In follow up to the Miso-Wasabi Coleslaw recipe from Saturday, here is the rest of the plate – Soy-Marinated Salmon with Black Lentils and Sauteed Kale. The inspiration was the same – cleaning out the fridge. In this case, I used a bunch of fridge ingredients in the marinade and the kale, and added black lentils from the pantry for heft.
Miso-Wasabi Coleslaw
This was one of those cleaning out the fridge recipes, which is a great start to recipe creation. You will probably recognize many of these ingredients from recent recipes I’ve posted on here. The available ingredients led me to asian, so that is what I went for with the overall dinner. Below is the slaw recipe, which ADAPTS one of my favorite mayo-based dressings, but recipes for the rest of the plate will follow on Wednesday!
Pasta with Pesto and Flaked Salmon
For whatever reason, the colors in this dish – pink and bright green – just scream spring to me. And after the prolonged winter drizzle we’ve had here in Boston lately, I think any way to bring on the spring is extra welcome. It’s also so easy! Pesto is a great “one ingredient” pasta sauce, and in combination with vegetables – really any of your choosing – makes a great, nutrient packed dish and a great foundation for ADAPTATION. I insist you run to the produce market immediately to give it your own spin!
Goat Cheese Ice Cream Sundae
Of my many goals for this blog, one of the big ones is being able to develop recipes that I’ve never heard of, that don’t seem like they would work, but that have an underlying logic to them founded in flavor and texture BALANCE that makes them tasty as well as surprising. From my life before this blog, I knew that watermelon rind pickles taste great on vanilla ice cream. For this recipe, I wanted to expand that foundational truth into a composed dessert, adding textural components and new techniques to make something that could be served in a restaurant.
Ward 8’s Healthy Scratch Cocktail
The other day I went to a new (to me) bar in my neighborhood called Ward 8, and I really loved it! First, the food was good. Very important. Additionally, at some bars I have a hard time finding even one cocktail that looks good on the menu, but this place had so many choices I almost couldn’t choose! I ended up going with this one, called Healthy Scratch (I’m trying not to think too much about the name origins), because it is not based on either whisky or gin, which are my usual preferences, and because I already had all the ingredients at home if I wanted to recreate it. It was just what I’d hoped, and here’s my version!
Ham Fried Rice
Fried rice is great for recipe development because it’s so versatile. As long as you have the rice and the sauce, you can add whatever meat, vegetables, and/or eggs to it and it will probably taste like fried rice (and taste good). This also means it’s great for the budget, because it helps use up odds and ends left over from other meals. In this case, I used up some ham left over from Easter, which is a classic addition to fried rice.
Vegan Lemon Macarons
As I’ve mentioned, my sister is vegan. Back before she became vegan, when she was just a vegetarian, we would make macarons together when we were both home at our parents’ house. If you’ve never made macarons, you should know that they’re more of a project than your usual dessert recipe. I typically set aside ~4 hours to make a batch, and that doesn’t include the overnight steps. While that is undeniably a lot of time to spend on some cookies, it saves a lot of money because macarons do not have expensive ingredients but are extraordinarily expensive to buy in the store. Even better, I get to use that time to catch up with my sister, and we both feel the accomplishment of making a beautiful dessert that can seem very intimidating. Since going vegan, my sister and I had not made macarons. But I learned about using aquafaba (more on that after the break) in place of the eggs in macarons on the Great British Baking Show, so over Easter we decided to give it a try. All I can say is, boy was my sister pleased with the results!
Tahini Noodles with Shrimp and Eggplant
When I was designing this recipe, I decided to CONFINE myself to a flavor profile that I knew BALANCED well together but that I had limited experience with: Middle Eastern flavors. Although shrimp is not the first meat that comes to mind when thinking of Middle Eastern food (lamb and beef kebabs are more common), fish is consumed, especially in the coastal areas, and is becoming more popular. While I don’t make any claims to the authenticity of this dish, it was really fun to stretch my mind and use flavors that I’m not as familiar with! Don’t be scared off by the long list of instructions; it looks like a lot of work but all the steps are quick and easy.
Vegan Chocolate Truffles
My sister has been a vegetarian for 15 years and within the last year decided to go fully vegan. This has inspired me to eat vegan more often myself, both because it’s better for the environment and my health and so that we can share meals together. There are many things my sister had to give up when going vegan, and other things that are just very hard to find. Chocolate falls into this last category. Chocolate itself is already vegan – it’s just a bean. But a lot of chocolate has milk added to it, even if it’s not what you would consider milk or white chocolate. Even if the chocolate is vegan, the filling of a truffle might have animal products in it. It seemed so silly that my sister would have to give up chocolates, especially because they don’t require non-vegan ingredients. So this year for Easter I enlisted her help in making up a couple recipes so everyone could have a great holiday! To the full post!
Asian Tofu with Farm Market Vegetables
One of the recipe creation scenarios I find the most difficult is when I have no springboard recipe to ADAPT, no CONFINED set of ingredients. I feel overwhelmed with choice, which I’m sure most of you can relate to. But putting myself out of my comfort zone is the purpose of this blog. So allow me to present my first “random” recipe. It’s a pretty basic asian stir fry, but I developed the recipe in the moment at the produce market, and it has a sauce with a lot of components, which is something I really struggle with. I think it came out great! I look forward to doing more in the future.
Results Not Guaranteed 