...with cold, fuss-free summer meals.
As much as I love to cook and bake, there are days when even turning
on the toaster seems to heat up the kitchen. I did very minimal cooking this weekend - one meal involved a couscous salad (boil water/broth, add couscous, stir, turn off the heat, cover, and let sit for 5 minutes, and it's
done... add vegetables and herbs of your choice, some kind of dressing, maybe some feta cheese). This is another one of those "non-recipes" as I like to call it, as you can do whatever you want! Choose a different vegetable. A different grain/starch. A different flavor profile with other herbs. During the colder months I would use a heartier grain like barley or spelt berries, but in the summer couscous is just perfect. I chose these vegetables because these are what I got from last Friday's
produce pickup.
The trick here, I think, is to flavor everything from the start - for instance, instead of cooking the couscous/pasta/grains in plain water, I cook it in vegetable broth. If I happen to not have broth and just have water, I add other aromatics (garlic, onion, herbs, whatever) and salt in the cooking water too. And, in either situation, some olive oil. A little olive oil never hurt anybody. (And actually, having a little fat, like olive oil, with vegetables helps our bodies absorb the fat-soluble nutrients in the vegetables. It's a good thing!)
 |
| whole wheat couscous, chickpeas, carrots, tomatoes, kale lightly sauteed in garlic and onions, parsley + basil from my balcony (Yes they are growing! There's hope for cactus-killing, non-green-thumbs like me!), and sheep's milk feta (from Lucky Penny Farm), dressed in extra virgin olive oil, lemon zest, lemon juice, salt and pepper |
Other meals involved cold soups just using the blender.
Cold soup #1:
Cucumber Soup
There is a reason cucumbers are harvested in the summer.
- 2 cucumbers, peeled, seeded, and chopped
- 1 cup plain yogurt (I extended the yummy Velvet View Farmstead yogurt by saving a bit to use as a starter for homemade yogurt!)
- 1-2 cloves garlic, depending on how garlicky you want it
- 2 tablespoons of chopped spring onions
- half a jalapeno pepper, seeded and chopped (optional, but I wanted just a tiny bit of a kick)
- a cup or so of vegetable broth (cold!) -maybe more, maybe less... just enough to get the consistency you want
- salt and pepper
- fresh herbs of your choice (mint, dill, parsley are good choices... I had some parsley on my balcony so that's what I used)
The most work here (which really isn't a
lot of work) is prepping the cucumbers and garlic. When a dish calls for raw garlic, I like mincing it with a little salt so that it becomes pasty. Sometimes, big garlic pieces somehow escape the blades of the blender, so mincing it into a paste avoids that. The salt seems to tame the flavor a bit too. (I do the same for raw onions, like for guacamole - though I don't mash them, just sprinkle salt over chopped onions and let it sit for a few minutes).
Whizz everything in a blender until smooth, and it's done.
You might chill it in the fridge some more, but since all my ingredients were cold to begin with, I didn't have to.
Cold soup #2:
Sopa de Ajo Bianco (Almond and Garlic Soup)
This soup is not for those who are lukewarm toward garlic. Even
A., who really likes garlic, said it was a little much. Two cloves of garlic (instead of 3) would be just fine here. Feel free to adjust to your liking.
- 1 cup of almond meal (available at Trader Joe's; some grocery stores also carry the Bob's Red Mill brand of almond meal)
- a cup or so (around 2 slices) of cubed day-old white country bread, crusts removed, and soaked in enough milk to cover
- 3 cloves of garlic, minced with salt until pasty
- a dash of sherry vinegar
- salt and pepper
Again - whizz everything in a blender until smooth. To make it extra smooth, pour it through a sieve into bowls. I did this, but ended up not wanting to waste the almond bits that collected in the sieve. So I slathered it on bread. It was already flavorful, so why not?
Technically, this recipe calls for blanched almonds so you probably wouldn't even have to run it through a sieve since you won't be dealing with the almond skins anymore. But I didn't have blanched almonds, so it had to be almond meal. I think it worked out.
This soup also calls for green grapes, as a garnish or served on the side - like in
this recipe. Unfortunately I didn't have any, but I imagine that would be really good here as a contrast to the creamy and garlicky soup. Note to self for next time.
Chill in the refrigerator before serving.
Hope it cools off this week!
