Edamame bread salad

Mmmmm...it's garden fare time!  This is a great meal for using up the beans and tomaotes you have erupting from your gardens, and also a vegetarian dish with lots of flavor and a good side of protein.  The recipe came from Better Homes and Gardens, athough I've lightened it up a bit and added a tad more basil than originally called for, of course.

Ingredients:

  ● 3/4  cup feta cheese
  ● 1/2  cup Greek yogurt or plain low-fat yogurt
  ● 2  Tbsp. snipped fresh basil
  ● 1  small clove garlic, minced
  ● 2  12- oz. pkgs. frozen soybeans (edamame)
  ● 1-1/2  lbs. fresh green beans, trimmed
  ● 2  cups yellow cherry tomatoes, halved
  ● 12  slices crusty country bread, toasted
  ● Fresh basil leaves
Balsamic Dressing:
  ● 1/4 cup olive oil
  ● 2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
  ● 2 tbsp red wine vinegar
  ● 1/4 cup fresh basil, lightly packed

Directions:

1. In food process combine feta cheese, yogurt, basil and garlic.  Blend until creamy and season with salt and pepper as desired. (If you don't have a food processor you can mash the cheese and yogurt together with a fork then add the remaining ingredients and stir).  This may be made ahead.

2. In saucepan bring 8 cups lightly salted water to boiling. Add soybeans and green beans and return to a boil. Reduce heat and cook, covered, 6 to 8 minutes or until tender. Drain and cool (speed up by rinsing with cold water.  Add tomatoes to bean mixture and drizzle 1/2 of balsamic dressing mixture (see below); toss to coat.

4. Spread feta mixture on bread slices; place slice on serving plate; mound bean mixture on top. Drizzle remaining dressing; top with fresh basil leaves.

Balsamic Dressing: In blender or processor combine 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil, 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar, 2 tablespoons red wine vinegar, and 1/4 cup lightly packed fresh basil leaves; blend until smooth. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Recipe shown here with gazpacho soup on the side - another garden great!

Peruvian quinoa stew

Quinoa is an amazing grain. It is gluten free, relatively high in protein, and surprising well rounded when it comes to amino acids (the building blocks of protein), making it a wonderful choice for vegetarian or vegan fare. It's also rather bland and we've tried recipes in the past that have, in our opinion, left something to be desired. But we refuse to be deterred, and a little inernet searching produced at least one interesting recipe, which we tried tonight and enjoyed.

A quick note first. I believe most of the quinoa sold in the United States is pre-rinsed, but if you buy it in bulk from health food stores (to avoid undue pre-processing), rinsing the grain before use is an absolute must. Quinoa grows covered in saponin, a very bitter substance that keeps away birds and is equally as unpalatable to humans. Because it is a relatively fine grain I used a coffee filter for this job, slowly running cool, filtered water over the grain until the rinse water no longer had a soapy look to it.

Peruvian Quinoa Stew

● 1/2 cup quinoa
● 1 cup water
● 2 cups chopped onions
● 2 garlic cloves, minced or pressed
● 1 tbsp. vegetable oil
● 1 celery stalk, chopped
● 1 carrot, cut on the diagonal into ¼-inch thick slices
● 1 bell pepper, cut into 1-inch pieces
● 1 cup cubed zucchini
● 2 cups undrained chopped fresh or canned tomatoes
● 1 cup water or vegetable stock
● 2 tsp. ground cumin
● ½ tsp. chili powder
● 1 tsp. ground coriander
● 1 pinch cayenne pepper, or more to taste
● 2 tsp fresh oregano, chopped
● salt, to taste
● cilantro, optional, to taste
● grated cheese, optional

Place rinsed quinoa and water in pot (covered) and cook covered on medium-low heat for about 15 minutes until soft.

While the quinoa is cooking place the onions, garlic and vegetable oil in covered soup pot and saute on medium heat for 5 minutes. Add celery and carrots and cook an additional 5 minutes, stirring often. Add bell pepper, zucchini, tomatoes, and vegetable stock. Stir in cumin, chili powder, coriander, cayenne and oregano. Simmer covered for 10 to 15 minutes, until vegetables are tender.  Stir in cooked quinoa and salt to taste. Serve hot, topped with grated cheese and cilantro if desired.

Needs some work

We love to try new things, and that obviously means we will sometimes run across a concoction that doesn't make the grade.  I can honestly say there has only been one dinner in all our years together that saw the inside of the disposal and was usurped by the pizza delivery guy - and that was many years ago - but there are lots of other recipes that have made their way into our never-again pile (aka the recycling bin), or our needs-some-work pile.  Today's recipe was of the latter category.  Why do I share it, then?  Because it's all a matter of taste, and because maybe you can do a better job!  If you have any ideas for alterations, let me know.

Spinach, beet, and goat cheese salad

First, scrub four medium beets and then boil them until tender (about 20-30 minutes), then drain, cool, and cut into bite sized pieces.  The hardest part is done.  Now heat about 1/2 cup EVOO and 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar in a pan.  Add spinach (eyeball it - however much you want to serve is good) and stir to coat with oil mixture until wilted.  Transfer to a serving dish and toss with beets, goat cheese, and candied walnuts (make these by toasting them in a hot pan, then adding maple syrup and stirring to coat, then allowing to cool on wax paper).  Serve warm.

Now, what didn't I like?  First, next time I'm going to skip the wilting step and serve this cold - I've seen it mentioned both ways.  Then, beets are sweet, and to me they were a little over-powering in this mixture (could be because they were in a very high ratio to the spinach), so I might tone it down a bit.  Also, I think next time I would try feta instead of goat cheese - the bitterness of the goat cheese was just a bit too much of a contrast for me.  The nuts are a good crunch, but an additional thought for next time might be crunchy pear.  We'll let you know if our second try is at all more successful.

Oh, and a good heads up would be "never make this while wearing white".  Just a thought.

Spinach quiche

This is one of our favorite vegetarian meals.  I can't remember where I originally got the recipe, but it has evolved so much over the time I've been using it that I think I can almost call it my own. 

Prepare a pie crust (or you can use the pre-made frozen kind).  I use this no-roll pie crust recipe with whole wheat flour.

In a skillet melt 1/2 cup of butter, then add 3 cloves garlic (chopped) and 1 small onion (chopped) and sauté until tender.  At this point add spinach (I do this by sight.  I think the original recipe called for a 10oz package of frozen, but I use fresh and just eyeball it.  I'm sure I use more...), and a handful of mushrooms (sliced, and again, I eyeball this - it wasn't originally called for) and sauté until spinach has wilted and reduced in size.  To this mixture add 8oz of feta (I sometimes use 4oz feta and 4oz goat cheese) and 8 oz of shredded cheddar and season with salt, pepper, and Italian herbs to your liking.  Stir until melted, then spoon in to pie crust and spread out evenly.

In a separate bowl whisk together 4 eggs and 1 cup of milk, then pour this mixture over the contents in the pie crust.  Depending on how deep your pie crust is, this will be pretty full, so I usually do it on a cookie sheet.  Transfer pie to oven (on the cookie sheet is fine) and bake at 375 for 30 minutes, then sprinkle the more cheddar cheese over the top and cook an additional 20-30 minutes or until the center is set.  Allow to stand for 10 minutes before cutting (this is very important if you don't want to be serving goop).

Stuffed Portobellos

One of our goals in the new year is to make at least one meal each week a vegetarian meal. Not only will this be good for us physically, it is also good for the environment (it would be even better if we could also make it a locavore meal, but we'll work on that come better weather). So with every intention of starting the year right we ate spinach quiche last week and tonight we made stuffed portobellos. Yum. Here's what we did:

I bought eight medium sized organically grown Portobello mushroom tops (about 3-4" across) from our Meijer and gently washed them before removing the stems (they twist out easily, leaving a nice little divot).  When dry arrange mushroom caps in a glass backing dish.

In a small bowl I combine 1/3c each shredded mozzarella cheese, bread crumbs, walnuts (chopped), and onions (finely chopped), and 1/4t each salt and pepper.  In a separate dish combine 2T veggie broth (homemade is best - see our minimalism in the pantry post) with 1 egg and lightly beat the mixture with a fork.  Pour the egg mixture over the dry ingredients and stir gently until well blended.  Spoon mixture into mushroom caps and sprinkle with an additional 1/2 cup or so of mozzarella cheese.  Bake at 350 for about 25 minutes or until mushrooms are tender and cheese is melted and beginning to bubble and brown on top.  Yum.