Purple Cauliflower Soup

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Utilizing different varieties of every day foods can mix things up and make cooking more fun and enjoyable. Case in point: Purple Cauliflower Soup! I eyed four different varieties of cauliflower at the store last week with colors ranging from white, to yellow, to green, and purple. Without having a recipe in mind, I grabbed the purple variety without hesitation because I felt like I needed more anthocyanins in my diet at that moment. We all know that feeling when we’re yearning for one pigment over another, right?

Haha, okay, so if you don’t know what anthocyanins are, they’re a pigment that belongs to the flavanoid class of molecules, and tend to make foods look red or purple (think blackberries or cranberries). But what’s really cool about them is that they might be antioxidants and could potentially fight cancer. We don’t have enough studies to prove this yet, but at least know that eating different varieties of fruits and vegetables can provide you with diverse chemical compounds to keep you healthy in the long run.

Want to know the coolest thing about my recipe below? Sprinkling lemon causes a chemical reaction that transforms the anthyocyanin pigment from purple to pink! So if you have kids (or just want to entertain the child within you), have fun getting a little artsy at home with this easy, delicious, and absolutely healthy meal!

Purple Cauliflower Soup

Time: 50 Minutes
Serves 4

Ingredients
1 large head purple cauliflower, roughly chopped
2 medium shallots, chopped
5 garlic cloves, chopped
4 cups vegetable stock
2 tbsp olive oil
Sea salt, to taste
Juice of 1 lemon, to garnish
Olive oil, to garnish
Smoked paprika, to garnish
Chives, to garnish

Directions
In a large saucepan or dutch oven, heat olive oil over medium heat. Add shallots and garlic and cook until soft, about 4-5 minutes. Add cauliflower, stirring occasionally for 5 minutes. Add stock and bring to a boil. Lower heat and simmer uncovered for 25-35 minutes, or until cauliflower is soft. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Puree soup immediately with an immersion blender or let soup cool for a few minutes before pureeing in batches with a food processor or a conventional blender. Ladle soup into bowls and serve with drizzled lemon, olive oil, smoked paprika, freshly ground pepper, and snipped chives.

Fettuccine with Guanciale and Garden Fresh Tomato Sauce

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Sometimes your best meals are impromptu and deliciously unexpected. Adrian and I were really hungry, but weren’t sure we had anything on hand to make for dinner. That is… until we saw a bunch of ripe tomatoes and fresh basil in our garden, begging to be cooked up into a sauce!

We found that we had a partially used box of fettuccine noodles, a little bit of parmesan, and frozen guanciale from a lovely farm in Davis. Scouring our pasta recipes, we adapted one by by Scott Conant featured on Serious Eats, but simplified it a bit. I’m not kidding when I say that this is definitely the most delicious pastas we’ve ever made and possibly ever eaten (sorry Scott!). I can’t quite vouch for this being the healthiest thing you’ll eat all week, but that’s okay on occasion! A little guanciale or bacon every now and then is perfectly fine. Just serve this one with a side salad, and this Diet Assassinista says you’re good to go.

Fettuccine with Guanciale and Garden Fresh Tomato Sauce

Serves 4-6
Time: 45 Minutes

Ingredients
Ripe plum tomatoes, 20
Ice
Olive oil, 3 tbsp
Butter, 2 tbsp
Crushed Red Pepper
Salt and pepper, to taste
Garlic, 6 cloves, chopped
Basil, 1 small bunch, chopped
Guanciale, ½ cup, chopped
1 lb. dry fettuccine noodles
Parmesan Reggiano, 1 oz , about ½ cup , grated

Directions
Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Have a large bowl of ice water nearby. Cut a small X on the bottom of each tomato. Ease about 5 tomatoes in the pot and cook. Let boil for about 15 seconds or until skins appear loose and promptly move them into the waiting ice water. Do this with remaining tomatoes.

Pull off the skin of the tomatoes with the tip of a pairing knife. Cut the tomatoes in half, squeeze tomatoes to take the seeds and a little juice out. Reserve juice if needed to thin pasta later.

In a wide pan, heat olive oil and butter over medium heat until hot. Add garlic and sauté until soft, 30-60 seconds. Add the tomatoes. Stir in basil, guanciale, a pinch of red pepper flakes, and season very lightly with the salt and pepper. Let the tomatoes cook for a few minutes to soften and then use a potato masher to break them up finely. Cook the tomatoes for 20 to 25 minutes, until the tomatoes are tender and the sauce has thickened.

Cook fettucine noodles in separate pot to 90% of doneness, reserving ½ cup pasta water. Add noodles to tomato sauce and cook for about 3 minutes, until sauce is incorporated. If dry, add some reserved tomato juice and/or pasta water. Serve pasta garnished with parmesan and freshly ground black pepper to taste.

Chicken Salad Sandwich with Cherries and Walnuts

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I’m so enjoying this sandwich right now and you should be too! It’s healthy, portion-controlled, and guess what, doesn’t require cooking! Well, unless you want to roast the chicken yourself, but that’s not something I feel like doing often in the middle of the week. Now I can look forward to just a few dishes and being well-nourished with protein, whole-grain carbs, a little fruit, and a little veg. Yum!

Chicken Salad Sandwich with Cherries and Walnuts

Time: 10 Minutes
Serves 4

Ingredients
1/4 cup low-fat mayonnaise
1/4 cup dijon mustard
2 tbsp fresh thyme, chopped or 1 tbsp dried
1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
Black pepper, one pinch
2 cupsroasted chicken, breast and/or legs, chopped
1/4 cup shallots, finely chopped
2 celery stalks, finely chopped
1/3 cup dried cherries, finely chopped
1/3 cup walnuts, chopped
Whole-grain bread, 8 slices, toasted
Butter lettuce, 4 leaves

Directions
In a medium bowl, add mayonnaise, dijon, thyme, lemon juice, and pepper and mix to combine. In a separate bowl, add chicken, shallots, celery, cherries, walnuts, and mix to combine. Stir in mayonnaise mixture.

Add chicken salad to toasted bread and top with a leaf of butter lettuce.

Blackberry Balsamic Chicken

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This is another recipe adapted from Leanne Ely’s Saving Dinner. I paired it here with a summer salad of garden-grown tomatoes, red onions, and a couple slices of baguette. It’s super delicious and takes just a few minutes to make. Plus, with fewer than 7 ingredients, it’s easy to meal plan. Theflavor of the chicken preserves is to die for if you haven’t had that combination. It’s August now, but these flavors are soooo making me look forward to Thanksgiving, yum!

Blackberry Balsamic Chicken

Time: 15 Minutes
Serves 4

Ingredients
1 tbsp vegetable oil
1⁄2 cup chopped red onion
Salt and pepper, to taste
1 tsp fresh thyme (or 1/2 tsp dried)
4boneless skinless chicken breast halves
1⁄3 cup seedless blackberry preserves
2tablespoons balsamic vinegar

Directions
Heat oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat until hot. Add chicken to skillet and saute 6 minutes on each side or until done. Remove chicken from skillet and keep warm. Add onion to skillet and saute till translucent. Sprinkle salt, pepper, and thyme. Add preserves, vinegar, and salt and pepper, stirring constantly until the preserves melt. Spoon the sauce over chicken to serve.

Kale Mojito Smoothie

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Per The Weather Channel, it’s quite temperate outside, but it sure isn’t at our house! We’re south-facing and the sun really hits hard for most of the day. That’s great for our garden, but not for my own hydration, so I really needed this refreshing smoothie to perk me up for my gym session in a couple hours.

To make it, I looked no further than my garden to grab the bulk of the ingredients: kale and mint. Then I added some local honey, citrus from the pantry, and finished it off with a little coconut water and ice. Yum! While just about everyone knows that kale is essentially a superfood, I’m not sure everyone knows how tasty and easy it is to blend up with just a few ingredients!

Kale Mojito Smoothie

Serves: 1-2
Time: 5 Minutes

Ingredients
2 medium kale leaves, stemmed
1/4 cup fresh mint, stemmed
Juice of 2-3 limes
1/2 tsp lime zest
2 tbsp honey
2/3 cup coconut water
2-3 cups ice cubes

Directions
Combine the first six ingredients in a blender. Then add ice on top. Blend on high until smooth.

Potato Tacos with Green Chilies and Queso Fresco

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I’d like to call this recipe Tacos Los Tres Amigos because I like consuming tacos in threes. Sometimes I go over my calorie allotment and just eat a little less for my next meal. And that’s totally okay! It’s adapted from a delicious recipe by Rick Bayless. I’m not quite sure anymore, but I’m pretty sure he’s the one that introduced me to the really interesting and yummy herb epazote. Using epazote is optional here and you can use more cheese to make up for the omission. It is available at many Mexican grocery stores, so if you have those in your area, definitely check them out! It’s funny because before I was growing it in my garden, I had to trek a few miles to the store to buy it. But last year when I stayed in Baja California, it was growing wild everywhere. In any case, I’m always curious about new things and if you are too, don’t miss out on this one!

Tacos Los Tres Amigos

Servings: 8-12 Tacos
Time: 45 minutes

Ingredients
1.5 lbs small boiling potatoes, halved
3 tablespoons olive oil + additional to fry tortillas
1 small white onion, thinly sliced
6 medium fresh poblano chiles, roasted and peeled
Salt
8 oz crumbled Mexican queso fresco or other fresh cheese such as feta or goat cheese
16 leaves epazote, chopped (optional)
8-12 corn tortillas, lightly fried in olive oil

Directions
Simmer the potatoes in salted water to cover until tender, about 15 minutes. Drain, cool under running water, peel and cut into 1/4-inch dice.

Heat the oil in a heavy medium-size skillet over medium. Add the onion and potato, and fry, stirring regularly to ensure that nothing sticks to the pan, until the mixture is richly browned, 10 to 15 minutes.

While the potatoes are browning, seed the chiles and roughly chop. Stir them into the potato mixture with epazote and season with salt to taste. Remove the mixture from the heat and stir in the cheese.

Fry corn tortillas in olive oil over medium heat. Fill with potato filling, fold in half, and serve with your favorite hot sauce.

Trader Joe’s Thai Chicken Curry

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Even though this recipe is simple and not even made from scratch, it’s sort of sacred to me and Adrian. We’ve been making some version of it since we started shopping at Trader Joe’s together about 10 years ago. As our palates have changed and our cooking skills have improved, we’ve added and omitted a few things. We also took a trip to Thailand in 2012 and fell in love with keffir lime leaves, which added the final touch we needed to perfect this recipe. Below is our little secret to a delicious curry in 25 minutes!

Warning: Our chili recommendations are quite spicy, so you might want to cut your chilies in half or omit them altogether!

Trader Joe’s Thai Chicken Curry

Serves 4
Time: 25 Minutes

Ingredients
Trader Joe’s Thai Yellow Curry Sauce, 1 bottle
Trader Joe’s Thai Red Curry Sauce, 1 bottle
10 garlic cloves, chopped
2 shallots, sliced thin
2 serrano chilies, sliced
10 Thai chilies, sliced
1.5 lbs chicken thigh, cut into 1-inch pieces
5 heads baby bok choy or 1 large head bok choy, roughly chopped
1 bunch Thai basil or sweet basil, roughly chopped
4 green onions, chopped
3 keffir lime leaves, julienned (optional)
Steamed rice, to serve

Directions
Over medium heat, combine curry sauces in a large pan or dutch oven. Add garlic and shallots and cook, stirring for 2 minutes. Add chilies and chicken and cook, stirring for 5 minutes. Then add bok choy, basil, green onions, and keffir lime leaves (if using). Simmer over medium heat for about 10-15 minutes, until sauce has reduced to a curry consistency and the chicken is cooked through. Serve with steamed rice.

A Pasta Recipe for Slow-Pokes Like Me: Spaghetti with Sautéed Sweet Potatoes and Ricotta

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Lately I’ve been cooking a lot of quick meals, even though that’s not necessarily my style. Many of my friends know me as the home chef who essentially slaves in the kitchen for hours on end, and it’s not because I make over-complicated food. I’m just pretty laid back and bring a super relaxed attitude with me wherever I go, which works great for those braises that take a few hours in the dutch oven anyway.

But a slow-cooking home chef has to get food done quickly sometimes, right? Otherwise how would I ever have time for clients and work, let alone the gym, or runs on along the beach? So below, I present you with a quick and delicious pasta on this night that I’m going to the gym. Faster home chefs could probably piece this one together in 20 minutes, but I over-estimated the time to 30-minutes for slow-pokes like me!

I think it’s important for people to know that healthy food is an achievable feat even for the busiest of us. This meal could probably be in your belly faster than running out last-minute to pick up fast food for your family. What was the clean up like? For those of you with a fast food addiction, don’t let these two pans overwhelm you. My clean up was was finished in less than 10 minutes. Dinner  + clean up in 40 minutes is proof that we can simplify and “healthify” our lives at the same time. Sometimes it just takes a little meal planning and thinking ahead to do so.

Spaghetti with Sautéed Sweet Potatoes and Ricotta

Serves 4-6
Time 30 min

Ingredients
1 lb spaghetti
3 tbsp olive oil
1.5 lb sweet potatoes (2 medium), cubed into 1/2-inch pieces
3 shallots, sliced
1.5 tbsp, fresh rosemary, chopped
1/3 cup parmesan, grated
1/2 cup ricotta
Salt, to taste
Pepper, to taste

Directions
Cook the pasta per package directions. Reserve 2/3 cup cooking water, drain pasta, and set aside.

In a large pan, or dutch oven, heat olive oil over medium heat. Add sweet potatoes, season with salt and pepper to taste. Cover, and cook stirring every 1-2 minutes to avoid scorching the sweet potatoes, about 8-10 minutes. Add rosemary and shallots and cook until potatoes are tender, 3-5 minutes longer.

Add cooked pasta and reserved water to sweet potatoes. Stir in grated parmesan. Serve pasta with a few dollops of ricotta, and season with salt and pepper to taste.

What I love Most About Summer + Recipe for Steak & Arugula Salad

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My calendar may say that it’s summer, but I’ve been so busy lately, I barely notice the change in season anymore. It’s a stark contrast to how I would literally count down the days to summer when I was a child, rejoicing when the final bell rang. Those long warm days in the California sun just couldn’t come soon enough!

The fact that summer is in full swing finally just dawned on me when foraging for these arugula greens. It’s a little sad that it took me three weeks to fully recognize the change in season, but mid-July is when my garden really starts to shine. I realize now that while I no longer count down to the lazy summer days of my past playing with friends, visiting the beach, or going to theme parks, I don’t think it’s a bad compromise that in adulthood, I have an incredible garden where I enjoy nothing more than counting down the days until my fruits and vegetables are ready to be harvested.

I suppose I truly have the better deal now because I really didn’t know how to cook much of anything when I was a kid. Now at least half of the food I cook up in summer is from my garden and that makes me a very, very happy dietitian. While this dish utilized the last of our arugula crop, my favorite salad greens will be back shortly with corn and pumpkins to follow. Until then, we will surely be eating our weight in tomatoes and kale!

Below is a recipe the salad, which I’ve adapted from an Epicurious recipe.

Steak & Arugula Salad

Serves 4
Time: 25 minutes

Ingredients
5 oz arugula
1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
3 large garlic cloves, smashed
1 large sprig fresh rosemary needles
1 lb boneless top loin steak or sirloin (1 inch thick)
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon black pepper
1 large shallot, thinly sliced crosswise
1 1/2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1 1/2 tablespoons red-wine vinegar

Directions
Mound arugula on a large platter.

Heat oil with garlic and rosemary in a 12-inch heavy skillet over high heat, turning garlic once or twice, until garlic is soft, about 1-2 minutes. Meanwhile, cut steak crosswise into 1/8-inch-thick slices and toss with 3/4 teaspoon salt and 1/2 teaspoon pepper. Add steak to skillet all at once and sauté over high heat, tossing with tongs to color evenly, about 1 minute for medium-rare.

Arrange steak over arugula using tongs, then add shallot to oil in skillet along with vinegars and remaining 1/4 teaspoon each of salt and pepper and boil 2 minutes. Garnish to taste with ground black pepper. Pour dressing over steak and serve immediately.

The Real Deal Greek Salad

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The best Greek Salad is something you can really only eat in Greece (or in my house)! My husband and I should know – that’s where we met studying abroad in 2003, and I think we ate our weight in salad on the island of Paros. The only Greek Salad I knew before visiting was pretty weak – limp lettuce, boring sliced black olives, a few chopped tomatoes, maybe some cucumbers, and crumbled feta cheese. It’s a shame that the salads I see in the US barely meet my standards for an appetizer, let alone a whole meal. But the Greeks know how to do it right. I suppose they’ve been making it a little longer than we have, so there’s that.

Anyway, Leanne Ely’s Saving Dinner has a great recipe for Greek Salad, but we’ve improved on it, and made it a little more authentic. Our salad is a full meal, providing around 500-600 calories depending on how big your block of cheese is. We’ve adapted the recipe below:

The Real Deal Greek Salad

Serves 2

Dressing
1/4 cup olive oil
3 tablespoons lemon juice
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
3/4 teaspoon dried oregano
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Salad
1 head butter lettuce leaves
3 tomatoes, sliced
12 Kalamata olives
1 English (seedless) cucumber, sliced
1 red bell pepper, seeded and sliced
1 green bell pepper, seeded and sliced
1 small red onion, sliced into thin rings
1 (100g) block Valbreso feta cheese

Directions
In a small bowl, whisk together the dressing ingredients.

Plate lettuce leaves and top with remaining salad ingredients, adding the cheese on top. Drizzle with dressing and serve with with whole grain rolls.