Fiber banana cranberry muffins

Last week at the market the guy at the fruit & veggie stand gave me some bananas. They were closing for the summer and he gave me some extra freebies (he does this from time to time). I rarely buy bananas - they're not one of my favorites and E doesn't buy them regularly either. When I have them they go into smoothies or more often we watch them start to go bad and then E will make bananas foster (loaded with butter and sugar - yikes!).

The fate of the current batch of bananas was looking to be similar - for one week untouched by all of us, now starting to get soft (which the French like, buy I don't). One made it into a smoothie this morning (along with all the leftover fruit from this week, before I stocked up again at the market). But what to do with the others?

My mom used to make banana bread from time to time, so I set about trying to find a healthy recipe that E will like (I've never been a huge banana bread person myself. I finally found this recipe that upped the fiber and there we had it. I subbed dried cranberries for raisins as E prefers them. I think I forgot to put in the oil but I'm not 100% sure on that - I was doing several things at once but I'm pretty sure I made them fat free, not even subbing in applesauce. Totally inadvertent on my part, but the result is dense little muffins. They're not too sweet but they might be too far into health food for E to like them...

Spring Rolls

For lunch today I made a variation on these Spring Rolls. I added beef and didn't use rice noodles, added cut up green beans and had 3 kinds of fresh herbs (parsley, coriander - I think we say cilantro in the US, and mint). I also added some of my fresh basil-orange salsa to the rolls. They were really tasty and easy (once all the chopping was done).

I plan to take rice paper with me on vacation, because this is sure to be a favorite this summer with leftover meat from the bbq...

Mache salad with grapefruit and tarragon

I've always been a just-throw-it-together salad girl. I never understood the idea of salad recipes. I mean, it's salad, what's so hard? My mom made mixed salads like that all my life, on a base of lettuce cutting up whatever veggies were in the fridge, I never knew other kinds of salad really. My stepmom makes 2 really good salads, one a parmesean-pinenut-romaine salad, the other Asian with mandarin orange slices and almonds. But even with those salads, nothing ever clicked for me.

Until this one. This salad was borne of a few extra minutes on the web, throwing ingredients into the search engine and seeing what came up. E had bought 2 containers of mache (lamb's lettuce) at the market and one was still untouched, so I was looking for a recipe interesting enough to get him to eat a salad (not an easy task). And I found this.

This salad was AWESOME. I made it without the chicken because we didn't have any - so it was vegetarian and light and really good. The grapefruit gave enough to be interesting, and even though my avocados turned out to be pretty yucky the dressing and other elements made you forget the bland and hard avocados. The dressing was the key, I actually had the tarragon mustard they called for and I suspect that helped, along with my favorite hand mixer which was able to make a nice emulsified mix.

E paid a very high complement - not only by eating all of his, but by telling me it was "tres fin" which is one of the highest cooking complements available.

A hit, that will make another appearance - maybe with chicken next time. Yum.

Black Bean Cakes with Orange Basil Salsa

For a long time I disliked sweet-savory combinations and would never have considered a dish like this, as fruit salsas fell into this category. How much food fun I missed out on!

I have never made bean cakes in my life, but I found this recipe for Black Bean Cakes with Orange Basil Salsa on a healthy-cooking site and since I'm trying to eat healthy and up the fiber for E I thought I'd give this a go, so I defrosted some black beans that were leftover from when I'd made chili.

It wasn't a fast recipe (I'm not really quick with all the chopping up) but it was fairly easy. Other than the bean cakes turning out too dry (need to play with the recipe sometime) it was FABULOUS. The bean cakes were really tasty and meaty and the salsa was just the perfect complement. I added some Greek yogurt to sub in for sour cream, and that was a good fit, adding moisture and richness.

E wasn't here for the recipe but I went ahead and made it anyway as the beans wouldn't hold for another 3 days, but I think he'd have really liked it - and I'll like having it again.

Kefta and zucchini kabobs

What to do with a package of ground beef? That was the question I asked myself yesterday, and asked Google to help me answer. After a lot of looking around, I came across this recipe for Kefta and zucchini kabobs - and I was set. I still had the eggplant salad leftover and thought I could pull off making a full Middle-Eastern dinner for E and I.

It was a bit of work - there is the sauce, marinade for the zucchini, and then the meatballs themselves to make, but it was really good, and really authentic tasting. I added breadcrumbs without thinking and this was a mistake - they soaked up the moisture in the egg and the meatballs were crumbly (I'd also used extra-lean beef, so unfortunately they tended towards dry). Next time I'll use regular ground beef (or lamb if I can find it). I also found out that allspice in French is "quatre epices" but I didn't have any so I added a small amount of nutmeg and clove. In the future I'll have the right spices, and maybe even dial them up a notch - I held back and shouldn't have.

I also whipped up some hummus and bought pita bread, and the whole meal was really good. And healthy for all of us.

Lebanese Eggplant Salad (Salatit El Batinjan)

Two weeks back my husband E came home with take-out Lebanese food for dinner from Noura. Noura always has good food, but the choices he made were outstanding, and everything really tasted great that day. Among the new dishes was an eggplant salad that had peppers in it and was very different from baba ghanoush. I looked up recipes for a while on the internet until I came across one that seemed to have roughly the same ingredients.

This recipe for Lebanese Eggplant Salad turned out excellent. I don't have a good enough memory of the specifics of the dish from Noura to be certain that it's the same salad, nor to compare the two, but I am sure that this one is REALLY good and I'm pretty sure that my version is healthier (eggplant absorbs oil like nobody's business!). It was pretty easy to make but did require some time (roasting the eggplants, which I did a few days ago). I did modify it - the salad from Noura did not have tomatoes in it, so I omitted them, and I also played w the spices a bit, adding cumin and used some smoked salt to give it a richer flavor. I also used more eggplant than the recipe said (I had smallish ones, but even then easily equivalent to 2 mediums).

I was hoping to have a lot leftover to share w E, but I'm not sure that's going to work out!

Lentil Tacos

I made lentil tacos a bit by chance, but they will become a regular addition to our menus, because they were FABULOUS.

My wonderful husband E had made a huge pot of not-so-wonderful lentils as a side dish for dinner on Friday night. No flavoring, nothing, just plain boiled lentils. They weren't a big hit, but they weren't bad either, just bland (and perfectly cooked). I put the leftovers in the fridge and when looking online for recipes using lentils on Saturday before lunch came across several for tacos.

Since all things Mexican are a-ok for me, I jumped on it and read 3 or so recipes and then improvised. I personally think they tasted just as good as the beef ones I make from time to time, but the sauce wasn't quite as good as I usually make it. The boys felt it was good but not quite as good as usual, probably because they knew it was vegetarian... next time I'll add some meat and fib about the proportions, and go back to my normal seasonings too.

The worst part of tacos here in Paris remains the taco shells - just horrible stale industrial stuff, we're better off w the soft flour tortillas for soft tacos or biting the bullet and frying the corn ones (but ugh, what a mess and time consuming process...)

Veal Paprikash

I made veal paprikash tonight and it looked remarkably like this picture. Onions, red peppers, veal, tomatoes and lots of paprika. Creme fraiche and ricotta gave it the creaminess (not much of either).

Delicious, served over spaghetti squash.

It was an easy stew dish and I'd add it to the rotation in a heartbeat if E likes it...

Roasted Garbanzo Beans with Swiss Chard

I made this recipe tonight looking up swiss chard on a foodie website, as many of my culinary adventures begin, having an ingredient on hand and looking up how to use it. I'd actually started looking for swiss chard and ricotta, but found this with good ratings and decided to go for it.

It was good and surprising - even my husband liked it, hard to imagine for a vegetarian dish! I didn't use nearly as much oil as the recipe called for, and I used a cookie sheet to roast the chickpeas instead of an 8x8 pan, which I think ended up with the chickpeas overcooked and chewy - almost crunchy. It wasn't bad, but it was kind of weird, and in the future I'd use a lower temp oven, a deeper dish as they recommended, and pay more attention to the cooking time, as the French garbanzo beans are considerably smaller than the American ones, which might also explain the over-cooked phenomena.

To the swiss chard I added beet greens, and the combo was really good. There was a strange sweet smell in cooking which I didn't like and could taste a little - either the beet greens or the bay leaves. Next time I'll try without bay leaves and see... beet greens are a rare delicacy, hard to predict if they'll be around in the future or not...

I'd make it again!

Roasted Vegetables!

Tonight I went crazy with roasting vegetables (and then eating them).

I started with roasted curried cauliflower which I mixed with 2 onions.

Next was zucchini, also with an onion, but with Greek spices.

Finally, I had a big bunch of celery and was curious, so I did that (but just with salt and a little sugar).

All were good, the cauliflower was best, the celery is interesting. In terms of prep it doesn't take long, the cooking is easy but takes a while. The veggies shrink a lot in roasting - it was easily half the volume you get with steaming, but VERY yummy. Also more calorie-dense, as you add oil to the veggies before roasting, but not huge amounts.

Definitely something I'll keep doing!

Roasted zucchini, spring onions & peppers

Last night I also made one of my first roasted veggie dishes. I went to the epicerie across the street (as we have empty veggie bins right now) and grabbed the few things that looked decent - 2 zucchinis, a big green pepper and a bunch of the spring onions (like scallions but with big round bulbs at the bottom).

Cut them all up, threw on a few spices and popped them in the oven. An hour later I stirred them up and added some olive oil as they were drying out. Back in a lower oven until we were ready to eat - and they were DELICIOUS.

It seemed like a really elaborate dish when in fact it was totally simple. And good for dinner parties I suspect because the timing is pretty flexible.

I'll definitely be doing more roasted veggie dishes - and looking into ways to do them on the BBQ too.

Mushroom risotto

Last night I made mushroom risotto to accompany E's fish on the BBQ. I was trying to work out a side dish and nothing looked very inspiring.

I saw the aborito rice in the cupboard and decided to try to make risotto - a first for me. I'd read a few recipes in recent months, in particular after E had made an attempt a few months back that was really not good (he just put the truffle rice pack in a huge pot of boiling water like it was pasta... uck).

It took some time because you have to stand at the stove and stir constantly, but it wasn't hard and it was VERY good. Everyone loved it, and I'm looking forward to finding new risotto recipes!

Baby artichokes braised in white wine & thyme

At the market this morning there were these gorgeous purple baby artichokes.

Ignoring my promise to not buy much of anything since we are leaving for a vacation later this week, they sang to me so I bought them, happy with the challenge of figuring out how to cook them. I've seen the baby artichokes at the market several times, but never had any idea how to cook (or eat) them.

But I love artichokes and they are among the few veggies that my DH really likes too, so I figured it was worth a try (even though the big globe artichokes are a steady favorite). Turns out they are pretty time-consuming to prepare, but the result was indeed very good. Next time I need to remove more of the outer leaves and pay more attention to buy really really small ones. I bought two batches of them, and one set was noticeably smaller than the other - and they were MUCH easier to eat.

My recipe, from the San Francisco Farmer's Market Cookbook, was pretty easy and turned out quite well, although next time I'll try to cut down on the olive oil and add lemon.

Asparagus, scallion & chicken stir-fry

I made a veggie-filled stir fry for dinner tonight. I used to make these all the time for myself, and took profit of the fact that Eric was "being good" because he had a cholesterol test in the morning, so I thought I'd give it a go. I bought a bunch of veggies at the market this weekend w this in mind, and cut them all up carefully, even through in some green beans and topped it with fresh parsley. It turned out less flavorful than the ones I used to make - in part because I didn't want to do a Chinese-soy sauce thing, and in part because I'm just completely out of practice with how to do these. Eric liked it (although his comment was that it was "girl food") but I think in the future I can make it better and more as a side dish of a mixed fresh veggie thing than the main course w chicken in it. I'd also be well-served to look through several cookbooks for some ideas...

Pico de gallo

I've been making pico de gallo pretty regularly. Every week I buy cilantro and "piments" and we almost always have tomato and onion on hand. I've learned to add lots of lime juice, to cut into itsy-bitsy pieces and it's become an appreciated staple. It seems to hold up about 5 days in the fridge and we throw it on a bunch of stuff. Yum.

Applesauce

I've made a lot of applesauce in the past few weeks. Plain normal applesauce, apple-pear applesauce, cranberry applesauce. I almost made strawberry applesauce but ended up just eating the strawberries on their own. It's a big hit and pretty easy.

Pasta Carbonara

I made myself pasta carbonara last night. I used the recipe by Nigella Lawson and it was fast but lacked a little something. I think the fact that I skipped vermouth/white wine was a problem, as was the quality of parmesean cheese (industrial grocery store stuff). I also used too small a quantity of lardons, next time I'll try with more. Has the potential to be yummy though...

Roti de boeuf and mashed potatoes

I made this super-simple meal for my DH the night before he entered the hospital for surgery on his gut. He was on a "low residue" diet which meant no fruits or veggies basically.

I am rarely the one who makes meat in our house, but I did this time, and it turned out well although the meat itself was strong-flavored (probably had aged at the butcher).

The mashed potatoes were made from scratch w milk butter and some leftover beaufort cheese. A bit too rich, but yummy for a few bites.

Tostada Dinner

I made a big tostada dinner for my team, full of American foods like guacamole, homemade tostadas and chocolate chip cookies for dessert. It was a big success and I was less stressed knowing I knew how to make everything. I even made refried beans myself since it drives me nuts to pay 7.50 euros a can (about 10$) and I have to go across town to find them. They turned out really well, and I will make them again.

My guacamole was excellent and stayed green for 2 days.

The other nice surprise of the day was finding that the chili peppers sold for North African cuisine are about the right spiciness for me and I made a really great pico de gallo the next day for my leftovers. It was simple to make and so much better than jarred salsa, and these chilis are available year-round, so it was a nice find!

The chocolate chip cookies were a big success and I drafted help in the kitchen to make them. Everyone went home with a baggie and I had none leftover.

Jerusalem Artichoke Soup

I made soup today with Jerusalem artichokes that I bought several weeks ago and then didn't know what to do with... During this week I came across a soup recipe for the little tubers when flipping through magazines in a doctor's office. I didn't write down the recipe because it seemed pretty simple - a litre of milk, a pound of Jerusalem artichokes, a potato or two. I started with a sauteed leek, added the milk and Jerusalem artichokes, 20 min later added the potato and some chicken boullion and there you go. A quick spin with the hand mixer and it was delicious and fast and I now have soup for the week!