Cranberry Rice Pudding

Sure, I try to write about using the fresh, seasonal, local produce bounty to create dinner.  But sometimes, it's about upcycling.

I don't make white rice, but I do sometimes acquire white rice.  Sometimes it comes along with General Tso's Tofu.  And it sits in the fridge.  Sometimes I have the common sense to freeze it and make fried rice with it later, other times it sits until we have to give it the old sniff-n-toss.

Let's face it, not every meal is a home-cooked treasure.  But just like I add spinach or chard to my leftover Chicken Tikka Masala to stretch my takeout into a three day experience, cooked takeout white rice can be turned into a creamy dessert that pretty much comes free with your delivery meal.  Recycled rice = instant dessert. 

Tofu Banh Mi Salad

I've had this salad stuck in my head for a while.  It's sweet and spicy and crisp and fresh and it mimics my all-time favorite sandwich.  I've proclaimed my love for the tofu banh mi pretty loudly on this blog. Nearly a year and a half ago, I wrote up the recipe for the sandwich.  One of my first posts was just about how much I like these sandwiches, without a recipe or anything, just "Hey, you know what's a good sandwich? Tofu banh mi."  

A banh mi is pickled carrots and daikon, cucumber, jalepeno, cilantro, a wee bit of mayo or vegenaise, maybe some sriracha and some kind of protein* which in my case is always tofu.  Sweet fried tofu.  

The good rolls from the real Vietnamese bakeries are made with rice flour and are crisp on the outside and soft inside and perfect for balancing the complex flavors of this salad.  

But something about it was calling for salad-ization.  Rolls are great, but lettuce works. And a soft, crisp-edged roll might interfere with the magic act that is sweet tofu with pickled veg and spicy peppers and cilantro.  That's a lot to work with and you want to taste it all. So it was time to make it into a salad. 

Let's call this Same Dinner, Different Day, even though the other day was in April of 2011.  Please don't hold on to leftover tofu that long. 

Hot Tip: Freezer Burritos for Easy Lunches

In the winter, lunches are easy.  Winter means any time when it's not 90 degrees out.  In the winter, I make lasagnas and chilis and pastas and I just make extra servings to freeze and lunch is handled.  On winter mornings, each of us just looks into the freezer and pulls out something wrapped in foil or dished out into tupperware and there it is, home cooked goodness to eat at our desks while staring off like zombies.  It's awesome.  In the summer, it's not quite like that.  In the summer, if I cooked the night before, there might be some leftover stir fry or pasta salad, but there's never that freezer bounty.  Summer foods just don't freeze like winter foods. 

Same Dinner Different Day: Pineapple Fried Rice

Pineapple salsa is good, but it can be a lot of flavor and maybe you don't want it tearing up the inside of your mouth for two consecutive days.  Cooking the pineapple takes out a lot of the sting, and turns yesterday's taco topper into today's one-wok dinner. 

Turn your regular pasta sauce into vodka sauce

There's a whole debate over whether vodka sauce is really a food, or if it's a 1980's food trend that refuses to die.   Chowhound has some decent conversation on the topic, and folks land on both the "vodka makes tomatoes taste better" side and the "this isn't really food" side.  More than 10 years ago, NYT said it was food, but that might have been too close to the 80s.  If you were to Google it, you'd find additional sources on the debate.

I think it's food.  But since I wasn't all that aware of what was food before the 80s, what do I know?  I make cream sauces without vodka, and they're good, but in my silly little opinion, vodka sauces get you to the magical place of pepperyness balanced with sweetness, and I don't think a sweet cream sauce with some pepper in it does that as well.  

Soft Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookies

There are four types of chocolate chip cookies:  Flat n' chewy, hard, soft, and icky.  Everyone has their cookie camp.  I make mine soft.  If you want to make them chewy, use the Tollhouse recipe.  Everyone else does.  It's a good cookie.  I'm all for it.  Also, other people like them hard.  I don't know what's wrong with those people.  And then some cookies are icky.  Like the hard "chocolate chip" cookies made of chalk dust that people get at Italian bakeries.  Ugh.


I was a Soft Batch kid, not a Chips Ahoy kid.  But I had some Soft Batch cookies a couple years back and there is some sort of acidic sweet chemical flavor that is no longer working for me. And they're dusty too.  I don't know what happened.


Either way, I've been working on a whole wheat recipe for a while.  I think whole wheat will only work with the thicker, softer cookies, because they're cakier to start with, and if you think too hard about it, muffin-ier.  So whole wheat works here.


Anyhow, I made you some cookies. 


I buy good chocolate chips, because I'm a spoiled girl.  I don't know, a couple years ago I had a [candy] bar and it was like wax and I asked myself what I was doing eating chocolate.  Sous Chef Brian had never been a chocolate fan, and I started buying "good" chocolate and all of a sudden he was all nomming on my secret stash, so I'm a convert, and I eat a lot less chocolate because I can afford a lot less chocolate.   So start with something you really like.  

Same Dinner Different Day: Ricotta Quiche Muffins

Ricotta quiche muffins?  Seriously, I had a hard time figuring out a name for this that made even that much sense.  It's muffin shaped, and has a lot of ricotta, and it's sort of the texture of quiche.   You're welcome to call it whatever you want. 


A few days ago I made the eggplant rollatini for an event.  Only I misjudged in the doubling/tripling, and ended up with way more ricotta and swiss chard than I needed.  Nearly two cups more.   It's about a cup of ricotta, a quarter cup of mozzarella, a half cup of swiss chard and a bit of black pepper. 

Hot Tip: Roasted Vegetable Stock

You know that I'm a freezer-hoarder.  I have a lot of things in there. Including the ends and peels of every veg that passes through this house, for stock.  And I make a lot of vegetable stock.

MSNDG started saving her veg bits for stock, and then, once she had a gallon bag full, she realized she doesn't really use that much veg stock.  So what was all this freezer space taken up for?


First, it's better to keep your freezer full.  A full freezer is a more efficient freezer.


But also, you can use veg stock almost anywhere you'd use water.  And certainly anywhere you'd use chicken stock.  You can use it in place of wine in lots of dishes.   Veg stock makes your pasta, couscous, quinoa, millet, barley, whatever, a bit tastier.  Veg stock can thin a sauce without watering it down.  It's step one of soup. 


And vegetable stock is free.  Those are veg you were going to compost or toss anyhow.


So the interwebs were telling me that it's better to roast your veg first, and I was thinking, that's an extra step I'm just not gonna mess with, until I reached full capacity in the freezer.


I don't know what happened.  I have a good bit of sauce frozen, and two loaves of sandwich bread, and a loaf of banana bread, and some calzones (recipe to come), and maybe a lot of other things, as well as a gallon bag stuffed with veg ends, and all of a sudden I just didn't have room left in the freezer.  But I didn't have the kind of time it takes to make stock.


Time spent making stock isn't busy time, but you have to be home, because, you know, the stove is on. And it takes a while to cool before you can stash it back in the freezer.

So just to make room in my freezer, I roasted up the contents of my stock bag, figuring it would soften and shrink the veg ends, making it easier to store the bag of frozen veg until stock day.


So here are some up close and personal shots of my veg ends.  All of this, on a baking sheet at 400 until everything softened and browned around the edges.  30 minutes or so?

Then back into the bag (once cooled) in the freezer until stock day.   They took up half the space they used before, so I felt I had accomplished something. 

When stock day came, I opened up my bag of browned and nutty roasted veg and tossed it in an equal amount of water with some peppercorns and let it go, simmering, tasting every so often.  When it stops tasting like dirty water, start paying attention.  Mash the veg with your spoon a bit.  Give it maybe another hour.  

Strain, and if you're feeling it, run through cheesecloth too.  I freeze it in jars and in ice cubes. An ice cube is about an ounce, so they're easy for measuring and adding a bit here and there. 

So, should we roast all our stock veg?  I think so.  It has a lot more flavor than my typical stock, richer, nuttier, heartier, etc.  If it's convenient to do so, why not?

Challah French Toast

Last week we went to Trader Joe's and we were debating buying some bread.  I haven't made bread for a while* - first it was hot out, and then I just didn't do it.  I thought I was done with storebought bread, but it's frustrating not having bread, so we went and looked at the breads and all of a sudden I was like, "OMG, Challah!"  


I've never owned challah** and never made it.  The last time I had it was at a naming ceremony for my friend's second kid, and he's on his third now.  Challah has historically been something I've encountered at celebrations, at other people's houses.   We grew up in a place of challah and good bagels.  We don't have good bagels here.  


So I don't know why, in that moment, it seemed to make sense to buy this rich, eggy bread that's closer to the texture of a croissant than the whole wheat bread I make, but it sounded awesome.  And it was. 


But that's a big loaf, and we really don't eat that much bread.  So it served all of our carb needs for the week.   Having Indian food?  Don't make naan, bust out the challah.  PBJ?  Challah.  Breakfast at work?  Pack a thick slice of challah.  BLT?  Feels sacrilegious on challah, but sure is delicious.  Need a snack?  Holla Challah. 


And still, after a week there was a good amount left, and this bread wasn't going to go to waste.  But we all know what challah is best at, right?  French toast.   It's legendary.  

Ordering in! Pizza and Salad from SliCE

Slice - excuse me - SliCE - is the closest "fancy" pizza place around. You know, a place where not everything is on top of red sauce. I make a lot of pizza, but sometimes you don't want to turn on the oven.  This is their Caramelized Onion and Goat Cheese pizza.  

It was great, and Brian said it might be the best he's ever had.  

Nice thin crust.

Good smattering of toppings. 

I love that they call it Caramelized Onion and Goat Cheese - but you know, it's got a good bit of bacon on top.  That's not even part of the title.  As I said here, and  say all the time, bacon is a seasoning, and clearly they understand that. 


Slice makes a bit point on their website about how they focus only on pizza and don't have frozen/fried appetizers or hoagies or any of the other stuff common at pizza places around here.   They do, however, have awesome salads.

This photo doesn't quite do justice to the Signature salad.  Arugula, pine nuts, gorgonzola and a raspberry vinaigrette that avoids that overly-syrupy taste of bottled dressings.  


I had a lame week for CSA greens, so ordering in a salad like this was great.  There was enough salad for three good servings, so I was able to bring it for lunch the next day. 

Summer Squash Frittata

I had a lot of squash, and I had a lot of eggs.  So I used the oven.  And it was worth it.


I may be stretching the word frittata here, but "egg casserole" sounds fairly disgusting.  Like something you'd see on The Gallery of Regrettable Food. 


The thing with me and "frittata" is that I don't have a skillet that goes into the oven.  Basic frittata is eggs with food in it, on the stove til set on the bottom, then into the oven.  When I say, "I made frittata," I either mean, "I made a big omelete," or what you see here.  Eggs, veg, cheese, oven. 

Chard and Zucchini Quesadilla, and BIG NEWS

I pick up my farmshare on Tuesdays, and go to the grocery store on Sundays and hit up the farm market on either Wednesdays or Sundays. So when we get to Saturday, most of whatever's in the fridge has been there a while.  It was time to clean house.

Lighter, Quicker Strata with Asparagus and Bacon

When Sous Chef Brian came home and asked what we were having, I said, "asparagus strata."  He said, "Erik Estrada?" I should note that I'm far too young to have watched CHiPs, but Sous Chef Brian is not.  Also, I know Erik Estrada from Sea Lab 2021, which was, for a very intense two-week span nearly 10 years ago, my favorite show.    I enunciated more clearly.  "Asparagus Strata."  He looked at me like a confused animal, which makes sense.  He doesn't get out to a lot of brunches or baby showers, and I had no clue what strata was before I started making it.


I had a vegetable strata at DiBruno Brothers about six months ago.  I didn't know what it was, but it looked pretty and it was vegetables.  It was tall, and had many layers, and it was delicious.  So this week I started looking for recipes.   I was surprised it was a brunch food, I would have called it "casserole" when I had it and been done with that. 


When I started researching recipes, I was shocked at how much egg it contained.   Over and again I saw easy-to-measure recipes that called for 12 ounces of cheese, 12 slices of bread and 12 eggs. 


I can't do that.  I can't put 12 eggs into dinner.  I can't halve it and put 6 eggs into dinner.  It just doesn't feel right.   I can, however, put less egg in, especially in order to justify bacon.  Also, these recipes called for sitting overnight, and that's not my thing.  And so lighter, quicker strata happened.

Black Bean and Chicken Egg Rolls

This is, apparently, the only pose I can imagine for the egg rolls -I used it last week too. 

A week ago I made Red Cabbage Egg Rolls, and I had about half* the wrappers left over, so here's what happened with that. These are much like some Southwestern Egg Rolls we've had in chain restaurants, but made of food and baked.

Banana Flax Pancakes

 

Brian is a pancake fan.  I've mentioned that I'm not much of a baker, and I consider pancakes to be part of baking.  My pancakes were a running joke for a while.  I couldn't even do it with Bisquick.  When we were young we live in a house with a million people and I remember weekend after weekend trying to prove I could do this and failing.  In front of a crowd.  

I swear, once we bought our own house, I learned how to measure and mix.  Not that I like it, of course I prefer to add a dash of this and a bit of that and see what happens, but once there's baking powder involved, I'm not qualified to mess around with the ingredients.  So now, occasionally, I make pancakes.

Butternut Squash, Chard and Sage Lasagna Rolls

I committed to doing some cooking in advance this weekend.  Cooking for lunches during the week, cooking for the freezer for some night when I feel less like cooking, cooking for the sake of cooking.  There's just two of us, and so making up a pot of/pan of anything means there are going to be leftovers, and I'm not one to eat the same thing more than a few times in a week.   So when I make something that takes more than a weeknight's worth of effort, I cook up a full pan of whatever it is, reserve two servings and freeze the rest.  Then our lunches this week can be something we haven't eaten in several weeks, rather than whatever we ate last night.  

This is a particularly effective policy for something rich, like a butternut squash lasagna enrobed in buttery sauce. 

This is one of few things I do with butternut squash.  I generally don't like sweet entrees.  I refuse to put brown sugar on sweet potatoes.  Carrots are an ingredient, not a dish on their own.  You get it.  So the squash gets balanced out by the cheese and the sage and the chard and it doesn't overpower the dish with sweet.

Tortilla Soup with Kale and Chicken

I don't really make soups.  I'm not good at viewing a soup as "dinner."  Put a grilled cheese sandwich next to it, and I'm all set, but just soup sounds like a beverage.   But this is different.  This is borderline stewlike.  This has stuff it it, and if you want to put different stuff in it, that's ok too.  Like pizza, pretty much, you can clean out your fridge into tortilla soup.

Red Pepper Pasta

Pasta Primavera

Kitchen Sink Pasta

Whats in the Fridge? Pasta

This is one of those dinners where you get back from a meeting at 8:30 and you're staring at each other wondering what's for dinner.  This is what's for dinner. Again, not a recipe.  So few things are.  This is more like, look, I put these things together, and I ate it.  And I liked it.

Free Vegetable Stock

I didn't get a photo of all the jars finished, so here's a midway shot.

I've talked about making stock briefly before, and I've talked about using stock a lot.  This is ridiculously easy, and it's absolutely free, except for the cost of a few peppercorns.  

I used to be bullion-cube happy.  I used to use a lot of the heavily-flavored, powdered vegetable flavoring that comes wrapped in foil.  This fixes that.  I still use beef bullion occasionally, since I never have on hand the part of a cow that one might use to make stock, but I don't see any use for chicken stock, since I have veg stock, and that fits my agenda since I'm deathly afraid of chicken.  But a flavorful enough veg stock meets 98% of my stock needs.

Also, I don't compost, so things I might compost instead turn into this, compost soup. 

Chard and Bacon Pizza

Remember when I made the pizza the other day and said you get two pizzas from a batch of dough? Here's round two.