Category: Fast and Good

Baby Kale & Carrot Salad with Citrus Dressing

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baby kale and carrot saladThis one hasn’t made it into the book yet, but I’m skipping that since it was so good. Le Quartier Bakery in Omaha sells sandwiches and a side salad with Kale and carrots in a citrus dressing. I’ve been hungry for that salad for days, and bought some baby kale, and a bottle of fresh orange juice to concoct something similar.

I was thinking of making it for supper tonight. And I started to pull it together, when the usual happened. Someone drank the orange juice and I can’t really remember what else was in the salad. No matter, I googled Citrus Salad Dressing and found Ree Drummond’s recipe. I punted and made something similar and it was amazing!!!  We have had this three nights in a row, since we had lots of leftover dressing.

1 box baby kale
1 carrot, grated

Salad Dressing:

In a mason jar, add

1/8 cup water
1 1/2 Tbsp marmalade (I used Orange-Apricot Marmalade)
1/8 cup olive oil
1/2 tsp kosher salt
1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 clove of garlic, grated
Splash of white wine vinegar. (Cider vinegar would be fine, too.)
2 Tbsp sour cream.

Close with a lid and shake well (violently, according to Ree.) 🙂

Dump baby kale into a nice bowl, add the grated carrot on top, and add some of the salad dressing. It was actually amazing. We practically licked the bowl!

Quick & Yummy Pasta Bake

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Tammy made a version of this for us the first time in Niobrara and for Kumy it was love at first bite. It’s perfect for cooking at a cabin, because it literally only takes one pot.  For a vegetarian version, just leave out the sausage.  (You may want to add a pinch of red pepper flakes if you leave out the sausage.)

1 1/4 lb. spicy bulk Italian sausage
1 24 oz. jar good spaghetti sauce
hot water

1 package rotini
1/2 cup parmesan
2 cups mozzarella

Brown meat in a dutch oven or large pot.

Add spaghetti sauce. Fill the spaghetti sauce jar with hot water, and add to the pot, along with the rotini and parmesan. Stir well, cover and bake at 400 for 30 minutes.

Remove from oven, sprinkle Mozzarella on top, and return to oven for 10 more minutes without a cover.

Easy Fajitas

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1 lb boneless skinless chicken breasts and thighs, cut thin

1 1/2 tsp kosher salt
2 tsp cumin
1 tsp onion powder
1 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp chipotle pepper powder (can use more if you like it spicier)
1 Tbsp cornstarch
1/4 cup water
2 Tbsp olive oil

4 red, yellow or green peppers, thinly sliced
1 yellow onion, cut into thin strips
1 red onion, cut into thin strips

Tortillas
Sour Cream
Salsa
Fresh Limes
Guacamole

Mix all spices, cornstarch and water in a medium bowl. Add in chicken, peppers and onions and stir to coat thoroughly. (You can use any kind of pepper or onion – it’s just fun to use different colors.)

Heat more olive oil in a large frying pan. Add everything and saute on pretty high heat for several minutes, until the chicken is cooked and the peppers and onions are soft and starting to brown a bit. You can grill it – which is more traditional, but the chipotle pepper lends a nice smokey flavor even if you just pan fry it.

Serve it with warm tortillas, with fresh lime juice squeezed over it. Top with sour cream, salsa, and guacamole.

Kumy’s Hindu Aloo (Potatoes)

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This is a wonderful, tangy, spicy golden potato dish with fresh cilantro and jalapenos. Really quick and amazingly good – one of Kumy’s specialties.

Kumy’s auntie, Shirin Auntie was an especially good cook, and such a lovely person. So was her husband, Chotu Uncle, and I miss them. (Story about them below.)  She taught Kumy how to make this dish.

When I asked him about the name, he said Shirin Auntie grew up in Bombay and learned this vegan dish from  a Hindu neighbor.  Aloo means potato, and anyone who has had these potatoes says they are “Kamal!”  (Amazing!)

4 medium potatoes, scrubbed and cubed in 1″ cubes (we like Yukon Gold)
2 Tbsp olive oil
4 cloves of garlic, thinly sliced
fresh ginger, peeled with a spoon and sliced very thinly (about 1.5 tsp)
3/4 tsp mustard seed
1/2 tsp cumin seed
1 jalapeno, sliced in half, seeds removed
1/2 tsp turmeric
1 tsp salt
2 lemons, juiced
4 jalapenos, held by stem, and cut twice from bottom
1 1/2 cup cilantro, chopped

Boil potatoes in salted water until they are soft. Drain and squeeze lemon juice over them. Heat oil in a frying pan, and add garlic, ginger and mustard seed, frying for 2 minutes. Add cumin seed, 1 sliced jalapeno, turmeric and salt and saute for just a few moments. Add the boiled potatoes and lemon juice and stir gently. You want to blend everything nicely without crushing the potatoes. Take the 4 jalapenos which have been partially cut and gently push them into the potatoes. Garnish with the cilantro. Serve with extra lemon juice.

Chotu Uncle and Shirin Auntie lived in a house with a beautiful garden – filled with beautiful plants in enormous sizes, and they loved cats and kept one as a pet, which was quite unusual. I always loved visiting them and seeing their garden.  

Later, they moved into a very nice apartment in the Royal Apartments.  One of my favorite memories was when they’d left the laundry room window open one day, and a mother bird began to build her nest just inside the window.  

They were so enchanted that they let her build the nest and raise her babies there – watching the progress with bated breathed, and tip-toeing in and out so as not to disturb them.  How could you not love someone like that?

Rachael Ray’s Spaghetti

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This is a great recipe for spaghetti, with sausage and lots of peppers and onions  You cook the sausage in the oven, which adds its own great flavor and pan juices.  This is also a good party dish – I’ve made it for our office holiday party at home.  If you really love bell peppers and onions, you can double them. (I always do.)

You’ll be doing three separate parts to this recipe – but you can pretty much do them all at the same time. Preheat oven to 425, start a large pot of water boiling, and heat 3 Tbsp olive oil in a large frying pan.

Step 1:

2 1/2 lbs. hot Italian Sausage
1 Tbsp Olive Oil

Put sausages on a baking sheet, drizzle with olive oil and roast at 425 for 15-20 minutes.

Step 2:

3 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
1 or 2 red peppers cut into 1/2″ thick slices
1 or 2 green peppers, cut into 1/2″ thick slices
1 or 2 onions, cut into 1/2″ thick slices
1/4 cup spaghetti sauce
1 tsp salt
1/4 – 1/2 tsp black pepper

Add garlic, peppers and onions to hot frying pan with olive oil, and saute for five minutes. Add spaghetti sauce, salt and black pepper.

Step 3:

1 lb. spaghetti, linguine or fettuccine
2 Tbsp butter
1 cup good Parmesan cheese (plus a little extra for garnishing)
2 cups good spaghetti sauce
1/2 cup water saved from the boiled spaghetti
Pan drippings from sausage when the sausage is done.

Cook pasta in salted water, saving 1/2 cup water when you drain it. Add back the saved 1/2 cup water and everything else to the pan and blend gently.

2 Tbsp fresh parsley, chopped
extra parmesan

Put spaghetti mix on a large platter. Next layer on the onion/pepper mix, and finally lay the sausages on top. Garnish with fresh parsley and extra parmesan. Yum-oh!

Spanish-Style Garlic Shrimp

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Made this for Christmas 2009 and it was quick and surprisingly good.

2 Tbsp olive oil
1 onion, finely diced
3 cloves of garlic, crushed
1/2 tsp hot paprika
1 lb. raw, good-sized shrimp, washed and patted dry (I like the easy peel ones.)
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
1 lemon, juiced
handful of fresh parsley, chopped

Heat oil in a large frying pan. Saute onion for 5-7 minutes until translucent. Add garlic and paprika and saute another minute or two, until the garlic smells cooked. (One of my favorite instructions in a Pakistani recipe was “to cook until a cooked aroma evolves.” No guesswork in that one, no sir!)

Sprinkle salt and pepper over the shrimp, tossing to coat.

Saute shrimp for a couple of minutes, until it turns nice and pink. Add Parsley and lemon juice.  Check seasonings and serve.  This is heaven with smashed potatoes, or serve it with crusty bread to soak it all up.

Spinach on Toast with Fried Egg

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Ever have one of those weary days when you get home and just need a really quick, really easy supper?  

I thought of this on my drive home last night and 10 minutes after I walked in the front door, Kumy and I were sitting down to eat. Kumy told me that when he was a child, spinach on toast was one of his favorite meals but they had it with hard-boiled egg slices. This may become a regular meal – it was so good!

4 slices good bread, toasted
butter
garlic powder

olive oil
garlic powder
two really big handfuls of fresh spinach
black pepper
parmesan cheese

eggs
salt & pepper

Toast the bread, lightly butter it and sprinkle very lightly with garlic powder.

While bread is toasting, heat olive oil in a large frying pan, sprinkle in a little garlic powder and add spinach. Cook until spinach is just wilted. Add a few grinds of black pepper and a handful of parmesan cheese. Set aside.

In another frying pan, heat olive oil, and make sunny side up eggs. (Yolks should be runny.) Season with a little salt and pepper.

Put toasts on a plate, top with spinach and fried egg. Delish!

Thai Baked Fish (in Nam Prik Sauce)

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Just made this tonight from Matt Danzer and Ann Redding’s recipe in the Wall Street Journal. Wow. So easy, and unbelievably good. Served with Gai Lan, a really delicious veggie. I varied a bit from the original recipe, but the Swai looked good at the Asian Market.

3 cloves garlic, minced
2 Tbsp brown sugar
1 whole lime, zested then juiced
1 more lime quartered
2 Tbsp Fish Sauce (find this in the Asian section – adds an unmistakable flavor.)
1 Tbsp olive oil
3 green chillies – very small and thin ones, sliced thinly
3 lbs. swai fillets (recipe calls for 2 lbs. cod or seabass in the WSJ)
6 Tbsp Cilantro leaves
Cooked white rice

Preheat oven to 350.

Mix garlic, brown sugar, lime juice, fish sauce, olive oil, half of the zest, and the chillies, stirring until the sugar is completely dissolved.

Put fish fillets skin down (if they have skin) in a shallow baking dish. Spoon the sauce over it. Cover with foil, or flip another pan over it. Bake for 12-15 minutes until the fish is just cooked.

Serve over rice with the pan sauce. Garnish with cilantro, fresh lime and zest.

Sriracha Glazed Salmon (or Chicken)

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Just made this last night for dinner with  friends.  It was easy and delicious -plus you just let it marinate until it’s ready to cook.  So you can hang out with your friends instead of messing around in the kitchen.  What more can you ask?

1/4 cup soy sauce
2 1/2 Tbsp vinegar (I used cider vinegar.)
1 Tbsp Sriracha Sauce (use less if you don’t like it too spicy)
1 Tbsp sugar
1 1/2 tsp fresh ginger, grated, or 1/4 tsp ginger powder
1 tbsp Sesame Oil  (Check the Asian section of the grocery store.)

2 large Salmon fillets

Mix glaze ingredients and pour into a large baking dish (I used a big rectangular pyrex dish, but you can also use a big, flat baking pan.)

Rinse fish, and shake off as much water as possible. Lay the fish skin side up in the glaze, so the actual fish meat is in the glaze. Lift it up from both sides to be sure it’s all in contact with the glaze. Let marinate at least 20 minutes.

Flip the fillets back over (skin side down now) and bake at 400 for 15-20 minutes, until the fish just flakes with a fork.  This is also a great fish for grilling.

Remove from pan and drizzle glaze from the pan over the fish with a spoon.

The glaze is also good on chicken. I served this last night with Brown Butter Potatoes, and a spinach and strawberry salad. Love it when the plate is so full of color!

Chicken Picatta

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I love the tart flavors of lemon juice and capers in this classic Italian dish, and it’s so quick! I often serve it with smashed potatoes sauteed in butter, since the tartness of the sauce blends really well with the potatoes. This recipe makes enough for 6-8 people.

Ingredients

8 boneless, skinless chicken thighs, flattened between layers of plastic wrap.  (I used a rolling pin to smash them and make them even. It’s important to get the chicken quite thin so it cooks quickly.)
1 tsp kosher salt
1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1/3 cup flour (use more if needed)
2 Tbsp butter
2 Tbsp olive oil

1/3 cup lemon juice
1/2 cup chicken stock
1/4 cup capers, drained
2 more Tbsp butter
1/4 cup fresh parsley, chopped
One more squeeze of fresh lemon juice

Heat oil and butter over medium heat in your largest frying pan.  Season flattened thighs with salt and pepper.  Put flour in a flat bowl or pie pan, and dredge the thighs, shaking off the excess.  Drop the floured thighs into the frying pan without crowding, and fry for 3-4 minutes per side, until they are starting to get golden bits on them.  Remove from pan and add more thighs. Continue until all the chicken is cooked.

Add in the lemon juice, chicken stock and capers and bring to a boil.  Reduce heat and add the chicken thighs back in along with any juices that have collected on the plate.  Cook for about 5 more minutes, turning the chicken so both sides are saucy. Add the last 2 Tbsp of butter and stir gently to distribute it.  Taste to see if it needs more salt or pepper.  Place in a serving dish, give one more good squeeze of lemon juice, and sprinkle parsley.