Weeknight Dinner Diaries

Suggested ideas for weeknight dinners and a dessert, all made and enjoyed around these parts.

Monday: Tomato, cucumber and bacon salad. Slice up tomatoes and cucumbers and fry up some bacon.  Let the bacon cool, then add to the vegetables, along with some sliced onions, if you like. For the dressing, a bit of mayo and sour cream is good. Salt and pepper liberally.

Tuesday: I’m such a lobbyist for leftovers. Let’s say you have leftover pork loin (cooked in a crock pot with apple juice and soy sauce, surprisingly delish) and roasted potatoes from the weekend. Cut them up and sauté in a pan with some spinach. Add curry spices. Eat with dollops of sour cream.  

Wednesday: There’s more time to mess around in the kitchen mid-week, so make this zucchini-bacon-and-cheese goodness. Slice up 4-5 zucchini and sauté in olive oil for 10 minutes or so.

Place the vegetables in a foil-lined pan and grate some cheese over them—mozzarella and Parmesan are always good. Add some diced ham or bacon. Bake at 425 for 20-25 minutes, and broil last five minutes. Let cool a bit before eating.

Thursday: If you’re running low on groceries by the end of the week, look around the pantry. You may be pleasantly surprised by the delicious things you can make using frozen, canned or jarred ingredients. For example: this posh-looking pumpkin soup had an unsexy start: an onion, garlic, canned pumpkin puree and chicken stock in a box.

Method: Dice and sauté a big onion in some olive oil and butter. Add a few minced garlic cloves when the onions are almost done. Sprinkle on some spices—I used Penzey’s Southwestern mix, but you can get creative here. A bit of curry spice is always good. Add the pumpkin, stock (I used about 12 ounces) and ½ cup milk, and bring the soup to a boil. Turn heat to a simmer and cook on low heat for 10 minutes or so.

Adjust the flavor to taste--I added 2 tbs. fresh lemon juice, 1 tbs. brown sugar, and ¼ cup plain yogurt. Play around until it tastes right to you. Add more stock or milk, if you like. Some diced ham or bacon, cut into 1-inch pieces and sautéed, is really good in this.  Eat with crackers or croutons, and extra yogurt.

Friday: Have dinner out but make dessert! Slice up some strawberries, sprinkle with sugar and top with sour cream. Some cookies or chocolate wouldn’t be amiss here, either.

Rice and Spinach "Kasha"

This is another entry in my Winter Detox series, where I make food that’s a) appropriate for post-holiday fitness resolutions, and b) has a comfort food factor. This spinach and rice thing/kasha* is my go-to weeknight dinner when I feel like cooking for myself.

No recipe here. I usually start out by sautéing some spinach with a bit of bacon (I know, not terribly healthy, but a strip of bacon is remarkably low in calories—about 40 a pop.) Any kind of cheese is good in this, as are sautéed mushrooms. Eat your spinach with rice or some toast on the side. Add a poached egg if you’re really feeling decadent. Good brunch dish, too.

*Kasha is Russian for any kind of porridge/hot cereal, and I like to think of this as a kind of healthy, American kasha. Buckwheat—known as kasha in the U.S.—is called grecha (греча, гречнивая каша, or гречka) in Russian.

Winter Detox: Butternut Squash and Spinach Whatever

This is something I like to think of as a post-holiday detox dinner. It’s healthy enough for New Year’s resolutions, it has a comfort-food factor for cold winter nights and it’s easy to make.

Roast some butternut squash on a Sunday afternoon when you’re pottering around the house.* When you’re ready to eat, sauté some spinach in a bit of olive oil. Add cubed butternut squash and some cheese—almost anything works here, although I like whipped cream cheese because it makes a nice, creamy sauce and isn’t terribly caloric.

Or add a bit of butter—it’s okay, a pat won’t set you back too much.  Eat with rice, pasta or as is.

*To roast squash: Preheat the oven to 425 and line a large pan with foil. Cut up a butternut squash into 4-inch chunks. Don't bother peeling. Place squash in the pan; sprinkle with brown sugar, salt and black pepper. Add a splash of olive oil.

Roast 30-45 minutes, until the squash is easily pierced with a fork. Let cool and peel.

Brunch

So I hear brunch is a pretty popular pastime these days. In Milwaukee, there's at least one blog devoted to full-time brunching and bloody mary-ing: Milwaukee Brunch Reviews.

I'm pretty agnostic when it comes to restaurant brunches, but I do like brunching at home. Brunch is often part of my routine on Tuesday mornings, the day when I work afternoons and evenings. It's also a good time to catch up on blogs, Twitter, e-mail and so on.

My favorite brunch food is pretty simple: spinach sautéed with some bacon and mushrooms, and topped with a poached egg and maybe a bit of cheese. Sometimes I'll toss in leftovers like roasted potatoes. Poaching eggs seems to cause such anxiety for cooks (think Julie Powell's near-breakdown in the movie Julie & Julia), but I've never had much trouble. Maybe I'm doing something wrong?

I bring a few cups of water to a boil in a saucepan, add a splash of vinegar (to prevent the egg white from separating) and then turn the heat to the lowest setting. I break an egg or two into a saucer and slide them into the water. I like my eggs runny, so I fish them out after three minutes.

For the beverage, I go for my recession latte--coffee made in a French press with a splash of hot milk.

Tuesday Morning Brunch for one:

Heat up a teaspoon of olive oil in a skillet. Add a slice or two of bacon, chopped up, and sauté for a minute. Add a handful of chopped mushrooms, and cook until the mushrooms are done, 4-6 minutes. Toss in two big handfuls of spinach (or half a package of frozen spinach, defrosted), and cook until wilted, 3-5 minutes. Add salt and black pepper to taste, and top with some cheese if you like. In the meantime, poach eggs as described above and make coffee.

My favorite side these days is a warmed up tortilla with cream cheese, but if you have more time, homemade yogurt scones are a close runner-up.

Cooking Notes

This post takes inspiration from former Milwaukee food blogger Haverchuk, who used to do roundups of cooking that hadn’t made it onto the blog that month, “like the deleted scenes on your DVDs.”

A few weeks ago I made draniki, Belarusian potato pancakes. These are a lot like latkes, but without the onion. You shred about 5 or 6 small peeled potatoes in a food processor; then add 2 tablespoons of flour, a beaten egg, salt and pepper. Be sure to salt the batter generously, or your pancakes will be bland.

Heat a glug of vegetable oil in a non-stick pan, and ladle ¼-cup scoops of batter into the pan. The pancakes should be 3 to 4 inches long, about 2 inches wide, and ¼-inch thin. When frying, you really have to generous with the oil, or the pancakes start burning. Fry for about 30 to 50 seconds, then flip and fry for another 30 seconds; repeat until both sides are golden-brown, about 2 minutes. These are pretty good with sour cream. Tip: Don’t make them on a weeknight when you really don’t feel like cleaning oil splatters off the stove, okay?

I tried these spinach-stuffed mushrooms at a New Year’s party, and have made them about four or five times since then. This is a Paula Deen recipe, and it’s really quite delicious. Unlike most of Deen’s repertoire, it doesn’t even call for five pounds of butter. I did make some tweaks to the original directions. Be sure to sauté the mushrooms caps for about 5 to 7 minutes before stuffing them, otherwise they don’t cook through. For the spinach filling, I subbed some homemade farmer's cheese for the feta. Ricotta would work, too.