Szechuan noodles

One thing you’ll almost always find in my fridge is a jar of tahini. This sesame seed paste is a key ingredient in hummus, which I make on a regular basis. I just bought a new jar and thought it would be fun to use it for something other than hummus. I decided on a recipe for szechuan noodles from the Barefoot Contessa cookbook.

This recipe is essentially noodles and vegetables in a peanut and sesame sauce. I doubled the amount of peppers, because in my mind the more vegetables, the better. I also used whole wheat pasta to up the nutritional value. The sauce has quite a few ingredients, but can be made days in advance. I just could not understand why this sauce contains so much vegetable oil – isn’t peanut butter, tahini, sesame oil and chili oil enough fat? My only guess is that the vegetable oil serves to thin the sauce out. I decided to omit the vegetable oil and just thin the sauce with some pasta water, which worked well.

Since I made the sauce and cut up the vegetables the night before, I had dinner on the table in about 15 minutes – you can’t beat that! While I waited for the noodles to boil, I cooked some snow peas to serve on the side. I garnished the noodles with green onions, and some black and white sesame seeds for added flavor and texture.

Blueberry crumb cake and cheddar dill scones

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Thursdays are breakfast days in my office, which means that each week, one of us is assigned to bring breakfast for everyone. It’s almost always bagels, with doughnuts thrown in now and then. When it’s my turn to bring breakfast, I like to do something a little different if I have the time. This was my week to bring food, and I decided to do some baking. I don’t really like to eat sweet things in the morning, so I made both sweet and savory options.

The sweet option was blueberry crumb cake, from the Everyday Food cookbook. I thought it would be a more unique take on your typical blueberry muffin. This cake was quite simple to make, and benefited from a delicious streusel topping. I used frozen blueberries, which worked out well. The blueberries are tossed in a bit of flour first so that they don't sink to the bottom of the cake. A small amount of allspice adds a nice background flavor.

For the savory option, I made cheddar dill scones from the Barefoot Contessa cookbook. I can’t even remember the last time I made scones, it’s probably been years. I had no trouble with these, and tried to put up my blinders when it came to the fat content. So. much. butter. cream. and cheese. But let’s not think about that! These scones are full of fresh dill, which is one of my favorite herbs.

The verdict? I would definitely make the coffee cake again. The scones were good, but in my opinion, not worth the calories. That being said, the scones disappeared faster than the cake. I think that people were a little relieved not to see bagels for the 5th week in a row!

Lunch for my grandma

My grandma was in town visiting this weekend. It's become a tradition that I cook her a meal each time she comes to visit. This time, I did a lunch that focused on springtime ingredients:

Baby spinach and mache salad with french radishes, peas, chive blossoms and pecorino romano

Pizza with fennel, oyster mushrooms, fresh mozzarella and truffle oil

Barefoot Contessa's coconut cupcakes

Name that citrus

One of my mom's patients brought her some citrus from their tree. Can you guess what these are?

They're called rangpur limes, and they are just as orange on the inside:

Although they're called limes, these fruits are actually a very sour mandarin orange. The taste is described to be something between a tangerine and a lemon. To be honest, all I really tasted was the acidity.

So you might be wondering, what did I make with these? Hummus. Yeah, I know it sounds like a weird way to use exotic citrus, but I really wanted hummus and didn't have any lemons around. I ended up using the juice from two of the limes, it gave the hummus a nice citrus flavor. I still have one more, I'm thinking a vinaigrette is in order, maybe with some orange olive oil.

I loosely followed the hummus recipe in the Barefoot Contessa cookbook.

Sugar snap peas with sesame

This is a really simple recipe, only four ingredients! You can use raw or blanched snap peas for this dish. I chose to blanch mine for about 2 minutes. The sugar snap peas are tossed in a combination of salt, sesame oil and black sesame seeds. You could probably use white sesame seeds if you don't have the black variety, but I do think there is a taste difference between the two.

Grilled corn salad

I used this recipe from Ina Garten for this salad, with one modification. I grilled my corn instead of boiling it. The corn is mixed with red onion, cider vinegar, olive oil, salt, pepper and basil. It was a nice combination of flavors, and very easy to make. The corn only took a few minutes on the grill, and the minimal amount of ingredients means that this dish comes together in no time.