One-Pot Pasta Recipe with Greens, Olives & Feta ♥

Today's vegetarian recipe: A one-pot pasta recipe. Cook the greens first, then cook the pasta in the same water. Toss with olives and feta. Devour! Weight Watchers 6 points.

Two problems with pasta recipes.

1) They take too long to get to the table. Pasta is supposed to be fast, right? -- zip, zip, done. But it takes forever to bring the water to a boil. SOLUTION: Use an electric kettle to boil the water. At the same time, heat up the cooking pot with just an inch or so of water. Together, this makes a big improvement, time-wise. If the idea appeals, I have a small electric kettle from Presto but there's an electric kettle style for every taste for anyone who's interested.

2) They take too many pots, some times three. THIS RECIPE's SOLUTION: Cook the greens and the pasta separately but in the same water then toss in the remaining ingredients. Aha - a one-pot pasta recipe.

I loved the simplicity of this pasta recipe, one developed for the April 2008 issue of Bon Appetit by Molly Stevens of All About Braising fame. (Is it just me or is Bon Appetit really ramping up their use of vegetables in recipes? Every issue, I find myself tagging more and more recipe possibilities for A Veggie Venture.)

NEXT TIME
The cooked pasta and greens are topped with a mix of parsley, lemon zest and minced raw -- very raw -- garlic. I found this superfluous so next time will skip the parsley entirely and just toss the zest and garlic into the hot pasta.
Mustard greens seemed like a good choice of greens. The idea was that their slight 'bite' would contrast well with the soft pasta, salty olives and tangy feta. Instead, the mustard greens melted into a big mass of messiness, hard to distribute throughout the pasta. Next time I'll use spinach leaves (not baby spinach, too tender to hold up) or broccoli rabe or kale.

NUTRITION NOTES
As always, I allowed only two ounces of pasta per person - while we might want to eat more, this is the sensible portion, despite the four ounces that recipes typically call for. To her credit, Molly Stevens allows only 2 - 2-1/2 ounces per serving.)
I also dropped the olive oil from 5 tablespoons to one, a big calorie saver. There's no knowing of course how good it might have been with more olive oil, but then again, when savoring this noodle by noodle, I wasn't thinking, "Gosh, this sure could use some more fat."
With Dreamfields pasta, this technically falls into low-carb territory.

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FREE ICONS for BLOGGERS Share your love of fresh produce, whether from the farmers market, your own garden or even a CSA farmbox. Four icons celebrate fresh local vegetables and fruits -- and my fellow bloggers are invited to use them on their own blogs. Here's more information about the free icons for bloggers.

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VEGETABLE RECIPES from the ARCHIVES
~ more pasta recipes ~
~ more vegetarian suppers ~
~ more leafy green recipes ~

ONE-POT PASTA with GREENS, OLIVES & FETA

Hands-on time: 20 minutes
Time to table: 30 minutes
Serves 4

Salted water

1 pound leafy greens, preferably spinach (not baby spinach) or broccoli rabe or maybe kale, thick stems removed, cut into one-inch strips (makes about 10 cups gently packed)
8 ounces penne pasta (I used Dreamfields Pasta, the low-glycemic pasta so good for low-carb diets and diabetic regimens)
Salt & pepper to taste

Zest of a lemon
1 clove garlic, minced fine
1 tablespoon olive olive (reduced from 5 tablespoons)
1/2 cup pitted Kalamata olives, chopped
3 ounces feta cheese, crumbled (about 1/2 cup)

Bring the water to a boil. Add the greens and cook until just tender, 1 - 6 minutes depending on the greens. With a slotted spoon, lift out the greens and let drain in a colander. Return the water to a boil. Add the pasta and cook until done, stirring occasionally. Lift out the pasta into the colander, then drain the pot -- but save a couple of cups of liquid.

Return the pasta to the hot pot. Stir in the greens and olive oil. Season to taste. Toss in remaining ingredients plus enough of the cooking liquid to just moisten. Serve immediately.

NUTRITION ESTIMATE
Made with 8 ounces of pasta and 1 tablespoon olive oil: Per Serving: 312 Cal (48% from Fat, 23% from Protein, 28% from Carb); 12 g Protein; 11 g Tot Fat; 4 g Sat Fat; 5 g Mono Fat; 14 g Carb; 7 g Fiber; NetCarb7; 2 g Sugar; 177 mg Calcium; 2 mg Iron; 428 mg Sodium; 19 mg Cholesterol; Weight Watchers 6 points

If made with 16 ounces past and 5 tablespoons olive oil: Per Serving: 624 Cal (57% from Fat, 19% from Protein, 24% from Carb); 19 g Protein; 25 g Tot Fat; 6 g Sat Fat; 15 g Mono Fat; 25 g Carb; 12 g Fiber; NetCarb13; 3 g Sugar; 177 mg Calcium; 2 mg Iron; 429 mg Sodium; 19 mg Cholesterol; Weight Watchers 14 points

TODAY'S VEGETABLE RECIPE INSPIRATION
Bon Appetit, April 2008

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Do you suffer from lachanophobia? Turn to A Veggie Venture and Veggie Evangelist Alanna Kellogg for the best vegetable recipes online. Find a quick recipe for tonight's vegetable in the Alphabet of Vegetables or plan menus with vegetables in every course. If you're a dieter, turn to hundreds of zero-point, one- and two-point Weight Watchers recipes and many low carb recipes.
© Copyright 2008

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Sweet Potato Gnocchi

Is it possible that I grew up in a mostly Italian town in New Jersey, totally adore Italian food, and never eat any sort of gnocchi by the time you turn 41? Yes, it is! So today, not only did I eat gnocchi, but I made it. I started my gnocchi journey with the sweet potato kind.

The dough was easy to make. I did learn, though, that one must not overwork the dough when rolling out the gnocchi. Once you mix the dough, you have a large dough ball from which you take batches to roll them out into ropes and cut apart. In the first batch that I rolled out I overworked the dough. I was trying to get the hang of rolling it out and cutting the correct size. At first I cut them too big, so I had mushed them together and started over. Note of advice to you all - don't do that!

Another thing I found out is that making the cute little fork indentation in your gnocchi is not easy. I decided to save my dough and stick with the little pillows instead.

I'm thinking about making it again and improving my technique. I know that next time I will probably put the ricotta, once drained in the sieve, through a food processor so little white cheese lumps don't appear in my gnocchi.

The other thing I learned is that sweet potato gnocchi is absolutely delicious!



Sweet Potato Gnocchi

Adapted from Gourmet and Bon Appetit Magazines


For The Gnocchi

2 1-pound sweet potatoes

1 12-ounce container fresh ricotta cheese

1/3 cup finely grated Parmesan cheese

2 tablespoons (packed) golden brown sugar

2 teaspoons plus 2 tablespoons salt

1/3 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg

2 3/4 cups (about) all purpose flour

For The Sauce

2 cups apple cider, reduced by half

3 Tbs. heavy cream

salt ground pepper to taste

1/3 - 1/2 tsp. dried, chopped sage

Put the ricotta cheese in a sieve placed over a bowl. Drain the cheese for two hours.

Line large baking sheet with parchment paper. Rinse the sweet potatoes. Pat them dry and pierce them with a fork all over. Place them on a microwave-safe plate and microwave on high until tender, about 7 minutes per side. Cut in half and cool.

Scrape sweet potato flesh into medium bowl and mash well till smooth. Transfer 3 cups of the mash to a large bowl.

Add ricotta cheese; blend well.

Add Parmesan cheese, brown sugar, 2 teaspoons salt, and nutmeg. Bend it well.

Mix in flour with your hands, about 1/2 cup at a time, until soft dough forms. It will all clump into a ball and take the dough off the sides of the bowl when the time is right.

As I look at this picture below, I wish that I had mashed the potato and ricotta better. Perhaps putting the sweet potato and ricotta in food processor before mixing it together with the flour would have made for a prettier picture.

Turn dough out onto floured surface; divide into 6 equal pieces. Rolling between palms and floured work surface, form each piece into 20-inch-long rope (about 1 inch in diameter), sprinkling with flour as needed if sticky. As you roll, move your hands apart. Cut each rope into 20 pieces.

This is the point in which you can roll each piece over the tines of fork to indent. I tried doing this, but it didn't really work out well for me, so I left most of my gnocchi as little pillows.

Transfer the gnocchi to a baking sheet. Keep them floured and separated.

Bring large pot of water to boil; add 2 tablespoons salt and return to boil. Working in batches, boil gnocchi until tender, 5 to 6 minutes. Transfer gnocchi to clean rimmed baking sheet. Cool completely. (Can be made 4 hours ahead. Let stand at room temperature.)

Meanwhile, get the sauce started. In a small saucepan, simmer the apple cider over moderately high heat until reduced to 1/2 cup, for about 20 minutes.

Add the cream, salt and pepper.

Pan fry the gnocchi in butter on a medium-high flame.

Keep frying till it is lightly browned.

Plate the gnocchi and drizzle it with the cider reduction sauce.

Mangia Bene!

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Kitchen Parade Extra: Strawberry Rhubarb Crumble Recipe

Today's recipe at KitchenParade.com: My recipe for strawberry rhubarb cobbler, one of spring's classic dessert recipes, topped with a buttery cornmeal crumb.

Thank goodness for rhubarb recipes. Otherwise A Veggie Venture might become altogether too healthful, bereft of sweets and desserts. Once the rhubarb is ready for harvesting and starts to show up in the grocery stores, who can resist a thick slice of rhubarb pie, the perfect balance of rhubarb-sour and sugar-sweet? But for simplicity, an easy cobbler recipe is the ticket, whether a 'plain' rhubarb cobbler or today's recipe, rhubarb and strawberry cobbler.

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BUSTED Many thanks to Maggie, a reader who makes her home in New York City on the top floor apartment of a building originally constructed in 1839 as a one-family house. Maggie's apartment runs due north to due south so the northern windows get no direct sun and southern windows and skylights get so much sun that anything short of a cactus would be fried. After reading Tuesday's post about how to grow fresh herbs in pots, Maggie wrote -- ever so poignantly -- to remind me that not all homes have the space, light and open air to grow fresh herbs, even ones with wonderful front stoops perfect for watching the world pass by. She's thinking about investing in an aerogarden, something I wrote about on BlogHer and has the added benefit of year-round fresh herbs.

Maggie, thank you for your letter and the Aerogarden suggestion. Readers, keep those cards and letters and comments coming!

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NEVER MISS A KITCHEN PARADE RECIPE! Who's been missing Kitchen Parade recipes? You know, like that recipe for Lime Chicken so perfect for a weeknight supper? Or light, bright and quick Lemon Asparagus Pasta that so celebrates the best spring asparagus? If you were accustomed to learning about new Kitchen Parade recipes via announcements here on A Veggie Venture, well, those announcements are a thing of the past, thanks to the two sites attracting increasingly different readers. Good news: Kitchen Parade is easily available too, just sign up for Kitchen Parade via e-mail or Kitchen Parade via RSS. Many thanks!

WHY DOESN'T THIS POST ACCEPT COMMENTS? Because I hope that you'll click through to today's column or Tuesday's herb post to comment there!

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Do you suffer from lachanophobia? Turn to A Veggie Venture and Veggie Evangelist Alanna Kellogg for the best vegetable recipes online. Find a quick recipe for tonight's vegetable in the Alphabet of Vegetables or plan menus with vegetables in every course. If you're a dieter, turn to hundreds of zero-point, one- and two-point Weight Watchers recipes and many low carb recipes.
© Copyright 2008

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Never Buy Fresh Herbs Again ♥ How to Grow Fresh Herbs at Home in Pots

Pantry with a Purpose: How to grow a few favorite fresh herbs at home. Recipes for easy, delicious and economical dishes using fresh herbs from food bloggers.

Food prices are skyrocketing with no end in sight. This is the second post tackling the idea of saving money on groceries by – stay with me a minute, it's not entirely intuitive – by cooking more. The idea, you see, is to stop paying crazy-high prices for commercial products, by making our own or in this case, growing our own.

Now I know that fresh herbs are a luxury in many households, it's dried or nothing. But cooking at home is as much about eating better as eating less expensively. Fresh herbs add life to salads, vegetables, salad dressings, meat dishes, even desserts and drinks.

In my grocery, small (plastic) packets of fresh herbs are now $3 for a small bunch. Trader Joe's sells fresh herbs for $2 but to my taste, they're not worth a nickel. Either way, buying just one packet a week adds up to $100 - $150 a year. Instead, I spend maybe $20 on plants, then use them all summer long. So here's my challenge, will you join me? Never Buy Fresh Herbs Again!

HOW to GROW HERBS in POTS
HOW to GROW HERBS in the GROUND
HOW to GROW HERBS in APARTMENTS
HERB-HAPPY RECIPES from MY FELLOW FOOD BLOGGERS

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MORE IDEAS for SAVING MONEY on GROCERIES
~ Never Buy Salad Dressing Again ~
~ How to Save Money on Groceries ~

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HOW to GROW HERBS in POTS

Pots Choose pots at least twelve inches in diameter but large pots work really well. Pots smaller than twelve inches simply cannot hold enough moisture on hot summer days. Terra cotta pots look great but are heavy, expensive and fragile. I really like the foam pots which look like terra cotta but are light, relatively inexpensive and last at least a decade (maybe longer, I just know that three of mine are that old). A mix of pot styles – color, height, diameter, shape, material – is less "matchy-matchy" and looks quite natural and beautiful.

Location Find a spot that gets direct sun for at least six hours a day and is open to rainfall. Late-day sun is hard on plants so if there's a choice, pick a spot that's bright in the morning but shaded in late afternoon.

Drainage The pot may already have drainage holes in the bottom. If not, it's simple enough to drill a few holes in the bottom. And do make sure to use pots with drainage holes – otherwise the plants may actually 'drown', since their roots could be in water. In addition, I like to place an inch or so of small rocks in the bottom of the pots to help drainage. During the spring, it's easy to buy bags of small stones at the garden store. During the year, for houseplants say, I use aquarium gravel.

Soil For extra-large pots, fill the bottom third or half of the pot with styrofoam popcorn or even used wine corks. The pot will need less soil and be quite a bit lighter, making it easier to move the pot or at least turn it occasionally. Then fill with soil. If you're doing just a couple of pots, buy a pre-mixed soil called 'potting mix' which will be loose and easy to work. For more soil, it's easy to make your own potting mix but I've become addicted to the performance of the Miracle Grow potting mix. It's expensive but I pay for the convenience and performance.

Time-Release Fertilizer Some potting soils already include a time-release fertizer. Otherwise, sprinkle the top layer with a fertilizer such as Osmocote (a real miracle product). Work it into the top couple of inches of soil.

Planting from Seed To plant from seed, you need to start very early in the season. Honestly, I've had zero luck planting from seed though others of course do.

Container Plants Instead, I buy small containers of herbs for $2 - $3 each. Walmart and the large hardware stores with gardening centers have good selection with the most reasonable prices. Most herbs are "annuals", this means that they'll last just one season. A few are "perennials" and will return year after year.

My Favorite Herbs for Pots My own tact is to grow a few favorite herbs, ones to use all summer in small quantities. So I usually buy one plant each of chive, rosemary, Greek oregano, dill, lavender, tarragon and thyme plus three basil plants. I also grow parsley and cilantro but just enough for snipping for salads and garnishing since I use them in such quantity and they are inexpensive in large bunches at the grocery store.

Plants Per Pot? Plan for one plant in a twelve-inch pot, up to three plants in a larger pot.

Finally, Planting! As soon as the frost date has passed (here's a list that shows frost dates by state, it shows April 30 as the last frost for St. Louis but the common wisdom is that it's really Mother's Day weekend), gently remove the plant from its container. Sometimes you can slip the base of the plant between the fingers of one hand to contain the soil, then turn it over. Some times you need to tug gently to remove the plant from the container. Dip the plant into water, using your hand to contain the soil. Crack open the bottom of the dirt, this lets the roots descend into the pot's soil more easily. Place the plant in the potting mix, fill in the sides with soil but don't mound the dirt around the plant's stem. Once all the plants are in, soak the pot with water.

Adding Flowers Fresh herbs are beautiful but they are "mostly green" so might not provide color. So some times, I'll tuck a pansy or a hanging flowering plant along the side.

TLC - Tender Lovin' Care In hot climates, pots will need to be watered every day unless it rains. I soak my pots every single morning, filling them until the water begins to drain out the holes in the bottom. Every three or four weeks, it also pays to refresh the fertilizer.

Buds & Flowers Aha! This is a trick! The 'flowers' on basil, dill and other plants may be beautiful but if we really want fresh herbs, we need to nip these off as soon as they appear. That said, I love the flowers of garlic chive so much that I keep an entire pot of garlic chive, just for the greens and flowers!

Harvesting It's great fun to step outside with scissors to gather a few herbs. Just cut off what you need. At the end of the season, you may want to harvest all the herbs for preserving for the winter. I love this technique, DIY Dried Herbs (How to Dry Fresh Herbs in the Microwave).

Winter Interest For the winter, woody plants like rosemary and lavendar, for example, die off but their dried versions provide great architectural interest throughout the winter. The soft-leaved plants like basil will just disintegrate after the first frost.

For Next Season Each year, it's important to amend the soil in pots by at least half, some gardeners even recommend replacing the soil entirely. While amending the soil with new potting mix, also work out roots and bulbs that will be in last year's soil.

HOW to GROW HERBS in the GROUND

Space This post isn't really intended for 'real gardeners', people who feed their families by tilling the soil. But the good news for the rest of us is that it doesn't take a 'garden' to grow herbs, just a small sunny corner will do. I switched from pots to a side garden two years ago, testing herbs in dense clay-like soil just to see what would happen. They did great! This year I've built up the soil so that it's workable and I'm betting that this year, the herbs will truly thrive. If you've got a place that will work for herbs, it's cheaper and easier to maintain plants in soil than in pots -- no pots to buy, less watering. Otherwise, the principles are the same.

HOW to GROW HERBS in APARTMENTS

UPDATE Many thanks to Maggie, a reader who makes her home in New York City on the top floor apartment of a building originally constructed in 1839 as a one-family house. Maggie's apartment runs due north to due south so the northern windows get no direct sun and southern windows and skylights get so much sun that anything short of a cactus would be fried. After reading this post, Maggie wrote -- ever so poignantly -- to remind me that not all homes have the space, light and open air to grow fresh herbs, even ones with wonderful front stoops perfect for watching the world pass by. She's thinking about investing in an aerogarden, something I wrote about on BlogHer and has the added benefit of year-round fresh herbs. Maggie, thank you for your letter and the Aerogarden suggestion. Readers, keep those cards and letters and comments coming!

HERB-HAPPY RECIPES: RECIPES using FRESH HERBS

Note to RSS and e-mail readers: the Del.icio.us technology used to collect these herb recipes only displays the recipe lists online. Want to see the herb recipes? Click through to Never Buy Fresh Herbs Again.

Basil Recipes
A plant or two will be plenty for salad for the summer. But to make pesto, you'll need to buy big bunches of basil - or grow a lot!

Rosemary Recipes

Tarragon Recipes

Chives Recipes
Worried about your 'green thumb'? Then start with chives which are completely forgiving and so useful.

Fresh Mint Recipes
There are many varieties of mint. In 2008, I'm adding spearmint to the collection.

Preserving Fresh Herbs

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Do you suffer from lachanophobia? Turn to A Veggie Venture and Veggie Evangelist Alanna Kellogg for the best vegetable recipes online. Find a quick recipe for tonight's vegetable in the Alphabet of Vegetables or plan menus with vegetables in every course. If you're a dieter, turn to hundreds of zero-point, one- and two-point Weight Watchers recipes and many low carb recipes.
© Copyright 2008

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Party Asparagus with Aioli ♥ Two Classic Recipes

Today's recipes: How to cook and shock fresh asparagus to retain the bright green color and enhance the natural asparagus flavor for serving chilled. How to make aioli, the classic sauce. Great for parties, buffets, composed salads.

~recipe & photo updated 2011, republished 2013~
~more recently updated recipes~

First the asparagus. At Easter, my favorite dish at a magnificent brunch prepared by a former White House chef and recent Silver Toque winner was, um, yes, the asparagus. Aiii it was good – arrayed on huge platters, stems peeled halfway to the tips and perfectly salted. At first, I thought there might have been garlic in the cooking water. The chef sniffed at that idea so hmm, perhaps not. At home, it took three tries and three pounds of asparagus to get the salt balanced properly. Yes, I concede, dozens of spears were sacrificed to get the salt right. (2011 Update: Chef Chambrin is the source of the recipe for Raspberry Bliss, my first column in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch!)

SALT It's another ingredient with (in my mind) an undeserved bad reputation. Because salt is "bad" for us, we cook rice and pasta and eggs and – heavens, vegetables – with minimal salt and even – horrors – without salt. Our bodies require salt. My solution, my rationalization? If we'd all just nix prepared and commercial food – and their high, high proportions of sodium – then it seems to me, we can let loose with salt for food cooked at home. I'm not a nutritionist so please don't violate a doctor's order. But I'd love to know – is salt a good thing or a bad thing in your world? How much salt would you use to cook a pound of asparagus?
Keep Reading ->>>

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Manchego and Tomato Salad

I've enjoyed watching a few episodes of Made in Spain, but I really didn't expect to make anything. I guess I'm a little intimidated by authentic Spanish cooking. It's not like it's difficult, but the ingredients are usually strange to me. But there I was, watching the episode on La Mancha, and there was my Manchego cheese in the fridge (straight from La Mancha), and my extra-ripe tomato on the counter. The time was right to experiment.

This little tapas dish is wonderful in every way. It's ingredients are simple, it's easy to prepare, and so full of flavor.

Chef José said that you could eat this right away, but it would be even better the next day. I think he was right about that.

Salad of Manchego, Tomato, Walnuts, and Rosemary
Adapted from José: Made in Spain

1 vine-ripened tomato

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

pinch of kosher salt

5 twists of fresh ground black pepper - on the coarse setting

5 oz Spanish Manchego cheese
1/4 cup walnut chunks, lightly toasted and then broken into pieces

fresh rosemary

Cut the tomato in half and grate it. That's right, grate it into a bowl. All of the pulp will come off of the skin and fall into the bowl with the seeds. That's what you want. Call it a fresh tomato puree (that's what José called it).

Add the the olive oil and season with salt and pepper.

Here's what the cheese looks like with it's characteristic rind with the zigzag lines.

Cut off the rind of the Manchego cheese and cut it into cubes. I did the approximate size of sugar cubes (if you can remember them). Add them to the tomato puree.

Add the walnuts. If you want more of fewer walnuts, go ahead and change the amount. I liked the 1/4 cup.

Take some rosemary leaves off of the plant stem. fold them over and rub them around between your fingers so that the oils in the leaves are released to the surface. Add it to the rest of the ingredients.

Toss all the ingredients in the bowl. Serve either immediately, or after being refrigerated for up to one day or so.

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Mexican Cinco de Mayo Green Dinner

All of the Earth Day celebrations last past week must have had me thinking green when it came to making a Cinco de Mayo dinner. Cinco de Mayo is May 5, of course. Did you think it was the Mexican Independence Day? Many people do, but it is not!

Let me first educate you all about Cinco de Mayo in a very brief history lesson:

Did you know that for a time, Mexico was ruled by a Hapsburg prince?

In 1862 Emperor Maximillian and his wife, Carlota, were sent to rule Mexico by Napoleon III. Why, you ask? After Mexico declared its independence from Spain in September of 1810, it borrowed money from France. But when France wanted the money back, Mexico was unable to pay off the debt. So France sent troops to collect or take over.

The French had the best army in the world and it was well-equipped. When they arrived at Puebla (the capital of the state of Puebla), there was a battle in which the poor Mexican farmers made sport of the French.

Sadly, in the end, the French won the war and took over Mexico for some years. But the battle of Puebla on May 5 1862, is remembered as a day of great Mexican pride. It is celebrated not only in Puebla, but through out Mexico, and the places where populations of Mexicans live in the US.

So let's celebrate the earth and Mexican heritage with a green Mexican dinner!

It all started out when I was at the grocery store a few days ago and found myself in the produce section where the green Mexican ingredients were begging me to buy them! I bought large tomatillos, beautiful poblano chiles (peppers), and cilantro. With ingredients in hand, I headed home to find some recipes.

Being a Spanish teacher who studied in Mexico, I have a number of good Mexican Cookbooks. I turned to The Complete Book of Mexican Cooking by Elisabeth Lambert Ortiz. I am a huge fan of this book, which was published way back when I was just one year old. The recipes seem very traditional to me, and not too gourmet. They promote authentic Mexican Cuisine.

The book magically opened to Arroz Verde on page 64. Well, maybe it opened to page 64 because it is the page that I most often visit.

I looked at her recipe for Pipián Verde, but I had fresh tomatillos, and her recipes called for canned. I was most interested in making a Pipián Verde (a green chicken fricassee) and I really wasn’t sure of the conversion rate, so I turned to the Internet for a recipe.

I did an advanced search on Epicurious.com for the tomatillos with the main ingredient of chicken. A recipe for Chicken in Green Pumpkin-Seed Sauce came up.
I made the chicken almost immediately and put in in the fridge, deciding to make the sauce the next day. Before going to bed later that evening, I shut down my computer.

Remembering that what I saw was a recipe for Pipián Verde, when I went to Epicurious the next day, I changed my search words to pipian verde. I clicked on the link that appeared, the only recipe they had with those words in the title.

It only took a moment to realize that this recipe was different, but it looked much better than the other one. Therefore, I would use the chicken I made with the first recipe, and the sauce of this new recipe.

The result was an absolutely delicious meal that I felt I had to share. So I made a second batch of it. Then on Monday, I shared this wonderful green meal with my hard-working Spanish 3 students (there are only 13 of them) who have probably never tried food like this in their lives.

One can't expect that a bunch of teenagers are going to fall in love with traditional Mexican cooking, but I think they appreciated it, and I'm sure that a number of them really enjoyed it. They approached the new flavors and ingredients with an open mind and that warmed my heart.

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