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Showing posts from March, 2012

Seductive Kale Salad ♥

Today's healthy vegetable recipe: I've fallen for the slow seduction of quick-cooked kale. Low carb. Weight Watchers zero points. Not just vegan, " Vegan Done Real ". Is kale the boy-next-door who just might become the love of your life, if you only paid attention? Like that boy, kale is always there, steady and patient. Like most greens, it's especially obvious during the late months of winter, during the weeks and even months when we so long for fresh foods, straight from the earth. But thanks to the miracle of global food distribution, kale is available and inexpensive year-round. (Miracle? Yes, really. Just think what we'd be eating, week in, week out, without it.) But kale is also the one who gets invited to the party at the very last minute. It's often an after-thought, just something to throw into a soup or a stew at the end of cooking for texture and color contrast, rarely raised onto a deserved pedestal of adoration. Well, lemme tell you. Kal

Beer-Soaked Crispy Baked Fries ♥

For crispy baked French 'fries', here's a quick trick, soak the fries in beer first! Crispy fries are the holy grail of potatoes – steamy hot and golden brown, crispy on the outside and tender in the middle. Starting on Day 325 in 2006 (don't bother, but there you go), I've tried a half dozen recipes, all disappointing. And when you limit your carbs, on those rare occasions when you choose to eat potatoes, they'd darn-better be worth eating! The recipe was inspired by St. Louis' "Beer Guy" aka Evan Benn of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The headline read, "Beer-soaked 'fries' are baked to crispy perfection". This sounded ever-so-promising!

No-Cream Creamy Cauliflower Soup ♥

Today's simple cauliflower soup recipe: If you have just three ingredients, a head of cauliflower, an onion and olive oil, you can make this soup! It turns out so creamy, even though it's made without cream, thanks to an unusual slightly-fussy-but-not-difficult technique to draw out flavor and creaminess. Made with water, it's a delicious vegan soup for everyone. Made with chicken stock ( Note to Vegetarians ), it's a low-calorie satisfying, substantial supper. Low carb. Weight Watchers 1 or 2 points. Something I've learned about restaurant chefs: many of them cook the same few dishes, again and again, over and over. Sheer repetition means "nailing" the muscle memory of technique and the sensory cues of color, smell, texture, touch. If practice makes perfect, there's a reason that restaurant chefs are good at what they do. We home cooks, if we make the one same thing once a week, it's a lot, especially if we are curious cooks who for fun are