Savory Greek Yogurt Salad

Sometimes I wonder when I’m gonna get my actual act together and cook dinner on a weeknight like a real live adult. I start off the week with the best of intentions. There’s always meat in the freezer that could be thawed. There’s typically no shortage of vegetables in the crisper due to my weekly market run. I don’t have single girl syndrome to fall back on, I’m pretty sure my boyfriend of many years wouldn’t complain if my cooking-for-two was together enough to extend past Saturday and Sunday nights.

But then I get home at 7pm and I’m all like, “yea this single fried egg with hot sauce is a perfectly acceptable meal.” This brings me to the savory greek yogurt salad that has become a staple in my weeknight meal rotation. I’m not going to pretend that other grownups would consider this a full fledged main entree, but for me on a Tuesday night, it does the trick. 

It’s tangy and savory and has protein, there’s salty feta and an herby cucumber tomato salad and lately I’ve taken to adding lots of toasty sesame seeds and for the tiniest sweet touch, some golden raisins. I feel like it’s a lot more well rounded than my standard egg for dinner. I will admit it’s a very summery salad --- cool, crisp and full of summer fare. I’ve had this salad in my back pocket for awhile now, I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop and for all the tomatoes to disappear all at once! But since the market had no shortage this past weekend, I have no problem telling to you make this immediately, before it’s too late!

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Savory Greek Yogurt Salad

Ingredients:

½ cup chopped tomatoes

½ cup chopped cucumber

1 teaspoon dill, finely minced

1 teaspoon parsley, finely minced

1 teaspoon mint, finely minced

1 teaspoon shallot, finely minced

juice of ½ lemon

tablespoon or so of olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

scant ¼ cup crumbled feta

1 cup greek yogurt

Optional, not pictured:

sprinkling of sesame seeds (or sunflower or pepitas...or all)

golden raisins

Directions:

In a bowl, combine tomatoes, cucumbers, herbs, shallot, lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper.

Put yogurt into serving bowl, spoon salad over top, dress with a touch more olive oil and fresh ground pepper, feta, and any other optional toppings if desired.

Serves 1

Monday Market Haul - 10/19/2015

Cucumbers, carrots, sweet peppers, cauliflower, broccoli, delicata squash, tomatoes, brussels sprouts, italian plums, honey nut squash

Fall has finally rolled around and stolen all the long, hazy summer days — as mournful as I’d like that to be, finding tomatoes at the market still has softened that blow considerably.

After being away for several weeks, I wasn’t sure what I would find this past Saturday. But even though I was completely bundled (since I have the cold tolerance of a small tropical bird) everything I could have hoped for was still available for the taking.

Here’s to October, the month of making crispy, crunchy salads to go with ALL of the roasted things.

Fall, keep it up and I might just change my mind about you.

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Some Seasonal Market Haul Inspiration from the archives:

What I Really Eat: Roasted Sprouts & Squash

Spicy Delicata Hummus

Broccoli Cauli-rice Bake

Cauliflower Falafel

Cauliflower Tabbouleh

Stuffed Prosciutto Wrapped Chicken with Roasted Plums

Plum Cake

Sunday Morning Reads

this is brilliant {tasting table}

QUEEN {eater}

interesting {npr}

Quick! Before all these veggies go into hibernation! {bon appetit}

easiest no bake chocolate cheesecake {tasting table}

this woman is a damn genius {smitten kitchen}

What I Really Eat: End of Summer Peach Compote

"What I really eat" are my Iron Chef meals. My pantry meals. Shit, my fridge is empty meals. The things that come out of necessity and lack of time. The ingredient list will usually be small and the execution usually simple. Something that is less of a recipe and more of a guideline. If something exceptionally awesome comes out of my Sunday night scramble, it will get posted as a “What I Really Eat” and probably be accompanied with a not-my-best photo.

It happens to the best of us. You get cocky. You take it for granted and you don’t realize that the last peach you ate, that last really great peach, was going to be the last great one of the season. If you had known, you probably would have savored it just a little bit more, made it last just a little bit longer. But alas, that is life.

I get it. You’re at the farmers’ market and you’re like: psh...it’s almost October? Whatever! Look at all these bins of peaches, they have to be good, right? WRONG. It’s now the time to play end of summer peach roulette. Could get a great one! Could get six really terrible ones.

As I bit into a farmers’ market peach the other night (one of half a dozen I had brazenly brought home), I came to the stark realization that summer might really be over, and therefore eating really great peaches along with it. My peach was mealy and chalky and tasteless. I swear I almost cried. Boyfriend looked over at me and said, “what’s wrong?”, as my shoulders fell and I probably looked like someone had just kicked the cat, and then I spit my bite of peach into the garbage with defeat.

There I was though, half a dozen deep in shitty end of summer peaches that nevertheless pained me to leave to the fruit flies. So I fell back on a mantra that has gotten me through many a questionable situation: When in doubt, make compote. 

Would cooking these mealy, lackluster things with a little bit of sugar and some lemon juice and maybe a cinnamon stick save them?

The answer was yes.

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End of Summer Peach Compote

Ingredients:

5 to 6 peaches, pitted, peeled and roughly chopped

¼ cup raw sugar or other sweetener (or to taste)

juice of half a lemon

one whole cinnamon stick (optional)

Directions:

In a small saucepan over medium heat, bring all ingredients to a light boil, stirring as needed. Lower heat to a simmer and let compote cook down, stirring occasionally for about 30 minutes or until fruit has cooked to desired consistency. Remove cinnamon stick to serve.

Compote freezes well, if you, like me, have an obsession with saving some summer for later. I plan to swirl it into yogurt with homemade granola (via dash and bella) for the rest of the week. It would be at home on toast or ice cream or waffles or pancakes as well. Just sayin.

Makes about 1 ½  cups of peach compote.

Sunday Morning Reads

For your Sunday morning cuppa joe

how amazing does this sound? {pure wow}

Lady Crush: Cara Nicoletti {food republic}

Thoughtful thoughts from Alton Brown {ny times}

Soup for Syria {food 52}

New York vocab {buzzfeed}

Feeding Anderson Cooper {vanity fair}

Rene Redzepi to close noma {tasting table}

He’s back and in Cuba {medium}

Gluten-Free Blueberry Scones

As I sit here in a cafe's sidewalk seating section with the warm sun beaming at my back, birds happily chirping, people walking along in shorts and skirts, and my iced coffee dripping with condensation, I can’t help but ignore the fact that apparently it’s the first day of fall. I’m sorry, what?

Per usual the season has flown by too quickly. I spent my last few weeks of summer completely wrapped up in my amazing new job (filed directly under a-great-problem-to-have) and I let this space wander. Now all of a sudden it’s fall and I’ve got a pile of summer recipes that are just too summery to post.

However, this year more than ever I’ve realized that summer “ain’t over ‘til it’s over” (R.I.P Yogi <3) and that means I’ve been bringing home blueberries by the quartful  from the farmers' market and will continue to do so until I can’t anymore. That also translates to --- I have too many blueberries in my fridge to be useful right now. But it also means, I have absolutely ZERO qualms telling you to make these blueberry scones right this second while blueberries are still in their prime.

These scones are perfectly moist and crumbly at the same time a.k.a. perfect scone texture. They’re bursting with berries and are gluten free, but full of flavor. If I had turbinado sugar on hand, I would have sprinkled that on top for a crisp, shattering top, but instead I lightly drizzled them with a glaze that also did the job. Either way, you will get a perfect scone. Along with the perfect way to savor the very last drops of summer.

At the very least, you can take comfort in the fact it’s no longer too hot to turn on the oven, so you really have no excuse.

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Blueberry Scones

adapted from this Smitten Kitchen recipe and this Food52 recipe

Ingredients:

1 cup white rice flour

1 cup brown rice flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

¾ teaspoon salt

1 cup buttermilk, cold

3 tablespoons maple syrup

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla

6 tablespoons very cold unsalted butter, cut into small cubes

1 cup blueberries

1 egg beaten or few tablespoons heavy cream for washing the tops of the scones

Optional topping:

Glaze

2 tablespoons of heavy cream

¼ cup organic powdered sugar

or

2 tablespoons turbinado sugar for sprinkling

Directions:

Heat oven to 425 degrees.

Line a large sheet pan with parchment paper or a silicon mat.

In a large bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder, and salt.

In another large vessel mix together buttermilk, maple syrup, egg, and vanilla.

Next cut the cold butter into the flour mixture and using your fingers mush the butter into the flour. The mixture should become like wet sand. At most the butter should be about the size of peas. Quickly add the blueberries to this mixture and gently toss until they are evenly distributed.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry and with a fork gently fold the wet into the dry. Mix until the batter just comes together.

Dump the dough onto a well floured surface and form gently into a disk and pat down until it’s about one inch thick.

Using a large knife or bench scraper cut the disk into eight equal sized wedges.

Transfer wedges to the prepared sheet pan and space at least 1 inch apart. Brush the tops with beaten egg or heavy cream.

Bake for about 20 to 25 minutes or until the tops are a golden brown.

For the optional glaze: whisk cream and powdered sugar together until a smooth glaze comes together. Let the scones cool just slightly before drizzling glaze over the tops. Or before baking, sprinkle tops with raw turbinado sugar.

Yield: 8 scones

What I Really Eat: Saucy Zucchini & Tomatoes

"What I really eat" are my Iron Chef meals. My pantry meals. Shit, my fridge is empty meals. The things that come out of necessity and lack of time. The ingredient list will usually be small and the execution usually simple. Something that is less of a recipe and more of a guideline. If something exceptionally awesome comes out of my Sunday night scramble, it will get posted as a “What I Really Eat” and probably be accompanied with a not-my-best photo.

A less inspired person might look in their fridge and on their counter and see but a single languishing green squash and some dying baby heirloom tomatoes. But me? I saw dinner.

Summer, at times, forces me to become a partaker of the clean out the fridge meal. And typically I emerge a champion on the other side, with a quick dinner and extras for the freezer to boot.

What started as a cross-my-fingers-hope-this-tastes-good endeavor became one of my favorite summer dinners to date. And my boyfriend deemed it one of the meals that defines my cooking style --- homey, comforting, saucy and made of out nothing. He stirred it into some freshly scrambled eggs as he said this. I opted to plop it into some brown rice, and because “treat yo’ self” --- melted a bit of shredded mozzarella on top.

Over the next couple days, most found its way to the freezer for when I’m sad in January and I want a taste of summer. But just so I could show you what I did, I swirled some into brown rice pasta and then had a very good Saturday lunch.

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What I Really Eat: Saucy Zucchini & Tomatoes

Ingredients:

olive oil

2 cups zucchini, diced

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 cups tomatoes, diced

1 tablespoon tomato paste

1 cup chicken stock

1 teaspoon red pepper flakes

salt & pepper to taste

a touch of butter

¼ cup parmesan, shredded or grated

Directions:

Splash a bit of olive oil into the bottom of a medium sized pan over medium heat. Add diced zucchini to the pan and stir to coat in olive oil. Let the squash cook for about five minutes on its own, then make a well in the middle of the pan and add the garlic. Stir in garlic and let it become fragrant, about 30 seconds, then add the tomatoes. Stir to combine. Add the tomato paste to the pan and stir to coat all the vegetables. Keep stirring the tomato paste into the vegetables and let it begin to brown on the bottom of the pan for a minute or so. Then add the chicken stock and deglaze the pan, using your cooking utensil to scrape up the browned bits on the bottom of the pan. Add the red pepper flakes and season with salt and pepper. Let this mixture simmer until reduced by half and zucchini is nice and soft. Before turning off the heat, stir in a touch of butter and the parmesan cheese to combine. Taste and adjust seasoning if needed.

Stir into all the things.

Makes about 2 cups of saucy vegetables.

Monday Market Haul - 8/17/2015

zucchini, green tomatoes, poblanos, potatoes, blackberries, jalapenos, romaine, strawberries, cucumbers. parsley, tomatoes, blueberries, peaches

I don’t know what it is about August but you’d think I was about to walk the plank. I live as if the month is already over. Lamenting summers end even though it is very clearly still 85 degrees by 10 o’clock every morning. The days are still long and the berries are still flowing. There’s no logical reason for this behavior, I realize.

It probably only makes the month go faster as it is. Can you believe we’re already half way done with it!? I gotta snap out of it, and just live in the now and stop fast forwarding myself to the dreary dredges of winter.

Bring on the suntans, the tomato sandwiches, and the cold brew coffees --- must milk for all it’s worth!

And I’ll begin that by enjoying all these summer hauls since they are numbered. Tomatoes for days, zucchinis and peaches and romaine, oh my! Blueberries have already met their destiny in the form of scones which I will maintain were worth putting the oven on for, even though seriously it was basically 90 degrees outside. Potatoes found their way into my haul because I’ve been dreaming of Herby Potato Salad for days now. The green tomatoes should prepare themselves for a fry dip, because I have some serious eggs benedict plans for them. The peppers are soon to find themselves roasted, skinned, and swirled into greek yogurt for a saucy topping on tacos. Blackberries, because I have just not made enough sauce this season. Oh summer, please don’t end!

Milking, milking, milking!