Salad with Orange Vinaigrette and Honey-Toasted Pecans

We are three weeks into this year's CSA, and so naturally, we are drowning in greens.

Spinach. Arugula. Mustard. Lettuces of every kind. Literally pounds of these greens have made their way into our fridge over the past few weeks. And though I have definitely gotten creative about adding greens into just about every meal and blanching spinach to freeze for later, with the hot weather we've been having (it's been in the nineties all week), we've been enjoying a bunch of salads, too.

Or maybe I should say, many servings of this one salad.

Because it's pretty much the only one I've been making.

But yes, it is that good.

You can sub any protein for the boiled eggs--grilled chicken or shrimp would be equally delightful, I'm sure, probably even better than the egg. But eggs don't need to be defrosted before you use them, so. You know.

A note on nuts: The DDH and I are not particularly big nut eaters. Neither of us go out of our way to put them on anything, we don't snack on them plain, and please for the love of all that is holy, keep them the heck away from our baked goods.

But the thing about CSAs is they make you try things you don't normally eat. In this case, our farmer's father has a bunch of pecan trees on his land, and so pecans regularly make their way into our CSA bags, especially early in the season when there isn't much else on offer. Except greens, obviously.

And it turns out that if you toast them in honey and butter, even a die-hard pecan-hater like the DDH will gobble them down. So while the dressing is all well and good for any salad, the pecans really make it special. And delicious.

Salad with Orange Vinaigrette and Honey-Toasted Pecans

Boil eggs, approximately 2 per person being served.

In a small bowl or convenient dressing shaker, combine:

1/4 cup orange juice
2 Tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1 Tablespoon Dijon mustard
2 teaspoons honey
1/8 teaspoon black pepper

Whisk or shake until thoroughly combined. Set aside. 

In a different small bowl, put some pecans, shelled. Ours arrive cracked and blown, so I still have to pick out all the shells and I just do this until I get bored. But if you like measurements, aim for about a quarter cup.

Add enough honey to coat the pecans. It's about a 2:1 ratio, so for a 1/4 cup pecans I use about 1/8 cup (aka 2 Tablespoons) honey. But this is all sort of to taste, so feel free to use a little more or a little less.

Mix the honey and pecans until thoroughly coated.

In a small skillet, heat about 2 Tablespoons butter over medium heat.

Once the butter is melted and foamy, add the pecans. Cook until browned and toasty.  There's a fine line between a browned pecan and a burnt pecan. Your best tool here is actually your nose; the pecans will just start to smell pecan-y and toasty. Stir them about; you'll notice the underside should be a little darker than the top. Give them another thirty seconds or so after your stir, then turn off the heat.

Separate your greens--spinach is especially good here, or the sort of thing called "premium greens mix" at the grocery store, but really just any sort of salad green will do--into each person's bowl. Top each serving with two sliced eggs and some pecans. Drizzle the dressing over the lot of it. Enjoy.

KFC-Style Coleslaw

Coleslaw is impossible to make.

What I mean is, coleslaw recipes vary so widely. People use mustard or no mustard, add other vegetables, make it tangy or sweet or both or neither. It can be sloppy and wet or dry and barely dressed.

It's always a gamble ordering coleslaw at restaurants because you never know what you're going to get and if you'll like it. And the same principle applies to coleslaw recipes. I mean, if you know you like a mustardy slaw or a creamy one, you can look at recipes that look like they'll result in the kind you prefer. But it's hard to tell.

I do know I usually like KFC coleslaw. It's a bit too sweet and sometimes a little gloppy, but overall it has a list of things I like--finely chopped cabbage, a touch of carrot and onion, creamy and sweet but still with some tang.

So when I went to make my own coleslaw with some of the bounty of CSA cabbage in my refrigerator, I went hunting for the KFC recipe. And if you want to clone a restaurant's recipe, you go to the Top Secret Recipes website.

I made a couple changes, and the resulting slaw--is very KFC-like.

KFC-Style Coleslaw
Adapted from Top Secret Recipes.

Gluten Free
Grain Free
Vegetarian

Use your food processor to finely shred two small or one medium heads of cabbage and two carrots or a generous handful of baby carrots.

Use the food processor to mince an onion (red preferred) and add 2 Tablespoons minced onion.

Mix the vegetables together in a large bowl.

In another bowl, combine 1/2 cup mayonnaise, between 1/4 to 1/3 cup sugar, 1/4  cup milk, 1/4 cup buttermilk (I used the lemon-juice-in-milk trick), 2 1/2 Tablespoons lemon juice, scant 2 1/2 Tablespoons white vinegar, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1/8 teaspoon pepper. Combine. I like to put the ingredients in the tall cylinder that came with my immersion blender and then use the immersion blender to blend everything. This ensures that the mayonnaise gets thoroughly mixed without leaving big chunks of mayo in the dressing.

Pour dressing over the vegetables and mix well.

Cover and refrigerate at least two hours before serving.

The verdict? It really does taste like KFC coleslaw, only slightly tangier and a little less sweet. The only problem is that I used homemade mayo and my recipe has a bit of dried mustard in it, so the coleslaw ended up tasting mustardy, which is exactly what I didn't want. SIGH. I wasn't thinking about the tiny bit of mustard in the batch of mayo, but it comes through really strongly. So if you're using homemade mayonnaise, leave the mustard out of it! But if you're using storebought, I'm sure it will taste exactly right.

Pepper Lime Pork Chops

Clearly we like citrusified meats around here. A splash of fresh citrus juice and a bit of zest really does add a brightness to the flavor of pork and chicken that makes something fast, easy, and healthy taste more like something fancy from a restaurant.

This would work equally well with lemon instead of lime (or a mixture; you could use lime zest and juice and lemon-pepper seasoning, or a mixture of lemon and lime zests/juices). It would also work on chicken breasts instead of pork chops.

The chops are dredged in flour which gives them a bit of a fried texture and flavor (and some nice crisp, especially when reheated on the stove), but you can always leave out the flour and still have a tasty rub for your meat.

Pepper Lime Pork Chops

Dairy Free

In a shallow bowl, combine zest of 1 lime, 1 Tablespoon dry mustard, 1/2 Tablespoon dried parsley, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon pepper, and 2 Tablespoons flour.

Heat 2 Tablespoons oil in a skillet large enough for your pork chops over medium-high heat.

Dredge 2-4 pork chops in flour mixture. Add to hot skillet. Cook 3-5 minutes on one side.

Continue to cook pork chops 3-5 minutes per side until almost done. Just before the last time you think you will need to flip the chops, add juice of 1 lime and 2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce to pan.

Flip pork chops and finish cooking in juice. Be sure to scrape up the tasty brown bits for your sauce!

Serve, pouring extra sauce over.

Lemon-Parsley Chicken

T-Rex really liked this chicken. Of course, he seems to like most chicken, so perhaps that's not quite the endorsement it could be.

The DDH and I liked it, too, though, so there's that. ;-)

As written, this makes very lemony and kind of sour chicken. If you like less lemon, cut back on the juice and/or omit the zest from the rub.

You can also make this chicken on the grill; remember to preheat your grill before you begin chopping and mixing the rub so it will be hot when you're ready to cook.

Lemon-Parsley Chicken
Adapted from Cooking Light September 2013

Gluten Free
Grain Free
Dairy Free

Combine 2 Tablespoons (approximately) minced fresh parsley, 2 teaspoons lemon zest (about the zest of one lemon), 4 garlic cloves, pressed, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1/2 teaspoon pepper in a small bone.

Sprinkle mixture on 2 large or 4 small boneless skinless chicken breasts. Rub into the chicken and let stand ten minutes.

Heat a skillet large enough to hold the chicken in one layer on medium high heat.

Add the chicken and cook on medium high for three minutes on each side.

Turn the heat down to medium low and continue to cook chicken five minutes per side until done. This will vary greatly depending on how thick your chicken breasts are. Thin ones might have been done after the initial six minutes; thicker ones will take closer to thirty minutes.

While chicken cooks, combine juice of one lemon, an equal amount of extra virgin olive oil, 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard, 1/4 teaspoon salt, and 1/4 teaspoon pepper. (The juice of a lemon is usually 2-3 Tablespoons, so if you don't want to measure, use 2 Tablespoons oil for a smaller lemon and 3 Tablespoons for a larger lemon.) Whisk until emulsified.

When chicken is done, pour dressing over and cook for two minutes, stirring constantly.

Enjoy!

White Bean Tacos

So, I have a confession to make.

About a month ago, a storm knocked out power to our house for almost forty-eight hours. When it became clear that the power wasn't coming back any time soon, I packed the meat into coolers with ice and took them to my in-laws' house, where at least they would be in the air conditioning (she only has the one side-by-side freezer and it's so packed I can barely fit a bottle of milk in there for when she watches T-Rex, so our food clearly wasn't going to fit in the actual freezer).

Luckily everything still seemed pretty frozen by the time our power came back and we could get it back to our freezer, but for various logistical reasons, the DDH took the meat back on his way to work. And since he was in a rush, he just piled everything, still wet from the ice in the cooler, into the freezer in no particular order.

This was about a month ago, and I still haven't managed to go out and reorganize the thing. Every time I need some meat or chicken broth or whatever, I have to pry it apart since everything is frozen together in big chunks. Sometimes the plastic rips and then I have to use up two things of meat. The freezer itself has big weird chunks of ice in it, because it's old and not frost free and all the frost melted and then refroze, sometimes around the meat that was put back in.

It's a mess. And so, honestly, I've kind of been avoiding cooking meals with meat in them, because it's such a project to find what I want and pry it out.

Hence these white bean tacos. They are actually quite delicious and DDH approved, but I'll be doubling the recipe next time since this only made enough for five or six tacos and we needed at least eight to cover dinner and lunch the next day.

You can also include some wilted spinach with the beans if you have those lying around.

A Note on Salt: I used dried beans that I had previously cooked and frozen, which are not salted. I wrote 1 teaspoon in the recipe but I think I might have used closer to two. If you are using canned beans, you may wish to start with less salt and add more to taste, since even rinsed, canned beans are more salty than dried.

White Bean Tacos

Gluten free (with corn tortillas)
Dairy free
Vegetarian (depending on tortillas) 
Vegan (depending on tortillas)

Heat 1 Tablespoon oil over medium-high heat. Swirl to coat.


Add 1 onion, vertically sliced, and saute five minutes or until soft and lightly browned. Add 4 cloves garlic, minced and saute thirty seconds.

Add 2 cups white beans (1 15-ounce can, drained and rinsed) (cannellini are perfect), 1 teaspoon cumin, and 1 teaspoon salt. Stir. Cook two minutes or until beans are thoroughly heated. Feel free to let it simmer longer while you prepare the salsa, especially if there's still some liquid from the beans. Just be sure to turn the heat to low and stir occasionally so the beans don't burn.

In a small bowl, combine 1 1/2 cups chopped tomato, 1/4 teaspoon salt, 1 jalapeno, sliced, and 1 Tablespoon lime juice. You can add either fresh cilantro here or two teaspoons dried cilantro to the beans.

Warm flour or corn tortillas. You can do this by covering them with a damp paper towel and microwaving for about thirty seconds, or, if you prefer them crispy and delicious (my preferred method), heat in a dry skillet for two minutes or so on each side (you'll have to check to make sure they brown and don't burn). This is how I prep tortillas for just about everything I make and I much prefer it to the microwave method, but since you have to do it one at a time it does take longer if you're cooking for a crowd.

Fill each taco with bean mixture. Grate cheese (we usually use Colby-Jack) onto each serving, then top with a spoonful or two of salsa.

Enjoy!

Cabbage and Tomato Soup

Soups are a winter standby meal. There's not much easier than chopping up some vegetables and meat and tossing them in a pot, and hot soup makes a comforting meal on a cold winter's day.

I don't usually make as many soups in the summer (neither the DDH nor I are fans of chilled soups), but I did yesterday, and I realized something that probably should have been obvious: just as with all other preparations of vegetables, soups taste completely different when made with summer-fresh produce than with winter-stored or canned stuffs.

I guess I thought that when you're boiling the heck out of something, it doesn't much matter how fresh it is. And that's true, in that a flavorful broth can make less-than-stellar produce still taste pretty darn good.

But soup made with fresh produce? Tastes even better. Or at least different.

This soup would be vegetarian with vegetable broth instead of chicken, but would also benefit from some chicken, or some sausage, browned and thrown in at the end. The DDH went for seconds even without meat, so it's plenty tasty and fairly hearty without it.

I used fresh tomatoes (the real source of the flavor difference--there's nothing like a garden fresh tomato no matter how it's prepared, but potatoes and cooked cabbage, I think, are pretty much the same always. Though actually the potatoes really had a nice flavor in this, too. Anyway.), but in the winter would usually use a can or two of diced tomatoes, so feel free to substitute. I used two big and several small tomatoes; I'm guessing it ran about a half pound or so.

As with most vegetable soups, you can switch around the vegetables easily. Add some carrots or parsnip or green beans or whatever you have lying around.

Cabbage and Tomato Soup

 Gluten Free
Dairy Free
Vegetarian (with vegetable broth)
Vegan (with vegetable broth)

Heat a tablespoon or so of oil in a large pot on medium high heat.

Add 1 onion, chopped and 1 small head of cabbage, cored and thinly sliced. I forgot to add any garlic because T-Rex was trying to pour the dog's water bowl out all over the kitchen again, but you really should include 3 cloves garlic.

Cook, stirring occasionally, for 8-10 minutes or until onion is soft and cabbage is getting there.

Add 1/2 pound tomatoes, diced, 2 teaspoons salt, 1 teaspoon cumin, 4 cups chicken broth, and enough water to finish covering the vegetables, if necessary.

Bring to a boil. Turn heat to low and simmer for about an hour or until potatoes and cabbage are tender.

Enjoy!

Pumpkin Spiced Oatmeal

Fall is finally here and with it, a plethora of pumpkin foods.

Seriously. Everybody has a pumpkin everything. The bakery where I get the office's Saturday morning bagels had pumpkin scones and pumpkin bars; the coffee shops all have pumpkin lattes, and restaurants serve pumpkin soups.

The DDH, who is not a huge pumpkin fan (he doesn't like sweet potatoes either, except as fries), rolls his eyes at this particular trend. But I like pumpkin (and sweet potatoes, for that matter), so it makes me happy.

For three-quarters of the year, I eat oatmeal for breakfast. It's fast, it's easy, it's tasty. I can change it up by adding different dried or frozen fruit. In the summer, it's too hot for oatmeal, and for most of this pregnancy I haven't been able to stomach it or similar warm foods. But my oatmeal appetite has returned with the cooler weather, and I've been happily noshing on strawberry-cherry oatmeal every day.

But then. Then I found a recipe for pumpkin spiced oatmeal.

My favorite fall food fad combined with my everyday, quick-and-easy breakfast?

The end.

This recipe is super easy to whip up, but, let's face it, waaaaay too complicated to make in the morning before work. Because scrambled eggs are too complicated to make in the morning before work. Sometimes coffee is too complicated to make in the morning before work. If it takes more effort than stirring water and ingredients in a bowl and popping it in the microwave, it's too complicated to make in the morning before work (which is why I tend not to eat breakfast in the summer when oatmeal isn't an option, oops).

BUT. This recipe reheats quite well. So I can make a big whopping batch of it on, say, a Thursday afternoon, and have breakfast for almost a week.

It's healthy and filling and fast--everything a breakfast should be. I'm in love.

Pumpkin Spice Oatmeal
Adapted from this recipe at Becky Bakes.

Make sure to read the notes at the end of the recipe regarding oat types and some tasty variations!

Set a medium saucepan on the stove on medium-low heat and gather up your ingredients. You may wish to measure your honey and pumpkin out in advance so you can add them quickly. Not that I speak from an experience wherein I almost burned my honey or anything.

To the hot, dry pan, add: 1/4 tsp. ground cloves, 1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg, 1/2 tsp. cinnamon, and 1/8 tsp. ginger.

Toast the spices for about two minutes, stirring occasionally so they don't burn. It seems silly to say "toast until fragrant" with these spices, because they're already fragrant. But you'll notice a point at which you suddenly say, "oh! that's what they mean by fragrant," because they'll suddenly smell even more like themselves than before.

Turn the heat down to low.

To the spices, add 1/4 cup honey

and 1 cup pumpkin puree.

You could probably do with as little as 1/8 cup of honey if you want less sweet oatmeal. See the Variations note below for some other options.

Stir the honey and pumpkin together until well combined and smooth.

 

Add 4 cups water to the puree mixture. (Note: If you use steel-cut oats, you may need 1/2 cup more water.)

 

Turn the heat up to medium high. Stir until combined and bring to a simmer.

 

Add 2 cups quick oats (1 1/2 cups steel-cut oats). See Oat Note, below.

 

 

Turn heat down to medium and simmer, stirring occasionally, twenty to thirty minutes or until tender.

 

After ten minutes, mine looked like this (remember I'm using quick oats):

Quick oats after ten minutes.

 After another ten minutes, they looked like this:

Quick oats after twenty minutes.

I declared them done at that point because I wanted them to still reheat well, but if you plan to eat it all right away, you may wish to let them go a little longer.

Either serve or remove from heat to a heat-safe container. Allow to cool before covering and refrigerating.

Pumpkin spice oatmeal.

 It reheated well the next morning:

Oatmeal reheated.

 And was delicious with a splash of cold milk:

Oatmeal with milk.

It of course lends itself to toppings: more cinnamon, fruit, nuts. I've been eating it with chopped almonds and it's delicious.

***



Oat Note:

Now. There are about a million and one types of oats out there. I usually buy the giant cardboard tube of "quick oats" because they cook quickly for my morning oatmeal but are a bit larger than "instant oats" for when I use them in recipes like this one. Sometimes I get rolled oats or steel-cut oats.

People will argue until they're blue in the face about what kind is better and how you REALLY ABSOLUTELY MUST use this one kind for one recipe or the other. But honestly? You can use any kind of oats in almost any recipe and you'll be fine. You may want to adjust the water : oats ratio of the recipe. You may need to adjust the cooking time. But don't let not having the Exact Perfect Right Kind of oats stop you from making a recipe that looks delicious. Try it with what you have on hand. Let me know if it's a total abject failure so I can delete this note. ;-)

 

***

Pumpkin spice oatmeal with almonds and milk.

Variations: 

• Sub any winter squash puree for pumpkin: butternut, acorn, etc. Also, sweet potato.
• Sub banana puree for the pumpkin. Add some chopped nuts for Banana Nut Oatmeal.
• Sub any liquid sweetener, such as agave or maple syrup, for the honey.
• Or sub unsweetened applesauce for the honey for a not-sweet but very autumny version.
• Use 1/8 cup honey and 1/8 cup molasses and up the ginger to 1 1/2 tsp. for Pumpkin Gingersnap Oatmeal. Bonus points for adding diced fresh ginger. This is my real new favorite.
• Play around with the spices, increasing or deleting them until you get it juuuuust right.

What variations can you think of?

 

I never bothered with any of the millions of baked oatmeal recipes on the internets, because heating up the oven seemed a lot of work for oatmeal. But I'm thinking a lot of those different flavor combinations could adapt well to this cooking method. Yum!

Beef and Bean Taco Filling

My default meals--you know, the meals you cook (or make your husband cook) when you realize you forgot to plan ahead and it's six o'clock and for some reason your husband is hungry--are pretty much all Mexican.

They are, in order of time/energy/thought needed to make:

1. Nachos (cheese on tortilla chips, melted in the microwave. Maybe some pickled jalapenos on top. If we add meat, that places it down at taco level on this list).
2. Quesadillas (with canned chicken).
3. Tacos with canned chicken.
4. Tacos with ground beef.

In fact, I make variations of the ground beef tacos so often that I have branched out into putting taco meat on nachos and salads and other random things.

I could tell you that tacos make a great default meal because they're cheap, meaty, filling, tasty, relatively healthy--all of which are true.

But the real reason I make them so often is because tortillas last forever in the fridge.

So I always have them on hand.

Also a few months ago I went in on sixty pounds of ground beef with my mother-in-law, so we've been eating a lot of that.

Anyway, the problem with default meals is that they're all in my head. That is, I don't usually follow a recipe or write anything down. I just look to see what we have on hand, mix it all together, and serve.

Sometimes this means that the resulting dish, well, isn't very tasty. It's bland, or oddly seasoned.

Sometimes it means the dish is totally awesome, but I have no idea how it got that way and so will never be able to replicate it.

Having suffered through a few too many One Time Only tasty dishes, the DDH has learned a trick. If he likes his dinner, he immediately asks me, "How did you make this?" If I tell him I just made it up, he tells me to write it down before I forget.

When I  served this particular taco meat combination last week, he not only told me to write it down, he retrieved the laptop from whatever corner of the house it was hidden in, booted it up, set it in my lap, and refused to let me do anything else until I had written down what I did.

I guess that means he liked it.

Beef and Bean Taco Filling

Heat 1/2 Tbs. oil in a large pan.

Cook 1 onion, diced and 3 cloves garlic, pressed on medium heat until soft.

Add 1 pound ground beef.

As the beef cooks, add 1 tsp. paprika, 2 tsp. cumin, 1 Tbs. chili powder, and 1/2 tsp. cinnamon. Stir to combine.

Cook five minutes or until beef is just about done.

A bit of pink is okay, as it will cook for a bit longer.

Add 1 can kidney beans,

Black beans also work well.

9 Tbs. tomato paste (there's a reason this is a weird number. It's my estimate of how much of a can of tomato paste I used (about 3/4 of one of those little cans) based on how much was left in the can afterward. Really I just kept adding tomatoe paste until it tasted right), and 1 Tbs. hot sauce of your choice (sriracha, Tabasco, chile paste, etc.).

Sriracha strikes again!

Stir to combine. Cook on low for about five minutes or until heated through.

Serve in tortillas as soft tacos, crispy shells as crispy tacos, on lettuce for a taco salad, or on chips for beef nachos. Add cheese, sour cream*, tomatoes, lettuce, and other Mexican garnishings as desired.

*I actually just use a bit of plain Greek yogurt instead of sour cream, because I rarely have sour cream on hand. Yogurt does taste different than sour cream, but it still adds a creamy tang that contrasts pleasantly with the meat.

Vegetarian Fried Rice

I ate a lot of fried rice growing up.

My mom loves to cook, and we ate a lot of different foods when I was young. I don't think I really realized how--varied? international? something like that--our diet was until I went to college.

Still, we did have a few staple recipes in frequent rotation. A lot of them were plays on pasta--pasta with tuna fish, clam spaghetti, garlic spaghetti, even, infrequently, spaghetti with meat sauce.

Another one of those staple recipes was fried rice. And for good reason--fried rice is cheap, easy, and makes a lot of food. Mom's version included ground beef as well as a couple of eggs, so it serviced adequately as a main dish. We ate a lot of it, and with gusto.

So it's perhaps surprising that I don't think I've ever made fried rice in the history of my married career.

For one, neither the DDH nor I are big rice eaters. I am stupidly terrible at cooking rice, and after suffering through one crunchy dish too many, the DDH learned to greet rice dishes with trepidation. Rice isn't cheap if you're ruining it (and all the ingredients you add to it) all the time.

For another, though I remember scarfing down huge portions of the dish as a child, I remember fried rice as being too salty, with a slightly weird sour flavor (sorry, Mom), and generally not interesting enough to attempt to recreate.

But since the DDH has flatly refused to acknowledge the awesomeness of Tuna Fish Pasta, and with the impending arrival of someone who will eventually be a teenage boy, I've decided I need to revisit some of those cheap-and-easy childhood staples.

Then I ended up with a whole bunch of free cooked rice, and I knew that it was time to tackle fried rice. I could attempt the recipe without risking poorly-cooked rice. And since I didn't need to spend forty minutes cooking rice, I could actually get dinner on the table on a Monday evening when I had a Zumba class quickly followed by a church meeting.

I tweaked my mom's recipes in a few ways.

First, I eliminated the ground beef, not because I don't like ground beef in fried rice but because I didn't have any defrosted and didn't really have time for the extra step of cooking it anyway. Eliminating that and the accompanying beef broth turned this into a vegetarian recipe, but I'll report back with a meaty version one of these days.

Second, having eliminated the beef, I needed to punch up the protein somehow. The bites of scrambled egg are my favorite part of fried rice anyway, so it was a no-brainer to increase the egg in the recipe.

Third, I cut back on the soy sauce, since I remembered it being too salty (though cutting the beef broth probably also saved some sodium).

And finally, I added some other sauces and spices to give it a more interesting flavor. Adding sambal oolek gives it a touch of bite--not what I think of as a lot, but you do taste it. In retrospect, it's possible that Mom's fried rice was mild-flavored because we were kids. Specifically, I'm the kid who liked everything bland and hated spicy foods. So, umm, keep in mind that it's probably entirely my fault her recipe wasn't perfect to begin with. I bet when she makes it for just herself and Dad it's deliciously seasoned. Ahem.

Vegetarian Fried Rice

Vegetarian Fried Rice
Adapted from my mom's recipe.

As I mentioned, I started with pre-cooked rice leftover from an office lunch. If you did not have the opportunity to rescue rice destined for the trash can, you should cook it first. Cook 1 1/2 cups rice according to package directions (to yield 3 cups rice, cooked). Set it aside and allow to cool. If you're really on top of things, you could cook the rice over the weekend and refrigerate it so it's ready to go for a fast weeknight dinner. I have never actually been this on top of things, but I pretend I am all the time.

Rice courtesy P.F. Chang's and my boss.

Once you have some nicely cooked rice ready to go, proceed with the recipe:

Chop 1 medium onion and 4-5 cloves garlic so they're ready to go. I speed-demoned them in the food processor:

to:

They never knew what hit them.

Heat 2 Tbs. oil in a large wok or skillet (if you know me, you know this is coconut oil, but clearly you can use whatever fat you'd like).

Add the onion and garlic

and sautee until onion is translucent.

Transluscent onion.

Add 12-16 oz. vegetables. The fastest and easiest is to use a bag of the small mixed veggies (peas, cube-cut carrots, and the like), but you can use any kind of frozen veggie mix or fresh vegetables. Almost any vegetable will taste good in fried rice.

I cut the bag open with scissors and still managed to spill
veggies all over the counter.

Cook until soft (aka thawed, if using frozen). You can stick the lid on the skillet to speed up the process.

Meanwhile, if you promise not to get distracted, scramble six eggs. I got distracted measuring out the ingredients for the next step and semi-burned the eggs. Luckily I sort of like semi-burned eggs, and the DDH didn't seem to notice. It's best if you don't get distracted, though.

Eggs.

Once your eggs are off the heat and your vegetables are done,

add 3 cups cooked brown rice and a scant 1/3 cup soy sauce (between the 1/4 cup and 1/3 cup lines).

Or more, if you like soy sauce.

In a measuring cup, spoon out 1 tsp. fish sauce and 1 tsp. sambal oolek/chile paste/hot sauce. Fill the measuring cup with water to make 1/4 cup liquid.

Add to the rice mixture.

Stir to combine and cook until rice is heated through.

Add your scrambled egg

 and mix thoroughly.

And there you have it. I was worried the DDH wouldn't find it filling enough without any meat, but six eggs seemed to add enough protein to satisfy him. Plus, brown rice tends to be pretty satisfying, fullness-wise, versus white rice. And then there's the fact that that particular combination of frozen vegetables is his favorite. At any rate, it got two thumbs up from him.

Quick, easy, cheap, tasty--it even tastes just as good the next day. Huzzah for fried rice!

Vegetarian Fried Rice

Sriracha Garlic Bread

I like food. All kinds of food. I'm not sure I can pick a favorite food. I would have difficulty choosing a Top Ten list.

But if you put a gun to my head and forced me to write such a list, garlic bread would probably make the cut.

Well. Until last week, when I discovered something even better than garlic bread.

Sriracha garlic bread.

Clearly, the only thing fluffy French bread, creamy butter, garlic, and a nice toast in the oven needed to turn it into the food of angels was a shot of srirarcha. Oh, and cheese.

Unlike the sriracha shrimp recipe, this sriracha recipe is not particularly spicy. You get a zing, perhaps a playful nip of spice, but the butter, bread, and cheese all counteract it so it's not overwhelming or painful at all.

Try it.

You'll like it.

Sriracha garlic bread with sriracha shrimp.

Sriracha Garlic Bread
Adapted from this recipe at Bon Appetit (which pretty much just says, make garlic bread. With sriracha).

Clearly, for garlic bread, you need a good bread. Something fluffy, with a nice crust. When the French bread at Reasor's goes on sale for a dollar, I usually stock up on several loaves and freeze the extra. The thinner loaves (long with a smaller diameter) work as well and will make cute little bite-size toasts that are great for serving at a party.

The DDH cuts.

Make sure to cut nice thick slices, Texas toast style. You want to still have fluffy warm bread innards even once the outside is crisp and toasty.

Line a cookie sheet with foil (to cut down on cleanup) and lay your bread slices out on it.

Through trial and error (delicious, delicious trial and error), we discovered that you need about 1 Tbs. butter per slice of bread. You can get away with as little as 1/2 tablespoon, but why bother?

It helps if the butter is softened, but it's not necessary.



Put some garlic, minced, in with your butter. This is a matter of taste. We used three big cloves for five pieces of bread.

The DDH, a purist with much better knife skills than I, truly minced the garlic; I usually toss it in the garlic press because I'm lazy like that. If you like bigger chunks of garlic on your bread, I would use more and merely dice it.

Minced garlic.

Anyway. Whip in 1/2 to 1 Tbs. sriracha. Again, this is a matter of taste. The DDH says he used about a squeeze per tablespoon of butter. Remember that you can always add more, but you can't take it out if you use too much. :-)

 

You'll notice that the mixture is liquid in the picture. The recipe DDH used said to whisk the sriracha and garlic with melted butter, but through the aforementioned delicious, delicious trial and error, we discovered that it is more effective to whip the softened-not-melted butter, garlic, and sriracha using a handheld beater or a whisk and a strong whipping arm. The butter goes further this way when spread on the bread; it's hard to distribute liquified butter evenly to all the bread pieces.

You want whipped, not liquid, butter mixture.

Spread the butter mixture on your bread slices. Make sure to butter both sides of all the breads!

Orange bread.

Preheat the broiler; we discovered that low was safest with our broiler but broilers vary greatly.

 

Grate Parmesan or Pecorino Romano cheese over the bread slices.

Broil for about three minutes on low. Broilers take bread from toast to terrible pretty quickly, so keep an eye on them.

 

Flip, add more cheese, and broil for another three minutes or so, until the cheese melts and the bread is golden brown around the edges.

Astute readers may notice there is more bread on this pan
than in the pre-toasted pictures. I *told* you we learned
that broiling bread on low was safer....



 Those bits of crisped cheese between the bread slices are good eating, too. Just saying.

Serve with a meal or as a delicious, delicious snack.

Sriracha garlic bread and soup.