No Meat Required

Something halfway between pesto and puttanesca

I get my veggies from time to time from an organic farm but I have to pay a flat fee delivery charge so it behooves me to order a lot. This time I got a hefty bag of brussel sprouts and I didn’t want it losing its nutritional value sitting in the fridge for days. But how do you feed three people a ton of Brussels when they don’t love them as much as I do? Shred them!

I threw them into my Cuisinart with the shredding blade in place. Then I tossed some olive oil — quite a lot– into a pan and when it was hot tossed the whole lot of the shredded brussels in it and tossed until it had clearly cooked through.

Then I started on the puttanesca sauce. I used a dab of some red pesto sauce I had left in the fridge — there was really only a tablespoon or so left in the jar. You could replicate that with a dab of tomato paste and some basil. Then I chopped up olives, capers, garlic and anchovy. Mixed it all up in a bowl with a lot of olive oil. Cooked the spaghetti. Then threw the pasta and sauce into the pan with the Brussels sprouts, tossed it all together and started grating parmesan into it. I used a pesto parmesan but you could just use parmesan and add basil. Or do without the basil. Lots of salt and pepper and a sprinkling of red pepper. It was delicious.

Ingredients:

• Spaghetti
• Brussel sprouts shredded and sautéed in olive oil
• Garlic
• Capers
• Olives
• One or two anchovies
• Parmesan
• Salt and pepper
• Oregano
• More olive oil

A meat-less take on a classic for St. Paddy’s Day

I was in Ireland for St. Patrick’s Day and after a small parade in the small village of Kilcar in County Donegal, I wanted to make something traditional for the holiday so I tried my hand at Irish stew sans the lamb or beef it traditionally requires. It came out great. Here were my ingredients:

• Potatoes. I steamed these prior to tossing in the stew.
• Carrots (I roasted these in the oven)
• Onions (I cut up into big chunks and roasted with the carrots)
• Parsnips (I had these frozen from making broth)
• Aquifaba (This is the broth that comes from boiling chick peas –I had in the freezer from having made hummus but you could use vegetable broth.)
• Barley
• Mushrooms (I used a mixture of shitake, oyster and king trumpet, but any will do)
• A cup of cream of mushroom soup (I used a local brand –not Campbells! –but you could just use more mushrooms, broth and onions)
• Vegetarian sausage cut up in chunks and broiled.
• Sage
• Thyme
• Salt and pepper
• A dab of marmite (my secret ingredient)
• Some soy sauce
• Worcestershire sauce
• Some miso

I actually had some leftover mushroom barley soup so I tossed that in — that accounted for the barley, but I added more mushrooms. I think the roasting the carrots and onions added a flavor punch. I used a lot of pepper. The broiling the sausage gave it a bit of heft so that they didn’t melt away in the stew as some veggie sausage tends to do. The barley and potatoes made it nice and thick.

Seriously it came out so good you wouldn’t know it had no meat in it.

I picked up a package of locally-smoked salmon. But we didn’t have bagels and I didn’t feel like eggs and salmon. How about noodles? In my pantry I had fusilli noodles — those are the corkscrew shaped ones. I had asparagus and basil. So that’s what I used.

First I boiled the entire package of fusilli.

Meanwhile, I chopped up a big clove of garlic. I chop that first, because the book Eating on the Wild Side said you can double the nutritional value of garlic if you let it sit for 10 minutes after chopping it, before you cook it. Then I chopped up the basil, a slice of anchovy and some capers.

I preheated my oven to 350, laid out the asparagus on a sheet of parchment paper, sprinkled some course salt on it and drizzled it with olive oil and threw it in the oven for 15 minutes.

I wizzed a dried ancho pepper in my coffee grinder turned spice grinder.

When the noodles were done, I cut the salmon into big chunks and tossed it in. I poured some milk over it. I added the garlic/basil/anchovy/capers. Tossed in the red paper flakes from the grinder. Added some onion powder and my trusty Ted and Barney’s salt and pepper mix. Added some oregano and quite a lot of lemon juice. Finally I took the asparagus out of the oven, sliced it up and added it to the noodles as well. Finally, I tossed in a little white wine I found in the refrigerator.

So what’s in the dish?

• Noodles (I used fusilli, but any noodle will do)
• Smoked salmon. Fresh salmon would be awesome in this.
• Fresh basil, chopped
• A big clove of garlic or two small cloves, chopped.
• 1 slice of anchovy (optional, but it boosts the flavor)
• A small handful of capers, chopped.
• Half a cup of milk
• Lemon juice
• Asparagus
• A dash of white wine if you have it on hand.
• Red pepper flakes
• Oregano
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Onion powder if you have it.