Thursday, June 25, 2009
Fireflies rise in the night
from verdant fields of green
like slowly rising embers.
Sparks from a dying fire...
The field is ablaze
with a June night's summer magic.
My "poetry" of the evening
This is a very meaningful quote for me. Its lessons are ones that challenge me. It is my struggle. It is my downfall. I include it here in hope that I will one day release myself.
The ego is a monkey catapulting through the jungle:
Totally fascinated by the realm of the senses,
it swings from one desire to the next,
one conflict to the next,
one self-centered idea to the next.
If you threaten it, it actually fears for its life.
Let this monkey go.
Let the senses go.
Let desires go.
Let conflicts go.
Let ideas go.
Let the fiction of life and death go.
Just remain in the center, watching
And then forget that you are there.
--Lao Tzu
Meatless Monday - Super Easy Veggie Enchiladas
Monday, June 15, 2009
Tonight's Meatless Monday recipe is...
Super Easy Veggie Enchiladas
This is another one that you can keep virtually all of the ingredients in your pantry and freezer to have on hand for a quick meal.
Ingredients:
1 can Hunt's Fire Roasted Diced Tomatoes
1 can whole kernel corn
1 can large black olives
1 can black beans (or pinto, or probably most any bean, except maybe those weirdly large butter beans... those are just freakish)
2 cans enchilada sauce
1 cup Texturized Vegetable Protein (TVP) Crumbles*, or Frozen Meatless Crumbles
1 package taco seasoning
Shredded mexican style cheese
Corn tortillas**
Optional:
Sour cream
Cholula hot sauce - chipotle or original
*Here in Blacksburg, TVP is available at Eats and also probably at Annie Kay's. It is a super inexpensive form of protein for vegetarians, and easy to use. Don't be intimidated! After thought: I sort of think you may also be able to find it at Kroger too, in the natural foods baking-esqe area, with the Bob's Red Mill stuff.
** NOT flour tortillas!!!! This is a critical point!!! They will *not* be enchiladas if you use flour tortillas. They'll be burritos. I'm just sayin.
Prep:
If you start with the TVP, you'll have to rehydrate it prior to use. You don't need much, it rehydrates and becomes a much larger quantity. Typically for 1 cup of TVP you'll use about 3/4 cup of water. Just try it a bit at a time until the texture looks right and not too spongy. You can do this with boiling water for a quick effect, or tap water if you have about 15 minutes to wait around while the TVP rehydrates.
Once the TVP has rehydrated, put a splash of olive oil in a pan and saute the TVP until it firms up a bit and some of the water has cooked back off. This is mostly a judgment call... when they start to stick to the pan a bit, I know it's time. From that point, follow the instructions for your taco seasoning as if the TVP were the cooked ground beef; this usually involves adding some water and cooking a bit more. If you start with the frozen crumbles you'll just need to get them to a heated stage before doing the taco seasoning steps.
In between the "taco (not) meat" cooking down a bit, open, drain and rinse the beans and corn. Lightly drain the diced tomatoes to get some of the liquid out, but don't smash down on the lid while you're draining them too much; you just want to keep them from being overly watery and not make them sad smashed representations of former lusciousness. There's a fine line. Open the olives and slice them, either the hard way or a few at a time with one of these awesome multi-taskers. I didn't use the whole can for mine (probably 2/3 of the can?); use as much or as few as you like. If you hate olives you could substitute onions or mushrooms or zucchini or something (don't be shy), you'd just want to saute them up first before putting them in the mix.
Mix the sliced olives, tomatoes, corn, beans and "meat" up in a bowl.
Open one of the cans of enchilada sauce and pour some onto a large plate or bowl. You'll be using this to coat the outside of each corn tortilla as you work with it (yes, the outside. yes, it's a bit messy).
Coat the bottom of your baking pan with a bit of the enchilada sauce. I had so much filling that I filled up one standard rectangular cake pan (13x9? or so?) plus one 8x8 or so square casserole dish with the enchiladas. The good news is, you don't have to cook them all at once; you can freeze some of them for later! Score - multiple meals for the work of one!!
To assemble the enchiladas, get a stack of the corn tortillas laid out on your work surface. Take a good sized bunch; you'll use them. You have to sauce the tortillas before folding - this is important because otherwise the corn tortillas will just crumble and break at the folds.
Take your first corn tortilla from the stack and lay it down on the sauce you poured out into the plate or bowl. Get the one side good and saucy. While over the bowl or plate, flip it over in your hands so that the sauced side is up while you move it over to your stack of tortillas (only one side is sauced). This is so you don't drip all the way across, depending on how far apart your prep areas are. Then, lay the sauced side of the tortilla down on the top of the tortilla stack, thereby saucing the next tortilla in line. On the non-sauced side (which is now facing up), lay out some of the filling you just mixed up in the bowl. Wrap the tortilla up carefully and lay it up against the side of your pan or dish, so that it stays closed. When you go back to your stack for enchilada numero dos, you'll see a sauced tortilla from where you laid the other one on top. Flip it over and pass on some of the saucy love. You can keep flipping over like this until the sauce starts looking a bit thin, then start all over again.
Once your tray is tightly packed with the enchiladas, spread the rest of the sauce over the top. Be sure to get sauce on all the edges of the tortillas or you will get wretched chewy parts that you will not want to eat. Ever had microwaved enchiladas? Know the part I mean? Yeah, like that.
Top them with as much (or little) shredded cheese as you want, cover the tray with tinfoil, and you're done assembling! If you want to freeze one (or more) of the pans, or put it in the fridge for tomorrow, now is the time.
When you're ready to eat, heat the oven to 375 and cook for 45 minutes (if you're working with a frozen pan of them, defrost them first in the fridge). When they're done cooking, let them cool down a bit before serving or they will fall apart when you go to dish them out. They still taste just as good, but they'll look more like enchilada casserole than actual enchiladas. That's the voice of experience speaking.
I recommend serving them with some sour cream (spread evenly on top after dishing them out) and Cholula. You can do without, but they're a bit blander for sure. You could also try topping them with fresh chopped cilantro and salsa, for a lower fat alternative.
I know a recipe is a hit when John goes back for seconds, and even more so when he's willing to eat leftovers. I hit both marks with this one - WIN! It's delicious.
Signs of Summer... Garlic Scapes!
Sunday, June 14, 2009
John and I hit the Blacksburg Farmers' Market yesterday, as we are wont to do on a gorgeous Saturday morning. As summer is progressing, the selection just keeps getting better and better. We decided to pick up some of our standard appetizer fare, since one of John's college buddies + fiancee were coming into town.
Our selection included a fantastic pesto bread, our favorite olive tapanade, chevre-style cheese spread and some cherries.
Along the way I saw some of these:
I'd never seen them before and had no idea what they were or what to do with them, but they looked GORGEOUS, so of course I asked about them. They are garlic scapes (a.k.a. garlic whistles), the flowering stalk from garlic. You're supposed to cut them off as they start to curl, so that your garlic plants can put more energy into producing the bulb and not spend it on flowering. My interest was piqued, so I picked up a small bunch for $1.50. As I was walking through the market several of the vendors commented and were so excited about my find that I promptly went back and got 2 more bunches! At $1.50 a bunch, how could I go wrong? Various people suggested making pesto, sauteing them just on their own like green beans, and serving them fresh chopped over salad. So many ideas... What to do, what to do? Since it's important to preserve them at the peak of perfection, I decided to go the pesto route with most of them, so that I could freeze some for future use. I started out with a recipe from Eggs On Sunday and made some adjustments from there. Note - this is a double recipe, I wound up with about 1 and 2/3 pint jars full.
Garlic Scape Pesto
Ingredients
2 cups chopped garlic scapes
2/3 cup walnuts
juice of 1 lemon*
1 cup parmigiano-reggiano cheese, grated**
1 cup extra-virgin olive oil***
coarse salt and pepper, to taste
--Added (not in the original recipe), about 1/4 cup of Pecorino-Romano cheese
* Strictly speaking, to double the original recipe I should have used 2 lemons, but I didn't. This was also where the last of the left over gorgeous Meyer Lemons went, which I basically just used because that's what I had on hand.
** I fresh grated the cheese, which winds up a bit fluffier than the store packaged pre-grated (and tastier, IMHO), hence the addition of the Pecorino-Romano.
*** I wound up adding what seemed like a good bit more olive oil. The recipe was very thick... I like my pesto a bit more fluid. Note that the pictures below were taken *before* I added the extra oil, which I stirred in after I realized how thick the stuff was as I was scraping it out of the food processor!!
Directions
Blend everything but the olive oil, salt and pepper in a food processor or blender. Slowly drizzle in the oil with the motor running, and blend until emulsified and smooth. Taste and add coarse salt and pepper as needed.
Good stuff!
M'm-h'm.
It's delicious.
Meatless Monday... A bit of a cheat?
Monday, June 8, 2009
OK, so I have to admit that I don't have a recipe prepared for my Meatless Monday post today. I have an AWESOME recipe that involves portobello mushroom caps, goat cheese, a bit of balsamic vinegar and either pine nuts or walnuts, but I don't have pictures for that yet! So I'm doing a bit of a cheat to tide me over... Two posts in one, if you will. The portobello recipe is soon to follow.
But first, to whet your appetite... My favorite type of dinner. It *is* a meatless dinner (albeit still involving dairy). The PICNIC! Sunday night John and I had my favorite kind of dinner, a spontaneous picnic on the porch. The meal included fresh bits of blue cheese and smoked Gouda, some gorgeous french bread, smoked almonds and some olive tapanade from the farmer's market. Perfect. The only thing that might have been better would be the addition of some D'Anjou pears (sliced, of course), maybe some Pink Lady or Jonagold apples (sliced...), and some lovely dark chocolate and French Beaujolais wine. I'm also a sucker for the olives from the olive bar... Seasoned, plain, jalapeno, Kalamata, whatever. But then, this was ad hoc at home in Blacksburg and not in Lyon, France (my favorite place on the planet). I think maybe Gracie likes picnics too (you think?).
That was a fab dinner.
This weekend I also made some lemon curd, courtesy of one of my favorite bloggers, The Bakerina! A couple of years ago she wrote a post about her Meyer Lemon Curd. I found Meyer Lemons in the Dekalb Farmer's Market last year and made my first batch, and I'm pretty sure I discovered a secret path to phenomenal sunny yellow heaven. So, of course, when John and I stopped in the Fresh Market in Roanoke on Saturday and they had some of these lovely things I HAD to scoop them up!!!!
The lemons (unbelievably gorgeous, aren't they?):
The recipe for the Meyer Lemon Curd can be found on The Bakerina's site, via this post.
Note: whoops, corrected that link, folks, sorry to have misdirected you initially.
Actually, I'll just paste the recipe here:
Bakerina's Meyer Lemon Curd
Ingredients:
2 teaspoons Meyer lemon zest (obtained by zesting or grating the peel on your lemons, taking care not to lift off any pith)
1/2 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup Meyer lemon juice
3 large eggs
4 large egg yolks
4 tbsp* chilled unsalted butter, cut into 1/2" chunks
Run the zest and sugar together in a food processor for about one minute until the sugar smells intensely lemony. You can also grind them together in a mortar and pestle, or rub the peel into the sugar with your fingertips.
In the top of a double boiler (or in a bowl that you can fit over a pan of simmering water), beat the eggs and egg yolks, add the sugar and beat until everything is combined. Put the bowl over simmering water and stir with a whisk. Feel some of the eggs and sugar with your fingers; if you can still feel sugar granules, keep stirring. Once the sugar is dissolved, add the lemon juice and cook to 160 degrees. If you don't have a thermometer, just watch for the following signs: The curd will become very foamy; then the foam will subside and the whole mix will start to thicken and tighten. When the curd starts to approximate the texture of loose sour cream, that's when it's time to pull it from the stove.
Strain the mix into a clean bowl, or into the washed-and-dried bowl of your food processor, and beat in the butter, piece by piece. Chill the bowl in an ice bath; when the curd is cool, decant it into a container and refrigerate -- after you perform a quality-control test, of course.
* You can use up to 8 tablespoons for a richer curd.
One of the first steps (combining the lemon zest & sugar):
You have to stir the mix CONSTANTLY to keep it from sticking or burning:
The straining gets out the solids as well as the larger lemon zests (don't skip this step!):
As you chill the mixture in the icewater bath, it thickens up nicely (as reflected in this shot, where I scraped down the sides of the bowl):
Last time I made the mistake of just putting the curd in jars and eating (some of) it straight. A lot of it wound up going to waste, mostly because I just wasn't sure what to do with it. This time, I remembered reading on the 10 Signs Like This blog (sadly, not updated in quite some time) that Jamie mixed the lemon curd with whipping cream and made a sponge cake roll. I decided to do the same thing (mix it with real whipped cream) and make a lemon pie. I proceeded to whip the cream (1 c. heavy whipping cream + 1/3 c. sugar + 1 tsp homemade vanilla*). If you've never actually made whipped cream from the liquid and are intimidated, don't be. Use the ratios above, and beat with whisk (or, preferably, electric beater), until it looks like this, and holds a peak:
I mixed half curd, half whipped cream, and put it in the pie crust I'd already baked (um, yeah, I bought the crusts; they are Pillsbury. I'm not entirely nuts, ya'll!!). I frosted it with whipped cream and stuck it in the fridge.
For some reason it didn't gel as well as I might have liked (maybe too much beating when trying to mix in the butter? not enough butter? who knows?)... So I covered it and put it in the freezer to firm up. Sure enough, 20 minutes of chilling on the counter today and it was perfect for eating. Awesome summer fare, just a touch icy and cold, but soft enough to be completely edible. What can I say?! It's delicious.
* post on the homemade vanilla to follow =) But here's a sneak preview pic!
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