Recipe Reduction 104-101

Green Beans With Almond Pesto


from Smitten Kitchen

What happens if you pick fresh green beans from your garden and leave them in the refrigerator in an open bag way too long, then steam them and top with a ground up mix of toasted almonds, garlic, Parmesan cheese, fresh thyme and olive oil? For me, it was sheer embarrassment--I found myself sucking the pesto off the beans and tossing them in the garbage.

Embarrassment aside, I think she's onto something with this. I tried the same pesto on some cooked cabbage and broccoli but it didn't play as well, so this is clearly a green bean thing. I just wish I'd made it before I killed the beans.
Great, fattening pesto:



 




Pasta with Ruby Chard and Cranberries
adapted from Moosewood Restaurant Cooking For Health

This recipe gets a B+ for effort but I get an F for execution. I left out the cranberries and walnuts. Truthfully, I don't think it would have made a big difference--instead of being a dish of bland pasta and greens it would have been a chewy-crunchy dish of bland pasta and greens. Not a keeper.


Whole Wheat Blackberry Ricotta Scones
adapted from The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook by Deb Perelman

The instructions needed a generous sprinkling of adverbs:
quickly,
speedily,
working fast, and
with great haste.
Because if you dawdle the whole mixture is going to spring up under your fingers into a puffy, unworkable mess. Between the cutting into six wedges and the fetching of the baking sheet, the dough rejoined itself along the cutting line. I ended up throwing it in whole, like a big, puffy cookie.

If I ever attempt anything this foolish again I'm going to set my home thermostat on 65 degrees and chill all my mixing tools in the freezer.  Or move to Alaska.

It didn't taste bad at all once I'd smothered it in powdered sugar.


Ginger Berry Chia Pudding
From Crunchy Radish

The recipe called for 2 tablespoons of chia seeds to one cup of liquid, but either my chia seeds were defective or that was not enough. My "pudding" is as thin as water.
This other blog https://www.eatingbirdfood.com/basic-chia-seed-pudding/
calls for 3 tablespoons of seeds and gives this advice:

In terms of timing, the chia seeds start to absorb the liquid pretty quickly, but you do need to give the pudding a bit of time to build the gel-like consistency. I usually add the liquid, give it a good stir, let it sit for 5-10 minutes, give it another stir to make sure the chia seeds aren’t clumping and then let it sit in the fridge for an hour or two, but if you’re in a rush you can eat it within 20 minutes or so, it just might be a little liquidy. Another great option is to make it the night before you want to eat it and let it sit in the fridge overnight.

I think I'll follow this advice in future.