Bloody Mary Bisque (Healthy and Easy!)

I know, I know - Bloody Mary Bisque? What?? Well, as per usual for this time of year, I'm getting heaps of tomatoes from the CSA and it's game on versus the fruit flies to see who gets to eat them. Usually I make some form of tomato soup for my end game. Deconstructed, what is tomato soup? Tomato juice and seasoning. What are Bloody Marys? Tomato juice and seasoning. I've never been happy with using canned tomato sauce or the V8 types in my soups, so I figured I'd check out the liquor aisle. Because that always has the answers.What sold me was a new horseradish mixer. I can usually take or leave a Bloody Mary, but if there's horseradish, I want six. The nice thing about making tomato soup with mixer is that you get a bunch more flavor without having to use a bunch of cream.

Ingredients:
1 TBS butter
1/2 onion, roughly chopped
6 cloves garlic, lightly crushed
4 medium-large tomatoes, cut into chunks
1.5 cups of your favorite Bloody Mary mixer
.5 cup broth
Salt and pepper to taste
1/2 cup milk, half and half, or cream if you really like
1/2 cup Greek yogurt
1/4 cup vodka (optional, but it's Bloody Mary Bisque)
Big handful basil, chopped

Directions:
One reason I like making soups is that since it all gets blended together anyway, it doesn't really matter how you chop stuff. So throw your butter in a big pot with a lid, turn the heat to medium, and once it melts, toss in your onion. While it cooks a bit, crush your garlic, and toss it in too. Give it a stir a couple of times until the garlic and onion start to brown.

Toss in your tomatoes, mixer, broth, salt and pepper. Cover and cook 20 minutes or so until everything is nice and squishy. Turn off heat. If you have an immersion blender, stick it in the pot and puree. If you don't have an immersion blender, go get one. With the blender stick running on low, slowly pour in your milk, then add your yogurt. This will help prevent the dairy from curdling, which it likes to do when it gets hot.

Add your vodka and basil, and stir it all up. Taste and adjust seasoning if needed. Cheers!

Pumpkin Spiced Seitan Stew (and a rant about imperial measurements)

As social media explodes with complaints about the very sudden drop in temperatures, I have been huddled in piles of blankets, stubbornly refusing to turn on the heat and receiving frequent glares from the dog. It was a perfect opportunity to spend the day in the kitchen with the oven on. Because baking doesn't count as turning on the heat.

This is a time consuming recipe. It's great for days off with fuzzy pajamas when you don't want to go anywhere. But the result will leave you with over a gallon of stew and will be quite delicious. It is based loosely on a recipe I have in a pumpkin-everything cookbook, but the recipe I have uses beef. If you are on a gluten free diet, this recipe is certainly not for you, but you may certainly substitute your choice of meat, tofu or beans for the seitan if you prefer.

There are two parts to this process: In part one, we make the seitan and roast  the pumpkin; in part two, we make the stew.

The seitan recipe is inspired by the PPK, a vegan's favorite resource, but it has been adjusted to better match the needs of this stew. Wheat gluten and nutritional yeast can be found in health food stores fairly easily, but may also sometimes be found in regular grocery stores. If you cannot find nutritional yeast, you can order it online or you can substitute almond flour or other non-wheat flour.

Seitan can be tricky to work with. You have to get your gluten to liquids ratio just right or it doesn't work, and sometimes the cooking process can also ruin it. The first time I tried making seitan, it came out tasting like sponge and I vowed never to try it again. Obviously I have gotten over that. Part of the problem is that we 'Muricans use a pretty stupid system of measuring solids by volume. This can lead to inconsistency in recipes because a cup of fresh, sifted flour is not the same amount of flour as a cup of flour scooped from a bin that has been sitting for months and had time to settle. The density of the flour (or other dry ingredient) changes, and since density equals mass divided by volume, we do not control for the actual amount we want, which is the mass. This leaves us with two options: either we use recipes written for the metric system, or we experiment enough times that we get a good feel for the type of item we are making so that we can adjust any dough or batter before it is cooked. And we do this for each type of item whether it's seitan, crepes or cupcakes.

Stupid imperial measuring system.

Anyway.

For the Seitan
Ingredients:
3 cups wheat gluten
1/2 cup nutritional yeast
2 tsp ground cardamom
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ground sage
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp allspice
1/2 tsp cloves
1/2 tsp ginger
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup broth
1/2 cup red wine
1/4 cup tomato paste
1/4 cup olive oil

Preheat oven to 325. In a large bowl, mix your gluten, nutritional yeast, spices and garlic. In another bowl, mix everything else. It is, in fact, important that you do this separately as gluten tends to immediately suck up anything wet. So if you put your broth in first, it may take all the broth but not absorb the olive oil.

Pour about 3/4 of your liquid mixture into your gluten and mix it as best you can, kneading a bit as you do so. This is a precaution as it's easier to adjust the liquid than the gluten. If you've still got some dry gluten, add a bit more at a time, incorporating until the mixture is saturated but not soggy. It should still hold its shape pretty easily. If it's falling apart, you've added too much liquid and will need to add more gluten. Knead 5 minutes or until seitan toughens up a bit. Roll into a log and wrap in foil. Twist the ends so it's a sealed package. This is important to prevent it from expanding too much while it bakes, which will make it too bread-like. Bake for about an hour or until it's quite firm.

 The seitan log!

For the pumpkin:
While the seitan bakes, you can throw a pumpkin in to roast at the same time. Just stick a large pie pumpkin with a fork a few times, place on a baking sheet, and stick it in the oven for about the same amount of time as the seitan. It's done when you can easily pierce through the flesh with the fork. I used about 3/4 of a medium-large pie pumpkin and half of a small one. The former had begun to rot on the top and bottom, so these were cut off and the rest was salvaged.


For the stew:
Ingridents:
The seitan and pumpkin you just prepared
2 lbs boiling onions
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 cups broth
3/4 cup red wine
2 bay leaves
1 cinnamon stick
8-10 whole cloves
Salt and pepper

Once the pumpkin and seitan have been out of the oven long enough to cool so you can cut them without swearing at the top of your lungs and dropping hot pumpkin on the floor, slice up your seitan and throw them in a large dutch oven with a blob of olive oil and/or a blob of butter over medium heat. Let the butter melt and toss to coat. Season with salt and pepper.

Peel your onions (it's much easier if you boil them for one minute first), and toss them over the seitan. Add the garlic, broth, wine, bay leaves, cinnamon stick, and cloves, and bring to a boil. Cover and simmer while you deal with the pumpkin.

Halve your pumpkin, scoop out the seeds and slime, halve them again, and grab whatever tool you think might best help get the flesh out of the skin. I was tempted to use the jigsaw, but instead used a knife I inherited years ago - it is curved, serrated on both sides, and has a pointy tip. I believe it's technically a grapefruit knife, but it worked relatively well.

Chop the skinned pumpkin into small chunks and throw it directly into the stew. Simmer another 20-30 minutes. Remove bay leaves, cinnamon stick, and cloves (if you feel like fishing) before serving.

This was quite delicious. Next time I make it, however, I'd like to have a thicker broth and will make a roux to do so.

Autumn Crepes with Roasted Beets, Carrots and Aioli

There is an area restaurant which specializes in crepes stuffed with just about everything from chicken to nutella. Over the years I have had many of their delightful creations, some of which I have recreated at home. A couple of weeks ago I paid them a visit and ordered one of their specials, an apple beet crepe, given that both are in season right now. I suspect it would have been delicious, but they boiled all the flavor out of the beets, which were in too high of a proportion, so it didn't quite hit the spot their crepes usually do. Obviously then the solution was to make my own beet crepes. I have not yet acquired my seasonal apples so I used another of their dishes as inspiration for this recipe. Ironically, they serve this as a salad, not as a crepe. This is a great recipe for a weekend brunch, particularly if you want to impress guests: it is very colorful in addition to being very tasty.

See? Gorgeous.

Ingredients: (makes 2 large crepes)
For the filling:
2 medium beets, washed, peeled, quartered and sliced
2 medium carrots, washed, peeled and sliced
blob olive oil
salt and pepper
handful baby lettuce

For the crepe batter:
1 egg
3/4 cup milk
2/3 cup flour
pinch salt
2 scallions, sliced

For the aioli:
1/4 cup mayonnaise (or substitute half Greek yogurt)
2 tsp lemon juice
1 TBS chopped dill

Directions:
Preheat oven to 425F. Blob your olive oil on a baking sheet, dump your beets and carrots on top and toss to coat. Distribute into a single layer, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and roast 15-20 minutes, turning over about halfway through. The time will depend on how small/thin you cut your veggies.

While the veggies are roasting, whisk together your crepe batter: the egg and milk first, then add flour and salt. The consistency should be very thin, much thinner than most pancake batter. If it seems too thick, add more milk or water to thin it out a bit. Different types of milk (dairy and dairy free) tend to leave different thicknesses, so you may need to adjust based on this. Stir in the scallions.

Heat an 8" or 9" pan over medium-low heat and give it a spritz of cooking spray. Dump about 1/3-1/2 cup batter into the middle of the pan and swirl the pan to distribute the batter evenly across it. Cook until the edges are dry and pulling up from the side, about 2 minutes. Flip and cook the other side for a minute. Repeat with remaining batter.

Mix up your aioli ingredients. When everything has cooked, place a small handful of lettuce on each of two crepes. Divide up the beets and carrots and place on top of the lettuce, spoon some aioli over the veggies, and place a second crepe over the top. Roll the crepe, tucking the ends as you roll. (Hopefully you are better at this than I am.) Cut in half if you like.

Strawberries and cream cereal with chocolate chips

Let's talk breakfast. I hate weekday breakfasts. On weekdays, breakfast is more about cramming food into my mouth like a starved velociraptor than it is about enjoying home cooked food. I am therefore likely to make a week's worth of breakfasts at a time and all the better if it can be done in 5 minutes. This recipe achieves the desired time restrictions, taste, nutrition, and isn't high calorie.

(This isn't very picturesque. Maybe if I put it in a mason jar.)

Ingredients:
5 cups almond milk (or your choice dairy)
Just under 1 cup cream of wheat cereal
2 TBS sugar
1 tsp vanilla
Sprinkle of salt
1 pint strawberries, hulled and sliced
Handful of mini chocolate chips
Scoop of yogurt (optional)

Directions:
Simmer together the milk, Cream of Wheat, sugar, vanilla, and salt until it starts to thicken. Dump in the strawberries and simmer two more minutes. Remove from heat and allow to cool down and thicken more.

If eating right away, scoop some into a bowl, stir in yogurt, and top with a few chocolate chips. If eating later, refrigerate without the yogurt or chocolate chips, and in the morning, microwave a bowl full with a splash of water to thin it back out. The yogurt doesn't really affect the flavor or texture but the protein it packs will help you stay full longer - a necessity for those of us whose shift of running around like a maniac lasts 7 hours before a 20 minute lunch break.

Smoky chili kielbasa and chickpeas with avocado mint zucchini noodles - VEGAN

This was an unusual creation, whose existence I blame on the fickle weather. It's winter. And then it's spring. And then it's winter again. And then it's summer for a day. Now back to winter. So do I want something warm and hearty or do I want something light and cool? I don't know anymore. Here's both! Bonus: the cool avocado offsets the intense smoked chili. It takes a couple of bites to get used to, but then is quite tasty. At first I wasn't sure whether Justin liked it, but then he went back for seconds.

Ingredients:

4 zucchinis, julienned into long strips (noodles)

1 onion, sliced thin

8 oz portabella mushrooms, sliced

4 cloves garlic, minced (divided)

1 package Tofurkey kielbasa (or other veggie sausage if you can't find this)

1 can chickpeas

3 smoked, dry chilies, sliced thin or crushed

Additional chili powder, to taste

Pinch cayenne

Few drops liquid smoke

2 avocados

2 TBS miso

1 TBS tahini

Handful of mint leaves, finely chopped

2 TBS lemon juice

Salt, to taste

Directions

In a large saute pan, cook the onion over medium heat until starting to brown. Add zucchini and a pinch of salt, stir, and continue cooking until the zucchini just starts to wilt. Remove from heat and put a lid or plate over it to keep warm.

In another pan, saute three of the garlic cloves with the mushrooms until the mushrooms start to release their water. Add the kielbasa, chickpeas, chilies, chili powder, cayenne and liquid smoke. Stir and continue cooking until everything is cooked through.

In the mean time, combine the avocados, miso, tahini, mint, lemon juice, salt, and reserved clove of garlic in a blender. Puree. Add a trickle of water at a time and continue to pulse until it thins out enough to make a sauce.

Pour avocado sauce over zucchini noodles and mix. Put onto plates and top with kielbasa mix. This makes about six servings and reheats well. The avocado puree does not turn brown immediately either, so you can keep it in the fridge in tupperware up to about 3 days.

Tabouleh (Tabouli)

Ta-bless you? No, Tab-oo-ley. This is a middle eastern salad that uses several contrasting flavors to produce a beautiful taste sensation when you eat it. The first time I made tabouleh (or tabbouleh or tabouli), the recipe was a very traditional one out of a vegetarian cookbook and it made me very happy. The next time I had it, it was prepackaged and bland and disappointing. But this is why I cook. The idea of tabouleh is tomato and onion with parsley, mint, and a lemon sauce, sometimes with bulgur wheat. You could also use other grains - this time I used beech smoked barley leftover from home brewing experiments. While delicious as is, there are a number of improvements I have made that make it delectable, rather like the fresh version of chocolate lava cake. Or something. (Can you tell I wasn't an English major?) So if you have had yucky tabouleh, don't despair! Try this recipe! An added bonus? You'll feel good eating this - it's just so fresh and healthy!

 

Ingredients:

1 cup bulgur wheat

1 small red onion, diced 

1 cucumber, chopped

1 lb tomatoes, chopped

6 oz reduced fat feta, crumbled

1/2 cup Kalamata olives, sliced

1 bunch parsley, chopped fine

1 bunch mint, chopped fine

1/4 cup lemon juice

1 TBS olive oil

Salt to taste

Directions:

Bring two cups of water (or broth!) to a boil, add bulgur, cover and simmer about 10 minutes or until tender. Drain excess liquid and allow to cool. Combine everything else in a large bowl and toss. Put salad in a bowl and top with bulgur. Serve cold or at room temperature. Done. Easy. What are you waiting for? Go make this right now!

 

Cheesy Seared Asparagus with Garlic and Pepper

Every time I have eaten asparagus in the company of a friend, I have been asked incredulously, "You like ASPARAGUS??!!" as if I had just declared my undying love of sparkly vampires. Admittedly if cooked anything but perfectly it tends to be pretty gross, and loads of people don't seem to know how to achieve this, including at a couple of restaurants I have visited (sigh). Luckily there are a couple of very easy ways of making asparagus delicious rather than revolting.  Here's a very easy one.

Ingredients

1 TBS garlic oil (or substitute olive oil and a clove of minced garlic)
1 bunch asparagus
Salt and fresh cracked pepper
1/4 cup Asiago cheese, shredded

Directions
Prepare the asparagus by peeling the ends. That's right, peeling. Most people cut or snap them off, but this is much less wasteful - it's really only the outer part that's tough and chewy at the bottom.

Heat a large saute pan on medium-high heat and add the oil. When hot, throw in the asparagus and turn to coat with oil. Sear the asparagus about 2 minutes, turn over, crack pepper and salt all over the top of the asparagus and sear two more minutes. Turn heat to low. Cover pan and saute gently for 5 minutes or until you can stick a fork through them easily but there is still a bit of resistance.  Cooking them until completely soft is how they end up tasting slimy. Remove from heat and  sprinkle cheese on top.

This recipe is easily adaptable. Omit the cheese and squirt some lemon juice over the top. To reduce calories, omit oil and use cooking spray. Or once cooked, put them in sandwiches or eggs.

Creamy Beets with Horseradish (Great for Valentine's Day!)

I am not a fan of commercialism or candy, but Justin likes hearts everywhere, and I see no reason to not take advantage of having a nice day with the person you care about most. I also used to hate beets because, like half the population it seems, I had never had them prepared well. I tried them in a restaurant last summer where they were properly roasted, and changed my mind immediately.  Since then we have roasted beets at home numerous times. I'm honestly not sure where this idea came from - we had a beet in the fridge and no dinner plans. "Mashed beet with horseradish" just tumbled out of my mouth as if some divine being (or cousin of Groot?) had wanted me to use ALL the horseradish FOREVER.

Ingredients:

1 large (or 2 small) beet(s)

1/4 cup milk (I used almond milk)

2 TBS butter

2 TBS+ horseradish

Pinch salt

Directions:

You're basically going to make these like mashed potatoes, but beets are a little more unwieldy. A few options:

-Use a good peeler to peel, then cut in chunks and boil till tender

-Wrap in foil whole and roast at 350 for 1-2 hours depending on size of beet, then scoop flesh out of husk

-Microwave till starting to soften, cut in half and scoop out of peel; cut into chunks and boil it the rest of the way tender

Mash with milk and butter, add salt and horseradish to taste, and stir. Or mix everything except the horseradish, and squeeze some of that into a heart shape on top of the mashed beet. Present to your lover with a sickeningly sweet expression.