Melon tomato feta salad

Adapted from Summer Melon Salad with Feta and Mint from the Detroit Free Press (adapted in turn from Country Living) via the Aug.21 Taste section of the Star Tribune

Ingredients

1½ cups melon balls, such as watermelon, honeydew or cantaloupe (I used yellow watermelon and cantaloupe)

¾ cup cherry tomatoes, halved

2 cups arugula

1 tablespoon olive oil, plus more for drizzling

1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar, plus more for drizzling

3 tablespoons crumbled feta (a mild variety like Israeli or French works well here, as would ricotta salata)

½ tablespoon chopped fresh tarragon

Salt and pepper to taste

Method

Combine 1 tablespoon each of oil and vinegar. Season with salt and pepper. Toss with arugula and divide between two plates. Top greens with half of the melon balls and half the tomatoes. Sprinkle 1½ tablespoon of cheese on each plate atop melon balls. Sprinkle with tarragon. Drizzle with olive oil and vinegar. Serves 2.

Rating: Quite nice. I’ve tried other variations on this that worked well also, such as Epicurious’ watermelon-arugula-pine nut version, and a watermelon feta salad, but not quite this combo pack before. Very repeatable. I’d make sure to use watermelon as one of the fruit choices.

Chicken with roasted balsamic tomatoes

I had an abundance of yellow and red cherry tomatoes in need of using and some chicken thawed, so I took a different take on what otherwise looks to be a perfectly plausible recipe in its own right.

Baked chicken with roasted balsamic tomatoes
Adapted from the Grilled FlatIron Steak with Roasted Cherry Tomato Sauce recipe by Meredith Deeds in the Aug. 21 Taste section of the Star Tribune.

Ingredients
2 pints cherry tomatoes
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves
2 garlic cloves, minced
Salt and pepper
8 boneless, skinless chicken thighs (or 4 breast halves)

Method
Put tomatoes in a roasting pan. If cherry tomatoes are particularly large, you may wish to cut them in half; otherwise just toss them in whole. Combine oil, vinegar, thyme, garlic and seasoning in a small dish. Drizzle most of the mixture over the tomatoes. Push to one side. Place chicken in the center of the pan and drizzle with remaining mixture. Bake at 400 for about a half hour or until chicken is done and tomatoes are cracked open and sizzling.

Rating: Perfectly fine fast food with minimal fuss. Since the tomatoes were cooking with the chicken, there was plenty of liquid in the pan to be slurped up by the rice mixture served on the side. I'm sure it would be tasty with grilled chicken, or the grilled steak as well.

While it was fine and worth repeating, it's still not quite my favorite method of roasting cherry tomatoes. At the end of the season when I'm faced with platters-full, I turn to Tomato Confit, a New York Times recipe the Star Tribune republished a few years back.

Lots of likely looking recipes in this week's Taste. Now to see if I try them all while it's still seasonal or whether I clip them all and they languish and turn yellow in my files.

Smoky roasted cauliflower

Eating well for less is a general goal for many of us, whether we’ve got six-digit annual paychecks or whether we’re subsisting on food stamps. One of the things I like about the Midtown Farmers Market is not only that they take food stamps, but that I see immigrant mothers choosing to spend their limited food stamp resources at a place likely to yield the most healthful results for their family. I’m sorry their means are limited to that extent, but happy that there’s a resource for them like the market.

Not everything at a farmers market is cheap. Meat, for instance, is “value priced,” aka it’s a much better value for a like product at a supermarket, where it’s totally not free. Ditto with fresh berries and tomatoes.

But there are genuine deals at a farmers market at any price. Like grocery stores, farmers markets have different tiers of shelving. While the grocery stores have multiple levels, the farmers markets have just the two levels, and the bargain values are on the bottom shelves or in baskets around the perimeter. Enormous baskets of tomatoes or cucumbers are a big value, as are all the root vegetables down at that level.

Each year there’s a ritual: I spot my first rutabaga of the season, an enormous family-feeding monster for a buck tucked away in a stand on the southwest end. I always exclaim when I see it: Is that a rutabaga? And the Hmong grandfather is always thrilled to see it recognized and happy to sell it to me for what seems to me to be a criminally low price.

It’s that sort of value that’s behind a cookbook aimed at getting people to eat healthfully on SNAP, as the food stamp program is now known. Grad student Leanne Brown’s thesis project was a cookbook that explores what’s possible on $4 a day without resorting to the dollar menu at a fast-food place. Clearly there are some different price points in place where she shopped in New York vs. the Midwest for certain items, but it’s a highly laudable effort at eking out decent food at an unsustainable price point.

Smoky and spicy roasted cauliflower

From “Good and Cheap: Eat Well on $4/Day” by Leanne Brown.You can download a free pdf of the cookbook here.

Ingredients

1 head cauliflower, separated into small pieces

2 garlic cloves, unpeeled (I used 5, because)

1 tablespoon melted butter

1 teaspoon smoked  paprika

½ teaspoon cayenne powder

Method

Combine cauliflower, garlic, butter, paprika, cayenne, salt and pepper to taste in a roasting pan. Roast at 400 degrees for 40 minutes. Squeeze out garlic; toss together. 

Rating: A tasty, caramelized side dish. It serves 4. Brown also has a recipe calling for serving the roasted cauliflower in tacos topped with salsa and cheese, which would stretch things a bit further. Clearly you’d need to buy your smoked paprika at a place like Bill’s Imported Foods, where spices are available in bulk, for the pricing to work out.

Slow cooker chicken cassoulet

Chicken Cassoulet

Adapted from “The Healthy Slow Cooker” by Judith Finlayson. This offers 135 gluten-free recipes for health and wellness, but I’m still willing to cook from it.

Ingredients

1 tablespoon olive oil

2 onions, finely chopped

4 celery stalks, sliced

8 carrots, peeled and sliced

4 garlic cloves, minced

2 teaspoons herbes de Provence

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon peppercorns

28 ounces of canned tomatoes, chopped

1 cup chicken stock

4 cups cooked white beans

2 bay leaves

8 chicken thighs, bone-in, (skin off if you want it to be healthy)

1 pound cremini mushrooms

¼ cup finely chopped fresh dill

Method

Heat oil in a large skillet. Add onions, carrots and celery and cook over medium heat until carrots are starting to soften. Add garlic, herbs and spices and cook for 1 minute. Add tomatoes with juice, stock, beans, bay leaves and bring to a boil.

Put half of the bean mixture into a large slow cooker. (Definitely can’t fit this in the old-fashioned size; it filled my 5-quart model to the brim.) Put chicken on top of that layer. Top with mushrooms, then spoon remaining sauce on top.

Cook on low for 6 hours (or on high for 3). Remove bay leaves if you can fish them out. Stir in dill and let cook a few minutes more.

Rating: Sort of like a chicken stew. It's not a wower, but it's certainly not bad. It starts out going in as quite runny, and thickens up a bit -- again, like a stew. It makes a super ton, so if your goal was to feed your spouse while you're on a week of night shifts from hell, mission accomplished.

The main things that probably make this recipe qualify as healthful are skinless chicken and a stipulation that the recipe serves 8. I'm not sure most people would divide the math that way in real life, which makes it a tad less healthful.

6 ways to use green beans

Braised green beans with garlic and lemon

Sometimes when I'm snapping off the ends of beans it triggers flashbacks to childhood, when my sister and I would be faced with mounds and mounds of beans to snap before our mother brought in another load from the garden. We passed the time by making up the characters of Blanche and Henrietta, who led very soap-operish lives. At this point I can't recall which of us was which, but I remember one of them was married to Harvey Wallbanger, who drowned in the bathtub, and the other was married to someone who died of a stroke -- of good luck. 

Luckily, these days I don't plant so many beans that I'm forced to dream up alternate existences while snapping them, but I am forced to dream up alternative ways of cooking them so we don't get too bored. Here are six ways to mix it up:

Braised green beans with garlic and lemon

From Martha Stewart Living Everyday Food July/Aug. 2012

Ingredients

4 cups green beans, trimmed

5 peeled whole garlic cloves

1 cup chicken broth

2 teaspoons fresh thyme leaves

Olive oil, salt, pepper

1 sliced lemon

Method

Put broth and garlic in a medium sauce pan. Bring to a boil. Add beans and thyme and simmer until done, about 10 minutes or so (longer if you’re doubling). Drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper. Serve topped with lemon slices.

Rating: Very nice. Repeatable. Works in larger quantities as well. I’d use a large skillet if you’re doing it in quantity so the beans get done evenly.

Yellow tomato braised beans

Adapted from Better Homes and Gardens Aug. 2014

Ingredients

2 medium yellow tomatoes or the equivalent in yellow cherry tomatoes, chopped small

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 cup chopped onion

2 minced garlic cloves

4 cups green beans, trimmed

1 tablespoon fresh lemon thyme leaves

1 tablespoon white wine

1 tablespoon butter

Method

Heat oil in medium saucepan. Saute onion until tender. Add garlic and cook 1 minute. Add tomatoes and beans. Stir together. Bring to a simmer and cook covered about 20 minutes or until nearly tender. Add thyme and wine and cook until tender. Add butter and cook uncovered until it thickens slightly. Season with salt and pepper.

Rating: OK. Not as good as the other braising method, but passable. If I hadn’t just tried the other kind, I’d probably be more impressed.

Many-bean salad

Adapted from 1,000 Lowfat Recipes, a cookbook on my sister’s shelf

Ingredients

1 cup each of cooked, rinsed and drained chickpeas, white beans such as navy, darker beans such as red kidneys, black beans or pintos (so a total of 3 cups of 3 varieties of beans to suit yourself)

2 cups fresh green beans, trimmed and steamed until tender crisp

½ cup thinly sliced red onions

2 green onions, sliced

2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

1 small garlic clove, minced

¼ cup red wine vinegar

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 teaspoon sugar

½ teaspoon sea salt

¼ teaspoon pepper

Method

Combine beans, onions and parsley. In a small bowl, whisk together remaining ingredients. Pour over salad. This seems to taste better if it’s had a morning to marinate, and be sure to stir it up again before serving.

Rating: A really quite nice version of three-bean salad. The steamed beans will stay bright green for a few days, but after that they’ll look like you used canned and won’t be as crisp.

Previous recipes I've posted that make good use of green beans:

Green beans with garlic vinaigrette. Fast, easy, tasty

Green bean tuna salad. Very fresh tasting lunch

Green beans gremolata. The Barefoot Contessa comes through again.