Roasted Eggplant, Tofu & Pluots Salad with Soba Noodles

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Roasted Eggplant, Tofu & Pluots Salad with Soba Noodles

Serves: 6

Difficulty: Easy

 

Roasted Eggplant, Tofu & Pluots Salad with Soba Noodles

Another wonderful vegetarian entrée salad featuring tofu, soba noodles, sweet fruit and eggplant. It would be great as a substantial starter or a main course. One could substitute any sweet fruit – I used a mix of plums and pluots – and offers a contrast of the savory/spice and fruity/sweet.

Key ingredients

Soba is the Japanese name for buckwheat and synonymous with a type of thin noodle made from buckwheat flour. It has a correspondingly strong, nutty flavor. Generally we find dried soba in packets, but keep your eyes open for fresh soba at Asian markets.

Lebanese Roast Chicken with Chickpeas, Hazelnuts, & Sumac Over Rice with Yogurt

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Lebanese Roast Chicken with Chickpeas, Hazelnuts, & Sumac

Over Rice with Yogurt

Serves: 4

Difficulty: Easy

I love this exotic mix of Lebanese spices and flavors with some Turkish and Israeli influences.  Lebanese cuisine includes copious amounts of garlic, olive oil and lemon.  Poultry is eaten more often than red meat. Frequently used in Turkish cuisine are lentils and nuts…in this case featuring chickpeas and hazelnuts.

 

Hazelnuts, raisens and currants for the recipe

Who doesn’t love roast chicken? You could make this dish with a whole chicken or with whole chicken legs as I have described here. I love the crackly, crisp salty skin and moist tender meat. But, most of the time, I don’t like roast chicken because most of the time, well, you end up with dry breast meat in order to cook the leg meat adequately. It also makes a mess of my oven. Lately if desiring a whole roasted or grilled chicken, I have been butterflying the chicken in order to achieve the 150-degree F for the breast simultaneously with the 170-degree legs. It is relatively simple to butterfly the chicken by cutting out the spine and flattening the carcass. I promise to share pictures of how to do this in the near future, but today, we use whole chicken legs.

Fall Comfort Food: Sausage and Black Bean Stew

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Fall Comfort Food: Sausage and Black Bean Stew

Serves: 6

Difficulty: Easy

Sausage and Black Bean Stew 

This is a wonderful stew to serve as the weather cools. Mostly, this is a cozy meal, the perfect antidote to weeks of excess without feeling excessive. It is quite flexible, and you can try it with turkey sausage, chorizo or Italian sausage, sweet or hot. I used a combination of Italian sausages for this recipe. You can also vary the beans. We love black beans but one could also use garbanzo, pinto, white or a mix. Throw in some chilies for heat and rainbow chard and you are on your way to a wonderful crowd-pleasing mix of flavors. You can swap chard with kale, spinach or another green. (If you are unfamiliar with chard but like spinach, trust me, you’ll love chard.)

While onto to warming, healthy food, check out Curried Chickpea, Lentil and Swiss Chard Stew http://cookingwithlarue.blogspot.com/2012/10/curried-chickpea-lentil-and-swiss-chard.html

Duck Pizza with Hoisin Sauce

Duck Pizza with Hoison Sauce
Including instruction on Pizza Dough

Makes 4 8-inch pizzas

Difficulty: Moderate

(Sous Vide instructions included for duck breasts. (135 degree F; 1-4 hours))

I love the flavor of the duck and hoisin sauce – and what a great combo for a dinner. Get your fix of two favorites in this amazing combo: Chinese and pizza.  It also makes for a great party appetizer that will leave your guests raving.

Lentil & Radicchio Salad with Walnuts

Lentil & Radicchio Salad with Walnuts

Serves: 4

Difficulty: Easy

This is one of my favorite Yotam Ottolenghi recipes. It is truly a meal in a bowl with a richly flavored layered salad resplendent with fresh green herbs and crunchy sweet walnuts and lentils. When I first made this dish, I used manuka honey, which can be found in health food stores. Manuka has a strong, woodsy flavor that colors the whole dish with a unique aroma. However, manuka is expensive and not available at your local grocer, so feel free to substitute with your favorite full flavored honey. 

The radicchio’s bitterness offers the right balance to the sweetness of the honey, but if you wish to substitute, try replacing with Belgian endive. Make the effort to find the slate-green Puy lentils.  They have a unique peppery flavor and hold their shape during cooking. They are the only lentils to be identified by area of cultivation – grown in the Le Puy region of France.

Radicchio