Dinner tonight - Buffalo pasta & carmelized carrots

From Lesley Stratton — Blog by Lesley Stratton

February 9, 2010

So tonight I threw together a quick dinner. I took a pound of ground buffalo we had lying around, cooked it, added some premade vodka sauce and some precooked pieces of broccoli. I ended up adding more broccoli, as I wanted plenty of green in the sauce and I’ve been increasing my vegetable intake. The sauce got tossed with some whole wheat fusilli, yum!

But the real star of the dinner was the carmelized carrots. Lately my husband and I have been following a vegetable trend - take a vegetable, chop it up, toss it with some salt, oil, and cumin, throw it in a very hot oven and wah la! You have a tasty vegetable dish! This one used cumin seeds, kosher salt and olive oil (and the carrots were peeled). And true to the format, came out very tasty. Of special note was that the carrot were starting to lose their integrity, getting kind of soft and unpleasant. But after going through the carmelization process, you’d never know they had been on their last legs.

Lamb Tourte and Kale

From Lesley Stratton — Blog by Lesley Stratton

February 8, 2010

A few days ago, my husband and I decided to attempt the lamb tourte recipe that was recently listed. We’ve always had a hard time getting ground lamb meat, so we purchased some lamb steaks at Trader Joe’s and chopped them up into small chunks.

The recipe was right about being time consuming. It took about 2 hours to make. But at the end, we had a tasty pie awaiting us, and plenty of it! My husband thought it was good, but that its flavor did not achieve more than the sum of its parts - that is, the pie was no more tasty when its individual components were combined. I felt it had a subtle taste - multiple layers of flavors, but I have felt the subtlety of its taste was lost when reheating it as leftovers later.

The other night, we ate it accompanied by crispy kale. This is one of our favorite ways of eating kale nowadays. More accurately, it’s the only way we’ve been eating kale. For years, I had no idea what to do with the vegetable beyond feeding it to iguanas. Now at last, I know how to cook it! My husband loves this recipe so we eat it relatively often:

Crispy Kale
* Cut the leaves off one bunch of kale (discard the stems).
* Spread the leaves evenly across a cookie sheet.
* Pour a couple tablespoons of oil on the kale and toss it a bit so it is well coated (or you can do this in a bowl beforehand).
* Sprinkle salt across the kale to taste.
* Bake at 400 degrees. Usually this takes around 10 - 15 mins. I take it out after 7 or so and turn the leaves. What you want is a nice crunchy consistency (but not burnt!) - sort of like veggie potato chips.
* Serve as a side (or just chomp it right off the tray, as we often do - it sometimes never reaches our plates!)