Edamame Salad

My god it's been almost a year since my last post...oops >.<
I could go on and on about school and relationships so I'll just say this: life happened.

I did get to take a cooking class last semester which was pretty awesome. It's safe to say that creating this blog worked. It became my set of training wheels to remove the scary aura around cooking. I've gotten more confident with cooking that I don't think it's really worth writing about as much. However, once in a while I do stumble upon a recipe or two that are really interesting and delicious.

Today, I'm sharing one of my favorite recipes that I got from my Food Science lab instructor, Chef Bill Collins. It was surprisingly one of the best things I had ever tasted, despite the rather simple recipe. Enjoy!

Edamame Salad - Yields 8 servings

Ingredients:

2 cups precooked edamame beans, frozen
1 1/2 cups carrots, medium, peeled and grated coarsely
1/4 cup scallion, thinly sliced
4 Tb cilantro, chopped
4 Tb rice vinegar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 tsp sugar
1 garlic clove, minced
salt and pepper to taste

Instructions:

1. Run warm water over frozen edamame to partially defrost. Saute in 1 Tb of vegetable oil for about 5 min until fully defrosted.
2. Toss with carrots, scallions, and cilantro.
3. Toss with rice vinegar, sugar, oil, and garlic to mix.
4. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Peanut Butter Banana Cookies

So I had one of those "Omg my bananas look sordid" moments and really wanted to make something with them ASAP. Also, since I was running out of pantry space, I decided to use some peanut butter (my 3 remaining jars will suffice for now).

So I did my usual Google thing and found this recipe for peanut butter, banana, and honey cookies. Seeing as how I misplaced my honey, I omitted that ingredient from this baking experience.

I just have to say, I don't think these cookies need honey as they're flavorful enough. I have to warn you though, since this recipe requires quite a bit of flour, the cookies will turn out more muffin-top-like than crispy crunchy cookie-like. It's still ridiculously delicious though, seeing as how everyone I shared a cookie with really liked them. The only thing I did with mine is that I made my glaze a little too thin so I fixed the recipe accordingly...at least it still tasted delicious as a cookie dip :P

Peanut Butter Banana Cookies - Yields about 2 dozen cookies

Ingredients:

Cookies:

1 1/4 cups all purpose flour

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp cinnamon

3 1/2 tbsp margarine, slightly melted

1/2 cup brown sugar, packed

1/4 cup granulated sugar

1/3 cup smooth peanut butter

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 large egg

~1 cup of mashed banana (about 2 medium sized ripened bananas)

Glaze:

3 tbsp smooth peanut butter

1/2 cup sugar

2 tbsp almond milk (or soy/regular, whatever you prefer!)

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

2. Using a stand mixer or whatever method you can use to mix a tough batter, mix the butter and sugars until smooth. Then mix in the peanut butter, vanilla, and egg until smooth. Finally, add the banana and mix until smooth.
3. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon. When evenly mixed, combine with banana/peanut mixture. Mix until evenly distributed.

4. Drop the cookie dough 2 inches apart in ~1 tbsp heaps (which I totally didn't do...) onto baking sheets that have been greased. Bake for about 12-15 minutes or until golden. Remove cookies from pans and cool completely before adding glaze.

5. To make the glaze: combine the peanut butter, sugar, and about 1 tbsp of your milk of choice in a small bowl. Whisk until smooth. Adjust the thickness by adding more milk or sugar. Drizzle glaze over cooled cookies and enjoy! :]

Turkey Taco Quinoa Stew

I originally wrote this in February...and was so proud because I was going to post up two entries in a week!...and then life kicked in. I'm really sorry >.<

But!!! - in order to make up for my sporadic posts, I have decided to post up one of my favorite dishes. It's not new to me, but it's really just so delicious that I had to share.

The original recipe from greenlitebites.com was so great that I mostly only changed the addition of cheese (because you really don't need it in the stew). I changed the proportions of the other ingredients based on personal preference and replaced some ingredients based on what I had on hand...no big differences but still, enjoy!

Turkey Taco Quinoa Stew - Serves 6

Ingredients:

1/2 lb Ground Turkey

1 package of taco seasoning

2-3 tbsp of canola oil

1 small onion, chopped

1 medium zucchini, chopped

1 green bell pepper, chopped

1 cup of Quinoa, rinsed

1 14oz to 15 oz can of chicken broth

1 14oz to 15 oz can of black beans

1 14oz to 15 oz can of diced tomatoes with jalepeños

Directions:

1. Heat oil in a large pot over medium to medium-high heat. Brown onions and turkey until turkey is no longer pink.

2. Add zucchini, bell pepper, and taco seasoning to pot, stirring ingredients until seasoning is evenly distributed.

3. Add chicken broth, black beans, tomatoes, and quinoa to pot. For a wetter stew, fill tomato can with water, swirl, and dump contents into pot as well.

4. Stir to evenly distribute ingredients, bring to a boil, then cover and let simmer for about 20 minutes (until quinoa soaks up most of the liquid...or until you can see the sprouts from the quinoa). You might want to stir up the bottom once or twice to keep the quinoa from sticking to the bottom and burning.

5. Enjoy!

Stuffed Pepper and Zucchini Galore!

Note: All of my good pictures were deleted from my battery deprived camera. I apologize in advance for the less than glamorous shots of food stuffs that now follow >.<

I know, I know. It's been a month. I've missed you blog. School sucks, and I've been surviving off of those yummy, filling, easy to cook carbs (mostly spaghetti and sandwiches >.<).

But alas; I planned on making a certain stew but realized I was missing two main ingredients...and the bell pepper (because I only had one pepper >.<) and zucchini I bought for that recipe were going bad. So, I thought, why not stuff the giant green bell pepper with zucchini and ground turkey? So I googled a recipe for the specifics on heating times and kinda winged the ingredients...turned out reallyyy good though =]

Stuffed Pepper with Turkey and Zucchini - Yields 1 serving

Ingredients:

One Large Green Bell Pepper

2-3 tbps cooking oil (I used Canola Oil)

1/4 lb Ground Turkey

1/2 Large Zucchini, chopped

3/4 small cooking onion, chopped

3 tbsp spaghetti/tomato sauce

Garlic Powder to taste

Salt and Pepper to taste

1. Preheat oven to 350°F.

2. Cut the top off of pepper and either throw away the top or cut up the extra pepper flesh for the filling. Remove all seeds from the rest of the pepper and wrap the pepper in aluminum foil. Put in oven for 15 minutes. Remove from oven and set aside.

3. Over medium heat, heat a pan with 1 tbsp of olive oil and cook the turkey until evenly browned. Set aside.

4. Using the rest of the oil, heat the zucchini, onion, and pepper bits (if you took any from the top) until tender. Add the turkey with the mixture and stir in the tomato sauce, garlic powder,

salt, and pepper.

5. Stuff the mixture into the pepper and return to oven for

15 more minutes. Enjoy when ready!

While the stuffed pepper was cooking, I looked over to the leftover zucchini and onion and decided to make a quick zucchini egg dish.

Zucchini & Eggs - Yields 1 serving

Ingredients:

2 eggs, beat

1/2 zucchini, sliced

1 tbsp canola oil

salt and pepper to taste

1. Heat oil in pan over medium-high heat. Saute zucchini slices until tender. Spread the slices out in a layer covering the bottom of the pan.

2. Season eggs with salt and pepper to taste and pour eggs over zucchini.

3. Cook until eggs are at the consistency you want, flipping and scrambling at your discretion.

Needless to say, I gobbled down this second dish before the first one finished baking...so I actually had leftovers! Yay lunch!

I will be updating within the week with that stew post...going grocery shopping today! Woo!

Vegan Mexican Pizza

Oh gosh it's been a while since I've posted hasn't it...really sorry! >.<

On a good note, this blog has been the motivation that I intended it to be; to the point that I find myself looking at a recipe and thinking "ohh, this will be awesome to make for my blog." Only thing is, once I cook and enjoy my meal, I don't have the energy to post a blog about it >.< I will revisit those recipes though. Don't worry~

But for today, I have a yummy post that is so easy to make and so easy to customize: pizza!

The main difference between this Mexican pizza and regular pizza seems to be the dough, not needing any time to rise at all.

College-level simplicity. Loving it.

The only thing wasn't easy was having to get the veggies. You know, those things that college students never buy because they seem to go bad so quickly? Yea.

Anywho, my friend Mairead and I were going to go to a local vegan cafe to get pizza but their wait time was ridiculous (I called at 3 to pre order a pizza and they were backed up until 8!) so, we decided to make our own! She pulled out this book called The Vegetarian Gourmet's Easy International Recipes by Bobbie Hinman and flipped to page 76 to find "South-of-the-Border Pizza." Now, this politically incorrectly named pizza was completely vegan except for the cheese part...so I bought some almond cheese. I have to say, the worst part about this pizza was the cheese I used. Next time, I'm going with Daiya Cheese. More expensive, but considering how much I paid for the almond cheese, might as well splurge a little more on actual deliciousness. Also, Mairea

Note: the recipe I'm posting will only make one pizza...though I guess you could make multiple small pizzas if you really wanted to.d opted to use real cheese (since she can actually eat it) so that's why we made two pizzas.

Now this recipe may seem complicated, but it's really not. Just a bit ingredient heavy. Also, I left out the tsp of ground cumin and replaced the tsp of dried oregano with Italian seasoning because I'm a college student with a limited collection of spices. Also, when it came to the toppings, we really just threw a whole bunch of toppings on it...no measurements. Just threw stuff on there.

Mexican Pizza - Yields about 3-4 servings

Ingredients:

Crust:

3/4 cup whole wheat flour

3/4 cup all-purpose flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

3/4 cup plus 1 tbsp water (so particular...)

Sauce:

1 8 oz can of tomato sauce

1/3 cup salsa (spiciness is up to you. I used medium)

1 tsp chili powder

1 tsp Italian seasoning (or dried oregano)

1/8 tsp garlic powder

Toppings:

1.5 cups of shredded soy cheese of your choice (mozzarella and/or cheddar works)

half a minced onion

half a very thinly sliced green pepper (my slices were too thick and they weren't soft enough when the pizza was done)

2-3 sliced mushrooms

some freshly chopped spinach

whatever else you want because it's a pizza. just make sure it's thin enough to cook well. if you add meat, like ground turkey, cook it before adding it to pizza.

1. Preheat the oven to 400 F. Lightly oil a 12" pizza pan (or use a cookie sheet).

2. In a large mixing bowl, combine both types of flour, baking powder, and salt and mix well. Add water and mix until all ingredients are moistened. Using your hands, work the dough into a ball. If it's too sticky, flour your hands a bit. Place dough in prepared pan and press to form a crust.

3. Bake the crust for 10 minutes. For the meantime, work on preparing the sauce and toppings. (don't forget to set a timer)

4. Combine all the sauce ingredients in a bowl, mixing well. Prepare toppings as listed.

5. Once the crust is done baking and out of the oven, spread sauce evenly, staying 1/2 in away from the edge of the crust. Sprinkle the cheese and the toppings heavily over the sauce. If it looks like a ridiculous salad right now, remember that most of the ingredients will shrink while cooking.

6. Bake the topped pizza 10-15 minutes or until cheese is melted (since the ingredients are okay raw anyway).

Enjoy! The crust turned out to be quite crunchy in some spots...mmm ^-^

Vegan Curried Lentil Soup

Okay. So lentil soup isn't really something that needs to be changed for my dietary restrictions. However, being a college student, I did have to change/omit a few things from the recipe due to a lack of...resources, to say the least :]

So my friend Rena (who is staying with me at college for a week or two) and I were just dillydallying around when we realized that though it was 11 PM, we hadn't had dinner yet. (aka. preoccupied with bananagrams :x) I had planned to make some breaded tilapia with a dijon mustard and mayo sauce but then realized I didn't have enough fillets to fill the both of us. Looking to add something more filling, I reached into my college cupboard filled with non-perishables, pulled out a bag of green lentils, and immediately though of soup. We pondered if curry would go with lentils and ended up Googling this Curried Lentil Soup recipe.

Because it's currently a winter wonderland outside and neither of us have a car, we had to make due with the ingredients we had in the house. So a medium carrot became a bunch of chopped baby carrots, garlic cloves were replaced with a LOT of garlic powder (though it probably would've tasted amazing with real garlic), and a medium onion translated into 3 small cooking onions. The green onions and wedged lemons were omitted due to a lack of resources and the sheer lack of desire to garnish our dishes. And even though the recipe is scaled to yield 6 servings, that just means leftovers for tomorrow! Also, no food processor? No problem. Bring a friend and a potato masher.

(Thanks Rena. Those chickpeas didn't see what hit em :P )

Curried Lentil Soup - Yields about 6 servings

Ingredients:

3 tbsp olive oil, divided
3 small cooking onions, chopped
2 handfuls of baby carrots (or 1 medium carrot), finely chopped
1 tbsp of garlic powder (or 1 clove of garlic, chopped)
2 1/2 tbsp of curry powder
1 cup of green lentils

5 cups of water, divided
1 15.5 can of chickpeas (garbanzo beans), drained, rinsed
1 1/2 tbsp lemon juice
2 tbsp of margarine or replace with olive oil
some salt and pepper to taste

Directions
1. In a large pot over medium heat, heat 1 tbsp of olive oil. Add onions and carrots. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Cook until onion is translucent, stirring occasionally for about 4 minutes. If you have garlic instead of garlic powder, add it in now. If not, keep heating until the carrots are starting to soften.
2. Add 2 1/2 tbsp of curry powder and stir for about a minute, until it is evenly dispersed.
3. Add lentils and 4 cups of water. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Increase heat until boiling, then reduce heat to medium to simmer until lentils are tender (about 30 minutes).
4. As the lentils are simmering, mash the chickpeas, lemon juice, 1/4 cup of water, 2 tbsp of olive oil, margarine (or extra olive oil), and garlic powder (if you didn't use garlic cloves) until most of the chickpeas have basically turned into hummus...although I personally don't mind having chickpea chunks in my soup.
5. Add your chickpea puree to the simmering soup and stir until puree is evenly distributed. Season to taste with salt and curry powder. Add water to change consistency if needed.

So yummy...and now I have leftovers! Yay! Went pretty well with the tilapia :]

Almond Cookies and Vanilla Pudding

So, I meant to do this entry a week ago, but my mother insisted that I wait until this weekend so that she could learn how to bake (she's a typical Asian mother...really no reason to use the oven other than to store pans and such...). Of course, once I started, she didn't care to watch as her favorite TV show was on. Figures.

Anywho, so she had requested that I make an almond based cookie, as those are her favorite, without it being too sweet. As I later decided, vanilla pudding would go really well with these cookies to make up for the lack of sweetness (dipping the cookies worked especially well) and it helped with taking care of the yolks leftover from the cookie recipe (which called for egg whites). As you'll come to learn, I really hate wasting food and resources in general...

So, I Googled almond cookies and dug up this Hazelnut and Almond Cookie recipe. I altered the recipe in several ways. First off, since I'm at home where my mother only has one cookie sheet, I changed the serving to 15 cookies. Then, since I didn't have hazelnuts, I just replaced the hazelnuts with, you guessed it, more almonds. Even though the recipe called for chopped almonds, I just smashed them around in my mortar and pestle set until they became somewhat grainy, not to the point of powder. I also added one extra egg white as I was using medium eggs and it didn't look like enough. Also I kind of changed my methods. So the recipe became:

Almond Cookies - Yields about 15 servings

Ingredients:

3 medium egg whites (separated using the hand to hand method...saved yolks for pudding)

1/4 cup and 3 tbsp of white sugar

~1 cup of crushed/chopped/smashed almonds

1 tsp of vanilla extract

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 325 F and coat cookie sheet with grease, oil, or margarine.

2. In a mixing bowl, beat egg whites until frothy. Add sugar and beat until mixture is thick and white. Stir in vanilla extract and then almonds.
3. Pour mixture into a saucepan over low heat, stirring with a wooden spoon for about 10 minutes, or until it becomes thicker and more beige. Drop by tablespoonfuls onto greased cookie sheet about 1 inch apart.

4. Bake about 16-19 minutes, until cookies are dry to the touch. Cool on a wire rack.

While the cookies were in the oven, I decided to start working on the pudding. Mind you, set a timer for the cookies, because I got distracted and left the cookies in a minute too long (still turned out well as indicated by my parents eating about half of them in 5 minutes, lol).

I found this Old-Fashioned Vanilla Pudding recipe online as well, and altered it to make it nonlethal to us lactose intolerant folks out there. Also changed the serving size as I had three yolks to use up:

Vanilla Pudding - Yields 6 servings.

Ingredients:

1/4 cup and 2 tbsp of white sugar

3 tbsp of cornstarch

1/4 tsp of salt

3 cups of Vanilla almond milk

3 egg yolks, lightly beaten in a heat safe bowl

1 tbsp and 1 tsp of margarine or butter

1.5 tsp of vanilla extract

Directions:

1. In a medium saucepan, combine the sugar, cornstarch and salt. Gradually stir in the almond milk until solids are evenly dispersed. Stir over medium heat until thickened and bubbly. Reduce heat and stir for 2 more minutes. Remove from heat.

2. Stir a small amount of hot filling into egg yolk then return all to pan. Return to heat and bring to a boil while stirring, making sure to scrape bottom (reason why I use a wooden spoon!)

3. Leaving pan on stove, turn off heat and stir for another minute or two. Then remove from heat and gently stir in the butter and vanilla.

4. Cool for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Transfer to dessert dishes, cover, and refrigerate for 1 hour.

I think this first endeavor of the year was a success...seeing as how my mother was scraping the saucepan clean of pudding with a cookie when she she asked me when I could make more -__-