Nachos

For those nights where your entire dinner comes out of a can or a bag... 

Bagged elements:

Tortilla chips

Shredded cheese

Canned elements:

Olives

Black beans

Pickled fiddleheads

Salsa

Pickled jalapenos

Worth it. 

Thanksgiving

Oh man, am I ever behind in posting pictures and recipes of yummy things.  Since I don't know where to start, I figure Thanksgiving is probably a good place.  Possibly overwhelming; you may not get many recipes with this.  Zan and Becky came to eat and drink with us, which made for excellent company and a really fun day.  

We started with appetizers. Ed really wanted to make a vegetable terrine, so he spent a long time roasting vegetables and getting everything *just so*.  It was a very pretty terrine, unfortunately, it sort of just tasted like cold vegetables, with too much aspic on top.  I don't really know how to improve on the fact that the terrine just tasted like cold roasted vegetables. I like roasted veggies, but the other appetizers were far more interesting.  

Other appetizers included a smoked salmon plate, some chicken liver pate that Ed made that we served with shallot jam, that he also made (and this was delicious), some turkey pate that was made with some unknown parts of the bird that maybe should not have gone into the pate (this was not quite as delicious; much more gamy and not really all that delicate), and some hummus and veggies.  All my favorite things!  

We made this immediately after going for a long-ish run in the snow, so were all quite chilled by the snow and quite excited by the appetizers.  Ed managed the perfect photobomb... 

The ladies showing their excitement without the photobomb...

So, after a few more hours of eating and drinking and talking and laughing, eventually dinner was done.  Mashed potatoes, delicata squash with sage and thyme and oregano, pull-apart garlic bread, two kinds of cranberry sauce/chutney, roasted Brussels sprouts with ham and gruyere, sausage and apple stuffing and roasted turkey thighs.



No idea what's going on in this photo, but it makes me smile.


Here's a photo of my plate, which may have been overloaded. And I may have gone back for seconds, and felt quite uncomfortable after that.  But I just loooove stuffing! And you only get it once a year! It took me days to be hungry again.



No photos of dessert, but we had a slightly-more-caramelized-than-ideal tarte tatin, with vanilla ice cream, and I was so stuffed that I barely had any of it.  I should also mention that Zan arrived armed with a beer or three for each course, that we paired pretty darn successfully!

Here's the cranberry chutney recipe, at least:
2C apple cider vinegar
1 onion, diced
1/4C fresh ginger
2 tbs orange peel
1 cinnamon stick
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
1/4 tsp ground clove
12oz cranberries
1.25C brown sugar
2 bosc pears

Cook the spices and the cider until it's reduced to ~1.5C (10min).  Add everything else, and simmer for 30 minutes, then mash coarsely.

And the stuffing, which was so delicious - I used Pioneer Woman's recipe.  Highly, HIGHLY recommend this one.  We cooked it underneath the turkey thighs, so all the drippings went right into the stuffing.  Win!

Oh, and here's the shallot jam. This one's a little estimated, since Ed made the shallot jam...

Start with several pounds of shallots. Slice thinly.
Cook on low with plenty of duck fat and salt, for 20-45min until you're starting to get some good caramelization.  Add some cider vinegar and some sugar. How much? Only Ed knows. Some. Also good are some raisins, preferably golden raisins.  Add more duck fat as needed.  Keep cooking. If things start to stick, you can add some water.  Keep cooking. Taste occasionally and keep cooking. After about an hour, it's probably ready.

This was really good with the chicken liver pate. I have no idea what the recipe for the pate was, sorry!

Garlicky olives and panzanella

We got some jumbo green olives from the Greek store the other day, and decided to try and make those delicious marinated olives you can get from Whole Foods that cost $11.99/lb.  I'd say this was a raging success.  We used garlic (lots), preserved lemons, and red pepper flakes, and the result was very tasty when warm, and divine once it had sat in the fridge overnight.  Yum!

Garlicky Olives:
Olives, of some quantity (1-2C?)
A few cloves of garlic
1/4 of a preserved lemon
Red pepper flakes (~1/2 - 1tsp)
Olive oil

Warm some olive oil in a pan.  Dice your garlic and preserved lemon.  Toast the garlic lightly, then add the olives to the pan with the lemon and red pepper.  Cook for a bit, probably 10min, then put in a bowl and serve with toothpicks.  If you have the patience, leave the olives in the fridge overnight so the flavors can meld.  Enjoy!

Clearly, this was a long day.  Ed went out riding his bike and got mega sunburned, but revived upon smelling the garlicky olives, and then was happy to eat some panzanella, which is one of my favorite hot-weather salads of all time, even more so when you have some day-old bread that really needs using.  It's darn tasty, and gets a good Ed-rating.

Panzanella:
1 avocado
1-2 good tomatoes
1 cucumber
1/4 red onion
Lots of basil
1/4 loaf of french bread, or the equivalent amount of other bread
1 lemon
olive oil
salt
butter

To make the croutons, cut the bread into ~1/4" slices.  Toast the slices in a pan with the butter until one side is toasty golden brown.  Remove the bread from the pan (one side should be slightly chewy, one side should be crunchy and taste like butter), chop into bite-sized pieces.

Chop everything else into bite sized pieces.  Dress with salt, lemon juice, and olive oil.  Toss it all around in a bowl.  Serve, and enjoy!

Baba ghanoush

Take one eggplant.  Halve lengthwise.  Pour a little olive oil onto a baking sheet, and put the eggplants cut-side down onto the baking sheet.  Bake at 400F for 20-30min, until the skin is wrinkly and starting to burn.  Scoop the goopy innards into a food processor.  Mix with ~1/4C tahini, the juice of a lemon, ~1tsp kosher salt, and a clove of garlic.

Dump into a bowl, top with some parsley or basil or cilantro, paprika, pomegranate seeds, or pine nuts (optional).  Eat with carrots, pita chips, tortilla chips, bread, or a spoon...

Definitely got a good Ed rating from this one.  The hands-on time is less than five minutes, and I think that includes washing the food processor.  Next time you're wanting a dip of some sort, I recommend this one.  Smoky, tangy, vibrant, and delicious.

Cilantro-walnut pesto

This recipe is mega out of date, but I was attempting to clean up some of the drafts that never got written, and came across this pesto.  I remember it being delicious enough that it's totally worth posting now, but it may be hard to find fresh cilantro right now.  Anyway, this pesto was delicious on pizza, pasta, and as some sort of underlayer for stuff on little crostini.  I don't remember the original reason we made it, but I do remember eating it on pasta later in the week.  Enjoy!




2C cilantro
1C basil
1/2C parsley
4tsp dried tarragon
1C toasted walnuts
2tsp salt
1tbs sesame oil
1/3C balsamic vinegar
2/3C olive oil

Take all the herbs off their leaves, rinse and dry. Toast the walnuts in a 350F oven for 5min, until they taste toasty. Put everything in a food processor and chop it up.

Pickled onions

We pickled a lot of things before Christmas, this year, and one of the surprise successes was the pickled onions. These were red onions, in a mix of sugar, salt, vinegar, and water, and I believe we put some garlic gloves and peppercorns in there for flavor. We didn't cook the onions at all before pickling - just poured in the hot pickling liquid, and canned them (which does involve 10min of boiling your food). The end result was very tasty, and definitely got good Ed-ratings. The onions were a bit soft, a little softer than stir-fried onions, and had none of the bite of raw onion, only good flavors. And some pepperiness from the peppercorns. Definitely going to make these again!

Above is one option for using pickled onions - fish tacos! I believe we're looking at two separate tacos - both with salmon, but one has a bed of greek yogurt and black beans, while the other has guacamole, black beans and broccoli. Both were delicious.

Other things that we pickled that were delicious were turnips, kohlrabi, quartered radishes (no more spicy! just delicious!), garlic, beets, carrots, ginger, and preserved lemons (not really pickled, but we did them at the same time). A very tasty Christmas gift! We're pretty hooked on the quick pickling now, though canning has its time and place, for sure. For all of these, we had a sweet/salty mix going on with the vinegar, and all sorts of random additions for flavor. The dried red pepper in the kohlrabi was a bit too much, two months later...

Eggplant rollatini

Two weekends ago, after Tiffany's wedding, we'd stopped for lunch/dinner with Susan and Matt in the North End after playing at the aquarium all afternoon, at a super duper fancy pants restaurant, that happened to be taking part in restaurant week, so was offering a 3-course lunch for $20.  Sign me up!  I had the eggplant rollatini for the starter, and it was delicious.  I guess that's what you get when a dish depends on a sauce and a filling for flavor, and you're at a super duper fancy pants restaurant.  Ed had the fried calamari, which were good, but ultimately, they were still just fried squid.  Second course was some sort of lemony creamy caper chicken for me (yummm), and a spaghetti carbonara for Ed, which was also a three-m yummm.  Dessert was tiramisu, for me, and a cannoli, for Ed.  Dessert was a four-m yummmm!  

Anyway, this set me to hankerin' for some more eggplant rollatini, so I tried my hand at that the other night.  Overall, I'd say it was a success, though really, the sauce had to cook down for a lot longer than the 30min I gave it, and I should have sliced the eggplant waaay thinner.  But, it got a good Ed-rating, and made some darn tasty leftovers the next day, too.  I'd totally make this again.  

Start with a tomato sauce.  You could purchase a good one from a jar.  I had our landlords' tomato plants to look after, so I made a sauce.  It had lots of basil in it, some grated carrot (for sweetness), onion, garlic, and a roasted red pepper.  Fairly standard, but quite delicious.  

The sauce, after it's cooked down for a while.  Could have used another few hours bubbling away on the stove, preferably stirred thoughtfully by an Italian grandmother, but I was hungry NOW.  

So, like lasagne, this seemed like a lot of work and a lot of steps to make a meal.  But, like lasagne, all the steps were totally worth it.  I'll try my hand at a recipe... 

Eggplant Rollatini

Made enough for 4 people as a main course

1 eggplant (a wide one)

1/2lb ricotta cheese

2 handfulls fresh spinach

2 cloves garlic

~1/2C breadcrumbs or panko

1 egg

4C tomato sauce (homemade or store-bought, doesn't matter, but it better taste good)

Salt, to taste

some amount of freshly-grated parmesan or pecorino cheese

Tomato sauce

Tomatoes.  I think I had 4 big red tomatoes and 2C of yellow cherry tomatoes

1/2C fresh basil

1 onion

2 cloves garlic

1 splash white wine

1 red pepper

1/2 a carrot, grated

Some olive oil

Set the oven to broil.

I'm going to write this recipe like you're making a tomato sauce.  If you're not, just skip the sauce-making instructions.

Dice the onion, and set it to sweating in a pan with some oil.

As that sweats, begin eggplant: slice your eggplant thinly.  Ed suggested using a mandolin, but I think that would be too thin.  Probably 1/4" thickness would be good.  Sprinkle some coarse salt (kosher salt) on both sides of the eggplant, and let it sit there oozing out its water as the oven preheats.  

Cut the red pepper in half, remove the seeds.  Place it skin-side up on a baking sheet, and broil for 5-15min, until the skin has black dots and is bubbly.  This means you can peel the skin easily.  Reduce oven temp to 400F.

As the pepper broils, work on the sauce.  Once the onion is sweated, add some diced garlic.  That'll want ~5min, you don't want to burn your garlic.  Then add the chopped tomatoes.  You'll be pureeing the sauce later, so don't worry about making the tomato chunks too small.  Add a healthy dash of white wine.  Grate the carrot, add to the sauce.  Chop the basil, add to the sauce.  Peel the pepper, add to the sauce.  Put a lid on that thing and let it go, while you do the eggplants - 

Wipe off the water that has oozed out of the eggplants.  Beat an egg with ~1tbs of water, in a small bowl.  Lightly oil the baking sheet your pepper had just been occupying.  Put down a sprinkle of breadcrumbs or panko (if using breadcrumbs, you can make those, too.  I happened to use up the rest of our panko).  Drag the eggplant through the egg, both sides, and let the extra egg drip off back into the bowl.  Then put the eggplant slices down on the baking sheet.  Sprinkle more breadcrumbs on the top side.  You'll probably need two baking sheets to fit all the eggplant.  Put the eggplant into the oven, and flip the slices after 10 minutes.  

Now for the ricotta filling.  Dice more garlic, and toast that in a pan with some olive oil.  Once it's toasted, add the chopped spinach.  Cook that until it's properly wilted.  Pull the pan off the heat.  Add the ricotta, stir it all around, grate in some hard cheese (pecorino or parmesan), sprinkle in some salt, taste, adjust.  Add the remainder of the egg from the eggplant-dipping station.  Stir it all around.  

Puree the sauce.  Don't burn yourself.  Pour half the sauce into the bottom of a large, high-sided baking dish.

When the eggplant is done, pull it out.  Put some filling at the fat end of the eggplant.  Roll it up, and place it, seam-side down, in the sauce in the baking dish.

Once all the eggplant slices have been filled and rolled, pour the rest of the sauce over the top of them.  Grate some more hard cheese on top.  

Put the whole shebang back into the oven, for 15min.  This just cooks the egg in the filling, and lets all the flavors meld together.  It also gives you a chance to clean all the dishes you just dirtied, and wipe the tomato sauce splashes off the wall.  Maybe even sit down and have a glass of that wine you splashed into the sauce.  

After 10-15min, pull out the eggplant rollatini.  Let it sit 5-10min to cool off a bit, and serve!  This would be even better if there had been some rustic sourdough bread to go along with it... but we didn't think that far ahead.  It was quite delicious nonetheless!  Totally worth all those steps.  I think the prep time was ~45min, which isn't too bad, considering how hungry I was when I started this.

Peach sangria

No photo... but this was worth making again.  Patrice and Rich were staying with us before Tiffany's wedding, and we decided that sangria would be the perfect accompaniment to go with lunch, and I'd just gotten back from Littleton with 4 quarts of peaches... perfect!

1 bottle of cheap pinot grigio
1 bottle of bubbly water
2 peaches, sliced into eighths or so
1 handful of mint
~1/4C simple syrup
2 shots berry vodka (peach or vanilla vodka, our other home-made concoctions, would also work here... as would triple sec)

The berry vodka was an inspiration after I'd made these amazing blackberry lime squares - I had to juice a whole bunch of mixed berries, and it felt like a shame to just throw out the discarded seeds and pulp, so I put them in a mason jar and covered with vodka.  Now we have purple berry vodka!  I did the same thing with a peach as we were making this sangria, since I think that will also be pretty awesome.  We don't really *drink* vodka, but I do use vanilla vodka in pie crusts, and I'm sure a peach vodka could work there, too.  Also, sangria.  'nuff said.

Anyway, Patrice muddled the mint with the simple syrup, and then we dumped everything else into the pitcher, and deliciousness came out.  It was a beautiful pink color, too, because of the berry vodka.  Basically, it was amazing.  Will make again.

Moules frites

We had mussels the other day, and they were delicious.  We ate them with a modified version of french fries - I cut the potatoes into sticks, and pan fried them in bacon grease until they were crispy and brown on all sides.  This has got to be one of the most delicious ways to eat potatoes.  Ed tried making an aioli for dipping the fries, but I wasn't a huge fan of it.  Even the one made with beer (he tried three different kinds) wasn't all that great - I just don't like mayo.  The mussels, however, were awesome.  We cooked them with a whole bunch of delicious stuff, and the broth was awesome.



The mussels started with a piece or two of bacon, chopped up, and with the fat rendered out.  We used that to cook the potatoes.  Then we sweated an onion, toasted some garlic, and added a diced fresh tomato and a whole bunch of kale.  Into that went two pale ales, and some salt.  Once that was boiling, we added the mussels, put on the lid, and cooked for 5 minutes.  Pull from the heat and enjoy!  The broth was quite good when soaked up with toasty bread.



The "fries" were pretty easy, just cut up the potatoes and fry on all sides until they're crispy golden brown.  Salt as they come out of the pan.  For the three kinds of aioli, Ed did this in the food processor. I think it was just an egg yolk, and then he drizzled in olive oil while the processor was running, but I could be wrong.  He ended up putting it into three separate bowls to make a tarragon one, a spicy one (red pepper flakes and grains of paradise), and a beer-flavored one, which obviously got a lot runnier.

I gotta remember that mussels are a cheap and delicious way to feed myself protein!  yum.

Tamales

I had an urge to eat tamales the other day, so I made some.  I didn't actually know what went into a tamale, but I did know that I didn't have any corn husks, so I'd have to use an alternative.  I went with waxed paper, and that worked acceptably well.  I also didn't know what to put in the dough, but figured I couldn't go too wrong if I made tortillas, filled them, and steamed them.  The end result was delicious, and I highly recommend to anyone that they try this butchered version of tamales.  

First things first, I made the tortilla dough.  1C masa to 2/3C water, plus a splash of olive oil for good measure, and ~1/2tsp salt.  This made a nice dough, and I divided it into eight pieces.  I rolled out each piece, or smooshed it out with my hands more like it, and put in the filling.  Then I rolled it shut, sort of pinching it where necessary to close the holes, wrapped it in wax paper, and twisted the ends shut.

The filling was sort of random - I had some frozen lebanese meatballs that we'd made a while ago, so I thawed some of those as I sweated some onions and toasted garlic, then mashed up the meatballs (which were like half bulgur wheat anyway), and fried with the onions and garlic until the meat was cooked.  I also had some spinach, which I dumped in the pan after the meat with some garlic.  I think you could pretty much use anything for filling, though having some sort of sauce might be nice.  Next time I think I'll do pumpkin or squash, with some goat cheese or feta or something.  

Once my tamales were all wrapped up, I steamed them for 30 minutes.  I didn't really know how long to steam them, but this seemed about right in my head.  They were pretty tasty after that long, though I have no idea how to tell if they're overcooked. 

Once done, I poured some lime-cilantro-tomatillos sauce over the top, and consumed them all in one sitting and with great gusto.  They were filling, and delicious.  

Lime-Cilantro-Tomatillo sauce
Made ~1C sauce
2 tomatillos
juice of 2 limes
~1C cilantro, rinsed
pinch of salt

Put everything into a food processor, and zap until it's made a paste.  Olive oil might also be delicious to smooth things out, but I didn't get that far.

Spicy cheese crackers

No ski trip is complete without cheez-its. Unfortunately, I didn't have any cheez-its, and I was going on a ski trip. Thankfully, I did have cheddar cheese, butter, and flour. Done deal. These crackers were DELICIOUS, and definitely passed the Ed-rating with flying colors. I will be making them again, they far surpassed the bright-orange cheez-its I'm used to.

Spicy cheese crackers

Didn't make nearly enough, double the recipe

1.5C grated cheddar cheese

4tbs butter

3/4C flour

1/2 tsp kosher salt

3/4 tsp red pepper flakes

1 tbs milk

Preheat oven to 350F.

Dump everything into a food processor and process until it makes a ball of dough. Roll this out with a floured rolling pin until it is ~1/8" thick. Cut into squares, or whatever shape you feel like, really. Dock the top with a fork, to keep them from getting puffy. Bake for 12-15 minutes, checking occasionally.

I recommend keeping smaller, single-person servings in different containers, because otherwise you'll eat the entire batch all at once, and then you won't have any more. That would be sad.

Gyoza

We'd picked up some gyoza wrappers at the Super88 last time we were there, but then I went and stole them from our freezer and brought them to Amherst, where Ali and I played at being Chinese factory workers frantically making gyoza. The frantic part comes in because we were really hungry, and had discovered that you couldn't just use the shells as a taco - they really wanted to be cooked.

The filling was somewhat uninspired, but it was tasty when wrapped in gyoza wrapper. I think it was diced cabbage, onions, carrots, pork meat, and lots of soy sauce. The smaller you dice stuff, the more even the filling, and then it'll hold together better.

I should have taken a photo of the wrappers - they were like four inches across, and round. I put 1-2 tbs of filling in each one, and then folded them over on themselves to make a taco shape. I used some water to seal the edge, spreading the water with my finger. Then I spread a little more water on one of the ridge sides, and sort of pressed the ridge up against itself bit by bit, until it made a pretty ridge-y thing. I can't really describe it any better than that. You just have to play around.

Once we had a plateful of these guys made, we heated some oil in the frying pan, and fried the dumplings on medium-high heat until they were golden brown on one side. At that point I dumped some amount of water (I think 1/3C?) into the pan, and covered it, and cooked for another 5-7 minutes or so, until the water was mostly gone, and the dumplings looked done. They were delicious! But I'm not sure if they're worth making just for eating - maybe for a dumpling party, but I thought it was a lot of work!

Tapas

Left to his own devices, Ed came home with all sorts of random ingredients, and announced that we were making tapas for dinner. To me, this just sounds like a lot of cleanup after, because you're making like five different courses and only eating little bits of them, but it was delicious enough to be worthwhile.

We made fried sardines - fresh sardines! I've never had them before, they were very pretty and shiny. They also tasted pretty good. Meaty, and not salty like the canned ones. I mean, we also deep-fried them, so of course they were delicious. We served them with a dipping sauce, that was a mix of greek yogurt and sriracha, with some salt sprinkled on top. And some fresh-squeezed lemon over the fish. Very delicious!

Shiny!


We also made some toasted bread things - the first one was with black forest bacon bits, shallots caramelized in the bacon grease, and topped with smoked cheese. It was delicious. The second toasted bread thing was toasted bread, topped with a mixture of beet greens and feta cheese and lemon juice.

There is also plenty of toasted garlic and kosher salt in this dish.


We also made a beet-and-feta cheese salad. This was tasty. Ed had bought some golden beets when he bought the sardines (hence the beet greens), so I boiled and peeled them, then diced them and tossed in vinaigrette of lemon juice, brown sugar, and olive oil. I added chunks of feta, toasted walnuts, and some pomegranate seeds, and I thought the salad was delicious. Ed wasn't into the pomegranate seeds. Apparently he doesn't like the taste. More for me!


And we also had some random olives scattered about. Overall, a very delicious meal! And the cleanup wasn't too bad.

Gougères: two ways

Ali just returned from France, where she had gougères for the first time, and she wanted to make some. I was all for this plan, and since she happened to be in Boston, we got to work. Unsure of what recipe to use, we made two different recipes: one from epicurious, because it had ratings, and one from a random French site we'd googled using the french google. This created lots and lots of little cheese puffs, so we had ample opportunities to sample the two options. The end result: the French gougères were far superior. They just had a way better texture, flakier and moister and cheesier. They also used three times the amount of butter. Minor details.

First, the epicurious recipe:
Blue cheese gougères
Made two baking-sheets-worth
1/4C white wine
1/4C water
1/2 stick butter, cut into cubes
1/4tsp salt
2/3C flour
3 eggs, whisked
1/3C blue cheese, crumbled.

Preheat the oven to 375F. Melt the butter and the wine and water in a saucepan, add the salt, and then add all the flour. Stir vigorously for about a minute, until it's smooth and leaves a film on the bottom of the pan. We did this over the heat. Then remove from heat, let it cool a minute, and add the eggs in three installments, vigorously stirring between each. Add the cheese, and stir that in.

Grease a baking sheet. Drop little balls of dough on the sheet. You can brush the tops with egg wash, just to make them pretty, but I'm not sure that adds to the taste. Bake for 25-30 minutes, checking occasionally. I don't think you want to overbake, you don't want dry gougères.

Ali, mélangez vivement!

The other version, from the French website, was much tastier. I highly recommend making it. Totally passed the Ed-test!

Gougères au fromage
Makes lots and lots and lots, but they disappear quickly
1C water
1tsp salt
1.5 sticks unsalted butter
4 eggs
2/3C grated gruyere cheese
1.25C flour

Preheat the oven to 375F. Grease some baking sheets. Melt the butter in the water with the salt, in a saucepan. Add the flour and stir vigorously. For about a minute. Remove from heat, and let it cool a bit. Add the eggs, one at a time, and stir vigorously between. Once the eggs are incorporated, add the cheese, and stir it in. Scoop little balls of dough onto the baking sheet, and bake for 25 minutes. Don't eat them all in one seating...

Scooping the dough onto the pan.

Mango shrimp spring rolls

I wanted to make dinner one night this week, as I'm staying with Peter and Gail, and they keep feeding me, so I thought I'd make spring rolls. These turned out alright, but were too big, I need to learn how to roll the little ones. You need the squishy noodles inside to make it so that they don't break, although some of them broke anyway, but there were just too many squishy noodles, and not enough other delicious things. These flavors maybe would have worked better as a salad. Or maybe wrapping them more loosely would keep the ends of the avocados from poking holes?

Anyway, for three people we had 7 rolls, which was enough to fill us up (testament to their size), when combined with a salad thanks to Gail. I bought 12 large shrimp, and that worked well for the rolls, but if I were going to do it again in salad form, I think you'd want more shrimps. Maybe.

Mango shrimp spring rolls
Made 7 rolls
rice paper
rice noodles
12 large shrimp (raw)
1 mango
1 avocado
2 limes
~1tbs brown sugar
~1tbs soy sauce
~1/2C cilantro, roughly chopped. Mint and basil would also work. Or all three.
~1/2C bean sprouts
Red chili flakes, to taste
1/4tsp salt

Combine the juice of one of the limes, half a tablespoon of brown sugar, some red chili flakes, and a tablespoon of soy sauce. Mix it up and taste - this is the dressing for your shrimp. Adjust as necessary. Soak the shrimp in the marinade as you prepare other stuff.

For the rice noodles, boil them for 5 minutes, then drain, and toss with the juice of the other lime, the salt, and the other half tablespoon of sugar.

Slice the mango and avocado into strips.

Fry the shrimp in some oil, until they're done. It's about two minutes a side, although I suppose it depends on the size of the shrimp.

Soak the rice paper in hot water for a minute or two, one piece at a time. Once it's flexible, spread it on a plate. Put down the colorful things first, because you'll see those those through the wrapper. A piece or two of mango, a slice of avocado, one and a half shrimps, some cilantro, some sprouts, and a small handful of rice noodles. Then attempt to roll the thing up - fold in the sides, first, then roll away from you, using fingers to keep it taut.

The rice paper dries out quickly if you don't eat it immediately, so cover the finished rolls with a damp towel while you finish making the other ones.

We had a ginger-soy dipping sauce with these, that was delicious.

Will I make these again? Probably, but I'm going to try for a higher ratio of yummy-stuff-to-noodles.

Roasted Chickpeas

I had a can of chickpeas lying around, and wanted to use it in a salad. But I also had the oven on, so figured I'd see what happened if I roasted the chickpeas first. I tossed them with olive oil, kosher salt, and stuck them on a baking sheet for 15 minutes, and the result was pretty delicious! They were crunchy on the outside, bean-y on the inside, and a perfect addition to a salad. Will make these again, for sure.

Potato-kale pancakes

This was a bit spur-of-the-moment, but, I wanted something hot for lunch, and I had kale and a potato to work with. Any time you fry something in a quarter inch of oil, it'll get my approval, anyway. And the Ed-stamp of approval. These were quite tasty.

1 potato, shredded
2 leaves of kale, rinsed, dried, and chopped into teeny little pieces
~1/2C shredded parmesan cheese
1 egg
cooking oil
salt and pepper

Grate your potato, and squeeze out the water. Then put it in a bowl. Add the kale, cheese, egg, and maybe 1/4tsp of salt and a couple grinds of pepper. Mix that around until its homogenous.

Heat a generous layer of cooking oil in a frying pan - the cast iron pan worked well for this. Once the oil is shimmering, use your hands to roll out hand-sized balls of the glop, and put it down in the oil. You'll have to work the potato stuff a bit with your hands, first, so that it all stays together, but it should stay. Once the balls of potato mixture are in the pan, flatten them a bit with a spatula.



Let the patties sit still for about three minutes, and they should be sitting there sizzling away. Once the bottoms are browned, flip, and shake some table salt on top of the side that just got flipped. Squish the patties with a spatula once you've flipped the patties.



After another 2-3 minutes, when that side is also browned, pull the patties out of the pan, and drain on a paper towel for a second before serving. Repeat the frying as necessary, I ended up with five patties. These are quite good, but if you fry up anything as little pancakes, and make it crunchy, and put cheese in it, well, I'll like it. The kale was a tasty addition though.

Stuffed endive leaves

Ed had an idea to stuff endive leaves with stuff, and I thought it was a good idea, so took pictures as we did it. The filling was a mixture of ground pork, roasted red peppers, onions, and garlic, with a little salt and pepper. We put those onto the scoopy part of an endive leaf, and placed them artfully around a pile of rice. The rice got cooked with a spoonful of yellow curry paste, which made it quite tasty.

While the endives were pretty and all, the pork mixture really just tasted best when eaten with the rice. At least we tried it both ways!

To roast the red peppers, cut your pepper into strips, and place skin side up, on a baking sheet. Broil for 5-10 minutes, until the skin is all blackened and bubbled. Take out the peppers, let them cool, and then peel off the skin with your fingers.


On an aside, Ed put the weather station thingy that had been sitting collecting dust for a few years outside, finally, and in the process extracted a sweet icicle. Luckily, the tip fell off before he could attack me with it.