Spiced Couscous Salad with Dates and Almonds

So during my last PFI adventure, I discovered tri-colored couscous.  They are colored with natural components such as vegetable juices.  There are orange, green and the natural yellow colors.  And I have been saving it to make for an occasion.  So tonight I went to a dinner party/potluck get together with a few girls from my volunteering group Cooking Matters.  The three of us are part of a group of girls who get together over food and wine and talk about careers, food, nutrition, recipes...basically anything food related.  Our hostess S, coined our group the Food Group.   

We had such a nice gathering tonight.  R brought a sweet potato salad with pepitas, cranberries, rosemary and a balsamic chutney dressing...so so delicious.  And S made a wonderful frittata with mushrooms, greens and sun dried tomatoes, AND an apple cranberry crisp topped with vanilla ice cream.   It is so nice meet up with people similarly interested in food and recipe talk.

So this recipe can definitely be made with regular couscous instead of the tri-color.  I think the tri-color is sort of more difficult to find.  Another side note is that the dates look really nice and different if you cut them into thin rings.   The original recipe calls for toasted almonds, but I thought raw would be a nice addition. 

Spiced Couscous Salad with Dates and Almonds
Adapted from epicurious.com


1 cup vegetable broth
1 cup water
1 1/2 cup dry couscous (regular or tri-colored)
Zest and juice of 1 lemon (about 1 Tbsp zest and 3-4 Tbsp juice)
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp ground coriander
1 15 oz can garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed
2/3 cup pitted dates, chopped in rings
1/2 cup raw almonds, chopped
1/2 cup fresh cilantro, chopped fine
1/4 cup green onion, minced
Salt and pepper to taste
Feta to garnish

Bring vegetable broth and water to a boil.  Add the dry couscous and stir for about 30 seconds.  Turn off heat and cover for 5-10 minutes.  If the couscous seems dry, add a little more hot water and let sit for a few more minutes.  Fluff with a fork and transfer to a large bowl to let cool.

Meanwhile, zest and juice the lemon (in that order) and whisk together with olive oil, cumin and coriander.  Drizzle the dressing over the couscous.  Add the dates, almonds, cilantro, and green onion.  Toss together and add salt and pepper to taste.  Top with feta.   Let stand for about an hour and serve!

Wind Cookies

There is a lovely bakery that my Mom and I started frequenting when I was in high school.  It was always such a special treat to go there and get our favorite cookies called Wind Cookies.  We would also go there with my high school friends and moms for special occasions and lunch dates.  It is such a magical little place once you walk through the doors.  Everything seems just as it should be.  The fluffy sugary smell of cakes, cookies, and other dessert treats, makes me feel like I am in CandyLand when I think of it.

So this year for my Mom's birthday, I tried recreating the famous wind cookies.  They are basically a dense meringue cookie.  And you can either get it plain, or filled with coconut, chocolate chips and nuts.  So of course, we liked the latter.  One of the best parts about them too, is the little pockets of carmelized sugar you sometimes bite into, which I zoomed into in the the above picture.

While I was making them, I snacked on some chocolate chips and coconut.  Yum!  You can put all of the additions (chocolate chips, coconut, nuts) into this recipe, or you can just add one or two.  Or you can leave them all out for a simpler, lighter fare.  You can also substitute the vanilla extract with almond extract.  I am not really one for food coloring, but you could add some for different colored cookies too.  A side note too is that the recipe below was taken from myrecipes.com and I cut it in half.  So you can double it if you are making for a larger group.

Wind Cookies

Recreated from bakery and adapted from myrecipes.com

Makes 12-20 cookies, depending on size

1 large egg white

1/8 tsp cream of tartar

1/3 cup sugar

1/8 tsp vanilla extract

1/4 cup chocolate chips (Ghirardelli are good!)

3 Tbsp shredded coconut

3 Tbsp chopped pecans

Preheat oven to 275 degrees.  In a large bowl, using a hand mixer, beat egg white and cream of tartar until thick and foamy. Gradually add sugar, a spoonful at a time, and continue to beat until mixture holds stiff, shiny peaks.  Stiff shiny peaks occur when you pull the beater (while turned off) from the mixture, and the peaks stay up and keep their shape.  This will take awhile! 

With a spatula, carefully fold in the vanilla, chocolate chips, coconut and pecans.  Spoon mixture into a pastry bag or if you don't have one, use a large ziptop plastic bag with a small corner cut out to pipe mixture through.  For small cookie, pipe about a tablespoon's worth of batter onto parchment lined baking sheet.  Keep cookies at least 1" apart from each other.  This is where you can choose the size of cookie you want.  So pipe more or less!

Bake until the cookies are firm and dry to the touch on the outside, about 25-30 minutes.  You can either pull out of oven and let cool on a rack, or leave in turned off oven overnight.  I chose the latter, and then was able to wake up the next morning and package them in the birthday box.  As a side note, they travel well!!

Baked Cucumbers

I know, a Baked Cucumbers recipe sounds really strange...but wow, what a great surprise they are!  At the beginning of this year, my friend and co-worker let me borrow her copy of Julie and Julia, which turned out to be the spark of my inspiration to start blogging.  This book led me to read many other similar books of peoples' culinary adventures.  And I gained a new appreciation for French cooking from this book.

So back to the cucumbers.  This concept does sound quite an unconventional thing to do to cucumbers.  When I heard about it, I thought they would undoubtedly be soggy and slimy.  But no!  Even in Julie and Julia, she has a dinner party and serves this, and everyone had the same reservations before trying them.  But everyone liked them and so did we. 

Another great thing about this dish is that cucumbers are something you may likely have in the fridge and it is a simple dish to whip up for guests.  The process of making them is really easy and mostly passive cooking, though you do bake them for an hour, so there is some planning that goes into it.    You have an option of what type of seasoning to use.  I chose dill, but Julia Childs suggests dill or basil.  Every time I cook from Mastering the Art of French Cooking, I follow the recipe without any diversions.  So what you see below will be exactly what Julia says to do. 

We also made the potato and leek soup, which is so simple and good.  We tried two methods of puree-ing the soup, one in the food processor and one with a potato masher.  Both were equally good, just different consistency.  Chicken and a few pieces of hearty bread made this a nice meal.

Baked Cucumbers
From Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking
Yields 6 servings

6 Cucumbers
2 Tbsp wine white vingear
1 1/2 tsp salt
1/8 tsp sugar

3 Tbsp melted butter
1/2 tsp dried dill or basil
3-4 Tbsp minced green onions
1/8 tsp pepper

Peel the cucumbers and cut in half lengthwise.  Scoop out the seeds with a spoon.  Cut in lengthwise strips about 3/8 inch wide.  Cut the strips into 2" pieces.  Toss the cucumbers in a bowl with the vinegar, salt and sugar.  Let stand for about 30 minutes (or a few hours).  Drain and pat dry with a paper towel.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Toss the cucumbers in the baking dish with the butter, herbs, onions and pepper.  Put in a baking dish (I used 9x13 glass dish).  Put in midlevel of oven for 1 hour, tossing occasionally.  Cook until the cucumbers are tender but still have a little crispness and texture.  They will basically look the same color as when you started.

Serve immediately as a appetizer or addition to a meal.  Bon appetite!

Roasted Broccoli

One thing I really enjoy is going to a good yoga class...which I did tonight.  Another thing I enjoy is coming home afterwards and having a super simple dinner.  I must give you a fair warning: this recipe is sooo easy and delicious and healthy.  It is modeled after a dish I  mentioned previously, from one of our favorite restaurants in town called Black Bottle.  So whenever I fix this dish, I call it Black Bottle Broccoli because I have spent about two years trying to recreate it. 

Every time I go in, I ask a different person how they make it.  It seems to vary person to person, but one common theme is that they use a convection oven, which I do not have.  So instead I roast it.  The usual suspects for flavoring are lots of garlic powder, salt and pepper.  Sometimes I use cayenne for a little extra something.  Lemon zest would be a nice tangy touch too.  You can also use a bag of pre-cut broccoli to make it simpler.  We usually split this and a flat bread pizza or chicken drums with a glass of red wine.  Or sometimes just have this as a beginning or end of the night dish. 

Roasted Broccoli
Re-created from Black Bottle's 'Broccoli Blasted'
Yields about 1-2 cups

1 Bunch broccoli, or bag of pre-cut broccoli
2 Tbsp olive oil
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp salt

Preheat oven to 425 degrees and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.   Cut off the broccoli florets and chop into small and medium pieces.  Wash and let drain in a colander.  In a large bowl, coat the broccoli with half of the olive oil, garlic powder, pepper and salt.  Toss with hands to fully cover the broccoli.  Repeat with the remaining half of ingredients, so everything is evenly coated.  This is a basic recipe, so add any other flavoring you wish.

Place on baking sheet and put in oven for 12 minutes.  Toss with tongs and put back in oven for 15 minutes or until broccoli begins to singe and turn dark on the ends.  Serve as an appetizer or side dish to pizza, meat or fish, or bean dish.

Black Eyed Peas and Smoky Squash Salad

This recipe is a dedication to my Great Aunt Boo, who I always think of when having black eyed peas.  She was a wonderful cook.  When she'd come to my grandma's for her summer visit, she'd be cooking up a storm in the kitchen.  And usually at least once during her visit she'd make black eyed peas. 

I came across this recipe on the always lovely blog Smitten Kitchen yesterday.  She posted a Spicy Squash Salad with Black Lentils and Goat Cheese.  I had a bunch of leftover feta and a can of black eyed peas, so I thought they'd make great substitutions.

And last night was my first and successful attempt at peeling a butternut squash with a vegetable peeler.  I was a little nervous, so I looked on the internet to find the easiest and least dangerous way to do it.  I found a great site that suggested cutting off the top and bottom of the squash first, to have a flat surface so the squash isn't rolling around everywhere, and tempting the peeler to cut you.

After this, the peeling was easier than I anticipated.  I would do one layer, and then there was a second, green-striped layer that I peeled as well.  From there, it was so simple to cut them in cubes...much like chopping a cantaloupe.  The seasoning was a different combination than I have used before and really enjoyed the result.  The recipe called for hot smoked Spanish paprika.  I only had the sweeter variety of paprika, so I did half of what I had, and half of a smoked dried chili pepper I had gotten at Whole Foods this summer, after taking a Turkish/Mediterranean cooking class.

I jazzed the black eyed peas up, by sauting an onion and garlic first and then added the peas and some salt and pepper.  I was drinking a glass of white wine that I wasn't totally enjoying (a little too sweet), so I poured a few swallows into the mix.  The result was really good.

Black Eyed Peas and Smoky Squash Salad
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen
Yields 4-6 good sized servings


1 Butternut squash, peeled, cubed and roasted
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp smoked chiles, powdered (or hot paprika)
1/2 tsp sweet paprika
1/2 salt

1 Tbsp olive oil
1/3 yellow onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 can black eyed peas, drained
1 Tbsp white wine
Salt to taste

1 cup fresh spinach, chopped
1/2 cup feta, crumbled
1 Tbsp red wine vinegar

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Prepare butternut squash.  Cut off top and bottom of squash.  Peel with vegetable peeler until you reach the smooth yellow/orange surface.  Cut the squash in half.  Scoop out seeds and cut into cubes.  Put cubes in a large bowl and toss with 2 Tbsp olive oil, cumin, paprikas and salt, making sure to coat each piece.  Roll a piece of parchment paper on a baking sheet and spread squash on top in one layer.

Bake for 20 minutes and flip cubes over and cook for another 15-20 minutes until tender.

While squash is cooking, saute the onion and garlic in 1 Tbsp olive oil on low/medium.  Cook until onion is translucent.  Add black eyed peas, wine and salt.  Cover and cook on low heat to let the flavors marry.

Take out squash and let cook.  I picked up the parchment with the squash on top, and carefully placed on wire rack to let cool.

Meanwhile, prep the spinach and feta.  Toss the black eyed pea mixture in with it.  Add squash and toss with vinegar, salt and pepper, adding more if needed  Serve as a healthy sized dinner salad, or a side salad to soup, chicken or toasty bread.