Macaroons? Cookie Dough Bites? (Gluten-Free, Vegan)

Have you ever gotten halfway through a recipe you found somewhere, and realized there was no way that it was going to work as written? With cooking, it's definitely easier to recover from and make tweaks, but when it's a baked good... well, all bets are off.

This happened to me about a month ago. I had come across a recipe for cashew flour chocolate chip cookies, and even though I had some warning bells going off in my head as I read the recipe, the positive comments convinced me to give it a shot.

Mix together dry ingredients - okay. Add butter - hrmm, no indication of the temperature or state of the butter given. Guess I'll soften it, that's pretty typical for cookies, right? Okay, now I have lumpy flour. Maybe when I add the liquid... liquid... there's no more liquid in this recipe. I guess the butter was supposed to be melted. Uh oh. Now what do I do???

Well, I'm not one to give up, especially when I've psyched myself up for chocolate chip cookies. I added some liquid, more flour, sugar (the original recipe also had no sweetener)... just guessing at amounts, until I had something that resembled a cookie dough. Whew! Let's get these guys onto a cookie sheet and bake 'em up.

7 minutes in - gee, these look awfully puffy and they're not spreading. I think I'll squish 'em down with a spoon and give them another few minutes.

12 minutes - well, these look like they're about as done as they're going to be. Yikes.

Hey, even though they look like they fell off the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down... they tasted good! I fed them to my husband, who thought they had a similar texture to macaroons. Macaroons. I can get behind that.

The next time I made them, I decided to use coconut oil instead of softened Earth Balance to enhance the macaroon-iness of them. Coconut flavor without the chewy coconut bits, for those who don't care for that texture. I also rolled the dough into balls for baking and did NOT flatten them with a spoon this time.

Hooray! They looked more like macaroons this time. But - to further confuse matters, my husband said that he felt like he was eating cookie dough, but in a good way. Cookie dough bites? I can also get behind that.

This is my long-winded way of saying, this is a gluten-free, vegan treat that is having a slight identity crisis. Make the dough balls a little bigger (1.5" diameter) if you want to call them macaroons. Make 'em a little smaller (1" diameter or even a little smaller) if you want to call them cookie dough bites. Don't like coconut? Use softened butter or margarine instead of coconut oil. Mix in whatever other chocolate or nuts or dried fruit you want.

Just don't flatten them with a spoon.

Macaroons or Cookie Dough Bites
Makes approximately 20 2" macaroons, more if you make them smaller

Ingredients

• 1 cup gluten-free AP flour OR regular AP flour
• 1 cup nut meal (I used cashew meal - almond meal should also work!)
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 tsp baking powder
• pinch of salt
• 1/3 cup coconut oil, room temperature OR 2/3 stick butter, softened
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 cup non-dairy milk OR dairy milk
• 1 cup mix-ins (I used 1/2 cup chopped pecans and 1/2 cup mini chocolate chips)

Directions

Preheat oven to 350°F. Line a couple of cookie sheets with parchment paper.

Mix together flour, nut meal, sugar, baking powder and salt in the bowl of your stand mixer until combined. Add coconut oil or butter and beat on medium speed until the dry ingredients look like they have small lumps evenly distributed throughout. 

Mix vanilla and milk together. While running the mixer on a low speed, slowly pour milk mixture into the bowl - the dough should come together. Add mix-ins and mix until just combined.

Roll dough into balls (1" balls for 2-bite treats, 1.5" balls for 3-bite treats) and place a couple of inches apart on the prepared cookie sheets. Bake for 9-10 minutes for smaller treats, or 10-11 minutes for larger treats. If they don't feel tacky to the touch on top and they're slightly firm, they're done - they won't brown much. Remove from oven and let cool on the cookie sheets for 5 minutes, then move them to a cooling rack.

Print this recipe!

Maple Nut Oatmeal Cookies

Our oldest kitty, Oliver, hasn't been feeling quite like himself for awhile. Even after many vet visits, he ended up at the emergency vet for a couple of nights this past weekend. I don't want to get into too many details about what's wrong, but he came home with a feeding tube for meals for now. This has resulted in me making what can only be described as a "liver milkshake" in smell and texture out of canned food and water, for pumping into the feeding tube. Yummy.

Partially to distract myself from worrying about Ollie, and yes, partially to eradicate the lingering odor of his dinner, I set out to make some more oatmeal cookies. As much as I adore my double chocolate peanut butter oatmeal cookies (known as DCPBOC from here on out), I wanted to make something with a completely different flavor profile. I wanted to use the same basic recipe, with the building blocks of nut butter, oats and gluten-free flour giving the same soft-but-toothsome texture, so I settled on making a maple nut oatmeal cookie.

The recipe is quite similar to the DCPBOC - almond butter instead of peanut, grade B maple syrup (for a distinct but not overwhelming maple flavor) instead of brown sugar, extra flour and less milk, and pecans instead of chocolate chips. The resulting cookies, based on my initial guesses at amounts for substitutions, were everything I hoped for - maybe more! Salty, sweet, nutty... just like me.

As with the DCPBOC, I made these gluten-free and vegan, but regular all-purpose flour and dairy milk should work just fine here. Even though we don't typically eat vegan in our house, I love making eggless cookies because I can rationalize "taste-testing" a lot more cookie dough without raw eggs giving me pause. So go ahead - let your kiddos and your grandmothers grab a spoon and eat the dough too - I won't tell.

Maple Nut Oatmeal Cookies
Yield: approximately 2 dozen 2" cookies
Adapted from Double Chocolate Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies

Ingredients

• 1 cup almond butter (9 oz by weight)
• 1/2 cup grade B maple syrup (if you dare to use pancake syrup, we can no longer be friends)
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 cup gluten-free AP flour OR regular AP flour
• 1 cup rolled oats
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp kosher salt
• 1/4 cup non-dairy milk OR dairy milk
• 3/4 cup chopped nuts (I used pecans, but walnuts, almonds or hazelnuts would also be nice)

Directions
Preheat oven to 350°F. Line a couple of sheet pans with parchment paper.

Add almond butter and maple syrup to the bowl of your stand mixer, and beat on medium speed until well combined (2-3 minutes). Add vanilla extract and beat until mixed in.

Stop the mixer. Add the flour and mix on a low speed until just combined. Stop the mixer again, add oats, baking soda, and salt and mix again on low speed until just combined.

The dough at this point should be somewhat crumbly and sticky. With the mixer running at a low to medium speed, add the milk in a thin stream. By the time you finish adding the milk, the dough should come together and pull away from the sides of the bowl.

Stop the mixer, remove the bowl and mix in the chopped nuts with a spoon. Using a cookie scoop (I used my OXO Good Grips Medium Cookie Scoop) or 2 spoons, drop rounded tablespoonfuls of dough a couple inches apart on the prepared sheet pans. If you're using a cookie scoop - don't overfill it - this dough is pretty sticky and thick, so you don't want to overtax the spring release mechanism. Flatten them out to about 1/4 inch thick with the palm of your hand - they won't spread much in the oven.

Bake for 9 - 10 minutes (11 minutes in my oven, but I tend to always need another minute past the upper bound of recipe times) - the tops of the cookies should look slightly dry and may be starting to just barely crack in places. Remove from the oven and let cool on the pans for 5 minutes, then transfer the cookies to a cooling rack to finish cooling. Enjoy with a glass of milk, or with more cookies.

Print this recipe!

Recipe Shout-Out: Chocolate Hazelnut Coconut Fudge

While looking for easy recipes for gluten- and dairy-free sweet treats a few weeks ago, I came across something that sounded too good to be true: creamy, rich vegan fudge made with only 5 ingredients (6 if you count the fleur de sel sprinkled on top). I had all of the ingredients on hand though, so I gave it a try.

Guess what? It was every bit as good as the original recipe promised! "Real" fudge has a slight sugar-graininess that I don't love, but this "fauxdge" had a smooth, almost truffle-like texture. I also really liked that it isn't super-sweet, but it's very chocolate-y. It came together quickly in my trusty food processor - the only hard part was waiting for it to set up in the fridge.

I've got some plans for experimenting with some other flavor combinations - if I come up with something brilliant, I'll write about it! For now, though, you should give the original recipe a try, because you can't really go wrong with chocolate, coconut and hazelnut (well, unless you're allergic, in which case, I'm sorry!).

Get the recipe: Crazy Delicious Dairy-Free Chocolate Fudge from Oh My Veggies

Side Dish: Roasted Frozen Vegetables

When you were a kid, and your mom needed to add a last-minute veggie side dish to dinner, chances are she did one of two things: (a) opened up a can of veggies and boiled them, or (b) opened up some frozen veggies and boiled them. Like most other kids, you probably staged a coup at the dinner table, which most likely ended in tears and/or an empty stomach.

Then... you became an adult and realized that Mom was just trying to keep your meals balanced as best she could with a busy schedule. Soon, you found yourself in a similar place - eating dinner at home is healthier and much easier on the wallet, but some nights you're too tired to cook a meal from scratch (even a Slacker Gourmet meal), or you just don't have the right ingredients on hand.

In our house, when we have one of those nights, our go-to meal is either chicken sausage or bratwurst, and some kind of frozen seasoned veggie blend. However, since the hubby has some food sensitivities, that narrows the field to about 2 - 3 types of seasoned veggie blends, and we get tired of them pretty quickly. Plus, they've still got a bit more salt and not-entirely-wholesome ingredients than we'd like. So what's a Slacker Gourmet supposed to do?

Canned vegetables? NOPE. They're generally loaded up with salt (yes, I know they make no-salt-added varieties), and the texture, even before you cook them, is not quite right. They have a strange, mushy texture and slightly tinny taste. No thank you.

Plain frozen vegetables, on the other hand, have the potential to be a blank canvas in the right application. They're completely unseasoned, they're already cut up, it doesn't matter if they're in-season or not, and they've already been blanched before they are frozen (meaning they are partially cooked even before you get your hands on them). However, the cooking directions on the bags always suggest either steaming them in the microwave, or (gulp) boiling them. Can we treat them better?

One of my favorite ways to cook fresh vegetables is to roast them. Roasting at a high heat caramelizes the edges, brings out sweetness and nutty flavors, and tames the bitter edge on many vegetables. Of course, this works best on larger, harder veggies like brussels sprouts, potatoes, cauliflower, etc. - not so well on corn (off the cob) or peas, for example.

I got to thinking - can we roast frozen vegetables straight from the freezer? The answer: YES! The final texture is slightly different from roasted fresh vegetables, and the cooking time (which is almost completely inactive) is about 40 minutes, but there is barely any prep involved. Most importantly, the flavor of these humble frozen vegetables goes from boiling's "blech!" to "hey, these are pretty good!" They'll never be nearly as amazing as roasted fresh veggies, but they're a good trick to have up your sleeve.

I tried roasting frozen cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, crinkle-cut carrots, broccoli and green beans. The Brussels sprouts were the biggest disappointment - they're my absolute favorite roasted fresh vegetable, but their frozen counterparts just didn't have a fantastic flavor. I suspect that they are more sensitive to the blanching and freezing process than other vegetables. The carrots didn't really brown up; they seemed to get a little dry on the outside instead. The flavor really concentrated and got nice and sweet, though. The cauliflower and broccoli were tasty, but the surprise favorite of the bunch were the green beans! They started getting crispy in places and almost tasted like green bean chips. Yum!

Roasted Frozen Vegetables
Serves 4-6 (or whatever the bag says)

Ingredients

• 1 lb bag frozen vegetables - cauliflower, broccoli, carrots, etc. (please use bagged veggies and not frozen-in-a-brick veggies!)
• a couple of glugs of olive oil (approximately 2 Tbsp)
• salt and pepper to taste

Directions

Preheat oven to 400°F. Line a cookie sheet with aluminum foil for easy cleanup, and put a cooling rack on top of the cookie sheet. I used a cooling rack as the cooking surface to allow air to circulate all around the veggies so any additional water would drain off, and I didn't have to toss them at all during cooking. If you don't have a cooling rack, you'll probably want to stir the veggies a couple of times during cooking. 

Toss the still-frozen veggies with olive oil, and season generously with salt and pepper. Spread the veggies on the cooling rack, and roast for 10 minutes. 

Boost the oven temperature to 450°F, and roast veggies for another 30 minutes, or until they are nice and browned around the edges. Enjoy!

Print this recipe!

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I personally like my roasted veggies seasoned simply with salt and pepper, but feel free to experiment with different oils and seasonings! A sprinkle of parmesan or Cabot Cheddar Shake at the end would also be great.

And if after all this, you try roasting canned vegetables, I really don't want to hear about it. Ew.

Double Chocolate Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies

Hello, fellow lazy foodies! After an extended spell of putting the slacker in Slacker Gourmet, I'm back! Don't worry, I hadn't forgotten about this humble little corner of the food blogosphere.

What have I been up to? Well, here's the thing. A few months ago, my husband was diagnosed with a whole slew of food intolerances, including gluten, wheat, rye, yeast and casein. The doctor put him on a strict elimination diet to avoid all of the trigger foods, which ended up lasting 3 months (right through the holiday season - yikes!). So I was cooking, all right, but much of it was far from Slacker Gourmet - there was a lot of experimentation and substitution. For the most part, I stuck with recipes that other, far smarter, bloggers and chefs had developed.

The hubby is off the elimination diet now, but has discovered that he does indeed feel better when he avoids dairy and gluten most of the time. Since this is now a part of our everyday lives, I've started to adapt and streamline recipes to fit into our busy schedules, and I'm looking forward to sharing them! I've also restarted Project 365, so I'm taking more and more photos (and learning how to take proper food photos). Now that I keep my camera close to me at all times, it's much easier for me to remember to grab a few photos of something I've made so I can write about it! I'm hoping to settle into a weekly update schedule eventually.

Anyway... enough about me! Let's talk about cookies, shall we?

I'm not much of a baker to begin with, but add in the constraint of staying gluten-free and dairy-free, and I'm ready to just break out the box mixes and be done with it. However, there were some recipes that the hubby really loved that I wanted to try to adapt. In general, the less reliant a baked good was on flour, the better chance I had of adapting it successfully.

One of the recipes that worked really well was this recipe for Healthy Peanut Butter Chunk Oatmeal Bars. It was already dairy-free, so I only had to use gluten-free oats and swap in a gluten-free AP flour blend (I've been using Namaste), and it worked beautifully.

There are a couple of drawbacks, though. When I make bars, brownies, etc., I really love using my Chicago Metallic Slice Solutions Brownie Pan - it's got the convenient sling to lift the bars out, and the cutting grid gives me beautiful bars every time (if I try to cut them myself, I inevitably end up with a crumbly mess). But the darn thing is a pain to grease (even though it's nonstick, i don't trust it that much), and even more of a pain to wash.

The bars themselves are also pretty serious. They're thick and filling, which is great sometimes, but not always what you're looking for. I've taken to cutting them in half from the original bar size, but... see above about the crumbly mess. Yeah.

I got to thinking - can I adapt these into cookies instead? Parchment-lined cookie sheets don't need to be washed (usually). If I could make cookies... then all of my equipment could go into the dishwasher. Plus, I could make them a little more manageably sized. For cookies, though, I was afraid that the amount of flour in the bars would make for a crumbly, dry cookie, so I swapped out 1/4 of it for raw cacao powder.

The results? A resounding success, I'd say! These cookies come together quickly with a stand mixer - you can have these mixed, baked, and cooled in well under an hour. They're also perfect for nearly any food restriction (well, except for a peanut or chocolate allergy) - no one would be able to tell that they are gluten-free or vegan unless you tell 'em. Plus, you can go ahead and eat the uncooked dough - no raw eggs to worry about!

Double Chocolate Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies
Yield: approximately 2 dozen 2" cookies
Adapted from Healthy Peanut Butter Chunk Oatmeal Bars

Ingredients

• 1 cup peanut butter (see below for measuring tips)
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 3/4 cup gluten-free AP flour OR oat flour OR whole wheat flour
• 1/4 cup raw cacao powder OR cocoa powder
• 1 cup rolled oats
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp kosher salt
• 1/2 cup non-dairy OR dairy milk
• 1 cup semi-sweet or dark chocolate chips (check the label to make sure they fit in with any food restrictions) 

Directions
Preheat oven to 350°F. Line a couple of sheet pans with parchment paper.

Add peanut butter and brown sugar to the bowl of your stand mixer, and beat on medium speed until light and fluffy (2-3 minutes). Add vanilla extract and beat until mixed in.

Stop the mixer. Add the flour and cacao powder, and mix on a low speed until just combined. Stop the mixer again, add oats, baking soda, and salt and mix again on low speed until just combined. Stopping and starting the mixer keeps you from throwing the dry goods all over the kitchen - don't ask me how I know that.

The dough will look very dry and crumbly now - that's okay! With the mixer running at a low to medium speed, add the milk in a thin stream. By the time you finish adding the milk, the dough should come together and pull away from the sides of the bowl.

Stop the mixer, remove the bowl and mix in the chocolate chips with a spoon. Using a cookie scoop (I used my OXO Good Grips Medium Cookie Scoop) or 2 spoons, drop rounded tablespoonfuls of dough a couple inches apart on the prepared sheet pans. Smush 'em down a little bit - they won't spread much in the oven.

Bake for 10 - 12 minutes (13 minutes in my oven, but I tend to always need another minute past the upper bound of recipe times) - the tops of the cookies should look slightly dry and may be starting to just barely crack in places. Remove from the oven and let cool on the pans for 5 minutes, then transfer the cookies to a cooling rack to finish cooling. Try not to eat all of them in one sitting.

Print this recipe!

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Let's discuss the elephant in the room - peanut butter.

I hate measuring peanut butter. Even with a handy little plunger-style measuring cup (like this one from OXO), it's still a sticky mess. I've found a couple of ways to lessen the pain, though.

If you have a kitchen scale, a cup of peanut butter is 9 oz by weight, so you can just put your stand mixer bowl on the scale, zero it out, then scoop 9 oz right into the bowl. In fact, go right ahead and add 3 5/8 oz of brown sugar in there too - now you don't have to pack it into a measuring cup!

My other sneaky peanut butter measuring trick? Well, most jars of peanut butter are 16 oz, which is not quite 2 cups. But Whole Foods sells their peanut butter in 18 oz jars, which is exactly 2 cups. If you want to be really efficient, go ahead and make a double batch of cookies (though I will warn you that you will be pretty much at max capacity in the classic 4.5 qt KitchenAid mixer).

Food Processor/Stick Blender: Easy Olive Tapenade

Have you ever found yourself in one of these all-to-familiar situations?

• Eating a piece of plain grilled chicken or fish and wishing you could jazz it up?
• Making a sandwich and discovering that you're out of mayo and mustard?
• Putting out crackers or sliced baguettes for company, but missing just one more spread for them?

Well, there are certainly many solutions for each situation. But what if I told you there was one recipe that could fix all of those problems, and more, in one fell swoop?

Enter olive tapenade. From Wikipedia:

Tapenade is a Provençal dish consisting of puréed or finely chopped olives, capers, anchovies and olive oil. Its name comes from the Provençal word for capers, tapenas.

Well, doesn't that sound fancy! However, your Slacker Gourmet alarm bells are probably going off. Finely chopped? Capers? ANCHOVIES? Breathe, people! Let's break this down:

• You don't have to chop anything up into itty bitty pieces, as long as you have a food processor or stick blender. Traditionally some tapenades were made with a mortar and pestle - we're definitely not going down that road either. 
• Yes, capers are one of those items you've typically bought for one recipe and one recipe only. They usually come in expensive little jars, of which you use 7/8ths for the aforementioned recipe. But - if you find yourself at Trader Joe's or an Italian grocery (not just a specialty shop), they sell capers in larger jars, and if you keep 'em in the fridge in their brine, they last for quite awhile. If you have them around on a regular basis, you'll find yourself using them in pasta/grain salads, stews, chicken sautés, or anything that needs a briny kick. However, if you still don't want to buy them, they are NOT essential to my quick tapenade recipe (which I suppose would technically make it an olive relish instead, but whatever). 
• Anchovies? So not necessary. If you happen to have them around, sure, go ahead and throw a fillet in, but there's no reason to go out and buy them. 

What kind of olives should you use? Well, that's a matter of personal preference. I do recommend using a mix of a couple different kinds of olives if you're not using capers. Buy them pitted, since, well, this is the Slacker Gourmet. You don't necessarily have to get them from the fancy olive bar in nice supermarkets; there are many perfectly nice jarred olives out there. The only guideline I personally have is: if it comes in a can, it's really not appropriate for tapenade.

A little more explanation on the puréeing technique: typically a food processor is the easiest tool for the job. But - this recipe only makes a cup or so of tapenade, so if you have a 14-cup food processor and can't find your little mini processor, it's definitely not worth getting the big processor dirty if you have a stick blender.

 

Easy Olive Tapenade

Makes 1 - 1 1/2 cups

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups pitted olives, rinsed (this is important!) and divided (any kind, or a mix - see notes above) 
• 2 tablespoons capers (optional - use a mix of olives if not using)
• 1 whole clove garlic 
• 1/2 - 1 tablespoon fresh parsley, basil, or oregano (optional)
• 1/2 - 1 tablespoon lemon juice or red wine vinegar 
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• Fresh cracked black pepper

Directions

Food Processor:
Combine 1 cup olives, capers (if using), garlic, herbs (if using), and 1/2 tablespoon lemon juice or red wine vinegar in the food processor bowl. Pulse until all components are between chunky and finely chopped. Drizzle olive oil in while processing until the mixture comes together and looks almost like a paste. Add the reserved 1/2 cup of olives and pulse until the new addition is coarsely chopped - this will add some extra texture. Taste and add the additional 1/2 tablespoon of lemon juice/vinegar if necessary, and stir in pepper to taste.

Stick Blender:
In the smoothie cup that comes with your stick blender, or a medium bowl, combine 1 cup olives, capers (if using), garlic, herbs (if using), and 1/2 tablespoon lemon juice or red wine vinegar. Hit it with the stick until the texture is between chunky and finely chopped. Add the olive oil all at once, and hit it with the stick again, until the mixture looks like a rough paste. Add the reserved 1/2 cup of olives and give it another hit with the stick until those olives are coarsely chopped and the tapenade looks like it has a variety of textures. Taste and add the additional 1/2 tablespoon of lemon juice/vinegar if necessary, and stir in pepper to taste.

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Okay, now you have tapenade, and it should keep for at least a week in the fridge. Now, what can you do with it?

• Use it as a relish for grilled chicken or fish. 
• Slather it on raw chicken or fish, wrap in parchment paper or foil, and bake for 15 minutes (thin cuts of fish), 20-25 minutes (thicker cuts of fish), 30-40 minutes (chicken) at 350 degrees.
• Use as a delicious sandwich spread (especially on a Mediterranean-inspired sandwich)
• Spread it on baguette slices or crackers for an elegant appetizer. If you want to jazz up the spreading platform, brush baguette slices with garlic olive oil and toast in the oven or toaster oven until golden brown.
• Toss it with cooked pasta and top with a sprinkle of Parmigiano-Reggiano for a quick meal or side dish.
• My mother, a dyed-in-the-wool New Yorker, once suggested using tapenade as a non-dairy/non-fish spread alternative to cream cheese and lox - and let me tell you, it's darn tasty! You get that nice saltiness without the fishiness, which is a huge bonus for my smoked-salmon-hating hubby.

Easy, savory, and versatile - the perfect Slacker Gourmet condiment.

Slacker Gourmet Formula: Pasta/Grain Salad

Well, more than a year has passed since my last Slacker Gourmet post. Oops. I could make all sorts of excuses about buying a house, and job changes, and blah blah blah, but instead, I'll just refer you to the "Slacker" portion of the blog title, and just go from there.

As a UI Developer by trade, creating web page templates is a big part of my day-to-day life - a basic structure for a page, filled in with different content, depending on a particular database call. For a large site with hundreds of thousands of pages, templating is completely necessary, otherwise we'd be reinventing the wheel over and over again.

But what does that have to do with cooking? Well, as I postulated in my Fondue Theory post, the creation of a basic formula (or template) for a type of dish makes it easy (and nearly foolproof) to implement nearly infinite variations, limited only by your own imagination. Some basic knowledge of complementary flavors is certainly helpful, but I'll happily make some suggestions to get you started.

My Pasta/Grain Salad formula has been a couple of years in development. Its roots are in Lemony Couscous with Chickpeas, which I've made a shockingly large number of times. However, as a Slacker Gourmet, I crave variety - no matter how easy and tasty something is, I will get sick of it after eating it enough times.

Enter the formula. As long as everything stays in the same basic proportions, there is no reason that nearly every component can't be swapped out for something else in the same basic family (black beans instead of chickpeas - yes; M&Ms instead of olives - not so much). This is where that general idea of complementary flavors will come in handy.

And now... the magic formula!

Pasta/Grain Salad
Serves 4-6 as a main dish, 8-10 as a side dish
Adapted from Lemony Couscous with Chickpeas

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups uncooked pasta/grain
• Enough water to cook the pasta/grain
• 1/4 cup citrus juice or other acidic liquid (vinegar is untested; will probably need less)
• 1 tablespoon citrus zest, if using citrus juice
• 3 tablespoons high-quality oil (extra-virgin olive oil is probably best in most cases)
• 1 14oz can of beans, drained and rinsed
• 1/2 to 1 cup of something briny, like olives, capers, artichoke hearts, rinsed (the stronger the flavor, the less you need)
• 1/8 to 1/4 cup of something crunchy, like nuts, seeds, wasabi peas, freeze-dried edamame (though the latter two will soften up the longer the salad sits)
• 1/4 to 1/2 cup chopped herbs and/or scallions
• Salt and pepper to taste

Directions
Cook pasta/grain according to package directions; let cool. Chop or slice the briny component if it needs it. Whisk together the oil, acidic liquid, and zest (if using). If using nuts, toast in a dry skillet over medium-high heat for 2-3 minutes, moving them constantly with a wooden spoon, until lightly browned and fragrant (as soon as you smell them, get them off the heat). Combine all ingredients in a large bowl. Taste and add salt and pepper, if necessary.

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What's so amazing about this salad? Well, it's freakin' delicious. You can make a huge batch and eat it for a week (it keeps wonderfully in the fridge). Depending on the starch component you choose, you don't even need to heat up the kitchen to cook it (see this post for Slacker Gourmet-approved easy starch cooking).

And since it's that time of year, I'd be remiss if I didn't say how great it is for summer potlucks: there's no mayo or dairy to spoil in the heat, and it can easily accommodate special diets and allergies without sacrificing flavor. Gluten allergy? Use gluten-free pasta, rice or quinoa. Vegetarian/vegan? You're already all set as-is! Nut allergy? Leave 'em out - they're not a deal-breaker.

Variations
"Okay, okay, I'm sold!" you say. "But, I need some inspiration for the flavor combos... help me out here!"

Flavor combo	Pasta/grain	Acidic liquid	Oil	Beans	Briny	Crunch	Herbs
Mediterranean *	Quinoa**	Lemons	EVOO	Chickpeas	Kalamata olives	Slivered almonds	Parsley
Italian	Orzo or farro	Lemons	EVOO	Cannellini beans	Black olives	Pine nuts	Basil
Mexican	Rice	Limes	EVOO or canola	Black beans	Black olives	Pumpkin seeds (pepitas)	Cilantro and scallions
Moroccan	Couscous	Oranges	EVOO	Chickpeas	Oil-cured black olives	Pistachios	Mint

* Pictured above.
** Yes, I know quinoa is technically a seed.

Want to mix it up more? Go ahead and throw some raisins in the Moroccan variation, some feta in the Mediterranean variation, or avocado in the Mexican variation (though it may not keep as long with avocado). Just keep those flavors complementary, and you can't go wrong!

Breakfast (or Dessert) Couscous

This morning, I was ravenous, and I wanted to make a hearty stick-to-your-ribs kind of breakfast. Unfortunately, the hubby woke up after a night of stomach troubles (poor guy) and asked that if I were to make breakfast, to please make something innocuous. Now, for us, innocuous means no eggs, no dairy, no grease... so basically, 90% of my breakfast ideas were not an option, especially since I had no desire to go out food shopping in order to get ingredients.

Then, I started thinking... what about couscous? A quick google search revealed that sweet couscous was not a novel idea - there were tons of recipes already out there. But alas, most of them involved dried fruit, which I didn't have on hand. After a quick survey of the pantry though, I had formulated a plan that fell somewhere in between Middle Eastern and Indian inspirations.


Breakfast (or Dessert) Couscous
Serves 3-4 for breakfast, more for dessert

Ingredients

• 1 3/4 cup milk (I used almond milk, soy or coconut would probably be good here too)
• heaping 1/4 tsp cinnamon
• heaping 1/4 tsp ground cardamom
• 1 1/2 Tbsp brown sugar
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• pinch of salt
• 1 cup instant whole-wheat couscous
• 1/4 cup shelled pistachios
• 1/4 cup sweetened shredded coconut

Directions
Microwave instructions:
Combine all ingredients except couscous, pistachios, and coconut in a microwave-safe measuring cup, and stir to combine. Heat in microwave until boiling, about 3-4 minutes (keep an eye out for boil-overs, which I didn't watch for - oops).

While the liquid is heating, measure out the couscous in a heat-safe bowl. When the liquid mixture is heated, stir once more, pour over the couscous, and cover the bowl until the couscous has absorbed the liquid, about 10 minutes.

Once the couscous has absorbed the liquid, fluff with a fork and mix in the pistachios and coconut. Serve hot, mixing in a little extra milk if desired.

Stovetop instructions:
Combine all ingredients except couscous, pistachios, and coconut in a medium saucepan (seriously, use one size bigger than you think you'll need) and bring to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally. Watch for boil-overs!

As soon as the milk mixture is boiling, kill the heat, and add the dry couscous directly to the pot. Stir, cover, and let sit for 10 minutes. Once the couscous has absorbed the liquid, fluff with a fork and mix in the pistachios and coconut. Serve hot, mixing in a little extra milk if desired.

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This was so satisfying. Even though couscous is not a grain (it's technically a pasta), the form factor and texture makes it comparable to steel cut oats or grits, so it makes perfect sense as a breakfast food. Plus, most couscous sold in the US is of the instant variety, which is basically foolproof as far as cooking goes.

Sorry for the inexact measurements. For this first attempt, I used the smaller amount of almond milk, and the larger amounts of brown sugar, cinnamon, and cardamom. Both the hubby and I agreed it might be just a touch too strongly flavored and too sweet like that, so I would recommend going between those seasoning measurements to taste. As for the liquid amount, I think a slight amount of extra liquid would add just a bit of pleasant creaminess to the whole shebang. Also on the list to try next time - 1/2 cup golden raisins, added to the dry couscous.

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Update (10/23/10): I made this again and adjusted some of the amounts. I upped the milk to 1 3/4 cups, reduced the cinnamon and cardamom to a heaping 1/4 tsp each, and reduced the brown sugar to 1 1/2 Tbsp. I think the flavor profile was a little more balanced. I also made it on the stove. If I'd had any extra milk, I would have also poured just a bit into each bowl to give an extra bit of creaminess. The recipe has been updated to reflect these changes.

Avocado "Pudding"

So, you have a recipe (say, Tuna Avocado Ceviche) that calls for 1/2 an avocado. No matter how well you wrap it up, even if you sprinkle it with citrus juice, that other half is just never going to be the same the next day. So what, pray tell, do you do with it?

Make dessert, of course!

*crickets*

No, I'm serious.

Avocado's a fruit, and the buttery taste and texture are just as at home with sugar as they are with savory citrusy applications. In all of 2 minutes, you can have a cool, refreshing pudding-like concoction that will be unlike anything you've ever had before, but you'll want to make it again and again. No pictures this time - lumpy green glop isn't particularly photogenic, even if it is delish!

Avocado "Pudding"
Serves 1

Ingredients

• 1/2 avocado
• 1 tsp sugar
• splash of vanilla extract
• splash of milk (non-dairy milks work well, I used almond milk)

Directions
Put avocado half in a bowl and begin mashing with a fork. Sprinkle sugar on the mashed avocado and mash some more - the sugar crystals help cut into the avocado flesh so it mashes easier. When the avocado is pretty well smooshed, splash the vanilla extract into the bowl and a slightly bigger splash of milk and mix well. You're looking for a pudding-y consistency, so if it's not quite there, keep adding splashes of milk and mixing until it's the consistency you'd like. If you're a perfectionist, I suppose you could do this in the food processor, but I don't mind the lumps. If you have more patience than I do, chill the pudding in the fridge until it's really cold, or just grab a spoon and CHOW DOWN!

Edamame-Shiitake Salad

One of the hardest parts of being a Slacker Gourmet is finding easy-yet-satisfying side dishes to go with simple main courses, such as grilled chicken. Sure, I always have frozen veggies on hand, but those can be so bland. Also, as the weather gets warmer, the desire for cool side dishes grows. So, I give unto you, faithful reader, a 3-ingredient (okay, 4 if you count oil for sautéing) side dish that's light, refreshing, and oh-so-healthy!




Edamame-Shiitake Salad

Ingredients

• 12oz frozen shelled edamame
• 1 package fresh shiitake mushrooms, sliced
• Olive oil
• 1-2 Tbsp bottled Asian-style salad dressing (I used Trader Joe's Sesame Soy Ginger Vinaigrette)

Directions
Heat some olive oil in a non-stick pan, and sauté the sliced shiitakes. Let cool. Put frozen edamame in a microwave-safe bowl and add about 1/4 cup water. Microwave on high for 4-5 minutes. Drain edamame in a colander, and rinse with cold water to cool down quickly. Make sure the edamame drains well - pat it dry with a paper towel if it's still too wet. Combine the now-cooled mushrooms and edamame in a bowl, and mix in just enough salad dressing to just barely coat the veggies. Cover and chill until cold.

Sesame Spinach Salad

Frozen spinach. It's a true powerhouse in the Slacker Gourmet's arsenal. Easily thawed for inclusion in casseroles or dips or thrown straight from the bag into a frying pan for sautéing (though that's another post), frozen spinach can be used in countless ways.

Until today, I had never thought to use frozen spinach in a cold salad application. In retrospect, it makes perfect sense - why buy and clean fresh spinach, just to clean it, boil it, and cool it down, when you could simply thaw and drain frozen spinach? I prefer the spinach in a bag, rather than the frozen bricks - it's much more manageable and thaws more evenly. I almost always have a couple of bags each of cut leaf and chopped spinach on hand.



Sesame Spinach Salad
Adapted from Sesame Spinach Salad

Ingredients

• 16oz frozen cut-leaf spinach, thawed but not warm
• 2 Tbsp sake or dry white wine
• 1 Tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1 tsp sesame oil
• toasted sesame seeds, for garnish.

Directions
Squeeze cold spinach in a tea towel or in multiple layers of paper towels, removing as much water as possible. Whisk together the sake, soy sauce, sugar and sesame oil in a medium bowl. Add the spinach and toss to coat with the dressing. Sprinkle with toasted sesame seeds.

TO TOAST SESAME SEEDS:
Preheat a small skillet over high heat. When the skillet is hot, add sesame seeds. Keep them constantly moving (either by swirling the pan or stirring with a wooden spoon). Sesame seeds toast quickly - about 1 minute for black sesame seeds, and between 1-2 minutes for white. They are done when you just start smelling a nutty sesame aroma. Black sesame seeds will turn shiny, and white ones will turn golden.

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This turned out to be a good base recipe. I used a sweeter wine (it's what I had on hand) and less sugar - next time, I would definitely use sake and the full amount of sugar. I really like the sesame flavor with the spinach, so next time, I may even increase the amount of sesame oil slightly. For a quick salad requiring no fresh produce, however, this was pretty great!