I wasn’t planning for this to be the recipe that broke the blogging dry spell, but after tasting the bite of the leftovers this morning I found I’d stumbled upon something. I’ve actually been cooking quite a bit lately, out of necessity and economy, fashioning meals that could’ve come straight out of the Trader Joe’s cookbook and might have been hard to defend in recipe form, like fish-stick tacos with homemade salsa, or turkey burgers with a secret ingredient (crushed pistachios) and pesto tortellini. Last night, after dropping over a grand on new apartment furniture (everything in our apartment except the bed is sourced from either Craigslist or the street, including a barely-used Ikea kitchen block, a cheerfully painted blue bookshelf that a nearby elementary school threw out, and two bar schools discarded by the Shake Shack downstairs), we had a cheap date that mostly consisted of spending five hours in the Museum of Natural History across the street and watching a terrible Robin Williams movie on Netflix Instant. In between, I made some nachos for dinner, bound by the constraints of the ingredients already in the fridge: a bag of frozen chopped spinach, a can of refried beans, an onion, a tomato, tortilla chips and good olive oil. 

The vegetable mixture that came out of this under-$5 experiment is good enough to serve for entertaining, the beans giving it a creaminess reminiscent of those vaguely-disgusting vaguely-delicious dairy-based dips that tempt and horrify me. 

Vegan spinach dip:

• 1 cup frozen chopped spinach
• 2 tbsp good extra-virgin olive oil
• 1/2 can refried beans
• 3/4 cup diced yellow onion
• Salt and pepper to taste

1. Saute the onion in a pan with a tablespoon of olive oil, stirring frequently.
2. Meanwhile, defrost the spinach with the remaining tablespoon of olive oil in a small covered saucepan. Once cooked through, add refried beans and stir until mixed well.
3. When onions are golden and translucent, add to bean mixture and stir well. If you like, melt a little cheddar on top. Serve with tortilla chips. 

One of the perks of staying with my parents is that my best friend from high school is also home in Evanston taking her gap year/funemployment, so we get to relive our glory years on a daily basis (okay, that’s a stretch, but yesterday we went to the mall and I bought flare jeans). In high school, Mary was a picky eater, but trips around the world and time abroad in Tanzania and France widened her worldview and her palate. She gets excited now about Himalayan pink sea salt the way she used to about pizza-flavored Goldfish. Also, she’s a fantastic cook: her mustard-broiled salmon recipe (coming up in the next post) is the only one I use, and she’ll turn out a honey&goat cheese pizza or chausson aux pommes like it’s no big deal. She’s also an artist, which means that she makes food not only for flavor but to create something beautiful: once I watched her delicately layer thin half-moons of apple in a tart pan for about an hour. While I tend towards a more ‘rustic’ aesthetic, we deeply appreciate each other’s cooking and we adore having the opportunity to cook for each other and trade ideas and techniques. Today I made Mary lunch, and she made me dinner.

Spelt bread:

• 1 cup + 1 tbsp spelt flour
• 1 cup milk or substitute (I mixed rice milk & coconut non-dairy creamer)
• pinch of salt
• 1 tsp molasses or barley malt
• 1/2 tsp baking soda

1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Combine ingredients and mix well. Place in a 9x5 loaf pan.
3. Bake for about an hour and ten minutes, until golden.

The lentil dip is modified from this recipe: I used brown lentils instead of red, and I didn’t saute the spices. I also left out the oil, then added some tahini when the initial product seemed a bit too soupy.

Spicy lentil spread:

• 1 cup dried lentils
• 1 onion, diced
• 2 + 1/2 cups water
• 2 tsp curry powder
• 3/4 tsp cayenne
• 2 cloves crushed garlic
• 2 tbsp tahini
• salt

1. Boil the lentils and onion until tender, about 25 minutes, and drain.
2. Blend lentils, onion and remaining ingredients in a food processor and season to taste. Serve warm or cold.

To make these open-face sandwiches, I put a foil-wrapped sweet potato in the oven at the same time as the bread, then skinned it and sliced it to layer over the lentil spread on each piece of bread. Sprinkle a little rosemary or herbs de provence on top to finish.