Category: Side Dishes – Veggies

Spinach and Cheddar Souffle

Recipe here.

I’ve always loved souffles and absolutely adore Ina Garten, so when I saw this recipe in House Beautiful magazine, I knew that I had to try it.  It was totally easy and really is foolproof.  I confess that I even forgot and opened the oven door once and the souffle still didn’t fall.  Yummy and cheesy, but also light and fluffy.  We served it with a fresh tomato-and-basil salad (tomato from our garden…basil from Girl’s sweet Spanish teacher’s garden) and it was beautiful.

Vegetarian Girl, clowning around with the souffle after it came out of the oven.

Beautiful Tomato-Basil salad…no recipe necessary, just sliced tomatoes, thinly sliced basil, a generous pour of olive oil and a sprinkle of kosher salt and freshly ground pepper.  This is basically just a cheeseless Caprese salad, but it was delicious.

Spinach-and-Ricotta Tortelli with Browned Butter

Recipe here.

I knew when I saw this recipe that, as appealing as it looked, it was going to be a fair amount of work.  I’ve had it sitting in the “someday when we have a lot of free time on our hands” pile for quite some time, just waiting for the perfect day.  I  knew that the kids would want to help with the stuffing and rolling, so it had to be a time when every one was home (difficult) and didn’t have other compelling things to do (near-impossible.)  It was time-consuming, but not terribly, and it took a little patience to get the hang of rolling the tortelli, but it was easiest than I thought and we were more successful than I had feared we might be.  All of the tortellis remained intact during cooking (I cannot boast this level of success with previous homemade ravioli attempts) and they were VERY tasty.  Well worth the effort and definitely something we will be doing again.  After running the pasta disks through the pasta machine, they became VERY long and unwieldy strips, so I cut them in half, but that turned out to be a mistake later, because I was not able to cut as many dough circles out of them.  We consequently had about a third of our spinach-ricotta filling left and our batch of dough made less tortellis than the recipe specified.  I’ll correct this next time by using a slightly larger circle cutter (I have another one that is 3 inches across) and using slightly more filling in each one.  We’ll be trying this again (now that the kids have mastered tortelli-shaping) and maybe experiment with different fillings and/or sauces.

Our batch only made about 52 tortelli, although the recipe states approximately 80.  I think I know what we did wrong, though, and will correct this next time.

We served the tortelli with some sauteed green beans and a grilled New York Strip steak (we just buy one steak and cut it into small strips to split three ways, amongst the carnivores in the family.)  Vegetarian Girl just had green beans and pasta.

We also sipped a lovely Syrah-Sangiovese blend that we brought back from Italy last summer.  We were saving it for a special occasion and figured that making our own stuffed pasta from scratch qualified as one.

Curried Couscous Salad and Sauteed Green Beans

Curried Couscous Salad recipe here.

Sauteed Green Beans recipe here.

Both of these recipes were vary tasty.  The green beans are very simple, just a slight variation from basic blanching or steaming, but the get just enough color in the saute pan to add some great extra flavor.  The couscous was a little more complicated, but well worth the effort.  This was a delicious salad with some really bright, bold flavors.  The recipe makes a TON of salad, so plan to invite people over, take it to a potluck or enjoy some leftovers (which are great for a day or maybe two, but not longer than that, and you can’t freeze it because of the cucumber.)  If you have a smaller family, I would recommend making half a batch.

We served this with a little bit of Baby Bam-dusted, grilled chicken for the carnivores.

Spring Salad with Grapes and Pistachio-Crusted Goat Cheese

Recipe here.

This was delicious and ridiculously quick.  The Easy Herb Vinaigrette in the recipe was indeed, easy and was quite tasty, but you could also use a balsamic vinaigrette or any other dressing that you prefer (although I would stay away from anything creamy, so that it doesn’t overpower the cheese.)  I highly recommend allowing the cheese to come to room temperature, as the cheese is much more palatable that way.  Nothing worse than a cold glob of cheese, in my opinion.  I used lowfat cream cheese for The Boy, because goat cheese is a little too gamey for him.  Boursin would also be good.

I was planning to grill some chicken to serve with this, but I forgot until I had the salads completely prepared and ready to go.  It was a very light dinner, but we didn’t miss the chicken at all, because we were having a VERY decadent dessert.  (Check out the next post for details.)

Classic Sole Meunière

Recipe here.

This is one of my favorite “fancy restaurant” meals, but I’ve never attempted it at home before.  I’m SO glad that I did, because it was super easy and VERY delicious.  I think that the recipe’s suggestion to buy a couple of extra fillets is a good one, because it does take a tiny bit of practice to get the knack for how long it takes to cook each fillet and for how to turn it.  The sole fillets are VERY fragile and have a tendency to fall apart when you flip them, but even if they do, they’re still delicious, and it shouldn’t take you more than two or three “practice fillets” before you’re flipping like a pro.  You definitely need to have the butter, lemon juice and parsley measured out and ready to go, because when you need each addition, you need it NOW and there’s no time to chop parsley or squeeze lemons.

We served this with some sauteed spinach and basmati rice.  We added a bit of sauteed shallot, chopped parsley and toasted, chopped pecans to the rice and finished it with a tiny bit of butter after it was cooked.

Grilled Skirt Steak and Creamed Corn and Black Beans with Poblanos

This was inspired by this recipe in May 2008 Food & Wine magazine, but I adapted things quite a bit.

First, I thought that the plain “sprinkled with salt and pepper before grilling” skirt steak could be improved upon, so we rubbed it with some coffee spice rub, instead.  The one that I used is from Williams-Sonoma, but they seem to only stock it sporadically.  If you can’t find it, I’m sure that a simple Google search would net you a serviceable recipe.

Secondly, I diced the onion in the creamed corn, because I’m not wild about long strips of onion, but just prefer the flavor of them, without being confronted with their slippery stringiness (weird?  yes, but I’m cooking, so I get to choose…)  I also upped the amount of corn in the dish (tripled, probably) and toasted/roasted it in a tiny bit of oil in a very hot skillet, so that it had a little “char” on it before adding it to the poblanos and sour cream.  I also added one can of (drained and rinsed) black beans.  I left the amount of sour cream the same (1 cup) and it was still PLENTY creamy for our taste.  In fact, if we had not added more corn and the beans, I think it would have been WAY too rich.  Until I added the beans and more corn, it looked like corny sour cream, rather than creamed corn.  With the adaptations, however, it was OUTSTANDING and was something that I will DEFINITELY make again with other Mexican meals in the future.  It would also be fantastic as a taco filling (with a little smoked chicken added, maybe?) or in an omelet.

I served this with some more of the Spicy Cilantro Slaw (I overbought and had an extra bag of the shredded cabbage in the house, so I decided to make it again.)  I probably wouldn’t do that combination again, as it was just too many creamy dishes on one plate, although it was still a great meal.  Vegetarian Girl made a meal out of the corn/beans and slaw, plus a little of the leftover lentils.

See the next post to see what I paired it with for dessert.

Jamaican Jerk Grilled Tofu

We made this vegetarian adaptation for Girl the other night when we had Jerk-Rubbed Catfish and she loved it so much that she requested it again.  It was SO easy, quick and healthy.  She made the little arugula-spinach-tomato salad to go with it (we already had the Baby Bam croutons on hand.)  It’s really the spice rub that makes it; it is absolutely fantastic.

You don’t need an actual “recipe” to cook the tofu, just cut a slice the size that you want to eat (use FIRM tofu), rub it down all over with a little (about 5 drops or so – not much is necessary) canola or vegetable oil, rub it down generously with the spice rub and then grill it on a preheated grill or grill pan.  Try to flip it as little as possible, because it can be a little fragile.

Spinach Salad with Lentils and Crispy Goat Cheese

Recipe here.

This will be a definite repeat.  Lentils are one of our favorite foods (especially Girl.)  They are terrific for you and have tons of the precious protein that can be so hard for vegetarians to get enough of.  We also all really like spinach, as well.  And, crispy-crunchy-gooey melted cheese?  Well, doesn’t EVERYONE love that?

This is similar to another salad that I made earlier this year (by the same food writer, even!,) but forming the cheese into patties and frying it takes this to a whole other level.

I made two slight modifications:

I cut back the amount of oil added to the lentils significantly.  I put in just enough to keep them from sticking (2 tsp?) while the garlic cooked.

I also used a bit of balsamic vinaigrette on the spinach instead of the olive oil.

We loved this and will definitely make it again.  The goat cheese was a tiny bit strong for Boy, so I might make his with boursin or something milder next time, but was still a fabulous and healthy vegetarian treat.