spaghetti with raisins and spinach

This pasta dish was actually spun off a couple of similar recipes that I had found for spinach with raisins and pine nuts, with almonds subbed in for their more expensive nut brethren, and spaghetti added to take this from side dish status to a full main course—aka all Sarah eats is pasta. 

tomato pie three ways

So last year I shared with you one of my favorite family recipes for tomato basil tart, and also a corn and tomato pie from the smitten kitchen, which was likewise amazing. I didn't actually make either of those things this year, but I do have for you a trio of new tomato pies to choose from, in case that's your thing (Nathan for instance, is most definitely not a fan, which is strange and misguided, but to each his own I suppose).

green bean, fennel and pickled red onion salad/caramelized fennel and onions

I am kind of excited to tell you about these two dishes. They both fit right in with the type of cooking that I usually do, but were still somehow refreshingly different from my everyday meals. First is the Smitten Kitchen's green bean fennel and pickled red onion salad, which I made because I had a ton of food co-op green beans. Then, I jumped at the chance to use up the rest of the fennel, caramelized with onions, in this recipe from Simply Recipes.

lemon buttered green beans with toasted almonds

really good green beans

I must apologize for the rather boring blog posts this weekend. I've been a little overwhelmed with all the posting this month, and I guess I'm in need of a second wind. Hopefully that will come with the start of a new week.

Anyway, today I've got these green beans for you. I'll be the first to admit that green beans aren't my favorite vegetable, but made like this they make a great side dish. All you need is a little butter, lemon, salt, pepper and slivered almonds, and you can make the lowly string bean sing.


green beans with almonds

We got a lot of green beans from the food co-op this summer, and this was my go-to preparation. Simply toast the almonds briefly until golden brown, making sure not to let them burn. Then the green beans are cooked in melted butter over low heat, sprinkled with lemon juice and tossed with the nuts. It may not seem like much, but it's really quite good.

romesco sauce

romesco sauce

My CSA went through a month and a half long stretch where it gave us at least 3 peppers a week, and sometimes as many as 5 or 6. Peppers are good, and we did get a nice variety of them, but it didn't take me long to run out of ideas for cooking peppers:

I really like roasted red peppers, but since I still don't have the courage to try canning (maybe next year!), there's only so many of them I can eat, even with Nathan doing his part. Pepperonata is one of my favorite recipe discoveries of 2010, but I got a little tired of that as well. Of course, peppers are a key ingredient in ratatouille, but I only got eggplant from the co-op once this summer, and the zucchini supply ended surprisingly early. With the bounty of vegetables in my fridge, I wasn't going to buy even more just to use up a pepper or two. Many a time, I resorted to throwing them into a variety of soups, with varying degrees of success. Peppers don't present quite as much of a challenge as say, kale, but I was still struggling to use them all up.

That's why I was excited when I found this recipe for romesco sauce. Red pepper is the star ingredient, but it uses tomatoes too, which the food co-op was also giving us a lot of at the time. (Actually, we were still getting tomatoes as recently as Thursday, but we're shifting to a biweekly pick up schedule, so I'm certain that was the last of them. Which is sad.)

This was really easy to make. I roasted a red pepper over the gas stove, and peeled and seeded it. I pulverized some almonds in the blender, and then added some day-old bread, garlic, a couple of tomatoes, olive oil and salt. It also called for a chili pepper, but I think I used part of a jalapeno pepper. I also substituted balsamic vinegar for the suggested sherry variety. It came together in a flash, to a nice, thick, dip-like consistency.


red pepper romesco

This was definitely very different from my usual fare. Nathan really liked it. Laura and I were a little unsure. There was something about it that I found slightly strange, but not completely off putting. The almonds added a nice nuttiness, but I think that maybe they, combined with the bread, kind of subdued the brightness of the red pepper and tomato too much? I was glad that I tried this and happy to eat it, but I wasn't so won over that I'd make it again.

Still, it beats another generic red pepper infused soup, right?


mystery soup

I'm going through my Flickr account and I swear to god I don't even know what this one is made of– it might not even have peppers in it. But the good news is, if I don't remember it, I don't have to blog it, right? One more dish to check off the list!