Sleepy snack

Blokey and I got on a really weird schedule and tried to fix this. We were on Australia time, falling asleep well into the A.M., and waking up all late and guilty. So we stuck it out on Tuesday, not sleeping all morning/afternoon, and watching bad internet TV/video games (I did more of the former. Playing yahoo.com word games while sleep deprived was not successful). We fell asleep last night at 7PM, and woke up at 4AM. Now we are on Berlin time.
Yesterday, I found that sitting made my tireness worse, so I got up from my desk chair around 4 PM and made this snack.

Fancy cheese crackers and simple lentil pate

Crackers (adapted from Heavenly Homemakers. While my homemaking isn't heavenly, I do appreciate and admire their efforts)
Ingredients:
1 c. of King Arthur's white whole wheat flour (Trader Joe's makes some too, but they're not commies)
2/3 c. of finely shredded hard cheese (I used parmesan and some stinky hard sheep cheese I picked up at the Italian market in Philly)
¼ teaspoon. baking powder
1-4 Tbsp of cold water
2 Tbs of butter
a sprinkle of your favorite dried herbs (I used oregano)

Preheat the oven to 350.

The original recipe called for more cheese, more butter, and food processing, but I am lazy and afraid of that much fat. I bet some more olive oil in place of some of the butter would work too. The recipe is simple- you mix everything together except the water, then mix in the water slowly by hand. Instead of processing, I finely grated the cheese and used a pastry blender (wedding gift, thanks Broooother) to incorporate the butter and flour, added the other ingredients (except the water) and added 1 Tablespoon (the recipe's amount). While a pile of cheese crumbs stared back at me, I added some more water.
Next, since I am a shortcutter, I rolled the dough out onto the cookie sheet until it was quite thin (Wheat thins/Cheezit thin), used a pizza cutter to cut them into Cheezit sized pieces, and baked for 15-17 minutes. The ends were cripsy first, so I removed them and stuck it back in the oven for another few minutes.

Funner than a blender

Can you tell that I wanted Cheezits?

Italian lentil pate (adapted from this recipe)

Ingredients:
Ingredients:
1/2 onion, sliced
3 cloves of garlic, chopped
1 Tbsp. of apple cider vinegar
1 1/2 cups of dried lentils
bay leaf
2 teaspoons of fancy mustard (or unfancy)
handful of fresh parsley, chopped rougly
dried herbs: oregano, basil, marjoram
salt, pepper, paprika
juice of one lemon
Olive oil

1.Cook lentils according to directions, with a bay leaf. Drain when done.
2. In the meantime, carmelize (or your best approximation) the onions in 2 Tbs of olive oil, over medium heat. Add the garlic towards the end and cook until everything smells good (if you like raw garlic, skip this step and just add it to the blender).
3. Using a hand blender/food processor, blend together all the ingreidents except the herbs, spices and lemon juice.
4. Season to taste.

Blokey is an understated man, but he claimed that the lentil pate was "so good." This is a top compliment, so I am pleased.

I fell asleep about an hour after I finished eating.

Cooking again

I am a bad food blogger. Mostly because I have been cooking the same meals over and over again, and thus nothing new to post. But now with school almost over, I plan to have more adventures. The Crown Heights CSA starts again in a few weeks, and I am super excited.
Before I left on a nice trip to Delaware this weekend, I did make bread for Blokey, and then a quick dinner. This dinner was inspired by Smitten Kitchen's smashed chickpea salad, but I didn't read the recipe, just went off the mental image. I actually think of this as a vegan egg salad more than anything else.
I served this on homemade bread, which I haven't had luck with recently. This loaf turned out pretty frickin' yummy though (I added a little extra yeast). Whole thing (not including the bread) took about 8 minutes.

Mostly whole grain and flax meal minimal kneading bread recipe

Vegan "egg" salad sandwiches
Ingredients:
Good bread (not the pre sliced kind) or crackers
1 tomato, thinly sliced
some kind of green (we used about a handful of argula)
1 green onion, chopped finely
2 1/2 cups of well cooked chickpeas, or 2 14 oz. cans of chickpeas, drained
Kosher deli style mustard (anything that's not French's)
salt, pepper
lemon juice or apple cider vinegar
various dried spices (we used oregano and basil)
Anything else on hand (shredded carrots, peanut butter or tahini, etc.)

Method:
1. Mash up the beans with a potato masher. Don't worry about making it too fine.

2. Mix it all up in medium sized bowl (except the tomatoes) to taste. I liked a lot of mustard but you can go for less. Yo could also forgo mustard and use mayo or just olive oil. We are fans of whole grain mustard (I bought 3 different kinds of mustard today from Fairway. It's like caviar for flexitarians like me).

3. Spread on pieces of bread. Top with tomatoes, thin slices of cheese (if you're not vegan), more greens, paprika, etc.. Eat. Still hungry? Spend 6 minutes make a few more

Vegan tapas

Two weekends ago, before my brother's wedding and the recent pork-a-thalon in Chicago with Anne and friends, I had some work friends over for a vegan tapas dinner thing. We made loads of food, but I only ended up taking a few pictures as things got a bit crazy. I promised our guests the recipes, but I never posted them!
Most folks think of delicious jamon serrano and tortilla espanola (and sangria!) when they think of tapas, but tapas are pretty vegan friendly. I mean, Spain was a poor country in Europe (after that whole age of exploration thing didn't work out so well), so there isn't a lot of rich food. Most of the food is vegetable and olive oil based, so it was easy to adapt or find vegan recipes and still have a diversity of flavors (and not rely on weird vegan substitutes, which my stomach generally rejects). We also got to use our pressure cooker several times for the beans.

Here's the lot of recipes. I only managed to snap up photos of the potatoes and the beans, but it was all very good!

Roasted eggplant/pepper dip:
Roast 2 eggplants and 1 large red pepper (pierce with fork) in a pan at 400 degrees for 45 minutes. Let cool, peel, and puree in a food processor/blender with 2 cloves of garlic, juice of one lemon, 1 Tablespoon of fresh cilantro, and 1 teaspoon of Spanish paprika.

Patatas bravas:
Cut about 2 lbs of potatoes (any kind) into 1/2" pieces and roast with 2 Tbs of olive oil in the oven for about 30 minutes, at 400. In the meantime, make a sauce by sauteeing 1 diced onion, 2 cloves of garlic, 1 teaspoon of red pepper powder, and 1 c. of red of wine. Add 15 ounces of crushed tomato and simmer for 10 minutes. Serve over the roasted potatoes.


Spanish mushrooms (Blokey's favorite)
Wash and cut 8 ounces of mushrooms (I used baby bella) into quarters. Sautee about 4 Tablespoons of olive oil over high heat for about 2 minutes. Lower to medium heat, and add 6 garlic cloves, 3 tablespoons of cooking sherry, 2 tablespoons of lemon juice, 1 dried red chili (seeded and crumbled), 1/4 teas of paprika, salt and pepper to taste. Cook until the mushrooms give off juice, and garnish with chopped parsley (2 Tbs).

Antipasto style white bean salad:
3 cups of Northern white or navy beans, cooked (or from a can, rinsed)
1/2 cup of roasted red pepper (from a jar), diced
1 can of artichoke hearts, rinsed and quartered
1/4 c. of red onion chopped
1/4 c. of parsley, chopped fined
1 tablespoon of dried basil
olive oil, red wine vinegar, salt and pepper.
Mix all the ingredients together, and use oilve oi, vinegar and salt and pepper to dress the salad to your tastes (we used about 1/4 cup of oil and vinegar)


Chickpeas and spinach.
Cut 2 pieces of bread (store bought) into cubes and fry in about 2-4 tables of olive oil, over medium heat. Add 3 cloves of chopped garlic, 1 teaspoon of cumin, some salt and pepper to taste, and 1 1/2 tablespoons of red wine vinegar. Add 10 ounces (one bag) of fresh or frozen spinach and cook down, adding water as necessary. Add 2 cups of chickpeas, and add salt and pepper to taste. (This looked kind of meaty but it was not)

Paella:
Fry 1 onion (chopped) and 2 cloves of garlic in 2 tables of olive oil. Add 2 chopped fresh tomatoes (or 1 1/2 cups of canned tomatoes), 2 cups of rice (we used basmati) and stir until the rice is well coated. Add 2 1/2 cups of liquid (we used water and vegetable stock), 1 1/2 teaspoons of salt, a pinch of saffron, and cut up vegetables (we used yellow pepper, cauliflower, green beans, carrots, but frozen artichoke, peas, and broccoli are also good). Bring to a boil, lower to simmer, and cover for 25-30 minutes, until liquid is gone. Add pepper, paprika, and lemon juice to taste when cooking is completed.

Carrot madness

Our farm share keeps giving us so many carrots. We haven't even eaten half yet. They are beautiful and delicious, but man, there are loads.
Today I was going to make a ginger-carrot salad, but we didn't have any non-wilted parsley. So instead, I thought I would do carrots as hasbrowns, but at the last minute decided carrot latkes. Evidently, this is not an original idea, but I did make this up as I went along. It kind of shows, but the recipe was still decent.

Lefty Cook's improvised carrot laktes (a recipe in process)
3 large carrots, peeled and grated
2 eggs
3 cloves of garlic chopped
salt and pepper
some flour
olive oil for frying


Method: Mix the first 4 ingredients together. Luckily, carrots are much drier than potatoes so there is no need to squeeze out liquid.

Next, mix up ingredients. Add a handful of flour to help create a "batter." (I used less than this but maybe 1/4 cup is in order).
Heat up about 1 Tbs of oil in a pan over medium heat. When it is warm, drop large spoonfuls of batter on the oil, and allow to cook for about 3-4 minutes, and flip. Careful that you don't burn (I kind of burned them). They are done when the pancakes are dry and golden brown.

The pancakes were pretty good, but somewhat crumbly. There needed to be more eggs. Some grated apple in the batter would have improved them. Also, some Greek yogurt would have been the perfect condiment. This recipe made about six 5" pancakes.

I also made a huge lentil salad, which I've made before, (lentils, chopped mustard greens, dijon mustard, salt and pepper, apple cider vinegar, feta) and then grated another huge carrot into it. I think I cooked more than a 1/2 bag of lentils and there aren't any leftovers.

Yellow Split Pea soup (and tomato drama)

When I eat out almost all the time, my body rebels. Nothing works right and my skin gets icky, my body is tired, and forget about being regular. Augh- grease, sugar, salt overload!
So when I got back from New Orleans, where I ate too much delicious Cajun food, I was dying for something not deep fried, full of meat, or chocked full of sodium. I bought a bag of yellow split peas, made yummy soup, and felt better right away (and ate it for lunch the next day, and breakfast the following day). Yep, blokey and I went through a whole bag of yellow split peas in about 2 meals.

Yellow vegetarian split pea soup
Ingredients:
One bag of yellow split peas
2 onions
2-3 carrots, peeled and chopped
3-4 medium potatoes, peeled and diced
3 bay leafs
1 c. of tomatoes (can be boxed or canned)
salt and pepper to taste
butter or olive oil
water or stock
oregano, basil, whatever herbs you have on hand (parlsey would have been nice too)

Method:
Pick over the split peas. Soak for 8 hours or do what I do, which is to put it in a pot with water, set it to boil with the bay leaves inside, and let it sit an hour.
Next, saute first the onions and fat together in a larger soup pot over medium heat. After 3-4 minutes (softer, smelling yummy), add the carrots. Let that cook and stir for about 3-5 more minutes. Add the potatoes, let that cook for a few more minutes.



Strain the peas and add to the pot with the carrots and potato mixture. Add water or broth until it covers over the stuff inside. Increase the heat to high until it all boils, then simmer and cover for about 20 minutes, until every thing is soft. Feel free to add more bay leaves (I love me some BL).


After the 20 minutes, add some tomatoes. Blokey and I are using Tetra Pak boxed tomatoes now. Evidently, canned tomatoes, because they are acidic, leach ickiness from the can into the tomato. The resin lining of cans "contain bisphenol-A, a synthetic estrogen that has been linked to ailments ranging from reproductive problems to heart disease, diabetes, and obesity." Uh, ick? If I am going to get those problems, I want it to be because I ate a lot of deliciousness. Since we eat a lot of tomatoes, we've decided to make the haul up to Fairway more to get these. They can also be bought at Trade Joes or Whole Foods, I believe (just not the TJs in NYC that I visit). This is also a good reason to consider soaking beans and forgoing canned soup (does anyone eat that anymore?)

These Pomi tomatoes are not joking around. Nothing in there but tomatoes.

I don't know why I didn't take an after photo. The soup looked like this, but more orange and uniform in color

We ate the soup with roasted Brussels sprouts and potatoes. Our CSA dumped another 20 lbs of potatoes and carrots on us. I need to focus on consuming those soon.

Cold ass NY

It's been fricking cold out in NY. Like makes your eyes water cold. This is the best kind of weather for roasting vegetables in a cast iron skillet, warming up your long skinny apartment with oniony odors. Yum.
Saturday night's dinner was nothing new, except I had to vegetarianize my favorite lentil salad. As I stole off Mark Bittman's blog, there's nothing like a good bacon and lentil salad, with dijon mustard and not much else. However, Mr. LC doesn't like bacon or other dead animals in his food. He's missing out, I know. I don't like paying for or eating meat analogs (although I plan to do vegetarian biscuits and gravy soon, whenever I can get my hands on some Gimme Lean veggie sausage, as my buttermilk is chillaxing in my fridge), so I try to get my savory other ways.
Enter the humble baby bella mushroom. Satuee these suckers up with some onion and butter, and you'll be rolling in the animal-free umami (the meaty, savory taste that we enjoy in meats, cheese, coffee, etc.). Also, cheese helps as well.

Vegetarianized Bittman's lentil salad
1 1/2- 2 c. of dry lentils
handful of parsley, chopped
juice of half a lemon
salt
pepper
cayenne (optional)
3 oz. of feta cheese, crumbled
dijon mustard
1/2 onion
butter
8-9 baby bella mushrooms

1. Boil and cook the lentils. If you start now, they'll be done once you finish prepping the rest of the salad.
2. Dice the onion and cook in butter (about 1 Tbs) over medium heat. Clean and chop the mushrooms, in the mean time. As the onion starts to become soft, add the 'shrooms. Mix occassionally. Cook for a while, maybe 7 minutes, until they get really soft. Turn off the heat.
3. Season the onion and mushroom mixture with salt and pepper. Add parsley.
4. When the lentils are done (they can be a bit al dente, or softer based on your preferences), drain and rinse (like pasta). Add to the mushroom mixture. Stir it all up. Crumble feta on top, add lemon juice, and mix in dijon to taste. Season with more salt and pepper if you'd like.

I served this with roasted potatoes and brussels sprouts. We were in cold weather food heaven.