Posts Tagged ‘vegetarian’
hasselback potatoes
Ahh, the baked potato. The dinner of so many cheap singles out there (yours truly included).
As much as I’d love to be showing this gorgeous spud next to an equally delicious and expensive strip steak, I’m just serving it up on its own since the budget is a wee bit tight lately. I’ve seen this method of baking potatoes all over the past year or so and it really has become my favorite way to eat a potato for dinner, as sad as that may sound. You still get that fluffy texture of a baked potato on the bottom but the wonderful chip-like crispy texture on the top. It’s like the mullet of baked potatoes (and we all know mullets are awesome, so…)
peanut butter chili
This should really be called “Pantry Chili with Peanut Butter” since that’s where it all started. Since payday fell on a Monday this past week and I had already exhausted my food budget, I had to be clever when it came to cooking over the weekend. I opened up my pantry and stood there, for a solid 10 minutes, trying to figure out what I could make. And then it all just came together: lots of half-opened bags of dried beans, canned tomatoes, broth, onion and garlic under the sink, and a jar of peanut butter on my counter (maybe open… with a spoon sticking out of it…).
I’ve heard of people using peanut butter in their chili before to give it a special aromatic, underlying flavor and I was always intrigued since peanut butter is my personal drug of choice. So I found a peanut butter chili recipe and converted it to be slow-cooker friendly and changed things up to use dried beans and work around the types of tomatoes and other ingredients I had on hand. I specifically added the peanut butter at the very end so the flavor would really pop and man does it ever. It’s reminiscent of African peanut stew almost. This is a really hearty chili, perfect for a Superbowl party since it fills you up but is also vegetarian-friendly (and vegan friendly if you don’t use the dairy and consider PB vegan) so you can feed the whole crowd with no worries.
butternut squash and kale baked risotto
So apparently I have a kale and/or butternut squash addiction right now. Let’s just chalk it up to winter leaving me with little to work with.
I saw this recipe for Martha’s version of baked risotto in an Everyday Food recently and was of course, intrigued. I love love love Ina’s version so much so I figured giving another spin on it a try would be fun. But of course since I’m me I basically took the ingredients from Martha’s and completely changed the method so it would result in what I imagined to be a much more creamy, well, risotto texture. A lot of the online reviews of Martha’s said the result was like baked rice with little moisture so I added more stock, changed the order of when you put it in, etc. The only thing I wish I would have done different is cut the squash much larger – mine sort of dissolved as I stirred up the rice after I pulled it out of the oven which gave a fantastic texture and flavor, but I missed the big hunks I was hoping for.
Still! This is another easy, delicious dish that can feed an army and comes together in about 45 minutes. Score!
poached eggs in spicy tomato sauce
…or as I like to call it “The dinner I throw together exhausted after driving home and unpacking post-Christmas.”
This is one of those gloriously easy, delicious, and hideous dinners you can throw together in 10 minutes and it is just so damn tasty. Just make a quick spicy tomato sauce, crack a few eggs into it, pop the lid on, and poach away. If you’re really ambitious you can toast some nice bread and rub a few garlic cloves on it to ensure extra awesomeness.
warm dijon lentils
I know – it’s not going to win any beauty contests. But trust me, it’s delicious.
I’m still cooking my way through Ina’s new book and this dish just screamed hearty winter warm-me-up fare to me, so it moved to the top of the list. Like everything else in her book (so far): it’s easy. Just simmer some lentils with aromatic vegetables and then toss with a super creamy Dijon-red wine vinaigrette. It may sound too simple to be fabulous and yes, it’s not the prettiest thing in the world, but you won’t be able to stop eating it.
I thinks Ina lists this as a sidedish, but it’s just so hearty and rich it easily worked as a dinner for me (two nights in a row). Just serve it with some good bread (a pretzel roll was my choice) and light red wine.
