Hawaiian Eats

So I believe an explanation is in order.

Last week no recipes were posted. This is because last week no recipes were made. Unless you count squeezing lime onto papaya. Which, you know, I might just count.

You see, last week I was in Hawaii. 

Sometimes life gives you lemons. This is not one of those times. 

When real life begins, which it will soon, I’m sure there will be plenty of lemons. But right now, this is one of those rare times where life doesn’t hand you anything small, yellow, and sour.  Instead, life says, “Here Liz, have a coconut and a machete and enjoy.”

So today, instead of a recipe, I’ll share a little of what last week entailed while I was spending a bit more time in the ocean and a bit less time in the kitchen.

It mostly looked like this:

With a lot of this:

And a fair amount of this:

And, you know, some of these:

It's a hard life. Don't know how I managed to feed myself over there. Somehow I survived, though.

And don't worry, for those of you who aren't particularly fond of change, we'll be back to the regular routine now. At least through the rest of the week.

Black Bean Tacos

My family is made up of voluntarily picky eaters and not so voluntary, tricky dietary needs.

My mom hates bell peppers, my dad has Celiac disease and has suddenly decided that now is a good time to try going vegetarian, and my aunt Anne can’t eat, god, I can’t even list it all: dairy, gluten, shellfish, nightshades, sugar, and potatoes, to state a few. 

I am an exception to this, as is my grandfather, Papa Bill. We’ll eat about anything you put in front of us.

Papa Bill always jokes that while they might have their diets, he has one of his own. The seafood diet. 

“I see food, and I eat it.”

An ancient joke, but always kind of refreshing to hear in a family that, when ordering in a restaurant, gets glares of disgust that make you wonder if instead of ordering your salad with no croutons and no tomatoes and the dressing on the side, you might have somehow accidentally told them you like to eat children for dinner. 

So for anyone who can relate to a family who is as dietarily-disabled as mine, or is just made up of picky eaters, or is simply trying to cut a few calories or experiment with something different by cutting gluten, or meat, or whatever else, hopefully some of the recipes here will help.

This is a fantastically simple recipe with wholesome, filling ingredients. It’s gluten free, and vegetarian, but more than that, it tastes good—which has always been, and will always be, the most important part. 

 

Black Bean Tacos

Serves 4

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

1 small onion, sliced

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 (15oz) can black beans, drained and rinsed
1/4 cup water

salt and pepper to taste

8 corn tortillas

1 cup carrot, shredded

1 cup romaine lettuce, shredded

4-6 ounces cheddar cheese, shredded

optional: salsa and/or plain Greek yogurt

Heat oil over medium high heat. Add onions, sauté until beginning to brown, add garlic and continue to sauté for another 1-2 minutes.

Add black beans and water to onions, sauté until liquid has reduced and beans have softened and are fragrant. About 5 minutes. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

In a dry skillet heat each tortilla over medium heat, about 30 seconds on each side. Set aside and keep warm.

Fill each tortilla with bean mixture, shredded carrot, lettuce, and cheese. Top with salsa or a spoonful of Greek yogurt if desired. 

Homemade Mustard Vinaigrette

 Having your own herb garden has a lot of perks. 

 

For one, you don’t have to spend a ridiculous amount of money to buy an obnoxiously, unnecessarily large bunch of any given herb. Seriously, grocery stores? I’m not trying to make a salad out of only parsley for I don't know, Shaq or Andre the Giant here. 

At most, I will probably use a few tablespoons of what is undoubtedly enough parsley to re-stuff a small couch cushion. I find this is true for almost all herbs, especially the more expensive ones. Would I like to buy just enough to make my meal? Oh heck no, I’d much rather have an absolutely enormous handful just to make sure I have way more than enough, and if it goes bad at the bottom of the veggie drawer of my fridge—because, honestly, who uses that much cilantro in a given week?—then, perfect, just what I was hoping for. I mean, who doesn’t love wasting ingredients, and money? 

That’s why an herb garden with its many perks is the perfect solution. 

This is not one of those perks. 

Unless cutting a beautiful bunch of parsley only to find a disturbingly large caterpillar on it is your kind of thing. But I’m betting its not. Don’t get me wrong, bugs aren’t always the enemy. In theory.  Fireflies in movies, completely awesome. In real life, kind of a disappointment. The spider from Babe:  lovable. In real life, spiders are kind of freaky looking and right now, one's the cause of a whole row of painful bites on the side of my thigh.

I’ve read The Very Hungry Caterpillar—that thing was cute.

But in reality, not so much.  Fuzzy caterpillar from afar, fine. Fuzzy little fellow on my soon-to-be food, not overwhelmingly pleasant. 

Luckily, what with the herb garden and all, it didn’t cost me an arm and a leg to go get another bunch of parsley. Problem solved. 

 

Having a basic go-to vinaigrette recipe has a lot of its own perks too. It’s simple and you can control every element—want to make it lighter, healthier? Cut some of the oil. Want to make it tangier, sweeter, spicier? All easy alterations. Don’t have the herbs a certain recipe calls for, improvise with what’s on hand.

For us, this is a great, quick vinaigrette for fresh salads. It can even be used for a different take on summer rice or potato salads or as a marinade for grilled vegetables.

Homemade Mustard Vinaigrette 

2 tablespoons Dijon mustard

4 tablespoons red wine vinegar

1 teaspoon sugar

½ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon pepper

¼ teaspoon red pepper flakes

1 tablespoon fresh parsley, minced

1 tablespoon fresh chives, minced

½ cup extra virgin olive oil 


Measure all ingredients—excluding olive oil—and place into a medium sized bowl. Whisk together.

Continue whisking while slowly drizzling olive oil into the bowl. Whisk until vinaigrette has thickened and all ingredients are mixed. 

If necessary, add additional salt, pepper or herbs to taste.

Vinaigrettes are best served soon after mixed, however, they can be kept in the fridge for up to 1 or 2 weeks depending on the ingredients. If storing the vinaigrette for use at another time, whisk again before serving at a later date.

Should yield about 1 cup.

Grilled Zucchini with Goat Cheese and Pine Nuts

I got in a lot of trouble during my semester abroad in London. 

Don’t get too excited now, it wasn't that kind of trouble. Not the locked up abroad, or girls gone wild, or can’t-remember-what-happened-last-night kind of trouble. My life is about as R rated as Dora the Explorer, sorry to disappoint. 

The trouble I had was in my everyday conversations. Whoever thinks that English in England is anything like it is here in America, I have to tell you how very wrong you are. For the most part, adding a “u” in the word “colour,” or saying “toilets” instead of the American term “bathrooms,” or figuring out that “pavement” meant “sidewalk,” and that “torch” meant “flashlight”—not too hard to handle. But in the kitchen it wasn’t as easy. For me, the conversations that would get me in the most trouble were always the one’s revolving around cooking. And not just because I had to spend an embarassing amount of time figuring out how to convert 425 degrees Fahrenheit into Celsius every time I went to bake a potato. 

For one: the word “caloric”? It doesn’t exist, across the pond it’s: “calorific.” Which is actually kind of awesome. Maybe it's just me, but being calorific doesn’t sound nearly half as bad as being caloric. It almost sounds like a good thing. Would you rather: "I ate a whole slice of cheesecake today, it was so caloric!" OR "I ate a whole slice of cheesecake today, it was so calorific!" Yeah, definitely better the second way. Especially if Tony the Tiger were the one saying it. Eat this delicious sugary cereal—It’s calorific!!

The second problem is that French words seem to make far more of an appearance in English cooking than they do in American. I get it, the French like to cook. They’re quite good at it in fact. That’s what Julia Child taught me—or at least, what watching the movie Julie and Julia taught me. And to be fair, we have our fair share of French words in our cooking vocabulary too: we do “sauté” and eat “hors d’ouevres” after all. 

But in England, it’s more than just a few phrases. They “fondue” and “sauté” like the best of us, but Zucchinis aren’t zucchinis: they’re “courgettes.” Eggplants are “aubergines.” Cookies are "biscuits." The list goes on. 

It makes it really difficult to ask for things in London's grocery stores without sounding a little like an idiot and a lot like a foreigner. 

So for those of you in England, please do enjoy this courgette recipe. It’s a fantastic summer side dish, it's delicious, and, you’ll be pleased to know, it’s not very calorific either.

Grilled Zucchini with Goat Cheese and Pinenuts

Serves 4-6

6 zucchinis, ends trimmed, cut lengthwise into ½ inch wide slices

6 tablespoons olive oil, divided

½ cup pine nuts

4 ounces goat cheese or feta, crumbled

¼ cup basil, chopped

_1/8  cup mint, chopped

4 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

salt and pepper to taste

Preheat grill to medium-high heat. Drizzle zucchini with 4 tablespoons olive oil. Toss to coat. Place zucchini on grill and cook until tender, about 4-5 minutes on each side. Grill marks should appear on both sides. Remove from grill, spread on platter for serving and keep warm. 

Heat a dry nonstick pan over medium heat. Toast pine nuts in the pan for about 2-3 minutes, shaking the pan frequently to avoid burning and to ensure even browning.  Remove from heat and sprinkle over zucchini.

Add goat cheese, basil, and mint. Drizzle with balsamic vinegar and remaining 3 tablespoons of olive oil. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Serve immediately.

Lemon Leek Pasta with Sautéed Chicken

For anyone who’s ever met me, this will not come as a surprise: I love pasta.

Most of the time, we love what we grow up eating. I say most of the time, because this is often, but not always, the case. My great aunt, who grew up during the great depression and ate baked beans for breakfast, lunch and dinner, refused to eat them ever again the second she learned how to cook for herself. According to the stories, she never once made baked beans for her family. Not surprising, I guess. Her brother, my grandfather, however, still adores them despite the monotony of years of beans with a side of beans and an extra helping of beans, please. So I stand by my theory.

It’s the case with many things in life—the songs we listen to on repeat in the car when we first get the CD, the surprisingly addictive flavor of gum we happen to snag from the checkout counter at the grocery store, the haircut we have. Once these things make it past the initial phase of obsession, through the phase of repulsion that's natural with repeated overexposure, and into the third and final phase of unexciting, but utterly familiar, comfortable, and companionable love: they usually stick for life. My aunt and her love for 70s rock, my mom's father and his golf, my dad's father and his baked beans, my dad and his 6th grade haircut. I grew up with an Italian grandmother. I also, therefore, grew up with pasta. Needless to say, I am in that third phase. It seems it's stuck for life. 

When I’m sick, when I’m happy, when I'm upset, when I’m starving, when I’m in desperate need of comfort food, when it’s raining, when it’s hot out, when it’s Tuesday, when I’m wearing red, when I’m breathing. Anytime is an appropriate time for pasta. It wouldn’t even be a lie if I said I’d eaten pasta for breakfast—don’t judge.  One fateful night while on an outing in New York’s Little Italy, I even ate pasta on top of pizza. Heaven on earth? Jury’s still out on that one but I’m leaning towards yes. Again here people, don’t judge. Everyone has that one food that just never gets any less, well, good—no matter how young you are or how old you get, how many pounds you gain, or lose, or how many changes your taste buds experience. For some it’s chocolate, for others its strawberries, or steak, or peanut butter, or cheese, or pancakes, or whatever it may be. For me, it’s pasta.

I could easily make an entire blog of simply pasta recipes, it wouldn’t even be a challenge. Don’t worry, I won’t. I’ll try to control myself.

For now though, this recipe is a wonderful example of how wrong it is to say that pasta is only a cool-weather dish. A foolish assumption indeed, my friends. This is a fantastically light and refreshing dish for any spring or summer night.

Lemon Leek Pasta with Sautéed Chicken

Serves 4

½ lb (8oz) uncooked linguine

2 medium to large sized boneless skinless chicken breasts, halved

2½ teaspoons salt, divided

1½ teaspoons pepper, divided

¼ cup flour

3 tablespoons butter, divided

1 tablespoon olive oil
3 cloves garlic, thinly sliced

2 leeks, cut in half lengthwise and sliced thinly

½ cup low-sodium chicken broth

¼ cup dry white wine

juice of ½ lemon

4 tablespoons fresh parsley, chopped

Optional: grated parmesan cheese to taste

Cook linguine according to package directions. Drain and keep warm.

While pasta cooks, prepare chicken. Place each chicken breast half between 2 sheets of parchment paper (or seal with as little air as possible in a large Ziplock bag), pound to an even thickness with a meat mallet, heavy pan, or rolling pin. Season with ½ teaspoon salt and ½ teaspoon pepper.

Place flour in a shallow bowl. Lightly coat chicken in flour and shake gently to remove any excess.

Heat 1 tablespoon butter in a large nonstick pan on medium-high heat. Cook chicken 3 minutes on each side or until done—should look golden brown and tender and have no traces of pink. Remove chicken from pan and keep warm.

In a large skillet, heat the olive oil over medium-high heat. Add leeks and garlic, sauté until beginning to tender—about 5 minutes.  Add remaining 2 teaspoons salt and 1 teaspoon pepper. Add white wine, broth, and lemon juice. Cook for 2-4 minutes or until liquid is reduced by half. Add remaining 2 tablespoons butter. Remove from heat.

Add pasta to the pan, mix gently to coat with sauce. Toss with fresh parsley and parmesan cheese. Serve immediately with sautéed chicken added either on top or on the side.  

Mediterranean Quinoa

I’ve never been one to pronounce things quite right.

I think it might have something to do with the fact that I’m highly gullible and come from a family who suffers, at least in part, from the same problem. My Italian grandmother, god knows why, grew up calling pesto: “paste-o.” Which is a) wrong, and b) kind of gross sounding.  But that’s the way she said it until the day she died. 

My aunt and I seem to mispronounce, and just generally misunderstand, a number of things as well—mostly because we’ll believe almost anything told to us with any amount of authority—deserved or not. If someone tells her that “superfluous” is pronounced “superlefuss,” well, she’ll believe them. And I’m not exactly one to talk, ever since that time in elementary school when my grandfather told me that Shania Twain had a brother named ChooChoo and I believed him. It wasn’t until I stood watching my parents smile knowingly at each other as I told them about how cool it would be to be named ChooChoo Twain that it dawned on me that I might have been duped. 

I mention all this only because this recipe involves quinoa. 

I don’t know about you, but I think whoever named this little grain clearly did it to get a kick out of watching obnoxious people argue over its proper pronunciation. This same person clearly came up with “açaí berries,” decided that the only letter getting doubled in the word Mediterranean would be that random r in the middle, and is most likely behind the name of that Gotye guy who sings that song: “Somebody That I Used to Know.”

See, in my family, we discovered quinoa—“keen-wahhhhh"—before it became a popular, well-known, properly pronounced, kind of ingredient. Back then, no one was there to correct us and the backs of the Trader Joes' quinoa boxes didn’t have humorous yet slightly condescending explanations about its proper pronunciation.

Even now, when everyone seems to be on board the quinoa bandwagon, it still trips people up. And if you tell me that you haven’t said it “keen-oh-ah” at least once in your life, then either you’re a big fat liar or just way better at life than I am. If that’s the case: teach me your ways.

Personally I don’t particularly mind how it gets pronounced. Sometimes I still say “keen-oh-ah” just to frustrate the people around me. It’s kind of a fun game, definitely up there with asking the driver, “are we there yet?” as much as humanly possible while on road trips, and tightening the lids on jars in the fridge so ridiculously tight that no one else can open them.

Anyway, no matter how you pronounce it: this dish is delicious. It’s also great for summer time meals or picnics as it can be served warm, or cold, as a main meal, or a side dish.

Mediterranean Quinoa

Serves 4-6

2 cups uncooked quinoa

4 cups vegetable broth or water

3 tablespoons olive oil, divided

1 small onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, minced

½ cup sundried tomatoes, drained if kept in olive oil or water, and chopped

1 14oz can artichoke hearts, drained and chopped

½ cup kalamata olives, sliced

salt and pepper to taste

4 oz feta, crumbled

optional: 1-2 tablespoons fresh basil or oregano, to taste

Combine quinoa with vegetable broth (or water) in a large saucepan and bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover with lid and simmer about 15 minutes until the quinoa is translucent and the germ has spiraled out from each grain. Set aside.

In a pan, heat 1 tablespoon olive oil on medium heat and add onions and garlic. Sauté until fragrant and the onions are beginning to golden.

Add sautéed onions and garlic, chopped sundried tomatoes, artichoke hearts, and kalamata olives to quinoa. Season with salt and pepper. Toss gently to combine all ingredients. Drizzle with remaining 2 tablespoons olive oil. Top with crumbled feta and basil. Can be served warm or cold.

Grilled Caprese Sandwiches

This is not my first blog post.


That statement is both true and untrue. But mostly true. The first blog post I ever wrote, the first of many, many blog posts that would follow, was for the Internet marketing company I worked for the summer before my senior year of college. 

 

Ironically enough, the topic I was instructed by my boss to write on that first day was “How to Create an Effective Blog.”

I’m not sure about you, but personally, I know I want my advice on blogging to come from a girl who's never blogged before and whose sole authority on the subject comes from a brief Google search on “how to blog” and years of experience bluffing her way through essays on books she’d read only halfway through, at best.

I only accept (and give) the soundest advice. Clearly. 

Yet somehow, despite the many blog posts that followed that summer, this still feels like the first time. Maybe it’s the fact that this is a bit more personal than those first posts on “How to Use Pay Per Click Advertising for your Small Business” and a smidge closer to my heart—although just barely—than my posts on “Optimizing your Website for Google’s Newest Search Algorithm.”

But, sarcasm aside, this really is something close to my heart. Here's the thing: I love food. Okay so that’s not very unique, lots of people love food, I know, I know. And if you don't, then you—wait seriously?

I’ll elaborate. I love food. I love food. The kind of love that would make a thirteen-year-old girl’s love for Justin Bieber jealous, the kind of love that could shout "Stellllllaaaa" far louder than Marlon Brando ever could, the kind that makes even Celine Dion songs seem inadequate. I love cooking food. I love talking about food—especially while eating food. I think the smell of sautéing onions might possibly be my favorite smell in the world, second best only to the smell of sunscreen and ocean mist in the middle of summer. I love the feel of kneading dough between my fingers and the way a freshly ripened cherry tomato bursts in your mouth when you eat it whole. 

I also love holding my iPhone above flaming barbeque grills, raw fish, pots of boiling water, and unnecessarily sticky cake batter. I live on the edge—and to make Steve Jobs roll over in his grave, clearly. Oh by the way: sorry, dad.

So I figured, if one day my iPhone ends up drowning in a balsamic vinaigrette, maybe I should do something to make it a little more worthwhile. Why not share a little of what I love with the people I love?   

This recipe is simple, but delicious.

Grilled Caprese Sandwiches

Serves 4

8 slices good bread—a crusty loaf of Italian that you can slice thickly is ideal

1-2 tablespoons olive oil

4 tablespoons pesto

6-8 oz fresh mozzarella, sliced

2 large roma tomatoes, sliced about ¼ inch thick

16-20 basil leaves

salt and pepper

Preheat the grill to a medium fire. Brush the outside of all 8 slices of bread with olive oil. Next, spread 1 tablespoon of pesto onto the inside of 4 of the slices of bread. Layer on sliced tomato and sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste. Top with 1-2 ounces sliced mozzarella and 4-5 basil leaves each. Close sandwiches.

Place sandwiches on the grill and cook until the cheese begins to melt and both sides are golden brown, about 5 minutes per side. Watch closely to prevent burning. Serve immediately.