Wilted Red Mustard Greens with French Fingerling Potatoes and Seitan, Apulian Whole Wheat Tarallini

At Trader Joe's yesterday, I had found a large package of baby artichokes at a great price, and was planning tonight and one other night soon to prepare them. But after I was done gardening today, my wife had limited time before her Sanskrit class, so I had to get busy and put a decent meal on the table in about a half hour.

I have rarely cooked with mustard, but picked up some organic red mustard greens yesterday. I took a handful of organic French fingerling potatoes and put them in boiling water, simmering them for about 10 minutes till they were barely cooked.

When the potatoes were cool enough to work with, I split them in half lengthwise, and also halved widthwise a few longer potatoes. I set them, cut side down, into a pan to saute in olive oil that had been heated over medium heat. A few minutes later, I added a little bit of coarsely chopped onion (perhaps a fifth of an onion; I actually wanted to use garlic, but found that I'm out of it), maintaining the potato cut-side down. A minute or so later, I added about a quarter containter of seitan, also coarsely chopped, as well as large chunks of a poblano pepper. I stirred periodically, not flipping the potatoes, for a minute or two; once I saw that the potato bottoms were lightly browning, I flipped them and cooked for another 3-4 minutes, stirring occasionally.

In the meantime, with my hands, I stripped off the ribs of three leaves of mustard, washed and air dried the leaves, then ripped each leaf roughly into thirds. When the sauteeing step above was done, I added the leaves and a few pinches of salt, then loosely covered the pan and let the greens wilt and cook down a bit just for a minute and a half or two. I added a few pinches of dill weed and mixed everything one last time, then served.

As I described this past October, Tarallini are "rounded bread sticks from the southern part of Italy including Apulia in the southeast" and are tasty to eat as part of a meal or as a pretzel-like snack. I purchased the whole wheat variety and served it with tonight's meal; again, they were quite tasty, as were the ones with fennel seeds. It was a fast but good meal.