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Sunday, February 28, 2010

Vegetable Lasagna with Garlic Bread

Cheesy goodness was on the menu tonight. We tried a new vegetable lasagna recipe that we found online. It was pasta free and called for thinly sliced zucchini, chopped eggplant and chopped yellow squash. All three were roasted in a mixture of olive oil, garlic and dried thyme.

We switched out the portobello with baby bella and the button mushrooms with cremini. In the future we will use all cremini and saute the whole batch. Also, I didn't let the tomato sauce simmer quite long enough and it was still a bit too liquid which made for a messy final dish. Despite that, it was quite tasty and we will definitely make it again. We give it 3.5 out of 5 stars.

yellow squash

 lightly roasted zucchini

mushrooms, mmmmm

 Parmesan

final result

Sunday, February 21, 2010

Mushroom Polenta "Lasagna" with Sesame Asparagus

Tonight's main dish was from Rachael Ray 365: No Repeats page 300. We have made this once before we started the blog and really liked it, so we decided to revisit and it was still just as good. We made a slight alteration to the mushroom portion of the recipe. We used baby bella rather than portobello mushrooms, and it was just fine. The recipe uses prepared polenta in place of pasta. The next time we make this, I may try to make the polenta myself. Also, next time we plan to make it in a larger pan to try and thin the layers out a little bit. We ended up having to cook it much longer than the recipe called for. Hopefully the changes we make next time will cut down on the cooking time.

The side dish was the sesame asparagus we made last month from Vegan with a Vengeance. I am proud to say that I did not burn the sesame seed oil and garlic this time around. We also followed the recipe better and did not end up burning holes in our mouths with too much red pepper flake. Trust me on this one, one teaspoon is plenty for this dish. While the cookbook suggests this as a side to Asian type meals, it paired well with the main dish which also included some red pepper flake.

This was a great dish, despite taking much longer than the recipe suggests. We give it 4.5 out of 5 stars.

 This one calls for a lot of ingredients

 mushrooms, onion, garlic and rosemary

 bre-bake

 mmmmmmm

Monday, February 15, 2010

Chickpea and Spinach Curry

Night two for Vegan With a Vengeance, with my first attempt at a curry. We made a few alterations to the recipe. First was using ground ginger since the fresh ginger we had wasn't so fresh any more. Second was using ground cardamom in place of cardamom pods, which our usual grocery store didn't seem to have. Upon spice testing toward the end of the cooking process, we added a little more curry powder as well as salt.

The dish was good, but a little more bland then the copious amounts of spice would suggest. My coworker of Indian heritage, told me today that she lives off of curry, so I'm hoping she can give me some good tips on uping the heat of the dish. In the future, we will definitely make sure we have some fresh ginger also more tomato and tomato juice. We give this one 3 out of 5 stars with high hopes of a better dish on the next attempt.

mustard seed and onion

 spices and tomato added

 cooking down the spinach

 simmer with the chickpeas

 we went with a bed of rice

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Jerk Seitan with Coconut Rice

Tonight we revisited Vegan with a Vengeance with delicious results. The main dish was jerk seitan (page 159). The recipe says to marinade the seitan for an hour, but I went ahead and set it up around noon and let it sit for about six hours. The only other variation we took from the recipe was to add more cayenne just before cooking, about a teaspoon or so more which gave the final dish a bit more heat.

The seitan was simple and flavorful with the large amount of spices used in the marinade. An onion and green bell pepper were sauteed for about 10 minutes before adding the seitan to the skillet. The seitan cooked for about ten minutes and then for a few more minutes when we added the marinade to the skillet. Total cooking time for the main dish was about 25 minutes.

The coconut rice recipe is from the same book (page 109). This too was simple and delicious. The jasmine rice cooked in coconut milk and water with a cinnamon stick and a little salt. Shortly before finishing, we added the zest of one lime to the party. Side note: we finally got around to getting a Microplane zester/grater and it is awesome.

Last but not least, we decided to add a simple greens salad much like we had with Salmon Cakes last month. We used salad greens tossed with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, kosher salt and pepper. We also added some tomato and cucumber.

This dinner will be revisited in the future because it was so tasty. We give it 5 out of 5 stars.

ingredients for the marinade

onion and bell pepper

 the seitan patiently awaits its turn

 finished rice topped with toasted coconut

 pair with Shiner Bock for the yummy

more pictures here

A View of Tasty Things to Come

stay tuned

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Left to my own devices

Laura and I both work jobs that require some night and weekend hours. For the most part we are able to get our schedules matched up so that we work the same schedules, or at least schedules that are at least some what alike. This week is one of the times that we are way off and won't have a night off together all week long, so cooking together can't really happen. Tonight Laura is working and I'm home alone so what do I make, Hamburger Helper. Yes, Hamburger Helper, I am sorry to say it but it is true.

In my defense I did have a large helping of broccoli to go with it. Maybe on my next alone night I'll try my friend Shawn's suggestion of cast iron skillet steak.

Saturday, February 6, 2010

Zucchini Pizza

Some nights we take a chance and it just doesn't work out. Tonight was one of those nights with our Zucchini Pizza experiment. The pizza has some promise, but what we ended up eating was really not very good. Don't let that stop you from reading the rest of this.

The pizza recipe was from Rachael Ray 365: No Repeats page 275. We made a few alterations, as usual. We replaced the ricotta cheese with cottage cheese which was an okay change. The change that we didn't like so much was the dough. The recipe calls for rolls of pizza dough and we went with a whole wheat pre-made dough that just was not good at all. We did find an easy enough looking recipe online that we may try next time, but it needs a few hours before it is ready.

The biggest issue we ran into was that while the recipe calls for 2 rolls of dough. We miscalculated the amount of dough and what do you know, we put twice as much topping on one pie and that was a big mistake. The biggest issue was that the cottage cheese had eight (yes e-i-g-h-t, 8) cloves of garlic in it. Now we love garlic and eat it a lot, but this was just way too much. Also with that much cottage cheese on on crust, it oozed all over the place in the baking process.

In the future we will go with another dough, maybe add some fresh tomato as a topping and cut back on the garlic.

 
beware the garlic
 
brown thin slices of zucchini (this part was yummy)

 the right side oozed

at least it looks pretty

Monday, February 1, 2010

Gratin of Eggplant with Plum Tomatoes, Fresh Mozzarella and Lemon-Basil Pesto

Oh, fresh mozzarella how I love thee. Laura and I broke out the Cooking for Two: Perfect Meals for Pairs that was a gift from my friend Shawn and his wife (also my cousin) Jill . We like the book, but it does tend to lend itself to more expensive meals than we usually like to make. We found a pretty good deal on the fresh mozzarella and it was oh so tasty, but it isn't something we will splurge on that often.

Tonight's dish is from page 46, Gratin of Eggplant Layered with Plum Tomatoes, Fresh Mozzarella, and Lemon-Basil Pesto. Yes that is a mouthful, but an oh so tasty mouthful. The pesto was simple: blended pine nuts (that had been roasted in the oven), garlic, Parmesan cheese, fresh basil and lemon juice. The eggplant was browned in a large pan with olive oil and then the yummy layers began.

The pesto brought a bright flavor to the dish that I very much enjoyed. I used too much olive oil in the browning of the eggplant which resulted in far too much liquid coming out in the baking process. Next time we make this we will use less oil on the eggplant and slice it a bit thicker. The mozzarella could have been a bit thinner but that was tricky stuff to slice. Laura thought the cheese could of used a bit more time in the oven, but we both loooooved the fresh mozzarella anyway. We give this one 3.5 of 5 stars.

fresh eggplant

pesto (we eat a lot of garlic)

this will be better in the summer when plum tomatoes are in season

trust me, you really should wish this was a scratch and sniff blog

pre-bake

nom nom nom