Over the last weekend my boyfriend was out of town, so I decided to experiment with light meals that might not be enough for him to eat for dinner, but would be fine for me. Namely, I had saved a few recipes of grain-based “salads” that would be quick, cheap and at least moderately healthy. One of them was a couscous recipe from Serious Eats (from their “Healthy & Delicious” series, natch). I substituted a lot of different things in this recipe, but the backbone is still there; in fact, you could argue that the recipe itself is like a template that can easily be adapted for various ingredients. To call this a salad is really kind of a misnomer; it’s a salad in the same way that any mix of vegetables and grains can be considered a salad. This dish can be served hot or cold, as a main course or a side, and it’s dead simple, with few, low cost ingredients.

First, sauté some garlic in oil until it is browned. This recipe doesn’t actually have any onion in it, which is surprising for me because I don’t know when the last time was that I made a stew-type recipe without onions. But it’s just garlic here!

In goes the diced tomatoes, chickpeas, basil (mine was fresh purple basil from my garden) and some paprika. For whatever reason I don’t have crushed red pepper in my spice cabinet, and in hindsight I should have probably added more paprika, or some cayenne too, if I wanted any kick from this. But it was tasty and full flavored without the spice anyway.

The original calls for couscous; I went with the harvest grains blend from Trader Joe’s, which includes Israeli couscous, red and green orzo, split dried garbanzo beans, and red quinoa. It’s a great blend, and it worked spectacularly in this dish. However, wanted to make sure it cooked through, so instead of taking the pan of the stove and letting the couscous cook from just the residual heat and moisture, I cooked this for the time listed on the bag (10 minutes) and then took it off the stove.

Once everything is cooked, chopped scallions and some crumbled feta or goat cheese get stirred in. The presentation looks pretty good here, and you could probably serve it just like this without mixing everything in (or maybe mix in the scallions but leave the goat cheese on top). Served like this, you would likely have larger hunks of goat cheese populating the dish, unless you stirred it up really well.

As it was, I stirred everything in at once. The goat cheese quickly melted and left me with a cheesy, creamy sauce. It was really two different dishes; with the goat cheese on the top, the flavors are all more separate, and you get the thinner tomato-y sauce covering the grains with larger, stronger chunks of goat cheese. With the goat cheese mixed in, the flavors mellow out more and everything melds together (in a good way). The goat cheese flavor is still present, but not concentrated and it mingles well with the tomatoes. As I said before, this dish is tasty and filling as a main course, but it also works well as a side; when my boyfriend got home, we used it as a side to a grilled steak along with some fresh sliced jicama in lime juice. The recipe makes a fairly large batch, so it will keep you going for a while.

Harvest Grains Salad (adapted from Serious Eats)

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• 4 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 1/4 cups water, divided
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh basil
• 1 (16-ounce) can chickpeas (garbanzo beans), drained and rinsed
• 1 (14.5-ounce) can diced tomatoes, undrained
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup uncooked Harvest Grains blend
• 1 cup coarsely chopped green onions (about a bunch)
• 1 cup crumbled feta or goat cheese

Directions

1. Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add garlic and cook 3 minutes, stirring frequently until browned.
2. Stir in 1/2 cup water, basil, chickpeas, and tomatoes. Simmer over medium-low heat for 15 minutes.
3. Add 1 3/4 cups water and salt and bring to a boil. Stir in Harvest Grains blend and simmer, covered, for 10 minutes or until grains are cooked.
4. Stir in onions and cheese. Serve hot or cool.

This quick and tasty pork recipe was based on Kay’s Pork Strips. There is something that always goes so well together about pork, sweetness, spiciness and citrus, and this recipe combines them all in a 15-minute marinade, which is always my favorite because I never plan far enough ahead to marinate overnight. I wanted to make sure I would have enough for leftovers tomorrow night, and the thin-sliced pork chops I bought came in a pack of 8 (as opposed to the 6 called for in the original recipe), so I upped most of the other ingredients also.

The ingredients for the marinade go into a bowl. I used mandarin preserves as the base, but you could use any citrus jelly or marmalade. The original recipe used apricot jelly.

Add the pork strips and mix to coat well, leaving it to marinate for 15 minutes.

In the mean time chop up some scallions and a bell pepper. You could probably even add more veggies to this, perhaps snap peas? The veggies don’t get cooked very long, so anything that has a good crunch and is tasty lightly cooked would work.

All of the pork and marinating liquid goes into the pot at once. Don’t stir it… leaving it to cook on one side caramelizes the sweet portions of the marinade to the pork, and helps to thin the marinade into a sauce. Once you can see a fair amount of white creeping up the sides of the pork, you can flip it to cook the other side.

Once the pork is flipped, the peppers and scallions can be added in to cook a bit.

Serve over rice and garnish with a few fresh scallions. It was quite tasty; the mandarin preserves I used (Bonne Maman) had pieces of orange peel in it, which remained in the sauce and imparted bursts of citrus flavor while eating. That combined with the occasional spiciness and overall sweet and salty flavors made the sauce quite well rounded and a great compliment to the pork.

Sweet and Spicy Citrus Pork Stir Fry (adapted from Kay’s Pork Strips)

Ingredients

• 8 pork cutlets
• 3 heaping tablespoons mandarin preserves, or other citrus jelly
• 1 tablespoon honey
• 2 tablespoons soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon sesame oil
• 2 teaspoon ginger, grated
• 1 garlic clove, grated
• 1/2 chopped chili pepper
• 1 red bell pepper, thinly sliced
• 4 scallions, sliced
• 1 tablespoon peanut oil

Directions

1. Combine preserves, honey, soy sauce, oil, ginger, garlic and the chili pepper in a bowl and whisk together.
2. Slice pork cutlets in to 1-inch strips and add to the bowl with the marinade. Stir so that all of the pork is coated and let sit for 15 minutes.
3. Heat a high-temp oil like peanut oil over high heat in a frying pan. When it is really hot add the pork and all of the marinade.
4. Don’t stir the pork, just let it cook for 2-3 minutes or until you start seen the bottom of the pork strips turning white.
5. Turn the pork over and add the bell pepper and the scallions and cook for a few more minutes, until pork is cooked through.
6. Serve over rice and garnish with fresh slices of scallion.