After last night’s little Cinco de Mayo party, it is time for some healthier eating. Chana dal is dried, split chickpeas cooked in the Instant Pot with spices, vegetable stock, onion, ginger, and garlic plus spicy tomatoes. The Instant Pot turns the dried chickpeas into yummy goodness in about 15 minutes.
Along with the Chana dal I made my usual rice mixture of hearty rices cut with riced cauliflower. On the bottom of the bowl is a layer of Foster Farms triple washed, chopped kale.
This vegan dish is easy to make and very tasty. I also feel good about eating it!
First, we are not of Mexican heritage, second, Cinco de Mayo is not even a big deal in Mexico, but third, it is a big deal here in the U.S. and we are all about celebrating holidays with food! So for Cinco de Mayo we started off with margaritas, tortilla chips, and guacamole. I got two avocados which ripened up during the week and a packet of spicy guacamole mix and stirred it together, mashing up the avocados. John made his Earl Gilmore memorial killer margaritas.
Chips and guacamole with a margarita
Our main course was chicken enchiladas which consist of shredded rotisserie chicken, shredded cheese, chopped onions, and salsa verde rolled in a corn tortilla.
Roasted salmon with mustard sauce, mixed rices, and Brussels sprouts
John roasted the salmon at 400F for 9 minutes. Since I was doing everything else we had to carefully plan what time he needed to start the fish. Earlier in the day I made the mustard sauce so that was ready to go. The rice was easy to do as well. I combined John’s white rice from the other day with my leftover red, brown, and wild rice plus riced cauliflower. Since we were upping the amount of rice I defrosted some more riced cauliflower, mixed it in, and nuked the whole amount until it was hot.
The Brussels sprouts were the timing problem. Normally it takes about 10 minutes to steam them and then let them brown in a little dry sherry and butter. But these were really big sprouts so I definitely needed about 15 minutes. I started them five minutes before the salmon. They were cooked and browned when the fish was ready.
A word about Brussels sprouts – the bigger they are, the more bitter they are. These were really big and quite bitter even though I added a half teaspoon of sugar. John liked them a lot but I did not. I will look for smaller ones in the future.
After reading an article that scampi is not just for shrimp I decided to try “scampifying” a pasta mushroom sauce. This consisted of starting with equal amounts of olive oil and butter, a tablespoon of each. Next I sautéed a little thinly sliced onion and then added in about 10 ounces of mushrooms halved or quartered depending on their size. After 5 minutes I added sliced garlic. Next came a half cup each of white wine and vegetable stock, some parsley, a pinch of pepper flakes, salt and pepper.
While this mixture was reducing John cooked the penne. When they were al dente he added them to the sauce. I stirred this around together and added some reserved pasta water, maybe a quarter of a cup. After plating on some raw kale we squeezed a little lemon over top.
This dish turned out really well. The white wine gave a slight sharpness to the sauce. Scampi mushrooms? Yes, please!
Seared marinated tuna, mixed rices, baby bok choy with oyster sauce
John marinated our tuna steaks in soy sauce, garlic powder, grated ginger, sesame oil, chile flakes, and dry sherry for 2 hours. When it came time to cook them he heated up our lightly greased cast iron frying pan until very hot, applied some sesame seeds to the tuna steaks, and seared them for about 2 minutes a side. The length of time searing depends on the thickness of the tuna. You want the tuna red inside but not cold.
I microwaved a rice mix of red, brown, and wild rices and then added a similar volume of riced cauliflower. I served myself 3/4 cup.
I stopped at the Asian grocery store and picked up a 1 1/2 lb. bag of baby bok choy. After washing them thoroughly I cooked them with garlic plus a little water in a big, lightly oiled frying pan with a cover. They cook down quite a bit. I made a sauce of 3 1/2 tablespoons of oyster sauce, 2 tablespoons of rice wine vinegar, 1 tablespoon of soy sauce, and a pinch of sugar and ladled it over my warmed platter of cooked bok choy.
We originally bought these 2 frozen tuna steaks weighing a total of 11 ounces on sale for $4.99. They turned out really tasty and I am going to keep my eye out for future sales and stock up!
Here is another use for rotisserie chicken. On Monday, our traditional chicken day, we made a piccata sauce for one of the breasts from our rotisserie chicken. Since we were merely reheating our chicken, we used the powder from a packet of chicken gravy to make a roux with butter and then added white wine, lemon juice, capers, and parsley to it and used the stock that I made earlier in the day to give volume to the sauce. After bringing it up to a boil and lowering the heat we gently warmed the meat.
Along with our tasty chicken piccata I made mashed potatoes which were so yummy with the sauce. Broccoli rounded out our surprisingly delicious dinner.
Caramelized onion hummus with whole wheat pita and Israeli salad
John and I opted out of eggs on Sunday for a different light dinner. The caramelized onion hummus was near its “best by” date and we needed to eat it. I think this was the first time I have had this version of the Sabra hummus and it was quite yummy. It went well with the whole wheat pita by Toufayan. Toufayan is my favorite brand of pita and I use it almost daily for lunch.
The Israeli salad is a combination of tomatoes, cucumber, parsley, mint, and red onion in a lemon vinaigrette. I got the recipe from A Cedar Spoon website https://www.acedarspoon.com/israeli-salad/. A few words to the wise about this recipe; it needs a lot of salt and benefits from some sort of hot sauce. Plus seed the cucumber and pre-salt it in a colander first so that you release some of its water. Otherwise the vinaigrette turns out bland and soupy after you put it on the tomato/cucumber mixture.
This was an enjoyable, easy dinner which will be especially good on hot summer nights.
The weather took a quite warm turn this week so my simmering Dutch oven of meat sauce for my boiling pot of spaghetti got turned into burgers on the grill with salad and chips.
Grilled burger with red onion and ketchup, salt and pepper chips, and mixed green salad with Gorgonzola
As usual John did a perfect job grilling the hamburgers to medium rare. My job was easy. I dumped the chips in a bowl and augmented a pre-packaged salad with kale and cabbage plus some crumbled Gorgonzola cheese on top.
It is pleasant to sit outside as the day cools off with a glass of wine and watch as John does the grilling. The rest of the dinner waits inside buffet style. I could eat this every week.
John and I went up to Wine Country on Friday. We stopped at our favorite winery, Imagery, and did a tasting.
White Burgundy is my favorite wine from Imagery
After our tasting we went out for a late lunch at Salt and Stone. It replaced Kenwood Restaurant where I got the recipe for the eponymous Kenwood Shrimp. We made that for dinner on April 13, 2023 and many times before. Unfortunately it is not on Salt and Stone’s menu.
John and I rarely eat out except on vacation so this was a treat. We figured a late lunch would count for lunch and dinner. We started out sharing a plate of crispy calamari with two dipping sauces.
Omnivore 