A Crustless Quiche

And I am back....again. Now that I am home for a few weeks, it's back to trying new recipes and cooking. I really like quiches, but it has always seemed (a) like an ordeal to make and (b) one of those special occasion treats. Then I discovered crustless quiches, which somehow makes quiches "healthier."

It was fairly easy to make and very much like a custard. After perusing through a number of recipes, this is what I settled with.

Ingredients:
2 whole eggs
2 egg yolks
2 cup half and half
2 red onions, sliced thinly and caramelized
1 cup broccoli
1 cup sliced portabello mushrooms
2 cloves garlic
1 cup shredded parmesan cheese
Cooking spray
Salt and Pepper to taste

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F
2. Saute garlic, mushroom, and broccoli in cooking spray.
3. Spray the bottom of a baking dish with cooking spray. Then place caramelized onions and sauteed veggies along the bottom of the baking dish and let cool for a minute. 
4. In a small bowl, whisk together first three ingredients and then pour over veggies mixture in baking dish. Add salt and pepper to taste.
5. Sprinkle cheese on top of egg and veggie mixture
6. Place in the oven for 30 minutes. I pierced it with a knife at the end to see if it was done.   

I think next time I make it, I would add a few more eggs to make it a little less custardy. Although delicious, it fell apart when eating it, making it a little difficult. 

Double Chocolate Cupcakes...A Birthday Treat

A few months back, our friend Grace made this double chocolate cake for her boyfriend's birthday which was RIDICULOUS. It was rich, delicious, and oh so much chocolate goodness. I asked her for this infamous recipe and made some tweeks of my own for my roommates birthday this past weekend. It's still rich and delicious, but is less overwhelming.

The recipe for the cake can be found on epicurious. One of my favorite things to do is scroll through the comments to see what other people added, modified, etc. One lady mentioned cupcakes and I personally thought that was GENIUS! It's the perfect amount of chocolate, especially after the steakhouse meal we had just eaten. Also, I know you're not supposed to mess with proportions when baking and not alter recipes, but when one of the comments said it made 36 cupcakes I decided that was too much for a 6 person dinner party and use only 1/3 of the ingredients and they still turned out lovely.

So for the chocolate cake and ganache, I used my favorite local chocolate brand, Taza. The factory is located in Somervile, MA and they specialize in stone ground Mexican chocolate. I followed the recipe for the chocolate cake and baked in the oven for 35 minutes since I was only making 12 cupcakes.

Instead of making the ganache that is included with the cake recipe, I opted for more of a traditional ganache recipe with a twist. My secret ingredient....

You can see the ganache batter in the background. The ganache recipe is as follows.

8 oz of Semisweet chocolate ( I used the Taza chocolate)
1/2 cup of heavy cream
1/2 teaspoon instant coffee
2 splashes of Grand Marnier

1. Chop up the chocolate into fine pieces and put in a double broiler. A double broiler is easily made at home with a pot of boiling water and a glass bowl on top. Add cream and coffee. Stir until all the chocolate has melted and you have a creamy smooth chocolate mixture.
2. Add Grand Marnier and keep stirring until mixed well.

After the cupcakes had cooled a little and the while the ganache was still warm, I dipped the top of the cupcake in the ganache and then put on a rack to cool.

Here they are...

Next time, I'm trying to make these cupcakes with bacon :)

And....We're Back!!

I have to say...I'm touched knowing that some of my friends actually look at this blog to see what I'm cooking and remind me when I haven't updated anything...(that's you Vanessa, Shira, and Betty :) ) Even if you are the only three people who check this out, I'm flattered!

After a long hiatus of being too busy and not having time to post what I've cooked (even though I SWEAR I've been cooking), here is a recipe update. Since I'm about to move in a month, I'm trying to use up all the food we have in our pantry and freezer, which is kind of a fun little experiment. It's like an episode of Chopped, except the mystery basket isn't filled with things like liverwurst.

With that being said, I love brussel sprouts. LOVE LOVE LOVE them. My roommate on the other hand, will eat them in public to save face if we're at someone's house, but would rather me keep them 100 feet away from any of the food I cook. Unfortunately, for her, we had a bag of brussel sprouts left in the freezer. MUHAHAHAH.

I don't know how I started liking brussel sprouts. I don't have any of those weird stories growing up where my mom tried to get me to eat them and I would throw a fit because I didn't like them. Actually, I never knew what they were because we never at them growing up. However, I assumed since everyone else hated them, I would probably hate them as well. In grad school, one of our classmates opened a bag of brussel sprouts, microwaved them, and ate them like popcorn while we watched Grey's Anatomy. I was curious, because by the age of 26 I realized that I (contrary to what I thought) liked a lot of things that other people did not like. I tried one. I liked it. End of story.Since then, I love having a bag of frozen brussel sprouts around just in case.

So, what do you do with brussel sprouts, 2 large sweet potatoes, and spicy italian sausage?  You roast them all up and mix it together for a hearty meal. Although, this is more of a fall treat, it was the easiest thing I've made in awhile and I had everything in the house already.

First, heat the oven the 475 degrees F. I put the sausage on one side of my pan and the cubed sweet potatoes on the other. I put a little olive oil, salt, and pepper on the sweet potatoes to season them. I realized, you don't need a lot of oil because as the sausages cook and the oils are released, you can mix that with the potatoes to help with the roasting process.

Rotate the sausage at least once then after 30 minutes, take the sausage out and let cool on a plate. Add the bag of dethawed brussel sprouts and mix everything together so the oil leftover from the sausage is spread evenly. Keep in the oven for another 20 minutes or so, until nicely browned. When it's all done zest some lemon peel and add a couple sprigs of thyme, mix everything together. I cut the sausage into bite size pieces since I plan to take it to work tomorrow and don't want to deal with cutting up sausage. I know, I'm lazy using cutlery at work :)

Honestly, you can't even TELL there are brussel sprouts in there...right?

The day I fell in Love with a Cassoulet

Sometimes I don't know how a recipe will turn out until I try it. I am not an expert in French cuisine and I've never had a Cassoulet before. Wiki told me it's cooked in earthenware and it's a rich, slow-cooked casserole. This Cassoulet was, in a sense, a fraud, but a delicious fraud nonetheless :)

I adapted the following Sausage and White Bean Cassoulet from epicurious.

Ingredients:

• 3 Sweet Italian Sausage Links
• 1 tsp olive oil
• 1 medium onion, halved and sliced lenghtwise
• 1 1/2 cups of sliced buttom mushrooms
• 1 green pepper sliced lengthwise
• 2 garlic cloves chopped fine
• a handfull of dried oregano, basil, and rosemary crushed and sprinkled
• handful of chopped curled parsley
• 2 bay leaves
• 2 cups cannellini beans
• 20 oz whole peeled tomatoes

Cook the sausage links for about 8 minutes and then set aside on a towel lined plate. In the same skillet, cook oil, onions, peppers, and mushrooms. Add dried herbs, parsley, bay leaves, and white beans. Slice sausage into 1/4 inch slices and add to skillet. Pour tomatoes and, using spatula, cut up tomato. Mix all together and cover on medium heat.

While that is cooking, chop one garlic clove and a hadful of parsley. Then cut up 5 slices of challah bread and toast bread, parsley, and galic in a tsp of olive oil in a separate pan. Pour sausage and bean mix into cassrole dish and top with bread topping. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and pop the cassrole into the oven for 20 minutes.

I would also skip the bread topping and just get some really really good crusty bread and dip in the stew. Sigh, I couldn't stop "taste-testing" the dish.

And now a view from the side :) Look at those layers, that Cassoulet is thick :)

When Kheema met Rajma

I don't cook Indian food often enough. I have always felt that I could never cook Indian food as well as my mother or my grandmothers, so I just don't bother. But it is hard to be away from home and really want good Indian food. Indian restaurants are never good enough: there is always too much butter, too much oil, and not enough love (so cheesy I know :) ). The other day I really wanted Rajma, which is essentially Indian vegetarian chili, and some Kheema. Sooooooo...if you put it together, you essentially an Indian spiced chili. Now, the pictures and the recipe will not do this dish justice. The smell is what excited me so much that I stayed up late at night to finish making it. If I were to do it again, the one thing I would do would be to cook the beans longer so they were softer.

Here is kind of what I did. Unfortunately, since I never use measuring spoons to do anything, I don't have exact measurements. I guarantee that I added quite a bit of each spice and I truly which smell-o-vision or a scratch and sniff sticker could be used to describe this. Here is how the marriage of my two favorite dishes went....

First, the Rajma....

1/2 bag of dried kidney beans. Soaked over night. Then put them in 5 cups of boiling water, add salt, and boil for about 30-45 minutes.

Then, get the Kheema ready....

Usually Kheema is made with ground lamb. I grew up with ground chicken kheema. I, however, only had ground beef on hand. So here is kind of what I used...

1 lb ground beef
4 cloves of garlic, minced
1 inche of ginger, grated
1 tsp oil
1 onion, diced
1 Tbsp Garam Masala (I was lucky to have mama moho's fresh garam masala)
1 Tbsp Coriander
1 tsp Chili Powder
1 Tbsp Toasted Ground Cumin
2 Bay Leaves
12-oz can of diced tomatoes

In a skillet, add some oil and heat. Then sautee onion, garlic, and ginger in oil. Add ground beef and then play with spices. I just kept added spices until it tasted good to me (I taste as soon as the ground beef is cooked). Then add the diced tomatoes and let simmer.

Then, when the kidney beans are cooked. On some page I read the 5 bean rule. Taste 5 beans, if they are all cooked, then you're good to go. Once I added it to the beans, I let it all cook together for 20 minutes. And VIOLA...with some quinoa, this ish was fantastic :)

Blackberry Compote and Cottage Cheese

I used to hate cottage cheese!! I always thought of it as a diet food, something you forced down your throat for the sake of weight loss. About 4 years ago, I realized I was wrong. I started eating whipped cottage cheese and then started expanding my horizons. Now I hearts it because it's so versatile and filling. The other day I was looking through the freezer and saw a bag if frozen blackberries we had bought from the farmers market over the summer. Now, I have some weird food "worries." For instance, I hate getting fruit on the bottom yogurt because I worry that there is too much sugar and preservatives in them. But I don't, for some reason, worry about the jam I bring home. Weird, I know!! Anyways , I had been wanting to try fruit and cottage cheese for awhile when I decided to go about making my own compote. This was the easiest thing to make and made me warm to the idea of "fruit on the bottom" anything.

All you need is fresh fruit, a pinch of salt, honey (I used agave nectar) and you bring all that to a boil. Then you mix 2 tbsp of water and 2tbsp of cornstarch together to thicken. Add that to the fruit until you have a nice thick compote.

This was the perfect amount of sweetness and made a great post workout breakfast with cottage cheese and some cereal:)

Spinach and Ricotta Gnocchi

Every morning my roommate and I take the MBTA into work. Within the past 2 months we've had a train conductor that has these catch phrases that he uses, such as "Teamwork makes the dreamwork" or "Have a five-star Friday." Most people on the train roll their eyes after the fifth time he makes the comment, but I can't help but giggle and appreciate the positive commentary. In the spirit of our uber-positive train conductor, we decided we wanted a Six-star Saturday. On the menu, Spinach and Ricotta Gnocchi and Garlic Shrimp. A few years ago, I found this recipe on Epicurious that I really liked. I liked using ricotta because I'm lazy and didn't want to go through the process of ricing potatoes. 

So my roommate and I went off on the mission to make Spinach and Ricotta Gnocchi. Now, there are not many ingredients and it's not difficult to make; however, both times I've made it I've struggled with the texture. It's never doughy enough so I end up using a lot more flour when I roll out the dough and cut it out into pieces. 

After I feel like that they were not that sticky, I plopped them into a pot of boiling water. After they floated to the top i put them into a pan of browned butter.

It looks like a buttery mess there, but when it's all done, we sprinkled it with some Parmesan and voila!

 The final product is much prettier!! My roommate whipped up some shrimp cooked in a pan of butter, minced garlic, and red peppers. THIS was our six-star Saturday :)

Spicy Chicken Meat Loaf and Asparagus (adapted from Cooking Light)

Meat loaf was never a norm growing up, so I never had a desire to eat it. The idea of a slab of ground meat with ketchup sounds the same as just eating a burger with ketchup. My Indian mother tried it once, with the hopes of introducing us to some good ol' American food. However, I don't remember it being quite a success. A few years ago, I thought I would see what all the hoopla was about and came across the recipe in Cooking Light for a Spicy Turkey Meatloaf. The first time I tried it with the ground turkey, but it was a little dry for my taste. I decided to give it another go ahead and, like usual, a number of things went awry. I didn't have ground turkey, ground mustard, and far too little ketchup to make an accurate sauce. However, I was determined to make it regardless and with some modifications, I think it worked out better than the last time :)

Here is the recipe I ended up using:

Adapted from Cooking Light's Spicy Turkey Meat Loaf with Ketchup Topping

Ingredients:

•  1 tablespoon butter
•   2 cups chopped onion
•  1 (8-ounce) package presliced mushrooms
•  3 garlic cloves, chopped
•  3/4 cup panko (Japanese breadcrumbs)
•  1/4 cup water
•  3 tablespoons chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
• 1 tablespoon low-sodium soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon garlic chili sauce
• 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
•  1 1/2 pounds ground chicken
• 1 large egg, lightly beaten
•  Cooking spray
•  1/3 cup ketchup
• 1/3 cup Maggi Sweet Chili Sauce
• 1 tsp Splenda
• 2 tsp dijon mustard
•  1 tablespoon brown sugar
•  1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg

        Preparation:

1. 1. Preheat oven to 350°.
2. 2. Melt butter in a large nonstick skillet over medium heat. Add onion, mushrooms, and garlic to pan; cook 8 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat; cool 5 minutes.
3. 3. Combine mushroom mixture, panko, and next 8 ingredients (through egg) in a large bowl; stir well to combine. Shape turkey mixture into a 9 x 5–inch rectangle on a broiler pan coated with cooking spray.
4. 4. Combine ketchup, brown sugar, mustard, and nutmeg in a small bowl, stirring with a whisk. Spread ketchup mixture evenly over top of meat loaf; bake at 350° for 40 minutes or until a thermometer registers 160°. Let stand for 10 minutes before serving.

Here is how it turned out....

    

      Yes, there is A LOT of meatloaf. But using ground chicken made it so moist and all the substitutions made it a bit more delish :) I sauteed some asparagus in butter and garlic and it was a perfect compliment to the dish!

"Scrambled" Paneer

Ahhh...day 2 of the Nor'easter. We just found out that the MBTA will be closed today and I'm not sure how  I'm going to make it through the day :) So, I woke up this morning and got cracking on a breakfast I had been dying to make. I get sick of eating eggs all the time for breakfast and felt that Paneer is a good protein and low carb substitute. Paneer is an Indian cheese. I had made some at home awhile back and froze it for a rainy (or snowy) day.

I started dethawing it and decided it would be great as a breakfast treat. Here is what is in it:

tsp olive oil
1 clove garlic, chopped
2 green onions, chopped both white and greens
1/4 frozen peas and carrots
1/2 cup paneer
2 tsp Madras Curry Powder
Salt and pepper to taste

I heated the olive oil in a pan. Once hot, I added the garlic and green onions and let then get a little brown. Then I added the frozen peas and carrots. Since I had not dethawed them, I put them in frozen, which I put them in first so they could "dethaw" in the pan. Then I added the paneer and started to break it up in the pan. Add the curry powder and seasoning and mix everything together. Once everything was mixed I put in on a plate with Maggi Sweet Chili sauce. It's a little spicy, a little tangy, and a lot of yummy.

Roasted Cauliflower

Obviously, I have a lot of time today to try some recipes. One of my favorite things is roasted cauliflower. On Super Bowl Sunday my friend Tanya made an awesome roasted cauliflower dish with chipotle mayo and fava nuts. I didn't have all of those things, but I had a whole head of cauliflower that needed to be cooked, ASAP. I have to say, if I want to try this recipe again, I would cut out the feta, it was not as necessary as I thought.

I made sauce consisting of 1 tbsp mayo (I would use less of this next time as well), a tsp of lemon juice, a tsp of capers, 1 tsp course dijon mustard, and a sprinkle of feta (which I would cut out next time)

I then roasted 1 head of cauliflower (475 in the oven for about 15 minutes?) with some olive oil, smoked salt, and pepper. Once roasted, I mixed the cauliflower in the sauce and mixed it all together. Since I'm lazy, I just ate the entire bowl for dinner :)

Surviving the Nor'easter

I am actually excited about a blizzard. It means working from home and watching the storm from the comfort of my home. I know one should be very smart and stock up on food, water, batteries, etc. I, on the other hand, made sure I had brie, salami, hot cocoa, and wine on hand. Yes, this may come off as irresponsible, but  in my defense, I did bring my plants inside from the porch so they don't get swept away by the wind and crash into someones window. So I tried this new hot cocoa (well new to me) which was wonderful! Best part, you just add hot water and it is still wonderfully rich and delicious!

I then decided to make some tortilla crackers to go with the brie, salami, and raspberry jam we had at home.
I had leftover tortillas from last week. I don't own biscuit cutters, so I found an old jar, cleaned it and cut out circles from the tortillas:

After all the rounds had been cut out, I sprayed both sides of the rounds with oil and put in the oven at 375 for 15 minutes. Halfway through, I flipped the rounds over and rotated the sheet pan to get the rounds evenly browned.

Then I put brie and salami on some of them and brie and raspberry jam on the rest. Here they are...nom nom nom

A BLT Egg Salad with Cucumber and Sausage

One morning I woke up and all I wanted was MEAT!! Now, meat and I have a weird history. When I was 7 years old I watched an ABC 20/20 (whatever show Peter Jennings and Diane Sawyer were on) show about the link between red meat and heart disease. At 7, I probably did not have the cognitive abilities to understand what that meant, but the words disease and death were brought up enough times that I decided I didn't want either of those. So I made a decision to never year red meat...until now :) I've also had periods of  vegetarianism, pescatarianism, poultrytarianism ( I know this is not a word), but red meat was never on list. About 6 months ago, I went on a date with a guy who convinced me to try these Kobe beef sliders at Lucky's near the Seaport area in Boston. Now, these were fantastic! One of these days I will go back and take lots and lots of pictures of those delicious burgers that piqued my interest in red meat.

Back to the morning. So, after having this meat craving, I asked my roommate's boyfriend to go and get some sausage and bacon from the corner grocery store. As I was cooking the bacon and sausage, I remembered watching Ina Garten from the food network make the perfect fried eggs. So I went at is, using bacon fat instead of oil (so sinfully delicious) and made the eggs. After looking at the greasy deliciousness on my plates, I realized I should get some lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumbers out to counterbalance the meatiness. Here was the final product...

The best part of making a salad like this, you do not need any dressing. Once you cut through the egg, the yolk becomes the dressing for the salad and it's amazing how delicious it can be.

Link to frying the perfect egg: How To Fry Eggs

Hummus Nachos

The Sunroom Cafe in Madison, Wisconsin has these delicious nachos that I have never heard of anywhere else. Like all other nachos, there is cheese, salsa, and some spice. But the best part of these nachos is the hummus. Yes, there is HUMMUS on these nachos...and it's DELISH! If you don't believe me, look at the pic.

The best part is, they are super easy to make! I kind of cheated while making it. I would typically make my own pico de gallo, but the pico/salsa from Trader Joe's is amazing and perfectly spicy.

Ingredients:

• Blue Corn Chips
• Garlic Hummus (I prefer the garlic, but regular or other flavors would be fine as well)
• Mozarella Cheese
• Trader Joe's salsa (I can't remember the exact name of it)

Assembly: I usually put the chips, then hummus, then cheese on top of each other on a plate and put it in the microwave for 30 second intervals (Cheese should be melted just enough but not burned) until done. I have never perfected the timing on this, blah. Then add the salsa on top!

Spinach and Goat Cheese Chicken Sausage

For the past year I have been trying to cut the "evil" carbs out of my diet. I know they are not evil, but  my body does not appear to like them very much anymore. I've done the two week induction phase for the South Beach diet which is helpful and gets me on track.  But the problem with eating this way is figuring out how to make it apart of your lifestyle and sustain it. It takes a lot of creativity to make sure you don't fall off the wagon. The hardest part of a low-carb lifestyle is figuring out what to eat for breakfast. There are only so many variations of egg dishes you can make before you want to scream bloody murder. So, this morning I decided to make some chicken sausage using ingredients I had around the house. Here is how they turned out

They were filling, the melted goat cheese was like a little treat when you bit into it, and best of all, a good alternative to eggs for breakfast. In keeping with the low carb theme, I didn't add any bread crumbs. In my opinion, ground chicken and turkey dry out so fast that I typically stay away from bread crumbs in order to keep patties moist. Here is how it was done.

Ingredients:

1lb Ground Chicken
1oz Goat Cheese
1/2 bag (6 oz?) of frozen spinach thawed and drained
1 tablespoon of Pizza Seasoning ( I use Penzys Spices)
1 Egg
Salt and Pepper to taste

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F
2. Take a sheet pan, line it with foil, and oil it slightly.
3. In a large bowl, I put the ground chicken, goat cheese, spinach, and seasoning. In a separate I beat the egg. Then I mixed everything together with my hands, making sure not to over mix the ingredients.
4. This recipe created about 8 patties. So I evenly divided the mixture into 8 sections and gently rolled and flattened the patties onto the sheet pan.
5. Bake in the oven for approximately 20 minutes, flipping the patties half way through.