Smoky-Spicy-Sweet Barbecue Baked Beans

I've been eyeing this recipe since I got my copy of Recipes From the Root Cellar last June. But what with our cross-country move and baby and all, I never got a chance to make it last summer.

But since June is nearly over, I decided it was finally time to carpe diem (inspired by Cher's character in Clueless, a truly great film) and I cooked up a big ol' pot of these lovely beans a few days ago as part of my Fourth of July Feast. These vegetarian beans make a nice addition to any party where you're serving a ton of grilled meat so that our non-flesh-eating brothers and sisters need not suffer any protein-deprivation.

I used kidney beans since I had a bunch of them in the pantry but I think that I might go with pintos next time around since they're even creamier.

After the soaking comes the cooking. It's crucial to cook the beans to your desired softness before adding the other ingredients since the acid in the tomatoes will stop the beans from softening any further, no matter how long you cook 'em.

Then you add the other ingredients (tomatoes, molasses, chipotles, onion, garlic, etc.,) and move the beans into the oven to bake for several hours. Mine had to shove over to make room for the cornbread for a little while but they seemed to get along just bee-yoo-ti-fully in spite of the cramped quarters and heated atmosphere.

Like any dish made with dried beans, a little forethought is required to allow time for the beans to soak overnight and for the long cooking required to render them soft, creamy and flavorful. Otherwise, the process is a breeze! And, of course, if you're in a rush, you could use canned beans (I promise I won't tell the foodie police if you do.) If you want to go that route, just substitute 3 15-oz cans of pinto or kidney beans, drained and rinsed and begin at step 2 in the directions below.

I served these beans with barbecued beef short ribs, coleslaw, cornbread and a salad of the most delightful greens, fresh from my mom-in-law's garden.

Smoky-Spicy-Sweet Barbecue Baked Beans

Serves 8

Ingredients

* 2 cups dried pinto or kidney beans, soaked overnight and drained
* 6 cups water
* 1 onion, thinly sliced
* 4 garlic cloves, minced or pressed
* 1 1/2 cups (1 15 oz can or jar) strained or pureed tomatoes or unseasoned tomato sauce
* 1/3 cup firmly packed brown sugar
* 2 Tbsps minced chipotle pepper canned in adobo sauce
2 Tbsps soy sauce

Directions

1. Combine the beans with the water in a large saucepan. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat slightly and boil gently, covered for 1 to 1 1/2 hours, until the beans are completely tender. Do not undercook; the beans will not soften further once they're combined with the tomatoes.

2. Preheat the oven to 300 F. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the beans to a large oven-safe pot with lid or covered casserole dish. Add the onion, garlic, tomato puree, brown sugar, chipotles and soy sauce and stir to combine evenly.

3. Cover and bake for 2 to 3 hours, until the sauce is a nice thick consistency. If necessary, you can remove the lid during the last 30 minutes to allow more of the liquid to cook off. Serve hot.

You might also like:

• Creamy Coleslaw
• Spicy-Sweet Barbecue Sauce
• Slow-Cooked Pinto Beans With Pork Belly & Skillet Corn Bread
• Barbecued Beef Short Ribs

In.gredients - Packaging-Free Grocery Shopping Comes to Austin

Just a quick, happy update to my January 2010 post about Unpackaged, an innovative packaging-free grocery store located in London (sadly, just a wee bit too far from my home to allow me to shop there regularly.)

If you happen to live in Austin, Texas, you'll soon be able to do your own packaging-free shopping 'cause a new store called In.gredients is opening in your fair city this fall, provided that their funding goes through. So bring your bags and jars and go crazy, y'all!

Although I find it ironic that America's first packaging-free grocery store will be located in Texas, one of the country's least progressive states, Austin does make a lot of sense.

You can read more about it in GOOD magazine's article.

Homemade BBQ Sauce

A few days ago, I did a dry-run of my 4th of July feast. Barbecued ribs with homemade sauce, skillet cornbread, sweet and spicy baked beans, coleslaw and green salad fresh from the garden. And God Bless America, it was goooooooood!

I'll do my best to post the recipe for each dish/component in the next week lest any of you want to use them for your own July 4th meals. Beginning with the barbecue sauce.

I've got a wicked sweet tooth and love the sweet, smokey flavor of barbecue sauce. I've also been fantasizing about making my own for years, ever since I clipped a recipe from a Martha Stewart sometime in the past decade. I'm happy to report that not only is it pretty easy to make your own sauce, somehow making it from scratch removes any trace of white trash-iness from this fine American sauce.

Best of all, the recipe makes a bunch and you can safely keep it in a jar in the fridge for several weeks, allowing you to slather all sorts of grill-ables with its delightful spicy, sweet flavors.

If you do not already have an immersion blender (also known as a wand or hand blender), I cannot recommend this little tool highly enough! And it will make this sauce even easier to make with far less clean up.

Happy grilling, everyone!

Homemade BBQ Sauce

Ingredients

* 1 1/2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

* 1 small to medium onion, finely chopped

* 3 garlic cloves, minced

* 1 can (28-ounces) crushed tomatoes

* 1 canned chipotle chile, packed in adobo sauce, minced (or a pinch of red pepper flakes if you don't have a chipotle handy)

* 1 1/2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce

* 1 1/2 tablespoons cider vinegar

* 1/4 cup unsulfured molasses

* Juice of 1/2 lemon

* Coarse salt and freshly ground black pepper

Directions

1. In a medium saucepan, heat oil over medium heat. Add onion and garlic. Cook, stirring, until onion is soft and translucent, about 5 minutes.

2. Stir in tomatoes, chile, Worcestershire, vinegar, molasses, and lemon juice. Simmer over medium-low heat until reduced by a third, stirring occasionally, about 45 minutes.

3. Allow to cool slightly, then purée using an immersion blender (if you don't have one, you can purée the sauce in a blender, working with batches. Season with salt and black pepper. Refrigerate in a jar with tight-fitting lid for up to 2 weeks.

You might also like:

• Smoky-Spicy-Sweet Barbecue Baked Beans (vegetarian, no less!)
• Tomato Jam - delicious with kabobs and grilled lamb
• Chimichurri Sauce - amazing on grilled beef and fish
• Lemon Aioli - amazing on anything...

P.S. If you're in a rush and don't have time to whip up a batch of your own barbecue sauce, you might want to check out Saveur's latest roundup of their favorite bottled barbecue sauces.

Roasted New Potatoes With Fresh Rosemary & Sea Salt

I can't tell you how grateful I am that it's finally new potato season. No matter how bad my spud cravings got, I just could not bring myself to buy the soft, eye-covered, green-skinned specimens that have passing for potatoes at our local grocery store for the past couple months. I really love potatoes so you can imagine how difficult this has been for me (cue tragic violin music.)

But at last the potato famine has ended and some fresh young thangs are finally showing up on the shelves. Roasting is one of my favorite ways to prepare potatoes - it's easy and delicious and I love the way they get crisp on the outside and soft on the inside.

Roasting is also a nice way to showcase some fresh herbs. And rosemary makes the perfect star. I got hooked on the stuff when we lived in Berkeley as our house had these enormous rosemary bushes growing in front of it and all along the sides. My but they were lovely! And so prolific, too. I would pick the stuff by the branchful, hanging them up and drying them to give to friends who were not as lucky as we in the edible plantings department. In a moment of Martha Stewart-like madness, I even drew one of the sprigs (see at right) and incorporated it in a label that I pasted on the packages of fragrant needles. Ah, the things I used to have time for before my son was born...

Now that we're back on the east coast, our rosemary production is on a bit smaller scale since it's got to fit into a flowerpot (albeit a pretty big one) in order to allow us to move it indoors during the winters. But our plant seems to be thriving, despite the long, dark winter it spent inside craning its finely needled branches towards the dim light at the window. I moved it outside about a month ago to let it soak up some sun.

I scrubbed the potatoes, minced some garlic, picked some of the deliciously-scented green rosemary needles, gave them a wash, chopped them coarsely, and tossed them with the potatoes, a big glug of olive oil, a few grinds of black pepper and a big pinch of salt. Then turned them out into my favorite roasting dish and popped them into the hot oven.

I recommend using a coarser-grained salt that will stand on its own better than fine-grained salts can.It's nice to have that little bit of salty crunch along with the rosemary's strong aromatic flavor.

These potatoes are very good on their own as well as with meat, fish or salad.

Roasted New Potatoes With Fresh Rosemary & Sea Salt
Serves 4-6

Ingredients

* 1 lb small new potatoes, scrubbed of all dirt and with any blemishes cut out. If the potatoes are different sizes, cut them into equal-sized pieces as you want them to roast at the same rate
* 2-3 tsps fresh rosemary, washed, dried and chopped
* 4 cloves garlic, minced or pressed
* 3-4 Tbsps olive oil
* 2 tsps coarse sea salt
* Freshly ground black pepper

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Toss the potatoes, herbs, oil, garlic, salt and a few grinds of black pepper thoroughly. You want each potato to be coated in oil.

2. Spread them in a single jumbled layer on a thick-bottomed cookie sheet or in a glass or ceramic baking dish and roast for 35-45 minutes (this will depend on how large your 'taters are). Do not forget to check them after 15-20 minutes and turn them all to prevent burning. If your oven heats unevenly (as mine does) you may want to check and turn them earlier twice while they're roasting instead of just once.

3. Once tender, remove from the oven and allow to cool slightly before serving.

More recipes you might like:

• Steamed Potatoes With Herb Butter
• Perfect Oven Fries
• Curried Potato Salad
• Potato Latkes
• Roasted New Carrots

I'm entering this recipe in this week's Weekend Herb Blogging event, hosted by Winnie from Healthy Green Kitchen.

Lemon-Scented Pasta With Swiss Chard & Ricotta

I first concocted this heavenly pasta dish last August. We had driven up to Vermont with my mom-in-law to introduce our three-month-old son to his great aunts and cousins in Putney and Burlington.

It probably sounds idyllic but it was kind of a rough trip in a lot of ways. Our son absolutely HATED the car as an infant so the four-hour drive to and from Vermont felt as if it took about a year off all of our lives (especially in our sleep-deprived state.)

Thankfully, my mom-in-law, Liz, has near endless patience for her grandson and she and I took turns sitting in the backseat and trying to him from screaming BY ANY MEANS POSSIBLE!  At one point, this included wiping his tiny feet repeatedly with some Wet Wipes we found on the floor of the car (don't ask me why this would work - the important thing is that it did get him to stop crying for a few minutes.)

And the drive was not all bad, of course. The scenery was uniquely beautiful - I am always awestruck by how gorgeous the North Country farmland is. On our way back to New York, we stopped at a farm and bought a little tub of fresh sheep's milk ricotta cheese.

I don't usually wax poetic about cheese but this one was kind of special - pure white and so soft - it made me think of angels and sleeping newborn babies.

When we got back to my in-laws' house, there was a ton of Swiss chard begging to be picked in the garden.

I thought it would be tasty to sautee some chard with onions and garlic, then mix it with the pasta, throw in gobs of this amazing cheese and top with some pinenuts, basil and a healthy dose of lemon zest.

I was right, it was dee-li-cious!

I found some similarly tasting-looking fresh ricotta recently and decided to recreate this meal. I served it in this great big pasta bowl I got at a yardsale years ago when we lived in Washington, DC. I love its gentle curves, subtle crackle glaze and the fact that it was actually made in Italy.

I don't remember much about the yardsale other than that it was in our old 'hood, Adams Morgan, but I like to think that an Italian diplomat was unloading some belongings before moving on to his next posting in some exotic locale. A more likely scenario is that some college kid bought it at Bed Bath & Beyond but I prefer my story -- much more romantic.

I'm also submitting this to my friend Kirsten who is hosting the Presto Pasta Nights event this week.

Happy Summer!

Lemon-Scented Pasta With Swiss Chard & Ricotta

Serves 4-6

Ingredients

* 1 lb of pasta (use whatever you like)

* 1 large bunch chard, rinsed, dried, ribs removed, chopped and set aside, greens chopped into ribbons

* 1 large onion, chopped

* 4 cloves garlic, minced or pressed

* 1 tub (15 oz) ricotta cheese

* Zest of 1 large lemon (since you're using the peel, I recommend using an organic lemon to avoid both wax and pesticides)

* A generous handful of pinenuts

* 1/2 cup fresh basil leaves, coarsely chopped

* A pinch of red pepper flakes

* Sea salt to taste

* Freshly ground black pepper to taste

* 3 Tbsps olive oil

Directions

1. Bring a large pot of water to boil for the pasta - once it boils add the pasta and cook until al dente.

2. Meanwhile, heat 2 Tbsps olive oil in a wide saucepan over medium heat. Once hot, add red pepper flakes, onions and chard ribs and sautee for around 4 minutes, stirring frequently until the onions become translucent. Add the garlic and sautee another 2 minutes or until the garlic becomes fragrant. Toss in the chard greens, stirring well to combine with the hot mixture in the pan, and sautee until wilted and bright green - another 2-3 minutes. Turn off the heat and set aside.

3. Drain the cooked pasta, rinse quickly with cold water, then return to the pot or place in whatever serving dish you plan to use and toss with a tablespoon of olive oil.

4. Add the chard mixture to the pasta and toss to combine. Top with the ricotta cheese, lemon zest, basil and pinenuts. Season with salt and pepper to taste and serve.

You might also like:

• How To Make Fresh Ricotta Cheese
  
• Butternut Squash Ravioli With Browned Butter, Sage, & Pinenuts
• Capellini With Wild Ramp & Parsley Pesto
• Pasta Autunnale With Grilled Eggplant, Zucchini & Tomatoes
• Penne With Figs, Onions & Pancetta

Cookbook GiveAway: Ancient Grains For Modern Meals by Maria Speck

It took me a few years of living in Berkeley to finally jump on the ancient grains train. I can be kinda contrary that way - I automatically dislike anything everyone is raving about. For example, when everyone was in love the Indigo Girls in 10th grade, I absolutely could not stand them. Same thing happened when I moved to Berkeley and people would not shut up about how amazing quinoa was (moving to Berkeley was a bit of an adjustment for me...) 

 

I eventually came around in both cases. Now I am a devotee of whole grains -- farro, quinoa, wheatberries, barley, you name it, I like to eat it.

So I jumped when I saw this delightful new cookbook by Maria Speck. I've just been leafing through it, salivating and wishing desperately that Maria lived with me so that I could eat these delicious-looking dishes every day without having to lift a finger (though, of course, I would be more than happy to clean up after her - that's only fair if she's going to be doing all the cooking, right?)

The good news for you, lucky reader, is that I am giving away a copy of this inspiring new cookbook completely free of charge!

All's you have to do is leave a comment here or on my Facebook page telling me what your favorite whole grain dish is by June 12. Please make sure to tell me your email, too, otherwise, I will not have a way to get in touch to find out your mailing address if you win and that would truly be tragic.

You do not want to miss out on Maria's excellent recipes -- here are some of the ones that sound most exciting to me:

• Cumin-Scented Quinoa With Red Beets
• Chicken Stew With Artichokes and Dried Apricots Over Brown Rice
• Kamut Salad With Carrots and Pomegranate
• Leek Salad With Grilled Haloumi Cheese and Rye Berries
• Orange Polentina With Honey-Mascarpone Topping
• Creamy Farro With Honey-Roasted Grapes

Okay, I need to stop now or I'll just end up copying all of the recipe titles out of the book... The gist is that it all looks good. Really good.

Maria is from Greece originally and her recipes have a little exotic kick to them that makes them more interesting than most.

So leave me a comment telling me your favorite whole grain dish and your email address and I'll enter you to win a free copy of Ancient Grains for Modern Meals.

The deadline to enter is Sunday, June 12th. I will choose a winner at random and email her or him to get the address for where to mail the book.

Good luck!

Warm Spiced Chickpea Arugula Salad

I found this recipe on the "Favorite Recipes" page of Mark Bittman's site last week. There are already quite a lot of recipes on my "to cook" list but I figured that if the guy who knows how to cook everything has singled this salad out as one of his favorites, it's gotta be pretty good, right?

Plus, our arugula was just getting big enough to need thinning and this seemed like a good use for the plants that had to go bye-bye.

So I tested it out the other day and it did not disappoint. It's got a lot going for it - the cumin seeds and ginger lend spice and flavor to the arugula's peppery bite and the satisfying meatiness of the chickpeas and the egg. I also like the way the hot chickpeas wilt the greens a touch. 

Although Bittman's recipe calls for adding the onions raw, I cooked them in my version since I was not in the mood for bad breath raw onion. The main drawback to using cooked onion over raw is that the thin slices of raw red onion would definitely add some visual pizazz to the dish which the cooked version lacks.

I could not resist composing the salad in this wonderful new green bowl with white and yellow flowers - a birthday gift from my Aunt Katy - the colors matched so well it just seemed criminal not to...

This salad makes a good meatless main dish or a great side to accompany a mezze of yummy things like hummus, quinoa, cucumber-yogurt salad, and pickled beets.

Enjoy!

Warm Spiced Chickpea Salad with Arugula

Serves 4 as a side or 2 as a main dish

Ingredients

* 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

* 1 tablespoon minced peeled fresh ginger

* 1 tablespoon minced garlic

* 1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds

* Dash of red pepper flakes

* Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

* 1 1/2 cups cooked or drained canned chickpeas

* 1 tablespoon rice wine vinegar

* 1 teaspoon honey

* 4 cups arugula leaves

* 1 small red onion, halved and thinly sliced

* 4 hard-cooked eggs, quartered

Directions

1. Put the olive oil in a deep skillet over medium heat. When hot, add the ginger, garlic, onions, red pepper flakes, and cumin seeds and cook, stirring constantly, until the ginger and garlic are fragrant and the onion is soft, 1 to 2 minutes. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, then stir in the chickpeas until hot and coated in the oil and seasonings, about 3 minutes more.

2. Remove from heat and with a fork, stir in the vinegar, honey, and 1 tablespoon water. Mash a few of the chickpeas as you stir to add texture to the dressing. Put the arugula and red onion in a large bowl and toss with the warm chickpea dressing. Taste and adjust the seasoning. Serve immediately, garnished with hard-cooked eggs.

You might also like:

• Roasted Delicata Squash & Caramelized Red Onions With Farro & Arugula
• Hummous With Caramelized Onions & Garlic Topped With Golden Beets, Toasted Pinenuts, and Greek Yogurt
• Lemon-Scented Quinoa With Tahini & Chickpeas
• Wilted Russian Kale Salad With Balsamic Vinegar & Orange Zest

Or these great-looking recipes from some of my favorite food blogs:

• Mediterranean Marinated Chickpeas from Kirsten at From Kirsten's Kitchen To Yours
• Panfried Chickpea Salad from Heidi at 101 Cookbooks
• Crispy Roasted Chickpeas from Jaden at Steamy Kitchen