I’ve decided that I like couscous much better in soup than pasta because it holds its shape a lot better, especially when the soup is reheated, and adding couscous makes the soup making process a lot faster too. The harissa (my new favourite condiment again since we just got a new jar) adds a nice spicy zing to the soup, so you can add as little or as much as you want. This recipe makes enough for 6 bowls of soup at 97 cents per serving.

Moroccan Couscous Soup
glug of olive oil
2 medium zucchini, halved and sliced into 1/2 inch slices
4 green onions, thinly sliced including the green tops
4 cups vegetable or chicken stock
2 14-ounce cans diced tomatoes with juice
1 14-ounce can chickpeas, rinsed and drained
small jar of marinated artichoke hearts
1 cup couscous
1/2 cup fresh parsley, chopped
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 tablespoon harissa, plus more to taste
salt and pepper

Heat up the olive oil in a large pot and saute the zucchini and green onions over a medium heat. When they have softened, add the stock and the remaining ingredients minus the parsley, salt, and pepper. Bring the soup up to a quick boil and then reduce the heat and let everything simmer uncovered for 7 to 10 minutes, or until the couscous is fully cooked. If the soup is too thick, add some extra water or stock until you get the desired consistency. Taste the soup and add more harissa if needed, then season with salt and pepper. Throw in the chopped parsley at the last minute and serve.

If you have leftovers, you might need to add some extra water when you reheat it because the couscous absorbs a lot of the soup liquid when it is in the fridge.

We also did a lot of eating; hitting up old favourites like Lamberts, Magnolia Cafe, and El Chilito, and exploring new restaurants like La Condesa and Frank, which was probably the most fun and original meal we had all week: hello, hot dog covered with bbq sauce and mac & cheese, plus they had bloody marys with bacon-infused bourbon and a strip of fried bacon as a stirrer!

On Saturday, I went to the Techmunch food blogging workshop hosted by Babette of Bakespace and Jaden of Steamy Kitchen. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but wow, what an inspirational and educational afternoon! There were a whole slew of experts discussing how to make your food blog better from selecting content to developing your brand in an effort to one day monetize your blog. My mind was just racing the entire time with different ideas and changes that I want to make to improve Recession Recipes. One of the first changes is going to be regular posts every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

Perhaps the panel that resonated with me the most was Jaden’s discussion of Creating Personal Buzz. She talked about her decision to make food and blogging her livelihood and how she created a visual inspiration board of her goals and the life that she wanted to lead. Three years later, she has achieved the life that she dreamed of and now uses her inspiration board to remind her of her journey and why she does what she does. As someone on the brink of a huge change with our impending move this summer and me still figuring out what I want to do career-wise, Jaden’s talk hit home and I’m going to make my own visual inspiration board to reimagine the life that I really want. If you want to learn more about all of the different sessions, the Austin-based food blog Setted does an excellent job of recapping the workshop: Part One and Part Two.

When we got back to Vegas, our bodies were craving healthy food and vegetables. In fact, I bet I was the only person on my flight to Vegas who was actually looking forward to lots of sleep, no drinking, and working out once I arrived! I made this Chickpea Tagine for our first dinner back as a way to atone for our trip to Austin. We both loved the hot and sweet combination of harissa and honey in the dish, which has inspired Carlo to make some harissa and honey chicken wings tonight (so much for the health kick ). Anyway this tasty and good for you dish makes enough for 6 generous dinners at $2.02 per serving.

Chickpea Tagine, adapted from Fitness Magazine, February 2010
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 red onions, halved and thickly sliced
4 small carrots, sliced lengthwise and cut into 1/2-inch slices
12 ounces cubed and peeled butternut squash
4 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
2 inches peeled fresh ginger, grated
1 tablespoon harissa paste, plus additional to taste
1 tablespoon honey, plus additional to taste
2 teaspoons ground cumin
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
2 cans 14-ounce chopped tomatoes
2 medium zucchini, quartered and cut into 1/2-inch slices
20 dried apricots, sliced
water
2 cans 14-ounce chickpeas, rinsed and drained
1 lemon
salt and pepper
2 cups couscous, cooked according to package directions

In a large heavy pot over medium-low heat, warm up the olive oil and and add the onions and a little bit of salt. Cook, stirring occasionally, for 5 minutes, then add the carrots and cook for 5 more minutes. Add the butternut squash, garlic, and ginger, and raise the heat to medium. Cook everything, while still stirring for 5 minutes.

Add the harissa, honey, cumin, cinnamon, turmeric, and stir the spices until they become fragrant, about 1 minute. Add the tomatoes, zucchini, apricots and stir well. Fill up 1 of the cans of tomatoes with water and add it to the pot and bring everything to a simmer over medium heat. If the tagine is too thick, add a bit more water until the mix is juicy but not too liquidy. Cover and reduce the heat as needed to let the tagine simmer gently, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables are tender and not mushy, about 20 to 25 minutes.

Add the chickpeas and lemon juice to the pot. Raise the heat and simmer, uncovered, until the chickpeas are heated through and the liquid has thickened slightly, 5 to 10 minutes. Season the tagine to taste with salt, pepper and additional harissa and honey. Serve the tagine over couscous for a delicious dinner that perhaps tastes even better the next day as leftovers.

This Southwestern Sweet Potato and Quinoa Salad is featured in Mark Bittman’s book and adds a new quinoa recipe to my repertoire, which is very welcome since I only had 2 quinoa recipes that I make, and I just happen to have a 9 lb + bag of quinoa in the pantry from when the bulk bin at Whole Foods went a little crazy and I was too embarrassed to put back the bulging sack of quinoa. This salad recipe feeds 4 people at 88 cents per serving, and is the perfect meal to make ahead for lunch on the go.

Southwestern Sweet Potato and Quinoa Salad
2 1/2 cups cooked quinoa, or 1 cup raw
1 lb of sweet potatoes
salt
1 red bell pepper, cored, seeded, and diced
1/4 cup minced red onion
1 avocado
1/4 teaspoon chipotle flakes or pepper
freshly ground black pepper
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lime juice
1/4 cup minced cilantro leaves

If you don’t have cooked quinoa already, put 1 cup of raw quinoa in a saucepan and cover the grains with an inch or so of water. Put it on to boil and once it does, let the quinoa simmer until it is cooked. You can add more water if it needs some, or drain the quinoa if there is any water that hasn’t boiled off once it is cooked.

Peel the sweet potato and dice it into 1/2 inch or smaller pieces. Cook the sweet potato in boiling salted water until tender, around 15 minutes, and then drain it well.

Toss together the sweet potato, quinoa, bell pepper, chipotle, avocado, and onion, and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Whisk the oil and fresh lime juice together and toss the salad with half of the mixture, then taste and add more dressing as needed. I squeezed in a touch of honey into the dressing to accent the sweet potatoes with fabulous results. Season the salad and garnish with cilantro.

On with the food!

We started off with a couple types of bruschetta from Italian Easy: Recipes from the London River Cafe. This is a great cookbook that’s full of fantastic recipes that are, as you would infer from the title, easy to make. It’s got dozens of bruschetta ideas in the front, and I picked mozzarella with chilis and then fennel and salami, both pretty easy. Start with some good bread, and cut it into 3/4 to 1-inch slices. Just before you want to serve, grill the slices, or if you must, toast them some other way, then when they’re done, rub one side with a peeled clove of garlic. Then, add your toppings. I like to put all my slices on a big plate, then put the toppings over them, rather than building each individual piece. It’s a lot easier, and just put a serving utensil alongside the dish, and everybody will figure things out. Each serving only cost 91 cents too.

For the mozzarella and chili topping, first grab some arugula and toss it in some lemon juice (I like to chop the arugula a little bit so it’s easier to eat), and chop up some red chilis (I like Fresno peppers or red jalapenos). When your bread is ready, sprinkle over the arugula, then put your cheese on top (I usually slice the mozzarella, then break it up with my fingers), and then toss some chili over everything.

For the fennel and salami topping, start by putting some water on to boil, and squeeze some lemon juice into it. Next, slice your fennel bulbs horizontally into half-inch or so slices, and break the slices up into their individual pieces, being sure to discard the hard central bits from the slices towards the bottom. Once your water is boiling, put in the fennel and let it boil for just a few minutes until it’s soft, then drain in a colander. If you’re doing this in advance, I’d recommend running cold water over the fennel to stop it cooking, then if you’re doing the bread on the grill, put it on the grill for a few minutes while the bread is toasting to heat it up and give it some color. Once you’re all set, put the fennel over the bread, then top it with some salami and/or prosciutto. Anything is fine to use here; we had some spicy salami we picked up at a farmer’s market in Carlsbad, California last weekend.

Finish both of them by drizzling over a little olive oil and some salt and pepper, then enjoy. By the way, these go really well with a cold glass of Bulleit Lemonade, our official summer drink.

I have to admit, I was a little skeptical of the Lentil and Sweet Potato Salad that Alex got from Gwyneth Paltrow’s site GOOP, because, frankly, it sounded like hippie food. But I actually really enjoyed it, and it got a big thumbs up from both of our guests. It took a little time to cook the lentils and sweet potatoes, and then to let them cool, so definitely do this one in advance. We didn’t have any maple syrup in the pantry, so we used some honey instead and it worked great. This recipe is so reasonable at 57 cents per serving.

You’ll also want to make your salsa verde for the salmon ahead of time, not just to get it out of the way, but because you want the flavors to have some time to meld together and intensify. This is a great sauce that works well with lots of different grilled meats, and it’s pretty easy. I like to chop my herbs by hand, but you could just as easily throw it all in the food processor, just don’t overdo it and get the herbs too fine. First, take a clove or two of garlic, and put them in your food processor or chopper with 3 anchovy fillets, about a table spoon of capers, and a tablespoon or so of red wine vinegar. Add in a little Dijon mustard (start small, you can add more later — I overdid this some in mine, and it was a little overbearing) and whiz it up. Grab a nice handful of flat-leaf (Italian) parsley and about half or a third as much mint. I also but a few basil leaves in, and they weren’t out of place. Then chop these by hand or in your food processor, and mix in your first set of ingredients along with some olive oil. Again, take care with the oil: you want the sauce to be loose, but not overly oily. Tuck it away in the fridge for a few hours, then bring it out and let it warm to room temperature for serving.

The Grilled Zucchini with Mint and Red Chili is pretty straightforward: grill your zucchini, then top it with some chopped mint and red chili and a bit of olive oil. For this, we just sliced the zucchini in half, but next time, I’ll slice it a bit thinner. This zucchini recipe equals 95 cents per serving.

The salmon is pretty simple, too: put some salt and pepper on it, then grill it, and squeeze some lemon juice over it. You don’t want anything fancy, since you’re going to use the salsa verde you made earlier. The salmon and salsa verde was the most expensive dish of the night, but still only cost $2.81 per person.

I was really pleased with how everything turned out. None of the flavors were too heavy, so it was nice for the hot weather, but everything was quite filling. Plus the whole meal cost only $5.24 per guest. Next time you’re facing the prospect of another barbecue full of uninspired meat and side dishes, try this menu for something a little different.

When we went camping in Death Valley last month, we made the Marinated Chickpeas and Pasta with Roasted Tomatoes and Black Olives. We make these dishes before we leave and stick them in plastic containers in the cooler, so we can take them out for a quick lunch or picnic. This tactic works really well and you always have something filling and tasty on hand, so you can spend more time having fun on your trip instead of slaving over the camp stove or grill.

One of my old friends Britney had forwarded me this Quinoa Salad recipe from the incredible blog 101 Cookbooks after reading about the Quinoa Sopa Seco. I’ve had this recipe on my list of things to cook for a while, and thought our trip to Zion would be the perfect place to test it out.

This Quinoa Salad recipe made 5 very large lunch-sized servings at $1.21 per serving.

I put just a tiny bit of olive oil in a hot pan to brown the tofu. Even though the recipe already calls for extra firm tofu, the browning helps make it even firmer and you can also season the tofu at this point to make it a bit tastier too.

Since I’m a fairly recent convert to quinoa and others may be too, here is an up close photo of what cooked quinoa looks like. Be sure to keep on cooking it so you can see all of the grains’ curliques. I like cooking my quinoa in some vegetable or chicken broth for some added flavour.

I didn’t really follow a recipe for pesto, but just chucked in some fresh picked basil from my potted garden, some toasted pine nuts, grated Parmesan cheese, and salt and pepper in the mini food processor. I whizzed all of that up and then added enough olive oil to make the mixture into a paste–so much better than the jarred stuff you can get at the grocery store.

The finished result tasted delicious and was my first “full” recipe made from my new garden. In case you are a bit nervous about making pesto, here is a classic pesto recipe to follow.

This Quinoa Salad was pretty easy to make and like Carlo’s Fritatta, this recipe has endless possibilities about what kind of veggies or protein you can use. It would be a great thing to make on a Sunday afternoon so you can use up whatever leftover vegetables are still in the fridge and get a head start on the week by having a few days’ worth of lunches prepared. I didn’t have any cherry tomatoes in the house, so I used some of this awesome roasted tomato paste that we bought in Argentina, which was a nice salty touch.

This recipe turned out to be the perfect camping trip lunch. It tasted great and really filled us up so we could hike to our hearts’ content. Even though Carlo did make a quip that he felt like a total hippie eating quinoa and tofu while camping

The incredible view from our campsite.

All of these recipes were published in the March/April issue of Clean Eating, and live up to the magazine’s (and Recession Recipes’s) mantra of consuming food in its most natural state, or as close as possible to it. Thankfully in addition to being good for you, these recipes also taste just plain delicious.

Salmon Roasted in Cilantro Salsa – Feeds 6 at $2.56 per serving
1 poblano pepper
1/2 cup fresh lime juice
2 green onions, sliced
1 cup packed fresh cilantro leaves, chopped
1 teaspoon canola or olive oil
1/2 teaspoon seat salt
6 3-oz salmon fillets, skinned

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. While you are waiting for the oven to heat up, roast the poblano pepper by laying it directly on a gas burner, beneath an oven broiler, or on a bbq grill. You want to roast the pepper until the skin blisters and turns black. I always love doing this because it feeds my inner pyro tendencies, but I get to be productive while burning things

Once the poblano pepper is totally charred, place it in a brown paper bag (I like using old grocery bags), and close it up so the pepper’s skin can loosen from the steam. Once it cools, take the pepper out of the bag and rub off the blackened skin under running water. Pat the pepper dry and then split it open and scrape out the seeds and interior ribs, and pull off the stem.

Cut the poblano into thin strips, and put them in a blender with the lime juice, onions, cilantro, oil, and salt. Whiz it all up until it becomes a puree. I like putting in a ton more cilantro and lime juice so the sauce gets really thick and smothers the salmon when it is cooked.

Place the salmon in a baking dish just large enough to fit the fillets. Pour the cilantro salsa from the blender over the salmon, and turn the fish to coat it on both sides. Bake the fish, uncovered, until the salmon is cooked–around 20 to 30 minutes–depending on how you like your fish cooked. I would start checking it around the 20 minute cooking point to see how it looks and then keep on checking every five minutes. It is kind of hard to over cook the salmon because of the salsa which helps keep things extra moist. To serve, spoon salsa from the pan over the top of each fillet of salmon.

Quinoa Sopa Seco – Feeds 6 people at 57 cents per serving
1 tablespoon olive oil
3 green onions, thinly sliced
1 red bell pepper, diced
1 teaspoon dried oregano leaves
1 clove garlic, minced
1 cup quinoa
Pinch sea salt
1/2 cup frozen peas, thawed
1/2 cup tomatoes, seeded and chopped (or halved cherry tomatoes)

In a medium saute pan with a lid, warm the oil over medium-high heat. Add onions and pepper and cook, stirring, until soft, for about 5 minutes. Add the oregano and garlic, and cook for 30 seconds. Stir in the quinoa, then pour in 2 cups water and add the salt.

Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat, cover and simmer until the liquid is absorbed and the grains show opaque lines around the edges, around 12 minutes. Turn off the heat and stir in the peas and tomatoes. Cover the pan again and let stand until the vegetables are warmed through, about 5 minutes. Keep warm until ready to serve.

Cucumber-Avocado Salsa - Serves 6 at 26 cents per serving
1/2 regular cucumber (not English), peeled and diced
1 medium avocado, skin removed, seeded and diced
1 lime, cut in half and seeds removed
1 teaspoon olive oil
2 tablespoon red or white onions, minced
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
1 tablespoon cilantro leaves, chopped

Place the cucumber and avocado in a medium bowl; then squeeze the lime juice over the top. Add the oil, onion, salt, and cilantro and stir gently. Serve immediately. This guacamole tastes great as a topping for the fish, but I think it can hold its own to any guac recipe so I will definitely make it again to munch on with some tortilla chips.

Tah dah! The finished meal at $3.39 per serving. Delicious, healthy, and recession friendly for sure!