Slow-baked beans: Whoa!

A friend recently sent me a recipe that was published in the New York Times.  Because he reads my blog, and wishes he had more time to cook, I decided to make this dish just for him.  ...Also it sounded amazing. Raj, a med student at Yale, has a mother who is an amazing cook and a maker of epic pies.  After eating all that tasty food, I trust his culinary suggestions.  And as I sit here writing and burning my mouth on molten beans, I'm here to tell you that it was totally worth it.

This recipe, vegan in its entirety, is exactly the thing I would expect someone who is intellectual and also vegetarian to eat.  Indeed, what an intellectual dish.  Nourishing, healthy, simple and delicious.  Not to mention economical.

Often times, I use recipes as guidelines and create my own version. However, I wanted to make this one exactly as written.  Safeway, as it seems, wanted to thwart me.  They were out of kale (!), so I decided to substitute fresh spinach.  I also had an early relative casserole dish which wasn't up to the capacity of the recipe, so in the end, I made 3/4 of the actual recipe, leaving a bucket of half-soaked lima beans on my counter.

I upped the temperature to 300 degrees.  Apartment ovens are not famously accurate, and I'm sure mine runs a bit cool.  Also I don't believe ANYTHING can cook at 225 degrees.  That's only 55 degrees hotter than a sauna, and people can survive in that.  

The beans turn creamy, the herbs are delicious, and everything melds together so nicely.  Definitely worth the three hours. Make it on a weekend or ahead of time and heat it up later.

Bean casserole doesn't photograph particularly beautifully...

The Recipe:  Slow-Baked Beans with Kale

Pasta, yum!

Tonight's dinner is something I made up a long time ago, when Zach and I first went vegetarian in college.  This was, of course, long before I started writing this blog.  Its a quiet, unassuming casserole dish that you can't really mess up, and is perfect to take along with you or to make ahead of time and pop into the oven.  Its cheap, and you don't need a lot of stuff to make it.

2 cups of dry pasta.  Any shape works fine, but spaghetti probably wouldn't be very good in this.
1 can of beans (I used garbanzo.  Cannelini beans would also be a good choice.  You could probably use cooked chicken, also.)
1 jumbo log of goat cheese, crumbled up (mine was 11 oz, I only used about 5)
1 jar of pasta sauce.  If you make your own, use it.  I use Newman's.
feta cheese crumbles
vegetable of your choice.  Tomatoes go nicely, I've put onions in before but its a good idea to sautee them a bit first.  Spinach might also.

Cook the 2 cups of dry pasta and drain it.  Chop the vegetables and add them to a medium-sized casserole dish.  Add the beans, pasta, sauce (to your taste) and  goat cheese.  Mix together.  The sauce should get a little creamy.  Top with the feta.

At this point you can put this in the fridge to bake later or pop it in an oven at 350 degrees for 30 minutes, just long enough for everything to melt together and get really hot.  Serve.

Start to finish this might take 40 minutes.  Made ahead of time, dinner is ready almost before you are!

Note: I said you can't really mess this up, but you can. Tonight I used sun dried tomatoes.  They made everything really salty, so I'd save them for another time, since sauce from a jar is probably already salty enough.  Normally this is damn tasty.

What do to with leftover goat cheese?  I think its fabulous on crackers!

The big 64

The other day I bought 64 ounces of plain yogurt.  I've been eyeing up this jumbo tub of Nancy's for a while, but searching for something new to inspire me I went right ahead and bought it last week.  So, other than eating it covered in honey and frozen black raspberries (they were much more delicious-and a whole lot less money- back when I got them from grandma's back yard!) what in the world do you do with that much yogurt?

Well to start, you're going to want to whip yourself up a batch of this amazing low-fat pasta salad.  Its a bit summery, but that's what one needs in late January.  I found when I was making it that I had only about two tablespoons of mayonnaise left, so I just used more yogurt to replace it.  I also only had tomatoes, onions, and celery, but those seemed to work really well in this. I added feta cheese, and believe me, you'll want to.  It adds such a great texture to the yogurt dressing.  If you don't like feta, I'd still try adding just a bit of Parmesan cheese.  Don't forget lots of salt and pepper, but other than that it doesn't need much!  Its very similar to a pasta salad they sell where I volunteer and I'm constantly addicted to it.

This was great but I'll probably never eat red onions again...talk about two days of the worst stomachache possible!

Remember that cheap ice cream maker I bought last year? That's right, I'm way ahead of myself in terms of the seasons!  The husband and I happen to frequent those by-the-ounce frozen yogurt shops that cost a fortune.  Let me tell you, for less than one trip to a yogurt shop you can make yourself a pint and a half of creamy goodness and it is incredibly easy.  I found this recipe, and quickly whipped some up.  In less than an hour I had amazing frozen yogurt.

They claim you can't use low-fat yogurt, but guess what? You can. And its good.  Maybe not as creamy as ice cream, but it certainly beats those soft-serve places.  The yogurt plus the toppings ran us under 10 dollars, and we still have some left after a delicious and healthy dessert.

The recipe calls for greek yogurt but I used regular american-style plain yogurt.  Its very tangy and delicious and I can only imagine what using Fage would do for this yummy stuff.

The toppings are mini-mochi...we got them at our local asian market.  They're soft and chewy and make a great topping for ice cream and fro-yo.

So now maybe I feel a little snazzier than I did last week...but I still have some yogurt to eat!

I feel like such an underachiever lately...

I haven't done much in the way of anything creative lately.  I'm struggling to finish a hat for a friend I promised her in back in November...and I haven't been cooking much lately.  The winter blues prevent me from wanting to eat much at all.  It happens every year.  I go to the grocery store and I don't want a single thing.

So I have to live vicariously through others.  Like my grade school friend Jessica Wysocki, who is apparently a fantastic artist in Pittsburgh.  I love these designs, especially the fingernail polish flower cards.  I don't really even own any fingernail polish...or I'd copy the hell out of these.

And good old Ms. T.  Who is now officially married in the eyes of Malaysian friends and family, and who just won an award for being awesome.  Alas, my blog is far from being award-winning.  Maybe someday.

A girl can dream, can't she?

Delicious food for busy girls

Last week I began a new job.  Its a completely new skillset, and I've been exhausted.  All last week we ate at restaurants, but this week I wanted to return to having home-cooked meals.  Tortellini soup was perfect!

The recipe is from the Easy Everyday Cookbook, but can also be found online at BettyCrocker.com.  I made it as closely as possible to the recipe, subbing the fresh parsley for some dried basil.  In addition, the recipe in my book has vegetarian broth used rather than chicken.  If you chop the vegetables beforehand, or have a lazy spouse with a day off who can do some chopping for you, the entire meal takes about 30 minutes to make.

Look at this awesome tea strainer!

From Limbo in Portland, Oregon, but you can buy one here.  Nice price for a lovely little item like this.  You can use it to brew tea or to strain out tea leaves when you pour from your pot.  A great gift, maybe?

Eat Like an Egyptian

While watching TV late at night I came across an episode of No Reservations where Anthony Bourdain was in Egypt.  I have to say that when I was a young child, studying ancient cultures was a hobby of mine.  Religion, myths and legends, fashion and food and drink of the ancient Greeks, Chinese, Romans and Egyptians continue to fascinate me today.  That is why when I saw Tony Bourdain eating Ful Medames, Egypt's ancient national dish, I decided that I need to find a recipe and make it for myself.

Recipes for this food vary greatly, but mostly involve simmering fava beans (also called 'broad beans'), onions, garlic, tomatoes, and various herbs and spices together in a pan.  While fava beans are a staple in the Middle East as well as Ethiopia and Greece, they are nearly impossible to find here.  I found canned fava beans at Whole Foods...but you know how I feel about canned beans.  Well, maybe you don't.  They're like cheating.  They're like telling your blind grandmother you have a royal flush in poker when you don't.  She won't know the difference, but its still wrong.  Also they don't taste as good (except for in chili where you're using 5 kinds of beans anyway, I don't expect you to cook all those beans yourself).

But I digress.  In Egypt, everyone, rich or poor eats Ful Medames (according to Wikipedia and Tony Bourdain and the recipe book), and there it is mostly a hearty breakfast dish served with a hard-boiled egg and pita.  But I'm from America, and I like to eat Lucky Charms for breakfast.  That's okay, Ful Medames makes a great dinner, too.

Links used in this post:
The recipe I used. This book seems excellent and I want to peruse it more!
Nutrition Data for Fava Beans
Wikipedia article for ful medames.