Let's pretend...

There are days when I wish I could eat anything. Not because I necessarily miss any one thing in particular, but because I wouldn't have to think so much about every meal I want to have. Maybe it's because of this cold that I just can't seem to get rid of, or that the last couple of days have been rather stressful at work, but I really haven't got any extra energy to devote to being Super Me with everything all planned out. Sometimes, all I really want to do is play Let's Pretend and eat whatever. It is then that it is really nice to have a couple of meals/recipes that you can pull out where Nothing needs a subtitution, you don't have to recalculate anything, and unless you are dealing with a picky eater, you wouldn't necessarily know that this meal can be considered "safe". It's just a relatively easy meal that tastes good, and you cooked it because you wanted to.

Say hello to Moroccan Vegetable Ragout with rice. I have a slight magazine addiction when it comes to cooking magazines, though I've actually gotten a bit better; unless it's the holidays, and then all bets are off. This is a recipe that I got out of  "The Best of  Fine Cooking; Soups & Stews" No. 74, and makes the $13 I spent on the magazine worth it. Very little prep required (slicing onion, cubing a sweet potato and coarsely chopping the kale was the extent of it if you use premade orange juice; the rest was opening cans and measuring!), not a long cooking time, and the flavours were wonderful! Sweet and savoury with a heartiness to it that made having it on a cold snowy day (like today) a good option, but as it is vegetarian and filling but still light, you could do this in early summer or fall and not cook yourself out of the kitchen either.

Moroccan Vegetable Ragout

• 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
• 1 medium yellow onion, tinly sliced (about 1 1/4 cups)
• 1 3- to 4-inch cinnamon stick
• 1 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
• 2 cups peeled and medium diced sweet potato (1/2 inch cubes, about 3/4 lb)
• 1 14-to 16-oz can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
• 1 14.5-oz can diced tomates, with their juices
• 1/2 cup pitted green Greek or Italian olives
• 6 tablespoons orange juice, preferaby fresh (1 big navel should do it)
• 1 1/2 teaspoon honey
• 2 cups lightly packed very coarsely chopped kale leaves (from about 1/2 lb kale)
• Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

Heat the oil in a 5- to 6-quart Dutch oven or other heavy pot over medium-high heat. Add the onion and cook, stirring often, until soft and lightly browned, about 5 minutes. Add the cinnmon stick and cumin; cook until very fragrant, about 1 minute. Add the sweet potato, chickpeas, tomatoes, olives, orange juice, honey and 1 cup of water; bring to a boil.

 Reduce the heat to medium low and simmer, covered, stirring occasionally, until the sweet potatoes are barely tender, about 15 minutes. Stir in the kale and cover, cooking until wilted and softened, maybe another 10 minutes. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Now, after all that, I will say that this recipe would be very easy to modify for vegans, simply by switching out the honey for agave nectar, but let's pretend I didn't!

Gnocchi!! (Product Review)

Growing up, we never used prepackaged food products, so everthing was always cooked from scratch. At the time, we always figured that we were getting cheated somehow and would on occasion insist on being fed wonderful gourmet meals like Kraft Dinner or Hamburger Helper. Ahem. It is somewhat telling that now my siblings and I all cook and all cook pretty much from, you guessed it, scratch. In truth, not relying on preprocessed foods in the first place made switching over to a gluten and dairy free diet a hell of a lot simpler. All I have to do is switch a few basic things over instead of having to try to find replacements for most of the recipe. However, when one gets home at almost 9pm and is very hungry because lunch was at 2, pulling up a from scratch meal can seriously suck. I don't really want to start peeling veggies, and in the summer all I would do is throw together a salad with a quick protein (beans or an egg or something) but it is February in Montreal, and it is currently snowing and I don't want a salad, thank you. This is where keeping a few staple ingredients on hand that can be whipped up to a hearty meal (in less than 20 minutes) comes in handy. Say hello to my go to: gnocchi.

Gnocchi, when done right, are little balls of pillowy goodness, best served pipping hot and smothered in some sort of (in my opinion) runny sauce. When done incorrectly, feed them to someone you don't like as they are more akin to little rocks. They use potatoes as the base, so technically aren't pasta, though they will more often than not contain a flour of some kind as a binder, and sometimes also egg. They are generally to be found in with the pastas at your grocer, however, though not always. There are a number of different companies who do produce them commercially, though the only one that I have found consistently with gluten free options is the Aurora brand. They actually produce five different varieties of gnocchi: whole wheat, potato, spelt, corn and rice. The first three all contain wheat flour or gluten (in the form of the spelt), so that leaves the corn and the rice kinds. I will be very honest, I do not like the corn variety. The flavour is fine, it's the texture that gets me. Gritty, much in the same way that corn meal is, which really isn't all that surprising. I just can't get over the mouth feel of it to really enjoy it. The rice gnocchi, however, does not suffer from that problem and the flavour is such that it's as much a vehicle for whatever sauce you put on it as anything.

 

 

 

So, tonights dinner: rice gnocchi with a bacon carbonara sauce. Easy enough. Cut up the bacon strips into 1 inch pieces and fry up in a large skillet while bringing a pot of salted and lightly oiled water to a boil. Once the water comes to a boil, add the gnocchi to the boiling water very carefully! They are hard little nubbins and will splash into the pot if you aren't careful. I usually cheat and spoon them in with the slotted spoon I take them out with. Leave them to boil until they float, at which time they are cooked. Try not to let them boil over long as the longer they cook the denser they get and they are best light and fluffy. While the gnocchi are cooking, add about 2/3 of a cup of cream (we used the MimicCream that we had left) and a jar of pasta sauce to the bacon. For us that meant using the last jar of the tomato sauce I put up last summer, about 2 cups worth. As soon as the gnocchi are cooked and floating, spoon them directly into the sauce and stir to coat. Serve immediately with vegan parmesan and enjoy!

I guess you could say that I sort of cheated tonight, since this is not a new product to me, but something that I keep on hand for quick and easy dinners. Knowing that I can incorporate something this versatile that is also gluten/dairy free though makes this something that I would certainly recommend as a pantry staple, especially if you on occasion need something quick. Enjoy!