White Bean Dip

Can of white beans + garlic + garlic scapes + parsley + lemon + olive oil= perfect dip with tortilla chips

Kung Pao Chicken

Kung Pao Chicken with snap peas, garlic scape, peppers, spring onions. Loosely based on this recipe. I found a chili-garlic sauce at the grocery store that ended up lending lots of spice to my sauce. Here's my version:

-Marinate chunks of boneless chicken breast in mixture of chili-garlic sauce, soy sauce, sherry, and sesame oil. I didn't measure these things, but had well over a cup of marinade total, which became my sauce. Only marinated for the time it took me to chop everything else.
-Start rice cooking.
-Chop garlic, ginger, garlic scape, tops and bottoms of spring onions, 2 fresh chili peppers, 1 red pepper, snap peas.
-Heat up sesame oil in pan. Add garlic and ginger until starting to brown, the add chicken and all the marinade. Cook chicken. Add spring onion bottoms, chili, garlic scape, snap peas, and red pepper. Cook 5-10 minutes, until peppers and snap peas are softening. Add cashews and spring onion tops and turn heat to low.
-Make sauce with: 3 tbsp soy sauce, 1/2 tbsp sesame oil, 1/2 tbsp sugar, 1/2 tbsp cornstarch, 1/2 cup water. Mix until cornstarch is dissolved, then add to chicken and vegetables. Simmer for 5-10 minutes.
-Serve over rice.

Mushroom phyllo cups

I like cooked mushrooms much better than raw ones. So I sauteed my mushrooms with some garlic and spring onions, put into premade phyllo cups, sprinkled cheese on top (Gruyere was what I had on hand), and baked for 10-15 minutes. Voila!

Caldo Verde

Last week I thought about making Caldo Verde-- a Portuguese kale soup-- with my first batch of kale. But it was warm and sunny out and soup just didn't seem right. Today, with a fridge full of kale and rain streaming down my window panes, the idea seemed much more appealing. I based my soup off the recipe I just linked to (here it is again), but with a few variations. The chouriço that the recipe calls for is a smoked sausage. I was using raw chorizo so I cooked it all-- along with garlic and onions-- before I started, then took out about three-quarters of it to set aside before I boiled the red potatoes in that same pan. Once the potatoes were getting mushy, I realized I didn't really want to take everything out and food process it-- I like my soup chunky, for one thing, and was too hungry to add this step, for another thing. So I simply stuck my potato masher right into the pot, and mashed up the potatoes while keeping the onion and chorizo chunks whole, and some bigger chunks of pototo remaining. Then I added the chorizo I'd set aside and kale and let it simmer for quite awhile--closer to 20 minutes, I'd say, than the 2 minutes the recipe calls for. In the end, my potaotes were so cooked and mashed up it probably wasn't any different in texture than if I'd pureed them.

The soup turned out great-- I appreciated the taste of the kale in this much more than when I made curried turnovers with the kale last week (curry does tend to mask flavors I suppose). I would definitely consider making this soup with other greens-- spinach for example-- but liked the flavor of the kale a lot. The chorizo I got was nice and spicy too, which added to the flavor of the soup.

Spinach-mint chicken penne

It's so great having all these vegetables in my fridge-- not needing to go to the grocery store with a whole list of ingredients to buy, but instead basing my dinner around what I already have. I wanted to use up some spinach and mint tonight, since it already looked a little wilty, but didn't want something too complex, time-consuming, or needing too many ingredients I didn't have. So I started browsing Epicurious for spinach recipes, and got inspired by a simple spinach pasta salad with some chicken for protein. I figured I'd use mint instead of rosemary, and both the tops and bottoms of my spring onions. I was a little hesitant about the mint-spring onion-spinach combination, but it turned out great-- garlicky with a little extra kick and very fresh and green tasting.

What I did: Sauteed the spring onions and a few cloves of garlic in olive oil, then added chicken-- one breast cut into fairly small chunks. Once the chicken was cooked, I added my whole batch of spinach, mint, and some chopped greens from the spring onions. Everything smelled incredibly fresh. Meanwhile, I was cooking half a pound of penne, and dumped it straight into the pan of greens when it was al dente. I added a little chicken broth and let the whole thing simmer for five minutes, then covered liberally with parmesan. Served it still steaming hot-- made about 3 servings, I'd say, so will last for me for lunch and dinner tomorrow.