Sauteed Broccolini

Did you know that broccolini is a cross between broccoli and Chinese kale (called gailon)? Nope, neither did I until I read the label on a couple of bunches of broccolini that I bought at the store last week. This post is part of my quest to try a new vegetable every week.

To prepare this veggie side dish, I heated some olive oil in a saute pan with a smashed garlic clove. Once the oil was hot, I discarded the garlic clove, add the broccolini, salt, and red pepper flakes. After cooking them for a few minutes while tossing them in the hot olive oil, I transferred them to a plate and sprinkled with Parmesan cheese. Really, this entire dish took about 5 minutes! It was super easy and pretty healthy too!

LESSON LEARNED: Cook this vegetable quickly so it stays crisp and bright green.

Recipe for Sauteed Broccolini

Honey Roasted Golden Beets

Every week I try to make a point to buy and eat a new ingredient. I think this is a good way to become familiar with different types of food and I love creating new recipes. This week I picked up a bunch of golden beets. I don't think that I've had the red varietal of beets, so this almost counted as a double new ingredient. :)

I first tasted the beets raw and they tasted tangy and had a similar taste to other root vegetables such as carrots. I thought if I thinly sliced them, toss the beets with yummy flavor boosters (olive oil, honey, cinnamon, salt), and roast until cooked through, I might get my husband to taste them. I was right! As they were baking, the house started to smell like cinnamon and he came to the kitchen to investigate. Ha! My plan worked!

LESSON LEARNED: Adding familiar flavors to unfamiliar ingredients encourages other people to taste them.

Recipe for Honey Roasted Golden Beets

Frizzled Brussels Sprouts

This is an awesome winter side dish! I've made this 4 or 5 times because it's so good. I made it for Christmas dinner and it was really well received by everyone in my family - even by people who normally don't care for this vegetable!

The hardest part of the dish is separating the leaves from each sprout. It takes a little bit of prep work because you need quite a few Brussels Sprouts. Just to give you a heads up, from beginning to end, they cook down to about a quarter of the volume.

You begin by crisping pieces of bacon, removing them with a slotted spoon, and reserving the rendered bacon fat. Then, the Brussels Sprout leaves are placed in the pan and cooked in the bacon fat. This is where the magical frizzled part happens! They will begin to wilt, become crispy, and deliciously brown. After they brown a few minutes, you toss in chopped walnuts, red pepper flakes, and salt. Finally, you add the cooked bacon and enjoy!

LESSON LEARNED: Don't be afraid to let the leaves brown while they cook. This is where all the flavor comes from!

Recipe for Frizzled Brussels Sprouts

Roasted Tomatoes

This is my absolute favorite way to eat tomatoes in the middle of winter! They are so DELICIOUS and SIMPLE to prepare. I sliced Roma tomatoes in half and sprinkled them with salt/pepper and olive oil. Then, I roasted them in a low temperature oven until they appeared dried out and smaller.

The tomato flavor is very concentrated and tastes 1000 times better than their fresh counterpart during the winter months. Sometimes I used cherry tomatoes (they just take less time to bake) and sometimes I drizzle them with pure maple syrup (they are additively sweet like candy). You could toss them in pasta or on top of a salad. There are so many possibilities!

LESSON LEARNED: This is such a simple preparation, but the results make you look like a culinary genius!

Recipe for Roasted Tomatoes

Spice-Roasted Cauliflower

My love of roasting vegetables continues! First, it was these roasted brussels spouts and now it's cauliflower. This is the perfect side dish for any dinner and it only requires a few ingredients. Cauliflower florets are tossed with olive oil, salt, cumin, and cayenne pepper. After they are cooked for 50 minutes in the oven, the cauliflower becomes brown, crunchy, and so DELICIOUS! The cauliflower is sweet, smokey, and slightly spicy. I think I could eat a whole bowl by myself :)

LESSON LEARNED: Roasting vegetables make them extra delicious! You could easily change up the spices and the vegetables. There are so many possibilities!

Recipe for Spice-Roasted Cauliflower

Kiwi, Goat Cheese, & Toasted Walnut Salad

I'm always looking for new lunch ideas and this salad is the perfect way to re-invent your typical lunch. I could easily imagine this on the menu at a cute bistro. I would definitely order it!

The salad is a spring mix tossed with a kiwi-vinaigrette. It's topped with cubed kiwi fruit, toasted walnut halves, and small dots of goat cheese. The end result is a sweet, nutty, and tangy salad that will brighten up your day. At least it made me smile last week for lunch :)

LESSON LEARNED: A kiwi-vinaigrette is made by mashing a kiwi to extract it's juice, then whisking in olive oil, white balsamic vinegar, and salt/pepper.

Recipe for Kiwi, Goat Cheese, & Toasted Walnut Salad

Spinach & Bacon Risotto

I think that making risotto is magical. You start with hard, little nuggets of rice, add chicken stock combined with lots of stirring, and end up with creamy puffed-up rice pillows. This dish sounds fancy, but with a little bit of time, you can make this dish very easily. It starts with the rice. In fact, my husband asked "Did you use a special kind of rice?" and I answered "Yep, I used arborio rice!". If you are not familiar with this type of rice, the best way to describe it is a short, fat rice. You can easily find this in any grocery store.

After choosing the correct rice, the next step is stirring. This is the most time-intensive part of the dish and the recipe here is for a "quick" risotto (it only takes 20 minutes of stirring compared to upwards of 45 minutes in a more traditional risotto). I started by cooking bacon until crisp, removing the bacon and part of the bacon fat, sauteing onion/garlic in a little of the leftover bacon fat, toasting the rice, deglazing the pan with some wine (that's just getting all the brown bits off the bottom of the pan), and slowly adding warm chicken stock to the pan. This is where the stirring begins! You constantly stir the rice and add stock once the previous stock cooks out. As you stir, this develops the starch in the rice and this is what makes the dish creamy. I would highly suggest stirring while enjoying a glass of wine! I certainly did!

Once you have used all the chicken stock, stir in some butter and Parmesan cheese. I then added some chopped fresh spinach and tasted the dish for salt. After I plated it, I added some more cheese for good measure. Here's a bonus: we found out that this dish is WONDERFUL as leftovers for lunch!

LESSON LEARNED: Slowly adding stock and stirring is the key to good risotto.

Recipe for Spinach & Bacon Risotto