Food and Bakes

Don’t know if you know ‘bout my black bean burgers..

But they’re pretty kick-ass. The years of being a vegetarian really worked wonders on my cooking.

 

Black Bean Burgers

• 1/2 onion, diced

• 1 can black beans, well drained
• 1/2 cup flour
• 2 slices bread, crumbled
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tsp onion powder
• 1/2 tsp seasoned salt
• salt and pepper to taste

• oil for frying

Sometimes I go a little heavier on the seasoning and add other stuff in, but that’s a matter of personal taste. Get on with your bad self and make what YOU want to be eating. The nice thing about these being black bean is that you can taste the mash before you fry it to see if all the seasonings are right for you. 

Preparation

Sauté the onions. Grind up the black beans in a food processor or mash by hand, then mix in everything else, ending with the flour. Easy Peasy. 

These fry in less time than it takes to fry an egg. Heat a pan over medium high heat, and fry each side until it looks like this:

The torn up bread helps to make the burger have that caramelized look that’s hard to get on veggie burgers. 

I usually only make one burger at a time, so I have a bowl of the black bean mix sitting in my fridge that I just take a patty’s worth out of throughout the week. Eeeaaasy cheap lunch. 

Anyway, today I loaded mine up with fresh mozzarella, whole grain mustard, baby spinach and arugula, the last bits of my fancy heirloom tomato and TJoe’s Artichoke tapenade (omg), and ate it with some plantain chips. Yum. 

• 21 Jun 2011
• 7

Big Ass BBQ Day

Right, so, I’m slacking again. Not so much on the cooking front.. just about posting the things I make on here. So that’s no so bad, I guess.

My roommate’s friends brought over their grill on saturday [because we’re poor and don’t have one], and we made EVERYTHING. ALL THE FOODS.

We had:

• grilled corn on the cob
• grilled [fucking expensive farmer’s market] asparagus
• burgers (which my roommate made with minced fresh garlic and basil)
• black bean burgers 
• brioche buns
• salad
• chips
• etc.

We also had pizza margherita. Mostly due to bad planning on my part. Still, it was a welcome mistake that I happened to pick that day to make the dough. 

Whatever. It was awesome. 

For the dough, I did this (via Epicurious)

• 3/4 cup warm water (105°F to 115°F)
• 1 envelope active dry yeast
• 2 cups (or more) all purpose flour [I used whole wheat flour]
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 3 tablespoons olive oil

Plus, I usually throw in some garlic powder with the flour. And sometimes, if I’m feeling all fancy and fat and stuff, I use butter instead of olive oil. Not this time, though.

Preparation

Pour 3/4 cup warm water into small bowl; stir in yeast. Let stand until yeast dissolves, about 5 minutes.

Then mix in the everything else and knead until the dough has a nice elasticity. Like, for around 5 minutes or maybe a little less. Add more flour in the dough is sticky. Then coat a separate bowl with oil and toss the dough in there and turn it to cover it with the oil. Cover with plastic wrap and set somewhere warm to rise for about an hour. 

I then put on a sliced up [ballin’ heirloom] tomato, fresh basil and fresh mozzarella and sprinkled everything with sea salt and black pepper. I baked that mofo at 400 degrees for about 8 minutes, and I think I put it back in for another 4 after checking to see if it was done. 

OH! And I drizzled a good amount of extra virgin olive oil over the dough before loading it up with stuff, and on top after baking. Not sure if that’s the way people usually do these sorts of things, but hey, it tasted good.

Fun Fact: I rolled it all out nice and pretty and circular…

 

Before remembering that I don’t actually own a baking sheet that’d fit that ;__;

So this shaped happened:

Whatever. Still turned out delicious.

• 21 Jun 2011
• 4

BBQ ‘n Baked Mac ‘n Cheese

Walking into Trader Joes, I had every intention of just buying an onion to use in my Moroccan Spiced Carrot Soup tonight, but the cheese selection is immediately to the right inside the doors, and I caught sight of the cheddars. I didn’t stand a chance. The carrot soup will happen some other time this week. I ended up making Mac ‘N Cheese and bbq chicken and broccoli for dinner instead. 

My mama recently visited, and she treated me and my roommates to a dinner at Lillie’s Q, which was incredibly awesome. She even bought me a bottle of their “Smokey Hot” BBQ sauce, which is what I used tonight. So good. 

Baked Mac ‘N Cheese

Ingredients

• block of good cheddar cheese, grated
• 1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
• 4 tbsp. butter
• 4 tbsp. flour
• 3 cups (?) whole milk (I totally didn’t measure this)
• 1 tbsp. paprika
• 1/2 tsp. onion powder
• 1/4-1/2 tsp. cayenne pepper
• honey, two drizzles, like, this much x2 (optional):

• sriracha, to taste (optional)
• salt & pepper
• whole wheat noodles
• bread crumbs
• enough melted butter to toss with the bread crumbs to make them wet, but not goopy.

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
2. Start the water boiling for the pasta. 
3. Melt the butter in a nonstick saucepan over medium heat, add in flour and stir until there are no lumps. Let simmer for a minute or two, stirring constantly. Throw in the onion powder and paprika. 
4. Cook the pasta.
5. Add in the milk and cook until it reduces a bit. Then add in 3/4 of your shredded cheese, and stir until the cheese is melted and the sauce has a thickish consistency.
6. Drain the pasta and mix the pasta into the sauce. Pour that into a baking pan.
7. Mix the bread crumbs with the melted butter and sprinkle a layer over the pasta. Sprinkle the rest of your shredded cheese on top of the bread crumbs.
8. Bake mac ‘n cheese for 20 minutes. Optional: broil until the cheese turns a bit brown.
9. EAT IT ALL. 

The chicken and broccoli weren’t anything special (aside from that kickass bbq sauce). I just marinated the chicken and then baked it because we’re poor and lame and don’t own a grill. The broccoli was steamed and seasoned with a teensy bit of butter, sea salt and pepper. 

Writing out these recipes is making me realize how much I eyeball things/not measure ever at all for cooking. Terrible. My culinary teacher would smack me upside the head. Here on out, I’m making a conscious effort to be more diligent about doing things the “right” way.

• 14 Jun 2011
• 2

Poor Woman’s Pasta

Also known as Chickpea Tomato Spinach Awesomeness. 

Hey, it’s harder than it sounds to think of recipe names. 

I’ve decided to play a little game with myself called Stop-Grocery-Shopping-So-Much-You-Money-Spending-Food-Drain. My cabinets have built up quite an impressive store of canned goods, and my freezer is overflowing with frozen veggies and fruit. Thus, this. 

Tomato Spinach Chickpea Pasta

ingredients 

• 1 lb. pasta (actually, any sort of grain thingy would work.. i.e. quinoa, couscous, rice, whatevah)
• 1 can diced tomatoes (Trader Joe’s has these awesome diced tomatoes with green chilies, and that’s what I used)
• 1 can chickpeas
• half a bag of frozen spinach
• 1-2 tsp. garlic powder 
• 1 tsp. onion powder
• juice from half a lemon
• 2-3 tbsp. olive oil
• salt & pepper to taste
• Extra virgin olive oil for drizzling at the end

So, obviously, you can use all fresh produce, and real garlic and onion, if that’s the way the universe moves you, but again, I’m on a budget, and I’m trying to hold off on the shopping for a bit.  I also have a terrible tendency to not use fresh produce in time, and it ends up going funky in my fridge. 

ANYWAY

Instructions

1. Heat up the olive oil in a large pan.
2. Dump in chickpeas, spinach, tomatoes, seasonings and lemon juice, and let simmer over medium heat. Everything is already pre-cooked if you do it my way, so you’re really just heating it all up and letting the flavors melt in with eachother a bit.
3. Cook pasta. 
4. Put chickpea stuff on top of the pasta, and drizzle with extra virgin olive oil. 

Voila. Easy-peasy.

The pictures are blurry because my hand was shaking from low blood sugar. Good thing this stuff cooks fast. 

• 12 Jun 2011
• 12

Saag Paneer

Aaaand onto the main event. After shutting the Olga Bread dough in the oven to let it proof for a bit, I started on making some cheese. Specifically, the indian cheese, paneer. 

Paneer pretty much = yum. It’s pretty mild, but what flavor it does have is nice. Anyway, making cheese is one of my favorite things to do because it makes me feel like a mad scientist. 

Paneer

ingredients

• half gallon of whole milk
• juice of a large lime (possibly two, so have an extra on standby)

instructions

1. Bring the milk to a boil in a sturdy, thick-bottomed pot, stirring occasionally.
2. Once it starts to boil, reduce heat. 
3. Add in 2-3 tsps of lime juice, stirring constantly. 
4. The curds should be separating from the whey and look like little clouds. It should take about five minutes to be fully separated. 
5. Promptly pour the contents of the pot through a cheese cloth (or some muslin), and squeeze out the extra liquid. 
6. Let the cheese hang for half an hour, then squeeze out the rest of the whey, and reshape the cheese into a ball. Then let it hang for another half an hour. 

Et voila. Unfortunately, my cheese came out too crumbly because I forgot to reshape it before letting it dry the rest of the way. C’est la vie.

Then comes the Saag part. I started off using the recipe from Julie Sahni’s book Classic Indian Vegetarian and Grain Cooking, but it started to taste a bit bland, so I deviated. This is what I did. 

Saag Paneer

ingredients

• Paneer, or a cake of tofu
• a bag of frozen, chopped spinach (or the equivalent in fresh - whatever)
• 1 sweet red pepper, chopped
• 6-8 tbsp. vegetable oil or ghee (clarified butter)
• 1 1/2 cups finely chopped red onion
• 2 tbsp. fresh grated ginger
• 1-2 tbsp. of curry powder (I ground my own spices for it, but you can just use a good premixed one)
• 1 serrano pepper, minced
• 1/2 cup of water
• 1 tsp. sea salt
• 2 tsp. garam masala

Plus, I threw in some mango butter.. no, I don’t care if that’s not traditional - I’m not Indian anyway.

Instructions

1. Puree the spinach and red pepper together in a food processor or blender. 
2. Heat 4 tablespoons of the oil in a large nonstick pan over medium heat. Toss the paneer in the pan and fry them until they’re golden. Don’t burn. Set aside for later.
3. Add 2 more tablespoons of oil to the same pan, along with the onion. Fry the onion, stirring constantly, until brown (~20 minutes). 
4. Add the ginger and fry an additional 2 minutes. 
5. Add the curry powder and serrano pepper, stir for a few seconds, then add the spinach puree along with the 1/2 cup of water, and salt. 
6. Mix well and bring to a boil. Lower heat and cook, covered for 2 minutes. Add the fried paneer pieces, mix again, and continue cooking for 2 more minutes. 
7. Stir in garam masala.

I also made some brown basmati rice, and tossed in some toasted black onion seeds. Turned out purdy good. 

P.s. Sorry for the crappy quality pictures (iPhone!) - I couldn’t be bothered to get out my good camera, and the lighting was bad to begin with. 

• 10 Jun 2011
• 3

Olga Bread

Well, after a long and trying day of playing Tiny Wings and plucking my eyebrows, I was finally arsed enough to get cooking. 

Started off by making my Olga Bread. Now, if you’re from southeast Michigan, your eyes probably just rolled back in your head and your tongue lolled out. For everyone not in the know, Olga Bread is the most wonderful form of pita on the planet. It’s moist, soft, and sweet-ish, and I’ve been craving it for months now. 

Ingredients

•  
  • 1 cup milk
  • 1/4 cup honey
  • 1/4 cup margarine
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast ( 1 pkg.)
  • 1/4 cup warm water
  • 1 teaspoon sugar
  • 4 cups flour, divided
  • 1 eggs

Directions

1. Scald milk, remove to large bowl.
2. Add honey, margarine and salt to milk.
3. stir until margarine is melted.
4. Set aside to cool until lukewarm.
5. Combine yeast, warm water and sugar.
6. stir until sugar is dissolved.
7. Set aside.
8. Add 1 1/2 cups of the flour to lukewarm milk mixture and beat well.
9. Mix in egg and yeast mixture.
10. Add remaining flour, a little at a time, until sticky dough is formed.
11. Turn out on a floured surface, knead about two minutes.
12. Dough will be sticky, (but don’t add more flour).
13. Place dough in oiled bowl.
14. Turning once to oil whole surface of dough.
15. Cover with plastic wrap and let stand in warm place until doubled in bulk.
16. Punch down dough; divide into 16 equal pieces.
17. Roll each piece to a thin rough circle about 8-1o inches in diameter.
18. Heat a large dry skillet over medium-high heat; do not use any oil.
19. Bake 15 seconds, flip and bake about 10 seconds on other side, until mottled brown spots appear.
20. Cool and store in a plastic bag.
21. Makes: 16 olgas.

I ended up using whole wheat flour (because I’m a dummy and only have about a half a cup of AP in my apartment). But hey, added healthy bonus, right? They still turned out deliciously (see: picture). I’m so pleased.

 I might turn the rest of them into Snackers… (cut into triangles, fry with seasoning salt, serve with swiss cheese/almond dip)… 

Also, fun fact: I cried like a baby/geek while rolling out the dough because I was watching the season 2 finale of Roswell. ;____;

• 9 Jun 2011
• 6