Spring

2 March 30, 2024 Dinner

Vegetarian Bibimbap

Serves 4
30 – 45 minutes, including prep time

This is Silvia’s first recipe on the blog!

I recently fell in love with Asian food, so I started to make it more often. I am putting bibimbap in this food blog, because I think it is delicious. It’s easy to make, and also a perfect meal for a cold day. If you are not familiar with bibimbap, it is a Korean dish, usually make with Rice, kimchi, beef, greens, and topped with an egg. This version is made with tofu instead of beef. You do not have to just put those particular ingredients in this dish, you can mix and match with any vegetables that you want!

– Silvia

Ingredients

1/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1 Tbsp brown sugar
1 Tbsp + 1 tsp + 1 tsp sesame oil
1 Tbsp spicy gochujang (optional)
2 lb tofu
1 tsp cornstarch
1 1/2 cups long grain white rice
3 cups water
2 carrots
1/8 tsp + 1/8 tsp salt
6oz baby spinach
Kimchi (Optional)
Toasted sesame seeds, for serving
4 eggs

Method

Prepare tofu. Cut each block of tofu into four long slabs, as pictured above. Use paper towels or a kitchen towel to gently press as much water out as you can. Stack the tofu slabs on top of one another, and gut into 3/4″ cubes.
Whisk soy sauce, garlic powder, ground ginger, brown sugar, and 1 Tbsp sesame oil in a medium bowl.
Transfer 3 Tbsp of the mixture into a small bowl. Whisk in gochujang (if using), Then set aside. Use remaining mixture as a marinade.
Add tofu and cornstarch to marinade in a medium bowl. Stir well, then set aside.
Add rice and water to a medium, pot. Bring to boil over high heat. Once boiling, reduce heat to a low, cover, and cook 20 minutes. When done cooking, fluff with a fork. Meanwhile, continue to prepare toppings.
Grate carrots on large holes of a box grater. Add to a small bowl with 1 tsp sesame oil and 1/8 tsp salt. Set aside.
Heat skillet on medium-high. Add spinach, 1 tsp sesame oil, and 1/8 tsp salt. Cover, cook 2 min, then stir until wilted. Transfer to small bowl and set aside.
Add tofu and marinade to the same skilled you used for the spinach on medium-high. Cook until beginning to brown, 7-10 minutes. Resist the urge to stir too often, or nothing will brown.
Assemble the four bowls. Add rice, then top with tofu, carrots, spinach, and kimchi (if using). Sprinkle with sesame seeds.
Heat a clean skillet over medium-low. Coat with oil. Crack one egg into a small bowl, then add to skillet. If you prefer your eggs more firmly set, cover the skillet. Repeat with the remaining eggs.
Cover and cook the eggs until whites are firm and yolks jiggle slightly 2-3 minuets.
Use a spatula to move one egg on top of each bowl. Drizzle with sauce.

2 June 14, 2020 Dairy-Free

Dead Simple Tomato Sauce

For me, pasta sauces fall into two categories, fast sauces, and sauces I never make. This dead simple tomato sauce is the former. You can easily throw it together in a couple of minutes, though it tastes best when it has at least 10 minutes to simmer. It is an incredibly forgiving recipe, so feel free to play around with the proportions if you want something different out of your sauce. This dead simple tomato sauce is of course great on pasta, or use it in my weeknight baked eggplant Parmesan recipe, or on a pizza.

Ingredients

3 tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion, diced (I like yellow, red, or white. Not a Vidalia)
4 cloves garlic, chopped
2 28 oz cans whole tomatoes in juice
1/4 cup fresh basil, chopped
Salt and pepper to taste
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes (optional)

Method

Open the cans of whole tomatoes and dump them in a large bowl. Squeeze the tomatoes with your hands to break them up into small bits.
Heat the oil in a large (12” or so) pan with a lid
Sauté the onion for 5-6 minutes until translucent
Add the garlic, stir and cook for 45 seconds or so
Add the tomatoes and basil, salt and pepper to taste and red pepper flakes if you are using them.
Turn heat low enough that the sauce isn’t splattering everywhere, partially cover and simmer for 10 minutes to so, stirring occasionally.

4 January 22, 2019 Dinner

Broccoli Soup with Lemon and Pecorino

Winter has really set in here in New Jersey. At West Point, this is called the gray season, where the sky, roads, grass, and pretty much everything is a shade of gray. It can be a depressing time. Or, you can curl up next to the fire with the kiddos and read some books, or throw some vinyl on the stereo while a pot of this brightly flavored Italian broccoli soup with lemon and pecorino bubbles away merrily on the stove.

If you take a look through the other recipes on the blog, you’ll see that I have fallen head over heels for the tried and true flavor combination of garlic, lemon, and pecorino. (Simple kale salad, spring snap peas with pecorino) It’s a really versatile holy trinity of flavors that you can apply to a lot of things. Deb over at Smitten Kitchen has done this with a bunch of recipes. I thought taking these flavors and making them into a healthy, stick to your ribs, winter soup was just the thing.

This brightly flavored Italian broccoli soup is a nice departure from the umami bombs that we tend to eat so much of in the winter. I’m all for a bowl of ramen, or a really well made French onion soup, but sometimes I need something acidic to wake yourself up. This recipe is very forgiving. You’ll save yourself a bunch of time if you have a decent immersion blender, but you can blend the soup in a regular blender too.

Also, here’s a tip for this recipe, and anything else with broccoli. While the onions are cooking, peel the long stems of your broccoli. This makes it so you can use the entire broccoli instead of throwing away the stems. After peeling, chop the stems off of the broccoli. Cut the toughest bit off of the very end and discard it. Now cut the broccoli stems into 1/3 inch pieces and add to the onions. The stems need a bit more cooking time than the florets.

As I was tinkering with this recipe, I thought I wanted something with quite a lot of garlic, so don’t shy away from the 6 cloves. It’s not too much, really. Also, as I was grating the cheese for this, I was using my new microplane box grater, which was a christmas present from my brother. I’m not usually one to get excited over a box grater, but this thing is amazingly sharp. I accidentally grated much more cheese than I intended to, but just went ahead and used it all. It’s just the thing to balance out the garlic in the soup.

grated pecorino cheese — A bit too much pecorino romano (or is it?)

Recipe

Ingredients

1 large onion, roughly chopped
6 cloves garlic, minced
2 tbsp olive oil
2 large Yukon gold potatoes, cut into 1/2 inch dice
8 cups water or broth
Salt to taste
1 tsp black pepper
2 lbs broccoli cut into florets, stems cut into 1/3 inch pieces and separated
2 cups grated pecorino romano
Zest of one lemon
Juice of one lemon
Crushed red pepper for serving

Method

Heat a large dutch oven over medium heat. Add the olive oil. When the oil is hot, add the onions, and sauté for 4 minutes or so until they start to become translucent. Add the garlic and sauté for about 30 seconds. Don’t let the garlic burn. Add the chopped broccoli stems and potatoes, and sauté for 3 – 4 minutes.

Add the broth or water and bring to a boil. While you are waiting for the liquid to boil, add salt to taste. Depending on how salty your broth is, this could be none, or up to 3 teaspoons. Go easy on the salt because you will be adding pecorino cheese at the end which also has quite a bit of salt. Add the fresh ground pepper as well. Once the soup boils, turn to a brisk simmer and let cook for 15 minutes.

After 15 minutes, check to make sure the potatoes and broccoli stems are cooked through. If they are, add the remaining broccoli, and cook for 5 more minutes. Once the broccoli is cooked, take a large ladle, and remove two or three large scoops of chunks of broccoli and potatoes and set aside. Remove the soup from the heat and blend the remainder of it with your immersion blender. If you don’t have an immersion blender, do this in batches in a regular blender, or just forget about it and have chunky soup.

Once the soup is all blended, add the broccoli and potatoes you removed back in, along with the lemon zest, lemon juice and pecorino cheese. Give everything a stir to make sure everything is incorporated. The soup should still be hot enough to melt the cheese, but if it isn’t, turn the heat to low and bring it up to temperature. Taste the soup and adjust the salt and pepper if you need to.

Serve with crushed red pepper and enjoy!

5 August 10, 2018 Dinner

Simple Kale Salad

I have made a lot of kale salads over the years, and done quite a bit of searching around the interwebs to find new ways to make a simple kale salad. There are tons of great recipes out there, but most of them are extravagant, and not something that I’m going to throw together in 10 minutes while the pasta is boiling. So, here is a recipe for a simple kale salad that i make regularly. It is so easy, and so good, that my daughters regularly request it, and can nearly make it by themselves.

Backstory

A couple of years ago, we visited my in-laws for Christmas. They live in the mountains of northwest North Carolina, right in the corner where North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia all meet. So close in fact that you can walk to either state fairly easily. It is a beautiful, very rural place, and the mountains are surprisingly steep. These are not the rolling Catskills or the gentle Poconos. The valley where they live is dotted with small farms with a few head of cattle or some chickens, along with some vegetable gardens here and there as well. They are close to the headwaters of the New River, and the water literally flows right through their front yard. There are also Christmas tree farms everywhere. Ashe County, NC calls itself the Christmas tree capital of the world.

While in theory, it should be warmer in North Carolina than in New Jersey, this is almost never the case at their house since the elevation is about 3,000’ or so. They get significant snows just like we do in the northeast without the benefit of armies of road crews clearing the stuff around the clock. This particular Christmas was another story. It was in the mid 60s for most of the time we were there. In fact, it was so warm that my father in law rarely fired up the great wood cook-stove in the kitchen that keeps the house so warm and cozy. It was also warm enough that the kale in their magnificent garden was still growing, even at the end of December. Seemingly every day, my mother in law would take my daughter Silvia out to the garden to gather a massive bowl of Kale to turn into this or that, and maybe pull a few last carrots, or whatever else still was left in the garden.

One of the dishes my mother in law made was a simple kale salad with this beautiful, organic, just harvested, baby kale. I don’t know what it is about greens that have just been plucked from the ground, but they tase so amazing, like they are somehow quivering with life. It really was a magnificent salad. Silvia nearly polished off an entire batch of the stuff herself one night, placing the blame for nobody getting enough salad on me for supposedly eating it all, then running out for the evening to go see a movie with my father in law. Little did everyone suspect that my four year old daughter was the culprit!

The best simple kale salad

This simple kale salad has become a year round staple in our house. Both of my daughters request it, help make it, and devour it almost weekly. So much so, that you seriously have to make sure they don’t eat it all before you get to it. The dressing is simple, light, and vibrant, and you can use it on other salads too. Just maybe don’t massage your romaine lettuce. If you want to have your kids cook this with you, have them help separate the leaves from the stems, and also help massage the kale with the dressing. I love it when my girls really get their hands into the food we are making. This salad won’s make too much of a mess when they dive in with two hands.

On kale…

You can use any kind of kale you like, but I prefer it with lacinato kale. The texture fits the preparation very well. Baby kale works nicely as well, and you don’t have to massage it much. If you use curly kale, make sure you really mush it well, and it doesn’t hurt to let it stand for ten minutes before you serve it. Also, make sure you zest the lemon before you juice it, unless you enjoy being annoyed, then definitely juice it first. If you want to pair this simple kale salad with something, how about a grilled pizza? And, a pro tip for any greens, if you find your greens have a lot of grit or dirt on them, separate the leaves and fill your sink with water to wash them. Swish all the greens around with your hands and let the dirt settle to the bottom of the sink before you take the greens out.

Fill the sink with water at least 4″ deep to wash dirty greens

Simple Kale Salad

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INGREDIENTS

1 bunch lacinato kale, (also known as dino kale)
1 small clove garlic
1/2 tsp salt
zest of half a lemon
Juice of one lemon. If it’s a huge lemon, use half of it for the juice
3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1/3 cup grated Pecorino Romano cheese
Pepper to taste

METHOD

Using your hands, separate the kale leaves from the ribs. You can usually just rip it all off in one quick motion. Roughly chop the kale into 1 inch wide strips and wash and dry the kale. Put the kale in a large serving bowl.
Finely mince the garlic, and dump on top of the kale along with the salt, lemon zest, lemon juice, and olive oil.
Using your clean hands, squeeze and mix the kale for a minute or two. The leaves will become more tender, and the volume will seem to reduce. There might be some extra liquid in the bottom of the bowl. Don’t worry about it.
Add the Pecorino Romano and the pepper, usually about 1/2 tsp. Mix well again and serve.

https://thedinnerwinner.com/simple-kale-salad/

Nutrition

Calories

565 cal

Fat

54 g

Carbs

6 g

Protein

18 g

Click Here For Full Nutrition, Exchanges, and My Plate Info

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4 July 19, 2018 baking

Grilled Pizza with Summer Vegetables

I’m pretty sure I have had a lifelong love affair with pizza. Who hasn’t really, but it still holds a special place in my heart. I came to grilled pizza later, but we’ll get to that… I grew up in Richmond, VA, before it was the hipster mecca it seems to be now. Down the street from our house was this classic 80s pizza joint called Italian Delight. It was one of those places that doesn’t really exist these days, with tons of cushy red vinyl booths, a jukebox, brown formica tables, really large red translucent plastic cups, and soda that came by the pitcher. We would frequent this place after a swim meet, or on a Friday after a busy week, and my brother and I thought it was heaven. It was made even better by the fact that there was an arcade next door, so you could play Street FIghter while your pizza baked.

For a pizza joint in the south in the 80s, it was pretty damn good. They didn’t have any fancy grilled pizza or anything, no pizza topped with arugula, figs, and burrata. But what they did have was solid and tasty. Now that I live outside of NYC, pizza is ubiquitous; it is at every child’s birthday we go to, and is the default for ordering in or takeout for seemingly everyone. There are fifteen pizza places in my town alone, which is a little under six square miles in area, though if you want a grilled pizza, you have to do it yourself.

If you have read some of my earlier posts, you know that I’m not a huge fan of turning on the oven in the summer, certainly not to 500 degrees to make a pizza. So, why not make a grilled pizza? You can absolutely use your BBQ grill like an oven, and you can even work some nice wood smoke flavors into the pizza if you want to.

The pizza stone on the grill.

You can do this on either a gas or charcoal grill.I have a three burner Weber Spirit grill that is pretty great. I have owned and used other gas grills in the past, and the Weber heats much more evenly and is better constructed than all of them. You’ll also need a decent pizza stone. I have gone through several of these over the years, and finally bought a really nice Emile Henry pizza stone that is grill safe. It has been excellent both in the oven and on the grill.

On Making Pizza Dough…

The pizza dough before rising.

To make a grilled pizza, the first thing you need to do is make a pizza dough. I have tried dozens of recipes over the years, and consistently go back to my variation of Mark Bittman’s basic pizza dough. He calls for using instant yeast, which is far more convenient than the packaged kind you must hydrate before you use. With instant yeast, you just add it to the rest of the dry ingredients, and it does all the yeasty magic all on its own. Bittman also calls for making the dough in the food processor. I have made dough by hand, the hard way, with a lot of kneading. I have made it in the KitchenAid stand mixer, and in the food processor. You can get a great pizza dough with any of the methods. The food processor is the fastest, so if I stand any chance of making a pizza dough from scratch on a weeknight, it’s going to be in the food processor. If you are in the market for a good food processor, this is the updated version of what I have and it is great.

I like to vary Monsieur Bittman’s recipe a bit, and use half all purpose flour, and half white whole wheat. This means using a bit more water to get the dough to come together, but makes for a more nutritious dough. Here is a link to my pizza dough recipe.

The pizza dough after rising.

The unbaked pizza topped with pesto sauce.

Grilled Pizza with Summer Vegetables

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INGREDIENTS

Ingredients
1 recipe Dinner Winner Pizza Dough
½ pound mozzarella, grated (use fresh or not fresh, either one will be delicious)
½ red bell pepper, cut into strips
2 spring onions, chopped
2 ounces prepared pesto sauce (I had some frozen. If you don’t, the Costco pesto sauce is really good. Use that if you can)
Grated parmigiano reggiano (for serving)

METHOD

Preheat the grill - After the dough has risen you’ll need to preheat your grill. I like to add a little wood smoke flavor to the pizza. This is 100% optional. The pizza will only be on the grill for a few minutes, so we are not talking about an 18 hour smoke or anything here. I have a lovely oak tree in my backyard that is constantly dropping sticks. I will usually take a couple of sticks and break them into about 8” lengths. Wrap the sticks in aluminum foil and using a knife or fork, poke a couple dozen holes in the foil. There is no need to soak the sticks because there will not be enough airflow for them to actually catch fire. Use whatever wood you like, but don’t use anything with sap, so no pine trees.
If you have a gas grill, turn it to medium high and using tongs, nestle the foil packet of wood down near the flames. Replace the grill grates, and place your pizza stone directly on the grill grates. If you have a charcoal grill, preheat the coals, then arrange them for indirect heat. I like the Ring of Fire method that Weber describes. Replace the grill grate, and place your pizza stone on top of the grate. Now, off to assemble the pizza.
Roll out the pizza dough - Once the dough has risen, flour a work surface, and turn the dough onto it. Divide in half and form two balls. Put one of the balls back into the bowl it just came from and loosely cover again. Press or roll the dough until it's as thin as you can make it, but not bigger than your pizza peel; let it rest a bit if it becomes too elastic. (Patience is your friend here.) Dust your pizza peel with cornmeal and transfer the rolled out dough to the peel. Don’t skimp on the cornmeal, it will help you get the pizza onto the stone a little later.
Add the toppings to the pizza - Once the dough is on the peel, use a large spoon to plop the sauce in the middle of the pizza. Working out from the center in concentric circles, spread the sauce around nearly to the edge of the dough. Once the pesto is spread evenly, sprinkle the mozzarella cheese over the dough. Next, evenly spread the onions and red peppers. The pizza is ready to go onto the grill.
Grill the pizza - Go and check your grill. You should see wood smoke, and a temperature of at least 400 degrees. The grill can be as hot as 550 without having to worry. Any hotter, reduce the cooking time by 2 minutes. Getting the pizza from the peel onto the stone can be a little intimidating if you have never done it before. First, shake the peel back and forth a bit to loosen the pizza on the stone. Once it is moving on the stone, place the peel at the top of the pizza stone and, using a quick back and forth flick , transfer it onto the stone. If a few veggies, or a little cheese falls off, no big deal, it’s your grill, not your oven.
Close the lid, and don’t open it for 10 minutes. If the cheese looks bubbly, and a bit browned after 10 minutes, you are good to go, if not, wait another two minutes or so. To get the pizza off of the stone use your peel like a giant spatula. Sometimes, it helps to have an actual spatula handy, in case the pizza is sticking and you need to help get it started.
After you have the pizza off of the stone, slide it onto a large cutting board and wait for a minute or two for the cheese to set a little bit. Serve, top with Parmesan cheese if you want, and enjoy with a cold Italian white, or a Peroni if you are feeling authentic.