summer cooking

Easy Vegan Dishes for Summer

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

It is too hot to do a lot of cooking in many parts of the US these days. Salads are a good alternative. However, if you get tired of just salads, here are two easy vegan dishes to enjoy that require little cooking time. If you are not vegan or vegetarian, you can add some cubed meat as you are sautéing the veggies.

Sauté coarsely chopped onion and garlic in olive oil. I have not specified amounts because amounts can be adjusted to your taste. Coarsely chop 1/2 medium sized beet and add to the onion and garlic. Cook this mixture until tender. Add 1/2 seeded and coarsely chopped red bell pepper. Add 2 Tablespoons of Thai red curry paste and mix well. Finally, add 1/2 cup coarsely chopped Thai basil and 2 cups arugula. Sauté until wilted stirring constantly. Serve over rice.

Sauté 1/3 coarsely chopped medium sized sweet onion, six small carrots cut into coins, and 5 coarsely chopped garlic cloves in olive oil. When nearly tender add five sliced mushrooms. When these are tender, add 1/3 coarsely chopped red bell pepper and sauté until tender. Finally, add 2 cups arugula and stir until the arugula is wilted. For spices add basil essential oil or World Market Greek Mediterranean Seasoning Blend. Serve over pasta of your choice. If you like cheese, grate fresh parmesan or asiago, my favorite, over the top.

Note: these recipes can be adapted by using your favorite vegetables, e.g. spinach in place of arugula.

Kale with Cannelloni Beans

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

1/2 medium sized sweet yellow onion, coarsely chopped

1 jalapeño pepper, deseeded, cut in half lengthwise and cut in 1/2 inch pieces

2-3 garlic cloves, coarsely chopped

1/4 large, red, bell pepper, deseeded and coarsely chopped

3 cups lacinato kale–see directions below

1 cup cannelloni beans

Olive oil

Spices–for this recipe I used World Market Mediterranean Greek

Before measuring the kale, cut out the central stem, discard, and finely chop the remainder of the leaves. Sauté the onion and garlic in enough olive oil to cover the bottom of the pan or skillet until the onion is translucent. Add jalapeño and red bell pepper. Cook until tender but the color is still bright. Sprinkle spices over this mixture and stir–amount of spices to suit your taste. Add kale. Stir and cook until the kale it totally wilted. Add cannoli beans and serve over rice.

Note: Other spices I use include basil, thyme, and fennel essential oils. Be careful when using essential oils to cook. A little goes a long way.

Guilty

/ Juliana Lightle / 2 Comments

After posting daily for nearly six weeks, I goofed yesterday and did not.  My excuse–went to a local winery, BarZ, with a friend and stayed longer than I thought we would, came home, and collapsed about 11:45.  Now I feel guilty, really guilty.  To make matters worse, this post will be very, very brief.  Why?  This evening six people from Italy are coming over for dinner.  My friends are hosting an exchange student from there and her parents, grandparents, and brother arrived Wednesday for her graduation.  All of them, plus her host parents and their daughter and a friend arrive at 6.  In the meantime, I must clean my house, go to the grocery store so I can cook to feed them, cook, and get Rosie ready so they can ride her–her mane is a tangled mess.

The menu:  the brisket recipe I posted July 8, 2012, roasted vegetables, salad, bread with garlic, ice cream with Chambord on top.  Since Lisa, the exchange student, loves this hot cheese (mangoes and habanero peppers in it) I get from Market Street, I bought all I could find the other day–it with crackers will be the appetizer plus who knows what else.  Now, off to untangle Rosie’s mane and feed her alfalfa before I take a quick trip to the grocery.

Red Snapper with Chorizo and Mixed Rice

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

Last Sunday evening I invited three friends over for dinner.  They come to my house all the time so I decided to try something different.  Red snapper was on sale at the market so I bought one big fillet and one smaller one, thinking they would fit perfectly in the heavy cast iron fish pan I have.  I use this particular cast iron pot because I can put it on the grill in the summer and avoid  heat in the house.  In my refrigerator I also found some soyrizo–chorizo made from soy instead of pork.  Since one of the friends is Muslim, I make sure never to feed him pork–he does not want me to go to hell, he says.  Since the fish and the chorizo made for rather sizable servings, I did not expect all of it to totally disappear.  Wrong.  They ate all of it and asked for the recipe.

Approximately 1 1/2 pounds red snapper or similar firm fleshed fish

Enough soyrizo (or chorizo) to cover the fish in a thin layer sprinkled over the fish

1 onion finely chopped

1 large poblano pepper, seeded and chopped

Olive oil

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1 small can tomato sauce

Pour enough olive oil into a heavy pan to cover the bottom

Lay the fish in the bottom of the pan and cover with chorizo

Saute the onions and poblano pepper in olive oil until onions are translucent

Spread the onion/pepper mixture over the top of the chorizo

Stir the cinnamon into the tomato sauce

Pour the cinnamon/tomato sauce mixture over the top

Place a lid on pan and bake on the grill at medium heat.

It takes the cast iron a long time to heat up so once it was heated, I baked the dish for approximately 20 minutes or until the fish was done and everything was bubbling.

I served this with my favorite rice:  1/3 Jasmine red rice, 1/3 Jasmine white rice, combined with 1/3 black rice.  I used one half cup each, sauteed with 1 TBS. finely chopped garlic in enough olive oil to cover the bottom of a large sauce pan.  Saute until the rice appears to be sticking slightly, then pour water double the total amount of rice.  Stir in 1 tsp. bouillon, cover with six paper towels and then the lid, turn down to low, and cook approximately one hour.  The red and black rice take at least twice as long to cook as white rice.

This easily serves four.  I served it with a salad:  romaine, red cabbage, dried cherries, yellow pepper, diced radishes, and feta cheese.  Bon appetit!!