Recipes #12-16

I've been busy trying to catch up with recipes here on the old farm, I mean, suburban house. One of the recipes I'd been meaning to try was from Appetite for Reduction by Isa Chandra Moskowitz, a chickpea and quinoa salad with balsamic vinaigrette. Since it involves a recipe for salad and one for dressing it counts as two recipes. Score! I followed with two more soups and one pasta from Donna Klein's Italian Vegan Kitchen.

Let's start with the salad. My husband loved it, and the flavorful dressing, which prompted me to try and work through my fear of food processors. Making the salad was painless, and I like the concept, but in practice, the salad was far too savory for me. I haven't been a salad person for very long. In fact, it's been about 2 years that I've been eating salad, and so far for me to like them they need some sort of fruit component. I've liked apple pie salad (lettuce with an apple sauce with cinnamon), strawberry and spinach salad, apple and spring mix with a hazelnut or walnut or citrus vinaigrette. Those choices have expanded the foods I've eaten considerably, but I'm still not at a place where I can enjoy such a savory salad. I'm disappointed, but I can live with it. C for me, A for the Baker.

The next two soups were far too average as well. The split pea with tomato and spinach was all right, but it had a sweet tinge to it I didn't find appealing. The no-fat added minestrone had its heart in the right place, but since the veggies weren't sauteed in even a little oil, the recipe amounted to a boiled veggie soup. Neither of the soups were bad, both were good enough for me to finish. However, I consider myself a bit of a soup afficianado, and to make it into my soup rotation, a soup really has to have something special. I'm considering re-making the minestrone with a tablespoon of olive oil, and sauteeing the mirepoix first. It's likely that that might make all the difference. Split pea gets a C, minestrone gets a B-.

The next recipe is a keeper, if a bit saucy. I made spaghetti with rosemary and red wine red sauce. The sauce is pretty darn good, though with the 12 oz of pasta, overpowered the noodles a touch. If I make it again, I think I would even out the ratio of sauce to noodles a bit by adding the full pound of noodles. I also think an extra clove or two of garlic wouldn't hurt... no surprise there, huh?

My plan had been to make a fig compote for desert tonight and bring my count up to 17, but between the soup and the pasta for dinner (not to mention the bread and sunflower seeds I ate while waiting for dinner)and I found I was just too full to eat any more. Perhaps you'll see the fig compote here tomorrow. Until then, happy cooking!