Everyday Vegetables

Since both D and I have finished our senior theses, we have a lot more time on our hands and have been cooking dinner more often. This was our simple creation for dinner last night.

This would be a great dish to serve on a Meatless Monday. Add a can of chickpeas to the roasted veggies along with the bell peppers if you're concerned about getting enough protein.

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45-Minute Dinner: Cauliflower, Green Beans and Rice
serves 3-4

Equipment:
Baking sheet
Pot
Stove
Knife
Cutting board
Tongs

Ingredients:
1.5c brown rice, uncooked
1 head cauliflower
0.5 lb green beans
0.5 red bell pepper
1 can garbanzo beans (optional)
2 cloves garlic
2t garam masala (optional)
olive oil
salt, pepper

Directions:
1. Preheat the oven to 450°F.
2. In your pot, put the 1.5c of brown rice along with 4c of cold tap water. Turn the heat to high. When it boils, turn the heat back down to as low as possible, and set a timer for 40 minutes.
3. Meanwhile, clean and chop your veggies. Toss the cauliflower with olive oil and the garam masala on the baking tray. Add salt and pepper to taste.
4. At 20 minutes left in the rice cooking, put the cauliflower in the oven. Toss every 5 minutes to prevent burning and to let any steam escape from the oven.
5. At 10 minutes left in the rice timer, add the green beans and garlic to the cauliflower, tossing to mix. Turn the broiler on and place the veggies back under the broiler.
6. At 5 minutes left on the timer, toss the bell pepper and garbanzo beans with the veggies and return to the broiler.
7. When the timer is done, remove the rice from the stovetop. Check your veggies. If they are golden brown in places, they're done. Otherwise, toss them again and throw them back in for 5 minutes. (The rice will stay hot, I promise.)
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Note: If you have a separate broiler compartment or your broiler takes a while to heat up, you may want to preheat it. Mine heats in about 30 seconds and can't be used at the same time as the oven, so I just changed it over when the veggies went back in the oven at step 5.

Do you participate in Meatless Mondays? Leave a comment or email me at piquantprose [at] gmail [dot] com. 


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Cinnamon Swirl Bread/Homemade Bagels

Cinnamon Swirl Bread with the Bread Baker's Apprentice open in the background.

I've been slowly working on baking my way through Peter Reinhardt's Bread Baker's Apprentice. I definitely haven't been going in order, nor have I made much progress, but the recipes I have made have been delicious.

Since Valentine's day is coming up, I decided I better make some of D's favorite foods. I'd say his two favorite ingredients are probably garlic and cinnamon, so I decided to make one goodie with each.

He recently bought me two brand spanking new loaf pans, so those were obviously going to factor into the equation. Since cinnamon + loaf pan = cinnamon bread, I knew exactly where to start. I don't want to reprint the recipe, because you should really check out the book but here are the basics:
1. Make a lightly enriched white bread dough (some eggs, sugar, fat, etc. but not a lot), with about a teaspoon of cinnamon in the dough. (Too much cinnamon will slow down the yeast. Don't worry, there's plenty more in this recipe.) Knead in chopped nuts in the last two minutes if you want. (Reinhardt's recipe calls for raisins, but really, who likes raisins???)
2. To form the loaf, roll the dough into a rectangle a few inches narrower than your loaf pans and fairly long (12-16 inches long). Sprinkle the topside with cinnamon sugar and then roll the dough tightly, pinching the end shut to create a seal.
3. Bake as instructed. When the loaves come out of the oven, brush the tops with about 1T melted butter per 2 loaves, and sprinkle with any leftover cinnamon sugar to make a nice delicious crust.

That's an awesome bread knife in the foreground. I'll post on knives soon.

Yum!! We finished about a third of a loaf as an evening snack.

Yes, all of those slices (and more) went into our belly immediately after this photo was taken.

Next task: garlic.

Roasted Root Veggies

While D and I were picking up ingredients for our energy bars, we also thought we'd grab some veggies for dinner. I contemplated swiss chard, because I was craving it a little bit, but realized I didn't really know how to cook it or what else I'd need to cook it. D also seemed unenthusiastic.

Instead, we picked up a collection of root veggies and stems, and roasted them in the oven. We also added some chicken breast to make it a meal, although to keep it vegetarian, I'd just eat it with a liberal helping of parmesan cheese grated on top, and maybe some shitake mushrooms sauteed in butter. Yum!

The sweetness of the parsnips and the sweet potatoes works really well with the starchy potatoes. We watched an episode of House while dinner was cooking. This is pretty much the easiest dinner ever.. you don't even have to preheat the oven!!! It comes up to temperature while the food is cooking.

Ready for the oven.

Delicious and roasty.

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Roasted Root Veggies

Ingredients:
1 red potato
3 Yukon Gold potatoes
1 purple potato
1 "Japanese" sweet potato (or some other kind)
1 Garnet yam
3 carrots
3 parsnips
0.25c olive oil
1 large clove garlic
salt and pepper

Directions:
1. Cut all the ingredients into 0.5 inch cubes and place them on a baking tray. Mince garlic and add it to the mixture.
2. Pour olive oil over them, grind pepper on top, sprinkle with salt, and toss to mix.
3. Put the veggies in the oven and turn it to 475°F. Bake for about 35 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes. The veggies will be soft, fragrant and starting to brown when they're done.
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Hasselback Sweet Potatoes

We made this for dinner last night. They took a bit of time to prep, but once they went into the oven they were super easy. They're also really pretty and delicious. The sweet potato goes really well with the garlic, since the roasted garlic is a little bit sweeter than raw garlic.

Unfortunately, once again, there was no time to get pictures before they disappeared into our hungry bellies. If you've never heard of hasselback potatoes before, I suggest looking at a recipe like this one, with pictures, so it makes more sense.

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Hasselback Sweet Potatoes

Ingredients
sweet potatoes or yams (I used garnet yams)
garlic, thinly sliced (you'll need about one cloves for every potato)
olive oil (you'll need about a tablespoon per potato)
salt
pepper

Directions
1. Preheat the oven to 400°F.
2. Wash the potatoes and cut off the ends. Slice the potatoes almost all the way through every quarter inch.
3. Place a slice of garlic in each slit of the potato. (These should help hold the potato slices apart.) This is easiest to do if you hold the potato up off the cutting board--the potato opens up like a fan.
4. Rub each potato with olive oil and sprinkle generously with salt. Grind a some fresh pepper on top.
5. Bake for 40-60 minutes, until a knife slides through the potato easily. These are really good when they get really soft.
6. Eat fresh or as leftovers. Yum!!!
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