Fettuccine and tomato sauce with mushrooms and kale
We moved up our pasta night due to avocados not being ripe yet for our salmon sesame bowl. I have been keeping the avocados in a paper bag with an apple and I think they should be ready by Thursday. Since pasta is welcome almost any night in our house, switching the fettuccine to Tuesday was no problem.
I had a little leftover sauce in the freezer and I added a can of tomatoes to it to make enough sauce for tonight without having to start from the beginning. After sautéing mushrooms, onions, and garlic I added the leftover sauce and the can of tomatoes. Right before the pasta was done I added a couple of handfuls of kale to the sauce. Before the fettuccine was drained John reserve a cup of pasta water. Then the drained pasta went into the sauce and a half cup of the water plus a teaspoon or so of olive oil. Mix it all together and it is done. I topped mine with parmesan cheese but omit the cheese for a vegan preparation.
Rotisserie chicken warmed in gravy with mixed rutabaga and potato mash, and sheet pan roasted vegetables with nuoc cham
This was an easy, tasty dinner with the vegetables stealing the show. I had a little left over rutabaga mash from last Monday so I decided to extend it with a potato. Rather than peel the potato, cut it up and, and boil it I decided to just put the whole potato in the microwave and cook it until it was done (about 8 minutes on high.) Handling the potato while it was still hot I was able to easily slip off the skin. Then I mashed the potato and mixed it with the rutabaga.
For the broccoli and leek I tossed them in some vegetable oil and salt and put them in a 425F oven for about 15 minutes.The leek was getting pretty crispy by then. I made a nuoc cham sauce and poured it over them while they were still hot..
This was a very successful meal. The nuoc cham gave the whole dish a salty boost of umami. Rather than the same old same old our dinner took on a new and pleasing dimension.
For this Sunday’s BFD I decided to make an arugula salad and top it with a scrambled egg. I accompanied my bowl with a piece of rye toast with melted ultra thin cheddar. John had his usual omelet and we both ate an apple.
I read an article that ran a poll of Americans rating how healthful their diet was. The average came out to around 6.5 on a scale of 1-10. I asked John what he would rate our diet as. He said 10. Since we have the occasional splurge I would say maybe 9 but we certainly try hard to keep our eating healthy but still interesting.
Lots of new things last week, tilapia, cabbage soup, polenta, and lots of family favorites this week. I told John that we will have to think of some new things for April. In the meantime this week we will bask in the comfort of dishes we know and love.
We have had this shrimp dish on and off the menu for weeks now and for some reason have never gotten around to making it. Well, the wait is over and it was really good! It was both light and satisfying.
John made the polenta in a ratio of 6 parts water to 1 part polenta. The only fat he added was a tablespoon of I Can’t Believe it’s Not Butter, no cheese. He used Bob’s Red Mill polenta and maybe it is tastier than others. The end result was a lot of polenta for minimal calories. He also sautéed the shrimp to perfection seasoned with salt, garlic, and oregano.
I had a pretty simple task. Originally we were planning on greens but I decided to use broccoli instead. Since I also need broccoli on Monday, I stretched our veg by adding some snow peas that needed using up and a carrot for color.
This was a surprisingly quick and easy dinner that I will not hesitate to put on the menu in the future.
Fusilli with mushrooms, baby cauliflower, onions, and garlic
I saw this package of baby cauliflower at Trader Joe’s while I was looking for broccolini. It sort of had the same form factor as broccolini so I decided to try it in this week’s pasta.
I did all the mise en place earlier in the day so everything would be ready when dinner time rolled around. Since I figured the stems of the cauliflower would need to cook longer I chopped them up separately and kept the florets for a last minute addition.
Cauliflower stems, florets, onions, mushrooms, garlic, and salt
As the pasta water was coming up to a boil I cooked mushrooms, then, onions, and garlic in a couple of teaspoons of olive oil. As John put the pasta in I added the stems and a little of the boiling pasta water. John gave me an additional cup of pasta water before he drained the fusilli. I added the florets to my pan, he dumped in the pasta, I added a half cup of the water and a little more olive oil, stirred it all together and we were done.
My take on using the baby cauliflower is that they are attractive in the dish but do not add the flavor punch you get from broccoli, broccolini, or greens. We finished our dishes with parmesan cheese. Omit or substitute for a vegan/vegetarian entree.
My paternal grandfather was born on St. Patrick’s Day in 1890. Not only would a lot of dinners that I cook seem totally bizarre to him but there is no way my grandmother could have found the ingredients with which to make them! Plus I am sure that he would never have helped out with the cooking and clean-up like John does. But today’s dinner might have been something they would have eaten (but there would have been meat involved.)
Cabbage and potato soup with Limerick soda bread
Since I am at least partly Irish on my mother’s side, my sisters and I usually make something Irish-y for St. Patrick’s Day. We discussed our menus on our weekly Zoom call so I know that they are both making corned beef and cabbage with soda bread. In fact, my older sister is even corning her own beef! Since we rarely eat red meat I wanted to come up with a vegetarian/vegan take on the traditional fare.
I found the recipe for cabbage, leeks, and potatoes on the NYTimes website which is unfortunately behind a paywall. It seemed fairly easy and there were plenty of helpful comments. For 4 servings you need a medium sized cabbage that you shred. You are supposed to sauté it in a bunch of butter until it is brown around the edges which would have taken forever. It’s a lot of shredded cabbage! Following a suggestion I put the cabbage on two sheet pans, sprayed it with olive oil spray, and roasted it at 400F until it was brown around the edges, about 10 minutes. Put the cabbage in a soup pot.
Then you add the 3 thinly sliced leeks, a little oil, and a couple of minced garlic cloves. And salt, this soup need quite a bit of salt, so just add it until you find your perfect salt level. Once the leeks are soft, you add two medium, diced russet potatoes and simmer in 2 cups of water or stock for 45-50 minutes. I needed to add additional liquid., at least 1 1/2 cups. The potatoes are supposed to dissolve thickening the soup. I had to help mine along with a potato masher.
We considered putting carrots in but I was afraid it might make it too sweet. Next time I will add them. We finished our soup with a drizzle of good olive oil and optional parmesan cheese.
Our daughter made king Arthur’s Limerick soda bread. It was delish! A little sweet from the raisins and sultanas and savory from the caraway seeds.
Limerick soda breadSo good that it is hard to eat only one slice!
From a dininglite healthy eating point of view, we made a vegan soup substituting a spray of olive oil and maybe two teaspoons of EVOO per person in a soup that originally called for 6 tablespoons of butter. I think I’ll eat another slice of soda bread 😁! (Soda bread is not vegan as it contains buttermilk and an egg.)
Our Purim celebration featured a lot of triangular food. The triangular theme represents the hat of Haman, the evil bad guy. Haman was plotting to get all the Jews killed but Queen Esther out-smarted him. So on Purim we celebrate Esther’s triumph, the saving of the Jews, we read the Book of Esther from the Bible, and eat Haman’s hat.
Triangular crudite and crackers with hummus for an appetizerCrab Rangoon with dipping sauce (I know that shellfish is not Kosher)Spanakopita
Actually we just walked down the frozen food aisle and picked out anything that was triangular. We also had samosas. They looked a lot like the crab Rangoon and the spanakopita. For dessert we had our daughter’s hamantashen, or Haman’s hats. They are yummy cookies with prune in the middle.
Hamantaschen
And for a special treat, here are a couple of pictures of our daughter from 1983 in her Queen Esther costume.
Sautéed tilapia and tartar sauce with sheet pan squash and cauliflower
We tend to buy frozen fish and shellfish. Costco has some good seafood products at reasonable prices so we always keep salmon, Chilean sea bass, shrimp, scallops, and some sort of white fish in the freezer. For our mild white fish we have been using mahi mahi but I find it a little too fishy. On our last trip to Costco we bought a bag of tilapia.
Tilapia has the reputation as being a pretty nothing fish. I figured it would be good for making tacos, maybe putting in our sesame bowl, or making fish sticks. Tonight we tried it out for the first time just as fillets sautéed in a pan. John cooked the fish a little too much but it was okay. There is a learning curve with something new. Next time I figure he will nail it.
Along with the fish, I made some tartar sauce and sheet pan vegetables. The butternut squash and cauliflower turned out really well, delicious and sweet. I decided on an oven temperature of 425F on the convect setting. The vegetables were cooked in 20 minutes with some nice browning from the olive oil I tossed them in.
I was quite pleased at our first foray with tilapia. I think it will definitely be great as fish sticks and in tacos. I’d love to batter and deep fry it but, you know, healthy lifestyle!
Rotisserie chicken, Instant Pot rutabagas, Brussels sprouts
This homey chicken dinner reminds me of Thanksgiving, but easier. The rotisserie chicken I buy from Costco is not the whole bird but their vacuum packed offering of cooked breast meat. I divide the package in half (about 1 lb. portions) and freeze one and refrigerate the other. I use the refrigerated one for soups, salads, sandwiches, and dinners like tonight’s.
The chicken is warmed in a packet of gravy while I pressure cook the rutabagas and sauté the Brussel sprouts. This is definitely comfort food for me!
Omnivore 