Tag: Recipe

January Recipe Challenge: South America

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I go through travel bug stages.  Last year, I was itching to go to India, then I went.  This year I’m itching to go to China and Peru, I’ve yet to go.  Not entirely sure why I want to go to those places but they seem awesome!  I really would love to do the Inca trail.

So tonight for the January recipe challenge, I made Peruvian Chickpea Stew.  Sorry for all the soups/stews, I’m a huge fan of soup/stew, and when I look for recipes I look for things that I would like.   Peruvian cuisine is such an interesting mix of many different cultures.  I find it really intriguing.

I first tried Peruvian Chickpeas at Super Pollo.  If you live in the Washington DC metropolitan area, please please please go to Super Pollo in Arlington, VA for some wonderful pollo a la brasa (yes I’m promoting meat eating because this stuff is amazing).

Tonight I put my chef planning kit to work!  I decided I needed some company for dinner, so I had a mini dinner party.  I only invited a few people so we could all fit at my tiny table (plus sadly I can’t afford to feed the 20 people I wanted to invite).

Peruvian Chickpea Stew

inspired by Recipezaar’s Peruvian Chickpea Stew

1lb dry garbanzo beans/chickpeas
2 tbsp olive oil
2 large onions or 3 small onions, diced
3 garlic gloves, minced
1 can whole canned tomatoes, roughly chopped
3 tsp coriander powder
3 tsp cumin powder
3 tsp allspice
2 small yellow squashes
8oz (approx) of vegetable broth
salt and pepper to taste

First,  cook your chickpeas until tender, a little under cooked is fine as they will simmer for a while later. You can probably use canned garbanzo beans too, but honestly I don’t think those taste as good.  You’d be amazed at how much better cooked dried beans taste over canned beans.

Then sautee the onions and garlic in the olive oil on pretty high heat until slightly browned and translucent.

Then add the chickpeas, tomatoes, spices, squash, and broth.  Stir and simmer on low heat for 30 minutes.

Serve with quinoa for a high protein very healthy meal!

I really liked this recipe.  It’s very healthy but hearty and tasty!  The spices are an interesting flavor combination.  I definitely recommend this! It wasn’t the same as the ones I had at Super Pollo but still delicious and probably a million times healthier!

To round out my mini dinner party, I made an Arugula and Pear salad using this recipe from Eating Well.  Honestly this salad was ridiculously good.  I tweeked the dressing a bit adding a bit more dijon mustard and a little less olive oil.  I also only used arugula, no other lettuce.  It was delicious!  I highly recommend this salad if you’re looking for a wonderful side dish!

For dessert, I made Fitnessista‘s Almond Butter Chocolate Chip cookies!  They were a hit!  No one knew they were vegan!    I made a few tweeks as well.  Instead of maple syrup, I used agave nectar and omitted the molasses since I didn’t have any and didn’t want to spend all that money for a teaspoon of molasses.

I just realized, actually this whole meal was vegan!  Very tasty and very balanced. Here’s my plate:

Salad side above and chickpea/quinoa side below.

A note about calories:

I decided to not count my calories for this meal.  I enjoyed it and made sure not to over eat too much, I filled half my plate with salad, 1/4 with chickpea stew and the other 1/4 with quinoa.  I also had 2 cookies, no big deal.  I splurged a bit, but I’m okay with that.  By the end of the meal, I wasn’t stuffed I was good and satisfied.  Yes, I probably could have eaten more but I didn’t feel the need to.  Life is about balance.  I want my weight loss to be manageable and sustainable, not painful.  One meal is not going to derail my efforts, I tracked the rest of the day (see my sparkpage) and tomorrow will be a normal day again and all will be well in the world.

I like to live by the 80/20 rule: Eat well 80 percent of the time and indulge 20 percent of the time.  Good rule in my opinion. What do you think?

Anyway, I’m off to watch more Mad Men!  Have a great night!

Sisterly-ness

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Earlier today I drove to Rancho Cucamonga to have lunch with my friend Rachel!  Since I’d driven that far I figured I would also visit my sister!

The best part of visiting my sister is all the good food her and her husband have!

Before dinner, I snacked on blueberries and raspberries!!  YUM!  They always have such yummy healthy food (and sometimes not so healthy too but mostly always healthy).

For dinner, my sister is making egg drop soup!  Here comes her recipe.  This recipe is not entirely vegetarian as it uses chicken broth.  I’m sure vegetable broth would work too!  (note: I am eating this to avoid being a “picky eater” when I’m in someone’s home I can’t impose my lifestyle on them).

Laura’s Egg Drop Soup

1 tsp fresh grated ginger
2 tbsp soy sauce
36 oz chicken broth
4 green onions
4 eggs
2 tbsp corn starch

Ingredients were gathered:  Ginger , Chicken Broth, Green Onions, Soy Sauce, Corn Starch, Eggs (Cage-free!)

Step 1:  Grate the ginger (about a tsp) and chop the green onions.  You may get the urge to put in more than a tsp of ginger, but she urges against this.

Step 2:  Put the broth in a pot .  Add 2 tbsp soy sauce and the grated ginger.

Step 3: Gather a bit of your broth and dissolve the corn starch in it.  Then add it to your pot.

Step 4: Heat it, it’ll thicken only a little bit

Step 5:  Beat eggs in a bowl.  Once the soup is heated (but not violently boiling) slowly drizzle in the egg while stirring the soup.

Step 6:  Add green onions.  Serve and enjoy!

This was gingery and very delicious!  I highly recommend it!

Now we’re enjoying a glass of wine and watching Four Christmases!

Have a great night!!

Miracles Happen, Once in a While

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My mother hates cooking.  But today, she was in rare form.

She made tilapia!

It was pretty good (Yes I eat fish.  Although this may change, right now I do.).  Really simple, just salt, pepper and onion powder.  The cooked on medium heat for a 6 minutes total.

I made a salad.

Later I started preparing Christmas dinner. On the menu for tomorrow:

Turkey, Ciabatta Stuffing (minus the pancetta),  Potato-Apple Gratin, My Sister’s Green Bean Casserole, and Sweet Potato Casserole. I’m sure there will be a salad on the side as well.

I always make that stuffing for Thanksgiving, but since I wasn’t here for Thanksgiving this year, I decided to make it for Christmas.  The bread is diced and waiting to be made tomorrow.  Tonight I started on the Potato-Apple Gratin.  It’ll be fully made except for heating/browning tomorrow in the oven.

It looks pretty good so far!  I hope it is.

Tips for Cooking a Large Meal:

-Plan your menu in advance
-Make sure you have all your ingredients
-Make as many things as possible the night before.
-Do all the chopping and prep work the day before so all the hard work is done with early.
-If you’re having a dinner, start cooking early in the day so you have time to clean up (both yourself and the kitchen)

Do you have any tips for cooking a large meal for many people?

Knock Off Moosewood Dressing

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Remember when I went to Moosewood and fell in love with the lemon-tahini dressing??  Well I decided to recreate it today.

After a trip to the Salvation Army all the way in Cortland (because the Ithaca one simply would not do) to shop for our ugly sweater/Liz’s B-Day party (My sweater is fantastic! I can’t wait to show you all!), we stopped by Ludgate Farms a local farm/store.  I bought a lovely Fingerlakes Salad bouquet!

I ran home and started making my salad with: Fingerlake Lettuce, Carrots, and left over lentil burgers chopped into pieces.  Then I added my knock off Moosewood Lemon Tahini dressing:

Knock Off Moosewood Lemon Tahini Dressing:

1/2 cup tahini
juice of 1 lemon
1/4 tsp cumin
few shakes for cayenne
salt and pepper
enough water to make it the right consistency

These are all estimate measurements as I started with a certain amount and added more as needed.  So if you try it making it you’ll have to try it occassionally and add more or less until you get it to be fantastic!

This made kind of a lot of dressing, so it’ll probably last a long time.  But the final product was pretty tasty!

Now off to write my statistics paper and work on my fitness (Fergie anyone?)

December Recipe Challenge: Vegetarian Lentil Burgers

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As you may have gathered, I’m a huge fan of veggie patties.  I eat them all the time.  Unfortunately, they’re expensive and I’m broke.  So I was looking around for a recipe for some sort of patty that’s cheap to make that would fit the need of my December Recipe Challenge (aka healthy).

While perusing 101 Cookbooks, I came across this recipe for Vegetarian Lentil Burgers and decided to try it.  The recipe is really basic so I added a few things to it to spice it up.

Vegetarian Lentil Burger:

adapted from 101 Cookbooks

1 and 1/2 cup cooked lentils
2 eggs (or 1/2 cup egg beater type product)
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp minced garlic
1 shake of cayenne pepper
1/2 onion finely chopped
1/2 cup whole wheat bread crumbs
1 tsp olive oil

Ingredient, minus the onion because I forgot to include it in the picture 😦

I cooked some lentils (slightly undercooked since the recipe said to use black lentils which apparently are less mushy than the lentils I have), then put 1 and 1/2 cup of lentils in the food processor with the egg, salt, garlic and cayenne.

Then I processed it for a few seconds, til it looked like chunky hummus.  I wanted to have who lentils still in it, but you can probably process it more if you prefer.

Then I combined the lentil mixture with the onions and breadcrumbs in a bowl .

I formed the mixture into patties (I think I got 8 out of this, medium sized).

Heated the oil and cooked them (covered) for about 8-10 minutes.  On medium heat.  If you have a lid that’s great if not, use foil like I did.

Enjoy!

These turned out pretty well!  I like them!  Next time I would add a little more salt or other spices to make them a little more fun. I still have a ton of lentils that I cooked so I think next time I’ll try making them with a Moroccan twist by adding cumin, corriander, cinnamon and lemon!

Also, don’t forget to suggest a cake!

Guatemalan Black Beans: Part II

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I’m glad you all enjoyed Part I of the Guatemalan Black Bean Saga.  Here’s part II:

But first another picture from Guatemala…

Me in front of Lake Atitlan in Guatemala on a very hazy day!

Once you’re tired of eating whole beans, you can use your left overs and make some refried beans!  Growing up we had refried black beans, eggs and tortillas for breakfast on weekends.  It’s still one of my favorite breakfasts (and I LOVE breakfast food).  Soo good!

Frijoles Volteados:

2 cups Cooked Black Beans (Reserve some of the liquid)
1/2 small onion diced (optional I didn’t use any)
1/2 tbsp olive oil
salt to taste

Step one: add as much beans as you want to make in the blender (I recommended two cups above but I only had about a cup).  Add a little bit of the liquid and blend until smooth, almost like a thick soup.  (You can stop here if you want to enjoy some frijoles licuados, essentially a black bean soup).


Step two: Dice your onion into small pieces.  Heat 1/2 tbsp of olive oil in a pan on medium to high heat. Add onions to heated pan, cook til onions are cooked through.  Skip this step if you choose not to use onions as I did

Step three: add blended beans to the pan.  Stir until thick (this will take about 10 minutes), watch out for splashing beans!  They burn!  (My mom warns me about this every single time I tell her that I make these).

Then as they thicken, it’ll start to separate from the pan, once you shake the pan and they form a solid log shape, turn them onto a plate.  You can slice it with a butter knife to serve… Doesn’t look very cute, but tastes delicious!

Step four: Enjoy with scrambled eggs, tortillas and sour cream or queso fresco!

I wish I had nice thick corn tortilla and plantains.  Unfortunately in upstate NY, they’ve only heard of flour tortillas and plantains don’t exist (I keep meaning to check the Asian market to double check this).

Once you try these, you’ll never want to buy a can of refried beans again!

In Other News… In case you hadn’t noticed… this site is now officially http://www.foodologie.com!  Woo!