July 8, 2013 by Andrea

Picture Perfect

Falafel is one of the few vegan dishes I make where Bob doesn’t comment about eating food his food eats. He loves the things and still tells me of the mythical falafel place in NYC that he has somehow never taken me to. But after the totally inedible experiment last year (where we did actually just go out to eat since we could not eat what I made – the only time that had happened) I’ve been hesitant to try them again. But after a year, and with a huge craving for the things, I tried again. This time we had success.

I started out with the chickpeas that I froze after the experiment last year. I boiled them again, thinking this may have been part of the problem and then let them sit in the water to cool almost to room temperature. I took about a cup plus a little of the chickpeas, about half a large onion chopped up, a scant handful of parsley, a little oregano from the garden, one clove of garlic, a pinch of salt, a hot pepper blend, cumin, a teaspoon baking powder (new can, another possible source of the problem last year) and about five or six tablespoons of flour. I mixed it all up in the food processor until it formed a ball of dough.

I let it rest in the fridge for about a half hour while I put together the topping – cucumber, tomato and onion in a little mirin – and a tahini sauce.

The sauce was basic. Chopped parsley and oregano, scant pinch of salt, ground pepper, squeeze of one half of a lime and four tablespoons tahini. Mix well. That’s it.

Once the dough had rested, I heated sesame oil over medium high heat and used my trusty ice cream scoop to measure the dough. Heat one side then the other (4-5 minutes per side)

Then let them drain on a paper towel to get rid of some of the oil/grease. Yes, that can be the best part but I’m trying for a little healthy here.

To keep with the limited wheat thing, I made essentially a salad with these. Lettuce as the base then the falafel

then the cucumber mixture and the sauce.

This time, we had a success. Both Bob and I cleaned out plates – to the point where there was none left for Jessie.

Poor puppy.

July 4, 2013 by Andrea

Independence Day Experiments

Happy Fourth of July! I am finally finished with the house painting! Bob sanded the bookcase today so I can work on that and get the front room totally done. Also waiting for the new bed set to come in to finish up the master bedroom. Good news – I love the way everything came out and don’t feel the need to move. Oh – I had some very cute helpers with the painting:

On the food front I went for a few experiments. I made a braised pork that was ok. Braised in red wine and beef broth, but still only ok. Not much different than my usual apple cider braise and more work. But the side dish … Lemon curried corn cakes.

I got the basic recipe from the FoodNetwork website but of course didn’t follow it. I made the paste, but wasn’t sure if the lemon was juice and zest or just zest … so I used both and figured that probably was wrong when the paste was more marinade. But I went with it. I had some pretty corn in my veggie basket so I took the kernels from those three ears and used them.

I also added grated yellow squash (drained) since I had it one hand. And I didn’t have shallots so I improvised with chopped onion and garlic. This, of course, meant I had to add more flour to the mix, which was just fine. I also added a hot pepper mix in place of regular pepper to up the spice. The end result was really really good. They don’t look pretty but they have a ton of flavor and it’s not a profile I use (ever) so it was also a nice change of pace.

Best part is I have about half the mix left so I can freeze it and make them again without having to make them again.

But the oh-this-is-dangerous part of my day came after Val sent me a link and said “how about these?” How can I resist a new dessert? So … I made the graham crackers

with my Winnie the Pooh cookie cutters since they are pretty much the only ones I have. Then moved on to the marshmallow fluff. Let me just say this is really, really sticky stuff. I should know that anything that calls for a bottle of corn syrup is going to be sticky, but somehow I always forget.

Getting everything put together was the tricky part. I did manage to pipe the fluff onto the cookies, but … well … by the time I finished they were already oozing.

But they did look cute, and after they were a little frozen I was able to push them back together a little and then dip them in the chocolate – which I should have heated a little more and probably added a little corn syrup to as it got thick really fast.

They are dangerously good. Seriously good. I’m not even sure there will be any left when Val gets in town tomorrow. Possibly new favorite dessert … Although it is hard to beat vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream.

June 28, 2013 by Andrea

Creative Use of Leftovers

Cooking with fresh ingredients is one thing, and I was lucky this week that A. I had the time to cook, B. had good ingredients from my veggie basket to work with and C. came up with something good for dinner two nights in a row. But the trick is the leftovers. Just eat them as is for a repeat of a pretty darn good dinner, or come up with something else. Yesterday and today I went with the something else option.

I’m still in the midst of painting (eight days down, about two more to go) so the leftover route was a good option. That and I’m a little sore in multiple areas of my body from said eight days of painting. So leftover dinner one – short rib rolls. I took some onion

caramelized them down, chopped up the leftover short ribs

and added some of the plum sauce. I let that simmer for a bit then rolled the mixture, a little at a time, in rice paper – easier than anticipated actually – and came up with dinner. I added a little heated sauce for Bob and short rib rolls it was. Somehow the addition of the onion gave this a great new dimension.

Tonight’s adventure was the pork. I thought about pork tacos, BBQ pork sliders, and a pork salad but none of that sounded appealing. So after seeing what my veggie basket had today I decided on a pork pie.

The savory pie idea came for, the awesome Chicken, Ham and Leek pie Emmie’s friend in England sent over one night the last time we were there. I had never really considered savory pies before, but now I’m slightly obsessed with them. BTW Brad – any chance of getting another pie when we come over next time? Just asking. I still have fond memories of that pie. … Back to the pork pie. I found a recipe for a Quebec pork pie. It had a fancy name and great reviews so I started there. But … never one to follow a recipe, I used the basic cooking technique and not much else.

I chopped two ribs of celery, one carrot, one half of a large onion, two cloves of garlic and the leftover pork from Monday. I tossed all of that into a large skillet (coated with a little butter) one cup of veggie broth, Italian seasoning, pepper and a dash of cinnamon. Stir all together, cover and simmer for about a half hour. In the mean time I made a crust. It’s not pretty, but it worked. I poured the filling into the pie plate, covered with what might pass as a top and popped it in the oven at 400 for about 30 more minutes. Uncovered. It came out looking like this.

By the time we finished our first and second helpings, it looked like this.

Needless to say, we both really, really liked it.

The front room (now to be referred to as the library) is looking really, really good. Love the dark brown walls and the new placement of the desk. My huge 302 pound desk. But it works. Still need to paint the bookshelf and get it all back together, but it is looking really, really good. Just our bedroom left and I should be able to do that next week.

If the cats decide they can supervise that is – such hard work being that cute.

June 25, 2013 by Andrea

Cooking with fruit

I’m not big on cooked fruit. It’s a failing, I know, but apple pie, crumbles of any kind, baked apples just have a really weird texture to me and I’ve never exactly found a way around it. Here in lies my conundrum; my veggie basket each week contains fruit – fruit that I generally intend to eat raw but then forget about. So … How to use the fruit but get around my texture issue.

My first idea this week was a chutney. Well, that was the idea before I decided I wanted a sauce, but I started with a fruit chutney recipe and just didn’t reduce it so much that it became an actual chutney. So … pears were the base of this and I added sherry vinegar, spices, chili peppers and … Hmmm … I can’t actually remember. But the sauce looked like is as it was cooking.

The end result was pretty good. Bob really liked it over the pork, and I have to say, I didn’t cook the pears so much that the texture was a huge issue for me. It was a little but of an issue, but not a total “I can’t eat this” issue. The pork itself was really good. Pork loin roast that I coated in ground mustard and brown sugar before grilling. It was almost as good as the bacon bread – almost.

After eating out (or take out) most of last week because of the painting project, a nice, light meal was a welcome and tasty change.

Also sitting in the ice box this week were some really cute plums. Now I like plums, but they have to be really ripe and I generally forget about them as I wait for them to ripen enough to eat. After the chutney sauce success, I decided to try a plum sauce to go with some short ribs I picked up the other day. Not wanting the heavy red wine version, I modified a yellow plum sauce recipe and came up with today’s experiment.

Plums, white balsamic vinegar, onion, a little water, brown sugar, ginger, chili pepper, and salt. Bring to a boil them let simmer until the plums break down. This did take a little longer than I expected, and then I was impatient and didn’t want to wait for it to reduce and thicken. But the result was still really good.

I added the sauce to the short ribs that I had I’m the slow cooker all day

and then made a side dish of glazed turnips and carrots. Note – the only other time I have ever eaten (knowingly) turnips was a timbal I made last fall that was not nearly as successful as the squash one. This is the long way of saying I had no idea if I would like them at all, but they were in the basket and my goal this week was to use everything from the basket. So … baby carrots and two turnips (cut into chunks) a little veggie broth and a bit of brown sugar and pinch of salt. Cook covered over high heat for ten minute, then uncover and stir until most of the liquid evaporates. I didn’t get a sticky glaze, but I did achieve a nice flavor and coating to them.

The overall dish was really, really good. The carrots and turnips went well with the short ribs and the sauce and nothing overpowered anything else. The sauce was the star of the show, but it was a very nice little meal.

And, of course, my quest for excellent brownies continues. I tried another Alton Brown recipe and added some caramel sauce I had left over from a cake.

The results were pretty darn tasty and if Bob isn’t careful I may hide this batch. I did give him a piece … But it may be the only piece he gets.

June 17, 2013 by Andrea

Coconut Cashew Chicken and new paint

The school year has finally ended for me and I could not be happier. I feel like my blood pressure dropped back into the normal zone. Fifteen years (give or take) I’ve worked in public schools and none has even come close to this one. So it is not with any sadness that I see it go, and hope that next school year is far, far better.

But, as I was getting those last things done – ten months of filing, preparing files for next year, getting yet more paperwork done – I came decided to try something totally different, inspired by all the Indian food Bob and I have been consuming in recent weeks.

My veggie basket had some really pretty red kale in it, and I decided to go with a cashew coconut sauce for it and the chicken. I started with roasting some cashews, the combined those in a food processor with honey, sesame oil and a little red pepper. Once that was ground to a nice paste, I took some and added it to coconut milk. It was really, really thick so I added veggie broth to thin it a little. The red kale I kept simple – braised in veggie broth.

The results were pretty good. I have another sauce that I think will go with a lot of things, and we had a meal worth taking a picture of for a change.

This week my project is painting. We started with the island last week and decided we liked it enough to do the rest of the main portion of the house. For reference, this is the island now:

Today I started with the front door area. It is a pain because there are lots of little areas and I, of course, forgot to get the small rollers at Home Depot this weekend. You always forget something. So I started this morning

with taping the ceiling off and painting the boring sand a kind of boring white.

After the first coat was on, I went out to Home Depot, got the rollers I needed, came back and got the second coat on in much better time – and with cleaner results.

Bob is really happy with the results and is working on patching the walls near the sliders for me so I can paint more tomorrow. Right now it looks like the most boring wall around – white walls, white trim is very bland. But I know by the end of next week, I will have a fabulous brown trim and it will look a ton better. And really, If we decide I completely hate it, I can always paint it again in a few years. Paint is cheap. Way cheaper than other renovations I can envision, so we will stick with paint.

June 8, 2013 by Andrea

Week’s End

Normally I remember to take pictures of food when I cook. Normally this usually involves Bob chuckling at me and at least one cat running in the opposite direction. This time, however, I was so hungry by the time I got dinner done on Friday, I just sat down and ate. And if you can’t tell from the picture above,

It was very, very good.

I did a version of a Greek chicken salad. Barley cooked in veggie broth (about 1/2 cup uncooked), cucumber (3 very small pickling ones, chopped), one beefsteak tomato, a bit of red onion, feta cheese and shredded chicken that I cooked in veggie broth and covered. To that I added a dressing of white balsamic vinegar, juice and zest of a half a lemon, three cloves of garlic, thyme, basil and pepper with olive oil. Needless to say, neither Bob nor I were willing to leave leftovers.

I also had a project this weekend. I’ve been wanting to paint the inside of the house for a while. We thought we had a color, but Bob was concerned with how dark it might make the house, so we went back to the drawing board. We settled on Swiss Coffee for the wall and Chocolate Coco for the trim. We think. So I decided to do a test.

The kitchen island is a great test space. Large enough to see, but not next to anything incase it turns out horribly. So we picked up some paint and I taped everything off and started painting.

Right next to the old color you can tell the difference. Once the whole wall was done, it is a litte harder to see.

After the first coat of the trim, I was nervous

The brown was not as dark as I thought it would be and I just wasn’t sure. After a second coat of paint and removing the tape …

I really like it. There is something about the chocolate that reminds me of grandmom’s house in Philly. Specifically the stairs in that house. I think the light wall and dark trim has an old fashioned feel to it, which I really like. So the plan is to live with it for a week and if we still love it next weekend we get the rest of the paint and I go to town painting the house.

It would also be helpful if I could get Leia to stop sniffing the paint. I almost got a picture but that cat is a true member of the family and HATES having her picture taken.

On a more serious note, we came through the tropical storm just fine. There was lots of rain, wind and a few tornadoes near work, but overall nothing to worry about. It is summer in south Florida so we kind of expect this stuff.

May 27, 2013 by Andrea

Memorial Day Cookout

I love a good excuse to spend an entire day in the kitchen. To me, there is something about chopping, peeling, grating and cooking all day. No time pressure, no worries, just a nice relaxing day to cook. So I invited a few people over for Memorial Day and used it as my excuse to cook.

I started with chicken and ribs. Orange and thyme marinated chicken and cider braised ribs.

The chicken was a total experiment. Zest and juice of two oranges, thyme from the garden, three chopped cloves of garlic, salt, pepper and olive oil. Marinade for twenty four hours. The pork was simple and tasted oh so good …

Apple cider, soy sauce and brown sugar. Marinade overnight then braised in a 250 degree oven for about four hours – turning once. They come out juicy and falling off the bone.

Add some home made BBQ sauce and grill – they were the star of lunch.

The chicken was good, but not nearly as good as the ribs.

Now lunch would not be complete with just the chicken and ribs. So we also had my no mayo coleslaw

cucumber and tomato salad with a white balsamic and dill vinaigrette

potatoes (which I forgot to take a picture of) and a quinoa tabbouleh – a total experiment and not bad. It looked really pretty though.

I also added some pineapple and watermelon from the farmers market. The pineapple was amazing; the watermelon not so great. But it sure looked pretty.

No meal would be complete without dessert. And as much as I hate making it, I did make the fabulous French Silk Pie.

I know I’ve made and posted this one before but really when you start with

and

and mix it for a LONG time to come up with that pie … Well, it is worth posting again. Although whoever decided that it takes “7-10 minutes” to get eggs to 160 degrees over a double boiler while mixing with an electric mixer was insane. Try 23 minutes. But the pie is so worth it.
And since I can’t do dessert half way and it is the beginning of summer, I had to go with berry shortcake.

Vegan scones, macerated strawberries and blueberries (maple syrup, sugar and vanilla) and whipped cream. Yes, real, homemade whipped cream. Ohh … It is almost as good as the pie.

The picture at the top is the lizard one of the cats brought in. I thought it had gone back outside, but apparently it went up in the pantry and sat near my vanilla. I almost had a heart attack but Bob saved the day – I think he was afraid I may not move it myself and then all the desserts would not get made.

Hope everyone had a great Memorial Day!

May 25, 2013 by Andrea

I Actually Cooked This Week

Three day weekend! Can I just say how excited I am about this? Nine days left with students and a three day weekend. (Yes, for those that don’t know, teachers and school personnel are as excited about the kids getting out for a summer as the kids are. Probably more. It is not that we don’t love them, but we don’t want them around for a while by this point in the year.)

On to cooking. I started the week with a salad. I felt the need for more greens and something healthier. Part weather, part yoga and part the large amounts of take out over the last two months had my body screaming for veggies. So … Mixed green salad with yellow tomatoes, orange peppers, cucumber and topped with a little steak that I marinated in sriracha sauce, honey, sesame seed and sesame oil. Pan fried and the left over, non used marinade on top as a dressing. Bob got meat, I got salad and we were both happy.

I also made what I am referring to as international fajitas. Soy and garlic marinaded chicken with a Caribbean pepper blend (very hot) in a Mexican tortilla, with Videla onions, orange pepper and finished with an Italian cheese blend. Had this with a Californian red wine. I actually really liked this. It worked well, and the flavors were balanced.

I also tried a new brownie recipe this week.

They look so good, but they didn’t really work. Not sweet enough, not chewy enough, and they didn’t have the great brownie taste/feel. Oh well.

We are grilling out Monday, and I have the menu planned. Heck, what else was I going o o sitting in a room for five hours watching one kid take a test? I planned an entire meal, wrote out the shopping list and mentally went through the cabinets to make sure I wasn’t missing anything.

May 19, 2013 by Andrea

Winding Down

You would think that by May school would be easy. Calm with everyone anticipating the summer and kids preparing for finals. But no, we are still doing state testing – going into week six or seven – and trying to make sure kids are doing what they should, and not doing what they should not do. Sounds simple enough, but most days I think everyone has lost their minds, or I’ve lost mine. R a combination of both. No wonder we’ve been making do with quick, simple meals or take out.

I did find a fantastic wine.

. I asked the very nice gentleman for a recommendation for a good after wok wine. He didn’t hesitate and pulled this Cotes du Rhone. Normally I’m not a Cotes kind of girl, but this was fabulous. Light, fresh, crisp but not acidic, great “mouth feel.” (Now I feel like a wine snob … And I’m ok with that.) It was perfect with dinner one Friday evening and for sipping after walking Jessie one Saturday afternoon.

I was going to bake Bob a birthday cake last week and try my hand at buttercream icing. But we ran into a problem. No. I wasn’t missing ingredients, the house didn’t explode, nor did I fall asleep before baking. We had a leak in the kitchen.

The drain in the sink was apparently leaking for at least a few days as we had a minor flood under the sink. By the time we got to the hardware store, started, went back to the store for more parts and got it fixed, I wasn’t baking. I did manage to make the beer bread experiments before heading to Val and Bill’s for the weekend

I used a White wheat, Guinness, a Lambic and the New Castle as the control. All were a hit and there was no clear winner as everyone had a different favorite. I think I liked the white wheat best. It’s amazing what three cups of self rising flour, half a cup of sugar and a bottle of beer can create. (Baked at 375 for 55 minutes)

Oh … And Bob had his own geeky project this week.

yep – remote camera. We may have to talk a out the one inside.

Hope everyone is having a great spring.

May 7, 2013 by Andrea

Zucchini & Tomato Fritters

I’ve been wanting to make the zucchini and tomato fritters I found in my vegan cookbook for a while. Even for omnivores, the Veganomicon cookbook is incredible. I’ve gotten biscotti, cakes, side dishes, etc out of there and so long as I “forget” to mention that they are vegan everyone loves them. The zucchini and tomato fritters were something I stumbled across, they sounded great, so I tried them – slightly altered as usual, but it worked.

I had some fresh zucchini and two beautiful tomatoes left, so I decided on this dish. I grated the zucchini and peeled the tomatoes then chopped them. No precision here, just used what I had.

The base was a little harder. I took one package of firm tofu, drain it and chopped it up. Into the food processor it went with three cloves of garlic, about a quarter cup almonds, a hand full of panko breadcrumbs, the juice of half a lemon, some fresh herbs from the garden (in this case dill, oregano and mint) and salt, pepper, tomato paste. The pepper was a hot blend Bob likes.

I figured a little heat would make up for the tofu. Once this was blended

I folded in the zucchini and the tomatoes. Because I forgot I was working late Monday, the mixture sat in the fridge, covered, for two days, but it was it was fine.

Today I heated a frying pan, added olive oil and fried tablespoons of the mixture that I coated in more panko. They are delicate, but if you just leave them and only flip once, they seem to come out ok.

I made these with panko crusted chicken with the same pepper blend since I just wasn’t 100% certain about them.

Bob really liked them and asked me to make them again and I have to say, I was happy with them – lots of flavor and a good texture with the tomato chunks and the crunch of the breadcrumbs. It was a really great side that I could turn into a main dish pretty easily.

All in all a success and not too bad for a Tuesday night!

Sixteen Paws

The random adventures of Andi, Bob, and four furry creatures

Category Archives: Food