Portabella Caps

I don't know if I've discussed my love of my Bj's membership much here, but for better or worse Bj's is my jam....though I don't get jam at Bj's, lots of peanut butter though, lots and lots of peanut butter (my mom and mother in law were a bit horrified by the peanut butter stash when they helped us move). Anywho, amongst the many things Sarah and I procure at the club (...yes I did just do that, even I'm embarrassed for myself) are portabella mushroom caps, cause for just shy of five buck for half a dozen, yes please! And this is a dinner Sarah loves, so lets get on with it...

Line your pan. You don't have to, but the one time I didn't cleaning it was ...less than fun. Spread out the caps and drizzle each with a bit of balsamic vinegar and a bit of olive oil. 

Add cheese! We had been using mozzarella, but we were running low on it this time around and used feta instead. Both. Delicious. Season those suckas...Italian seasoning? Sure! Basil? Yeah! Oregano? Why not! (I mean don't go crazy, one of those options will do, you really don't need more than one). Throw them in the oven at 400*F until the cheese looks melty and delicious....

Nom, nom, nom. See you next Tuesday!

Beet Sliders

Since shallots, beets and garlic were in no short supply with our winter CSA share, beet sliders became a weekly staple in our apartment for a while.

I'm sure there are better ways to cook a beet, but I peeled it, sliced it and threw it on a grill pan with some water. Then I would very un-scientifically cover it with a pot lid to try and trap some of that moisture. I'd have to add some more water here and there as I flipped the beets periodically.

While the beets were cooking I'd take a small shallot and clove of garlic and cook those up in a pan. The shallot I would slice before putting it on the stove and the garlic I would grate on our handy dandy garlic grater (which I really do love and recommend to anyone, it's also great for ginger!)

Once the shallot and garlic are cooked they go in a small container with some mayo and get mixed up.

For the sliders we went White Castle style and put them on typical dinner rolls. First I toasted the rolls, then the top got some of the garlic shallot mayo. 

The beets got topped with a healthy slice of mozzarella, and viola! Beet Sliders for all! (Or at least Sarah and I). 

My favorite side to have these with were some homemade sweet potato fries (bonus: use the same pan as the garlic and shallot were cooked in to cook the fries, more flavor, less dishes). 

See you next Tuesday (hopefully, maybe?)!

Corn Chowder

Since joining a CSA Sarah and I have made a lot of soup. To be fair I made this the day before we got our first lot of winter veggies to make room in our kitchen/pantry for them, but either way. Soup for days. Actually between all the different soups, more like soup for weeks. But moving along!

Butter! Melt it in a pot.

Onions and garlic! One onion. However many cloves of garlic make you happy. Because if there's anything you've learned about me thus far it's that almost every food should apparently have garlic and onions.

Stir occasionally until the onions start to get a little more translucent. 

Dust it with a little salt and a wee bit of cumin or curry or whatever you feel like would taste good in your corn chowder.

Dust it all with a bit of flour and stir.

Potatoes. Two or three big ones. Peeled. Diced.

Some milk. Some cream. 

CORN! Now in real life I'd just use frozen. BUT. I was making this so that I could use those five ears of corn that were sitting around. (side note: I do not love cutting corn off the cob)

I mixed 6 cups worth of Better than Bouillon with three cups worth of water and dumped it in. You could use this, actual bullion, or actual vegetable stock. I just used what I had. The other three cups of water I beat two eggs into well as seen below before dumping that in too. (I like putting eggs in corn chowder, it may give it a weird texture, but otherwise it's totally delightful).

Cook til the potatoes are soft and that's it! I stored ours in mason jars as pre-made lunches. Cause, you know the mason jar lunch is something we've been really into these days. Maybe Providence put a little hipster in us. Who knows. It's hella convenient though, I'll tell you that much. See you next Tuesday!

Peanut Tofu

And now back to what this blog (and my life) is really all: food. (Not really, but really). The other night I wanted to make something for dinner to accompany an acorn squash I had gotten, and I settled on using a block of tofu that had been sitting in the fridge since I was back in Providence (...so a while). I used my bff google to look up tofu recipes and settled on this one, because we had (or so I thought) everything on hand to make it, and quite frankly, it looked awesome. While it turns out I maybe didn't have exactly what I needed (including the time to prepare it correctly) it came out pretty great!

The tofu. So it wasn't until I started googling tofu while making this that I realized I actually didn't want silken tofu at all for this. Who knew? Apparently silken tofu falls apart/breaks much easier than regular tofu. I did end up with some odd shapes and had to be careful, but it all worked out alright. 

I didn't have quite the proper amount of time to devote to draining the tofu (also since it was silken tofu it also wasn't packaged in quite as much liquid. But hooray paper towels!

Surprise! We were just about out of parchment paper. But I suppose in true Tim Gunn fashion, I made it work.

The sauce was the reason I was actually excited that we had all the things, cause we had bought sweet chili sauce for some home made cup 'o noodle lunches a few weeks ago. so there are all the ingredients for the sauce (I don't really believe in buying soy sauce when I'm always given far more than I use to eat at one time with my asian take out). 

I left the tofu in the sauce to marinate on the counter while we went out so Sarah could vote and we could go to the library.

 When we returned home I put it in a skillet with some sesame oil, and fried it up! Then lets not be silly, we didn't have cauliflower in the house, so I made a mix of brown basmati rice and quinoa to put it on top of. I was worried that it for various reasons it didn't come out good, but turns out it was real good. Especially as left overs a week later (which I had with some peanut sesame soba noodles instead of rice). It also got Sarah's approval. All in all, I'd make this again, correct tofu, or not (if we're being honest...which I almost always am). yummmm. See you next Tuesday!

Curried Lentils

Lentils! Yay! Let me start by saying I loosely followed this recipe, and boy do I wish I had some sweet potatoes when I made it, not because it wasn't delicious without them, but it just looks and sounds like it would be oh so much better with them. But alas, we did not have any sweet potatoes in the apartment. Also I feel as though every non-sweet baking recipe I made starts with, let's cook up some onions in oil. And honestly, I don't have any problems with this situation!

Ginger. Garlic. If you've followed this blog even a little, you know that these also rank high on things I love using. Instead of the recommended spice amounts I just took a table spoon and filled it almost 3/4s of the way with curry powder, most of the rest with cinnamon, and a little bit of ground cumin. This seemed to work fine. I also forgot to add salt at any point in time. Oops. But I also figure that vegetable broth tends to have a high enough sodium content for this not to be a huge problem. Which really, it didn't turn out to be a problem.

I did not have, nor want, jalapeños. I'm just not that into spice. But we do have a bag full of little peppers in our fridge, so I chopped up four of those and threw them in the mix. No swiss chard for me (I'm not even that sure really what it is), like the salt I forgot black pepper, no cilantro (I wish! Lilly doesn't like it though), lime juice yes, zest no, bay leaf yeah sure we had that, no almonds or scallions (though I'd add them if you have 'em), and when it seemed to be a bit dry I added milk instead of more stalk, cause I'm just that kind of rebel. 

After covering it and letting it simmer for 25 minutes it was ready to eat. I threw it over rice and had a delightful lunch. Then I took a nap, but that's a different story. See you next Tuesday!