Tag: food

High Density Apple Pie

I have been following the “roast apple slices before putting into pie crust” approach from Bon Appétit when making apple pies. The Thanksgiving pie this year was about five pounds of sliced apples, mixed with about a cup of maple syrup, and roasted at 350 F for 25 minutes. They should be tender but not dehydrated (a big *no* on the convection oven). The roasted apples are mixed with 2-3 tablespoons of flour and drizzled with more maple syrup. They are then added to a walnut pie crust and baked for another 20-30 minutes.

Maple Cranberry Sauce

I made a maple cranberry sauce tonight — add about a cup of water and a cup of maple syrup to a saucepan and stir. Rinse a bag (12 oz) of cranberries and add them to the pot. Bring to a boil, then lower the temp and simmer for twenty minutes or so until the cranberries break up. It’s really good warm and cold.

Shiitake Mushroom Jerky

We saw jerky-style shiitake mushrooms on Shark Tank a few days ago, and their SEO isn’t awesome because searching for “shiitake mushroom jerky” doesn’t show their company’s site in the first page. And, since I didn’t remember the company’s name … that makes ordering it difficult. The first page of results does, however, provide a lot of recipes. So I picked up a pound of shiitake mushrooms at the grocery store (a.k.a. every not-dodgy-looking shiitake they had in the bulk mushroom section). I marinated them for 24 hours in a combination of 1/4 c soy sauce, 1/4 c low-sodium soy sauce, 1/4 c apple vinegar, a clove of garlic (diced into small pieces), and a sprinkle of crushed red pepper (ground). I roasted them at 200 F for a LONG time. The recipes said 90 minutes to two hours, but it was after midnight when I turned off the oven, and I had started cooking the things at 7PM. So that’s at least five hours. A food dehydrator would be a good investment if we’re going to keep making mushroom jerky!

End result — it’s way too salty. Possibly using 1/2 c of low sodium soy would have been OK … but thinking of using veggie stock for some of the soy. And possibly making one with a few tablespoons of maple syrup instead of garlic.

Impossible Meatball Sub

Our power went out last week, and we were discussing where to pick up dinner for the night. I kind of wanted to get sandwich-makings, but it was cold. While I could easily have sold warm sandwiches … cold sandwich makings from the store had limited appeal. And, unfortunately, there’s nowhere around here to get a veggie meatball sub. We ended up getting pizzas from Pizza Hut because they now offer Beyond’s Italian sausage as a topping. It was really good (good enough we ordered another pizza the next night of our power outage), but I was still hungry for a meatball sub.

Now that we’ve got power again, I picked up a package of Impossible’s ground-beef-style stuff. It looked pretty dodgy — a grainy lump of red stuff. I added panko, salt, shredded Parmesan cheese, ground pepper, an egg, and Italian herbs. Mixed it all up and rolled them into balls. Fried them until crispy. For a comparison, I used the same basic recipe with mushed cannellini beans. I should have made the cannellini balls smaller so they’d have been crispier.

The Impossible meatballs were awesome. Not exactly a meatball — they were a little dry, but that would have been solved by simmering them in the sauce (something I intentionally didn’t do because I wanted them to be crispy). I think rolling the meatball around a little bit of mozzarella cheese might work too.

Either way, we had really good meatball subs. And between the can of cannellini beans and the pack of Impossible ground-beef-style stuff, it was enough for dinner yesterday and lunch again today.

Hop Garlic Marinade

Hop Garlic Marinade

Recipe by LisaCuisine: AmericanDifficulty: Easy
Prep time

10

minutes

Ingredients

  • 304 cloves garlic

  • 1/2 cup olive oil

  • 2-3 Tbsp hop tea

  • 1 tsp honey

  • 1 tsp salt

  • 1/2 tsp pepper

  • 1/2 tsp Aleppo Pepper

Method

  • Whirl everything in a food processor until emulsified.

Cinnamon Sugar Almonds

Cinnamon Sugar Almonds

Recipe by LisaCourse: SnacksDifficulty: Easy
Prep time

15

minutes
Cooking time

30

minutes

Ingredients

  • 2 egg whites

  • 2 tbsp vanilla extract

  • 4 cups unblanched almonds

  • 2/3 cup coconut sugar

  • 1 tsp salt

  • 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

Method

  • Preheat oven to 300 F
  • Beat egg whites until frothy; beat in vanilla. Add almonds and stir to coat.
  • Combine sugar, salt, and cinnamon. Add to nut mixture and stir gently to coat.
  • Spread evenly on a baking tray and bake for 15 minutes. Stir and bake for another 10-15 minutes (until crispy).

Creamy Corn Chowder

Creamy Corn Chowder

Recipe by LisaCourse: Dinner, SoupsCuisine: AmericanDifficulty: Easy
Servings

4

servings
Prep time

30

minutes
Cooking time

40

minutes

Ingredients

  • 2 Tbsp butter

  • 1 medium onion, chopped

  • 2 cloves garlic, minced

  • 5 ears fresh corn, kernels cut from cobs

  • 6 cups stock (veggie, chicken)

  • 1 lb potatoes, diced

  • 2 tbsp corn starch

  • Bacon (or veggie bacon)

  • Cheddar cheese

Method

  • Melt the butter in a stock pot and saute onions until translucent.
  • Add garlic and saute until fragrant
  • Add corn kernels and saute until they start to caramelize
  • Add stock, corn cobs, and potatoes. Simmer for 30 minutes.
  • Mix cornstarch with a little water to form non-Newtonian fluid. Slowly mix into soup to thicken broth.
  • Near the end of cooking time, saute bacon.
  • Ladle soup into bowls. Sprinkle with cheddar cheese and bacon.

Crispy Kale Chips

Krispy Kale Chips

Recipe by LisaCourse: SnacksCuisine: AmericanDifficulty: Easy
Servings

4

servings
Prep time

30

minutes
Cooking time

40

minutes

Ingredients

  • Kale

  • Olive Oil

  • Salt

Method

  • Preheat oven to 400 degrees F
  • Wash kale, dry, and slice
  • Toss kale with olive oil and salt
  • Set convection oven to 325 degrees F and roast for 10 minutes. Turn kale over and roast for another 5-10 minutes

Notes

  • This is a great snack, but I also use it as a crunchy topping on hearty stews.

Grilled Corn

Turns out you can cook corn directly on the grill. When we bought our grill eight or nine years ago, I found a recipe has you peel back the husk, remove the silk, re-wrap the corn in the husk, and soak it all in saltwater for an hour. That is a lot of lead time, and we wrapped up our yard work at 9PM this evening … so an extra hour and a half or so to get the corn ready wasn’t going to happen.

But if you shuck the corn, baste it with a little olive oil, and toss it on the grill … turn the ears every 3-4 minutes to avoid scorching … it is delicious. Total cook time was somewhere between 15 and 20 minutes over medium-high flame. The grill itself was open a lot (every 3 or 4 minutes to turn it, plus checking on the burgers).

Garlic Yogurt Salad Dressing

Garlic Yogurt Salad Dressing

Recipe by LisaCourse: SaladsCuisine: AmericanDifficulty: Easy
Servings

4

servings
Prep time

15

minutes

Ingredients

  • 2 cups Greek yogurt

  • Juice from 1/2 lemon

  • 2 Tbsp olive oil

  • 1 clove garlic, finely minced

  • 1/2 tsp fresh ground pepper

  • 1-2 tsp salt

Method

  • Combine all ingredients and mix well – adding salt to taste.

Notes

  • Served over a combination of romaine lettuce, onions, and cucumbers.