A Dinner

It must have been this morning's 4 mile walk that caused me to be ravenous enough at midday to plot out a relatively complex meal for dinner. It wasn't really a complex meal in the least, but since I've been spending so little time in the kitchen lately, it felt like a big deal.

I started some bread and then went to Jack Bishop's A Year in a Vegetarian Kitchen for inspiration. The recipes are simple, use relatively few ingredients, and make the most of seasonal produce. I ended up making a salad of tiny lentils with dill and feta and served a pecan and arugula pesto over fresh linguine. I wasn't thrilled by either dish but I think the lentils will improve overnight. The pesto was just a bit odd, I guess. I love the flavor of arugula with mixed greens in a salad or tucked into a sandwich, but the heat of the pasta caused that distinctive flavor to dissipate and the final dish just tasted....green. Not a bad thing, but not what I was hoping for.

The surprise was dessert. While I am in no hurry for Passover to be here, I am mindful that the holiday is approaching and there's quite a bit of flour around here needing to be used up so I spent some time with King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking which I'd recently checked out from the library. It's a huge book full of all kinds of things, but the whole grain orange cake caught my eye. Made mostly with whole wheat pastry flour, it was delightful: moist, light, and with a heavenly orange aroma. It had tasty glaze which surely would have made a white flour cake cloying but took this more substantial cake from sturdy to special. The resident teen was only to happy to gobble it down, as were the rest of us (in a slightly more restrained fashion). The recipe is here.