Canning and Pepper Soup Options

I was really happy with the way the Roasted Red Pepper Bisque turned out the other day, and we still had tons and tons of peppers, so yesterday i made up some more (about three times the amount) for canning. I just left out the coconut milk, and did everything else the same, then canned it into 6 quart jars in the pressure cooker.

However, I did have some left over that wouldn't make an entire jar full, so I used that as the base of another soup which turned out great, too.

All I did was saute some diced peppers, and then add that and some cooked black beans and some frozen corn. Also, I spiced it up with some Sriracha.

The soup was served with tortilla chips and some homemade salsa my friends had canned last summer. A nice southwestern-ish meal, on a very cold, snowy December night.

Mmmm. . . Pizza

After this weekend's cold weather camping trip, I was ready for some simple, comforting food.  So what better than an american-style pizza dinner with some friends?  This is just your normal, hand tossed pizza.  This pizza featured both red and yellow bell peppers, and sliced mushrooms.  the cheese was an Amish made yogurt cheese that our local food co-op gets, and the sauce was just a basic tomato pizza sauce.  

However, what really makes a pizza, if you ask me, is the crust.  I used the same dough for both pizzas and the bread sticks, which made for a lot less work.  

For 3 large pizzas (or two large pizzas and 12 bread sticks, as was the case here), I start with two and a quarter cups of warm water: I just use the hottest water my tap will produce.  My general rule, for the thickness i like pizzas (a normal hand-tossed pizza) is 3/4 cup of water per pizza, and then i base all other measurements off of that.  I proofed about a tablespoon of yeast in with the warm water, with maybe two teaspoons of sugar.  

When the yeast looks to be fairly alive, I add in several cups of flour, which I've mixed with a bit less than a tablespoon of salt, and stir it up.  Generally I start by only adding a few cups of flour, so I get a very wet dough, or batter even,  then I add in some stuff to jazz it up.  This time I put in maybe three or four cloves of garlic, which I had crushed and minced, along with a couple tablespoons of dry crushed oregano and about a tablespoon of basil (I didn't really measure that at all, but if i had to guess, I'd guess about that amount).  And finally I put in a healthy dose of Olive Oil.  

From here I put in more flour until it's the consistency I want for kneading, and knead for about ten minutes, (or until the dough has developed a good amount of elasticity or resilience) adding flour as needed to keep it from sticking too bad.   I then coat it with more olive oil, and let it rise till doubled, about an hour.  

After the dough has risen, I punch it down and knead it a few times to get out any large bubbles, and separate it into three equal size balls, two of which I'll use for pizzas, and one for the bread sticks.  

For the pizzas, I flatten them with my hand a bit, and then I actually do toss them.  To do so, drape the pizza dough over both hands, so it's resting on your knuckles (not with your hand in a fist, use the middle segment of fingers), and just gently toss the dough up and with a slight rotation, catching the dough on your knuckles too.  I've seen an Italian chef doing this, and he claimed that in reality, this is more to get excess flour off of the dough, tha

n it is to make the dough expand to the right size.  But it does expand some, and it makes the dough thicker on the outside than in the middle (one thing i never do, is get out a rolling pin when making pizza).  Honestly though, mostly the dough tossing is just to impress your friends who are always hanging out in your kitchen, yet for some reason never helping to prepare the meal.  After tossing i still have to resize the dough when it's laid out on the pan, to make it fit.  I take the dough and pinch it up a little bit around the edge, making a nice ring,  it makes a nice crust when it rises and helps me keep an even edge for the toppings and sauce.  

And that's it.  Add your toppings and throw it in an oven between 400 and 450 degrees, (depending on the style of pizza and the toppings) and you've got an amazing pizza.  For the bread sticks I just divided them into 12 equal (more or less) pieces and rolled them with my hands into "sticks", let it rise while you're preparing the pizzas, I sprinkled a little cheese over the bread sticks after they had risen.  Then put it in the oven at the same time as your pizza, the bread sticks will be done just a bit before the pizzas, so pull them out and serve them with your left over pizza sauce (I always make too much pizza sauce).  

And there you have it.  It tastes a lot better than calling domino's or papa john's, and costs a lot less too.  

Roasted Red Pepper Bisque

One of my housemates brought home a huge crate of red and yellow bell peppers yesterday afternoon, right as i was getting ready to prepare dinner.  So given the current weather conditions, the first thing that came to my mind was roasted red bell pepper bisque.  This creamy, full-flavored soup was great for a cold winter night, and roasting the peppers gave the whole house a nice sweet pepper smell.  

Here's how it worked, for about 11 servings:

I quartered and removed the stems from 6 med-large red bell peppers, and laid them out (skin side up) on a cookie sheet.  And then placed them in the oven (which I had conveniently already heated to about 450 degrees).

While those were roasting,  I cut up two decent sized yellow onions,  and three med sized carrots, and cooked those in a skillet with some olive oil, until the onions started to caramelize.  

Meanwhile, I took a large pot, and made up about 5 1/2 or 6 cups of veggie broth.  We were out of Better Than Bouillon,  so I just used some powdered vegetable bouillon, and it worked fine.

After the peppers had been roasting for around 30 minutes (i don't really know how long, i just checked on them periodically, I'd guess about 30 minutes), I removed them from the oven.  And when the onions and carrots were done, I added those to the broth (which was already simmering).  I then cut up the peppers into smaller chunks, and put those in the broth, and let it all simmer for another half hour or so while I worked on other things.  

After that had a chance to cook together for a while,  I got out the old blender, and blended it all together till it was nice and smooth.  I've seen several recipes for bisque that want you to then strain the soup so it's completely smooth,  but I like the textures and such, so I did no straining.  

I returned all of that to my pot and left it on low heat,  then, maybe 15 or 20 minutes before dinner time, I added to that the most magical of all ingredients: coconut milk.  I'd like to think that this soup tasted so good because I did such a good job of making it,  but let's be honest here,  anything with enough coconut milk tastes good.  

Instead of coconut milk, if you aren't worried about being vegan friendly, you could use sour cream, heavey cream, Crème fraîche, yogurt, milk, soy milk.  Some of the thinner creamy things you might want to thicken a bit with cornstartch, however.  Coconut millk, in my opinion, will give it the best flavor.  After adding the cream, I added some more seasonings, to taste, and voila.

I served this meal with a romaine lettuce, baby spinach and apple salad, and made french baguettes to go with it all (if you ask me, it's not really soup, unless you have fresh baked bread to go with it).

Spicy Bean Curd and Spinach

For lunch today, I pan fried some tofu in olive oil, with Sriracha, hoisin sauce, soy sauce and various other tasty spices.  Then I paired that with a fresh baby spinach salad, as shown above.  After plating, but before I walked into the dining room to eat, I looked outside at the several inches of snow, and tons more falling (it's still falling, in fact), so salad just didn't sound. . . warm enough.  

So I whipped up a little peanut sauce, let the spinach steam with that for just a minute, and then cut up the tofu into bite size pieces and tossed them all together.  The end result wasn't nearly as pretty,  but it tasted great, and was much more similar to an authentic dish I would've eaten in China.  For the most part, they just don't do raw vegetables in China.  

Mostaccioli al Forno con Salsiccia e Piselli

This is from last week, but i'm just not getting around to posting about it.  I'm sorry I didn't get a good picture,  but this dish really hit the spot for me.  A creamy tomato sauce, baked in with mostaccioli noodles, homemade spicy Italian sausage (tvp) and peas.   And fresh, home-made super crusty french bread. 

I made a creamy sauce because (once again) i needed to use up some silken tofu, so I blended that up to make vegan "sour cream" and mixed that in with a somewhat stereotypical tomato sauce.  I had precooked my mostaccioli noodles, so then i mixed 

the noodles, sausage and frozen peas in a casserole type dish, mixed in the noodles and added some cheese on top.  Oh, and also I sliced some garlic to go on the top (mostly because it makes the whole house smell so good).  Then I baked it till it was warm all the way through and some of the cheese had begun to brown (less than half an hour at 350).  

I love peas.  They're great.  Peas peas peas.  If you don't, substitute you're favorite green veggies.  This dish was lacking in color variety, maybe some big broccoli florets in there would have been good.  Or maybe do the broccoli on the side, steamed with browned butter and garlic.  That'd add a nice complimentary flavor, and some good color to the plate.  

French Bread

For the french bread, i used what i could remember of my friend paul's directions.  It's basic bread; 2 cups of water, tablespoon yeast, a hefty pinch of sugar, same amount of salt, and flour till it's the right consistency, with no oil.  

After the kneading it had three risings.  After it double once,  punch and need and let rise some more.  Then after it almost doubles again, I separated it into three pieces (though in hind-sight, with this much dough, I should have made four),  and rolled out each of those into about a 30cm by 40 cm rectangle.  Then I rolled those up into baguette shapes.  I let them rise again for maybe 20 mins, till it looked like a size I liked.  

Meanwhile, i preheated the oven to 450, along with a cookie sheet on the bottom rack of the oven.  I had all three baguettes on another cookie sheet, so when it was hot, and the bread had risen enough, i put that second cookie sheet with the bread on the middle rack.  

This next part is important,  as soon as I put the dough in the oven,  i used a spray bottle (a mister) filled with warm water, and sprayed the cookie sheet on the bottom rack,  this all of course turned to steam immediately on hitting the hot metal.  This (along with the super hot oven) gives the bread it's very hard, yet very thin crust.   Professional bakers have misters built in their oven,  this is an ok substitute for the rest of us.  I sprayed inside the oven several times,  giving the pan a chance to reheat up between each squirt.  This also gives the bread's crust a sort of sheen to it, better than an egg wash.  After about 10 minutes I turned the heat down to a little under four hundred, so the inside would cook through without the crust burning.  My all-too-french friend Heather says if the crust feels just hard enough to be inedible, then it's almost hard enough.  This is of course balanced by the crust being very thin, and the inside being somewhat airy, and a lightly chewy.  

This was a super easy pasta dish to make,  I'll probably use it for large groups often.  And it's important to have recipes which are flexible enough to use with whatever veggies are in season.  (Or whatever you've preserved from the summer if it's freezing outside and the middle of December).  This could have also worked with summer squash, some winter squashes, eggplant, asparagus, bell peppers,  spinach or mushrooms.  And if you get your vegetables in season and fresh, each will give the pasta dish different, and distinct flavors.  

Sweet Potato Black Bean Quesadillas w/ Creamy Black Bean Dip

Tonight I made sweet potato black bean quesadillas for a potluck dish.  Here's the break down:

I took half of a very large sweet potato,  cut it into four strips (quartered lengthwise), and then cut those into about 1/4 - 1/3  inch thick slices, and fried them in olive oil.  I wanted these to be thin enough to put happily onto the quesadilla, but not chip thin.  

Then I cut up a couple of small onions into small strips, and fried them up in the left over olive oil, with some Sriracha.  I had those in the skillet for a while, till they were caramelized; plenty browned and a little crispy.  

So then I laid out nine tortillas, and put just a small sprinkle of shredded Mozzarella on each (sorry vegans, you can also use your favorite "cheeze").  Then a layer of the sweet potato, and I sprinkled on some cooked black beans.  Next I added an even smaller amount of cheddar cheese, and then a small pile of caramelized onions.  

Here's a picture of them without the tops on.  To me it looked good like that, just could have heated it up in the broiler, but i went for the classic quesadilla anyhow.  

Top it off with another sprinkling of cheese, and another tortilla.  And through it in a dry skillet on med heat,  maybe a minute on each side, making sure the middle is hot enough.  Then I cut each quesadilla into six pieces and plated.  If you want to make them ahead of time,  cook them the same, but don't cut them up.  Then you can heat them up on a cookie sheet in the oven, that'll get the tortillas nice and crispy again.  

Creamy Vegan Black Bean Dip:

So last summer, I came across several blocks of silken tofu, but, well, I don't like silken tofu.  I love good old fashion, extra firm, Chinese style tofu,  but this silken stuff just doesn't do it for me.  So I froze the tofu, hoping I'd find something to use them for later.  Well I finally got around to experimenting.  I looked up how to make "sour cream" from tofu,  and found a simple recipe at vegetarian.about.com.  It looked alright, so i went for it.  Basically it was just silken tofu, with a bit of lemon juice, oil, and vinegar.  It didn't taste like sour cream,  but that's ok, i didn't need it to taste exactly like sour cream, it was creamy and salty and a little sour, it almost had a flavor like a creamy goat cheese, but maybe we were being fooled by the texture (it didn't get as smooth as fresh tofu would have).  

So I had that in my food processor already, and I added some cooked black beans, and spices, then blended it up for a wonderfully creamy black bean dip.  I think the spices I used were cumin, coriander and a little ground red chili.  Voila.  I found some parsley in the fridge (I don't know how we have fresh parsley in December, but whatever, it was there, so I used some), and decided to put a couple of pieces up there for garnish.  

This was one of the best dishes I've made in quite a while.  And not too much work, since I used premade tortillas.   

Breakfast for Dinner

In continuing with my sausage experimenting, yesterday some friends and I made breakfast for dinner.  

So i tried my hand at making breakfast sausage.  This used about a cup of TVP, and a cup of water to reconstitute it.  Then i mixed in about a little less than a teaspoon of sage, a little more than a teaspoon of thyme, some red chili flakes, and a little bit of ground chilies.  Also salt and pepper, and some soy sauce.  

I originally made them into patties, using some egg and flour,  but, while the spices were quite good,  it just wasn't good enough to be eaten on its own, so i decided to break it up and fry it a little more and make sausage gravy.  

So for dinner, we had biscuits and sausage gravy, and scrambled eggs.  My friend Roselyn, however, did not get the memo that this was "breakfast for dinner", and instead thought that the theme was "things you put gravy on" So we also had mashed potatoes.  And yes,  she's mashing those potatoes with a pastry cutter.  

It ended up being a great meal for a lazy Sunday evening, even if perhaps it was a little high in starches, and a bit lacking in green things.

Vegetarian Chorizo

Here's another dish I made last week.

I've been experimenting with vegetarian sausage.  I used to love sausage, but it's so expensive,  so I've been searching for good alternatives and finally found one I'm happy with.  

This used TVP,  which i constituted with red wine and cooking sherry.  I fried a bunch of garlic and an onion in olive oil, and mixed in a bunch of ground chili and other spices.  And instead of salt, i used soy sauce, to get it a bit darker,  though most of the color in the chorizo is from the chilies. And finally, I added some red wine vinegar, and squeezed half a lime over it, to bring more flavor to the front.  

I served it with Spanish rice and refried beans,  sliced red leaf lettuce and tortillas.  We ate too fast however, and i forgot to take a picture of the dish plated.  Oh well.  

I've been experimenting more with TVP and vegetarian sausage lately.  In general I'm scared of TVP, it seems weird,  but this turned out so well, that I'll keep trying (not to mention how cheap it is).  I want to next master breakfast sausage, so i can make biscuits and gravy (my southern side might be coming out).  

Sticky Rice Balls

I've been inspired by hearing about fun food creations that others are sharing on the internet, so I've decided to start displaying some of my own.  I might switch this over to a separate blog, at some point, but we'll see if i continue to do it.  

These are some sticky rice balls with a spicy orange dipping sauce I made for a potluck last week.  In the middle they contain julienned carrots and apples, and I sprinkled them with sesame seeds.  The sauce is made from orange juice, a hot chili sesame oil and rice wine vinegar.  Then I spiced it up with some cayenne pepper, cumin, and red chili flakes, and thickened with cornstarch.  I also made an alternate dipping sauce based on soy sauce with other spices.  

They were a big hit, but a bit of work to make.  The first plate full i made didn't turn out too pretty, then i figured out if i kept my hands really wet, the sticky rice wouldn't stick to my hands, and it would stick better to itself.  If i make it again, I might try different veggies for a filling, and I'll toast the sesame seeds.  And maybe cook the rice in a broth of some sort, to give it more flavor.