Next week is March and I am looking ahead to spring. You can find all of these ingredients in most markets, including Trader Joe’s. This snap pea and radish recipe is SO FAST, and so fresh and tasty. It’s an ideal side dish for entertaining as well as a weeknight dinner. It may not look like much, but the combination of these ingredients is a winner!Continue reading
Spring Green Pasta with Asparagus and Peas Recipe
Pasta has come a long way since I was a child, especially in the last few years. There used to be limited options beyond typical durum wheat pasta. Possibly you could find whole wheat, but that was about it. Now there are so many choices including spelt, quinoa, brown rice, gluten-free blends, corn and, miraculously, grain-free. I have had all of the above and whereas I think they are all good, Cappello’s grain-free pasta recently blew my mind. My daughter was home for spring break and she bought some for dinner one night. I’ll tell you the truth, I wouldn’t have even tried it because I would assume a grain-free pasta would be a mess plus it’s crazy expensive (I mean CRAZY.) But if you have to be grain-free, pasta is a food that you might kill for. Anyway, it was fantastic. Or maybe I just wanted to love it after I found out how much she spent.
I grew up eating pasta 3-4 times per week. Monday it was often in a soup, Tuesday or Thursday was baked ziti, Friday was linguine aglio e olio, and Sunday was either ravioli or my grandmother’s homemade pasta with her sauce. We are Italian, so no one ever complained or thought it was strange that we ate so much of it. But now I consider pasta an occasional treat because I believe it is a processed food with a significant amount of carbohydrates. There is nothing wrong with complex carbohydrates, i.e. those paired with fiber and/or protein. Complex carbs, as opposed to simple carbs, are good for you and we need them for energy. But it is quite easy to overeat pasta, especially if you consider that a serving size is 1 cup of cooked pasta. Overeating carbohydrates is what gets us into trouble. When our blood sugar spikes, insulin is released to scoop it all up and let me repeat myself, insulin is a pro-inflammatory, fat-storage hormone. What’s the moral of this story? Don’t go crazy with pasta. Eat a small portion, and even better, stretch it out with lots of nutrient-dense vegetables.
This is a lovely pasta recipe which utilizes the new spring produce coming out in the markets. I love the combination of asparagus, peas, mint and lemon. It’s so bright and fresh. According to Eating Well, asparagus is a very good source of fiber, folate, vitamins A, C, E and K, as well as chromium, a trace mineral that enhances the ability of insulin to transport glucose from the bloodstream into cells. Peas and grains make a complete protein, so if you wanted to serve this without any additional protein you could. My whole family, including the picky one, loves this pasta.
I think this would be nice for Easter lunch with poultry, lamb or ham. It’s easy enough though that you could whip this up for a weeknight dinner, too. For those of you not eating pasta, the vegetable mixture is terrific mixed with cooked brown rice or quinoa. I have also added a leek to this recipe. Just clean it really well, thinly slice it and sauté it before adding asparagus. A handful or two of spinach leaves would also be delicious. Adding dark green leafies is never wrong. And a few toasted pine nuts would add some nice crunch, if desired. Why didn’t I write all these suggestions into the recipe? Because I know people don’t like recipes with a lot of ingredients. This dish tastes excellent as is written, but feel free to improvise.
Whatever you do, don’t forget to save some pasta water before draining the pasta. That starchy, flavorful water is so valuable! It is the key ingredient to keep this from being dry, otherwise the inclination might be to add oil to the pasta to moisten it. If you are dairy-free, feel free to eliminate the cheese altogether, but do add a little extra salt. The pasta I used in these photos is Trader Joe’s gluten-free quinoa and brown rice fusilli. Check out this post here for how to perfectly cook gluten-free pasta!
- 2 Tablespoons unrefined, cold pressed, extra-virgin olive oil
- 1 pound medium asparagus, tough ends trimmed, stalks cut into 1 ½ -inch pieces
- zest of 1 lemon
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- pinch of crushed red pepper
- 1 teaspoon sea salt
- freshly ground black pepper to taste
- kosher salt for the pasta water
- ¾ pound pasta, such as penne
- 1 ½ cups peas (frozen is fine)
- 3 Tablespoons finely chopped fresh mint
- 2 Tablespoons unsalted butter or organic Earth Balance
- ⅓ cup grated Pecorino-Romano or Parmesan cheese
- In a large skillet over medium heat, warm the olive oil. Add the asparagus and sauté, stirring, until tender, about 5 minutes. Stir in the lemon zest, garlic, red pepper, sea salt and pepper and sauté until garlic is fragrant to heat through, 1 minute. Set aside.
- Bring a large pot of water to a boil and add 1 tablespoon kosher salt. Add the pasta and cook until just before it reaches al dente. Remove 2 cups of the pasta water and set aside. Add the peas to the pasta pot and stir. Drain pasta and peas.
- Return skillet to medium heat. Transfer pasta and peas to the skillet with the mint. Add 1 cup reserved pasta water and stir everything to combine well. You may need a little more with gluten-free pasta. Simmer until pasta is al dente, about 3-5 minutes. Add additional pasta water if desired. Stir in butter and cheese and taste for seasoning. If you don't add cheese, you may need a little extra salt.
Lemon Turkey and Barley Soup Recipe
Maybe you’re in the whirlwind of Thanksgiving preparation madness and can’t focus on the day after quite yet. But just thinking about this soup relaxes me. You know how I am rather structured and favoring traditions on Thanksgiving? I am just as much that way the day after Thanksgiving. I stay in my pajamas until noon, forgoing the turkey burn spin class that everyone else is at, in favor of a very leisurely breakfast with my family and holiday shopping on my laptop. But the first thing I do on Friday morning is to start my turkey stock on the stove with last night’s carcasses and fresh aromatic vegetables. Now when I smell turkey stock, it feels like a day off. And then I always make some version of a simple turkey soup for dinner. What’s nice about using the remnants of a roasted bird versus a raw one, is that you don’t have the accumulation of fat to contend with. So the resulting stock can be used that same day (as opposed to waiting until the next day to remove the fat that has solidified from the top.)
In general, you can take any soup which calls for chicken and chicken stock and replace it with turkey. Turkey just has a stronger, more distinctive flavor which tastes like….turkey! But you can take my Chicken and Lime Soup with Avocado and use turkey there, or Italian Wedding Soup with shredded turkey instead of turkey meatballs, and so forth. Or just make a batch of stock and freeze it for a rainy day. This soup though, is the perfect antidote to all the richness from Thanksgiving dinner. It’s a nice, light broth soup with a little tang from fresh lemon juice. I love that it doesn’t taste like yesterday’s meal. I personally like eating my leftovers in a transformed way, as opposed to just heating them up and having the same exact meal the next day. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course.
I had some turkey leftovers from a recent class, so I made this Lemon Turkey and Barley Soup for my family and they all, even Mr. Picky, loved it! What’s lovely about barley is that it thickens up the longer it sits so I enjoy this soup even more the next day, and so did my kids when I put it in their thermoses for school lunch. If you are gluten-free, I think any kind of rice would be nice instead of barley. Be mindful of the cooking times, though. Brown rice takes 50 minutes and white takes 18. I asked the kids what they thought of the lemon juice in the soup and they all thought it was the perfect amount — definitely lemony, but not too much. I personally would have liked a little more lemon, but that’s something that can be added to each individual’s bowl, as well. It’s a nice, fresh twist on a barley soup. For a more traditional barley soup, check out this link here and sub turkey stock if you like.
Ironically, this year my day after Thanksgiving will be different. I’ll be waking up before the sun comes up and heading over to KTLA Channel 5 (not in my pajamas) armed with my Thanksgiving leftovers to make some delicious recipes with the anchors that morning. If you are in LA and are interested in tuning in, my segment is scheduled for 9:45 am!
Until then, I hope you have a wonderful holiday. I always remind myself in the midst of the planning and prep and cooking that this day is about being mindful of all we have to be thankful for — and there’s always, always something. I am so grateful for all of you and my students, from whom I learn so much and who inspire me every day!
- 2 Tablespoons unrefined, cold pressed extra-virgin olive oil
- 1 onion, chopped
- 3 large carrots, sliced
- 3 stalks of celery, chopped
- 4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
- 1 Tablespoon herbs de provence*
- 8 cups turkey or chicken stock, preferably homemade
- ¾ cup uncooked barley (not hulled – takes too long) I like Bob’s Red Mill or Arrowhead Mills, which say “pearled,” but they’re only semi-pearled.
- 2 teaspoons sea salt
- freshly ground black pepper, to taste
- 1 pound leftover turkey meat, shredded or cubed
- 2- 4 Tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice (I used 4 Tablespoons and thought it was perfect)
- 5 ounces (about 5 cups, packed) fresh baby spinach leaves
- Grated Pecorino or Parmesan cheese (optional)
- Warm the olive oil in a large pot over medium heat. Add the onion, carrots, celery and garlic and sauté until the onions are translucent, about 8 minutes.
- Add the herbs de provence and stir.
- Add the stock, barley, salt and pepper and bring to a boil. Lower to a simmer and cook partially covered until the barley is tender, at least 30 minutes.
- Stir in the cooked turkey and simmer until turkey is heated through. If you want the barley to become larger and thicken the soup a little, just simmer another 10-20 minutes.
- Stir in the lemon juice and spinach and cook until spinach is just wilted. Taste for seasoning and add additional salt, pepper or lemon juice, if needed. Serve with grated Pecorino or Parmesan cheese, if desired.
** You can also substitute 1-2 cups cooked grains and decrease the stock to 6-7 cups. You will just need to warm the grains through and not cook them for the full amount of time.
Baked Falafel Recipe
One day I woke up and decided I had to have falafel. Falafel are deep-fried balls of pulsed chickpeas blended with herbs, onion and garlic. Sometimes they are made with a combination of broad beans and chickpeas and sometimes that contain a lot of herbs which make them rather green on the inside. They’re so tasty and a great high-protein, vegetarian food that you can eat in a sandwich or on a salad or dipped into a sauce. My family and I love falafel and one day I just had such a craving for them. I wanted the works — pita bread, tahini sauce, lettuce, tomato and pickled radishes.
But the fact that falafel are deep-fried is a major turn-off to me, especially food that is deep-fried in a restaurant, as opposed to at my house, because restaurants use and re-use the same low-quality oil over and over again. Deep-fried foods are just a big plate of inflammation, bad for digestion, bad for the heart, bad for the blood, bad for the skin, just B.A.D. Knowing how awful deep-fried foods are is a little bit of a curse because it’s hard for me to enjoy them, even in moderation. But I wanted to make real, authentic falafel that I would un-authetically bake. So naturally I went on Youtube to learn how to make them. Sure there are plenty of blogs with falafel recipes, but a lot of these recipes are not the real deal. For the real deal, I watched falafel-making videos from Israel and I learned everything I needed to know and then some!
For example, falafel are made with raw, soaked chickpeas, not canned. The texture is a bit crumbly, not a mashed potato patty. There are no eggs in falafel. And after watching a few videos of expert falafel-makers, I really wished I had a meat grinder (which is what most of them use) to process the all the ingredients into the perfect texture. But my food processor was good enough and the next day (because I let my chickpeas soak 24 hours), we enjoyed very delicious, healthy baked falafel. And although falafel has a bit of oiliness from frying, I didn’t even notice the absence of oil since I smothered the patties with a delicious tahini sauce.
My son, who is known to be a tad picky, devours anywhere from 6-10 falafel at dinner when I make them. For sure he loves to eat them in pita, especially if the pita is homemade and warm from the oven (I used this Martha Stewart Living recipe with success.) But he (and we) is just as happy wrapping a few falafel in a big lettuce leaf with some sauce. Falafel make the perfect Meatless Monday dinner since they contain lots of protein from the chickpeas and the tahini sauce. You can also make them spicier with an extra pinch of cayenne. If I know I’m going to have a crazy afternoon, I’ll make the sauce and shape the falafel in the morning and bake them at the end of the day for a really easy dinner. Add some lettuce and tomatoes for a simple dinner or go the extra mile with pickled vegetables, pita, and some grilled eggplant.
Even though I am really against deep frying and I had great results baking these, you can certainly “sauté” these falafel in a skillet with some olive oil until golden and crisp on both sides. It is a much faster way to cook these and they will have a little bit more of an authentic greasiness. But the baked version does it for me just fine. I hope you’ll give them a try!
- 1 ¾ cup dried chickpeas (do NOT use canned chickpeas)
- 2 medium cloves garlic
- 1 cup chopped onion (about 1 small onion)
- 2 teaspoons ground cumin
- 1 teaspoon ground coriander
- pinch cayenne
- 1 ¾ teaspoons sea salt
- ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- 1 Tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
- ¾ cup chopped parsley (or mix with chopped cilantro)
- ¼ cup whole wheat pastry flour or GF flour blend or chickpea flour
- unrefined cold pressed extra-virgin olive oil for brushing the pan and the falafel
- Sauce:
- ½ cup tahini
- ⅓ cup – ½ cup warm water to achieve right consistency and depending on the bitterness of the tahini
- 1 medium garlic clove, minced
- ½ teaspoon sea salt or to taste
- 1 Tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
- Put dried chickpeas in a bowl and cover with water by a few inches. Soak 12-24 hours, making sure chickpeas stay completely submerged in water the entire time.
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line a baking sheet with unbleached parchment paper and grease the paper with olive oil.
- Drain the chickpeas, and add to a food processor with garlic, onion, spices, salt and pepper, baking soda, lemon juice, parsley and flour. (Use a meat grinder if you have one.) Pulse the mixture, scraping down the sides as necessary, until it looks like couscous. The mixture will be quite crumbly.
- Form the mixture into about 20 balls, 1 ½ inches each. Press down on the tops to flatten them into thick patties. You can add a little extra flour if they are not holding together. Place them on the prepared baking sheet. Brush the tops with oil.
- Bake for 15 minutes on each side or until golden. You can fry them in oil, as well (not as healthy.)
- Blend all the sauce ingredients in a blender adjusting water to achieve right consistency. You want a thin sauce.
- Serve falafel with tahini sauce in a pita or lettuce leaves. Chopped tomato and cucumber salad is a nice accompaniment.
Brussels sprout hash with capers, lemon and hazelnuts recipe
There are things I have to make for Thanksgiving and things I want to make for Thanksgiving. Even though I don’t eat turkey, everyone else that shows up does, so that’s non-negotiable. As are stuffing and mashed potatoes. Thank heavens for Pinterest boards. So even if I don’t get to indulge my fantasy of an all-veggie, every-color-of-the-rainbow-Thanksgiving, I can look at it on my computer screen.
I might be alone here, but I actually think turkey is totally boring, and the veggie side dishes are where all the fun happens. I like color, texture and freshness! This Brussels sprout hash is my idea of a good time on Thanksgiving. It’s green, bright, a little crunchy and a little acidic. Compared to turkey, this hash is a party!
Unlike some Thanksgiving side dishes (sweet potato casserole,) this Brussels sprout hash is no one-hit wonder. It is incredibly complementary with turkey and mashed potatoes, but it is equally delicious mixed with whole grain pasta (my favorite) or as a side to fish or chicken. This Brussels sprout dish has become one of my favorite comfort foods and my kids actually like it, too! Plus, it’s incredibly easy and fast to fix up. Not that I am all that concerned with nutrition on Thanksgiving, this is also a pretty healthful dish.
The difficult part of Thanksgiving menu-planning for me is how to include Brussels sprouts on the menu. I have so many favorite recipes that all work beautifully, it’s difficult to choose! Although it’s a tad more work than just cutting them in half, I love the texture of the sprouts when they are cut thinly like this. If you have a food processor with a slicing blade, you can prep this in seconds. Here’s how I would tackle this for Thanksgiving:
Day before:
- slice the sprouts and refrigerate in a covered container or zippered bag
- squeeze the lemon juice and refrigerate
- toast the hazelnuts, rub with a towel to remove skins and chop. Keep in a covered container at room temp.
Day of Thanksgiving:
Cook sprouts right before serving dinner.
Look out for my Thursday posts to help you get ahead and be organized for Thanksgiving!
- ½ cup hazelnuts (if you can get them already skinned, skip step 1)
- 3 Tablespoons unrefined, cold pressed, extra virgin olive oil or coconut oil
- 1 Tablespoon unsalted butter (or just use more oil)
- ¼ cup capers, well drained
- 1 pound Brussels sprouts, washed and trimmed, and shredded*
- the juice of 1 lemon, about 2 ½ Tablespoons
- Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
- Preheat the oven to 350°. In a pie plate or baking sheet, toast the hazelnuts until the skins blister, about 15 minutes. Transfer the nuts to a clean kitchen towel and let cool, then rub to remove the skins. If you don’t mind hazelnut skins, you don’t need to remove them. Coarsely chop the nuts.
- In a large heavy skillet, heat the olive oil and butter over medium heat. When the oil is hot, but not smoking, add the capers (be careful since they will probably splatter!) Sauté the capers for about one minute, or until they start opening like little flowerbuds.
- Add the Brussels sprouts and hazelnuts to the pan and stir to coat with the oil and caper mixture. Pour in the lemon juice and cook, stirring frequently, for about 5 minutes or until the sprouts are tender but still a little crisp.
- Remove from the heat and add salt and pepper to taste. Serve immediately.
You can also add some cooked, diced bacon and/or some fried sage leaves.
Mexican-style Sauteed Greens Recipe
You know what never happens? I never make at home for dinner something that I am currently teaching in one of my classes. Why? Because I normally eat it several times a week and I am not super motivated to eat it any more than that, no matter how good it is! This is even more true towards the end of the month after I have taught the same recipes a dozen or more times.
Well, never say never because I have been teaching this Mexican-style sautéed greens recipe all month and I made it for dinner Monday night. Why? Because there is never any left after my class! Everyone has just gone crazy for this recipe and finished every last morsel before I had my chance. I look forward to these slightly spicy, tart greens and then….none for me.
I am really obsessed with Mexican food. I love the bright, fresh, punchy flavors. And the ingredients are easy to come by in Southern California. I do find it hard, though, to come up with a wide variety of vegetable side dishes to complement whatever Mexican main dish I am making. I have a lot of salads in my repertoire. If you haven’t tried my Mexican Chopped Salad or my Avocado, Jicama and Mango Salad or the Cilantro Lime Slaw, those are just fabulous and deliver a lot of nutrition at the same time.
But when I stumbled up this recipe for Quelites, I knew I found a new favorite Mexican side dish. Quelites actually refer to a type of weed, also known as lamb’s quarters, but in the above mentioned recipe, mustard greens are used. Mustard greens are a tad bitter for my husband and Mr. Picky, so I tried this recipe with lots of combinations of milder greens, like spinach, baby kale and chard, as well as dinosaur kale. Love, love, love, love, LOVE!
What I like best about this recipe is how the acidity from the lemon juice and the sweetness from the tomatoes tone down any bitterness from the greens (if you’re using mature kale, for example.) I don’t think this recipe is very hot, even with an entire jalapeño, although I do remove the seeds, which is where the heat is more concentrated. But it’s hot enough for my heat-averse guys. I just add a few shakes of hot sauce to my greens and I’m happy.
I have eaten these Mexican-style greens with rice and beans (so simple and so good!), as well as chicken enchiladas and tacos. If you follow me on Instagram or Facebook, you saw that I made them for dinner this week with a veggie paella (Spanish, not Mexican, but so what) and then the next day with scrambled eggs and a corn tortilla. Whatever you’re making for Cinco de Mayo, this will be the perfect, healthful side!
- 1 Tablespoon unrefined, cold-pressed, extra-virgin olive oil
- ½ onion, finely diced
- 1 jalapeno, thinly sliced (remove seeds to make it milder)
- 1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
- 1 pound kale, stems removed and leaves cut into strips or 10 ounces baby greens such as baby kale, Swiss chard and spinach
- Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
- 1 Tablespoon fresh lemon juice
- In a large sauté pan, heat the oil over medium heat. Add the onion and jalapeno and cook until onion is tender and translucent, about 3 minutes.
- Add tomatoes and cook for another 2 minutes, or until tomatoes just start to lose their shape.
- Add the greens and a sprinkle of sea salt and black pepper. Cook, stirring frequently, until greens are wilted and just tender. Sturdier greens will take longer than baby greens.
- Pour lemon juice on top and taste for seasoning. Serve immediately.
Roasted Vegetable Buddha Bowl with Lemon-Tahini Dressing Recipe
We all have those recipes we love but don’t make very often (for me it’s chicken pot pie and spanakopita.) And then there are the recipes you rely on when you don’t want to think about what to make. Those are your go-to, no-fail, everyone-loves-this recipes. I wish I had an endless supply of those. But I am going to share one of my-go’s with you today! This roasted veggie buddha bowl is just that. I swear I could eat this every day. I taught this recipe in my classes in January and I actually did eat it every day and I never got tired of it.
A Buddha bowl is really just a simple combination of (usually) lightly steamed vegetables on top of a gluten-free grain, like brown rice, and often topped with a sauce or dressing of sorts. It is a very clean and healthful meal, but very satisfying. Personally, I prefer all my meals in a bowl. I love when all my food gets combined and every bite has a little bit of everything. It’s Mr. Picky’s worst nightmare.
A Buddha bowl is flexible. Clean out of the vegetable crisper and use what you’ve got. Not in the mood for rice? Use quinoa or millet. Soy or peanut-based sauces are very popular on Buddha bowls, but I am kind of obsessed with my lemon-tahini dressing from this salad, so I adapted that for this recipe. And even though I said a Buddha bowl is usually made with steamed vegetables, who says you can’t roast them? Like with a little coconut oil until the edges are just a bit crispy. Heaven!
I make dinner for my family every night (and if you follow me on Instagram or Facebook, you would know exactly what that looks like!) Even though I am a big proponent of one meal for all, there always those days I ate a late lunch after a class and I’m not feeling like the roast chicken and potatoes I am making for dinner that night. This Buddha bowl is my go-to on nights like that. I’ll make a big pan of roasted veggies for all of us and then whip up this dressing and a pot of steamed quinoa and voila! I have something a little lighter and I’m a happy camper. That’s not to say that my husband and my kids don’t like Buddha bowls. They all really do, especially my girls. As you would imagine, Mr. Picky doesn’t exactly eat his in a bowl. Rice in one separate, distinct area on a plate, roasted veg in another and hold the dressing, please. No problem, dude.
If you decide to make this dressing for your Buddha bowl, you really have a nice vegetarian meal no matter what grain you use since tahini is basically just sesame paste. Sesame seeds are high in protein, good fats and did you know, calcium? Just good to know if you’re looking for non-dairy sources of calcium. And if you make this with broccoli and kale, you have a very calcium-rich meal. I also like to sprinkle everything my Buddha bowl with gomasio, a macrobiotic condiment which is just a mixture of sesame seeds and sea salt. The one I use by Eden Organic also has seaweed in it. If you have all the other ingredients, but not the gomasio, make this anyway — you will love it and you will feel awesome after eating it. Have a lovely weekend!
- Dressing (makes about 2 Tablespoons/serving):
- 3 Tablespoons fresh lemon juice, about 1 small lemon
- 2 small cloves of garlic, grated or minced or just smash the cloves if you don't actually want to eat the garlic, but still have a subtle garlic flavor
- ¼ cup raw tahini (roasted tahini is fine, but raw is a little milder)
- 3-4 Tablespoons room temperature or warm water
- ¼ cup unrefined, cold-pressed, extra-virgin olive oil
- ¾ teaspoon sea salt + more to taste
- pinch of cayenne (optional)
- 8-10 cups mixed vegetables such as 1 head of broccoli, cut into bite-sized florets and stems, trimmed and chopped AND 1 head cauliflower, cut into bite-sized florets*
- 2 Tablespoons melted unrefined coconut oil or unrefined olive oil
- 3-4 large leaves of kale, washed, dried, stems removed
- Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
- Steamed brown rice, millet or quinoa for serving (optional)
- Plain or seaweed gomasio for sprinkling on top (optional)
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Line a large baking sheet with unbleached parchment paper.
- Make the dressing (or you can make while the vegetables are roasting): in a small bowl, whisk together the lemon juice, garlic, tahini, water, olive oil, salt and cayenne until well blended. Just use the amount of water you need to get the consistency you want.
- In a large bowl, toss the broccoli and cauliflower with the coconut oil. Don’t wash the bowl yet. Place the broccoli and cauliflower in one layer on the prepared baking sheet. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Roast for about 20-30 minutes, or until tender and golden in spots. I like to turn the vegetables after about 15 minutes.
- Take the kale leaves and rub them around the bowl with any remaining coconut oil until lightly coated. Tear until large pieces and sprinkle with a pinch of salt and pepper. Place on top of the broccoli and cauliflower in the oven and roast until the kale is just crispy, about 5-10 minutes.
- If you’d like to eat this as a “bowl,” place a scoop of rice/millet/quinoa in a bowl and top with the vegetables. Spoon some sauce over everything and sprinkle with gomasio, if desired.
Roasted fingerling potatoes with gremolata recipe
I hope you all had a merry Christmas! We’ve had such an amazing few days with my family in New York. Christmas Eve is always such a special night and this year was no exception, with 94 of us at my aunt’s house for dinner. NINETY-FOUR. And four ladies announcing they are expecting so we’ll be 98 next year? My aunt is an absolute genius to be able to orchestrate a sit-down pot-luck for so many. I swear she could run a small country. Heck, she could probably run THIS country! We were in four different rooms eating 7 or 8 different types of fish (and a few veggies for good measure.) Although it’s really not about the food for me, instead my favorite moment of the evening is listening to all the little ones sing around the Christmas tree watching the staircase in hopes that Santa makes an appearance, which he always does. Then everyone screams and the flash bulbs go off as if there were paparazzi in the house. It never gets old for me.
Christmas Day is always the perfect balance to the evening before. It’s quieter, just 17 of us at my parents’ house and my mom is in charge. We always start the meal with tortellini in chicken broth, which my kids love. Then she makes a beef tenderloin with a red wine sauce, stuffed mushrooms, green beans with shallots and a green salad. This year I was hoping to add these amazing potatoes to the menu. I made them for Jenni Kayne’s holiday cooking class a few weeks ago and I knew they would be perfect with my mom’s menu. They would actually be perfect with almost any menu! But I’ll admit, I bailed at the last minute, thinking we had plenty of food already, I was a little tired from having gone to bed at 2:00 in the morning, and no one would care if we had or didn’t have potatoes on Christmas. Really, everyone looks forward to all the cookies after dinner anyway.
Alas, I still would love to share this recipe with you because I know you will love it and I know you will find a place for it in one of your upcoming weeknight dinners or even for something as special as New Year’s Eve. I love crispy, roasted potatoes plain and simple, but these have an extra umph from the gremolata. Gremolata is an Italian garnish traditionally made with finely chopped fresh parsley, raw garlic and grated lemon zest. I’ve had it before on osso buco, roasted vegetables and even pasta. It’s just bursting with flavor and freshness and makes ordinary potatoes out of this world. I love it! For this version of gremolata, I added a little orange zest, crushed red peppers, and fresh mint and thyme, all of which I adore with potatoes. I also made the gremolata once with a little fresh rosemary instead of the thyme and dropped the chili flakes just because — also delicious!
Try and find these teeny fingerling potatoes if you can. They are so creamy and super easy to use since you just just have to wash and dry them, no peeling, no chopping. BUT, if your market only offers Yukon Gold or red skinned potatoes, go for it. They’ll still be delicious.
I am hoping you are finding time to rest and restore your energy this week. Acting like a superhero is totally overrated and people who look like they do it all don’t, and if they do, they’re exhausted. Being a good parent or a good host/hostess or a good cook is good enough. Sounds like a good new year’s resolution for me for 2014!
- 1 Tablespoon grated lemon zest (about 2 lemons)
- 1 teaspoon grated orange zest (about half an orange)
- ⅓ cup fresh parsley leaves and tender stems, finely chopped
- 2 heaping Tablespoons fresh mint leaves, finely chopped
- 2 teaspoons fresh thyme leaves, finely chopped
- 1 large clove of garlic, minced or grated
- a pinch of red pepper flakes
- 2 pounds small fingerling potatoes, washed, dried and halved (leave whole if they are only an inch or so long)
- 3 Tablespoons unrefined olive oil, divided
- Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
- Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Line a large baking sheet with unbleached parchment paper.
- Make the gremolata: in a small bowl mix together the zests, herbs, garlic and red pepper flakes. Set aside.
- Place the potatoes on the prepared baking sheet and toss with 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Spread the potatoes in an even layer and sprinkle with ¾ teaspoon of sea salt and black pepper to taste. Place in the oven for 35 minutes.
- After 35 minutes, remove the potatoes from the oven and add another tablespoon of olive oil and half the gremolata. Toss until well combined. Place back in the oven for another 10 minutes or until potatoes are tender and golden.
- Remove from the oven and transfer to a serving bowl. Toss with the remaining gremolata and taste for seasoning. Sprinkle with an extra pinch of salt and pepper, if desired. Serve warm or at room temperature.