Sliced grilled lamb with couscous and vegetables
Tonight we had lamb from yesterday. The way we managed to still have rosy pink but warm lamb was to sous vide it at 125F for around an hour. It was still juicy and tender. I made some couscous and mixed it with some leftover asparagus and other sautéed vegetables. It was an easy, thrifty dinner with very little mess.
Grilled boneless leg of lamb with mashed potatoes and grilled asparagus
We had such fun with the whole family Sunday night at our Seder. There was singing and reading plus good food too. John grilled a boneless leg of lamb and I made mashed potatoes and grilled asparagus. I put two skewers through nine spears and that made it really simple to flip them over. It is a new technique that I’ll use gain!
Spaghetti with meat sauce
I guess having a wheat spaghetti is not the most kosher thing one can eat during Passover but we tend to bend the rules. After having some matzoh and butter for hors d’oeuvres, we had an easy pasta with some jazzed up jarred spaghetti sauce. To the plain sauce we added ground beef, onions, garlic, and red wine. I topped my with a little arugula, fresh cherry tomatoes, Parmesan cheese, and olive oil. It was comfort food plus!
Seder Dinner – Salmon with mashed potatoes and Brussels sprouts
Tonight, the night of the first Seder of Passover, we just had three of us, John, our daughter, and me. We are doing the family Seder on Sunday. We started with some chicken liver pate with cornichons and our main course was sous vide salmon with pesto and a sour cream sauce plus mashed potatoes and sautéed Brussels sprouts. It was a small but festive occasion with reading, singing, and good food and wine. For dessert we had one each of our daughter’s delicious macaroons.
Lentil soup with smoked turkey sausage
John had eye surgery today to remove a cataract so he needed a little comfort food – lentil soup with turkey sausage. Since I was cooking solo I really wanted this to come out well. I started out with a sauté of small dice of onions, carrots, and celery, then added the smoked turkey sausage and chicken broth. In about a half an hour when the lentils were tender I added larger chunks of the same vegetables plus some greens and the turkey sausage. Adding these components at the end of cooking insured that the vegetables would not be mush and all the flavor would not be cooked out of the sausage.
I used Trader Joe’s small green lentils. I liked their flavor better than the larger brown ones I get from my usual grocery store.
Penne with peanut sauce and broccoli
This is fast becoming one of my favorite meals. Not only is it delicious but it’ also so easy to make. We enhanced our bottled peanut sauce with some additional peanut butter, vinegar, and water because it was running low. I sautéed some mushrooms, onions, and garlic while I was waiting for John to get home from work and also added one of last summer’s blazing hot chiles. While the penne was cooking, I dropped in a sieve full of broccoli in the top of the boiling water for one minute then added it to the onion mixture. Finally I combined the pasta and peanut sauce with the onions etc., used a little reserved pasta water to loosen up the sauce, and heated everything together.
So good!!
Rutabagas and asparagus with chicken
I decided to put the chicken last in my title because we Americans put way too much emphasis on meat as the main focus of a meal when it should be vegetables and grains as our focus. Plus I put rutabagas first because I find them to be a delicious vegetable that is under utilized.
Rutabagas are also a healthy choice. According to sources I read rutabagas are “low in Sodium, and very low in Saturated Fat and Cholesterol. They are also a good source of Dietary Fiber, Thiamin, Vitamin B6, Calcium, Magnesium and Phosphorus, and a very good source of Vitamin C, Potassium and Manganese.” Plus they do a very good job as a stand-in for potatoes.
Lastly, along with the rutabagas we had asparagus which is in season right now and we split a chicken breast because, after all, it is Chicken Monday.
Chickpea stew with kale and ditalini
Once again here is my Meatless Monday on the wrong day. John is just too wedded to Chicken Monday to have it any other way. Anyway, while I was out getting my hair cut, John did most of the chopping for this delicious stew. Once all the prep is done, it cooks in about 25 minutes and, even for us, there are leftovers.
This is an adaptation of NYT Times Cooking, Chickpea Stew with Orzo and Mustard Greens. You can find their recipe here.
Last night we ate with our son and family. We ordered pizza. Actually we ordered one large pizza and some salad. That’s ONE large pizza for five adults and two kids. John and I have just returned from Italy where people order a whole pizza just for themselves and eat the whole thing! How can one pizza possibly feed seven people?! This is how – make a tasteless crust, top it with tasteless cheese and tomato sauce, and serve it cold. I think there was a piece left over. That’s some pretty sad pizza.
A proximity of my awful slice of cold cheese pizza
Shrimp pad Thai
I see that a white bowl was probably not the best choice for this picture. But although this dish looks rather pale, it delivered on some good taste. A little tweaking would improve it though.
I saw this recipe on the Food andWine website. Since I have always had trouble finding tamarind paste, I was thrilled by the prospect of a recipe where it was not included. My tweaks to the recipe include upping the lime juice and fish sauce and lowering the sugar. I don’t like my savory dishes sweet! Also, who needs two tablespoons of oil to set a scrambled egg?!
Here’s a link to the recipe, http://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/quick-shrimp-pad-thai
Omnivore 