vegetarian – Page 8 – The Kitchen Illiterate

I’m talking about some savory bread pudding

I promised it, and here it is: Spinach and Mushroom Bread Pudding. And it was just as awesome as I thought it would be. Of course, someone at work pointed out to me that it’s pretty much strata, so all my excitement about the crazy innovation of making a savory bread pudding was kind of depleted. But my excitement about eating it was not. Strata, bread pudding, who cares? It is delicious.

I want to experiment with other additions: different vegetables, different bread, different herbs and spices. Maybe some meat (I’m telling you, everything is better with sausage). The basic recipe can be a great blank slate for all kinds of wildness. I am thrilled with the possibilities, and for once, I’m actually kind of happy that we still have some cold weather ahead, because this puppy requires the oven to be on for over an hour, and that’s just not a good thing in August.

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Roasted Butternut Squash and Chickpea Salad

Last week was by far the craziest, busiest week I’ve experienced in grad school. But though I couldn’t find time to share my culinary endeavors here, I was, in fact, endeavoring (er?). And one of those endeavors involved some roasted butternut squash. I saw a recipe for this butternut squash salad on Orangette months ago, and while she may not have been able to hold out for winter to make it, I somehow managed to hold out until winter was almost over (at least, I hope winter is almost over). And honestly, I think this salad is more springy than wintery anyway. Sure, there’s roasted squash in there, but the lemony tahini dressing and the cilantro give this hearty salad a bright, summery taste. Perfect for bridging these last few months of cold, grey Boston.

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Curried Lentil Stew is Not Photogenic

A cup of red lentils

Why is vegetarian food often so unattractive and difficult to photograph? All the vegetables and grains look so beautiful before they’re cooked, but inevitably the outcome is monochromatic mush, and no matter how good it tastes, it refuses to look lovely on film or even to look that appealing in my bowl. Which is a shame. Because this Curried Lentil Stew, which I found at Everybody Likes Sandwiches, is freaking delicious, but I have a feeling that meat-eating manly men like Mr. X would take one look at it and flee. Kale? Mushy lentils? Rice? Noooooo!!!

Well whatever, then, more for me. A lot more for me: This recipe could feed 10 people. It would be a great thing to make before a week when you know you’re going to be really busy, so you could just subsist on this huge bowl of healthy lentils rather than resorting to take out or something horrifically full of sodium and preservatives. In fact, I suspect that I will in future do just that, and I wish I could send a big bowl of it to Miss Crystal in Spain before her next round of finals.

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Light Broccoli Cheddar Soup with Chive-Cayenne Oil

Bowl of Broccoli Soup

When people think of broccoli soup, the ubiquitous casserole-glue cream of broccoli usually comes to mind. I don’t know many people who consider broccoli soup high up on the list of adored foodstuffs. But you see, my love of broccoli knows no bounds. I mean, I even love the stuff on pizza. And while I do have a bit of a weakness for a heavy, creamy bowl of canned badness, I’ve never tried my hand at making my own. Of course, now that I have an immersion blender, broccoli soup had to be one of the first things I introduced it to. (Are you guys sick of hearing about the immersion blender yet? I hope not–I suspect it’s going to be a soupy winter.)

When I started looking for a recipe, though, I found myself shying away from those full of heavy cream and flour and cups upon cups of cheese. I’ve been feeling lackluster from the lack of vitamins in my diet, and my inability to get to the gym on a regular basis probably means that I should limit my intake of heavy creamy dairy just a titch. I wanted to find a recipe that really let the broccoli dominate, but I was worried about producing boring soup. This was such a conundrum, people!

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Tomato and Mushroom Soup with Pasta Dumplings

Tomato Soup with Dumplings

I didn’t actually intend to make pasta dumplings. And frankly, I think this would have been better if the pasta had turned out the way I wanted it to, so I think this recipe needs a little more tweaking. I actually based this soup off a recipe that has been sitting in my overstuffed recipe folder for almost three years: Mark Bittman’s Pasta in Broth recipe from his New York Times column, The Minimalist. His recipe is minimal, all right, and I am decidedly not a minimalist. So I decided to fancy it up just a little.

What intrigued me about the original recipe is that it seemed like a really easy way to have homemade pasta. No pasta maker necessary, no endless rolling out of dough. Bittman writes that you can just pinch small pieces of dough off the ball and throw them into simmering stock. What could be easier? Sadly, it wasn’t as easy as I thought to pinch small pieces. Mine were larger, and resulted not in pasta so much as in doughy, heavy dumplings. It’s not that they were bad, just…unusual.

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Impromptu Buttercup, I mean, Hubbard Squash Soup

Buttercup Squash Soup

This is clearly the season for soup, and thanks to my lovely mother, there will be a lot of it this week. After last week’s not so smooth (yet still delicious) black bean and butternut squash soup, she went and sent me an immersion blender. Isn’t she awesome? In order to ensure that it gets a lot of use, I’ve already planned to make three, yes, three soups this week. And no, that is not a giant bowl of mustard you see above, that is a very simple, yet very delicious ~~buttercup~~ Hubbard squash soup.

I wasn’t planning on squash soup, since it just seemed a little repetitive, but when I saw Hubbard squash at the Roche on Sunday I had to buy it. Oddly, they called it buttercup squash, but as it turns out it was a Hubbard. Or rather, a piece of a Hubbard. A small piece. A piece so small that, much to my surprise, it made a single bowl of soup. Now that is cooking for one.

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Black Bean and Butternut Squash Soup

Squash Bean Soup

What a minute. Am I actually posting something the day after I cook it, instead of waiting for one or two (or three) weeks before I finally find the time to get around to it? How is this happening? Don’t I have other things I should be doing? Well, yes. Yes I do. But this soup was so delicious, and it’s so perfect for fall, and I’m eating the leftovers for lunch right now, so I decided to take some time out of my way-too-busy day to share. But I’m not sharing the leftovers. Those are mine.

I actually stole this recipe, or at least the inspiration for it, from Smitten Kitchen. And I noticed that the lovely Everybody Likes Sandwiches made it, as well. Maybe this soup will become the new No-Knead Bread. On second thought, although it’s clearly very versatile, it’s not nearly as easy as No-Knead Bread. You might have to be pretty dedicated to both squash and beans to take the time for this soup. And I am both.

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Talk about the Old Country: Pierogies with Tomatoes, Browned Onions, and Dill

Oh delicious potato dumplings

Update: Want to see a new and improved version of this recipe? Here ya go.

I have a serious weakness for pierogies. Little pasta pockets filled with mashed potatoes and cheese? What could be better? I usually pan fry them with just a bit of oil and butter, so they are crispy on the outside and warm and creamy on the inside. I have been known to make an entire meal of nothing but pierogies, on those nights when I’m feeling the need for comfort food. So when I saw this recipe on epicurious, I knew I would have to try it. It seems a little easier to justify eating pierogies for dinner when you put tomatoes and stuff on them, at least to me. I’ll take any reason to justify eating things that are really not that good for me. Putting broccoli in macaroni and cheese makes it health food, right?

So one cold day last week, I figured it was time for a pierogie dinner.

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Tofu, Noodles, and Peanut Sauce

So, this whole schooling thing is proving way more time consuming than I expected. Updating twice a week? Ok, not so far. It’s actually not that the school work is time consuming. It’s that it is so draining the last thing I want to do when I come home is sit down and write about what I just barely managed to dredge up the energy to cook. Because I have been cooking, and some good stuff, too. Like the above: Tofu, udon noodles, fresh vegetables, and peanut sauce, one of my favorite things in the world.

I may have mentioned before that I have a bit of a thing for peanut butter. Like, I eat it almost everyday. This addiction extends to peanuts, peanut sauce, peanut butter cookies, pretty much anything involving the delicious flavor of that lovely legume, Arachis hypogaea. I’ve experimented with a few different peanut sauce recipes and so far the best I’ve found is from Martha Stewart’s Everyday Food. It’s pretty thick, and very strongly peanut-y, but with a nice kick to it. I usually pair it with red peppers and udon noodles, and I find it’s just as delicious cold as it is hot. This sauce has definitely become a kitchen staple.

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Arancini di Riso con Funghi, and this time it worked!

Risotto and Tongs

Thanks so much to everyone who has left comments and sent emails lamenting my sudden disappearance from the kitchen. It’s great to know that I and my food experimentation have been missed. Things have been absolutely crazy here these past few weeks. Crystal left for Spain, after many visa debacles. I started a new job. I’ve undertaken a massive book reorganization project, so the huge collection is finally being put in order. I’ve had to spend way more time than I wanted dealing with computer issues and yes, I am actually debating going over to the dark side and buying a macbook. Not to mention attempting to keep the house clean, getting myself to the gym on occasion, and taking advantage of my last weeks of freedom before school by going out to the bar too much. Uh oh.

But I have been cooking, at least a little bit. Before Crystal’s departure she requested one last risotto, a Wild Mushroom and Pea risotto, which was fantastic. Of course, I made way too much and the day after making it, on Crystal’s very last night in the States, I decided to try, yet again, to make arancini di riso, or risotto fritters, risotto balls, fried risotto, whatever you want to call it. My last experiment with these never made it to these pages because it was disastrous. They stuck to the pan and fell apart and didn’t cook all the way through and, ugh, nightmare. This time, though, they were perfect.

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