Snowed In Coconut Cup Cookies

Snow ruined my Saturday night. I made the best of it.

Inspired by the wintery white stuff all around me and trapped in my apartment, I started out looking for recipes that involved one egg and no milk. I came across this neat coconut cup cookie recipe. It sounded easy, so I made half of it (there are no need for 12 cookies at a table for one).

The best part about this blizzard is that I learned how easy it is to make pie crust in my food processor. Seriously, really easy. I pretty much just tossed in a cup of flour and half a stick of butter, then pulsed the processor slowly adding water as I went. The results were fabulous.

After forming the cups in my muffin tin, I baked for 10 minutes and added the fillings. Seeing as I didn't have any gross marmalade like the recipe called for, I decided to mix it up. Two cups had guava paste, two had chocolate chips and two had blueberry jam. All were good, but it was hard to tell them apart!

Pumpkin Puree

Halloween may have just passed, but the excitement I feel when I come across a pumpkin display at a grocery store still can't be matched by any other food or decoration.

Seriously. It's like mesmerizing and I usually just stop for a minute to look. My friends can attest to this weird fascination, as they've been bombarded with a stream of pumpkin-related propaganda picture mail for the last month.

Anyway, there has been a lot of talk about a shortage of pumpkin puree for about the last year. I've yet to experience the scarcity myself, but I thought I'd give this a try. I followed this blogger's instructions.

Then I made some pumpkin muffins. Because while pumpkin puree is time-consuming and somewhat hard, muffins are the easiest thing in the world to bake.

I also made this tasty pumpkin seed and pomegranate salad.

Soup Post

Disclaimer: The are no soup recipes or soup photos in this post.

But I have been on a helluva soup-making binge lately. At least once a week, I make a pot of some kind of vegetable soup, and I eat it for lunch every day that week. The thing about my soup is that it's usually not much to look at. I've made borscht, tons of gazpacho, squash soup and plain-old vegetable stew. All good, none beautiful (ok, maybe the borscht). The result has been very little blogging on my part. Laziness might also have something to do with that though...

Here is a sample of some of the more interesting stuff I have made:

Pretzel Bites (half of this recipe)

Udon Noodles with Tofu

Roasted Beet Hummus

Raspberry Walnut Tart

Potato Ricotta Fritters with Indian Spice

Wheat Bread

On this fine Labor Day weekend, I knew I'd be making some of this vegetable soup. But when I woke up this morning, I realized I had no bread or croutons of any kind.

In addition to being Labor Day weekend, it was also the University of Minnesota's Welcome Week. I've lived in this area long enough to know to shun all things related to U of M students moving in. Unfortunately, this includes the entire Quarry Place Shopping Center, which happens to contain my closest grocery store.

So I just decided to avoid that clusterf*ck entirely and make my own bread. This is only like the third time I've made bread from scratch, and it's getting better each time. This was actually pretty good, as I followed some foolproof Smitten Kitchen instructions. Bellow is my recipe.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups white flour

1 3/4 cups whole wheat flour

1/4 cup crushed bran cereal

1 tablespoon of salt

1 tablespoon maple syrup

1 tablespoon turmeric

1/4 cup olive oil

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon active dry yeast

3/4 cup warm milk and/or water

Add the yeast to the warm water/milk. Combine all other ingredients and mix well. Add yeast mixture and mix well with your hands or an electric mixer. Once all the bumps are out. Form a ball with the dough. Cover and let sit somewhere for several hours. When you see that it has risen, knead the dough well. Let sit for another hour. Knead well and then form a loaf with three slits on top. Bake in bread pan at 450 degrees for 30 minutes. Reduce heat to 425 degrees and cook for another 15 minutes or so.

Habanero

Another week, another impulse buy at the farmers market. What am I going to do with 20 habanero peppers? Who cares when they cost $3!

But seriously, what am I going to do with them... I suppose I could share with friends, so let me know if you want any.

So far I made some spicy baba ganoush.

As you might guess from the photo, I roasted both the eggplant and the habanero for this recipe. I figured it would tone down the intense spiciness of the habanero. I also had the foresight to deseed that hot little pepper.

That method seemed to work. So I did the same for this raw vegetable curry, which I served with brown rice and a fried egg. This "curry" was made from leftover gazpacho ingredients (i.e. tomatoes and bell peppers). It was so spicy that most people probably would not have been able to eat it. I, however, loved it.

Gazpacho

The most difficult thing about this recipe was getting to the farmers market before noon on Saturday. You see, a trip to the Northeast Minneapolis Farmers Market was absolutely vital for my gazpacho because store bought tomatoes would never do. For me, gazpacho is dependent on the quality of your ingredients, all of which are in season right now.

While I ventured out on a Saturday morning for tomatoes and cucumbers, the market had a lot of other useful produce for this dish. I bought these white peppers, but I don't know their actual name.

They sort of taste like bell peppers. I also bought some fresh garlic, which I had never cooked with before.

Anyway, this is my (first) recipe for gazpacho. It's pretty easy to play with the quantities of the ingredients, and I'll definitely be making gazpacho again soon.

Ingredients:

6-7 plum tomatoes, coarsely chopped

1 medium sized red onion, coarsely chopped

2-3 small cucumbers, coarsely chopped, not peeled

2-3 cups of chopped bell pepper, any color or kind

1/2 cup parsley

4-5 cloves garlic

3/4 loaf french bread, torn into chucks

The juice of 1/2 lemon

3 tablespoons red wine vinegar

1/4 cup olive oil

A few dashes each of: dried oregano, dried thyme and coriander

2 teaspoons salt

Pepper to taste

Enough tomato juice to cover your veggie/bread mixture

In a food processor, you need to lightly process all of your vegetables. I did this on the "pulse" setting, one vegetable at a time. I used my food processor to shred the bread chunks and garlic too.

Add all vegetables and bread to a large bowl. Add olive oil, lemon juice, vinegar, spices, salt and pepper. Cover with tomato juice, mix well and chill overnight.

Sea Scallops with Pineapple Cucumber Salsa

You know you're getting old when you're Target browsing habits change. It used to be all about cloths, cosmetics and ridiculous women's magazines. Now, you give me 15 minutes to fill a prescription and I'm all over the cooking section.

I picked up these scallops at Target on just such an occasion. They appear to be high quality, though my knowledge of real seafood is surely lacking. At least the freezer pack they came in is releasable.

Ingredients:

7-10 sea scallops, bought frozen but later thawed

Oil for searing

1 medium-sized cucumber, coarsely chopped

1/2 medium-sized red onion, coarsely chopped

1 8oz. can of crushed pineapple

1-3 green chillies, diced

A few dashes of tabasco

1/2 teaspoon vinegar (optional), I used apple cider vinegar

Salt and pepper to taste

First, you wanna make that salsa. Assemble your veggies, pineapple and spices. Then mix well. Sear the scallops in a frying pan over a medium heat for 2-3 minutes on each side. Top scallops with salsa an serve.

Corn and Mystery Vegtable Pie

The mystery is because this was kind of a freezer cleaning recipe. I actually expected it to be bland and kind of weird. But as soon as I took my first bite, it reminded me of something awesome. That's right, I used the last of my pie crust dough!

That part was way delicious, and much less messy than I expected when I rolled it out. The vegetable puree was the weird part. No one remembers this but me, but I made some vegetable stock a few month ago. The veggies I used for that were strained, blended, frozen, thawed and used in this pie.

Ingredients:
3 large leeks (just the greens), coarsely chopped
1 carrot, coarsely chopped
1 small potato, quartered
1 teaspoon red chili flakes
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
Salt and pepper to taste
Enough pie dough to cover the bottom of a pie pan+ enough flower to roll it out
3 pieces of corn
1 1/2 cups Parmesan cheese
2 eggs
1/4 cup milk
1 tablespoon honey
Tabasco sauce
1/2 cup bread crumbs

Roll out your pie dough and press it into a pie pan. Poke holes with a fork, and bake at 350 degrees for 10 minutes. Soak the corn in the water for 10 minutes and remove kernels from cob.

Boil leek greens, potatoes, carrots and spices until soft (30 minutes at a low heat). Add a little salt. Strain well and puree in a blender or food processor. Reserve liquid for vegetable stock. Place pureed veggies into pie cross, spreading as thinly as possible across the bottom.

Mix cheese, corn, milk, salt and pepper. Add Tabasco and honey to taste. Add this to the top of the pie, and top it all with the bread crumbs. Bake at 375 degrees for 30-45 minutes. Just make sure the eggs are done...

Chilled Lettuce Soup with Homemade Croutons

Ok, so the croutons aren't totally homemade. I bought some rye bread, and as usual it sat around for a long time before I realized I wouldn't be able to eat the whole thing. So I decided to make croutons! My own seasoning and everything...

The soup is legitimately very healthy though. I found ways to add flavor, and it really does taste much better when well chilled. My recipe is very different from, but still adapted from, this one my Mark Bittman.

Chilled Lettuce Soup
2 head of romaine lettuce, thinly sliced
1/2 large red onion, sliced
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
3 cups chicken stock, low sodium or homemade
3 tablespoons olive oil
1/4 cup tahini
1 1/2 cup ice water
Salt and pepper to taste

Saute onions and seeds for about 5 minutes in olive oil. Do not burn. Add your stock and lettuce. Cover and cook at a medium heat until lettuce is wilted. Add tahini, salt, pepper and ice water. Somehow, manage to get it all into a blender. Blend until you've reached a nice consistency.

The tahini gave this light soup a creamy flavor similar to this one. Serve with these croutons.
Croutons
3 cups of stale bread, coarsely chopped
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
Salt and pepper to taste
Olive oil cooking spray

In a large baking sheet, spray bread with cooking spray. Add spices, salt and pepper. Toss so that croutons will be evenly coated, but make sure they all lay flat on the pan. Bake for 10-15 minutes at 350 degrees, taking them out to toss once.

Just watch these carefully, so you don't scorch them. In my opinion, rye bread tastes pretty good as slightly burnt croutons.

Fourth of July Foods

In case you haven't guessed, I'm not really much of a grill master. I blame the fact that I don't own a grill (no balcony in my apartment) and my tendency to use more vegetables and less meat. So if you don't think there's enough meat in this post about foods on the 4th, then I'm sorry. Believe me, there was still plenty of grilled chicken to go around...

Besides, those are pineapple chunks wrapped in bacon up there. I got this idea from Mark Bittman, who suggested pineapple wrapped in prosciutto as part of his "101 Fast Grilling Recipes." Nea did all the cooking. Here she is getting excited.
I did make a side dish that was great for garnishing grilled meats. This pickled onions recipe yielded a tasty, vinegary side.
Finally, it's a Fourth of July tradition at my house for my Grandmother to prepare a dessert trifle. She's always kind enough to pretend I helped in some way, though she's the master. Anyway, it's delicious with yogurt, angel food cake, berries and jello.

Sugar Cookie Bars

I've never made plain old sugar cookies before, but seeing a recipe for sugar cookie bars set of a craving. While cooking for more than one over this holiday weekend, the craving was satisfied. The results were definitely reminiscent of gooey cookies, but the frosting made it more like cake than bars.

I'm not going to bother copying the recipe I used, but go here to take a look. It was easy enough, and yielded great results. My only addition was a little water to the cookie dough, which was very sticky. At least I tried to get patriotic with the sprinkles...

Egg White Frittata with Fingerling Potatoes

Often times with eggs and potatoes, I feel the need to cover them in ketchup. Not with this frittata. The fresh little potatoes and a perfect amount of spice made this a very tasty meal without extra condiments, not even Tabasco.

Also, seeing as I'm terrified of cholesterol, I used mainly egg whites for this frittata. I kept one yolk in just for the texture. Either way it was mostly vegetable and totally delicious.

Ingredients:
1 cup fingerling potatoes, quartered
1 small yellow onion, diced
1 cup broccoli, broken into very small pieces
3 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
1 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon crushed red chillies
1 teaspoon ground coriander
Salt and Pepper to taste
4-5 egg whites
1/4 cup skim milk

Thinly coat an oven-proof, non-stick frying pan in olive oil. Add your potatoes and sautee for about 5 minutes at a medium-high heat. Add your onions and continue cooking until potatoes are almost done. Add your broccoli and garlic, and keep the pan sizzling for another 5 minutes. Sprinkle on your turmeric, coriander and chillies while it cooks. If the pan looks dry, add a bit more oil.

Lower the flame just a little on your stove. In a separate container, whisk eggs and milk together well. Add the egg mixture to the pan so that it spreads out evenly. Now, put your spatula down and don't touch the eggs anymore. You don't want to scramble them. Keep the pan on the stove top until the eggs are cooked on the bottom, but looks about like this on top:

At this point, you can do two things. I put my oven-safe pan into the oven at 375 degrees for 15-20 minutes. You could also cover the pan with a lid and continue cooking this on your stove top at a lower heat.

Kohlrabi Curry / Noolkol Kalan

This recipe was new to me. Unlike many Indian curries, I had never heard of this before cooking it. I googled kohlrabi recipes, and from there I got excited about some curry. Not only did I learn about a new kind of curry, but I also learned how to spell kohlrabi (challenging!).

This particular kind of curry calls for yogurt while cooking. The recipe, which I adapted, explains why/how in a bit more detail. All I know is I love plain yogurt...

Finally, a third lesson: purple kohlrabi are only purple on the outside. I was really hoping this cauliflower-like vegetable would yield a pinkish curry, but no such luck. Once you peal them, green and purple kohlrabi are essentially the same.

Ingredients:
3 kohlrabi, peeled and cubed
2 cups water
6-7 green chillies
2 cups plain yogurt
1 teaspoon of chili powder
1 teaspoon turmeric
Salt and pepper to taste
1 tablespoon cumin seeds
1 cup coconut (fresh or dry, unsweetened)
1/2 cup cashews
2 tablespoons olive/vegetable oil
1 tablespoon mustard seeds
6-7 curry leaves
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
4-5 dry red chillies, purchased whole but split in half before cooking

Boil kohlrabi in water until soft but not mushy. Ideally, most of your water will have evaporated too. Add turmeric, chili powder, salt and pepper. Mash together green chillies, cumin seeds, cashews and coconut. It should resemble a paste. Add this paste to the kohlrabi and then mix in the yogurt. You can cook the yogurt a little but be very careful not to boil or burn it.
Make some tarka by frying mustard seeds, curry leaves and red chilies in oil. Once its nice and cool, add it to the curry. Serve this dish with rice. I used a mixture of brown rice and lentils.

Summer Begins + Blog neglect

I haven't blogged since before Memorial day...which leads me to believe that I've been distracted by summer's temptations. Now I'm not saying that's going to change, but it is an excuse. I've also been eating a lot of salads, and those are rarely blog-worthy for me.

My creativity has been slacking too. I saw some cipollini at the grocery store, and I knew just the smitten kitchen recipe I wanted to try: balsamic glazed sweet and sour cipollini. I used tomato paste instead of tomato sauce, and ate them with a fried egg and some greens.


I did invent a new summer casserole, which would really be better named a Late Summer Casserole. It was similar to eggplant parmigiana, for which my mother has an excellent recipe. I didn't bread and fry anything, but I did layer tomatoes with eggplant and corn. In between I used bread crumbs and cheese (mozzarella and Parmesan).


After a long day of work and a run, I had a salad for dinner last night. That just wasn't enough, so I made this onion frittata. I used frozen peas too.

Luckily, I saved my fresh peas for something a little different. I made a pasta salad similar to this one by the smitten kitchen. Mine had a bunch of chopped green onions, plus cilantro, garlic and chillies in the dressing.

Lemon Yogurt Cake

I love lemons. If I had lived in a cool climate hundreds of years ago, I probably would have asked you for lemons for Christmas. Loving me as you do, you would have bought me several, and I would have baked you a delicious lemon cake as a reward.

Thanks to globalization and fossil fuels, I can now buy lemons any time I want...

But still, a lemon cake was in order. The whole wheat flour made it healthier, but maybe less delicious than this similar smitten kitchen cake. I didn't follow that recipe exactly anyway. My cake was still very tasty and maybe a little healthy.

Ingredients:
1 cup plan, whole milk yogurt, unsweetened
1/4 lemon juice
2 tbs butter
1 cup sugar
Zest of one lemon
1/3 cup vegetable oil
2 eggs
1 2/3 cups whole wheat flour
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups fresh berries (I used blueberries and a few raspberries)
**You can use frozen berries too**

Grease two small bread loaf pans with the butter, use some cooking spray if surface is uneven. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine all liquid ingredients and stir well. Add sugar, and stir that well too. Add the dry ingredients and the rest of the butter, and mix until the batter has virtually no lumps. Fold in berries and pour batter into pans. Bake for 45 minutes to an hour. It's done when a toothpick comes out clean.

Pasta with Spinach and Blue Cheese

I've been sitting on the dish for almost a week now. Luckily, my spinach had a far-off expiration date. I actually bought the pasta, Fusilli Col Buco, about two months ago, and I've spent much of that time dwelling on what kind of awesome sauce to put on it. This particular pasta is great for carrying sauces, so this might not have been the perfect topping. Obviously, it was super delicious, and I still have the other half of the box to combine with another sauce.

Ingredients:
Almost an entire bag of spinach, large stems removed, coarsely chopped
Half a box of Fusilli Cos Buco, or another spaghetti-like noodle
As much blue cheese as you can handle (I used blue goat cheese, which was creamy and wonderful)
Salt and pepper to taste
A tablespoon of butter
**Adapted from this Mark Bittman recipe**

Clean and chop your spinach. Bring water to a boil and add pasta. When it's almost done, add the spinach, blanching it. Drain. Return pasta and spinach to pot with the butter, cheese, salt and pepper. Turn a the burner on low if necessary. Mix well while it all melts together. Serve with fresh tomatoes if desired.

Garlic Chive Hummus: A really good idea

After paying a whole $1 for those garlic chives, I've been trying to think of new things to do with them. The garlic chive risotto was good, in the way that risotto is always good. Garlic chive hummus, although unheard of according to the internet, is amazing.

With hummus, I always either have too little garlic (like one clove you can't taste) or too much garlic (like 3 cloves that give you dragon breath). These garlic chives were the perfect in between and also added a little bit of freshness...whatever that means...

The strange greenness was nice too. I have yet to post a hummus recipe on my blog, because I feel like that it's pretty basic. But I really thought this one was special.

Ingredients:
1 standard size can chickpeas
1 handful of garlic chives (about 12) with the softest part of the ends removed
3/4 cup olive oil (or less if you're willing to add water)
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 lemon or lime, juiced
1/4 cup tahini or a little less

Mix ingredients in blender or food processor until you get hummus. Add more of one of the aforementioned liquids if it starts to stick.

Garlic Chive Risotto

Finally, I've gotten to those garlic chives. These are similar to regular chives, but obviously, more garlicky. You can put them in just about anything for a little extra flavor, but they don't have an appealing texture when raw.

I made risotto once before this, but this time, it turned out much better. I think that's because I used more stock this time around.

Ingredients:
1 cup arborio rice
2 tablespoons butter
1/4 cup dry white wine
6 cups chicken or vegetable stock
1/2 small red onion, chopped finely
3 cloves garlic, chopped coarsely
7-8 garlic chives (use the parts that crunch when you chop them)
1/4-1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
Salt and Pepper to taste
1-2 tablespoons of truffle oil (optional)
**The second time I made this, I added a teaspoon of turmeric, which gave my risotto a beautiful golden hue (not pictured here).

Fry the onions in the butter. Add the rice and saute at a low heat until well coated, adding more butter if necessary. Add the white wine and cook at low heat until absorbed. Slowly start adding the stock, 1/4 cup at a time. Add more when absorbed. Stir frequently but not constantly. It should take you about 20 minutes to use up that stock. Add the garlic and garlic chives halfway though.

When finished, at the Parmesan and truffle oil. Salt to taste and stir well. Serve quickly.

Chocolate Cupcakes with Peanut Butter Frosting

These cupcakes were for my friend Erin's birthday. She's a big fan of peanut butter, so it seemed to make sense. It might have made a little too much sense though...her roommate made her a chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting for her birthday... Oh well, both were delicious, and we sort of had a theme going.

I used my favorite chocolate cupcake recipe, which also happens to be the only chocolate cupcake recipe I've ever used. They turned out great. This is what I used for the frosting, though I had to use more milk and less sugar to get a nice consistency.