I don’t recall when I first combined kale & capers, but it is certainly a winning combination. The salty brine of the capers and the thick texture of the kale are reminiscent of seaweed. Paired with creamy white beans, this is a delicious, healthy, quick and easy meal that I make again and again. I usually use dry navy beans, this time I tried it with a can of butter beans that had been sitting in the cupboard, and I think it turned out even better than usual with the larger soft beans. I imagine that black-eyed peas would work well too.

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In a combined effort to continue getting through our pantry items in anticipation of our move this fall & to create an original recipe for entry in Culinarty’s Original Recipe Round Up, I created these Chard & Tepary Bean Empanadas.

Teparies are an heirloom bean varietal native to the southwestern United States and Mexico that are very similar to the pinto bean, in fact, my description of their flavor, is that they taste like pinto beans that have already had sugar and fat added to them, even though they have not. Tepary beans can be ordered from Rancho Gordo. There are two varieties of teparies, white and tan. The white teparies are a bit sweeter than the tan. I use a blend of the two.

Just to be thorough with my very first food blog event entry, this is also my entry to MLLA-13 conceived by Susan of the “Well-Seasoned Cook” and currently being hosted by Sunshinemom of “Tongue Ticklers”

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I cook Indian often, ever since I fell in love with a particularly ghee filled dal on an otherwise uninspiring thali plate and discovered the next day that I could recreate it perfectly for a third of the cost.

Indian is a fantastic cuisine, at least to my probably untrained palate, because I can make three dishes the first night, planning for leftovers, and then add a dish or two a night, and all of a sudden the week has passed with delicious meals every night that didn’t require too much thought.

This particular recent batch of Indian dishes have also had the uncharacteristic trait of being relatively quick to make. I started off on this latest Indian cooking bought with a half a head of cabbage that needed to be used up. This curried cabbage (adapted from somewhere on the internet that google does not want to reveal) has turned me into a cabbage lover:

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I’ve been making Indian for the last week or so, it’s so easy to make enough for leftovers and then add another dish every couple of days. I had a small amount of cauliflower that needed to be used up so I made a second attempt at the Parmesan-Cauliflower Fritters recipe from the Vegetarian Times.

The first time I made these fritters I found them very bland, but I wanted to work with the recipe because it was easy, healthy, and the fritters actually held their shape well (which can be alot to ask of a fritter), so I made a note to try them with something saucy and spicey, like Indian food.

This time I added cumin to the mixture, but the Indian dishes I ended up making were new to me and didn’t turn out especially saucey, so the fritters still seemed bland and boring. I finally found thier place though, the next morning, when putting together our lunches for work. I had made a slightly modified version of the Cannellini Vinaigrette that Lydia from The Perfect Pantry adapted from Perfect Tapas, which itself had seemed a bit of a failure at first taste; a bit off tasting from substituting white wine for wine vinegar, overly oiling from perhaps undercalculating the ratio of dry beans to canned.

I paired the Marinated Cannellini Beans with the Quinoa Cakes on a bed of Mache, and the sum was better than all it’s parts. I finally figured out where the Quinoa Cakes belong and the extra oil in the beans became a flavourful salad dressing. A perfect lunch . . .

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A few weeks ago I made this Onion and Fennel Bisque, which called for a whole two tablespoons of Pernod. While the soup was quite good - I actually liked the fennel in it and I don’t tend to enjoy fennel - I wondered what else to use the rest of the 750ml bottle in.

Google didn’t reveal much, mostly meat recipes, but I did come across one appealing recipe for Fresh Spinach with Leeks in Pernod, which I slightly modified and paired with some cumin spiced white bean and rice patties for a quick one dish meal (quick after the beans & rice are cooked of course) . . .

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