Side Dishes – Starch – Page 2

Butternut Squash Gnocchi with Sage Brown Butter

Recipe here.

This recipe (served with a simple, small salad and some chicken that was sprinkled with seasoning and grilled) was tasty, but I’ve made a version of this dish before and VASTLY preferred the other recipe. The other recipe used sweet potato instead of the butternut and also contained some ricotta. The dough for that version was MUCH easier to work with and the finished gnocchi cooked MUCH faster. The flavors are good here, but they’re pretty much identical to the other one, which was much easier to execute. I’ll be sticking with this version in the future.

Pork Loin Chops with Cinnamon Apples, Classic Potato Pancakes, Spicy Green Beans with Garlic Oil and Preserved Lemon

Pork Chops and Apples recipe here.

Potato Pancakes recipe here (we served them with sour cream and they were fantastic!)

For the green beans, I was inspired by this recipe (which I’ve made before) and another one with preserved lemon in Madhur Jaffrey’s awesome World Vegetarian cookbook and combined them and adapted them to make my own, which was quite delicious. Ideally, the beans would be a little more browned that the ones in my photo, but these were still good.

Spicy Green Beans with with Garlic Oil and Preserved Lemon

1 pound fresh green beans, washed and cut into 1 1/2 to 2 inch long pieces

2 or 3 garlic cloves, thinly sliced (think Paul Sorvino in Goodfellas)

2 Tbsp olive oil

1 wedge of preserved lemon (Use the rind only; remove and discard the pulp), rinsed well and finely chopped

(If you don’t want to make your own, you can buy preserved/Moroccan lemons at a gourmet store. They are VERY simple and inexpensive to make, but they do have to sit for a while.)

a sprinkle of red pepper flakes, to taste (start with 1/4 tsp.)

kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

Blanch green beans by covering them with cold water in a medium saucepan. When they come to a boil, drain them and soak them in ice water until they are cool. Drain them again and set them aside.

Heat the oil in a large saute pan over medium-high heat until hot but not smoking. Add the garlic and cook, stirring constantly, until the garlic is lightly golden-toasted, but not brown. Quickly remove and discard the garlic.

Add the green beans to the pan and cook, stirring only once or twice, until the beans are slightly softened and lightly browned in spots, but not mushy. You’ll need to watch them carefully, since they won’t brown if you stir them too much, but if you don’t toss/stir them enough, they’ll scorch or stick to the bottom of the pan.

When the beans have reached your desired doneness, sprinkle them with salt and pepper, add the chili flakes and lemon and stir to coat evenly. Remove from heat and serve.

Adobo Grilled Chicken, Black Bean & Quinoa Salad and a Crunchy Roasted Corn repeat

YUM! This was SUCH a delicious meal. I had planned on only making the black bean & quinoa salad and grilled chicken, but The Boy was with me at the supermarket and saw corn on the cob and requested this corn, which he loves. It sort “went with” the meal, so I acquiesced.

Black bean and quinoa salad recipe here. This recipe is delicious, but makes a ton, but it also keeps in the fridge fairly well for a day or two and makes a great lunch the next day. If you’re not a fan of leftovers and you’re not feeding a crowd, I’d recommend making a half-batch. It was quite good and pretty simple.

The corn recipe, basically, is here, but I used Penzey’s Arizona Dreaming for the seasoning this time. A universal hit, every time. Have served it for company and always have people ask for the recipe. Boy, in particular, LOVES this stuff.

The chicken is just boneless, skinless thighs sprinkled liberally with this fantastic Adobo seasoning mixture (scroll down) and then grilled. I really love this spice blend and am planning to use it more in the future. It’s great on chicken that you’re planning to put in any kind of Mexican dish (enchiladas, tostadas, fajitas, etc.) Achiote/annatto can be a little bit hard to find, but try a Latin market (or the Latin aisle of a large supermarket.) If you’re in Austin, Central Market has whole annatto seeds (in their bulk section) that can be ground in your spice-dedicated grinder.

What? You don’t have one of those?!!?! $20 can fix that. You NEED one. How else can you make garam masala?

*This meal is gluten-free, if you use gluten-free breadcrumbs.

Polenta with Tex-Mex Chili

Another recipe from Madhur Jaffrey’s World Vegetarian book.

I can’t find a link to this recipe online, but it’s basically just a vegetarian chili with kidney beans (I used borlotti, which are more pinto-ish, because I already had some soaked and cooked,) served over polenta which has a bit of butter and parmesan cheese added to it. Very yummy dish, but I do feel a little embarassed, as a Texan, to call this “Tex-Mex Chili.” I mean, really…there were no Fritos or onions or grated orange cheese over the top of it. And, HELLO??? There was NO MEAT! And there were LENTILS in it!!! It was good, but this really should be called polenta topped with bean stew or something. I will make this again (with the polenta subbing for the Fritos, it’s kind of an upscale Frito pie,) but will probably adapt my own vegetarian chili recipe to use more Tex-Mex spices and maybe add some textured vegetable protein, to at least make you FEEL like there could be meat in it. I like the combo of polenta and chili, though. Creamy and soft, mixed with warm and spicy.

More Spring Rolls, with some new dipping sauces

Spring Rolls are becoming one of our all-time favorite meals lately. They’re very vegetarian-friendly (although it’s easy to add meat, for any carnivores that would like it,) there’s not much “cooking” involved (although there is lots of chopping!) and they’re light and healthy.

I made a “fancy” version last night, with a few extra ingredients and dipping sauces.

The ingredients that I used (in large tray) are:

rice noodles, sauteed sliced mushrooms, shredded romaine lettuce, thinly sliced red onion, sliced avocado, mung bean sprouts (that I grew myself!,) julienned red bell pepper, cucumber and carrot, grilled Teriyaki chicken, shrimp, baby corn and chopped water chestnuts.

I also had some fresh chopped chives and peanuts and cilantro and mint leaves to add as garnish inside the rolls.

The new dipping sauces that I tried were Hoisin dipping sauce and a peanut dipping sauce. The third one is the spicy/sweet sauce that we’ve used before. The spicy-sweet sauce is still Hubby’s favorite, but the kids and I LOVED the peanut sauce, so I will definitely be making that one again in the future. Deee-lish.

For quantity/planning purposes, in case you decide to make this, I used two boneless, skinless chicken breasts (marinated in Teriyaki sauce, then grilled and sliced) and about a cup of thawed, frozen, pre-cooked shrimp. I made a half-batch of the peanut sauce (single batches of the other two.) I used one can each of the water chestnuts and baby corn, one avocado, about a cup of sprouts, about 1/4 of a red onion, about 1/4 lb of mushrooms (sliced and sauteed in butter/olive oil until softened and golden) and one romaine lettuce heart. I used half of an 8 ounce package of rice sticks/rice vermicelli noodles and less than one package of spring roll wrappers.

I was serving 6 people, one of whom is a vegetarian and two others of whom do not eat shrimp, but everyone at their fill and there were enough ingredients leftover to make 6 more vegetarian spring rolls (the meat was all gone) the next day. I also served some steamed, in-the-shell edamame along with this. If you’re serving REALLY hungry people, you might not have many/any leftovers.

Hoisin-Glazed Scallops with Sauteed Spinach and Peanut Butter Noodles

Peanut Butter Noodles recipe here.

The scallops recipe is from the subscription-only section of Fine Cooking’s website, but basically, you just cook the scallops in a VERY HOT lightly oiled pan (after sprinkling them with a tiny bit of cayenne and salt) until they’re browned on both sides and opaque throughout and then you lightly brush them with hoisin sauce. Easy peasy. The accompanying spinach recipe is slightly more difficult to sum, but I didn’t use it, anyway. I just sauteed my spinach the same old way, with a little Baby Bam.

I’ve added the “vegetarian” tag to this post, because the peanut butter noodles would be (and were, for The Girl) an acceptable vegetarian entree, on their own. They were delicious and were a huge hit with all four of us. You could add any veggies that suit your taste (mushrooms, water chestnuts, baby corn, broccoli, etc.) and you could add a bit or sriracha to spice it up, if you like that sort of thing. We added cucumber, grated carrot, red bell pepper, cilantro and finely chopped peanuts.

Wheat Berry Salad with Raisins and Pistachios

Recipe here.

This was quite tasty. It had a nice lemony tang to it, and the chewiness of the wheat berries was very filling.

Now, that being said…if you hate raisins and goat cheese, or if you’re not crazy about cilantro or are frightened by unfamiliar novelty grains, this salad isn’t going to convert you. It is exactly the sum of its parts, so if you like the parts, you’ll love it; if you don’t, you won’t…

Spinach-and-Ricotta Tortelli with Browned Butter

Recipe here.

I knew when I saw this recipe that, as appealing as it looked, it was going to be a fair amount of work. I’ve had it sitting in the “someday when we have a lot of free time on our hands” pile for quite some time, just waiting for the perfect day. I knew that the kids would want to help with the stuffing and rolling, so it had to be a time when every one was home (difficult) and didn’t have other compelling things to do (near-impossible.) It was time-consuming, but not terribly, and it took a little patience to get the hang of rolling the tortelli, but it was easiest than I thought and we were more successful than I had feared we might be. All of the tortellis remained intact during cooking (I cannot boast this level of success with previous homemade ravioli attempts) and they were VERY tasty. Well worth the effort and definitely something we will be doing again. After running the pasta disks through the pasta machine, they became VERY long and unwieldy strips, so I cut them in half, but that turned out to be a mistake later, because I was not able to cut as many dough circles out of them. We consequently had about a third of our spinach-ricotta filling left and our batch of dough made less tortellis than the recipe specified. I’ll correct this next time by using a slightly larger circle cutter (I have another one that is 3 inches across) and using slightly more filling in each one. We’ll be trying this again (now that the kids have mastered tortelli-shaping) and maybe experiment with different fillings and/or sauces.

Our batch only made about 52 tortelli, although the recipe states approximately 80. I think I know what we did wrong, though, and will correct this next time.

We served the tortelli with some sauteed green beans and a grilled New York Strip steak (we just buy one steak and cut it into small strips to split three ways, amongst the carnivores in the family.) Vegetarian Girl just had green beans and pasta.

We also sipped a lovely Syrah-Sangiovese blend that we brought back from Italy last summer. We were saving it for a special occasion and figured that making our own stuffed pasta from scratch qualified as one.

Curried Couscous Salad and Sauteed Green Beans

Curried Couscous Salad recipe here.

Sauteed Green Beans recipe here.

Both of these recipes were vary tasty. The green beans are very simple, just a slight variation from basic blanching or steaming, but the get just enough color in the saute pan to add some great extra flavor. The couscous was a little more complicated, but well worth the effort. This was a delicious salad with some really bright, bold flavors. The recipe makes a TON of salad, so plan to invite people over, take it to a potluck or enjoy some leftovers (which are great for a day or maybe two, but not longer than that, and you can’t freeze it because of the cucumber.) If you have a smaller family, I would recommend making half a batch.

We served this with a little bit of Baby Bam-dusted, grilled chicken for the carnivores.

Classic Sole Meunière

Recipe here.

This is one of my favorite “fancy restaurant” meals, but I’ve never attempted it at home before. I’m SO glad that I did, because it was super easy and VERY delicious. I think that the recipe’s suggestion to buy a couple of extra fillets is a good one, because it does take a tiny bit of practice to get the knack for how long it takes to cook each fillet and for how to turn it. The sole fillets are VERY fragile and have a tendency to fall apart when you flip them, but even if they do, they’re still delicious, and it shouldn’t take you more than two or three “practice fillets” before you’re flipping like a pro. You definitely need to have the butter, lemon juice and parsley measured out and ready to go, because when you need each addition, you need it NOW and there’s no time to chop parsley or squeeze lemons.

We served this with some sauteed spinach and basmati rice. We added a bit of sauteed shallot, chopped parsley and toasted, chopped pecans to the rice and finished it with a tiny bit of butter after it was cooked.