09.16.11_Poached Eggs on Ricotta Toast

Poached eggs is another one of those things that always scared me to try. I don't know why but the idea of just dropping an egg into almost boiling water seemed like a situation where a lot could go wrong. After my successful attempts at other dishes that scared me (aka the gnocchi and the risotto) I decided it was time to conquer my fears of poached eggs. Trusty Rachael Ray had just posted a recipe for Poached Eggs on Ricotta Toast from her magazine and since she has not led me astray yet, I decided to use her recipe (the delicious pictures didn't hurt either).

I felt like I had watched enough Food Network and Top Chef to know the basics. I had always seen/heard that you should spin the water before dropping the egg and that adding vinegar will help the egg coagulate faster and more cohesively. Being the worrier that I am, I did some research on poaching eggs and found most reviews saying that the vinegar was really not necessary and would change the flavor of the eggs. I also did not want to poach the eggs one at a time so I would not be able to spin the water or else all the eggs would collide and merge into one monstrous poached egg. I decided to throw everything I thought I knew about poaching eggs to the wind and just had to go for it!

Before attempting my first poach, I got everything else ready. I had read on multiple blogs and websites that the time it takes to poach the eggs goes fast so you should have everything else ready first. Ray Ray's recipe called for steamed asparagus but I do not have a steamer. I Googled "how to steam asparagus without a steamer" and came across this handy video. All I had to do was add a little water to a pan and add the asparagus after the water starts to simmer. Super simple. While the asparagus was "steaming" I toasted up the bread and spread the ricotta onto the toast. We decided to leave the bacon out of the recipe so that it would be a vegetarian dish. I put four pieces of asparagus onto each toast and then the time had come to poach the eggs.

Perfectly runny yolk! Just the way I like it!

Instead of using a big pot I used a deep-sided skillet for poaching the eggs. I thought this would be easier to keep track of the eggs since I was poaching four. I got the water to just below a boil and cracked the first egg into a small Pyrex bowl. I dropped the egg into the water and watched anxiously as the egg started to cook. I repeated the process and was able to fit three eggs into the pan comfortably. I probably could have fit the fourth but didn't want to push my luck. Each egg cooked just enough before adding the next egg so they would not stick together. In the end we have four pretty poached eggs for our toast and I managed not to pop any of the yolks in the process.  I served the Ricotta Toasts with some orange wedges and called it a day on our breakfast for dinner.

09.12.11_Falafel Burgers

Phillip and I had falafel several times throughout our month of vegetarianism, our first night, and at Lebanese Taverna to name two, but it was definetiely something we both enjoyed. I came across this recipe for Rachael Ray's Falafel Burgers and I thought this would be a fun new way to eat falafel. I also had not made falafel from scratch so I was excited to see that the recipe did not use the box mix.

Making the "batter" was super simple. All I had to do was combine the ingredients (chickpeas, red onion, garlic, flour, cumin, coriander, chili powder, turmeric, and S&P) in a food processor.  I left out the parsley because I didn't have fresh and decided there were enough flavors going on already with all the spices. After all the ingredients were evenly mixed I divided the mixture into four even portions and formed them into patties.

The patties right after they came out of the skillet, top with cucumber slices.

The burgers cooked in oil in a skillet for a few minutes on each side. The recipe calls for 3 minutes on each side. I probably did a little bit longer hoping to get a bit more of a crust on the burgers. We served the burgers in pita with sliced cucumber and instead of the tahini sauce Rachael made we just used store bought spicy hummus. The burgers tasted just like falafel and were just as delicious the next day for lunch. I ate my leftovers on one of the Pepperidge Farm Deli Flats rather than the pita because the pita was so thin it kept falling apart on me during dinner. The Deli Flats tasted just as good though, if not better in my opinion!

08.30.11_Zucchini Tacos and Black Bean Soup

Yesterday was our One Year Anniversary and we are going to be celebrating this weekend with a trip to Charlottesville. For something special on the actual day we decided to just have a low-key night with wine and cheese on our rooftop before cooking one of our last vegetarian dinners. Our first date was at a Mexican restaurant called Surfside in Glover Park. I decided to make Zucchini Tacos and Black Bean Soup to somewhat recreate our first date. I was actually surprised with how many different things I needed to do for these recipes (lots of prep work) and I didn't even make the tomatillo salsa that the taco recipe recommended! When it was all said and done we had a sweet corn succotash, grilled zucchini tacos, and black bean soup.

I made the sweet corn succotash first since it could just sit and the flavors would just marry the longer it sat. It was easy enough. Just saute onion, garlic, jalapeno, and bell pepper for a few minutes before adding the corn. The recipe called for fresh corn but I had a can of corn on hand so I just drained it and used that instead. I also squeezed a little fresh lime into the mix to brighten the flavors a bit. After the succotash was made it was onto the black bean soup. This had to simmer for about 15 minutes so I figured I could grill up the zucchini and squash for the tacos once the soup was simmering.
I had originally found a recipe for black bean soup on a vegan blog and had bookmarked it without really looking at the ingredients. After reading it on Monday it had all kinds of things that I did not have so I decided to go back to trusty Rachael Ray and get an easier recipe with things I would most likely have at home or easily be able to find at the grocery store. Her recipe called for black beans, celery, onion, bell pepper, and a can of diced tomatoes, seasoned with bay leaves, cumin, coriander, S&P, and hot sauce cooked in vegetable stock. I decided to leave out the tomatoes for Phillip so I added a little extra stock to make up for the liquid that was lost by omitting the tomatoes. Other than a lot of prep this recipe was easy as Ray Ray's recipes always are. I'm not sure why she calls it a stoup though. I know she loves making stoups because she thinks she's clever for combing the words soup and stew but this was definitely more soup-like. If I were to make this again I would cut back on the celery. It seemed more like a Tex-Mex vegetable soup than an actual black bean soup like I wanted.

Black Bean Soup, Sweet Corn Succotash, and Grilled Zucchini and Squash for the Tacos

Once the soup was simmering I sliced up the zucchinis and squash into long planks. Having a mandolin would have made this much easier and the size of the planks more consistent. Obviously cutting them with a knife worked fine but my slices were inconsistent to say the least. After slicing all I had to do was brush each side with olive oil and season with S&P before throwing them on the grill pan. A couple of minutes later dinner was ready. I also put out salsa, cheese and lime wedges to top the tacos with. The zucchini tacos were delicious and I did not miss the meat at all. All the vegetables were super juicy so they were a little messy to eat but well worth it.

08.26.11_Butternut Squash Risotto

Similar to gnocchi, risotto is another one of those foods that has always scared me a bit to try. My avid Food Network watching has taught me it can easily come out wrong and after seeing Wolfgang Puck pull Jyll, a contest on Food Network Star back into the kitchen to show her how a risotto was properly made, I was skeptical to say the least. Since my audience was a little less daunting than Wolfgang Puck, I decided to give it a try. I found a Rachael Ray recipe for Butternut Squash Risotto and figured that her recipes are always super easy so this would be a good one to try. After reading over the recipe I decided I did not want to use the frozen butternut squash that it called for. While I'm sure it would be delicious, one of my biggest issues this month was consistency of food and everything being mushy. I thought about pureed butternut squash in the risotto and it immediately turned me off. I decided I would use fresh butternut squash instead and bump it up a little.

The hardest part of this dish was peeling the butternut squash. As I said while peeling the eggplant for the eggplant meatballs, my vegetable peeler is far from up to the task for something like a squash, so I just used a paring knife instead. It took a while just because I wanted to go slowly and not end up cutting myself. After peeling the squash, I cut it in half, took out the seeds, and then diced it up into small cubes. I tossed it with olive oil, S&P, and then put it in the oven for 25 minutes at 400 degrees per Ina Garten's suggestion.
While the squash was roasting, I made the risotto. Rachael's recipe was, as expected, easy to follow and straight forward. After cooking the onion and garlic for a few minutes, I toasted the arborio rice then added the cup of wine. After the wine completely cooked off, I added a few ladle-fulls of the stock and water mixture. I usually did three ladles each time. Other than having to be patient this was honestly one of the easiest dishes I've made this month. I was worried that my pan was not going to be big enough since I do not own a deep-sided skillet like Ray Ray has, so I just had to be careful at the end to stir slowly since the pan was filled to the brim. In the last couple of minutes, I added the butter, sage, and cheese before finally folding in the roasted butternut squash.

I could not get over how good this dish was, and how easy it was to make. I think I cooked it a few minutes too long since I was waiting for the garlic bread to come out of the oven, but other than that I was really impressed with how it came out. This recipe also made a ton of risotto so now we know: Rachael Ray's portion sizes: big. Giada DeLaurentiis's portion sizes: tiny.

08.15.11_Spinach Enchiladas

Spinach Enchiladas. This picture does not do these enchiladas justice for how delicious they were.

Since we hadn't had any Mexican food since our Bean Tacos, we decided to try this recipe for Spinach Enchiladas that Phillip found. I had not made enchiladas in probably four or five years so I was excited to make them again and the thought of spinach and cheese pouring out of a tortilla sounded incredible.

As almost all of the other recipes have been, this dish was super simple to prepare and involved very little cooking and/or prep work (my favorite kind of meal). The first thing to do was to defrost the frozen spinach. To go back and quote my favorite teacher Rachael Ray, frozen spinach truly is an incredible deal when you think about how much spinach wilts down after being cooked. While Ray Ray always used a dish towel to ring out all the liquid in the defrosted spinach ("She can afford to buy new towels each time" is how Phillip rationalized this gross technique) I decided to just use my hands and some paper towels to make sure all the liquid was gone.  Meanwhile, I sauteed some green onion and garlic for a couple of minutes in a tablespoon of butter before adding the spinach to the pan.

In a mixing bowl, I combined the ricotta and Monterrey Jack cheeses with the sour cream before adding the spinach mixture. After everything was combined, I used a 1/4 cup measuring cup to scoop out the spinach and cheese mixture into each tortilla. Using the 1/4 cup divided the enchilada filling perfectly, making the 10 tortillas stuffed evenly. The enchiladas were delicious, super satisfying, and ready in about 30 minutes. I served the enchiladas with some guacamole for a little something extra on the side.

The enchiladas after they came out of the oven, with an excessive amount of cheese melted on top!

The only modifications we made were using flour tortillas instead of corn (it's what I had in the house already) and I put way more cheese on top then the recipe called for. If you wanted to make this dish even healthier you could use olive oil instead of butter to saute the green onion and garlic, sub low fat cottage cheese instead of ricotta, and use corn tortillas (rather than flour) like the recipe calls for.

08.11.11_Pesto

As the week is coming to a close we needed to use up the other half of the Eastern Market pasta we had bought last weekend. I decided that I did not want to have the exact same meal and thought that a pesto sauce would go nicely with the both the tortellini and the spinach and cheese ravioli that we had left. Since I have made pesto before, and because it is one of the easiest yet most delicious sauces ever, I knew the ingredients I needed but wanted to double check the proportions of each item. I automatically walked over to my computer to look up a recipe but then stopped myself when it dawned on me that I could use an actual cookbook. Such a novel concept. I pulled out the first cookbook I ever owned, the Better Homes and Garden New Cookbook, which my mom gave to me as a house warming gift for my first apartment. As I sat on the couch looking up pesto in the index, Phillip looked over me and said, "Whoa. You're using an actual cookbook." Funny how much even cooking has been changed by technology. But I digress.

I halved the recipe since I only needed enough pesto for two servings and because I only had one cup of fresh basil (and no, we didn't steal it this time, we actually bought it). I put 1 cup of packed basil leaves, 2 cloves of garlic, 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese, 1/4 cup pine nuts, and a pinch of salt and black pepper into my baby food processor and gave it a quick pulse. Because I only have the baby Cuisinart I could not stream the olive oil in as I pulsed. I added a little bit of oil at a time until it all came together into a nice consistency. I used a little bit more oil then the recipe called for (I used 1/4 of a cup) because I wanted it to be a little bit looser and more or of a sauce then a paste.

A super close up of the pesto, in case you felt a need to see every speck of basil and cheese.

I made garlic bread again out of leftover buns from our Veggie Burger night. I changed it up a bit this time and just used garlic powder instead of fresh garlic and also sprinkled some Parmesan cheese on top before toasting the bread. I always forget how much I love pesto until I have it. I only used half of the pine nuts so I put the rest into the freezer, as Rachael Ray taught me to, so that they would last longer. You don't want the "oil to spoil!" I can't wait to use the leftovers in another pesto dish sometime soon.

08.05.11_Veggie Sloppy Joes

Sad picture of the Sloppy "Veg-Head Joes" and sweet potato fries. I had a better picture but my camera decided to focus on only the bun...

On Friday my best friend Caitlin was coming into the city to have dinner and go out with us that night. After a year-long trip to Thailand, Caitlin became a vegan (much to my dismay). All of our favorite foods together could no longer be shared so I selfishly hoped that she would see the light and go back to her meat eating ways. Unfortunately for me this did not happen, so when we had her over for dinner on Friday the meal had to be vegan. I had found another Rachael Ray recipe that intrigued me for "Sloppy Veg-Head Joes." I thought this would be a good instance to try them as the only modification I'd have to make to make it completely vegetarian and vegan-friendly would be to substitute vinegar for the Worcestershire sauce since it apparently contains anchovies.

Phillip and I went to Whole Foods earlier in the week to buy all the ingredients. While standing in line to check out I had a mini-panic attack when I realized I chose a dish that two of the primary ingredients were tomatoes and onions, both things that Phillip does not eat. We decided he would deal with it, try them and if he didn't like it, we could find him something else to eat that night. Worst comes to worst he can have a delicious meal of sweet potato fries since I had planned on serving them as a side to the Joes. I did end up leaving out the onions from half of the Joes to appease Phillip a little bit since he was trying a tomato based meal.
Per usual, Ray Ray did not disappoint. The recipe was incredible easy, a "one pot meal," and did taste like Sloppy Joes to a certain extent. We followed the advice of one of the reviewers and mashed the black beans with a potato masher to make all the ingredients bind together, making the Joes a little less sloppy to eat. Phillip did a good job and ate his, but the fact that he only wanted one shows he wasn't a huge fan of this meal. Overall, they were pretty tasty and if you have a strong love for Sloppy Joes (which none of us do) but have decided to vegetarian, give this recipe a try.

08.04.11_Sesame Noodles with Tofu

Confession: I learned almost everything I know about cooking from the Food Network. I had it on basically 24/7 in college unless I was in class or watching another one of my shows that I regularly watch. Rachael Ray specifically taught me a lot of great tips and easy techniques that I use all the time. Sadly the days of Ray Ray teaching me new things seems to be over, as I am now more than fully aware that nutmeg is that little something in the background that makes you go "Hmmm what is that?" and that a Stoup is thinner than a stew but thicker than a soup. Get it? Stoup? That being said, since I have been having to look up actual recipes this month I thought Rachael Ray would be a good person to look to for fast and easy meals since that is what she is known for after all.

 After searing for "vegetarian" on foodnetwork.com and narrowing my search results down to show only Rachael Ray recipes I found her recipe for Sesame Noodles. As the recipe shows, they were extremely straight forward and super simple. The recipe was actually meant to be for a side dish so I just tripled the recipe so I could use a whole box of pasta and to make enough for an entree.

To add some protein into the mix we decided to try and cook tofu, something I had never cooked with before. Deciding on which tofu to buy was quite the scene. Phillip and I went to Whole Foods and were not at all prepared for the plethora of options that were presented to us. We ended up buying extra firm tofu based on my rationale that "if I'm going to be sauteing this, I want it to be firm so that it doesn't fall apart." Extra firm also had the fewest number of boxes left on the shelf so we figured if everyone else was buying it, we should too.

After watching a video online no how to prepare tofu, I was ready to go. It was easy enough, same as cooking chicken or any other protein. I added the sauteed tofu in with the sesame noodles and served the with a side of steamed edamame.

A few things I would do different next time:
1) The noodles themselves did not come out as flavorful as I had hoped. I found this to be odd especially after comparing the colors of my sesame noodles to the picture on Food Network's website. My noodles came out a much darker brown so I assumed I had more sauce and therefore more flavor. When we heated up the leftovers I added some more soy sauce and a little more sesame oil and found them to be more enjoyable.

2) I would put the tofu directly into the sauce before mixing the sauce into the noodles. Since tofu is like a sponge it absorbs any flavors that you put it with. Because I had dressed the noddles with the sauce prior to adding the tofu, there was not much left for the tofu to absorb. By putting the tofu into the sauce first, it would have much more flavor and taste less like plan sauteed tofu.