Korean Style Vegetable Pancakes

Do you have in your life, or are you one of those difficult people with some kind of dietary restriction? Vegetarian? Gluten free? Lactose intolerant? Here's the recipe for you: meat-free, dairy-free, gluten-free. And tasty and pretty filling. (Not vegan, though, sorry vegans.)

The basis for this recipe is from Mark Bittman's "How to Cook Everything Vegetarian," and I am loving it (I've probably made these 4 times in the last month). I multiplied it the original by 1 1/2 and should have done even more, because if you're going to stand over a stove cooking stacks of pancakes, might as well go big, like when you make crepes, always double or triple the recipe, you know they'll get eaten. 

This would be a good recipe for using up leftover difficult vegetables. You could probably even use one of those bags of prepped coleslaw or broccoli slaw mix. This time around I used shredded carrots, chopped onions, and slightly steamed cabbage. I think putting green onions in it gives it more of the Korean vibe, and I particularly like it with sauteed mushrooms, to give it a little meaty-ness. And it's an easy recipe to adjust, the egg : flour : water ratio is simple (1 : 1 : 3/4) and doesn't require complex math to scale up or down. And these are good the next day, and the next day after that, they just need a little rewarming, so go ahead, scale it up, and turn on a TV show or find a good book to read while you do some serious pancake cooking.

Korean Style Vegetable Pancakes

3 eggs

3 cups rice flour  **see note at bottom 

2 1/4 cups water

salt to taste

pepper to taste

any other spices you like (chili powder, coriander, paprika, basil, garlic, etc) to taste

about 3 cups? ( I didn't measure, oops.) chopped or shredded vegetables (carrot, summer squash, green onion, slightly steamed cabbage, peppers, regular onions, sauteed mushrooms, broccoli, etc)

Whisk together eggs, rice flour, water, salt, pepper, and any spices you want. Add your chopped and shredded vegetables. There should be plenty of vegetable per batter, I wish I'd measured for you. 

Heat up a skillet to medium or medium high heat, lightly oil the skillet and scoop out some vegetable/batter onto the hot skillet. I used about a cup, maybe a little less, of the mixture in my 9" cast iron pan. There should be enough batter-iness to the batter to completely encase the vegetables, but it should still be plenty vegetable-y. I found that I had to quickly move rearrange clumps of vegetables to get them evenly distributed among the batter. 

batter in the pan a couple minutes before flipping

pancake in pan after flipping

Let it cook for a few minutes, the bottom should get getting a little color, and the top will probably be dry, carefully flip it over and let it cook a few minutes more until the top gets a little color on the parts that stick out, then gently scoop it off onto a plate. Repeat with remaining batter. Be sure to flip gently, and don't flip before it's ready, especially if you are doing all rice flour, they will be more delicate than the regular breakfast pancakes you might be used to, because there's no gluten to hold it all together.

Cut into triangles and serve with soy sauce, sriracha, Thai sweet chili sauce (my favorite), or whatever else floats your boat. This size batch made 6 9" pancakes. 

**Mark Bittman says you can use all or part wheat flour, but I like the texture of using all rice flour best, and then you can feed it to your gluten-free friends or self. I get rice flour at the Asian or international grocery store, I think you can also get it at Whole Foods or in the special healthy section of a grocery store if you have a good grocery store.

Another Summer Salad

I recently rediscovered a fancy pumpkin seed oil and quince balsamic vinegar set that was given to me a while ago, the bottles were hiding in the outside fridge, lonely and forgotten. I read something online about eating pumpkin seed oil with heirloom tomatoes, and it sparked a memory -- I have pumpkin seed oil! It was very exciting. So this is the salad that I made:

About 3 large tomatoes, diced
2 small-medium sized cucumbers, diced
a few basil leaves, chopped
1 can of small white beans, drained and rinsed well
drizzle of pumpkin seed oil, to taste
drizzle of quince balsamic vinegar, to taste
sprinkle of salt

Combine everything in a bowl, toss it all together, and eat.

We ate this with corn on the cob for a light dinner. No pictures - our camera has been missing for 2 weeks. It will turn up, but prepare yourself for some more picture-less posts, I actually have things to share.

Also, thank you, Laura, for your comment, it's always nice to see that I still have readers, even after a long break between posts. :)

Veggie Spring Rolls

I haven't had a lot of creative juices lately, so I don't have a big story for you, just some pictures to show how easy it is to make your own summer rolls, just like a friend showed me, she also has a special dipping sauce for it, I think it is peanut ginger, we just used an all-purpose Korean sauce.

You'll need some rice paper, I got some at the vietnamese store, the are probably easy to find at regular stores too, here's what to look for:

You can use whatever you want for filling, I used:

Carrots
Cucumbers
Daikon radish

I used about 4 carrots to 1 cucumber to 1/2 daikon radish, and that made a lot of rolls.

Shred the carrots and radish, and cut the cucumbers into strips. Put some warm water in a bowl, dip rice paper one at a time in the warm water for about 5 seconds, remove, then arrange the fillings on the rice paper, and roll it up like a burrito.

Easy peasy!

Popover Pizza

I saw this recipe on a friend's blog, and decided to try it for 4 reasons: 1-we have a minor pizza obsession in our house, 2) I love popovers and the idea of taking popover batter and turning it into pizza, brilliant! 3) We had some leftover mozzarella from our last pizza adventure. 4) I got to use my new immersion blender from Motherdear to make the batter. Hopefully I'll have more with the immersion blender soon. In the meantime, here's how I made it.

Vegetarian Popover Pizza Casserole

Preheat oven to 400.

Prepare batter (can be done ahead of time or when your filling is simmering as given in the other recipe)

2 eggs
1 cup milk
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup flour
1 glug of your favorite cooking oil (a glug is a highly unprecise measurement, you pour until you see/imagine the oil "glugging," it's about one tablespoon)

Now prepare your topping. Here's what I did, but you can see the other recipe and the link to the original recipe with other ideas for the meat eaters out there.

a bunch of mushrooms (about 14 oz), sliced
1 onion, diced
2-3 cloves garlic, chopped
10 oz frozen spinach
1 can diced tomatoes
dried basil to taste
salt and pepper to taste
lots of grated mozzarella
a good bit of grated parmesan

Saute the mushrooms until they release their water and shrink, add the onions and continue to cook until they start to soften. Add the garlic and continue to saute for a few minutes. Add the spinach and canned tomatoes and spices and let simmer for a few minutes.

Pour the topping into a 9 x 13 inch pan (I actually used a 7 x 11 inch pan and it worked fine, but I think bigger might be better for this amount of stuff), top with all but 1/4 cup of the cheeses. Pour the batter over the topping, make sure it covers to the edges and corners, top with the remaining cheese and get it quickish into the preheated oven.

It will get puffy and browned, I forgot to watch the clock, but I imagine it was about 30 minutes (and I'll admit I turned up the oven to 425 about 2 minutes into it and I was already impatient) then take it out and let it cool/collapse for a minute, scoop it out and eat it like the pizza lover you know you are.

Thanksgiving: Roasted Vegetables

Roasting is a good idea for autumn vegetables whether it's Thanksgiving day or not. It would be nice to have for a big Thanksgiving crowd because you can make massive quantities of it by buying normal quantities of several kinds of vegetables. This bowl of chopped vegetables lasted three people for at least four meals. Oh, and it is delicious. And its so great to have more vegetables at Thanksgiving feasts, they are so typically carb-heavy and turkey-emphatic. I don't have anything agains carbs or turkey, but I do love extra variety, and you (probably) know by now how I feel about vegetables.

vegetables, pre-roasting, so pretty!

Preheat oven to 425. Cut up you favorite autumnal vegetables into similar sized pieces. Some good vegetables to start with (and I'm sure you'll have more ideas): Brussels sprouts, carrots, summer or winter squash, onions, mushrooms and celery, and now that I think of it, cauliflower would be a good addition, too. Toss the generously with olive oil, add mashed roasted garlic (optional) and any spices you want. I just used black pepper.

Place in a single layer in a pan, sprinkle with coarse kosher salt, cover with aluminum foil and put in the oven. After 30 minutes or so, the vegetables should be making a lot of bubbly noises in the pan, and will be starting to look a little more cooked, shrinking and losing form somewhat. If that is what's going on, take off the foil and let them roast about 10-15 minutes more, turning occasionally with a spatula, you should start seeing darker edges on some vegetables, they should all be tender and shiny, and the mushrooms should be shriveling up.

I made these again tonight to eat with gnocchi. I tried steaming the less tender vegetables (carrots, Brussels sprouts and celery) to see if it would speed up the roasting time so that it could be more of a make-ahead dish, but steaming didn't cut down appreciably on the time needed for roasting.

roasted vegetables

New Acquisitions and Adventures

Older Brother and I went to New York City and Philadelphia the last couple of days and did a lot of walking and sightseeing and visiting of friends. It was exhausting, but I had a great time, and I'm glad that Older Brother wanted to go, because I probably wouldn't have gone by myself. Here are our food adventures, in chronological order.

Before taking off early Wednesday morning, we bought some maps at Barnes and Noble, and I found this book in the bargain bin. I'm excited to try some recipes, and I love the pictures even if the recipes don't turn out.

In New York (between visiting some friends, browsing through fabric in the garment district, and taking the Staten Island Ferry to see the Statue of Liberty) we had some pizza which had a nice crust and lots of vegetables, but it wasn't a revelation, I had high hopes for New York pizza, and maybe it was just the stuff that we got, but it was still just pizza. We also had dumplings from a place in Chinatown, which were good, nice crunchy vegetables inside and not super salty. Older Brother bought these preserved salted kumquats that are really good. Oh, we also had breakfast at Community Food and Juice with a friend, and it was a really nice place, good food and nice atmosphere, I definitely recommend it.

stuffing my face with New York pizza

Preserved and salted kumquats

In Philly we saw some more friends and ate lunch with one of them at a place called the National Mechanics in the old city which was pretty awesome. They surprised me with a good selection of vegetarian foods, and I think they deserve their own review (next post). Ws also visited Reading Terminal Market which was pretty awesome, but I didn't buy anything and didn't get any pictures, but it was a very impressive area and I would like to go back.We didn't do a lot of eating in Philidelphia, which is a shame because my friend knows all the good places, but we weren't super hungry after the awesome lunch.

Food from National Mechanics

This morning, back home in DC, we went to the Eastern Market, on the hunt for some good produce. We found a good selection of cute eggplants for really cheap, in such interesting colors, I had no idea there was such a thing as an orange eggplant. Aren't they cute? And there were some delicious white peaches, I bought a bunch for some cardamom experiments, hopefully they will be fruitful (haha!) and I'll have plenty to write about here. There were some awesome looking ravioli with different colors, and can you see the sign for chocolate and cream ravioli! We also tried some pastries from a vendor there, and they still didn't stack up to Pavel's, so the hunt continues for the awesomest bakery in the D.C. Metro Area.

A Green Smoothie

A few days ago my tummy was upset, but I was hungry, so I thought something super healthy with yogurt might help.  I gave in to the green smoothie fad and made one with kale, peaches and yogurt for breakfast. I've heard that the flavor of the greens is not noticeable in a green smoothie, but I want to tell you that depends entirely on how much you use. My first batch of smoothie was great, and so for my second breakfast I put even more kale in it, and this time it was overly "green" flavored. So I recommend not overdoing it on the greens. The peaches were nice, they gave it a nice flavor and sweetness and the colors did not clash to make something completely disgusting looking. I didn't measure the ingredients, but I took a picture of the second batch before blending, the one with too much kale, which is as close as I can get to writing down a recipe for a smoothie. But if you want a real recipe with real measurements, there's a ton out there within searching range, they've been very popular lately.

green smoothie-too much kale in this one

Green Mashed Potatoes

Green potatoes with sautéed veggies  

This is a pretty brilliant way I discovered to get myself and  Lovemuffin to eat greens, the really healthy greens, like kale, swiss chard, and mustard greens. I have tried it with all three of those types of greens, and I personally prefer it with kale, the flavor and color and texture seem the best with kale. And a little extra butter never hurts. They are perfect for Saint Patrick's Day, or for whenever you need something to do with potatoes besides making them boring white and fluffy. 

Green Mashed Potatoes
7-8 good sized russet potatoes
1 bunch kale, chard, or mustard greens, or any other sturdy greens of your choice
1 onion, chopped (optional, but highly recommended)
2-3 cloves garlic, minced (optional, but highly recommended)
Grated cheese to taste, such as parmesan, asiago, romano, pecorino, or a combination
Butter, Milk, Salt and Pepper to taste

Peel and chop potatoes, start boiling them in well salted water. While that is starting, rinse and chop the greens, discarding or chopping thick stems finely. Add the chopped greens to the potatoes, let it all boil together until the potatoes are tender enough for mashing.
While the potatoes are cooking, sauté the chopped onion in a little oil, if desired, adding the garlic when they are mostly soft and translucent. Set aside to add to the mashed potatoes later.
Drain the cooked potatoes and greens, and then mash with milk and butter and cheese until it is the desired consistency. Add salt and pepper to taste, add the onions, if using. Serve with a little extra butter and/or cheese on top.

Crepe Party

I made some crepes the other night, my crepe pan is well seasoned now and I have the technique down, so it was kind of a party. The savory crepes for dinner were delightful and surprisingly filling. I used the recipe for blintzes from Mark Bittman's "How to Cook Everything Vegetarian" and they were very sturdy and hefty, as you can see in this picture. You can use any tried and true crepe or blintz recipe.

Savory Crepes For Dinner

1 onion, finely chopped

about 10 mushrooms, finely chopped

1 clove garlic, finely chopped

1 10 oz. package frozen spinach, thawed and drained

3-4 oz. mozzerella cheese, shredded or diced

2.5 oz. parmesan cheese

salt and pepper to taste

10-12 crepes or blintzes, already cooked

Saute onion, mushrooms and garlic till soft, let cool somewhat. Mix with well drained spinach, cheese and spices. Place about 1/4 cup of filling on the crepe and roll it up burrito style. Place all of the rolled crepes in a casserole pan in a 350 F oven for 10-15 minutes, until the cheese is melty, then serve. Or you can just keep the filling very hot when you prepare it and everyone can roll up their own.

And I made sweet crepes for dessert/breakfast the next day with cottage cheese and berries and a dash of sugar. You don't really need a recipe for this one.

Mark Bittman's Layer Vegetable Torte

I just love The Minimalist. I made this vegetable torte tonight, and it was magnificent! I used a Greek cheese called myzithra instead of parmesan, and it was pretty good, but next time I will just use parmesan. I had thought about using some onions too, but when it came right down to it, I forgot. It happens a lot. I stuck the veggies under the broiler to cook them instead of on the grill, that is easier for me. We ate it with mashed potatoes. My pictures aren't very good tonight, but check it out:

Rhubarb Cobbler

Rhubarb has always fascinated me. It looks like pink celery, and it tastes so good in pie. It's amazing. If you have ever had rhurbarb, its was probably in strawberry rhubarb pie. When I was in high school, I really wanted to grow rhubarb in our yard because I had heard that it grows really well in cold places like Siberia and Wyoming. My dad never really got on board with that idea, maybe because he only knew of one thing to do with it. But I have always been sure that there is so much more to do with it, I just need a lot to experiment with.

Now, whenever I see good fresh looking rhubarb at the grocery store or the farmers market, I buy a couple of stalks and either use them immediately, or cut them up and freeze them for future use. It freezes very nicely, just spread out the pieces on a cookie sheet so they aren't all in a big clump and then put them in a freezer bag so that you can measure them easily when you use them later. Elise, of my favorite food blog, simplyrecipes.com recently posted a bunch of great looking rhubarb recipes, I haven't had a chance to try them all, because I keep getting stuck on this rhubarb cobbler recipe which I want to share with you today.

A couple of years ago I saw this recipe for rhubarb cobbler online, I don't remember where or I would post the reference, and it is awesome. We tried making it in the dutch oven with my family with the same dumping method you use to make peach cobbler with canned peaches, but it didn't have enough liquid in it to make the cakey part turn into cake, and it was way too sweet, plus the melty wax from the everlasting candles we put in for Motherdear's birthday, and overall wastn't the best cobbler experience ever, so that was kind of a bummer. So here is the tried and true method that you do in a cake pan in the oven.

Rhubarb Cobbler

3 c. chopped rhubarb

3/4 c. brown sugar
4 Tbsp. butter, melted
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 c. milk
1 1/2 c. flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1 c. sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees, butter a 9 x 11 inch pan. Combine rhubarb and brown sugar in a medium size bowl, mix well and set aside. In a large bowl, combine 3 tablespoons of the melted butter, eggs, milk, flour baking powder, vanilla, and sugar. Beat with a heavy whisk until a smooth batter is formed. Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Spread the rhubarb mixture over the batter in an even layer. Drizzle with the remaining melted butter, bake for 40 minutes, maybe a little longer if you want the middle not quite as gooey as it looks in the picture above. Serve warm with vanilla ice cream, if desired.

Variations:

*Add 2 or more teaspoons (to taste) minced fresh ginger root to the rhubarb/sugar mixture, prepare and devour as usual.
*Add orange zest and up to 1/4 c. orange juice to rhubarb/sugar mixture (decrease amount of sugar if you are adding juice), prepare and devour as usual.
*I kind of think that the amount of sugar in the rhubarb part can be reduced a little, as you like it. It is important to have some sugar, because it helps make it liquidy, which seems important for cobbler, and rhubarb is very very tart on its own. But you may want to reduce the sugar if it sounds like too much for you.

Bright and Tasty Vegetable Stew

The idea for this dish is from a Moroccan tagine. Something that I have never actually eaten, unfortunately, but I saw this recipe for a lamb tagine with all these different vegetables, and I really wanted to try it. We were feeding the missionaries, and what better time to experiment with crazy food than when you have a captive audience, right? Actually, I get super nervous about cooking for other people, start thinking too much and second guessing myself, so maybe not the best idea after all.

The original recipe is from a cookbook I got at the library, "The Africa Cookbook: Tastes of a Continent" by Jessica B. Harris. It calls for lamb, carrots, turnips, eggplants, calabash squash (like a pumpkin) and zucchini, along with spices, of course. That combination of vegetables seemed a little more autumnal that I wanted, so I did something a little different, and hopefully still preserved the spirit of the thing. I meant to serve it with couscous, but apparently I didn't have any couscous. It was really good with the rice that I cooked instead with vegetable stock and a little cardamom. You could of course add meat, beef or lamb would be good, brown them to start with in olive oil and spices, then add the vegetables as directed. Or you can grill your favorite meat and serve it on the side, in case you are feeding a vegetarian. Pesky vegetarians.

Vegetable Tagine 
olive oil for sautéing
5-6 carrots, chopped into 1 inch chunks
1 onion, chopped not too small

2 teaspoons fresh ginger, roughly chopped 

fresh ground black pepper, to taste

5 or 6 cardamom seeds, or about 1/4 tsp. fresh ground cardamom

pinch saffron (optional)
3 sweet bell peppers, chopped into 1 inch chunks
3 zucchinis, chopped into 1 inch chunks
1 - 1 1/2 cups vegetable stock
6-8 sprigs cilantro, leaves coarsely chopped
6-8 sprigs parsley, leaves coarsely chopped

Sauté the carrots and the onion in olive oil for a couple of minutes, add cardamom, black pepper and saffron, half of the ginger. Add the bell peppers, and zucchinis  and stock. Simmer covered for 20-30 minutes, add the remaining ginger halfway through. Stir occasionally until the vegetables are soft and there is less liquid, it shouldn't be too dry, but it shouldn't be soupy at all. Add the chopped cilantro and parsley leaves, let simmer an additional 5 or so minutes. The colors of the vegetables should be bright and cheerful, and the flavor with the spices will be bright and cheerful, too. Serve along with rice or couscous flavored with cardamom or thyme.
Serves 6.

try this:

Get some fresh shitake mushrooms.
Remove the stems, disard.
Brush caps lightly with olive oil.
Grill. (Or throw under the broiler, if you can't grill it)
Enjoy.

Seriously, this is my new favorite thing. I got goosebumps when I tasted it. It was delightful. This mushroom farm is what I need, because buying those shitakes once a week at the farmers market is going to add up pretty quick. I would have taken a picture, but it doesn't look like much, also I was too busy tasting, and tasting and tasting.....

Potato and Leek Soup

I've made this soup a couple of times at my work, and it's been a pretty big hit. The Lovemuffin eats a lot of it when I make it at home, too, so that usually a good indicator of a good recipe.

Here's what you do:

Peel 3 large russet potatoes, chop into pieces, put them into a pan and fill with just enough vegetable broth and water to cover the potato pieces. Add some black pepper and oregano and dill, if desired, to the pot. In the meantime, clean and chop 3 leeks, just the white and light green part, into thin slices. Peel and chop one onion into pretty small pieces. Saute the leeks and onion in butter or olive oil until they are translucent and tender. When the potatoes are soft and the leeks are tender, blend the potatoes with the broth in a blender until smooth or mostly smooth. You might not need all of the liquid.

Put the blended potato stuff back in the pot, add the sauteed leeks and onions and about a cup of half and half. Let it simmer for a few minutes, it will thicken a little, you can add milk or water if it is too thick. Add salt and pepper to taste, and consume.

More on Charred Peppers

This is how the roasted/charred peppers look when you peel off the blackened skins. The charred skins have a papery texture and pretty much slip right off the flesh. When you roast the pepper like this, the flavor becomes super intense, really sweet and peppery at the same time. I don't even like peppers, but I love them like this. You could also do this to spicier peppers, not just sweet bell peppers. Put charred and peeled peppers on hamburgers (or veggie burgers) or other sandwiches (see below).

You can also use this technique with tomatoes, but unlike peppers, tomatoes start disintigrating after 5 minutes of intense heat, and I haven't yet learned how to keep them contained when they are falling apart like that. But they would make a fabulous sauce for pizza or spaghetti.

This is my amazing sandwich that I made with roasted red peppers, eggplant, cheese and pesto. Someday I will maybe make it for you. I am salivating over it all over again.....

Roasted Red Pepper and Raspberry Soup

Last summer Lovemuffin and Pricklypear were lucky enough to go to Paris with his Parental Figures. They had heard about this amazing restaurant that they really wanted to go to. I wish I could remember the name of it, because it was truly amazing and I would like to recommend it to everyone I know. They served dinner in 4 courses, but it was a fairly casual place. One of the things that Lovemuffin got was this soup, Roasted Red Pepper and Raspberry Soup, and for some reason it is the only thing I really remember, probably because the combination seemed so unlikely, and yet it was so incredibly delicious. It was a vivid red color, kind of tangy, kind of sweet, and I could actually taste both the rasberries and the peppers, and they really complimented each other. I have thought about this soup on and off ever since then, fully intending to make an imitation. I did try it once, but I wasn't satisfied. The other night I tried again, and this time I think I succeeded. I'm sure it's not exactly the same as the one in Paris, but it's the same idea and it is very good.

Roasted Red Pepper and Raspberry Soup

3 red bell peppers

2 tomatoes

1/2 onion

3 cloves garlic

4 c. water

1 c. vegetable stock

1/2 tsp. dried oregano, or 1 tsp fresh

approx 6 oz. frozen raspberries

salt and pepper to taste

Cut the bell peppers in half, remove seeds and stem, place on a broiler pan, skin side up and broil for about 10 minutes, until the skins are black and charred. Keep an eye on them, you may need to rotate them or the pan to char it as evenly as possible. Remove from broiler and immediately drop into a paper bag, close bag and let the peppers steam and cool. Place the whole tomatoes on the broiler pan, broil until the skins begin to blister and char a little, turn them over, and repeat on the other side. (More on charring peppers and tomatoes in another post.) The tomatoes will go faster than the peppers, and their skins don't need to become very black, mostly just blistered. Remove to a bowl, let cool, and slip off the skins. Peel the charred skins off the cooled peppers. Chop the peppers and the tomatoes into smaller pieces, don't worry about making them even sizes or shapes, they just need to be smaller. Chop the onion into smaller pieces, and crush the garlic cloves.
Place the peppers, tomatoes, onion, garlic, water and vegetable stock in a medium size pot. Bring to a boil, let simmer for about 30 minutes, until the onions and garlic are both soft. Add the oregano near the end of the cooking time. Let cool for a few minutes, then puree the soup in batches in a blender. Place the frozen raspberries in the blender, ladle some of the soup over them, enough to cover, and then puree both together. Strain this to remove the raspberry seeds, then put the strained liquid back with the rest of the soup. At this point you can either serve the soup right away (it may need a little re-warming after adding the cold raspberries), or chill and serve it either warm or cold later. Serves 4, with some leftovers.
*Note--if you have leftovers and keep them for a couple days in the fridge, the flavor becomes super intense.*

New vegetables

Today my landlord gave me some vegetables from his garden. He loves gardening. Today he gave me some beets and swiss chard, as well as some apples, yellow pear-shaped tomatoes, some fresh herbs: parsley, oregano, lemon thyme and regular thyme, and even a bunch of flowers. I put the flowers in this vase that I made in my pottery class. It's the first time that I've used it, and I think it looks pretty good. Anyway, I am very excited that he gave me the chard and beets, because I keep on seeing recipes for them, but I don't think I have ever had chard before, and I've only had beets in borscht, and I've only had borscht once in my life. I have been wanting to try these vegetables, and now I will have a chance to do so without actually having to buy them!

Tonight we had the missionaries over for dinner, and I sauteed the chard stems/ribs and added them to rice. My landlord told me to clean them really well, so I was doing that, and all of a sudden I realized that there were little bugs on the backs of all the leaves that look like ticks, and that kind of freaked me out. I nearly through the whole lot of it away. But I perservered and scrubbed off all the buggy things and dirt and pulled off all the bad spots on the leaves and then cut up the stems and ribs. I didn't do anything with the leafy parts yet, because I guess it needs to be cooked, and I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around cooking something that looks like a green salad. The rice and chard ribs together was pretty good, but kind of weird. They have a strange flavor. I might try them again.

I also made a roasted red pepper and raspberry soup for dinner, and I must say, it turned out quite well. I'll have to write that recipe up later, because it is so awesome, it deserves it own little page.

Vegetarian Burgers

I have been noticing vegetarian patties at the store that you can grill and eat like hamburgers, and I've wanted to try to make some veggie burgers for a while. I mentioned in the previous post a recipe for a pumpkin and white bean burger that I wanted to try because I had fresh pumpkin on hand, I did make that. Also, a while ago I made a spicy black bean burger recipe that was pretty good, but I would do things a little different with it. And yesterday my boss mentioned to me a way to make patties with lentils and cracked wheat, so maybe I'll find a recipe for that, or we'll start making it at work and it will be good.

I tried the recipe with pumpkin and beans.  I read several comments where people said that they added bread crumbs and eggs and they held together better throughout the entire process. So I tried that, but I forgot to add the oats that it calls for. I think the oats instead of the bread crumbs would have been better texturally, and I would definitely keep the egg as well. I also patted bread crumbs on to the formed patties, to try to give it a nice crunchy exterior, and it worked! The exterior browned nicely and was firm and crisp. But overall I was a little disappointed with the finished product. It was very starchy, so much that I couldn't stand to eat it on a bun, and I couldn't even taste the pumpkin. I ate it with an avocado instead of a mayonnaise sauce, and I liked the avocado a lot. Here's what I would do with this recipe if I make it again: 1) Use the recommended amount of oats, not bread crumbs 2) Add an egg to the original recipe 3) Use a very flavorful squash puree, drained so that the patties won't be so juicy, they will be easier to form 4) Coat the formed patties in bread crumbs to help them stay together during cooking and for a nice crunchy outside.

The spicy black bean burgers I tried were pretty tasty, but difficult to make. They didn't hold together very well, so I kept adding more bread crumbs. When I chopped up the onion and green pepper in a food processor, they became very very juicy, so I think that's why it needed more bread crumbs. If I was making it again I would either chop the veggies by hand instead of in the food processor, or I would drain the processed veggies very well to keep the mixture from becoming too soggy and unmanageable.  Also, the author says that if you are grilling them, to put them on a piece of foil, and then put them on the grill. It almost makes sense to use foil, because veggie burgers don't hold together as well as ground beef and they would probably fall apart and slip between the bars of the grill rack when you try to flip them, or even just place them on the grill. However, the burgers stuck to the foil, even though we had sprayed it with non-stick spray, and they didn't seem to actually get cooked all the way through. So we found a rack to put on the grill with small holes, like something you might use for fish, and used that instead of foil, and that got the job done. I think it would also be easy to cook them on the stove with some oil on a cast iron griddle. Overall, these burgers were quite good. They had a nice texture, not like meat, but you can't have everything. Even with all the extra added bread crumbs they weren't too starchy, and they were spicy and very tasty. I had used cayenne pepper instead of hotsauce, and they had quite a kick to them.

The other day we bought these veggie burgers, and they are quite good, but I think they have way too much salt in them. Also, there are chunks of something, probably the bamboo shoots, that are way too fibrous and hard to chew. When I bite into a piece of the bamboo shoot, it reminds me of trying to eat cardboard, or maybe styrofoam. I don't like that. And they use soy protein; I'm still not sure how I feel about soy products, and I generally stay away from them. But I do like that they are uniform in shape and size, that they have chunks of vegetables, they hold together, even on a grill and that they aren't made of mostly beans.

I guess that is my goal for making a veggie burger now: something that holds together without needing a ton of bread crumbs, I figure, if I'm going to put these on a bun, I don't need bread already in the patty. And it needs to have other vegetables in it besides beans, and I probably won't be doing tofu of TVP anytime soon. So if I find something that works and I love, I will put it up here!

Pumpkin Puree

I made my very own pumpkin puree for the first time today. We bought a small pie pumkin a week ago, and I've been trying to figure out what to do with it. I have all sorts of pumpkin recipes on top of the usual pumpkin pie. I am thinking of doing a different kind of custard with it, and I thought about cutting it into cubes for a soup or curry. And then I found a recipe online today for bean and pumpkin burgers that only calls for 1/2 cup, so if I made that I would probably still have plenty left over for some kind of dessert as well.

So here's the story. I decided to just puree the pumpkin instead of trying to do cubes or anything. But it's so hard to cut open squashes in a reasonable amount of time without injuring myself and making a huge mess. I know, because I just struggled with one the other day. So this time, as per a helpful hint (thank you Jenny, thank you Whitney!), I cooked it in the microwave for a few minutes before cutting it. I poked a bunch of holes it it first with a fork, just in case it's one of those things like an egg or a potato that explodes in the microwave if left whole. I nuked it for 4 minutes, which was probably a little long, but it was definitely effective; it was very easy to cut into quarters and remove the stem. The seeds came off of the stringy fibery stuff that they are attached to, but the stringy stuff was slipperier (is that a word?) than usual and it was hard to get it all out. I cooked it the rest of the way in the microwave because I read that it is fast and energy efficient, and I don't have to think or pay attention at all. I put it in a shallow dish with a little less than 1 cup of water, and covered it with plastic wrap. After 12 minutes on high power, it was very soft and falling off the skin. So far so good. I let it cool, and then I tried to puree it in the blender. That was a bad idea. The pumpkin didn't move up and down through the blender to puree all of it, it just sat in the same place. I added some of the cooking water, but that didn't help at all. It just sat there. I'd heard that you can make very smooth puree by pushing the pumpkin pulp through a sieve. So I did that instead. It took forever. Next time I want very smooth puree I will use a food mill. But that isn't even necessary to turn the pulp into a puree. You can pretty much just mash the pulp with a fork, until it is smooth enough to work in any recipe. So after 20 minutes of squishing pumkin through the sieve, I had a decent amount of very nice looking puree, but then it was very juicy, from all the water I'd used in the blender. I drained it in a sieve lined with a paper towel; now it looks quite nice. I think I'll have to freeze it until I find the recipe that I really really want to make.

Here's the bottom line: I'll use the very fine, smooth stuff for some kind of dessert, and the rougher stuff that I didn't put through the sieve because I got tired of it I will use for the burgers. The whole project was too tedious and time consuming, for such a small output. If I decide to do it again, I think I will do several pumpkins at once and freeze the puree. But if the burgers or any other pumpkin projects turn out exceptionally well, I will post them here!

How did I start liking Eggplant?

Here's a weird thing: I never liked eggplant. When I was little we had to eat it and it was terrible. More recently I thought I would try it because I had been discovering all sorts of things that I hated as a child and now I like. It was still terrible. Even more recently I had some grilled, and that was pretty good, but I just figured, I'm never going to be able to do that myself because our grill probably won't be up and running anytime soon. I'd pretty much written off eggplant for good. But hey, we just moved into this great new apartment with a gas stove instead of electric, and I discovered that I can use the broiler pretty much just like the grill. So I "grilled" some eggplant a couple of weeks ago, just brushed with olive oil, and I think that was the only thing Lovemuffin ate that night. It was very good. I've been doing it about twice a week for the last 3 weeks. Last night I let it soak for a few minutes in oil and balsamic vinegar, and it was fabulous. So tonight I am doing that again with oil, vinegar, salt and pepper and some summer squashes along with the eggplant and I bet you could add any other vegetable that takes the same amount of time to cook, like mushrooms, onions, or even fennel bulbs. This would be great with some grilled meat and rolls or potatoes with herbs like rosemary, oregano and basil.

It doesn't take long to make this delightful concoction. Here's what I've been doing: Cut the eggplant into your favorite size and shape of pieces, I like to do pieces of about 1 x 1 x 2 inches, but you could do 1/2 inch slices or long skinny spears, whatever you like. Sprinkle the cut eggplant with salt and let it sit while you prepare your other veggies. Cut your other vegetables into similar sizes and shapes, and place them in a bowl. Rinse and dry the pieces of eggplant and put them in the vegetable bowl. Drizzle with the oil and vinegar, sprinkle with salt and pepper, toss to coat each piece, and let set for about 15 minutes, or even longer. (In the meantime you can prepare other parts of your meal, or write your blog, or anything really.) Then place the veggie pieces on your broiler pan or hot grill and let them cook for about 5 minutes. They should start getting a little brown, not too brown at this point, and be making a sizzling noise. Take them out of the broiler and turn the pieces, rotate any in from the edge that aren't brown at all and place them closer to the heat source. Let them broil for 5 more minutes. Check them again, they should be a bit darker now, and still sizzling away. Turn them and rotate them on the pan once more and put them back in the broiler, this time checking it every 2 minutes to make sure they aren't burning. When everything is a delightful shade of toastiness, and the eggplant looks kind of shriveled, remove from the broiler and serve.