Tag Archives: veggies

Miso Mustard Green Beans {Recipe ReDux}

If you follow me on Instagram (@danaartinyanRD), you know that I’m kind of obsessed with my CSA from Green Acres. It’s organic, locally grown and always exciting to see what treasures I’ll get in the week’s haul. I especially love all the weird exotic stuff, e.g. nettles (have to wear gloves when you handle them/cook them so that you don’t get a rash), Scarlet turnips, all colors of carrots and Swiss chard — though I guess that’s not so exotic, depending on who you ask.

I have a special place in my heart for vegetables that are “abnormal” in color: yellow cauliflower, purple asparagus, red carrots and so on. Growing up, my mom always made a point to make sure our meals were colorful, which I’ve carried into my own cooking. So the crazy-colored veggies fit in perfectly. Last week, I got these rainbow green beans and was thrilled to use them in this month’s “Fresh From the Garden” Recipe ReDux:

The season of bountiful produce has arrived. Whether your produce comes from the Farmers Market, a CSA share, or a plot of dirt out back, show how you are using fresh July fruits or veggies. And if you have gardening successes – or failures – please share!

rainbow_green_beans

I can thank a former Recipe ReDux for my love for miso paste. It lends a savory flavor complexity that I get really geeked about. A couple months ago, I was cooking with friends and made some roasted green beans with a miso-mustard sauce, so this recipe is a play on that. It might sound simple or maybe even strange, but trust me, you will be DREAMING about these miso mustard green beans for days. You’re welcome.

miso_green_beans

Miso Mustard Green Beans

Try these with chicken, steak or grilled tofu. If you don’t have green beans, I’m pretty sure this sauce would be amazing on whatever you put it on, so not to worry. I especially recommend cruciferous vegetables and sweet potatoes.

Ingredients:

  • 1 lb. green beans (multi-color if available), preferably locally-grown and organic
  • 3-4 large carrots
  • 1 Tbsp. virgin coconut oil
  • 1 Tbsp. miso paste (I used a chickpea-based, soy-free version from Miso Master)
  • 1 Tbsp. grainy mustard
  • 1/4 cup rice wine vinegar
  • 1 Tbsp. olive oil
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 tsp. local honey

Directions:

  1. Wash green beans and carrots well. Cut ends off of green beans and carrots. Julienne carrots (into small matchsticks).
  2. Heat oil in a medium skillet for 2-3 minutes. Add green beans and carrots and saute for 10-12 minutes, or until desired level of char is reached.
  3. While the vegetables are sauteeing, add remaining ingredients to a bowl and whisk until well-combined.
  4. Toss vegetables in miso mixture and serve warm.

miso_mustard_green_beans

Who else is obsessed with their CSA? What’s your favorite CSA treasure thus far?

For more great locally-grown recipes, click the link below!

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Roasted Rainbow Carrots with Coconut Curry Beet Sauce {Recipe ReDux}

Who doesn’t love leftovers? Cook once, eat twice…or three, or four times.

Instead of just reheating the leftovers, though — c’mon, you know that gets boring — why not repurpose them into a completely new and delicious dish?

That’s what we were tasked with doing for this month’s Recipe ReDux:

Two for One

We’re all about cooking once and eating twice. In short, double dinners are better. Show us how you take a favorite recipe already on your blog – and ReDux the leftovers into a new dish. Or, whip up a new healthy recipe and give suggestions on how to make it a second meal. For example, slow cooker pot roast could become shredded beef tacos; or grilled chicken breasts might morph into chicken salad.

roasted_carrots_coconut_curry_beet_sauce

A few weeks ago I made this delicious {vegan} Coconut Curry Beet and Butternut Squash Soup, and I packaged the leftover soup into individual containers and then stuck the containers in my freezer for future soup-eating occasions.

Now, the soup was delicious, don’t get me wrong, but after eating it for a week straight, I was completely beet souped out. And I still had a couple containers left.

What’s a girl to do??

(#firstworldproblems)

roasted_carrots_beet_sauce

MAKE IT INTO A SAUCE! And drizzle that sauce onto the most perfectly-roasted rainbow carrots.

Did you know that carrots started off as PURPLE — not orange? Some think that orange carrots were first bred in the Netherlands to honor King William of Orange, but whatever the real story, the orange color has seemingly stuck since that time.

I like all carrots, but rainbow carrots are just so gorgeous! And the different colors mean that they have a variety of nutrients — beta-carotene (vitamin A) in the orange carrots, anthocyanins (powerful antioxidants) in the purple carrots and Xanthophykks and lutein (linked with cancer prevention and eye health) in the yellow carrots.

Roasting them brings out their natural sweetness and earthiness. I could eat them straight out of the oven (with a little sea salt), but the addition of this beet sauce completely elevates them and will totally impress your dinner guests.

roasted_carrots

Roasted Rainbow Carrots with Coconut Curry Beet Sauce

Serve this delicious veggie dish with grilled chicken or steak — or keep things vegan with marinated/roasted tofu. 

Ingredients:

  • 2 lbs. carrots, preferably organic rainbow carrots
  • 1 Tbsp. coconut oil, melted
  • 3/4 cup leftover Coconut Curry Beet and Butternut Squash Soup
  • 1 Tbsp. lime zest (from organic limes)
  • 1/2 cup toasted pecan pieces
  • 1/4 tsp. smoked sea salt (regular, non-smoked sea salt would also work)

Directions:

  1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Wash/scrub carrots and cut the ends off. Lay carrots on a baking sheet and drizzle with melted coconut oil. Toss the carrots a few times to evenly coat them with oil.
  2. Roast carrots for 30-40 minutes, or until tender. Transfer the carrots to your serving platter.roasted_coconut_carrotsroasted_rainbow_carrots
  3. Using a spoon, drizzle carrots with leftover beet soup, then sprinkle with lime zest and pecans.

roasted_carrots_coconut_curry_beet_sauce

Check out the link below for infinite leftover meal ideas from the members of Recipe ReDux. Enjoy!

Quick and Easy Recipe: Warm Green Bean, Pomegranate and Sweet Potato Salad {Sponsored Recipe ReDux}

I received free samples of Libby’s new Vegetable Pouches mentioned in this post. By posting this recipe I am entering a recipe contest sponsored by Libby’s and am eligible to win prizes associated with the contest. I was not compensated for my time.

With the cooler weather, I’m craving all kinds of fall- and Thanksgiving-themed foods. But who has the time to cook all the squash, potatoes, beans and turkey? Not this girl.

I’m all about the quick, simple meal using quality ingredients — and culinary shortcuts — to yield tasty, good-for-you dishes. So when the folks at Libby’s Fruits & Vegetables challenged us to create delicious appetizers, soups, salads or side dishes in 10 minutes or less using Libby’s Vegetable Pouches as the hero ingredient, I was ready to get cooking.

warm_thanksgiving_salad

Libby’s Vegetable Pouches are pretty snazzy little things. They’re microwaveable (DONE IN ONE MINUTE!), which means fewer dishes for moi to clean (this whole not having a dishwasher thing is really getting old). Libby’s is the first to offer ready-to-heat vegetables in pouches. I don’t have to feel bad about throwing the package away, either — I’m a hippie like that — because pouches use 75% less energy annnddd waste is easily compressed, reducing space in home disposal and landfills. An added bonus is that the pouches are made with BPA non-intent materials.

Tip: the pouches will be available nation-wide come the new year and can currently be found in select Walmart stores.

green_bean_pomegranate_sweet_potato

But none of the aforementioned perks matter if it’s not tasty, right? Lucky for me (and you all), Libby’s Vegetable Pouches are delicious and come in five popular varieties – sliced carrots, sweet peas, cut green beans, mixed vegetables and sweet corn.

I chose the cut green bean variety as the star of my warm green bean, pomegranate and sweet potato salad.warm_thanksgiving_vegetable_salad

This salad is a GAME ˆ CHANGER. It would be a welcome addition to any Thanksgiving table and it takes LESS THAN TEN MINUTES TO MAKE! Not to mention it is no-bake (a microwave is the only cooking vessel you need), since oven space is quite precious on Thanksgiving. Plus, with “exotic” sounding ingredients like pomegranate, rosemary and cinnamon pecans, you’ll appear to be the best, most knowledgable chef around.

Recipe: Warm Green Bean, Pomegranate and Sweet Potato Salad

Enjoy this while it’s still warm, or refrigerate and eat cold. This would be delicious served alongside chicken or turkey — or eat it by itself! It’s really that good. If you don’t have pomegranates around, you can swap them for dried cranberries.

Ingredients:

  • 1 medium sweet potato
  • 1 pouch Libby’s Cut Green Beans
  • 1 cup pomegranate arils (seeds), or the seeds from one medium pomegranate (use the pre-seeded version to save time — I find them frozen at Costco or fresh at Trader Joe’s)
  • 1/2 cup raw pecans
  • 1 tsp. butter, preferably grass-fed
  • 1/4 tsp. cinnamon
  • 1/4 cup parmesan cheese
  • 1 1/2 Tbsp. olive oil
  • 1 1/2 Tbsp. balsamic vinegar
  • 1 Tbsp. honey (look for an ethically harvested variety — find out more about the honey/bee issue here)
  • 1 tsp. dried rosemary
  • 1/4 tsp. salt
  • 1/4 tsp. black pepper

ingredients_warm_green_bean_salad

Directions:

  1. Poke holes in sweet potato using a fork. Microwave sweet potato for 2-3 minutes. Flip sweet potato over and microwave for an additional 2-3 minutes, or until it feels soft.
  2. While the sweet potato cooking, melt butter in a small skillet, add pecans and cinnamon and stir for 2-3 minutes to toast.
  3. Prepare pomegranate. The best way to do this is to roll the pomegranate on the counter before cutting it — you should feel and hear the seeds loosening up. Then, inside a metal or glass bowl (the juice could stain a plastic bowl) cut the pomegranate into quarters and dig out the seeds. Or, use pre-prepared pomegranate seeds to save some time.
  4. When sweet potato is done in the microwave, swap it out for the Libby’s Cut Green Bean Pouch and cook according to package instructions.
  5. While the green beans are cooking, cut the sweet potato into small cubes.
  6. Drain heated green beans and add to a large bowl along with remaining ingredients (including toasted pecans). Toss and serve warm.

green_bean_pomegranate_sweet_potato_salad

Voila! Enjoy this super-easy, amazingly delicious salad!

 

Eggplant Chips with Roasted Garlic Pumpkin Hummus {Recipe ReDux}

My Grandma used to make the most delicious roasted eggplant with yogurt sauce. Velvety smooth, garlicky, cooked for hours…

The fact that I could never duplicate that dish could be attributed to many things — I didn’t use enough oil, I went too light on the garlic, I used the wrong type of yogurt for the sauce — but when it all boils down, no one can do it better than Grandma. Am I right?

While I love my Grandma’s eggplant dish, I myself could never really get eggplant right. It would turn out soggy or tasteless or morph into a weird texture when cooked. I loathe eggplant because I am a perfectionist and, well, the things I created up until now were far from perfection.

I’m always up for a challenge, though, so for this month’s Recipe ReDux theme of dehydrated food (either doing the dehydrating yourself or incorporating dehydrated ingredients into a dish), I figured it was time to meet my culinary nemesis.

Eggplant, you ain’t got nothing on me. Doesn’t hold a candle to Grandma’s Eggplant, but it’s pretty damn delicious.

eggplant_chips_pumpkin_hummus

It turns out eggplant chips aren’t so difficult. And you don’t even need a fancy dehyrator. Nope, these were dehydrated right in our old crappy oven.

What really makes these eggplant chips, though, is that dreamy pumpkin hummus made with roasted garlic.

peeled_garlic

Do you all know the trick to peeling a lot of garlic very quickly?

Peel the outside layers off of the bulb, plop the whole thing in a container with a lid, and shake it like a Polaroid picture. Like, really shake it. Your muscles should be sore, no joke. I don’t know how, but this assault to the garlic magically gets all of the peels off while keeping each clove intact.

This is a great party trick, depending on the type of party.

So once you’ve magically peeled your garlic, it’s ready to be roasted on the stove. Just place it in a small saucepan, pour in enough olive oil to cover the cloves fully, and heat the oil/garlic until it starts to simmer. Then remove from heat and let cool.

You now have both roasted garlic AND garlic-infused olive oil! Now what to do with all of this deliciousness?

pumpkin_hummus

Hummus, obviously! And since it feels like fall in Chicago, PUMPKIN hummus. The roasted garlic and garlic oil also make an excellent pesto sauce, FYI.

Recipe: Eggplant Chips with Roasted Garlic Pumpkin Hummus

You can eat these together or separately, they are both delicious in their own right. I can’t wait to try the eggplant chips with a yogurt sauce and the hummus with, lets be honest, everything. Man I love hummus.

Ingredients

Eggplant Chips:

  • 1 medium eggplant, sliced into very thin rounds (1/8″ or 1/16″). Use a mandolin if you have one.
  • Cooking spray
  • Salt

Pumpkin Hummus

  • 2 (16 oz) cans low sodium chick peas, drained and rinsed
  • 1 can pumpkin, or 2 cups roasted/pureed pumpkin
  • 1/4 cup garlic olive oil (see above for how to make your own)
  • 4-6 cloves roasted garlic (also see above)
  • 1/4 cup water
  • 2 Tbsp. tahini or nut butter, such as almond or cashew butter
  • 2 Tbsp. local honey
  • 1 Tbsp. dried rosemary
  • 1 Tbsp. salt
  • 1/2 Tbsp. cumin
  • 1/2 Tbsp. red pepper flakes
  • 1 tsp. smoked paprika
  • 1 tsp. black pepper
  • 1 tsp. cinnamon

sliced_eggplant

Directions

Eggplant Chips:

  1. Preheat oven to 200 degrees.
  2. Place metal cooling racks on top of baking sheets (I needed two in order to fit all of the eggplant). The cooling racks allow air to circulate around the whole eggplant chip, helping it to dehydrate more effectively.
  3. Spray the cooking rack with cooking spray. Salt one side of the eggplant piece, then lay salted side down on the rack. Do this with all of the eggplant rounds, then spray the tops of the eggplant with cooking spray and sprinkle salt over the eggplant (so that both sides are salted). This will help draw moisture out during the dehydrating process.
  4. Place baking sheets in oven and bake for 30 minutes. Rotate pans then bake for another 30 minutes. Flip the chips and then bake for another 15-30 minutes, or until the eggplant is slightly browned and crispy.

Pumpkin Hummus:

  1. Place all ingredients in a large food processor and process until desired consistency.
  2. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes before serving. Drizzle with honey and olive oil for serving.

eggplant_chips_hummus

{side note: how frickin’ adorable is the green polka dot mini casserole dish in the picture?! Expect a fruit crumble or vegetable bake at some point in the very near future. Thank you, World Market.}

For more amazing dehydrated recipes from the talented Recipe ReDuxers, follow the link below (click on the little blue guy).