Chinese New Year !

Water Drops

Greek Lima Beans in Tomatoe Sauce, Golden Globe winner for Best Side Dish

My parents and I discovered this Lima Beans dish during a visit to a local Greek restaurant called Lezvos - we all raved about the dish and my mother did an immaculate job at replicating it. I just served it as a side dish at my Golden Globes party - even though the Hollywood Foreign press wasn’t around to nominate these beans - my friends Charna and Caryn both said that it was award winning. Opa!


Ingredients:


28 oz Canned Diced Tomatoes or 6 large tomatoes diced

2 1/2 tbsp of Tomatoe Paste
1 cup chopped flat leaf parsley
1 clove minced garlic
1 cup chopped onion
1 cup olive oil (I only used 1/4 cup olive oil)

1 cup water - (omit a bit for canned beans)
3-4 tsp kosher salt
1/2 tsp ground pepper

1 pound jumbo lima beans or 2 cans lima beans


Directions:



If you are using dry lima beans you must soak them over night in water and then drain, and rinse them. Then place the lima beans in large pot with 16 cups of water and bring water to a boil and cook for 25 minutes. If you are using lima beans from the can you don’t need to soak or boil the lima beans.

Spray a casserole dish (3/4 casserole dish) with Pam. Combine canned diced tomatoes, tomato paste, parsley, garlic and chopped onions in the casserole dish. Then add olive oil, lima beans, water, salt and pepper. Bake for 2 hours if the lima beans are dry and bake for 45 minutes if lima beans are from can.

Enjoy!

Chef Cara

Tofu Scramble with a kick

A couple of months back, I finally went from looking at the gorgeous "101 cookbooks" blog to trying some of the healthy & natural recipes. I dipped my foot in the water with Heidi Swanson's edamame with lemon vinaigrette- it was tangy and delicious. I'm not a vegan, a granola or a hippie- I just love to cook, bake & keep it healthy most of the time. Her blog is fantastic- so far, I have made 3 of her recipes & resounding success everytime! There is nothing like trying a new recipe, especially a time consuming one, to find that you've wasted your precious time, money and excitement (like last week's average mushroom barley soup that got rave reviews online). Her blog, so far, has proven to be a one stop shop for 5 star healthy and QUICK recipes with relatively few easy to find ingredients.

Here is the recipe:

http://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/garam-masala-tofu-scramble-recipe.html

Don't let the word "scramble" turn you off- there are no eggs, I hate eggs!

I substituted pistachios & dried cranberries for chickpeas and almonds- you could put in whatever you have in the pantry & fridge.

My apartment smells beautiful and now I have 2 lunches for this week waiting in the fridge.

Perfect for a busy week when I start my new dream job working on launching a new line of authentically Italian illy chilled espressos in New York. How bad could a job be where they send you to illy's coffee university in Soho for 2 days? It would only be appropriate that I make you some illy mocha chip gelato in the coming weeks. Stay tuned!

Cable line

*sorry if you spotted a dust at the right bottom side in the photo.

Salad with Roasted vEGGies

Happy New Year’s to all of our Braude’s Bites visitors! Rumor has it that this may be the year of the Ice Cream Maker! 


Woke up this morning with the intention of making an egg white omelet - that did not happen. Plan B was new and exciting and a complete success. We’ve all seen the beautiful glossy pictures in the foodie magazines with a poached egg oozing over a bed of healthy greens. Looks stunning but who really makes that for themselves? Well I did, sort of.


Ingredients:

5 Baby Tomatoes on the vine

a few slices of Red Peppers

3 Mushrooms

1/2 small Onion

Sea Salt

Ground Pepper

Italian Seasoning
2 Eggs

Extra Virgin Olive Oil President Choice
100% Greek Olive Oil

Arugula


I sliced all the veggies, glazed with olive oil and put them in my toaster oven to roast for 8 minutes, watch them so they don’t burn - at this point the aromas from the veggies took over my kitchen. 



Next, I arranged the arugula in bowl and seasoned with salt, pepper and the President Choice 100% Greek Olive Oil - any yummy Olive Oil will do!

I cooked two eggs over easy in a frying pan and sprinkled it with salt, pepper and Italian seasoning.



I added the grilled veggies and the egg on the salad and it was heaven.

Enjoy.


Cara