We're back! Now with 100% more salad.

Oh my gosh ya'll - we're no longer living in an internet black hole and once again have high speed internet! So after a 2+ year hiatus Moore Food Please is back.  We're easing back into food blogging (as to not sprain anything), so tonight's recipe is a simple one that mostly consists of chopping and mixing. No hardcore cooking required.  

Chickpea Salad with Cilantro-Lime Vinaigrette

Chickpea Salad:
15 oz can of chickpeas, rinsed & drained
1 cup corn
1 pint grape tomatoes, halved
1 organic cucumber, peeled & diced
1 organic green bell pepper, diced
1/2 small red onion, finely diced 

Dressing:
3 T organic lime juice
zest of 2 organic limes
2 T extra-virgin olive oil
2 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 tsp honey
1/8 tsp ground coriander
2 T fresh cilantro
Dressing recipe adapted from:  http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Cilantro-Lime-Vinaigrette-103849


Instructions:

Wash and chop your veggies.  Put them in a big mixing bowl, like so.

Gather your dressing ingredients and put them in the blender.  Blend for about a minute or until the cilantro is minced.

Pour the dressing over the salad and mix.

Serve and enjoy!

Avocado & Smoked Gouda Sandwiches

This avocado and smoked Gouda sandwich is one of my favorites.  It's a perfect simple meal for a hot day!
Ingredients:
sourdough bread
sliced tomato(es)
sliced avocado
sliced red onion
romaine lettuce
smoked Gouda
spicy mustard
vegenaise or mayo


Lightly toast the sourdough bread under a broiler.  Add the gouda, broil for a few more minutes until the cheese is slightly melted.    

Top one side with tomatoes, vegenaise, salt & pepper.

Top the other half with spicy mustard, onion, avocado slices and lettuce.

Smoosh the sides together and enjoy! 

Chickpea Fattet Tostadas

After last night's flavor debacle, we decided to try something else from The Gourmet Vegetarian Slow Cooker and this time it worked out great. Tonight's dish was very simple and actually didn't need the slow cooker at all. The only part of the recipe that called for the cooker was to cook the dried chickpeas. I didn't want to let them go all day, so I just did the quick cook method that took about an hour. Rather than sitting in the slow cooker all day, I just boiled the dried chickpeas for a couple of minutes and let them sit in the hot water until they were ready.

I had never made hummus before, so we just followed the recipe from the book. In the future I'll cut back on the amount of garlic, but otherwise it was tasty. One downside to making our own hummus is that our little food processor is loud and makes our dog cower under our feet.

The dish was very good and much more filling than we had expected. We will definitely do this one again.

just before the poor dog was under foot

pita is hard to slice

hummus all done

pita toasted under the broiler, hummus, romaine lettuce, roasted pine nuts, a touch of fresh mint and Greek-style yogurt: easy peasy

Arepas with Avocado-Tempeh Filling

 Tonight we made stuffed Venezuelan sammies from Terry Hope Romero's Viva Vegan!  Terry co-authored several of my favorite cookbooks, including Veganomicon, so I expected good things.  And this recipe did not disappoint!  Arepas are akin to corn bread or just really, really thick tortillas.  They have a crunchy crust and a moist and dense center.

The recipe called for the tempeh filling to be made in advance so that the flavors have time to meld.  We planned on having the arepas for dinner, so I made the filling in the morning and let it marinate in the fridge.  After briefly boiling the tempeh, I sprinkled it with soy sauce and cut it in cubes.

Next I whisked Vegenaise, lime juice and fresh ground pepper together and then stirred in the shredded jicama and tempeh cubes..This was the first time I've ever made anything with jicama and the first grocery store we went to didn't carry it.  Once you peel it, it looks a lot like a potato but smelled like a green bean.  I wish I would have thought to try a bit of it on it's own, but I didn't.

Making the Arepas was pretty simple.  The dough was made out of masa harina flour, salt and water.  It was supposed to be strictly Venezuelan or Colombian style masa harina, but the kind we bought was of non-specific origin.  The dough was kneaded and then patted out into 6 disks about 4 inches in diameter.

They were then fried in a bit of canola oil before being baked for an additional 15 minutes in a 350 oven. 

After baking we sliced the arepas were sliced in half, spooned on the prepared filling and topped it with sliced avocados.  The traditional way to assemble these includes splitting them three quarters of the way and stuffing the filling inside like a pita, but we found the sammich construction a bit easier.
 

The results were yummy!  The only way I can think to describe the filling is as a tangy slaw.  I love the jimaca and lime combo with the mild tempeh and warm arepas.  The arepas themselves were nice, but on their own seemed a bit bland.  Maybe adding a bit more salt would help this?  Zack thinks they would be good withbutter and honey as a breakfast.  We give it four stars!

  More pics here

Road Trip for Hash (no, not what you are thinking)

Occasionally we at Moore Food, Please like to let other people feed us. Yesterday, Laura and I went to visit our friend Mandie in Pacolet, South Carolina and attend her family's Hash. In case you are unfamiliar with Pacolet, it is the town near Spartanburg with a big horse in the middle of a river (pictured to the left).

Now those of you, like me, who are not native to South Carolina may be wondering just what a "hash" is. Well the best I could tell when I got here was that it was a bunch of stuff mashed up into some kind of delicious meat paste. Wikipedia has an article on it here. Mandie's family makes a big production out of the meal and pretty much the entire town of Pacolet, SC comes by to partake.

A hash is not normally very vegetarian friendly, but Mandie did a wonderful job of preparing vegetarian dishes for those who don't drool at the idea of meat paste.

Yup, we ate at the "Eatin' Shed"

Hash is typically cooked in a large single pot, this family doesn't screw around when it comes to their pot.

A family member stirring the pot (insert dumb joke here).

The desserts were delicious!

See more pictures of the day trip

Dinner on the cheap - Ramen Bowls!

You know it.  You love it.  You probably ate nothing but it in college...it's ramen!  Times are tight, so we've been looking for creative ways to eat on the cheap.  Zack discovered the Budget Bytes blog a few months ago before the layoffs.  It's a lovely little blog by Beth M., a money conscious foodie.  It must have been fate!  Or google. 

 
This ramen bowl was our first experiment with a Budget Byte's recipe.  It was easy to do, yummy and of course, cheap!  We bought the ramen on sale for .17¢ each.  As with most of our recipes, I added way more veggies than required.  We included shredded carrots, sliced mushrooms and baby spinach.  In lieu of the flavor packet we added soy sauce and a splash of fish sauce.

Zack dislikes runny egg yolks so I opted for making egg-ribbons similar to egg-drop soup.  Apparently I haven't mastered egg-ribbon making.  It ended up more like broth with little chunks of egg floating in it.

We bought a jar of chili-garlic sauce to add some heat.  It was yummy but very similar to sriracha sauce.  If you have sriracha at home, just use it instead.  Overall I would say this is a 4 star dish.  It would be perfect for an evening when you are really tired and don't feel like making anything elaborate.

Birthday Baking FAIL

As you may know, things have been kind of stressful and grim for us these past few months.  So for Z's upcoming birthday, I wanted to do something completely frivolous and fun.  A few years ago I saw a blog post for this Supertall Amazing Rainbow Cake and I knew that would be just the thing.  It was gonna be AMAZING!  And a surprise.

Zack went to visit some friends Friday night, so I got to baking.  Flour, egg whites and sugar flew.  The mess was epic.  The cake was a coconut cake from a recipe I found on about.com.  I separated the batter into different bowls and added the food coloring.  I didn't know how much to add, so I just sort of dropped the coloring in and mixed until it looked nice.  Then I poured it into the cake pans and baked it according to the instructions.  Simple enough.

Now, lets talk frosting.  And egg whites - evil, evil egg whites.  The icing was going to be a nice, fluffy and supposedly simple egg white and sugar mix.  I threw out two batches.  The egg whites would not turn into fluffy peaks no matter how long my Kitchen Aid abused them.  My last attempt finally yielded something fluffy and yummy.

I stacked the layers, adding frosting and shredded coconut in between them.  Then I frosted the exterior and dusted it with the remaining coconut.  Voila!  A giant Baked Alaska.  Wait, what?

A few things:  I should have made a double recipe so that layers would be nice and thick, to contribute to the whole "Supertall" aspect of the cake.  But time was short and I was out of eggs!  Baking tip #1, be prepared.  That means have extra in case you eff it up the first time!  Also, the cake pans I used weren't exactly the same size.  For this recipe you either need a ridiculous number of cake pans, or time enough to bake everything in separate batches.  Our neighbors graciously let me borrow a few of theirs so I could bake the cake all at once.  Despite the slight roundness of the cake, I was still pretty dang proud...

...That is until the next morning.  When this is what I find.  All of the lovely, fluffy icing had disappeared into a cobwebby vestige of its former glory.  Cursing ensued.  Lots and lots of cursing.  But I was determined that 3 hours of baking would not go in vain. 

We were brave and tried a slice.  It actually tasted pretty good.  Nice and coco-nutty.  The frosting had been absorbed by the cake, so it was very moist.  And it looked pretty on the plate, even without frosting.

Next year, I'll be keeping it simple.  Patti, I hear you have a cheesecake recipe?

Linguini with Lemon-Roasted Asparagus and Goat Cheese

I love asparagus!  Really, I do.  As a child, my experience with it was limited to the canned stuff smothered in cheese.  I happen to be a fan of cheese, but canned asparagus is just unpleasant (think mouthful of snot).  So I was surprised when I had fresh asparagus for the first time as an adult.  Ever since then, I've been happily experimenting with any new recipe I come across.  I saw this liniguini recipe last week on CRAFTzine.com and knew we'd have to try it soon.  Bonus: asparagus is in season so it's fresh and cheap!


This was a really simple and delicious recipe.  The veggie prep included washing and cutting the asparagus and slicing shallots.  The citrus marinade took only a couple of minutes, mostly spent mincing garlic cloves.  I zested and juiced a lemon and mixed it in with olive oil, garlic, and dijon mustard along with some salt and pepper.  The marinated veggies roasted for seven minutes which was exactly the amount of time the pasta needed to cook.  Then we tossed it all together and topped it with goat cheese and parsley.  Yum!  And it was all done in less than thirty minutes (Suck it, Rachel Ray).  Download the recipe in PDF here.       

 Zack chopping veggies

cry face.  shallots ain't no joke.

citrus-y goodness

roasted veg

Ta-da!

Salmon & Couscous Packages

Spring time is here and it is time to step away from the heavy dishes. Tonight we dined on a recipe from The Diabetes Seafood Cookbook (don't worry neither of us have contracted diabetes just yet). The recipe was cooked in foil pouches like we had last week, but rather than a stew the couscous soaked up all the liquid. Laura and I are both big fans of dill and this dish delivered on that taste. The one thing we didn't like was the finished couscous. The liquid used for cooking was white wine and wine flavored couscous just isn't all that tasty. Next time we try this recipe we will either use just water or veggie broth in place of the wine.

We give this one 3 stars for now, but we did end up throwing out the couscous.

dill and sour cream, what more could you ask for?

 couscous underneath fish on top (wine to come)

the recipe side was cucumber with sour cream, we decided to add some more dill (it was a good call)

fish = good; couscous = bad

more pictures here

Ramen Radiator

Moore Food, Please is back from our short break, work woes have kept us busy and too exhausted to post recently. We do have a few dishes from the last few weeks to write about and hopefully we will have them all up soon.

Last night we tried a recipe from the Alton Brown book I'm Just Here for the Food: Version 2.0 and it was yummy. The recipe was Ramen Radiator (page 169). The recipe reminded me of the "silver turtles" I used to make when I was in scouts as a kids. The cooking method had us wrap everything up in aluminum foil and let the liquid cook the goodies with steam in the oven.

We will definitely revisit this recipe, with a few minor changes. The final dish was a little sweet for our taste, so we will probably omit the honey, cut back on the mirin and slightly increase the amount of soy sauce. We give this one 4 out of 5 stars, and with a little work it could easily become 5.

cremini mushrooms were caramelized in olive oil and toasted sesame oil

the goodies that were going into the pouches

what isn't visible is the half "load" of ramen noodles under the fish

we decided to eat like grown ups for once

mmmmmmmm

more pictures here