Fresh chickpeas

Another delicious vegetable I like to eat is fresh chickpeas. Are? The grammar in that sentence is all wrong. Anyway, these are delicious. I cook them like edamame and they taste kind of similar, very fresh and green and a little salty if you salt them. Inside their little shells, they look like little brains. Gross, but so delicious.

Fresh chickpeas


1 lb fresh chickpeas (garbanzo beans)
a steamer basket
water for steaming
salt

Heat a pot with an inch of water to boiling, and place the steamer basket in it. Dump in all the chickpeas, cover, and let cook for 2-3 minutes. Remove from the basket, toss with salt, and eat. To eat - open up the little pods and eat the guts. Yum!

RAMPS!

Do you guys know about ramps? They're related to leek and garlic, and grow wild around New England. Probably some other places too, but I don't live in any other places. These ones grow along the path in the woods where my mom walks her dog, so we brought a trowel and dug up a bunch. They're hard to get out of the ground! But they're so delicious.

They're easy to prepare. You can cut them up and cook them in a pan like I did, or you can grill them whole (once you remove the roots), or probably bake them if you feel so inclined.

Ramps

Wash the ramps well. They will probably be dirty. Trim off the roots, then slice in the middle and separate into piles, with a bulb pile and a leafy greens pile. Heat a little olive oil in a saute pan, then toss in the white ends. Cook for about ten minutes on medium heat, tossing a few times. Once the ends are starting to soften and brown, add the leaves and cover. Turn the heat down to low, and cook for 2-3 minutes, stirring once, until the greens are softened. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Serve over pasta, or with eggs, or just eat like this.

Happy St Patrick's Day!

As someone who's totally not Irish in any way, I don't really feel anything special about St. Pat's day, except that it means two things. One, my birthday is in a little over 2 weeks (it was supposed to be today), and two, it's corned beef season!!! I love corned beef. It's my favorite food. When I was younger, I used to always ask for corned beef for my special birthday dinner. Technically, I made New England boiled dinner, which is easy easy easy, and good. Not terribly nutritious, but it could be worse. I could have deep fried it.

New England boiled dinner


3-4 lb corned beef
1 onion, quartered
2 heads garlic, peeled
2 bay leaves
1 t peppercorns
1 T pickling spices (or the packet that came with your corned beef)
4-6 carrots, peeled and sliced into 1" pieces
4-6 red potatoes, halved
1 head of cabbage, cored and cut into eighths

Combine corned beef, onion, garlic, bay, peppercorns, and spices in a large pot. Cover with cold water, bring to a lot boil, cover with a lid, and lower the heat to medium-low. Cook about 3 hours, until it's not too hard to stick a fork into the meat. Add the carrots and potatoes and a little more water if you need to (you shouldn't), cover back up, and cook 15 minutes. After 15 minutes, add the cabbage, cover, and cook another 15 minutes. Done! Serve meat sliced, with vegetables and broth.

Sweet potato puree

Are you sick of my posts about mushed up foods? Sorry. I like mushed up foods right now. I feel like I'm making baby food but for myself!

Sweet potato puree
1 sweet potato
1 T butter
1 T maple syrup
1/4 c coconut milk

Preheat the oven to 400 and prick the sweet potato all over. Place on a piece of foil and bake for about an hour. Let cool a little, then cut the potato in half. Scoop the flesh out into the blender, and add the butter, maple syrup and coconut milk. Pulse until smooth. Serves two.

Spinach and garlic for people with sad mouths

I'm having a little bit of fun pureeing all my food. If only we had a better blender, but that's a different story. I really wanted to eat spinach with dinner, and thought I'd cook it with a lot of garlic and then chop it up with a knife, but the knife I wanted to use was dirty. So I used the blender. Oh boy. This is like creamed spinach, but without the cream.

I did have to add some broth to make the blender work, but the resulting tablespoon of liquid that was at the bottom of the bowl when I was done was delicious, so I didn't feel too bad about diluting the spinach.

Spinach and garlic puree


a splash of olive oil
2 cloves garlic (or more), minced
a few big handfuls of spinach
salt and pepper to taste
1/4 to 1/2 c stock

Heat up the oil in a pan, then add the garlic and cook for a minute or two until fragrant. Add the spinach. If you pan is small and all the spinach won't fit at once, just add as much as will fit, wait for it to wilt, then add some more and keep going until you've used all your spinach. Cook all the spinach until wilted, then transfer to the blender. Add salt and pepper and stock, and pulse until there aren't many big pieces left.
Serves one.

Noodles with tofu and vegetables v2

Alex cooked me dinner today. Yay! It was easy. I sat on the couch, looking at houses on the internet (we're looking to buy), and then a little while later, dinner appeared!! It was like magic. Delicious magic.

Alex's version of noodles with tofu and vegetables


1 package skinny gf spaghetti (or angel hair)
1/2 c peanut sauce (make your own, or use store bought)
1 c frozen edamame
1 small head broccoli
1 block tofu
1 T sesame oil
1/2 t chili oil
1 T gf soy sauce
black pepper
1/2 t ginger and garlic powders
1 t Chinese cooking wine

Preheat the oven to 350 and bring a pot of water to boil. Spread out the noodles on a cookie sheet, bake until starting to brown a little bit (like 5-10 mins). Alex says it should look 'espresso foam brown', or the color of soba noodles almost, then let cool. Turn up the oven to 450. Cook the noodles in the water in the water according to the package directions (all the brands have different directions), then rinse under cold water. Toss with the peanut sauce. Steam the broccoli until bright green and fork tender, then steam the edamame for a minute or two, then sprinkle with salt. Cube up the tofu. Combine sesame oil and chili oil and soy sauce and black pepper and ginger and garlic powders and cooking wine. Toss the tofu in this, then bake for 10 minutes, flip, then bake another 10 until crispy. Dump the vegetables over the noodles, add the tofu, add more sauce if you need to, and garnish fancily with vegetables.

Dumpling filling spring rolls

Did you make way too much filling for dumplings and get stuck with too much filling? Oops so did I. I got sick of making dumplings about 2/3 of the way through the filling, and instead of just cooking up some noodles to use the rest of the filling with, I decided to make spring rolls. Super easy, super good.

Dumpling filling spring rolls


whatever filling you have left from making spinach dumplings
spring roll wrappers (rice paper ones, obviously)

Place 2 tablespoons of filling in the middle of a softened (in warm water) spring roll wrapper. Fold up the side closest to you, then fold over the left and the right. Pulling gently down towards you to make the filling in a tight line, roll towards the remaining side to seal. set aside and repeat with the rest of the filling. Pan fry in a little oil on each side, like you would a sausage. Serve hot, with dipping sauce!

Spinach and other vegetable dumplings (vegan)

I know I always say "I LOVE THESE" whenever I make something, but dumplings are for super-duper serious one of my favorite foods. I love them. I could eat them every day. Except that they are very time/labor intensive, and I have yet to find a gluten-free dumpling that is available. I've heard rumors, but haven't seen any in person. Back when I was eating gluten, but not meat, I used to get these spinach dumplings from the corner Chinese restaurant and I couldn't get enough of them. Then I stopped eating gluten, started eating meat, and stopped being able to eat at corner Chinese restaurants. Boo. So now I make my own! Check it out.

I used the dumpling wrapper recipe I posted two years ago (oh my god), but this time you get a filling recipe!

Spinach dumplings


1 small head bok choy
1 onion, diced
1 lb mushrooms, diced
1 T minced ginger
1 T minced garlic
1 bag spinach
6 oz tofu, cut into little cubes
2 carrots, finely grated
3 T gf soy sauce
1 T chili-garlic sauce
1 t sesame oil
dumpling dough*

Strip the leaves off the bok choy, then slice into thin strips and set aside. Dice the stem as small as you can. Heat up a pan with a small amount of oil in it, then add the bok choy stems, onion, mushrooms, ginger and garlic. Cook for 10 minutes or so, until softened. Chop up the spinach, toss it into the cooked vegetables with the bok choy leaves and let everything wilt for a second. Remove from the heat. Add the tofu and carrots, as well as the soy sauce, chili garlic sauce, and sesame oil. Let everything sit for about half an hour, until cool, then toss everything into a strainer and let drip for a while. You want your dumpling filling to be pretty dry so it doesn't make the wrappers go all floppy and fall apart.

Pinch off a ball of dough, a little smaller than a golf ball, and flatten in your palm. Place about a teaspoon of filling in the middle, fold the dough in half, and pinch all around the edges to seal in. Repeat about a billion times. Wish six times the dough recipe, I made about three and a half dozen dumplings. They were pretty large though. Line the dumplings on a cookie sheet to freeze whatever you're not going to eat now.

To cook the dumplings, bring a few inches of water to boil in your wok. Put a bunch of dumplings in your bamboo steamer, put the lid on, and put the steamer in the wok over the boiling water. Cook for 15 minutes (make sure to check the water once in a while to make sure it's not boiled all out and ruined your pan). Pan fry the cooked dumplings to get a little crispy shell on the outside, and serve with dipping sauce.

*This makes a lot of filling, so I made six times what the recipe says so I could make as many dumplings as I could. Then I got bored with making dumplings and used the rest of the filling for something else, which you will see tomorrow.

French lentil soup

I love French lentils. I like to put them in ragu, but since we're not really eating a lot of meat right now (healthy/diet) so I did something else. I made soup! Alex is a super soup fan (say that five times fast) and wasn't feeling the best the other day. This helped. It's fast, easy, and full of things you'll probably have in your kitchen. 

French Lentil Soup
Adapted from Epicurious


1 T olive oil
2 large onions, chopped
1 c carrots, chopped
1 chili pepper, minced
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 1/4 c French lentils
1 can diced tomatoes
4 c stock
salt and pepper to taste


Heat the olive oil in a small soup pot. Toss in the onions, carrots, chili pepper, and garlic and cook for about 15 minutes. Add the lentils, tomatoes, and stock. Cover and simmer for 30 to 45 mins, until the lentils are cooked. Puree half in the blender and stir back in, add salt and pepper to taste, and serve to your sad sick husband. 

Noodles with tofu and vegetables

This was supposed to be 'fried rice stick noodles' but I think I changed too many things, plus our wok isn't very non-stick so the noodles just got stuck. Then, the noodles got too cooked and started to fall apart so I gave up and it's just noodles with tofu and vegetables that aren't crispy at all. They're still delicious!

Noodles with tofu and vegetables
Loosely based on Mrs Chiang's fried rice stick noodles in the book Mrs. Chiang's Szechwan Cookbook


8 oz dried rice noodles
4 c boiling water (approx, enough to cover the noodles)
5 T gf soy sauce
1 t cornstarch
1 box tofu, cubed
5 scallions, diced

All the vegetables you can find, diced and sliced (I used broccoli, carrots, zucchini, mushrooms, and onions)

1/2 t salt

2 T oil

1 t chili oil

3 t sesame oil

Pour the boiling water over the noodles and let sit for 5-8 minutes until softened. Drain and rinse in cold water and set aside. Combine soy sauce with the cornstarch and toss with the tofu and half of the scallions and set that aside too. Toss the vegetables into your hot wok, then add about 1/4 c water and the salt. Cook until the vegetables are softened. Scoop them out, then heat up the oils and toss in the noodles and the rest of the scallions. Cook for a minute, then dump in the tofu, and vegetables. Cook, stirring every so often, over high heat until the noodles break up a little and everything is hot. Serves 4-6.

Green bean casserole

Are you ready for Thanksgiving yet? Me neither. The good news is that I made green bean casserole. This is easy, if you can find the gf condensed soup. I've bought it at Wholefoods, but you can buy it online as well. Pacific Natural Foods makes a gluten free one, it runs about $3 a box, so it's a special treat. I made the crispy onions myself, I haven't found a gf store-bought version. 

Green bean casserole

1 1/2 lb frozen green beans

1 can (box) condensed soup (chicken or mushroom)

1/4 c milk

salt and pepper

1 t paprika

1 t gf soy sauce

1 onion, sliced thin

2 T rice flour or corn starch

2 T olive oil

Preheat the oven to 350. Spread the green beans in the casserole dish. Mix together the condensed soup, milk, salt and pepper (a pinch of each), paprika and soy sauce. Pour over the green beans. Toss the onions in the flour, then fry in the olive oil until starting to crisp. Sprinkle the onions over the top the the green beans, and bake for about 45 minutes until bubbly and browned. 

brussels sprouts and a poached egg

Do you have too many dishes in the sink, not have very much food in your house, and feel lazy? If so, this is what you should have for dinner. Our dishwasher is broken and we're having some technical difficulties. This dinner only needs a roaster/cookie sheet, which can be covered in foil so you don't have to wash it, a cutting board, knife, spoon, a little cup, and a small pot. I guess that's more than I thought. Anyway, this is fairly healthy as far as things we eat in my house go, cheap, and good.

Brussels sprouts and poached eggs
a few handfuls of Brussels sprouts (a handful and a half or so per person)
olive oil
salt and pepper
a sprinkle of Parmesan cheese
one egg per person
1 t cider vinegar

Turn on the oven to 400 degrees. Cut the sprouts in half and trim off their bottoms. Spread them in your pan, and drizzle with olive oil, then sprinkle with salt and pepper. Roast for about half an hour, until the sprouts are fork-tender and well browned. Sprinkle with cheese while hot. Bring a pot of water to boil (about 2 inches deep), and add the vinegar. Break an egg into a little bowl, and all at once drop the egg into the hot water, turn off the heat, and sweep the egg white strands around a little bit back onto the egg so it stays together. Cover the pot and let sit with the heat off for 4 minutes. Remove with a spoon and place on top of the Brussels sprouts, and serve immediately. If you need to cook more than one egg, cook them two at a time.

What I like to do with tomatoes

Even though tomato season is, unfortunately, pretty much over (how are we halfway through fall already? How is it almost Thanksgiving!), you might still be able to find a few good ones. If they're perfect, this is what you should do. Excuse the picture, I was testing out a new film camera and the shutter got stuck open. I kind of like it anyway, though.

Quick fresh bruschetta
1 big tomato or a bunch of cherry tomatoes
1 clove garlic, minced or smashed to a paste
1 T olive oil
a pinch of salt
some pepper
a few leaves of basil

Chop up your tomato, mix in everything else, and let sit a little while. Make some toast, and eat as much of the bruschetta as you can before someone else comes along and asks you to share.

Brussels sprouts hash

I had a craving for Brussels sprouts today, and since Alex is working late, I figured I might as well just have them for dinner. This was easy, quick, and I even cooked an egg on top at the end to make it a whole meal.

Brussels sprouts hash
I added some blue cheese, which you can skip, I might add some bacon next time if I had any. 


1 onion, sliced thin
1 T olive oil
1 lb Brussels sprouts
1/2 t hot sauce
a big pinch of salt
1 t cider vinegar
1/2 c water or stock
1/3 c blue cheese, crumbled

Cook the onion in the olive oil over medium-low heat until caramelized, 10-15 minutes, stirring occasionally. While the onions are cooking, cut the sprouts in half, and then cut them into thin strips. Add to the onions once they've caramelized, and increase the heat to medium-high. Cook until the Brussels sprouts start to brown, then add the hot sauce, salt, vinegar, and water and cover. Cook 6-8 minutes, until everything is cooked through. Sprinkle over the cheese, turn off the heat, and serve!

Optional extra credit: crack and egg or two on top after you add the blue cheese, turn the heat on low, cover, and let cook about 5 minutes until the whites of the eggs are set. Yum!

It's spring!

Hi. It's spring now. And I live in Connecticut now. Hooray! Moving was rough, but we're settling in now. Alex and I started our new jobs, and trying to get back in the swing of things. As part of starting over, we're going vegan for a month, and trying to be healthier. We've been eating too much meat and junk.
Now that the kitchen is unpacked (mostly), I was able to cook again. Hooray! We had gone to Wholefoods, where they had a great local-seasonal produce section. We got ramps, spring onions, fresh garbanzo beans, and fiddleheads. Yum. I also found some gluten-free (and vegan!) gnocchi, for $4. I cooked everything together and made the most delicious dinner.

Spring vegetables and gnocchi

1 package gf gnocchi

1 lb fiddleheads, cleaned of their papery shells

1/3 lb ramps

2 spring onions

a big handful of fresh mushrooms, sliced

1 T olive oil

salt and pepper

Bring a pot of salted water to boil, and cook gnocchi 2-3 minutes. Drain and toss in a little olive oil, then sautee over medium heat until slightly browned on all sides. Meanwhile, steam the fiddleheads for 5-8 minutes, until fork tender. Slice the spring onions thinly, then the ramp bulbs, setting aside the onion tops and the ramp greens. Sautee the onions in a little olive for 5-10 minutes until softened and starting to brown. Add the mushrooms and cook until browned, then add the greens from the ramps and the onion tops. Cook until softened. Toss in the gnocchi, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and enjoy!

Cabbage roll soup

It's snowing again. Of course it is. We're having the snowiest winter in the history of the universe of Philadelphia, so I don't think the snow will let up/melt anytime soon. When it snows, I don't really leave the house unless it's an emergency, so I had to cook dinner with things we had in the fridge/freezer, which led to this soup. It's delicious, hearty, easy, and delicious. This soup has all the ingredients of Hungarian stuffed cabbages, which are delicious but a little time consuming. Here is a good, quick alternative.

Cabbage roll soup

3/4 pound ground beef

salt and pepper

1 T paprika

1 onion, diced

2 carrots, cut into half moons

2 stalks of celery, diced

4 cloves of garlic, minced

1 can diced tomatoes (or of tomato sauce, I didn't have any but that's what I wanted to use)

1 quart chicken or beef broth

1/2 head of cabbage, core removed and the rest sliced into thin strips

1/2 c rice

Salt and pepper the beef, add the paprika, and mush in. Brown the beef in a small amount of olive oil, then remove to a bowl. Cook the onion, carrots, celery and garlic until starting to soften, then add the tomatoes, broth, and cabbage. Add the beef back in, and enough water to cover. Cook 15 minutes, then add the rice. Cook another 15 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the rice is done and the cabbage is cooked to your liking. Add salt and pepper if necessary. Serves 4.

Kale chips

I'm sure you've seen these all over the internet. But I'm late to jump on the wagon. Better late than never, huh? My favorite favorite way to cook vegetables is to roast them with olive oil and salt and pepper. Why wouldn't I have applied this to kale yet? It's a good idea. Yum.

Kale chips

1 bunch kale, cleaned and dried

a glug of olive oil

salt and pepper

a dash of balsamic vinegar

Preheat your oven to 350. Whisk oil, salt and pepper, and balsamic together in a bowl. Tear kale into the bowl and toss with the dressing. Bake 12-14 minutes, until crispy. Cool slightly, and try to share.

Sauerkraut Latkes

Yes, really. Alex and I are making sausages with sauerkraut for dinner, and had half of a bag left over. I was playing around on epicurious to get some ideas, and found this recipe. Genius! So I threw it together (seriously, about 2 minutes), fried them up in some oil, and ate them up. I am glad I only made four because I could have eaten a whole lot more than the two I ate.

Sauerkraut latkes

inspired by epicurious.com

1 c sauerkraut, drained well then squeezed between paper towels

1 egg

salt and pepper

2 T flour mix

oil for frying

Heat 1/4" oil in a frying pan. Combine sauerkraut, egg, salt and pepper, and flour mix in a bowl with your hands. Form patties, squeezing out any excess liquid. Fry latkes, browning well on one side, then flipping and browning on the other. Serve with apple sauce.

Pock-marked Ma's bean curd (Mapo tofu)

I was going to make some sort of sesame tofu for dinner, with some sort of spicy green beans. When I told my mom that, she suggested I try this dish instead, called pock-marked Ma's bean curd, or more commonly on Chinese menus in America, mapo tofu. This recipe comes from our family favorite Szechwan cookbook, Mrs Chiang's Szechwan Cookbook. Go buy it! It's less than a dollar on Amazon, used! Seriously. I happened to have all the ingredients on hand, so I changed my dinner plans a little bit. Goodness am I glad I did! Alex and I devoured it. We went back for seconds, then thirds. We were hungry, but this was just such a fantastic dish. The tofu is creamy, the sauce is spicy, the pork is smooth and meaty, and the green beans that I snuck in added a fabulous crunch. This may seem like a complicated dish, but as long as you have everything assembled when it's time to cook, it's easy. Like most food cooked in a wok, this only takes about ten minutes to cook.

Pock-marked Ma's bean curd

Adapted from Mrs. Chiang's Szechwan Cookbook.

1/2 lb ground pork

3 scallions, chopped

2" ginger, super finely minced

4 cloves garlic, crushed

2 T plus 1/4 c soy sauce

2 t sesame oil

1 T Chinese cooking wine

2 t plus 1 T cornstarch

2/4 c water

1 block of tofu (I used a box of Mori-nu firm silken tofu, about 12 oz)

1 1/2 t chili oil

1/2 t chili flakes

1 t chili-garlic sauce (or your favorite hot sauce)

1 T sugar

2 c chopped green beans

2 T peanut or canola oil

Combine ground pork, half of the ginger, half of the garlic, all the scallions, 2 T soy sauce, 1 t sesame oil, and cooking wine in a small bowl. Set aside. Smoosh together the remaining garlic and ginger and put in a small bowl, set aside. Whisk 2 t cornstarch into 1/4 c water in a little cup and set aside. Add the rest of the soy sauce to the rest of the water and set aside. Cut the tofu into small cubes, mine were about a centimeter on each side. Mix together the chili oil, chili flakes, and chili-garlic sauce. Sprinkle the rest of the cornstarch (1 T) into the pork mixture. You'll have a lot of little dishes to wash, but trust me.

Ready to cook? Let's go.

Heat the oil in a wok until it shimmers. Add the ginger-garlic mixture and cook until fragrant, stirring the whole time, about 30 seconds. Add the chili mixture and the green beans, and cook, stirring, another 30 seconds. Add the meat mixture and cook until the meat is browned a little, and cooked all the way, about 2 minutes. Add the tofu, cook for a minute, then add the sugar and cook another minute. Stir in the soy sauce-water mixture, bring to a boil, and cook for 2 minutes. If your sauce isn't thick enough for you, stir in the cornstarch-water mixture a little at a time, until the sauce is thickened enough for you. Stir in the sesame oil, cook a minute, and you're done!

Serve over rice. Serves 2 starving people or 4 regular people.

Bacon wrapped, cheese stuffed, grilled jalapenos

Oh. My. God. I've made stuffed jalapenos before (fried ones) which were great, but nothing like these. These are not much healthier, because they're wrapped in bacon, but I can't handle how delicious they are. If you scrape the jalapenos clean, they won't really be spicy, just a little heat afterwards but definitely not 'burn your mouth run screaming for a glass or five of water'. The trick with these is to grill them slowly. If you try to cook them over the hottest part of the grill, you'll end up with crispy bacon and raw peppers.

I started these out straight on the grill, but then the cheese was oozing a lot so I finished them up on top of foil. I thought making five of these (with large peppers) would be enough for Alex and I (in addition to the gigantic meal we were eating) but when we were done I wished I'd made more. More more more! These are all I can think about today. A friend of mine suggested smoking them next time we use the smoker, and that is something we will absolutely be doing. Bacon-wrapped, cheese-stuffed, mind-blowing, grilled jalapenos

Recipe from Sandra Lee, kicked up a bit. If you're not into grilling, you can bake these in the oven, I'd say about 15-20 minutes at 350, then you can finish them under the broiler if you want. You could also cook them in the smoker. If you really don't like any heat, you can use small bell peppers instead of jalapenos.

5 large jalapenos (or more if they're smaller)

1/2 c cream cheese

1 c shredded cheddar

1 t salt

pinch of pepper

3/4 t smoked paprika

1 clove garlic, crushed

5 slices bacon

Slice your jalapenos from stem to tip of the pepper. Carefully open the peppers, and scrape out the seeds and white membranes. You might want to wear gloves to do this, spicy pepper hands are not fun. Set the cleaned peppers aside. In a small bowl, combine the cream cheese, cheddar, salt, pepper, paprika, and garlic. Stuff each pepper with as much cheese mixture as you can. Wrap each pepper tightly in a slice of bacon, and secure with toothpicks or on a skewer.

Grill on the side of the grill, where it's not too hot, for anywhere from ten to twenty five minutes, depending on how hot the grill is. You can grill them on foil, so you don't ruin your grill grate with cheese. These peppers need slow heat and a little time. Let them cook so that the peppers are cooked.

Serve with homemade ranch recipe, coming soon. Or just eat as is, they're perfect.