This is an adaptation of a Deborah Madison recipe.  I made this with fresh rainbow chard from the farmers’ market – it’s in season now and if you are trying to incorporate more leafy greens into your diet, this is a delicious vehicle!

Chickpeas With Chard & Moroccan Spices

For the greens:  Bring a large pot of water to a boil.  Meanwhile, separate the stems of the chard from the leaves and coarsely chop each, but keep separate.  Add the chard stems to the boiling water and cook for approximately 5 minutes, until just tender.  Add chard leaves to the water and cook an additional 2 minutes.  Drain and set aside.

In a small bowl, combine the garlic, 1/2 t. of salt, dried spices, 1 t. oil, 2 T. of the cilantro and the parsley.  Stir to make a thick paste.

Heat the remaining oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat.  Add the onion and pepper.  Cook for 7 minutes, then stir in the garlic paste, chickpeas and 1/2 c. chicken broth.  When the onion is translucent, add tomatoes, chard, another 1/2 t. salt and the other 1/2 c. broth.  Reduce the heat to low, and simmer for 5 minutes.  Stir in the remaining cilantro and serve.

Serve over brown rice, barley or whole-wheat couscous.  Serves 4, generously.

P.S.  This is even better the next day, when the flavors have come together.  Makes a GREAT lunch!

It’s August, and here in the Northeast U.S., we all know that our beautiful weekends are numbered.  I don’t know about you, but we’re trying to squeeze in as many backyard BBQs as possible . . . evenings on the patio are precious.  Soon we’ll be shoveling again.

This is a menu I’ve made many times, always to raves from the crowd.  It’s virutally all do-ahead, so you can take some time with your guests instead of running around crazy before dinner.

Grilled Lemon Chicken recipe from Gourmet Magazine – FYI, I use ~3 lbs. of boneless, skinless chicken breasts and it works out well.  Also note that you must marinate this chicken overnight, so plan accordingly!

Pair this with the Orzo With Tomatoes, Feta & Green Onions recipe from Bon Appetit.  FYI, if you can get fresh, multicolored cherry tomatoes, they’ll look really pretty in this.  And a note:  I am usually a hater of pasta salads, but this one has so much flavor, it’s worth the chopping.  Trust me – I’ve never had a party where this was served and people didn’t request the recipe.  Never!

Serve this Fig Salad With Greens & Walnuts on the side – be sure to scale up the recipe to however many servings you need – as written, it only serves 3 people.

Tried it mixed with a huge tomato, which I cubed.  Although it was better (lending credibility to my too-much-pesto-hypothesis), I still wasn’t a huge fan.  Don’t know what I’m going to do with all these remaining leftovers!

I think it was my sister-in-law who turned me on to green salads with fruit in them.  Until I’d had her spinach salad with strawberries, I’d always been a salad-traditionalist of sorts – salads were savory, and for me, eaten after my main course (unless, of course, a salad was my main course, which it often is).

But there is something interesting and tempting about a salad loaded with both greens and fruit, and maybe some nuts and dried fruits too, with a slightly sweet dressing.  For me, they’re always slightly unexpected, but enjoyable.

I tried this on Saturday night, and we liked it.  It incorporates fresh figs, which we “discovered” last summer.  I ate dried figs as a kid, but as a grownup I hadn’t regularly eaten fresh figs, and certainly never cooked with them.  If they are ripe, they can be very tasty.  If they aren’t (they’ll be very firm), they won’t be.  And sometimes they’re really mushy and over-ripe, in which case they’re awful.  So see if you can man-handle your figs a bit before you commit to a basket.  I also try to find organic ones, and then I just wash them and slice them with the peel intact.

Green Salad With Figs, Grapes & Pine Nuts

Dressing

*To toast your pine nuts, put them into a small, dry skillet and stir them constantly over low heat – they’ll toast quickly, so watch them!  Let them cool before you add them to your salad.

For dressing:  combine all ingredients in a large bowl and whisk to combine (or use an old spaghetti sauce jar – add all ingredients and shake vigorously – this is my fool-proof method).  This makes about twice as much dressing as you will need for the salad – so you can either halve the recipe, or keep the leftovers in the fridge for about a week).

For salad:  toss all ingredients in a large bowl, dress with prepared dressing to taste.

Serves 4 as a side-salad.

Some tips:  Pine nuts are expensive, and because of their high oil content, they spoil more quickly than your other nuts.  Trader Joe’s has great prices on nuts generally, and also on dried fruits.  Buy a large bag of nuts and use what you need – keep the rest in the refrigerator and they won’t go rancid as quickly.

Turned on by sweet dressings?  Newman’s Own makes a good light raspberry walnut vinaigrette that is a staple at our house – try tossing it with mixed greens, crumbled blue cheese, dried cranberries and then topping it with a sliced grilled chicken breast (here again, TJ’s can be a time-saver – their already-grilled chicken breasts are pretty darn good (no weird texture) and don’t have any crazy sauces on them.  The balsamic ones are my favorite, but lemon-pepper and plain grilled are great, too.  Voila!  If you used bagged salad greens and the pre-cooked chicken, you now have a healthy and summery main-course in less time than it takes to order take-out!

Tonight I made Heidi Swanson’s Arugula Pesto Wheat Berryrecipe and my verdict is “meh.”  My husband’s verdict is two-thumbs-down with a pouty face.  That’s pretty bad.

There’re a few things that were going on here.  I absolutely do not think that this recipe was a dog.  I think I put too much pesto on my wheat berries, for starters.  So if you do make this, go easy at first and add more, which Heidi does encourage you to do.  I just thought the pesto was delicious and so I was in a “if some if good, hell, more is better!” place, and, well, I overdid it.

Second.  I did add the fried seitan, and although I’ve been wanting to like seitan forever now, I just don’t.  The texture is too weird for me – if you’re a seitan lover, put it in and you’ll have a tasty, protein-packed meal.

Third.  Wheat berries are chewy.  They have a great, sort of nutty flavor, but they are work.  I like this, actually, but they are not for everyone – for instance, my poor husband.  I think these pushed him over the edge of his whole-foods tolerance.  He said “I like quinoa soooo much better.”

Fourth.  The pesto.  I love arugula – it’s peppery and fresh.  This pesto is an electric green color, toasty from the pine nuts, zesty from the fresh Parmesan.  I thought it was great.  Husband pronounced it “too green,” both in color and flavor.  I tried some on our daughter’s plain udon noodles and it was terrific.

I’m not giving up on this!  I have the leftovers in the fridge and tomorrow for lunch I’m going to try them again – the flavors will have melded well by then, and if it’s still too much, I might put a mound of wheat berries, etc. on a bed of arugula and eat it that way.  Some chopped tomato might be great with it too. 

I’ll let you know.

For those of you who’ve followed me on Facebook until now, you might remember that my 6-year-old daughter is in love with Giada De Laurentiis.  She will watch “Everyday Italian” with rapt attention, and comment on everything from the food Giada is making (“oooh, I could eat the t.v.!”) to her outfit (“I like Giada’s clothes mom, and her jewelry, and her eye makeup is sparkly today!”).  It’s really very funny.

When I’m not watching with her, L. will often pause the t.v. and run from the room yelling “mom! mom!  you have to come here and SEE this, it’s amazing!”  In which case I have to run in to witness the tasty-looking vittles for myself.

Anyway.  We were watching the “Bake Sale” episode at the end of last week, and amongst the many sweets Giada showcased were these Marscapone Mini Cupcakes- replete with a pink strawberry glaze.  What six-year-old could resist those?

We whipped them up yesterday and they are terrific.  So easy to make (cake mix is easy), light, cute and yes, very pink.  Perfect for a fairy tea party or a princess-palooza of some kind, or just to eat with friends on what was a gorgeous summer Saturday.

Enjoy!

So, a disclaimer . . . these are dishes I haven’t yet tried, but that I’ve flagged in various magazines and on-line.  I’m including links, and I’m going to try to make at least a few in the next week or so.  How ’bout we mix up our routines and expand our repertoires together?  If you try any of these, please post a comment and let everyone know what you tried and how it was!

This delicious Arugula Pesto Wheatberry recipe landed in my in-box today.  If you haven’t checked out Heidi Swanson’s 101 Cookbooks site, get with it!  She is an award-winning, go-to resource for whole food cooking.  There are LOTS of vegetarian options here.

It’s still summer, thank goodness, and many of us love a good burger on the grill.  I flagged this recipe for Grilled Turkey Burgers With Cheddar And Smoky Aioli in August’s Bon Appetit – don’t panic, it’s from their “Fast Easy Fresh” section, so it’s approximately 40 minutes from counter to table – definitely do-able – and you can even make the burgers up to 4 hours ahead and throw ‘em in the fridge ’til you’re ready to grill.  This has one of my favorite ingredients, smoked paprika – I will eat almost anything with smoked paprika in it (that and butter, but that’s for another post).

Also from the August Bon Appetit, a good farmers’ market recipe – Orecchiette With Fresh Mozzarella, Grape Tomatoes And Garlic Chives.  Instead of the pea-sized mozz. from Trader Joe’s that they suggest, I’d hit up a local farmers’ market and score some uber-fresh mozzarella from Fiore di Nonno Cheese - for the Belmontians reading here, they’re at our market on Thursdays.

Summer’s a great time for super-easy, casual suppers.  Cooking Light’s August issue has a good-looking recipe for a Chicken and Roquefort Sandwich that’d be nice with a cold beer or glass of wine, if you like those sorts of things. Serve it up with some crudites or a quick tossed salad as a side.

More quinoa, please!  Food & Wine’s August issue has a simple Quinoa Salad With Sugar Snap Peas that’d make an interesting side to some grilled tofu or chicken. I’m always looking for new ways to eat quinoa.  This would look especially beautiful if you can find red quinoa.

For a simple, seasonal dessert, the kings of food-porn at Gourmet send our way a delicious-looking Yogurt Cake With Currant Raspberry Sauce - again, don’t get tense, it’s a sheet cake and if you can’t find or don’t want to deal with fresh currants, you can use more raspberries (see Cooks’ Notes in the recipe).  And do you realize how impressed your fans will be when you turn out a from-scratch cake?  They really are worth the effort.  Trust me on this.

Turkey burgers can be so blah – dry, flavorless, especially if you make them with virtually fat free turkey breast meat with no skin ground in. But these from Martha Stewart are consistently delicious.

I usually subtitute a slice of chopped-up bread for the dry breadcrumbs because I think that the dry crumbs make the burger dry. I always make them with the leanest turkey I can get. Last night I used the heel of a whole-wheat loaf and they came out great. Be careful not to cook the heck out of these. We don’t eat them on buns with condiments, we eat them straight up, with a salad and veggies on the side. But they would be delicious on a fresh bun, too.

Enjoy!