Roasted Cauliflower & Cilantro Pesto Cous-cous

First roast some cauliflower for 50 minutes in a 375 degree oven. Separate the head of cauliflower into its natural large florets, arrange on a baking sheet, drizzle in olive oil and sprinkle with salt. Turn once about halfway through. I love this and make it all the time. You can use this in soups, mash it up, or eat it plain.

When there is 10 minutes of time left on the cauliflower, boil some water. In a bowl put 1C cous-cous, 1 heaping tablespoon cilantro pesto and a bit of salt. Add 1 1/4C boiling water and cover bowl for 5 minutes. Fluff with a fork and add 1/4C seeded sundried kalamata olives. Serve with cauliflour for a, simple, easy, tasty and pretty much monotonic meal.

Cilantro pesto

It turns out pesto is really easy to make. And it doesn't have to be expensive either. Today I used cilantro instead of basil and thought about using cheap sunflour seeds instead of expensive pine nuts, but I already had pine nuts, so I'll use them up first.

I tasted sunflower pesto at a nearby restaurant, Uncle Betty's, and it was fantastic! It adds a sunflower flavour that I thought worked very well with basil. I didn't miss the pine nuts at all. I spoke to the owner about it and he said made the switch to avoid nut allergies. Economical, tasty, and won't kill people by accident! I'd call that a win.

I'll try that myself another time, but I thought cilantro would make for another interesting substitution. I didn't change the rest of the recipe, but I think I should have. With cilantro, it came out a bit oily for my taste. It is much more of a liquid than the basil one was. I think the cilantro has more water in it than basil. Oh, and I added one less clove of garlic. Last time, the garlic flavour took over the next day. Hopefully it will tighten up overnight. 

I'm going to put this on everything! Starting with my current favourite sammich, grilled chicken & avocado with old cheddar on flax seed bread:

Cheddar tomato sandwhich

Lunch time is sammich time here at the Zen household. By household, I mean the small collection of rooms I triple lock against the crazy neighbours and homeless people of the outside world. Today's version is a classic old cheddar and tomato sandwhich with arugula and pesto. Pile them onto lightly toasted multi-grain bread from the local bakery and it will look like this:

Simple, quick (under 5 minutes), and delicious. 

Pork noodles in vegetable (and tomato) sauce

If you can't read my chalk writing, speak now or forever hold your peace. The chalkboard is how I keep track of what I use in the kitchen and methinks it is here to stay. Spelling mistakes are inevitable because it is usually written in a hurry, please ignore those.

This is a one pot dish. Start by lightly browning the onion in a large non-stick wok. Mine is cast aluminum. It has no coating so I can use metal tools on it and it won't scratch. Best kitchen thing ever for a one pot dish! Add the pork once the onions start to have some colour. When pork starts to brown and is all separated into small pieces, add chopped carrots. When they get a bit tender, add tomatoes, pepper, thyme (stripped from the stem) and beans. I threw in my last small handful of spinach to use it up as well.

Boil whole wheat pasta until just under al dente. Add a ladle of pasta water to the sauce. Drain and add pasta. Add pesto and work it into the pasta a bit before mixing in with the rest of the sauce. When pasta is fully cooked, remove from heat and serve with freshly grated parmesan and homemade habanero hot sauce if desired.

I added the beans for fibre, and while they were a bit out of place, I think they would have worked better than any other type of bean. Perhaps lentils would have been better because they are smaller and have a mild peppery flavour that would have worked. I like making these types of dishes with spaghetti or some similar pasta broken into quarter strands. It allows for easy eating, as it doesn't discard vegetables when twirled on a fork as full strands do. Sorry, no picture for this one. It disappeared pretty quickly.

Basil Pesto