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Simple, elegant, healthy food and a fondness for gluten- and grain-free recipes

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White Bean Chili with Prawns

white bean chili

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a chili recipe that has prawns in it. Am I stretching the boundaries of chili a tad here? Maybe.

But you’ll forgive me once you find that this recipe takes less than 30 minutes, yet delivers a full-on, soul-warming, healthy dinner. Just what you need after spending a few brisk hours in the garden, raking and bagging leaves, only to come back inside and realize that it’s your turn to make dinner too. Sound familiar?

I really felt like making a big, full-on batch of hearty chili, but it was already 6 o’clock by the time I’d bagged all the leaves for the day. I was getting hungry, and didn’t want to slip into being decidedly hangry.

With no time to dash to the store to pick up ingredients, I turned to the pantry instead and sized up what I did have: A tin of white kidney beans, some frozen prawns, a bunch of gorgeous rainbow chard along with an onion and some garlic. Hmm….I bet I could do something with this.

white bean chili in pan

So here’s what I was thinking: Use the white beans as a base, flavor them with cumin and chili powders, simmer briefly to blend the flavors and then toss in the chard and prawns to cook just before serving. That, plus a squeeze of fresh lime juice and sprinkle of cilantro, was my simple, lickety-split chili.

And wow, talk about flavorful. Punching about its weight I’d say, considering I only simmered it for just over 10 minutes.

This dish, with its elegant prawns and unassuming tinned beans, is kind of like tossing on a suit jacket to dress up your jeans; a study in contrasts. It might not impress your friends who are dazzled by the latest molecular gastronomy creations. But it’ll definitely impress your friends who know what good food is all about.

The leaves have almost all floated off from their branches for another season. A few more sessions of raking before fall firmly turns to winter. When I come in after clearing up the last leaves for the season, I’ll know just what to make.

white bean chili

 

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White Bean Chili with Prawns

Serving Size: 2

If you're craving the flavors of chili but don't have much time, white bean chili with prawns is the answer. Prawns add an elegant touch to lowly tinned beans flavored with chili and cumin, making this a dish fit to share with friends on a fall evening. Or to keep all to yourself.

Ingredients

  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1/2 medium sweet onion, chopped
  • 2 cloves garlic, chopped
  • 1 teaspoon chill powder
  • 1 teaspoon ground cumin
  • 1 teaspoon dried oregano leaves
  • 1 19-ounce tin white kidney beans, drained and rinsed
  • 1-1/4 cup chicken stock
  • 4 rainbow chard leaves, torn into 2-inch pieces
  • 20-24 peeled prawns
  • juice of 1/2 lime
  • kosher salt & fresh cracked pepper
  • optional garnish: fresh cilantro leaves, chopped

Instructions

  1. Heat the oil in a large saucepan over medium-low heat. Add the onion, garlic, chili powder, ground cumin and dried oregano leaves and saute for 3-4 minutes, stirring frequently, until the onion has softened. (If the mixture gets too dry before it has softened, reduce the heat or a few tablespoons of the chicken stock to prevent it from burning.)
  2. Add the drained kidney beans and chicken stock. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to low and cover the pan. Let simmer for 10 minutes.
  3. After 10 minutes, remove the cover and season to taste with salt and pepper.
  4. Bring the heat up to medium-low, add the chard leaves and prawns, and cook for 3-4 minutes, or until the chard is wilted and the prawns are cooked through.
  5. Ladle into two bowls, and squeeze the lime juice over each one. Sprinkle with a pinch of chopped cilantro (if using) and serve.
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Copyright 2011-2013 Ant & Anise

Mahi Mahi Tacos

Mahi mahi tacos final

Hello there, and welcome to our (mostly) redesigned site. It’s a refreshing, clean look that we love, plus it looks a lot better on mobile devices. A lot better.

(I’m even starting to modify a little code, here and there, all the while praying I don’t blow up the whole site as I tinker away. It’s true, a little learning is a dangerous thing.)

We still have a ton of cleanup to do on the blog. There’s always more to add to Ant & Anise, of course. A better search function for recipes. Maybe an ‘About’ page, where we let you know a little more about Ant & Anise than just a sentence or two. Yep, we’re getting around to that…. 

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My Famous Aunt, and Broiled Salmon Misonese

broiled salmon misonese final

When I was growing up I had a famous aunt.

That’s what it felt like to me. Eve wrote for the Vancouver Sun newspaper for years, before the days when anyone with a computer could publish to the world. When there were more filters on what made it to print. Manual ones, like editors.

We subscribed to the daily paper, and I never tired of seeing her byline. My aunt, the author. Cool! 

Occasionally, Eve would weave personal vignettes into her articles and refer to her sister or parents. When I’d read these I would always feel a rush of excitement, as if anyone reading the article would naturally realize the family connection to know it was my mom or my grandparents she was talking about. It made me feel a little famous, by extension…. 

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Roasted salmon with ginger lime glaze

roasted salmon with ginger lime glaze and sauteed kale

Summer is almost here.

I want to say it’s here! it’s here! because I love sunshine, warmer weather, and the more relaxed pace that comes around this time of year. I always say, any day that it’s warm enough to not wear socks is a good day.

But this morning it rained, and the air is still stubbornly chilly once the sun disappears behind a cloud. (I’m still wearing shorts, but I had to bundle up with a heavy jacket to tame the goosebumps on my arms.)

ginger lime glaze in bowl with salmon
With summer coming on I’ve been trying to work more seafood into meals. I typically fire up the barbie when I want to cook any kind of fish, because I hate the lingering smells that come from cooking fish in the kitchen. But a good way around this — especially when it’s a drizzly June day, and the last thing I want to do is hover over the barbecue in the rain — is to roast salmon in a hot oven. … 

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Baby artichokes, grief and the pleasures of memory

baby artichokes in pan Ah yes, nothing disrupts writing quite so completely as death.

I’ve been making my way along since Ann’s death, good most days, a weepy mess on others, with no warning and no apparent trigger for the tears. But that’s how grief goes, unpredictably and in waves.

And somehow any grief is every grief, so sadness over one loss brings back sadness over another.

Lately I’ve been acutely missing my old friend James. He was as different from Ann as any two people could be, in life and death.
James was an irrepressible enthusiast who couldn’t wait to tell you a new joke, or give you a taste of the latest in a never-ending series of new foods. He died at 84, with a soup on the stove and a cookbook on the table, from a heart attack so massive that he may not have had time to register what was happening.

I’d been missing him even before I found the baby artichokes in the grocery store. But standing at the chopping block, trimming away the outer leaves, I felt again that particular ache of wanting to see someone you love, and knowing that you never will again.

Forty years ago, in San Francisco, we were shopping for supper and James found some baby artichokes in the market. I’d never seen them before. He erupted into effusions. We bought a very generous amount.

Back at the house we were staying in, he showed me how to break off the outer leaves, trim away the green on the stem end, and immediately rub the ends on a cut lemon.

baby artichokes ready for the panNext step: slice off any prickly ends of leaves and rub the ends on a cut lemon. Then cut them in half, and rub the halves on a cut lemon.

You can’t possibly overestimate how quickly a cut artichoke left open to the air turns brown.

Then he warmed a bit of olive oil in a heavy frying pan, put the artichokes in, cut side down, cooked them until they browned, then turned them over, ground on salt and pepper, and squeezed the juices of the cut lemon over top. He put a lid on the pan and cooked them until they were tender and easily pierced by a paring knife, about 10 minutes.

baby artichokes brownedWe ate them whole, with good bread and wine, all by themselves. Oh my.

I’ve cooked baby artichokes many times since. In fact, I buy them whenever I run across good-looking ones, firm and fresh.

The purple ones, by the way, while exceedingly nice to look at, don’t offer any other benefit over their plain green cousins, and seem to take longer to cook.

Last week, I bought artichokes, thinking I’d make them as a side dish for Friday’s supper. But by suppertime I was in a hurry, so I didn’t cook them.

On Saturday, we bought spot prawns, the first of the season – just eight, at a somewhat astronomical price from our neighborhood health food mega chain. Pasta would turn the prawns into dinner, so pasta it was, with baby artichokes, spot prawns and goat cheese.

Alan kindly twisted the heads off the prawns for me.
It’s important to do it right away, while the prawns are still lively, because as they die, they secrete a chemical that turns the flesh of their tails to mush. (A good reason to never buy whole spot prawns that are lying still on ice.)
But the livelier they are, the harder it is for me to separate the heads from the tails. I’m a hypocrite: I love to eat them as long as someone else will spare me the horror of killing them.

baby artichokes.spot prawns and onionsI put the pasta water on once the artichokes had started cooking, then sliced some onions very thin and put them in a second pan to cook slowly in olive oil. The prawns joined the onions when the pasta was almost cooked, and took only two minutes before they turned a bright pink.
I used the whole grain spaghetti that Barilla makes, but any long thin pasta would do. A bit of goat cheese and parsley on top, and there it was: an impromptu taste of spring.

We talked about James over dinner – Alan knew him too – our delightful, prickly, always entertaining friend.
It’s been five years since he died. In my experience, grief never goes away, but it gets softer over time, and in the end, you almost welcome the ache, because of the memories that come with it.

In the spirit of James, here’s a recipe for two that you’re encouraged to modify.

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Baby Artichoke and Spot Prawn Pasta

Ingredients

  • 1 to 2 pounds baby artichokes, green or purple
  • 1 to 2 lemons
  • 8 spot prawns, about 3/4 of a pound
  • olive oil
  • 1/2 medium onion, sliced very thin
  • enough spaghetti, linguine, angel hair pasta for two
  • 2 tablespoons chicken stock (optional)
  • goat cheese
  • parsley
  • salt and pepper

Instructions

  1. Trim the artichokes and seal the cut ends as you go by rubbing them into a cut lemon.
  2. Heat a tablespoon or more olive oil in a heavy frypan. Place the artichokes fact down in the pan. Cook them on medium heat until they brown.
  3. Once the artichokes are cooking, put the pasta water on.
  4. In a second frypan, heat a tablespoon of olive oil and add the onions. Cook them slowly, stirring often, until they are soft and beginning to brown.
  5. Once the artichokes have browned, turn them over, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and squeeze on the remainder of your lemon. If your lemon is not very juicy, add the juice of the second lemon.
  6. Cover the pan and cook over low heat until the artichokes are tender and easily pierced by the point of a paring knife, about 10 minutes. Check the pan often. If it's too dry, add a few tablespoons of chicken stock or water.
  7. Put the pasta in when the water is boiling.
  8. When the onions are cooked, bring the heat to high and add the spot prawns. Cook for a minute on each side, just until they turn pink.
  9. Turn off the heat and add the cooked prawns and onions to the cooked artichokes. Drain the pasta, add to the prawns. Then put the pasta into a serving dish, top with crumbled goat cheese and sprinkle on parsley.
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Copyright 2011-2013 Ant & Anise

 

The Paleo Diet Challenge: Day 27

paleo diet challenge day 27 garlic scapes

So, Day 27 in the Paleo Diet Challenge. I’ve mentioned before that I like getting a CSA box because it pushes me outside of my kitchen comfort zone, a little. Take garlic scapes. Not something you see at a big box supermarket, or even your local green grocer. Last year garlic scapes definitely had me stumped. I think we ended up chopping into a stir fry. Ho hum.

This year, when I we got the garlic scapes in late June, I thought I’d aim for something more creative, at least a little. Turns out that garlic scapes make a fine pesto, and I made one based on a recipe from Dorie Greenspan.

But when I tasted the pesto, I was a little taken aback. Garlic scapes are supposed to be milder tasting than the bulbs. What I had created was really strong, with a pungent garlicky smell and taste that made me think great, first I didn’t know what to do with the scapes…and now I don’t know what to do with this pesto. I parked it in the fridge and forgot about it. (Well, mostly. It still glanced at it practically every time I opened the fridge.)

I was feeling a little lazy today, and it was getting too late to make anything elaborate. When I looked in the fridge and saw the garlic scape pesto starting at me, again, I thought okay, here we go. It’s just me for dinner, so who would mind if I have a serious case of after-dinner garlic breath, except maybe the cat?

With some prawns, a tomato, and a few zucchini ribbons standing in for pasta, the pesto made a very quick, Paleo-friendly meal. The best part, and the biggest surprise, was how the pesto had mellowed. Really. It had toned down considerably from when I first made it, and now was pleasant and very, very mild.

And it didn’t give me bad garlic breath either. (I knew you’d be wondering.)

paleo diet challenge day 27 garlic scape pesto

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Prawns & Garlic Scape Pesto with Zucchini

Serving Size: 1

This recipe can be easily doubled. If you need to scale it up even further, I'd suggest sauteeing the prawns in their own pan so they don't have to compete for space with the zucchini ribbons.

Ingredients

  • 2 small zucchini, peeled lengthwise (about 5 oz of ribbons)
  • 1 tomato, chopped
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • 1/4 - 1/3 cup garlic scape pesto
  • 6-8 prawns, shelled
  • salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

Instructions

  1. Using a vegetable peeler, make the zucchini ribbons: Peel the zucchini lengthwise, down one side until you get to the center and then down the other.
  2. In a large saute pan, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the tomato and cook for 2-3 minutes, or until it has cooked down and released some juices.
  3. Add the zucchini ribbons and saute for 1 minute until they soften slightly.
  4. Add 1/4 cup of the garlic scape pesto and stir it in so it evenly coats the zucchini ribbons. Continue cooking for another few minutes until the zucchini has released some juices, but is slightly firmer than 'al dente'.
  5. Push the zucchini ribbons and tomato to one side of the saute pan, and add the prawns. Cook for 2-3 minutes, or until the prawns are firm and pink. Add another few tablespoons of pesto if you like, and stir in to coat the prawns and zucchini. Season with salt and pepper and serve immediately.
3.1
Copyright 2011-2013 Ant & Anise
3.2.2089

 

paleo diet challenge day 27 zucchini ribbons

 

More on the Paleo diet challenge:
Why I’m doing it in the first place
My plan for the 30 days

 

Garlic scape image from The Coast, via Google Images.

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About Us

We’re Eve and Kris, an aunt and a niece. We love food. And while we have a lot in common in our approach, we also have our differences. So why not hash it out in a blog? Ant and Anise is a conversation about food in our lives, past and present. We like real food that doesn't take hours to prepare, but has something unexpected about it. It helps if it's pretty, too.

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