Whole Grain Rice Salad

I missed last year's cherry season.  I don't know how it happened, but it came and went before I even realized it had happened.  This year I overcompensated with a mixed flat of sweet and sour cherries.  What I did with them is another post for another day, but I set aside a few to make the Whole Grain Rice Salad from Super Natural Every Day.

I had to make a few adjustments based on what I had on hand.  There was no baby spinach, but there was... either Swiss chard or beet greens, I can't even be sure.  Pecans had to take the place of walnuts, which I didn't have.  I opted for feta over goat cheese, and for the all-important grain base, I chose wild rice.  The salad was fine, but honestly, not exciting to me.  I can't exactly place why.  I'm sure, though, that it wasn't the dressing.  I had some of the leftover dressing on a green salad, and it made that green salad worth eating.  I'm not typically a fan, but the cherry dressing was such a unique flavor, it seemed to make it worthwhile.

So the bottom line here is that I can't judge too harshly having made so many substitutions, but it's unlikely that I'll try this salad again.  The dressing, however, is one I'll come back to.

Shaved Fennel Salad

The Shaved Fennel Salad from Super Natural Every Day is my new favorite twist on the cucumber salad I've made for the past few years.  Like many who have the book, I've gravitated toward recipes with beautiful photos, and this salad has none.  When Heidi posted it on her website, complete with photos to remedy the fact that it's photo-less in the book, I took notice and mentally filed it away to make.  Whenever we start getting new goodies from the CSA again, I like to search the sites I love for recipes I haven't tried, and I rediscovered this one.  The recipe instructs you to let the sliced zucchini sit to absorb the lemon juice and dill for 20 minutes to an hour, which I found to be too little time.  (The first time I made this, I let it sit in the fridge for 2 days out of necessity, and the second time I actually followed the instructions with poor results.)  The lemony salad is a great match for the arugula, but does not work at all with regular lettuce.

The salad also made a lovely accompaniment to the Rye Soda Bread and Dill Butter from the same book, which we took on a picnic to Duke Farms (a lovely picnic for a lovely place).

Macaroon Tart

The Macaroon Tart from Super Natural Every Day is a simple sweet treat that will please anyone who loves coconut.  A buttery tart base packed with coconut flakes is topped with a layer of blackberries and snowy macaroon tufts that turn a delicious golden brown when baked.  Chopped pistachios provide a beautiful color contrast to the purple blackberries.

I made this for my grandma's birthday and then again for Mother's Day, and it was a huge hit both times.  The first time, I lazily opted not to halve the blackberries, instead scattering them over the tart.  This was a mistake because they should have been in a layer covering the entire tart base, to ensure that every bite contained some blackberry goodness.  I fixed this the second time around and I feel that it was worth the extra step.  Even with the tedious task of halving tons of tiny berries, this is still quite a quick dessert.  A few extra notes: the pistachios don't shine here in terms of flavor, but are visually crucial to the dish, and in place of a tart pan I used a medium bar pan (stoneware).  I may try coconut oil in place of the butter next time - it seems like an appropriate substitution.

Beans and Cabbage (Dark Days 4)

I am way behind on Dark Days!  The detox is kind of hard to locally source, so I'm trying to think of things to "localize" wherever I can.  This week's local meal was beans & cabbage from Super Natural Every Day.  I've made and posted this before, but not with local sources.  The cabbage and potatoes came from last month's Princeton farmers' market, the shallots from my CSA, and the Jacob's cattle beans (first used in another Dark Days meal) from Cayuga Pure Organics in New York state.  The beans were much better suited for this than for what I previously used them.  They go from undercooked to exploded in a matter of minutes, so they were still all broken up, but it worked out fine for this dish.  Lesson learned, local is not always going to be better quality, and you have to make that decision for yourself.  I don't anticipate buying that type of bean from that source again in the future, though they may have just been a little bit older.

Oatcakes

I finally got around to making the Oatcakes from Super Natural Every Day.  Ken wanted a muffin to bring to a work holiday celebration breakfast potluck thing.  I was looking for something that I had all the ingredients to make (and that I would want to eat) and settled on these.  With all the butter in them, of course they were delicious, they were chewy and hearty, like eating a really sweet bowl of oatmeal.  I want to try making these again, but I intend to health them up a little to make them a more appropriate breakfast option.

Starting tomorrow, January 2nd, I'm going to try the Whole Living Magazine's 21-day (or 28-day if you're feeling ambitious) detox plan.  So I will be posting mostly about that, and I won't get to try too many of the recipes I've been flagging lately - but I know it's only a temporary thing, and I think it will make me feel a lot better after all the sugar and junk I've been eating lately.

Rye Soda Bread with Dill Butter

This is a fantastic pair of recipes from Super Natural Every Day.  I've been meaning to make the Rye Soda Bread - it's one of the ones I had my eye on early on when I got the book.  The Dill Butter was never on my short list.  But when we got two bunches of dill from the CSA, I figured, why not both?  I used up some of the chives from my little container garden as well.

I don't know what I was thinking not wanting to make the Dill Butter to go with the bread.  It's ridiculously good!  I'm not one to butter my bread, which is why I wasn't interested in it at first - but it's really worth it.  I have been snacking on it for the past few days, and I even ate it for breakfast yesterday (and probably will tomorrow).  Despite the somewhat assertive flavors it actually makes a very nice breakfast.  (In Heidi's book it's in the Lunch section, but I like to warm it up and we don't have a toaster oven at work, so breakfast it is!)  Farmer cheese is added to the butter, almost as much as there is butter, so it's not entirely butter that I'm eating for breakfast!

I'm officially out of rye flour, though, so now it's time to try a variation with some other types of flour.  I'm trying to use up as much of my flour as possible, but it's rough with all this produce coming at me left and right!

Which reminds me... I'll try to get my CSA post up tomorrow!

Summer Squash Soup

I made this Summer Squash Soup from Super Natural Every Day with last week's zucchini, which were starting to look a little sad.  The squash is supplemented with potatoes and onions to make a pretty close rendition of a Thai red curry dish.  The key difference is that only half of the liquid in this recipe is coconut milk, and light coconut milk at that, while the restaurant dish is entirely coconut milk, presumably full-fat, and therefore has loads of calories.

I like that this dish tasted like takeout, but it did not fill me up at all.  I desperately wanted brown rice to go under it.  I ended up satisfying my afternoon craving for carbs with a terrible granola bar from the cafeteria and a cinnamon sugar donut left over from someone's morning event.  Also, the squash got pretty squishy, so I would love to try this with a heartier winter vegetable like cauliflower.

Mushroom Sauté

I visited the Princeton farmers' market last week on Thursday.  I like it better than the Friday markets, since I only have to go to one to see all the vendors I want, and Princeton just makes you feel good about life.  I got some cremini mushrooms at the market, and still had some asparagus from the previous week, so I made this Mushroom Sauté from Super Natural Every Day.  I made a whole bunch of (mostly minor) adjustments, but I think I was still true to the spirit of the recipe.  Mainly, I left out the seitan, which I have no interest in as of now, but who knows, I might change my mind one day.  We made a quick and simple fried rice to go along with it, from the leftover rice from earlier in the week.  This was so quick and perfect for a weeknight.  You know those recipes that pretend to be fast weeknight recipes?  This was the real deal.  I can imagine making this again, with other vegetables instead of the asparagus - broccoli, definitely.

Roasted Strawberries

MMM... We made these tasty Roasted Strawberries from Super Natural Every Day.  We quadrupled(!) the recipe and baked them on stoneware.  Because we made so much, there was some extra juice, but we filled the jar with the berries and then with enough liquid to cover them.  We ate them warm over a scoop of fresh ricotta.  I think they would be great with ice cream too.

Heidi's Multigrain Pancakes

It's been a while since we've really cooked.  I find it easier to feel motivated in the beginning of the day, so I went with breakfast.  Heidi's Multigrain Pancakes from Super Natural Every Day - served with fresh local strawberries, sliced.  The leftover whole wheat, oat, and rye buttermilk batter made us a few Monday morning waffles.

Muesli

I've never had muesli before.  At least not the right way.  On our vacation in January I had a delicious muesli at a breakfast buffet.  But I ate it just as a cereal, with milk, and didn't give it time to soak.  This Muesli from Super Natural Every Day was super simple to make - just mix a few things together and soak overnight in the fridge while it plumps up full of thinned-out yogurt - and super tasty too.

It got me thinking about other muesli recipes I've seen.  There are two in Good to the Grain - one with hazelnuts, rye and quinoa flakes, and dried cherries and cranberries, and another with almonds, pecans, walnuts, spelt and quinoa flakes, figs and apricots - and one on 101 Cookbooks with dried peaches and apples, sweetened with honey.  I'm thinking about my own flavor combinations too - mainly apricot and pistachio.  I'd also like to try the mixed rolled grains in place of some of the oats for a little variety.

Orzo Salad

I made this Orzo Salad from Super Natural Every Day with a friend who doesn't like cheese or pine nuts (two key ingredients in the pesto) and she had seconds!  I love a good vegetable pesto.  The pesto is made from broccoli, and there are also broccoli florets in the salad.  The creme fraiche in the pesto made it unique.  I've never used creme fraiche before - it's kind of a cross between yogurt and butter.  Kind of the consistency of yogurt, but tastes kind of like flavorless butter.  It's confusing, but I know that you can make cultured butter from creme fraiche, so I don't think I'm too far off here.

Sadly, this was not as good the second day.  Maybe it was too cold while I was eating it, but I was totally overwhelmed by the garlic, which didn't happen when it was fresh.  I liked it, but I'm not sure I'll make it again.

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!

Tortellini Salad

I chose a few recipes to make from Super Natural Every Day this week and bought all the ingredients - now I'm committed to making them!  First up this week was the Tortellini Salad, with crisp broccoli and asparagus, creamy avocado, a lemony-garlicky dressing, the bright flavor of cilantro, and crunchy toasted almonds.  It's served at room temperature, which is perfect for warmer weather.  It wouldn't be too difficult to vary the vegetables, and I could even see doing a grilled version - grilled asparagus or zucchini instead of quickly cooking it in the pasta water - even leftover grilled vegetables would work well here.  We used an asiago-ricotta tortelloni (they're bigger than the little tortellini) which brought a great saltiness that tied the outside of the pasta to the inside.  I'd like to try tortellini next time, since it would more closely match the size of the cut vegetables.  I can't wait to get deeper into this book - so far I'm very pleased with the recipes I've made.

White Beans & Cabbage

It's finally here - Heidi's new book, Super Natural Every Day, arrived in the mail on Tuesday.  I first made the White Beans & Cabbage pictured on the cover on Wednesday with little success.  The idea is for potatoes and white beans to brown before being tossed with finely shredded cabbage.  I tried to use a stainless skillet, so my potatoes basically crushed themselves into a sheet at the bottom of the pan and prevented everything else from browning.  The result was decent enough to make me want to try again, so I went for it on Friday night with a non-stick skillet.  Everything turned out the way it was supposed to this time, and a generous dusting of finely grated Parmesan tied it all together.

One fun trick I discovered while making this recipe was how to get a fine shred out of cabbage.  I cut it into four quarters, then put the outside part down and held the core with my left hand, kind of like an upside-down triangle.  I ran my knife along the cut side with a downward motion.  I got most of the cabbage shredded finely this way and only had to slice a bit of it.  Knowing this makes me much more inclined to buy and cook cabbage.

Millet Muffins

These Millet Muffins are from the sampler PDF for Heidi Swanson's new cookbook.  I made them almost immediately after seeing the sampler.  And they are SO GOOD!  They reminded me of corn muffins.  The lemony flavor is delicious and the millet adds a crunch, a much softer crunch than I thought it would.  Millet is one of those grains that is good for you, and you should eat it, but there's not all that much you can do with it.  I had some in the fridge (it's kinda old) so I will make these muffins to use it up.  They are super quick and easy, tasty and healthy.  Next time I will try using applesauce instead of some of the butter, just to see what happens.  Butter is good and all, but if I can cut down on it, I will feel better about eating two of these the minute they come out of the oven :)

Coming soon in my next post: photos from my brand-new digital SLR!  Yay!