Cooking from A to Z

RSS Feed Homepage

Articles: 1, 2, 3, 4

Roasted vegetables + Spicy polenta = close to perfect meal
2007-09-28 09:20:00
I could term this a perfect meal, but nothing's perfect, right? :) Wait, the last post was about a perfect seafood meal ... hmm, guess that was just marred by the totally imperfect picture!I've kind of rediscovered The Complete Cookbook in the last few weeks - this is one of my oldest cookbooks and I've used several recipes from it, but it seems like I've also skimmed through a lot of other truly mouthwatering recipes. As I was flipping through the pages yesterday, this roasted vegetable salad totally caught my eye - it seemed like another of those "let's get into Fall" recipes and we had most of the workings for it :) Turned a few more pages and we stumbled upon a polenta recipe that seemed like a good match.The veggie salad called for parsnips along with dutch potatoes, onions and carrots - Hmm ... no parnsips! We just went with a bell pepper and some pearl onions instead. Worked pretty well, especially with the killer dressing we made for it! Roasted Vegetable Salad=========...
More About: Vegetables , Close , Spicy , Perfect , Meal

Halibut meets grape leaves
2007-09-28 08:21:00
This was one of those perfect seafood meals. It was also one of those "Damn! The camera is on the fritz!" meals! :)While poking around for interesting fish recipes, I came across JenBlossom's post about halibut with lemon butter. Soon, I was trolling the Food&Wine recipe collection looking for other halibut recipes. This one about halibut roasted in grape leaves caught my eye. We haven't had grape leaves in a long while, and this recipe sounded really simple and quick. In one of those rare instances, we pretty much followed the recipe, except for using halibut fillets with the skin on - not a problem since it peeled off real easily once they were baked.We really wanted to get all pieces of our meal ready at the same time, it truly sucks when an entree sits around getting cold while the sides are still being worked on! After a little juggling, we figured out how to create a packet of grape leaves, drizzle it with olive oil and chopped thyme and seasoning and wrap the halibut in...
More About: Leaves , Aves

Pooch Treats!
2007-09-28 07:40:00
After everything that Vodka has been through over the last few days, he deserves loads of treats and many swims in the lake! The latter is yet to come, but we figured we'd get started on the yummy treats part :)Pretty amazing how a bunch of fruits and some oatmeals makes for fabulous doggy cookies. Actually, they're pretty appealing to the human palate too, I snuck one when Vodka wasn't looking! Apple'n'Pear cookies ================== 2 honey crisp apples - diced 1 pear - diced 1/3 stick of butter 2 cups of oatmeal - softened in warm water 1/2 cup of milk Melt the butter, mix in the fruit chunks, add the oatmeal and milk, mix it all up. Drop spoons of it onto a greased baking tray. Bake at 400 F for about 20 minutes.Vodka says *drool*!
More About: Treats

Rice Mixup, mon?!
2007-09-27 00:08:00
Indian rice dishes are among the best out there, what with pulao and biriyani and bisibela and vangi bath, the list just goes on! But then there are the fiery latin and caribbean flavors that arouse all the senses - the paellas and beans'n'rice and arroz con something or the other! Last night was definitely a rice night, after poking around Didi Emmons' book, we stumbled upon this yummy looking Jamaican rice mixup recipe that we morphed to work with what we had. Instead of using regular long-grain rice, we use this nutty rice and lentils mix that I found at PCC a few weeks ago. With 3 kinds of wild and brown rice as well as red lentils, it ends up bursting with flavor and blends really well with strong spices like cumin and coriander. All the stores seem to be teeming with squashes right now, so we settled for this Delicata squash - even as I cut it, it seemed to be redolent of sweet potato rather than squash. Well, wikipedia seems to think the same! :) We went with onions and ...
More About: Rice

Fusilli e Bean Casserole
2007-09-25 07:08:00
Today felt like a non-desi comfort food day. Hmm ... mac'n'cheese? No, I was craving something more nutritious than that! :)After poking around several cookbooks, I finally embarked on making a veggie-filled pasta bake. As the fusilli cooked, I started gathering the makings for the base. A bunch of green beans were on hand, a ripe'n'ready-to-burst tomato was waiting too. And maybe some olives?This was the final recipe:3 cups fusilli - cooked al dente 1 large ripe vine tomato 1/3 lb green beans - parboiled 10 green olives1/2 cup nonfat milk 2 T all purpose flour 1/3 cup light havarti cheese - grated2-3 t chopped chives 1/2 cup of breadcrumbs (or) crumbled flatbread, which was all I had on hand red pepper flakes salt to tasteAfter pureeing the peeled tomato, I added the minced olives in. The next step was to make a nonfat white sauce by roasting the flour in a dry pan over heat and adding the milk, constantly stirring to avoid clumping. I figured chives might give the sauce a good...
More About: Bean , Casserole

Spicy eggplant!
2007-09-25 06:44:00
Eggplant is one of those weird vegetables - it seems to take a lot of thinking to find the "right" recipe for it. And it either turns out fabulous or really crappy, no in between! I was looking for a side to go with some dosas a few days ago, and realized I had some really fresh indian eggplant waiting to be cooked up. After much dithering, I decided to go with a simple, straightforward recipe - stuffed & baked. After slicing off the tops of the little eggplants, I made a cross cut lengthwise in each of those - for filling with the stuffing. I had some sambar powder that I'd made a few days ago - seemed like the perfect filling. I loaded up the eggplants with the powder+salt, spritzed them with some oil spray and baked them for about 15 minutes at 400 F. For the first time ever, I garnished these with some chopped fennel - the combination of flavors was awesome!Hmm ... this is an odd picture, these look more like dates than eggplants!!! :)
More About: Spicy , Eggplant

Chowder?
2007-09-24 07:11:00
What could be better than a bowl chowder to welcome fall? Though I'm not quite ready to admit that summer is over as yet (I'm still hitting the farmers' markets seeking out summer vegetables!), nothing quite like a chunky corn'n'leek chowder to embrace autumn!Seriously, this is one of my best soup recipes *ever*. I pored over my Soups book hoping to find the perfect chowder recipe that I could use with the leeks and tomato from my veggie patch. Hmm ... couldn't quite find the right recipe, so I morphed several ideas together and came up with this: Fiery Leek and Corn Chowder ========================6 leeks (small) corn kernels scraped off from 2 ears of shucked corn 3-4 cloves of garlic1/2 green bell pepper - finely chopped1 medium ripe tomato - peeled and chopped 3-4 thai chillies - sliced lengthwise1/3 cup of nonfat milksome chivesChop off the greens from the leeks and cooked them for 3-4 minutes in 1/2 cup of water. Once wilted, puree these along with the tomato pieces an...

Noodlin' time!
2007-09-24 06:42:00
Every once in a while, I get this intense craving for indo-chinese food, good stuff like what we get at Cascade in Madras, not like what one finds at Bamboo Garden in Redmond!In honor of those good times, I embarked on making hakka noodles a couple of nights ago. I was a little apprehensive about how it would turn out, nostalgic flavors sometimes lead to disappointment! But this one turned out ok :) Obviously, I'll still take Cascade's noodles over mine, but this was good enough to keep me going till the next visit to Madras happens!I started off cooking a bag of hakka noodles (flat noodles found at indian and chinese stores) in boiling water for about 10 -12 minutes. In the meantime, the veggies got prepped: 1 red onion, 5-6 cloves of garlic, 2" ginger (finely chopped), 4-5 thai red chillies, a handful of peanuts sauteed in 1 T of sesame oil. I added julienned carrots and red bell peppers and sauteed till they were cooked. The seasoning was pretty simple - a few spoons of soy sau...
More About: Time

Good old upma
2007-09-19 21:57:00
One of my ultimate comfort foods - upma - rava, rice, vermicelli, whatever. And I had a serious yen for rava upma last night. Apna Bazar now carries the real upma rava, not the super fine cream of wheat which makes for a poor, often lumpy, substitute! After dithering between using bansi rava or upma rava, I finally settled on trying the upma rava.Most folks reading this blog probably know an upma recipe by heart, but for those who don't, I'll put down my recipe anyway. This upma was replete with a ton of veggies - colorful goodness, especially tomatoes from my patch! :)Rava Upma==========2 cups of rava (roasted)3-4 green chillies1" ginger - minced1 medium red onion - chopped2 medium tomatoes - chopped12-15 roasted peanutsa pinch of turmericsalt to tastecilantroSeasoning:1 t black mustard seeds1 t urad dal1 t channa dal1 t sesame oil8-10 curry leavesHeat the oil and cook the seasoning. Throw in the ginger, green chillies and onions and saute till the onions are translucent. Add the...
More About: Good

Eating my way through a Tortilla Stack :)
2007-09-18 07:24:00
My sis made this fabulous mango-pineapple salsa over the weekend, and (like always!) had a ton left over. So, I inherited a box of it *drool*! I was wondering if I should save it for dipping into over a few days or just use it all up. Well, given that I was staring at a little pile of corn tortillas, I couldn't help but use it!I poked around my Didi Emmons' Vegetarian Planet book, trying to find some recipe that I could work the salsa into. Tortilla Stacks! Sounded real simple and quick to make. The salsa seemed to have gotten a bit runny with the juices of the mango, pineapple and tomatoes. I drained out the liquid from the salsa and saved for possible use later.The first step was to bake a bunch of tortillas till they got crisp. Then I placed 2 tortillas side by side in a loaf pan and added layers of salsa, grated oaxacan string cheese, pinto beans and tortillas. Four more layers went on, following by drizzling the salsa liquid over the tortillas. I baked the stacks for 10 minut...
More About: Eating