Guacamole

For a celebration to Spring Jam I wanted to make something everyone loves, fast and easy to make, and a communal dish. I went with two different concoctions of guacamole. To make I used simple ingredients from Rainbow: Cilantro, avocados, onions, tomatoes, garlic, and lime.  A Chipotle friend of mine inspired me to make this and also participated in helping make it. I, of course, had to add a bit of honey to the mix that surprisingly was good to him-success.  I made one with tomato and one without because some don’t like tomatoes in the household.

It turned out a success that everyone enjoyed

Grilled Cheese

Seeing as I had an extremely busy weekend, the only thing I had time to make was a staple in my diet these days, grilled cheese, which is the one of the few things from Bittman that I can make where I live! Because I live in a sorority house with a closed kitchen and am unable to easily get to a grocery store for fresh ingredients, nor do not have a single spice or condiment in my possession, I have to get a little creative with the food I eat. Freezer meals are unhealthy and tasteless, toast is getting real old, and fridge space is minimal. The only thing keeping me going is being able to make a quick grilled cheese when I have little else to eat unless I go out to a restaurant. This time, all was had left in the fridge was string cheese, so I had to make it with that rather than the usual cheddar. This may sound strange, but was surprisingly tasty!

Next semester I will be living in a house where I can actually use the oven or stove when I'd like to cook myself a meal. I am extremely excited for this. Not that I don't love where I live now, it's just difficult to make myself healthy meals when there is nowhere to cook them. This semester, I just took advantage of whenever I was lucky enough to go home so I could cook at home with the ingredients my parents actually keep on hand. I am so excited to have a home where I can make something without even needing to run to the store before I start. I've been spoiled in high school living with my parent and I cannot wait for next semester so that I can actually start using the skills I've learned in this class!

the freshest pasta you've ever seen

Earlier this week I decided my cooking exploits for tonight were going to involve homemade pasta--I've gotten spoiled by one of my coworkers, who used to work for Loring Pasta Bar, and who makes fresh pasta pretty regularly in our cooking classes. Generally I'm not much of a pasta person, but I pretty much always stuff my face when he makes it.

I wanted to keep the sauce/toppings/other flavors simple so the flavor of the dough could come through. Yesterday afternoon I was downtown and there was a lady on Nicollet Mall with a a vegetable stand. I picked up a ridiculous quantity of green beans from her, so naturally I had to use up some of those.

The dough:

Flour (AP and semolina), extra virgin olive oil, eggs, salt

The embellishment:

Green beans, olive oil, garlic, almonds, Asiago, lemon, rosemary

I used Bittman for the dough recipe (page 156 of the soft cover). Mixed it in a bowl the way I was taught, stirring together the flour and salt, making a well, and adding the eggs and olive oil before combining and kneading everything.

Pasta dough!

One of my first days at my job I helped said coworker and one other person mix and cut pasta dough for a class. It was slightly false advertising because that is definitely not how I spend my time there now (sweeping behind the ovens seems to happen a lot more frequently...), but I can forgive them because I constantly get to reap the benefits of seeing and tasting other people's incredible cooking! We have a pasta machine, which makes nice perfect fettuccine-like strips, I used a rolling pin and pizza slicer. All about the rustic aesthetic, right?

The pile of pasta, before cooking!

That gets tossed into a big stock pot full of boiling water, and has to cook for literally about two minutes before it's done. Bam, pasta.

The green beans I cooked with garlic, salt, and pepper, then added chopped almonds, lemon zest, fresh rosemary and shredded Asiago to, as well as an extra pour of olive oil. Fresh basil would have been really nice instead of the rosemary, but I was using what I had around.

I absolutely loved this. It was really, really good. I wish homemade pasta weren't so labor-intensive because I could eat this always. I suppose I appreciate it more for that!

Potato Leek Soup

This week I had a lot of leeks in the refrigerator, and my roommate had lots of old potatoes, so we got together and made a potato leek soup. I didn't really follow a recipe for this; however I did a little searching on the Internet beforehand to see what sort of process to go through. I sauteed the leeks, then combined them with potatoes, milk, water, chicken broth, and some salt and pepper and cooked until the potatoes softened. To thicken the soup, I added flour and boiled until it reached a good consistency. It was really good, and I think my roommates enjoyed it as well! We all ate it on our porch because it was an absolutely gorgeous day outside! If I were to do it again I might even experiment with adding more vegetables, like carrots or corn. -Deidra A

Crepes

I've always wanted to make crepes, since I had them a lot when I was in Europe last May. It didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped, but it wasn't horrible. I used a recipe from the internet (allrecipes.com):

1 cup all-purpose flour
2 eggs
1/2 milk
1/2 cup water
2 tbsp melted butter
salt

Crepes are supposed to be thin and slightly browned. However, mine was a little thick and it didn't brown at all. I think I put too much batter in the pan, and the pan temperature was too low. When I tried to flip it, the crepe broke in a few spots, so it got a little mangled. However, I tried to salvage it and added some peanut butter to the inside. It turned out to be a great little study snack despite a few mishaps. I definitely want to try this again to get the technique down!

Black Bean "Hummus"

This post appears identically on Cooking with Charles and UMN Cooks 2013.

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I mentioned last week that I was excited to try out hummus with a black bean base instead of chickpeas. That's what I did this week. There's a black bean dip recipe on page 93 of Bittman but this is really just him hummus recipe (also page 93) with some ingredient swaps.

I was forward thinking enough this time to actually start with dry beans rather than canned ones. I used 1 cup of dry black beans and soaked them in another few cups of water for the day. I should probably have soaked them in more, as they grew to fill the three-cup jar I had them soaking in. The soaking softened them up but they still needed to be cooked, of course. I threw them into a saucepan with a bunch more water for about an hour with some salt and two bay leaves. (I don't really know what bay leaves taste like, but I've seen them with black beans before so it seemed worth a shot.)



Once the beans were soft, they got put in the food processor along with 3 cloves of garlic, juice from 2 limes, 1/2 tsp cumin (approx), and salt and pepper. I then proceeded to blend it as smooth as my blades would go.



This turned out pretty well, but it's a bit boring. I remembered thinking that this might be the case when I came up with this idea. Bittman suggests roasted red peppers with the bean dip, which I think would be good, or tomatoes, which I think would not have enough character. I had considered roasted jalapeño peppers as an option -- I almost went for a thai chile but it didn't seem thematic -- but when I went to the store today I had not remembered to buy any. So it's sitting in my fridge, pretty good, but a little bit boring.



Of course, later, sifting through my vegetables I found that I had outsmarted myself; I picked up a pair of jalapeños specifically for this task when I went shopping earlier this week! I'll have to add them to the mix.

Oatmeal chocolate chip cookies

This weekend I was invited to a picnic and was trying to decide what to make. I came across a recipe for oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. I have to say I was rather disappointed with how they turned out. The dough seemed to be really dry and the cookies constantly fell apart. If I were to try and make this recipe again I would add less oats. overall they were alright but I have definitely had and made better cookies.

http://www.bettycrocker.com/recipes/oatmeal-chocolate-chip-cookies/48acadc3-f7e1-46b5-bb33-33bee95f6cf7 

Italian Sausage

Since the weather finally decided to warm up, I felt like celebrating summer by making Italian sausages. I made a bun-less dish combing Italian sausage, green and red peppers, onions, and mustard. I just made up this recipe. It was very good!

Potato Salad

Today I stopped at home to see my family and have the first grilled dinner of the summer! I thought that some potato salad would go great with our grilled chicken so I mixed my moms recipe with Bittman (p 103).  The only main differences between the two is that I did not add any parsley, and I added a little bit of italian dressing, because according to my mom that gives it some extra flavor.  Also Bittman's recipe doesn't call for any eggs, which confused me because I have never had potato salad without eggs before so of course we added some hard boiled eggs.  My mom told me that she always makes it with equally or more eggs than potatoes, but maybe that is just how my family makes it!

The potato salad turned out creamy and it was perfect for the first warm day of the year! 

Chicken Black Bean Tacos/Burritos

So I am behind on posting my recipe for last week which ended up being a combo of Bittman's Bean Burritos with meat (p 273), and my own modifications.  Mine turned out to be more of a chicken taco than a burrito, but I did have black beans, salsa, cheese and some tortillas, like the Bittman recipe calls for. I came a cross a recipe for healthy chicken tacos on the internet so I decided to add some ground chicken with taco seasoning to my creation.  I also chopped up half of an onion and a jalapeño to add some flavor.  I cooked the chicken up and then cooked the beans, jalapeño and onion separately.  Once everything was cooked I put it all together in my tortillas and added cheese and salsa as well.  Then I cooked the 5 tacos in the oven at 350 for about 20 minutes just to warm up the tortillas and melt the cheese.     These were really good and pretty healthy with the lean chicken.  I was full after just one of them so I had plenty of left overs for the week!

Garlic Smashed Potatoes

Taking a look into my sparsely stocked refrigerator, I realized I wasn't going to be making a gourmet meal tonight. Making the best of the situation, I found a few round reds, some garlic, cheese and sour cream.

Bittman's recipe is on page 339, but I did this one on my own for the most part. I boiled the potatoes whole until, when pierced with a fork, they were tender but not complete mush. Bittman suggests using milk and butter but with neither on hand, I figured I would be able to make due with sour cream. For some spice I used oregano, parsley salt, pepper, and a clove of garlic per potato because, you know, yolo.

Skins and all

 I'm a big fan of twice baked potatoes so I decided to throw them in the oven for a while with some Parmesan and pepper jack cheese on top. For our last challenge recipe I made quiche using a muffin pan and I really liked the results so I did the same for this one.

And here's the final product, a bite-sized, garlic overloaded, mashed potato appetizer.

Sweet Potato Gnocchi

Bittman pg. 550

Since I knew that this week was going to be pretty busy, I decided to make this recipe ahead of time. Regrettably, that means that my recipe is from Bittman yet again. I was inspired by the gnocchi we made in lab a few weeks ago and wanted to give it a shot of my own. I remembered that I had some awesome sweet potato gnocchi at Trader Joes once so I wanted to replicate that.

I pretty much followed the recipe in the book, adding in some spices to better compliment the sweet potato. Unfortunately, it is really inconvenient to take pictures while making the little dumplings so I didn’t get any of rolling out the dough. I boiled the gnocchi in some salted water until they had been floating for a bit.

I finished of my gnocchi by tossing it in some browned butter and cinnamon. Yum! I think they turned out really well! They were a little dense but definitely not too bad. I'd say they were comparable to any pre-packaged gnocchi that you can buy at a store. I consider this a success and plan on trying it out a couple more times until I can get it perfect, haha.

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

I was craving something sweet and I had most of the ingredients for the Oatmeal Raisin Cookies, so I decided to make some from http://www.food.com/recipe/healthy-oatmeal-raisin-cookies-36232.

 

I gathered the ingredients.

 

I mixed the brown sugar, egg whites, and apple sauce.

 

Got the dough together.

 

 

And Voila!! I thought this recipe was interesting because it wasn't made with any fat, except the cooking spray that I put on the cookie sheet. The other recipes that I looked at asked for 1/2 to 1 cup of butter!! I added the whole box of raisins because my dad loves raisins! They turned out nice and moist from the apple sauce, but I think I will add greek yogurt next time to see what it tastes like. Over all, nice texture and taste, they weren't too sweet like other cookies that I have made.