Beet and Goat Cheese Salad with Orange Dressing

This salad is another example of flavors that get along like they've known each other since kindergarten. Roasted beets, sweet orange juice, goat cheese, and walnuts are far from a motley crew. Their flavors and textures complement each other beautifully. It's simply logical.

I don't have much more to say, other than this is one of those "fancy" salads that would go very well as a first course (in smaller portions) before some equally fancy entree. And the effort is minimal.

Beet and Goat Cheese Salad with Orange Dressing
serves 3

INGREDIENTS:

3 medium-sized beets, root and stem ends trimmed
1/4 teaspoon orange zest
2 tablespoons fresh squeezed orange juice (about 1/2 orange)
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
3 cups (loosely packed) chopped red leaf lettuce
1 ounce fresh goat cheese, crumbled
handful walnut pieces, toasted

DIRECTIONS:

1. Preheat toaster oven (or oven) to 400. Wrap beets in foil and place on a baking sheet. Bake for 45 minutes, or until easily pierced with a fork. Unwrap and let cool. When the beets are cool enough to handle, scrape off the skins with the blunt side of a knife. Cut into quarters (or smaller if using large beets). Place in a bowl.

2. In a small bowl, whisk together the orange zest, juice, vinegar, oil, and salt. Pour about half of it over the beets and toss to coat.

3. Assemble the salad: divide the lettuce among three plates, topped with a third each of the beets. Top with goat cheese crumbles and walnut pieces. Drizzle with remaining dressing. Serve.

Enjoy!

Mache and Leek Soup

I'm guessing right about now you have two questions. The first one is, what the heck is mache? And the second one is, how do you pronounce it? Well I'll leave the second question to our French friends. But the first question I can answer. It's a tender, small leafy green, also called lamb's lettuce. It has an interesting flavor that is best described as somewhere between spinach and watercress, with an unexpected hint of pea. That's right, pea. I can't explain it, I can just cook it and eat it. And I hope you will too.

If I'm going to be completely honest, this soup was supposed to be made with watercress. Watercress, I have discovered, is remarkably hard to find. They often have it at my supermarket, but it looks discolored and sad. They occasionally have it at the farmers market, but they didn't this past weekend. And Trader Joe's let me down. So I opted for mache, and was pleasantly surprised.

This soup has a very mild flavor, but it isn't bland. It's comforting and wholesome and all those usual adjectives I tend to use when I describe soup. This is basically a potato-leek soup given an extra vitamin boost. It's quite nice. Pick up some crusty sourdough and you'll have yourself a very satisfying meal.

Mache and Leek Soup
adapted from Everyday Food
serves 3

INGREDIENTS:

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1 leek, white and light green parts only, chopped
coarse salt and freshly ground pepper
1 cup low sodium vegetable broth
2 cups water
1 small to medium baking potato, peeled and chopped
4 ounces mache
drizzle of fresh lemon juice

DIRECTIONS:

1. Heat 1/2 tablespoon of oil in a medium saucepan or Dutch oven over medium heat. Add leek, and season with salt and pepper. Cook, stirring occasionally, until tender, about 4 minutes.

2. Add broth, water, and potato. Raise heat and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to simmer and cook, partially covered, for 10 to 12 minutes, or until potato is tender.

3. Add all but 1 cup of the mache and stir it in so it all gets incorporated into the soup. Cook until bright green and tender, about 3 minutes. Puree the soup in batches, or using an immersion blender.

4. Toss the remaining mache with the remaining oil and lemon juice, and season with salt and pepper. Serve the soup topped with a handful of the mache salad.

Enjoy!

Baked Stuffed Sweet Potatoes

Fall officially began a few days ago, but it took California a little while to get the memo. We had insanely hot weather the past few days, but I wasn't having any of it. I insisted on making a fall-inspired lunch today, and apparently the weather checked its calendar. I kid you not - literally as I was cooking, the clouds rolled in and a cool breeze kicked up, and the temperature dropped about ten degrees. Spooky.

But instead of being spooked, I rejoiced that suddenly this meal fit the day perfectly. It's filled with rich, indulgent flavors, but it's actually incredibly nutritious and not very fattening at all. You have your salty, your sweet, your tangy, and your peppery, all on one plate. You can create your perfect bite if you get all the elements on your fork at once. It's an experience to seek out, my friends. I recommend it.

The balsamic glaze is magical - make sure you use high quality balsamic vinegar, since you will be concentrating its flavor. The prosciutto provides a fantastic salty meatiness to contrast the sweet flesh of the potato. The arugula is refreshing and spicy at the same time. It all just comes together in a beautiful symphony of flavor.

Baked Stuffed Sweet Potatoes
adapted from Everyday with Rachael Ray
serves 2

INGREDIENTS:

2 medium-sized sweet potatoes
2 ounces diced prosciutto
1/4 cup high quality balsamic vinegar
2 cups loosely packed baby arugula
1 1/2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper

1. Preheat oven or toaster oven to 425. Line a baking sheet with parchment or foil. Cut ten 1/2 inch slits in each sweet potato and place on the baking sheet. Bake for 45 minutes, or until very tender.

2. When the sweet potatoes have about 10 minutes left to go, sprinkle the diced prosciutto on the baking sheet next to the sweet potatoes and return to the oven. Bake the prosciutto along with the sweet potatoes for the remaining time, until prosciutto is crispy and browned.

3. In a small saucepan, bring the vinegar to a boil over medium-high heat and cook until reduced by about half, and syrupy, about 5 minutes.

4. Toss arugula with olive oil and season with salt and pepper.

5. Cut an X into the top of each sweet potato and peel back the skin around it. Mash up the flesh of the sweet potatoes lightly with a fork. Serve topped with arugula, prosciutto, and drizzled with balsamic glaze.

Enjoy!

Sweet and Spicy Grilled Cheese Sandwiches

This week's Craving Ellie in my Belly recipe was the lovely and simple Ellie Krieger variation on grilled cheese. There is something timeless and indescribably fantastic about a well-made grilled cheese sandwich. Whether you're a purist who just wants the cheese + bread + butter formula, or someone who likes a bit of zing in her grilled cheese, you can't deny that it's simply wonderful. Of course its best friend is tomato soup, but since this was a slightly fancier grilled cheese, I thought it would go well with yesterday's carrot salad.

This grilled cheese tastes like something you'd get in a diner or a deli. It has some serious oomph, for lack of a better word. And it's all thanks to the grilled onions. As I virtually inhaled this sandwich, I marveled at the fact that it actually felt like there was meat in there, thanks to the melty cheese and the grilled onions conjuring up memories of In-n-Out cheeseburgers of yore. But there is no meat, folks. None. Vegetarians, check it out.

A lot of things can go into a grilled cheese sandwich to jazz it up, but this one doesn't take it too far. Grilled onions, tomato slices, and some peppers give enough flavor to make everyone happy. Ellie's version used cheddar and pepper jack, but I decided to use cheddarella (cheddar and mozzarella mixed, for those of you unenlightened folk) with some diced pimiento peppers. Yum!

Sweet and Spicy Grilled Cheese Sandwiches
adapted from Ellie Krieger's The Food You Crave
serves 2

INGREDIENTS:

1 teaspoon canola oil
1/2 medium onion, diced
salt and pepper
4 slices whole wheat bread
2 slices of cheddarella (or similar) cheese
1 tablespoon diced pimiento peppers
1 medium heirloom or plum tomato, sliced
cooking spray

DIRECTIONS:

1. Heat oil in a medium skillet over medium heat. When hot, add the onion. Cook, stirring, until onion is golden and brown around the edges. Season with salt and pepper and remove from heat.

2. Assemble the sandwiches: place a slice of cheese on two of the slices of bread, top with the onion (half each), the pimientos (half each), and the tomato slices. Top the sandwiches with their missing bread slices.

3. Clean the skillet and coat with cooking spray. Heat over medium-high and then place the sandwiches in the skillet. Reduce heat to medium-low. Place a panini press or another skillet on top of the sandwiches to weigh them down while they cook. Cook until the undersides are brown but not burned, and cheese is mostly melted, about 5 minutes.

4. Flip the sandwiches over, replace the weight, and cook on the other side for about 4 minutes, until browned on both sides. Cut in half and serve.

Enjoy! You know you will.

Lemony Carrot Salad

We went to a barbecue a few months back, and a friend brought a fantastic carrot salad. I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since, so tonight I decided to make my own version. It's so easy, with so few ingredients, that you have to promise me you'll use the best quality ingredients you can find if you make this. When there are only three items on the grocery list, you might as well get the best ones, right?

This is a great side dish or starter. If you plop it on a pile of baby greens, you can serve it as a salad all on its own. We're having ours with some lovely grilled cheese sandwiches, to be posted tomorrow.

Lemony Carrot Salad
makes about 3 cups

INGREDIENTS:

zest of 1/2 lemon
juice of 1 lemon
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
5 medium sized carrots, grated
a handful of flat-leaf parsley, chopped
salt and pepper to taste

DIRECTIONS:

1. In the bottom of a large bowl, whisk together the zest and juice of the lemon. Stream in the olive oil, whisking constantly.

2. Add carrots and parsley to the bowl and toss to coat with the dressing. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

There you have it. Enjoy!

Quick Corn Chowder with Toasted Tortillas

This was an impromptu dinner that I hadn't intended to make this week. My husband hasn't been well, and soup seemed like a good idea. I wish I could say I used gorgeous summer sweet corn from my CSA for this soup, but I had none, and had to turn to frozen corn instead. If you have fresh corn on hand, please use it!

This soup is remarkably simple, a sort of fluid polenta-that-isn't-actually-polenta, topped with yummy Mexican-inspired toppings and featuring lots of interesting colors. I took Nigella's recipe and ran with it, throwing in some things I happened to have in the fridge. The result was a tasty and soul-satisfying meal; everything soup should be, if you ask me.

Blue corn tortillas are a fun and more interesting chip, but feel free to use white or yellow corn chips if that's what you have.

Quick Corn Chowder with Toasted Tortillas
adapted from Nigella Express
serves 3-4

INGREDIENTS:

3 cups frozen sweet corn, defrosted (or fresh corn kernels)
2 scallions, trimmed and halved
2 tablespoons semolina flour
3 cups low-sodium vegetable broth
1 red bell pepper, seeded and diced
1 jalapeno, seeded and diced
salt to taste
handful lightly salted blue corn tortilla chips
1/2 cup grated cheese (cheddar or mozzarella are best)

DIRECTIONS:

1. Drain the corn and put into a food processor with scallions and semolina. Process to form a paste, leaving some texture but very few (if any) whole kernels.

2. Warm the broth in medium pot over medium-high heat. When hot, stir in the corn paste. It will break up and distribute throughout the broth as it heats up. Stir in the bell pepper and about half the jalapeno. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to simmer for about 10 minutes.

3. Meanwhile, preheat toaster oven (or oven) to 375. On a foil-lined baking sheet, spread out the chips and sprinkle with the cheese. Bake for about 5-10 minutes, or until cheese is melted and starting to brown.

4. Serve the soup, about two ladles per person, topped with the cheesy chips and remaining jalapeno.

Enjoy!

Greek Style Bread Salad with Lemon-Caper Dressing

This is a great meal to make for dinner when you're atoning for a fairly indulgent lunch. Or, a fairly indulgent week, as the case may be. It's a Greek-inspired version of bread salad, which usually showcases more Italian flavors. To be honest, I'm not sure how "Greek" this really is, but it's good. The dressing is slightly creamy, but totally guilt-free. The salad features two of my favorite things - capers and tomatoes. And who doesn't like crusty bread in their salad? Please.

Go ahead and make yourself a healthy supper that is yummy enough to make you forget the atonement aspect.

Greek Style Bread Salad with Lemon-Caper Dressing
adapted from Everyday with Rachael Ray
serves 2

INGREDIENTS:

6 slices of baguette (about 1/2 inch each)
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil, plus more for brushing
1 clove garlic, cut in half
2 1/2 tablespoons lowfat Greek-style yogurt
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon chopped flat leaf parsley
1/2 head romaine, coarsely chopped
1 heirloom tomato, chopped
1 scallion, thinly sliced
1 tablespoon capers, drained
freshly ground pepper

DIRECTIONS:

1. Preheat toaster oven (or oven) to 350. Brush both sides of each slice of baguette lightly with oil. Bake for about 10 minutes, until browned, flipping over about halfway through. Rub one side of each slide with the cut side of half the garlic clove.

2. Mince the remaining garlic clove half, and whisk with yogurt, lemon juice, and remaining oil. Toss the parsley, lettuce, tomato, scallion, and capers with the dressing. Season with pepper. Serve the salad with the bread slices.

Enjoy!