Crawfish Fettuccine, Chicken Saag & Dal, Yellow Curry with Tofu, Sheet Pan Brats, Strawberry Lemon Bars & More!

This round up includes lots of really nice spring meals, including several quick and easy weeknight dinners and some very delicious strawberry lemon bars for dessert!

Crawfish Fettuccine with Seared Catfish

This was a Saturday night date night dinner in that felt kind of like a restaurant meal!

I was craving crawfish pasta and a friend had given us some fresh catfish filets and with the addition of the fresh parsley and garlic chives from River Queen, it all came together so well.

First, I cooked the crawfish tails in butter and added garlic chives and seasonings while I cooked the Il Supremo hand cut fettuccine.

I also seasoned the catfish filets with garlic and onion powder and paprika and gave them a little sear in cast iron pans and transferred to the oven to finish cooking.

Once the fettuccine was cooked, I added the pasta to the crawfish tails with lots of freshly grated parmesan, plus more garlic chives and parsley and freshly squeezed lemon juice.

It was simple but so delicious. And we had it with an arugula salad with a creamy almond-based dressing with sunflower seeds and garlic chips.

Chicken Saag & Dal Makhani

I had a sinus infection that made me lose my taste and smell for a few days and this boldly flavored chicken saag was super weird to cook and eat because I couldn’t smell or taste it at first. Fortunately it was a big batch and my taste came back before the leftovers were gone, but cooking without smelling and tasting as you go is definitely a strange experience!

Most people are more familiar to saag paneer, made with seasoned and cooked and then pureed greens with cubes of firm cheese. But it’s really good with cubed chicken breast, as well! I used collards and Swiss chard, but spinach, mustard greens and kale work, too. For hardier greens, you want to cook down them quite a bit so that they are smooth and creamy when pureed in the food processor. Of course, baby greens and spinach cook quicker.

For the dal, I used black lentils and started with the usual saute of onions and then garlic and ginger and then the seasonings, including plenty of turmeric. Then I simmered the lentils with tomatoes and finished it with a little heavy cream. It’s dreamy on its own, but also went really well with the chicken saag and rice and fresh cilantro and lime juice on top.

Thai Yellow Curry with Tofu & Veggies

This was one of those mid week cooking sessions where I needed more meal prep to last the rest of the week, so I made this in morning for dinner that night and leftovers the rest of the week!

I had a few blocks of tofu to use up and departed from my usual tofu with a nutritional yeast and cornstarch batter and just did a little salt and cornstarch since its destiny was going in soup!

The veggies were onions, kale (stems in first, added the leaves at the very end), carrots and mushrooms. I used yellow curry paste, fish sauce and rice vinegar to season it, added homemade chicken broth and simmered it until the veggies were cooked, then added the roasted tofu cubes. At the end, I added coconut milk after everything was cooked through and then topped the bowls with green onions, cilantro and garlic chips and hot sauce or chili crisp!

Miso Salman & Carrots with Sushi Rice

This was another quick-ish weeknight meal that worked well for leftovers for meal prep, but I did cook it and eat it in the evening the first time!

The salmon just got a little drizzle of sesame oil, miso and onion salt before being cooked in the toaster oven.

I did a big batch of rainbow carrots steamed with butter and miso, too. The purple carrots seep into all the others and turned everything sort of burgundy, which is so interesting. The carrots were delicious, nonetheless!

And then we had some sushi rice cooked with kombu, rice vinegar, salt and a little dash of sugar. The salad was really nice with it all and we used Japanese barbecue sauce and an extra splash of rice vinegar as the dressing and topped it with tempura seaweed crisps and the whole plates with a sprinkling of scallions.

Sheet Pan Brats, Roasted Veggies & Potatoes

Another quick mid-week meal was our Local Cooling Farms brats and veggies with some of the fermented mustard from R2 Positive Culture.

On one pan, I roasted fennel and leftover Swiss chard stems and on another I did Yukon gold potatoes. Once the potatoes were almost cooked, I added the brats and cooked for another 15-20 minutes or so. The whole meal was easy, but super satisfying!

Cheddar Sage Chicken Meatballs

My sister asked me to make this recipe with pork for her baby shower back in 2016. And because the photo has such a big cheddar frico on the plate, I thought it was tomato sauce! It’s kind of embarrassing, but for the shower, I made a simple Marcella Hazan tomato sauce and served them that way. Whoops!

But we’ve made them without sauce several times since, especially for the holidays and including when they were here for Christmas this past December.

I have lots of sage in my garden right now, so for a potluck I decided to try them with our homegrown ground chicken. The recipe has so much cheese (and I usually cut it by a quarter or half, even!), so I figured the lean chicken would work well with all the cheddar. They were maybe a tiny bit less decadent, but still so good — the sage and cheddar flavor combination is delicious.

Strawberry Lemon Bars

And with lots of eggs to use up and plenty of strawberries, it was time for another round of strawberry lemon bars.

I usually use the dough recipe from this NYT Cooking recipe and the filling from this blog. You bake the crust first, mix up the filling in a food processor and they come out so lovely. Tart and sweet and perfect.