Monday night dinner: Leftovers, kind of

I got home fairly late this evening and didn't have much time to cook. I had initially planned to sautee up our kale/chard, microwave some frozen chicken tenderloins in marinara sauce (I see your skepticism, but they turn out really well and it's SO fast) and prepare some kind of grain to finish it up. Instead, I noticed that we had some leftover coconut milk-poached chicken (yum/yay!) and already-steamed sweet potato cubes (leftover from Sunday's waffles). Sounds good to me!

So I went ahead with the chard: washed thoroughly and then chopped roughly, thrown into a pan with a little bit of olive oil, salt, pepper, a few dashes of lemon juice and a teaspoon or so of crushed garlic (a tip: I hate cleaning out our garlic press, so every month or so I will do several whole heads of garlic, and store the crushed garlic in a glass jar in the fridge. It seems to sweeten and mellow over time, but I'm cool with that. I have also considered freezing it in little cubes, like you can buy in the store - I just haven't found a suitable tray yet!) Sauteed over medium heat, the chard cooks down in under 10 minutes. I usually put the ribs in first and let them soften up for a minute or two before I put in the leaves.

The sweet potato got a heavy dusting of cinnamon and a few minutes in the microwave to warm up, as did the chicken - and that is how I made dinner AND cleared out the fridge in 15 minutes. Not too shabby. :)

Sweet Potato, Cabbage and Lentil Tagine

Looking around online for something that might use up some cabbage as well as some sweet potatoes, I came across this recipe for a root vegetable tagine. I didn't have any parsnips or turnips on hand, so I just substituted (you guessed it) more sweet potatoes for the missing veggies, and as a result turned it into a sweet potato, cabbage and red lentil tagine with a little bit of carrot. I also substituted some nice juicy raisins in for the dried apricots, which worked out fine.

I heated up about 1 Tbsp. olive oil in a pan, then added 4 c. chopped cabbage, 4 c. cubed sweet potato, 1 c. chopped carrots, 1 c. dry red lentils, 1/2 c. raisins and a 1/2 inch knob of ginger, minced (we keep ginger root in the freezer, it stays good there for a couple months and is really easy to chop and grate when it's frozen!). Sauteed all this over medium heat about 5 minutes while I mixed up the spices (1/2 tsp. kosher salt, 1/2 tsp. ground cumin, 1/2 tsp. paprika, 1/4 tsp. cinnamon, 1/4 tsp. turmeric, 1/8 tsp. allspice, a few flakes crushed red pepper and a few grinds of black pepper). Added the spice mixture to the tagine and stirred until incorporated, then added just under 4 c. vegetable stock and 14 oz (one can) of diced tomatoes. Brought to a boil and then turned the heat to low and let simmer uncovered for about 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

While the tagine was cooking, I made up a cup of quinoa (combine 1 c. quinoa with 1.75 c. water, bring to a boil and then simmer covered for 15 minutes or so). The recipe suggests to serve over couscous instead, which would also work well; it could probably also be eaten alone as a very hearty soup.

Time: About an hour overall - 30 minutes to prep and 30 minutes to cook. It took a while to cut up all the vegetables, but once that was done it didn't require too much attention.

Dishes/kitchen mess: 9 out of 10 on the arbitrary scale! The tagine came together in a single Dutch Oven, and I used a small saucepan to cook up the quinoa. Since I put the leftovers in the fridge in the same dish that I cooked it in, cleanup time was minimal. Awesome! There were a lot of sweet potato peelings to deal with, though.

Nutrition Info: (via Cooking Light) CALORIES 343(7% from fat); FAT 2.7g (sat 0.3g,mono 1.3g,poly 0.4g); PROTEIN 13.4g; CHOLESTEROL 0.0mg; CALCIUM 85mg; SODIUM 691mg; FIBER 10.3g; IRON 3.1mg; CARBOHYDRATE 68.4g

In other words, super healthy! The lentils provide lots of protein and fiber, and the only source of fat is the olive oil that the veggies are sauteed in. Serving over quinoa instead of couscous provided extra protein as well.

Sweet Potato Waffles

Since we've started getting sweet potatoes in the farm box (around November or so), I've been wanting to make waffles. We tried these last year and they were delicious. Not only does the flavor of sweet potato go really well with brown sugar and cinnamon, but it adds interesting texture, and the moistness of the potato helps keep the waffles from becoming dry. Besides, since sweet potatoes are vegetables, I feel slightly more virtuous eating sweet potato waffles than regular ones, despite their still-dubious nutritional value (see below).

I used this recipe from Alton Brown as my guide, with a few modifications. After steaming 1.5 cups of sweet potatoes in a glass dish in the microwave, I just mashed them up with 1 cup milk, 1/4 cup brown sugar, 1/4 cup butter, the grated rind of one large satsuma (probably less than the suggested 1 Tbsp), and 2 eggs (rather than the six egg whites suggested by Alton). In a separate bowl, I mixed together 2 cups flour, 1 Tbsp. baking powder, and 1/2 tsp. kosher salt. I added the liquid ingredients to the dry ingredients and stirred just until everything was wet - it's important not to overmix or the batter can become tough. The batter is super thick, almost like a dough, but it cooked up fine.

We have a relatively inexpensive two-square Belgian waffle maker that takes about 1/4 cup of batter per waffle and cooks them up in about 5-6 minutes. Other types of waffle makers will operate differently, obviously. :) If I could go back and do my waffle iron purchasing over again, I'd probably get a large round one rather than the two-square, since it's easier to get the batter to spread and cook evenly in a round iron. But c'est la vie.

I decided to top the waffles with a little bit of apple - cut up one large apple into thin slices, melt 1/2 Tbsp. butter in a small saucepan and sautee the apples. Add 1-2 Tbsp. brown sugar and 1/4-1/2 tsp. cinnamon and cook until the apples are nice and soft. The waffles are pretty moist, especially with the juicy and buttery apples on top, but maple syrup (and/or whipped cream) would still be a welcome addition.

Time: Overall, this took me about 40 minutes to get together: 20 minutes to cut up /steam the sweet potato and mix the ingredients, and then another 20 for the four 'batches' of waffles to cook (while I made coffee and the apple topping). Not an insignificant investment of time, but not bad for a fancy schmancy breakfast.

Dishes/kitchen mess: As someone who owns a food processor, stand mixer and pizza stone but no dishwasher, I often find myself evaluating recipes based on how big a pile it will leave in the sink. This one dirties two large bowls and a waffle iron (plus a small saucepan for the apples) and involves some chopping as well, so I'll give it a 5 out of 10 on my arbitrary kitchen mess scale.

Nutrition Info: 227 calories per waffle (6g fat/37g carbohydrates/6g protein - more here). The sauteed apples add another 77 calories (2g fat/15g carbohydrates/0g protein - more here). Maple syrup and whipped cream both up the calories considerably, too.

So, okay, it's not health food, but there IS a lot of vitamin A (150% of your daily value in two waffles!) and hey, there's nothing wrong with a sweet breakfast treat once in a while. Especially if you have a couple pounds of sweet potatoes lying around.

Week 1: A surfeit of root vegetables

Well, this blog is off to an inauspicious start! This week's veggie box came on Wednesday, and of course I was out of town for a lab retreat from Wednesday to Friday. This week we were absolutely inundated with satsumas (mandarin oranges) and sweet potatoes. Also in the box: a bunch of carrots, a handful of apples, salad greens, a couple heads of broccoli, leeks, a head of cabbage, and a bunch of chard. As you can see, we have a couple butternut squash to work with as well. I love squash, but I sort of think of it as interchangeable with sweet potato, so we may well put them off for another week. Thank goodness they keep forever!

My tentative plan for the week is to make sweet potato waffles for breakfast on Sunday, and then use the rest of the sweet potatoes in a soup with some chard and chickpeas or white beans (embracing my recently discovered love of Northern African-ish cuisine). We tend to eat a lot of our fruits and veggies raw as snacks - the satsumas will be, for sure, as will the carrots, and the apples will either be snacks or wind up atop a salad (or possibly the waffles). The leek and broccoli seem like prime candidates for a creamy soup, but would also work just fine as side dishes with chicken or fish some night this week.

I must admit I've been having some trouble with the cabbage so far this year... it's just not in my culinary lexicon (yet) so I keep putting off cooking with it, and as a result there two entire heads of cabbage hanging out in our compost bin. This leek and cabbage sautee looks like a decent side dish, but I'm hoping I'll come up with something a little more interesting, perhaps in combination with all the potatoes we still have lying around.