meatless meals

Simply Summer {Smoked Salmon Pasta Salad}

by Lisa on July 17, 2011

Smoked salmon is literally one of my favorite things. Unfortunately, when you’re pregnant, you’re not supposed to eat smoked fish unless it’s cooked. For me, that kind of defeats the purpose of eating smoked salmon but last week I really wanted some. So I threw together this simple pasta salad.

To make it pregnant-friendly, I poached the smoked salmon in water so that it would keep it’s flavor. You could poach it in wine or oil if you want, but I wanted to keep it simple and true to flavor.

Ingredients

1/2 bag of farfalle pasta
1 package smoked salmon {about 8 ounces}
asparagus, trimmed and cut into pieces (a 12 oz. package or so}
12-16 grape tomatoes, quartered
2 ears of corn, boiled
2 whole scallions, sliced thin
2 lemons, juiced
2-3 tablespoons olive oil
salt
pepper
handful of basil, chiffonade

Method

Bring a pot of water, preferably with a colander in it, to a boil. Salt when it comes to a boil and add the corn. Boil for 5-8 minutes. Remove the corn.

Bring the water back to a boil and quickly blanch the asparagus for 1-2 minutes so it keeps its crunch. I find that very thin asparagus works well in this recipe. Remove the asparagus and place in a bowl {if you have some time, put the asparagus in an ice bath, I skipped this step}.

Once the asparagus is done, bring the water back to a boil, salt liberally and add the farfalle. Prepare the farfalle according to package directions, until al dente.

While the pasta cooks, prepare the rest of the ingredients.

In a separate pan, bring water to a boil {enough to cover the salmon}. Add the salmon and poach for about 5-8 minutes. Remove from the water, flake with a fork and add to the bowl.

Cut the corn off the cob and add to the bowl with the asparagus. Chop the tomatoes and scallions and add to the bowl.

Drain the pasta and add to the bowl.

To prepare the dressing, juice 2 lemons and whisk the juice together with the olive oil, salt and pepper. Pour over the rest of the ingredients, add the basil and mix well to combine.

Serve warm or cold {I prefer warm}.

For a dish I threw together at 9:30 pm, this was surprisingly delicious.

Jeromy and I each had 2 servings and ate it the next day for lunch.

Experiment with different flavor combinations-use the vegetables you have on hand-make this recipe your own!

Enjoy!

{ 1 comment }

Summer Soup {Gazpacho}

by Lisa on June 14, 2011

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again and again: in our house, Alton Brown is a culinary genius. When Jeromy and I wanted to make gazpacho, we knew exactly who to turn to, and Mr. Brown did not disappoint.

During the heat wave in DC last week, the only thing I wanted to eat was food that did not need to be cooked and I really wanted gazpacho. I held off on making it though, hoping to go to the farmer’s market on Saturday morning for the tomatoes. Unfortunately, Saturday morning got away from us and we didn’t make it to the market {I had a very important event to attend}. Even so, gazpacho was stuck in my head and I really needed to make it. I used tomatoes from Trader Joe’s but if they’re available to you, I would highly recommend using farm fresh tomatoes or even ones from your own garden!

I have a hard time altering Alton’s recipes. The man really knows what he’s doing. The only thing I did here was double the recipe so we’d have enough to take for lunches and maybe have some extra for the freezer. If you want the original measurements, check out the recipe!

Ingredients

3 pounds tomatoes, peeled, seeded and chopped
1 can {approximately 1 3/4 cups} tomato juice
2 cup cucumber, peeled, seeded and chopped
1 cup red bell pepper, chopped
1 cup red onion, chopped
1 large jalapeno, seeded and minced
2 medium garlic cloves, minced
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
2 limes, juiced
4 teaspoons balsamic vinegar
4 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons fresh basil leaves, chiffonade

Method:

First, bring a pot of water to a boil. When it’s approaching a boil, prepare an ice bath. Then, cut an x in the bottom of each of our tomatoes.

It’s easiest to have all of the tomatoes prepped, the pot of water and the ice bath close to each other, because you’re going to be working fast.

Add the tomatoes to the boiling water for 15-20 seconds

Then immediately put them in the ice bath.

Once the tomatoes are cool enough to handle, peel the skin off. Have another bowl available with a fine mesh sieve set over it. After the skin is removed, core and seed the tomato, being sure to put the seeds and pulp in the sieve. Squeeze all of the seeds and pulp through the sieve to get as much juice as possible. Supplement the juice with a can of tomato juice {or however much is needed to get to 2 cups}. Chop the tomatoes and place them in a bowl with the tomato juice.

Next, add the rest of the ingredients to the bowl. Stir well to combine.

Transfer 3 cups to a blender.

Puree for 15-20 seconds.

Pour the pureed vegetables back into the bowl with the remaining chopped vegetables.

Stir well to combine.

Cover and place in the refrigerator for 2 hours and up to overnight. Serve with chiffonade basil garnish.

The color of the soup will deepen overnight to a gorgeous red. The flavors of this soup are so refreshing, especially since it is served cold. As written, this recipe can easily be altered to be vegetarian or vegan, just substitute the Worcestershire sauce for a vegan version {thanks, Pam!}. For those omnivores out there, I think this would be delicious served with chilled shrimp or at the very least, grilled baguette.

The Worcestershire sauce, balsamic vinegar and jalapeno pepper give this gazpacho an extra kick that is not ordinarily found in gazpacho.

I honestly cannot wait for lunch.

Pass me a spoon.

Recipe courtesy of Alton Brown.

{ 4 comments }

Cooking with Clare {Pizza Night}

by Lisa on April 22, 2011

Friday night, Clare came over to spend the night so her parents could go celebrate their anniversary. Clare loves to cook and gave me a pizza stone and pizza peel for my bridal shower.

There are so many things that I am looking forward to about my daughter, I can’t even count all of them. But one of them is the experience we’ll have of being in the kitchen together. With this is mind, Clare and her mom Amadie are going to be writing a monthly post here on The Splattered Apron about cooking together!

Clare and I kicked off the series tonight and Clare is going to introduce herself, in her own words:

Hi! My name is Clare. I know Lisa because she started babysitting me when I was only two and a half years old! Then she stopped babysitting me when I was about five years old. Then my mom and dad became really good friends with her. Only a while ago I was the flower girl at Lisa’s wedding, and it was awesome! The things I like to do besides cooking is swimming, hanging out with my friends, and of course, hanging out with Lisa! : -) I am eight years old and I live with my mom, my dad, and my cats. I have two cats, one is named Spencer and the other one is named Kinsey. Spencer is funny because he is a scaredy- cat. Tomorrow morning Lisa and I are going to make doughnuts! Yum, yum!

I think we have a future blogger on our hands!

Tonight we used the pizza stone and pizza peel and made cheese pizza. First, we made the dough, using this recipe. It was super easy and didn’t require more than 30 minutes of rising. Clare is responsible for most pictures in this post, but here she is carefully measuring the salt for the dough.

While the dough was rising, we made some quick pizza sauce. All it takes is a large can of crushed tomatoes and 2 tablespoons of pizza seasoning. Stir well and simmer slightly over low heat.

Next, grate some mozzarella cheese. Clare did most of the work here. While she did that, I preheat the oven to 450 degrees with the pizza stone in it.

By now, the dough should be ready. Sprinkle corn meal on the pizza peel and stretch out the dough by hand, being careful to avoid making holes in the dough.

Spread the dough on the pizza peel, the cornmeal will help the pizza not to stick to the peel so it will come off easily onto the pizza stone. Which is not exactly what happened for us, because I did not have any cornmeal. Oops!

Next spread an even layer of sauce on the dough and then cheese.

Finally, put your finished product in the oven for 15-20 minutes, until the crust is crisp and the cheese melted. I did this part, but Clare showed off our finished product.

Due to our lack of cornmeal, we decided to turn this pizza into a calzone, in order to get it onto the pizza stone. It still turned out great! I loved the dough and am looking forward to trying it again as a pizza. And to use it to make smaller calzones to freeze for lunch.

Clare loved it despite it’s misshapen appearance.

Can’t you tell?

{ 2 comments }

Soup’s On {Mushroom Soup}

by Lisa on April 20, 2011

It was at least 80 degrees today in DC, so why am I writing about soup? It’s a fair question. Truthfully, I made this soup a month or so ago and have been meaning to share it with you. Better now than in August, right?

This soup is really good and it’s light. We served it as an appetizer at Thanksgiving a few years ago and everyone still had plenty of room for the meal. And dessert.

This is another recipe that I adapted from Jeromy’s favorite cookbook, Classic Home Cooking.

Ingredients

2 tablespoons butter
1 small onion, minced
1 garlic clove, minced
1 pound of mushrooms, sliced {I used a mix of porcini, cremini and button}
5 cups chicken stock {or substitute vegetable stock}
2/3 cup dry white wine
2 teaspoon fresh oregano, chopped
2 tablespoons fresh chives, chopped
salt and pepper

Method

First, heat some water and soak the porcini mushrooms for about 10 minutes to rehydrate them {porcinis are only sold dried and they have a great earthy flavor}.

While the porcini mushrooms are soaking, prepare the rest of the ingredients.

Melt the butter in a large pot {I use my Dutch oven} then add the onions and garlic. Cook gently, stirring occasionally until the onion is soft but not browned.

Drain the porcini mushrooms and give them a rough chop. Then add all of the mushrooms to the pot and cook for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Add the stock, wine, oregano and thyme. Season with salt and pepper. Bring to a boil, then cover and simmer for 10 minutes, until the mushrooms are tender.

After 10 minutes, salt and pepper to taste.

The variety of mushrooms gives this soup a great flavor, especially the addition of the porcini mushrooms. This soup keeps well in the fridge for about a week, but I wouldn’t recommend freezing. We tried that once and the mushrooms could not stand up to it.

Feel free to play with the combination of mushrooms in this soup—maybe you love oyster and shitake but porcini isn’t your thing. That’s okay, make this recipe your own.

Enjoy!

{ 1 comment }

Mangia! {Eggplant Parmesan}

by Lisa on April 12, 2011

One of my all time favorite meals is eggplant parmesan. I love the way my mom makes it—with layers and layers of eggplant, cheese and sauce, almost like a lasagna.

This is not prepared the way my mom prepares it Her way takes a lot of time, my way? 45 minutes, tops.

Ingredients

1 eggplant, sliced to 1/4 inch thick
panko bread crumbs
Italian bread crumbs
2 eggs
1/4 cup of water
flour
burrata mozzarella cheese
2 cups of prepared tomato sauce {I used my mom’s!}
salt
pepper

Method

Slice the eggplant and lay them out on cutting board. This is the most important step: sprinkle the slices with salt and let them sit for 10 minutes. The salt draws the moisture and bitterness out of the eggplant and really improves the flavor. After 10 minutes, the eggplant will look like this:

Rinse off the eggplant and pat it dry.

While the eggplant is sweating, set up your breading station. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m trying to use up as much as we can in our pantry. Now that we’re getting ready to move, using up our pantry is more important than ever—the more we use, the less we move! I really want to simplify the amount of food we keep on hand in our next house and will share our approach with you when we move, but back to the recipe….

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

For your breading station, place some flour in a shallow bowl and season with salt and pepper; whisk the two eggs and water in a separate shallow bowl; and mix the panko bread crumbs with the Italian breadcrumbs in another shallow bowl.

PLEASE do not run out and buy these ingredients, use what you have on hand. If you have plain bread crumbs, just add some dried oregano, parsley and thyme.

Next, dredge the eggplant in the flour, shake off excess. Then, dip both sides in the egg, shake off excess. Finally, dredge both sides in the bread crumbs. Be sure there is a good coating of breadcrumbs on each slice.

Bake the eggplant on a greased cooling rack on top of a baking sheet. This way both sides will get nice and crispy. Bake for 25-30 minutes, depending on the oven. You want the coating to be crispy but the inside to be soft.

Spread a spoonful of the sauce on the bottom of the baking pan then lay the eggplant in one layer on top of it. {If you prefer the eggplant to stay very crispy, do not spread the sauce on the bottom of the pan}. Next, spread some sauce on each piece of eggplant.

Finally, divide the mozzarella cheese evenly among the eggplant and sprinkle all of it with parmesan cheese.

Pop this in the oven for 15-20 minutes, until the cheese is melted and a bit brown on top.

Serve immediately. Ordinarily I’ll serve this alongside a salad and/or some pasta, but on this particular evening we were in a rush to eat and checking out houses online, so we both scarfed down the eggplant without anything else It was delicious, though not as crunchy as I would like. I think if I hadn’t put the sauce on the bottom of the pan and maybe used the broiler, I would have had a better result. Feel free to make these modifications. Recipes are just a guide!

Enjoy!

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