31 dishes, 31 days – I’m cooking my way through Melissa Clark‘s “No-Sweat Cooking” from the August issue of Every Day with Rachael Ray

Mike returned from Tales of the Cocktail yesterday, laden with swag and full of great stories. He was also feeling a little… shall we say fatigued from indulging in so much good food and drink during his week in New Orleans, and he asked that I plan out some light and healthful fare for the week.

Our Monday dinners are typically meatless, and this Herbed Tabbouleh Salad looked like just the sort of hearty but wholesome dish to help ease my guy back into post-pork-and-bourbon reality. I used my own homemade roasted red peppers, plus chickpeas that I had previously cooked from dried and portioned out (canned versions, are of course, just fine – I just have to do things my way). The salad itself was a breeze to put together, the bulgur needing just a quick soak in boiling water to soften, then a toss with the red pepper strips and chickpeas plus plenty of chopped parsley, freshly squeezed lemon juice, and some of our best olive oil. Mike liked it so much he ate the leftovers for lunch today, topped with a little leftover chicken I had cooked up while he was away. Another day, another winning low-fuss and sweat-free dish.

Get the recipe: Herbed Tabbouleh Salad

We’ve reached the point in the season where I feel like I’m drowning in vegetables. There are bowls and bowls of tomatoes on the counter, bags of string and shell beans to be prepped for freezing, not to mention the crisper drawer filled nearly to bursting. In the end, I know this is a good problem to have – when I think I can’t look at another winter squash or head of deep green leafies in a few months, I’ll be glad that I stocked up on Summer veggies now and preserved them for later use.

I’ve been all about the peppers lately: tiny bird chiles and fiery serranos, thin-skinned frying peppers and multicolored bells, our kitchen has been full of them, and I’ve spent hours grilling, peeling, marinating and pickling. While I’m preserving them to extend their season, I can’t resist using some right now, like in this pepper and eggplant stew I served with seared striped bass filets.

I suppose the stew is part peperonata, part caponata, with chunks of eggplant, tomato, capers and Sherry vinegar joining my marinated grilled bell peppers, fresh hot peppers and pickled wax peppers. They were all sauteed in a base of olive oil, chopped shallot and garlic, and cooked just until the veggies were soft and juicy. I added a little chopped fresh parsley at the end, spooned it into bowls and served the fish filets on top. It was just the thing to take the chill off a cool late-Summer evening.

As you may have noticed, risotto is one of my go-to dishes for weeknight dinners. It is so easy to prepare, and provides such a wonderful backdrop for a wide variety of flavors, that you really can’t go wrong with it.

When planning our meals for the week, I decided that I wanted to do a vegetable risotto enriched with goat cheese. I thought about doing an asparagus risotto – a spin on the version Mark Bittman wrote up in the Times last week – but the asparagus we have had recently has been so fresh and tender, I am hesitant to do much more to it than lightly steam or sauté it, or toss it with a little salt and olive oil and roast it. I decided instead to go with red peppers, roasted until sweet and smoky. Ideally, I would have done them over a hardwood fire on the grill, but it was late by the time I got home, and it was a bit too breezy and cool outside, so I decided instead to just roast the peppers in the oven.

It’s an easy enough process – just section 4 peppers into two or three big pieces, removing the seeds and cores, place them on a foil-lined sheet pan, sprinkle with salt, drizzle with olive oil, and roast at 450 degrees for about 40 minutes. When the skins are blistered and charred, remove the peppers from the oven, place another sheet of foil on top of the sheet pan and seal up the edges. Allow them to sit in a cool place for 20 minutes or so, then peel off as much of the skin and charred bits as you wish (I like a bit of the skin left on mine; some people don’t, so really, it’s a matter of preference).

While the peppers cooled, I warmed up a quart of homemade chicken stock in a pan, and peeled and diced an onion. I melted two tablespoons of butter in two tablespoons of olive oil in a skillet and added the onions to the pan. I seasoned them with a bit of kosher salt and allowed the onions to soften.

I placed my roasted red peppers in a blender, added about a cup of the warm chicken stock, and pureed until smooth. I then poured the rest of the stock in, gave it another whir, and then poured the red pepper/stock mixture back into the pan so it would stay warm. I put about a cup of water in the blender carafe, swirled it around to get any red pepper puree that was clinging to the sides and added that to the red pepper/stock mixture as well.

I cooked the risotto as I usually do (using 1 1/2 cups of Carnaroli rice, 1/2 cup white vermouth, a splash of sherry vinegar, and the red pepper/stock mixture). With the last addition of liquid, I stirred in 4 oz. of soft fresh goat cheese in two batches, stirring well so the first batch melted and was incorporated before adding the second. I stirred through another tablespoon of butter off the heat, spooned the risotto into bowls, and topped each with a few shavings of aged goat cheese. I rounded out the meal with a salad of tender young spinach leaves Mike had picked up from Yuno’s at the Greenmarket.

This may have been one of the best risottos I have made – the flavors were extremely well balanced, with the sweet and smoky flavors of the red peppers and the tart and creamy flavors of the goat cheese all present. It’s definitely a keeper.

Wine Pairing: After a (too) long absence, I returned to Vine Wine on my way home from work yesterday to pick up a bottle to go with our meal. I was happy to see wine guru Troy there when I walked in, and after chatting for a few minutes, I asked him for his recommendations. He chose two Spanish wines, one of which we had had before, and another one we hadn’t, which I ended up going with.

The 2006 Ameztoi Txakolina is a really unusual wine from the Basque region, very bright and citrusy, and lightly fizzy. It had a nice sort of mineraly quality that would likely make it delicious with any sort of shellfish, but it was absolutely killer with this risotto. It’s one to remember for future meals.