Butternut Squash with Pecans and Blue Cheese

Really easy side dish to write up today. I'm afraid I was a bit lazy on one of my last days off and didn't feel like doing groceries - so dinner was this Nigella Lawson dish with a side of pesto macaroni. There's only three ingredients but they went really well together!

First step was to toast the pecans. Really easy - I just threw them in a dry pan and tossed them around for a few minutes. I translated the pecan measurement (100 g/4 oz) as 3/4 cup. Luckily I had these in the freezer already, purchased for a pecan pie that never got made...

Next was cooking the squash. I must have bought a huge one - it filled two whole pans. This was the most time-consuming part, which is why I don't eat nearly enough squash in the winter. But it smelled like Thanksgiving while it was cooking! The squash released a lot of water while it cooked - if I wanted it really roasty I suppose I should have split it into four pans so it wasn't so crowded. Oh well. I did peel it - I'm not into eating butternut squash peel yet, though I know you can.

I just mixed the nuts and cubed squash together in a big bowl, and since my hubby doesn't like blue cheese, I added it as more of a garnish instead of mixing it in. I have to say, though, it was fabulous with the blue cheese - totally worth adding it. It cut right through the sweetness of the squash - I wanted some in every bite. A really comforting meal on a cold night. Perfect for when you buy blue cheese to serve to your friends then forget to put it out!

Better Butter Tofu

Happy Boxing Day!

Now let me start this post by warning you that this recipe is trying to be a 'healthier' butter chicken (or in my case, tofu) - but I wouldn't tell anyone to make it if you were actually craving rich, restaurant-style butter chicken. Having said that, it's a tasty, easy Indian-flavoured dinner. The recipe comes courtesy of Greta and Janet Podleski of Looney Spoons and Eat, Shrink and Be Merry fame.

The ladies first call for marinating chicken thighs in PC Tandoori sauce and baking them. I instead fried up some tofu with some vindaloo curry paste I have in the fridge (those jars last a long time and do go on sale occasionally). Hey, Indian flavour is Indian flavour, right? I then added (real!) butter to the pan with some oil, 1 large onion and 3 garlic cloves. My spice mix was mostly the same as listed in the recipe, omitting turmeric (just don't have any) and replacing the fresh ginger with 2 tsp dried ginger.

I added in the diced tomatoes, 1 cup only of stock, and 1 tsp molasses instead of brown sugar. After simmering, I skipped the part where they blend half of the sauce - if I had an immersion blender, I would, because I'm sure it makes it much creamier, but I couldn't be bothered to dirty my blender. I also threw in some extra veggies - carrots and cauliflower - and put the tofu back in.

Some delicious ingredients go in next - sour cream, and a Tbsp of peanut butter. No cilantro this time, but if I had some I would add way more than 1 Tbsp! I just threw some green onions on top.

The result was more like a chunky, peanuty Indian stew, since I didn't eat it over rice - just inhaled a bowl of it. But I could see if you blended half of it and ate a more manageable portion over rice, it would be like butter chicken/tofu. Either way it was damn good.

Light Shrimp Chowder

I found this Low Country Shrimp Chowder recipe in a Food Network magazine and it looked like an easy, quick shrimp soup. Not really a thick chowder but something a little lighter. On this particular night I had just received a nice package of chocolate from my dad in the mail, and was looking forward to finishing up the last season of True Blood, so I got to work.

I started with a good chunk of butter (yes, real butter!) in the pot but added some olive oil too - I find I usually burn pure butter. I added the scallions but omitted the celery (because it's gross). Actually I would have added celery in this case, but hardly wanted to go out and buy a whole bunch when I just wanted one stalk. I was very excited to use my Old Bay seasoning, which I had just bought, I just wished it called for more! I probably put in 2 tsp, even though I'm pretty sure it's mostly salt. I then threw in some orange bell pepper and, as extra veggies, a couple carrots.

The broth is made up of 2 cups of milk, and 6 cups water. Many of the reviewers on the Food Network website used stock instead because they found it too bland, but I just went with water. I did of course add salt and lots of pepper, and shrimp's pretty salty anyway. The recipe also calls for 1/2 cup white rice, which thickened it a little. Near the end I added in (drained and thawed) corn and shrimp - I bought the slightly cheaper 'Atlantic' shrimp, the tiny ones, which means there were a lot more and they were easier to eat in soup-form.

I topped the soup with parsley, grabbed a glass of white wine and sat down to watch vampires kill/have sex with each other. The soup was really good, light but with lots of flavour (definitely salty enough!) and a nice yellow butter shine on top. Mmm.

Cold Rolls

Pssst... here's a secret: Sometimes I don't feel like cooking! Yes, it's true. Sometimes when I get home late from work, mostly on the days when Mike's working late, I make a very simple dinner for myself: cold rolls, aka fresh rolls. While I often think of them just as vehicles to eat large amounts of peanut butter and sriracha hot sauce, they are healthy (well, as long as sodium's okay!), easy, versatile and fast. I eat them pretty much every week.

For protein I usually go for tofu, and if I'm smart the night before, I'll cut some up and place them in a 'marinade' of lemon juice and pepper. It makes the tofu a little tangy, and really good. Alternately I use those little flavoured tuna cans (I buy them on sale, and man are they ever convenient) in thai chili flavour, or lemon pepper, or peanut satay. Whoever thought of those is a marketing genius. I've also used cold chicken on the rare occasion we buy rotisserie chickens.

Next up are the veggies: usually chopped bell peppers, and matchstick carrots and cucumbers. Bean sprouts if I'm feeling fancy (and can finish a whole bag in two days before they turn slimy). Cilantro is delicious but I rarely buy it just for rolls. And I always add dabs of (natural) peanut butter. Then it's time to roll! The rice paper package says to soak towels and place them between the papers (blah blah blah) but really you can just run the paper under the tap and let it sit for a minute while you assemble the roll. They'll become sticky and malleable.

Assemble, cut into halves, eat while dipping into hot sauce. Delish! While it's not the healthiest dinner (the rice papers are full of salt, as is my beloved sriracha) I figure the large amount of raw veggies balances everything out.

This is my go-to dinner when Mike works nights, which means I also eat it while watching my guilty pleasure TV shows. I happily chomp down while sitting at my laptop with Gossip Girl, Glee and Grey's Anatomy. Happy times.

Cherry Brownies

We were having some friends over for a Friday night of cheese, desserts and Rock Band so I decided to try the Blackcurrant Brownies from the LCBO's lovely Food & Drink (Autumn, 2012). Something a little different, since I don't make brownies too often - but hey, sometimes I like to go all out with gooey brownies full of butter! Especially when others are around to eat them.

First up was melting the butter (I took it down to 3/4 cup from 1 cup) with the chocolate. The Hershey's bar I had bought was less than the 175 grams they called for, but luckily I usually have some dark, mini chocolate chips in the freezer, so I threw in a handful of those too. I also took it down to 3 eggs from the 4 the recipe called for, and cut the sugar from 1 cup to 3/4 cup. Sometimes recipes are just too decadent, ya know? These ingredients cost money!

The batter was quite grainy (so much sugar!) but looked very chocolatey. Next up was putting half the batter in the pan, then freezing it for 30 minutes. The recipe claims the freezing makes them more moist - maybe, but more importantly it lets you put a nice layer of jam in the middle! I used an organic Morello cherry jam I had, because who doesn't like cherry and chocolate? It was a little tough to spread the second half of the batter onto the jam, but it didn't need to look very pretty - I figured it would all even out in the end.

After a further 20 minutes in the freezer, they were ready to be baked. Even with the slight reductions in butter, sugar and eggs they tasted fabulous. Really chocolatey, gooey, and the layer of jam in the middle gave them an extra fruity kick to cut through the rich chocolate. Fairly easy recipe, if you don't mind waiting while the pan's in the freezer.

Tofu Stir-Fry with Rice Cakes

The hubs and I decided to snag a table at Mission Chinese Food, a hipster restaurant surrounded by Spanish markets and pawn shops, while we were visiting San Francisco back in September. As loyal (library) readers of Bon Appetit, we had already read about the rock star chef and knew the magazine named it one of the best new restaurants in the US in 2011. We enjoyed it but weren't overly impressed, but we were very intrigued by the Thrice Cooked Bacon dish, featuring tofu skins, bitter melon and Shanghainese rice cakes, which looked like water chestnuts but were gelatinous rice products of some sort... so we did some research and went in search of them in Chinatown.

Success! Turns out they come dried, so first we had to soak them overnight. The package did not give a specific soaking time, so we guessed a little. They were still firm once dinner time rolled around so we boiled them for a couple minutes to soften them up. They were just as we remembered - very gelatinous but strangely good.

The rest of the stir-fry was pretty straightforward. First we fried up 2/3 of a package of tofu. Next we threw in some veggies - broccoli, peppers and carrots. We also whipped up a quick sauce consisting of some kitchen staples: chopped garlic, rice wine vinegar, soy sauce, sriracha and toasted sesame oil. After the veggies had cooked for a few minutes we stirred in the sauce and the rice cakes in the pan.

It didn't turn out to be the most colourful dish, with the white tofu and rice cakes, but it was damn tasty. An easy and filling dinner for a night of sitting back, drinking an IPA and watching the Warehouse 13 Christmas special.

Peruvian Baked Quinoa and Cheese

I found this Peruvian Baked Quinoa and Cheese recipe on the Vegetarian Times website while looking for something else, but I thought it sounded good - I really like quinoa but had never made it in cheesy bake form. I was a little skeptical of the description - 'an alternative to mac-n-cheese' - but I thought I'd give it a shot.

First in the pot: an onion and bell peppers, which gave me a few minutes to rinse the quinoa. Then the quinoa went in with some garlic. Then I put in the water - but this is where it got confusing. The recipe states that the water will (mostly) be absorbed in 3-4 minutes - which is crazy talk. Quinoa is made with a ratio of 2:1 for water:quinoa, and usually takes at least 15 minutes to absorb/cook. I did wait until it was fully cooked, to be on the safe side, just not sure why the recipe was so off?

I did let it sit for a few minutes, but I was still a little worried the eggs would cook when I mixed them into the quinoa with milk and cheese. No need, though, it mixed fine and turned into a wet rice pudding-like substance. I wish I had added more veggies in though - it wasn't very colourful.

While it didn't brown very much on the top - maybe putting extra cheese on top would have helped - it was still quite tasty. Next time I would add more spices and make it a little more Southwestern - jalapenos would work well, since it was similar to corn bread. It's a good recipe for potluck dinners, and even better eating it cold out of the fridge the next day. Seriously.

Low-Fat Yogurt Loaf

It was a Friday night, and we needed a dessert to follow some delicious Thai food. I decided to experiment a little with the French Yogurt Cake recipe from Bon Appetit magazine (May, 2012). I've made it a bunch of times, but I wanted to see if I could eliminate some of the sugar and oil. I knew it would probably end up a tad less delicious than usual, but I figured the next day we could eat it with jam (which is what we did).

The recipe is really easy, which is probably why I keep making it. First I whisked the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, salt). I changed around the wet ingredients a little this time. I used 1/2 cup sugar instead of the whole cup, 1/4 c oil instead of 1/2 cup, but I still used 1 cup yogurt - unlike the recipe's whole milk Greek style yogurt, however, I just used what I had, which was plain ol' 1%.

I usually don't bother with the rubbing together of the sugar and lemon zest. Too much work. I skipped the zest this time, and decided to add in almond extract with the vanilla - because almond extract is amazing. Please go out and buy it, and put it in everything. I also added some almonds to the top to spruce it up a little.

The cake ended up spongy and not too sweet. Perfect to eat warm out of the oven with some butter or jam. Sure it was a little dry by the next day, but it didn't last very long anyway. The recipe is very adaptable - it's such a basic yogurt loaf, you could really add anything. I'm a little surprised, since Bon Appetit's recipes are usually a little fancier, but this was a great find.

Pumpkin-Peanut Curry Pasta

When the weather gets colder and the cans of pumpkin show up on store shelves, this is my go-to recipe. It's a slightly random mix of delicious ingredients that makes a hearty pasta dinner. I have been making it for a couple years, so I almost laughed out loud when I had to google the recipe for this post. The picture for Rachael Ray's Pumpkin-Peanut Curry Noodles with Five-Spice Seared Scallops and Shrimp recipe looked nothing like mine! I had forgotten the original featured scallops and shrimp. Oh well. And before you discount the recipe because it's from Rachael Ray, it's a very un-Rachael Ray recipe. It's not Italian or sandwich-based, and the finishing touch isn't a pound of cheese grated on top. Trust me on this one.

First in the pan is lots of garlic and ginger (grated from frozen), followed by bell peppers (I had both red and green for colour) and red pepper flakes. I usually throw in carrots as well. Then I push the vegetables to one side and start on the sauce: a couple of large spoonfuls of (natural) peanut butter melted, then whisked with tamari/soy sauce, pumpkin puree and curry paste. Seems Rachael Ray uses Patak's Indian curry paste - I've been using thai red curry paste this whole time. I'm sure it's good with both! And when she says it will be thick, it is:

Luckily by this time there should be a pot of whole wheat pasta boiling away on your stovetop, so it's easy to ladle in some starchy pasta water to thin it out. Hmmm, seems she also strangely uses spaghetti. I've always used penne or rotini - much better for thick, chunky pasta sauces.

The resulting meal is really good - peanut and curry are fabulous together and the pumpkin just pulls everything together in a nice thick sauce. Usually when I'm cooking with thai curry paste it's for soup, or actual thai curry, so this pasta dish is something a little different. And other than buying the can of pumpkin, I usually have everything else in the house. Try it with the seafood toppers if you want, but I don't think there's a need.

Chickpea and Greens Curry Soup

It was a Monday, my day off, and I wanted to make an easy dinner for the hubs and I before going to see a movie (Pitch Perfect). I had picked up a can of coconut milk and wanted to make a soup with it, so I dug out this Chickpea and Greens Curry Soup recipe from Vegetarian Times, made a few alterations and voila, an easy dinner.

As good as all the spices looked that were listed in the recipe, I went the lazy route and just used a couple tablespoons of thai green curry paste. Those little jars are amazing, last forever, and are totally worth the money. Threw in some onion and spinach - I had been looking for kale but our Sobey's is not always very good at having it in stock, and besides a large bag of spinach is cheaper. I threw in the rest of the ingredients - a can of lite coconut milk, 3 cups chicken stock, 1 cup water, a can of chickpeas and one chopped tomato (for acidity, I assume). I also added some extra vegetables - bell peppers and carrots.

While it was very flavourful from the curry paste, it needed a bit more heat, so I also added in some harissa for extra spice. To make it a more complete meal, I cooked some rice noodles to add in. I have tried to add rice noodles to soup, and learned the hard way that they tend to soak up all the broth, so I boiled them separately, placed them in the bowl and spooned the soup over them. Finished with some cilantro, skipping the yogurt due to not having any. Super easy and quick - just be warned, it does splatter a little while you're slurping up those noodles!

Breakfast Bars

I recalled the other day that I had two cans of condensed milk in the cupboard. Well, I only make one recipe with condensed milk, so it was time to make Nigella Lawson's Breakfast Bars! And can I take a moment to comment on the use of baby pink and baby blue on her website? (I got the recipe from the Nigella Express cookbook so I had never visited before) Everyone seems to describe these bars as 'cereal and milk' in bar-form but I see them more as sweet granola bars. And so versatile - you can throw in whatever you like.

I only knew condensed milk from the rare times I've had Vietnamese coffee. I knew it was thick and sweet. It is imperative to heat the milk before mixing in the mixin's because it's so thick. I scorched it a tiny bit this time - still getting used to our electric elements, I suppose. Just be careful not to cut yourself on the metal lid when you're spooning the leftover milk out of the can and into your face. Because you will be doing it. And don't even try looking at the nutritional info.

I put on some No Doubt and got to work figuring out the amounts of the different ingredients. Unlike a good British home chef, I do not have a kitchen scale. And no one else does either over on this side of the world, so please start putting cup measures with the grams! I see on Nigella's website you can switch between imperial and metric, but it's still all weights! After a complicated few minutes at a cooking conversion site (the first time I made them), I seem to have settled on the following:
2 1/4 cups oats
2/3 cup coconut
3/4 cup raisins/dried cranberries
3/4 cup nuts (this time: peanuts and walnuts)
3/4 cup seeds (this time: more walnuts, sunflower seeds)

It quickly makes a thick oaty mess that gets pressed into a 13x9" pan and baked for an hour at a low temperature. Then you have delicious snack bars for the week! Even the hubs likes them, and he doesn't like coconut. And as mentioned before, you can of course throw in whatever you want. Have fun exploring your local bulk store! They're the best. I also discovered that heating them up for a few seconds in the microwave and then eating them with vanilla ice cream is quite tasty...

Pumpkin Whoopie Pies

For the record, I don't think I had ever eaten a whoopie pie (the dessert du jour, cupcakes are out!) let alone made one. But, 'tis the season for pumpkin things, and I wanted to make a Halloween treat for our Halloween-themed monthly pub trivia night at the Magpie. I had this recipe from Food Network magazine picked out, which involved a chocolate cookie and pumpkin icing, but the online reviews turned me off - good thing I checked! A quick Google search found a multitude of recipes, and I picked Rachael Ray's Pumpkin Whoopie Pies because they seemed to be what I wanted - a pumpkin-flavoured cookie with cream cheese icing.

I don't make cookies too often (they're hard to make healthy since the best ones are full of butter) but I figured since a large group would be eating these, I could go crazy. The batter was different from the choco-chip cookies I normally make - it's made with melted butter and brown sugar, which gave the cookies more of a cake texture.

Despite (or because of?) my use of a cookie scoop (a Xmas present from last year) the thick batter didn't really smooth out very easily, so the cookies were a little bumpy and not all were particularly round, but mostly the same size. Clearly this is a skill I need to work on. But they were a lovely dark orange colour.

Next up was making the cream cheese icing - seemed a pretty standard icing. Which means it was delicious, of course. Hmm.. think I still have some in the fridge... the recipe made twice as much icing as I used, and I thought I had used a generous amount in each 'pie'. Clearly I should have used more! Just didn't want them getting too messy in their Tupperware in the fridge.

Sandwiching them together was pretty fun, mostly because of the large amount of icing I ate in the process. The cookies were so thick that the pies were quite tall - lots of cookie goodness in each bite. My friends seemed to enjoy them - and we ended up in a solid 3rd place at trivia.

Lentil Sloppy Joes

This has got to be one of my favourite recipes. I think I've made it more times over the past couple years than anything else. Who could resist lentil-based sloppy joes, cleverly named Snobby Joes? Thank you Post Punk Kitchen. They are tasty, healthy and easy to make. I really hate the "Meat eaters will love them too!" slogans but it fits here.

There are two steps. First is to cook the lentils. This involves putting green lentils in a pot with a bay leaf or two, adding water, and boiling for about 20 minutes. I usually use red lentils for this recipe, they work well because they get mushy and sort of disappear with all the other ingredients. The green ones keep their shape.

Once the lentils are cooked, it's all about the one pan meal. Fry up some onion and some mixture of red/green bell peppers, add in some garlic and spices. The recipe calls for chili powder and oregano, but I usually throw in some extra spice for more heat. I used harissa this time.

Then I throw in the lentils, some tomato paste and some tomato sauce. This time I had Classico vodka sauce in the fridge, which is slightly cheesy. Yum. After everything simmers away into an awesome tomato-lentil mix, it's time for the secret ingredients. Maple syrup and mustard!

You do have to be patient and let it sit for a few minutes before serving - the flavours really do meld together. It's a great recipe for leftovers, because a day or two in the fridge = more tastiness. I can pretty much eat it with a spoon, but of course it's better thrown on top of a bun with some grated cheese on top. This recipe is a great and easy way to use up lentils - they're so cheap at the bulk store but I never know what to do with them. So... sloppy joes for everyone!

Spicy Chard Soup

While the Food Network magazine may be pretty meat-centred, sometimes they come up with some pretty decent vegetable soups. I've made this Spicy Chard Soup a few times, usually when I have a few nights eating dinner alone - I now understand the idea of a soup topped with yogurt and hard-boiled eggs isn't everyone's cup of tea. But it is mine. So there.

I'll admit the idea of washing and chopping an entire bunch of swiss chard isn't my idea of fun, but it's worth it. And unlike kale, where the stems just get thrown away, the chard stems are chopped along with the leaves and cooked in the soup too. Less waste! After all that work, the first step is to toast whole cumin and caraway seeds. I do the lazy route and just keep them whole, while the recipe wants you to grind them up yourself.

First in the pot are the onions, as usual, as well as the chard stems, as they need a few extra minutes. Then comes the fun part - adding in harissa (a spicy red chili paste, mine is from Tunisia), tomato paste, four (or more) garlic cloves and the spices. Vegetarian soups often need a lot of flavour boosting, and tomato paste is a common ingredient. Just be sure not to burn it (which clearly I've done before). After that it's pretty easy, as all soups should be - add in the chard leaves, stock, water, and let it cook. Finish with some lemon juice.

The toppings are the best - quartered hard-boiled eggs, a dollop of Greek yogurt (or whatever you have - I usually have 1%) and a drizzle of olive oil over the top. Don't skimp - they make it extra fabulous.

Sweet Potato and Spinach Frittata

This month's Vegetarian Times (Nov. 2012) had some good looking frittatas - who can resist eggs for dinner? I make frittatas quite often because a) they are easier than quiches (and healthier) because there's no crust, b) I still can't figure out how to make an omelette, and c) you can just throw in whatever you have the fridge. Also, the leftovers are good - and you don't even need to heat them up. I chose the Sweet Potato and Kale Frittata with Goat Cheese (with some variations) because autumn = orange food = sweet potatoes. (Recipe not online so I'll post it below)

First things first: eggs. With a touch of mustard and salt and pepper for some extra flavour. Next, I peeled and diced a large sweet potato, and gave it a quick turn in the microwave to soften it up.

Onto the frying pan, aka where everything delicious happens. Since I replaced the kale in the recipe with baby spinach, I didn't bother wilting it. I just cooked the onion, threw in the potatoes, topped it with large amounts of the baby spinach and then poured the eggs on top. In retrospect this wasn't the smartest move - there was so much veg in the pan that it took some jiggling to get the most egg to the bottom of the pan, where it would get it nice and brown.

Next, the whole pan is put into the oven to brown the top and finish cooking. Normally I put it under the broiler for a few minutes, but this frittata was so packed it didn't quite cook all the way through on the first go. I suppose I should have followed the recipe, where it gets baked. The other problem with the broiler - it browned the spinach a little too bit. But luckily, once you flip it over, and sprinkle some feta on top ...

Sweet Potato and Kale Frittata, Vegetarian Times, Nov. 2012:

Oven: Preheat to 400.
In medium bowl, beat:
8 eggs
1 tsp apple cider vinegar
1 Tbsp Dijon mustard

Peel and dice one large sweet potato. Place in large dish with some water, cover, microwave for 5 minutes.

In large pan:
Saute one diced onion. Wilt in 4 leaves of kale, 2 min.
Add potato, then eggs.
Cook 3 minutes.

Cook in oven for 10 minutes.

Sprinkle crumbled goat cheese over the frittata a minute or two before serving.

Fettuccine with Summer Veg and Goat Cheese

It is a happy day when Mike or I come home with a new Food Network magazine from the library. It's a pretty nice mag, and I generally get one or two recipes from it - skipping over most of the meat recipes (they really like variations of meat and potatoes). We needed a quick pasta dinner (okay, we just didn't feel like cooking) so we whipped up this pasta recipe.

I liked this recipe because the first step is just throwing a lot of raw veggies into a bowl. Would have made more sense to make it during the summer when we were saving our energy bill by not running the AC ever, but oh well. In went some sliced yellow squash, diced tomato (we just used red, didn't bother seeding it), some diced green onion, lemon zest (best!) and some olive oil.

Meanwhile we cooked up some whole-wheat spaghettini, throwing in a bunch of green beans for the last 2 minutes. Then came the fun part - mixing! We needed a slightly bigger bowl, since a few of the veggies went overboard, but oh well. We threw in the pasta and beans and tossed them with delicious goat cheese (the reason I chose the recipe - I found some affordably priced at my neighbourhood bulk store), reserved pasta water and some more olive oil. We then joked that this is the kind of simple recipe we shouldn't need a recipe to make.

Topped with grated parmesan cheese and more goat cheese, the pasta was ready to be devoured. Who can resist cheesy pasta? We don't often eat pasta without tomato sauce so this was a little different. It was quickly devoured while we watched our downloaded TV shows. Just another night with us!