May 25: Craft Beer Week!

We've had a little slow down in posts, but should be back to normal next week. Tonight, we tossed together something quick in order to high-tail it over to Map Room to check out what they're serving for Craft Beer Week!

May 1: Grilled Chicken with Pesto-Yogurt Potato Salad and Beet Green Salad

We had our friends Kyla, Alex and Roxy over for dinner, and decided to make some grilled chicken, with a beet green salad and pesto-yogurt potato salad as our sides. I wanted to highlight this potato salad because 1) it tastes good 2) it's easy to make and 3) it has no mayonnaise, so it's a good recipe to bring to an outdoor barbeque.

You begin by quartering red potatoes. I cut up a 3 pound bag of potatoes to make this batch, which was more than enough for dinner for four (and a half), as well as two nights of leftovers for us two.

Lots of mysterious shadows in this photo.

Boil the potatoes until they are fork-tender. Strain them out of the boiling water, and then put them into a large bowl.

While the potatoes were cooking, I made the pesto. You can certainly use the jarred/pre-made stuff if that is easier. I made our pesto from what we had in the house -- leaves and stems from our basil plant, some pine nuts, minced garlic, olive oil and Parmesan cheese.

Once your pesto is ready, combine it with the warm red potatoes and 1 1/2 cups of Greek yogurt.

Here is the final product...

You can serve this room-temperature, cold or hot. It's good regardless.

Here is the salad alongside the beet green salad and the grilled chicken.

And here it is the next evening alongside grilled salmon and zucchini halves. 

This time around, I think we could have added more pesto, but to be honest -- I am not sure if we added as much as the 1/2 cup as suggested by the recipe. The Greek yogurt is nice and tart and really adds a different dimension to the potato salad. Depending on the Greek yogurt you buy (or it could be all Greek yogurt -- I am not completely sure), this is a gluten-free recipe as well for all our friends with celiac.

May 17: Greek-inspired Quinoa with Feta and Avocado

So, I (once) thought it would be a good idea to rip recipes that I found delicious out of my magazines. Fast-forward four years and two moves later, and I have a random pile of magazine clippings that I'm not sure what to do with. I ended up buying a binder and trying to sort through everything so I can actually utilize these recipes when I'm looking for something new to cook. Hence this new-found (and much loved) quick dinner recipe.

First, you cook 1/2 cup of quinoa in water (I just followed the directions on the package for the timing and ratio of quinoa to water).

We were originally concerned about the amount of quinoa this recipe called for, but it ended up being plenty.

While that cooked, I mixed a dressing of 2 tablespoons of freshly squeezed lemon juice, 2 tablespoons of olive oil and a little bit of kosher salt. 
 

The base of the quinoa salad is a handful of chopped spinach leaves, 2 chopped and seeded Roma tomatoes and finely diced red onion (maybe about 1/3 of a cup? I usually eyeball it).

I tried to dice the onion as small as possible. I love red onion, but make these pieces too big and you'll have some kickin' onion breath.

Once the quinoa is done, you mix it in with the vegetables. The warm quinoa softens up the spinach leaves. You then mix in the lemon/oil/salt dressing and stir everything together.
 

You prepare a bed of larger spinach leaves on the plate.  

You add the quinoa on top of the spinach leaves, and top with crumbled feta and some avocado.

You don't need to use as much avocado as I did. I definitely used an entire one just for myself, which is plain ridiculous.

Both Paul and I really enjoyed this dish. It was simple and quick to make. We're also trying to eat meatless at least twice a week, so this is something to add to our stock of meat-free recipes (which currently consist of veggie tacos, pasta, and stir fry with tofu.)

It's really only the feta that makes this "Greek-inspired," so I imagine if you changed up the ingredients, you could make it a couple different ways:

• Blue cheese crumbles with the same ingredients -- would be similar to world's best salad
• Manchego cheese shavings and pepitas for more of a Spanish flavor
• Queso fresco or Chihuahua cheese and black beans for a Mexican dish

I'm excited to try this a few different ways!