fried "rice" quinoa

Over the past two years, quinoa has quickly become one of my favorite grains! If you haven't tried this super food yet, you are seriously missing out! Don't let the funny name intimidate you! It has a slightly nutty flavor in my opinion but you can use it basically as a substitute for rice.

It's definitely pricier than rice, if you have a Trader Joe's nearby I have found them to have the most competitive prices for quinoa.

Quinoa made like fried rice has become a favorite meal for boyfriend and I, especially during the busy work week. It's gluten free and can be made as a vegetarian main dish or as a side dish.

Quinoa fried "rice" as a side for ginger chicken

Ingredients:

1 cup quinoa
Chicken or vegetable bouillon (use vegetable to make it vegetarian)
1 Tb of olive oil 
1 Tb of minced garlic
1/2 cup chopped celery
1/2 cup frozen or fresh peas
1/2 cup chopped carrots
1-2 large eggs

for sauce:
2 Tb of soy sauce
1 Tb of Teriyaki sauce
1 Tb of sesame oil (can substitute olive oil)

Directions:
Rinse quinoa in a mesh strainer. Cook quinoa in bouillon, refer to package directions for the amount of liquid needed to cook 1 cup of quinoa, typically 2 cups of liquid. Allow quinoa to cool, this step can be completed the day before.

Heat 1 Tb of olive oil in a a large skillet, add the garlic and cook for one minute. Add peas and celery and cook for 2-3 minutes or until they are about half of your desired tenderness. If you are using frozen peas, you might need to cook slightly longer than 3 minutes. Add in carrots, mixing them with the other vegetables.

Add cooked quinoa to the skillet and mix with vegetables for a few minutes allowing the quinoa to heat up. While the quinoa is warming, mix all of the sauce ingredients together in small bowl. When the quinoa is warm, pour the sauce over the top and stir all ingredients together.

Push the quinoa and vegetables to one side of the pan, making a small pocket of empty space. Crack eggs in the small pocket of empty space and scramble them a few minutes until cooked fully. Note this can be done in a separate pan if you don't have enough room. When the eggs are fully cooked, mix them in with the quinoa and vegetables thoroughly. Serve hot.

Servings: 2 main dish or 4-5 as a side dish

Homemade mac & cheese

Cheese. Pasta. Yum.

My friend Abby was having a dinner party for her birthday, she is a serious gourmet. She has made her own ricotta cheese and despite my reservations about eating a homemade dairy product, it was pretty good (I'm told it's actually pretty easy to make ricotta). So what do I take to the party of a fellow experimental chef? For some reason, in the middle of DC summer heat, mac and cheese was the first idea I had. I had never made mac and cheese from scratch, it was a 97 degrees outside with 90% humidity but for whatever reason a casserole dish full of comfort food seemed entirely logical. As I write this, it's starting to sound delicious all over again.

So, how does one make mac and cheese with out a box from Kraft? Good question! Actually, I was surprised how easy it was! The recipe below is something I concocted after spending 30 minutes or so browsing different mac and cheese recipes. It's a little bit Martha, a little bit allrecipes.com and a little bit Lacey.

I read one recipe that called for 'pasteurized cheese product food' - not cheese but cheese product food. Ew. You might as well just buy a box if you aren't going to use actual cheese. There is nothing from that recipe in my version.

Homemade Mac & Cheese
8-10 oz whole grain macaroni - cooked according to package directions and drained
4 oz shredded extra sharp white cheedar
4 oz shredded Gruyere
1 oz grated Romano cheese
1/4 butter
2 cups 1% milk
3 Tb flour

*Note measurements are approximate, I did not measure when I made this but it seems pretty hard to mess it up, so you can play by ear a little bit. Also if you don't want to shred the cheese, or don't own a cheese grater (but really why wouldn't you?), you can cut it up into small pieces.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Melt butter in small sauce pan, when it's completely melted mixed in flour. Add milk and stirring frequently, allow to simmer until it begins to thicken. Add cheese one handful at a time, reserving about 1/2 cup total of the cheeses. Mix pasta into cheese mixture and pour into a casserole dish. Top with remaining cheeses and sprinkle with bread crumbs. Bake for 30 minutes.

Aside from possibly needing some paprika and garlic (you know me and my garlic), this was tasty and in spite of inhospitable summer weather, a huge hit at the dinner party, considering all the tasty items Abby served up, I consider that a major accomplishment.

Homemade hummus

Hummus is quite possibly the world's most perfect food. Yes, I've probably said that about something else if you look through all my past posts. I recently decided, somewhat randomly, that I was going to make homemade hummus. I knew some people who had done it and felt assured it was pretty easy. And that brings me to:
Challenge #1: Finding tahini. I live in a large metro area, there is all kinds of weird stuff that I never saw at a grocery store anywhere in Kansas sitting on the shelves. Could I find tahini? No. I looked in the international aisle, condiment aisle, next to the ready-made hummus to no avail. I called my friend in Kansas to find out where she buys hers and it was at her normal grocery store. No Middle Eastern market, no specialty health food store. I finally found it. They had one kind, in a little spot in the store. I talked to four different store employees until one of them even knew what tahini was!

Challenge #2: The missing blender
Ideally, you should make hummus in a food processor but I don't have one and I'm pretty sure if I did, I'd use it four times a year. Maybe. Many hummus recipes out there say you can also use a blender and I had one of those, or at least I used to. I have absolutely no idea where my blender is. I must have left it at the old apartment somehow, but no clue how. Congratulations, new tenant! You just got a really nice blender.However, I had already bought all the fixin's for hummus. I was on a mission. Enter the IKEA chopper. I recently had bough a vegetable chopper from IKEA but had yet to break it out. It was kind of an impulse buy. I put my hummus in the bottom of a square, flat dish (corning ware baking dish) and set to chopping. I thought it would more or less work to mush up the chickpeas and it more or less did, though the hummus wasn't as smooth as it normally would be.


Challenge #3: Too much tahini
I read a multitude of hummus recipes before making it and they were all about the same, varying a little in the details, according to tastes. I would suggest tinkering with it, to see what you like but I put a basic recipe below for starters. However, I challenge anyone who has ever claimed to measure tahini. It is impossible. It's very cement like at the bottom and all the oil is at the top (kind of like natural peanut butter), so you have to stir it up, which basically resulted in some tahini cement stuck to the bottom of my spoon. I have now attempted the hummus twice, and still no idea how anyone would ever mention this.

That being said, most of the recipes I read called for 2 Tb of tahini and that is a lot. Wow. The first batch of hummus I made was way too strong on the tahini. I would advise you to start with about 3/4 Tb and taste the results to see if you want more. With the proper equipment and tinkering, fresh hummus would be way better than grocery store hummus.


Sorry for the poor quality photo! Hope you still get the idea.

hummus

1 can of chickpeas (garbanzo beans)
2-4 Tb lemon juice
2 cloves garlic (minced)
minced onion (I skip this because I hate onion)
1 Tb tahini
1 Tb olive oil
salt and pepper to taste (I'd use sea salt)

Flavorings to think about....
-red pepper
-artichoke
-spinach

Do you have other flavoring ideas? I'd love to hear your tips!

Roasted lemon broccoli

Simple and delicious sides are always hard to come by. I don't want to use more than one pan to make a side dish for only me, yet, I don't want my meals to center on big slabs of meat either. Sometimes I feel that the "American diet" is akin to "big slabs of meat," usually, I feel this way when I'm visiting the Midwest.

This broccoli side dish is delicious and beyond simple. The flavors of the lemon, salt and broccoli are fantastic.

Roasted Lemon Broccoli

1 head of broccoli
1 Tb of olive oil
1 lemon wedge
coarse sea salt

Preheat oven to 425. Toss broccoli in olive oil and place roasting pan. Spritz wit lemon juice and sprinkle with salt and bake for 8-9 minutes.

This simple method to prepare fresh broccoli has quickly become my go to summer side. It's best when it's fresh from the oven and the broccoli is still crisp but passable as a left over side to supplement lunch the next day.

Get your hands off my couscous!

Sorry for the long silence! My computer got a virus and it took nearly two weeks to sort it out. However, I'm pretty pleased to say I fixed it myself! Who needs tech-support?

Last weekend while preparing for my pilgrimage to my local Safeway (or Un-safeway as it's know in DC) I was thinking about what new thing I could make and I decided on...drum roll please...Couscous! I enjoy couscous when other people make it but it's just one of those non-American foods that never occur to me to make. I'm not even sure what made me think of it then!

I trekked off to Safeway to discover that they don't sell plain couscous! Apparently, they don't think Americans have the capacity to make this because they only sell pre-flavored couscous in boxes with little spice packets. sigh. I bought two boxes.

At home, while I boiled some water and my spice packet to make my couscous my mom called. The conversation went something like:

Me: Hi mom.
Mom: Hi. What are you doing?
Me: Making couscous.
Mom: What on Earth is that?!?
Me: Uh...it's couscous...something kind of in between rice and pasta.
Mom: Oh....(while thinking, whose kid is this?)

Making couscous is actually really easy. Easier than pasta! Just boil some water (or broth), olive oil and salt, remove it from the heat, stir in couscous, cover it up and wait about 5 minutes (check the package directions for the liquid to couscous ratio and exact wait time).

To add to my Parmesan flavored couscous, I sauteed some red pepper, garlic and broccoli to mix with my couscous. It was tasty. However, I wasn't satisfied. Am I ever? I wanted plain couscous that I was responsible for spicing and darn it, I was gonna find it. So the next day I went to another grocery store and eureka!

You can also put additional spices in the water while it's boiling and the couscous will suck it up with the water. Couscous has quickly joined pasta as my go to mid-night dinner option.

Couscous is tasty both hot or cold. You can:
-mix in chicken, or pork to make it a meal
-add it to lettuce salads
-add raw veggies and cheese (I'd recommend feta) to make couscous salads
-add cooked veggies and eat it hot (as I described above)

The possibilities are endlessly delicious!

Pesto and...Presto!

Pesto is the best sauce-invention ever. You can make simple, gourmet (seeming) meals in a flash - provided you buy the pesto. I lived on pesto during grad school. All of my friends in grad school came over and had the "pesto pasta with veggies dish." Which, I still eat, though not as often, and is the subject of this SGG post.

Unfortunately, I've never successfully made my own pesto. I only tired once, I don't have a chopper/food processor and I'm also not an Italian grandmother, so I don't need one. One of my SGG goals for the year included potentially trying this again but thus far my herb garden has ceased to provide any basil. I suppose that means I'm off the hook.

In grad school, I lived in the Netherlands and there was an abundance of tasty pesto available, however, I now find my choices to be limited - or nonexistent. I'm sure there are places with delicious pesto in DC, it's probably just $15 a jar. At the grocery store, there is one kind, that's right one. I actually asked a stock person once where I could find the pesto and he did not know what it was. Bad sign. So making your own might not be a bad idea.

In any case, when I do have good pesto available or settle for the so-so stuff, I make my grad school staple. It's simple, can use just about anything in the fridge and can be vegetarian or not.


Pesto pasta with Veggies

1-2 servings of hot pasta, cooked according to package directions (any kind of pasta you like, rotini works well)
2 cups chopped mixed veggies (can use almost anything you like, suggestions: summer squash, tomatoes, corn, broccoli, peppers)
2-3 TB of pesto
garlic to taste
salt and pepper to taste
bacon or chicken, 1 inch pieces (optional)
cheese (optional, mozzarella suggested)

Meat directions:
While cooking the pasta, in a small skillet cook bacon cubes or chicken pieces with garlic, salt and pepper for 5-6 minutes on medium heat until almost cooked. If using chicken, you might need a little bit of oil, the bacon will produce enough grease. Add veggies and cook 3-4 more minutes until veggies are soft and meat is thoroughly cooked. Toss with hot pasta and pesto sauce. Add veggie/meat mixture, top with cheese and serve.

Vegetarian directions:
While cooking the pasta, in a small skillet saute garlic in olive oil for 30 seconds and add veggies. Season with salt and pepper. Add veggies, top with cheese and serve.

Taste: B+
Cost: A-
Waste: A+

Guacamole weekend

I ate enough guacamole this weekend to make up for not eating it my entire life. wow. I bought 5 avocados last week and 4.5 went into guacamole. Why would I buy 5 avocados you may ask? Well, I like avocado (a lot) and they were on sale for a $1. Ok, they're on sale for a $1 like every two weeks but these were actually good, not ones that had been sitting around for a week and were over-ripe.

Moving on, I think I tried every possible incantation of Jess' guacamole recipe. When I was at the store buying my ingredients, I was talking on the phone...yes, I was THAT person...which was a bad idea, because I forgot something - the lime.

Jess and I had a whole text conversation about the lime juice and if it was actually important, poor Jess has become my guac consultant. I asked her if I could just use a little OJ instead, you know still citrus and will prevent the guac from oxidizing (ie turn brown). Jess was anti-adding OJ, too much sugar. Did I do it anyway? Yea...and I'll be honest, I don't think it mattered much. The little splash of OJ I used did not really add that much sugar and I'm sure it was useful in preventing oxidation.

Jess's recipe is:

I omitted onions in all versions. ewww!

Guac round #1 (2 avocados, Friday night)
Jess' recipe with OJ for lime juice

Round #1 was pretty tasty, I had some friends over Friday night and they hardly touched the guac. Ok it was pretty soon after dinner, but basically I ended up eating it all myself and it was a huge bowl.

Guac round #2 (1 avocado, Saturday night)
OJ for lime juice and no Jalapeno

This was just for me, and I was feeling lazy...do I really need to cut up Jalapeno? I decided no. This one was the worst, I guess it needs a little zest, even if I don't particularly like spicy food.

Guac round #3 (.5 avocado, Sunday afternoon)
Jess' recipe

Around this time I was tired of guac, especially since the two times I had made it were less than fabulous but I had all those avocados in the fridge! So in the morning I made it to the store and bought a lime and it really made a difference. This was amazing and I remembered why I could not stop eating it at Jess' house! The lime juice gave it a fresh quality that it was just missing without it.

Guac round #4 (1 avocado, Sunday night)
Jess' recipe

Yes it was so good I made more later the same day, that 1/2 an avocado was just not enough! I think the photos is this version - doesn't it look deliciously chunky? Oh looking at it make me want guac again!?!

Just goes to show you, don't mess with perfection and sometimes it's worth it to go all the way back to the store to get that one item you forgot.

Fresh Guacamole - I'm converted!

I'm currently in KC, visiting my friend Jess - culinary student extraordinaire! We were at the store negotiating dinner options and I saw avocados on sale. While I was feeling up the avocados trying to find a ripe one, Jess was asking me what the beep I'm planning to with it. I said, just eat it. I LOVE avocado. Jess felt this was not a good plan and insisted on making guacamole, which I told her I don't like.

Apparently I was wrong. Jess makes some tasty guacamole. I'm not sure I'd ever had fresh made before because when I hear guacamole I think the goopy stuff you get at restaurants. Ew. But this was almost chunky. I ate almost all of it. Jess got like 2 chips. The following day we made it again, this time using two avocados so Jess could have at least a little bit. Oh I'm hungry just thinking about it.

Here is a link to Jess' blog with her avocado recipe. I'm working on getting a guest post from her in the future.

PS: I got in trouble for this photo because it wasn't "presentation ready." Forgive me.

Cook it slow, eat it fast!

I'm really excited, I just got a crock pot! I had a crock pot in college and used it all of about 4 times but it got broken when I moved to DC. Ever since I've been seeing all these fabulous looking crock pot recipes and thinking how nice it would be to have one waiting for me after work. So, after Christmas I headed over to Bed Bath & Beyond and bought one. Now, I have to use it.

This week I made scalloped potatoes from the recipe book that came with it - only three more times and I'll beat my old record! I changed the recipe a bit and it really did not work out so I'm going to put up the original and mine - make at your own risk.


Original Recipe

1/2 cup margarine/butter
1/2 cup onion, chopped
1 16oz package of frozen hash browns
1 can of cream of mushroom soup
1 1/2 cup of milk
1 cup cheddar cheese
1 small green pepper chopped
1 cup cheese cracker crumbs

Lightly grease crock pot. Stir together the margarine, onions, hash browns, soup, milk, cheese, green pepper and 1/2 cup of crack crumbs. Top with remaining cracker crumbs. Cover and cook on high 3-4 hours.

Lacey Version

1/2 cup margarine/butter
3-4 sliced potatoes
1 can of cheddar cheese soup
1 1/2 cup of milk
1 cup cheddar cheese
1 small green pepper chopped
1 cup bread crumbs

So when reading this, I thought fabulous idea - slow cooked scallop potatoes but why use frozen hash browns when I could use fresh potatoes? I don't like mushrooms, so I though hey extra cheese and I omitted the onions because I'm not a fan. I also subbed bread crumbs for cracker crumbs. I cooked it on low for about 8 hours because I wanted to make it while I was at work. What I got was a mediocre, slightly over cooked, somewhat greasy, cheesy mess. Well, it did not taste that bad really but I'm not going to make it again.

I would say using the cheddar cheese soup instead of a cream base is where I went wrong. Using something like cream of potato would probably have worked out alright. I'm also wondering if I put it on the warm setting for the entire day instead of the low if it would be cooked enough but not burnt around the edges.

It anyone tries to make the original version, let me know how it turns out! Hopefully, the next crock pot adventure will be more successful.

Simple scalloped potatoes - from Japan?

This recipe is from a Japanese cookbook. No...I don't speak Japanese. My neighbor when I lived in Holland, Sachi, was Japanese. She was also interested in experimental cooking used to make recipes from a "modern" Japanese cookbook, which were mostly sort of a Japanese take on western food. There was also a recipe for kind of an egg plant-tempura-lasagna, which was fabulous and I've never made but might try it sometime...

So this recipe is very approximate, given my aforementioned ignorance of Japanese.

2-3 large potatoes
about 1 cup cream (or half & half)
cheese
2-3 Tb butter
bread crumbs
salt & pepper

Slice the potatoes, making sure to slice them all into a similar size. Place in a pot and cover with water. Cook on high heat for 10-15 until almost cooked (cooking them partially on the stove cuts down the oven cooking time significantly). Place the semi-cooked potatoes in a baking pan and cover about half-way with cream. You can use half & half to make it a little healthier (and cheaper) but you will need to bake it a little longer so that it thickens. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Sprinkle about 1 cup of cheese over the top (you can use just about anything, in Holland we used Gouda, today I used Colby Jack) and put a tablespoon of butter in 2 or 3 different places, top with bread crumbs and bake.


So, on our oven in Holland you could not adjust the temp (challenge), in short you want to bake it until the cream reduces and thickens. Today (my first time making this in the US) I baked it at 350 for 20 min and another 20 min at 250. I'd say bake it longer at a lower temp in general.

I was a little heavy handed with the bread crumbs this time, but still tasty! This is also excellent the next day, better I think actually.

What does fall mean? Butternut squash!

I don't like to be cold, so I'm not a fall fan, but I absolutely LOVE butternut squash. It's so sweet and delicious. I also like that it's something that is really only available when it's in season, it gives me something to look forward to, but a lot of butternut recipes are for soup. Eh, not such a fan here, I'm always looking for other uses and I love that too - there are possibilities out there, I just gotta look for them!

So I'm sharing one of my favorite butternut recipes. I like it for several reasons (not a soup!), it's versatile - can be an entree or a side and you can make as much or as little as you want, perfect for a single girl.

Ingredients:

Butternut squash, cut into 1" cubes
Olive oil
Thyme
bread crumbs (seasoned or plain)
Feta cheese (can use blue cheese or mozzarella, gorgonzola would probably work too, I like feta)
salt and pepper

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Place butternut cubes in a non-stick baking dish Coat butternut cubes lightly in olive oil (not too much, will make it greasy), sprinkle thyme on the cubes when mixing the oil on them. Sprinkle cheese on top (for 3-4 cups of butternut cubes, I use about 1/3 cup of cheese, this will make it pretty cheesy)or you can try to mix it in a little so it's in the middle and top. Next sprinkle a little salt and pepper (to taste) and about 2 tablespoons of bread crumbs on top. Bake approximately 30-40 minutes or until squash is soft.

To cut cost, I often use a little bit of feta and supplement with some mozzarella.

See the photo of the finished product above...you'll notice part of it is already gone, yea sorry about that I was really hungry and kind of forgot to take a photo first. This will likely be a reoccurring theme.

One thing I don't like about butternut - otherwise it would be a perfect love affair - it's a pain in the rear to cut up. I advise a sharp knife and to be careful. I'm not sure if this is because I'm not buying the right ripeness, sometimes it seems easier than others but if you have any tips, I'd be glad to hear them.

Do you have any butternut recipes you'd like to share? I want to hear 'em! If yours sounds yummy, I will try to make it and post it on the blog.

Cost: A
Waste: A+
Taste: A