Dinner Tonight

Month: June 2012

Red Lentil Dal with Asparagus with Perfect Roasted Potatoes

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This August, I’ll be coming up on the 1-year benchmark for posting regularly on this blog. I actually started the blog a year earlier, in 2010, but it took awhile to find my rhythm and figure out what I actually wanted this space to be. It took another three months or so to figure out what good photos and lighting could do for food shots. Remember the tomato cobbler? It’s probably one of the best dishes I’ve made in the past year, but back in September, I was still surmounting the steep learning curve of DSLR and coming to grips with the fact that Photoshop can’t transform harsh 70-watt overhead lighting into soft natural light. Now, all of my shots are done in natural day light with some thought to food styling and composition. I still have a lot to learn, but I’ve made some good progress.

And then something like this red lentil dal comes along which absolutely resists having a good photograph taken. From any angle, it still looks like what it is: Red lentils cooked to bursting with some wiggly red onions and asparagus. The photos don’t help brag about the flavor, how the red lentils cook down to what turns out to be an excellent sauce for the asparagus and onions and how the Indian spice blend infuses the onions to perfection.

Not everything can be as beautiful as strawberries or melted, oozy cheese.

So without the help of photos, how can I convince you that you absolutely must make this recipe? That in the course of a few weeks, this dish has made many appearances on our dinner table, and it’s been a delight each time?

How about this: Once you buy the few spices needed which may not already be in your spice rack, this is one the absolute cheapest dinners you can cobble together, and you can do it again and again without needing to hit the grocery store each time.

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Mint-infused Ricotta Cheesecake Bites with Macerated Strawberries

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Today marks Recipe Redux’s first birthday, and to celebrate, we’re all making small bite desserts. Recipe Redux was started by a group of dietitians, and each month a group of healthy food bloggers post the recipes they’ve created, all stemming from a single monthly challenge.

Those of you who know me in real life likely know that dessert isn’t my favorite course, and I’m much more likely to spend my time in the kitchen on something savory and satisfying instead of sweet and luxurious. So coming up with a tasty dessert bite was a bit of a challenge. Given my culinary proclivities, it’s no surprise that what I ended up with is a small bite leaning heavily on cheese and fruit. The idea here is pretty simple, and it’s a good party appetizer because so many of the elements can be made individually and made ahead of time. A classic shortbread dough is shaped into a tiny tart shell, then filled with ricotta cheese and macerated strawberries (though practically any fruit would do just as well).

But the absolute genius part of this recipe is what I came up with for the ricotta cheese: it’s homemade and infused with mint. It’s delicious, and I’m so excited to share it here! I’ve been making homemade ricotta for a few years, and it isn’t all that challenging. The only special equipment you need is cheesecloth, which can be bought at a grocery store or hardware store for around $2-3. One purchase will get you through several rounds of cheese making. After that, it’s as easy as boiling water (or milk, in this case), and draining. The brilliance of this particular recipe is that I added a good handful of mint leaves to the milk before I brought it to a boil, and the flavors and scent of the mint leaves perfume the final product. Strawberries and mint go so well together; this one simple addition helps elevate the entire dessert.

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Open-faced Caramelized Onion and Fontina Grilled Cheese Sandwich

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It’s almost summer in Boston, but sometimes it doesn’t quite feel like it. Luckily, we’re seeing the seasons change with fresh summer produce turning up in the grocery stores, and the farmer’s markets have opened across the city. Sometimes it’s warm enough to grab a drink outside after work. But as I’m sitting here writing, it’s barely over 60 degrees outside, and I need to wear long sleeves to stay warm with the windows open.

About a week or so ago, it was a chilly, rainy day with the temperature down into the 50s. I’ve started a more ambitious running routine since my semester ended in May, and my good friend Jodi introduced me to running on the Esplanade along the Charles River. I do either a 4 or 5 mile loop most days of the week, and I’d been doing such a good job sticking to my routine that I didn’t want to let the rain and the chill be what broke my good streak. So I wore a fleece pullover and hit the road, got wet, but wound up back home after an otherwise normal run. I spent the rest of the day feeling like the damp had seeped into my bones and couldn’t get quite warm enough no matter what I did.

And so this sandwich was born: Standing by the stove slow-cooking some onions for about an hour and roasting tomatoes for soup would be the only thing to break the chill.

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