong.  I omitted the black olives out of laziness (and Ken hates them) and we decided on toasted slivered almonds for the crunchy aspect, but I'd like to try the pepitas next time.  The recipe says it serves 4, but we used slightly less ravioli and polished it off between the two of us.  I see some more stuffed pasta dishes in our future!

Harissa Spaghettini

I always buy produce for a certain purpose and never get around to using it.  I had some kale that had been meant for a dish that I never ended up making, and I needed a quick, easy recipe to use it up.  I skimmed through some kale recipes online and decided on the Harissa Spaghettini recipe from 101 Cookbooks.

The harissa oil was super spicy!  We added feta, which gave it some saltiness as well as a cooling element.  I tried the chopped black olives that were in the recipe, but I preferred it without them.  We used blanched slivered almonds instead of the pine nuts, which I didn't have on hand (plus they're so expensive now!).  I forgot the lemon zest, which is too bad because I'm sure it adds a fresh refreshing flavor, but I'll be sure to try it next time.  This was pretty good and was an easy, quick weeknight dinner and a nice way to use up kale.

Roasted Delicata Squash Salad

I waited forever to be able to make this Roasted Delicata Squash Salad.  Seriously!  I got the delicata squash from the CSA a few weeks ago and then I picked up the other ingredients - potatoes, radishes.  I had the miso already, I always have almonds on hand, and I totally forgot about the kale.  When I went to Whole Foods to pick up harissa, the missing link... they didn't have it.  After about half an hour of searching I asked customer service and they informed me that it was discontinued due to low sales, just like the muscovado sugar I was looking for a few weeks earlier.  People don't know what they're missing by not buying this stuff.  Unbelievable!

So anyway, I had to turn to Amazon for my harissa, which cost me more to ship than the actual tube.  Luckily, it's a condiment you don't need to use much of, and the handy tube means you don't have to use it all right away.  (I buy tomato paste in a tube too - unless you have a recipe that actually calls for a whole can, it's much more cost-efficient and convenient.)

Since I got some kale in my CSA share this week and picked up some more radishes at the market, I decided today would be the day.  It turned out great!  I should have cut the potatoes smaller, but otherwise I thought it was delicious.  The one change I made was to roast the radishes instead of slicing them and adding them raw to the salad.  The potatoes were my favorite part, but Ken liked the squash and radishes better.  It would be a great side for a harissa-marinated chicken!  The marinade could be used for a variety of vegetables, too.