Veggie Marrakesh

This recipe was actually my husband's discovery and together we have been working on perfecting it ever since. It's hard to explain what marrakesh is, I've seen it likened to curries and tagines, but I think it's more consistent with what I consider a stew. Using spices traditional to Moroccan cuisine including cumin, turmeric and cinnamon, this dish certainly packs a lot of flavor and is perfect for those cool fall and early winter evenings when vegetables are plentiful at the market but you find yourself craving something warm and hearty.

Perfect Brown Rice Every Time

This is going to be one of those practical posts where we get back to the basics of cooking. When I was first learning how to cook, I cooked my rice in the microwave because it was the way my mom always did it, and predictably my rice boiled over into a starchy puddle of goop. Other people swore by their rice cookers as the secret to creating perfect rice, but truthfully no one really needs yet another unitasker appliance taking up precious real estate in their cupboards. In an interesting turn of events, my husband taught me the secret to cooking perfectly tender, fluffy brown rice every single time.  

Black Bean Tacos with Fresh Mango Salsa

Cooking for picky eaters is really tough. I think we all know someone who is very set in their taste preferences and completely unwilling to even taste something new.  My family seems to have more than it's fair share of picky eaters, and conversations at the dinner table include echoes of the same theme:  I don't eat that.  When you are a home cook trying to be health-conscious and increase the amount of vegetables and fruits in your family's diet while sticking to a budget, what can you do?  I say, get creative and get sneaky.

Fresh Mango Salsa

Salsa is a food with a ton of secret advantages. It tastes indulgent when it's actually low fat, low calorie, and high in fiber and other nutrients. It's cheap, especially when you take advantage of seasonal ingredients. It's surprisingly versatile - you can use any combination of vegetables, fruits, and spices you like to create the perfect blend of freshness, acidity, salt and spice. And even though it is shockingly easy to make, it never fails to impress families and guests. One of the most impressive and simple salsas that every home cook should have in their repertoire is fresh mango salsa.

Quinoa Pancakes with Coconut Walnut Syrup

Whether you know me personally or you only know me from this blog, you probably learned that breakfast is my favorite meal of the day, and the undisputed ruler of my breakfast table is the humble pancake. While they are delicious, unless you eat a pretty sizeable stack, they don't tend to have the "staying power" to get me through to lunch. Enter quinoa, my new secret satiety weapon.

Avocado Pear and Gorgonzola Salad

I know I've said this before, and I'm sure I will say it again about a different recipe, but this salad is absolutely amazing and I don't think I'm overstating my point. My go-to bag lunch is a salad, because it's easy to pull the ingredients together in my lunch bag, quickly chop toppings just before serving, and it helps me get in my veggie servings early in the day. And I could eat this salad every single day.

Red Quinoa Tabouleh

Whether you spell it tabouleh, tabbouleh, tabouli, or tabbouli, to me this simple dish is synonymous with summer. A tangy mix of fresh herbs, tomato, onion, and grains, tabouleh is rumored to have it's origins in an ancient culinary rivalry between Caesar and Cleopatra. (Hey, I really can't make this stuff up!)  My first experience with tabouleh was at a wonderful Lebanese restaurant in northeast Minneapolis and it is a staple on the menu of many Greek restaurants, although most sources consider it a traditional Arab dish. Traditional tabouleh is made with a grain such as bulgur or in American versions couscous, but for a healthier spin I wanted to use one of my new favorite ingredients, quinoa.

Mixed Greens Caesar

Salads are one of those diet foods that tend to get dieters into a lot of trouble rather quickly. Sure, it's vegetables, but once you start adding dressing, cheese, croutons, and other crispy toppings you can easily find yourself with a plate of vegetables that tops 1000 calories. They say true love lasts a lifetime, and I LOVE Caesar salad. So to ensure I can enjoy Caesar salad anytime I want for the rest of my life, I created a better Caesar salad.

Root Vegetable Chowder

If I could give one universal cooking tip to every single patient I see in clinic it would be this: master the art of making homemade soup. Homemade soups are a wonderful way to incorporate vegetables into your diet, prepare a satisfying meal that everyone in your family will enjoy, and also reduce the amount of fat, calories, and sodium you consume. Beyond that, soup is simple to make at home, can be prepared in as little as 30 minutes, is inexpensive, and makes wonderful leftovers for later in the week or to stock the freezer. This recipe is a rich vegetable chowder perfect for cold winter nights and to help you utilize extra vegetables sitting in the bottom of your refrigerator's crisper.

Herbed Flatbread

Sometime last spring I received a text message from a friend and fellow medical student asking if I could recreate a flatbread they tried at a restaurant in Minneapolis. Never one to decline a challenge, I tasted samples and spent some time in the kitchen trying to recreate the light, flaky texture and wonderful flavor of fresh herbs in this flatbread. After doing some research and several attempts later, I realized I was making this far too complicated and instead needed to approach this flatbread not as a yeast bread, but as a quick bread.

Perfect Buttermilk Pancakes

A lazy weekend morning with a plate of warm pancakes is a rare gift these days, and one of the things I look forward to most. My mom made the best pancakes I've ever tasted, a recipe she received from an old friend many years ago. Unfortunately, one batch makes enough pancakes to feed twenty hungry duck hunters on a cold October morning, and no matter how I've tried there just isn't a good way to cut the recipe and have the same quality product. I will admit, this isn't quite the same as our family recipe, but it's a very close second and you won't need to invite the entire neighborhood to your house to help eat leftovers.