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. 

Butternut Squash Pasta

At work we used to have a lunch club.  Every other week, someone would bring in a dish for the group to eat.  The cook rotated, so everyone got to enjoy new recipes and someone else's cooking.  My coworker Sarah Catherine brought in this butternut squash pasta. It was so good that I later asked her for the recipe so that I could make it myself. The recipe can be found here. 

The first step in making this pasta dish is to roast the butternut squash.  Cutting up the squash was probably the most difficult part of making this dish.  I lined a baking sheet with foil to minimize my clean-up and then tossed the cubed butternut squash with rosemary, salt, and pepper.  I baked the squash in the oven for about 45 minutes. 

While that cooked, I started on the sauce that would eventually pull the dish together.  First, I sauteed some scallions in olive oil while also preparing pasta according to the package. Hopefully I don't have to explain how to do that...

The next step is a little more complicated though.  Because I don't have a double boiler, I made my own contraption out of a frying pan on top of a sauce pan. The point of a double boiler is to avoid direct heat.  By putting water in the sauce pan, the frying pan receives indirect heat, reducing the risk of burning your sauce. I started off with a combination of salt and flour.

Then I added milk and stirred until the sauce started to thicken.  The flour helps with that process.  Next I added provolone cheese to the mixture. 

Once that was melted, I transferred my sauce to a sauce pan... 

...and stirred in the cooked pasta. At this point, the pasta was essentially macaroni and cheese.

Then I transferred everything to a oven-safe baking dish and topped the pasta with the butternut squash and scallions.  The final touch was to add some parmesan cheese.  You can never have enough cheese, right?

I baked the dish in the oven for about ten minutes, or until the parmesan cheese on top was melted.  Judging by this picture, I probably could have left it in the oven for a few more minutes.  But, alas, I was hungry and it smelled amazing.  I couldn't help myself, so I took it out and dug in. 

This dish is indulgent and delicious.  The recipe suggests adding bacon as well.  You can't go wrong with bacon, so I'm sure that is a great addition.  I'm so glad my coworker introduced me to butternut squash pasta!

Vegetarian Pot Pie

I kicked off my fall recipes with pumpkin baking.  Now that it's starting to actually  get colder, here's a hearty pot pie recipe.  It's from the Skinny Bitch cookbook, pictured below.  The main ingredients are also pictured below: pie crust, flour, milk (non-dairy if you want a vegan recipe), oil, butter (margarine if you want a vegan recipe) and vegetables.  Here I used onion, carrots, peas, and broccoli, but any vegetables would do.  

There are three parts of this pot pie: vegetables, crust, and base. The first step in making this vegetarian pot pie is to cook the vegetables.  I started by sauteing the onion and carrots. 

Next, I added in the broccoli and frozen peas. 

Next up is the broth, or base for the pot pie. This is the unhealthy part.  First, I melted a stick up butter.

Then, I stirred in some flour to thicken it up. 

The third ingredient in this base was milk.  I stirred it into the butter and flour mixture. 

Once the vegetables and base were ready I mixed them together.  This will be the filling in the pot pie. 

This recipe was designed to make one standard pie-sized pot pie. Instead, I made two smaller pies.  They were meant to be individual servings, but really each pie had 2-3 servings in it. 

After the filling was in its dishes, I covered them with pie crust, pinching at the edges in an attempt to make it pretty. 

Then I baked it in the oven until the crust was golden brown. 

And voila, that is how you make pot pie.  Despite being vegetarian (and vegan with a few modifications), this pot pie tasted just how I remembered it. With a buttery, flaky crust, this dish is best served fresh out of the oven.

Vegan sweet potato and chickpea tacos

Who ever thought of making a taco out of sweet potatoes and chickpeas?  Not me!  This recipe was originally intended to be Black Bean and Yam Tacos from the Skinny Bitch cookbook that I love.  It turned out that I was out of black beans, so I subbed chickpeas, and it worked! These tacos were super simple to make and full of yummy vegetables.

The first step was to saute a sweet potato until soft.

Then, I added a diced green bell pepper, and spices: garlic, cumin, coriander, chile powder, and oregano and sauteed some more. 

Next up I added a diced tomato and a can of rinsed chickpeas and sauteed until warmed through.

Finally, I sliced up an avocado and spooned the mixture into a whole wheat tortilla. These tacos surpassed my expectations.  They had great flavor, a fajita-like texture, and were full of nutrients.  I bet they would be good with other vegetables as well.  Corn and squash are two easy additions that come to mind.  Have you ever made meatless tacos? 

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. 

Broccoli and Seitan with Black Bean Sauce

Going out to eat as a vegetarian or vegan can be very difficult.  While lots of foods appear to be meat-free, many are cooked in a meat-based broth.  This week I decided to make my own vegan broccoli and seitan with black bean sauce, inspired by one of my favorite Chinese dishes: chicken with black bean sauce.  The recipe for this dish was adapted from CookingLight Way to Cook Vegetarian's Seitan Stir-Fry with Black Bean Garlic Sauce.

My first step was to mix together the sauce: water, rice wine, flour, and store-bought black bean garlic sauce. After I set this aside, I stir fried a package (8oz) of seitan in oil.

After the seitan started to brown, I removed it from the pan and added garlic, ginger, and broccoli to the pan, which I cooked until the broccoli was no longer crunchy. 

Then, I added back in the sauce and seitan and cooked until heated through.  That's all it took!  This stir fry was awesome.  It had great flavor and was super easy to put together, thanks to the prefab black bean sauce. I served it with brown rice to create a well-balanced dinner, complete with protein (seitan has a ton!), complex carbs, and vegetables. Yum yum yum. It was also great for lunch the next two days.  Have you ever tried seitan?

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 Jambalaya

 

Over the weekend of my vegan week, I went to visit my aunt and uncle in Virginia.  They were very considerate of my food restrictions, and even went to the farmer's market for me.   For lunch we had TONS of grilled veggies and portabello sandwiches. There were a lot of leftover grilled vegetables, which I was lucky enough to take home with me.

Remembering a great vegan meal I had at One World Cafe in Baltimore, I decided to make a vegan jambalaya featuring the vegetables.  The first step was to saute the veggies in a pan to crisp them up again.  You can see all of the veggie goodness in this picture:  green squash, yellow squash, red pepper, portabello mushrooms, red onion...

 

Once the veggies were heated, I added vegetable broth, brown rice, and jambalaya spices as recommended by the internet.  If you were making this with fresh vegetables, you would want to make sure that the veggies are tender before adding the broth. 

 

Once the rice was cooked, I added seitan that I had leftover from my vegan sloppy joes. I let the jambalaya cook for a couple more minutes to heat the seitan, and then it was ready to devour.

 

When I told my family that I made vegan jambalaya, they were a little confused.  Traditionally jambalaya is made with sausage and shrimp.  Mine obviously had neither.  They questioned whether this concoction could really be called jambalaya.  I would argue that yes, it can.  The flavor was spot-on, and the texture was very similar to the original recipe.  This is a great way to make a large quantity of food with leftovers already in the fridge.  

Fish Tacos

A few weeks ago my mom and I went to Bonefish Grill.  I asked my mom if she had seen the Facebook app about foods to try before you die.  She had, and we realized that one of the foods that was uneaten on both of our lists  was fish tacos.  She ordered fish tacos at dinner, and we both loved them. The next time I went home, we decided to make them for ourselves. This recipe is a Ryberg original.

First we pan fried two filets of tilapia covered in Old Bay seasoning.  We used one fillet per taco. This may seem like a lot of fish for one taco, but it seemed just right once done.

While the fish was cooking, we created a mango salsa to put on top.  It included mango, onion, and cucumber.  If we had cilantro, we would have used some of that too.  We also added some lettuce on top of the fish and salsa.

Here is our final presentation: fish taco, salad with mango salsa on top, and some mango slices for dessert.  We ate our dinner outside.  It was a nice, refreshingly light summer meal. I will definitely be making this again.