Couscous with Sautéed Ramps and Tomato

By Ashley
May 24, 2013
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I made some Quick Pickled Ramps a few days ago, and was left with the green leaves to use elsewhere. I needed to make a side dish to go with the Lemon Garlic Tilapia that I made tonight, so I sautéed them and cooked them with couscous. It turned out pretty good, but I think next time, I’ll use vegetable or chicken stock instead of water to give it a little extra flavor. Also, note that not all couscous has the same ratio 1:1 liquid ratio, so check the package directions to make sure you have adequate cooking liquid.

Couscous with Sautéed Ramps and Tomato
Ashley Covelli

1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
1 bunch ramp leaves, coarsely chopped
1 roma tomato, coarsely chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
1 1/2 cups water
1 1/2 cups couscous
radishes, thinly sliced, for garnish

Heat oil in a medium saucepan. Sauté ramps, tomato and garlic for a few minutes, until the tomato begins to melt down a bit. Add water, crank the heat up to high and bring to a simmer. Stir in couscous, cover and remove from heat. Let sit 5 minutes (or until the liquid is absorbed) and fluff with a fork. Serve, garnishing with radish slices, if desired.

Big Flavors Rating: 3 Stars

Lemon Garlic Tilapia

By Ashley
May 24, 2013
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Lemon Garlic Tilapia

This was a quick and easy recipe that packed a lot of flavor, perfect for a rainy Friday evening. I keep a bag of tilapia fillets in the freezer, so this is something that I could throw together at any time. I really liked the tanginess of the lemon on the fish, and it was perfectly tender. It was a big hit with my husband and toddler! I served this with Couscous with Sautéed Ramps and Tomato.

Lemon Garlic Tilapia

Lemon Garlic Tilapia
Allrecipes – Eireann

“This is a delicious and healthy recipe that takes no time at all to make. You can bake it or even grill it. Tastes great either way!”

Makes 4 Servings
PREP: 10 mins
COOK: 30 mins
READY IN: 40 mins

4 tilapia fillets
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 tablespoon butter, melted
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
1 teaspoon dried parsley flakes
pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Spray a baking dish with non-stick cooking spray.

Rinse tilapia fillets under cool water, and pat dry with paper towels.

Place fillets in baking dish. Pour lemon juice over fillets, then drizzle butter on top. Sprinkle with garlic, parsley, and pepper.

Bake in preheated oven until the fish is white and flakes when pulled apart with a fork, about 30 minutes.

Big Flavors Rating: 4 Stars

Memorial Day Grilling Roundup

By Ashley
May 24, 2013
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First of all, thank you to all the servicemen and women out there. I have family and friends in many branches of the military, and I know it’s an insanely demanding way of life. We appreciate you! Memorial Day marks the start of grilling season for a lot of people. Hopefully the weather will be nice, and we can all fire up the grill, kick back, relax and spend time with our friends and family. Here is a roundup of some of our favorite things to grill. How are you spending your Memorial Day?

Memorial Day Grilling Roundup

1. Korean BBQ Party: Sokalbi Gui (Barbecued Beef Short Ribs)

2. Dill Chicken Paillards with Tomato-Dill Relish

3. Parchment Grilled Salmon with Lemon and Dill

4. Grilled Cheese and Tomato Stacks

5. Herbed Beef and Rice-Noodle Salad

6. Root Beer-Can Chicken

Quick Pickled Ramps

By Ashley
May 23, 2013
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I found some ramps at the Farmers’ Market on Saturday, and I wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted to do with them. I thought pickling might be a fun route to go with them. This recipe for Quick Pickled Ramps stood out to me. This way, I could enjoy the ramps for more than just one time – because those bad boys are expensive! The bunch of ramps I got only had 10, so I cut the recipe in half. They smelled wonderful while I was making them (although cooking large amounts of vinegar is always a surefire way to clear out your sinuses!) and I’m looking forward to trying them out. Right now, they’re sitting in the fridge waiting for me to QC them. I’ll update the post with a rating after we dig in. I’m definitely going to try out making a salad dressing with the pickling liquid like the author recommends – yum!

Quick Pickled Ramps

Quick Pickled Ramps
A Stack of Dishes

A simple quick pickling recipe that only takes a day or marinating before you can enjoy them. It’s a good recipe for other tender vegetables too. Makes 2-3 jars of pickles.

2 bunches of ramps~ about 40 stems
2 cups of white wine vinegar
2/3 cups sugar
1 Tablespoon black peppercorns
1 Tablespoons juniper berries
1 teaspoon salt
Sterilized jars

Wash the ramps and trim the root ends and the first filmy layer from the bulb.

Trim the bulb ends off up to where the leaf starts. Save the greens for another dish.

Warm the vinegar, sugar, spices and salt in a saucepan and bring to the boil. Turn off and allow the brine to steep until cool, about 20 minutes.

Reheat the brine to a simmer. Blanch the ramps in the hot brine for about 30 seconds. They will turn a bright beautiful pink color. Remove the ramps and divide between your jars- keeping them covered.

Allow the brine to cool again for 10-15 minutes, then pour the brine over the ramps and cover.

That’s it- now just let them stew for a day or two before you dig in.

Notes: These are refrigerator pickles and are not meant to be “put up” in the traditional sense. Please keep them cold until ready to eat them.
The brine is also a wonderous thing that is wonderful as the acid in a salad dressing or other recipes.

Strawberry Rhubarb Freezer Pie

By Ashley
May 23, 2013
1 Comment

Oh my goodness. I found the coolest thing to do with some of the recent batch of rhubarb that I picked up from the Farmers’ Market. When I saw this post over at Vintage Mixer, I was floored. Making a pie filling now to be enjoyed at some point in the future when I need a dessert fix? Sign. Me. Up. So I made the filling this afternoon and it’s sitting in my freezer right now. I may have licked the spatula, you know, for purely scientific purposes, and it tasted great! I hope I’ll be up for baking the gingersnap crust when I end up making this pie, but I could always just thaw it out and pour it into a pre-made pie crust, too. Easy as (freezer) pie. I’ll be sure to report back with my findings and an official rating…

Strawberry Rhubarb Freezer Pie

Strawberry Rhubarb Freezer Pie
Vintage Mixer

Yield: 1 Pie

for the pie filling (double or triple if you want to freeze multiple pies)
4 cups strawberries, sliced and dived in half
2 cups rhubarb, sliced
1 cup sugar
2 tablespoons cornstarch
juice from 1/2 lemon (2 tablespoons)
1 teaspoon vanilla bean extract (optional)
for the crust:
5-6 tablespoons unsalted butter or coconut oil, melted, plus additional for greasing pie plate
1 cup finely crushed gingersnap cookies (5 oz)
1/2 cup finely chopped pecans (2 oz)
1/8 teaspoon salt

Cook 2 cups of the strawberries and 2 cups of the rhubarb over medium heat for about 10 minutes or until they start to break down. Stir occasionally. Using a potato masher or fork, mash the fruit to break it up more. Add sugar, cornstarch and lemon juice and cook for about 3 minutes over medium high heat until mixture thickens.

Remove from heat and let cool.

Add remaining 2 cups sliced strawberries and stir in 1 teaspoon vanilla bean extract or beans from 1 vanilla bean pod.
Transfer to a freezer safe ziplock back and freeze for a rainy spring day.

To make the crust: Put oven rack in middle position and preheat oven to 350°F. Grease pie dish. Toss together all crust ingredients in a bowl with a fork until crumbs are moistened, or use a food processor to combine. Press the crust mixture evenly over bottom and up side of pie plate. Bake crust 6 minutes, then cool on a rack.
constructing the pie

Top cooled crust with defrosted strawberry rhubarb mixture. Chill pie until ready to serve. Before serving top with whipped cream.

Notes: the recipe is for one freezer bag pie but you may double the recipe so that you have two pies waiting for a perfect pie day.

Soy-Ginger Marinated Chicken Stir-Fry

By Ashley
May 23, 2013
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I came up with this marinade as a way to use up some of the chicken that I had in the freezer. It used ingredients that I almost always have on hand. I used up some of the veggies that I had in the house to bulk it up a bit and served it over forbidden rice that I cooked in the rice cooker. It had a lot of flavor, and we really liked it, but I definitely unintentionally overcooked it. The color of the peas made me sad, and the chicken was a little dried out. Dang! Ah well, it was good, but definitely not a stand-out in this house.

Soy-Ginger Marinated Chicken Stir-Fry

Soy-Ginger Marinated Chicken Stir-Fry
Ashley Covelli

2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into bite-sized pieces
4 tablespoons low-sodium soy sauce*
1 teaspoon sesame oil
2 cloves garlic, minced, divided
1 teaspoon ginger, grated
1 tablespoon honey
pinch of red pepper flakes
2 tablespoons rice vinegar
1 tablespoon peanut oil
1 small onion, chopped
8 ounces snow peas
8 ounce can sliced water chestnuts, drained
cilantro, chopped, for garnish
dry-roasted peanuts, chopped, for garnish
lime wedges, for garnish

Whisk soy sauce, sesame oil, 1 clove of garlic, ginger, honey, red pepper flakes and rice vinegar in a medium bowl. Add chicken pieces and toss to coat. Cover and refrigerate for 4 hours.

Heat peanut oil in a large, non-stick skillet. Add reserved clove of garlic and onion and sauté for a few minutes, until beginning to soften. Add the chicken with the marinade and cook over medium-high heat, stirring, until the chicken is almost cooked through. Add snow peas and water chestnuts and sauté until chicken is done. Serve over rice, garnishing with cilantro, peanuts and lime.

*Optional: use Gluten Free

Big Flavors Rating: 3 Stars

Raw Vegan Pad Thai

By Ashley
May 22, 2013
1 Comment

Some friends of ours came over to babysit while Dino and I went out to dinner to celebrate our anniversary. They’re newly vegan, and I wanted to make some dinner for them to enjoy while watching our rambunctious toddler. I love pad Thai, but I always figured that fish sauce was key to making it great. I also would have never thought to make it raw! So when I saw that combination, I knew it would be a fun one to try out. And this recipe says it tastes better after it sits in the fridge overnight. Perfect! I decided to make it the day before, and then QC some for lunch before they came over. Win/win! It was really tasty, but I think it tasted more like a satay than a pad Thai. The recipe author says that this recipe is easy, which I only agree with to an extent, because making the veggie noodles can be a hassle, so I’m not categorizing it that way for the purposes of this site. Also, if you want this to be raw, you need to make sure to use raw almond butter, tahini and tamari. The stuff I used wasn’t. Anyway, it was a big hit for dinner, and I found a new, vegan, raw and GF friendly recipe to add to my repertoire.

Raw Vegan Pad Thai

Raw Pad Thai
Vegangela

This easy raw vegan dish uses zucchini and carrots for the “noodles”

Total time: 15 minutes

Serves: 2-3

2 medium zucchini
2 large carrots
2 green onions, chopped
1 cup shredded purple cabbage
1 cup cauliflower florets
1 cup mung bean sprouts or radish sprouts (spicy) (optional)
½ cup crushed peanuts (optional)
½ cup chopped fresh coriander/cilantro (optional)

Sauce
¼ cup tahini
¼ cup almond butter (or cashew butter, or a blend of both)
2 tbsp lime or lemon juice
¼ cup tamari (select a wheat free version for gluten-free diets)
2 tbsp agave (or maple syrup)
½ tsp garlic, minced
1 tsp ginger root, grated

Instructions
Use a spiralizer (or mandolin or vegetable peeler) to create noodles from the carrot and zucchini. Place them in a large mixing bowl and top with the other vegetables.

Whisk sauce ingredients in a bowl. The sauce will be thick, but will thin out after it’s mixed with the vegetables.

Pour the sauce over the vegetables and toss. Best after 1 day in the fridge.

Big Flavors Rating: 4 Stars

Freeze Your Veggie Scraps to Make Stock in the Slow Cooker!

By Ashley
May 22, 2013
1 Comment

Veggie Scraps

I’ve been saving bits of the veggies that I’ve been using over the last few months in a bag in the freezer (aptly dubbed “Stock Bits!”) so that I could cut down on waste and also make something tasty out of food scraps. The bag has been bursting at the seams for quite some time now, so I finally got out the slow cooker and dug the bag out of the freezer.

Stock Bits

My bag contained a lot of veggie bits, including onion tips and tops (I didn’t save the rest of the peels with them, because I use so many onions in the kitchen that it would basically just be onion stock – ha!), a few bell pepper stems and cores, some kale stems, carrot ends and peels, a few pieces of tomato stem (technically a fruit, but I thought it would work here), celery leaves and stems, shallot tips and tops, and some zucchini ends.

Slow Cooker Veggie Stock

This process is super simple – I just filled my slow cooker with the contents of the bag (plus a little bit more that I had left from the Raw Carrot Avocado Soup that I made earlier today), filled it with water (it took around 10 cups to fill my slow cooker up to about 2 inches under the top), added a little bit of seasoning (I chose 2 dried bay leaves, 6 black peppercorns, 1/2 teaspoon mustard seeds and 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt). I set it on low and let it cook for 5 hours.

Slow Cooker Veggie Stock

When it was done, I was left with a beautiful, amber colored stock. I strained out the solids and poured the stock into some containers, let it cool down, and popped it into the freezer. Once they’re completely frozen, I’ll put the slabs of stock into a freezer bag for later use. It’s so nice to have this on hand, and it really was pretty low maintenance! Plus, I didn’t have to have a stock pot on the stovetop all day, heating up my kitchen.

Slow Cooker Veggie Stock

Just a note: I found a good article over on The Kitchn about stock vs. broth. What I’ve made here is very lightly seasoned, so technically, it may be broth… but it’s definitely not seasoned enough to be something you’d want to eat without some adjustments. So… I’m going to stick with calling it stock.

Slow Cooker Brown Sugar and Balsamic Glazed Pork Loin

By Ashley
May 21, 2013
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A lot of people think that slow cookers are a wintertime luxury. As someone who doesn’t really have air conditioning that reaches the kitchen, I think that slow cookers are perfect for summertime cooking! You can have a nice, hot meal without heating up your kitchen, usually with minimal effort. I came across this recipe on a blog with one of the funniest names I’ve ever heard and knew I wanted to give it a try. It took very little effort to get it going this morning, and before it finished, I had to make a glaze and baste it a few times. Probably not a recipe I would have chosen back when I was working full-time, but not a big deal now that I work part-time from home. Anyway, this was wonderful! I hadn’t previously considered glazing something that was cooking in the slow cooker, but it worked beautifully. The extra glaze was very tasty, and it went well with the pork, which was nice and tender. I served this with an Avocado Mango Lime Chickpea Salad and a green salad, which made dinner a breeze!

Slow Cooker Brown Sugar and Balsamic Glazed Pork Loin

Brown Sugar and Balsamic Glazed Pork Loin
C+C Marriage Factory

Ingredients:
1 (2 pound) boneless pork tenderloin (or regular pork loin)
1 teaspoon ground sage
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 clove garlic, crushed
1/2 cup water

Glaze
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
1/2 cup water
2 tablespoons soy sauce

Directions:
Combine sage, salt, pepper and garlic. Rub over roast. Place in slow cooker with 1/2 cup water. Cook on low for 6-8 hours. About 1 hour before roast is done, combine ingredients for glaze in small sauce pan. Heat and stir until mixture thickens. Brush roast with glaze 2 or 3 times during the last hour of cooking. Serve with remaining glaze on the side.

Servings: 6-8

Big Flavors Rating: 4 Stars

Avocado Mango Lime Chickpea Salad

By Ashley
May 21, 2013
2 Comments

Avocados and mangoes have been on sale at the store lately, and they’ve been beautifully ripe. This is a good thing, but it also means that I need to use up what I buy so they don’t get overripe. I had a Brown Sugar and Balsamic Glazed Pork Loin cooking in the slow cooker all day, and I wanted to make an easy side dish to go with it. I threw this salad together, and oh… my… goodness. It was fantastic! It’s super simple to put together, and if you’re working with really ripe fruit, it just melts in your mouth. This was fantastic, and I’ll definitely be making it again!

Avocado Mango Lime Chickpea Salad

Avocado Mango Lime Chickpea Salad
Ashley Covelli

1 lime, zested and juiced
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 avocado, peeled, pitted and diced
2 mangoes, peeled, pitted and diced
1 can chickpeas, rinsed and drained
2 tablespoons cilantro, chopped
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

Whisk lime zest and juice with oil in a large bowl. Add avocado, mangoes, chickpeas and cilantro. Season to taste with salt and pepper and toss gently to combine. Serve and enjoy!

Big Flavors Rating: 5 Stars