RECIPE REDUX: Cauliflower, Sprouts & Beans in 'vinaigrette' (NYT)

You can use that wok for meals other than Asian-themed ones, if you like...sugar-less and flour-less skillet supper: cruciferous veggies and beans in an intriguing sauce, done in Wok, from The New York Times.

This recipe woks cauliflower, brussels sprouts and red beans in a mustard 'vinaigrette' -- minus the vinegar. The 'vinaigrette' consists of lemon juice, olive oil and Dijon mustard, whisked with a little water or vegetable stock.

TIPS Tuesday: Float It...or Coat It

Just tossing up a non-lettuce leaf salad with dressing, sometimes doesn't really work too well, I find. 

Sometimes dressing for, say, a cauliflower salad--as from last Saturday--or an asparagus or green bean salad, really needs to marinate the salad--float a little in the dressing, as it were--before you can serve it. Another possibility is to coat the salad ingredients with just some olive oil, and maybe one or two of the dry dressing ingredients (for example, parsley or paprika), let that sit for a bit, or even chill overnight, before tossing it with the dressing-proper. You can divide, or reserve, some of the dry ingredients, as well, to sprinkle over your marinated salad before serving.

TIPS Tuesday: It's Cauliflower Time

I've been seeing cauliflower in markets. Turns out California grows more than 90% of all U.S. cauliflower. It's versatile, pairs well with melted cheeses, can form a kind of no-flour crust with slightly browned, melted cheddar, and is healthful, reportedly containing anti-cancer agents. Loads of recipes are online, like this roasted one and this gratin, which you could adapt to eliminate the flour and bread-crumbs. Here's an interesting Indian non-vegetarian curry. I plan on making this Spanish-style cauliflower salad.

SCRUMPTIOUS Saturdays (Um...Mondays): Moroccan Chicken

I'm doing a lot of travel through the end of September, so I'm not around to cook a lot: here's a pretty neat recipe for Moroccan Chicken from Slow Carb Foodie, adapted from Mark's Daily Apple. It's a lot of ingredients and steps, and normally I wouldn't go for that. But I would simplify this by grating the cauliflower, combining all the dry spice ingredients together, browning the chicken, and then 'breading' the chicken with the spice mixture before putting it in a baking pan with the other wet/fresh ingredients to cook. Just a thought.

Another possibility is to create a Middle Eastern marinade out of all of the ingredients, save the cauliflower, and after marinating overnight in the fridge, 'bread' the chicken with the grated cauliflower, then bake...just a thought.

THEMATIC Thursdays: Nerc* Crusts

Kids, NRC doesn't stand for Nuclear Regulatory Commission (at least not on this blog). It stands for No Refined Carbs. 

Back a few recipes, I featured a summertime no-bake cheesecake, with an almond meal and oat-bran crust, as a solution to making that recipe with the standard graham-cracker crust. But, that is, quite frankly, a dessert crust, and would not work for, say pizza. Other grains you could use besides oat-bran might include amaranth, quinoa, buckwheat (true buckwheat contains no wheat)**, and mixing them with butter, oil and some kind of very sturdy fruit, such as raisins, dried cranberries or dates, might work for a pie--but again, not for pizza.

**(I don't bake these flours--just throw them in and mix. Transmuting them with heat monkeys with vitamin content and moves these toward 'refined-carb' territory)

BUT...how about cauliflower? Huh? Yes, a very clever Navy wife has created a tremendously appealing recipe that would work great for a pizza. On her blog, Joyful Abode, she mixes cauliflower, mozzarella cheese and eggs to create what looks like a real solid, brown, crunchy crust.

Problem solved!

Nerc = "not eating refined carbs"