Breakfast for Dinner

I love having what would normally be considered breakfast foods for dinner. I love how much easier those meals can be in comparison.

Last week I made a vegetable frittata that came out perfect. All the vegetables were cooked just right and the eggs for nice and puffy, but not to crispy on top.

Veggie Frittata

1 broccoli crown, cut down into half florets
½ bunch of asparagus, top 2/3 of each stalk cut into 2 pieces
½ large red pepper, sliced thin
½ large red onion, sliced thin
1 cup egg whites/egg substitute from a carton
½ cup shredded low fat cheddar cheese
1 tsp garlic paste
2 tsp olive oil
Salt & pepper to taste

Steam the broccoli and asparagus just until they were fork tender. Heat the oil in a cast iron skillet over medium heat. Set your broiler on high. Sauté the pepper & onion until tender in the hot oil. Add the garlic to an open spot in the center of the pan and quickly mix into the cooking vegetables. Add the asparagus and broccoli. Sprinkle the cheese over the vegetables and toss to mix. Add egg white to cover the vegetables evenly. Add salt & pepper if you like. Allow the eggs to cook just until they begin to bubble and you can see them have set underneath the liquid top layer. Move the pan to the broiler. Watch it carefully under the broiler until the eggs complete cook and puff up. It should be golden brown on top, but not too brown.

Allow it to cool for just a minute, cut and serve. One quarter of the dish clocked in at just about 3 Weight Watcher points for anyone who is considering how the dish fits into an active diet regimen.

And there you have breakfast for dinner!

Jason

Light & Easy Pasta Bake

Very rarely do I make pasta at home. Margot is usually the one who does and that is maybe once per month. I never really developed an appreciation for it growing up and while I will order pasta when out at a good Italian restaurant, but I don’t often crave it and thus don’t make it at home. This makes Margot sad because she loves pasta, but she understands the issue; and there are many things she doesn’t regularly eat for exactly the same reason.

So it was with great surprise that I should want to make pasta and that I was going to scheme something up to use ingredients we had on hand to make something a little more than cooked pasta with sauce on top. My motivation was the open bottle of wine some new friends has left us.

What I ended up with contains most of what is in a typical lasagna but I used shells for the pasta. When everything was ready it was mixed together and spread into a baking pan and topped with parmesan cheese. It really was simple, and it turned out to be pretty light as well. Not a bad two-fer to get for a dish I don’t often make!

Jay’s Light & Easy Pasta Bake

1 lb ground turkey, browned & cooked through
1 box whole wheat shells, cooked according to package
1 white onion, chopped
1 red pepper, chopped
8 oz light Ricotta cheese
½ jar spaghetti sauce
¼ cup + 2 Tbsp parmesan cheese, seperate (fresh grated or jar style)
1 Tbsp garlic paste
2 tsp frozen fresh oregano
2 tsp frozen fresh basil
Salt & pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 375.

Mix everything but the pasta and the last 2 Tbsp of the parmesan cheese in a large bowl. Add the pasta and mix well. Pour into a baking dish and spread as one flat layer. Cover with the remaining parmesan cheese.

Bake until golden brown on top.

I served this dish with some olive bread sprayed lightly with white truffle oil and a very nicely crafted Dolcetto wine made by some of our new winemaking friends. It really was a fantastic pairing, and I found that Dolcetto lives up to its reputation similar to that of Chianti for being an easy drinking and very food friendly wine.

Newsflash! I made pasta for a second time in the same week. You can only imagine how excited Margot was. My friend Wayne mine broke his collar bone skiing the same day as I made the first dish, and we made something a little different on Wednesday to take over for a visit. I saw a recipe for “Greek Mac and Cheese” at Kate’s Kitchen and remembered I had a wine from Santorini hanging around, so Greek dinner it was! We all loved the pasta, and Wayne & Meredith really appreciated not having to prepare dinner for one night. Wayne is getting around good, but he needs to try and heal up so his activities as an outdoor adventurer and musician are not permanently derailed from this mishap. I am going to review the wine in a separate post but head on over to Kate’s Kitchen for the recipe for “Greek Mac and Cheese”.

Cheers!

Jason

Vegetarian Red Beans & Rice

I’m not sure what prompted it but last week my wife said she wanted Red Beans & Rice. We’ve only eaten it a couple of times in 15 years so it was a pretty obscure request. No worries though, it sounds good and I can definitely pull that off.

I went looking for recipes to get some inspiration and quickly found a great vegetarian (eating lighter these days) red beans & recipe from the Sortachef blog. I adapted the recipe in three ways. I used chipotle and chili powder instead of straight up cayenne. Margot seems to be more sensitive to cayenne and I wanted her to be able to eat the dish at will. I added 1 tsp of liquid smoke to help offset the missing flavors that you would get in the traditional dish from sausage and/or other meats. I then added the juice of ½ of a lime. I am finding that a slight hit of acid in some dishes helps flavors express themselves.

Vegetarian Red Beans & Rice

2 cups dry Small Red Beans, soaked overnight
1 large yellow onion, chopped
4 sticks celery with leaves, chopped
1 green bell pepper, chopped
4 Tbsp olive oil
6 cups water
3 teaspoons of salt (reserve 1 tsp)
½ tsp of freshly ground black pepper
1 ½ tsp of dry thyme
1 ½ tsp of oregano
½ tsp chipotle powder
½ tsp chili powder
1 tsp liquid smoke
Juice of ½ a lime
3 cloves garlic, pressed or finely chopped
8 ounces of tomato sauce
Cooked rice

Soak the beans overnight covered by 2 inches of water. Drain, rinse and pick out any stones, stems or rotted beans.

Heat the 4 Tbsp oil in a large dutch oven. Sauté the onion, celery and green pepper over medium-high, turning occasionally with a spatula. When the pepper has lightened in color and the onions are translucent remove the vegetables from the heat and drain off the excess oil. Wipe out the dutch oven and return the vegetables to it.

Add the beans and 6 cups of cold water to the sautéed veggies. Now add the salt (2 tsp), black pepper, oregano, thyme, chipotle, chili powder, liquid smoke, lime juice and garlic. Mix well.

Bake in the oven at 325°. Put bean pot on the center rack and bake for 2 ½ hours covered, stirring every half hour or so. After 2 ½ hours, add the tomato sauce and last 1 tsp of salt. Remove the lid from the bean pot. Increase the heat to 375° and cook for 2-3 hours, until beans are tender and the cooking liquid has thickened.

( All done and ready to eat! )

Make a pile of cooked rice. Place 2/3 to 1 cup of the red beans mixture on top of the rice. Enjoy with hot sauce if you like some heat!

( Slightly out of focus. Sorry. It was good nonetheless! )

We enjoyed this hearty, but lighter than the classic, dish with a homemade Belgian White beer and the newest episode of the FX cartoon series Archer. The beer has coriander and bitter orange peel in it. Those flavors together with the creamy wheat body of the beer really worked well with the beans and rice. The pairing with Archer is a different sort of pairing all together. Off-color jokes and sexual innuendo are always good for a laugh and made for great atmosphere to enjoy dinner and a beer to on a Friday night.

Cheers!

Jason