Macadamia Nut Tomato Pesto

“What’s wrong with these tomatoes, Miss?” a girl asked me as I was running from group to group during cooking day in my culinary class.

I stopped, mid-crazy. “What do you mean, what’s wrong with them?”

“They’re so red. And soft. Are these rotten?”

I scrunched my eyes up and studied her face. She wasn’t kidding. “Hmmm. No. They’re perfect. Maybe you didn’t know that store bought tomatoes are usually never ripe. And they’re crunchy.” Disgusting, too, I stopped myself from adding.

She still looked skeptical.

When I had decided to make the trifecta of pasta sauces, pesto, alfredo, and marinara, with my class, I didn’t know they weren’t yet familiar with basics of the kitchen. These teens had never been to a land where tomatoes are not crunchy, the stoves are not all electric, and where pasta sauce doesn’t come out of a jar.

So in between looking for the source of the unlit gas stove smell and explaining that one clove of garlic wasn’t the same as the entire head, I was smacking myself on the forehead for my ambitious plan. When I had done my planning, my thought was, “Oh yeah, this will be easy peasy.” 

Maybe I should have stuck to box cake mixes.

Each group got a basic recipe for one of the sauces and a box of pasta. The groups had to come ask me for cooking tools and ingredients, as the kitchens are not stocked. I quickly realized that in addition to the two stockpots I brought from my own home, there was only 1 more in the whole classroom. When representatives from each group came to me to get ingredients they’d forgotten how much of whatever it was they were supposed to get. Most forgot to get the water boiling until about half way through class, so we were cutting it close to finishing a 20 minute dish in 70 minutes.

The week before I had taught them about plating (whatever little I know) and we were supposed to do a plating and photography session with the pasta, but since we were running down to the wire this is about as good as I got:

Success.

And I guarantee you that some of them will still crack a jar of Prego for dinner this weekend.

But at least they know that parmesan cheese isn’t actually that nasty stuff you get in a green can.

Over the weekend I was looking at the leftover tomatoes I had picked up from the Shintaku’s farm, Green Growers, in Hau’ula. They have some lovely tomatoes and amazingly priced compared to the store. Terry was nice enough to send a few pounds my way for free since I was using them for my class.

I thought about the price of pine nuts climbing 300% and the mildew that’s making sweet basil scarce in our islands right now. It suddenly made sense to throw that basic pesto recipe out, however tasty.

No matter how expensive mac nuts are, I bet they’re cheaper than those pine nuts. Pine nuts are going for $30 a bag at the Costco here.

Macadamia Nut Tomato Pesto

This pesto is similar to a marinara but the meatiness of the macadamia nuts gives the sauce some girth. It clings better and the nuts cut a bit of the acid in the tomatoes as well. The sauce goes best with a long pasta, like spaghetti or linguini.

Oh, and use real tomatoes, please. The soft, red ones.

• 2/3 C macadamia nuts
• 1 lb tomatoes (about 6 small or 4 medium)
• 2 Tablespoons loosely packed Thai basil (or 1 tsp dried if none is available)
• 2 cloves garlic, peeled
• 1/4 C grated parmesan or Romano cheese (not that they’re the same, but Romano is an option in a pinch)
• 4 Tablespoons of olive oil, divided
• 1/2 tsp salt or more to taste
• 1 pinch sugar
• 1 lb pasta such as linguini, fettuccine, spaghetti or bucatini

1. Bring 6 quarts of water to a boil and add salt to taste. Cook pasta according to package directions. Drain and set aside.
2. While the pasta is cooking, in a skillet over medium heat, dry toast the macadamia nuts until lightly browned, stirring frequently (about 3-4 minutes).
3. Roughly chop the tomatoes, basil, and garlic. Put these in a food processor/cuisinart fitted with the blade attachment. Add the macadamia nuts, grated parmesan cheese, 3 Tablespoons of olive oil and process until pureed, about 30 seconds. The macadamia nuts should be small but visible.
4. In the now empty skillet, heat the final tablespoon of olive oil over medium high heat. When the oil is hot, add the tomato sauce and stir frequently until the color changes to become more red and the sauce is reduced just slightly, about 5 minutes. Add salt as necessary to taste, and a pinch of sugar.
5. Add the pasta directly to the sauce in the skillet. Toss to coat. Serves 6-8, Serve with more parmesan if you wish.

Taco Bowl

Amaya likes to share food more than she likes to eat her own food. If you make something big to share, she can pick through what she likes and enjoys sticking her spoon into your bowl. I guess that’s true of most people when it comes to dessert. I always want to share your dessert.

I wanted a salad, but more than a salad. Whenever I eat a huge salad I’m hungry 15 minutes later, no matter how good it is. This gave me a little more staying power. It’s vegetarian as well. I’m not sure why I’m calling it a “taco” bowl, other than the fact that it has a slaw with it that I normally associate with fish tacos. This slaw is good with any taco, really.

I told Amaya what I was making for lunch and she put her hands over her mouth and said, “I don’t want that.” I said, “I’m making it for me.” But then I sat down with it and she said, “Can I have some of that?” I told her to get a spoon and dig in. And we did.

Taco Bowl (serves 2)

• 2 C orange slaw (see recipe below)
• 4 slices Japanese eggplant (or 2 slices globe eggplant)
• 1 handful baby tomatoes
• 4-5 mini sweet peppers or 1 colored bell pepper
• 2 T olive oil
• sea salt
• 4 T tomatillo salsa
• 1/2 avocado, cut into slices
• 1 C beans (black or pinto)
• 1/4 C cheese
• 2 C cooked brown rice

1. Put parchment paper down on a cookie sheet. Heat the oven to 400 degrees. Rub olive oil over eggplant, peppers, tomatoes. Arrange on cookie sheet and sprinkle with sea salt to taste. Roast in the oven for about 15 minutes, until the skin of the pepper is browned and separating.
2. Put cooked rice in a large bowl. Arrange the slaw, roasted veggies, avo, beans on the rice. If using a large bell pepper peel off the skin, seed, and slice into strips. The mini bells will tear apart pretty easy so no other prep necessary other than pulling off the stem. They have minimal seeds, usually. Spoon the salsa on top and sprinkle with cheese. Enjoy the order for a moment, then stir it all together and eat.

Orange Slaw (makes 2 cups)

• 2 generous cups finely shredded cabbage
• 1/2 lemon squeezed to make 1 T lemon juice
• 1 T olive oil
• 1 T mayo
• 1T orange juice concentrate
• 1 garlic clove, minced
• salt and pepper to taste

1. Whisk together the dressing ingredients (lemon juice through garlic clove) in a small bowl. Toss with cabbage in a bowl. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Black Bean, Corn, and Avocado Salsa

In honor of the Eat Like Us for a Day Challenge on May 14, I decided to find an actual recipe that I use that could fit with this challenge.

Well, I spent a long while at my cookbooks before realizing that I basically eat wheat, soy, and dairy at every single meal.

Yikes!

I was looking in the fridge and realized I needed to use a few ingredients and a light bulb went off in my head. YES!

Black bean salsa. I love to make this, because it’s easy, can be made in big huge batches, and people are always asking me for the recipe (which is funny, because, 'recipe? for salsa?’ I barely pay attention to measurements for this).

The girl can’t keep her hands out of it, as long as I don’t put too much hot pepper in it. This time I left it out entirely and when I turned around to get my camera, she was going at it with the spoon. Ha. And I thought salsa was just a good excuse to eat chips.

I usually use my food processor for the first half of the salsa, because I’m lazy and it’s way easier than mincing onions. Just make sure you PULSE properly instead of spinning it around and around, otherwise you’ll have tomato puree rather than salsa. But if you’re not lazy, like me, just mince everything. I let Amaya cut up the other half of the cucumber for fun (with a butter knife) to keep her busy. I also recommend putting in a papaya or mango or even pineapple if you have it around. I love the sweetness added to it. Then a minced jalapeno in there is counterbalanced so well.

Black Bean Salsa

• 1/2 red onion (or white/yellow is fine)
• 3 medium tomatoes (about 2 C)
• 1 T cilantro or to taste
• 1 clove garlic
• 1/2 cucumber (Japanese is best—thin and less seedy)
• 1 C black beans from a can
• 1/2 C frozen corn
• 1/4 t to 1/2 t salt (to taste)
• juice from half a lime
• 1/4 t sugar
• 1/4 t apple cider vinegar
• 1 T olive oil
• 1/2 avocado

1. Cut the onion into large chunks and throw them into the food processor. Pulse the onion until the bits are pretty small. Maybe about 10 half second pulses.
2. Core and chunk up the tomatoes and add them to the processor as well. Put in the garlic and cilantro. Pulse about 6-8 times until chunky.
3. Remove the mixture and put into a bowl. Cut the cucumber into small cubes and add to the mix. Rinse and drain the beans and heat up the corn to defrost. Put in all the ingredients except the avocado and stir lightly to mix them up. Taste and add more seasoning as needed.
4. Dice up the avocado and add to the salsa. Toss lightly so as not to squish the avocado.
5. Serve with corn tortilla chips (make sure they’re not cooked with soybean oil) for the challenge! Serves 6-8 people as an appetizer.

Follow the link to the challenge! Remember to join us next Friday, May 14th.

Spinach Pies

How can puff pastry be so yummy and come in a conveniently frozen package?

Because, yes, it’s inconvenient to make yourself. Possible, but inconvenient. Especially when you live in Hawaii and the butter is melting too fast to make those delicious flaky layers. So I just stock up when I see it on sale at the supermarket.

I am a little more than in love with Moroccan and Lebanese foods, and when I saw these spinach pies in my cookbook Arabesque: a Taste of Morocco, Turkey, and Lebanon   (a b-day present from my sis-in-law a couple years back), I marked it for dinner trial later that day. And, yes, I used frozen spinach. Too easy.

I loved the bright notes in the lemon and spice mixture. The rich taste of dark cooked spinach always tastes good to me.

I let my daughter brush the packages with butter before putting them in the oven and she was so interested in this strange present I was making. I liked that the spinach was hidden until the bite had already been taken (and by then she knew it tasted good!) so we were all happy.

Spinach Pies (Fatayer Bi Sabanikh) adapted from Arabesque

• 1 pound fresh spinach leaves (or frozen, in my case)
• 1 onion, chopped
• 1/2 C pin nuts
• 4 T olive oil
• salt and pepper
• 1/2 tsp ground allspice
• juice of 1 lemon
• 14 oz puff pastry
• flour

1. Turn the oven on to 350. Wash the spinach and remove thick stems. Put the leaves in the saucepan and just a sprinkle of water and steam until soft. Strain and squeeze all the liquid out with your hands. If you are using frozen spinach, microwave the spinach (take it out of the box) until thawed, and squeeze out the liquid. Chop coarsely.
2. Fry the onion in a large saucepan with 3 T of oil, until golden. Add the pine nuts and stir until they begin to color. Add the spinach, salt and pepper, allspice, lemon juice, and mix well. Stir around until the liquid evaporates.
3. With half the puff pastry at a time, dust a rolling surface and the rolling pin with flour. Roll out each half into a thin sheet. I cut the sheet into squares (rather than rounds) to save time—about 4 inch squares. Put a tablespoon or two of filling in the middle and pinch up the sides, firmly sealing the edges. It’s okay if the filling starts peeking through during cooking.
4. Put the pies on foil on baking trays. Brush the tops with olive oil and bake in the oven for 25-30 minutes or until golden.

Weeknight Pasta

Today was one of those days that I couldn’t get anything done. I was leaving all sorts of half done things in the wake of all the things I found myself promising to do for someone else.

After work I started grading, then left a pile of papers on the couch, and started washing the dishes. I took a break to start an e-mail, and let a boiling pot of water for pasta evaporate on the stove at 7:40 pm, because my good sense told me that dinner time was leaving the realm of acceptable time period. At the rate I was going, we were going to be eating dinner in bed.

Around 8 I finally cut up some mushrooms and zucchini, because I knew I wouldn’t have to wait long for those to sauté up in a pan, and I wouldn’t have to add them separately (which meant that I already knew, because of the day I was having, that I was going to be walking away from the stove when I should be lovingly stirring with my wooden spoon).

Mid slice through a mushroom, the girl comes trying to see up onto the counter, and she declares, “I don’t like mushrooms. I don’t want to eat mushrooms.” She had that special whine that only 3-year-olds have when they know you are going to make them eat mushrooms and are just letting you know now, so that you can expect a fight during dinner. I told her that it was not acceptable to talk to me like that, and after the next declarative sentence started, I took her to time out.

A few minutes later I went to get her and asked, “Why did Mommy put you in time out?”

“Because I was being annoying.”

Yes. Yes. That is so exactly right. The girl gets a point.

I cooked up my vegetables, and I had that voice in my head telling me, “Don’t crowd the mushrooms”, and I was crowding them. I was cooking up a mob of mushrooms and I had already thrown the zucchini in there just to get trampled on. Julia would roll over in her grave. But this dinner needed some shortcuts if it was actually going to make it in before the final call.

I popped open the bottle of Four Cheese Rosa Bertolli Sauce I got from the Foodbuzz Tastemaker’s program. Now, I have a particular dislike for bottled pasta sauce. I’m a pasta snob. But let’s get real, here. I was not having any sort of expectations about what this dinner would be. I was on the edge of having a major tantrum about not having been fed and quite willing to make the pregnancy hormones my scapegoat.

Once I got some pasta on a plate and started arranging my photo shoot, I got a phone call, so the man and the girl ate without me. This was the kind of phone call that was definitely keeping me from finishing anything. I missed the whole dinner.

I got off the phone, and their dishes were already in the sink. I sighed, took my photos, and sat down. And I tell you what. I FINISHED that dinner.

My hub told me, “She loved the sauce. She ate it all.”

2 points.

Actually, the sauce was lovely. I admit, it wasn’t chemically like most of the bottled white sauces I’ve tried. I might be able to lay down the snobbery for a couple of weeknight pasta saves.

Weeknight Pasta

• 1 lb short tubular pasta
• 1/2 zucchini, thinly sliced into coins
• 6-8 mushrooms, sliced
• 2 Tbsp butter or 1 tsp olive oil
• 1 bottle of Bertolli Four Cheese Rosa sauce (or other desired “pink” sauce)
• 1/2 C cream or milk
• 4 roma tomatoes, sliced

1. Boil pasta according to package directions (reserve 1/4 C water after boiling)
2. While pasta is cooking, heat a skillet to medium high heat. Add oil or butter as desired. Put in mushrooms and zucchini and saute to desired texture. I like to brown my mushrooms slightly.
3. Add tomatoes and stir until skins are slightly wilted.
4. Add pre-made sauce, 1/2 C cream.
5. When draining the pasta noodles, reserve 1/4 C water from the pot. Put water in the bottle and shake it around to get the rest of the sauce out of the bottle. Add to the pan.
6. Mix with the pasta and serve (or just serve sauce on top, as desired).

Family Bites: Roasted Garlic Edamame

I made this recipe up as part of the Newman’s Own Family Bites snack category. I had recently eaten some garlic edamame at a nearby restaurant, and thought, “I could make this.” This is not a thought I usually have at restaurants, but I was motivated enough to try because we always have tons of edamame in the freezer.

My girl will eat frozen edamame, because she doesn’t like to wait for me to heat it up. This gives me the shudders, so she usually eats the one she pilfered from the bowl while she’s waiting for me to steam them.

This was so easy, and really satisfied my late afternoon salt craving. I can be kind of a garlic fiend, so don’t think you have to use as much as me… but it does taste so good. She had no trouble finishing off the bowl so you may want to make a separate batch for yourself.

Roasted Garlic Edamame

1 cup frozen edamame in their shells
2 Tbsp salted butter
3 cloves garlic, minced or pushed through a garlic press
1 tsp Braggs liquid amino acid or soy sauce

· Heat butter in a frying pan over medium-high heat until melted and just beginning to brown.
· Add edamame and garlic and cook, stirring constantly, until edamame are heated through and garlic is browned.
· Add Braggs liquid amino acid and toss. Remove from heat and serve while still warm

Sandwich Heaven

I say, when you don’t have time to make dinner, make sandwiches.

No, I’m not talking about PB&J or ham and cheese (although there may be days when this is perfectly acceptable), but real sandwiches. The kind where you pretend you’re eating a picnic in some French countryside with your love. And no kids in sight.

Except that you have kids, and your spouse is coming home late tonight, and there’s no way you can fix dinner with your daughter pulling on your pant leg because she’s bored.

So you make sandwiches.

We had sandwiches twice this week. I asked Jake to pick up 2 loaves of garlic sourdough because I wasn’t even going to bother baking bread. Un-uh. No way.

The ingredients are important. Real tomatoes—the kind that you can see the red all the way through, preferably local. Brie cheese. Roasted peppers. Garlic cloves. But these ingredients need no dressing up—they’re fabulous without much work.

Everyone assembles their own the way they like it. My daughter stuck with brie on a slice, with a few tomatoes and lettuce on the side. We tricked her into eating roasted pepper by telling her it was a baked tangerine (why this made sense to her, I’ll never know).

The second night we ate sandwiches I sliced up some sausage and heated them up in a pan for the hub and girl, and sliced some cold tofu for myself. I made my sandwich based on my Vegan friend’s favorite sandwich (he was drooling just telling me the assembly). I ate three in no time at all.

The best part? No dishes, except the ones we ate on.

Roasted Veggie w/ Brie (serves 4)

• 12 thin slices of sourdough bread (or other bakery bread)
• 12 slices of brie cheese (rind removed if you prefer)
• 2 yellow, red, or orange bell peppers
• 8 cloves garlic
• sliced tomatoes
• sliced avocado
• balsamic vinegar
• olive oil

1. Preheat oven to 370 degrees. Put a piece of parchment paper on a cookie sheet. Cut bell peppers in half. Remove seeds. Place bell pepper halves cut side down. Rub or brush the outside with a bit of olive oil.
2. Separate garlic cloves and rub with olive oil as well; also place on cookie sheet.
3. Bake until peppers are soft and skins are browned. Remove from oven and place bell peppers in a plastic bag for a few minutes to sweat the skins. Remove skins. Cut peppers in half again.
4. Serve vinegar and oil on the side and assemble sandwiches (sandwich pictured has: roasted garlic spread on bread, tomato, avocado, roasted pepper, brie, and a drizzle of balsamic vinegar.)

Vegan Lover (makes 3 open faced sandwiches)

• 3 thin slices of firm tofu
• nutritional yeast (about 1/4 C)
• 1 T olive oil
• sea salt (fine ground) to taste
• 3 Tbsp hummus
• sliced avocado
• sliced tomato
• 1 Tbsp Ume plum vinegar (or other vinegar if you don’t have)
• 1/2 C radish sprouts
• 3 lettuce leaves
• 3 slices of good quality bakery bread

Assembly. Split ingredients into 3 servings. On top of 1 slice of bread layer the ingredients as follows: drizzle olive oil, sprinkle salt, spread hummus, press avocado slices, sprinkle yeast to taste, place tomato slices, sprinkle more yeast, place tofu slice, sprinkle more yeast, place sprouts, drizzle ume plum vinegar, top with lettuce leaf.

Note: nutritional yeast is VERY good. It’s salty and light tasting. I keep it around for vegan cooking, but I often add it whatever I’m cooking (soup, stew, sandwiches, etc) to give a little savory flavor. My closest comparison is chicken bouillon in flavor, but not really like that. You can find it easily at a natural foods market, often in the bulk section. They look like yellow flakes and melt very easily on the tongue.