Curried Lentils with Sweet Potatoes & Spinach

Very modifiable. Use different spices, different greens, make it more soupy...

This made a giant pot. If you want a smaller pot, use half the package of lentils and decrease quantities slightly.

2 onions, chopped
4 garlic cloves, minced
small knob ginger, minced
1 jalapeno pepper, minced
2 tsp each garam masala & curry powder
1 tsp each cumin & coriander
2 Tbl. tomato paste
1 can diced tomatoes
2 large sweet potatoes, cut into small cubes
1 box vegetable or chicken stock
1 bag dried lentils, washed (brown or green)
few handfuls baby spinach leaves
1/2 can coconut milk
small bunch cilantro, chopped
splash lemon/lime juice
hot sauce


- Saute onions until translucent.
- Add garlic, ginger, jalapeno and spices, cook 1 minute. Add tomato paste & cook another minute.
- Add tomatoes, sweet potatoes, stock & lentils. You will likely have to add more water to cover.
- Cover & cook on low about 40 minutes or until lentils are tender. Add water if necessary.
- Stir in spinach until wilted.
- Add coconut milk, cilantro, lime juice & hot sauce. Taste for salt - mine didn't need much.

Serve over brown rice, or as-is, or top with a poached/over-easy egg.

Cheater Soft Pretzel Bites

On the theory that "dough is dough," I thought I would try making soft pretzel bites out of frozen pizza dough that I had hanging around. I've made pretzel bites once before from scratch, and they were delicious. I'm not crafty enough to be good at shaping dough, so the bites are much easier.

I also have amassed a collection of gourmet salts, so I figured this would be a good opportunity to use those. Hence:

Pink sea salt, Hawaiian black lava salt, and smoked applewood salt.

The verdict:

Considering that these cost about $1 to make (I used half a package of frozen pizza dough that cost $1.99), and for minimal effort I can have fresh, hot soft pretzels...I approve. The dough probably wasn't as great-tasting as scratch-made, but...whatever. I also wish I could get that deep dark brown that "real pretzels" have, but I think you have to boil them in lye to get that. Eeek!! Now--could I taste the difference between the salts? Not particularly. But I think the black salt won at least on texture...nicely crunchy.


Cheater Soft Pretzel Bites

Frozen pizza dough, thawed (1/2 of the package I bought made around 50 bites)
3/4 cup baking soda
1 egg
Coarse salt

- Shape the thawed dough into a thin rope. Cut into 1-inch pieces.
- Boil a large pot of water & add baking soda.
- Drop in the dough pieces (in batches); boil for about 30 seconds. With a slotted spoon, remove to parchment-lined sheet pans.
- Preheat oven to 425. Beat egg with 1 Tbl water.
- Brush bites with egg wash & sprinkle with salt.
- Bake for 12-15 minutes, until deep golden brown.

Serve with honey mustard for dipping. Next time I might try a cheese sauce too.

Beef Stew à la Khan

So far this winter, the weather forecasters in the DC metro region have been...over-forecasting. We've had at least two snowstorms predicted that barely amounted to anything. And now we're actually getting winter storms named, which is kind of fun. We've already had "Gandolph" and today, we had the arrival of "Khan!" KHAAAAANNN!

Khan gave us maybe an inch of snow, nothing major. But with the whole day off today I thought I'd make a grocery run before the madness hit, as I had a beef stew craving. So I named this...

Beef Stew à la Khan

- Season 1 package of cubed beef stew meat with salt & pepper, & toss in flour to coat.

- Sear beef in a dutch oven in bacon fat (or oil) until browned; remove to a bowl.

- Add 1 package button mushrooms, halved, to pan (add more oil if necessary). Cook over med-high heat til brown; remove to a separate bowl.

- Chop 1-2 onions roughly & add to pan  (with more oil if necessary). Cook until softened & browned. Add 2 chopped garlic cloves & stir briefly.

- Deglaze pan with 1/2 bottle beer (I used Shock Top IPA); scrape up browned bits with spoon. 

- Add 2 Tbl. tomato paste & cook about a minute.

- Add beef back to pan. Pour in about 1/2 box beef stock/broth. I had a few leftover roasted garlic cloves so I mashed them & added them to pan. Also added 2 bay leaves & some smoked paprika.

- Cover and simmer on low heat about 1 hr.

- Meanwhile, peel 3 carrots, cut in half and then into 1-inch pieces.

- I also remembered I had an acorn squash leftover from one of our last CSA weeks, like...3 months ago!! Still seemed fine, so I peeled & chopped that.

- Add carrots, squash & reserved mushrooms to pot & more beef broth to cover. Simmer for 1 more hour.

- If you want to thicken the stew, stir some beef broth into a tsp or two of flour & add this to the pot.

- Taste & add seasonings. I added splashes of red wine vinegar, Worcestershire sauce & hot sauce.

Serve over mashed potatoes (I made mine with cream cheese & scallions) and enjoy...preferably while watching Star Trek II!

Bacon Fried Rice with Brussels Sprouts

This was kind of stupid good.

I've been meaning to make a bolognese sauce for a few days, but keep getting derailed by other things. We had a bunch of leftover rice from Chinese delivery, and I also had some brussels sprouts and bacon to use up, so...voila.

I cut the bacon into ~1 inch pieces, cooked it in a large pan and drained out most of the fat. In the remainder I quickly sauteed 1 chopped onion, a few brussels sprouts (sliced/shredded) and a couple chopped garlic cloves. Then added in the rice, added a few splashes of soy sauce & sesame oil, black pepper & hot sauce. Then scrambled 2 eggs into the middle and mixed the bacon pieces back in.

I'd make fried rice more often - it's so easy and is a great way to use up leftovers - but I can never seem to cook rice to quite the right texture. Leftover Chinese takeout rice is the best!

Gourmet Star Wars Shortbread Cookies

OK, got pretty bad about posting on the blog. Sadly the CSA veggies kind of became more of a burden this year, as I was just too frigging busy to cook a lot of the time. However as I type this, I am enjoying some pasta with kale-arugula pesto, made and frozen from one of our last deliveries.

So the CSA's over; now it's just time for fun stuff. Christmas cookies. I got Star Wars cookie cutters a couple of years ago and at that time, made "regular" sugar cookies and spent quite a lot of time decorating them. They came out pretty cool (see below) but it was a lot of work!

This year I thought I would forgo the icing and made the dough itself in interesting flavors. I also went for shortbread, since...super simple and delicious! I settled on three flavors to match up with 3 characters:

- Dark Chocolate - Habanero Darth Vaders
- Cranberry - Ginger Stormtroopers
- Matcha Green Tea Yodas

There is also a Boba Fett cookie cutter...I probably could have come up with a fourth flavor, but I didn't think I wanted to make THAT many cookies.

For the basic shortbread dough, I used this for each batch:
- 2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
- 1/2 cup confectioner's sugar
- 1/4 tsp kosher salt
- 2 cups flour

For the Darth Vaders, I got a bar of Ghiradelli 70% cocoa, melted half of it in the microwave and added it to the creamed butter & sugar before adding the flour. I think I added some vanilla too. I probably could have added even more chocolate or maybe some cocoa...the dough didn't taste quite as dark-chocolately as I'd hoped. Before baking, I sprinkled the cookies with habanero sugar (more on that here). The baked cookies didn't taste particularly spicy at all, just a little bit of warmth that kicked in after a couple bites. I'd been cautious because the creme brulee I'd made with the habanero sugar (cut about 50% with regular sugar) was fairly spicy. So, I think if you'd like really spicy cookies you could add some cayenne/chipotle powder to the dough as well. Since I had the other half of the chocolate bar, I decided to melt that, dipped the "helmets" in it, and sprinkled on more habanero sugar. This did add a little more of the dark chocolate & spicy flavors, but they are still fairly tame (at least to my taste).

For the Stormtroopers, I chopped a good handful each of dried cranberries and crystallized ginger, and also added the zest of a lemon to the dough. These are really tasty, probably my favorite flavor of the bunch. Perhaps you can pretend that the cranberries are wounds from the stormtroopers getting shot. Errr...or not. I guess they never did much besides fall over and emit a bit of smoke from the laser hits.

For the Yodas, I added two tablespoons of Matcha (green tea powder) to the flour before adding that to the butter/sugar mixture. Matcha is a pretty expensive ($18 at Whole Foods for a Republic of Tea canister) finely ground high-quality green tea. It's a fairly intense flavor and supposedly has more antioxidants/health benefits than regular green tea. Y'know, to counter the .66 tablespoon of butter in each cookie. So...lovely color to these, and pretty intense green tea flavor. They are definitely a not-too-sweet (I even sprinkled them with some "sanding sugar" before baking) acquired taste of a cookie, but successful I think! Oh, I also added the zest of one lime to the dough for these, but could barely taste it. Could probably do a couple of limes if you want that flavor to be more pronounced.

The basic shortbread recipe I used said to bake these at 325 for 15-20 minutes. I did that with the first batch and they were not done (I also used "air bake" cookie sheets which take longer, I think). I upped the temp to about 335 and then even 350, but they still took at least 20 minutes to get barely brown.

Oh, and pro tip - if you make the dough the day before like I did, remember that shortbread dough turns back into pretty much solid butter when you chill it. Leave plenty of time for it to sit out at room temp before you roll it, and/or be prepared to use your muscles!

These were fun, tasty and different - and definitely MUCH less work than meticulously painting icing on like I did before:

Happy holidays, and may the force be with you!

Roasted Veggie Extravaganza with Black Rice & Spinach

One of the best things I've eaten this year was a meal at Life Alive, a vegetarian restaurant in Lowell, MA (and they have some other locations in MA). We ate there a few months ago on tour. Reading the menu, I was prepared for a healthy but "crunchy hippie" bowl of vegetables. Well, it was...but it was SO good! I'd gotten their signature "Goddess Bowl" which was beets, broccoli, carrots, kale & tofu over brown rice, with a creamy ginger-miso sauce. I also added avocado and a hard-boiled egg, which upped the deliciousness. What I really liked about it was that all the veggies were cut very small, so you didn't feel like you were chewing huge amounts of plant matter.

The last couple weeks of the CSA have brought a lot of lovely fall root vegetables. I thought I would use the Life Alive dish as inspiration and roast a bunch of these, over black rice for some nice color contrast. The result was a tasty rainbow:

Now...lest you think I am delving into a truly healthy vegetarian lifestyle with this dish...nope. I will still happily devour a greasy patty melt & fries at my local diner, or down a whole box of Kraft Mac & Cheese post-gig (made with half a stick of butter and half & half, no less). But sometimes you need to cleanse. And sometimes you just have A LOT OF FREAKING VEGETABLES you have to use up.

So...here are the players:

Sweet potato, golden beets (I'd actually been hoping for red for the nice color contrast, but golden beets are delicious and don't stain everything they touch), orange cauliflower (fun!), turnips and radishes (which I'm not a fan of raw, but I like them roasted).

Pretty golden beets!

This involved more cutting/prep work than I'm usually game for, but...it was a lazy day off. So I cubed everything very small:

Everything got tossed with olive oil, salt & pepper. And I added Penzey's Turkish Blend to the sweet potatoes & cauliflower. I think some Black & Red ended up somewhere too.

I roasted these on separate baking sheets and was able to do everything in "one batch" between the oven and toaster oven. Temp at 400 and I turned it down a bit after the first 15 minutes. The cauliflower & radishes were done in 15 minutes or less; the sweet potatoes & turnips in about 20-25 and the beets took the longest at about 30. I also turned the broiler on for a couple of minutes to get the beets crispier. Let these all cool for a bit as I was thinking the finished dish would be nice at room temp.

The roasted veggies (beets cooked way down!):

Meanwhile I cooked some black rice (also called Forbidden Rice). This has a nice chewy texture and nutty taste, and it apparently has lots of antioxidants & good stuff in it. I also chopped up some fresh spinach leaves and gave them a squeeze of fresh lemon juice.

To serve, I put the rice in a bowl and mixed the raw spinach into it, which wilted it a bit. Then I put a couple spoonfuls of each veggie on top, and garnished with some goat cheese and Trader Joe's Goddess dressing thinned with a little lemon juice.

Really, really tasty. Would have been even better with some avocado and/or nuts/seeds, but made a nice healthy dinner with plenty of leftovers.

So there's a huge "FrankenStorm" on the way to our area. When I was at Safeway today I thought the one thing I might need in case I have to be holed up in the house for awhile was...Doritos. So y'know, good thing I'm getting the veggies in too.

Fall Vegetable Curry, Apple Streusel Cake

This curry used up one of the giant sweet potatoes we got yesterday, plus a bunch of kale and the rest of the cubed butternut squash I had in the freezer:

Started by sauteeing onion, garlic and ginger. Added in the squash & sweet potatoes. I have no idea what quantity of spices went in, but I believe I used cumin, coriander, cardamom, two kinds of curry powder, Penzey's tandoori spice, and black pepper. Perhaps overkill...but I thought it could have been even spicier!

Then I added chicken broth to barely cover (you could use vegetable broth or water to keep this vegan), plus about a tablespoon of tomato paste. Cover and cook until vegetables are tender. Then I stemmed & chopped a bunch of kale and added that. After it cooked down a bit I added a can of chickpeas, and a can of coconut milk. I really need to use that more often...it's so good! To finish, plenty of hot sauce and a squeeze of lemon. Fresh cilantro would be nice in this but I didn't have any. Served over brown basmati rice.

For dessert: apple streusel cake! After perusing tons of apple cake recipes and almost making this one from the Washington Post, I decided to go with this one from Joy of Baking - looked pretty simple. I added in a chopped apple to the cake batter, but otherwise followed the recipe. The cake layer didn't rise very much and it was a small amount of batter. Also I thought the streusel needed more butter. But...not bad!

Had this with some Häagen-Dazs Creme Brulee ice cream (also not too shabby, but Ben & Jerry's wins on that flavor).