Fresh Cherry Tomato Salsa

This year I've grown an abundance of cherry tomatoes, especially yellow ones, along with jalapenos and cilantro. I whipped up some amazing fresh salsa the other day using all of these plus some green onion and spices and served it with black bean tacos topped with sour cream. I could eat this every day!

Ingredients:

• 1 bunch of green onions, chopped finely
• 1-2 handfuls of cherry tomatoes (yellow and/or red), diced
• 2 jalapeno peppers, seeded and chopped
• 1-2 Tbsp cilantro, chopped
• 1/4 tsp cumin
• pinch of sugar
• pinch of salt and black pepper

Chop and mix everything together. Use the spices to taste and squeeze a bit of lime juice into it if you like. Great with tacos, chips, quesadillas, eggs, etc.

So I'm a Line Cook

Working in the food industry is apparently a thing I'm now doing. I've read about it, watched various movies about it, thought about it. Being someone who really appreciates a good, thoughtful, creative meal, I'm surprised at how little I've considered the people who make that food. I mean, I might have considered the chef who designed the dish and what they intended but never really gave the line cooks a second thought. And now I am one.

I'm admittedly a little shell-shocked. After just 2 days of training I'm already wondering if this is really for me. It sure is a lot of work for minimum wage. I've always thought that I was a fairly decent cook but at home I only have to live up to my own standards, and if it sucks we order take-out. Now I'm working to professional standards, making some things that I would not prepare for myself, and I'm being closely watched while I do it. I'm terrible with a knife. I was already the first person in the kitchen to slice myself (not badly, but enough to need the first aid kit.) I have some good ideas for the development of the menu, but the execution of the dishes is not always easy for me. This further solidifies the theory that I'm a designer by nature and not really an artist.

But I've been given a chance to learn a lot, about myself, about cooking/food and about running a business. I feel privileged to be a founding member of this brewpub because I have the opportunity to help shape it into what it will become known for (besides the beer, of course.) The more that I think about it I realize just how huge that is. So many people, in this town and outside of it, have been waiting a long time for the opening of this restaurant and might be expecting something spectacular. I hope we don't let them down. I really want to see this place become our town's craft beer mecca and I'm psyched to be a part of it. 

I just have to keep reminding myself of all of this when I start to get down about working my ass off for minimum wage. I'm re-reading Kitchen Confidential for some inspiration and commiseration. Bourdain knows how to cheer me up.

Tempeh Sloppy Joes

For whatever reason vegetarian sloppy joes sounded like a good idea today. I searched the internet for a recipe and there are probably thousands of them. I ended up trying this one (from Lazarocooks) and it was pretty good.

If I had to change anything I'd reduce the amount of tomato sauce and maybe add some lentils or some other beans. Since it was a little too saucy I added about 2 or 3 tablespoons of instant mashed potato flakes to thicken it up a bit. So here's what I ended up with:

Ingredients

8 oz. package tempeh, finely cubed/crumbled (I used this kind)

1 tbsp. olive oil

1/2 yellow onion, finely chopped

1 red bell pepper, finely chopped

15 oz. can tomato sauce

1 tbsp. chili powder

1/2 tsp. garlic powder

2 tbsp. Worcestershire sauce

1 tbsp. brown sugar

1 tsp. Sriracha

2-3 tbsp. potato flakes

salt and pepper to taste

Heat oil in a pan or wok on medium heat. Add onion and saute until transparent.

Add tempeh and red pepper and saute until browned a bit. 

Stir in chili powder, sriracha and garlic powder and saute a little longer.

Add in worcestershire sauce, brown sugar and tomato sauce.

Reduce heat and let simmer for 10 minutes. If it's still too saucy, stir in the potato flakes until thickened to your liking. 

Serve on kaiser buns. Makes at least 4 sandwiches.

Colcannon - Day 15

Tonight I tried out this vegan colcannon recipe to celebrate St. Patrick's Day. Except I un-vegan-ed it a bit. I used parmesan cheese and regular milk since I did not have the dairy-free varieties of them. If you love potatoes and kale, check out that link for the recipe since I followed it exactly. It was delicious!

Roasted Gobi Aloo - Day 14

Day 14 and we're not really missing the meat at all. We are also spending a lot less (veggies are often cheaper than meat and we're not eating out as much). Here's tonight's meatless meal inspired by this, but simplified by using a prepackaged sauce.

Ingredients

• 4 medium sized yukon gold potatoes, diced
• half a head of cauliflower, chopped into bite-sized pieces
• olive oil
• salt
• 1 pouch of simmer sauce (like Tasty Bite, we used Good Korma)
• sriracha
• 1 can chick peas, drained and rinsed

Preheat oven to 450
Toss potatoes and cauliflower with olive oil and salt. Spread out into a foil lined baking sheet and bake for 30 minutes or until golden brown on top.
Pour sauce into a big pan or wok and heat on low
When veggies are done, scrape them into the pan and add chick peas. Stir to coat evenly.
Add sriracha to your desired heat level. Add a splash of water if the sauce is too thick.
Simmer for about 5 minutes. Serve over rice.

Breakfast Burritos - Day 10

This morning Nick and I made some awesome vegetarian breakfast burritos. They went something like this:

Ingredients:

• 4 eggs
• 1/4 sweet onion, diced
• handful baby portobellos, diced
• half a red pepper, diced
• 1 cup-ish of frozen shredded potatoes
• garlic powder/salt/pepper/sriracha
• butter
• light olive oil
• shredded "taco" cheese
• burrito size flour tortillas
• 
  

We cooked the scrambled eggs first, in butter, and set them aside.

Then, heat some olive oil and spread the potato in a thin layer, sprinkle with spices, let it fry for a few minutes to get crispy. Flip them over and stir in the veggies.

Stir-fry it all together until the onion gets caramelized and everything is starting to get a little crispy. Stir in the sriracha.

Add the scrambled eggs to the pan and stir them in. Turn off the heat and sprinkle with cheese. Roll up into tortillas. Nom!

Tofu Satay - Day 6

Tonight we put together a quick veggie stir-fry inspired by this video:

Except I used the following:

• baby portobellos, chopped 
• sweet onion, diced
• yellow bell pepper, chopped
• 1 block of extra firm tofu, diced and shredded a bit
• Satay sauce
• Sriracha

Served over plain white Jasmine rice with a little fresh cilantro on top.

Sriracha Egg Salad - Day 5

Nick (newly obsessed with Sriracha) is making us Sriracha Egg Salad Sandwiches for lunch today. Looks delicious!

Mediterranean - Day 2

Tonight we went out for dinner at our local Mediterranean restaurant. They have the best falafel sandwiches but tonight we went for the mezza-style dinner (small plates or appetizers). Nick and I shared the following:
Baba Ganouj with pita
Spiced Green Beans in a tomato based sauce
Vegetarian Stuffed Grape Leaves
Feta Stuffed Dates w/ pomegranate syrup

It was super delicious and surprisingly filling. I think the grape leaves were my favorite. They are stuffed with a spicy mixture of rice and chick peas and served with a tangy yogurt sauce. I must learn how to make these!

Meatless March Day 1

To kick off Meatless March 2012 I'm making Curry Tempeh stir-fry for dinner tonight. I don't have an onion or mushrooms though so tonight's version will be garlic, asparagus, carrots and red pepper. I also don't have any prepackaged curry sauce so I'll be making some from scratch using curry powder and maybe some sriracha sauce.

I'll be serving it with jasmine rice and naan & hummus. Yum!

Meatless March

We've been wanting to try it for a while so Nick and I have committed to going vegetarian for the month of March. I've been "pinning" vegetarian recipes and I'll be posting some here to help us keep it interesting. If you're not already vegetarian/vegan, join us for the #MeatlessMarch challenge!

Gruyere Popovers

 I happened to pick up gruyere cheese recently simply because it's something I don't see often and had never tried it. It's a really nutty/bitter hard cheese and wasn't sure what to do with it. Then I came across this recipe over at Martha Stewart's website. I had recently acquired a popover tin and hadn't used it yet so I went for it and made these this morning. So good! And only 4 ingredients: flour, milk, eggs, cheese (well, and a pinch of salt).

I halved the recipe and only made 6 instead of 12. Served them cut in half with butter and jam.

Confetti Chili

Even when made with meat, I like my chili very veggie heavy. Here's my latest chili incarnation. Lots of veggies plus two kinds of beans makes this one look pretty colorful and festive.

Ingredients:

• 1 lb ground beef
• 1/2 onion, diced
• 2 stalks of celery, diced
• 1 large carrot, diced
• 1/2 bell pepper, diced
• 1 can chili ready beans
• 1 can black beans
• 1 can diced tomatoes w/ chilis
• about 16 oz. tomato sauce
• 1/2 cup frozen corn
• 1/2 cup frozen peas
• about 1.5 cups of water + 1 bouillon cube
• salt/pepper/chili powder/red pepper flakes to taste

Directions:

• Brown ground beef in a large stock pot or dutch oven. Add onion, celery and carrot and saute until onion is slightly softened.
• Add the rest of the ingredients and bring to a simmer. Spices should be added per your desired heat level.
• Cover and continue to simmer for about 20-30 minutes until all veggies are softened. The celery will take the longest so if those are soft, everything else should be finished.
• Serve with a dollop of sour cream and/or a bit of shredded cheese.

Meatloaf Muffins

Yea, not at all veggie but super easy and delicious. I wanted to write down this basic recipe so I'll remember it later.

Ingredients

• 1-1.5 lbs ground meat (beef, pork, turkey, etc. or a mixture)
• 1 box stovetop stuffing (any flavor)
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup water
• spices and/or sauces to taste

Directions

• Preheat oven to 350.
• Mix meat, stuffing, eggs and water together in a big bowl with a rubber spatula (I found this to be easiest). Add any spices you like though you don't need much because there's already a good amount in the stuffing mix. You can also add a bit of BBQ, steak sauce, Worcestershire sauce, gravy or whatever else sounds good to you.
• Spray a muffin tin with non-stick spray and fill each cup with the mixture. Top with additional sauce if desired.
• Bake for 35 minutes. Let cool for 10 minutes before removing from muffin tin.

Makes 12 meat muffins. These refrigerate and freeze well and are great for packing into lunches or for a quick dinner. They might also be good topped with cheese or mashed potatoes. I've thought about experimenting with a veggie version but I made veggie meatloaf before and it was terrible. I'm sure it can be done though. If you know of a good one I'd love to try it!

Veggie Thanksgiving

This year for Thanksgiving, I'm considering planning an all vegetarian spread for my husband and me. Sure, we'll most likely have a bit of turkey or ham at my parent's house but I'd like to see if I can put together an awesome meal at home without it. This post is the beginning of my collection of easy vegetarian/healthy holiday recipes. I hope to expand this through to Xmas as well.

• crockpot acorn squash (also gluten free)
• maple roasted Brussels sprouts
• parsnip ecrasse
• Ok pretty much all of these (check out the vegetarian section) I was going to pick out a few choice recipes but they are all worthy of bookmarking.
• roasted root veggies
• golden-crusted Brussels sprouts
• vegetarian Cornish pasty
• and maybe I'll work up my own Thanksgiving-style veggie pasties

Spinach Gouda Grilled Cheese

OK so grilled cheese does not need a recipe. I'm only posting this because it was a delicious idea that I want to remember later.

I used this Arnold Butter Split Top high fructose corn syrup-free bread
1 slice of Gouda cheese
1 small handful of fresh baby spinach
Smart Balance olive oil based "buttery spread"

I think you know what to do from here ;)

p.s. I've tried it with more cheese because I love cheese and more should be better, right? But surprisingly I find that it's too much. Restrain yourself, one slice is perfect!

Spicy Veggie Cold-Fighting Soup

I was home sick with a terrible cold this past weekend so I whipped up some soup using some of the leftover filling from last weeks Butternut Squash Pasties. It's a pretty rough recipe but it was delicious so I'll share anyway :)

Ingredients:

• about 2 cups diced fresh veggies (I used butternut squash, carrots and onion)
• 4 small diced potatoes
• 1/2 cup or so chopped cabbage
• 4 cups water
• 2 veggie bouillon cubes
• salt, pepper, red pepper flakes, rosemary, bay leaf, dried parsley (yea, I eyeballed all of this. I was apparently heavy-handed with the peppers)

Throw all of this into a crockpot and cook on high for 5 hours. I added half a can of white beans during the last 30 minutes to add some protein. Leave this out if you wish or maybe add rice or pasta instead. Adjust seasoning to taste.

Butternut Squash Pasties

ahem - Pronounced PASS-tee, has nothing to do with the burlesque adornment nor is it like glue.

The pasty is a traditional meat pie/sandwich (basically a homemade hot pocket) that originated in Cornwall, England. If you're interested in more history you can read about it here. It comes into my family by way of Escanaba, Michigan where immigrants from Cornwall and Finland settled and made them popular. My grandmother grew up there and, this past weekend, she was in town. She, my mom and I made some U.P. style pasties.



I then modified the recipe to suit my tiny kitchen. I am not really equipped to make pastry from scratch (and anyway, this blog is all about EASY) so I substituted crescent roll dough. The result was flaky and fluffy as you'd expect from a crescent. Yummy, but not ideal for hand-held consumption as a pie crust might be.

Here's the original filling recipe (from memory)
3 lbs potatoes, peeled and diced
2 cups diced carrot
2 cups diced rutabaga
2 cups diced onion
1 lb ground meat
salt and pepper
your own pie crust recipe

Mix all ingredients together. Dough should be rolled out to about 10 inch ovals and filled with the (raw) filling mixture. Fold dough over and pinch edges together. Bake at 350 for 1 hour. Makes at least 10 pasties. (actually, now that I think about it, we made 10 and still had half of the filling leftover. And we didn't use nearly 3 lbs of potatoes.)


My recipe (a work in progress)
4 smallish yukon gold potatoes, peeled and diced
1 carrot, peeled and diced
1/2 butternut squash, peeled and diced
1/4 sweet onion, diced
1/2 lb ground beef
salt and pepper
a bit of cinnamon, nutmeg and clove
2 rolls of crescent roll dough

Note: I precooked the filling because I knew the crescent roll dough would burn if in the oven for an hour.

Cook meat in a skillet. Drain off some of the fat if there is a lot. Add the remaining ingredients to the skillet and stir to combine. Let cook for just a couple minutes. Roll out dough so that you have 8 rectangles total (made up of 2 triangles each). Place about a half cup of the filling onto on corner of each rectangle, fold over the other side and pinch the edges together. Bake at 350 for 20-25 minutes.


My next experiment will be a vegetarian version and possibly a dessert version. Stay tuned for those recipes!

Red Lentil and Butternut Squash Curry Soup

I found this recipe at Martha Stewart's website (of all places) yesterday and I just happened to have everything I needed to make it at home already. So of course I had to try it out. I followed the recipe pretty closely except I did not make my own curry spice mix (I just used a store bought curry powder) and I added a bit of orzo pasta to bulk it up a bit. Delicious!

Ingredients:

• 2 Tbsp curry powder
• 2 tsp sea salt
• 1 tsp ginger powder
• 1 half a sweet onion, diced
• 2 Tbsp minced garlic
• 2 Tbsp butter
• 1 butternut squash, seeded, peeled, cubed
• 4-5 cups water + 1 bouillon cube
• 8 oz red lentils
• 1/4 cup of orzo pasta
• a dash of red pepper flakes for extra heat
• salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

• Melt butter at medium heat in a big pot or dutch oven and add salt and curry powder and stir for a minute.
• Add onion and garlic and saute until translucent. Stir in ginger powder.
• Add squash to pot, stir and let cook for about 5 min. until squash starts to soften.
• Add water and bouillon and heat to boiling. Reduce heat and let simmer for 10 min. (at this point I used my potato masher to mash some of the squash a bit.)
• Stir in lentils and orzo and simmer for 10 to 15 more min. until soft.
• Taste and add spices as desired.

Super Sunrise Juice

Here's another exceptional juice that we created. It's like eating a whole salad but with enough sweetness and tanginess to make it feel like you're just having a cocktail. It's super delicious and healthy as is but I can't say it wouldn't also be great with a splash of rum/tequila/vodka :)

Ingredients:

1 cucumber
1 head of romaine lettuce
1 whole bunch of celery
1 golden delicious apple
2 pears
2 limes
1/2 a small beet
4 large carrots

makes at least 4- 8oz. servings

OMG, a photo!