My Food Geek

The eater always tells me I make the best sandwiches. My formula for a good sandwich starts with good bread. Leave the Wonder bread for toast and find something good - something with a good crust, something with an unusal flavor, or something with a nice airy texture. I then try to match the ingredients in the sandwich with the bread. You can never say too much about good, fresh vegetables or top-quality deli-meats, don’t skimp here! Finally, to hold everything together, you need a good spread. Dry sandwiches just aren’t any good so find something to bind it all together and marry the flavors. To top everything off, garnish the sandwich with something fun, like olives, and pile on the potato chips…mmmmm, potato chips.

Here’s one I almost deleted and didn’t show everyone.

• Whole Foods focaccia bread
• Fresh mozzarella
• Homegrown sprouts
• Red leaf lettuce
• Ripe, hydroponic tomato (hey, it’s still winter in New England)
• Olive tapenade /mayo mix

It was a damn good sandwich, I can’t lie.

Last week, Sam over at Beck’s and Posh posed the question, “What does your unedited fridge look like?” I figured I’d take some pictures of the silver box and detail what is inside. While I generally don’t stock the sort of ingredients that Alice Q. or David Lebovitz does but here we go:

Starting with the door in no particular order:

Condiments, lots of boring American ones: ketchup, mustard, mayo, Japanese mayo, tabasco, worcestershire. A few Asian staples: mirin, sriracha, chili paste. Rounding it all out is milk, some water (tap, the best!), an opened bottle of wine, olives, capers, and cream.

On the top shelf there’s some cooked wheat berries, black beans, Trader Joe’s greek style yogurt, and some pita bread.

Pretty much the rest of the fridge is loaded with CSA fruits and veggies from Wednesday.

If you’re wondering what’s in the toothpaste tube, it is fancy dog treats.

Lately, we’ve been a little behind eating our vegetables. Sometimes it can be a little overwhelming having vegetables delivered to your house every Wednesday, whether you need them or not.
Here’s a little something I dug out of The Greens Cookbook that uses many of the vegetables that we’ve been stockpiling these days.

My main goal was to find a recipe that would use up the large bunch of chard I had sitting in the refrigerator from last week. I grabbed this veggie-centric cookbook and hoped for the best. Apparently some eater already got to this book and marked several recipes with post-it notes, this recipe being one of them. I think the note read something like, “Yummy! I want to eat this!” or something like that.

I quickly read the recipe and found that I had just about everything on hand except for the buckwheat linguine that the recipe suggested. I made the decision to make homemade egg pasta with white flour as a substitute; in the end it all worked out. If you do happen to have some fresh pasta on hand, this recipe would make for a nice quick and light dinner.

Linguine with french lentils carrots and chard
(Adapted from The Greens Cookbook)
2-3 carrots finely diced
6 leeks finely diced
1 bunch of chard chiffonard
3 cloves garlic

1 cup lentils picked over
2 bay leaves

1 lb fresh pasta
Shaved pecorino Romano cheese
Salt, pepper, olive oil

Place lentils, bay leaves, and 4 cups of water in a small pot and bring to a boil. Lower heat and simmer for 15 minutes or until lentils are tender but not falling apart. Drain immediately and toss with olive oil, salt, and pepper. Remove bay leaves.

Bring a large 6qt pot of water to a boil. (for the pasta)

In a large skillet saute leeks, carrots, and garlic until softened. Add the lentils, chard, and about one cup of water and lower heat to a simmer. Cook for about five minutes or until the chard is just wilted.

When the vegetables are almost done, cook pasta. Fresh pasta only takes about two to three minutes to fully cook. Drain pasta and add it to the vegetables along with several tablespoons of olive oil. Adjust seasoning and simmer for one minute to blend flavors.

Immediately turn out onto a serving dish and top with freshly shaved Romano cheese.

The other day, the foodie decided to dig through some of my vegetarian cookbooks for veggie burger recipes. After perusing a few he asked me “TVP or Walnut Oatmeal?” Although I do often really like the way textured vegetable protein works in recipes, walnut oatmeal just sounded too good to turn down. I hadn’t tried either recipe before, because despite my many recipe books, I really have never been much of a cook.
After a quick trip to the store for a few needed ingredients, the burger assembly began. When he got to the browning of the patties, I was amazed at how meaty the burgers smelled. The house filled up with their irresistible aroma and I couldn’t wait to try them.

I was definitely not disappointed when they were complete with these very flavorful burger and their nice meaty texture. They were nutty and delicious and the best veggie burgers I’ve had the pleasure to eat, which is saying quite a lot considering the many many varieties of veggie burgers I’ve eaten in the past. I hope to see this recipe again soon.

The leftover mixture got to make a second appearance as surprisingly convincing meatballs in a spaghetti and meatball dish a few days later.

Walnut Oatmeal Burgers
Adapted from The New Laurel’s Kitchen: A Handbook for Vegetarian Cookery and Nutrition

burger mixture:
1½-3 cups walnut pieces
2 cups rolled oats
½ cup breadcrumbs
3 or 4 eggs, slightly beaten
½ cup skim milk
1 large onion, chopped fine
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp sage
1 tsp salt
freshly ground black pepper to taste

for cooking burgers:
oil to brown patties
3 cups vegetable stock

for serving:
hamburger buns and any desired burger fixings

Grind walnuts in blender and combine with the rest of the burger mixture ingredients.

Let the mixture rest in refrigerator for about an hour to let the flavors meld together.

Form the mixture into patties. The entire mixture will make 8-12 burgers depending on the size patty formed. It is recommended to use half of the mixture now, and reserve the rest for use in another recipe or for more burgers later.

Brown patties on both sides in a lightly oiled skillet, then pour the stock into the skillet and bring to a boil.

Reduce heat and simmer, covered, for 25 minutes.

Serve on buns with all your burger fixings.