Archive for December, 2009
Friday, December 18th, 2009
Penne with butternut squash sauce
We are leaving for vacation tomorrow, so I have been trying to use up what is in the house. One thing I had on hand was a butternut squash. One of our favorite recipes is corn, bean, and squash soup, but we have had that several times recently, so I decided to try something different. I thought it might make a good sauce for pasta, so I went with that. I mostly stuck to
this recipe from the nourishing gourmet, but I added some cannellini beans and some whole milk at the end, since I also needed to use that up. The result was ok. Adding more salt helped a lot, but I think that it was too thick, too squashy, and too much sauce for the amount of pasta. So next time I would probably use either more millk and pasta, or less squash (and more salt). It was a nice way to use my new immersion blender though, and I have been looking for tomato-less pasta sauces recently, since I keep hearing how canned tomatoes are bad for me.
Tags: pasta, squash
Posted in cooking | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, December 15th, 2009
Mjadra sandwich
While we were in Michigan over Thanksgiving we stopped at our favorite Middle Eastern restaurant in Ann Arbor, Jerusalem Garden, for a tasty mjadra sandwich. Mjadra is basically just lentils, caramelized onions, and either rice or bulgar. I haven’t been able to find it at restaurants in Colorado, so I decided to try to make it myself. I found quite a few recipes online, some with rice, and some with bulgar. Some had almost no spices, and some had many. I decided to use a cup each of brown lentils and brown rice, 2 large onions, a little cinnamon and some cumin. I also added about a half cup of bulgar at the end to soak up the remaining water. It was pretty good, though I think next time I will cook it a little longer, use less cinnamon, and add garlic.
I put the mjadra in a pita, along with some baba ghanoush, lettuce, a pickle, feta cheese crumbles, and a little Red Hot.
Tags: baba ghanoush, bulgar, lentils, middle-eastern, pita, rice
Posted in cooking | No Comments »
