Vegetarian BBQ dinner

While we're still waiting around for the arrival of our little one, I decided to grill up a dinner for us this evening. The CSA is in abundance at the moment, so I'm trying to prepare food that uses the vegetables we get to the maximum! Tonight was no exception, the corn, radicchio, onions, potatoes, and dill all came from the share!

On to our menu:

• Grilled Corn - As per my usual, I like to grill the corn in their husk, so it more or less steams inside. As usual it turned out great, if I do say so myself. I had pinned a recipe for Siracha Street corn recently and thought, now was as good of a time as any to try it out. It turns out I'm not really a fan. While I really like spicy and Siracha sauce, I'm more of a sweet corn purist - I like to taste the flavor of the corn.
• Grilled Radicchio - I'm never quite sure what to do with radicchio, but I had seen several recipes for the grilled variety in past internet searches, so I thought I would try it tonight. The only thing I left out from the recipe was the orange peel, as I didn't have any; also I used Parmesan cheese instead of Romano. I didn't really miss the orange, though I probably could have grilled/cooked the quarters a bit longer. Overall I thought all the flavors were excellent - the radicchio was a little bitter, which was cut by the spicy balsamic marinade.
• Baked beans - well these came out of a can and were prepared on the stove, but I thought they went well with everything, and Ebon likes them :)
• Veggie Italian sausages and grilled onions - I like the Tofurkey brand and the onions were sprayed with olive oil and cooked on top of a foil sheet on the grill - Yum for carmelization.
• Potato Salad - I didn't really have a recipe, I just kind of threw some things together. I boiled some new potatoes - either cut in half or whole depending on their size. When they were tender, I stopped cooking, drained and let them cool for about 20 min (this is where I was doing the preparations of other things above). When they were cool, I cut them into bite-sized chunks. The dressing was a dip that I prepared a few days earlier - 

~1 cup plain lowfat yogurt
~2 tablespoons fresh dill
~1 teaspoon salt
~1/2 teaspoon pepper
~1-2 tablespoons of olive oil
couple pinches of sugar
I mixed the dressing portion together and poured over the potato chunks and mixed everything to coat.

This was a very filling meal, and it would have been much better to have more than just two people to help eat this one!

Spicy Kohlrabi Stew with Tomatoes

I've had some kohlrabi from our CSA share sitting in my fridge for too long. So long in fact that some of it went bad, but I needed to use up the good parts, so I surfed the interwebs for recipes. I didn't really find anything too good until I came across this recipe. There wasn't a picture that I could pin to my YUM Pintrest Board, so I decided to find the cookbook at the library. I requested it and a few days later I had Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian: More Than 650 Meatless Recipes from Around the World in my hands.  It took me another few days before I actually looked at the cookbook, but it is very thorough in terms of vegetables, grains, dairy, etc. Pretty much anything vegetarian that you want to cook, you will probably be able to find it.  I might just have to buy this cookbook to have in my arsenal.

Getting to the actual food... Although I had most of the ingredients for the original recipe I found, I opted to make the Spicy Kohlrabi Stew with Tomatoes.

2 pounds kohlrabi heads cut in ~1/4" dice
2 tablespoons oil
1/2 teaspoon whole cumin seeds
generous pinch of ground asafetida (I didn't have this and opted for garlic powder instead)
1-4 dried hot red chilies - to desired heat (again I opted for ~1/2 teaspoon crushed red chilies/peppers)
5 medium tomatoes peels and finely chopped
1/4 teaspoon ground turmeric
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon sugar (if the tomatoes are sour)
Put the oil in a medium pan and set over med-high heat. When hot, put in the cumin seeds. A second later, put in the asafetida and the red chilies. Stir briefly until the chilies turn dark, a matter of seconds. Now put in the kohlrabi. Stir once or twice and quickly put in the tomatoes, turmeric, 3/4 cup water, salt, and sugar. Stir and bring to a boil. Cover, turn the heat down to low, and simmer very gently for 30-35 min, or until the kohlrabi is tender.

I also cooked up some brown lentils to which I added, ground cumin, coriander, salt, and pepper. This was all served with rice.

I thought this turned out well. Some of the kohlrabi just didn't cook right because it was so big/tough, but the flavors turned out pretty good and the heat was just right. The tomatoes came from my garden and from the CSA share - another reason to use this recipe!
Ebon seemed to like it well enough, so I would make this again if I had an abundance of kohlrabi and tomatoes.  Now go buy that cookbook!

Pea, Carrot, Red pepper, and Tofu stir fry

This was from about a month ago...

We took our annual early-summer trip to Red Fire Farm to pick strawberries over the weekend. We were also able to pick peas and herbs, so peas played into dinner on Sunday. I had some sauce from a previous dinner still in the fridge that I thought would be tasty in a stir fry. So fry up the tofu, I did - golden on each side of the roughly 1" cubes. I had several veggies on hand - 2 carrots, sliced, one red pepper, and a large handful of snow peas - freshly picked! I removed the tofu from the pan and briefly stir fried the veggies in some sesame oil. When the veggies were almost done, I added the tofu back into the pan and poured in the
Nuoc Cham. I covered and simmered for a couple minutes to get the sauce to soak up into the tofu, then took the cover off to reduce the sauce which was a little watery.
It was really filling up with rice and I thought the combination of the sesame oil stir-fried veggies and the sauce was a good flavor combination.
The peas were awesome! I love snow peas, and they taste soooo much better when they have just been picked.

Double Whammy

I got our entire CSA share because our share partners are out of town this week. I have to figure out how to use up A LOT of veggies this week. Fennel was in the share, as were potatoes. Ebon suggested a potato gratin. So I googled potatoes and fennel and got this: Potato Fennel Gratin
The only substitution I made was plain low-fat yogurt for the half-and-half.
I thought the flavors turned out excellent. However, Ebon was not a fan of the fennel at all and he thought there should have been more cheese (I thought it was quite cheesy enough). I must admit the fennel was a bit on the crisp side, so if I tried to make this again, I'd probably saute or roast the fennel, so it would have a bit more flavor and a softer texture. Unfortunately, I won't be trying this again...

I needed something else to go with the gratin, and one of other the recipes I pulled up said "serve this with a bowl of minnestrone or black bean soup..." so I went with the Black Bean Soup.
I didn't have bell pepper, so I used some carrots I pulled up from my garden earlier this week.  I also added 1/2 a jalapeno to give it a bit of a kick, though I couldn't really taste it, so I added the other half to the leftovers that I froze for later. I thought it turned out pretty good. I did have to add a bit more salt and pepper at the end, and it could have maybe used another herb of some sort, but I didn't know what to add and ended up nixing the idea. Again, Ebon ate this, but probably did it out of pity.

Next up - some sort of recipes to use up the fennel fronds and the radicchio. I did find something for fennel pesto - interesting...

Caprese Melted Sandwich

It's been hot here lately and I have not wanted to turn on the oven to do any sort of cooking or baking. So all of my dinner ideas this week have involved the smaller toaster oven, frying pan or broiler. Earlier this week I reheated lasagna I made over the weekend. We had quesadillas (black bean with salsa and cheese, though I should have added some corn from the freezer) on Tuesday and last night after I picked up our CSA veggies and got a haircut, I made an open-faced melted Caprese sandwich. I thought it turned out great.
Ebon bought a baguette that we needed to use up before it got too hard to chew, so I went to the garden and picked some basil for the pesto. I also picked up a roma tomato and some fresh mozzarella from the store.
I made the pesto with garlic scapes (about 4) that I cut from the garlic growing in the garden, the basil - probably about 1/4 cup packed not exactly sure about the amount, and some olive oil. I put it all in the blender, once it was all smooth I added about a 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese and a few grinds of fresh black pepper.
I cut about 2/3 or 3/4 of the baguette in half length-wise and spread the pesto onto each half. Then I sliced the tomato very thinly and put that on top of the pesto. Then I sliced the fresh mozzarella balls as thin as I could, which ended up about 1/4" thick and added it on top of the tomatoes.
I stuck it under a medium broiler for about 5-10 min, enough to heat up all the ingredients and start melting the cheese a bit.

Lovely low-heat (relatively) dinner!

Cream Cheese Brownies aka Zebra Brownies

I made Cream Cheese Brownies for the first time over the weekend. I have always known them as "Zebra" Brownies, which I think is more fun name. A friend asked me to bake something for their dessert table at their wedding. I had every intention of making a practice run of brownies before the actual date, but I had so many things going on last week I was never able to get to it.
I ended up making a double recipe and baked them in a 9x13 baking dish. I was worried they wouldn't finish baking in time for us to leave to actually make it to the wedding, so I turned up the temperature about 10 degrees. Other than that, I followed the recipe to the letter. I thought they turned out pretty good, though Ebon thought they were a little dry - probably due to the increased temperature. I also could have done a better job of spreading out the middle cream cheese layer, there were some spots that had large clumps and others that didn't have much. I would love to try these out again with a single batch and smaller pan.

Sesame-Crusted Tofu with Nuoc Cham

I made Sesame-Crusted Tofu with Nuoc Cham for dinner a couple nights ago. To accompany it, we also had rice and a salad from the first CSA distribution this year! I thought it went together pretty easily, though I didn't have fish sauce, so I substituted soy sauce, water, and some miso.
I probably could have left the tofu in the frying pan a little longer to give it nicer crust, but I thought it was great. The sesame seeds gave a nice texture to the tofu. Since I've never had authentic Nuoc Cham, I thought my sauce was pretty good, though it could probably have been a little spicier (I also didn't use red Thai chilies) and maybe a little less sweet. I would make this recipe again, as it is pretty easy to throw together. There is a bit of waste with the sesame and breadcrumbs and egg, but maybe I'll cut the tofu different or just make more the next time.
Enjoy!

For Later

I have to check this out:
http://eatclosetohome.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/vegetarian-meals-for-a-month.pdf

Curried Cauliflower and Chickpea Stew

For dinner tonight, we're trying something new. I was browsing Pintrest or the food blogs I follow and found an interesting recipe using cauliflower, so I picked some up at the store.  Unfortunately, I couldn't remember what recipe I got it for and I couldn't seem to find it, so I searched for a new cauliflower recipe.  I found this: Curried Cauliflower and Chickpea Stew. I had all the ingredients and it looked easy enough.

I started some brown rice in our new fancy rice cooker since it takes more than an hour for it to cook, then I started on the recipe.

My variations - I used a curry powder I had on hand (about 2-3 tablespoons) and I added some additional spices - cumin, mustard seed, coriander, and tumeric. I used 4 roma tomatoes and 1/2 a can of green chilies instead of the canned tomatoes. I didn't have any cilantro, and I love cilantro, so that was lacking slightly. I also added salt, I can't believe that salt isn't in the recipe.

I thought it turned out pretty well. The flavors were a bit muted when combined with rice, so maybe some more spices were in order. I did like the combination of the cauliflower and chickpeas, though. Ebon didn't like it - I didn't know he didn't like chickpeas in dishes, so I probably won't be making it again. Oh well.

Chocolate Chia Pudding

It was a busy/relaxing Memorial Day weekend around here. I kept busy sewing since the weather outside was cold and damp. I took a break from my quilts to make a recipe I pinned recently - Chocolate Chia Seed Pudding. Since I've been pregnant, I've done my best at trying to avoid processed sugar and sweets in general, so this was one of the "sugar-free" desserts that I found.It went together very easily. I used 2 teaspoons of honey as the sweetener.
It turned out OK. I wouldn't make it again. The mouthfeel was a bit strange with the little, bloated chia seeds and I think I didn't use enough cocoa or honey. It didn't taste sweet enough or chocolatey enough.

Crisp Polenta Cakes with Braised Cabbage and Beans

Well, I'm at it again. After several weeks of apathy for cooking, which I'm sure may only get worse, I attempted this recipe last night: Crisp Polenta Cakes with Braised Cabbage and Beans. Mine definitely did not turn out like the picture!
The flavors were wonderful. The cabbage was a bit like sauerkraut, but not so pungent. The sauce, with the beer and mustard, was a good mix and complemented the cabbage perfectly, and who doesn't like fried cornmeal with cheese!
The thing I had the hardest time with was the process of frying the polenta. It was probably my pan or maybe I wasn't using "leftover" polenta, but I did not have the lovely little patties that are pictured in the blog post. After a little while and a couple failed attempts, I had better luck, but it was mostly clumps of polenta that were mostly fried, but some that weren't.
My variations:
I was thinking of some other recipe and I used 3 green onions instead - whoops.
I didn't have any apple cider vinegar, so I used red wine vinegar instead. I used honey instead of sugar. I made the polenta (recipe from my favorite cookbook below) a couple hours before, put it in a pan and cooled it in the refrigerator. I used a brown ale that a friend and I brewed - delicious, if only I could drink what was left in the bottle! I skipped the caraway seeds since I didn't have any - I didn't miss them. I threw the beans (I used garbanzos since that was what I had on hand) into the sauce while it was reducing.

Polenta:
2 cups water
2 cups milk
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon salt
1-1/4 cups cornmeal
2 tablespoons butter
1/4 cup Parmesan cheese
Bring the water, milk, nutmeg and salt in a heavy saucepan to a slow boil. Turn the heat down (simmer). Slowly add the cornmeal, whisk constantly. Cook until the consistency is like mashed potatoes and it begins to pull away from the side of the pan, about 5 minutes. Remove from the heat, add the butter and cheese and mix in. Spread in dish or on a greased board to cool - size will depend on how thick you want the polenta. A 9x13 baking dish will give you about a 1/2" thick cake.

I was pleasantly surprised at the results (flavor-wise), and Ebon even went back for seconds. However I probably won't make this recipe again due to the amount of work required. Maybe I'll find a way to use pieces of it in different recipes.

Baked Mashed Potato and Vegetable Omelet

I made this for dinner tonight!
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Baked-Mashed-Potato-and-Vegetable-Omelet-10257

When I got home I was super tired and didn't feel like cooking, but I also wasn't in the mood for leftovers in the fridge (Chinese food).
I make fritattas fairly frequently, but I wasn't in the mood for full-on fried potatoes. After some searching on my favorite recipe site, Epicurious.com, I found a few options and  the Baked Mashed Potato and Vegetable Omelet won out.

The veggies I used were onions, garlic, about 1/4 of a red pepper, half of a zuchinni, and 4-5 white mushrooms chopped up. I made the mashed potatoes with the last of our bulk potatoes from Red Fire Farm, butter and Greek yogurt that was way to sour to eat on its own (it wasn't spoiled, but a new brand I had never tried - it was a fail). I also added a little cheddar cheese - Ebon's favorite. I used rosemary instead of parsley because it was what was on hand and our rosemary plant needed a trim.

The flavors turned out great, but the texture was all wrong. It was just a little too mushy. Maybe if I used a bigger pan and allowed the omelet to get a little crispier, it would have been better. I won't make it again.

Cannellini and Kale Ragoût

I made this tonight:
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Cannellini-and-Kale-Ragout-109247

Ebon was pleasantly surprised that he didn't hate it- his words, but he still ate pizza for his "real" dinner.

I thought it was pretty good. I'm trying to get more leafy greens and protein in my diet, and this hit the spot - I shredded a bit of Parmesan cheese on top for a little added saltiness/cheesiness.

Chilaquiles

Again, my favorite cookbook, Quick Vegetarian Pleasures to the rescue for our Sunday night meal.


Chilaquiles, as far as I understand from the cookbook and what I've had in restaurants they are kind of like a Mexican Lasagna or casserole. Also, typically they are made using up on-hand ingredients before they go bad. That's what I did when I made them on Sunday.
I'm in the process of trying to clear out stuff that has been in our freezer for quite some time - the pumpkin from the Pumpkin Mac and Cheese was from the fall and just needed to get used. In the chilaquiles, I used up some hot peppers, beans, corn tortillas, 1/2 package of Trader Joe's Soy Chorizo and some fresh tomatoes that I got on reduced sale that were destined for the freezer or needed to be used immediately.

Olive oil
2 onions, finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic, diced
the recipe calls for a large can of diced tomatoes, but I used the reduced-sale Roma tomatoes, probably about 2 lbs worth or so
2 cups of cooked beans, I used black beans and white kidney beans, the recipe calls for a 15oz can of kidney beans
1/2 green pepper, finely chopped
1-2 hot peppers, again the recipe calls for canned diced green chilies
1/2 package of Trader Joe's Soy Chorizo (not in the original recipe)
12 corn tortillas
~2 cups or 8oz of shredded cheese, the recipe calls for Monterrey jack, but I used cheddar
1 cup of sour cream

In a hot large skillet over medium heat, add ~2 tablespoons of oil and fry the onions and garlic until soft, ~5-10 min. Then add the tomatoes, peppers and chorizo. Simmer until thickened.

In a 9" x 13" pan spread about 1/3 of the sauce on the bottom of the pan, top with 1/2 the tortillas, 1/2 the sour cream, 1/2 of the cheese, and the second 1/3 of sauce. Top that with the remaining tortillas, sour cream, sauce and finish with the rest of the cheese.
Bake at 350degF for 30-40 minutes or until hot and bubbly.

I'm not sure if it was the chorizo or the hot peppers, but it came out slightly spicy, but very good.

In Absenstia

I've been away a while, but I've still been cooking. I don't mind writing, but things would be so much better with pictures, and the pictures just take too much time to remember to take them, take them, upload them to the computer then upload them to Google Picasa. I'm sure there's a better easier way - probably if I had a smart phone, but I'm not planning to get a smart phone. I'll just opt out of pictures at the moment unless I think I made something exceptionally pretty, which is not usually the case.

A couple weeks ago I started, in earnest, trying to come up with a menu of 4-5 items for the week. Here was the proposal for the week of February 18th:
Baked Potato Soup
Bok Choy with mushrooms and noodles
Zucchini Enchaladas
Pasta with Broccoli

It took more than a week to get through all of those, including leftovers and take-out/pizza, etc. However, I enjoyed not having to think too hard and also shopping ahead of time to prepare.

This week, I opted for:
Chilaquiles w/veggies and chorizo
Falafel
Tofu with veggies stir fry
Japchae
Seitan steaks with Mashed potatoes, gravy and veggies (peas/corn)

So far, we've had the chilaquiles and the Japchae. When I grocery shopped for this week, I hadn't gotten everything because I was worried some things might go bad (veggies for stir fry, etc), so I'll be off to the store tonight to get the remaining ingredients. I think we'll have the falafel tonight :)

Pumpkin Mac and Cheese

Last night, I didn't feel like cooking much, and the items I planned last week, I hadn't fully shopped for. So we were lacking a few ingredients.  So I did what I often do - use what's on hand.

~2 cups of uncooked pasta, I had about 1 cup of shells and 1 cup of spiral pasta, like this. Both worked well to hold onto the heavy sauce.

enough water to cook the pasta.

After the pasta has cooked to al dente, drain the water.

Add ~2 tablespoons of butter
1/3 cup of milk
12 oz of Velveeta cheese in 1/2" cubes
~2 oz cheddar cheese in 1/4" cubes
cook on low or medium low heat while the cheese melts
Add in 2 cups of pureed pumpkin
pepper to taste
~1/2 teaspoon marjoram
~1/2 teaspoon thyme

This came together pretty fast, and ended up tasting pretty good. The pumpkin and Velveeta together turned out to be very creamy.

Stuffed Peppers

I went to the grocery store today in search of fresh fruits and veggies. I walked away with 4 peppers that were on the "quick sale" rack. While driving home, I realized I could make a stuffed pepper for dinner.

two servings of rice ~3-4cups cooked?
1 cup black beans
1 cup corn (I used frozen)
1/2 of 28 oz can of chopped tomatoes
~2 teaspoons oregano
1/2 teaspoon salt (I probably could have put more in)
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper
1 teaspoon garlic powder (propbably could have used fresh)
2 green onions
Combine together all ingredients until mixed.
Cut the tops off 4 peppers, I used yellow in this case.
I chopped up the good parts from the "top" and added them into the rice mixture.
I put a large pinch of shredded cheddar cheese at the bottom of the pepper, then added a spoonful of rice mixture, a little more cheese and then filled up the pepper with the rice mix. Repeat for all 4 peppers.
Place all 4 peppers on a cookie sheet and bake at 375deg F for 30-40 min or until the peppers are soft.
sprinkle a little more cheese on top and put under the broiler on low and broil until the cheese is melted.