Asian Meat-wads!

I haven't blogged much lately, but I have been cooking-- for the past 2 weeks I've been volunteering at our local Whole Foods. It has a cooking school that offers cooking classes throughout the year, including weeklong kids camps during the summer. If you've got a kid age 7-15, I recommend this as a summer activity! Each day is a different global theme, so this year we had American, Indian, Italian, French and Latin American Day (drooooool). Anyway, all that to say, if I don't encounter another child with a knife for the next 12 months, I'll be happy. Just kidding, they're a joy. With knives. 

So, today's experiment was a mind-concoction, like so many of my dishes are. I decided to make some Asian meatballs, and I must say they turned out deliciously! I forgot to take pictures during the process, but here's the finished product: 

WARNING: as a mind-concoction, there are no actual measurements, so experimenter beware.

2 lb ground pork (next time I might substitute 1/2-1 lb of ground beef, just for a textural variety)

chopped leaves of 2 small bok choy (you can stir fry the stems later!)

1 very large clove garlic 

1/4 onion, diced

~1/2 tsp? fish sauce

~1 Tbsp? soy sauce (I used Worcestershire because it's all I had)

~1/4 tsp each of: allspice, turmeric, cinnamon, curry powder and cayenne

Mix all ingredients together in a large bowl, form into golf-ball sized wads, then dredge in bread crumbs so the outsides will become deliciously crispy. Then bake at 400* for 20 minutes, according to Alton Brown (as I was making these, a meatball episode of Good Eats just happened to come on. COINCIDENCE?!) He suggested cooking them in a mini-muffin tin so the juices can drain down, but I did it on a baking rack and lowered the temp to 325*. You can use a meat thermometer or just cut into a wad to see if it's done. I served them by themselves right into my mouth, but you could put them on top of rice noodles, as a side to stir fry, let 'em soak up some pho or curry broth. Almost anything can be done with the adaptable meatwad! 

Grilled Chicken and Cherry Salsa

Well, y'all, it's officially summertime in New Orleans.  When it's 101 degrees outside and at least 80% humidity, I like foods that are fresh, crisp, and can retain their cool flavors in the face of positively inhumane heat.

Yesterday, I turned to a recipe I found on Pinterest (withhold judgment till you've actually tried it!)  This is my first time cooking from Pinterest, and I was actually really pleased.  This recipe uses fresh berries and herbs to make a slightly spicy but refreshing salsa, and as the website touts, it's ready in 20 minutes!

I mixed roughly chopped cherries, fresh blueberries, minced red onion, lemon juice, fresh basil, fresh mint, minced jalapeno, balsamic vinegar, honey, and a dash of salt in a small bowl and let it marinate while I grilled the chicken.

Summery colors! 

 I brushed both sides of the chicken breasts with olive oil and seasoned with salt and pepper, then grilled for a couple of minutes per side in a skillet on the stovetop.

The only thing that could have made this better  would be cooking on an actual grill!  

 The whole meal came together so quickly, and the flavors were really nice together.  Plus I had leftovers to bring to work today!  And I've got a fresh mango back home that I'm going to add to the rest of the salsa to give it even more flavor.  Bon appetit :)

Balsamic Beets & Kale, Oh My!!

Everybody!  I'm back!  It's been awhile, and I've got SO many recipes to share with you, so let's get started.

Literally as I type this, I am eating this delicious and ridonkulously easy recipe for balsamic beet and kale salad.  You can find the original recipe here.

As usual, almost all of my ingredients are from the Hollygrove Market & Farm.  As many of you know I volunteer there every Sunday afternoon; it's a refreshing change of pace from the office life, I get to interact with approximately a million different people every time, and I get a great deal on fresh, local produce, grass-fed meats (namely pork, chicken, beef, and lamb), and locally produced goodies like jams, honey, and even fresh-roasted coffee.  WIN.

For this recipe, I peeled and sliced a handful of beets, shredded a whole bunch (literally, an entire bunch, approximately one pound) of kale, and finely minced a shallot.  In a separate bowl, I whisked together equal parts olive oil and some balsamic vinegar my mom gave me (for some reason I think she made it...?  Mom, do you make wineegar?!); the recipe calls for Dijon mustard, but I substituted what I had: creole mustard and honey.  I added salt and pepper to taste, then drizzled the dressing over the shredded/minced veggies in a large bowl.

Then I ate it.

I love this salad for its versatility; I've eaten it alone, added it to salads for pizzazz, stuffed it in quesadillas, eaten it over rice, eaten more of it alone, topped eggs with it, put it in an omelet, etc.  It's got a surprisingly complex mix of tart, sweet, spicy, crunchy, and delicious.  It would make a great side dish for a last-minute spring or summer potluck!

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna cut this short so I can go eat some more....

A Taste of Summer: Exquisite Key Lime Pie!

Recently, my grandma had a birthday. Judging by the dessert she gravitates to almost every time we go to Applebee's for dinner, I decided to make a homemade (from scratch) key lime pie to celebrate at our family get together. I had this gorgeous picture in my mind of a lime green pie in a black crust, so I opted for a chocolate Graham cracker crust.

The recipe I followed was from one of my favorite cookbooks, Cook's Illustrated Cookbook from America's Test Kitchen. It tests different proportions of ingredients, etc. and gives you the absolute best version of the recipe (my favorite carrot cake recipe is also from this book-- not too oily, dry, crumbly, or gooey. Perfect!)

Unless you live in southern Florida and I'm jealous of you, key limes are not readily available. This book suggests the use of Persian limes (the kind you find in any and every grocery store), which saves you from juicing 20+ tiny key limes (you're welcome!)

First, zest limes and get the juice from 5 of them. I misread the instructions and zested the 5 limes, too, so a) the pie was extra lime-y and b) I was so sick of zesting. You'd probably only need to zest 2 or 3, unless you're an overachiever.

I might make this my background photo. My favorite color is lime zest. 

One of these things is not like the others...

I think the zested limes look just like tennis balls. They are also delightfully fuzzy.

Any recipe for a custardy pie like this one will require egg yolks. I like to use the 3 bowl method that I learned from volunteering at cooking school. Basically, you want to crack your eggs over one bowl, and have a separate bowl for yolks and one for whites.

This method is more important if you're using the whites (to make a meringue or something fluffy), because they're the ones that will really flop if they get any protein (yolk) in them. Using this method, if the egg that you just cracked gets some yolk in the white, all the other egg whites you have aren't compromised and you don't have to start over. It's sort of a mini insurance policy. On your eggs. Trying to think of a funny pun.

One of the things that makes me cringe the most is when a recipe asks you to separate eggs, then only uses the yolks or the whites. Whichever 1/2 you have to use (yolks or white), you can scramble the other half. No waste! (If you do it the other way, you're LITERALLY throwing half the money you spent on eggs down the trash chute. If you're spending $6/dozen on organic eggs from free-range, self-aware, happy-go-lucky chickens that poop rainbows, that could add up.)

While the custard was thickening, I made the crust. The best way to finely crumble your Graham crackers is to put them in a Ziploc bag (if you're reusing one, make sure it's fully dry and has no holes), then roll it over with a rolling pin.

 I opted for a glass in a bowl. We're high-tech in my kitchen. Try to keep up.

If I were to do anything differently, I would not add extra sugar to the pie crust, just because I was using pre-sweetened chocolate Graham crackers. The crust turned out extra crumbly, and I'm wondering if that's why. 

I used the same glass to press the Graham cracker dust into the pie pan after adding melted butter. Make sure it's pressed down well, then use a spoon to press it into the edges. You can lick the spoon. And/or the bottom of the glass.  You'd have to have surveillance footage of my kitchen to prove whether or not I did that last one... 

The pie crust needs to bake a few minutes, and the custard filling recipe should tell you whether the crust should be warm or cooled completely before the custard is added. In the case of this recipe, the crust should be warm. In a moment of poor judgment and hyper-impatience, I poured the custard into the fresh-from-the-oven pie crust, so that's another possibility for why the crust was crumbly.

Cooking and baking is truly 99.9% following directions. You see how well I do that.

Regrettably, I didn't get a photo of the beautiful finished product-- apparently the love of key lime pie is genetic in this family because this was snarfed up in a flash.

You can also just buy a crust. That would save you some time and energy, but I just really REALLY like making things from scratch as a way to show my peeps how much I care. Stay tuned to see if I still say the same after this weekend's Easter dinner... :)

Message me if you'd like this recipe in full! Or, do yourself a favor and buy this great cookbook . I promise I'm not getting paid for advertising. 

Now featuring... The Brewmeister's Beef Stew!

Greetings all! As we near the close (hopefully) of the dreary winter weather, here comes a classic cold weather go-to meal for me. And I might mention that this will be a bit of a cameo for the "brewmeister", who will remain anonymous at this point ; )

Anyway, one of my favorite winter meals is a rich, flavorful beef stew. Not only is this perfectly tasty, but also a very low maintenance meal, granted you are able to plan ahead about 6-8 hours. So, first step here is chopping a bunch of veggies up into bit size pieces (the more irregular the better). For this version I went with a sweet potato from our local farmer's market (I wish I took a picture of this bad boy, must have been 4 pounds or so), 4 carrots, 1 white onion, and 4 stalks of celery. Your finished product for this step will look something like this.

Now you can put this aside and focus on the star of the show-- BEEF!! What I like to do here is coat the beef in a flour/salt/pepper mixture. And just as an FYI, nearly all grocery stores will have some stew ready meat already chopped up for you. I used about a pound and a half for this recipe. So once you have the beef evenly coated with your flour and spice mixture, throw some oil in a pan and crank up the heat. Once your oil is ready, throw your meat in there and get all sides nice and brown. This step is key to locking in the tender goodness of your meat. So once your meat is good and brown, toss it in your Crockpot. Don't forget to scrape in every last morsel of flavor from your pan here.


So now we are ready to toss everything (veggies, beef, liquids, and spices) into the pot and let the flavors meld like a well orchestrated symphony. For flavor, let's invite the following friends to the party:

So we have some beef broth (I used two cups here), a couple bay leaves, about a tablespoon of paprika, 2 tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce, and my favorite, 3 cloves of minced garlic. These are really more about personal preference, so listen to your heart. And I can't forget, living up to my nickname, I also topped off the pot with some home brews. These happened to be of the gingered ale variety : ) 

Quick recap: veggies, beef, liquids, and spices are all in the Crockpot. At this point, our work is nearly over. Just set your Crockpot to the setting of your liking; low and 8 hours was my choice since it was a weekend and it was too cold to go golfing. In the meantime, read a book, have a few more beers. or catch some good TV; whatever tickles your fancy. After a few hours, check on your stew, and make sure everyone is getting along nicely in the sauna!

This meal goes really well with some yummy cornbread, or bread of any kind. Well, that is all for now, folks! Hopefully it's not too late to put this recipe into action. If it is, there's always next winter, or you could move to a more northerly latitude. 

I will gracefully stand aside now because as we all know, the women run the show...

Sweet, spicy, savory burritos...and a lot of cheese.

Guys, I'm back!  Yes, another post starting with an apology for the hiatus: travel, houseguests, Mardi Gras, and the flu are all in my past now, so I can start making food again.


This week's recipe: Sweet Potato and Black Bean Burritos!  Vegetarian (for those of you to whom that is important), surprisingly filling, and far tastier than anything this healthy usually is, these things also freeze well and can be reheated on those nights when you get home entirely too late and just wish you had some Mexican food....i.e. I wish I had made these pre-Mardi Gras.

This recipe comes courtesy of my farmer's market, who also supplied me with the onions and the sweet potatoes.  Thanks, Hollygrove.

I started by peeling and cubing 3 small sweet potatoes (or 2 large ones, whatever you've got on hand), cubing an onion, cubing a red bell pepper, and dicing 2 jalapeños, then combining all those little cubes in a large bowl with a couple of tablespoons of olive oil, a generous shake of both cumin and chili powder, and salt and pepper to taste.

I spread the spiced cubes on a baking sheet and roasted them at 425˚, stirring once halfway through.

While the veggies were roasting, I chopped 1/4 cup of packed cilantro, drained and rinsed a can of black beans, and added them to the empty bowl with a hefty dose of lime juice.  I then added the roasted veggies back to the bowl, gave it a good stir, and ended up with this fabulous fiesta of color.

¡Olé!

I spooned a spoonful* into the middle of some pretty large tortillas, sprinkled on some Mexican blend cheese (better for melting than other blends), and rolled it up like the true burritoista that I am.  

*about 1/4 cup

I swear, I could work at Moe's or Chipotle now, because I am now a Master Roller since this recipe produced SO MANY BURRITOS.  Hence the freezing. And the eating for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  And the pawning off on friends.

Once rolled and back on the baking sheet, this little village of bean blankies (shoutout to my Tom Haverford fans!) cooked for another 15 minutes at 375˚.

The next time I make these, I'll probably add a little ground beef or pork because I'm a reckless and insatiable carnivore.  I'll probably also cube the sweet potatoes a little smaller, because even though they roasted up beautifully tender, my drunk self prefers small chunks in my late-night Mexican food endeavors.

Final note: I win at life with this important purchase.

ONE POUND o' cheese.  Lawd. 

Moroccan Olive Chicken with Cous Cous, recipe courtesy of my brain

So sorry for the lag time, comrades. Family was in town, I baked a cake, and time escaped me. But now, the next post:

In a brief and infrequent moment of foresight, I put some frozen chicken breasts in the fridge to thaw while I was at work today. That way, when I got home in a semi-tizzy after 8 hours in that hell-on-earth known as retail, I would at least have the ingredients ready to create the master plan I had just started thinking up on the way home. The alternative is hacking the chicken breasts apart with a not-sharp-enough knife, and we all know where that leads…

My master plan goes a little something like this, while I’m stopping-and-going on I-40:

“Dinner, dinner, dinner… I know, chicken!…baked! To keep the moisture in, it needs a jacket of…. Citrus? I don’t have any… [brain blast!] OLIVES! With…rice.”

So, I put the mostly defrosted chicken into a glass pan that I had a top for. I lightly salted and peppered the chicken boobies, then covered with 4 tablespoons of sliced green olives. When you do this at home, I would rinse the olives a bit, the brine tended to make some bites of this meal a little too salty. I also chopped some red, yellow and orange sweet peppers for color, then put the top on the dish and baked at 350* for about 20 minutes. Mine took longer than expected because the meat was thicker in some places than others. In retrospect, I would butterfly the chicken or cut them in half lengthwise (hot dog style—anybody else remember that from elementary school?)

Getting ready to bake! Kalamata olives or capers would probably work well here, too, if you wanted to experiment with a Greek, lemon-olive-rosemary dish.

While the chicken was cooking, I pureed about 2 cups of cilantro leaves (be sure to rinse them) with olive oil and some pine nuts. Pine nuts are crazy expensive, but I (randomly) had some lying around my pantry, so I used them. If you don’t have any and don’t want to buy any, walnuts work just as well. So, I blended those ingredients to make a sort of cilantro pesto.

Making the cilantro pesto

Rinsing my cilantro. Disregard the blueberries, which I was eating while rinsing. On a side note, a blueberry with a cilantro leaf wrapped around it is a surprisingly refreshing snack. 

It was then that I realized I forgot to put on the rice, which we all know takes longer than you would think it does.

Quick thinking: cous cous! If you haven’t tried it, cous cous is da bomb diggity (can’t believe I just said that, wow, hello 1994). It’s a grain, a Moroccan staple, and literally cooks in 5 minutes. You just boil your water, add a bit of salt and some olive oil or butter, then add cous cous, remove from heat, cover, let sit for 5 minutes, then fluff with a fork. While fluffing, I added some sun dried tomatoes, which made it really beautiful and even more colorful. And healthier, I suppose, if you’re going for that.

Time to plate! So, I put down some cous cous, then some pesto, then the chicken, spooned the olives, juices, and peppers on top, then a bit more pesto. I wanted this to be Food Network ready because the BrewMeister is such a Food Network junkie. I failed to mention, while I was making this he was—I kid you not—TAKING OUR FRONT DOOR OFF ITS HINGES and CUTTING RIGID PLASTIC WITH MY GOOD KITCHEN KNIVES. ShakeMyHead.

Men, I will never understand you, please explain yourselves. Thank you.