Ottolenghi-inspired burnt aubergine

We had one eggplant left, and I figured, why not try one of those recipes from the Ottolenghi cookbook that we haven't tried before? There is one in there that essentially broils the crap out of an eggplant and mixed with fresher flavors, and that's what I wanted. Here's the original recipe, ish:

https://thehappyfoodie.co.uk/recipes/burnt-aubergine-with-yellow-pepper-and-red-onion

I have to say, true to typical-Alex-form, I didn't manage to follow the recipe for very long. But, our version was totally inspired by Ottolenghi's!

One of the things this salad relied on was one of those amazingly sweet little red onions. I don't know if you could do it with those big supermarket red onions, but I hear that soaking the cut onions in cold water can take away some of the bite of a fresh onion. The little fresh guys we got don't need that. It's amazing. I can't stop raving about these onions.

The interesting thing is that the eggplant sort of disappears into the dish, just adding some smoky flavor and a little bit of thickening texture to the dressing. So good. Definitely my newest favorite way to eat eggplant.

Broiled eggplant with herb oil
1 eggplant
1 small red onion
~1C cherry tomatoes, halved
~1/2C fresh parsley, chopped roughly
~1/2C fresh basil, chopped roughly
~1/4C fresh oregano
~1tsp cumin seeds
~1/2tsp red pepper flakes
~2-4tbs olive oil
Juice of half a lemon
Several pinches of salt

Line a baking pan with tin foil (this step is unnecessary if your baking pans are clean enough. Mine are so well "seasoned" that you'll get a lot of smoke if you don't cover up the seasoned bits...), and broil your eggplant until it's soft and the skin is burned and cracked, turning a few times. I think it took us about 15 minutes, turning it every 5.

Cut the tomatoes in half, deposit in a big bowl. Cut the onion in half, then each half in half lengthwise, and slice into little quarter-rings. Add to the boil. Salt, lemon juice in the bowl.

Pour a hefty couple glugs of olive oil into a small pan. Add the cumin seeds and red pepper flakes, and heat that until it smells awesome. Then add in the fresh herbs, and stir those around for maybe a minute, taking the pan off the heat. The idea is that you're flavoring the oil, not cooking the herbs.

As you're doing that, scrape the eggplant innards out of it's burned and cracked skin. Chop roughly and add to the bowl; season with some salt, mix with the tomatoes and onions.

Pour the warm oil and herbs over the eggplant mixture. Stir to combine. Taste, and adjust salt and lemon juice as necessary.

We ate this as a salad, but it would also be SO GOOD over toast.

Tabouleh, pickles, and other random meals

This weekend we processed a bunch of veggies into things to eat later. I guess humans have been doing this for our entire evolutionary history, but with the advent of grocery stores, well, it's less fundamental to survival. But it still seems a worthwhile thing to do when presented with all this fresh produce, that won't stay fresh forever.

We also swung by the farm, on our way home from other wanderings, and picked more green beans, husk cherries, blueberries, cherry tomatoes, and herbs. Because we totally needed more food. But god are those husk cherries amazing. Planning to make a big batch of pesto, hence all the basil. Oh, and the chanterelles - we happened across them as we were hiking. Can't not stop for that! And they fry up so well with butter. mmm. And we bought two melons from the farm store, a mini watermelon and a mini musk melon.

Anyway, as for the pickles, we've had good luck with lacto-fermented peppers, and preserved lemons, but have struggled with cucumbers in the past. I think this is largely due to getting them from Russos' sale shelf, so they're already old, and also because Ed doesn't always use a recipe. I looked one up. The golden ratio appears to be:

4C water:3tbs kosher salt

The rest is all flavoring. So, one batch of Moroccan-themed carrots, and two batches of cukes, because we do have a lot of those. The brine for both veggies was just the 4C:3Tbs ratio.

Carrots:
peel of 1 lemon (washed, then peeled with a vegetable peeler)
2 small dried red chilis
1 tsp cracked coriander
1 tsp cracked cumin
About a third of a small white onion, cut into thin rings

I think that was it?

Pack the spices and onion in the bottom of a jar, and cut the carrots into sticks. pack the carrot sticks into the jar, and top with brine. Make sure the carrots are fully covered, or else they'll mold, and then you have to throw out the whole batch. Use a weight (like a small jar filled with water) to push down on the veggies, and leave 'em be for 3-4 days.

Cucumbers:
1 tsp peppercorns
1 tsp fennel seeds
a few sprigs of fresh tarragon
1 clove
about a third of a small white onion, cut into thin rings

Same deal as the carrots. Pack the onion and spices into a jar, cut the cucumbers into nice 1/4" rounds, and pack them into the jar. Cover with brine, put a weight on top, and leave them alone for a few days before tasting.




Tabouleh
We make this stuff a lot, but this week's CSA was the perfect CSA for tabouleh. Not only that, but the little fresh red onions they gave us are just amazing - so crunchy and sweet, it's almost like eating something entirely different than an onion. Onion can be hit or miss in a tabouleh, but with onions this good, you're only hurting yourself by not eating them raw. Because we still had a huge pile of cucumbers left over after making two jars of pickles (I think 5?), it was a cucumber-heavy dish, but we made like two gallons of it, so it all works out in the end.

5 cucumbers, diced
2 tomatoes, diced
2 small red onions, diced
~2C parsley, chopped
~1C basil, chopped
2 lemons
2C bulgur
2C water or vegetable stock
1/2C? olive oil
Salt. lots. to taste.

Boil the veggie stock, and once it boils dump in the bulgur and stir it around, then leave it covered for at least 5min.

Dice all veggies and put into a bowl. Squeeze in the lemons and give a couple good glugs of olive oil and pinches of salt. Stir, taste, adjust. Ed and I have different opinions on how wet a tabouleh should be; I like mine relatively dry, he likes his sopping wet. Preferably with oil. We usually compromise by me making it my way, and he'll just add oil.

Season the bulgur with some oil and salt and lemon, taste, and add to the big bowl.



This gets better on day 2 or 3, if it lasts that long.

Other meal photos -


Zoodles and a bolognese. That was a damn good bolognese; normally I think I try to cram in too many veggies, but this one I knew we were serving it over zoodles (zucchini noodles), so I left it alone, and those flavors just sang together.



Bacon (pour off some of the fat but reserve it in case you need to add it back), onion, garlic, ground beef (cook off the fat in a different pan first), tons of fresh savory and oregano and thyme, bay leaf, dried red pepper, oven-dried tomatoes, tomato sauce, tomato paste, a solid 2C or so of red wine, chicken stock as needed. Large quantities of fresh basil are to be served on top of this.

Don't skimp on the wine. Also, when they say don't cook with wine you won't drink, that means you should be drinking a glass as you cook, right?

As for zoodles, I think we both agreed that it was an acceptable experiment, with no need to repeat again.

Ham, cheese, and squash-stuffed french toast. Took about half a grated yellow zucchini to fill between the cheese slices, with the bread dunked in eggs first. Still working on those VT leftovers; sliced bread and lunchmeats? Not really my style, but you can't let food go to waste. Anyway, this was good, despite its resemblance to a sandwich.




Green beans and kielbasa. The green beans were really tasty. A hunk of butter in the pan, tons of garlic, a splash of oil (less than a glug), saute the garlic until golden and add the beans, saute until soft. Add chicken stock as needed if things get dry, and squeeze half a lemon over the whole thing. Top with some toasted almonds.

Then after taking the beans out, we added a spoonful of dijon mustard and reduced the sauce a bit. This paired wonderfully with the kielbasa.

We tried making some zucchini and eggplant chips in the oven. Slice the veggies into rounds, salt and let them sit until they've released some water. Squeeze, then dredge first in egg, then in cornmeal, and bake at 500F. We found that the zucchinis were good, but the eggplant got too soft. I guess actually deep frying would be better, unless you like soft eggplant. Eh, worth a try.




Kale salad, meatballs, and an Ottolenghi-inspired "burnt aubergine" dish. Ed declared the eggplant dish the best thing I've ever made. It was good. Recipe in a different post, because indexing. Oh, and a watermelon-basil-rita. That drink was DANGEROUS. I don't really know what was in it. White overproof rum, tonic, muddled basil and watermelon, and who knows what else.

The kale salad had a dressing of mustard, lemon, oil, and salt. It also used up the last of our redleaf lettuce (not pictured: the big-ass salad I had for lunch Saturday that used up most of the red leaf lettuce). Then some steamed yellow beans, slivered almonds cooked in butter, dried cherries.

I have no idea what Ed did to make the meatballs, but they involved some amount of bulgur, salt and pepper, and a bunch of fresh savory.

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.

Roasted butternut squash with tahini sauce

So, browsing the internets, we came across Amateur Gourmet making this. It looked delicious, so, we made it, too. The tahini sauce was a little different than what he'd made, since we didn't have any fresh lemons - we mixed tahini with greek yogurt, ground cumin, cardamom, clove, cinnamon, grains of paradise, and red pepper flakes (we also didn't have any za'atar - we'd had some, but it's long since gone, and we haven't gotten more). The end result was a truly delicious way to eat squash. So good, in fact, that we did it again a few days later.

Here's the original recipe, from Yotam Ottolenghi's cookbook, Jerusalem. This is "the caterer's" that my grandfather goes to in London. I have his book called Ottolenghi, but haven't gotten around to acquiring the other books, yet.

Roasted butternut squash with tahini sauce
Made enough for 5-6 side servings, 4 main servings
1 butternut squash, cut into 3/4 by 2 1/2-inch wedges
1 red onion cut into 1 1/4-inch wedges
olive oil
~1/4C light tahini paste
~1-1/2 tbs lemon juice
~2 tbs water
1 clove garlic, crushed
~1/4C pine nuts
1 tbs za’atar (or mix of cardamom, cumin, pepper, and other middle-eastern-y flavors)
~1/4C coarsely chopped flat leaf parsley
Kosher salt

Preheat the oven to 450F.
Toss the squash and onions with some olive oil and kosher salt. Arrange on a baking sheet, and cook for 30-40min, maybe flipping at the halfway mark if the bottoms are getting too browned. Keep an eye on the onions as they might cook faster than the squash and need to be removed earlier.

Toast the pine nuts in a dry small frying pan, no oil needed. This'll take 5 minutes max, make sure you don't burn the nuts!

Mix all the sauce ingredients together, drizzle over the squash and onions on a nice platter. Sprinkle za'atar, nuts and parsley on top. Eat!

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...

Roasted tofu

Yet another way to eat tofu!  This way was actually quite good - we marinated the tofu in a sauce, then roasted it on an oiled baking sheet until it was crispy on the outside, fluffy on the inside.  Passed the Ed-rating with flying colors, too.  Turns out, tofu can be tasty, but we knew that.  It's just a protein to carry flavors.

The sauce was a mix of soy sauce, smoked maple syrup, butternut squash seed oil, and some sort of vinegar that I no longer remember.  And some salt, and possibly a dash of sriracha.  Tough to remember, but you basically want a sauce that's somewhat thick, with some sweetness in it so it'll caramelize nicely.  Balance the sweet/sour/salty/spicy and you'll have a winner.  I think we marinated the tofu for 15-20min, and I believe the tofu chunks took about 20min to brown up, and we flipped them once.  I recommend this one.  Make it.

Cucumber salad

Apparently there has been a lot of hype in the foodie world recently about a cookbook written by the chefs at Ottolenghi, a catering place and restaurant in London. One of their store locations happens to be around the corner from my grandfather's house, and every time I visit, if we're walking home from somewhere, we'll stop for a dessert from "the caterer's".

I'm not exactly "in" with the foodie world, but, when I discovered that this place had a cookbook, the next time I visited London, I picked up a copy. Whenever I've expanded beyond their desserts, the food has been excellent, so I wanted to see how its done. Apparently, good quality ingredients and lots of fresh herbs, olive oil, and lemon - no real surprises. But I tried the first recipe from the book for a party on Saturday, a safe salad, and it was just as good as I'd hoped.



Cucumber salad
6 small salad cukes
2 mild red chilis - I believe I went with anaheim chilis
~3tbs cilantro
Some mint and basil, because I had it
1/4C veggie oil
~3tbs mixture of sesame oil and olive oil (this is all because I didn't have sunflower oil, so decided to just go wild)
1/4C rice wine vinegar
2 tbs poppy seeds
2 tbs granulated sugar
Salt and pepper to taste

Wash the cucumbers, cut off the ends, and slice them in half, and then diagonally, to make long strips. Chop the pepper, and roughly chop the herbs.

In a big bowl, mix together the oils, vinegar, sugar, and poppy seeds. Put everything together and "use your fingers to massage the flavours into the cucumbers". They recommend that if you have to let this salad sit, drain off the liquid before serving and re-season with salt and pepper before serving.

Spicy roasted almonds

We were watching a Good Eats show, and Alton Brown made a batch of roasted ginger almonds. They looked pretty good, so we thought we'd give them a try, having just gotten back from Costco and now armed with 10lbs of almonds.



Well, they weren't quite what I hoped. Tasted too much like soy, and not enough like Worcestershire sauce. Or something like that. Luckily, I really like the texture of roasted almonds, so they'll get eaten anyway. Next time, I'll add some honey, or at least sugar or something. It was worth an experiment. Actually, next time might just be chex mix with almonds in it...

Chocolate-walnut chewy clifbar knockoffs

Another of my favorite nectar bars is the dark chocolate walnut one. I made some modifications to this, adding some salt and some instant espresso powder, but they were darn close to the original - I think the melted chocolate and the cocoa really did the trick.

I searched around online for recipes first, and found this and this, so sort of combined them/did my own thing. I also only had 1.25C of dates left, and I think I could have gone with more. Oh well, next time.



1.25C dates (I'd recommend at least 1.5C for a sweeter bar)
1C walnuts
2oz dark chocolate
2 tbs cocoa
1/2tsp instant espresso powder
1 tsp vanilla
a hefty sprinkling of salt

Grind the dates up in a food processor until you have little bits of date. Toast the walnuts in a 350F oven for 8 minutes, until they're just toasty-tasting. Grind those up in the food processor, too, but not too small. Melt the chocolate with the vanilla in the microwave, and then stir in the cocoa, salt, espresso powder, dates and walnuts. Use your hands to really mush everything together and get it all mixed up well. Form the dough into 7 even balls, and then roll those into logs and flatten. Wrap in plastic wrap to store.

Chewy ginger cookies

A while back, Melissa (one of my coworkers) made a molasses ginger cookie and brought it in, and it was delicious - chewy, soft, gingery. I decided that those were perfect holiday cookies, and I had her recipe, so I attempted to make them on my own. Unfortunately, I only had a small dribble of molasses left, so I just replaced it with honey. Close enough, and the cookies are chewy, so life is good. They aren't as dark as hers, but thats not really an issue.



Chewy ginger cookies
Made 67 cookies

3/4C butter
1C white sugar
1/4C honey
2-1/2C flour
1/3C water
1-1/2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp salt
1C candied ginger, chopped

Cream the butter and sugar. Stir in the honey and water. Mix together the dry ingredients, add to the wet. Stir in the candied ginger. The recipe says the dough might be very soft, in which case you should refrigerate it, but my dough was quite stiff. Because the air was dry, maybe?

Roll into little balls and flatten slightly, roll in granulated sugar and put on the baking sheet.

Bake at 300F for 8 minutes on an ungreased cookie sheet.

Note: these could be vegan cookies (I think they started out that way) if you used margarine instead of butter. Not for me, but maybe if you have vegan friends?

Chewy granola bars

A long time ago, I made some sort of granola bar thing that mimicked the Clif Nectar bars - specifically, the cranberry almond one. It was good, but I don't really remember that much from it. It had fresh apricots, dried cranberries, dates, almonds, and I think a little lemon juice. And I baked it.

I've also been making a bunch of apple leather, with the apple sauce that Ed has been making. I'll get to that in another post, at least its simple...

Anyway, I'm always searching for the ultimate homemade energy bar - something that is portable, high energy, healthy, and tastes good. Those clif bar knockoffs were pretty good, but I thought I'd look around and see what other people were doing - I noticed a lot of recipes out there trying to replicate larabars, also a date-based bar made of real food, and most of those didn't require any baking. This was intriguing, so I decided to try it. Of course, I ended up changing stuff, as always... It had started with just dates, cranberries, and almonds, but then it seemed to dry, so I added some applesauce, and then it seemed too wet, so I added some dry stuff, you see how it goes. The end result was good, though, I think I have a winner!

Chewy granola bars

1/3C dates
1/4C dried cranberries
1/4C almonds
1/2C oats
1 tbs applesauce
1 tbs flax seeds
1 tbs sunflower seeds

Heat your oven to 400F or so, and as that preheats, chop the almonds roughly in the food processor. Toast the almonds for 5 minutes, you could leave everything raw, but I like the flavor of toasted things. Once the almonds are toasted, toast the oats, flax seeds, and sunflower seeds. Meanwhile, grind the dates into a paste in the food processor, then add the craisins and try to get those ground a bit too. Add in the applesauce and grind some more.

Dump everything into a big bowl, and mix it around with your hands until its evenly mixed. Roll it into five evenly-sized balls. It'll be really sticky, so it might help to occasionally wash your hands. Once you have your little balls, roll them into logs and flatten them out. Then, wrap them in plastic, and you've got chewy granola bars ready to go!

Indian Feast

Leo and Jenny were coming over for dinner, and Ed wanted to make some Indian food. By this, I thought he meant one dish, some dal or something. With some rice, and maybe some naan if he was feeling like going crazy. Well. He emailed me, with a seven-course menu, asking what I thought. Um, how about, we don't make seven dishes on a weeknight? Alas, I could only talk him down to six. They were all yummy, except for the dal, into which I dumped a little too much turmeric, so I had to keep diluting it and adding more lentils, and salt, and some sugar, until the bitterness was manageable. Lets just say we had lots of dal left over.

The man with his creations.

Leo with the bowl of tomato chutney.

Jenny grinning in front of a huge pile of naan.

Jenny brought the naan, and Leo brought the beer, which really are my favorite parts of Indian food anyway, but on the menu was: Red dal, mango chutney, tomato chutney, raita, tofu tikka masala, chana masala, and basmati rice. Given that our stove currently has three burners, this was an ambitious project for sure, but we actually ended up eating by 8pm. I was quite impressed. Most of these dishes are variations on onions and tomato with spices and other stuff, I can't remember what went into each one and I have no idea what happened for the mango chutney - I wasn't there when Ed was making it. By the time I got home, he had most things started, the tofu was marinating and the dipping sauce-type things were done (raita, mango chutney, tomato chutney). The mango stuff was quite delicious, so I'll have to get the recipe from Ed at some point, although he doesn't really do recipes...

I also didn't get pictures of everything - too hungry! This is the Chana masala:
1 can chickpeas
1 onion
2 cloves garlic
1-2 tbs tomato paste
1/2 can tomato chunks
water to thin it out
pinch of sugar
various spices, to taste (cumin, coriander, turmeric, salt, pepper, red curry paste)

Cook down the onion a bit in some oil, add the garlic, add the tomato paste and water and chickpeas, add the spices and keep tasting as you go along. Who cares about authenticity if it tastes good?

Mango chutney. No idea what went in here, although the black bits are toasted cumin seeds. It was good.

Dal - I wasn't really paying attention to this one, but I know there are onions, garlic, green lentils, red lentils, a can of tomatoes, some tomato paste, lots of spices (similar to the chana masala), and then more lentils and tomatoes and salt and some sugar in an attempt to dilute the bitterness from too much turmeric...

Tofu tikka masala - Basically the same as the chana masala except with tofu instead of chickpeas, and the tofu was marinated in yogurt and ginger. I think this needed to be ground up a little, maybe some coconut milk added, some cashew butter, more yogurt, but it tasted good as it was, too.

I didn't get a picture of the tomato chutney - mostly just onions and tomato paste - and the raita, which was yogurt, cucumbers, and mint. And maybe with sugar and vinegar, but I don't remember.

Kale chips

I admit, this is essentially a re-posting of a recipe. However, one of the three ingredients is slightly different. I make crunchy kale a lot, with curly leafed kale, and the other day, I bought some flat-leaved kale. It has all sorts of other names, like Tuscan kale, dinosaur kale, whatever, it has flat leaves. We had it twice in a row, the first time we left it in big leaves, and that was basically impossible to eat. So the second time, I chopped it up into bite-sized pieces first, and then I tossed it with olive oil and salt and baked it, and it was awesome. I think this method of cooking works better with the Tuscan kale than with the curly-leaved kale, because it crisps up while staying green, unlike the curly kale which tends to be either green or crispy. It just turns slightly brown. This stuff was good though. I'll be getting this kind of kale in the future - provided it stays as cheap as the other kind.


Kale chips
1 bunch of flat-leaved (Tuscan) kale
~1-2 tbs olive oil
sprinkling of salt

Preheat your oven to 350F. Take the kale leaves off their stems, rinse them, and chop them into bite-sized pieces. Toss these pieces with olive oil in a bowl - don't use too much olive oil, I found that these had a tendency to feel oily the first time we made them (when we used much more olive oil). Sprinkle some kosher salt on the leaves, toss that around, and then spread them in a loose layer in 2-3 baking sheets. Bake for 7-15 minutes. You should hear them crackling as the water dries up. Take them out after 8 minutes or so, just to check the progress and maybe stir them around. They're done once they feel crispy - not floppy anymore.

Enjoy!

Scallion Pancakes

The other day I was struck by a craving for the Taiwan Cafe's scallion pancakes. Unfortunately, I wasn't near the Taiwan Cafe, so I figured I'd try making them. I was scared it would be a very long, arduous process, but it actually wasn't too bad. I found a recipe here, and it looked doable. I did not let the dough rest at all, which may have made them easier to roll out, but it worked. They ended up delicious, although they could have used more of a deep-fried method rather than pan-fried, I thought they were lacking in oil.

Use Real Butter has much nicer looking step-by-step instructions than me, and since I didn't change the recipe, go get it there. Basically, you make the dough, knead it, let it rest (oops), divide it up and roll it out into a circle. I put about a quarter teaspoon of oil on each pancake, then sprinkled on the scallions and some salt.

Roll it up like a cigar, and then roll it horizontally like a snail.


Once its rolled up again, roll it out flat. This is what gives those pancakes their awesome flakiness and layers.


Fry them up in about a tablespoon of oil per pancake.


Slice them up and enjoy!!


A dipping sauce would be nice, I don't know what the proper dipping sauce is but I mixed some soy sauce with rice wine vinegar and that tasted pretty good. I highly recommend making these things, they were easy and pretty quick, and most importantly - delicious.

Tuscan Style Beans and Chard

I was inspired to do a little Italian cooking after watching some cooking shows on WXXI, our local public broadcasting station. The nice thing about this dish is that it's so simple.


olive oil
onion
bell pepper
spicy pepper or red pepper flakes
2 cloves garlic
1 can of cannellini beans (or about a cup of presoaked/precocked beans)
1 can tomato paste
1 cup water
bunch of swiss chard
salt/pepper

1st saute your onion, pepper, spicy pepper, and garlic in olive oil. Add canned beans (along with the juices in the can - they help to thicken things a bit), tomato paste, and water and cook until bubbly. Add in the swiss chard and cover and cook on low heat for 10min. Salt and pepper to taste.


I made some flatbread with this following the naan recipe from Joy of Cooking. Pretty yummy!

Sparkling Cranberry Gems

I was a little misled by these cookies. I thought they'd be much more cookie-like, but instead they were very scone-ish. I guess the ingredients should have clued me in, but I kept waiting for them to spread out and become cookie-ish in the oven, instead of staying in their nice little balls. Don't get me wrong, they were FABULOUS. Just not exactly what I expected. A cookie-scone, I suppose. Anyway, I will definitely make these again. Cookie or scone, I like them both!

The recipe came from the King Arthur Flour blog, but they appear to have removed the recipe, or anyway I couldn't find it again. So here it is:

Ingredients
1C flour (whole wheat or white)
1.5C dried cranberries
2 tbs icing sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla extract
6 tbs frozen butter
3 tbs milk

Coating
1/3C coarse white sparkling sugar

Put the craisins and flour in a food processor and process until it looks like each craisin is in four parts. This didn't work so well for me, but I found that having whole craisins in the cookie was just fine. Add the sugar, salt, and baking powder. Using a cheese grater, grate the frozen butter into the flour mixture. Once it is all in there, rub it in with your fingertips for a bit. Then add the milk and vanilla and mix. It will seem pretty dry, I found I had to get in there with my hands to mix it all up, but don't be tempted to add more liquid.

Put the sugar in a ziplock bag. Form the dough into 1-1/4" balls. Put about six balls at a time into the bag, shake around until they're coated with sugar, then squish them to the final shape you want them in (they won't spread out) and bake at 350 for 16 minutes. I actually cooked mine longer because I kept expecting them to melt out. You want to take them out before they get brown anywhere.

Yields 36 cookies.

I put about 2/3 of the dough in the freezer in a cookie turd, I'll report how those turned out. I'm not worried with all the butter to keep them happy.

And, uh... don't eat them all at once. You'll get a tummyache.

p.s. I labeled them as vegan, because I figured it would be an easy substitution--use soy milk instead of milk, and margarine instead of butter. Why you would want to do that is beyond me, but hey, it takes all kinds, right?

Thai Rice Pudding

I picked up an interesting bag of rice during my last grocery shopping expedition. Sweet rice, also called glutinous rice, is related to arborio rice, the common Italian rice used to make risotto. Like arborio rice, sweet rice has a lot of starch (not glutin, glutinous rice is a misnomer), and while cooking the starch leaches out and thickens the dish. Perfect for making a delicious rice pudding!


To prepare sweet rice you first soak it at least 6 hours. You then steam it wrapped up in cheesecloth for 20 minutes like I have in this picture . While it's almost done steaming, you heat up your liquids for the pudding. For the ~1 cup of rice that I made, I used 1/2 can of coconut milk and 1/2 c of water. I didn't add spices for the first go, but I think spices like cinnamon or cardamom would work nicely. Once the liquids are boiling, and the rice and cook until it thickens. Lemme just say this was delish! Next time I want to serve with some mango slices, and I hope to get a better finished dish pic then.

Oreo Cuppers

Woohoo first post! Thanks to Alex for letting me write up my crazy cooking on her blog. Ok, so I made these vegan chocolate cupcakes with oreo frosting. For those of you that are kinda wary about vegan food, just chill. There are no weird ingredients in these cuppers, unless you consider soy milk to be weird I guess. They are super yummy and probably really unhealthy for me... whatev!