Lemony Green Beans

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Our friends Gary and Dorie always have amazing vegetable gardens, with surplus enough to share. I have vegetable garden envy – since our backyard isn’t sunny enough to produce much more than leaves…

Anyway, I made green beans last night that Gary and Dorie shared with us, and they were so good and fresh!  (I often just cook the green beans with the stems on and just cut them off on my plate.)

1 lb. whole green beans, washed
1 Tbsp butter or bacon drippings (I used a bit of both.)
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1-2 Tbsp lemon juice
Black pepper, freshly ground
1 tsp kosher salt (Skip if cooking in pasta water.)

Bring a pot of water to the boil. (I had just cooked a pound of pasta, so instead of draining the pasta, I used a big strainer spoon to remove all the pasta, and just cooked the beans in the pasta water.)

Add the green beans to the pot and let them simmer for about 3 minutes. Drain the water, add the butter and/or bacon drippings, garlic powder, salt, lemon juice and pepper and toss the beans in them. (Skip the salt if you cooked the beans in the pasta water.)

It was a lovely summer supper.

Spaghetti (Well, Really Oriecchette) alla Carbonara and Lemony Green Beans

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spaghetti alla carbonara

In the newspaper a couple of days ago, a challenge was issued: make Spaghetti alla Carbonara!  I looked at the ingredients, which are quite simple and thought, what the heck – I’ll take that challenge.

Since I was going right by the Mexican grocery store, I stopped to pick up the ingredients I would need. (First change to the printed recipe: it should have been an Italian grocery store, right?  I also didn’t use Pancetta, or Guanciale, or Pecorino. Will the modifications never stop?)

I’d gotten a beautiful bag of green beans from Gary and Dorie, our dear friends and thought that would add to a great supper.

Arriving home, the usual happened – we were out of spaghetti! However we had plenty of Oriecchette, which we love anyway.

Oriecchette alla Carbonara was delish – and so were the lemony, garlicky green beans.

Ingredients:

1 big Tbsp kosher salt
1/2 package of turkey bacon or thick-cut regular bacon, cut into 1/2 inch slices.
Freshly ground black pepper, maybe 1/4 – 1/2 tsp?
2 cloves of garlic, crushed or 1 tsp garlic powder
1 pound good spaghetti, or whatever pasta you have on hand
4 large eggs, stirred well and kept in a bowl
3/4 cup parmesan cheese
Fresh, chopped Italian parsley (Ali brought in about 6 good stems.)

Fill a big pot of water for the pasta, add the salt and bring it to the boil. As soon as the water is boiling, add the pasta. You want to cook the pasta until it’s very al dente. Save out about a cup of the pasta water.

In the meantime, in your largest frying pan, begin cooking the bacon. Let it cook for 8-10 minutes until it’s really nicely crispy and browned. Drain off all but 2 Tbsp of the pan drippings.  Add the crushed garlic and saute for a minute or two until it’s cooked.  (If using garlic powder, just add with the black pepper.)

Grind some black pepper into the bacon, and add 1/4 cup of the pasta water. Scrape up all the brown bits from the bottom of the pan.

As soon as the pasta is just barely al dente, drain out the water, and add the pasta to the frying pan. Gently stir the pasta to coat it, and add a little more pasta water if you need to. Let the pasta cook for 1 minute on medium heat. Remove from the heat altogether.

Add the eggs and blend quickly and gently to prevent the eggs from cooking too much. If it starts to get sticky at the bottom, add a little more pasta water.  Stir for a minute or two.

Add the parmesan and parsley and keep gently folding the pasta. Add one more grind of black pepper over the top,  check salt and serve.

Caprese Salad with Balsamic Vinaigrette

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caprese salad

Nothing is more beautiful than tomatoes, mozzarella and basil, drizzled with a tangy, sweet balsamic vinaigrette!  And takes almost no time at all.

4 tomatoes, sliced 1/2″ thick
1 ball of fresh Mozzarella, cut into 1/4″ slices
Handful of fresh basil leaves

Vinaigrette Recipe:

3 Tbsp Balsamic Vinegar (Costco’s is amazingly good)
2 Tbsp Olive oil
1/4 tsp garlic powder
2/3 tsp Dijon mustard
1/3 tsp honey
1 Tbsp chopped fresh parsley
1/8 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black pepper

Mix vinaigrette up in a mason jar, and shake well.

Layer tomatoes with Mozzarella and basil leaves on a broad serving dish, and drizzle the vinaigrette over. So good.

Perfect Home-made Lemonade

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We had our Camper’s Packing Party Saturday and everyone loves lemonade, so I made a jug of lemonade that was just delicious. Home-made is pretty easy with organic lemon juice from Costco.

When I used to make lemonade, I’d always have to juggle lemon juice and sugar to get it right – and the sugar takes forever to dissolve. This recipe is really easy and perfect: not too sweet, not too sour and totally simple, using simple syrup.

3 1/2 cups simple syrup (recipe below)
1 1/2 cups lemon juice
6 cups water
2 1/2 cups ice

Mix syrup, lemon juice and water. Add ice.

For Pink Lemonade, add a drop of red food coloring.

Simple Syrup:

Add 2 cups sugar and 2 cups water in a saucepan. Heat until the syrup begins to boil, then turn down the heat. Simmer until the sugar is completely dissolve – just a few minutes should do it. Let it cool a bit, then pour into a mason jar. Keeps in the refrigerator for a couple of weeks.

If you have fresh strawberries or raspberries, you could buzz them in and just add a bit more simply syrup to taste.

Pepper, Mushrooms & Eggplant on Pasta

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We had roasted eggplant a couple of days ago, and had some leftover.  I also had peppers in the fridge and a bunch of mushrooms, so we threw together a lovely dish. A little parmesan would have been good, but we were out. It was delicious as is.

Maya wanted “hodge-podge” pasta tonight. (We keep a large mason jar with the tail ends of all different pastas. Even if they cook at slightly different times, they’re usually close enough to be fine, plus it’s fun to have all different shapes.)

1 Tbsp olive oil
1 red pepper, sliced thinly
1 green pepper, sliced thinly
2 Tbsp butter and 1 tsp of bacon drippings (optional)
2 cloves of garlic, crushed or 1/4 tsp garlic powder
8-10 large mushrooms, sliced fairly thinly
1/2 tsp kosher salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
Roasted eggplant
Pasta

Start water boiling for pasta. When you start the mushrooms, you can start the pasta and it comes out about the same time.

Meantime, heat olive oil in a large saute pan. Add peppers to oil and stir fry for a couple of minutes. Turn the heat down a bit, and loosely cover the pan with a lid. (I used a lid that was smaller than the pan, but still covered the peppers.) After a couple of minutes, I uncovered them, and stirred again. Back on with the cover for another couple of minutes.

Stir again, and remove the peppers. Wipe out the pan in case anything was getting close to burning. Add butter to the pan, and the bacon drippings. Add garlic and cook for a couple of minutes until it starts to brown. Add the mushrooms and cook them the same way you did the peppers. Stir fry, then cover, stir again, cover and stir again.  For the final cook, you’ll want to leave them uncovered until most of the liquid dries up.

Add the peppers back into the pan, along with any juices. Using a spoon, scrape the flesh out of the roasted eggplants along the edge of the pan. Break up the eggplants into smaller chunks. Some parts will be stringy, but that’s okay. Toss with the peppers and mushrooms to warm and season with salt and pepper to taste. Yum!

I added another little pat of butter to my pasta since I love butter!

Roasted Eggplant

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So simple, so delicious – Maya and I made this for dinner last night.

When you start with a lovely, fresh vegetable, you don’t need to do much to bring out the best flavor, and this is a perfect example.  Roasting the eggplant brings out its sweetness and tenderness and salt, pepper and a bit of butter make it crazy delicious.

4 small eggplants, halved, with the stem end removed
2 Tbsp olive oil
1/2 tsp kosher salt  (I’m guessing here – I really just used a good pinch.)
1/4 tsp fresh ground black pepper
Butter

Heat oven to 400. Pour the olive oil into the center of a baking pan and slide the eggplants around cut side down to get olive oil all over them. Flip them back over and sprinkle them with the salt and pepper.

Roast for a good 20 minutes or until they have sort of sunk in, and are browning on the top.

Melt a pat of butter on top of each eggplant and serve in the skin. When eating, just scrape out the inside and leave the skins.  Nirvana – sheer veggie Nirvana…

Wonder if there is any left?

Romaine Salad with Balsamic Vinaigrette

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balsamir salad

Just made this for supper tonight, and this salad was so good – a real “lick the bowl” dressing.  Maya made Ina’s Salmon using honey mustard, since we were out of Dijon and she roasted some Butternut Squash with butter, salt and pepper.  They were so delicious and had lots of bright, vivid colors on the plate. I love eating dinners like this!

3 Tbsp Balsamic Vinegar (Costco’s is amazingly good)
2 Tbsp Olive oil1/4 tsp garlic powder
2/3 tsp Dijon mustard
1/3 tsp honey
1 Tbsp chopped fresh parsley
1/8 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black pepper

Hearts of Romaine, chopped
4 eggs, hard-boiled, peeled and quartered

Mix 1st 7 ingredients in a bowl.

Put romaine lettuce in a large bowl. Add hard-boiled eggs and dressing and toss. Our eggs were still warm from boiling which was a nice counterpoint to the cool, crisp salad.

Ina’s Salmon

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It’s another fabulous Ina Garten recipe – and almost ridiculously easy. When I think how much cooking fish used to scare the heck out of me, I can hardly believe it.

3 lbs. salmon, cut into 2″ slices

2 Tbsp Dijon Mustard
3 Tbsp soy sauce
6 Tbsp Olive oil
1/2 tsp garlic powder

Mix mustard, soy sauce, olive oil and garlic powder in a bowl. Pour about half the marinade in a glass baking dish, and let salmon soak in it skin side up for 20-30 minutes. Flip fish back over.

To grill the fish, preheat the grill, and start the fish skin side down. Grill for five minutes. Then brush with more marinade, carefully flip fish over and grill five more minutes. Remove to a serving platter and drizzle on any remaining marinade.

Baking is even easier. Just flip salmon so it’s skin side down in the glass baking dish. Heat oven to 425 and bake the fish for 20 minutes. I like to brush the fish with more glaze about half way through. It’s done when it’s flaky. Yum.

Asian Chicken Noodle Soup

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For this soup, you cook the noodles separately, then place them in the soup bowl and add the soup and other toppings right on top of them.  Rice noodles can get really mushy if you overcook them, so by adding them to the soup bowl, you never have to worry about mushy noodles!

Rice Noodles

Place rice noodles in a large, heat-proof bowl. Add boiling water to cover and let sit, gently moving them apart with a fork. Check for doneness by biting one to see if it is cooked through. Really thin noodles cook in 7 minutes or so and thicker ones may need 10. When done, drain and toss with a little sesame oil.

4 Tbsp Soy sauce
2 Tbsp Mirin (can use cider vinegar with a little sugar)
2 tsp dark Sesame Oil
1 clove garlic, minced
2 Tbsp fresh ginger, grated
1 Tbsp sugar
1 tsp Sambal Oelek (Can use Sriracha or any hot sauce you like)
8 cups chicken stock
1 lb. thinly sliced chicken breast
1 head chopped Napa cabbage

Add everything except chicken and cabbage to a large pot and bring to a boil. Turn down heat and let simmer for 15-20 minutes. Add the chicken and cabbage and cook until the chicken is done and the cabbage is slightly softened,7-8 more minutes.

1 bunch fresh cilantro, chopped
6 scallions, thinly sliced

To serve, place noodles in a large soup bowl. Ladle soup over the noodles, and top with cilantro and green onions. Serve with soy sauce and Sriracha to let each person season their soup.

Elote – Mexican Street Corn

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If you live in Omaha, you must go to the Farmer’s Market in Aksarben and pray that the sweet corn lady is there making Elote.  Kumy and I had gotten one, and quickly realized that there was no way we were willing to share.  (Okay, so there was no way I was willing to share, and I ran back to get another.)

There is nothing better than sweet corn that’s just been picked, quickly boiled and slathered with mayo, fresh lime, parmesan and Tajin Seasoning.  This is a version that I make at home.   Tajin seasoning is tart, salty, not super hot and easily available in Mexican markets and online.  You can make traditional Elote using ears of corn or  make a casserole using frozen sweet corn.  It’s delicious either way!

Ingredients

6 ears of corn, freshly shucked and washed (or 24 oz frozen sweet corn for a casserole)

Crema:

1/4 cup Mexican mayonnaise (or use regular mayonnaise with a good squeeze of lime in it.)
1/4 cup sour cream
1/2 cup Cotija cheese (or parmesan in a pinch)
1/2 tsp Tajin seasoning
1 clove garlic crushed, or 1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/4 cup Cilantro, chopped pretty fine
Juice of 1/2 lime

For traditional Elote corn on the cob:

Mix crema ingredients in a bowl.  

Cook corn by boiling in unsalted water or grilling. Slather the corn with the crema, and sprinkle with extra cotija and dust with tajin seasoning.

For Elote casserole:

Mix all ingredients except Cilantro in a bowl and pour out into a baking dish. Baked uncovered at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.

Garnish with chopped Cilantro and an extra sprinkle of Tajin seasoning.