Light and Easy Farfalle Salad

Do you like sun-dried tomatoes?  I love them.  There is something deliciously tart about them.  I would eat them with everything if I could.

I recently discovered a whole line of sun-dried tomato products.  California Sun Dry makes all these different spreads and things with sun-dried tomatoes.  I think my favorite is the garlic and sun-dried tomatoes.  I mean, how can you go wrong with both garlic and sun-dried tomatoes?  (Hint – you can’t)

This is a nice, light pasta salad, created in my mom’s kitchen and eaten for lunch the next day.  It’s simple and delicious, and the flavors really speak for themselves.  Perfect to throw together for dinner one night and take the leftovers to work or school for lunch.

Home Sweet Home....and Tempeh

I was in home in Philly for the weekend with my family. The whole family. It was a lot of fun.

I spent Friday cooking, as usual, but this time I was in my parents’ kitchen and with company. There are a few very important things about being at my parents house.

Fresh Herbs

More people helping (= I can take action shots)

1000000% more natural light in the kitchen (my kitchen has none, and the rest of my apartment has very little)

My dad’s beautiful DSLR. So jealous. Also, I had a lot of fun with it. Maybe too much fun.

Mom and I made several dishes (many of which will be posted at some point). One of them was the tempeh.

Have you heard of tempeh before? I love it. It’s a nice not meat alternative to tofu. Much like tofu, it’s a soy product and you can marinate it in anything you would marinate meat or chicken in. I think tempeh has a more satisfying texture than tofu, but it also has more of its own flavor than tofu.

Our dinner on Friday had a Mediterranean theme to it, so I decided to make a Mediterranean marinade for the tempeh. I looked around online, and found a whole bunch of recipes that had the same components, just in different measurements.

So I closed the tabs with the repeating recipe, and went to look in the herb garden to see what I could use.

For the record, this marinade is AMAZING. There was randomly a bowl of steamed broccoli on the counter (these kinds of things are normal in my parents’ house), and while the tempeh was marinating, my sister and I kept dunking the broccoli in to soak up some marinade.

If you’re scared of tempeh, please at least try the marinade. It’s tangy and fresh and smells phenomenal. And according to my other sister, it would taste great on chicken.

I guess I should warn you, this recipe did not pass my four year old niece’s taste test. Then again, few things do these days. Oh well.

Summer Ragout over Crispy Polenta Rounds

I have a lot of cookbooks.  No, really, I think it might actually be a problem.  When I’m bored, I might read a book, but I’m even more likely to read a cookbook.  One of my cookbooks is the vegetarian edition of the Williams-Sonoma Food Made Fast series.  It’s a pretty good cookbook, short and sweet, organized in an appealing way, and definitely a good starter cookbook since the recipes are simple and easy to follow.  But I haven’t made many of the recipes from it (though my roommate last year swore by it).

Now that it’s zucchini and squash season, my mind keeps going back to this one recipe from this cookbook – polenta with vegetable ragout.  One thing that always bothered me about the recipe from the cookbook is that the ragout, which has no real solid texture, is served over creamy polenta.  Where’s the crunch?  What do I bite into?  What could I put in there to give me that solid?

Tis the season....for squash!

Then I realized that polenta doesn’t always have to be mushy.  It can come in solid form as well.  Now, I usually love making things from scratch, but I cheated a bit for this recipe.  This is one of the times where making the polenta from scratch would not have added anything other than time (I would have had to make the polenta, then chill it to harden, then cut it into rounds).  Instead, I picked up a log of pre-made, pre-solidified polenta.  If I wanted to make herbed polenta or cheesy polenta or some other version that involves flavoring the polenta itself, I would go through the process (or at least try).  In this case, your local Trader Joe's has gluten-free, dairy-free, prepared polenta in a log that actually tastes pretty good.  I highly recommend you pick some up.

Polenta log

Anyway, after picking up some good late summer veggies and log or two of polenta, here is the version of this polenta-ragout recipe that I came up with.

Summertime Salad

Now that Labor Day is here (happy Labor Day, by the way), do you find yourself desperately clinging to summer as it slips by?  I know I do.  So to celebrate the holiday and the lack of school/work, and, of course, to pretend that summer is still in full swing, I made a salad.  A watermelon salad.  Because what says summer more than watermelon?

My sister made a version of this salad a few years ago when she had a dinner party at her apartment.  For the most part, I really only remember it being delicious and involving watermelon and tomatoes.  So I went with that vague memory and came up with something that seemed to work well. 

I used red wine vinegar here, but you could easily substitute balsamic instead.  In fact, if I had any balsamic, I would probably use that.  But sadly, DC doesn’t seem to have any kosher balsamic vinegar, so I’m still waiting on a care package to replace my stash (hint hint, Mom).

Also, I like the combination of feta cheese and red wine vinegar, but I've seen watermelon salad recipes out there that use goat cheese, so I highly recommend experimenting in that direction as well.