When in doubt, serve it on arugula!

I love my kitchen as much as the next food blogger. I feel very comfortable there. It’s normally very relaxing for me to cook.

But sometimes I just want dinner to be made. I want a dish that’s quick, flavorful, and simple.

I want a dish that I can make within the time it takes me to listen to one podcast of Car Talk.

This dish is that dish.

It can look a bit intimidating, especially if you aren’t use to cooking with a lot of Asian flavors. But really it’s dumb simple to make and utilizes one of my favorite kitchen tips!

Sesame Chicken Noodle Salad

Yield: Serves 4.

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Total Time: 35 minutes

Ingredients:

1 pound chicken breasts, seasoned with salt and pepper
1 red pepper, sliced
1 pound linguine
Vegetable oil
Arugula

Sesame Sauce:
2 inches fresh ginger, peeled and diced
1/3 cup peanut butter
1/3 cup rice wine vinegar
1/4 cup oyster sauce
1 tablespoon chili-garlic sauce
2 tablespoons sesame oil
1/2 cup pasta water (from linguine)

Directions:

1) Season chicken with salt and pepper. Add a drizzle of vegetable oil to a large skillet and heat over medium-high heat.

2) Sear chicken on both sides for about 4 minutes, then turn down heat and continue to cook chicken, flipping occasionally, until chicken is cooked through, about 12 minutes total cooking time.

3) Remove chicken from pan and slice into large chunks.

4) Start cooking pasta. When pasta is almost done, scoop out some pasta water.

5) Mix sauce ingredients in a bowl. Stir well. The sauce should be very smooth and silky. If it's very thick, add more pasta water.

6) Using same pan that you cooked the chicken in, add another drizzle of oil and add red peppers. Cook for just a few minutes over medium-high heat until veggies soften.

7) Add diced chicken back to skillet and stir in sesame sauce.

8) Drain pasta and add to skillet. Stir together to incorporate everything.

9) Serve sesame chicken salad on a bed of arugula.

Heavily adapted from a Cook's Country recipe.

The Sesame Sauce

When I say this meal can be intimidating, it’s mostly because I’m not sure a lot of people keep their pantries stocked with the stuff to make this sauce.

If you have to buy this stuff for the first time, it’ll involve lots of words you probably can’t pronounce and at least one panda bear.

Lots of jars...

Have no fear though. Once you hunt down all the jars that you need, the only actual work you need to do for the sauce besides measuring is peeling and dicing some ginger. Not rocket science!

There is one problem though. When you mix all these ingredients together, it will taste very good, but it’ll most likely be a bit on the lumpy side.

Don’t worry about this right now. We’ll fix it later!

A bit chunky...

The Chicken

The sauce is definitely the star of this show. You don’t have to use chicken for this dish if you wanted to make a vegetarian version. You could just toss the sauce with the noodles or use some seared tofu if you wanted.

I went the chicken route on this day though. Assuming you are using chicken, just season a few boneless skinless breasts with a good pinch of salt and pepper. I’m usually not a huge boneless skinless chicken fan, but it works well for this recipe.

Keep it simple.

In a large skillet, heat a drizzle of oil over medium high heat and once the pan is hot, add the chicken.

Sear the chicken for about 4 minutes per side. Then turn down the heat to medium and continue to cook until the chicken is cooked through, probably another 6 minutes or so. That of course will depend on how big your chicken breasts are.

Mine were on the smaller side.

Make sure it's cooked through...

Once the chicken is cooked through, scoop it out of the pan and slice it into big chunks.

You want the chicken to be visible in the final dish!

Big chunks work great.

Finishing the Dish

There’s just a few other things you’ll need to finish off this recipe. While it’s kind of optional, I recommend dicing up a red pepper and also getting some arugula ready.

Two quick veggies.

When it comes to the pasta for the dish, you can use almost any thin pasta. Spaghetti, linguine, angel hair… it would all work fine.

Fantastic Kitchen Tip Alert

Anytime you are making a sauce to go with pasta, one of the best sauce helpers you can have is the actual water that you cook the pasta in. Pasta water is starchy and salty and will help smooth out sauces and give them some body.

If you ever find yourself with a lumpy or lackluster sauce, try adding some pasta water to it.

In this case, we will add about 1/2 cup to that lumpy sauce that we mixed together earlier.

Wonderful water.

This will completely smooth out the sauce and make it perfect.

In the same skillet that you used to cook the chicken (no need to wash it even), add another drizzle of oil and then toss in your red peppers.

Cook them for a few minutes until they are soft and then add in your chicken. Pour your sauce over the whole thing!

Sauce is really smooth now.

Assuming you are decent at timing, hopefully your pasta is done as well right around this time.

Almost any pasta will work.

Then just stir your pasta in with the chicken and sauce.

It’ll look like a lot of sauce, but it’s just enough to coat all the stuff.

If at any point, the sauce gets too thick, just add a bit more pasta water to it and it’ll thin out.

This was my finished version!

All tossed together!

Now, you could just serve this in a big bowl, but I tried something a bit unconventional.

I served mine on arugula. This might sound strange to serve a pasta dish on greens, but it worked really well actually. The arugula is nice and peppery and holds up well to the strong sesame flavors.

And it makes for a pretty plate!

Pretty plate!

So there ya go!

If you can master the sauce, this dish is really simple to throw together, but really delivers in the flavor department.

Give it a shot if you’re in the market for a quick and easy dinner. And let’s be real… who isn’t in the market for a quick and easy dinner?

Health in a bowl!

I’m a huge fan of instant Netflix. In fact, Betsy and I don’t even have cable anymore.

Currently my queue on instant Netflix breaks down into:

1) Dorky science shows like Mythbusters.
2) Awesome TV series like Breaking Bad and Law and Order: SVU
3) Documentaries or movies that people have recommended to me about food.

Last week, I finally watched a show that a friend recommended to me approximately 6 months ago called Forks Over Knives. I think the movie can be summarized in the title of it, which I didn’t fully understand until halfway through the thing. I thought the title was forks over knives because you use a knife to eat things like meat and forks to eat things like veggies.

The real meaning of it though is that if you wisely choose what you eat with your fork you can almost certainly avoid going under the knife. It argues that as a society, we have put the knife over the fork and now we think that it’s much easier and less drastic to have a few surgeries instead of changing eating habits.

So, as a shout out to what I thought was a really interesting and very well done movie, I decided to cook something that I think the Forks Over Knives crowd would approve of… mainly because it’s from their website!

Spicy Orange Greens

Yield: Serves 2.

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Total Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:

1 bunch greens, like broccoli rabe, kale, or chard
1 red pepper, diced
1/3 cup water
1 clove garlic, minced
1/4-1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon orange marmalade
8 ounces soba noodles, cooked
1 tablespoon sesame oil
Chili garlic sauce (opt.)

Directions:

1) Wash and roughly chop greens and dice peppers and garlic clove. Cook soba noodles according to package. Drain soba and toss with sesame oil to make sure the noodles don't stick.

2) Add water, garlic, red pepper flakes, soy sauce to a large skillet or wok. Bring to a simmer over high heat and cook until garlic is fragrant, just a minute or two.

3) Stir in marmalade.

4) Add greens and red pepper to the pan and cover.

5) Cook for 2-3 minutes until veggies are soft. Stir everything together so the sauce evenly coats the veggies.

6) Serve greens with soba and top with chili garlic sauce.

Adapted from Forks Over Knives website.

Forks over Knives

Based on my post from the weekend, it’s pretty obvious that this movie didn’t turn me into a vegan. But it did reinforce a lot of what I already think. Namely, that through healthier eating, we would drastically reduce some of the health issues we face as a country.

This doesn’t just mean obesity, but even more radical diseases like heart disease and even some cancers. To make huge progress in this effort, the film argues that we have to basically completely eliminate from our diet three things: meat, dairy or other animal products, and processed foods and oils.

The problem that I have with the movie is that it makes the whole situation seem like a switch. It’s either on or off. You’re either eating healthily or you’re on a path to cancer.

I like to think of more as a sliding scale. Sure, if you eat nothing but deep-fried cheesesteak every day, you’re in for a rough haul, but having a slice or two of bacon on the weekends I don’t think is going to set my body into a tailspin.

Of course, Americans tend to have a problem with the word moderation so I can see how arguing for a cold turkey approach might be more effective.

Anyway, so I liked the movie. It has some fascinating statistics and compiles work from two very respected doctors who have been researching this stuff for over 40 years.

But enough about reviews… let’s eat!

Spicy Orange Greens

I wanted to cook something from the Forks Over Knives website after I watched the movie. One thing that I found ironic was that the recipe they posted probably leads to a lot of people breaking one of the main Forks over Knives rules!

The recipe calls for a tablespoon of orange marmalade and about 90% of marmalades in the store contain mostly high fructose corn syrup which the movie is very against. Oh well, nobody’s perfect. Of course, you can find marmalade without HFCS (I did), but I doubt most people would do this for the recipe. They would just grab a jar.

Anyway, this recipe was actually very delicious and takes less than 30 minutes to toss together which is cool.

You’ll need these things to make the sauce!

Good stuff.

One cool tactic that they mentioned in the movie, and that this recipe used, was that instead of stir-frying in oil, try to use water. So basically you make a very flavorful steaming liquid and cook your food in that.

I was skeptical that this would work but it turned out to be great and definitely healthier than cooking the greens in oil which is what I would’ve done if left to my own devices.

Speaking of greens… you can use almost anything for this recipe. You want something hardy like rabe, kale, or chard though. I went the rabe route.

Love the rabe.

To prep the veggies, just wash and roughly chop the ingredients. Pretty simple!

Just a rough dice is good.

Soba Noodles (I bend the rules)

You could serve the greens over rice or something, but the recipe also suggested noodles and that sounded better to me.

So I went with soba noodles which are some of the healthier noodles out there!

One of my favorite noodles.

I really love soba noodles because they are extremely flavorful. They have a really nutty flavor. I also like them because they are very good warm or cold so they make for quick leftovers.

There’s one problem with the noodles that led me to slightly bend the Forks Over Knives rules.

Soba noodles stick together like they are made of Elmers. After you boil them and drain them, if you walk away for a few minutes, they will congeal into one big mass of noodles: like a noodle cake.

These will stick like glue!

There’s one cure for this and it’s not approved by the Forks Over Knives doctors, but whatever.

The cure is oil… specifically sesame oil. For me, I’d rather use a tablespoon of this stuff and have really flavorful (and separated) noodles, but I do not think that the doctors in the movie would approve.

Necessary in my opinion.

Finishing the Dish

Once the noodles are cooked, this dish takes about five minutes to finish up. It’s really quick and easy.

Basically, just add the water, garlic, red pepper flakes, soy sauce, and marmalade to a large skillet or wok.

Water. Not oil.

Bring this to a simmer over high heat and then toss in your veggies.

A quick steam.

Cover this up and cook the veggies for just a few minutes. So basically you are steaming the veggies but with spices and some sweet orange flavors.

When the veggies are done, just toss them a bit so they all get evenly coated with the sauce.

Maybe two minutes later.

I wanted to kick up the heat a bit more on mine so I added some chili garlic sauce as well.

Simple and delicous!

It’s hard to deny that it would be good if more people ate meals like this pretty regularly.

I was also impressed by how actually delicious and creative this dish was. The oil-to-water change was a great one and probably one that I’ll use regularly.

So, check out the movie if you’re interested. But, more importantly, make this dish. Some might say that by eating it you’re warding off cancer, but I’ll just say that I’m recommending it because it’s really tasty!

Whoa man.

Warning: Some people are going to read this post and think that either A) this requires too much work or B) sweetbreads are gross.

That’s fine.

I pretty much guarantee though that if I were to sell you one of these for $5 out of my street cart you would say it’s the best sandwich you’ve ever had. That’s because sweetbreads are delicious and maybe the most under-rated offal of all time.

Much like the oysters that are typical for a po’ boy, these little bites just melt in your mouth. And for those of us who live in the mainland and can’t get fresh oysters easily, sweetbreads are a wonderful (and much cheaper) substitute.

Sweetbread Po' Boys

Yield: 4 sandwiches

Prep Time: 30 minutes + soaking time for sweetbreads

Total Time: 45 minutes

Ingredients:

Sweetbreads:
1 pound sweetbreads
1 quart buttermilk
3 cups all-purpose flour
3 tablespoons paprika
1 tablespoon kosher salt
1 tablespoon black pepper
1 quart vegetable oil, for frying

Pickled Slaw:
1/2 cucumber, peeled, seeded, and chopped
1/4 red onion, diced
1/4 red pepper, diced
1/2 cup carrots, grated
3 tablespoons olive oil
3 tablespoons tarragon vinegar
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
Pinch of salt

Walnut Mayo:
1 cup mayonnaise
1/4 cup walnuts, toasted
1 lemon, zest and 1/2 lemon juice

Other Sandwich Ingredients:
4 Hoagie buns, toasted
Lettuce
Sriracha hot sauce (opt.)

Helpful Equipment:
Mini Food Processor for mayo
Deep Fry Thermometer

Directions:

1) Soak sweetbreads overnight in cold water.

2) Poach sweetbreads in simmering water for 4 minutes. Remove and cool.

3) Slice sweetbreads into 1 inch bites. As you go, discard any tough tendons on the sweetbreads.

4) Soak sweetbread bites in buttermilk for at least a few hours.

5) When ready to make sandwiches, heat about 1 inch of oil in a large high-walled frying pan or in a heavy pot. Heat to 350 degrees.

6) Toss all-purpose flour with paprika, salt, and pepper. Drain sweetbreads and add to flour mixture. Coat well with flour.

7) Fry sweetbread bites for about 4-5 minutes until they are golden brown. Remove and let drain on a paper towel. Add sweetbreads to sandwich while still warm.

To Make Slaw:
1) Combine slaw ingredients in a large bowl. Toss with vinegars and oil and season with salt.

2) Ideally, make this a few hours before so the ingredients have some time to pickle. You could make the night before without a problem.

To Make Mayo:
1) Toast walnuts in a dry pan for a few minutes until fragrant.

2) Pulse with lemon zest and juice from 1/2 a lemon and mayo. Pulse until smooth.

3) Store in the fridge for up to a week.

To Make Sandwich:
1) Toast bread and slather with walnut mayo. Add a piece of crispy lettuce.

2) Top lettuce with fried sweetbreads. Add slaw to top of sweetbreads and drizzle with hot sauce if you want.

3) Slice the sandwich in half and serve immediately.

Planning and Prep

Unfortunately, this isn’t a sandwich that you’re just going to toss together on a whim. It requires a bit of planning.

For starters, the sweetbreads which we’ll get to in a minute, require at least a day of prep. You need to soak them overnight to clean them well.

Besides the sweetbreads, I also recommend making the slaw for the sandwiches in advance as well. The quick pickled slaw will just taste better on day two.

So, while none of the individual steps for this sandwich are super-hard, it does require some planning to pull it off.

If I can do it, you can do it.

The Slaw

The sweetbreads and mayo on this sandwich are really buttery and creamy so I thought it would be a good flavor addition to add something acidic. This quick slaw that I came up with was literally from leftovers in my fridge. It worked great though.

Basic stuff.

Just dice up all the ingredients pretty finely and toss them in a bowl with the vinegars and oil. Season this with a pinch of salt and let it sit for at least an hour or two.

Like I said, it would be best if you could make this the day before, but it’s not completely necessary.

The day before would be good...

Walnut Mayo

Any good sandwich worth its bread will have some sort of dressing. I started by thinking that a spicy mayo would work well with this sandwich. I still think that it would. So if you wanted to make a chipotle mayo like this one, it would also work well.

I ended up going a slightly different route though. For this mayo, I just toasted a handful of walnuts in a dry pan until they were fragrant (about 3 minutes), then pulsed them with some lemon zest and lemon juice and mayo until it was relatively smooth.

This is really good stuff and would be awesome on a bunch of different sandwiches actually.

Not bad at all!

Ok. Enough with the condiments. Let’s get down to business.

The Sweetbreads

Sweetbreads, if you’ve never used them, are from the thymus gland or pancreas gland of a cow. The ones I’m using for this post are the pancreas.

While they look intense, they have a super-mild flavor. Once they are fried, they melt away in your mouth. Like butter.

One of the hardest parts about sweetbreads is just finding them! Most likely, your grocery store won’t carry them. They just aren’t popular enough to keep in stock. You’ll have to ask around at butchers and farmer’s markets and you can normally get your hands on some.

The good news is that they won’t be very expensive if you can find them. They are, after all, a gland that most people just throw away…

I was pretty nervous about prepping these guys, but it turned out to be pretty straightforward.

To start, soak the sweetbreads in cold water overnight. This will help flush out any blood or liquid in the glands. It’s probably a good idea to change the water at least once also. (top left)

Next, you need to lightly poach the sweetbreads. This really just makes them easier to work with because they firm up a bit when they are poached. I cooked mine for about 4 minutes in simmering water.

After the sweetbreads are poached, slice them into 1 inch bites. While you do this, remove any tough tendons that are attached to the sweetbreads. It’ll be pretty obvious what you should be removing as it will be very tough while the actual sweetbread material is very tender. (top right)

Once the sweetbreads are soaked and poached, soak them in buttermilk for a few hours. You could do this a day or two ahead of time though if you wanted. I just soaked mine for two hours before frying them. (bottom left)

When you’re ready to fry, drain the sweetbreads and toss them in the flour mixture (all-purpose flour, salt, pepper, paprika). Now they are ready to fry!

Frying the Sweetbreads

You don’t need a lot of oil to fry these guys. Just about an inch of oil in a large pan with high edges is more than enough.

I did a test run with just one sweetbread bite to make sure these were going to work.

I can’t really explain how delicious this was. Golden brown and slightly spicy on the outside with a really creamy and delicious center. So good!

Testing testing...

I fried my sweetbreads in two batches at 350 degrees.

As always, I highly recommend using a deep fry thermometer to make sure your temperature is in a safe range.

Just a few minutes will do the trick.

The setup.

When the sweetbread bites are done, let them drain briefly on a paper towel.

I can’t get over how good these were.

Very good.

Making the Po’ Boys

Ok. Now for the easy part.

Toast your sandwich bread and slather both sides with some of the walnut mayo (or spicy mayo if you went that route).

Then lay down a piece of crispy lettuce and add a good thick row of the fried sweetbreads.

Pile it on.

Top with the slaw and, as an optional step, add a good drizzle of sriracha hot sauce.

How could you not want this?!

Had to do the hot sauce.

These sandwiches are messy, but man are they good. I sliced mine in half to make it a bit easier to eat.

Adventurous, but delicious.

This is an adventurous meal. No doubt about that.

But the payoff is awesome. Definitely one of the most unique and interesting sandwiches I’ve ever made.

If you love sweetbreads, hate sweetbreads, or have questions about sweetbreads, leave a comment!

This warms the soul.

It’s been a very long time since I’ve posted something made in my crockpot, almost two years in fact. So I was very happy when a crockpot dish won the poll last week.

Plus, it just makes sense. It’s cold and you’re probably busy this time of year so a dish that you can RONCO (set it and forget it) is probably helpful.

Funnily, this soup fits almost all of the categories in the poll last week. I swear that wasn’t planned… sometimes it just works out that way.

I’ve made chicken tortilla soup before, but never posted on it. This version was, by far, the best version I’ve ever made though. Something about letting the flavors just kind of mingle all day long really gave the finished soup an interesting and deep flavor.

You’d be silly not to try this!

Crockpot Chicken Tortilla Soup

Yield: Serves 5-6

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 8 hours

Ingredients:

1 yellow onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 Serrano pepper, diced (with seeds)
1 red pepper, diced
1 stalk celery, diced
1 chipotle pepper, minced
1 15 ounce can diced tomatoes
1 pound chicken breasts
2 dried New Mexico chile peppers (or poblano)
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
2 bay leaves
6 cups chicken stock
A few sprigs cilantro
3 corn tortillas, diced
1 cup corn
Salt and pepper

Garnish:
Corn tortilla strips
Avocados
Limes
Cotija cheese
Sour cream

Helpful Equipment:
Crockpot

Directions:

1) Finely dice the onion, garlic, peppers, and celery and add them to a crockpot.

2) Also add in the chicken breasts, canned tomatoes, bay leaves, cumin seeds, dried chiles, and chicken stock. The stock should just cover all the ingredients.

3) Cover and set the crockpot on low. Cook for 6-8 hours.

4) Remove dried chiles and bay leaves and discard. Remove chicken breasts, shred, and return to crockpot.

5) Add in cilantro sprigs, corn, and a few corn tortillas cut into bits. Let the crockpot simmer for another 30-60 minutes.

6) Season soup with salt and pepper.

7) To make tortilla strips, dice corn tortillas into strips and bake at 350 degrees for 15-20 minutes until lightly browned and crispy.

8) Serve soup piled high with tortilla strips. Other fun garnishes include lime wedges, crumbled cotija cheese, avocados, and sour cream.

Preparing the Veggies

I know what you’re thinking: ”Holy crap that’s a lot of ingredients!”

True. But hang in there. Most of them are basic stuff and once they are all in the pot, there’s very little work involved in this meal. You can go cross stuff off your list and come home to a delicious soup.

These are the few veggies that you need to start this soup.

Just a few basics.

The key to these is to dice them pretty finely.

For the Serrano pepper, I left the seeds in. You could take them out though if you’re worried about the heat.

Then just toss all this stuff into your slow cooker!

A fine dice.

Besides the veggies you need a few other things to get this soup going.

This is where a lot of the flavor comes from in this soup.

Flavor town.

Add all this stuff to the crockpot along with your chicken breasts. I would shoot for about a pound of chicken but you could use more if you wanted.

For the chipotle pepper, make sure you dice it very finely. Nobody wants a big bite of chipotle in their soup.

For the dried peppers, you can use almost any dried pepper. I went with New Mexico chile peppers, but poblanos would work also. Just break up the dried peppers into a few pieces and scrape out the seeds. Then throw the dried pieces into the crockpot along with the chicken breasts.

Everybody in the pot!

Add in all your chicken stock which should just barely cover all the ingredients.

A Slow Cook

Set your crockpot to a low heat and let this sucker cook, covered, for at least six hours. If you wanted you could cook it for even longer though. Six hours is the minimum.

After that, your house will smell amazing and your soup will look something like this.

6 hours later...

Finishing the Soup

There’s a few things we need to do to finish this soup now that most of the cooking is done.

For starters, take out the bay leaves and dried peppers from the soup and discard them. They’ve given the soup plenty of flavor and there’s no need to hang on to them.

Next, take out the chicken breasts and use a few forks to gently shred the meat. Then you can return it to the crockpot.

Get it?

Finally, there are three new ingredients that I recommend adding at this point as they don’t need to simmer all day long.

First, add some corn and cilantro sprigs. Second, cube up a few corn tortillas and add those cubes straight to the soup.

Just some more flavor!

Cover this and let it simmer for another 30-45 minutes. The tortillas will soften and some will completely disintegrate into the soup which will give it a really rich texture. The cilantro will give the soup a nice herb flavor.

After it’s second cooking, remove the cilantro stalks and season the soup generously with salt and pepper.

The Garnishes

My favorite part of chicken tortilla soup is serving it with tons of fun garnishes and toppings and then people can kind of make their own bowls.

The essential topping (in my opinion) is crispy tortilla strips. These are super-easy to make. Just cut a few corn tortillas into long strips and bake them at 350 degrees for about 15-20 minutes.

The strips will be lightly browned when the are done and super-crispy.

Great garnish.

Some other topping ideas that I like are sliced avocado, crumbled cotija cheese (or any cheese really), sour cream, and lime wedges.

Some other fun add-ins.

Once your soup is seasoned well with salt and pepper just ladle it into a bowl and pile on the toppings!

From above.

It’s actually a very filling meal for soup because of the chicken, tortillas, and cheese. It’s very warming and just a complete winner of a meal in my book.

Don’t be daunted by the ingredient list here, people. You can and should give this a shot sometime this winter!

The cute little napkins in this post were kindly donated by Oh Little Rabbit.

Hello delicous salad!

I can only think of two possible explanations why orzo exists:

1) Elaborate joke. ”Look at this huge rice! But wait… joke’s on you. It’s not rice. It’s pasta. I just blew your mind!”

2) Elaborate mistake. Something went horribly wrong with the spaghetti machine and orzo happened.

Anyway, I’m glad that this joke and/or mistake happened at some point in history because orzo is one of my favorite ways to make pasta salad. This was one of my most recent versions of the dish that went over really well. It’s very fresh and reasonably healthy for a pasta salad.

Greek Orzo Salad

Yield: Serves 6-8.

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 50 minutes

Ingredients:

1 pound orzo pasta
1 cucumber, seeded, peeled, and diced
1 red pepper
1/2 red onion, diced
6 ounces feta cheese
1/2 cup slivered almonds
1 avocado, diced
Salt and pepper

Quick Lemon Dressing:
1 clove garlic
1 lemon, juice only
1/4 cup olive oil
Salt

Directions:

1) For dressing, dice garlic clove and mash it together with salt in a small bowl to form a rough paste. Then whisk in lemon juice and olive oil and season with salt. You might not need all of the dressing.

2) Cook orzo according to package.

3) Dice all the veggies finely. Take your time to make sure they are even-sized. For the cucumber, be sure to scoop out the seeds and peel it.

4) Mix orzo with veggies and crumble in feta cheese.

5) Drizzle on dressing and stir well. Start with half the dressing and add more if you want. It should be very lightly dressed.

6) Stir in chopped avocado and sliced almonds and season with salt and pepper.

7) Serve room temperature or chilled!

Orzo. What are you?

I like to imagine that at some point in history there was an old Italian mother who learned how to make orzo by hand. She then promptly relegated the task to her children.

Whatever your job is, be thankful that it’s not making orzo by hand.

I do not know how you are made.

Luckily, orzo is much easier to cook than to make. Just boil it like you would any pasta, in a large pot of salted water. Check your orzo directions for cooking times, but you’ll probably want to cook it for around 8 minutes.

Be sure not to overcook the orzo or it will get really mushy. Mushy pasta is no good.

The Salad Ingredients

Besides the orzo, just a few simple vegetables and some feta cheese is all it really takes to make a great salad here.

Basic veggies.

I’ve given onion cutting lessons a few times on Macheesmo, but to review: The best way to cut an onion is to slice it in half down the root. Then lay it flat on a cutting board and cut off the stem end.

Remove the skin and slice the onion horizontally and vertically to form a grid.

Then you can easily turn the onion and dice it up.

Get it?

Spend some time with the veggies in this recipe to make sure they are all chopped up evenly.

For the cucumber, be sure to scoop out the seeds and peel it.

Take your time with these.

Once your pasta is cooked and drained, toss it in with the veggies and stir everything together.

This is a good start, but it would taste a bit bland if you left it like this.

All mixed up.

The Dressing

I recommend using a very light lemon and oil dressing for this salad. To start it, use the garlic technique from my ranch dressing recipe. Dice up the garlic finely and then mash it with the salt to form a rough paste.

A quick dressing.

Then just whisk in your lemon juice and olive oil and season it well with salt. You might not need all of the dressing for your salad. I recommend starting with half of the dressing and taste it. You can always add more, but it’s pretty hard to get dressing out of a pasta salad once it’s in there.

So go slow on it.

Some Good Add-ins

Besides the veggies, pasta, and dressing, I recommend tossing in some extra add-ins just to give the salad a bit more flavor.

First, feta cheese is a logical choice. It goes well with all the flavors and will give the salad some saltiness and creaminess.

Second, avocado. Who doesn’t love avocado?

Third, slivered almonds. They give the salad an awesome crunchy texture.

The almond toss.

Stir this all together and serve it in a big old bowl.

Such a good salad.

You can serve this bad boy at room temperature or chill it.

It’s perfect as a side for a dinner party or you can make it and eat it for lunch during the week.

If you wanted to make a meal of it, you could grill some chicken or tofu and serve it on top of the salad. I think it’s a pretty filling salad as is though.

Give those orzo makers some business and give this a shot!

Quick. Simple. Delicious.

There’s come a point after every Thanksgiving I’ve ever hosted or attended where there’s a few huge bags of leftover turkey meat in the fridge and everybody has pretty much had as much turkey as they can take.

You will eat it with stuffing, put it on a sandwich, and probably sneak it at midnight, but sometimes even with all of that, you’ll be left with more turkey than you know what to do with.

This is when fajitas come in and save the day. They may just be the perfect way to use leftover turkey. Let me explain:

1) They take just a few minutes to make. After slaving away over the stove for days, it’s nice to have a quick meal.

2) They are somewhat healthy. They are mostly lean meat, veggies, and salsa. It’s actually a somewhat light meal after days of gorging.

3) They have a different flavor profile. Even though you’re using turkey, it has a completely different taste because of the spices.

Even though the actual turkey day is still a few days away, this is a great way to put a dent in some of those leftovers!

Leftover Turkey Fajitas

Yield: Serves 4.

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Total Time: 15 minutes

Ingredients:

1-1.5 pounds leftover turkey, chopped
1 red pepper, sliced
1 orange, yellow, or green pepper, sliced
1 yellow onion, sliced
1 jalapeno, sliced thin
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
Salt and pepper
12 flour tortillas

Toppings:
Sliced avocado
Salsa
Sour cream

Directions:

1) Chop up turkey roughly. You can use white or dark meat. Also slice peppers and onions into strips.

2) Pre-heat oven to 300 degrees and wrap tortillas in foil. Add tortillas to oven and let heat up for 5-10 minutes.

3) Add oil to a large skillet over high heat. Once hot, add the peppers and onions and cook until they are slightly caramelized, about 4 minutes.

4) Add chopped turkey to skillet with spices and a pinch of salt and pepper.

5) Toss ingredients together well and cook until the turkey is slightly browned.

6) Serve turkey mixture with warm flour tortillas and toppings.

Peppers and more Peppers

Like I said, one of the great things about fajitas is it gives you a chance to use some nice fresh veggies after days of carbs.

I like my fajitas to be really pepper-heavy so I usually use a red pepper, one other kind of pepper, and a jalapeno or two.

Essential fajitas ingredients.

Slice up the peppers and onions. For the jalapeno, if you’re using one, remove the seeds and chop it a bit smaller. Nobody will enjoy a huge slice of jalapeno in their fajitas.

This might take 5 minutes to prepare.

A good guide for size of slices.

Gobble Gobble

As far as the turkey goes, you can definitely use white or dark meat. I used leftover turkey from my apple cider brined turkey. I was worried about the apple flavors not going well with the fajitas, but they were delicious.

No problems at all.

There are some options when it comes to prepping the turkey. You could shred it, but I like my fajitas to have larger chunks of meat so I just roughly chopped my leftover turkey.

I like big chunks in my fajitas.

Cooking the Fajitas

Before you actually start cooking your fajitas, I’d recommend wrapping your tortillas in some foil and sticking them in a hot oven for 5 minutes or so to get them nice and warm.

The fajitas themselves only take about 10 minutes to cook at the maximum.

Start by heating your oil in a large skillet over high heat. Once it’s hot, add your onions and peppers and cook them until they start to caramelize a bit, about 5 minutes. Then add the turkey and spices and a pinch of salt and pepper.

Cook this all for a few more minutes and you’ll be ready to rock.

Really easy dish to pull together.

Cook the fajitas on a high heat is key so you get some browning on the veggies and on the turkey.

While they cook, I always like to get some fun toppings ready. For this meal, I just used some salsa, sour cream, and diced up an avocado.

Can't go wrong with these toppings.

Serve the fajitas with a few flour tortillas and pile on the toppings.

Two or three fajitas is a really good meal.

A good fajita.

There’s nothing tricky or hard about this recipe. It’s just straightforward good food which is all you need when you’re looking for a way to use your leftovers and relax.

If you have some turkey leftover after Thursday (who doesn’t?), try out the Tex-Mex route!

Some of my favorite flavors.

Sometimes I get desperately sick of normal pasta sauce. Betsy and I eat pasta at least a few times a week and at some point in the week I’ll exclaim, “I’ll put anything in the world on that pasta except tomatoes.”

It’s not that I don’t love tomatoes. I definitely do. But a dude can only eat so much ragu.

The sauce I worked up on this particular night has a sesame base and has a delicious, rich flavor. At the same time though, it’s pretty light. You can’t really even see it on the pasta, but you can smell and taste it.

I wasn’t sure if Betsy would like my sesame sauce so I just served it with her favorite pasta, angel hair. I figured that would probably win her over. Luckily, the sauce turned out to be so good that I could’ve served it on a plate of kitchen twine.

Sesame Angel Hair Pasta

Yield: Serves 4.

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:

1 pound angel hair pasta
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup safflower oil
1 clove garlic
2 inches fresh ginger, grated
2 tablespoons sesame oil
2 tablespoons rice wine vinegar
2 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons chili garlic sauce
1/2 pound edamame, steamed
1 red pepper, diced
Sesame seeds (garnish)
Chopped scallions (garnish)
Sriracha sauce (garnish)

Directions:

1) Mince garlic and peel and grate ginger.

2) Whisk garlic and ginger with soy sauce, safflower, sesame oil, sugar, and chili garlic sauce to make a dressing. Set aside.

3) Steam edamame in the microwave or in steamer until soft. Toss with chopped red pepper.

4) Cook pasta according to package and toss with dressing and vegetables. You might not need all the dressing so add it slowly.

5) Serve warm or cold.

The Sesame Sauce

If you have even a decent Asian pantry, you’ll probably have some of the ingredients for this dressing. At a bare minimum, most people have soy sauce. And most people should have rice wine vinegar and chili garlic sauce because those go great in a lot of dishes.

Basic sauce stuff.

The ingredient that gives this sauce it’s kick though is the sesame oil. This stuff is flavor-packed and a little goes a long way.

Just a few tablespoons will be more than enough to flavor a whole pound of pasta.

This stuff rocks.

Add all your sauce ingredients to a medium bowl and whisk them well to combine them. I knew this was going to be a winning recipe when I tried out the sauce on its own.

It’s slightly spicy, but its main characteristic is a deep savory flavor.

Really flavorful dressing!

The Add-ins

You could just toss some pasta in this sauce and call it good, but I thought it’d be nice to give the dish some color with some fresh vegetables. I just diced up a red pepper and steamed some frozen edamame.

If you can’t find edamame, any pea would work great.

Great colors.

The pasta

Like I said, I used angel hair because I know it’s Betsy’s favorite and I rarely use it. You could use almost any noodle pasta for this dish though. Rice noodles or even spaghetti would work equally well.

Betsy's favorite pasta.

Finishing the Dish

Whatever pasta you decide to use, just cook it according to its cooking instructions. As soon as you drain the pasta, add it to a bowl and pour in about half of your sauce.

Check out this action shot!

Action shot!

You might not need all the sauce for your pasta so start with half of it, toss the pasta a bit to combine everything. Taste it and add more sauce if you think it needs it. I used almost all of my sauce.

As soon as the sauce hits the hot pasta, an intense sesame flavor will smack you in the nostrils.

Then just stir in your edamame and red peppers and you’re ready to go!

All mixed up.

I served this garnished with chopped scallions, sesame seeds, and Sriracha sauce.

Garnishes are fun.

The really nice thing about this dish is that it keeps really well and is awesome cold. So it works great for lunches!

In fact, I think I liked this dish better as a cold noodle salad on day two.

If you’re feeling the tomato twinge and need a change, try this guy out!

A lot going on in there...

I’ve been on sort of a never-ending quest to find the perfect lunch salad. It’s tricky business because you want something that had plenty of filling ingredients so you can make it through the afternoon. Ideally, it would also keep really well so you can take it for an entire week.

Oh. It also needs to taste really, really good so you don’t get bored with it.

You can see a lot of my previous lunch salad attempts in the Macheesmo salads category. I try a bunch out that I don’t always post as well. I try to only post the really outstanding ones.

Which would easily include this one.

In fact, this one might have been my favorite to-date. The funny part is that it was inspired largely on a pre-made salad that Betsy grabbed at a local grocery store one day when I completely failed at making a lunch salad. It was so good that she asked me to try to re-do it. I added a bunch more veggies and stuff to it, but the idea is basically the same.

Asian Quinoa Salad

Yield: Serves 4-6.

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups uncooked quinoa, cooked according to package
1 red pepper, diced
1/2 cucumber, seeded and diced
1/2 cup shredded carrots
2 scallions, minced
4-5 radishes, sliced thin
1/3 Cup soy sauce (dressing)
1 Tablespoon mirin rice wine vinegar (dressing)
1 Teaspoon spicy sesame oil (optional for dressing)
Chopped peanuts
Chopped fresh basil
Toasted sesame seeds

Directions:

1) Cook quinoa according to package.

2) Chop veggies finely and stir in with cooked quinoa.

3) Drizzle in dressing a bit at a time. Taste and adjust with more dressing if necessary. You might not need all of it.

4) Toast sesame seeds in a dry pan for a few minutes on medium heat until the seeds are lightly browned and fragrant.

5) Stir in peanuts, seeds, and basil.

Making the Quinoa

Quinoa sounds all fancy (and can sometimes come with a fancy price tag), but it’s surprisingly easy to make. You should read the instructions on the package since there are a few different varieties of quinoa. In general though, rinse the quinoa with cold water and then get some water simmering in a large pot. Usually you want a 2-to-1 ratio, water-to-quinoa.

Once the water is simmering pour in the rinsed quinoa, cover it, and let it simmer for about 20 minutes. Then kill the heat and let it sit for 10 minutes. Then lightly fluff it up and you’ll have a really delicious quinoa!

quin-wow.

Prepping Other Ingredients

The list of veggies you could toss in this salad is pretty endless. I’d recommending using whatever you have in your fridge that might go well in it. For me this included some cucumber, red pepper, onions, and shredded carrots. I also picked up some really beautiful radishes at the market on this given week and I figured they would give the salad a nice crunch also.

One thing I wouldn’t add to this salad is any kind of cheese like feta. Sometimes I like adding cheeses to salads like this, but in this case I think it would be too much.

Colorful stuff!

As far as prepping the veggies go, just try to get them sliced up pretty finely. You don’t want any huge chunks of any one thing. For the cucumber, I would remove the seeds, but you can leave on the skin if you want.

These were my radishes after a quick dice.

Go pretty thin on everything.

Once everything is in the bowl with the quinoa it’s a really pretty mix.

Hard to get healthier than this!

The Dressing

I kept the dressing pretty simple for this salad. You could fancy it up a bit with some fresh ginger and/or garlic, but I this was a quick and easy dressing that definitely go the job done.

You can definitely leave out the sesame chili oil or sub it with normal sesame oil, but I do think it’s a really nice touch.

Peanut are optional... only if you're allergic.

Just mix up the soy sauce, mirin and sesame oil and drizzle it over the salad. Depending on your tastes you might not need all the dressing so I would add about half of it and then adjust the flavor.

It’s pretty hard to remove soy sauce from a salad like this so start slow.

Add a bit at a time.

Once you add some dressing, stir it all together and then taste it. Just adjust it to your tastes at that point!

The Bonus Items

There’s a few bonus items that I think kick this salad up a notch. I added a few handfuls of chopped peanuts, a big handful of fresh basil which I just diced up and a few Tablespoons of sesame seeds.

Sesame seeds can be a tiny bit bland straight out of the box, but if you toast them for a few minutes in a dry pan, they become lightly browned and really fragrant.

So I recommend toasting them.

Love the smell of these guys.

You could add the garnishes to the top if you want, but I just stirred everything together.

This is supposed to be a low maintenance dish after all.

Lunch every day!

Honestly, this is about as healthy as a salad can get in my opinion. It’s got tons of veggies and flavor to get you going. If you wanted to add even more protein to it you could add some chicken or tofu, but I didn’t even think it needed it.

It’s a great change from the standard deli bar salad or whatever.

Buried in salsa...

My mom called me a few days before her visit this last weekend with a question:

“How much do you know about halibut?”

My answer was pretty simple: ”Well, I know that it’s a fish… and I know that it’s delish.” What more do you need to know?

Turns out that her neighbor had recently been to Alaska and had a very good fishing expedition and came back with about a hundred pounds of flash frozen Alaskan halibut. He gave some to my mom and she offered to bring it with her when she came so we could cook it up.

Unfortunately, the way that halibut is normally cooked – baked with tons of butter – was off limits to us because my mom has some dietary restrictions that we had to follow. So I came up with two fun ways to cook the halibut. Both ways turned out very good.

Both of the recipes in this case centered around a really simple pineapple salsa, so let’s do that first.

Pineapple Salsa
Makes 6-8 cups of salsa.

- 1/2 whole pineapple, diced
- 1 green pepper, diced
- 1 red pepper, diced
- 1 peach, pitted and diced
- 1 Serrano pepper, minced (optional)
- 1 big pinch of kosher salt

Once you have this salsa made, you have the base for both dishes actually.

Basic salsa

As with most salsa, this guy is mainly good chopping practice. If you’ve never cut up a whole pineapple before, it’s not so hard but I can see why people could be intimidated.

Start by chopping off both ends of the pineapple and then stand it on its end and use a large sharp knife to slice off the rind around the edges. Then chop it in half long-wise and slice out the core. Then just dice up the fruit like you would anything else.

Of course, if you want the absolutely expert way to peel a pineapple, I recommend checking out this video. Takes some skill, but definitely the best way to do it to preserve more of the fruit.

Anyway, once you have everything done, just toss it in a bowl and season it with some salt. The longer this sits, the better it gets!

Good stuff.

A Grilled Meal

For dinner, I wanted to grill some of the halibut. As a side, I wrapped a few sweet potatoes in foil and tossed them on the grill also. These guys need about 40 minutes on the grill so start them way before the fish obviously.

Just a side...

As mothers are inclined to do, when she said she was bringing “some fish” she meant “more fish than four people could ever eat.”

For the four of us I think she brought about 7-8 pounds of halibut.

A huge amount of fish!

I picked out a few of the filets that I wanted to grill and saved about a pound for my ceviche plan the next day.

When it comes to grilling the fish, I kept it about as simple as possible: just some olive oil and a bit of salt. In hindsight, I think I may have added some blackening seasoning or something to give them a bit more of a char from the grill. I had my grilled cranked up to as hot as possible and I didn’t get really great grill marks.

Not the best grill marks, but okay.

That was okay though. More important than the grill marks is the goal of not over-cooking the fish! Halibut is a very tender fish and the last thing you want to do is over-cook it. Depending on the size of your filets and how hot your grill is, your cooking time might vary, but I promise that you won’t need to cook them for more than 6 minutes or so. About three minutes per side was a perfect time for my fish.

If you want to test the fish, just pick one of the fatter filets and see if you can easily flake apart the fish. If it flakes apart, it’s done.

Serve this as soon as possible. I piled on as much of the salsa as possible because it was really delicious.

Really refreshing and healthy.

Next Day Ceviche

As I mentioned, we had a lot of fish, so I kept about a pound of it to use in an appetizer the next day. This was my basic ceviche recipe which also used some of the leftover pineapple salsa.

Halibut Ceviche

Yield: Serves 4.

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Total Time: 2 hours 15 minutes

Ingredients:

1 pound fresh halibut, diced
2 limes, juice only
1 lemon, juice only
1 orange, juice only
1 1/2 - 2 cups pineapple salsa (recipe from above)
2 Tablespoons olive oil
1 pinch of salt
Crackers or chips for serving

Directions:

1) Stir together all ingredients except olive oil. Let sit, covered for 2 hours.

2) Drain off most of the liquid and stir in olive oil. Taste for salt.

3) Serve with crackers or chips.

Mix everything together in a large, non-reactive bowl except for the olive oil. The acid from the citrus and salsa will actually cook the fish. It’s a pretty cool process, but for the dish to be good it’s very important to have really fresh fish. Otherwise the dish will end up being too fishy tasting.

Once everything is combined, let it sit in the fridge for about 2 hours, stirring it every 30 minutes or so. Then drain out most of the liquid and stir in the olive oil. Taste it for salt and serve it with chips or crackers.

The Ceviche!

Believe it or not, we actually used almost all the fish my mom brought!

I guess that goes to show you that moms really do know best.

About as healthy as it gets!

After a week of vacation eating mainly seafood and butter, Betsy and I were in the mood for some healthy stuff when we got home.

I wondered through the produce section and picked out a few things that looked particularly good (green beans/corn). To make a meal out of them, I tossed them with some spicy sesame soba noodles.

Turned out to be really flavorful and one of my favorite healthy dishes in a while.

Summer Soba

Yield: Serves 4.

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Total Time: 35 minutes

Ingredients:

1 9.5 ounce package of soba, cooked according to package
1-2 Cups green beans
2 ears corn
1 red pepper, diced
1/2 Cup carrots, shredded
2 scallions, only greens
1-2 Tablespoons sesame oil (or chili sesame oil), for soba
2 Tablespoons vegetable oil (for cooking)
Fresh basil (garnish)
Chopped peanuts (garnish)

Sauce:
2 Tablespoons soy sauce
1 Tablespoon mirin
- 1 Serrano pepper, diced with seeds
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 2 inches fresh ginger, grated

Directions:

1) Prep all veggies and set them aside.

2) Cook soba according to package then drain and toss with sesame oil.

3) Mix sauce ingredients being sure to mince ginger/garlic/pepper well.

4) In a large skillet, add oil and then all the veggies except carrots and scallions.

5) Cook veggies on high heat for a few minutes until hot, but still a bit crunchy.

6) Add sauce to pan and cook for another minute or two until sauce is fragrant.

7) Add soba to pan and stir together well. Then stir in carrots and scallions.

8) Serve with chopped basil and peanuts.

Prepping the Ingredients

The veggies that I used for this are by no means the only ones you could use. Almost any fresh summer veggie would be great tossed in with this dish, so don’t feel limited by what I included.

Good summer stuff.

Assuming you do use some of the veggies I used though, prepping them is pretty straightforward. Dice up the red pepper, snap off the ends of the green beans and chop them in half. Cut the corn off the cob.

Pretty easy prep.

In essence, this is a stir-fry recipe, so I mixed up a very quick and simple sauce for it. Nothing too heavy, but just to give the dish some flavor.

Not pictured: Serrano pepper

Mince up the garlic, pepper, and ginger really finely and then stir it together with the soy sauce and mirin.

Seriously awesome sauce.

Cooking the Soba

If you aren’t familiar with soba, don’t fret. It’s basically pasta except made with buckwheat. This gives it a really unique flavor (almost nutty). It also takes no time to cook. Most soba cooks in just a few minutes.

Pretty things.

The thing about soba is that it’s a really sticky pasta. After you cook it and drain it, you’ll want to toss it with some oil or you’ll end up with one big block of pasta that will be pretty hard to work with.

But if you pour over a few tablespoons of sesame oil then it will flavor the pasta and also keep it from sticking. If you want to add some heat do the dish, you can use sesame chili oil!

Oil is key.

Finishing the Dish

Once your veggies are prepped and your pasta is cooked, this is a pretty straightforward dish to make.

Add a few tablespoons of oil to a large skillet and toss in all your veggies (except carrots and scallions) over high heat. Cook these for just a few minutes. You want to make sure that they still have a bit of crunch to them.

Don't over-cook this!

Then stir in the sauce and let it heat up and get fragrant for a minute or two.

Finally, add in all the soba and stir the whole thing together. As a final step, stir in the carrots and scallions and you’re all set!

Yum.

Serve the soba immediately with fresh basil and peanuts on top.

Very colorful and healthy dish.

Health in a bowl.

One of my favorite things about soba is that unlike some other pastas, it maybe tastes even better cold. So leftovers are perfect for a weekday lunch or something.

Summer soba was a total hit at my house. It’s a perfect use for some of the delicious veggies available these days.