punjab delight

Job perk: I meet lovely, lovely, people.

It may be the charming Ethiopian man who told me the history of coffee (seriously!). It may be the adorable lady who had me consult which cake slices were “most famous” to put together for a dessert tray.

However, the lovely person I refer to today is… Mr. J. (His name starts with a J… and rather than spell it atrociously, I’m approximating). He is a frequent visitor to my bakery as well as the owner of one of my favorite local eat in/take out places, Punjab Dhaba.

It is a laid back sort of place with Indian prints on the walls; locals, Indian and non, hangin’ out; Bollywood playing in the background; and intensely great Indian food.

J. mentioned owning Punjab Dhaba at the bakery picking up some treats, and I went “I loooooove that place!” (It’s about two blocks from where I went to high school and was a lifesaver on nights when no one in my family felt like cooking- particularly great for veggies during Lent!)

He went “Come!” and promised all of their best stuff.

So I went! And brought a friend, the lovely Maya, who has definitely graduated from Blog Friend to just Friend.

We arrived and J. asked what we liked. We informed him we’d like to dine vegetarian and he disappeared to the back of the kitchen and then hooked us up!

On the left are two paneer dishes; on the bottom is wonderfully seasoned spinach, atop is I guess what’s known as butter paneer (the vegetarian version of butter chicken?) It’s like creamy tomato soup Indian-ified… rich, flavorful, and unfrigginbelievably luscious.

Rounded out with, obvi, basmati rice

I will never make basmati rice taste as good as an Indian restaurant does.

And naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan oh my sweet naan.

Theirs has crispness and chewiness; denseness and flakiness; all in the same bread.

That was a TON of food (we finished… half? Between the two of us? Maybe?)

Yet my pal Mr. J. was not finished yet, and urged us to try these potato thingies:

Like the love child of a samosa and a hash brown pattie. Insane. Insane times infinity when doused in raita (ohhhhh yesssss)

Poppadum!

I didn’t bother with closeups on either of the curries. Perhaps the unattractive orange and green mush in the background of the shot give you an idea why :D

As usual, Maya and I had a fantastic chat about every manner of topic, food blogger related and non. Three hours or so seems to be about standard for blogger meetups.

And then I was out the door with the perfect ending to an Indian meal, fennel seeds!

yay-to-ma-to

You know how it goes. Every few weeks I go, “I HAVEN’T HAD PASTA IN WAY TOO LONG!”. Then I eat lots of it.

Crikey this was a good one.

A beautiful marriage of pantry staples…

And perfect ripe produce…

Pasta with Tuna, Capers, and Tomatoes

serves 2

olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 1/2 large tomatoes, diced (see what I did with the last tomato half down below!)
1 can tuna, preferably packed in oil, as I think it improves the texture, drained (my cat loves tuna juice!)
1 T or so capers
4 ounces pasta (I used Barilla whole wheat spaghetti)

Heat oil on medium heat in a small frying pan. Add garlic and cook until fragrant and just beginning to brown. Add tomatoes and bring to a simmer, cooking until they begin to break down. Increase heat to high and cook, stirring often, until most liquid evaporates. Then mix in tuna.

Meanwhile, cook pasta according to package directions, just shy of al dente.

Remove pasta from water with slotted spoon, and add to tomato-tuna mixture, along with capers. Toss to coat.

 

As for the rest of that tomato. In my fantasy of fantasies, the lunch I brought to work on Saturday approximates (ish) an Italian’s picnic lunch. Ish.

On your left is more garlic ring bologna (I just had this feeling like I needed some MEAT. I am generally cool with this flexitarian sustainable-meat-only thing I’ve had going, but… sometimes I get sick of peanut butter) and up top is sliced apple. This is my first farmer’s market apple of the year; honestly I was thinking it wasn’t worth it since they’re not in season yet but it was good! As for the piece de resistance, le sandwich:

Well okay the bread isn’t remotely Italian (a bagel thin) but the broiled cheese and tomato on top? *Heaven* My manager at work saw this and went “Oh God bruschetta?! I cannot eat that anymore!” She apparently had an experience where she was hungry late at night in Florence and ate too much bruschetta because it’s all there was. What a tragedy. I hope she can bounce back.

The remainder of my apple went into one of my favorite afternoon snacks:

The bakery job has lead to a dramatic upsurge in my consumption of baked goods, which has lead to a dramatic upsurge in zits. On my face. Not cool. I thought middle school was over.

So, no pastry for me today. I hafta say, apples and roasted almonds may be the best, most filling combo ever.

granolation

Hi my name is Ileana and I

1. Read recipes for fun and
2. Get insatiable urges to make muffins (I needs my fix real bad!)

That led to reading this recipe for granola muffins and making these:

Which starred this: the now-famous Galaxy Granola. More on this in a bit.

Berrylicious Granola Muffins

1 cup Galaxy Granola, Not Sweet Vanilla flavor
1/2 cup milk

1 T ground flax
3 T water

1 cup whole wheat flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt

1 egg
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 six-ounce container berry-flavored yogurt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 cup dried cranberries
1/2 cup fresh cranberries (I still have mine in the freezer from last fall. I love these guys! Obviously you could sub another fresh berry)

Combine granola and milk in a bowl and let sit for thirty minutes.
Combine water and flax to make a flax “egg”, and let sit.
Sift together dry ingredients (flour through salt) .
Combine wet ingredients (egg through vanilla). Add dry ingredients, then fold in granola and Craisins.
Spoon into greased muffin tin, and bake at 375 for 20 to 25 minutes.

So so so so yummy. I love love love cranberries. These were texturally awesome from the granola, too. Surprisingly light and fluffy- you’d never guess it was 100% whole grain!

As the ingredient list in the above recipe reveals, I’ve got some Galaxy Granola up in my house! The company was nice enough to send me some free samples.

This arrived on my doorstep:

And I went… “Huh?”.

Actually, that is a lie. Every blogger ever has gotten a sample of Galaxy Granola, which is why I knew to request one :D

I knew that Galaxy Granola has espoused a “fruit not fat” philosophy, and that its granolas are baked in applesauce, not oils. I think obsessing with fat bar none (and not differentiating between the types of fat; some is healthy!) is a little 90s of them. As far as I know, granola is traditionally made with liquid oils, not butter or trans fat, so it’s generally pretty harmless fat. Haven’t they heard of omega 3? It’s so hot right now!

I think their motto should be "Fruit not Crap" (though I have a feeling that would not exactly fly in the Midwest). I am definitely, DEFINITELY in favor of removing the scary unnatural ingredients in your typical granola product (just to give an example, a Kudos bar contains, among other things, Soy Lecithin, Palm Kernel, Hydrogenated Palm Kernel, Hydrogenated Palm Kernel, Hydrogenated Palm and/or Palm Oil, and "TBHQ to Maintain Freshness"). Replacing all that scary stuff with fruit is definitely a win!

Anyway, that's my thoughts on the Galaxy Granola philosophy. Now the actual flavor. Along with as a baking ingredient, I’ve had the Not Sweet Vanilla flavor several ways.

First, after a long day of work, I ate several handfuls out of the bag. Truth.

Then, as a Sunday brunch, I had a bowl with milk, bananer, and blueberries.

My thoughts on Galaxy Granola, Not-too-Sweet-Vanilla, are as follows.

Pros:
- Absence of cloying sweetness
- Enjoyable textural variety: barley and spelt flakes! Crisp rice!
- Makes the milk taste good

Cons:
- A bit bland. I’m glad that they cut out excess sugar- a lot of granola is way too sweet. However, if you cut out fat, you have to have some OOMPH! If you want to eat plain oats, you can eat plain oats for a lot less money! Let’s talk about Allie-bars: I was lucky enough to sample one after our blogger meetup, and they are vanilla flavored and not too sweet and were still SUPER vanilla-y and awesome!

I’m still stoked to try the other flavors. This is just prelim :D

In the interests of a well rounded Sunday brunch I also included an egg:

And a cuppa tea, and sunshine!

So that was a yummy brunch but I was still hungry. So here’s where things got a little random.

Bear with me.

A few weeks ago, I had some green beans and, not having any particular to do with them, turned to my old friend Mark Bittman’s 101 picnic dishes. Made in 20 minutes or less. I love. It’s a classic along with Mark Bittman’s Summer Express. Also 20 minutes or less. Amaze.

So this sauce you make for green beans contains miso, walnuts, soy sauce, and ginger. It’s wicked delicious. It makes a ton (you can’t scale it down too much or your blender won’t blend) and I had a ton leftover but no fresh green beans. But for some mystifying reason my sister had bought canned. Like, it’s… July. There are… fresh. But her weirdness was my good fortune cause it meant I had something to toss with miso goodness!

Looked absolutely revolting, tasted fab!

I ended up adding some cooked eggplant to the rest of the sauce, which was also superb!

my new boyfriend

There is a gentleman vendor at the farmer’s market who appears to be in his seventies. For the past two weeks, following enjoyable chats about the deliciousness of grilled peaches and nectarines, he has given me free fruit.

It is by far the best relationship I’ve ever had.

I love nectarines. This crop is especially great, and Nectarine Man confirmed this, and said it was because it’s been dryer than usual and this makes them sweeter.

Something else I love: veggie burgers. Veggie burgers are delicious and convenient. Veggie burgers are also stupidly expensive. So I made my own!

Lentil Burgers

1 cup lentils
2 1/2 cups water
1/4 cup walnuts
1 carrot, finely chopped
2 green onions, roughly chopped
1/4 cup oats
2 T ground flax
1 tsp. cumin
1/2 tsp. paprika
1/4 tsp. dry mustard
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. freshly ground black pepper

Combine lentils and water in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil, cover, and reduce heat and simmer for forty minutes. Remove lid, and allow lentils to cool.

Meanwhile, combine carrots, green onion, and walnuts in a food processor, and pulse until everything is finely minced.

Then add oats, flax, and spices, and pulse again until incorporated.

Finely, add lentils and pulse, scraping down sides with a spatula, until lentils are incorporated (this takes less time than you would think).

Form lentil mixture into eight patties, and voila, lentil burgers!

Burgers that you want to make for later can be individually packaged and frozen.

    

Cook patties on a sprayed nonstick skillet on medium heat until browned to your liking- about twenty minutes total, flipping every five minutes or so.

This looks ridiculous- like a bagel with jelly, right?! It is in fact a bagel thin, the closest thing I had to a bun, and my burger is accessorized with arugula, and, keeping with the lentil Indian theme, peach chutney. If you can, I highly, HIGHLY recommend pairing this with chutney. Oh man oh man oh man.

Rounding out dinner was a yummy yummy thrown together salad: corn, red onion, heirloom tomatoes in both yellow and red, and avocado.

I thought about dressing but was just like “Eh, avocado makes fat and tomato makes acid.” And indeed, the lovely veggies dressed themselves.

workin’ grub

Breakfast and lunch have been focused on getting me energy. Life has been a bit spastic lately.

Everything is improved when you make amazing amazing amazing overnight oats.

Night before:

1/2 cup oats
1/2 a vanilla yogurt
1/2 T chia goodness
2 T water

En la manana:

2 T chopped almonds
1 nectarine. Perfect. Sublime. Juicy. Amazing. Nectarine.

A circular work lunch:

Featuring THREE darlings of the blogworld:

- a Bagel Thin (I like these! I got them at the Entenmann’s discount bakery, my favorite place on earth, for $1, and I think they’re good! I don’t love regular bagels- unless I’m eating them in New York City, obviously- except for the tops and the bottoms when they get all toasty. This gives me that! Plus 100% whole wheat!)
- almond butter
- rhubarb compote

Plus some veg.

Another round sandwich- I really love the bagel thins for egg sandwiches! I hate traditional bagel sandwiches (big thick sandwiches in general)- I feel gross taking huge bites and having food running down my chin. Thin is the way to go!

My sammich was fried egg and arugula. Plus some squash, sauteed in the usual manner in olive oil with salt and pepper and fresh oregano.

Quite a lovely color scheme! I love yellow and green :D

Rounded out with a yopes and a homemade Arnold Palmer- half homemade leftover tea, half homemade stevia lemonade. Ugly color, but tasty!

This next lunch was so insanely yummy and also so insanely well rounded. Photographed at 7:30 am (on Saturday, yeurgh) it was unfortunately less than photogenic.

On the left (fruit, protein/healthy fat) we have a sliced jazz apple with almond butter for dippage. On the right (whole grains, vegetable, more healthy fat, dairy) we have a wrapsie filled with melted cheese (I so wish this would’ve been goat cheese, that would’ve kicked it to the next level! Just Monterey Jack) and avocado and arugula. SO good!

grilled gifts

So cute: I was at the farmer’s market and I sampled some unfrigginbelievable nectarines. So I bought a ton. Obviously. They were cheap, too.

And then I just started chatting with the very nice farmer (I asked if I should look for anything in particular when picking out nectarines, he said looks didn’t matter :D) and then he was talking about bruised ones and I was like “Oh, I don’t mind bruises, I just grill them!” So he gave me three bruised ones for free! People never give me things for free (my sister, the hottie in the short skirts, it’s a different story).

I set them aside on our counter, like so.

Annnnnnnnd then I got home from 10 1/2 hours of work on Saturday and my mama had STEAK marinating! Honestly, it’s of unknown provenance, but she got it at Lebanese Butcher which is a small-scale place and she said they were like, cutting steaks off a cow in front of her. So I’m hoping it’s not feedlot meat. Anyway, I’m not turning down my mama’s generosity in the interest of eating politically correctly!

So my grill station:

Nectarines (bit of a hot mess but they grilled up beautifully) steak (marinaded in some kind of yummy soy-lemon-olive oil thing that my mama found online) and corn, which I used to grill in the husk but I had it straight up at my aunt’s and it was SO good so I did it like that and it at no point appeared even remotely at risk of burning.

I was really nervous about grilling the steak, actually- I haaaaaaate overcooked steak, and had never actually grilled it all by myself before! (There’s always been a man standing by, hah!) But I tried to go by the feel of the meat and it ended up gorgey and rare, just how I like it :D

My plate, in indoor light, since in the course of just grilling outside, despite wearing bug spray, I got six mosquito bites.

Had to laugh- that steak you see soaking in the marinade was supposed to serve ONE. My mom and I together ate half of it. As you can see above, I was perfectly satisfied with a 3-4 ounce portion.

The corn was scrumpsh. I just sprayed it before putting it on the grill and it got all sugar and awesome and didn’t even need butter. And the nectarine, ohhhhhhhh the nectarine. As you can see, even when I eat a steak dinner, I rhapsodize about the plants!

 

That up top was also vair yummy- exciting cucumber salad! Really!

It’s rare for me to get excited about a cucumber. It’s not that exciting, let’s be honest. I usually buy it when I want coolness/crunch, and don’t really think of it in terms of flavor. However, this was a genuinely delicious cucumber. Local produce has not failed me!

I tossed it with red onion (for flavor and prettiness!) and a dressing of honey, little bit of oil, and lotsa rice vinegar.

Quite honestly, I like a grilled steak from time to time but honestly even as I eat it am usually thinking about COLD LEFTOVER STEAK, also a wonderful thing to have in one’s home (I know some people get similarly rhapsodic about leftover cold meatloaf).

So following crazy Monday, grateful for the leftovers, I made salad!

Avec arugula, the last of the cuc-red onion salad, avocado, and lime-parsley dressing. Mmm mm it was good.

Like any meal, I went, “Let’s get some carbs in there!” So I got out three of the eggplants on our counter (leaving… another 3. Mama loves her some eggplant) and roasted them at 475, per the methodology in Oriental Basics, until dark and soft (to give you an idea, that one in the middle used to be white- these guys were small, a pound total, and it took about 22 minutes)

Then, to make baba ghanoush, I pulled the flesh out of the skin and whirred it up in my food processor with:

2 T olive oil
2 T lemon juice
3 T tahini
2 cloves minced garlic
salt and pepper

Subbbbblime. You were supposed to top with fresh parley (which I had) and olives (which I didn’t), so I subbed harissa, which was delicious and made for a beautiful color scheme.

Oh baba ghanoush. I love.

For dippage, I made an assortment. On the left, the last whole wheat faux-flatout wrap, ripped up. On the right, homemade bagel chips!  My sister makes us buy food no one else in the house would eat (large non whole wheat bagels) and then ignores it and leaves it to rot. Well, I will not allow that in my house. So I thirded each bagel half, sprayed with cooking spray and sprinkled with salt, and toasted in my toaster oven til golden (I caught these IN THE NICK OF TIME. I am such a neglectful toaster!)

Must call your attention to the beauteous plate:

My mom’s goddaughter MADE that! She is ten and is the most beautiful, imaginative, sweet, funny child on earth (I am in no way biased). And now we have her awesome plate.