Tag: Lunch
Broccoli Cheese Soup
For the last few weeks, my husband has more or less forbidden me from making soup. Not that we have that kind of relationship, where he goes around forbidding me from doing things (“NO MO’ SOUP, WOMAN!!”) but not too long ago we had quite the culinary misadventure with soup. On a hot July day, I had gotten it into my head that roasted cauliflower soup sounded great for dinner. I love that particular soup–creamy, spicy, nutty, and a great source of vegetables. Unfortunately, with the temperature outside being approximately that of a thousand burning suns, a steaming hot bowl of soup really did not hit the spot that night. Any time your napkin functions as a sweat towel instead of a crumb catcher, you know you have a problem–we both sat using our napkins to wipe our glistening foreheads throughout the meal. Hence the whole “forbidding” thing. Actually, it was more of a polite-but-firm request. Regardless, the point was clear (and mostly mutual): no more piping hot foods until the weather settles down to something below sweat lodge conditions.
Well, being the soup lover I am, I held out as long as I could, but dang it, the weather in Phoenix just takes soooooo loooooong to cool off–if, indeed, you can call our 70 degree winters “cooled off.” I can’t tell you how much time I spend fantasizing about living somewhere where in the next month or so leaves will begin changing, sweaters will begin replacing tank tops, and soup will become a reasonable dinner option. And that’s basically what making this soup was for me: fantasy. Pretending that the day’s forecast didn’t contain triple digits. La-la-la I can’t feel you, oppressive heat! I can’t see you, relentless sun! I will eat my delicious steaming bowl of broccoli cheese soup and not need a cold shower afterwards!
And you know what? It kind of worked. I enjoyed this soup, as I always do, and managed to not feel feverishly hot while doing so. Maybe the weather really is changing, ever so slightly? Or maybe my husband turned down the A/C in anticipation of dinner?
A final note: this recipe comes (adapted) from the book The Cleaner Plate Club, which I highly recommend. It’s part cookbook, part manifesto about improving children’s diets in America today. If you want to get educated on how to cook healthily for your child(ren), check this one out!
Broccoli Cheese Soup
(Adapted from The Cleaner Plate Club)
Ingredients:
2 Tbsp. olive oil
1 c. chopped celery
1 c. chopped carrot
3/4 c. chopped onion
4 c. chicken broth (homemade if possible; vegetable broth may be substituted)
1 bay leaf
2 tsp. dried thyme
4.5 c. broccoli florets
1 Parmesan cheese rind
1 Tbsp. butter
2 Tbsp. all-purpose flour
1 c. whole milk (2% could work in a pinch)
8 oz. grated Parmesan cheese (about 2 cups)
salt and pepper
Directions:
1. Heat the olive oil in a large stockpot over medium heat. Add the celery, carrot, and onion and cook about 10 minutes.
2. Add the chicken broth, bay leaf, and thyme. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to a simmer. Add the broccoli and cheese rind and simmer until the broccoli is tender, about 20 minutes.
3. Meanwhile, in a separate small saucepan, prepare the roux: melt the butter over medium-low heat, then whisk in the flour. Cook, whisking constantly for about 2 minutes. Add the milk. Bring to a simmer, then add the Parmesan and whisk to melt evenly.
4. Remove the bay leaf and cheese rind from the soup. Carefully puree about half the vegetables with an immersion blender (or blend half the soup in a regular blender, covering the lid with a kitchen towel to prevent a hot mess), bringing it to a texture you like.
5. Stir in the cheese sauce. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer 10 minutes. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
Serves 4 as a main dish.
Barbecue Pork Pizza
Everybody has that weird thing that they enjoy, even though most other people hate it or are indifferent to it. Maybe you get a high out of cleaning toilets, or a satisfaction from balancing your budget, or maybe you’re like my aesthetician friend who gets a perverse pleasure out of popping people’s zits. My own personal strange divertissement comes from……(drum roll)…….(don’t worry, it’s nothing super gross)…..(like wiping dog butts)…..(or chewing someone else’s gum)…….
meal planning!
Whew! See? Nothing too funky. Meal planning is an art I strive to perfect every week. I get a thrill from the challenge: Can I make use of the foods already occupying space in my pantry and fridge and not spend too much on special new ingredients? Can I achieve a balance of cooking trusted standards but also incorporating the new recipes I’m dying to try? Can I somehow make it all work together like a giant puzzle? Well, I try. To some people, that probably sounds miserable, but to me it’s the pleasure of bringing order out of chaos–delicious order, if at all possible. So you probably won’t be surprised when I tell you that the gold standard, the hit-the-jackpot of meal planning for me is that diamond-in-the-rough, one-two punch of…..
the Double Duty Dinner!!
The Double Duty Dinner is the kind that you prepare one night and are then able to use in a different way another night. This is not the same thing as leftovers. It’s a creative reinvention of one or more components of one dinner to create a second dinner. The best is when the second dinner bears little resemblance to the first. Then you really and truly don’t feel you’re having leftovers.
This fantastic Barbeque Pork Pizza is probably my favorite example of such a high-scoring Double Duty Dinner. Well, it’s the second half of it. The first half is another dinner: pork tenderloin slathered in barbeque sauce, slow-cooked in the Crock Pot. Barbeque pulled pork can of course be used in several ways for the first dinner: served on buns as a sandwich, served with corn on the cob and potato salad in summer, roasted sweet potatoes and onions in winter, or any combination of sides you can dream up. The key is to make extra and save it for later in the week, when you’ll make this pizza and kill another day’s meal plan bird with one stone. Because you do not want to miss out on this pizza. Tender barbeque pork, gooey mozzarella, crispy red onions, and some cilantro for a bite that rounds out the whole mix. If my digestive tract would let me, I could eat this entire pizza.
And seriously, I looooove meal planning. So if you’re ever interested, comment or shoot me an email and I’d be happy to send you some sample week meal plans. It would make my day!
Barbeque Pork Pizza
Ingredients:
1 lb. store-bought refrigerated or homemade whole wheat pizza dough (such as Trader Joe’s)
3/4 c. barbeque sauce
1/2 lb. barbeque pulled pork (leftover from your first Double Duty Dinner)
8 oz. shredded mozzarella cheese
1/2 of a small red onion, thinly sliced
1/2 c. loosely packed cilantro leaves
Directions:
1. Remove pizza dough from refrigerator and follow package directions for rising. (Trader Joe’s dough rises for 20 minutes.) If using homemade pizza dough, follow recipe directions for rising.
2. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
3. Grease a 15 x 10 inch jelly roll pan. Spread pizza dough across pan, overlapping the edges slightly. (It will contract as it bakes.) Bake in preheated oven about 10 minutes.
4. Heat oven to 450 degrees.
5. Spread barbeque sauce over dough, followed by pulled pork. Top with mozzarella, red onion, and cilantro.
6. Bake an additional 10 minutes, or until cheese is bubbly and red onion begins to wrinkle and brown.
Serves 4.
Crab Quiche
What’s the first thing you learned how to cook? Mac and cheese? Scrambled eggs? BLTs? Weird as it may sound, one of the first things I ever learned to cook was quiche. Growing up, it was a dinner dish my mom frequently made–a deviation from her ’80s Illinoisan repertoire of baked chicken, spaghetti, and meatloaf. To this day, I’m not sure how this traditional French fare infiltrated her Midwestern meal planning, but I am the beneficiary of its presence there. From early on in my marriage when I first started cooking, I had an index card with her recipe for a chicken-spinach-mushroom variety on it and used it often. In the last ten years, I’ve expanded from there. To date, I’ve tried…
- broccoli quiche
- quiche lorraine
- bacon-asparagus quiche
- tomato-mozzarella-basil quiche
- ham and parsley quiche
- crab quiche
- and probably other less successful versions I don’t remember.
Basically, if you have a pie crust, eggs, and cheese, you can whip up a quiche. Add what you like, take out what you like–easy dinner, boom! Or easy lunch. Or easy breakfast. Or easy brunch. For this crab quiche, you quite likely have all the ingredients except the crab (unless you’re one of those crab stockpilers you see on reality TV: “Coming this June to TLC…Crab Hoarders of Maricopa County.”) If you’re a crab hoarder, you’re gonna LOVE this one. And even if you’re not a crab hoarder, give it a try. With its mild crab taste, it’s a great way to work some omega 3-rich seafood into your diet even if you’re not crazy about seafood.
Crab Quiche
(Slightly adapted from Allrecipes.com)
Ingredients:
1/2 c. mayonnaise
2 Tbsp. all-purpose flour
3 eggs
1/4 tsp. garlic powder
dash hot sauce
1/2 c. milk
6 oz. lump crab meat (drained, if from a can)
1 1/4 c. your choice of shredded cheese (I’d recommend a Swiss or a cheddar blend)
1/2 c. chopped green onions
1 9-inch unbaked pie crust
Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. In a large bowl, beat together mayonnaise, flour, eggs, garlic powder, hot sauce, and milk until thoroughly combined. Stir in crab, cheese, and onion. Pour into pie shell.
3. Bake 35-40 minutes, or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.
Creamy Apple Barley Salad
I always seem to overdo it on the weekends. Between the excesses of date night on Friday and Sunday dinner at my Italian mother-in-law’s, I frequently start Monday feeling like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Woman…(in terms of bloating, not like I want to destroy apartment buildings or anything). I’d really like to become as conscious about what I’m putting in my mouth from Friday night through Sunday as I am Monday through Friday. Today, a Saturday, I found myself feeling a little guilty–and, extraordinarily, still a little full–from the Culver’s Oreo and cookie dough concrete mixer I allowed myself on date night last night. (If you don’t believe me, or if you want to feel a tremendous amount of shame for ever having eaten one, check out the jaw-dropping nutrition facts on concrete mixers.) Seriously, wow.
So this Saturday noon found me with the desire for something light and healthy for lunch. Weekend lunches at our house are usually cobbled together with random bits of whatever is left from the week–my husband always says I grocery shop as though a week has only 5 days. Sometimes the results are tasty, sometimes less so. (Tomato-shrimp omelet, anyone?) Today I realized that I had everything needed to make this creamy apple barley salad we had once before and I for one had really liked. It comes from one of my Real Simple cookbooks. What I love about Real Simple is that their recipes truly stand up to the name–more often than not, I have all the ingredients on hand. They make great use of standbys like salt and pepper, wine vinegars, Dijon mustard, yogurt, lemon juice, etc. Love it when I don’t have to run out and buy $5 oyster sauce I’ll use one tablespoon of in a year. (But, hey, no judgment if you’re an oyster sauce nut.)
This recipe pairs the sweet crunch of apple and chewiness of barley against the backdrop of tangy Dijon and yogurt. Toss on top of a bed of spinach and/or arugula and boom, it’s a salad! I added a bit of feta to give it some extra oomph, since this was my lunch in its entirety. (Adding cheese to stuff may actually be the best thing about being a semi-vegetarian.) Cheese or no cheese, though, this makes a nice light lunch or an interesting side salad for a simple entree like grilled chicken or fish.
Creamy Apple Barley Salad
(Adapted from Real Simple Best Recipes: Easy, Delicious Meals)
1/2 c. pearl barley
salt and pepper
1/2 c. plain Greek yogurt
2 Tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
1 Tbsp. fresh lemon juice
1 tsp. Dijon mustard
2 stalks celery, chopped
1 large apple, thinly sliced
1/4 c. fresh mint, chopped
4 1/2 c. fresh spinach, arugula, or mixed greens
Directions:
1. In a medium saucepan, combine barley, 1 1/2 c. water, and 1/4 tsp. salt. Bring to a boil and then reduce heat. Simmer, covered, for 25-30 minutes, until water is absorbed.
2. Meanwhile, in a large bowl, whisk together the yogurt, olive oil, lemon juice, Dijon mustard, 1/2 tsp. salt, and 1/4 tsp. pepper. Add the celery, apple, mint, and cooked barley and toss to combine.
3. In individual bowls, divide the greens. Top with the barley mixture.
Serves 2-3 as a main dish, 4 as a side salad.
Caprese Tart with Basil-Garlic Crust
The funny thing about eating seasonally in the Phoenix area is that it’s all bass-ackwards from pretty much everywhere else in the country. Knowing what little I do about gardening and harvesting in Illinois, where my family is from, I realize that Midwesterners–and therefore probably other cold-climate residents–are used to tomatoes in the summer (and probably almost nothing in February). Right now in our garden, however, sits a bed of tomatoes as crowded as Wal-Mart on Black Friday.
Unlike Wal-Mart shoppers on Black Friday, we have not had to call the cops on them.
Or Disneyland on this ill-timed weekend last December:
With this tomato horde taking over our garden bed, I’m on a mission to use every single one of them–not because I’m afraid they’ll take over our entire property (well, maybe a little) but because my husband has spent so much time and devotion planting, watering, and tending to them. (I don’t even try to pretend I have anything to do with it. I seem to have the opposite of a Green Thumb–something like the Black Thumb of Death.) I do enjoy the harvest, though, and fresh-from-the-garden tomatoes are one of life’s best simple pleasures.
This week’s tomato feature is this delightful caprese tart. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect after reading through the recipe. Would it be dessert-like, with its buttery crust? Or pizza-like, with its tomato-basil-mozzarella topping? Strange as it sounds, it was exactly both of those things–in the best way possible! The crust certainly sets this apart from your typical pizza with its thick, rich texture, but the melted mozzarella, oven-softened tomatoes, and crispy baked basil identify it as definitively savory. Kind of makes your mind go in chicken-or-the-egg circles–pizza or tart? tart or pizza? It’s a mystery. A delicious mystery that you might as well just eat.
Caprese Tart with Basil-Garlic Crust
(Adapted from Annie’s Eats, originally from Ezra Pound Cake and The Complete Vegetarian Cookbook)
Ingredients:
For the crust:
1/3 c. fresh basil leaves
2 cloves garlic
1 1/4 c. all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. salt
8 Tbsp. unsalted butter, chilled and cut into small pieces
4-5 Tbsp. cold water
For the filling:
8 oz. fresh mozzarella, sliced
1 c. ripe cherry tomatoes, sliced
1 Tbsp. olive oil
Salt & pepper
Freshly grated Parmesan cheese
1 Tbsp. minced fresh basil
Directions:
1. Make the crust dough: in the bowl of a food processor, combine basil and garlic. Process, scraping the sides down as needed, until finely minced. Add flour and salt and process briefly to mix. Add butter pieces and pulse about 10 times, or until the mixture resembles pea-sized crumbs. Add 3 Tbsp. of the cold water and pulse a few times to incorporate. Add 1 more Tbsp. water and pulse again to see if the dough forms into a ball. If not, add the remaining 1Tbsp. water and pulse again until a ball forms. Remove the dough, flatten into a 5-inch disc, and wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for at least 1 hour.
2. When you are ready to bake the tart, preheat oven to 425 degrees. Transfer the dough to a lightly floured work surface (or a greased sheet of wax paper–less messy) and roll out into a 12-inch circle. Lay the dough in a 10-inch tart pan and press it into the sides. Lay a piece of aluminum foil or parchment paper loosely over the dough and fill the center with baking beads. (Rice, dry beans, or small pasta also work as baking beads.) Bake 10-12 minutes, then remove foil and beads and bake another 5 minutes. Lower oven temperature to 375.
3. Layer the bottom of the pre-baked crust with the sliced mozzarella, followed by the sliced cherry tomatoes. Season with salt and pepper and drizzle with olive oil. Top with Parmesan and fresh minced basil.
4. Bake about 30 minutes, or until the crust is golden brown. Allow the tart to rest at least 5 minutes before slicing and serving.
Makes 1 10-inch tart.
