Mediterranean Half Cooked Half Raw Salad
Posted: May 21, 2013 Filed under: Recipes | Tags: capers, eggplant, feta, tomato, Zucchini Leave a comment
YUM! This is now a new favorite. I created this salad as a way of using up smaller amounts of vegetables. The creation of half roasted vegetables with their more complex flavors, raw vegetables with their crunch, capers and feta cheese for it’s saltiness and vinegar for the tang makes a really satisfying dish.
Four cups of roasted vegetables – I used Eggplant and zucchini, but you could use carrots, yellow squash, fennel, or even sweet potatoes
1 pint of cherry tomatoes –halved
½ small red onion chopped
25 fresh mint leaves chopped
3 T. capers
1/3 cup crumbled feta cheese
3 T. rice vinegar
1 T. olive oil
2 packets of Splenda
Salt and pepper
Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Cut the vegetables you are going to roast in uniform sizes about the sixe of a cherry tomato. Cover a cookie sheet with foil and spray with pam. Spread the vegetables in a single layer. Roast in oven until browned and soft about 30 mins.
Remove from oven and let cool. Mix the vinegar, oil and Splenda together. Toss the cooled roasted vegetables with the tomatoes, red onion, mint, capers and dressing in a bowl. Add the feta and toss gently. Can be served at room temperature or chilled.
Grilled Shrimp and Vegetable Salad
Posted: July 23, 2012 Filed under: Recipes | Tags: cherry tomatoes, corn, onions, peppers, pesto, Shrimp, Zucchini Leave a comment
Glad I was able to get all my grilling done for this yummy salad before the thunderstorms came. This is a wonderful way to use any vegetable you like. I used as many different things from my garden as I could and it was delicious. I think it made enough to feed six people as a main course.
1 ½ lb. large peeled and deveined raw shrimp
1 T. olive oil
3 ears of corn
2 zucchini – sliced the long way into ½ planks
1 red onion sliced into ½ inch rounds
4 different peppers- one sweet green, 2 mild banana, one Anaheim and one Poblano- cut in half and seeded
1 c. cherry tomatoes- halved
1 lemon – halved
1 t. white wine vinegar
2 T. pesto base- recipe follows
Salt and Pepper
Heat the grill to high and spray with Pam. Put the corn, onions, peppers, zucchini and lemon cut side down on the grill. Cover and cook for 5 minutes. Turn the corn a quarter turn and flip the peppers. Close the cover and cook another 3 minutes. Once the zucchini and onions get grill marks flip them. Turn the corn again.
The peppers will cook fastest. One they are soft, remove them. You don’t want to cook everything too much, just until soft.
The lemon will be the next thing to come off, then the zucchini, onions and last the corn. Let everything cool enough so you can handle it. After it has cooled chop the peppers, onions and zucchini into ½ inch chunks. Cut the corn off the cob and put it all in a bowl.
Turn the grill down to medium. Cover the shrimp in olive oil and place on grill in ne layer. As soon as you get them all down turn them over and cook for no more then a minute. They will get pink very quickly; as soon as each side is pink remove them. There is nothing worse than over cooked shrimp.
Squeeze the grilled lemon on the shrimp and add the pesto base to them. Toss them together with the grilled vegetables and add the cherry tomatoes and vinegar, salt and pepper to taste.
Pesto Base
When my garden is producing an over abundance of basil I make this base of a pesto sauce and freeze it. If I want to add pine nuts and Parmesan cheese I can thaw a puck of base and add those things. But I also like to have just the base to add to recipes that use basil and garlic.
3 cups of Basil leaves- packed
7 cloves of garlic
1 T. olive oil
Put the garlic in a cuisine art and pulse until minced. Add the basil and olive oil and pulse until paste like.
The Healthy is Hidden in it Chili
Posted: July 12, 2012 Filed under: Recipes | Tags: beef, chili, onions, peppers, tomatoes, Zucchini 2 Comments
Chili is a great way to make not just a low fat dish, but one that has a lot of veggies that you would not even know are in there that add fiber and bulk without adding many calories.
3 onions chopped
5 cloves of garlic minced
2 lbs of 96 % ground beef or ground turkey breast
1 Green pepper chopped
5 cups of shredded squash (I used 2 zucchini and 1 yellow squash)
2 shredded Carrots
3 hot green peppers chopped
½ cup Chili powder
2 T. ground Cumin
1 T. smoked Paprika
2 15 oz. cans of chopped tomatoes
1/2 cup of liquid – wine, beer, chicken broth or water
1 can of red kidney beans
9 packets of Splenda
1 T. Red wine vinegar
Salt and Pepper
Pam
In a large stockpot on a medium high heat, spray with Pam and add onions and garlic. Cook for 3 minutes stirring every once in a while. Add the meat and chop it up with a spoon as you cook it until it is browned. Add all the peppers, squash and carrots. Stir and cook for another 3 minutes. Add all the spices and the canned tomatoes. Add the liquid and bring boil and simmer for 20 minutes making sure
there is a little liquid in the pot. Add the beans, Splenda and vinegar and cook a few more minutes.
Ratatouille – Not Like The Movie – but served in an omlette
Posted: June 19, 2012 Filed under: Recipes | Tags: eggplant, ratatouille, red peppers, tomato, yellow squash, Zucchini Leave a comment
When I was in college I lived off campus for two years with three roommates. We each had responsibility to cook dinner for the house Monday through Thursday whether you were going to be eating there or not. One of our roommates, Annie, was a vegetarian, so I was always searching for good ideas of what to make that we all would like as well as something that was inexpensive.
Ratatouille was a go to dish, but back then I made it with a ton of olive oil and served it covered in cheese. It was vegetarian, but certainly was not healthy. Since then I have discovered that both the oil and cheese were unnecessary to make a great dish.
Here is my much lighter version, which I used as the filling for an omelet.
1 large yellow onion diced
3 cloves of garlic minced
Pam
3 cups of diced eggplant
2 zucchini – diced
2 yellow squash – diced
1 red pepper – diced
1 15 oz. can chopped tomatoes (I have mentioned in previous recipes that fresh tomatoes are wasted on these cooked dishes, but if you are overwhelmed with fresh tomatoes go ahead and use them.)
30 fresh basil leaves chiffonade (That means finely cut)
Spray a big stockpot with Pam and place over Medium High heat. Add the onions and the garlic and cook, stirring every 30 seconds, until softened, about 5 minutes. Spray more Pam and add the eggplant. Cook the same way for another 5 minutes. Add all the other vegetables except the basil and cook another 5 minutes. Add basil and salt and pepper. Cook another five minutes.
Lemon Zucchini Latkes
Posted: June 9, 2012 Filed under: Recipes | Tags: Latkes, lemon, smoked salmon, Zucchini Leave a comment
My garden is spitting out squash like the Duggers do children, but nothing else is producing yet, so I am sorry for yet another Zucchini recipe. But you won’t be sorry if you make this one.
I was making Russ a loaf of Zucchini bread, but I grated too much zucchini and had to think of something to do with it. While looking at the shreds in the Cuisineart I thought it looked a lot like grated potato for Latkes. So here is the out come.
These can be used as a side dish or tomorrow I am going to re-warm them and put a dollop of Greek yogurt and a sliver of smoked salmon on them and serve them as an appetizer to my Cousin and his wife who are coming for dinner.
Makes 24 – 2-inch latkes
4 medium zucchini – grated
1 t. salt
Juice of one lemon and zest of half the lemon
1 shallot minced
3 T. Parmesan cheese
3 T. flour
1 egg and one egg white, beaten
Black pepper
Pam
Grate the Zucchini in the food processor and put into a colander and sprinkle with all the salt. Mix it together. Place colander over a bowl to catch the liquid that is going to drain out of the zucchini and let it sit for half an hour.
After draining hold colander under the running water in the sink for just a moment to rinse off a little salt. Put a paper towel on top of zucchini in the colander and press it down pushing as much water out of it as possible, turning the squash a couple of time.
In a large mixing bowl beat the egg and egg white together and add all of the ingredients except the pam.
Heat a non-stick fry pan on medium high. When it gets hot spray Pam in the pan. Drop spoonfuls of the zucchini mixture into small rounds and press them down a little. Cook for about one minute on the first side and then flip them and press down again and cook the second side about a minute.
I only do about 5 at a time so they are not crowded in the pan. You can keep them warm on a cooling rack set on a cookie sheet in a 250º oven if you want to serve them right away.
Or you can wrap them up and refrigerate them and reheat them on a cooling rack set on a cookie sheet in a 325º oven until they are warm – probably about 10 mins.
I used the Latkes as the base of an hors d’oeuvre. I put a dollop of Grreek yogurt and a sliver of smoked salmon on top they were great. Russ then ate the leftovers for breakfast and added capers making them even better
Baked Stuffed Zucchini
Posted: June 7, 2012 Filed under: Recipes | Tags: onions, pesto, tomatoes, Zucchini 1 Comment
The Garden is in full squash production. Here is a great way to use the zucchini you should have picked two days ago, but you did not see them under that giant leaf until they got just so big.
4 large zucchini – or six smaller ones
2 15 Oz. cans stewed tomatoes
1 large sweet onion chopped
2 T. Pesto – or 20 basil leaves chopped, and 2 cloves of garlic minced
½ cup grated Parmesan cheese
Salt and Pepper
Pam (of course)
Preheat the oven to 425º
In a saucepan put the tomatoes and the onion and bring to a boil and then reduce to simmer and cook until the onion is translucent, about 20 minutes.
Cut the ends of the Zucchini and slice them down the center lengthwise. Scoop the seeded middle out of the squash digging it out as an American Indian would have dug out a wooded canoe.
When the tomatoes are done remove the pan from the heat and add the pesto and the Parmesan cheese and mix well.
Spray an oblong pan with Pam. Fill each zucchini canoe with the tomato mixture and place in oblong pan. After you have filled all the zucchini sprinkle salt and pepper on each one.
Add a cup of water to the pan without pouring on the zucchini canoes. Cover the pan with foil, sealing it as best you can.
Carefully place in the oven so as not to make the canoes float around and turn upside down.
Cook for 45 minutes. Then remove the foil and continue cooking for another 15 minutes. The zucchini should be fork tender.
4 servings as a main dish or 8 as a side dish
Zucchini Chips
Posted: June 4, 2012 Filed under: Recipes | Tags: cumin, Zucchini Leave a comment
OK, these are nothing like chips except for the shape, but they are yummy, somewhat snack like, incredibly easy to make and a good use of garden abundance.
Zucchini evenly sliced into ¼ inch rounds
Ground Cumin
Sea salt
Pam
Preheat convection oven to 450º if you don’t have convection they will just take a little longer to cook.
Cover cookie sheet with foil and spray with Pam. (By now you know I love Pam.)
Lay out zucchini in single layer and spray the top of the zucchini with Pam. Sprinkle Cumin over the zucchini evenly. Then sprinkle just a bit of sea salt.
Place in oven and cook for 20-30 minutes. The actual time depends on how close to ¼ inch you made your slices. When they just start to get brown they are done. They will shrink up about 25%.
They are good hot or cold.
Less Dana, More Good 