Brussel Sprout and Mushroom Ragout with Herb Dumplings

I am much more interested in new things than I am in relying on the tried and true.  I am completely brand un-loyal.  I hate watching a movie or reading a book more than once, unless I really can't remember what it's about.  I think that watching the same reruns of Seinfeld and The Office over and over on TBS is a complete waste of my time.  And I hardly ever cook the same dish more than twice.

Gluten-Free Quick Bread with Walnuts

Yesterday I had planned to make a quick bread recipe that a reader submitted as a comment to Whole Wheat Nutty Quick Bread post.  But when I got to the grocery store there was no whole wheat pastry flour.  Yes, I could have walked two blocks to the next grocery store or just used regular whole wheat flour, but instead I was tempted by a gluten-free garbanzo-fava flour.  PJ has considered going off gluten, and even though he has not committed fully to it yet I thought that having a really good gluten-free loaf might make it seem less scary!

Design-Your-Own Whole Wheat Muffins

Schools were closed again today for a snow day, giving me time to blog about these delicious muffins!  The recipe is a basic whole wheat muffin, but the beauty is that you can completely customize them by adding your favorite fruits, mashed vegetables, nuts, or seeds.

I made a double recipe so we can keep some in the freezer.  For the first batch I made banana walnut and for the second sweet potato with cardamom.  PJ liked the banana better and I liked the sweet potato, but they are both really good.

Chicken Udon Noodle Soup

When I started making this recipe I thought, "I see what we're doing here - we're making chicken noodle soup."  I'm familiar with a good chicken soup recipe because my mom makes a really good one and I make it myself when I'm feeling sniffly or sneezy.  But as I started reading the recipe, I soon began to worry: no carrots or celery? no matzah balls??  and we're adding soy sauce???  It's amazing how switching out just a few ingredients gave this chicken soup a completely different feel. I packaged up the leftovers in pyrex containers to bring in to work for satisfying lunches.

Onion Tart with Mixed Greens

This recipe is a combination of two great French foods: pissaladierres and gallettes.  It is topped with caramelized onions like a pisaladierre, a type of pizza popular in southern France that is topped with caramelized onions, anchovies, and olives.   However this is not made with pizza dough like a pisaladierre but instead rests on a flaky pastry crust  like a galette, which is a flat, free-form, rustic tart.

Tilapia over Swiss Chard and Cannelini Beans

I just found this recipe for swiss chard with cannelini beans on the Williams-Sonoma website.  You might not expect it, but they have an amazing recipe collection which I highly recommend.  The author suggested serving it as a sauce for pasta or over polenta, but when I saw it I immediately thought it would be great served under a fillet of fish.  I prepared the tilapia similarly to the meuniere method I used for the sole a few posts ago.  It came out to be a really nice dish.  It reminded me of something very fancy I had in a five course meal at Ten Tables Restaurant in Boston, but this version is really pretty inexpensive and also fairly easy to make.  I prepped all the ingredients before I left for work so it only took about 25 minutes  when I got home.  Feel free to substitute whatever fish looks best at your market.  For an extra special presentation, make some polenta and serve it beneath the bean mixture, but it really is so elegant without it too that it doesn't seem worth the extra effort to me.

Happy Valentine's Day! Recipe: Stir-Fried Red Cabbage and Winter Squash

PJ's stomach is still not completely healed so I'm trying to get creative to make stir-fried vegetables as exciting as I can.  This combination of red cabbage and bright orange butternut squash is so visually pleasing and really tasty, too.  Next time we have it I'm going to make it with chicken though since I make a similar cold red cabbage and chicken salad that is really good, and PJ still isn't crazy about tofu.  I found this recipe when I was going through the archives of the recipe section in the New York Times.  I realized that the same recipe was actually published twice under different names in 2008 and 2010.  I figure that if this is the recipe they republish when they are out of other good things to write about that it has to be pretty good!