Turkish-Style Oven-Braised Winter Vegetables (p. 343)

This is a really simple recipe to throw together, if you're the kind of person who's in to braised veggies. I'm not, really, but with enough salt and pepper pretty much anything can be good.

The only stove-top cooking needed is for the beans -- I had soaked mine over night and then cooked them in water and olive oil for about an hour, until they were nice and tender.

For the rest of the veggies, you can use pretty much whatever you have on hand. I chopped up carrots, celery, a turnip and a potato and put them in an oven-proof dish with some salt, pepper, lemon juice, and olive oil.

Pour in some boiling water and cook in the oven until the veggies are all cooked, about half an hour.

Sprinkle with chopped scallions and mix in the cooked beans.

We ate this at room temperature (which the cookbook recommends), and it was okay. I had leftovers for lunch today that I heated up and I liked that quite a bit more. Cold beans just don't do it for me.  Luckily, a perfectly cooked steak with garlic-butter sauce filled us right up.

white beans -- $2.49

celery -- $3.99

carrots --$1.29

potato -- $.69

turnip -- $1.23

scallions -- $.99

(with plenty of beans, celery, and carrots leftover)

Total Cost of Turkish-Style Oven-Braised Winter Vegetables: $10.68

($2.14 per serving)

Fassolada (p. 136) and Moroccan Carrot Salad with Orange and Lemon Juice (p. 83)

Fassolada is Greek White Bean Soup and it's a great hearty soup that's pretty easy to make.

In a stock pot, cover white beans (that have been allowed to soak overnight) with water. Bring to a boil and then simmer, covered, for about a half an hour.

Meanwhile, sauté onions, carrots, and celery in olive oil. Once they have softened, add in diced green peppers.

Add this combo, along with tomato paste, into the pot with the beans and cook until the beans are done, about another half hour. Add in lemon juice and salt and pepper and serve.

Matt and I both really liked this. It's kind of like meatless chili and was definitely filling enough to be dinner. And we liked dunking crusty bread into the juices, too.

Since I was already buying carrots for the soup, I also made a Moroccan Carrot Salad with Orange and Lemon Juice. The carrots are supposed to be grated on the smallest holes of the grater but my smallest holes are super small, so it basically just gave me carrot juice and a bloody knuckle. After bandaging I chose a larger hole, with much success.

Mix the grated carrots with fresh-squeezed orange juice (yum), lemon juice, and a tiny bit of sugar. Top the salad with roasted walnuts (with their skins removed.)

I loved that the carrots weren't cooked in this recipe, and I liked the flavor of the orange. I don't need to make it again but I'll be good with tomorrow's leftovers.

beans -- $1.55 (the bulk are left)

onions -- $1.37 (half an onion left)

pepper -- $.99

celery -- $1.99 (most left) 

Total Cost of Fassolada: $5.90

($1.48 per serving)

carrots -- $.99

lemon -- $.69

oranges -- $1.20

Total Cost of Moroccan Carrot Salad with Orange and Lemon Juice: $2.88

($.96 per serving)

Carrots in Agrodolce (p. 305)

Carrots in Agrodolce is Italian Sweet and Sour Carrots and is the last of my cooked carrot recipes, thankfully. It's easy enough to cut the carrots out of other recipes, but when they're the main ingredient it's a little harder. The plus side of this recipe is that I got to use my new birthday present kitchen scale for the first time. I didn't have the amount of carrots the recipe called for (3 pounds) so I needed to scale back all the other ingredients accordingly.

I got my carrots all cleaned up -- peeled and chopped -- and put them in lightly salted boiling water for about 5 minutes before draining them.

Next up I sauteed a little bit of chopped onion in olive oil until the onion was nice and soft. In went the carrots and black pepper as well as a little bit of hot water. I let this simmer, covered, for five minutes, before adding some red wine vinegar and, once that was bubbling, a little bit of sugar. I stirred everything together thoroughly and then served with a little bit of parsley scattered on top.

So, this is still cooked carrots, but the flavors are good.

The best part of the recipe is that I had all the ingredients, so it was totally free.

That, and that we ate it along with amazing beef and chorizo tacos (not Mediterranean) based loosely on this recipe, but really mostly just based on what was available in my fridge.

So totally delicious. Hello, spicy chorizo love.

Total Cost of Carrots in Agrodolce: Free!

Tilapia with a Spanish Almond Sauce* (p. 377) and Oven-Braised Carrots (p. 305)

*Really, this is supposed to be made with halibut. But $18.99 a pound?!? I don't think so.

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I had two lovely vegetarian ladies over for dinner last night, so fish and a veggie side it was. I also had some almonds leftover from my basic rice pilaf the other night, so it was as good a time as any to make a fish needing an almond sauce.

This fish preparation takes a kind of long time, but it's not particularly difficult. The first few steps just involve sautéing and browning a few things in olive oil, individually. First, soften garlic slivers and remove them with a slotted spoon to a bowl.

In the same pan, toast the almonds until golden brown. Remove them to a separate bowl with the slotted spoon.

Next, add bread cubes to the oil until each piece of bread is golden brown. Add this to the same bowl as the almonds.

Chop parsley and put it in a food processor with the garlic -- puree them together. Add the almonds and the bread and then a mixture of saffron, lemon juice, black pepper, and cinnamon, all pounded together. Process these ingredients together for only a short time so that the sauce is still fairly crunchy.

Add a bit more olive oil to the skillet and sauté chopped onions and leeks until soft. Set these aside in a bowl and put fish steaks that have been coated in salt, pepper and flour into the skillet. Quickly brown both sides of the fish and remove them to an oven-safe dish. Pour the onion/leek mixture over the top of the fish and put it in the oven for about 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, add a combination of white wine and sherry to the skillet and allow the alcohol to reduce along with any residue left in the skillet. When it has mostly reduced, add it the sauce that has been prepared in the food processor, called a pepitoria sauce. Pour this sauce over the fish and cook for another 20 minutes.

This was light and lovely. My friend Sarah likened the pepitoria sauce to Thanksgiving stuffing, except with a Mediterranean twist. And it is -- it's fluffy and delicious and adds a really nice flavor to the fish.

With this, I served a carrot dish. I'm sure y'all are tired of me saying I hate cooked carrots, but I do. Sorry.

For this dish, make sure you use a pot that is oven-safe, because the same pan needs to be used both on the burner and in the stove. To start, sauté onions in olive oil until they are soft. Add carrots that have been cut in half lengthwise and then chopped into two inch segments. Pour in chicken stock (I still have some homemade left!) and leave the pot over medium heat until the stock comes to a boil.

Put the lid on the pan and put it into the oven for about 40 minutes.

Eh. These are fine, cooked carrots are just way too sweet for me.

tilapia -- $13.99

bread -- $2.19 (most is left)

leek -- $1.14

parsley -- $1.69 (with plenty left)

onion -- $1.37 (half left)

lemon -- $.89

Total Cost of Tilapia with a Spanish Sauce : $21.27 (which made about 6 servings)

carrots -- $2.49 (half left)

onion -- $1.01

Total Cost of Oven-Braised Carrots : $3.50

Roots, Shoots, and Squash (p. 344)

This is a roasted winter vegetables dish, but a lot of the ingredients came in my CSA box this week, so, happy Memorial Day! Enjoy some winter veggies.

The nice thing about this dish is that you can pretty much throw in whatever you have and it'll come out delicious, so I made a few changes from the original recipe based on what was in my refrigerator.

The beets are cooked separately and are started before everything else, both to make sure the entire dish isn't pink and also to ensure that the beets are cooked thoroughly. Peel and chop them into small chunks and place them in a baking dish with fresh lemon juice and olive oil.

 In a small bowl, combine minced herbs (I used parsley, but you could use most anything) with chili powder (I used harissa, since I have some and it'll give the same sort of spicy kick) and stir together. The recipe calls for a pinch of this to be added to the beets before they are put in a very hot oven, but I mis-read and mixed the whole spicy herb recipe with the beets. Whoops. I didn't even notice until it was time for me to use the remainder of the mixture.

Anyway. Once the beets have begun roasting (they're supposed to take a little over an hour), begin prepping the rest of the veggies. Peel and quarter the onions and combine in a large bowl with chopped carrots and other somewhat hard veggies -- the recipe called for turnips and celery root, which I didn't have, so I used red potatoes instead. Whatever you use, be sure to wash it, remove any skins, and chop into somewhat bite-size chunks.

These are poured into a large oiled baking dish and then mixed with more olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper, and the rest of the herb/harissa mixture. I just made a second batch of the mixture and added it all to the potato/onion/carrots.

After about twenty minutes, add squash chunks (and in my case, zucchini chunks) to the dish. Stir well and put back in the oven.

Twenty minutes later, add leeks and garlic and stir again. Check on the beets as well.

Once the carrots are cooked all the way (about 15 minutes later) the dish is ready to come out. Top with the beets, and you have yourself a meal.

This pretty much created a feast -- it's a ton of roasted veggies. Luckily, they're pretty delicious, which I think is thanks to using harissa (and doubling the amount of it.) The veggies have a subtle heat to them, the kind that slowly invades your mouth (in a good way.) Unfortunately, my beets look a little crazy since they were covered in the parsley mixture and were in the oven for such a long time -- they definitely got a little crispy.

beets -- $2.44

squash -- $2.44

zucchini -- $2.44

onions -- $1.63

lemon -- $.42

carrots -- $.89

potatoes -- $2.44

leeks -- $2.49 (2 left)

Total Cost of Roots, Shoots, and Squash: $15.19 (this will definitely be in my lunch all week long -- it makes a whole lot.)

Carrots in a Chermoula Sauce (p. 306)

Tonight I just needed to make a side to bring to my friend Meg's for dinner, so I chose Carrots in a Chermoula Sauce because I already had everything for the chermoula sauce, having made it earlier this week to go on squash.

So, yeah, this is the exact same sauce, this time on carrots (and I also threw in some zucchini, because I had one in my fridge.) The carrots are peeled and cut into two inch chunks and then put into boiling water that just covers them for about 15 minutes, until they are tender. For the zucchini, I cut it into about the same size and sauteed it in olive oil for about 8 minutes. The carrots and zucchini are then drained and mixed with the chermoula sauce, and left to marinate for about a half an hour before eating.

Cooked carrots are still not my favorite, and at this point probably never will be, but the chermoula sauce can make me forget that. And the zucchini was also a nice distraction.

carrots -- $.99

zucchini -- $2.20

Total Cost of Carrots in a Chermoula Sauce: $3.19

Turkish Grated Carrot Salad with Yogurt (p. 82)

This was supposed to be our vegetable side dish last night, but it wasn't quite ready when the pizza came out, and we were so enamored by the pizza that we decided to just eat all of it and not eat any vegetables at all. So I just finished it up last night and threw it in the fridge. Which brings us to today, when we will eat it with dinner. 

This is a pretty simple recipe to make, and can be served either as a side, alone, or on a bed of lettuce as a more substantial salad. To make it, boil water and cook the carrots for a short amount of time, so that they are somewhat soft but not completely cooked through. Halt the cooking by running them in cool water, and then grate them into a bowl. In a separate bowl, you make a sauce of yogurt, garlic, lemon juice, olive oil, and salt. Then you just gently mix the sauce with the carrots and serve. 

Easy, tasty, etc.

carrots -- $.99

lemon -- $.69

yogurt -- $.67 (with some left for tomorrow's breakfast!)

Total Cost for Turkish Grated Carrot Salad with Yogurt : $ 2.35