Zebra Beans #2

It worked!

While the black beans faded somewhat in soaking and cooking, they were not allowed to tarnish the white beans as both were cooked separately. Also, being impatient, I simply boiled the hard dry beans, changing the water after an hour. Next time I'll change the water sooner, to mimic the soaking water, and add salt for the last 45 minutes. It's nice to know that instead of making cooking dried beans a 16+ hour process, you can do the whole thing in two hours, if you're willing to have the stove on the whole time and supervise things. There's no big difference in taste between the colors of beans; but since the white beans are much bigger than the black, they take longer. (Note to self: This means that if you cook the black beans for as long as you cook the white beans, you'll overcook them and that's no fun.) Then you add the beans to the sofrito, and viola, zebra beans! The sofrito is the most fun when you use four colors of peppers. :)

Quinoa Bean Stew

This was another successful cleaning-out-the-fridge stew, and also a success for cooking improvisation. I typed up the general procedure I followed, but it's very flexible to anyone else's modification. Epic win!

Quinoa Bean Stew

1. Saute lots (2 tbsp) minced garlic in ample olive oil
2. Add 2-3 c total chopped onion, carrots, celery, and potato, with a pinch of salt.
3. Add 3 roma tomatoes, chopped and 1 8 oz. can tomato sauce
4. Add 3 c water
5. Add 1 c rinsed quinoa and 2 c cooked white beans and the corn cut off an ear of corn (next time I'm using more because I love corn so much)
6. Add 2 chicken bullion cubes, 1 tsp basil, 1 tsp oregano, 3/4 tsp thyme, 1/2 tsp rosemary, 1 large bay leaf
7. Simmer for a long time, blend at some point if you want. Taste and adjust spices if necessary.
8. Reheating is best done on the stove, on low heat to avoid burning things, with extra water if it gets too thick.

(Guys, seriously, this is why I need a digital SLR. Giovanni is fantastic but I really need to be able to focus things myself, cuz zoom + flash + macro mode = tearing hair out. And last I checked, hair isn't something you want in stew.)

Zebra Beans #1

The plan was to use some of the super pretty bell peppers (I bought a bunch on sale, chopped, and froze them to simplify things in the future :) ) to make zebra beans - white and black beans mixed. The first lesson was that when you soak black beans with white beans, the color that comes out of the black beans and otherwise ends up down the drain, gets adopted by the white beans and makes super ugly gray beans. The second was that (probably because of a size difference) white and black beans take different times to cook. They still made good Cuban beans, but don't ask for a picture. Since they weren't heavenly as Cuban beans usually are, I'm wondering if there's something about the white beans that doesn't work so well. Anyone can has informations?

Stay tuned for experiment take two!

Moosewood Mediterranean Cannellini Patties

Another recipe-following success! Not so much a pattie-sticking-together success, but they were yummy!!!

First you saute 2 c minced onion and minced garlic in warm olive oil with a tsp of salt, then after 5-10 minutes you add 1 c chopped bell peppers and 2 tsp cumin, and cook for 5 more minutes. Turn off the heat. In a mixing bowl, mash 4 c cooked canellini (or other white beans) by hand. It got messy!

You then stir in 1 c minced fresh parsley, 1 tbsp fresh lemon juice, 2 c cooked brown rice, and black pepper to taste. Introduce sauteed veggies, and mix well. Shape into patties (the recipe says you get 18 but it depends on the size) and cook on medium heat 5-10 minutes a side, until golden brown. If you're lucky, they'll stick together (I wasn't, but they were super yummy nonetheless!).

You can eat them straight up, with yogurt tahini dressing, or as part of a pita sandwich. I imagine you could also make them with lots of other spice and veggie combinations, and maybe garbanzos instead of white beans.

Moosewood Tomato Wine Sauce with Fennel

Tonight's experiment was another miracle in actually following recipes. I couldn't taste the wine at all, though I might not have recognized it anyway. The fennel makes it slightly interesting, but otherwise it's a gentle tomato sauce.

The Moosewood cookbook says to saute 1 c chopped onion, 2 minced garlic cloves, and a sprinkle of salt in warm olive oil for 5-7 minutes, then add 2 tsp ground fennel, 1 tsp dried oregano, and 1 tsp dried basil and cook for another minute. Then you add 1/3 c red wine and boil everything. Add a 28 oz. can of tomatoes pureed (you can buy tomato puree or buy whole tomatoes and dirty your blender) and simmer the sauce for about 20 minutes, seasoning with salt and pepper to taste.

Red Bean Love

This why you should always have canned red beans, cooked brown rice, and frozen onion and bell pepper on hand. And half a tablespoon of honey, for the very end.

Cheap, healthy, and out-of-this-world-delicious. All hail broccoli Gavroche!

Recipe for red beans, Cuban style: saute garlic and onion and green pepper for a few minutes.

Typical sensationalist story-telling Cubans masquerading as Italians! The nerve!

Then add tomato sauce and oregano; after a few minutes add beans and a bay leaf or too. Cook for 45-450 minutes, adding more water if things dry out. Add a little bit (about 1/2-1 tbsp) of honey after you turn the heat off and stir well. Serve hot (or cold to college students) over brown rice. Make lots and lots and lots or they will disappear insantly.

Untitled Improvisations

Here are two delicious fast things to do with a saute pan. They're somewhere between risotto and stir-fry, and have infinite flexibility. The 28th and 29th saw improvisational cooking at its best.

Day 1:

Saute some of the minced garlic in olive oil until fragrant, then add chicken. Cook until just brown on the outside and set aside. Saute more minced garlic, then chopped onion, carrot, and celery (about a cup each?) and saute some moe. Without adding water, add about 1 c chopped tomatoes and boil with 1 tsp oregano, dried basil, rosemary, thyme, and a bit of black pepper.

Add chicken and rice (how much depends on how many veggies you use). Cook, stirring often, until the chicken is cooked through and everything is nice and hot and well blended. Serve with heavy whole wheat bread. :)

(Sorry it's a crappy picture; the flash was misbehaving and I was hungry!)

Day 2:

Brown the chicken in sauted minced garlic like day 1, but with the addition of Famous Dave's Country Roast Chicken Seasoning. Remove, add more olive oil and minced garlic to the pan, and saute the already cooked broccoli for a minute, then add cooked brown rice and browned chicken to the pan. In lieu of canned cream of whatever soup, I added a 1/4 c (skim) milk and about 3/4 c grated cheese (mostly cheddar, but also some romano to use it up), and lots more of the chicken seasoning.

(Easy, efficient way to grate cheese. These guys are infinity times better than the box kind.)

(This guy reminds me of  Gavroche singing "Little People" from Les Mis)

Cook, stirring often, until the chicken is cooked through and everything is nice and hot and well blended to creamy deliciousness.

Lentil Tomato Soup

it was really cool to get to see the quinoa half-cooked like this

Lentil Tomato Soup

(adapted from Italicious, who has the nerve to have prettier pictures than me...)

Heat the olive oil over medium heat in a heavy soup pot or Dutch oven, and add a chopped onion. Cook, stirring, until tender, about five minutes. Add the two crushed but not chopped garlic cloves, diced carrot and a diced celery stalk, and a generous pinch of salt, and continue to cook for another five minutes until tender. Add the 2 chopped tomatoes and some rosemary and a bay leaf, and cook, stirring often, until the tomatoes have cooked down somewhat and smell fragrant, about 10 minutes. Add 1 c lentils and 1/2 c well rinsed quinoa and 5 c water. Bring to a boil. Reduce the heat, cover and simmer gently one hour. Taste and adjust seasonings. Stir in the parsley. Serve, garnishing each bowl with Parmesan or Gruyère. Serve with bread.

Victory! (Magic Summer Stew)

Did I not call it at the base of the stairs? I did, I did indeed. I declared that tonight would be a night of victory! Victory over the unknown of the Future, victory on extra veggies floating around the fridge...

And so it was. We'll call it Magic Summer Stew. It's very much like Stone Soup: it's a conglomerate of whatever you feel like using up. The only rule is that it must be colorful. Mine included onion, potato, carrot, red and yellow pepper, scallions, and garbanzos, but you're free to include whatever you'd like. I usually care so little for recipes I have no right to inflict them on others (except, of course, the Hershey's Holiday Chocolate Cake recipe, but that's a very different story).

To start, I sauteed minced garlic in a very generous amount of olive oil and then added a bit of cooking sherry and black pepper. My prayers were answered and the veggies cooked down a lot (I added 1.5-2 c of water to help them) - the silly people I live with don't have any big pots :(. I added bit of many spices; if I remember correctly these included about 1/4 tsp salt, about 10 tiny red pepper flakes, and 1/4-1/3 tsp oregano, and 1/3-1/2 tsp dried basil (I meant to put in fresh basil at the end but forgot). After there was enough room in the pot, around the time I added the spices, I added as many garbanzos as I felt like (maybe 2 cups? You can probably tell by now I don't keep track of stuff like this) so they had plenty of time to take in the flavors of the veggies and the spices. Let's hear it for impromptu cooking!!!

Served best over barley (not bulgar like I tried at first; bulgar is too nutty and in my opinion best suited for accompanying stir fry, which I like to do with cashews...). Also, since it's kind of stew-y, but the barley kind of soaks it up, I recommend serving in those dishes you never use, the ones that are a combination bowl and plate.

Yes, you should be jealous. Even the broth by itself is absolutely delicious. Lucky for you there's plenty left (if you hurry!).

Tomato Sauce #2

This is the Chief Senora del Campos espeaking. I have identified the culprit as the mischievous onion. There will be absolutely no more onion in tomato sauce. Tonight it was much darker because of the lack of onion, but I forgot the sugar and overall wasn't impressed. The wine didn't seem to have a big effect. Still searching for how to make the perfect tomato sauce...