Well Done Jack Bishop!

Congrats to Mr. Bishop for his cookbook Vegetables Every Day being named the cookbook of the week at Borders Books. This book is my vegetable encyclopedia. When I visit a farmers market and find a foreign vegetable (see kohlrabi), I can look it up and find out how to pick it, prep it, and cook it. I've learned things such as selecting small turnips rather than large ones, because the larger ones tend to be less flavorful and more woody. And, for my friends looking for vegetable side dishes, this book has tons of recipes.

If you are wanting to expand your vegetable vocabulary and consumption, I highly recommend this book to you. Let me know what you think if you pick one up.

Orecchietti with Spicy Broccoli

If you want an easy pasta dish, this is a great choice. You only have to chop broccoli and garlic, and heat them up with a couple other ingredients while the pasta is cooking.

I thought the flavors were distributed perfectly, but I have a head cold, so there is a distinct possibility that I over-salted. Tommie will be home soon to let me know. My guess is that I did, but as my taste buds are on strike, the salt to everything else ratio seemed good to me.

I'm giving this dish a 4.5. It's surprisingly tasty and extremely easy to make.

Red Bean Chili with Ancho Chiles and Coffee

Cold, snowy day after Christmas + Head Cold Tommie = CHILI!

I haven't made this recipe since last winter, because it takes 3-4 hours to make, and the rest of the year I'm somewhere out on my bike rather than indoors cooking all day. But in the winter, especially on a snowy day, this is the perfect activity. 

I also went ahead and baked a loaf of "Lighter Wheat" bread (see picture) from my Bread Baker's Apprentice cookbook. This bread baking thing is not as hard as I thought it would be. With my eternal quest to control all substances that enter my stomach, I'm happy to have overcome my initial trepidation and am now on my second type of sandwich bread as well as homemade bagels.

Anyway, enough on the bread. As I said, the chili takes forever to make, because the recipe calls for dried beans. None of the steps is really difficult to do, so if you have an afternoon free, this is a rewarding dish that makes your home smell very yummy, and the result is a completely authentic tasting chili. I can't put down John Grisham's newest book, "The Confession," so I had a great afternoon of primarily reading while the bread and chili did their things in the kitchen. Come to think of it, I also fit in a half-hour of yoga while they were cooking. Wow. I actually accomplished a lot this afternoon. Huh.

I was tempted to give this dish 4.5 stars because of the time factor, but the truth is, it is too good, so it gets 5 stars. Oh, and BTW, I dumped in like 4 heavy shakes of cayenne pepper to add some kick. It's not in the recipe, but I just feel like chili should make your mouth tingle.

Couscous Tagine with Turnips and Dried Apricots - Take Two

If you're paying attention you'll remember that Tommie made this dish last month (seriously I expect NO ONE to remember that). Tommie and I had made homemade bagels this week, and so I needed a nice, healthy, nutrient rich meal to combat the overload of simple bagel carbs in addition to the chocolates, cakes, and cookies that have been accompanying the holidays.

Enter one of my favorite and extremely easy to make dishes: Couscous Tagine with Turnips and Dried Apricots. The sweet flavor of the apricots blends just beautifully with the peppery turnips. Love, love, love this dish. Tastes fabulous, extremely low calories, chock full of nutrients with tomatoes, cinnamon, cumin, cilantro, turnips, apricots, onions, and couscous. We give this one the full 5 stars.

Seriously, DON'T FEAR THE TURNIP. If you are afraid, at least give it one shot. If you hate it, no worries. But you may find that you love it like I do, and then you'll just maybe be open to trying even more vegetables that seemed like a no-go area before, like perhaps chard, fennel, leeks, parsnip, beets... There's a world of delicious flavors to discover that can help to make your body stronger than ever. Start now with THE TURNIP!

Rigatoni with Cauliflower, Curry Powder, and Coconut Milk

Why do I keep eating past the point of being full when I know it's going to make me feel uncomfortable afterward? Oh right. Because the food from this cookbook is so fracking tasty.

This is a nice, different kinda pasta dish. The flavors blend together beautifully: spinach, lime juice, coconut milk, curry powder, garlic, onion, jalapeno, and the ubiquitous salt, all combined with rigatoni.

My only complaint, as I have with most pasta dishes for that matter, is the cleaning factor. Our kitchen is a mess right now. Regardless, this one is worth making.

We're giving tonight's dinner 4.5 stars. It's extremely delicious, but as Tommie says, it's not "magical" like some of the other dishes in the book. Let me know what you think if you make it.

Indian-Style Squash Soup with Spiced Pumpkin Seeds

Tonight's Jack Bishop soup has a guest star: fresh-baked Anadama bread by ME! More on that later. Let's talk soup.

Another out of the ballpark hit. This soup requires a few different steps to make, but it's all very easy. The soup on its own is delicious, but I love the spiced pumpkin seeds that you sprinkle on top. They are just delicious, and I love the crunch that they add to the soup. They're also yummy to snack on sans soup.

And now, my bread. A certain conservative political blogger friend recommended to me the book, The Bread Baker's Apprentice. I had tried to make bread from a different cookbook, and the flavors were not there. So, I read this highly scientific book and followed the recipe for Anadama bread (combo of polenta and bread flour plus some light molasses, salt, water, yeast, and a little butter). This bread is a two day event. Sadly, I messed up Step Two this morning, and I think that's why the bread didn't rise all the way. BUT, it tastes amazing. Bread baking is an art and a science, but with only a little knowledge I was able to make delicious bread even after messing it up!

As you might have guessed, I'm giving the soup the full 5 stars. It's just fabulous. Tommie will be eating well when he gets off his plane tonight.

Caribbean Black Beans with Sauteed Plantains

I feel somewhat cruel posting this while Tommie is stuck at work in Chicago. It's a sin how tasty this dish is. I purposefully don't make it that often, because I love it so much that I don't want to overdo it.

The beans are sauteed with orange juice, lime juice, garlic, and jalapeños. Then you add sauteed plantains and rice to the scrummy beans, y tienes una fiesta fabulosa!

Make this dish. You'll thank me. Needless to say: 6 out of 5 stars. No pregunta.

My Favorite Hot Cocoa

This has nothing to do with Jack Bishop, but since this blog is about my favorite foods, I thought I'd share my favorite cocoa. Lake Champlain's Organic Hot Chocolate is my fave, but I also love their spicy Aztec flavor as well as their new Mountain Mint. The Organic one has a rich, dark chocolate flavor. I've had the Traditional one, and it's just not bold enough for my tastes. If you prefer milk chocolate, you might like this flavor more than me.

Every afternoon I pour 8 oz of 2% milk in a mug and microwave for 2 min. 20 sec. (The can says to microwave for 3 minutes, but in my microwave that is too much.) Then I add one generous tablespoon of cocoa and mix. Voila! My sugar craving is satisfied for the day, and the milk has so much protein in it that I'm not hungry until dinner.

Lake Champlain's cocoa is sold at my Whole Foods Market in Alexandria, but I don't think it was offered in the Arlington store the last time I looked. So, if it's not in your WFM, you can use the link above and order it online.

Let me know what you think if you try it. With 35º temperatures even down in Miami, we're all looking for a good way to warm up. I say: Make it a cocoa day!

Black Bean Soup with Cumin, Chiles, and Lime

Best. Black. Bean. Soup. Ever.

No wait.

Best. Soup. Ever.

I've made this soup a few times, but I feel very strongly that the wrong beer (one of the ingredients) can destroy the dish. And, since I haven't had a beer in easily a decade, I have not been very good at picking beers. But today, I went to the old faithful Heineken, my beer of choice in the '90s. Complete fracking success.

Couple things if you make this: instead of removing 2 cups of soup and blending them, I just blended the soup in the pot a bit with my immersion blender. Not the whole thing, just enough so that when you stir it around you get that fabulous, thick texture that all black bean soups must have (IMHO).

Also, I opted for plain yogurt instead of sour cream, and I went with a fat-free one. Tasted fabulous. Why add the fat and calories if you don't need them?

So, for the first time EVER, I am awarding this dish 6 out of 5 stars. Best. Soup. Ever.

Corn, Tomato, and Lima Bean Stew

Dr. Sanjay Gupta would SO approve. Look at all those colors! I haven't made this dish for ages, and I have no idea why. It's very simple to make, extremely tasty, and highly nutritious.

I took the easy option and went with frozen lima beans, but when it comes to corn, 99% of the time I buy corn in their husks and cut the fresh kernels off the cob. Next summer I'm gonna find out if I can grow corn on our terrace. Talk about an effective privacy screen -- I hear it can grow as high as an elephants eye!

Without Tommie's input I'm going to give this one 4.5 stars. I love it, but it has a bit of half-and-half in it, and Tommie is not such a fan of The Dairy. Really it's only a tiny bit of the cream just to add another layer of flavor to the dish, but my guess is that he gives this one a rating somewhere in the 3-4 star range. To be continued...

Spinach and Pesto Risotto

When the cat's away the mice will play... WITH THE CHEESE!!!!! So, Tommie's out of town, and I thought to myself, CHEESE! (Tommie, if this is too much for you, step away from the blog.)

My good friend, who I will refer to as Memily, in case she would like anonymity, came over this afternoon, and we made Jack's Spinach and Pesto Risotto. I can never make anything like this when Tommie's home, due to the CHEESE factor, so we took advantage of the opportunity.

This was my first risotto, and, no surprise-- thank you Jack, it came out delicious. Jack has an incredibly delicious pesto recipe in the book that is an ingredient in the dish. If I had made the pesto in advance, the risotto would have taken maybe 30 minutes or so to make. But since we were making it an afternoon of hanging out and cooking, we made the pesto first. Fabulous pesto. I, of course, gave the leftover pesto to Memily to take home, because Tommie would be horrified to find its yummy, CHEESY, goodness in our fridge. Enjoy, Memily!

We both agreed that this risotto tastes as good as anything you'd find in a nice restaurant; therefore, it gets the full 5 stars. Tommie -- if you're still reading this, Memily took the rest of the leftover CHEESE with her too.

Black Sesame Noodles

She shoots, and she scores!!!!!

OK. The first thing you might wonder is "Black Sesame Noodles?" Yes. I couldn't find black sesame seeds, so I went with the oldy but goody white sesame seeds. And, the only thing I'll say about that is, that I wish I put more in, because, um, YUM!

I'm gonna tell you some of the flavors, but just know that it's super easy, even though there are a lot of components. You basically throw a bunch of stuff in a food processor, shred some veggies, and cook some pasta.

So here goes: fresh ginger, garlic, carrots, cucumber, radishes, peanut butter, soy sauce, rice vinegar, hot pepper, some other odds and ends, and then top it off with fresh cilantro and toasted sesame seeds. Yummmm-frickin-y.

Clearly, tonight's dinner gets the full 5 stars. I actually did not get a second serving, because I wanted to leave room to have a slice of my freshly baked bread tonight for a snack. Food just tastes so much better when you make it from scratch.

Potatoes and Chard with Green Curry Sauce

Yum. This one's a keeper. It's so fracking cold up here, that I chose all my recipes for the next few nights from the Winter section of the book. Jack says he likes this dish on a cold day, and we discovered that we do too!

Some cooking observations: I didn't use enough green curry out of fear that I would make the dish too spicy. Nope. Definitely not too spicy. Tommie had to add some chili flakes to his plate to get the zip he wanted. So, I'm going with two tablespoons next time at bat.

Also, I just cannot get the timing right on my stove. We've lived here one year this week, and I'm still simmering my dishes way too hot. I think I'm done with trying to use the "simmer" indicator on the knob and just lower the heat to med-low or low. I share this story with you, because I definitely overcooked the potatoes. It might have been a blessing though, because some of the potatoes kinda mushed up, and so it made the dish seem even creamier.

Bottom line, even with me under-spicing and over-cooking this dish, we still loved it! Gonna go with 4.5 stars. Maybe if I get it right I'll be able to award this curry the full 5 stars. Oh one last thing: Jack recommends serving this with rice. I didn't do that. Potatoes and rice seems like way too many carbs and overkill. Do you disagree?

Golden Tofu Wrap with Warm Asian Slaw

This meal is standard fare in our non-animal eating home. Not unlike the majority of Jack's recipes in "A Year in a Vegetarian Kitchen," the ingredients are few: some sauteed tofu cubes, some red cabbage, a little jalapeño, some garlic, a splash of some Asian liquids, and a whole lotta love. (JK.) But as is the norm, the results are delicious.

With this dish I've learned that I like to add a bit more of the seasonings to the cabbage to give it more kick, and I've also learned to not buy Whole Foods' lavash wraps ever again. They taste good, but they're way too flaky and rip too easily. The dish calls for 12" flour tortillas, and Whole Foods never has any big enough. So I tried the lavash this once. Once! Next time, I buy proper tortillas at Harris Teeter. Lesson learned.

As one of our fave dishes, we're giving tonight's meal 4.5 stars. We're not really depressed that we got full, but we're still looking forward to leftovers for lunch tomorrow.