Dissertation Dinner

Though the title of this post might have already scared some people off, I really look back fondly at this pasta dish that I sort of developed during the past semester.  Although I love to cook every night, during the last phase of writing the Beast I wasn't able to really spend time making food when I got home from campus, since I had to turn right around to start working again.  So this was a one pot wonder that I ended up making in bulk at the beginning of the week to last me the next 6 days.

My favorite part about it is that it has everything you need--plenty of greens, whole grain pasta, and a little lean ground beef for the protein--but it isn't laden with a heavy sauce.  It's just tossed in some extra virgin olive oil.  I missed the dish so much I made it the other night for the two of us.  So here is a modified two-person recipe for the yummy dish that saved my life this past spring :)

Ingredients (serves 2, plus a little extra):
-1/2 onion, chopped
-a handful of asparagus, cut into 2" sticks
-1/2 zucchini
-2-3 tablespoons olive oil
-1 bay leaf
-1/4 lb ground beef (or ground turkey)
-3 cloves garlic, minced
-2 servings of pasta, cooked and drained (reserve a little pasta water)
-salt, pepper, and garlic powder to taste

So, first you wanna spend some time chopping all your vegetables.  It's very stressful to chop while things are cooking in a hot skillet.  I don't like to be rushed.

Here's my thin asparagus spears.  Drew loves the thin asparagus :)

Choppity chop.  Two-inch spears are good.

I would normally use more onion than this, but I ran out.  Oh well.

In a deep skillet, heat the olive oil on medium low and caramelize your chopped onions until translucent and golden brown.  Make sure the pan is gonna be big enough for EVERYTHING in the end, including the pasta.

Mmm, here we go with the onions.  I love when they get like this.  This is when I add in the bay leaf too.  I don't know, it just gives it a little something.

Now, here's the important part.  You have to remove the onions from skillet before cooking the ground beef.  I know it seems silly, but you'll end up overcooking your onions.  But you can't do beef first or else you'll never achieve that pretty golden color on the onions.  So use a slotted spoon and get the onions out of that pan for a minute to let the beef do its thang.  Oh, and you use a slotted spoon so the oil remains in the skillet.

Now, you want to add your ground beef or ground turkey.  I crank up the heat a little bit so i can get a nice sear on the meat.  Here's the beef I used (I usually go for 93-7, but this was all they had other than the 70-30, which scares me greatly...I decided 10% fat was okay for this dish).

I like getting these tubes so I can pinch off the amount I need and leave the rest in the fridge :)

Use a wooden spoon or spatula to break up the meat into smaller pieces so you don't have one giant burger in the middle of your dish.  By the way, note my bright yellow tea kettle in the background.  How happy does that make you feel?

Break break break.

When the meat is most of the way cooked through, that's when you wanna add back your onion, and throw in the asparagus and zucchini.  Toss them all together, adding a little extra olive oil if it looks too dry.

Let cook on medium.  Stir every so often so all the asparagus and zucchini get cooked.

Once the veggies look kinda done-ish, like they've lost their crispness, that's when you add your garlic.  You do this because garlic burns easily.  I like burned garlic, but most people frown upon that.

To finish off those veggies and make them surrender to your will, add a little of the reserved pasta water to help steam the vegetables.  Cover and let sit on low for a few minutes.

Now, here's my cooked pasta.

I'm gonna uncover the beef and veggies...

Then dump in the pasta.  Yay!

Seasons of love time.  Season with salt, pepper, and garlic powder (and throw in any fresh herbs you might have, such as parsley, basil, or oregano) and stir.  I kinda usually go crazy at this point and start tossing in whatever herbs I feel like from my spice rack.  But that's up to the cook.

When you toss it all together, it looks like this.

Yum!  This is really one of my favorite dinners, and it is SO low budget and low maintenance.  It tastes good after sitting in the fridge for days...just zap it in the microwave.

It's really quite hearty, but it's also pretty good for you as long as you're using lean beef and a little bit of olive oil.  The best part is, you're filling most of that volume with vegetables.  You can add more veggies too, like mushrooms, green peppers, broccoli, etc.

Whether you're busy because you're writing a dissertation, or life is just hectic and you want dinner to be comforting and filling, this is a great choice for you.  Enjoy!

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For a printable version of this recipe, please click here.

Chickpea Salad

I love anything that involves chickpeas.  They are the perfect texture, shape, and flavor (not too bean-y) and provides so many good nutrients.  Here is a wonderful side dish that is easy to make because it takes very few ingredients, so it can be whipped up real quick if you're needing something to go with your entree.  At the same time, it is hearty enough to be the main star in a lunch, like stuffed in a pita.

Ingredients:
-1 can garbanzo beans (=chickpeas), rinsed and drained
-1/2 cucumber
-1 lemon, juice and a little zest
-1 tbsp olive oil
-1/2 tsp salt
-a few good twists of fresh ground pepper
-1 tsp garlic powder
-a handful of parsley

First of all, can i say how excited i am to use a big girl cutting board instead of the little college student board i've been using all these years?  Anyways, here are the basic ingredients that you'll need.

Peel the waxy skin off the cucumber, and chop half of it up into small bites.

Rinse the canned chickpeas and allow to drain.  You don't want to add the gunky bean water to the salad, right?

Finely chop the yummy parsley next.  I liked using flat leaf parsley for this dish, because it seems less dry than curly parsley to me, but you could certainly use curly.

Okay, let's add those three ingredients to the bowl now, and toss together.  Yum! 

Now the fun part!  Take a lemon, kinda roll it around on the counter to release the juices inside, then cut in half and squeeze into the bowl.

If you have a citrus reamer, you could certainly use it here.  I just squeeze the crap out of it with my own womanly power. 

I love lemon.  I just finished watching Battle Lemon on Iron Chef America and got some interesting ideas on how to incorporate it more in my cooking.

Okay, enough squeezing pictures.  Next, zest a little bit of lemon and add to the mix.  Really, i should have zested first, but oh well.  You might just zest like half a lemon, a whole lemon yields too much zest.

4.  Add olive oil, salt, pepper, and garlic powder.  I highly recommend fresh ground pepper.

Okay, time to toss!

Like i said, this salad makes a very easy, 5-minute salad, but also tastes great in a half pita!  By the way, in case you missed it, here is a great recipe for homemade pita. 

Enjoy this easy salad, and have a wonderful week!  Thanks for being back and reading :)

For a printable version of this recipe, please click here.

Pita Bread

Hello food lovers!  I'm back!  I am so sorry i was away for so long, but good news!  I successfully defended my dissertation last month, so that's a wonderful victory.  And about two weeks ago, I married the man of my dreams!  We now live in a darling apartment and enjoying city life together :)

Our new kitchen is small in size but has considerable counter space and storage, so I'm happy!  I had been itching to bake something, but also wanted to keep things on the healthier side (I love making desserts, but I don't like eating them and Mr. SSUR likes eating them a little too much).  So i decided to try my hand at making pita bread from scratch!

The recipe comes from the New Moosewood Cookbook by Mollie Katzen, and my mother-in-law got us this book as a housewarming gift.  It's so neat because it has handwritten recipes that are easy to understand.  I love it!

Anyway, I was excited about this recipe because it requires dough work, which means I get to use a lot of my new tools and gadgets in the kitchen.  So let's begin!

Ingredients (makes 6 big pitas):
-1 cup warm water
-1 1/2 tsp yeast (1/2 packet)
-1 tbsp honey
-1 tsp salt
-3 1/2 cups flour
-a few drizzles of oil

1)  Put water and yeast in a bowl and let stand 5 minutes.  This is the kind of yeast I decided to get.  I think i am feeling optimistic about the amount of yeasty baking I'm gonna do.  It expires in over a year, so let's see if I can get thru the whole jar :)

Adding the yeast to the water!

2)  Once the yeast water has sat for a few minutes, add honey.  You can use sugar too, but I like the taste of honey for things like this that are gonna be eaten with savory foods.  I don't know, it's probably psychological.

Adding salt to the mix as well...then whisk it till it's all dissolved.

3)  Using a wooden spoon or paddle setting on your mixer, add 3 cups of flour one cup at a time.  Here it is after 2 cups...

And after 3 cups...

You might need to switch to the dough hook after the last cup.

4)  Scrape dough out of the bowl with a wooden spoony spoon.

The dough should be firm enough to just hold in your hand like this.

It's a pretty firm dough.  Really, 1 cup of water was all the liquid it got, since the dough doesn't use eggs or oil.  Knead it for 5-10 minutes, then let sit in oiled bowl (oil the top of the dough too).  Cover it with a warm, damp cloth and leave in a warm spot for about an hour.

6)  Once the dough has risen, set it on a floured surface and knead for a few minutes to punch out the air bubbles.  Separate into 6 small balls of dough, and knead each one and roll out into thin (1/8") flat circles.

The fun part is, we got these dough planners from our friends Michael and Eileen for our shower back in January, and these are awesome.

You wrap them around your rolling pin so it raises the pin exactly 1/8", allowing for perfect height.  Cuz let's face it, i never ever ever get the dough all the same thickness. 

Er, shut up.  That was my first one and it looks like a square with rounded corners.  The others looked better.  

7) Let circles rest on floured counter for about 30 minutes.

8) Preheat oven to 500F.  Place circles on a greased and floured baking tray.  I used a silicon baking mat, so i didn't have to do that, but I imagine you would want to make sure these slip right off the tray.  Bake for 6-8 minutes or until slightly brown on top.  Let me show you some magical pictures.

I love watching things in progress...I look into ovens once every few minutes (don't worry, i use the light, i'm not letting any heat out) and love watching things bake.  Haha when I was a kid, I would open the washing machine while it was going, stick my finger into the groove that makes the machine think the lid is on, and watch the clothes swish back and forth, then spin dry.  I also can't leave plants alone because I keep poking and prodding them trying to watch the changes as they grow (which ultimately ends up killing the poor seedlings).  Anyways, look at these:

This made me squeal, i was so excited.  Look at that poof!

Out of the oven!  I like things that take very little time to bake :)

9) Now this is important: wrap the stack of hot pitas in a clean moist towel and place in a paper bag and seal it.  Let sit like that for 15 minutes.

I only had a Starbucks bag handy.  And a binder clip.  Haha.

This process keeps the pitas from hardening up.

Okay, so check it out!  This is one of the little half-size ones I made for taste-testing.  I ate one, and my friend Stu who came over to drop off his keys got another.  Yum!

And here's a trick I've learned over the years from my superstar culinary friend, Dani.  She saves bags  from loaves of bread and uses that to store home-baked goodies!  I happened to have this bag from hamburger buns, so I stored the pitas in there.  Excellent!

Yay!  Thanks for reading, and thanks for all your patience waiting for me to come back!  Up next: an easy chickpea salad that goes reallllly well with the pitas we just made today.  Stay tuned!


For a printable version of this recipe, please click here.