One pot cauliflower

Image via Wikipedia

Spring in central Ohio is gorgeous. After the miserable, soul-sucking gray months of damp, cold winter the explosion of flowering trees really is miraculous. Tulips are a marvel. Hyacinths send me into orbit. Daffodils make me smile every damn time I see hthem.

But then I sneeze and rub my red, watery eyes. I gasp for my albuterol and happily ingest prednisone, my lungs begging for merciful corticosteroids. Ah, Zyrtec, Zyrtec, come hither. Mama needs thee.

My food thoughts, happily, are less itchy, scratchy, and wheezy. I turn away from February and early March carbohydrate-laden chowathons, and turn to salads and fruits, finally starting once again to have some taste. My kids, sick of bananas, sliced apples, and pears, feast on strawberries that actually taste like strawberries. Sure, they're still imported, but not from as far. Asparagus. Ramps. A glorious pile of plump green beans greeted me at the market yesterday for NINETY NINE cents a pound!

What to do with it all? Well, here's an idea.

From my favorite new cookbook, Mad Hungry, I acquired the completely nifty practice of slicing cauliflower like bread to bake, roast, blanche, or steam. So much less waste! Remove the green leaves, cut out the woodiest part of the core, then slice. Today I combined my sliced flowerets with a fast pickle-like preparation on the stove, cribbed from Mollie Katzen in Salads. An all-in-one salad prep, and I must say, it's pretty good. We'll have it all week either as a stand-alone side dish, tossed in greens with a salad, or tossed with cooked beans and raisins as a lunch perhaps stuffed in pita.

Bavarian Spring Cauliflower Salad

1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1/4 cup white wine or white balsamic vinegar
1/2 cup of waater
2 minced garlic cloves
1 teaspoon Bavarian spice mix (Penzy's, optional product but tasty)
Whole peppercorns
2-3 bay leaves
1 cauliflower, cored, sliced like bread into florets
1 spritz lemon

Combine oil, vinegar, water, spice mix (if using), garlic, salt, a tablespoon or so of peppercorns, bay leaves, and cauliflower in a large saucepan. Bring to a boil, then cover and simmer gently until the cauliflower is done to your liking.

Transfer to a bowl, add a squeeze of lemon, remove bay leaves, and chill.

To serve, consider addition of capers. Sliced hard-boiled eggs would make this tapas-like. For that matter, canned or fresh tuna chunks wouldn't be out of place, with or without capers, or the hard-boiled eggs.

Scarpetta's Spaghetti with Fresh Tomato Sauce and Garlic Basil Oil

This sounds fabulous, and well worth a trip to Steamy Kitchen where you can get the recipe from the fabulous Jaden. You'll save the trip to NYC and the $24 per plate at Scarpetta's. You can make it for your entire family, with a salad, and a decent bottle of wine for $24. You might be able to find 4 cute plates on clearance at Target and still come in under $24, too.

Scarpetta's Spaghetti with Fresh Tomato Sauce and Garlic Basil Oil, recipe and picture via Steamy Kitchen

Moroccan-spiced spaghetti squash. Or maybe....

I like spaghetti squash. I have tended to be a purist about it, roasting with olive oil, then serving with butter, salt, and pepper. Little parmesan. My husband thinks it is boring and tastes like nothing, but I'm not so quick to dismiss, particularly since there's butter involved.

I came across this recently in Smitten Kitchen. Might give it a try with that squash that's been sitting on my counter now for about a month.

Moroccan-spiced spaghetti squash

But hmmm....I cut this out of Food & Wine last month. Maybe I should try this one instead:

Spaghetti Squash Salad with Pine Nuts and Tarragon

Except that while I was searching for the recipe I came upon this, also from Food & Wine. It has feta and almond. Those two things alone make me like it:

Warm spaghetti squash salad

What am I to do?

Ode to my stomach with chickpeas

Stomach, leave me the f$*# alone! I want to eat these:

Smokey Fried Chickpeas

As it is, I can hardly bear to behold them. Woe.

Picture and recipe via Food52

Foodie Weekend

Having company over for the weekend. Can't decide what to make. Would it be wrong to serve these for dinner?

Smores IceBox Candy Bars link and picture via Joy the Baker

How to get my two of my favorite foods together, shrimp and chips? How about this fabulous sounding (and looking) dip from an American master, Tom Douglas:

Shrimp Dip with Potato Chips via Yum Sugar

I've been eyeing this recipe for a week. Should I give it a spin or not?

Grilled Apple Salad with Cider Vinaigrette via Slashfood

Did you know Necco wafers have gone all natural? I'm not sure if that's better or worse in regard to you know, the fact that it's candy and all, but still. I'll tell myself that it means that I can eat Necco wafers for lunch 'cause they're full of beets:

Necco Wafers via Slashfood

Speaking junk food, just in case you can't get enough of me, I have a post on the OSU Student Health Services Blog today:

Twinkies really are like crack!

I'm not saying Twinkies are crack, I'm just sayin' to keep the Narcan handy when ingesting.

Regards for a most excellent Friday! ---IcedLatte

Tassajara Warm Red Cabbage Salad

Recipe and photo from 101 cookbooks. I'm not the world's biggest cabbage fan unless there's a reuben or brat attached, but this really strikes my fancy. Heidi does it again! Check it out at:

Tassajara Warm Red Cabbage Salad Recipe

Almost oil-free miso all-purpose dressing

Image via Wikipedia

My latest. Tossed blanched haricots verts and snap peas in it. Delicious. This would work for a whole variety of salads, noodles, chicken, fish, most especially tuna. It is adapted from a Crescent Dragonwagon recipe from way back.

More Miso!

2 inches fresh gingerroot, peeled, finely chopped
1/4 cup white miso paste
1/4 cup rice wine vinegar (seasoned or not works)
1/4 cup mirin (or sweet sherry)
2 T tamari soy sauce
2 T honey
2 T tahini
pinch cayenne pepper
1 T sesame oil

Tricky instructions: mix everything together and serve. Think you can handle it? This makes a lot: enough for a salad and then some.

Just when you thought you were free of eggplant!

You weren't! Mark Bittman has a recipe for roasted vegetables, Thai style. It looks remarkably like my crockpot ThaiThai vegetable stew, which I cribbed almost completely from a PassUBy KYSO recipe, only I'm lazy and she's not so I throw my stuff in the crockpot. I don't use peanut butter 'cause nuts make Little Latte get very hive-y.

I might try this. Or I might stick with the crockpot version of PassUBy's recipe.

Roasted Vegetables, Thai Style

The best use of squash and corn pudding perhaps ever

From the genius 101 Cookbooks. Heidi has done it again:

Roasted Corn Pudding in Acorn Squash

I don't like green beans

I think green beans taste like dirt and I don't generally like a big helping of dirt. However, this past weekend we rented a farm. The owners left us a great big pile of fresh produce. Included was a huge bag of fresh picked green beans. The challenged to IcedLatte was to make them edible to her dirt-suspcious palate.

I did. I inhaled these green beans, and picky Little Capuccino ate them too. Little Machiatto will eat anything vegetable or fruit. That they were a hit with her was not a surprise.

Without further ado, I give you:

No Dirt Green Beans
Lots of fresh green beansm (say a pound or even more), end & string snapped off
Olive oil
Red pepper, diced
1/2 cup onion, shallot, whatever
Salt
Pepper
Nob of butter
Water

In a heavy pan for which you have a lid, heat up some olive oil over medium to medium-high heat. When it's hot, add your onion and red pepper. Stir occasionally until they have a little color. When they do, throw in green beans plus say, 3/4 cup of water, little more, little less. Add salt. That's important.

Throw on your pot lid not quite all the way and let these suckers cook. Toss occasionally. They'll need 15 minutes or so at least. You want them to be cooked but not mushed. When they're almost there, take off the lid and let the water evaporate and let some color come to those beans.

When they're done, remove from the heat and toss in a bit of butter. Add salt if you think they need it. Add some pepper. Serve.

I know it sounds too simple to be true, but it is. Feel free to substitute your favorite grease. Bacon grease would be lovely, and a little crumbled bacon at serving would be delightful. Garlic wouldn't be bad, either.

Run, Don't Walk.

To the store because she did it, she really did it. The High Priestess of Community Gardening, yes, Lady Stoddart herself posted the very best, bar none, roasted marinated red pepper recipe. Go go her website immediately and get the recipe and run, run, run to the grocery store and make this right now. They need several hours to mature, but they are so lovely and worth it. Buy a lot. You'll eat a lot.

The Best Roasted Red Marinated Peppers in the World. Seriously.

I am swooning.

I am also typing this from my brand new little netbook which was delivered today to my house. I call it "MiniMe". It's cool. Just went I'd almost kicked the face-buried-in-the-crackberry habit!!!!

I have a friend with a farm.

Image via Wikipedia

I was trying to channel Isak Dinesen's line, "I had a farm in Africa..." This friend COULD have a farm in Africa or anywhere the hell else she wants vegetables to grow. If she wanted vegetables to grow on your couch, grow they would. She is almost all-powerful. She can't prescribe medication in the state of Ohio like I can, but aside from that, I can't think of a single thing she can't do.

She has a recipe on her website today, a skeleton of a recipe, really, for ratatouille. Her site is worth checking out if you are interested in gardening, have ever looked at a garden or wondered what it might be like, especially if you are interested in community gardening. She knows everything. EVERYTHING. I mighta mentioned her before. And the recipe makes me want to grab some warm pita and dig right in. At this time of the summer, when tomatoes, peppers, and zucchini are everywhere, and an eggplant can certainly be had SOMEWHERE, make this. Put some in the freezer. In February, when it's cold, gray, depressing, and you think your mortal soul is in peril, thaw your summer goodness. You'll make it another week, I promise.

Too Much Garden Bounty? Ratatouille to the Rescue!

INSANE list of green recipes

From Cheap Healthy Good. How do they do it? This is AMAZING!

246 recipes for cabbage, kale, spinach, swiss chard, and beyond!

Another great treasure-trove post from Cheap Healthy Good, which coincidentally begins with a reference to David Lebovitz (see below)

Seriously, Eating: 40 recipes from the other website I work for