What’s for Dinner: July 29

This week has been far more successful. Getting less veggies, but still more than enough to feed us. Here’s what was on the menu this week.

Tomato Green Bean Pasta

I had green beans, I had tomatoes, so maybe they would be good together. I’ve seen this before, so why not? So, to the internets and what popped up? Closet Cooking! Closet Cooking is a blog that has grown quite a bit as this guy has nice photos and pretty good recipes. So, I felt confident making this. Now I had tons TONS of tomatoes and a lot of green beans, so I made this recipe 1.5 bigger than listed here. And, I didn’t use the canned tomatoes because I had tons of tomatoes. I’ve been getting these nice heirloom orange tomatoes that are ginormous, so I used two of of those and three of the more normal tomatoes. I let the tomatoes break down into sauce and it was delicious. We also put it on top of an old bag of linguini that needed to be eaten and that was just perfect. Husband was really very happy with this meal. This will go into regular rotation. Bonus: I made this in the cast iron pan, which I love using for presentation.

A few changes, just because I had different stuff on hand:

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 fennel bulb, chopped
• Some scallions (he called for onions, but that’s what I got so …)
• 3 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1 pinch red pepper flakes
• 6 cups diced fresh tomatoes
• 1.5 pound green beans, trimmed and cut into bit sized pieces
• Oregano, a mix of fresh and dried
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 handful parsley, chopped
• A shake of dried dill
• 1/2 cup feta, crumbled (optional)

Start with the onions, sauteing for about 7 minutes. Add the garlic and the red pepper for about a minute, then add everything except the parsley and dill and feta. Cover and simmer about 40 minutes, remove from heat and add the remaining ingredients and serve on top of the grain of your choice (which was linguine for us.)

Swiss Chard Frittata

Trying to convince my newly-employed friend Suzie that fritattas are a great dinner idea. The whole working mom thing is a bit of a transition. In that spirit, I made one for us. Husband thought I used too much chard, which might be the case. He felt that it took away from the flavor of the eggs. So, if I were to make it again, less chard. Still, I ate the rest for lunch and thought it was delicious.

So tear your Swiss chard leaves: you probably want 8. I used all 15, because some of them were small, but husband thought it was too much. I also diced all the stems.
Take your onion (again, for me it was a bunch of scallions because I’m swimming in scallions) and saute until soft, near the end adding 3 garlic cloves (total of about 5 minutes with scallions, longer with an onion.) Then add some salt, some rosemary (I think I probably used a tablespoon) and the chard and saute for a minute or two. Then, add your 8 eggs. Let that cook for about 5 minutes, then put that in a 350 degree oven for another 10 minutes or until firm. NOTE: add a fair amount of oil in your pan to keep those eggs from becoming one with the pan.
I also have a ton of potatoes, so I chopped up a few, boiled for 5 minutes and then sauteed in olive oil with garlic salt and basil. Yum! A nice balance to the frittata, which was rich tasting in comparison.

Butternut Squash Pizza

This one is on the cover of my latest Vegetarian Times! Timely! Here’s my version:

Pizza crust:

• 1 cup warm water
• 1.5 T yeast
• 1 T sugar
• 1 t salt
• 1 T oil
• 2-3 cups flour

Put the sugar in the warm water (for me it’s fairly hot) until dissolved and then add the yeast. Wait about 5 minutes. If it’s super bubbly and foamy, continue. Otherwise, toss and start over. Then add the salt and the oil. Now, start adding the flour a cup at a time. I think what made this latest version so successful was I didn’t use too much flour. I put enough flour in to form a nice ball, but it was still fairly sticky. Just not sticky enough that it would prefer to be on your hands and not part of the ball. Then let it sit for about an hour and a half. Punch it down and let it rest about 10 minutes. Then divide it into 4 balls and give it another 10 minutes. If it’s longer, let it sit under a kitchen towel to keep it from drying out. When you’re ready, bake for 13-15 minutes. You can up the temperature to 400 if you are done with the squash but it will cook ok at 350 too.

While all that is going on, prep the butternut squash mixture. Peel, seed and chop the squash and half an onion. (Note: this mixture only made TWO pizzas, so go with a bigger squash and an entire onion if you need to.) Cover with oil and salt and roast for about 30 minutes on 350.

Put the squash mixture on top of the now baked crusts, drizzle with olive oil and basil. (They used spinach but hey I had a TON of basil. The kid went with arugula.) Top with some parmesan. OH MAN so delicious.

Beet Salad

Got lots of teeny little beets this week. I think they probably hung on to these and are emptying the larder, so that we weren’t overwhelmed with beets. (Which we were anyway, hell I even made cupcakes and pancakes.) This time? A standard beet salad.

I roasted all the beets: about 7, or about 2 pounds. I wrapped them in foil and stuck them in the toaster oven. They were small enough to fit. I left them in there for about half an hour, then peeled them and chopped them.

I also candied some walnuts. I went with about half a cup and tossed them with about a tablespoon of honey, heating them until they were covered.

Then, I put down some baby spinach. (YES I was forced to buy greens at the store, unbelievable. First time in about 3 months.) I added some of the beets, the walnuts, put some goat cheese from our local goat farm and topped it with some olive oil, balsamic vinegar and lime mixture. (About 50-50 with a splash of the citrus. The recipe I found had called for orange juice concentrate so I just used the citrus I had on hand.)

Excellent.