Month: January 2010

Prana Cafe, Newton, MA

This is the very first restaurant review to be featured on the blog. I love to cook and share new recipes, but it is fun to go out and let others cook for you….or in this case, not cook for you. Let me explain – Prana Cafe serves mostly raw vegan food. I’ve been wanting to try this place ever since it opened, and my friend Susan graciously agreed to come with me. I am not considering any food lifestyle changes, but every restaurant offers a chance to experience what other people eat, which I find fascinating.

After braving traffic and snow squalls, we arrived at the cute and trendy restaurant, and were seated quickly. So the question you’re dying to ask: what do you order at a high raw vegan restaurant!? Let me start by saying that they do serve beer and wine. There were quite a few food choices; plenty of salads, yes, but also soups, appetizers, sushi, pizza, and pasta. Our server was very patient with us as we asked about how things were made. I settled on the pizza of the day, which had a thin crust, and was topped with mushrooms, pineapple chunks, and sun dried tomato sauce. It was served with a side salad of field greens.

The verdict? Although it resembled pizza is some ways, this was a different dish altogether. But I did enjoy it. The crust was crispy, the sauce had a great flavor, and the pineapple tasted very fresh. I was going to bring my camera, and then chickened out. Next time! The pizza was very filling, and although we looked at the dessert menu, I didn’t really have room.

I will go back to Prana Cafe again, perhaps to try one of those desserts, since it offered a unique and yet comfortable dining experience. There are a lot of menu items which piqued my interest, and maybe I’ll try to recreate a few at home. I’d recommend that you go too, if you feel you’re ready for the adventure. You need to go in with your mind wide open to trying new dishes and enjoying a meal that may be quite different from your usual fare.

Winter Panzanella

I was looking for a recipe to use the leftovers from my first try at No Knead Bread, and remembered how much I liked the panzanella I made this summer. I found this recipe for a winter version of the salad, using butternut squash and brussels sprouts. But I don’t think so many steps are needed to make this dish well, and I also reduced the amount of oil used. In the end, I really enjoyed this salad when it was freshly made and warm, but it got even better on the second (and third) days when I ate it cold.

1 small butternut squash, peeled and diced to 1/2″ – 1″
12-15 brussels sprouts, quartered
3 T olive oil, divided
1/2 small red onion, sliced thinly
1/2 c. red wine vinegar, divided
Salt and Pepper
3-4 c. bread cubes
3 T shredded Parmesan
1 t thyme
1/4 c. chopped fresh parsley

Place butternut squash and brussels sprouts on a baking sheet, and drizzle with 2 T olive oil. Bake at 40o F for 20-25 minutes, until roasted. Set aside. In a small bowl, mix sliced onion and 1/4 c. red wine vinegar. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, and set aside. Place bread cubes in a 13″x9″ dish, drizzle with 1 T olive oil, and sprinkle with thyme and Parmesan cheese. Bake at 400F for 15-20 minutes, until browned. Mix vegetables, onion and vinegar mixture, and bread cubes in a large bowl. Add parsley, and enough of the remaining vinegar to dress the salad. (My bread cubes easily soaked up the remaining 1/4 cup.) Serve immediately warm, or store in the refrigerator.

Barley Curry

If you are a true fan of curries, you may not want to read much farther. I am not claiming this to be an authentic curry, but more of a gateway dish. The original recipe is from Weight Watchers and uses pasta, but another blogger suggested barley, which seemed more fitting. Not only can you choose your whole grain, but you can choose your vegetable too; here I used a package of broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots but just about anything would work.

This dish was good, but certainly didn’t satisfy my craving for Indian food. I did like the combination of curry and barley though, and it made a healthy and warm lunch.

2 t canola oil
1 small onion, sliced
1 t minced garlic
16 oz. frozen vegetables, thawed
3/4 c. vegetable broth
1 T curry powder
4-5 scallions, sliced
1 c. (dry) barley, cooked in water according to directions
6 oz. plain yogurt

Heat oil in a large frying pan. Add onion and garlic, and cook for 5-10 minutes, until softened. Add vegetables, and cook for 5 minutes. Add broth, curry powder, scallions and heat just until the mixture simmers. Add barley and cook until heated through. Lower heat and stir in yogurt.

-Adapted from Weight Watchers

Sun Dried Tomato Wine Sauce

I was originally inspired by this recipe, but was afraid that if I posted the recipe as a seafood dish, those who prefer land creatures would skip right over it. So let’s focus on the best part of this dish: the very chunky sauce. Here it’s shown on a haddock fillet, which was dusted with cornmeal and Italian seasoning, and then baked.

I always enjoy recipes that use wine; for this one, I opened a bottle of Barefoot Pinot Grigio. I am certainly no wine expert, I just know what I like, and this tastes great! But whatever wine you use, this recipe was fantastic.

2 t olive oil
1 shallot bulb, peeled and chopped
1/2 c. white wine
1 T lime juice
6 sun dried tomatoes, coarsely chopped

Heat oil in a small saute pan. Add shallots, and cook for 5 minutes until softened. Add wine, lime juice, and sun dried tomatoes, and simmer for 2-3 minutes until the liquid is reduced. Season with salt and pepper, and serve over chicken or fish.

No-Knead Bread

I am quite late to the Internet party celebrating this bread; I actually stumbled across the concept when looking for recipes for the Le Creuset-like pot I got for Christmas. The original recipe which started the craze was published in the New York Times in 2006. However, the best review of the recipe, including several reader comments, is from Smitten Kitchen. She also walks you through the conversion of regular active yeast to instant, just in case that’s what you have in the house already.

While this recipe does not require kneading, it does require a fair amount of elapsed time. So I started late Saturday afternoon by mixing the flour, yeast, salt, and water in a bowl. I covered it with plastic wrap, and thought that bread making seemed pretty easy. It was even working while I slept!

On Sunday morning, I decided to tackle the next step. There’s a lot of talk about the dough being wet, and when I poured it onto a 12″x8″ plastic cutting board to rest for 15 minutes, it was indeed sliding all over the place. Good thing there was plenty of flour on the counter as well. This is not a No-Mess bread.

Then it was time to turn it onto a floured towel for the second rise. There was no way I could form the dough into a ball; I practically poured it onto the towel. Many people who’ve made the recipe suggest using either a plastic mat, parchment paper, or a flat bottomed bowl instead of the towel and I will definitely try this next time.

Two hours later, I didn’t think the dough was appreciably bigger, but went ahead with the next step anyway. I heated up my pot to 450F, minus the knob which cannot withstand that temperature, and somehow got the dough from the towel to the pot. I baked it as the recipe indicated and here’s what came out of the oven.


A little flatter than a typical loaf, but not too bad looking. Other people who’ve tried the recipe recommend baking it in a smaller dish to get a higher loaf, and I’ll try that next time too. But now for the real test – how did it taste?

The taste is good, more like sourdough than traditional Italian bread. This bread is definitely crusty, mostly in a good way, but because it’s so flat there is almost too much crust in each bite. Unfortunately, like all fresh bread, it doesn’t last long and was almost too chewy by the evening. I will try this recipe again though, and make some modifications including substituting some whole wheat flour.

I recommend you give this a try, even if (especially if) you’re a little afraid of making homemade bread. It’s a low cost experiment, and there is nothing like fresh bread still warm from the oven. This review is good as well, describing how to make this bread in less time and listing different baking dishes than can be used.

And I found the perfect recipe to use up the rest of the loaf (and no, it’s not French toast…)

TGIF!

I’ve had no time to cook this week, so no new recipe for today. But I do have some fun projects planned for this weekend…including No Knead Bread, my first bread making experience in a long time. See you Monday!

Hungy Girl’s Scoopable Chinese Chicken Salad

This chicken salad is packed with veggies and makes a great portable meal. I used less dressing than the recipe suggests, but the dish still has a nice sesame flavor and the oranges make it naturally sweet. I don’t even usually like water chestnuts, but they blended right in. Next time I will try to make a homemade version of the dressing (and take a picture in a nicer dish) but otherwise I won’t change a thing!

Crockpot Spinach Casserole

I was looking for a somewhat light version of creamed spinach that I could serve over a baked potato. I used this recipe, with fat free cottage cheese and Smart Balance Light. It served it’s purpose over the baked potato, but the consistency was fairly thick. It also would have been better with some cheese. I may tweak this recipe again, and also try baking it in the oven. Still, I’ve been on the hunt for new potato toppings, and am glad I tried this one. It did make a warm and filling lunch!

Kale Chips

My friend Lee asked if I had tried to make kale chips, a recipe which has been featured on popular food blogs such as KERF, as well as the Today Show. I did make these last year one time but wasn’t totally impressed. With Lee’s encouragement, I decided to give the recipe another try. The process is simple enough; you place pieces of torn kale on a baking sheet, coat them with cooking spray or oil and some salt, and then bake them in the oven at a high temperature until crispy. Ketchup is optional, but highly recommended.

I admit I liked them enough to eat the whole batch over the holiday weekend, and yet I don’t think they’ll make it into my usual rotation. They are good, but there are a lot of great recipes which use kale that I like better, including this salad and this sweet and savory kale dish. But if this recipe will bring kale into your house for the first time, go for it!

Thyme Roasted Sweet Potatoes

I know, I was supposed to work on perfecting sweet potato fries, but then I saw this recipe and remembered that I had put fresh thyme in the freezer. I substituted cayenne pepper for the red pepper flakes, and they certainly had a little kick. The sweet potato rounds looked quite elegant on my dish but they tasted great as well. Fresh (or, frozen when fresh) herbs really make a difference; if only I had a green thumb and more natural light, I’d try an indoor herb garden!