Monday: Cashew Curry

Coconut milk cashew curry on basmati rice.

For some reason unknown to us, cashew nuts go extremely well with cruciferous vegetables. In fact, a nice way to punch up plain broccoli or kale is a topping of chopped, toasted cashew nuts. This curry takes advantage of that natural pairing, adding green beans, tofu, and coconut milk. Served on basmati rice, it was a filling and straightforward almost-one-pot meal.

Tuesday: Aloo gobi chaat

Aloo gobi chaat.

We've already blogged about chaat - an Indian snack food that can serve as a quick weeknight dinner. This was more or less a reprise of our previous chaat, but with the substitution of a small head of purple cauliflower for the tomatoes (no longer in season, sadly).

To save time, we once again used pre-cooked canned chickpeas instead of dried black or green chickpeas. Since the taste of canned chickpeas leaves something to be desired, we followed Madhur Jaffrey's method for quickly improving their flavor: drain and rise the chickpeas, then simmer for five to ten minutes in water to cover with whole spices (a bay leaf, cumin, coriander, cloves, or whatever you like) in a tea strainer or tied up in a little cheesecloth sachet. Although we don't use this technique every single time that we use canned chickpeas, it can really make a difference for dishes like chaat where the chickpeas are to be eaten whole without any additional cooking.

Tuesday: A light pre-Thanksgiving dinner

Roasted purple cauliflower with parmesan, white beans, and quinoa.

This recipe calls for roasting cauliflower florets in a baking dish with a little oil, garlic and lemon juice. This preparation results in a whole different flavor profile for cauliflower compared to how it tastes boiled - some people who don't think they like cauliflower might be interested in trying it out.

Although white cauliflower is the most common cultivar, you can also find it in peachy-orange and purple. (Yes, the color is completely natural!) This purple cauliflower took on a red tinge when roasted.

Thursday: Pasta reprise

Whole-wheat penne with cauliflower-anchovy sauce.

This is another of our standby meals for a weeknight when we don't have much time to cook.

(Can you tell we've been busy lately?)

Thursday: North Indian cauliflower and potato

Cauliflower and potatoes cooked with fenugreek and fennel seeds.

This recipe from Madhur Jaffrey's World of the East is apparently a popular North Indian dish. It's commonly served with paratha, but due to time constraints we had to substitute sourdough bread from the freezer.

A note on terminology: some people might call a dish like this "curried" cauliflower and potatoes. The truth is, there isn't really such thing as "curry" - Indian dishes use a great variety of different spices in combinations that vary by season, region and recipe. Generic "curry powders" might include a few of the most common spices - turmeric, coriander, cumin and cayenne - but this doesn't begin to capture the subtlety that can be created by varying types and amounts of spices, and adding them at different stages of the cooking process.

Ironically, a common flavoring in many south Indian regional cuisines is the "curry leaf" - which bears no relationship to commercial curry powders, but does impart its own complex flavor to certain dishes.

Wednesday: Almond joy

Yellow cauliflower with roasted almonds and cranberry beans, served with quinoa.

We adapted this recipe from a Chinese one in Madhur Jaffrey's World of the East, substituting cranberry beans for lima beans (which Giselle has refused to eat since infancy). It's a very quick preparation, in which pre-cooked cauliflower and beans are stirred in oil with a little garlic and ginger, and then sherry is added in. But what really makes the dish is the first step, in which you fry almonds in the oil you will use to cook the vegetables. Who knew almonds could taste like that??

Incidentally, if you're wondering why those little purple beans are named "cranberry," you should check out how they look before being cooked:



Last year a farm came to the market which sold several other types of shell beans (beans sold fresh in their inedible pod), and we got to try a couple, but unfortunately this year cranberries are all we can find. If anybody knows where in New York you can score a couple other types of shell beans, please let us know.

Thursday: slightly monochromatic pasta

Pasta with cauliflower-anchovy sauce.

This is one of our super-easy staple meals: boil florets of broccoli or cauliflower until they're just a little less tender than you'd want them to be to eat them; then drain. Heat olive oil in a frying pan and saute a little garlic; then add a tin's worth of chopped up anchovies; then add the florets and cook them, mashing them around. Throw it onto the pasta - it's really delicious and takes under half an hour, even if only one person is cooking.

That recipe is originally from How to Cook Everything, Mark Bittman's comprehensive cooking bible.