Chicken Tacos

When I make a roast chicken, I usually get 4-5 meals out of it. Chicken tacos are great- I usually have a bell pepper and an onion laying around, and sometimes an avocado...

I slice a bell pepper and an onion and sautee them in a very hot cast iron skillet, to get that little bit of char like they were grilled. It also makes that fun sizzling, like those fajita platters at chain restaurants (Fun fact! fajita means skirt steak, sooo no such thing as chicken fajitas). Then I add some shredded leftover chicken, and lots of cumin, chili powder and maybe cayenne. I mashed up an avocado with some lime juice, spread that on corn tortillas, topped it with some cilantro, and piled the chicken- pepper- onion stuff on top. And then I took a picture, because it looked great.

Red Lentil Tomato Soup

I make this soups about 5 times a year. It's from Fine Cooking, and I actually follow the recipe when I make this. It's awesome because you can usually make it without going to the store. At least, if you usually have lentils, canned tomatoes, chicken broth, carrots and celery at home, which I do. It's just enough cooking to make you feel like you did something but it's one of the easiest soups ever, just dice up some onion, carrot and celery, and a little ginger... then spices, lentils, tomatoes and broth. I like to load it up with as much curry as possible, but since it's such a good lunch-soup, I'm trying to hold back a little. My coworkers have made it clear they don't appreciate the lunchroom smelling like curry.

I have this salad I make all the time that reminds me of the Chop't salads in DC. It's so tasty and so healthy and it's gorgeous.

Dressing- equal parts lime juice and olive oil, mnced garlic, cumin, and salt

1 cup to 1 1/2 cups diced tomoto, or halved cherry tomatoes

1/2 can black beans, rinsed

1/2 cup corn

orange bell pepper, grilled or broiled, roughly diced

half an avocado, diced

all of the cilantro

half a head of romaine, chopped

It doesn't need much dressing at all, with the avocado in there. It's so pretty, with the black beans, yellow corn, bright red tomato, orange bell pepper. It can't be a red or yellow pepper- you already have red tomatoes and yellow corn. IT HAS TO BE ORANGE, OK. Also, throw some salt and maybe some hot sauce in when you toss it all together. I always seem to foget this part. This is one of those dinners to eat when you're really hungry... because it's so big and filling and delightful but you feel so good after you eat it, because it's nutritionally perfect.

Lima Bean Hummus

This one time, I made an edamame hummus, I thought it would be really cool with crudites as an hors doeuvre for an Asian dinner. And it was pretty bad. It had tofu.... it looked pretty at least.

Lima bean hummus, on the other hand, turned out great. I just did garlic, cooked lima beans, olive oil and lemon and cumin with mint. It was so creamy and bright tasting, and it was gorgeous.

Keftedes

Ooh these are good. I mean, they're fried, but still. There's so much zucchini right now, and I really can't get on board with zucchini bread and shit like that. I've always wanted to try these but they sounded like a lot of work... grate the zucchini, salt and press out the water, make patties and fry 'em up. But it was really easy, not all that greasy. Totally making these again. Topped with a quick version of tzatziki, Greek yogurt and mint.

So, a pound and a half of zucchini, grated and salted with the water pressed out, diced onion, 1 tsp baking powder and enough flour to pull it together. Make little flat patties, fried in not even that much olive oil (like, less than a 1/4 cup). Making these again soon!

Corn Chowder

Wow. This made my weekend. I usually have a pretty strict No Soup in the Summer policy, so I haven't made a lot of soups with summer veggies. But it's all rainy out, and I didn't feel like making another saute or succotash.

This was crazy easy- I cut the corn off 3 years of corn (bi color, so pretty!), I diced up some prosciutto (the little nubs they sell for cheap, perfect for this), and sauteed that with scallions whites in a little olive oil. Added in the corn, one cob, and little thyme and a can of chicken broth. Simmered for a while (I honestly don't know how long, I'm not good at times and measurements and stuff) and pureed it for a bit with an immersion blender. I went to taste it, thinking, hm I wonder if this will be any good, and I was Blown. Away.

I love how so many veggies can make things creamy- corn, eggplant, lima beans. I want to make this for other people so I can say "No really! There's no cream in it!" The tastiness:effort ratio on this stuff is off the charts.

Pineapple-Poblano Salsa

Whenever possible, I will work into conversation how much I love mango salsa. Mangos in general, really. I always do the same mango, jalapeno, bell pepper, red onion, cilantro and lime juice.

So I had this pineapple sitting around, looking awesome, but it really needed to be dealt with. I also had these poblanos... This guy at work brought them in from his garden, and insisted they were Anaheims. They were clearly not.

Those are poblanos. They tasted like poblanos, too. Poblanos are great grilled/ roasted, like you would do with a bell pepper. My mom makes this quesadilla with roasted poblanos and mozzarella and Serano ham. To clarify, she's never made this for me, she just makes it for herself and then calls me and tells me about it, like once a week.

So I've had roasted poblanos on my mind, and I had that very nearly overripe pineapple. I grilled the peppers on this neat little stovetop grill I just got, diced them up with the pineapple, some cilantro, scallion, and lime juice. I might need to make this more often, it's a nice switch from mango. The almost caramel-y sweetness of the pineapple works with the smokey poblano. I made some chili-rubbed chicken to go with it. (Yeah, I made a protein to go with the topping, not the other way around.)

Salmon Burgers

I'm obsessed with these salmon burgers. Salmon's obviously really great for you. I don't think I've ever read a fitness magazine that didn't mention salmon (and I read that crap a lot). I really like salmon, everyone else seems to, too. But I feel like I do the same thing with it- pan sear it or bake it in the oven, with a green vegetable. It kind of bores the hell out of me. I've done a recipe where you wrap the salmon fillet in rice paper and fry it, I did one where it's poached in a tarragon cream sauce... and like most fish it kind of needs to be fresh to be good. I like the idea of salmon burgers a lot and I was thrilled to find that they can be frozen and thawed without really compromising the quality of the fish.

So these are a pretty awesome weeknight dinner- you can pull some frozen burgers out of the freezer, thaw them quickly, and pan-sear them and they're so, so tasty. I got a big side of salmon at BJ's yesterday (just over 2 lbs) and made salmon burgers today. They're all individually wrapped in my freezer waiting to be devoured later in the week.

2 lbs salmon
1 cup fresh breadcrumbs
2 cups mayonnaise
4 cloves garlic
1/2- 2/3 cups chopped chives
1/4 cup mustard
2 Tbs lemon juice
salt and pepper
1/4 tsp cayenne

I chopped the salmon the a food processor, in 3 batches, 5-8 pulses per batch. I wouldn't do it all at once- part of it would get destroyed while the top bits stayed in big chunks. Mixed the mayonnaise with the garlic (grated on the microplane) and the rest of the ingredients. It seems like a ton of mayonnaise- it is. You won't need it all. I combined the chopped up salmon, breadcrumbs, and a scant 1 cup of the mayonnaise mixture and chilled it. I made what turned out to be 20 slider-sized burgers. I lined them up on cutting boards (baking sheets work too) and froze them. I pulled them out and individually wrapped them in plastic and put the in bags. (The burgers are a little sticky. Trying to wrap them in plastic before freezing just gets gross.)

So, now you have 20 frozen salmon sliders and lots of chive mayonnaise to use as a condiment. (The mayonnaise is good on a lot of stuff so having more than you need is nice.) Since I couldn't find slider rolls, I got whole wheat dinner rolls and sliced them and froze them. My freezer's pretty full right now, not gonna lie. Especially since the back is full of frozen chicken I'm not eating right now. Also! one dinner roll makes just about 1 cup of breadcrumbs. So that worked out nicely.

To cook- thaw and pan-cook in a little oil, 4-5 minutes per side. One mini burger is about 140 calories. 2 cooked burgers on toasted rolls with 1 Tbs of mayo on each is about 750 calories. They're kind of decadent. And awesome.

Salad with White Anchovies

I’ve been seeing these white anchovies on a lot of restaurant menus recently and I’m kind of obsessed with them. They’re very different from the grey pungent kind that come in a jar (although I am a huge fan of those, too, in Caesar salads or pastas). These are about 5 inches long, and meatier and fresh-tasting. I found some last weekend in an Italian market and I was thrilled. I was thinking these were one of those things only restaurants and people who lived in Manhattan or Italy could get. They were probably overpriced but a lot cheaper than a restaurant. I like to rationalize expensive ingredients or bottles of wine by comparing to the 300% markup that a restaurant would charge, kind of like buying clothes on sale.

So I had them on a salad based on a recipe I found from Bon Appetit with fennel and red onion. The fennel is a great choice with the anchovies. It compliments most seafood, but I’m not sure I would have come up with this pairing on my own. I’ve been eating fennel a lot this winter- as part of the mire poix of a soup , or cut into wedges and roasted, but I haven’t had it raw in a while. The thing about fennel is if you’re going to eat it raw, it needs to be sliced really thin (I think that applies to onion was well).

First I sliced the onion really thin. Like, as thin as I could get it. I tossed that with 1 Tbs each of red wine and sherry vinegar (mainly because I couldn’t decide which to use). I pretty much always do this with onions when they’re going to be eaten raw; I think it takes the edge off and seems to prevent that raw-onion-mouth thing you get after eating them. I left the onions to pickle in the vinegars while I watched the first half of Glee and opened wine.

I mixed the onion-vinegar mixture with 2 Tbs of olive oil and salt and pepper, and added the fennel to that, and then tossed it all with 5 oz (the whole box) of arugula. I laid the anchovies on top and gave it another few grinds of black pepper, most for aesthetic reasons. Black pepper on white fish just looks good.

This would probably be salad for two normal people, but I ate both. One serving (half the recipe) is about 220-250 calories. The picture is from Bon Appetit, mine had a lot more arugula but just as pretty!

½ package of white anchovies, drained on paper towels

½ red onion, sliced paper-thin

1 small fennel bulb, halved, cored, and sliced thin (but not as thin as the onion)

2 Tbs vinegar (red wine, sherry... I wouldn’t do balsamic though)

2 Tbs good olive oil

Salt and pepper

Vegan Lent

Today, I have officially decided to give up meat for Lent. I’m not the slightest bit religious, but I figure Lent is as good a time to try giving something up as January 1^st is to make a resolution. I don’t eat a lot of meat anyway, so this won’t be as hard as it sounds. I’m always smugly telling people that I could totally be a vegetarian because I don’t eat meat very much and I love vegetables so much you guys and did you know eating a steak has the same carbon footprint as driving a Hummer all day? and then I pat myself on the back for thinking about doing something good for the environment. But then I still end up eating some chicken wings because everyone else is and it would be rude not to, or adding sausage to a soup “for flavor”.

I’m also giving up eggs and all dairy (milk, cheese, yogurt, butter). I’m keeping fish, though. This is because I really love fish, fish is really good for you, we should all eat more fish, the environmental impact of eating fish is not nearly as bad as eating meat, etc… I recognize it seems arbitrary, to go vegan except for fish, but I’m doing it anyway. Also, eating fish during Lent is like, a thing.

(I’m not giving up honey, though. Not because I love it too much to bear putting sugar in my tea for a few weeks or anything. I just can’t really accept the notion that it’s non-vegan. I mean, come on. Bees!)

So I intend to blog my meatless-Lent-escapades. (Lentscapades? No. Sorry.) I won’t be eating fish every night, mostly because I am not that organized. There will be a lot of beans and lentils and maybe some tofu. And I have no intention of ever buying some sort of meat imitation food.