Monday, October 31, 2011

Tomato-Zucchini Bake


Easy and healthy!

It was a gorgeous day yesterday and I guess I caught up in that good feeling and went a little crazy on my produce shopping. I came home with two full bags of veggies, including some type of squash I had never seen before. In fact I had to confirm with the guy at the stall that indeed it was a squash.


I went home, posted a picture of them on FB with the caption: "Picked them up at the farmers mkt yesterday- any suggestions on how to cook them? similar to zucchini?" It was of no help. Some guessed guava, while one guessed watermelon! Fortunately for handy dandy Google, I soon realized that they were just round zucchini.

Tomato-Zucchini Bake
-3 roma tomatoes
-4 medium round zucchini
-olive oil
-one clove of garlic, finely chopped
-1/3 tsp sea salt
-1/2 tsp fresh black pepper
-1/2 tsp dried basil

Pre-heat oven to 350. Spray medium sized baking dish (I used a 9" square glass dish) with cooking spray or oil mister.

Trim ends of zucchini and discard. Slice the rest and put aside. Slice the tomatoes in rounds. Alternate tomato and zucchini slices in layers. See picture above. Scatter the chopped garlic over the layers of tomato/zucchini. Sprinkle with salt, pepper and dried basil. Drizzle a bit of olive oil over the vegetables. Bake 25-30 minutes, or until squash is tender.

Monday, October 24, 2011

Potato Salad w/Roasted Cumin and Horseradish Vinaigrette

Baby new red potatoes tossed in this vinaigrette offers a light variation to your everyday potato salad.


----

Every time I visit my parents, my mom insists that I take home some groceries when I leave. It's always something new -a couple of bananas, a ripe mango, a large filet of salmon. "I bought a large piece from Costco and divided it up for you kids." And by "kids," she means her three adult children. It's quite cute actually.

This time she packed up some new red potatoes, a couple of peaches, and a bunch of cilantro. I had forgotten about the potatoes until this morning, when I opened up the vegetable crisper in search of something and saw them rolling around. I decided to make a potato salad, but as I rarely have mayo on hand, I dressed it with a vinaigrette -olive oil, lemon juice, ground roasted cumin, salt, pepper and horseradish (yes, horseradish!).

6 small new red potatoes, boiled and quartered (skin on)
1 small red onion, thinly sliced
handful of cilantro, washed and chopped
1 tbs prepared horseradish
2 tbs olive oil
2 tbs lemon juice
1 tbs ground roasted cumin
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp fresh cracked pepper

Toss potatoes, onions and cilantro in bowl. Add salt and pepper. Whisk together olive oil, lemon juice, cumin and horseradish. Lightly toss into salad. Enjoy!