I’ve worked on this recipe for a couple years now and while I’m always tweaking it, this version is the newest and so far the best. It’s even boyfriend-approved, which is tough when you’re dating a chili connoisseur. I don’t mess around when it comes to comfort foods and let me tell you, this is one delicious dish.

What I really love about it is how easy it is! All you need are basic knife skills for the onion and garlic and patience for the slowly developing flavors. The base of the chili is salsa — I normally get the store-bought stuff, but if you have a great salsa recipe, by all means use it! I suggest using a salsa you’ve tried before so you know how spicy it’ll be. You might notice that this is a big recipe … that’s because it’s ten times better the day after and I always want to make sure I have leftovers.

Almost-From-Scratch Chili

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Approximately 15 portions

Ingredients:

• 2.5 pounds lean ground beef
• 2.5 cups diced onion
• 5 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 3 (16-ounce) cans kidney, pinto or black beans, drained and rinsed
• 6.5 cups salsa, homemade or store bought
• 2 (4-ounce) cans diced green chiles, drained
• 15-ounce can diced tomatoes, undrained
• 5 teaspoons chili powder
• 1.5 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1 cup chicken stock or water
• ½ cup brown sugar, packed
• salt, to taste
• shredded cheddar cheese
• tortilla chips

Brown and drain the ground beef in a large pot. Add the onion and garlic cook for about 3 minutes, stirring frequently. Add the beans, salsa, chiles, tomatoes, chili powder and cumin. Add enough chicken stock/water to get the desired thickness. Stir in the brown sugar and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low; cover. Cook, stirring occasionally, at least 1 hour. Check for seasoning (although you shouldn’t need much salt at all). Garnish each portion with lightly crumbled tortilla chips and cheese and, most importantly, enjoy!

Cooper is obsessed with fruit, so we basically weigh him down with an orchard’s-worth every time we pack his lunch. However, we forgot to take into account the fact that he wouldn’t be in school for four days due to Thanksgiving, so we ended up with some extra bananas that were rapidly turning brown.

Banana bread is one of those things that I always say I’m going to make, but the bananas invariably get thrown away, because I never actually do. I just have some sort of mental block against banana bread– I always think it’s going to be way more complicated than it actually is, I guess.

In any case, I had a few days off (and the previously mentioned browning bananas), and muffins seemed to be the thing to do with both. I went on to my Big Oven iPhone app (I mention them a lot, but I’m not shilling, I swear!) and tried to find an easy banana muffin recipe. I certainly succeeded. With only six ingredients, it took just a couple of minutes to whip up.

Now, this isn’t a healthy recipe, by any means. I’m sure I could have modified it, but I just stuck with what it said, which includes an entire stick of butter. However, I did do a half cup of brown sugar and a half cup of white sugar instead of a full cup of white sugar. Okay, just typing this out makes it sound really bad, which it is, but they’re quite delicious.

It is a very basic recipe, so if you’d like, you can certainly dress it up a little bit. I just added some cinnamon, but I’m sure some nutmeg, etc. would have been nice as well. If you’re really pressed for time, I recommend mini-muffins– it cut the baking time down to about 15 minutes.

It’s pretty hard not to completely love someone who cleans your house for you. My cleaning lady is an awesome person … and I adore her even more since she shared this recipe with me.

In her subtle way, she inquired why I had bowls of green tomatoes all over my house. We’re talking heirlooms, Romas — both large and small — and cherries. Between our CSA farm harvest and our own plants, our tomato cups runneth over this year, and I was hoping the green ones would ripen up.

She then related to me how she used her green tomatoes — baked with garlic, oregano and olive oil — and I couldn’t wait to try it. It reminded me a bit of Scott Peacock’s slow-baked tomato recipe that we love here, but my cleaning lady said we’d end up with a much different flavor from the green ones, and she was right.

They are savory, slightly tangy and so rich and complex with flavor … very different from the sweet and syrupy slow-baked cherry tomatoes. I souped them up a bit and ended up with a new go-to recipe … as long as we have green tomatoes, that is.

Roasted Green Tomatoes with Garlic and Oregano

Ingredients:

• enough coarsely chopped green tomatoes to fill a 9X13 baking pan in a sort-of single layer (I use a bit more than that)
• about 8 cloves of garlic, sliced or quartered
• about 1/2 cup olive oil
• about 1/5 cup balsamic vinegar
• dried oregano to taste
• sea salt to taste
• freshly ground black pepper to taste

Arrange the garlic and chopped tomatoes in the pan, then pour olive oil over them and toss. There should be enough to coat the tomatoes and leave a coating on the bottom of the pan as well. Sprinkle with the oregano, salt and pepper and toss. Finally, drizzle with the balsamic vinegar and give everything a final mix.

Bake in a 350 degree oven for about an hour, or until tomatoes are smushable. Then smush them so the juices mix with the oil and vinegar … yum.

We like to serve this over polenta with some salad and grilled sausages, but we’ve taken Kona’s suggestion and served it over quinoa with good results too.

Pureeing some sort of legume and throwing in delicious stuff is my idea of a perfect dip. It’s easy, healthy, super-tasty and I love dreaming up different ways of scooping it up: corn chips, brown rice crackers, cucumber and carrot sticks or rounds, baguette, polenta … you get the point.

But back to the easy. I’m going to go so far as to say bean dip goes beyond easy, into the territory of sheer laziness. I love knowing that I can make a spur-of-the-moment dip from ingredients in my pantry and refrigerator and barely lift a finger. Pushing the button on a food processor? Lazy. Delightfully lazy.

C’mon. Be lazy, lazier than me even. If you have a 15-ounce can of white beans, open it, rinse and drain the beans and follow the directions below to make a dip so simple you’ll feel guilty. But only for a moment.

Pesto White Bean Dip
Puree beans and add 1-2 tablespoons store-bought pesto (or to taste). Add equal amounts of olive oil and lemon juice until you get the consistency you like. You’ll need a few tablespoons of each to get the consistency I like. Try this dip with breadsticks or polenta rounds.

White Bean Dip with Fresh Herbs
Puree beans with 1 teaspoon of Better Than Bouillon‘s vegetable broth concentrate. Add equal parts lemon juice and olive oil until your favorite consistency is attained. Pulse in a handful or two of your favorite fresh herbs — I like basil, sage, rosemary, flat-leaf parsley, chives, thyme…. I love serving this one with simple crispy rice crackers or flatbread.

Caesar White Bean Dip
Puree beans with 1 teaspoon anchovy paste, 1-2 cloves garlic, 1 teaspoon stone-ground mustard and 1/2 cup grated parmesan or pecorino romano cheese. Add equal parts lemon juice and olive oil until you reach your desired consistency. This one’s great served with baguette or lettuce cups.

Only slightly more challenging (which means you can’t be comatose and make them, but sleepwalking is fine) are some of my past white bean dip recipes:

• White bean dip with sun-dried tomato and roasted garlic
• Roasted red pepper white bean dip
• Easy white bean dip with garlic and fresh herbs

Passover sucks.

I’m never sure how many people are familiar with Judaism in the world outside of my little urban-suburban East Coast super-Jewish bubble, but to recap, Passover is a week-long festival. During Passover Jews celebrate being freed as slaves from Egypt (though then we went and wandered in the gosh-darn desert for forty years, so I’m not sure it was much of an upgrade).

It’s celebrated by having a seder which is a big, traditional meal that, in a truly Jewish fashion, involves you sitting around and talking about how much your ancestors suffered so you could sit here and eat brisket. That’s not why it sucks. I like that part. I can listen to some stories of suffering if it means I get potato kugel at the end of it. No, the part that sucks is that on Passover, you cannot eat anything that is leavened, or has risen at all. Basically, does it have flour in it? You’re probably not allowed to have it. And this means that every food that has ever made you happy is pretty much cut from your diet for a week. Bread? No. Pasta? Nope. Rice? It depends on where you come from, but most Jews say nuh-uh. No cereal. No crackers. No chips (except potato chips). No pizza. Nothing with a breaded crust. No baked goods. Pretty much all desserts are gonzo.

Fear not, though, because Jews have a (really, really terrible) solution known as matzah. It’s basically a giant, crumbly cracker that’s used in various states of being ground up, and it pretty much instantly dries out everything, including your mouth. Also, if you eat too much of it, it gives you constipation something fierce.

This holiday has always seemed a bit weird to me. It’s never seemed very Jewish to me to limit one’s eating capabilities. The only reasoning I can possibly come up with is that if there’s one thing Jews like more than eating, it’s complaining about how hard we’ve got it, and this holiday ensures that no matter how cushy your life is, once a year, you and the rest of your people will be sitting on the toilet pissed off, or with your nose pressed against a bakery window, or staring at food blogs showing off baked Easter goods like a giant, cosmic middle finger.  At least once a year you will on some level understand the pain and suffering of those less fortunate than you, because you are deeply sympathetic to the feeling of literally being willing to kill someone for some freaking bread.

Every family, though, has various solutions to dealing with this. There are certain desserts every family has and certain recipes (usually involving lots of potatoes and cream or chocolate to mask the taste of matzah) that the use to get them through the week. My mother, for example, whose birthday often falls during Passover, has a truly decadent chocolate nut cake with the world’s best, fudgiest frosting. Since, sadly however, you can’t sit around eating chocolate-covered raisins the entire week (woe), my personal favorite family recipe is one my mother got from a friend about eleventy bajillion years ago that makes what we call Passover Rolls. And these suckers are amazing. They’re not really bread, but they’re so much like bread that by eating them you almost feel like maybe, just maybe, you’re not going to die constipated, bitter, and without good food in your stomach.  They take about twenty minutes and even if you’re not keeping kosher for Passover, I suggest you try them. They’re delicious.

Magical Matzah Rolls
(Makes eight medium-sized rolls)

1 cup matzah meal
2/3 cup water
1/3 cup oil or melted butter
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. cinnamon
1 tbs. sugar
3 eggs

1. Boil together water, oil, sugar, salt, and cinnamon.
2. When the mixture comes to a boil, immediately take off the flame and mix in the matzah meal. You should mix until your dough is firm and comes away from the sides of your pot, then let it cool for a few minutes.
3. Add and mix in eggs to your dough one at a time — the mixture should be very loose. If it’s too loose and liquid, refrigerate the dough until it’s solidified to a more ideal texture.
4. Heat oven to 400°.  Either grease a cookie sheet or line it with parchment paper. Scoop out about a tablespoon of your dough and place them on the sheet about two inches apart from each other.
5. Put in oven and let bake for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, turn the oven down to 300° and let the rolls cook for five to ten more minutes, or until they’re brown. Rolls keep well, but are best when they’re fresh.

Delicious and simple, fast and nutritious: salmon baked with pesto with roasted yams and broccoli. So easy, you don’t even need a recipe.

Spread some homemade pesto (or your favorite store-bought version) on your salmon and bake  at 400 degrees for about 15 minutes.

Roast your chopped veggies at 400 degrees convection roast for 20-25 minutes (or regular 400 degrees and flip halfway through).

Salivate until you can’t take it anymore … then start eating!

Most definitely, if it’s my roasted broccoli. One of the things I like best about it are the crispy ends of the florets that get all brown and toasty. The insides are sweet and tender and it’s a perfect texture contrast, all in one little floret.

There’s something magical about the flavor of roasted broccoli. It won’t remind you of steamed or sauteed broccoli; it somehow takes on a whole different nuance of flavors and brings out the best that broccoli has to offer.

For a time commitment of about 20 minutes, you really can’t beat it. Toss the florets in olive oil, season with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper and roast at 400 convection roast (or 425 degrees flipping halfway though) until edges are crispy. You can serve as-is, or grate some pecorino romano or parmesan over the whole deal, or roast some garlic along with it or sprinkle with crushed red pepper.

It’s a good thing to salivate over a vegetable.

I’m basically a lazy cook. If there’s a shortcut, I’ll find it, and if I can save a dirty dish in the process then I pretty much deserve a gold medal or something. It’s that mindset that prompted me to try making risotto in the rice cooker, a smashing success, I must say.

Sadly, our rice cooker recently bit the dust, so when I wanted to make a risotto to go with our rack of lamb, I had no choice but to use a regular pot (since when I went out to buy a new rice cooker, they didn’t have what I wanted so instead I left and went shopping for some new clothes … but I digress….). And I made a glorious discovery: you do not, I repeat, do not, have to stir risotto constantly and add the broth little by little. It’s OK to be lazy, like me. Your risotto will still come out delectably creamy and rich, I promise.

I wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted out of the risotto, but I bought some fresh basil and edamame and somehow they just ended up in the risotto. Ah, the way good recipes are born….

Risotto with Edamame and Fresh Basil

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups short-grain brown rice
• 6 cups chicken stock
• 1 onion, diced
• 1/3 cup basil, chiffonade style (just slice it real purdy like)
• 1 1/2 cups shelled edamame (ready-to-eat)
• 1 cup freshly grated pecorino romano
• 2 tablespoons butter
• freshly ground black pepper to taste

Add a little olive oil to your pot and cook the onion until translucent or even a bit browned. Then add the rice and saute just a minute or two to get it a bit toasty. Then add the chicken stock and cover, bringing to a boil. Turn down to simmer at low to medium heat for about 45 minutes to an hour, but keep a watch on it (through a clear lid if you have one, so you don’t have to keep opening the pot and letting the steam out). You’re looking for almost all of the liquid to be absorbed, leaving you with a nice creamy rice.

Add the edamame and heat through, then remove from heat and stir in the basil, pecorino romano and butter. Season with the pepper (you may salt if you wish, but my chicken stock is already salty enough for my taste) and serve.

Trust me … no one will ever know you didn’t stir … unless of course you share this recipe with them.

A lot of people are under the impression that, as a vegetarian, my diet mainly consists of salads. While that wouldn’t be a bad idea, there are actually several salads that are off-limits, including the ubiquitous Caesar salad. Even if you don’t add the grilled chicken to it, Caesar salads are still generally no-nos to vegetarians, due to the anchovies (a food which I still do not understand, even a little bit).

Some of your “fancier” Caesar salads will have actual anchovies in them, staring up at you as you’re pretending to be healthy by eating a salad. However, even your low-rent Caesar salads generally contain anchovies in the dressing. So, what’s a vegetarian to do? Eat something else. After all, we’re pretty used to that. Sure. Or, we could make our own non-anchovyish Caesar salad dressing. A dressing so versatile that it can even be made, sigh, vegan.

When I was with my family for the holidays, my sister made an amazing vegetarian chicken Caesar salad. I wanted to eat it all the time, so I was not to be deterred by the fact that she lives halfway across the country from me. I set out to recreate the goodness at home. So here you go:

Vegetarian/Vegan Caesar Salad Dressing (serves 2-4)

1/4 cup olive oil

1 tablespoon of mayonnaise (I prefer the mayo made with olive oil, but you vegans out there can use vegan mayo).

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

1-3 garlic cloves, minced (I use at least three, but I’m obsessed with garlic. This should really be to your taste)

1/2 lemon, juiced

Dash of soy sauce

salt and pepper to taste

Mix it all together, and BOOM: Best Caesar salad dressing ever. The best part is, you don’t have to mess with raw eggs or any of that nonsense, so it’s fast and less scary than just downing eggs.

As for the salad itself, follow your bliss. Romaine, croutons and parmesan are boring to me, so I decided to make a chicken Caesar salad. I added the parmesan (because it is delicious) and cooked up two of the Morningstar Farms Italian Herb Chik Patties, sliced those bad boys up and stuck them in. I also added cucumber because they’re delightful and we had some that needed to be used up. All in all, if I didn’t make Luke have some, I would have sat there and eaten the entire bowl of salad, which would have been pretty much the opposite of the healthy, “I think I’ll have a salad for dinner” choice.

It’s embarrassing, it really is. I call myself a cook, yet I made this ridiculously easy meal for dinner tonight and we all fell over ourselves loving it. It feels a little wrong, like I cheated on cooking a dinner. There’s something not quite right about a meal with essentially four ingredients, but somehow it worked for us tonight.

John’s burritos consisted of the tortilla, ground meat (we used grass fed beef), a can of re-fried beans and cheese. I know, I could hardly believe it either, but nothing in it sounded gross, so I thought I’d give it a whirl.

I browned the ground beef, stirred in the re-fried beans, put the filling in the tortillas, sprinkled cheese on and baked them for 10 minutes.

Then, I added my own special touches (I use the term loosely). Instead of making the suggested green chile sauce (which sounds delicious and I’ll probably make it someday), I served the burritos with shredded lettuce, fresh tomato salsa, chopped avocado, fresh cilantro and a dollup of plain yogurt (our version of sour cream, but you can see Cate’s version here).

Unfortunately, I also substituted the flour tortillas for corn ones, which are less sturdy but more delicious (and won’t make Owen and I wig out on wheat). Who cares if they weren’t pretty burritos? They still tasted great.

I think we may have found a new go-to recipe tonight. It’s so easy, versatile and customizable that you can’t lose with this meal.

Perhaps it’s because I’m a busy mom and winter, with its lack of grill meals, is quickly creeping up, but I’m becoming intrigued with the idea of freezer meals.I love making pesto and freezing it all summer long so I can enjoy it even when the snow is piled high, but that’s all about enjoyment. It really only saves me about 5 minutes and washing the food processor; I still have to cook the rest of the meal.

Since I’ve got to live up to my Fresh Foodie reputation, I certainly can’t buy convenience or frozen meals, but I’m craving a simpler evening these days. So why not try cooking whole meals when I’ve got all of this fresh, whole food at my disposal, and save them until winter? It will be such a treat to have a meal everyone loves ready to go and to have a night off of cooking.

Baked ziti is one I’m going to try first. I’m strangely obsessed with baked ziti, because I’ve never made it and I don’t even know where to start. To me, you boil your pasta and put your goodies with it. It mystifies me that pasta can be baked. I’m adding some spinach to this recipe, and probably some zucchini and eggplant as well.

I really don’t know what the heck butter chicken is, but apparently it is an Indian dish that can be frozen and sounds fantastic! Cook chicken in butter, add lots of fragrant, distinctive spices, yogurt and… yum. I’ll probably also add veggies to this dish — carrots, zucchini, maybe even some chunks of potato.

I love me a good crock pot meal, and it took me a very long time to find a good crock pot chili. Here’s a vegetarian crock pot chili that has promise — three kinds of beans, lots of other veggies and tons of herbs and spices. I won’t need to add any veggies to this one!

Since we don’t eat wheat, these bulgur and beef stuffed peppers aren’t quite perfect, but a quick substitution of quinoa for the bulgur should do the trick. With feta, spinach and lots of garlic, these aren’t your typical stuffed pepper.

I love this recipe for Italian polenta casserole. The measurements make two casseroles, so you can eat one and pop the other it he freezer — nice! Did I mention it’s got eggplant and spicy sausage?

Butternut squash and sage go so well together, and that’s actually a combo we use on one of our favorite pizzas (with some prosciutto too). I’m looking forward to trying this healthy vegetarian lasagna with butternut squash, sage, spinach and cheese.

There are so many more, this post might just end up with a part two!

As I sit down to my laptop, I am unconvinced as to whether I will even be able to write this post. As soon as I start describing the homemade ice cream we made tonight, I’m sure I’ll be running to the freezer — multiple times — to snitch from the double-batch I made. Yeah, this post will never get done unless I exercise extreme self control.

You really, really cannot imagine how good this chocolate coconut milk ice cream is. Sure, you’re probably out there crying me a river because Owen and I can’t eat a lot of dairy without getting sick, sick, sick. I surely don’t feel bad for us — we’re in frozen dessert heaven.

Besides the coconut milk base, a couple of other things attracted me to this recipe. It is sweetened only with agave syrup, so no unrefined sugar. It’s chocolate, and not only have I been craving chocolate ice cream, but I’ve been so unsatisfied with all of our attempts at vanilla ice cream (because chocolate and the kid don’t mix) that I was left with no alternative. Finally, this recipe is sinfully easy to make. Some ice cream recipes you have to — gasp! — cook, but this one is four ingredients and a stick blender (or a whisk if you don’t do high-tech).

One minor disappointment, as I have with all of my homemade ice creams: they are best when right out of the machine. As mentioned in the original post, it comes out like the most perfect soft-serve ice cream you can possibly imagine. Several hours later, it’s still good, but starting to get hard. The next morning — yeah, I went there — it’s rock-hard and needs to sit out a bit just to be scooped. I’ve been looking into this phenomenon and there are lots of ideas on how to cure it, and I’ll be testing some of them soon. Of course I’ll report back to you. Regardless, this ice cream recipe is completely divine.

So I ask — Kimi Harris, who the hell are you and what have you done to me? And I mean this in only all the best ways, because inventing this recipe was a stroke of genius that I wish I had … struck? Anyway, I’m glad to have found you and this recipe, and since my kid fell asleep tonight, I’m thinking the green light for chocolate is ON.

I’m sure you’ve fallen into the same trap with your kids. No matter how healthy you try to be, as soon as they’re old enough to start ordering their own food at restaurants, they discover the kids’ meals… and the French fries. I really have a bone to pick with pretty much every restaurant in the northern hemisphere, because if they didn’t celebrate the French fry as a vegetable, then perhaps children across America would be eating more broccoli.

Nevertheless, the four-year-old loves French fries, so we give him French fries, often and in great, heaping quantities. But stop! Before you report me to the Department of Social Services, we make him oven-roasted potatoes cut in the shape of French fries, and he doesn’t know the difference. And yes, mine are as crunchy — sometimes crunchier — than the deep-fried versions at your local watering hole… uh, I mean restaurant where you’d appropriately take your kid. Yep, that’s what I mean.

Oven-Roasted French Fries

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Ingredients:

• 3 very large and very fresh potatoes (I used Yukon Gold tonight)
• olive oil
• sea salt
• freshly ground black pepper

I know, the list of ingredients is freakishly small, but go with it. They’re perfect.

Now here’s the trick: the technique, or should I say the process. Start by cutting your potatoes to a uniform size, using a mandoline if you have one. You can toss the cut potatoes in olive oil and spread them evenly on a roasting sheet, or you can spray the pan with olive oi, spread out the potatoes and spray again.

Then, season with salt and pepper.

Cook at 400 degrees convection roast if you have it, or 425 degrees bake, flipping potatoes halfway through cooking time. Cook for approximately 30 minutes or when potatoes are a deep, golden brown. Then shut off your oven and leave them in for 5 more minutes. You can also put the potatoes in the oven before it reaches the desired temperature. This is they key to getting them crunchy, so don’t leave out the low temperature cooking part.

Well, it’s also important to use potatoes as fresh as you can get and as starchy as you can get, because they will definitely turn out crunchier.

So go — make your kids happy and feed them healthy potatoes… they’ll never know.

Gourmet cooking doesn’t have to entail hours of cooking with a list of ingredients longer than your normal grocery list. Create meals bursting with complex flavors that will please every food snob in your life, easily.

All my years of getting multitudes of chard from the CSA farm, I’ve experimented with at least 70,000 ways to cook it. Time after time, I always come back to this easy, versatile saute. Three little ingredients and somehow the flavors magically blend together… perfection.

You can serve it as a side dish, with your protein on a bed of it (think grilled chicken or fish, even tempeh) or add sliced sausages to your saute and create an easy, healthy main dish.

Chard with Onion and Tamari

Ingredients:

• 1 bunch chard, coarsely chopped
• 1 small onion, chopped
• tamari, soy sauce or Bragg’s liquid aminos

In a skillet over medium high heat, saute the onion until tender, about 5 minutes. Add chard and saute until bright green and starting to limp, about 2-3 minutes. Sprinkle with tamari, heat through and serve.

I know — painfully easy, ridiculously healthy… how do you think you’ll serve it?

A few weeks ago, I was at Borders perusing the clearance section. I found this really janky set of cookbooks that I adore, but are only useful in the loosest sense. The ingredients don’t actually combine to make anything; they’re more of a guide to an idea of a dish than anything else. I’ve made several recipes and I’ve changed them all so much that they’re barely recognizable. One of the first meals that I tried was basically a heart attack on a plate: Eggs in potato shells. You guys, this thing has four ingredients: eggs, potatoes, butter and cream. I am not messing around, here.

Not only does it look completely deadly, but I was doubtful that it would even taste good. I thought it would be gross and runny and just make me feel kind of sick. However, it was so freaking good. This is basically twice-baked potatoes with eggs and is a perfect breakfast dish when you have some leftover baked potatoes from the night before.

Eggs in Potato Shells (serves 4)

Ingredients:

• 2 large potatoes
• 4 eggs
• 2 tbsp cream ( You should use light, but I only had heavy, so… yeah.)
• 4 tbsp butter

Wrap the potatoes in foil and bake for an hour at 400°F, or until soft. Remove the potatoes and cut in half lengthwise. Scoop out the insides of the potatoes and put in a large mixing bowl. Mash the insides of the potatoes with the cream and butter. Add salt and pepper as desired.

Put the mashed potatoes back into the shells and place into a dish that will hold them steady (I used a bread pan). Carve out a hole in the center of the potato mixture and crack and egg into the hole. Bake until the eggs are set, about 20-25 minutes.

You can of course make this less heart attack-inducing by using less butter, but really, when you’re already cracking an egg into a potato, what’s the point? I did feel guilty though, so I sauteed some asparagus to go with it. That totally makes it healthy!

There’s something magical about a good bean dip. Sometimes it’s the perfect hummus, drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with paprika. Other times it’s a spicy black bean dip threatening to ooze over the side of your organic blue corn chip if you don’t scoop it into your mouth in time.

But today, I’m thinking about white bean dip. In the wintertime, white bean dip is perfect with sun-dried tomatoes, balsamic vinegar and crusty bruschetta. Summertime brings a lighter, lemony bean dip served with veggies and crispy brown rice crackers. Making a delicious white bean dip is criminally simple, and the one I made this weekend should land me life in prison. Yeah, that was totally hokey, but the bean dip really was good!

Easy White Bean Dip with Garlic and Fresh Herbs
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Ingredients:

• 15-ounce can white beans, rinsed and drained
• 1 clove garlic
• 1/3 cup mixed fresh herbs, packed (I used parsley, basil, sage, thyme and rosemary)
• 3-4 tablespoons olive oil
• 3-4 tablespoons lemon juice

Add beans and garlic to food processor and blend. Add all other ingredients, starting with the lower amounts of olive oil and lemon juice and adding more until you get the consistency you like. That’s it! I served this bean dip — poolside! — with brown rice crackers and raw veggies: red peppers, carrots, snap peas, broccoli.

There’s a bunch of other ways you could enjoy this bean dip:

• spread on a sandwich with roasted peppers and baby spinach, and maybe a slice of salami or two
• fill celery sticks with it
• in pita bread
• make it a bit thinner, make a puddle on a plate, surround it with greens and serve fish or chicken on it

Ever since springtime arrived, I haven’t been able to get enough of salads. I could literally eat them at every meal and not get sick of them. This works out rather well, as they calorically balance out the excessive amounts of chocolate I consume daily.

I forgot to buy hearts of palm today for my favorite gourmet mesclun salad that is really my go-to side salad, so I whipped up a little something using the same maple mustard balsamic vinaigrette that I use.

It couldn’t have worked out better, since I had some prosciutto that was about to expire, and my freakish pantry is always stocked with dried mission figs and raw pine nuts. Someday I will write a post about how you could live out of my house for months, quite possibly years, before ever running out of the food in the pantry and freezers. But right now, I’ll just give you my very easy recipe:

Mesclun Greens with Figs, Pine Nuts, Prosciutto and Feta

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Ingredients:

• mixed mesclun greens, enough to feed your crew
• pine nuts, toasted
• dried figs, halved
• prosciutto, ripped into bite-sized pieces
• crumbled feta cheese
• maple mustard balsamic vinaigrette

Toss all ingredients, in the ratio of your liking, together and serve. Tonight we had this salad with some chicken wings with rhubarb chipotle sauce. The salad was gone before I could even think about taking a picture of it!

I don’t mean that they didn’t exist, of course. I just mean that, until 1921 when Teddy Roosevelt made George Washington Carver’s work famous, people in America thought they were a pretty useless weed. And it took even longer for people to not only figure out they weren’t, but to make peanut stuff: peanut butter, peanut butter cookies, peanut oil, and most importantly, peanut sauce.

Now, strangely enough, peanut sauce seems to be a staple in Thai cuisine, which is confusing to me. Especially since peanuts were brought over to China in the 1600’s as a crop. This conflicts greatly with my elementary school history education, since weren’t we supposed to be mystified by this little legume’s delicious properties? So why would we bring a weed to China? And how did it then move down and become so popular in Indonesia and Thailand?

Frankly, I don’t care who “invented” it. I would like to take them out to dinner and maybe a movie afterward. I would like to take them behind a middle school and get them pregnant. (30 Rock reference, anybody? I swear I’m not actually that creepy.) But though I crave peanut butter sometimes,  I can’t stand what I call “peanut butter mouth”,  that sticky sensation that leaves you smacking your tongue like a dissatisfied cat and wishing for a giant, cold beverage. But still, I yearned for peanut butter, and there are only so many times I could eat peanut butter cookies and not get fat. And then I hit upon the solution: peanut sauce.

Because peanut sauce, assuming you don’t have a peanut allergy, goes well on everything. Marinate tofu in it (or, well, anything, but tofu retains it nicely). Put it on rice with some chopped up vegetables and you have yourself a meal. Use it  on grilled meats. Dip shrimp in it. Put it on pasta instead of oil to keep it from sticking. Use it as a salad dressing. I think, personally, you could tweak it a little and put it on vanilla ice cream, but I’m crazy like that.

What I’ve used it most recently on is the abundance of sugar-snap peas that have exploded from our garden since the near-constant month of rain we’ve recently had in Boston. The peanut peas with sesame seeds (got to come up with a better name for that) were a pretty big hit at our July 4 barbecue. By which I mean that I was not the only one scarfing it down. It’s a sure-fire, kid-friendly side dish that’s perfect for summer. There is no cooking required, sugar snap peas are in season (and often available at farmer’s markets locally grown — huzzah, environmentally-conscious food!), and if you, like my family, grow sugar-snap peas, it’s perfect for that abundance you’re going to find yourself facing right about … now.

Easy Asian Peas
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(serves 6-8 as a side dish)

• 6 cups of sugar snap peas
• 1/4 cup peanut butter
• 1/4 cup water
• 2 tbs. sesame oil
• 2 tbs. soy sauce
• A “schmurble” of honey (around 1/2 tbs.)
• Black pepper to taste
• Sesame seeds for garnish (around a quarter cup, toasted if desired)

Clean and halve the peas (I suggest doing this on the couch, with your feet up, while watching television. I watched the Dogs 101 marathon on Animal Planet and I firmly believe that the puppies on my screen made this taste better by cute osmosis). Place in large bowl/whatever you plan on serving in.

In a small, separate bowl, whisk together the peanut butter, water, sesame oil, soy sauce, honey, and black pepper until smooth. The whisking should go in three distinctive stages:

1. Holy crap, this peanut butter is never going to break up
2. The peanut butter is breaking up, but it is super weird/clumpy/oh my god, I have failed as a chef
3. Hey! Look at that! It’s a pretty and consistent sauce!

The point being: keep whisking.

Pour sauce over peas, mix until all the peas are covered, mix in sesame seeds if desired

Serve. Be complimented on your culinary genius.

Shepherd’s Pie is an English meat pie made with ground beef and mashed potatoes.  My boyfriend and I lazed about on July 4th, enjoying a respite from the hustle and bustle of the week, instead of joining the hoards of people heading out for picnics and fireworks over the weekend.  The day was spent reading, napping and listening to music.

As dinner time approached,  I realized that we didn’t have much of a plan or much in the fridge for that matter.  It was likely the grocery stores were going to be barren, having been subject to the barbecuing masses.  My boyfriend was kind enough to suggest ordering Chinese, but I declined and instead welcomed the challenge of making a delicious dinner for us with whatever I could find in the fridge and pantry.

What I found was the following: Note: There is a print link embedded within this post, please visit this post to print it.

• Ground beef
• Onions
• Garlic
• Frozen corn
• Frozen peas
• A russet potato

The onions, garlic and frozen veggies are usually a staple in my kitchen, but it was quite lucky that the beef and potato were shacking up there as well.  Let me also say that I have never made Shepherd’s Pie before. But, it seemed like a fairly simple concept.  So, this is what I did:

I preheated my oven to 400 degrees.  Then I began sauteing 1/2 a small chopped onion and 2 cloves of garlic in some olive oil over medium heat for about ten minutes until soft.  Then I added about 1/4 cup each of the corn and peas, turning the heat up and adding some salt, pepper, and dash of cayenne.  Once the veggies had defrosted, I added a teaspoon of chopped fresh rosemary and the ground beef.  I’d say I had about 3/4 of a pound or so.  I let the meat brown and combine with the other ingredients for about 1o minutes.  At the end, I added 2 or 3 tablespoons of beef broth (just some bouillon I had in the pantry) combined with 1 tablespoon of cornstarch to create a lovely gravy.  Once the sauce thickened, I turned off the heat and set it aside.

Meanwhile, I had peeled a potato, cut it into cubes and boiled in salted water until tender.  I made a  quick potato mash with milk and butter.  The ground beef mixture went into a casserole dish, then I topped it with the mashed potatoes, making sure to cover all the meat.  Then I used a fork to create grooves and texture in the potatoes.  I dotted the top with a few pats of butter and popped into the hot oven to bake for about 30-35 minutes.  The result was a mouthwatering meal that involved very little cleanup, and a renewed faith in the creativity that blossoms as a result of  laziness.  I mean necessity.

Way back in May, I wrote about the trials and tribulations of making green salad with shrimp. My favorite version of this salad featured an improvised recipe for spicy pan-seared shrimp. What I didn’t realize was how convenient this method for preparing shrimp would be! This shrimp recipe is quick to prepare and requires little-to-no advance planning.

Why so convenient? I use frozen, peeled shrimp. Pop a handful in a colander and submerge them under running cool water. They’ll thaw in minutes. Insta-protein! And since shrimp are small, they take on the flavors of a marinade quickly and cook in minutes, perfect qualities for impatient cooks like me who are hungry and want to eat half an hour ago.

I love these shrimp in salads, but they would also be great mixed in with stir-fried veggies or served alongside some sesame noodles. And while I haven’t counted the calories, there isn’t a whole lot of added oil or sugar in this recipe, so they’re definitely on the healthy side.  (Full disclosure: They do have a fair bit of salt, which probably accounts for at least some of the tastiness.)

This method (quick marinade and pan-searing) also works great for scallops and cubed chicken.

This recipe has a pan-Asian spin on it, but I’m sure there are other marinades that could work. Maybe garlic, lime juice and jalapeno for a fresh Mex feel? Garlic, red pepper flakes and dry white wine? Are you sensing a theme? This preparation works because the marinade has strong flavors. If you have other marinade ideas, share them in the comments.

If you don’t have sriracha on hand, no matter. You can use your favorite hot sauce or sub in a shake or two of cayenne pepper. The corn starch is also optional, but it helps develop a crunchy crust on the shrimp.

Spicy pan-seared shrimp
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Ingredients:

• 12 large shrimp, peeled
• 1 teaspoon soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon sriracha or other hot sauce to taste
• 1/2 teaspoon cooking wine
• 1 teaspoon cornstarch
• a sprinkle of garlic powder (optional)
• canola or other vegetable oil

Directions:

• If your shrimp are frozen, thaw per directions.
• Prepare marinade by combining soy sauce, sriracha, cooking wine, cornstarch and garlic powder in a medium bowl and stirring well.
• Add thawed shrimp to marinade and stir to coat. Marinate for approximately 20 minutes.
• Heat heavy skillet over medium high heat. Add oil to coat bottom, so shrimp will not stick. Heat until oil begins to shimmer.
• When oil is hot, add shrimp to pan one at a time. Take care to avoid any spattering oil and do not crowd the pan. There should be space around each shrimp, and you should hear the shrimp sizzle as they cook. Do not add the remaining marinade to the pan.
• When the tails of the shrimp begin to look pink, turn the shrimp to brown the other side.  Cook until the second side is browned. This will only take a few minutes.
• Remove shrimp from heat as soon as you are finished cooking, so they don’t grow tough.

Before I came to Portugal, I’d never even heard of Russian Salad. With that in mind, I kind of figured it was just something people here ate, and I couldn’t figure out what the hell was Russian about it. As it turns out, the Russian Salad I’ve been eating is so far removed from the original (which, to my surprise, is actually Russian!), it might as well be called Portuguese Salad, and the way I make it at home when no one’s looking, it probably doesn’t even deserve a name.

But seriously. According to Wikipedia, the first Russian Salad had both gherkins and fresh cucumbers. And caviar. And veal tongue. In other words, something a lot of people, myself included, would not eat unless there were big bucks to be made from it. And I fully admit I have eaten it with sliced hot dogs in it, which are a horror show in and of themselves, but in defense of hot dogs, if they do have tongue in them somewhere, at least I don’t see any taste buds. Blech.

Nowadays, perusing through the various recipes Google has to offer, I see that Russian Salad here and in the States are pretty much the same basic ingredients; boiled potatoes, carrots, green beans or peas, and usually hard boiled egg, and some sort of cooked meat or tuna. There is, however, one glaring difference: mayonnaise.

Now, I’m not nearly as mayo-phobic as Debbie. When I still ate them, I would put it on burgers and tuna sandwiches no problem. But to bathe my salad in? Thank you, but no. Just the thought of all those lovely veggies coated in goopy, glistening mayonnaise is enough to make me lose my appetite. Olive oil is the way to go, and if you think it needs it, some vinegar, but that’s really optional. So is meat, if you ask me.

But like I said, and as you can well see from the picture, when I make “Russian Salad” at home, I get really lazy about it.  If you couldn’t tell, that’s an over-easy egg, neither hard nor boiled. Hard boiled eggs are just a pain in the ass. You have to put it in its own little pot, wait for it to boil and make sure the egg doesn’t crack and ooze out into the water, time it just right so you don’t get that nasty green ring around the yolk, drain it, rinse it in more water to cool it off, and burn your fingers trying to peel it because you are starving and didn’t rinse it long enough so it’s not really cool yet.  For one or two eggs? Not worth it. It’s just so much easier to put some olive oil in a pan, crack an egg in it, and flip it over.

It may not be Russian, but it is delicious, simple. and as far as I’m concerned, guilt-free.

I probably make salad nicoise far too often. Let’s face it — it’s embarrassingly easy to steam green beans, boil potatoes and toss it all together with salad, olives and tuna. It makes the perfect dinner salad.

In an effort to mix things up a bit, I really rocked my family’s world last night when I served them salmon instead of tuna, used capers instead of olives, and I made a lemon vinaigrette instead of my usual nicoise dressing. Yeah, it was super exciting.

And did I mention super easy? Yeah, I guess I did, but I wanted to make sure you caught that part.

Salmon Salad Nicoise

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Ingredients:

• 4-6 potatoes, boiled whole then cut in large bite-sized chunks
• 1 pound (or so) green beans, trimmed and steamed
• greens of your choice (I used baby spinach and mesclun mix)
• 1 shallot, finely chopped and slightly cooked (30 seconds in microwave)
• 1 pound salmon, seasoned and grilled as rare as you dare
• 1 tablespoon of capers per serving (about 4)

For dressing, whisk together:

• 3 tablespoons lemon juice
• 1 1/2 tablespoons cider vinegar
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1 tablespoon fresh thyme, chopped
• the tiniest pinch of sea salt
• a generous sprinkling of freshly ground pepper

Toss first four ingredients together with the dressing, and prepare on a plate. Top with a serving of salmon and a tablespoon of capers and you’ve got yourself a dinner salad, baby.

There are a lot of different ways to make fruit compote. Some recipes I’ve come across say to not add any water at all and just let the fruit stew it it’s own juices. To me, that sounds like a good way to burn perfectly good fruit. Others will tell you to add a little water and a diabetes-inducing amount of sugar. It all depends on the personal preferences of who’s going to be eating it, I guess. Personally, I like to have it on the syrupy side, with a fair amount of liquid in addition to the fruit.

What’s compote good for, you ask? Well, anything you feel like, really. But I have to say, if you put some over your pancakes, you will probably never want that HFCS-laden “pancake syrup” again. You will probably also eat enough pancakes for three people. Or maybe that’s just me. Moving on….

Another thing I love to do with fruit compote is to stir it into plain yogurt with some granola or other cereal. You could also stir some into your morning bowl of oatmeal. Or, how about over ice cream, or if you’re feeling industrious, use it to make your own fruit flavored ice cream. Spongecake, or better yet cheesecake, with some fruity, syrupy goodness spooned over top? You get the idea!

So, what I made most recently was a ridiculously simple strawberry-cherry compote. I had some strawberries I had frozen whole when they were on sale a while back, and a ton of black cherries to use up before they went to waste. But really, you can go crazy here with whatever you want. Add some spices like cinnamon, ginger, or a whole vanilla pod, citrus zest, mint, it’s all game. As for what fruits you use, it’s totally up to you. I’m particularly fond of berries and stone fruits like peaches or nectarines, but you can also use apples, pears, or just about anything else that you think is a good combination.

Simplest Fruit Compote

Ingredients:

• 2-3 cups frozen or fresh fruit, peeled and sliced or chopped into bite sized pieces if necessary
• 1/4 cup sugar, any kind you like (not artificial sweeteners!)
• 1/2 cup of water, or more or less depending on how thick you want it
• Optional additions: 1 cinnamon stick, 1-2 slices fresh ginger, 1 vanilla pod, 1tsp (or more) grated lemon or orange zest, etc.
  

In a small saucepan, combine the sugar and water and and any spices you want to use and turn the heat up to high. When the syrup comes to a boil, add the fruit (carefully! Hot sugar syrup is painful.) and bring to a boil again. Turn the heat down to low and cook for at least 15 minutes, longer if you want a thicker, sweeter compote. Let it cool a little bit and use it right away, or store it in the fridge. It’ll last for at least a week, if not longer.

In case I haven’t made it abundantly clear, I’m not super-comfortable in the kitchen. In fact, one of the reasons I started writing for CliqueClack Food is because I had a baby and wanted to become more comfortable so I could feed my family well. So it should come to no surprise that I don’t really have a ton of my own recipes. In fact, when I decided to write this post so Cate would  have something to do with her potatoes, it was the first time I ever actually wrote out a recipe.

All of that is a very long-winded way of saying that the recipe I’m about to publish is really just a guide. Play around with the amounts to suit your taste. For instance, I don’t completely loathe mayonnaise like Debbie does, but I’m not a huge fan of it, so I put in as little as possible. You may want more. You would be wrong, but hey. To each their own. If you’re brave (and awesome) enough, you could even up the mustard quotient– which is something I would actually recommend.

This potato salad is super-simple, and can generally be made with things hanging out in your refrigerator.

• 5 lb. bag of red potatoes
• 6 hard-boiled eggs
• 3 celery stalks
• 1/2 cup of mayonnaise (I like the Kraft olive oil mayo)
• 1/3 cup yellow mustard
• 1/3 cup pickle juice
• 6 pickle spears (Claussen Kosher Dill spears)
• 1 tsp. white pepper
• 1 tsp. paprika
• salt and pepper to taste

Cut the potatoes in half, keep the skins on and boil them up. In a separate pan, boil your eggs. While your potatoes and eggs are boiling, slice your celery and chop up the pickle spears. Drain the potatoes and cut them into bite-sized pieces and put them in a large bowl.Chop up five of the eggs, leaving one aside.

While they’re still hot, add your celery and pickles. Add the mayo, stir everything up, add the mustard and stir it again. Put in your 5 chopped eggs, then add the pickle juice and stir it up a third time. Add the salt, black pepper and white pepper, and stir it all up a final time. take the 6th egg, slice it and place on top of the potato salad. Sprinkle the paprika over the entire dish.

The key to the whole dish is the pickles, which is why I use Claussen. They’re just the best-thhands down. I HATE potato salad that tastes sweet, hence the focus on the pickles and mustard. The pickles also take the place of the onions that most people seem fond of putting in potato salads.

Some folks are also kind of confused by the fact that I put eggs in my potato salad. I honestly started doing that because my mom puts them in hers, and I just got used to it. It’s definitely still potato salad, and not egg salad, but the eggs are nice because they add a different texture, not to mention some protein. Overall, the recipe is a little weird, very simple, and people seem to dig it.

Do you have a favorite pizza sauce? As much as I love a good old fashioned red sauce pizza, I tend to detest jarred pizza sauces. They are never the right consistency for me (too smooth and runny) and they’re too salty.

I’ve gotten around that in a couple of different ways. Sometimes, I’ll just use canned tomato sauce with no salt added and dress it up with a little garlic powder, oregano, basil and freshly ground black pepper. Other times, I’ll drain a can of diced tomatoes, pulse them a bit in my food processor and add the herbs and spices.

I’ve found a video (thanks YouTube!) that demonstrates how to make the world’s easiest tomato sauce for pizza. It’s one of those, “Why didn’t I think of that?” moments as you watch it, but then you realize that unless you are fond of digging into a can of gourmet Italian tomatoes and squeezing shamelessly that it probably wouldn’t have occurred to you.

Nevertheless, this is probably the perfect pizza sauce if you’re looking for taste and texture along with ease and speed. Try it — just wash your hands first.