Posts Tagged ‘vegetables’

Fennel is one of those odd, underused vegetables in an everyday kitchen. It looks like celery, tastes like black licorice, and changes like a chameleon depending on how it’s cooked. But it’s a wonderfully versatile and healthy thing to work with – you just have to give it some time and love.

Incredibly high in vitamin C and fiber, fennel can be served crunchy raw, boiled, braised, baked, and everything in between. The cool thing is, once you bake it, the flavor can change dramatically from pungent and bitter, to sweet and aromatic. If you’re one of the many out there who dislikes its natural black licorice flavor, blanching and baking it is your road to fennel happiness, which you can follow below.

I saw this side dish of baked fennel with parmesan in the latest issue of Everyday Food, and immediately decided to make it. As I wandered around my grocery store trying to come up with something to serve it with, the idea of fennel = fennel seeds = sausage popped into my head. Since Italian sausage traditionally has fennel seeds in it, why not take a plain or non-Italian chicken sausage and bake it with this yummy fennel side dish to get that flavor profile, but in a much more elegant, muted way? Tender and velvety fennel with the rich and robust sausage, the dish is all-season friendly. Plus, the whole thing comes together in under 45 minutes, using only 2 pans, and could easily be served for a hearty lunch or light dinner.

Words cannot describe how much I love this stuff.

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Back in August I was feeling a little on the sniffly, sore-throat, swollen-gland side, so naturally I wanted some soothing comfort food. I emailed my mom asking for her chicken noodle soup recipe I loved growing up, expecting it to be an easy, throw-together kind of recipe.

Oh how wrong I was.

I had no idea my mom’s (well, grandma’s) recipe entailed making your own stock, cooling it overnight, cooking more vegetables the next day, cooking the egg noodles, etc. For an average weekend this would be no big deal, but the idea of doing all that work feverish and sick was just a big no. So the email sat dormant, until I realized I would be cooking my favorite roast chicken and thus have the carcass to make stock (bing!). Since I usually eat a leg and a little breast when I roast a whole chicken, and then do whatever with the leftovers, it felt like the perfect opportunity to eat a bit of roast chicken, and then use the rest of the delicious meat (plus the carcass) to make the ultimate chicken noodle soup.

Some people would call the list of ingredients and recipe pretty pedestrian – but as the saying goes, simplicity is the sign of perfection. The flavor of the stock is superb, and cooking the vegetables separately the next day really adds a nice layer. Although my mom has always served egg noodles with her soup, you can really use any short pasta. Either way, this dish is simple, but time consuming – something I find in most soups I love.

Stock veg!

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This is a fitting bookend for the healthy spinach egg bake with the chocolate stout cupcakes in between. Going back and forth can be torture, but life is all about balance and like I say, it’s important to indulge on a diet (pretty regularly, in my opinion) but it’s also important to either stay on the horse or hop right back on the next day. So if you’ve been indulging in cupcakes or avoiding the gym due to this frigid (horrible) weather, try this and you’ll feel a little better.

I got this idea when I started to use prepared tzatziki sauce like crazy last year. In my daily diet, I try to be as clever as possible to find substitutions for fatty, awesome ingredients and this is one of my favorite finds. Tzatziki became my #1 replacement for mayonnaise on sandwiches, ranch dip for raw veggies, bases for creamy salad dressings, etc, mostly because it has very little fat thanks to Greek yogurt, and only has 35 calories per 2 tablespoons.

So when I got a hankering for thick, indulgent, creamy chicken salad last summer, a lightbulb went off and I simply used tzatziki with a dab of low-fat sour cream instead of awesome fatty mayo. In comparison, my combo has 80 calories while 5 tablespoons of full-fat mayo has 500. And low-fat has 250. Ha! Beat that! The other ingredients in my chicken salad are pretty classic. I love sweet grapes and crunchy celery and that’s pretty much it. I’m not a huge fan of nuts in my salad, but feel free to add them. Don’t forget the average ½ cup of nuts has almost 400 calories  – so don’t toss them in with a heavy hand!

Seedless and sliced.

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Okay, okay, I’ll share something healthy. I had a little banter with my friend Cara today about how we tout eating sweets and treats while everyone is tweeting their work-outs, but truthfully, I like to help! I eat healthy most of the time, and this recipe utilizes a few of my favorite substitutes and tricks to make something filling, calorie and fat-friendly, and most importantly – delicious!

You could call this a crustless quiche or frittata or whatever you like, but since the ratio of veggies to eggs is so tilted, I just call it a spinach egg bake. I love throwing dishes like this together using whatever you have in the fridge, and although I make this version for one, you can easily multiply it and bake it in a bigger dish to feed you plus a few others. Just go with the “omelet” method – cook all the filling ingredients before tossing them into the eggs, but top the entire thing with cheese instead of stirring it in.

And for those counting calories – you get the entire bake here for about 375 calories (not kidding!) which I’ve broken down in the recipe below. So enjoy (guilt-free) and celebrate the new you en route!

Eating for one can still be a lovely setting.

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As I type this, I keep hearing “The Final Countdown” by Europe in my head, which thanks to Arrested Development, plays mentally whenever something epic is happening in my life.

Thanksgiving is like the Superbowl of any home cook. We lay it all on the line. We  usually cook for more than we’re used to. A wider array of palates. Kids are involved. Adults are involved. You have to write timelines. Utilize every inch of kitchen space. Work together.  It’s like a marathon of cooking and I go at it headfirst.

This Thanksgiving was the same, yet different. The past few years I’ve been responsible for the turkey and a few sides, collaborating and cooking with my mom. But this time around my sister DeAnna and I (the cooks of the family) took the reins, cooking for our family, plus her in-laws, at her house. We divvied up dishes and responsibilities, and I took on the stuffing because frankly, I could just have that for Thanksgiving and be happy.

I’ve had this recipe saved for over 2 years, just waiting for the chance to make it. I love and adore my mom’s stuffing, but it’s very traditional and I’ve been dying to make something a little different. I knew this could be it – just a slight twist on the classic flavors with a few interesting additions. You’ve got bread and celery and stock, but you’ve also got leeks (my addition), bacon, and cashews. When I saw this on Smitten Kitchen I loved it for it’s onion-receptacle (which I ended up nixing for its fussiness), but really wanted to pursue it for its flavor profiles. And thankfully, I did. The cashews add such an awesome salty, layered flavor and texture, and seriously, leeks and bacon have never been bad before, and they’re definitely not bad here.

I also included the recipe for pink fluff, a Jones family tradition we have both on Thanksgiving and Christmas. It’s like white trash Bavarian Strawberry Cream with Jell-O and Cool Whip instead of gelatin and cream – a recipe from my mom’s step-dad we all indulge in every year.

So Happy Thanksgiving to all, enjoy the (enormous) amount of photos below and the holiday!