Dinner Tonight

Meg

Homemade Soft Pretzels

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Clearly Thanksgiving was the big event this week, but I was also really looking forward to the Packers-Lions game, too. Since the game started at 12:30, David and I didn’t start our Thanksgiving cooking until late that afternoon. Since we had a small gathering to feed, we opted for a tiny 8-pound turkey, which roasted in about two and a half hours. We loaded up our table with sides of veggies: mashed potatoes, twice-baked sweet potatoes with goat cheese, cauliflower gratin, and roasted Brussels sprouts. I also made a cornbread stuffing (coming later next week). All these dishes had minimal prep time and simple cooking methods, which allowed for plenty of time to make game day snacks.

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Sweet Potato Muffins

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Once I started my Master’s program in nutrition, I started following several dietitians’ blogs to help me stay in touch with what’s going on in the field: they blog about food, research, trends, and often include vignettes from their experiences with patients. The Nutrition Blog Network is where I first came across several of the Recipe Reduxers blogs. Each month the bloggers  share their recipe interpretations of a common theme on their individual blogs. This month is my first post with the group, and our subject is “new” whole grains — in other words, incorporating less familiar whole grains in new or inventive ways. I wanted to branch out into something new, but still use readily-available ingredients in my kitchen. Whole wheat flour and oatmeal are two of the most common options for cooking with whole grains, but I also usually have quinoa on hand in my pantry. Quinoa is technically a seed, but it is still often considered a whole grain. Instead of making a salad, I decided to grind the quinoa into a flour and go from there.

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Hasselback Potatoes

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These are the best, absurdly easy potatoes I’ve made in awhile. I saw the idea posted on a friend’s pinterest page and thought they looked super simple and whimsical. Over the last few weeks I’ve made them twice with great success: once as a run-through of sorts to see if they really were as easy and delicate-looking as they seem, and then again when my good friend Allison came for a visit from out of town. Paired with salmon and roasted Brussels sprouts, it made a great dinner: the kind where you spend all your time and energy talking with your guests and pouring them drinks instead of watching the stove.

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Figs, Goat Cheese, and Arugula Pizza

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I put this pizza together last week before our book club meeting just to get a quick dinner in before our evening out. Book club on an empty stomach can be a dangerous idea: English majors (who now earn full-time salaries) tend to bring along lots of wine. We had about an hour between getting home and heading out for the evening, so these little pizzas worked out well. The combination of figs, goat cheese, and arugula is classic. Adding prosciutto here wouldn’t hurt either.

When these figs get cooking in the oven at about 400-degrees, they get very soft and start to caramelize. I smeared goat cheese over the pizza dough to serve as the base, and the gooey cheese and caramelized figs running together produced a great flavor.

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Blueberry Oatmeal Pancakes

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David and I are usually eggs and toast people when it comes to weekend breakfasts, but I recently made these hearty oatmeal pancakes that I think are worth sharing. Because of the oatmeal, these pancakes have enough heft to them to satisfy those who don’t like super sweet foods first thing in the morning (like me). They’re kinda like the Quasimodo of pancakes, though: they’re a little lumpy and misshapen but they’re also kind of sweet and worth the effort. (I’m talking about the Disney version…).

They’re also super healthy. With oatmeal, fruit, and whole wheat flour, they’ve got plenty of nutritious goodness to feel good about on a Saturday morning.

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Egg Salad on Pumpernickel

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It’s funny, I bought this pumpernickel loaf last week to make an entirely different recipe than what I’m posting today. Originally, I planned to write about a very German-sounding meal of pumpernickel-breaded chicken with mustard and cabbage. I did end up making that dish, which was good, but then I made this sandwich with the leftover bread, and I’m so glad I did. This egg salad was splendid.

I  happened to have some tarragon on hand from when I made seafood risotto, and pairing tarragon with eggs is second only to pairing it with seafood. A few years ago my sisters and I took my mom to a traditional afternoon tea the day after Christmas, and they served these slender egg salad sandwiches on dark rustic pumpernickel. They were so manageable, and I’ve kept that sandwich in my head until I had the chance to make it myself. Believe it or not, good pumpernickel isn’t the easiest thing to find in Boston.

I found this quick & simple recipe from Gourmet, but I happened to be out of shallots at the moment. Adding a bit of celery kept the crunch factor, but incorporating both the shallots and the celery is probably the way to go. Also, toasting the bread gives the sandwich a nice firmness so it doesn’t fall apart on you (as much) when you’re eating it. When David took this to work, he kept the egg salad separate in a small tupperware container and constructed his sandwich just before lunch.

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Seafood Risotto with Tarragon & Sweet Peas

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To top off my week of homemade comfort foods, I made seafood risotto. And it was a great way to finish a great week. First, my mom celebrated a special birthday (happy birthday Mom!). Then, on Saturday, I spent the afternoon cooking with my friends from school for a project – and isn’t it amazing that my program requires some kitchen time? And now, as I’m writing this, David and I are both sitting happy with wins for our favorite teams. Incidentally, both games were St. Louis vs. Wisconsin: the Green Bay Packers beat out the Rams yesterday afternoon, and are now 6-0, and late last night the St. Louis Cardinals defeated the Brewers to head to the World Series! Very exciting.

As for the recipe, this is another one of my own creations. I absolutely love the combination of tarragon and seafood, so it was easy to come to the idea of flavoring a seafood risotto with tarragon. Being on a student budget, I thought a shrimp & pea risotto would be simple, relatively inexpensive, yet delicious. So I headed to my neighborhood seafood mercato to pick up the shrimp. Kerri, one of the owners of Mercato del Mare, tucked in a few lobster meat claws for us, too (thank you, Kerri!). Perfect.

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Shrimp Stir-fried Rice

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Most weekends I start out with grand plans about what I’m going to cook. Homemade pasta is high on that list. But so often the workload of a full-time student/part-time employee means I don’t get to spend as much time as I’d like lingering over super hands-on dishes. But, luckily, my schedule as a graduate student means I was able to spend Monday afternoon at home, so I put on a large pot of brown rice and made shrimp stir-fried rice for dinner.

This is a great recipe because it doesn’t have any of the heavy, leaden textures and flavors that take-out can have. I upped the cilantro and lime by a lot, cut down on some of the salty ingredients, and added peas to up the amount of veggies in the dish. The intense flavors of the cilantro and lime really add a lusciousness that more than makes up for the lack of greasiness (if you’re into that). Plus, the leftovers heat up really well for lunch the next day.

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Gruyere & Apple Pear Strata

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It’s four weeks in to the start of the semester, and things are starting to ramp up at school. In some ways, it’s really interesting and rewarding: I really like my Medical Nutrition Therapy class (the nitty gritty science) and Nutritional Epidemiology. But in other ways (exams, projects, presentations), it’s exhausting. Which is why I so wish I could label this recipe in the “Quick & Easy” category… but I can’t. It’s a really good recipe (David gave it rave reviews), but the 8+ hours of chilling time required means that this falls squarely in the thinking-ahead category.

This dish is a nice combo of savory and sweet flavors. It’s almost like a brunch/dinner savory french toast. And after the ingredients are assembled and chilled, the pre-meal prep time is very minimal. The original recipe, from Cooking Light magazine, called for a cinnamon-raisin bread, but wanting to cut out some of the sweetness, I substituted whole white wheat bread instead. I also used the beautiful “apple pears” pictured above, and they held their shape very well throughout the soaking and cooking process.

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Pesto Pasta with Roasted Tomatoes

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I’ve been sitting on this post for awhile, not quite knowing what to do with it. Though it’s really a quite simple dish, it’s not exactly ground-breaking. But I decided to go ahead and post it because it’s quick, easy, healthy, and it’s a good use of ingredients that are often leftovers or pantry staples.

It’s a perfect combo for nights when you’re too busy to put something more complicated together. Or when you’re not actually too busy, you’re just diving into to other, more distracting, things. Like this. Or this.

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