Cauliflower Curry
When I have a craving for Indian food, I pull out my Moosewood Cookbook and make this curry. There are a lot of ingredients and you can go a little crazy with the condiments, but it is well worth it. You begin by grinding a fragrant curry paste with toasted seeds and nuts, spices coconut, garlic and ginger.
Here are all my seeds, nuts, spices, ginger and garlic happily waiting in the food processor to be ground up into a delicious savory curry paste.
The drink shown with the curry is a Green Apple Fizz. I also like to serve the curry with homemade pear chutney, but store bought chutney is just as good.
To toast seeds: place seeds, one type at a time (different seeds toast at different rates) in a small dry saucepan (no oil) over medium heat. Toast seeds, stirring and/or shaking intermittently, being careful not to scorch the seeds, until they are light brown and fragrant. Cumin seeds will darken a bit more than sesame seeds.
Cauliflower Curry
from Moosewood Cookbook
6-8 servings
2 medium potatoes, cut into small chunks
1/2 cup shredded unsweetened coconut
1 tablespoon mustard seeds
3 medium cloves garlic, peeled
1-1/2 tablespoons fresh ginger, minced
1/2 cup lightly toasted peanuts
1 teaspoon turmeric
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves or allspice
2 tablespoons toasted cumin seeds
2 tablespoons toasted sesame seeds
1/4 teaspoon cayenne
1/2 cup water (more, as needed)
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 medium onion, chopped
1 teaspoon salt
1 large cauliflower, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 medium carrot, thinly sliced
1 can chickpeas, rinsed and drained
3-4 tablespoons lemon juice
Condiments – any assortment:
chopped cilantro
thinly sliced oranges and/or lemons
sliced cucumbers and/or tomatoes
thinly sliced bell pepper, assorted colors
toasted nuts and/or coconut
raisins
chutney
1. Boil potatoes until just tender. Drain and set aside.
2. Place next 11 ingredients in a food processor or blender and puree until fairly homogenous. Add extra water, as needed, to form a soft workable paste.
3. Heat oil in a large, deep pot and add onion and salt. Saute for 5 minutes over medium heat. Add cauliflower and carrot and mix well. Cover and cook about 10 minutes, then add the paste. Mix well. Cook, covered over low heat until the cauliflower is tender, stirring every few minutes. Add more water if necessary, to prevent sticking.
4. Add the cooked potatoes, chickpeas and lemon juice and cook a few more minutes. Taste and adjust salt if needed. Serve hot with rice and condiments.
Jen’s Taco Salad
My friend Jen from Santa Cruz made this delicious taco salad for me a number of years ago. We’ve been close friends since high school and have been through a lot together. Everytime I make this I think of her 🙂 Thanks Jen!!
There are a lot of options here. Use Smart Ground for vegetarian. Omit cheese to make it vegan.
It looks like there are a lot of steps/ingredients, but it really comes together very quickly. If you have extra taco filling, it’s great in…guess what??…tacos!!! And also good in burritos, quesadillas, scrambled eggs…be creative!
Hungry yet?
Ingredients:
Taco Filling:
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1/2 cup chopped onion
1/2 cup chopped red bell pepper
1/2 cup chopped green bell pepper
1-12 ounce package Smart Ground (regular or Mexican flavor), or 12-ounces ground beef
1-1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon chili powder
1-1/2 teaspoons dried oregano, crumbled
1 can black beans, drained and rinsed
3/4 cup frozen corn kernels
Salt to taste
Salad Assembly:
Tortilla chips (can use baked tortilla chips), slightly crushed into bite-sized pieces
Salad greens
3 tomatoes, chopped, about 3 cups
A sweet salad dressing, such as French or Marie’s Raspberry Vinaigrette
1-1/2 cups shredded cheese
Salsa
1. In a medium sized skillet, heat extra virgin olive oil over medium high heat. When hot, add onion and cook for about 5 minutes, until it starts getting soft.
2. Add chopped red and green bell pepper and cook for 3-4 minutes til slightly softened.
3. Add Smart Ground or ground beef and stir to combine. Add cumin, chili powder and oregano and cook either until Smart Ground is warmed through or until ground beef is cooked.
4. Add black beans and corn and cook until corn is heated through. Set aside.
5. On dinner plates or large salad bowls, place a single serving of crushed tortilla chips, about 3/4 cup or as much as is desired. Measurements of ingredients used to assemble the salad below are estimates, use your best judgement.
6. Place about 1/2-3/4 cup of warm taco filling mixture on top of the crushed tortilla chips.
7. Place about 3/4 cup of salad greens on top of taco filling mixture. Sprinkle 1/3 cup of chopped tomato on salad greens.
8. Drizzle desired amount of salad dressing over the salad.
9. Sprinkle about 1/4 cup of shredded cheese on top. Spoon desired amount of salsa on top.
My kids love salad if it’s taco salad! Makes enough for at least 6 very hungry people.
Pumpkin Seed and Green Chile Posole
Warm and hearty, posole makes a great dinner on a cold winter night. The savory combination of slightly smoky and spicy flavors is delicious!
This recipe was in this February’s edition of Sunset magazine and I could not resist making it. Onions, chiles, garlic and tomatillos are roasted first to bring out a smokey flavor and then pureed to make the posole base. I think this may be the first time I’ve ever eaten posole. It’s usually made with pork but I did not miss the meat at all. This can be a vegan dish if you omit the cotija cheese garnish. Posole tastes even better the next day!
Creamy pumpkin seed and green chile posole
from: Sunset Magazine
Serves 8
1 large yellow onion, cut into wedges
3 large poblano chiles (I could not find fresh poblanos so I substituted Anaheim chiles instead)
1 serrano chile (serranos are spicy and I wanted my kids to eat this so I left it out)
1-1/2 pounds tomatillos, papery husks removed and rinsed (I did not know how to pick a tomatillos so here is interesting article on how to pick tomatillos ripe)
4 unpeeled garlic cloves
2 dried ancho chiles, stemmed and seeded (I could not find dried anchos so I substituted dried pasilla chiles)
About 1 cup salted, roasted pumpkin seeds (pepitas), divided
2 cans (29 oz. each) white hominy, rinsed and drained
5 to 6 cups vegetable broth
About 5 teaspoons dried Mexican oregano, divided (I used regular oregano)
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 large zucchini, cut into large dice
Accompaniments: corn tortillas, chopped cilantro, thinly sliced green onions and crumbled cotija cheese
1. Preheat broiler with oven rack about 3 inches from heat. Place yellow onion, poblanos, serrano, tomatillos and garlic on a rimmed baking sheet. Broil, turning, until vegetables are browned to blackened all over, 15 to 30 minutes, moving them to a bowl as they get browned. Let cool.
2. Toast ancho chiles in a large pot over medium heat until fragrant, pressing down with tongs and turning occasionally, about 3 minutes. Turn off heat.
3. Peel and seed poblanos and serrano. Peel garlic. Whirl serrano, garlic, onion, tomatillos and any juices and 1/2Â cup pumpkin seeds in a food processor until very smooth. Pour into the pot with the anchos (they’ll fall apart as they cook). Coarsely chop poblanos and add to pot (I accidentally pureed the poblanos with the rest of the vegetables from the oven and this was fine too).
4. Stir in hominy, 5 cups broth, 2 teaspoons oregano and the cumin. Cover, bring to a boil over high heat, then reduce heat and simmer, stirring occasionally, until cumin flavor is mellow, about 45 minutes. Discard any large pieces of ancho chile.
5. Stir zucchini into posole and simmer just until tender, about 5 minutes. Stir in more broth if you like a thinner soup.
6. Ladle posole into bowls and serve with remaining pumpkin seeds and oregano and other accompaniments to taste.
Impromptu Fried Rice
Fried rice is one of the most amazingly simple dishes to make.
Believe it or not, it’s better to make fried rice out of leftover rice than freshly cooked rice (but fresh cooked is fine too). In fact, fried rice is a great way to use leftovers. Last night I tossed rice with some leftover tofu, broccoli from the night before, a few more veggies and some eggs for a delicious, quick dinner.
Fried rice doesn’t need a lot of soy sauce. When I first started making fried rice, it didn’t quite taste right so I asked my Mom about it and she told me I was putting too much soy sauce in it. Less soy sauce = much better.
You can get very authentic and start with stir frying some garlic and ginger in oil first, but it’s not necessary if you’re in a hurry.
I usually make this with whatever protein (tofu, chicken, etc.) and veggies (any fresh or leftover, or frozen corn, peas, shelled edamame, etc.) I have on hand. The addition of toasted sesame oil adds a really nice flavor to the rice and I highly recommend adding it if you have it!
 Fried Rice
4-6 servings
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vegetable oil
2 cloves garlic, peeled and smashed with the flat side of a knife (optional)
4 slices fresh ginger (optional)
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1/2 tablespoon toasted sesame oil (optional)
1 cup vegetables, can be any combination of fresh or leftover, diced
4 cups cold cooked rice
1 cup tofu or cooked leftover meat
2 teaspoons soy sauce
1-2 chopped green onion
Salt to taste
1. Combine and lightly beat eggs together in a bowl.
2. Heat 1 teaspoon vegetable oil in wok or frying pan over medium high heat. Add eggs when hot and scramble in pan until done. Remove from pan and reserve.
3. Heat remaining oils in a wok or frying pan. If using, add garlic and ginger and stir fry for 4 minutes to infuse the oil with flavor. Remove garlic and ginger from the hot oil.
4. If using, add fresh vegetables to the oil and stir fry for a couple of minutes.
5. Add rice to the vegetables/oil and stir to break up chunks. Stir fry for a few minutes, then add the frozen vegetables if using.
6. Add the tofu or meat, and the soy sauce to the rice. Stir fry until heated through.
7. Add salt to taste, if using, and sprinkle with chopped green onion before serving.
Sausage and Spinach Soup aka Meatball Soup
The chill of fall is in the air and it’s the perfect time of year to cozy up with a piping hot bowl of delicious soup. This is a hearty soup; the perfect dinner to make on a weeknight. Super quick and easy.
At home we call this Meatball Soup but it doesn’t really have meatballs in it. What it does have is fresh pork sausage fried with onions and then it’s combined with stock, pasta and spinach. I started making this because my kids loved the canned Italian wedding soup. I was looking for a cheaper and more plentiful version of it to make at home – one can of soup looks very small when you’re trying to feed a family of hungry boys 🙂
The pasta I use is called Acini di Pepe by Ronzoni. They are very tiny pieces of pasta and it cooks into little pasta balls. It looks like this before it’s cooked:
The tiny pieces of pasta actually look quite large in this photo!
In Portland, you can find this pasta at Freddie’s or Winco. If you can’t find it, any small pasta will do. I serve the soup with bread (the boys love to dip bread into the soup and eat it) and fruit or salad for a fast weeknight dinner.
Sausage and Spinach Soup
serves 4 hungry people plus plenty of leftovers for the next day (it tastes even better!)
adapted from the recipe on the back of Ronzoni’s Acini di Pepe box
1/2 pound bulk sausage
1/2 cup chopped onion
1 tablespoon olive oil, if needed
2-32 oz. cartons of chicken broth
1 cup Acini di Pepe pasta (or any small pasta)
10-12 oz. frozen chopped spinach
1. In a large pot, cook the sausage over medium high heat, breaking it up into small pieces. When browned and cooked, lift the sausage out of the pot.
2. Add the chopped onion to the pot and cook for 5-10 minutes until soft. Add the olive oil to the pot if there’s not enough oil from the sausage in the pot to fry the onions.
3. Add the chicken broth and bring to a boil.
4. Once boiling, add the pasta to the broth and cook for 10 minutes until the pasta is done. If you used larger sized pasta you may have to cook for a little longer.
5. Add the frozen chopped spinach to the soup along with the reserved sausage.
6. Bring soup back to a simmer and serve.