Spinach Walnut Pesto-ey Pasta

One of my favorite all time foods is pesto, so imagine my delight when I found this recipe on eat me, delicious who adapted from Quick-Fix Vegetarian. Walnuts, spinach, and flax seed? I couldn't have been happier. I love fixing my family healthy delicious food and this recipe looked (and absolutely was!) amazing. We recently unearthed our food processor too, after years in hibernation, when I made baklava. The food processor is great, especially for finely uniformly chopped foodstuffs. Ours is super tiny, but it makes cooking so much easier! I digress, back to the pesto: my dad said it could have used parmesan cheese (it's vegan as is) and my brother said that reducing the amount of olive oil made it a lot drier than normal pesto but that he thought normal pesto was too oily, so next time I might add somewhere between 1/4 cup of olive oil and 1/3 cup of olive oil.

Serves 4-5

makes about 2 cups, serves 4 with pasta

Ingredients
3 cups fresh spinach
4 cloves garlic
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup firmly packed fresh parsley leaves
1/3 cup walnut pieces
1 cup fresh basil
2 tbsp ground flax seed
(whoops! looking over this I realized I didn't grind the flax seeds.)
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil or walnut oil
(I might add more oil next time, the pasta was a little drier than normal pesto)
1 block of baked tofu (mine was 7 oz)
(I couldn't find smoked tofu, which the recipe originally called for, at either TJ's or our local health food store. Where do you get smoked tofu?)


Meanwhile, steam the spinach over boiling water for 1 minute, or wilt it in a covered bowl in the microwave for about 3 minutes.
(I really struggled with this step for some reason. I've made gyoza before by frying then steaming them but for some reason, without a special steaming device, I felt like I needed a solution that wasn't provided above. Does this ever happen to any of you- where you have a cooking block that you just can't seem to get past? I didn't want to blanch all the flavor and nutrients out of the spinach, but I also wanted to have a good consistency for the sauce. What I ended up doing was really ridiculous: I rinsed baby spinach in a colander, and then dipped the bottom of the colander into the boiling water I was preparing for the pasta for about two seconds. Then I tossed the wilted spinach with the fresher spinach while still in the colander).
Mince the garlic with the salt in a food processor. Squeeze any moisture from the spinach and add to the food processor along with the parsley, basil, flax seeds and walnuts. Puree until smooth. Add the olive oil gradually and process to a smooth paste.

Cut up baked tofu into squares or small strips. In the pot that you cooked the pasta in, add the pesto and the tofu. Heat over low until tofu is hot.


so healthy and tasty!

Thai Chick-Un Pizza

I guess I'm on a peanut butter kick. After devouring the remainder of those peanut butter cookies, and most of a box of Tagalongs, I decided that the main course for tonight's dinner should be Thai pizza. Luckily, Ashley, author and baker extraordinaire of "eat me, delicious", has adapted recipes for some of my favorite breakfast, lunch, and dinner foods. I'm so happy I could throw a parade. Instead, I'll just have to start cooking with profe more than once a week.

So, we set to work. As an asian-american cat, he always approves of asian food. And as an enlightened being, he enjoyed the irie coloring of the pizza.

I hope you like jammin' [while eating this yummy pizza] too.


Thai Chick-Un Pizza
Adapted from eat me, delicious who adapted from Eat, Drink & Be Vegan

makes 8 large slices on a 14 inch pizza pan. Feeds about 5.

Peanut Sauce*

2/3 cup organic creamy peanut butter
1/3 cup ketchup
2 tbsp rice vinegar
2 tbsp low sodium soy sauce (I used Bragg's)
4 large cloves garlic, quartered
2 heaping tbsp fresh ginger, chopped
1/4 cup soy milk
(I might use coconut milk next time)
1 tsp agave nectar/syrup
(note: I would add maybe 1/4 - 1/2 c. of crushed red pepper next time because I just ended up dumping 3 tablespoons on my slice of pizza anyway)


1 14-16 inch whole wheat pizza shell for thin crust (see recipe below)
(my pizza pan is either 14 or 16 inches)

1 cup cooked garbanzo beans
(I used canned)
1 red bell pepper, diced
1 cup fresh pineapple, chopped
(I used precut pineapple from Trader Joe's refrigerated section)
3/4 cup snow peas, chopped
1/2 cup green onions, sliced
peanuts, chopped (garnish)
fresh cilantro leaves (garnish)

To prepare peanut sauce:
In a food processor, add peanut butter, ketchup, rice vinegar, soy sauce, garlic, ginger, soy milk and agave nectar/syrup, and puree until smooth.

Preheat the oven to 450 F. Prepare a pizza pan with 1 1/2 tbsp of olive oil and a sprinkle of flour (I used Kamut flour) the pizza pan. Roll or stretch the ball of dough to fit your pizza pan. (Note: for a short cut, I frequently use Trader Joe's whole wheat pizza dough. For thin crust on a 14-16 inch pan, use about half of the bag of dough. For thick crust use the whole bag)


Spread peanut sauce evenly on pizza crust. In a bowl, lightly flatten chickpeas with a large spoon (or in palm of your hand), and distribute evenly over sauce. Distribute bell pepper, pineapple and snow peas evenly. Bake for 10-15 minutes (depending on crust thickness), sprinkling on green onions for last minute of cooking, until the crust is golden and toppings have heated through. Serve sprinkled with chopped peanuts and cilantro if desired.




















Pizza dough recipe from epicurious

Ingredients

1 cup (or more) warm water (105°F to 115°F)
1 1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast
2 cups unbleached all purpose flour
3/4 cup unbleached white whole wheat flour
3 tablespoons vital wheat gluten*
1 1/2 teaspoons coarse kosher salt
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, divided

Preparation

Whisk 1 cup warm water and yeast in small bowl; let stand until yeast dissolves, about 5 minutes. Using on/off turns, mix both flours, wheat gluten, and coarse salt in processor. Whisk 2 tablespoons oil into yeast mixture. With machine running, gradually add yeast mixture through feed tube of processor. Process until dough forms ball, adding more warm water by teaspoonfuls if dry, about 1 minute. Transfer dough to floured work surface; knead until dough comes together.

Brush large bowl with 1 tablespoon oil. Place dough in bowl; turn to coat. Cover bowl with kitchen towel. Let rise in warm draft-free area until doubled in size, 1 1/2 to 2 hours. Punch dough down. Divide in half; form into 2 balls. DO AHEAD: Place each ball in separate resealable plastic bag. Chill up to 4 days or freeze up to 1 month. Let chilled dough stand 1 hour or frozen dough stand 4 hours at room temperature before rolling.

*The sauce tastes a little salty by itself, but it evens out nicely with the sweetness of the fresh pineapple and red bell pepper.

nom nom nom :)