Daily menu

by

Just another Tuesday night at the Walker Cafe

Broiled Lemon Salmon served over Bow Tie Pasta with Pine Nuts

For the salmon (serves 3-4)

  • 3-4 1/2 pound portions of salmon
  • 1 lemon sliced very thin
  • garlic powder
  • dill weed

Place salmon skin side down on a lightly oiled baking pan. Sprinkle with garlic powder,  cover with lemon slices and sprinkle with dill weed. Broil for 10-15 minutes on a rack that is about 8″ below the broiler.

For the pasta

  • 1 pound bow tie pasta
  • 1/4 c. chopped parsley, or 1 kale or chard leaf, chopped
  • 2 Tbs. olive oil
  • 1 clove garlic, minced
  • salt
  • 2/3 c. pine nuts

Toast the pine nuts by placing them in a non-greased pan over a medium heat. Stir constantly for 2-3 minutes until they are toasted. Remove from heat and pour into a ceramic bowl to cool.

Boil pasta until al dente, adding parsley or chopped greens to the water during the last minute. Drain. Add olive oil to pan along with garlic. Stir in pasta. Toss in the pine nuts. Salt to taste.

by

Tomato Rosemary Soup

Tomato soup and quiche made a great dinner tonight. For a flavorful soup, splurge on some good quality Italian canned tomatoes. After all, you’d easily spend that on a couple of cans of prepared tomato soup, right?

Tomato Rosemary Soup (serves 4)

  • 2 Tbs. olive oil
  • 1/2 cup diced onion
  • 1 stalk celery, diced
  • 1 large bay leaf
  • 4 whole cloves
  • 1 28 oz. can plum tomatoes, chopped
  • 2-3 sprigs fresh rosemary (or 1/2 tsp. dry, crumbled)
  • 2 cups chicken or vegetable stock
  • salt and pepper to taste

Saute the onion, celery, bay leaf and cloves in the olive oil for about 10 minutes or until the onions are very soft. Add the tomatoes, stock and rosemary. Heat slowly for about 45 minutes. Season with salt and pepper, and remove the bay leaf. Serve in a cheerful red bowl with a sprig of rosemary as a garnish.

by

French Toast on a Warm Plate, Topped with Plum Jam

Challah french toast topped with homemade plum jam.

My dad  will carefully touch a finger to his plate to see if it’s been heated. He’s not a complainer, but give him a cold dinner plate and you’ll hear about it with a soft murmur of “not hot.” His caregivers each have their own method for warming the plate. They put it in the oven or the microwave, or run it under hot water, and our boldest nurse places it directly over an open flame on the stove top so that when the eggs hit the plate they sizzle and continue to cook.

This morning I decided to heat everyone’s plates. I wanted everyone to enjoy their french toast piping hot, and to sit down together to eat. I kept a platter going in the oven, and put the plates all around.

My grandmother, Mollye, taught me how to make plum jam. If you’re not lucky enough to have homemade, go out and buy some plum jam. It’s fantastic on french toast.

French Toast (serves 4)

  • 3 eggs
  • 1/3 c. milk
  • 1 tsp. cinnamon
  • 1/2 tsp. vanilla
  • butter for the pan
  • 8 slices bread (I use left-over challah)

Whisk up the eggs, and mix in the remaining ingredients. Melt 1-2 Tbs. butter in a large pan. When the butter is very hot, dip each slice of bread, first one side and then the other, and place immediately into the hot pan. Brown well on each side. Keep warm in oven, cover with a clean kitchen towel if the platter will be in the oven more than 10 minutes. Serve with lightly warmed plum jam.

by

A Simple Stir Fry for Two

For adults only tonight.

Something unusual happened tonight. The rest of the family had already eaten or was out of the house, and I wound up making dinner for just me and Doug. Dinner for two adults! I was free to prepare something that we would enjoy, without going through the list of food “dislikes” which looks roughly like this:

  • Molly loves mushrooms but the boys hate them so if I use them I have to cut them large so the boys can pick them out.
  • Joe and Max love potatoes but Molly doesn’t care for them.
  • Macey won’t eat spicy food.
  • Max loves raw broccoli but not cooked.
  • Molly likes cooked broccoli but not raw.
  • One of the kids likes asparagus but I’m not sure who.

You get the idea.

But tonight, with the absolute freedom to create a meal for just me and Doug, I happily used the gorgeous purpley asparagus, half a box of mushrooms, plenty of sliced onions, and just enough of some left over steak to add a bit of salty chew, and created a simple grown-up stir fry for two.

Asparagus-Mushroom Stir Fry (with steak, tofu or chicken)

Saute 1/2 onion, sliced, in 2 Tbs. olive oil. Stir in 1/2 pound fresh asparagus, cut into 2-inch pieces, and 1/2 pound mushrooms, quartered. Add 2 cloves minced garlic, a dash of salt and plenty of freshly ground pepper. Heat for about 5 minutes and then stir in about 1/2 cut of thinly sliced cooked steak (or chicken or tofu). Cook just until the meat is heated, and serve.

by

Creamed Spinach

Serve this while the spinach is still a bright green, and slightly al dente.

Since they were babies, my children have always loved this. Even tonight I heard a quiet little, “Ooo—creamed spinach!” when they sat down. Make this from fresh spinach, cut down on the cream by using 2% milk, and you’ve got a gorgeous vegetable dish that’s packed with flavor and nutrients. You’ll find that a lot of creamed spinach recipes either start with frozen spinach, or if using fresh the recipe directs you to blanch the spinach before creaming. Fresh spinach will release a lot of liquid during cooking, but I use that liquid to help make the cream sauce, so that all the vitamins end up in your serving bowl.

You have to start out with a ridiculous amount of fresh spinach. When you think about quantity, think about something roughly equal to the size of your head. Then double that amount. Tonight I started with 14 loosely packed cups of chopped fresh spinach, and wound up with 4 cups of creamed spinach.

I’m certainly not claiming that this is a no-fat dish, so if you are planning on serving something like this, then for goodness sake balance out the rest of your meal with simpler dishes. Tonight we had rotisserie chicken, plain baked sweet potatoes, plain brown rice, and fresh strawberries. When you look at the delightful mixture of color on your plate, you can feel good about enjoying this decadent-tasting creamed spinach.

Creamed Spinach

  • 14 cups chopped fresh spinach
  • 1 onion, finely chopped
  • 4 Tbs. butter
  • 1/2 c. flour
  • 1-1/2 c. milk
  • 1/2 c. half and half
  • 1/4 tsp. nutmeg (optional), or more to taste
  • salt, to taste

Rinse the spinach leaves well, and discard the thicker stems. Chop coarsely. In a very large pot, melt the butter and saute the onion until soft. Sprinkle on the flour, and very slowly add the milk and then the half and half, stirring constantly. Add the chopped spinach and stir it in until it is well combined with the sauce. Add the salt and nutmeg. Keep stirring slowly. The spinach with wilt and the mixture will thicken. Heat through on a very low heat, taste and adjust seasonings. Serve while the spinach is still bright green and slightly al dente.

Start with 14 cups of chopped spinach.

If you're having a creamed green on your plate then balance it out with simpler foods.

by

Not your mother’s beanie-weenie: Spicy Sausage and Beans over Polenta

This is a company dish that you can prepare in less than 45 minutes. It’s a show-stopper with it’s contrasting colors and complex blend of textures and flavors.

Use your favorite sausage. Tonight I was lucky enough to have a garlic sausage ring from Romanian Kosher Sausage Company, corner of Clark and Touhy, Chicago. If you ever get a chance you should stop in there to buy deli meat that is fresh and well-seasoned, or to pick out a salami which hangs on the wall behind the butchers. This is the real deal. (Closed on Saturdays.)

I’ve  had great success with chicken-apple sausage, and for a low-fat version, turkey kielbasa.

Spicy Sausage and Beans over Polenta

Polenta

Start this first, and let it cook slowly while you cook the sausage and beans.

  • 3 cups water
  • 1 cup polenta (also called corn grits or coarse corn meal)
  • 1/2 tsp. salt

Mix together all of the ingredients, cooking slowly over medium heat, stirring often. It will thicken but should be thin enough to slowly pour off the spoon. Add more water as needed. It will take about 25 minutes to cook. You’ll know it’s done when it’s not gritty to chew.

Sausage and Beans

  • 2 Tbs. olive oil
  • 1 large onion, cut into slices
  • 1 lb sausage, cut diagonally into slices
  • 2 large cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 28-oz can whole tomatoes cut into large chunks, or 4 cups fresh tomatoes, chopped
  • 1 15-oz can pinto beans
  • 1 15-oz can black beans
  • 1 Tbs. basil
  • 1 Tbs. oregano
  • 2 tsp. salt
  • 1/4 tsp. cayenne
  • 1/4 c. chopped parsley

Saute the onion and sausage in the oil until the onions begin to caramelize and the meat is browned. Add the rest of the ingredients, cover and let heat through. Add more salt, spices or cayenne to taste.

To serve, spoon the polenta into a large, deep-sided platter or pasta bowl. Ladle on the sausage and bean mixture, top with chopped parsley.

by

Charmoula

Chermoula marinated talapia, served tonight with brown rice, mixed vegetables and orange slices.

Charmoula sauce is something I’d never heard of until our friends Ben and Liz introduced it to us. They brought over a jar filled with the golden, green-speckled marinade and I tried it tonight with talapia. Charmoula is found in Moroccan, Algerian and Tunisian cooking. It’s main ingredients are cilantro and garlic, along with coriander and chili peppers.

by

Pretty Pasta With Vegetables—Redux

I believe that good tasting food should be visually beautiful. Food is a form of art work. I take a lot of care with my dinner preparations, following what my mother taught me that if you have a lot of different colors on your plate then you will be getting a lot of different nutrients.

I made this dish and posted it a couple of weeks ago, but I’ve not been happy with the way the meal looked that night. It was far too bland and approached a monochromatic plate which makes the food about as appetizing as cardboard. (I know it has green and red in it but there is something lacking, perhaps with the pasta itself?)  So tonight I approached it with an artist’s eye, and feeling rich with a ‘fridge full of variety, I am offering this re-do.

Friends get impatient with me when I’m not able to provide exact quantities of ingredients when I’m making, for example, a stir fry, a soup, or perhaps this pasta dish. Tonight I set about to give every diner a plate full of vegetables, and all of it hidden in the pasta sauce.

These are the vegetables that I used for our family of six:

Vegetables included in this dish are: broccoli, kale, zucchini, carrots, tomatoes, onion, cauliflower and cauliflower greens.

When deciding on how much of each vegetable to use, I simply imagined how much I wanted each person at the table to have on their plate, then multiplied by six. Take a moment. Visualize your plate. Picture what colors,  flavors and shapes you are looking for, and then start chopping.

As an experiment, I took of 1/6 of each vegetable and put it in a Pyrex measuring cup just to see what we were all in for:

I think we all got a great assortment of vegetables on our pasta tonight, and I feel much better about the way the dish turned out this week. There is always room for improvement!

by

Plan your week.

I’m doing what I mean to do every Sunday, and that is to plan the entire week’s menu in advance. It takes a few quiet minutes, and will save a lot of time in the upcoming week. Here’s my plan for the upcoming week:

Sunday: Tamale Pie from Laurel’s Kitchen Cookbook, broccoli, and orange slices. (Option B for my dad, who doesn’t like spicy: fish fillet, baked potato.)

Monday: Homemade macaroni- cheese-vegetable dish.

Tuesday: Tilapia marinated in neighbor Ben’s charmoula sauce, rice,  frozen mixed vegies, fruit salad.

Wednesday: Tortellini with an easy tomato sauce, crusty bread, cauliflower, green salad.

Thursday: Sausage and bean dish, polenta, broccoli, green salad.

Friday: Rotisserie chicken, creamed fresh spinach, sweet potatoes, challah.

by

Potato Corn Chowder

I love this soup. My first taste of potato chowder was in the basement of the Illini Union in 1975. In keeping with the diet of this part of the world, it was made with bacon and lots of heavy cream. My version is packed with great vegetables like kale and carrots, uses low-fat milk and is one of my family’s favorites.

This afternoon, in keeping with the Illini spirit, I picked up some bacon ends at the U of I meat lab. After trimming off most of the fat, I chopped up the meat and sauteed it along with the leeks. This soup is also great with bits of ham or sausage, but is also every bit is good as a vegetarian soup. Also, add some chopped red sweet pepper if you like that.

Potato Corn Chowder

  • 1 leek or 1 large onion, chopped
  • a few slices of ham or bacon (optional)
  • 2 Tbs. olive oil
  • 5 medium potatoes, chopped (I leave the peel on)
  • 1 large sweet potato, chopped
  • 2 large kale leaves, chopped
  • 2 stalks celery, chopped
  • 1 cup chopped parsley
  • 3 large carrots, chopped
  • 3 cups corn
  • 3 Tbs. butter
  • 2-3 cups milk
  • 1 Tbs. basil
  • 1 large bay leaf
  • salt
  • pepper

Saute the onions and meat, if you’re using it, in the olive oil. When the onion is soft add all of the vegetables and the basil, and just barely cover with water. Cook for about an hour, until the vegies are soft. Take out 2 cups of the broth and vegetable mixture and quickly run through a blender, and then return to the pot. Add the milk and butter and heat very slowly until warm. Season with salt and lots of fresh pepper.