Ten-Minute Chickpea Salad

May 16, 2013 By Love & Flour in Sides No Comments Tags: chick peas, quick sides

You walk in the door at 5:30 p.m. Your highly lovable but also highly energetic kids are happy to see you and ready to be entertained. Your spouse (who is surely happy to see you even though forgetting to tell you) stares at your hands, which are holding nothing but your briefcase and now-empty lunch sack. “Did you remember to stop at the grocery store and pick up the salad for the neighborhood block party?”

Depending on your day, a blank stare or expletive-laced outburst could follow. Which will it be? How about a different option altogether in the form of whipping up this chickpea salad as did Michael Natkin, who wrote about a very similar scenario which inspired a very similar recipe. He shared both in his lovely cookbook Herbivoracious.(He writes a blog by the same name.) “Born out of desperation” is how he put it.

The desperation (so to speak) I typically face when wanting to create a quick meal is having something I can prepare relatively quickly that is also relatively healthy. I think this fits the bill. And because it is a salad, you can do pretty much anything you want with it. Add a can of black beans in place of one can of chickpeas. Not a fan of peppers or sundried tomatoes? Add olives or artichoke hearts or sunflower seeds.

Nakin suggests using fresh tarragon, dill or mint in place of a handful of basil. I did not use basil at all because I wanted the leftovers to keep for lunch. Like the overall idea of this salad but loathe chickpeas? Toss in cooked quinoa or couscous instead. No matter how you toss it, I am sure you can’t go wrong. Enjoy!

Ten-Minute Chickpea Salad

Author: adapted from Herbivoracious by Michael Natkin

Recipe type: side dish

Serves: 8

Ingredients

For the Salad
2, 15-ounce cans chickpeas, rinsed and drained
1 cup red onion, diced (about ½ onion)
1 cup English cucumber, chopped
1 pepper or 1 jar of roasted peppers
1 cup crumbled Feta cheese
½ cup sundried tomatoes
1 garlic clove, minced
For the Dressing
3 tablespoons lemon juice
¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper, to taste

Instructions

Stir together all of the salad ingredients, from the chickpeas to the garlic.
Immediately before serving, stir together the lemon juice and the olive oil and pour over the salad.
Stir to coat and season with salt and pepper to taste.

Notes

If desired, roast the pepper over dry heat before adding it to the salad. Do this by heating a cast iron skillet over medium-high heat and then adding the whole pepper. Roll the pepper from side to side every few minutes or so until nicely charred. Once cool enough to handle, chop, seed and add it to the salad.

Five Days of Cinco de Mayo: The Side Dish

May 1, 2013 By Love & Flour in Sides 2 Comments Tags: beans, holiday

Whenever I order a meal at a Mexican restaurant, it arrives with what seems like an obligatory side of rice and beans. I sometimes get to choose what type of beans arrive, but that is about as exciting as it gets. Until now. Enter baked Mexican-style beans.

Let’s be honest. Unless we’re talking jelly beans, no one is ever going to scream for beans the way they do for ice cream. This recipe takes those beans up a few notches on the totem pole of things that delight.

There is not a whole lot of pretty to this dish, but I am of the mind (hope!) that the taste makes up for the presentation. Tomatoes and chiles add flavor and bite as sour cream and cheese layer on the deliciousness.

Perhaps I am giving rice and beans a tough time because I eat them at least three times per week. Rice and beans, along with some sort of scrambled egg and rice bowl or egg sandwich, are common lunches and dinners in my world. After a while, plain beans begin to become tiresome, so I was happy to find this recipe.

As for things you should know if you want to make this dish, first off, it makes a lot of beans. The recipe says the yield is four, but I would say that is a conservative estimate.

For leftovers, I have resorted to eating the beans along with rice, of course, but I have also found I like it as a sandwich spread. I simply used a fork to mash some of the beans before spreading it over toasted bread. I don’t know that I would eat just the mashed beans and bread, but it definitely adds to a sandwich as a condiment.

In the write up of the recipe itself, the author suggested making this dish a go-to for potlucks since it yields a good amount and is easily doubled for larger parties. I modified the recipe a bit, choosing to use pinto beans and black beans along with the kidney beans called for in the recipe. This can be baked in an 8 x 8 or a 9 x 13 baking dish depending on what you have available.

Overall, I liked the way this recipe gave me a new, but simple, way to prepare flavorful beans for use throughout the week. I hope you will find the same. If not, I hope you will stick around until tomorrow when we start getting to the really good stuff. Enjoy!

For more Cinco de Mayo menu ideas, check out my Cinco de Mayo Pinterest board or visit the Cinco de Mayo page to see last year’s menu.

Day 1: The Appetizers – Pumpkin Seed Salsa

Day 2: The Main Dish - Mexican Noodle Casserole

Day 3: The Side Dish

Day 4: The Drink

Day 5: The Dessert

Mexican Baked Beans

Author: adapted from Simply Satisfying by Jeanne Lemlin

Serves: 4

Ingredients

2 tablespoons olive oil
1½ cups onion, diced (from 1 large onion)
2 cloves garlic, minced
1, 28-ounce can diced tomatoes, drained
1, 4-ounce can diced green chilies, drained
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 teaspoon chili powder
¼ teaspoon dried oregano
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon black pepper
3, 15-ounce cans beans (I used one can each of kidney beans, pinto beans and black beans)
1 cup sour cream
2 cups grated cheese (I used a Mexican blend)

Instructions

Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat.
Saute the onions and garlic until the onions are soften and the garlic is fragrant, about five minutes
Add the tomatoes, chilies, tomato paste, chili powder, oregano, salt and pepper.
Raise the heat to high and continue to cook, stirring frequently, until the liquid from the tomatoes has for the most part evaporated, about another five minutes.
Combine this skillet mixture with the beans, either in the skillet if it is large enough, a bowl, or the baking dish (8 x 8 or 13 x 9 will work) you plan to use.
Layer half the combined bean and tomato mixture in the baking dish (if you combined the mixture in the dish itself, you will simply want to transfer half back to the skillet for a moment) and top with ½ cup of the sour cream and 1 cup of the cheese.
Add the remaining bean and tomato mixture, followed by the remaining sour cream and cheese.
Bake at 375 degrees F for 20-25 minutes until the mixture is hot and bubbly.

Luck o’ The Irish Mash

Mar 13, 2013 By Love & Flour in Sides 1 Comment Tags: holiday, vegetables

I learn something nearly every single time I work in the kitchen. Sometimes it is something new, like how to make a simple pastry crust or whip egg whites into fluffy oblivion. Sometimes it is something I relearn, like how lemon juice is a stinging reminder of the paper cut I forgot about.

This go around, I realized I do not own a serving bowl. Among the hundreds of assorted glasses, plates, bowls, utensils and all other kitcheny things resides not one serving bowl. I have crème brulee dishes for pete’s sake.

It was not so much the fact I do not own a serving bowl that got me, but that its lack of presence never even occurred to me. This of course sent me into a dissection of how I could miss such a thing, and I realized I either bring desserts or salads wherever I go. As such, my trusty melamine serving plates and salad bowls go with me. Couple that with the fact my place is too small to host a traditional dinner party, and there you have it. Four cake stands. Not one serving bowl.

As a result, you all get to look at two new bowls I purchased with the vision of holding ice cream in a couple of months. A bright lemon ice cream set against those blueberry dots was the first thing that came to mind. Mashed potatoes and cabbage were not even on the radar screen. But like most kitchen improvisations, this one turned out okay and taught me something along the way too.

One rare occasions, just for the sake of trying something new, I will actually purchase a one-ingredient wonder instead of finding a substitute I already have on hand. In this case, I bought a jar of wasabi powder to make the wasabi paste called for in this recipe. I simply added two teaspoons of water to one teaspoon of powder to make the paste, though less water would have been just fine too.

As for the taste in the final dish, all I could sense was the horseradish. The heat from the wasabi was minimal at best. In fact, if no one told me wasabi was in this recipe, I never would have guessed it. If you do not want to purchase wasabi powder, horseradish or hot mustard seem like reasonable substitutions. I would recommend adding at least one of them because – at least in the case of the wasabi – it really did add to the flavor.

I took this recipe from the What Katie Ate cookbook inspired by the blog of the same name. This cookbook has some of the most stunning food photographs I have ever seen. They were truly gorgeous. So much so that the recipes were little more than an afterthought the first time I looked through it.

Do yourself a favor and check it out from your local library or flip through its pages at your local book seller or buy it from wherever you choose. If this one recipe is any indication, both your eyes and your taste buds will thank you. Enjoy!

Irish Mash

Author: What Katie Ate by Katie Quinn Davies

Serves: 4

Ingredients

For the Mash
6 large russet potatoes
¾ cup milk
¼ cup whipping cram
3 tablespoons butter, plus additional for serving
1 teaspoon wasabi paste
salt and pepper, to taste
¼ white or green cabbage, cored and thinly sliced
5 scallions, thinly sliced
For the Topping
1 tablespoon olive oil or butter
1 handful (roughly one cup) white or green cabbage, cored and thinly sliced
3 scallions, thinly sliced
1 handful (roughly ⅓-1/2 cup) pine nuts
1 teaspoon sesame seeds

Instructions

Peel the potatoes if desired and cut them in half.
Place them in a pot filled with salted water and bring to a boil.
Allow the potatoes to boil for 30 minutes or until a knife or fork is easily inserted into the centers.
Drain the cooked potatoes before returning them to the pan.
Use a potato masher or hand mixer to mash the potatoes until fairly smooth.
Add the milk and continue to mix until the potatoes are quite smooth.
Next beat in the whipping cream and the butter.
Season with the wasabi paste and the salt and pepper to taste.
Set aside over low heat while you prepare the cabbage and mash topping.
Bring a second pot of salted water to a boil.
Gently stir in the cabbage and allow to cook for 6-8 minutes until tender, yet still slightly crisp.
Drain the cooked cabbage, then stir it into the potatoes along with the scallions.
To prepare the topping, heat the oil or melt the butter in a skillet over medium heat.
Add the cabbage, scallions, pine nuts and sesame seeds and cook for 5-10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the mixture is slightly crispy and toasted.
To serve, warm the potatoes and top with the cabbage and pine nut mixture. Add butter and salt and pepper as desired.