Vegetarian

Cold Pea Soup with Herbed Oil Swirl

YIELD: 6 servings
ACTIVE TIME: 35 minutes
TOTAL TIME: 60 minutes, plus chilling

INGREDIENTS

- 3 tablespoons unsalted butter
- 1 medium onion, chopped [Or substitute leek]
- 1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt, plus more to taste
- 2 (16-ounce) bags frozen sweet peas (6 cups) [Recommend petite peas]
- 1 cup plain Greek yogurt
- Freshly ground black pepper
- 1/2 cup Herbed Olive Oil

PREPARATION

1. Melt butter in a large heavy pot over medium heat. Add onion and cook, stirring often, until softened but not browned, 6–8 minutes. Add 1 1/2 teaspoons salt and 2 cups water, stir to combine, and bring to a boil. Add peas and cook, stirring occasionally, until just tender, about 2 minutes.
2. Remove pot from heat. Rebecca recommends letting it cool before stirring in the yogurt so it doesn’t curdle. Either way, the next step is to stir in the yogurt. Purée soup in a blender or in the pot using an immersion blender, thinning with water if soup is too thick, until smooth. Season with salt and pepper and let cool to room temperature. Transfer to a resealable container, cover, and chill at least 2 hours or up to overnight.
3. Divide soup among bowls and top each with a swirl of Herbed Olive Oil.

Do Ahead

The soup can be made and chilled for up to 2 days.

Smoked Tuna and Roasted Vegetable Baked Mac & Cheese

I’m finally getting around to writing this post several months after I actually made the dish, so my recollection of the details is a bit fuzzy.

I roasted up a couple sheet pans of veggies – mushrooms, summer squash, broccoli, purple carrots, and butternut squash.
I made a cheese sauce with way too much cheese.
I boiled some pasta, your standard elbow macaroni noodle.
I mixed the paste, veggies, and smoked tuna into the cheese sauce, which was difficult since I used too much cheese and the sauce was very thick.
I baked the resulting mixture in the oven for a while at some temperature.
We ate it, and it was good.

I loosely followed this recipe (scroll down past the author’s life’s story and you’ll find the ingredients and directions):

Roasted Vegetable Macaroni and Cheese

Salsa Romesco with Grilled Vegetables

I looked at several romesco sauce recipes, and no two were the same. I finally settled on this recipe with some minor adjustments.

1 1-inch thick slice of crusty bread, crust removed and cut into 1-inch cubes

1 large tomato

5 cloves garlic

1/2 cup almonds

2 medium red bell peppers

1/4 cup olive oil

2 tablespoons sherry vinegar

1 tablespoon smoked paprika

1 teaspoon Kosher salt

1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Preheat oven to 375°F. Line a baking pan with aluminum foil. Place almond, garlic, bread and tomato on baking sheet and place in the oven. Roast almonds until fragrant and bread is crusty and just starting to brown, about 10 minutes. Remove almonds and bread and continue roasting garlic until soft and tomato until tender, about 20 minutes more. Remove from oven, let cool slightly and remove skin from tomato and peel garlic.

While other ingredients are roasting in the oven, roast peppers over an open flame on a gas stove or grill until the skins are blackened. Place in a bowl and cover with plastic wrap and let sit until cool enough to handle, about 20 minutes. Remove charred skin, seeds, and cores.

Place bread, tomato, almonds, peppers, olive oil, vinegar, paprika, salt, and pepper in the bowl of a food processor. Purée until smooth. Taste and season with additional salt and cayenne pepper as needed.

Place in and airtight container and place in the refrigerator until cool. Store refrigerated up to 5 days

I used three roma tomatoes instead of the one large tomato called for in the Serious Eats recipe. I also used lemon juice in place of the vinegar (because vinegar is the devil), and chipotle chili powder instead of cayenne. I couldn’t see the sense in buying crusty bread, cutting the crust off, and toasting it so it basically has a crust again, so I just left the crust on.

I toasted/roasted everything on the gas grill instead of in the oven, and grilled up some carrots, zucchini, and romanesco broccoli to serve with the sauce. It ended up a little thicker than I wanted, so I added a bit more olive oil and a little water to thin it down. The romesco was smoky and delicious, and the leftovers were used up quickly as a spread for sandwiches and a dip for chips and crackers.

Red Red: West African black-eyed pea stew

1 thinly sliced yellow onion
1/4 cup coconut oil
2 stemmed, seeded, thinly sliced jalapenos
3 ounces fresh ginger cut into chunks
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 tablespoon curry powder
1 teaspoon chili powder
4 drained and rinsed cans of black-eyed peas
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 pint halved cherry tomatoes

In a large Dutch oven over medium / medium-high, cook onion in the coconut oil until beginning to brown (~5 minutes.)
Stir in the jalapeños, the ginger, the tomato paste, the curry powder, and the chili powder. Cook for about a minute.
Stir in the black-eyed peas, the soy sauce, the tomatoes, and 1.5 cups water. Bring to a simmer, lower heat to maintain simmer, and cook uncovered for ~20 minutes until slightly thickened (stir once in a while, obviously.)
Discard ginger, add salt as desired.
Eat it.

Couscous m’hassel

From “Medina Kitchen: Home Cooking from North Africa” (from the chapter on Fez, Morocco) by Fiona Dunlop (a British cookbook as you’ll see by the metricity)

Couscous m’hassel

vegetable oil for frying, plus 2-3 tablespoons for the couscous (I used olive oil)
1 kg (2lb 4oz) onions, peeled and sliced
3 tsp crushed saffron
3 tsp ground ginger
3 tsp ground black pepper
3 tsp cinnamon
500g (1 lb 2 oz) raisins
1-2 Tbsp granulated sugar (I only used 2 tsp and that seemed good enough)
1 1/2 kg (3 lb 5 oz) chicken pieces (I used a few pounds of crimini mushrooms instead)
750g (1 lb 10 oz) couscous
50 ml (2 oz) water
about 100g (3 1/2 oz) salted butter (I left this out)
150g (5.5 oz) toasted almonds as garnish (I left is out too)

Chicken (mushrooms)

Heat the oil in a frying pan and fry the onion and 1 tsp each of the spices (except the cinnamon) over low heat until the onion is soft. Add the raisins, 1 tsp cinnamon and sugar. (I put some salt in as well). Cook over medium heat for 10-15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Set aside to allow flavors to meld.
Sprinkle the chicken with the remaining spices and cook in a steamer, covered, for about an hour or until the chicken is cooked through. (Instead, I chopped up a couple pounds of mushrooms and cooked them in the big pan the onions had been cooked in. Takes much less than one hour.)
Cook the couscous (see below)
Arrange the chicken pieces (mushrooms) over the top of the cooked couscous, pour over the onion and raisin mixture, then garnish w/ a sprinkling of toasted almonds before serving.

Couscous

In a large wide bowl, rub water (about 700-750 ml for 750g couscous) and 3 tablespoons of olive oil into the grain, lifting and rubbing it repeatedly to distribute the moisture. Set aside to swell for 15 minutes.
Transfer to a double steamer or “couscoussier” with either or vegetables simmering hard below. (I used a mesh colander and that was fine.) Steam for 15 minutes with the lid off.
Return the couscous to the bowl, spread out with a wooden spoon, sprinkle with more water and oil and some salt. Lift and stir the grains, breaking up any lumps. (She says, “Oil your hands to do this more effectively” but only a sadist would suggest you put your hands into something that’s been steaming for 15 minutes.)
Return the couscous to the steamer for 15 minutes.
Put the couscous back into the bowl, add some liquid (water, stock or even rose water) to moisten thoroughly break up any lumps with the wooden spoon and rework, separating the grains as much as possible.
Return to steamer for final 15 minutes.
Put in a large serving bowl, adding some salted butter to make it glisten (ah, that’s where the butter I didn’t use was meant to go).