Too few people understand a really good sandwich

Thursday night meant I was off the hook again! Here’s what my baby made me:

Yup. Philly cheesesteak sandwiches. mmmMMMmmm…comfort food at its best.

Falafel

I had forgotten how easy these are to throw together for a pantry busting meal…and how wonderfully tasty they are.

What you need:

2 cups garbanzo beans or chick peas (funnily enough the cans I buy come in 190z cans which is roughly over a cup, but roughly under 2 cups, so two of these are required – I use the remainder to make hummus)

1/2 cup packed fresh parsley (today I didn’t have any parsley but wanted something green so I added a tablespoon of dried basil)

4 cloves of garlic

1 tsp ground cumin

1 tsp ground coriander

1/2 tsp paprika

1/2 tsp turmeric

1 small onion

1/2 cup bread crumbs

1 tbsp sesame seeds

pinch of salt

Peanut oil for frying

8 pitas

A variety of fruits and vegetables to serve on the pitas with the falafel.

Toss everything but the bread crumbs and oil into the food processor. Pulse-blend until you’ve got a paste. Mix in the bread crumbs by continuing to pulse-blend them in. Once they’re all blended put the lot of it in the fridge until it’s time to cook them (the more uniformly cold they are the easier they are to work with so I recommend having them in the fridge for no less than an hour.)

You’ll want to serve the little chick pea patties as immediately as possible after cooking so chop any desired vegies (I recommend baby spinach, tomatoes, peppers and green onions) and get your pitas ready before hand. I like to have some kind of tasty, offensively pungent sauce to serve with them so I usually make that up while the mush is chillin’ too. What I had on hand was half a tub of sour cream – generally a little too rich for my liking so I diluted it with the minced half of a red onion and 3 cloves of garlic. To that I added some dill and a pinch of salt; et voila! Instant offensively pungent saucey stuff!

The cooking method or these is pretty simple; heat 2 inches of peanut oil in a skillet or wok. Roll the chick pea mush into a bunch of looney-sized balls then flatten them to about a 1/2 inch in thickness. Once the oil is HOT (and you can use a little mush to test) gently place the falafel in it (I’ve got a couple of these puppies which help with this as I prefer too keep my fingers well away from hot grease) to cook for about two minutes. If using a wok you’ll probably want to do them in batches of four or five. Upon removing them from the oil place them on a paper towel lined serving dish then toss ’em on the table as soon as possible.

It’s Tuesday and he’s cooking

The boy outdid himself tonight with a lovely spinach salad, mashed chivey-parsley-red potatoes & broiled pork with salsa verde.

Fall vegie stew

Today we’re making a lovely, spicey, crap-weather-beating stew out of the beauties above.

What you need:

1 large red onion, thinly sliced

4 cloves garlic, smashed (not crushed)

1/2 pound shiitake mushrooms, sliced

1 of each, peeled and cubed: large yam, medium pepper or butternut squash (or the squash of your choice, really,) medium turnip

3 large parsnips, peeled and cut into circles

6 medium sized red potatoes, cubed – I don’t peel these

2 teaspoons each: whole mustard, cumin, coriander, allspice & fennel seeds (I prefer to use the whole, unground versions of these spices as I find their flavours stay stronger over longer periods of time than their ground versions)

2 teaspoons each: ground turmeric, cinnamon (yes! cinnamon! it will be wonderful, never fear!), nutmeg, cayenne pepper (because these things are hard to find whole and harder to grind if you do)

2 mushroom bouillon cubes

1 herbes fines bouillon cube (okay, I’m only using this because I want to try it – you can substitute that for a tablespoon each of thyme, oregano, sage and fresh parsley)

3 tbsp olive oil

How to do it:

Cube/slice/smash/chop all of the vegetabley ingredients listed above. If you’re anything like me your table will look a little like the following picture when you’re done:

Then toss the whole mustard, cumin, coriander, allspice & fennel seeds into a mortar & pestle or a spice grinder (aka: coffee grinder – some people in rich countries keep several of these for various reasons, however my Queendom is not so auspicious – okay, okay. We did trade the second coffee grinder for a set of stella artois glasses.)

With that we’ll grind them into a coarse (as opposed to fine) powder. To that we’ll add the rest of the spices (but not the herbs!) Then we toss that into a large pot over medium-high heat:

And we’re going to leave them there, stirring occasionally, until out little spicey friends become over-poweringly fragrant and start to pop. Again, you’ll have to take my word on this, but they will pop. At which point we’ll add 3 tablespoons of olive oil and stir until everything’s coated. To that we’ll add the thinly sliced red onion and smashed cloves of garlic and stir a bunch more until the onions are translucent. At this point we add our potatoes and only our potatoes so help us Ford. Oh, and a little salt. Like, a teaspoonful. And we stir again.

What’s going on at this point is our salt and butter and potatoes are all mixing together and convincing the potatoes to release some of their starches which will serve to thicken the sauce later. It’s important to not allow the potatoes to brown too much for this very reason, but if they brown a bit that’s ok too.

Then we add all of the other splendid autumnal vegies….and yes; we stir again. We want to get them all coated with those spices we worked so hard to put together.

We’ll let them sit there like that, still over medium-high heat, still stirring occasionally, for about 10 minutes. Then we’ll add just enough water to cover our vegies.

At this point we’re going to turn the heat down to medium-low, put a lid on it and leave it to its own devices. I’m going to go get the kids from the bus stop (but not before waiting until there’s a little movement in the pot then turning it down to the lowest heat possible on the burner because I’m paranoid of fires.)

Your finished stew should be thick, but still have tender but identifiable chunks of vegetables in it.

Because vegetable stews are a wee bit more delicate than meat-based stews, I tend to not make dumplings with them and opt for buttermilk tea biscuits instead.

Picnic in the Park

I’m all about inflicting cruel and unusual punishments upon my loin fruits and my nephews. So today, November the 2nd, first morning with frost on the ground, we went for a picnic in the park. We ran our errands and then hit the grocery store and picked up a small rotisserie chicken, a bag of baby carrots, some clementines and drinking boxes, hit the park and mowed down…but not before climbing a tree.

best ever chip dip

I’m a complete sucker for chips and dip. I’ll pass over chocolate any day, but do not deny me my greasy, potatoey goodness.

The following is a recipe for cream cheese chip dip which is as addictive as it is easy.

What you need:

1 block cream cheese

1/4 cup evaporated (makes a creamier dip) or regular milk

2 tbsp dried onion flakes

Loads of cracked pepper (our mill is always loaded with a red/green/black combo which is to die for – we’re pepper snobs)

A pinch of salt

Toss all of the above into a medium sized bowl, cover with plastic and allow to sit for at least 2 hours so that the onions have a chance to reconstitute in the milk, like so:

Resist the urge to stir or poke it or disturb it otherwise. After about 2 hours you can mix it:

Then serve it in your favourite bowl. This one’s mine:

Yup. It’s a depression era gas station special made by Federal Glass Company. I have a bigger one with tigers, too. It saddens me deeply that the practice of giving cheap glass products away with a refill has gone out of style. So much cool kitchen stuff is collected that way. But I digress.

Your dip is done! Eat it!

my pizza stone

This is my pizza stone. There are many like it but this one is mine. My pizza stone is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life. Without me, my stone is useless. Without my stone I am useless. I must season my pizza stone true…

Okay, it’s a little grimey and gross looking right now (and I’m a total ass for making the sprog hold it before giving it a proper washing), but I wanted you to get a feel for just how much I put this poor thing through.

This is the brand new stone the stork brought us:

One day it may look just like its sister.

I’ve had my stone for almost 4 years now and it’s done well by me. I’ve subjected it to pretty much everything all the books tell us not to; direct heat, a lack of preheating, frozen foods, etc. and it remains my favourite kitchen tool ever. If you don’t have one, go get one. If you do have one, take it out and use it – I double dog dare you to get it looking like mine.

Betty Crocker rang, she wants her muffins back

I’m generally not a strong endorser of mixes and packages of pre-mixed stuff or things to which one should just add water to produce a seven course meal – not because I’m a puritan or that I’m particularly well versed in the benefits of whole foods versus processed foods (though there’s certainly a wee bit of that going on.) Mostly it’s just because they don’t often taste as good as the real deal.

That said, there’s definitely room in my cupboards and a time and place for such things. Most specifically for bulk food store honey oat bran muffin mix. I am not a baker and what muffin mix means in my kitchen is nearly 45 minutes in which my two sprogs and my sister’s two sprogs are happily concocting and not fighting, not wanting outside, not whining because they’re bored, not fighting, not needing me to jump rope, not having squeeling contests, not fighting (did I say fighting?) or requiring massive amounts of my attention otherwise. 45 sweet minutes in which they’re happily smashing bananas, cracking eggs, greasing tins and licking spoons and I can easily accomplish half a day worth of work while keeping half an eye on their productivity (just to ensure they’re not over-mixing the muffins.)

This stuff is great. It’s reasonably healthy – actually providing acceptable levels of complex carbohydrates to keep us all regular and containing a very minimal amount of sweetener (as all good muffins will.) On top of all that, it’s not so expensive or time consuming that you’ll be devastated should the results turn out less than savoury.

Today we made honey-oat-bran-banana-coconut-chocolate-chip-walnut muffins.

Other muffins from mixes we have made include, but are not limited to:

Pineapple-mandarin-coconut

Sesame-apple-cranberry

Salsa-cheese-pecan

Pumpkin seed-pecan-peach

Maple-walnut-apple

Potato-cheese-parsley

Carrot-raisin-pumpkin seed

Cranberry-orange-almond

Papaya-coconut-pecan

Ham-walnut-pineapple

Poppy seed-lemon-almond

p.s. I’ve also used this stuff to make pancakes.

pesto!

I discovered the cheap, easy alternative to actual pesto about 15 years ago and our freezer has hardly been without it since. It’s a great way to deal with spinach and parsley which are about to pass and is far less spendy than fresh basil pesto, which can be hard to come by at the best of times.

For this batch I used:

5 cups baby spinach
2 cups fresh italian parsley
2 tbsp dried basil
5 cloves of garlic
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp freshly ground pepper
2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 cup olive oil

Toss the lot of it in a food processor or blender and whiz until it reaches a creamy consistency. Placing it into ice cube trays (as above) makes for a quick freeze and conveniently sized for use later.

Pesto can be jazzed up (or down, for that matter) in all manners: omit the basil and replace the parsley with cilantro and you’ve got a yummy addition to your next spanish rice casserole. Add sun-dried tomatoes and you’ve got a lovely pizza base. The sky’s the limit, really and pesto is a great place to start experimenting with flavours and balances. Enjoy!

all things squishy

I have a two year old hanging around lately so we’ve been making all manner of yummy things with the bounty of seasonal goods bestowed upon us recently.

Squash and pumpkins and garlic roasting for soup and muffins. While those cook we eat grilled old cheddar and gala apple (soooo good right now – go get some!) sandwiches.

Then we make the autumnal requisite squash soup. Roasting the squash first gives it a sweeter and nuttier flavour. The roasted garlic goes in there too. We puree it with a few potatoes, add some curry spice and serve it with cream.

We found a recipe for pumpkin bacon muffins over at and had to try it.

Tasty, tasty baconny, pumpkinny goodness.