Riddle Me Easy!!

QUESTION: What do you get when you take a bunch of CSA tomatoes, garlic*, cucumbers and onions and toss them into a food processor with some oil and whatnots?

ANSWER: Tons of delicious gazpacho with not a ton of dishes to wash! YAY!!!

I love tomato season! Gazpacho is so refreshing—splash a small amount of “the good olive oil” on top to garnish and voilá—a great lunch, a great dinner, a great snack, a great side. Effin’ great. In truth, I prefer my gazpacho a bit chunkier but I couldn’t remember how I used to make it so I used an old Bittmann recipe** that called for stale bread, which we had and I hadn’t ever done before...

And I used the food processor. All by myself!! I’d guestimate this as one PointsPlus value treat for my Weight Watchers buddies.

*Farm garlic might be one of my favorite things on this planet.

**I added onion and red pepper, too.

Pasta Primavera: The Remix

Today’s NYT magazine has 8 recipes by Bittman for pasta primavera. I’m not usually very excited by pasta primavera, which means “springtime pasta”, but once I saw that JustAwesome had picked up some fresh pappardella from Piemonte Ravioli, I was quickly on board!

What I typically don’t like about it at restaurants is that it is usually too many disparate veggies, none of which I’m very interested in. And it always seems soggy and tasteless. Bittman simplifies it and adds a little kick.

Pappardella with peas, pecorino, chili and mint.

Soooo good. Clean and simple.

I hope it is springtime long enough to try the other 7 recipes. Fortunately, we have enough for leftovers tonight.

Holy Smokin’ Easy Soup!

JustAwesome asked me to make a pea soup today. From frozen peas. She said it was super easy and really good. I don’t love peas, honestly. I find them too sweet. But I trust her judgement—if she said it is really good, then it is really good.

It is sooooooooo freakin’ good.

Not pretty, but smokin’!

The most challenging part is reading the recipe, which is, oddly, in paragraph form. I don’t usually type recipes, but I can’t resist here.

The quickest and best soup you can make is to cook 3 cups of frozen peas in 2 cups of vegetable stock made with a good-quality bouillon cube. When the peas are tender, purée in the food processor or blender. Add some olive oil (preferably basil-infused) and season to taste. Serve Parmesan to sprinkle over.

And that’s it. She does go on to say that you can add ham or this or that but that is basically it.

I used Whole Foods’ 365 organic petite frozen peas and Pacific veggie broth. Immersion blender. Salt. Pepper. Then, instead of basil-infused olive oil, I used a Smoked Extra Virgin Olive Oil that we just picked up this weekend. Clearly the pièce de résistance. Holy smokes!

Great with the leftover gougères that we froze!

Mac & (cauliflower) Cheese

Macaroni and Cheesiflower? Yes, please.

JustAwesome found this Bittman recipe in the March issue of Runner’s World. I don’t like to eat low-fat this and spray-on that but I am still trying lose my freshman 15*. This macaroni and cheese with cauliflower is a great solution. The pureed cauliflower adds the creaminess—much less cheese is necessary—and really bulks it up. And bread crumbs, yum. It was warm and lovely. I felt warm and lovely.

Does it replace macaroni and cheese altogether? No, I don’t think so, but it was really good. I’m sure we’ll be making this one again and again. Thanks, Mark Bittman.

Pass the Bittman Macaroni and Cheesiflower, please!

*I’ve lose 16.5 pounds to date. Thanks, Weight Watchers!

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National Crêpe Day. YAY!!

Yesterday was National Crêpe Day, as you probably already know. I don’t need much of an excuse.

Bittman’s recipe is really simple and really tasty. Buckwheat flour, some white flour, eggs & water. A tiny bit of butter or oil. They’re actually pretty low in PointsPlus values, if you care. Our main course pancakes were mushroom, onion and cheese (something in the cheddar family). Wine. Salad. Then a few sugar and lemon pancakes for dessert. Those are my favorite!

The filling possibilities are endless.

Two savory pancakes in one week. YAY!! My life rocks!

What should we do for Chinese New Year?

Gung Hay Fat Choy!

Swiss Chard Pancakes

After my earlier disaster (which actually turned out ok), I needed some cheering up. I had been eyeing some Swiss Chard pancakes from the new Dorie Greenspan book. Savory, warm pancakes. I knew those would cheer me up. They would turn my sad onion-y frown upside down.

I love chickpea flour pancakes. I love buckwheat pancakes. I love potato pancakes. And I love them crepe-y with sugar and lemon, too. I love pancakes. For dinner.

These pancakes were really delicious and different. Onion-y and hearty. Perfect with a salad. JA said she wanted to live inside her pancakes. I think she liked them.

Recipe here. I’d use less oil next time.

The Great Scape

I love seasonal veggies and crazy lookin’ scapes excite me. They grow from the tops of garlic plants—a deliciously mild and tasty by-product. They taste fresh and bright. They’re extremely versatile.

I like to make them into pesto and it is not your Momma’s (or step-momma’s) 80’s-style pesto. All you really need are scapes. Forget the basil. Forget the pine nuts, and obviously, forget the garlic. Actually, some people use almonds or pine nuts, but I’m something of a purist. I keep it simple.

Scapes

Olive oil

Parmesan or Pecorino

A little lemon

Sea Salt

Or, you can roast them. Or just cut them up and add to a salad. Or in mashed potatoes. Or...

Dorie Greenspan freezes the pesto until the tomato season. She says they’re “stupendous together”. Mmmm!! Check out her link to see how she stores it and for more details on what scapes are, what to do with them and what they taste like.

Oh man, I wish we were making pizza tonight. What cheese goes with scape?

Back on Track!

The last few days have been a little harder to stay on my Weight Watchers plan than usual.

On Friday night, we had cocktails at Savoy, mixed by our favorite bartender, followed by a fabulous meal at our favorite new restaurant, Torrisi. Torrisi has a prix fixe meal that is such a great deal and positively dreamy. You get EVERYTHING on the menu (but only one main). Check out at the menu, it changes daily. The warm mozzarella in olive oil and milk thistle cream should give you an idea. They make pretty much everything themselves. Get there early.

On Saturday I shoved these things down my throat: leftover pork chop for breakfast, oysters and beer, ice pop, soft shell crabs and a half dozen Trader Joe’s Macarons.

On Sunday we went to a 100th birthday party, for a house, not a person (Happy Birthday, 272!). The food was so yummy — little mac & cheeses in espresso cups (perfectly WW sized!), potato latkes, sliders, cupcakes, etc. Yum, yum and yum.

On Monday we went out again — cocktails, cheese & charcuterie plate, mains, no dessert. Place not good enough to share the links, but you get the idea. 3 days of non-WW’s eating, it is time to get back on track.

Which brings me to my post today…

This is a favorite lunch of mine that is super low in Points. Imitation crab meat salad wrapped in lettuce or nori or wasa bread. I cut up some onion, carrots & celery, sprinkled on some cayenne pepper and added a little Miso Mayo spread that I use because I hate mayo but the dish needs some glue. Satisfying and about 2 Points. It is a lunch that I get excited to eat. I love lunch.

Ramp it up! And, Dressing 2.

For the food snobs out there, I know, enough with the ramps. For everyone else though, they are a new and exciting, seasonal vegetable. Who doesn’t like some variety? As you can see from the link, ramps are wild leeks. They’re really flavorful.

The scene is pizza night, our house. Night number two of the dressing challenge for JustAwesome. We wanted to try a ramp pizza. But what cheese to use? Fortunately we are blessed with an amazing cheesemonger, Saxelby Cheese, a few blocks away at the Essex Street Market. We were steered towards a super stinky cheese called Fromage de Cow. Funky and AMAZING!! (Thank you, Anne!).

The salad was beautiful, though I can’t remember what kind of mix we got (from the Union Square Farmers’ Market). It had flowers and spicy arugula sprouts and whoknowswhatelse; there were at least 8 different types of leaves in it. Delicious. For the dressing, we went with a simple French dressing, posted as a comment by cousin Cath in Thoiry, France, which is about a half hour from Geneva. Cath is able to whip up amazing dressings without a thought. She has a real gift.

This is her recipe. (Thank you, Cath!)

French Dressing

3 tbsp olive oil

1 tbsp balsamic vinegar

2 tsp dijon mustard

1 tsp salt

lots of black pepper

Shake or whisk well.

Add honey or sugar to sweeten.

Dressing 1

So I’ve been challenged by Feral to make 10 salad dressings in 10 weeks. It’s a bit daunting. I don’t like making salad dressing, this is mostly a result of laziness. You’ve finished making dinner, put together a nice side salad and then you have to whip up a salad dressing? Sigh. Some people, like my cousin Cath, can knock together a delicious salad dressing in their sleep. I can’t. It stresses me out. I make it, taste it, it never tastes quite right, does it need more oil? I add more, taste again, D’oh! that was too much! I add some vinegar, I taste it again, now it’s too sour, so I add some honey, this goes on and on, an endless circle of taste, adjust, taste adjust.

For my first dressing I decided to use a Jamie Oliver recipe. Feral thinks my family is obsessed with Jamie Oliver; she’s convinced it’s some sort of weird family quirk, but it’s not, he’s just big in Britain and has been for about 10 years now. His cookbooks are household staples. One of the reasons Feral thinks we’re obsessed with Jamie is that his Party Cake from The Return of The Naked Chef has become my family’s go-to cake for celebrating birthdays. This cake regularly shows up at our birthdays in Canada, France, Scotland, and NYC, here’s a SMALL sampling:

It’s a good cake. Anyway, back to salad....

Thai dressing from Jamie Oliver’s, The Return of The Naked Chef

4 TBSP fresh lime juice

3 TBSP olive oil

1 TBSP toasted sesame oil

a pinch of sugar

2 inch piece of peeled ginger grated with microplane

1 garlic clove grated with microplane

half a small red chili deseeded and finely chopped

a large handful of chopped fresh herbs: cilantro, basil and mint

Put everything in a jar and shake, shake, shake.

It tasted a little sour right out of the jar so I added a bit more sugar. It still tasted tart to me but I trusted the recipe and dressed my salad. I’m glad I did, it was tasty. The salad I used it on:

Lettuce, arugula, tomatoes, asparagus, yellow pepper, carrots, mango, some of the fresh herbs from the dressing, and warm fake beef strips. Topped with a few salted peanuts this was a great dinner salad. I’ll be making this again.