Tilapia with Apples, Cabbage & Warm Cumin Vinaigrette

I don't know if you've heard,  but IT SNOWED here on Friday!!!  It was beautiful and so much fun to play in with Munchie.  Unfortunately, our cupboard was seriously bare.  So we finally risked life and limb today and ventured out to the grocery store.  I think we pretty much bought the place out.  While there we got the ingredients for tonight's dinner.  The recipe is from The Ultimate Cook Book (p 340) which was a gift from Uncle Phil and Aunt Cheryl (thank you for feeding our obsession!).
 
Zack prepped all of the veggies and I sauteed the onion, garlic, cabbage, chickpeas & a granny smith apple in a bit of butter and white wine.  The Tilapia was seasoned with salt and pepper and put on the stove top briefly before being baked in the oven.  The vinaigrette seemed more like an onion relish than a dressing.  It was made of sauteed red onion, garlic and cumin mixed with lime juice and white wine vinegar.

The original recipe called for bass, but Harris Teeter only had Chilean sea bass.  This particular bass has almost been fished to extinction.  The Tilapia seemed like a good substitution.  The vinaigrette also called for crushed cumin seeds.  There were no cumin seeds in the spice cabinet, there was some regular cumin.  We decided to use what we had because, damn it, we're kind of cheap.      

The result was a yummy, if slightly monochromatic dish.  Zack gave it 4 out of 5 stars even though he generally isn't a fan of cabbage.  I really liked the cabbage and tart apple combo.  I think we will make this one again.

 

 

more pictures here

Chickpea Cutlets with Mustard Sauce & Sesame Asparagus

Tonight was a triple Isa night!  We made Chickpea Cutlets in Mustard Sauce from Veganomicon and Sesame Asparagus from Vegan With a Vengeance.  I own and luuuuuuuv both of these cookbooks and I'm seriously coveting her cupcake and brunch book too.  Despite Zack's attempt to burn down the house, dinner turned out yummy and mostly flame free.

The cutlets were easy to make.  Zack had a lot of fun smooshing the chickpeas with our muddler.  I kneaded the mash into the wheat gluten and seasoning and smooshed them into 4 thin patties (the thinner they are, the crispier they turn out).  I thought that the mustard sauce was a nice tangy complement.  Zack could have lived without the capers in the sauce.  As always, there were a few substitution.  I used bottled lemon juice in place of lemon zest and subbed leftover Panko bread crumbs instead of the standard variety.  I think the Panko caused the cutlets to fall apart a bit.

After initially smoking up the house, Zack made the asparagus.  He cooked it perfectly so that it was still slightly crunchy.  This recipe was delicious but hot as all hell!  It called for 1 tsp of red pepper flake.  We're both fans of spicy food, but this was toooo much!  Next time we're sticking with 1/2 tsp.

Overall, we give this dinner four stars.  We'll definitely make it again in the future.

vampire inoculation

the smooshing part was fun

 forming the cutlets

more smooshing

cast iron skillets are awesome

 spicy asparagus

the yummy results

more here

Sicilian Lentil, Vegetable and Pasta Soup

It has been a gray soggy Sunday here in Charlotte so we decided to try a slow cooker recipe from a new book at my library called The Italian Slow Cooker. As one might imagine, this book isn't exactly vegetarian friendly, but it did have a nice sounding lentil soup. The prep for this dish was simple and just involved chopping some vegetables and tossing them in the pot with some water and since we went with canned tomatoes we didn't have to bother with peeling and seeding. We never said we wouldn't cut corners here.

The pot cooked on low for 7 hours and we added elbow pasta and let it cook on high for an additional 30 minutes. To go along with the soup we kept with the cutting corners and had some frozen garlic bread. The soup was a good start, but will need some work if we do it again in the future. We think that replacing some of the water with vegetable stock or adding a little bouillon would add a deeper flavor, also adding some fresh herbs would help. If anyone has herb suggestions we are open to them. We give this dish 3 stars out of 5, but it has potential. As a slow cooker recipe should be, it is a good one to let go all day and you can just leave it alone, though an occasional stir doesn't hurt.

mmm fresh veggies

chopped veggies

more pictures here

Salmon Cakes with Salad Greens and Rice

Two nights, two posts and both from Rachel Ray recipes. She may be annoying, but she knows how to cook and puts out great recipes. The recipe for tonight's post can be found on the Food Network (one of our favorite networks) here. A while back we tried a salmon cake recipe from the back of the salmon pouch and thought, "meh."

This recipe was much better and added a lot of flavor and the sauce was super hot so if you make this and are not a fan of heat, you might want to cut back on the amount of chili sauce. We used Sriracha Hot Chili Sauce and ended up adding another 1/4 cup of mayo to ease up on the heat. We give this one a 4.5 just with some minor changes to the sauce to keep it from being too hot. Serving it over the salad green tossed in olive oil, salt and lemon juice was outstanding.

Other variations we made:

• Panko rather than cracker meal (leftovers from the Eggplant Parmesan)
• Cayenne pepper because we didn't have any cayenne pepper sauce. I think this added more heat and took away some moisture which made forming the cakes a bit difficult

 Laura chopping the dill

pre-cake goodness

pre-fried cakeness

crush the cook indeed

the yummy finished product

more pictures here

Quesadilla Casserole with Collard Greens

I know, collard greens aren't the first side dish one thinks of with quesadillas, but it works surprisingly well. Laura and I mixed our childhoods a bit tonight with some good 'ol Tex Mex and down home southern dishes. The quesadilla casserole was a Rachel Ray recipe found online and the collard greens were prepared with liquid smoke, soy sauce and garlic from a recipe in Veganomicon.

We liked the casserole and will revisit it with a few tweaks in the future. One thing we both thought would be good was to add some tomatoes to each layer and maybe some diced jalapeno peppers to give it a little heat. Laura really like the greens, but I wasn't as thrilled with them. I didn't each them growing up, so I haven't developed a taste for them. I am told that I will be given plenty of chances in our life together to develop the appreciation of collard greens.

black beans, corn and parsley for the filling

 

sauteed onion and black beans squished into a paste

 

tortilla, paste, filling, cheese (repeat 4 times)

bake at 400 for 30 min (Cosby sweater optional)

careful, oven baked cast iron is HOT

top with green enchilada sauce

more pictures here

Eggplant Parmesan à la Alton

Continuing down our nerd road, Laura and I are big fans of Alton Brown. Earlier today I broke out his book I'm Just Here for the Food: Version 2.0 to try and find something new to make and settled on Eggplant Parmesan. The preparation of this dish was ridiculously easy and fun to do. We don't break out the cast iron skillet as much as I would like, so getting to pan fry some goodies is always a welcome treat.

The recipe calls for panko rather than traditional bread crumbs and I think that made all of the difference. The panko gave it a lighter and crispier crust than the others would have. One substitution we had to make was to use a pre-shredded mix of cheeses because the store did not have provolone except for sandwich slices. We had some left over spaghetti sauce in the fridge and went with that rather than just plain tomato sauce.

For a side dish we decided on some asparagus and just used a steamer bag from the frozen section of the grocery store (don't knock it, it is actually pretty dang good stuff). I made my first ever reduction sauce with balsamic vinegar which turned out pretty nice, though we went a little heavy handed on it when we put it on the veggies. Otherwise the dinner was a big 'ol win and I plan on making it again soon. Plus, it is a pretty cheap meal that doesn't take long to prepare. WE give it 5 out of 5 stars. But enough of the words, here are the pictures.

knives are fun

workspace

resting while their friends get fried

just a touch of sauce between each layer

"suck it Iron Chef"

Laura likes plating and wanted me to say that

 

See the whole set here

Faux "Chicken" and Dumplings

So far we've been good about keeping our dish a week pledge. But we have not, as of yet, shared any tasty food with our neighbors.  And we like them.  Soooo, Saturday we decided to have us a little dinner party! 

Joey and Rebecca 
poor neglected neighbors

 

bitty kitchen table

We made faux chicken and dumplings. This dish has always been one of my favorite cold weather comfort foods.

Faux "Chicken":

2 boxes Quorn Cutlets

4 cups water

2 cups Veggie or No-Chicken broth

3 carrots

3 stalks of celery

1 small onion

frozen peas

1/2 tsp salt

1 cup milk

fresh ground pepper

Dumplings:

2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

3 Tbls non-hydrogenated shortening

3/4 cup buttermilk

Defrost Quorn Cutlets, chop into bite-sized pieces and set aside (when defrosting, add a little broth and cover so they don't dry out).   Pour broth and water into a large pot and bring to a boil.  Add salt and simmer chopped onions, carrots, celery and peas for 5 minutes.  Drain the veggies and set them aside also reserving the broth.

To make the dumplings combine dry ingredients and then cut in the shortening until it is the texture of a coarse meal.  Add the buttermilk and combine only until the dry ingredients are moistened.  Its not necessary to roll out the dough unless you just really want to use a rolling pin.

 

Put the reserved broth back into the pot and bring to a boil and add fresh ground pepper.  Pinch off 1 1/2 inch pieces of dough and drop them into the broth a few at a time.  Adding a bit of milk to the broth will help thicken the mixture.  Reduce the heat to medium low and stir periodically for 8-10 minutes.  Add the Quorn and veggies back to the pot and cook until warm.  

 

 

Everyone enjoyed the yummy results.  Yay for good food, good friends and sharing!

Rebecca and Joey

no longer neglected!

Full Flickr set in all its glory here

Boba Fett-uccine

Nerd Night!

Tonight's dish is a simple fettuccine recipe from Wookie Cookies: A Star Wars Cookbook, with the punny name of Boba Fett-uccin. Because seriously what goes better with pasta than a little galactic bounty hunting?! Nothing, that's right!

The recipe was good (though, the recipe wasn't really necessary). We eat a lot of baked pasta around here and are trying to ease off of that. This is a much lighter dish with steamed vegetables mixed in with a tomato pasta sauce (we went canned on that). The recipe called for broccoli, cauliflower and zucchini. In the future we will cut out the cauliflower and replace it with something else because neither of us really care for it all on its own.

We will revisit this dish again in the future. It is very simple and including prep only took 20-30 minutes from start to finish. A great easy meal for a week night after a long day of work whether that be librarianing or hunting down the dredges of the Coruscant underworld.




Quality testing the fettuccine.





Of course you must top it with freshly grated Parmesan cheese.



Finished Product and more pictures here