Recipe: Roasted Garlic Cauliflower Puree

First of all, let me state for the record that I have never been a fan of cauliflower. It's like weird, mutant, albino broccoli. So, when various people would tell me that they made pureed cauliflower and it was "like mashed potatoes!" and it was "soooo good!", I was, shall we say, skeptical. I guess I finally was told it was good by enough people that I decided to give it a shot, but I was still not expecting much.

As it turns out, I was wrong. This is soooo good and it ends up being quite a lot like mashed potatoes!

Ingredients:

• 1 bulb garlic
• 1-2 tsp olive oil
• 1 head cauliflower
• 1/2 cup chicken broth
• salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

1. Cut the end off the garlic bulb to expose some of the cloves (not the root end...the other one) and remove as much of the outer paper as possible while keeping the cloves together. Drizzle the cut ends with olive oil and wrap in aluminum foil. Bake in a 425 degree oven (I like to use the toaster oven for this) for approximately 1 hour or until garlic cloves are soft. Take out of oven and allow to cool at room temperature (it just needs to be cool enough to handle without burning your fingers).
2. Cut the cauliflower into even-sized florets. Boil, covered, in the 1/2 cup broth for about 10 minutes or until cauliflower is easily pricked with a fork. Careful...not too mushy! Also, 1/2 cup broth won't look like a lot, but don't add more! You puree the cauliflower with the liquid later, so adding more will make the puree come out too thin.
3. Remove cauliflower from heat. Squeeze roasted garlic cloves out of their skins and add it all to the cauliflower.
4. Use an immersion blender to puree the garlic, cauliflower, and broth. Add salt and pepper to taste.

I enjoyed this so much, I'm making it again tonight. I'm serving it with bison burgers....yum!

Butternut Squash and Apple Soup

This is an adaptation of a recipe that Shuaib recommended we cook at the first Team Grondul Thanksgiving. If you follow the link you'll see that the original called for butter and heavy cream...fine for a Thanksgiving treat, but not so great for everyday. I swapped the butter for olive oil and the cream for lite coconut milk to health it up...now it's a healthy fall treat! Yay!

Ingredients

• 4.5 Tsp. olive oil
• 1/2 large onion, chopped
• About 2 lb. butternut squash peeled, seeded and cut into 1-inch cubes
• 3 cups low-sodium chicken stock (you could certainly use vegetable stock instead to make it vegetarian)
• 2 Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored and chopped
• Pinch of nutmeg
• 1 cups lite coconut milk
• Salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste

In a large soup pot over medium heat, heat the oil. Add the onion and sauté, stirring occasionally, until tender and translucent, 4 to 6 minutes. Add the squash and stock, bring to a boil and reduce the heat to medium-low. Simmer, stirring occasionally, until the squash is tender when pierced with a fork, about 20 minutes. Add the apples and nutmeg and simmer, stirring occasionally, until the apples are tender, about 15 minutes. Using a food processor or a blender, puree the soup in batches until smooth. Return the soup to the pot, stir in the coconut milk, and season with salt and pepper. Warm gently as needed.

No-Beef Stew

I recently had a craving for beef stew but Michael doesn't eat beef. Hmm...conunrum. Then I was shopping at Whole Foods and what to my wondering eyes should appear, but bison stew meat...on sale! So, I searched Epicurious.com for a good beef stew recipe that sounded like what my mom used to make when I was little. I found this recipe for Irish Beef Stew. Based on Michael's no-beef preferences and some of the reviewers' comments left at the Epicurious site, I came up with this (awesome, if I do say so myself) recipe.

Ingredients

• 2 Tblsp olive oil
• 3 Tblsp flour plus salt and pepper to taste
• 1.5 - 2 lbs. bison stew meat cut into 1-inch pieces
• 6 large garlic cloves minced
• 5 tsp vegetable Better than Bouillon
• 5 cups water
• 2 Tblsp tomato paste
• 1 Tblsp sugar
• 1 Tblsp dried thyme
• 1 Tblsp Worcestershire sauce
• 2 bay leaves

• 2 Tblsp olive oil
• 1.5 lbs red potatoes cut into 1/2 inch pieces
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 2 cups chopped baby carrots
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 Tblsp cornstarch

Directions

Heat oil in heavy large pot over medium-high heat. Meanwhile, dredge the bison meat in the flour/salt/pepper mixture. Sauté meat until brown on all sides, about 5 minutes. Add garlic and sauté 1 minute. Add Better than Bouillon, water, tomato paste, sugar, thyme, Worcestershire sauce and bay leaves. Stir to combine. Bring mixture to boil. Reduce heat to medium-low, then cover and simmer 1 hour, stirring occasionally.

Meanwhile, heat oil in another large pot over medium heat. Add potatoes, onion and carrots and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Sauté vegetables until golden, about 20 minutes. Add vegetables to bison stew. Simmer uncovered until vegetables and bison are very tender, about 40 minutes. Discard bay leaves. Tilt pan and spoon off fat. Whisk cornstarch in cold water and then stir into stew to thicken.

Recipe: Nut-Butter Banna-Dog

Here's another of my bachelor-style* culinary inventions: the nut-butter banana-dog.**

Ingredients

• 1 hot-dog bun. I like whole-wheat ones, but use whatever floats your boat.
• 1 to 2 tablespoons nut butter. I like almond and cashew, but peanut, is a classic and is also acceptable.
• 1 small-ish banana.

Directions

• Open the bun.
• Spread the nut butter of your choosing on both inter surfaces.
• Peal the banana and press it, firmly, into the bun.
• If needed, slide banana back and forth to spread the nut butter.

* This one's also great for a kid, or for a child-at-heart like me.

** No dogs were harmed during the development of this dish. Although, one might have eaten some pieces of the prototype that were "accidentally" dropped into his bowl.

Recipe: Spaghetti Enchilada Casserole

Today for lunch I'm having spaghetti enchilada casserole: leftover spaghetti sauce---with ground turkey!---layered with corn tortillas and reheated in the mircowave oven. It's not just international; it's tasty.

Mmm...Cupcakes!

I bought the COOLEST book today.

OK, so I like dessert, particularly baked goods. I'm not so much into candy or ice cream...when I crave something sweet, I want a cookie or a cupcake or pie. But store-bought ones are kinda meh and/or have weird, unpronounceable ingredients in them. So, I prefer to bake my own. However, Michael doesn't eat stuff like that. For those of you who don't know Michael personally, he has not eaten desserts since the summer before he went to college which was, oh, 15 or so years ago. So, if I decide to bake a batch of cookies, I end up eating them all myself, and trust me...I do not need to eat 36-48 cookies. One or two, sure! Not an entire batch. A slice of cake, great! Not a whole cake. And my willpower is limited around baked goods. Thus, I mostly go without.

Enter my new cool book entitled Small Batch Baking. I know, right?

Today I made chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter frosting and they were AWESOME...and there were only four of them! I ate two and gave the other two away because, apparently, I have no better willpower with four cupcakes than with twenty-four. Still! I was very impressed and I can't wait to try more recipes. She has tiny cakes in there that she bakes in tin cans and itty bitty pound cake in tiny loaf pans and little pies and small batches of 6 cookies. I'm so excited!

Thanks to kchristie on the dog board for the recommendation!

Recipe: Oily Bread

Here's another of my bachelor recipes.* I call it oily bread, and I think it makes a great snack or side-dish.

Ingredients

• 3 English muffins or small pitas.
  
• 2 tablespoons olive oil.
  
• 2 teaspoons balsamic vinegar.
  

Directions

• Split the English muffins or quarter the pitas.
  
• Toast the bread.
  
• Mix the oil and vinegar** in a small bowl.
  
• Dip the toasted bread in the mixture and enjoy.

* I can't help but wonder how horrified a gourmand like Nick is by these.

** As best you can.

Recipe: Herbal-Tea-Flavored Hot Cereal

Here's another bachelor-style recipe that I invented, though I think even non-bachelors may appreciate it.

Ingredients

• 1 serving (usually about 1/2 cup) dry hot cereal. I typically use oat bran, but you can use oatmeal, or anything else you like.
  
• Milk or soy milk, quantity determined by cereal directions (usually about 1 cup). I like to use unsweetened soy milk, but you can do what you like.
• 1 ripe banana.
  
• 1 bag of herbal tea.*  I usually use something fruit-flavored: blueberry, pomegranate, apple-cinnamon or some such.
• (Optional) 1 teaspoon of flax oil.
  

Directions

• Mix the cereal and milk, then cook according to the cereal's directions. I usually find the 90 seconds in our microwave suffices.
• Cut or tear open the bag of herbal tea, then mix its contents into the cereal.
• Slice the banana into the cereal.
  
• (Optional) mix the flax oil into the cereal.

This recipe may sound strange, but I find that the herbal teas usually have a melange of spices that work together to complement the cereal. I encourage you to try it.

I'm certain that the flax oil seems odd to most of you in the readership. I like to use it to provide a solvent for the oil-soluble spices in the tea and to add some essential fatty acids to the dish. It also produces a bit of an odd flavor, which some may not enjoy.

* I feel compelled to point out that "herbal tea" is a misleading name, since this bevearges does not contain leaves of Camellia sinensis.  Instead, it should be called a tisane.

Recipe: Chili Dog Casserole

Alison posts most---to date, all---of our recipes, so I thought it was time for me to post one of my own. What follows is a "recipe" for the chili dog casserole I make---assemble, really---sometimes when I'm feeling lazy, espcially when Alison isn't around. This dish is well within the bounds of what I call "bachelor food." What I mean by that phrase will be obvious when you read the recipe, if it isn't clear from the dish's title.

• 4 hot dogs. I use uncured chicken dogs, but you can use something more traditional, if you like.
• 1/2 can chili. I use low-fat vegetarian chili, but again you can certainly use "regular" chili.
• 2 hamburger buns. I use whole wheat buns, but...
• 1 to 2 tablespoons finely chopped onion.
  

Cut the hot dogs to whatever length you desire, mix with the chili. Heat in the mircowave to desired temperature. Pull the buns into smaller pieces. Add the buns and onion to the heated mixture. Stir, then eat with a spork.

Schadenfreude Pie

Obama fans in the readership might want to bake a schadenfreude pie today.

Apple Oatmeal Crumble Recipe

Hey guys! I had a hankering for something sweet and appley the other day, but I didn't want to make an entire pie or an entire pan of apple crisp. That leads to bad, bad things. So, I found this recipe at Epicurious and I tweaked it just a tad (see below for my version). Basically I left out the lemon juice because I didn't have any and I doubled the topping and added more spices. I mean, c'mon! Even with double the topping, you're eating a whole apple and only 2 tablespoons of sugar and 2 teaspoons of butter. Did I mention the whole apple? And oats! It's practiaclly health food!

Ingredients

• 1 granny smith apple, peeled, cored, and sliced thinly
• 2 Tblsp packed brown sugar
• 2 Tblsp water
• 1/4 cup rolled oats
• 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/8 tsp ground cloves
• 1/8 tsp ground nutmeg
• 2 tsp cold butter cut into bits
  

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
2. Toss sliced apples with 1 tblsp of brown sugar in a small ceramic baking dish. Sprinkle with water. Bake 20 mins.
3. Meanwhile, stir together oats, remaining tblsp brown sugar, and spices. Rub the butter into the oat mixture until distributed.
4. Sprinkle topping over apples and bake 20-25 mins more until topping is golden brown.
5. Serve warm with vanilla ice cream. (See?! You're even getting your dairy in. HEALTH FOOD, I'm telling you!)
   

Roasted Cherry Tomato Pasta

Hey everyone! I thought I'd share the meal that we had for dinner tonight...it was SO GOOD. I'm still a little fixated on it and I want to eat more of it, so instead I'm going to write about it. I'm sure that will be JUST as satisfying, right?

Ahem.

OK, I basically adapted the recipe from this Emeril Lagasse recipe on the food network site. I know, right? It's really shocking that Michael would eat anything Emeril makes. However, it should be noted that by "adapted" I mean " pretty much totally copied except for I left out all the fatty cheese at the end". Aha! Mystery solved.

Ingredients:

• approx 2.5 lbs cherry tomatoes, halved (note: Emeril's recipe called for various colors of tomatoes...yellow and heirloom green in addition to red. They were hard to find and I'm not that fancy. All red works great, too.)
• 3-4 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1 Tblsp balsamic vinegar
• 3/4 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp black pepper
• 1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
• 1/4 cup chiffonade fresh basil leaves
• 2 Tblsp chopped fresh parsley
• 1/2 tsp dried oregano (Emeril's recipe calls for 1 tsp of fresh...I don't use oregano that often, so I elected to just use my dried oregano that I already had rather than buy expensive, fresh oregano of which I would use one tsp and then throw the rest away after I found it several weeks later all nasty in the bottom of my fridge.)
  
• 1/2 package of Angel hair pasta (We use whole wheat...yum!)
  

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
   
2. Combine tomatoes, garlic, oil, vinegar, salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes in a large glass baking dish. Bake 40-45 mins.
3. When the tomatoes are done baking, toss in the basil, parsley, and oregano.
   
4. Meanwhile, cook the pasta and then toss with the tomatoes.
   
5. EAT!

If you choose to check out the link above you'll see that the original recipe called for ricotta salata and pecorino cheeses as well as a bunch of toasted pine nuts. My version is probably less tasty, but on the upside I'll be able to wear my pants tomorrow. I sprinkled some grated parmesan on it and called it a day. If you add all the cheese, you might want to use the entire package of pasta as the original recipe calls for (the whole package ended up being too many noodles with just the tomatoes) and make sure your sweats are clean.

Fall Food

Mmm...now that it has gotten a little bit chilly outside, I'm starting to want to cook all my favorite fall foods. I am a nut for anything that has pumpkin in it and I really love making homemade soup when it starts to get chilly outside. Here are a couple of my favorite soups:

Barley and Roasted-vegetable Soup

• I found this recipe on Epicurous.com and I really love it! I have made it both with and without the barley and I have never found dried porcini mushrooms, so I usually leave that part out. Also, if you use instant barley, you can sort of combine the last 2 steps into one and save yourself some time.

Alton Brown's Curried Split Pea Soup

• This one is easy and yummy. The hardest part is chopping up the onion. I think it tastes great served with bread made using Alton's pizza crust recipe.
  

Another Team Grondul Dinner Favorite

Here is another of our favorite recipes. This is actually a Weight Watchers recipe, but it's really good, I swear!

Turkey Meatloaf

Ingredients:

• 8 oz uncooked lean ground beef (7% fat)
• 12 oz lean ground turkey
• Note: These are the meats the recipe originally called for. I have used all bison, all ostrich, and all 4% fat ground turkey and all of them have come out quite well. In fact, last time I made this, I only had 1 lb of bison, not the required 20 oz, so I chopped up and threw in some crimini mushrooms I had on hand to make up for the extra meat and it came out great. This recipe is pretty forgiving.
  
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• ½ cup uncooked old-fashioned oats
• 8 oz canned tomato sauce
• 2 tblsp worchestershire sauce
• 1 tblsp hot pepper sauce
  
• I usually use the Tobasco chipotle sauce, which is a bit less hot than regular hot sauce, and it comes out great!
  
• 2 large egg whites or one whole egg
  
• ¼ tsp salt
• ¼ tsp black pepper
  

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350^o F. Spray loaf pan with cooking spray. Combine beef, turkey, onion and oats in a large bowl. Mix together tomato sauce, worchestershire sauce, hot pepper sauce, egg whites, salt and pepper. Add to meat mixture and mix well with hands. Press into pan and bake 60-70 mins.

Alternatively, you can place the meat mixture into a muffin pan (12 cups is usually what we get out of it) and make cup-meats! You will only need to bake them for 20-25 mins if you do them in muffin cups. We decided to try this one night when we wanted meatloaf, but we were starving and didn't want to wait an hour.

Omigod, I want to eat IT ALL!!

I made the most awesome thing in the world tonight...brace yourself...peanut butter ice cream topping. I found the recipe at allrecipies.com:

1 cup sugar
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup peanut butter

Combine sugar and water in a small saucepan and bring to a boil. Remove from heat and then stir in peanut butter. Use a stick blender until mixture is smooth and begins to thicken. Serve over vanilla ice cream and enjoy the awesomeness.

I still blog here, too, I swear!

Hello everyone. Sorry I have been the non-blogger for so long! I have just been kind of unmotivated to blog about stuff lately, but I decided to share some of what has been going on with me with the rest of the world.

Aside from school stuff, mostly what I have been up to lately has been extremely domestic. I have been knitting lots of stuff and I have been on a really big cooking kick. First up: the cooking. I thought I'd share a recipe that I sort of made up recently. I was trying to replicate a recipe for Greek chicken pita sandwiches that a friend had brought over one night when we were doing a potluck-style dinner. It was really good, but unfortunately for me, it was a Let's Dish meal, so she didn't have the recipe to share with me. So, I searched for Greek chicken recipes on the internet and tried to incorporate the most common elements in all of the recipes into my own crock-pot recipe. Here is what I came up with:

Ingredients

• 1 pgk boneless skinless chicken breasts (about 1 - 1.5 lbs)
• 1 Tblsp olive oil
• 2-3 cloves garlic, minced
  
• 1 onion, thinly sliced
• about 3 Tblsp dried oregano
• 1-2 tsp vinegar (white or red wine vinegar will work fine)
• juice of 1 lemon, plus 1-2 tsp of zest
• salt and pepper to taste

Directions

1. Combine all ingredients in the crock pot. Cook on low for about 4-5 hours until chicken is cooked through. Add a little water or chicken broth (about 1/4 cup) if chicken is getting too brown. You might just add this up front if you plan to not be around while it cooks.
2. Shred the chicken with 2 forks
3. Serve on pita bread with feta cheese and some pepperoccini if that's your thing.

I like to serve this with a Greek salad on the side. Yum!

Stay tuned for knitting updates...it's too late for me to deal with taking pictures right now, so I'll catch you up on that later. Good night!

Mmm....pizza crust....gaaaahhhhgghh...... *drool*

Oh. My. God. I love you Alton! Love!

Ahem. Perhaps I should start at the beginning.

Michael and I often make homemade pizza, but we have always used store-bought crust that we just topped ourselves. Don't get me wrong, up until a few hours ago, I thought it was really, really tasty. A few days ago we were watching Good Eats on the Food network and Alton Brown, the chef who hosts the show, did a show on pizza crust. Hmm...intriguing. I have tried to make homemade crust from a recipe that my sister gave me a few times, but it has always turned out not so good. Toward the end of the episode, Alton said that he often eats the crust without any toppings...just brushed with olive oil with a little salt and pepper on top. Michael and I looked at each other and said, "Man that sounds good!" So, we decided to make this recipe. It's a bit involved as many of Alton Brown's recipes tend to be, but it is SO WORTH IT. Michael and I took his suggestion and just brushed the crusts with olive oil before baking and put some pepper on top. We also roasted a head of garlic and spread that on after it was done. The recipe makes two crusts and we polished it all off in about 10 minutes. It was AWESOME!! The recipe is available on the internet here. Just a few notes:

1. I could not find instant yeast as his recipe calls for. In case you have the same issue, I used regular (not rapid rise) yeast that comes in the packet instead and it turned out, as mentioned before, REALLY WELL. I used one packet. On the back it gave instructions for using the yeast when the recipe calls for it to be added in with the flour and not dissolved in water first, so we followed those, actually measuring the temperature of the water we added, and it worked out fine.
2. My crust was not pretty. At one point I was worried because it was only vaguely round and was not very evenly stretched. It totally didn't matter. I'll probably practice making it look nicer in the future, but don't get discouraged if it seems like kind of a mess. It will still taste amazing.
3. This recipe is not difficult....it just requires a little planning ahead because of the 24 hour rise in the middle.
   

So, I heartily encourage you to try this out. I want more already!

Tired, Bored, and Antsy = Bread!

Do you ever have those days when you are bored and antsy, but nothing you can think of to do sounds good? I'm tired, so I don't want to work out. It's rainy and gray out, so I don't want to go for a walk. I don't feel like reading, nothing good is on TV, I'm between knitting projects, etc, etc, etc. And yet I'm not really in the mood to just veg out. What to do?

Well, I decided to bake something. Recently I have discovered our local Great Harvest Bread Company location. Oh, it is SO GOOD. They make their bread fresh every day, so if you go in early in the day it is still warm. They always have samples out and they let you try a big piece of whatever bread you are interested in. On Thursdays, our location has this bread called Breakfast Blast. It's wheat bread with dates and cinnamon chips in it and it is my new favorite thing. I bought some this week, but it was gone by yesterday morning (Yes, we did eat an entire loaf of bread in 2 days. No, we do not have a problem. We can stop anytime.) I was craving some, but the store is closed on Sunday and they only have that kind of bread on Thursdays anyway. So, I decided to see if I could make some on my own. I poked around in my cookbooks and found a recipe for this wheat quick bread that had raisins in it. I figured if I used chopped dates instead of the raisins and added some cinnamon, we might be in business. Sure enough, it came out really well! It's very similar to the Breakfast Blast bread, but a bit less sweet since I used ground cinnamon rather than cinnamon chips. That's fine by me since it made it more Michael-friendly anyway! I also substituted soymilk that I soured with vinegar (click the link and look toward the bottom in the section entitled "replacing buttermilk" for more info) for the buttermilk to make it Michael friendly as well. Enjoy!

Alison's Breakfast Blast-esque Bread

Ingredients:

1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon (I might try adding more next time)
1 beaten egg
1 cup buttermilk
3 tblsp honey
1 cup chopped dates
1 beaten egg white

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a baking sheet; set aside. In a large bowl combine whole wheat flour, all-purpose flour, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, and baking soda. Make a well in center of dry mixture; set aside.
2. In a small mixing bowl combine the egg, buttermilk, and honey. Add egg mixture all at once to dry mixture. Stir until just moistened. Stir in dates.
3. Turn dough out onto prepared baking sheet; pat with wet fingers into an 8-inch round (dough will be wet). Brush with egg white.
4. Bake in a 350 degree oven about 25 minutes or until golden brown and a wooden toothpick comes out clean. If necessary, cover with foil for last 5 minutes of baking to prevent overbrowning. Serve warm.
   

*Drool*...Burgers...

So I thought I'd take a page out of Nick's book, um, I mean, blog, and post one of our favorite recipes! I actually found this recipe on the Epicurious website. I really like that site for getting recipe ideas, but I almost universally have to reduce the amount of oil the recipe calls for. I swear, those people have stock in cooking oil...or maybe it's owned by a heart surgeon. Either way....

Sun-Dried Tomato Burgers

Ingredients:

• 1 lb ground meat (beef, bison, ostrich, or turkey)
• 1/2 cup chopped, drained sun-dried tomatoes packed in oil
• 1 Tblsp oil from sun-dried tomatoes
• 3 Tblsp finely chopped onion
• 1 Tblsp dried basil
• 3/4 tsp ground cumin
• salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Mix meat, tomatoes, reserved oil, chopped onion, basil, cumin, salt and pepper. Form into patties and refrigerate or cook immediately.

We have made these burgers with all kinds of meat and they always turn out well. I think it works particularly well with bison, though. Because bison is so lean, it's often difficult to cook well and can end up tasting like shoe leather. However, because you add some oil to these burgers, they work really well with bison meat.

You can find the original recipe here. As you can see, I reduced the recipe by a lot (3 lbs of meat?? Please!!), reduced the oil by about half, and I don't make the balsamic-glazed onions the original recipe calls for. I have tried them and, while they are quite tasty, I think they overwhelm the taste of the burger. These are plenty tasty all on their own!

Bon apetit!!