Hard to get healthier than this!

After a weekend of over-indulgence, I’m always in the mood for something that’s really quick and healthy.

I definitely don’t want anything with meat or cheese in it. For once.

This recipe was inspired by a recipe that was in the most recent Bon Appetit. I say inspired because I changed almost every main ingredient except chickpeas. The original had chicken in it, but I felt like keeping it veggie packed so I nixed the chicken and added in a few potatoes and some kale.

The bonus piece of cutting out the chicken is that it also trims about 20 minutes off of your prep time.

Thirty Minute Chickpea Stew

Yield: Serves 4.

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Total Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:

2 15-ounce cans chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1 1/2 pounds potatoes, peeled and cubed
1 small bunch kale leaves, chopped
1 quart vegetable stock
1/2 cup roasted red peppers, chopped
1/4 cup olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
2 bay leaves
3 tablespoons tomato paste
2 tablespoons ground cumin
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
Crusty bread
Salt and pepper

Directions:

1) Add olive oil to a large heavy pot over medium-low heat. Add minced garlic and red pepper flakes. Cook for a few minutes until fragrant.

2) Add in cubed potatoes, tomato paste, and cumin. Turn the heat up to medium and cook for 5 minutes, stirring regularly.

3) Add in vegetable stock, chickpeas, bay leaves, roasted red peppers, and a pinch of salt and pepper. Bring to a simmer and simmer until potatoes are soft, another 10 minutes.

4) Stir in kale and lemon juice. Season with salt and pepper.

5) Break up some crusty bread in the bottom of a bowl. Ladle stew over bread. Serve immediately.

A Basic Stew

I think one of the best things you can learn as an at-home cook is to master the simple veggie stew. Learn how to balance the spices and flavors in a stew and you can usually make a fantastic meal with a few fresh veggies, a few canned foods, and some simple stock and spices.

For this version (and for a lot of stews that I make), these are some of the basics.

Just some basics.

I was worried that by cutting out the chicken, my stew wouldn’t have enough body to be really filling. I’m not sure if that’s entirely true because there’s still bread in the soup also.

But, I decided to add in a few chopped potatoes at the last minute.

I liked the potato addition, but I also think it would’ve worked fine without them.

Gives the stew some body.

Canned chickpeas makes this stew super-quick. It would add on at least an hour to use dried chickpeas and I’m not sure you would get much for your extra work.

Just be sure to drain and rinse the chickpeas well.

I think I’m almost in the market for a new strainer…

Rinse these guys pretty well.

Making the Stew

To start the stew, we need to infuse some oil with two really flavorful things: garlic and red pepper flakes.

Two of my favorite things.

The key to doing this correctly is cooking the garlic and pepper flakes over fairly low heat for a few minutes. If you crank the heat to high, you’ll completely char the garlic.

Instead, just add them to the olive oil over medium-low heat for a few minutes. When it starts to get really fragrant, you know it’s ready to go. The garlic shouldn’t even be browned really.

Low heat is important..

Next, add in the potatoes, tomato paste, and cumin.

This will immediately start to smell amazing. Stir it all together and let it cook for a few minutes. You can turn your heat up a bit to medium at this point.

Already smellin' good.

After a few minutes of that, just pour in the vegetable stock, add the bay leaves and chickpeas, and bring the whole thing to a simmer.

At this point the stew is pretty much done when the potatoes are cooked through which will probably take another 10 minutes or so.

Love that color...

Finishing the Stew

There’s a few ingredients to add to the end of the stew that completely make it in my opinion. First, roasted red peppers. Honestly, I’m not sure that I’ve ever had roasted red peppers in a stew before but they worked great and paired really well with the chickpeas.

Next, I added some chopped kale. You could also use something like swiss chard if you wanted. A leafy, sturdy green really helps the stew out though.

One of the most important ingredients is lemon juice. The acid just makes all the flavors really pop. Don’t forget it!

Gotta toss in some greens.

Once all that stuff is stirred in, just season it with salt and pepper and you’re ready to go.

This stew took me about 30 minutes to make and I was taking photos and stuff. You could probably make it even faster!

Serving the Stew

The stew tastes good as-is, but to really turn it into a meal, just put about 1/2 cup of torn bread into the bottom of your bowl before you serve it. Any super-crusty and slightly stale bread will work great.

Hidden bread!

Then just ladle on the stew with some of the broth and you’re all set.

Hard to beat in my opinion.

Betsy and I devoured this and we had plenty for leftovers also.

Give this a shot this week if you are crunched for time and looking for something healthy and filling!

Good luck. Good eats!

I’m not really much of a superstitious person. Maybe it’s my philosophy background, but I tend to think that things happen randomly and we impose meaning on them.

That said, there are still a few traditions that I do without fail.

One of those is eating black-eyed peas on New Years. It’s something my mom always served to me and she still calls me every year to make sure that I eat some.

I figure that in this case it doesn’t really hurt. Black-eyed peas aren’t a strange food. They aren’t impossible to find or taste gross. They are cheap and delicious. So I figure why not?!

Normally, I just make some sort of hearty soup like this one, but this year I decided to class it up a bit. As it happens, black-eyed peas and bacon make for a really good eggs benedict.

As a reader recently said on my Facebook page: “I don’t believe in good luck. But I do believe in good food!”

Black Eyed Pea Benedicts

Yield: Serves 2.

Prep Time: 20 minutes + cooking beans

Total Time: 45 minutes

Ingredients:

2 cups cooked black-eyed peas
3-4 slices thick bacon, chopped
3 scallions, chopped
1 large leaf of kale, minced
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 pinch of salt
4 large eggs
1/2 cup white vinegar (for poaching)
2 english muffins
Sriracha sauce (opt.)

Hollandaise Sauce:
1 large egg yolk
1 cup butter, melted preferably clarified
1 teaspoon water
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 pinch salt
1 pinch cayenne peppe (opt.)

Directions:

1) Cook black-eyed peas according to package. Canned would work fine for this recipe also.

2) Dice bacon and scallions. For kale, slice out the center rib from one large leaf and mince the kale finely.

3) In a skillet, add a drizzle of olive oil over medium heat. Cook bacon until it's well-browned and most of the fat has rendered out.

4) Add scallions and kale and continue to cook for another few minutes until they soften.

5) Stir in black-eyed peas and season mixture with salt and pepper. Keep on low heat until needed and stir occasionally.

6) For hollandaise, whisk yolk together with water, lemon, and a pinch of cayenne and salt.

7) Melt butter. Clarified butter will work best, but I've used just normal melted unsalted butter with success before.

8) Over a double boiler, heat yolk mixture and whisk until it's steaming and frothy.

9) Slowly start to drizzle in butter and whisk. Add the butter slowly until the sauce comes together. You may not need the entire cup of butter to get a smooth sauce. Once the sauce is formed, set it aside until needed. Don't keep it over the heat. If it gets too thick, whisk in a teaspoon of hot water to thin it out.

10) To poach eggs, add 1/2 cup of vinegar to a large pot of water (2 quarts). Bring the water to a simmer (not a boil) and swirl the water with a spoon.

11) Crack eggs into a bowl and then carefully drop them into the swirling water. Cook for about 2 minutes.

12) Remove eggs with a slotted spoon and let them drain briefly on a paper towel.

13) Toast muffins and spoon black-eyed pea mixture over muffins. Top with eggs and sauce. Optionally, drizzle on some sriracha or hot sauce. Serve immediately.

The Peas

I used dried black-eyed peas for this post, but there’s really no reason for it. Feel free to use canned.

If you do use dried, be sure to sort them before cooking them. Of all the dried legumes I’ve ever used, black-eyed peas have more pebbles than any other in my experience. No idea why this is, but I always find a pebble or two in my black-eyed peas.

Chipping a tooth on a rock is not a great way to start the new year!

You could use canned...

The Topping

Besides the black-eyed peas, there’s just a few things that I wanted to put in my filling. All of these are pretty standard flavors that go really well with black-eyed peas. Traditionally, a ham hock is used to cook them, but I just sliced up a few pieces of bacon.

Instead of collard greens which need need to cook for awhile, I just minced up a kale leaf which will saute much better.

Good flavors!

To start the filling, add a drizzle of oil to a skillet and add all your bacon over medium heat.

Cook it until most of the fat has rendered out and the bacon starts to crispy up, about 8 minutes. Then add the sliced scallions and kale.

Cook this mixture until the veggies start to soften, just another minute or two. This will already smell great.

Already delicious!

Then just toss in your cooked black-eyed peas and season with some salt and pepper.

Solid stuff

Keep this mixture warm over low heat until you need it later. Give it a stir occasionally just to make sure it isn’t burning.

The Hollandaise

I really do think that when it comes to classic sauces, hollandaise is the easiest to make. I find it to be a very forgiving sauce which is why I’m always baffled at how restaurants screw it up.

It’s really just two things: Eggs and butter.

Not a hard sauce.

If you are making a really professional hollandaise sauce, you want to make sure and clarify your butter before using it in the sauce. This basically just insures that you don’t get any butter solids in the sauce and that you have consistent results.

But you know what? Clarifying butter is kind of a pain in the buttocks. I’ve just melted butter in the microwave before and used it with okay (but not perfect) results. Just try not to add the butter solids (which will be at the bottom of your bowl) to the sauce if you can help it.

Also, if your sauce doesn’t work because you took this shortcut… don’t blame me!

To make the sauce, whisk together a yolk with a teaspoon of water and lemon juice in a mixing bowl. Add in a pinch of salt and cayenne pepper (optional).

Set this bowl over a pan of simmering water (double boiler) and continue to whisk it until the yolk mixture turns frothy. It should be steaming slightly and will start foaming like crazy. This is your cue to start adding the butter.

Just like any time you are making an emulsified sauce, start by drizzling in a small amount of the butter. Whisk whisk whisk. Drizzle in a bit more. Whisk more.

If your sauce starts to curdle at all, it might be getting to hot, so take it off the heat and whisk like crazy.

At the end of the day you should be able to whisk in almost an entire cup of melted butter into the yolk. This was my finished sauce and it was darn near perfect in my opinion!

I could eat this with a spoon.

Once your sauce is made, don’t put it back on the heat. It’ll break down completely if it gets too hot. It’ll be fine at room temperature for 5 minutes while you finish the rest of meal. If it comes time to use it and it’s really thick or congealed, just whisk in a teaspoon of hot water and it’ll loosen up immediately.

Poaching the Eggs

They make fancy contraptions to poach eggs, but I think those things tend to overcook the eggs. If you don’t feel like poaching the eggs, you can also just fry a few eggs over-easy and use those.

To poach eggs the right way though, just bring a large pot of water to a simmer and then add in a good amount of plain distilled vinegar.

Crack your eggs one at a time into a separate bowl. Give the water a swirl with a spoon and gently slide the egg into the water. It should immediately clench up and start cooking in a nice little package.

Depending on the size of your pot, you should be able to do 2-4 eggs at a time in one pot.

Two minutes of cooking time will leave you with perfect poached eggs.

When they are done, scoop them out of the water with a slotted spoon and let them drain on a paper towel.

You could fry them also...

Assembling the Benedicts

All the hard work is done. Now for the fun part.

Toast a few English muffins and pile on the black-eyed pea mixture.

High and deep!

Top each half with an egg and a good dollop of sauce.

You could stop right here if you wanted.

Pretty straightforward

I like a bit of hot sauce with my black-eyed peas though so I drizzled on some Sriracha. It totally made the dish in my opinion.

When you cut into one of these benedicts, it’s a thing of beauty.

Best brunch I've made in awhile.

Like I said, I’m not sure that I believe in good luck.

But I’ll use any reason I can find though for an excuse to make these delicious things.

HAPPY NEW YEARS EVERYONE!

Change up the standard.

This upcoming weekend is probably the biggest grilling weekend of the year here in the US. It’s our independence day on Monday and that means that we Americans will be celebrating by eating lots of meat, blowing stuff up, and drinking a lot of beer.

Pretty standard really.

One of the basic sides at pretty much every BBQ party this weekend will be coleslaw. It’s cold. It tastes great with burgers and steaks. And frankly, it’s probably the healthiest thing some people will eat this weekend.

If you’ve never made coleslaw, it’s basically just raw cabbage which doesn’t seem very appetizing, but if you add a few other veggies and a thick mayo sauce, it ends up being pretty good.

I figured I’d try the same thing with kale which I actually prefer to cabbage. Raw kale can have a slightly bitter taste to it, but it’s not a problem in this slaw.

Kale Slaw

Yield: Serves 6.

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Total Time: 15 minutes

Ingredients:

1 bunch Tuscan kale, the curly kind, minced thinly
1 daikon radish, minced or or shredded
1 red pepper, minced
1/2 lemon, juice only
2/3 - 1 cup mayonnaise, homemade is best
A few dashes of hot sauce
Salt and pepper

Directions:

1) Remove ribs from kale leaves and mince finely into strips. Also shred daikon and mince red onion.

2) In a separate bowl, mix mayo, hot sauce, and lemon juice.

3) Pour dressing over slaw and stir well to combine.

4) Season with salt and pepper.

5) Serve right away or make in advance.

The Kale

If you take a big bite of raw kale, you probably won’t be too happy. It usually has a kind of bitter, iron-like taste. If you steam it or saute it with some lemon, this completely goes away, but the raw stuff is a bit dangerous.

This isn’t a hard problem to solve though in a slaw. Step one is just to make sure you take the time to prep your kale correctly. Cut out the bit middle ribs (stems) and then mince it very finely into narrow strips.

Ditch the stems for this.

Speaking of veggies, make sure to take time prepping the other two veggies in this slaw also.

If you’ve never used a daikon radish before, they basically look like albino carrots. They have a mild radish flavor though and work great in slaws like this.

If you can’t find a daikon, you can use a few regular radishes. Just make sure to dice them finely.

Not cheese.

The Sauce

Over the last month or so I’ve been ranting pretty regularly about how I’ll never use store bought mayo again.

Well, it didn’t take me very long to break my own rule.

I wanted to make homemade mayo for this stuff, but I was out of eggs and the idea of going to the store just for mayo was a bit soul-crushing. So, back to the store bought stuff for this post.

It worked fine for a slaw like this, but I think it would’ve made a noticeable difference if I would’ve made it myself.

Homemade mayo is best as always.

I just stirred my mayo with some lemon juice (1/2 lemon) and a few dashes of hot sauce.

The hot sauce works really well with the kale flavor.

Then just pour your dressing in with your veggies!

The sauce.

Stir this all together and taste it for salt and pepper. It’ll probably need a good pinch of both.

Don't forget the salt and pepper!

You could serve this stuff with almost anything off the grill.

It’s a fantastic and interesting side that’s a great change from the standard stuff.

I served mine with my sriracha beer can chicken and some grilled potatoes. Very solid meal.

Great with BBQ stuff!

If you’re sick of the old standard coleslaw and have ten or fifteen minutes, I think you’ll love the crisp flavors in this version.

Give it a shot this weekend!

Smoothies can be so varied I really struggled for awhile on how to present a wide spectrum of recipes in one post. That was, of course, until I saw a guy riding a bike last weekend with a rainbow sticker on his backpack. When I saw the rainbow I thought, now those would be some awesome smoothies!

Anytime I think of a rainbow, I can’t help but think of the mnemonic device for remembering the order of the colors: ROY G. BIV!

After some tinkering, I present to you, the ROY G. BIV Smoothie Team!

Pretty.

Each of the recipes I used are below, but before that, there are a few quick notes on smoothies that I think are important.

First, smoothies are all about balance. You want to combine some sweet with some bitter. You want to make sure that your acids are balanced. Really if you do that and taste as you mix, you can’t go wrong. These recipes should all be seen as jumping off points. Mix and match and find your own, well, rainbow. (I should be a motivational speaker with lines like that!)

Second, whenever possible try to use frozen fruit instead of fresh. I usually use mostly frozen fruit just because it’s easier but some fresh fruit is fine. The thing to remember is that if you use fresh you have to throw in some ice which waters down the smoothie a bit.

Third, keep some juice (orange, apple, cranberry, pomegranate, etc) on hand as well as some milk or yogurt. Those can smooth out your smoothie…

So let’s take a trip through Roy G. Biv!

All of the smoothie recipes in this post are adjusted for 2 Cups of smoothie which is about enough for one big serving. The cups in this post hold about 1 cup of liquid so I halved the recipes for this post because I didn’t need 7 cups of smoothies floating around.

The Red Smoothie. This is pretty straightforward. After I tasted it, I added a pinch of sugar because it was just a bit too bitter for my tastes. I also used frozen raspberries, but if you use fresh you’ll need to add some ice.

Other options: beets?

The Orange Smoothie. This one is just like a shot of vitamin C. It’s refreshing and delicious and if you’re afraid of flavor mixing, this is the one for you! If you can’t find clementines, you can use any orange-like fruit. Tangerines for example would be awesome.

For those that need a shot of Vit. C.

The Yellow Smoothie. This one seriously tasted like a milkshake. The banana and milk made it really creamy and the mango was nice and sweet. If you served me this blind, I’d guess there was ice cream in it.

Very sweet actually.

The Green Smoothie. Ok. I was a little worried about this one. Basically I just picked out a bunch of green stuff and threw it together! At first, it tasted kind of funky (some would say it tasted healthy), but then I added a pinch of sugar and a tiny pinch of salt and that totally mellowed out the flavors. The sugar and salt are not optional in this one if you want it to taste decent.

Shockingly, green was pretty good!

The Boozy Blue Smoothie. Ok. It turns out that there are no really blue foods. Sure there are some flowers and stuff, but there’s just nothing that pops with blue color. Blueberries are totally mislabeled. They are purple, people.

So I figured if I couldn’t find a food that was blue, I might as well making something with booze in it! This was actually really tasty and I could imagine sipping a few of these on a beach somewhere.

Maybe not for breakfast.

The Indigo Smoothie. This one is a really basic one, but the Pomegranate juice has huge flavor. Sometimes Pomegranate juice can be a bit bitter though and so the yogurt smooths it out nicely.

Delicious.

The Violet Smoothie. Ok. So this one was maybe my least favorite of the seven. It was pretty strongly flavored. I thought about maybe adding some plum to the mix which I think would keep it pretty violet but might mellow it out a bit.

In other news, I’m not entirely sure what the difference is between violet and indigo. It’s possible I’m slightly colorblind.

Violet = Indigo - Yogurt...

The Equipment. Of course, to make smoothies you’ll need a good blender. Now you could spend hundreds of dollars on a blender, but I’m not sure that’s really necessary if you’re just getting into the smoothie thing. I’ve had this really excellent professional Oster model blender for almost a year now and I use it almost daily. It’s nothing fancy but it has all metal parts and only two speeds: pulse and GO. What else do you need?!

Mine performs just like it did on day one!

Roy G. Biv!

Day to day though Betsy and I, surprisingly, don’t make our smoothie choice based on color. Like I said at the beginning of the post, we normally do a mix between the indigo, red, and yellow varieties.

Just one more...

It’s very possible that I had more fun making and writing this post than any post in Macheesmo history. There were moments when I had to just stop, look at my counter full of crazy colors and ingredients, and laugh out loud. It was so much fun.

I hope you all try some of them out and pass along this post to your friends. Also, leave a comment obviously and let me know which one you want to try or if you happen to know a blue food that I missed!

The second reason why I’ve been digging these dishes lately is because they’re very fast and frankly I’ve been pretty darn busy these days! So a meal that’s delicious, fast, and reheats well the next day is what I’m looking for.

Plus, I think just looking at this dish will make you healthier!

Simple but good.

You can of course just serve this with some rice and you’ll all set, but I wanted to try my hand at a new flat bread recipe which also worked great for this meal.

Chickpea and Kale Stirfry

Yield: Serves 2-4.

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour

Ingredients:

1 large bunch of kale
1 15 ounce can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1 medium zucchini
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 lemon, juice only
1 Teaspoon cumin seed (optional)
Pinch of salt and pepper

Whole Wheat Chapati (From Bittman's How to Cook Everything)
2 1/4 Cups whole wheat flour
1 Cup all-purpose flour
1 Teaspoon salt
1 Cup warm water (might need a bit more if dough is dry)
2 Tablespoons minced chives (optional)

Directions:

Chapati:
1) Mix flour, chives, and salt together, then add water and bring into a ball. Turn out onto a floured surface and knead for five minutes. It should be a really sturdy dough.

2) Cover dough and let rest for 30 minutes, then cut into 10 even pieces.

3) Roll out each piece of dough and cook it in a cast iron skillet or any heavy pan with a drizzle of oil over high heat for 15 seconds. Then flip it and cook for another 30 seconds until the bread is slightly charred and puffed. Repeat with all of the pieces.

For Stir fry:
1) Prep all your ingredients. In a large skillet, add a drizzle of oil and add chickpeas. Cook for a few minutes until chickpeas get crispy, then add cumin and cook for another minute. Remove chickpeas.

2) Add zucchini to pan and cook for a minute until it starts to soften. Then add kale and garlic and cook until kale starts to wilt, about 30 seconds.

3) Add chickpeas back in pan and lemon juice. Season with salt and serve immediately with flatbread.

Making the Chapati

I made some flat breads before on Macheesmo (The scallion bread in this post is great also.) For some reason people are scared to try these, but they’re really easy to make and very tasty. The whole wheat flour in this variety makes it almost nutty.

Two Flours. Simple as that.

To start it, just mix together both your flours with your salt and chives if you’re using them. Then stir in your water and knead the dough a few times to form a pretty sturdy dough.

This needs to rest.

Turn this out onto a floured surface and cover it with a towel. Let it rest for 30 minutes at a minimum or at the most a few hours. This will let the flour relax a bit and make the dough a lot easier to work with.

Then chop it up into about 10 even pieces. I kind of just eyeballed it.

Ten pieces is good.

Then roll out each piece of dough into roughly a 8 to 10 inch circle. It should be pretty thin.

Pretty thin is good.

Cooking the Chapati

To cook this flat bread, get a cast iron skillet or very heavy pan over high heat with a drizzle of neutral oil (like canola or something). Once the pan is hot, add your rolled out dough to the pan and count to about 15 (you’ll probably have to do one at a time). Then flip it over. Let it cook for another 30 seconds to a minute and it should puff up a bit and also get slightly charred.

Like this!

Pretty delicious.

Cooking the Stir-fry

You don’t really need a wok to cook this stir-fry but you have one, you can obviously use it. Any large pan will work fine though!

Basic stuff.

As with moth most stir-fries, it’s very important to prep all your ingredients. Dice your zucchini, roughly chop your kale, mince your garlic, and drain and rinse your chickpeas.

Everything needs to be ready here.

The thing about this stir-fry is that all the ingredients need different times to cook so if you just throw everything in at the same time you won’t get the best results.

To start, you need to cook the chickpeas since they’ll take the longest to cook. Add a teaspoon of neutral oil to a hot pan (or wok) and once it’s very hot, add your drained and rinsed chickpeas. Let them cook for a few minutes until they start to crisp up. If you’re using cumin seeds, add those to the chickpeas with about a minute left.

The chickpeas should be a bit crispy and charred. Take your chickpeas out of the pan while you cook the rest of your stir-fry.

These are great just like this!

Next, I cooked my zucchini which took about a minute. Then add the kale and garlic and cook for another 30 seconds or so until the kale begins to wilt a bit. Finally add all your chickpeas back to the stir-fry and add your lemon juice to pan. It’ll sizzle a lot and smell delicious!

Serve it up immediately over either rice or the whole wheat flat bread!

Two ways to serve it!

I ate this with the flat bread on day one and with rice on day two. Turns out that the flat bread doesn’t keep really well so eat it as soon as possible!

I ate mine with some hot sauce, but it was good as-is also. The lemon flavor with the kale is fantastic and the chickpeas add great texture.

Fast, simple, and healthy! What more could you ask for?!

They make for excellent finger food and at least two of the three will transport very well. You’d probably only need to pick up a few items if you wanted to make some of these tonight!

Let’s get started!

I first heard of this recipe a few months ago and it has been sitting in the back of my brain for awhile now. I figured this was a good time to give it a shot. The real key to these is to make sure you use a really flavorful spice blend on them. The chickpeas take on a great texture when they’re roasted, but are a bit bland in the flavor department.

Roasted Chickpeas

- 1 (14.5 ounce) can of chickpeas, drained and rinsed
- 1 Tablespoon olive oil, or just a drizzle
- 1 Tablespoon Kosher salt
- 1 Teaspoon cayenne pepper
- 1 Teaspoon paprika

This is really simple, but start by preheating your oven to 400 degrees and then pour out your drained and rinsed chickpeas onto a baking sheet. Bake them for 20 minutes at 400 degrees. Halfway through, give them a stir just to make sure they are cooking evenly.

Meanwhile, in a bowl, mix together your spices. I didn’t end up using all of my spice mix above, but you might depending on how spicy you like it! You could also try cumin, curry powder, cinnamon, etc. Go crazy!

Once the 20 minutes is up, your chickpeas should be completely dry and starting to get a bit crispy. Add them to a bowl and toss them with the olive oil and a few pinches of spice mixture. You can adjust according to your tastes and add more later if you want.

Then back in the oven for another 20 minutes until they are crispy and delicious! They shouldn’t be crispy all the way through, but the outside should definitely be crispy.

Roasting some garbanzos!

I thought these were awesome. Betsy was skeptical, but I noticed the bowl getting smaller when I wasn’t looking…

Next on the appetizer list:

I know these sound bizarre, but trust me, they are delicious. They seriously taste like very, very thin potato chips. They are somewhat healthy and a perfect vessel for salt, which let’s face it, is the key indicator of a good chip.

Crispy Kale Chips (From KERF)

- 5-6 very large kale leaves, washed, dried, and ripped into large pieces
- 1 Tablespoon Olive oil
- Few pinches of kosher salt

Preheat your oven to 375. Meanwhile wash and dry your kale leaves. Make sure they are as dry as possible or else the leaves will just wilt and not crisp. If you have a salad spinner, give them a spin in that. I just used a few paper towels to dry mine though.

Then drizzle them with a bit of olive oil and a good pinch of salt and toss them in the oven. Mine took about 25 minutes to cook, but I think I added about twice as much oil as I needed so there was a lot of moisture in the pan. Halfway through cooking, I actually took out all my leaves and dried out my pan and then put them back in!

Also, don’t salt these things like you would potato chips. They don’t need nearly as much salt. They are super-thin.

Check on them every 10 minutes or so as they cook and move them around a bit if they are stacked on top of each other. When they are almost entirely crispy and browned around the edges move them too a bowl.

Nice.

These are shockingly amazing. It doesn’t even taste like you are eating kale. It tastes like a yummy chip. I’m fairly certain I could eat a whole bussel of kale (probably like 6 servings) if it was prepared like this.

The only two problems that these awesome chips have are: 1) They are basically impossible to transport. I think if you tried to take them anywhere they would just crumble. They are super-thin and pretty fragile. 2) Keep a toothpick on hand. They leave bits of dried kale in your teeth! Totally worth it though.

And last but not least:

Cashews are awesome. But cashews that are coated in a sugary glaze packed with spicy red pepper flakes are even more awesome.

Spicy and Sweet Cashews (From a Well-Seasoned Cook Recipe)

- 2 Cups raw, unsalted cashews (I think you could start with unsalted, roasted cashews and skip the roasting step entirely.)
- 2 Tablespoons vegetable oil
- 1 Teaspoon red pepper flakes
- 1/4 Cup light corn syrup
- Few pinches of kosher salt

This has the most ingredients of any appetizer so far, coming it at 5! Still pretty straightforward though. If you start with raw cashews, roast them in a 350 degree oven for about 20 minutes until they are a light brown. Don’t over toast them because they will toast more as they cook later. (Top right photo is toasted.)

Then in a large skillet, heat up the veggie oil and add all of your red pepper flakes. Let that cook for a minute or two over medium-high heat to make sure the oil is all infused with the spice. Then add all your cashews and stir to evenly distribute the oil and peppers! (Bottom left photo)

Next, add your corn syrup to the cashews and cook it for a few minutes. The corn syrup should bubble and start to glaze over the cashews. Keep stirring them to make sure you get an even coating. You’ll know when your cashews are basically done because you will have a pretty dry pan. Everything will be stuck to the nuts.

Then pour your cashews back onto a backing sheet and spread them out to cool (bottom right).

Cashew overload.

Once they are cooled you should be able to break them up and stick them in a bowl! I think I used too much corn syrup in my version pictured above (I used closer to 1/2 cup I think) and they were a bit too sticky. Still tasted good though!

Anyway, there ya go! Three appetizers which just a few ingredients! These could be ready for your party tonight in just a few minutes and with very little work.

Be safe tonight everyone and have a Happy New Year’s Eve!

This time just to kick it up a notch, I served it with some freshly made scallion flat bread.

Sorry for the steam...

This dish is fantastic because it’s fairly fast to make (especially if you opt-out on the flat bread), but it’s still packed with flavor and is very healthy. You could also call this dish a curried lentil dish, because it does have a lot of lentils, but in my mind the cauliflower and kale is kind of the star of the whole deal.

Plus I’m a big fan of recipe alliteration.

Curried Cauliflower and Kale

Yield: Serves 4.

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour + plus bread rest time

Ingredients:

1 small head of cauliflower, cut into 1/2 inch florets
1 bunch of kale, cut into ribbons, probably 2-3 cups
1/2 red onion, minced
1 1/2 Cups lentils
2 Tablespoons oil
2 Tablespoons curry powder (or to your tastes)
1/2 Tablespoon paprika (I like hot spanish paprika)
1/2 Tablespoon whole coriander seeds (lightly toasted and ground), or you can use ground coriander
Pinch of salt

Flat Bread Recipe (Recipe from Once Upon a Plate)
9 ounces (about 2 cups) all-purpose flour
1/2 Teaspoon salt
2 Teaspoons sugar
1 Cup whole milk
2 Tablespoons vegetable oil
Scallions, diced (optional)

Helpful Equipment:
Pizza stone and peel (for the bread)

Directions:

1) For dough, combine flour, salt, and sugar in a bowl. Add oil and then slowly add milk until dough comes together in a ball.

2) Knead it on a lightly floured surface for about 8 minutes until it is soft and smooth.

3) Add ball of dough to a lightly oiled bowl and give it a turn to coat the ball. Cover it loosely with plastic wrap and let it rest at room temperature for an hour or so.

4) Cut up the cauliflower (cut off all of the greens around the stalk and then just start working through the head of cauliflower, cutting off each floret evenly).

5) Cut the kale into small ribbons. Take each leaf of kale and, using a knife, cut out the center vein which is very hard, leaving two leaves which you can then cut into kale ribbons.

6) Once dough has rested, cut it into 5 even pieces.

7) Heat pizza stone in a 500 degree oven (if you have a broiler, use that).

8) Roll out each piece of dough until it’s very thin and then top it with some diced scallion. Slide the naan off peel and onto stone and let it cook for 3-5 minutes depending on your oven. If you don’t have a pizza stone, you can bake these just on a normal sheet pan. They’ll still be good, but probably just not as crunchy on the exterior.
9) Cook lentils according to the package directions (Most likely this means adding 2 cups of water for every cup of lentils into a large pot and getting it boiling) adding spices half way through the cooking process.

10) Heat a few tablespoons of oil in a large pan and add cauliflower. Cook florets over medium-high heat for about 10-15 minutes until the florets start to brown a bit.

11) Add onions and cook them until they are translucent – probably another 5 minutes.

12) Add kale along with a pinch of salt. Cook this for just a few more minutes until the kale starts to wilt.

13) Add all veggies to the lentil pot and stir everything together and season with other spices.

14) Stir it well and let it sit for a minute or two just to let all the flavors mingle.

15) Serve it up next to the flat bread!

Starting the Flat Bread

Also known as naan, this stuff is usually made in a tandoori which is essentially a large clay pot that can get really hot. Unless you happen to have one of these guys laying around, your best bet is probably a pizza stone to get close to the right texture on the bread (crusty exterior while still moist on the inside).

The dough is really simple to make.

Basic stuff.

Start by combining your flour, salt, and sugar in a bowl. Add your oil and then slowly add your milk until your dough comes together in a ball. Knead it on a lightly floured surface for about 8 minutes until it is soft and smooth.

Then add your ball of dough to a lightly oiled bowl and give it a turn to coat the ball. Cover it loosely with plastic wrap and let it rest at room temperature for an hour or so.

This needs time to rest.

Prepping the veggies

You only need a few veggies for this dish but each of them is very flavorful.

Good winter ingredients.

If you’ve never dismantled a head of cauliflower, it’s a lot like a huge mutant broccoli floret. First, cut off all of the greens around the stalk (you can save these for stock if you want) and then just start working through the head of cauliflower, cutting off each floret.

The most important thing is to make sure you have evenly sized pieces so they cook evenly. This will mean that you’ll have to half or quarter some florets and probably leave some of the smaller ones whole.

Mutant broccoli!

Onto the kale. Normally, I would steam kale, but I actually add it straight to this dish without precooking it. To make this easier, cut the kale into small ribbons.

Take each leaf of kale and, using a knife, cut out the center vein which is very hard, leaving two leaves which you can then cut into kale ribbons. This is the final spread of veggies.

Veggies prepped.

You’ll also need some spices obviously. I just used store bought curry powder, but if you wanted to go crazy you could definitely make your own. For the purposes of this dish, I thought the jarred spice worked great.

You could make your own curry if you are awesome.

Cooking the naan

Once your dough has rested, cut it into 5 even pieces. You could actually cut it into smaller pieces if you want. If you are feeding more than 4 though, I’d recommend doubling the recipe because this stuff is popular.

You could go smaller if you wanted.

Heat your pizza stone in a 500 degree oven. Actually heat it as hot as you can and if you have a broiler you could even use that to get higher heats like in the tandoori oven.

Roll out each piece of dough until it’s very thin and then top it with some diced scallion.

Nice.

Slide the naan off your peel and onto your stone and let it cook for 3-5 minutes depending on your oven. If you don’t have a pizza stone, you can bake these just on a normal sheet pan. They’ll still be good, but probably just not as crunchy on the exterior.

Cooking the veggies

The first thing you want to do is start your lentils. Just cook them according to the directions on the package. Most likely this means adding 2 cups of water for every cup of lentils into a large pot and getting it boiling.

After doing this a few times though, I actually added a bit more liquid than recommended because you need to use a large pot so you can eventually combine all your ingredients and cooking the lentils in the larger pot makes the water evaporate faster.

Meanwhile, heat a few tablespoons of oil in a large pan and add your cauliflower. Cook your florets over medium-high heat for about 10-15 minutes until the florets start to brown a bit.

Then add your onions and cook them until they are translucent – probably another 5 minutes.

Finally add your kale along with a pinch of salt. Cook this for just a few more minutes until the kale starts to wilt.

Don't overcook the kale.

Adding the spices

The few times I’ve made this dish, I’ve tried adding my spices at various points either to the lentils or to the veggies. I think it’s easiest to add all the spices to the lentils as they cook. I add mine to the water about halfway through the cooking process. Then when the lentils are done cooking and are soft, add all your veggies to the lentil pot and stir everything together.

Stir it well and let it sit for a minute or two just to let all the flavors mingle. Then serve it up next to the flat bread!

Not the most colorful, but very tasty.

This is a pretty flexible meal. You could add different toppings to the flat bread (any kind of seed, cilantro, garlic, etc). You could add more or less spices depending on your preference. You could eat the curried veggies in a pita as a lunch sandwich.

This dish passed the Jeff Test which is the standard test I use for most vegetarian dishes. It’s pretty simple to see why: It’s healthy. It’s packed with flavor. And it’s reasonably fast if you can chop and cook at the same time. What more could you ask for in a winter dinner?!

While leafing through my go-to cookbook last week, I found this recipe and knew I wanted to try it.

Healthy. Flavorful. Fast.

I absolutely love calamari. It is surprisingly simple to cook, flavorful, fast, and dirt cheap. Even at Whole Foods it runs about $5/pound. If you have a fish market in your area, you can get enough for a good appetizer or salad dish for a buck.

The part of this recipe that was new to me was not the calamari, it was the rice. What really makes this dish is the Sticky Rice. I got it pretty close, but made a pretty fatal error right away: I used the wrong kind of rice.

The recipe called, of course, for sticky rice which is typically broken Jasmine. This rice is impossible to find though unless you are in an Asian market. I didn’t want to make a special trip so I thought I would try it with Jasmine rice and see what I got. I followed the same procedure which was fun and new and I ended up with a very flavorful rice, but the texture wasn’t, well, sticky. Or not as much as it should be.

Basic Sticky Rice

- 1 1/2 Cups sticky rice
- 1 Cup Coconut milk
- 1 Tablespoon soy sauce

To really get the desired texture you have to soak your rice overnight. First, rinse it very well until the water runs clear. If you have the right kind of rice, this will rinse of extra starch you don’t want. Then let it soak overnight.

Rice is such an amazing thing.

When you are ready to start cooking the next day you are going to need one more piece of equipment which can be bought at most supermarkets for about $2.

We are not making cheese today.

Take your rice and dump it into a section of cheesecloth, tie it up tight into a ball and put it in your steamer. You want this to steam for about 30-40 minutes. It’s pretty hard to overcook so don’t worry about that.

Possibly odd, but effective, method.

NOTE: Keep an eye on your steamer. I almost burned my kitchen down because all of the water will evaporate much quicker than when you normally steam vegetables. I’m guessing this is because the water is being absorbed by the rice. I had to add water to my steamer half way through because it was bone dry.

While it is steaming you can prep your other ingredients. When buying calamari, it should smell fresh and be on ice. Most markets will have them cleaned for you already. If you get to know your fishmonger (you should), maybe you can talk him/her into throwing in a few extra tentacles. They’re the best.

Squid is CHEAP.

Calamari and Kale Stir Fry
(Serves 2 full plates)

- 1/2 pound calamari, cleaned
- 1 bunch kale, try to pick one with smaller leaves
- 1 to 2 red chiles depending on your desired heat
- 1 clove garlic
- 2 Tablespoons olive oil
- A few carrots (optional)
Feel free to experiment with other veggies and flavors. This is just a base.

Pretty easy prep.

For the kale, slice out the tougher middle stem part and then rip up the leaves into bite-sized pieces. For the calamari, slice the body into rings and the tentacles into halves or quarters depending on size.

Also, dice up your chiles, garlic, and any other ingredients you need. This all cooks really fast, so you want to make sure you have all of your ingredients prepped.

Everything ready to go.

Focus back on your rice for a minute. Hopefully it has been cooking for about 40 minutes and hopefully it is sticky. If you are like me, you will have Jasmine in a bag, which is good also, but not exactly right.

Add the coconut milk and soy sauce while keeping the rice in the cheesecloth. Kind of roll the rice around to get it all covered and mixed in.

Wrap up your rice again and return it to the steamer on low to basically stay warm. It should be done cooking though.

The flavor for the rice.

Now for the quick part. Saute the peppers and garlic for about a minute just to get the flavors going.

Don't burn these guys.

Then add your kale. Saute for probably three minutes until the kale turns really green.

Healthy!

Then add your calamari and cook for about two more minutes until the little squids turn opaque and barely firm.

Calamari party.

Take them off the heat right away. The hard thing about calamari is that if you overcook them for even 30 seconds they will start to get rubbery. You want tender. Not rubbery. I always err on the side of under-cooking these guys actually.

Then it is as simple as putting a heaping serving of your sort of sticky rice down and topping it with your stir fry.

Why don't you put a ring on it?

There was something about this meal, even though I messed up the rice, that left me feeling really awesome. The dish was filling but also I could tell that what I was eating was good for me. It had that kind of flavor. It tasted like health. You know what I mean?

Next time I’ll buy the right kind of rice…