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slow cooked vaquero beans with onion, garlic, and oregano :: by radish*rose

slow-cooked vaquero beans with onion, garlic, and oregano

radish*rose 1 Comment

Did you know you can use the slow cooker to turn dried beans into perfectly cooked beany goodness?  No pre-soaking necessary!  Really: ANY BEANS.  That being said, the best dried beans come from Rancho Gordo.  (Also they have awesome popcorn if you want to make this.) I used their Vaquero beans for this recipe (aren’t they cool looking?) and honestly every single bean in that bag is so good. Yum!  Also… bonus side effect… your home will smell really good as these beans are cooking.  (And how to put this delicately… your home can continue to smell good thanks to the geniuses at Beano. Check it out. Thank me later.) Continue reading

white bean, artichoke, tuna, and egg salad :: by radish*rose

white bean, artichoke, tuna, and egg salad

radish*rose 0 comment

If I might make an observation, IT’S FULL-ON SUMMER here!  So maybe you don’t feel like cranking up the oven. Instead, you might want a light but hearty, protein-filled salad for dinner. And wouldn’t it be great if you could make it from items you can keep handy in the pantry, with a few fresh ingredients to liven things up?  A tip: put all your canned ingredients in the fridge before you leave for work.  Then when you get home, throw this together, and it will already be chilled and you can nom-nom it right away!  This is a super-flexible recipe, so if you haven’t got hard-cooked eggs or artichoke hearts already at hand, just leave them out or sub in something else you do have that you think would be nice.  It will be OK. Promise. Continue reading

thai-style curry mussels :: by radish*rose

thai-style curry coconut mussels with lime and spinach

radish*rose 2 Comments

Love Thai food?  Me too!  The combination of curry, coconut, and lime used in many Southeast Asian dishes is so addictive.  Thanks to Thai curry paste, which is readily available (I got mine from Whole Foods), you can recreate the flavors at home without too much fuss.  And one of the wonderful things about steaming mussels is that a delicious broth is created once the mussels open up and add their juices to the broth base. I like to serve this dish with jasmine rice because once you have finished the mussels, you can stir rice into the broth (which also has greens in it), and eat it like a soup.  And you’ll want to.  It’s so good! Continue reading

tuna steaks with sesame ginger dipping sauce :: by radish*rose

grilled tuna steaks with sesame ginger dipping sauce

radish*rose 0 comment

Since we are urban apartment-dwellers, grilling = broiling for us. It’s like an upside down grill! Or at least ours is, because the heat source (flame) points down from the top of the oven – not everyone’s broiler is the same. Check yours out.

We made this on a cast-iron, enameled grill pan (like this) to get a nice sear and the grill marks on it (which serve a purpose – searing protein creates a Maillard reaction which intensifies umami, also known as savoriness). It helps a lot if you heat your grill pan up under the broiler, place your food on it (it will sizzle!) then put it back in the broiler. Nice! These tuna steaks are a hearty treat. We probably could have made them a little less well-done, which we will try next time. The dipping sauce is pretty intense, especially if you add wasabi – you gotta try it. Wasabi nose, whee!!  (That feeling you get when the wasabi heat goes up in your nose! Ever notice how chile heat affects your mouth and lips but wasabi heat affects your nose? Know why? Me neither!) Continue reading