dinner – Wait…are those…cookies?!

November 11, 2012

007 and a blue plate special

A few weekendy things:

Sorry I’m not sorry… I love my Ducks!

And really… shaken, not stirred. I wonder if James Bond ever does normalish things like go out and buy bread? What if he really wanted ice cream or something? Wouldn’t there be some creep trying to pick him off on the way to the ice cream store? Does he ever go anywhere without a gun? The latest movie was freaking fantastic!! Such a lovely way to spend my Sunday—a date with Daniel Craig and some veggie burgers. Okay, sadly not really but I can pretend, right?! At least these veggie burgers were real:

It’s like a blue plate special.

And cookies! They were real too.

AND paleo. I’m rather proud of myself that I baked something with coconut flour that wasn’t totally nasty. I’m all for non-grain flours, but my first encounter with coconut flour ended up in the garbage. Literally. I NEVER throw away food unless it’s gone bad… BUT. These. Ugh. They defied description. Thankfully, I got things under control with a different recipe, and am now a convinced fan of coconut flour. (They can be found in the following post)

So. A wildly successful weekend on all fronts: James Bond, veggie burgers, and cookies. AND the Ducks won. #lovemyducks!

Sweet Potato-Quinoa Black Bean Burgers

I got 7 burgers out of this, and they made awesome leftovers. Recipe slightly modified from here! Especially tasty with a side salad and extra mustard… these have sweet potato, black beans, and quinoa, as well as lots of other delicious things. They’re also soy-free, which is a nice change from a lot of other veggie burgers.

4 small sweet potatoes (no really, mine were TINY)
1/2 c cooked quinoa
15 oz (1 can) black beans, rinsed and drained
1/2 c frozen corn, defrosted
1 leek, lightly sautéed
6 tbsp rolled oats
2 tbsp raw pepitas
pepper to taste
scant 1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp oregano
1 tbsp olive oil

Wash the sweet potatoes, pierce them a few times with a fork, and pop into the microwave on the baked potato setting (or whatever yours has). When finished, let them cool until you can cube them (skin and all), and then rustically mash them (leave some lumps). Clean the leek thoroughly, and dice up the white bit. Lightly sauté in a bit of olive oil; let cool.

Preheat the oven to 375, and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

In a separate bowl, mash the black beans (almost completely, again—leave some lumps). Stir in mashed sweet potatoes, cooked quinoa, corn, sautéed leek, rolled oats, pepitas, salt/pepper, cumin, oregano and olive oil. Stir to combine. Form into patties/sliders/whatever, and plop onto the prepared cookie sheet. Bake for 15 minutes total, flipping at the 7 minute mark. Top with mustard or whatever floats your boat! They’re delicious any way you slice it.

November 4, 2012

Squashlets, Kale, and Chèvre

I’m slightly behind in bloggingness. AGAIN.

But that’s okay, because I have some pretty freaking amazing stuff to share! Like…

SUPER SQUASH STRIKES AGAIN! Remember all that silly business with the epic mega tons of squash I ate last winter? Welllll, yeah. It’s back. Complete with kale, it’s trusty sidekick. Oh. And goat cheese. Because… REALLY?! You expect me to give you a savory dish without goat cheese??

Psshhh.

Let’s be real. Cheese is where it’s at.

I could probably eat goat cheese all day until the cows came home, and then I would look at the cows and say: “COWS! Why are you here?! I need GOATS for goat cheese, obviously” and then go back to eating my goat cheese. Forever.

This dish is easy and comes together quickly—the only longish part is all the prep work of wrestling the squash and chopping the kale (both of which can be done ahead of time to save on dinner prep when you’re starving). Squash and chèvre complement each other beautifully, and are perfect with kale. Besides all that, you get antioxidants galore from the squash and kale, as well as a ton of other health benefits. AND goat cheese is good for your soul, obviously.

Butternut Squash and Kale Skillet with Goat Cheese

Serves 3, with enough leftovers for 2 dinners and one small lunch. Recipe adapted from Fitness Magazine.

Do yourself a favor and be liberal with the goat cheese, you’ll thank me later!

one enormous butternut squash, peeled and diced into 1/2″ cubes
a good glug of olive oil
salt/pepper to taste
1 small onion, diced
1 clove of garlic
4.5 c kale, finely chopped
1 tsp freshly grated lemon zest
2 tsp fresh-squeezed lemon juice (From the lemon you just zested… you see what I did there?)
1/2 c low-sodium chicken broth
1/4 c dried apples, chopped and soaked in water for a few minutes to soften
chicken sausage, casing removed (optional: mine was smoked apple chardonnay)
small log of goat cheese, crumbled

In a LARGE (no, really. LARGE) skillet, heat olive oil over medium high heat. Add squash, onion, and garlic, and cook, stirring constantly, until squash is lightly browned and tender: about 7 minutes. Add kale, lemon zest and juice, and salt/pepper to taste. If using sausage, add now. Cook until kale is wilted and squash is fork tender, about 5-7 minutes more. Add in chicken broth and and apples, and simmer for a few minutes before serving, so everything is heated through. Serve immediately, and top with goat cheese! (liberally, of course)

October 22, 2012

Lightning-fast mooching abilities and other skills

Mmm. Kebabs.

Why is it way more fun to eat things on sticks? Is it some kind of childish relapse I’m having? I doubt it, considering I hated (no wait, loathed is waaay more accurate) corndogs as a child. Which is like the quintessential kid-food-on-a-stick. Gross. I STILL think they’re gross. Probably even more now than I did. Anywayyy. There’s something about eating chicken on a skewer which makes it waaay more fun than just eating chicken. Boooring.

Besides, then when you’re finished, you can poke your dinner partners with your skewers. Muahahhaa.

Not that I would ever do such a thing…

You know what that makes me think of?! The Mooch Fork!!! I WANT one of these: they’re basically a telescoping fork that can be used for swiping choice bits of food off of your unsuspecting dinner companion’s plates!! What a genius idea. They take poaching to an entire new level. No longer will I have to do one of these: “WAIT! Ohmygosh there’s a METEOR outside, look look look!!” *semi-spastically points out the window while simultaneously gesticulating wildly and sneakily swiping bread or whatever while no one is looking*. Oh no. With a mooch fork, I could just telescope away. No one would able to stop my lightning speed mooching. It might also be useful in the grocery store around the holidays—perhaps to fend off those crazies who try to steal the last can of pumpkin (long range poking might come in handy, you never know…). Does anyone know where to get one of these?! Because I want one, pleaseandthankyou.

Anyway. Food on a stick.

These kebabs are deceptively simple. All they really require is a bit of advance planning and some time. But they make a fab change from everyday chicken…AND you get to play with your food! Winning all around.

Caribbean Chicken Skewers

My family usually makes 6 skewers, so 2 per person. We use wooden skewers that we soak for at least an hour beforehand (to prevent them from burning), with 4 sticks per person (if you use two sticks per kebab, the meat can be flipped evenly on the grill without sliding around…does that make sense?!). I’ll include the amount of food we use for 3 people, so adjust according to your needs.

The marinade recipe is from The Cooks Illustrated Guide to Grilling and BBQ, and is delicious. It makes more than we need, so we’ll usually save some.

Whatcha need:

enough skewers to feed your peeps
2 large or 3 smallish chicken breasts, defrosted and cut into chunks
2 large bell peppers (I used one red and one purple), cut into chunks
1 onion, sliced into skewer-able pieces
2 apples, cut into chunks
mushrooms, halved
zucchini is good too, if you have it!

Marinade:

1/2 c good quality extra virgin olive oil
1 garlic clove
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp chili powder
3/4 tsp ground allspice
1/2 tsp pepper
1/4 tsp cinnamon

Whisk all ingredients together in a small bowl.

About an hour before, soak the skewers in water.

Heat the grill to about 500 (ish), enough to get a sear on the meat.

Defrost the chicken, and cut into smallish cubes. Let it sit in the marinade for at least a half an hour, preferably an hour for the best flavor (although that never happens around here). While meat is marinating, cut up veggies so you’re all ready for blastoff…

Once meat has sat for a bit, thread the meat and veggies onto the skewers, alternating so they look pretty! Use two skewers, as I said before, so that you can rotate the meat on the grill without it just spinning on the skewer. Grill for 2 minutes per side, uncovered, rotating the kebabs a quarter turn every 2 minutes, until meat is fully cooked and meat/veggies/fruit are lightly browned (about 8 minutes total for white meat). Remove when there is no pink at the center and the meat is opaque. Serve immediately! I like mine with a sweet potato and mo’ veggies on the side :)

September 16, 2012October 29, 2012

Ice cream the size of my face and other musings…

Today, I ate an ice cream the size of my FACE. No. Really. It was. Don’t believe me?

Yep, now you do.

In all fairness, I did share with Vaccuum Vati. Thank heavens. It was enormous.

And then I took a nap. Seriously. I have never in all my life gone into that serious of a food coma… but I actually napped when I got home! With my kitty, love love love! And then… I did kitty yoga and went to the gym. A lovely day all around, I must say.

You see, I’ve been going to Fenton’s ever since I was a child, with my gram. So it brings back all kinds of nice memories, besides giving me the ability to stuff my face with deliciousness. As a kid, I used to search the menu for the least painful, smallest lunch option possible, so I could go speedily onto dessert… and I realized today that I apparently still do that. Ice cream is infinitely superior to lunch. Duh. Everyone knows that.

Anyway. Getting back to the point of this blog, which is, after all, recipezzz… I made chickpea cakes! I’ve made them before and they’re fab… but was too lazy at the time to blog about them. Sooo you get them now! Do a happy dance, they’re amazing. They sort of taste like hummus in cake form. Winner winner, hummus dinner…

Chickpea Cakes with Yogurt Drizzle

The recipe is ever so slightly adapted from Naturally Ella, here. These are delicious. Hummusyyy and with a nice texture. The yogurt drizzle gives them just the right amount of sauciness… and they’re particularly good with cucumber. I doubled the recipe to serve 3.

Chickpea Cakes

2 c cooked chickpeas (I used canned)
2 tbsp tahini
sprinkle of garlic powder (I was out of for reals garlic, if you have it, use about one clove)
2 tbsp Braggs Liquid Aminos (or soy sauce, whatever you prefer)
1/2 c parmesan
4 tbsp whole wheat pastry flour
2 eggs
salt/pepper to taste
glug of olive oil

Yogurt Sauce

a few spoonfuls of plain yogurt of choice (mine was lowfat, not greek)
drizzle of olive oil
salt, pepper to taste

perfect antidote to ridiculous amounts of ice cream.

Muscle your food processor out of it’s hiding place/lair in the cupboard. Set up the whole shebang. Toss in chickpeas, tahini, Braggs, garlic powder (or normal garlic), and parmesan, and pulse until the mixture comes together and is a bit crumbly. Add in flour and eggs, and salt and pepper, and pulse to combine. Add a teeny bit more flour if it seems a little too thin—it should be like sticky batter consistency.

Heat olive oil in a nonstickish pan over medium heat. Once pan is hot, drop large spoonfuls of the batter into the pan. Let cook until you can easily flip them and the bottoms are done, then flip and cook until both sides are nicely browned, about 5ish minutes.

To make yogurt sauce, vigorously stir all ingredients together in a small bowl. Seriously. It’s that easy.

Stack prettily… drizzle… eat… repeat.

December 7, 2011

Close encounters of the Leek-kind

I think Salem might finally be getting out of its RIDICULOUSLY cold weather funk, hooray! I’ve scraped ice off my car before class for the last three days, but it’s lookin’ like a squeegee (that is such a great word) might suffice today. Thankfully. I mean, as much as I like treating ice scraping as a bonus early-morning workout, I’d really rather pass, thanks. Because ice in the uggs is no fun. And because when I’m trying to listen to the radio on my way to class and the antenna is trapped in its little frozen antenna house, due to sub-artic conditions of 29 degrees, I am not a very happy camper. Although it did make me giggle, I have to say, when I heard this weird noise and turned around to see the antenna trying to fight its way up to the light and majorly struggling. We got there in the end, thankfully… Toots and I ventured out into the freezing fog, and my heater kicked in just as I was pulling into the parking lot at school. Psh. Fail.

Whatever. All this cold weather makes me want to stay inside and cook tasty things (not like I really need an excuse for this, do I?! I think I cook more than I do homework) (But a girl has to eat, RIGHT?! At least I’m doing something productive). When Kira and I were at Trader Joe’s on Sunday, we encountered LEEKS! Which is awesome. Leek is such a funny name for a veggie. I just like the way the word looks, leek leek leek leeeeeek! It’s just fun. Call me crazy, but whatever. Besides, they’re really a hilariously awkward looking veggie. I’ve never dealt with a leek up close and personal, but I’ve eaten them in soup. Which is delicious. But since we had soup at the end of last week, I wasn’t feeling super soupy… AND there was an abundance of quinoa lurking in the cabinet, clamoring to be eaten.

So now, I can cross dealing with leeks off my to-do list (because you know it was on there, right?!)… thanks to these quinoa-leek cakes! Kira and I had them with salad for din din last night, and they were leekily delicious.

Quinoa Cakes with Leeks and Corn

Loosely adapted from Annie’s Eats, kind of. Makes 13 small cakes, about 3″ in diameter. Or you could make enormous patties…

Procure:

1 cup quinoa, rinsed and cooked
1 leek! Cleaned, with the green bit removed
2 eggs
1/3 c grated Parmesan, plus more for sprinkling
1 slice whole wheat bread, made into crumbs
Frozen corn (or fresh, if you’re lucky)
1/4 tsp salt
1 garlic hunk (equal to one clove, I use the frozen ones from TJ’s, because they’re mess free and awesome)
pepper to taste

To start… Cook the quinoa! Combine 1 cup of quinoa and and 2 cups of water, bring to a boil and then simmer for 15-20 minutes, until the water is absorbed. Fluff with a fork and set aside to cool.

In the meantime, clean the leeks! Cut off the root end and the really green bits (those are bitter and woody, you don’t want them), and then slice and dice the leeks into little bitty pieces. Put them in a bowl full of water and swish them around, to get all the grime out (this is also why you buy organic!), then drain them through a collander. Kira and I sauteed them in a bit of olive oil, and the garlic clove. Set aside until cool.

When quinoa and leeks are cool: In a large bowl, combine quinoa, leeks, eggs (lightly beaten), parmesan, corn, salt, pepper, and the crumbled slice of whole wheat bread. Form into patties, and cook until they are browned and hold together, about 5 minutes. Serve sprinkled with extra parmesan, and with a side salad :)

***Note: We both found these to be a bit on the bland side. Next time I make them (and believe me, there WILL be a next time, they were super tasty), I think I might experiment with adding some spice of some sort, like cumin (pairs well with parmesan), or something of that sort. At least more salt needs to happen, but I also think they could use a bit more flavor. We also did half our batch with corn, and loved it—next time corn is going in the whole shebang. Kira and I were also postulating that the addition of chicken sausage would be good—it would provide the saltiness/flavor that these lacked.

this is what happens when you're hungry and your food is hot. steamy lens!

September 13, 2011September 18, 2011

Omgea-3s, for the Win!

Hoooooray for (Alaskan, wild caught) salmon! Effectively exploding with essential omega-3 fatty acids (which not only make your skin gorgeous, but also contribute to vital body processes like your clotting time) and polyunsaturated fatty acids (which are good for you, period). I LOVE salmon! Not just because it’s good for me, but because it’s super tasty!

I was admittedly a bit freaked out about cooking fish for the first time… I mean, not exactly the first time, but the first time ALONE. This is a BIG DEAL. Because there are no helpful parental types lurking around who you can pester to see if your fish has achieved the correct doneness. No. Instead you must rely on the power of your own fork-wielding hands and superb optical powers of visionary greatness (ok, 20/15 fighter pilot vision, you have to be good for something!) to determine if your fish is done. Happily, I apparently passed this test, as I’m a) sitting here typing this, and b) my fish passed the flake-test, and was super fab. Hooray!

Which was good. Because after spending 3.5 HOURS on the phone with various types of tech support, attempting to ascertain the problems arising from my computer/internet, I was about ready to either get really violent and start throwing things, or start climbing the walls. Or possibly both.

Which means it was a good thing that my dinner cooperated as planned, or we might have had a full-scale meltdown/wall-climbing/throwing-thing fit. Which is never good. Happily, all tech-type things are hopefully resolved (or at least they seem to be, thank goodness), and I didn’t have to throw anything. And my salmon was good.

I got the idea for this recipe from the bestie Julia, but I didn’t follow her recipe exactly. Instead I looked up one specifically for salmon, and used that. I think I’d make a few modifications if I did it again—I’ll try to note them below.

Salmon en Papillote (serves 1) Adapted from here

enough salmon to feed you!
assorted veggies (I used a smallish red bell pepper and 3 large mushrooms)
lemon slices
fresh herbs, to taste
salt, pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 450ºF.

Rinse your defrosted salmon with water and pat dry. Place each salmon fillet in the center of a largeish piece of parchment paper (or foil is fine. I used foil, I have no parchment paper at the moment!) and season with salt and pepper. Lay a few slices of lemon over the top of the salmon (I think I used 3).

Arrange sliced bell pepper and button mushrooms around the fish. Top it all with olive oil and 2 tbsp white wine if you have it (if not, water works just as well). The recipe calls for fresh thyme–If you like it, use it, but I’m not a huge fan, so I used fresh basil, which was also good.

Roll and crimp the edges of the foil or parchment to make a sealed packet, and place on a cookie sheet in the heated oven. Bake for about 15 minutes, until your fishy flakes apart or you deem it done. Careful when opening the packets, since the steam is really hot.

I chased mine with some crazy chocolate cake (made with all applesauce, see recipe here!), which of course made the indignity of the last 3.5 hours seem a bit less offensive. And Voyager, which of course makes everything better.

“Dismissed. *pause* That’s a Starfleet expression that means GET OUT.” -Captain Kathryn Janeway to a very buggy Nelix