I love testing recipes on friends and family. What's even better is testing a recipe in a friendly competition setting. You have a collection of people who can't tell which dish belongs to which person. They are honest, brutally honest. This makes for a great recipe test and an even better blog post.
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Every once in a while I make something so delicious that it surprises me and I completely forget to take any pictures. This is exactly what happened last night. I had no idea that I had a killer meal on my hands.
After a long day of driving home from a busy weekend in California the last thing I wanted to do was slave over dinner. But, I did want a warm home cooked, healthy meal to help me recover from all the crap we ate over the weekend. This dish was the amazing result. I was sitting at work, researching, writing, just plain busy when out of no where *BAM*!! I was hit wit a craving for Asian style noodles. I had pretty much made up my mind in regard to dinner at this point and thrown my previous plan out the window. So after a few brief moments of a different type of research I was able to pull together this fabulous recipe. I tested it out last night and it worked wonderfully. As for the extra veg in this recipe (the co-stars, if you will), I chose to stick with carrots and zucchini. However, if you have some other fabulous idea...go with that! Pasta is, and should be, a once-in-a-while indulgence. It's delicious and versatile but the carbs can really bring you down. I decided last night to test out this new recipe. And if we were going to have "real" pasta (not spaghetti squash, not strands of delicious zucchini) it was going to be loaded with extra fiber. This recipe is creamy, flavorful, stuffed to the brim with veggies and completely satisfying. My husband had no complaints. I topped his with a few sliced, seasoned chicken tenders and mine came with two little Gardein chicken tenders (not pictured), too. The pasta was served with a side of Roasted Brussels Sprouts. I guess it's pretty obvious that I'm still on a significant soup kick. Can't shake it, and well, I guess I don't really want to. I'm enjoying these warm soups on these chilly Arizona evenings. Though, it's definitely not as cold here as it has been back east. At any rate, I was inspired by a recipe that I found yesterday. I decided to change up a few things, add a couple ingredients and see what happened! The result was just as expected--purely delicious and totally vegan. My husband loves to eat Thai food as well, so I added some shrimp to his serving. He really enjoyed the flavors and even added a few dolops of chili garlic paste for some extra spice. I think it's clear to say that I have an affinity for all things gnocchi, all things kale, all things cauliflower. So I've reinvented my gnocchi soup recipe, again! This time I mixed my pesto soup with a vegan cream of mushroom soup! It was amazing. Though my recipe is quite different, I was inspired by this recipe on the New York in Green blog. It's been chilly here, yes, even in AZ. Not as cold as our East Coast friends, but cold still. Our home has been afflicted with seasonal allergies. This soup seriously helped my throat and sinuses. Don't know what it was--probably the kale and mushrooms! Yum! This dish is by no means "oil free". I'm saying that now so that you know that I never claimed it to be such a thing. It is however, inexcusably delicious. The roasted flavor of all the spices and fresh lemon does this broccoli some extreme justice! I'm super happy with this recipe. My husband was the one who asked for it and he was sufficiently pleased as well. There are lots of tasty flavors in this dish. I encourage you to raid your spice cabinet and add as you see fit! This is a super easy recipe to put your own spin on--as you should always do! This soup is one of those that takes less than 45 minutes from cutting board to dinner table. I compiled a few different recipes and techniques to get the finished product, which confess I forgot to take a picture of until I had divvied it up for today's lunch at work! So even though the picture is a little odd, the flavor is amazing! My husband even loved it. The "layered" part comes from how the soup cooks, in layers! And you will need your immersion blender for this one. Just helps in the speedy-ness of the whole thing. Who has time to use a blender in batches? Certainly not me! I have a dog to play with and TV to watch. In Arizona, where we live, lately it's been too hot to do much of anything extraneous outside. Not that grilling is the least bit tiresome, but the heat from the sun (it's been around 113 here), the random humidity and the fire we created for grilling is a tad too much. To cope, I took to grilling all sorts of fresh veg inside last night. Though, I wanted more than just grilled veggies, so I also whipped up a batch of my Eggplant Veggie Burgers. They take some time to bake but putting them together is a breeze. |