Tag Archives: vegetarian

Couscous with Tomato and Arugula

These past few weeks, perhaps fueled by the knowledge that my maternity leave is coming to a rapid close, I’ve been cooking up a storm. Who knows if I’ll have the energy to make meals with multiple courses at the end of my workdays-to-come? So if the whim hits to make beer-braised brats and onions with a side of creamed spinach with bacon, the time is now. If my tastebuds cry out for baked mac and cheese with a side of buttery peas and shallots, the time is now. Arm me with a nice glass of red wine around 4pm, a cutting board and a knife, and I’m in dinner-making heaven.

But of course I don’t always come to the dinner hour with a complete notion of what I want to eat. In fact, for me, half the pleasure of menu planning is letting my taste buds be courted by recipes that I peruse and gazing at the food photography in magazines, cookbooks, and of course online.

During my enthusiastic searches for new ideas, I finally delved into a cookbook that had been sitting on my shelf since my friend Annie gave it to me for my baby shower: “The Naptime Chef: fitting great food into family life.” Kelsey’s recipe for couscous promised to pair perfectly with the salmon fillets I was practically drooling to make–and it did. I loved the tang of the vinaigrette, the fresh lemony-ness of it all, the sweetness of the tomatoes and the nutty flavor of the arugula. Plus, not only was this great warm with salmon, but it was also good piping hot the next day after a stint in the microwave, and topped with a perfectly cooked over-easy egg and blue cheese crumbles.


With my humble modifications, I present you one awesome side dish . . . which could easily be a main dish for a casual lunch by yourself on the couch, watching the latest episode of your favorite show. Just sayin’.

It made me almost as happy as Alice after a big meal . . .

 . . . almost.

It’s tough to beat the happiness of a drunk-on-milk baby, what can I say.

Et maintenant! I give you . . . le couscous extraordinaire.

Ingredients

(Serves 4-6)

10 oz uncooked plain couscous
½ cup extra virgin olive oil
Zest and juice of 1 lemon
¼ cup red wine vinegar
½ tsp salt
1 tsp black pepper
1 pint grape tomatoes, halved
1 pint golden sunburst tomatoes, halved
2 ½ oz baby arugula

1. Cook the couscous according to the package directions.

2. Fluff the couscous well with a fork.

3. Whisk together the olive oil, lemon zest and juice, vinegar, salt and pepper to form the dressing.

4. Stir the dressing, tomatoes and arugula into the couscous, tossing until everything is evenly mixed together. Taste and re-season if needed.

5. Serve warm, hot or cold!

And eat it with our without salmon . . . though “with” is highly recommended.

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Creamy Thai Lentils with Sweet Potatoes

With the holidays behind us and only two weeks left of my maternity leave, I feel like I’m spinning uncontrollably towards a Big Unknown. Which I am. What will it be like to take my baby to work? Will I feel invigorated by getting out every day, or exhausted? Full of purpose or drained of emotional resources? And more importantly, what will it be like to have to put away the gauchos I’ve lived in for the past 3 months and actually wear *shiver* real pants? Like, pants pants? (Know what I mean?)

It’s hard to say . . . so why keep thinking about it? What will happen will happen, so in the meantime I’ll keep gazing at my baby . . .

. . . (and putting lotion on her poor dry skin!), reading on the couch, doing my morning coffee/devotional/Pilates routine, and I’ll even write a couple blog posts. But before posting recipes for 2 fabulous soups that I’ve discovered, I bring you these lentils. I don’t even remember when I made this dish–in fact, I had this post ready to go and saved to my drafts from some time last spring or summer. It’s appalling how long it sat there, and I’m happy to finally resurrect it, because it was really awesome.

I really loved this dish, modified from Lindsay’s already-fabulous recipe. Because I misread the recipe though, I used 1 lb of lentils instead of 1 cup, so it was much more of a lentil-heavy dish than she intended. But I didn’t realize my mistake until I referenced the original recipe before writing this post, because it was fantastic even with my flub!

I also was wary of the cabbage she included, mainly because I intended this dish to last as leftovers through the week, and cold leftover cooked cabbage really tends to . . . well, it stinks, folks. So I went with spinach instead.

It’s truly delicious, a meal that can be made fairly cheaply, and pretty darn healthy to boot. And it’s almost vegan–fully vegan if you skip the butter.

Enough said–let’s cook!

Ingredients

(Serves 6-8)

1 lb lentils, rinsed
5 cups vegetable broth
2 large sweet potatoes
1 tsp turmeric
3 TBS oil
1 TBS butter
5 cloves garlic
1 onion thinly sliced
1-9 oz bag spinach
2 jalapeños
1 TBS fresh minced ginger
1-14.5 oz can diced fire roasted tomatoes
1 1/4 cups coconut milk
Salt and pepper, to taste
Cilantro, to garnish

Peel and dice the sweet potatoes, and add them to the pot along with the broth and rinsed lentils.

Bring it to a boil, then simmer over low heat for 30-40 minutes, or until the lentils and potatoes are just done cooking (soft but still holding their shape). Stir the pot a few times during this cookination to make sure the lentils don’t burn to the bottom of the pot, and add extra water as needed.

Add the turmeric, tomatoes, and ginger, mix it all about, and cook for another 10 minutes, adding a little more liquid if it looks dry (or another can o’ tomatoes if you want to walk on the wild side!).

Slice the onion, mince the garlic, and de-seed and mince the chilies.

Like zees!

Heat the oil and butter in a large skillet. Cook the onion, garlic and chilies until softened.

Add the spinach, and stir until just wilted (sorry, a little short on step by step pics today). Add the spinach/onion combo to the pot of lentils along with the coconut milk. Stir until evenly incorporated and heated through.

Excellent! Looks like a pot full of gross mush. Exactly what I was hoping for.

But your taste buds will tell you otherwise! Yost clois yor ais and troist me.

And don’t ask what accent I was trying to speak in–it’s entirely of my own making.

Taste and season, and serve garnished with cilantro (by itself or over rice).

You will love these flavors!

At least I did.

Now dig in!

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