Spicy Udon Soup

Despite the summer-like weather, I made some spicy udon noodle soup this afternoon. A few days ago I saw this recipe on Foodgawker, and knew right away that I wanted to give it a try.   It is definitely a keeper, with endless variations. 

First, in a large sauce pan I sauteed garlic, ginger, and an onion in vegetable and sesame oils.

After a few minutes, I added in diced bell pepper and mushrooms.  This recipe is very versatile, so you could add really anything that you want here.  I bet bamboo shoots, green onion, and bok choy would all be awesome additions or substitutions. 

After a few more minutes, I added in vegetable broth (canned, this time) soy sauce, and lime juice.  Bring on the sodium!

Next I added some miso and chili garlic sauce.  Sriracha would work well too, but all of my sriracha is at work.  I let that boil for a few minutes and then dropped in an egg and scrambled it up in the broth with a fork. If you've never done this before, it is a great way to add a little protein to soup, and is great with ramen. Finally I added in the noodles. Udon noodles are an Asian variety of thick wheat noodles.  I was able to find some at my local Giant.  They either don't take long to cook, or come precooked.  I'm not sure.  I let the soup boil for just a few minutes, and then ladled myself a bowl.  Yum. 

Tandoori Chicken Sandwiches

I cooked meat this week for the first time in months.  Since I'm training for a half marathon, I need all the carbs and protein I can get.  Brandon and I made tandoori style chicken burgers with a recipe from Martha Stewart.  Do you think Martha actually writes her own recipes anymore?  

To start off, we marinated chopped chicken breast in lemon juice with a combination of aromatic spices: scallions, ginger, paprika, cumin, cardamom, cayenne, salt, and pepper for about half an hour. 

Next, we made the patties.  Have you ever wondered how chicken nuggets get their texture?  Here's the process.  We put the marinated chicken in my magic bullet (the recipe recommended a food processor) until the chicken was aproximately the texture of ground beef.  With this texture, the cooked chicken patties had a burger-like texture.  If you continue pureeing the mixture until smooth, you will end up with a chicken nugget-like texture. 

Then form the chicken into patties.  I made small patties, about 2 inches across, so that I could fit multiple into a pita.  You could also make larger patties for a burger-style sandwich. In this picture you can see the different textures of the patties, some more burger-like and some more chicken nugget-like.

We cooked the patties in a hot skillet with a little oil, flipping them after a few minutes.

Brandon was skeptical of the patties, so he reserved some chicken chunks before they went into the bullet. He cooked them in the oven, under a hot broiler. Here are the pieces.

I ate the patties with cucumbers and a cumin yogurt sauce inside whole wheat pitas. The patties were nice and flavorful, reminiscent of chicken tikka. In the sandwich, the yogurt sauce was a cooling partner to the spicy chicken and the cucumber added a nice crunch.  It was a great combination. 

Spaghetti Squash

I've used spaghetti squash in a couple of my posts so far.  Here I will explain exactly how to quickly prepare spaghetti squash. The first step is to cut the squash in half. Then, scoop out the seeds in the middle like you would before carving a pumpkin. 

 

The next step is to cook the squash.  This can either be done in the oven or in the microwave.  In the oven, it will take at least half an hour.  In the microwave, each side will take 3-5 minutes. I have used both methods before.  The squash comes out exactly the same either way.  It really is a matter of preference.

 

Once the squash is cooked, use a fork to scrape the "meat" out into spaghetti-like noodles.  This may sound confusing, but once the squash it cooked, it easily form noodles.

You can use the spaghetti squash as you would use spaghetti in a variety of dishes, from simple spaghetti and marinara sauce to more complicated meals.  If you are sticking to a gluten-free diet, it is a great substitute for pasta.

Here is a picture of a spaghetti squash meal that I packed during my vegan week.  There is (starting at the top right corner and going clockwise) tomato sauce, fresh diced tomatoes, spaghetti squash, and seitan (decidedly not gluten-free).  It microwaved very well, and was a nice change of pace.  What's your favorite way to cook spaghetti squash?

Vegan Sloppy Joes

 

Here we have yet another recipe from the Skinny Bitch book.  This was my first meal during vegan week. The hardest part about this recipe was finding one of the main ingredients: seitan. Seitan is a meat substitute protein made from wheat gluten.  I finally found it in the refrigerator section of WholeFoods.

The first step in making vegan sloppy joes is to finely chop the ingredients: onion, bell pepper, carrot, and seitan.

 

Then, saute them in a frying pan with a little olive oil. Meanwhile, prepare lentils by boiling them. After the lentils are soft, puree half of them to create a ground beef-like texture.

 

Once the vegetables are soft, stir in some tomato paste.

Then add the cooked lentils.

Voila!  Making vegan sloppy joes that are full of protein is as simple as that.  Surprisingly, they actually tasted like traditional sloppy joes. In the picture above, you can see that I ate my sloppy joes on a bun with a side of sweet potatoes.  Later in the week, I ate them in a pita, pictured below. If you are vegan, be careful to make sure that your bread choice is as well.

Vegan/Vegetarian Taco Salad

Normally, I am not a huge fan of tacos.  This weekend, however, I tried fish tacos for the first time ever.  After seeing it on the "How many foods have you tried?" app on Facebook, I knew that I had to try them sooner or later.  It turns out it was sooner, and I was impressed.  The fish tacos I had were made with Tilapia and topped with a mango salsa.  The sweet and salty combo really did it for me. 

I was so intrigued by the  tacos that I decided to make my own version of tacos.  They were very simple to make, and the whole process took about fifteen minutes.  For the filling I mixed together:

• 1 can of drained, rinsed black beans
• 1/2-1 cups cooked frozen corn
• 1 diced tomato
• 1 diced avocado
• 1/2 chopped green pepper
•  1 diced jalapeno pepper
• a generous amount of fajita seasoning (I had some leftover homemade mix in the cabinet from fajitas, but a purchased packet would work too.)

Then, because I wanted to be a little creative, I baked tortillas into taco bowls.  The inspiration for the bowls came from the Skinny Bitch cookbook, that it probably seems like I am obsessed with by now.  To bake the shells into a bowl, first I microwaved them for 30 seconds to loosen them up.  Then, I formed them into a bowl shape using a muffin tin.  I baked them in the muffin tin at 350 degrees for ten minutes.  After the bowls were nice and crisp, I took them out of the oven and put my filling (along with a little lettuce) into the bowl.

I made two versions of the taco salad: one vegan, one vegetarian.  Can you guess what the difference is?

 

 

The only difference between the two is a sprinkle of cheese on top.  I ate both versions, and honestly, the cheese made little to no difference in the enjoyment of this meal.  Both versions were fantastic.  I will definitely make this recipe again!

Skinny Bitch: Ultimate Everyday Cookbook

Since I've been cooking a lot more vegetarian food lately, I decided that I should invest in a vegetarian cookbook.  After much shopping (online and in person), I settled on Skinny Bitch: Ultimate Everyday Cookbook.  I had heard of this book before--my initial impression is that the author was cocky using a title like that.  It turns out that this book is actually vegan and the author is a nutritionist.  So far I have been very happy with the recipes.  I have made blueberry streusel cake, edamame salad, and daal. 

The blueberry streusel cake was the most traditional of the three recipes I have tried so far.  While not the healthiest thing I have ever made, it was good enough to be my breakfast for a week straight.  (Sorry, no pics of this one).

Next up is the edamame salad.  This is probably my favorite of the three recipes.  This salad, which is served cold, involves edamame, bell pepper, bamboo shoots, water chestnuts, and an AMAZING miso dressing.  The dressing reminded me of the salad dressing at my favorite Japanese steak house.  This is a must try.  In case you don't know (I only learned about two weeks ago), edamame is soy beans.  It is cold either in pods like peas, or already shelled as pictured above, and is a great source of protein.

Finally, we have daal.  Daal is a traditional Indian dish made from lentils.  Basically, it is lentils--red in this case--cooked with a bunch of spices, onion, and pepper. It was surprisingly easy to make and made great leftovers for lunch.  I'm looking forward to trying more recipes from this book.  I've already flagged about twenty more that I want to try....look for those coming soon!

Make your own take out

A lot of young people in DC are fortunate enough (or unfortunately for their bank accounts) to work downtown and have a ton of restaurant choices for lunch.  I, on the other hand, work in what my coworkers refer to as a "food desert." We have very slim pickings for lunch--subway, pot bellys, quiznos, giant salad bar, and not much else. So, I bring lunch almost every day to work.

This week I was inspired to make a cold noodle salad with peanut lime sauce.  At my college there was a little Asian restaurant on campus that served massive quantities of this dish.  I quickly became addicted, and recently--with the help of a college friend--figured out how to make it for myself.  The dish contains udon noodles, sliced up vegetables (I used cucumber, carrots, and green pepper), and optional chicken.  The sauce is a combination of peanut butter, soy sauce, water, lime juice, sesame oil, fresh ginger, garlic, and pepper. Here are a couple of tips:  1) Using crunch peanut butter is a bonus because it is like using peanut butter and sprinkling on peanuts...without actually having to buy peanuts.  2) Sesame oil makes any Asian dish taste more authentic.  To make the sauce you simply whisk together the ingredients.  Then, mix the sauce in with the pre-soaked noodles and veggies.  If you want an extra kick, add some sriracha on top too.

Mushroom spinach wrap with bean spread

Wow...that title sounds really appetizing doesn't it? NOT.  It turns out that, despite the name, this was a quite tasty lunch. I saw this recipe a while ago in my Better Homes and Gardens cookbook.  I never had the ingredients on hand at the same time, but last night I decided to get up off the couch and go to the grocery store to buy them. Here they are:

• Mushrooms
• Italian dressing
• Spinach (cheaper when bought from the salad bar)
• 1 can of beans (cannellini or navy)
• 2 cloves garlic
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 tablespoon chili powder
• Tortillas
• Cheese (I used a shredded Italian blend)

Here's what you do.  First, coat the sliced mushrooms in Italian dressing.  I'm sure another type of dressing would work too, but that is what I had on hand.  Then, broil the mushrooms in the oven for a few minutes.  Meanwhile, lightly dress the spinach in dressing.  Then, use a blender to combine the can of beans, garlic, olive oil, and chili powder into a thick liquid--somewhere between gravy and peanut butter. All that's left to do now is put everything together!  Lay out a tortilla, smear it with the bean spread, and then layer on spinach, mushrooms, and cheese. I refrigerated my wraps overnight and had them today for lunch.  I was afraid they might get a little soggy from the spread and dressing, but had no problem.