Friday, June 24, 2011

Asian Chik'n Salad with Scallion Pancake

Earlier this week, I made these delicious salads as part of my dad's birthday-father's day celebration. Having a nice big salad for dinner is pretty much his favorite thing, so I made these -- with some fabulous salad greens from the CSA, tangerine vinaigrette, and veggie chicken (Trader Joe's chicken-less strips -- my dad's favorite), garnished with sesame seeds. The chik'n was cooked up with some plum sauce, red pepper flakes, ginger, garlic, and a little peanut oil.


As you can see from the picture, we also had some scallion pancakes with our salad -- made from the last of the spring onions from our CSA and whole wheat pastry flour. Overall, a tasty, satisfying, light summer meal -- and, most importantly, my dad loved it!

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Curried Chick Peas & Kale on Potato Pancakes

One of our classic family favorites is curried chick peas and some kind of green vegetable -- with some potatoes thrown in if I have them. I've posted about it before, because we really do have it all the time! Last night, however, I made a slight variation on the classic garbanzo'n'green extravaganza.


The chick peas and chard were prepared as usual, but -- instead of having potatoes as part of the curried mixture -- it was served on top of potato pancakes. It was delicious -- and a fun twist on one of our standard dishes!

Despite the fact that the chick peas were quite spicy, Zelda ate a million of them -- and refused to eat any of the potato pancake. In the background, you can see a glass of homemade limeade that we had with the meal. Zelda was watching Yo Gabba Gabba -- and Plex taught us how to make lemonade (squeeze lemons, add water, add honey, stir). We didn't have any lemons, but we did have a couple of limes -- so we made our limeade with agave nectar. Yum!

Friday, June 10, 2011

Thai Enchiladas with Kale, Black Beans, and Sweet Potato

At long last, our CSA has started up again! This week, we got kale, spinach, lettuce, arugala, mustard greens, spring onions, sage, lemon balm, and radishes.

We had our official first CSA meal of the season last night at my dad's house, after picking up the vegetables. Last night I made a sweet and spicy stirfry with all of the mustard greens and some veggie chicken that my dad had (Trader Joe's chicken-less strips); the sauce was made from plum sauce, peanut oil, red pepper flakes, garlic, and some spices. We ate the stirfry over brown rice, garnished with some sesame seeds.

Alas, I don't have a picture of last night's meal (though I should have one whenever my dad e-mails it to me) -- so let's talk about tonight's meal, the second official meal of the season!

Tonight, we had thai enchiladas filled with kale, black beans, and sweet potato -- and they were awesome. The filling was creamy and delicious, and the various flavors blended really well to make an amazing meal. I considered keeping the secret of this complicated-sounding recipe classified -- but the best part of this super-tasty meal was how easy it was to throw together. This comes with a confession that I didn't make my enchilada sauce or most of this recipe from scratch; no, there was a very crucial assist from my friend carton of soup.

In our pantry, we had a box of Pacific Foods Thai Sweet Potato Soup. I strained out the liquid to be the base of the sauce and left the chunky sweet potato bits for filling. I added a can of drained black beans to the mostly sweet potato mixture, then added kale that had been chopped and sauteed.

The liquid from the soup is pretty thick to start, but needs a little bit of thickening to be really good as an enchilada sauce. I think coconut flour is a good thickener to use, since there is already coconut in the soup -- but really, any thickener will do. Whisk in a little bit of your thickener of choice until it is smooth, then heat gently until the sauce thickens up enough to pour over the enchiladas.

We only had small, taco-sized corn tortillas -- so these were really mini enchiladas. One container of soup and half of our part of the kale yielded nine small enchiladas. You'll want to drizzle a little bit of oil and sauce on the bottom of the baking pan so that the tortillas don't stick or get hard on the bottom. Roll up the tortillas with the filling and lay them in the baking pan; when they are all assembled and comfortably snuggled together into the pan, pour the sauce evenly over all of the enchiladas. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes, covered in tin foil so your tortillas don't dry out.


When there was about five minutes left, I decided on a whim to sprinkle a bit of soy cheddar over the tops of the enchiladas to give them some cheeziness -- but that is definitely optional. The darker sauce on top of the cheese is a little bit of extra sauce drizzled over the top. You can see a bit of kale and black beans peeking out shyly at the end of the tortillas. Overall, not the most photogenic creation, but definitely super yummy -- and easy!