Teaching Andrew; Cheddar and Stewed Pinto Bean Whole Wheat Quesadillas with a Heart Salad

Ultimately the point of these lessons is to get Andrew out of fast/semi fast food places and into his kitchen. Imagine how my heart warmed (and that’s saying a lot) when we were in the grocery store buying this weeks sundries and the response to my query of,  “So, how are you Andrew?” was, “I’m excited!” With that my foul mood that had been following behind me like a dirty redheaded stalker evaporated.

This was my ideal goal, to help him reconnect with food and be excited about what he’s about to eat. Our plan is to arm Andrew with a weeks worth of relatively simple dinners that he feels confident about making before we start to branch out into the more complicated and exciting dishes. When at the meat counter he spied a boneless lamb shoulder roast trussed up and his eyes lit up, “What’s that?” “That’s a lesson for about three weeks from now.” Ultimately it is economical both in the wallet and on the clock to roast a large piece of meat and freeze individually wrapped portions for quick meals.

Instead of roasting a several pound chunk of animal flesh we went vegetarian. We took a can of organic pinto beans pinto beans that Andrew thought he liked more than black beans cooked them with onion, pepper and a couple of spices.

Quick Spiced Pinto Beans

1 12 oz can organic pinto beans

1 anaheim pepper, minced  (which we chose because it is very mild and Andrew isn’t a huge fan of hot pepper flavor)

1/2 large Spanish onion, diced

1/2 tablespoon of ancho chili powder

1/2 teaspoon paprika

1 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons olive oil

Heat the olive oil over a medium heat and add the diced onion and minced pepper until the vegetables are soft. Add pinto beans with most of the water from the can and add the spices. Stir until spices are blended and let simmer for 7 minutes. Remove from heat.

While the beans were developing their flavor we made a fantastic salad with some fun microgreens. The ingredients in this salad are both briny and fresh, a winter salad with some spring tossed in. The chickpeas give protein and the avocados much needed fat because I’m eating vegan at the moment.

Heart of my Heart Salad

1/2 head Boston Green Leaf lettuce shredded

1 12 ounce can of artichoke hearts in water

1/2 12 ounce can of hearts of palm

1/2 avocado diced

1/2 cup radish microgreens

1/2 cup wasabi microgreens (of which Andrew said, “Interesting”)

1/2 12 ounce can of organic chickpeas

Balsamic vinaigrette (NOT Andrew’s favorite)

Once that was on the table we sliced 2 ounces of Dubliner cheddar very thin (Andrew doesn’t have a grater yet and so the cheese melts but the outside of the tortillas don’t burn) and heated 1 1/2 tablespoons of safflower oil in a large pan. We put one whole wheat tortilla in the hot oil, quickly sprinkled it with 1/2 of the cheese, then a 1 bean thick layer of the quick spicy beans then half of the cheddar topped it with the second tortilla and cooked until golden brown on both sides, about 3 minutes per side. We then made a dipping sauce of equal parts sour cream and salsa. And voilà yet another meal in less than 30 minutes.

The lovely thing about knowing how to make a quesadilla, which may seem like a simple thing to many, is that you can put anything want in those babies.  One of my favorite combos is cheddar, mushrooms and kale, or jack, chorizo and red peppers, or queso blanco, black beans and avocado and the ever popular classic, pepper jack with just salsa and guacamole.

Related Articles

• Recipes for Health: Fast Food for Harried Days (nytimes.com)
• Recipes for Health: Black Bean and Goat Cheese Quesadillas (nytimes.com)
• Easy Pinto Beans & Ham Hocks (learnwaystosave.wordpress.com)
• Recipes for Health: Mushroom Quesadillas (nytimes.com)
• Upcoming Adventures in Bean Cookery (stevishabitat.wordpress.com)
• Projects ” How-To’s ” Vegan Pinto Beans,Rice, & Kale (cutoutandkeep.net)
• Shrimp & Portobello Quesadilla (kitchenmisfit.wordpress.com)

Virtual Cruising For Tangible Tastes

From the time that I was 15 years old I have collected my recipes by clipping them from various food magazines and newspapers and putting them in a sketchbook that I organized by section. In these books are also hand written recipes from all kinds of sources including other people’s mother’s recipes and other people’s cookbooks. In fact, before I started this blog 4 months ago I previously wrote a blog called 3×5 collections (better name than Food Thinking I know) that was dedicated to all the recipes that I had collected over the years. My initial idea for 3×5 collections was to create a community where people could share their favorite family/community recipes.

With food blogs being prevalent and increasingly influential, our access to recipes, food pictures and how-to videos has vastly changed the landscape of recipe collection and has thrown to the wind the idea that Aunt May’s buttermilk pie crust is truly the best crust in the world. How does one actually determine this with so many recipes for other people’s Aunt’s best buttermilk crusts available at ones fingertips? Not surprisingly my method of collecting recipes has shifted from the clip and paste with scissors and tape to the clip and paste of command V and command C. I no longer call my Aunt when I want to make buttermilk biscuits I get online and type in buttermilk biscuit recipes to my search engine. I find myself buying fewer cookbooks and reading more blogs. I look for inspiration vicariously through other people’s cooking experiences. In fact a lot of what I decide to cook is informed by what other people’s attempts look like in pictures that give me information based only on one of the senses engaged in the cooking/eating process.  What I decide to cook has in fact become almost entirely divorced from something that I actually tasted, wanted to honor and recreate. Instead, my choices are impulse and slightly competitive driven and I wonder what it means to find oneself cooking for an audience of people with whom I share food with only virtually at least in equal part with the people I actually share food with at a table.

Yesterday, I filled my first Food Thinking notebook and had to buy a new one. Before I put it on the shelf I made a list of every recipe that was in it to put at the beginning of the notebook so I would know where to find the recipes should I want them again in the future. In the spirit of honoring the intrinsic value of a good recipe and the care that it takes to create food, here is most of that list and where I got them. To all of my fellow bloggers who have helped nourish me and mine I sincerely thank you.

Korean BBQ Chicken Marinade- Bill Granger. I pulled this one off the T.V. 1 cup sugar,  1 cup soy sauce, 1 cup water, 1 teaspoon onion powder. 1 teaspoon ground ginger, 1 tablespoon lemon juice, 4 teaspoons hot chili paste.

Duck Noodle Salad- Bill Granger

Indian Spiced Yogurt Sauce- Anjum Anand, I use this on squash as well.

Jamie Oliver’s Tray Bake- I know this is his but the link is gone, here’s the recipe. 1 1/2 pounds lamb sausage (any kind will do, but this had balsamic, so a heavier sausage will hold up better. 1/2 pound shallots halved, 1 pound new potatoes halved, 5 sprigs thyme, 3 sprigs rosemary, 5 sprigs oregano, two bulbs garlic stripped but leave the cloves whole, 1 tablespoon sea salt, 1 tablespoon medium ground black pepper, 5 tablespoon olive oil, 1 1/2 cup balsamic vinegar. Preheat the oven to 350. Preheat the empty roasting pan in the oven for 10 minutes. Once the pan is hot add the olive oil and the spices until they get fragrant but do not brown. Add in the potatoes and the cloves of garlic and toss in the oil and herbs. Add the shallots and the sausages and toss. Pour  the balsamic vinegar over the whole shebang and cook until the potatoes are done, about 45 minutes.

Tomatillo Soup with Shredded Chicken- Mariquita Farm

Chicken Tikka Marsala- Jamie Oliver

Sweet Potato Gnocchi- East Village Kitchen, her site had a major hiccup so I’m linking my own post.

Scallion Ginger Sauce- David Chang via You Fed a Baby Chili?

Tomato Jam with Ginger- Healthy Green Kitchen

Hummus- Epicurette In New York

Pad Thai- Ubiquitous Cravings

Unami Chicken Marinade- Bite Me New England

Vietnamese Roasted Game Hens- Ravenous Couple

Chicken Pumpkin Stew- Jehan Can Cook

Cauliflower Mac and Cheese- Jaime Oliver via Eat. Live. Travel. Write

Crispy Chicken with Chili Sauce-Egg Wan’s Food Odyssey

Seasoned Spinach (Sigumchi Namul)- Korean American Mommy

Mung Bean Salad- Korean American Mommy

Beef Jerky- My Man’s Belly

Pickled Carrots with Jalapenos-Southern Fried Curry– as a warning these are delicious but quite hot!

Stuffed Peppers- This Week For Dinner

Curried Goat- Them Apples

Pickles-Kitchen Konfidence

Spinach, Mung Beans and Stuffed Artichokes Caught in the Web!

Fall is cooking season and I am more than content to stand in my kitchen and try recipe after recipe challenging myself to try new foods and new techniques. Admittedly, I’ve been going a little crazy and I’ve tried so many recipes this week, that I have to break them down into a couple of posts. This I will call vegetable side dish heaven.

I love vegetables I do, but spinach is one of those vegetables that I eat more because its good for me rather than out of sheer love, thus I am constantly on the prowl for a spinach recipe that will elevate it from the, “Fine, I’ll eat it.” To the, “I hope they have spinach today at the market so I can make_____.” Interestingly, when I was reading this weeks blog entries for Foodbuzz’s Project Food Blog, two of my favorite blogs, You Feed a Baby Chili?!? And Korean American Mommy both had a recipe up for Korean Blanched Spinach or Sigumchi Namul. This side dish is delicious, just tasting the sauce which is soy, kosher salt, sugar, white vinegar or rice vinegar, a thinly sliced scallion and red pepper flakes, forewarned me that I had found my, “I hope they have spinach today!” dish. Both recipes did call for toasted sesame seeds, but sesame seeds bug me since they insist on lodging themselves in between my teeth so I tossed in a few drops of sesame oil instead.

Korean American Mommy also had a recipe up for Korean Mung Beans Sprouts which caught my eye because I had mung beans leftover in my fridge from all the Pho eating I’ve been doing, I recently cooked a cow shank into a whole lot of Pho stock. It was novel for me to actually cook the mung beans, I have only used them raw where I am throwing them into a soup or a hot dish where the ambient heat essentially quick cooks them, and I have never eaten them as a side dish on their own. This side dish was so delicate, crisp and clean in flavor and I was delighted by the texture that I ate quite a lot on their own before I did end up adding them to the spinach thinking that the crisp texture of the mung bean would be a nice contrast to the spinach. Both of these side dishes had some staying power and where just as flavorful and crispy 24 hours later when the remnants were devoured as a midnight snack.

Last week I asked a bunch of my friends for a list of things that they would really like someone to cook for them, for whatever reason. I got quite an interesting list and one of the things on the list was stuffed artichokes. I love artichokes but had never had them stuffed. Roasted, boiled, steamed, dipped in butter, aioli and cheese sauce yes, stuffed no. I used a recipe from Saveur.

The stuffing was very flavorful and very light, but it did end up being a little soggy. I may have stuffed the stuffing to far down into the artichoke. In the end I liked the idea more than the actual product. I think that I may be an artichoke purist and truly prefer them simply steamed and served with really good melted butter. I certainly wouldn’t turn down a stuffed artichoke if it landed on a plate in front of me, but I probably would not make them stuffed again, however if you are a stuffed artichoke lover this is a great recipe and the failings of the dish were mine alone.

Related Articles

• Celebrate National Spinach-Lovers’ Month With These Recipes (blogher.com)
• Meatless Monday: Here’s How You Can Do It (biggreenpurse.com)
• imabonehead: Almost Bourdain: Come Dine with Me (7): Japanese Spinach Ohitashi; Spice Temple’s Chinese Stir-Fried Pork with Green Onions; Thai Pork Pad Kra Pao with Fried Egg (almostbourdain.blogspot.com)

Recipes From Around The Web: Pho, Pumpkin Stew and Olives

Normally my taste buds run in streaks. I’ll get a taste for duck and I’ll make duck several times in several different ways for a month and then I’ll be done. Or pumpkin, for about 6 weeks of the year everything I touch has pumpkin in it, near it or I have shaped to look like a pumpkin. Either I am losing my attention span or my taste buds are changing, but for the last two weeks I have been all over the map. In keeping with my normal taste bud streak I have been quite literally pickling everything I can get my hands on. I am lucky enough to have several friends in my life who are more than happy to pick up the ‘slack’ because although nutritionally, pickled produce isn’t the worse thing that one to eat, it will take its toll on your kidney’s eventually especially if you eat nothing else.

Speaking of pickling, well technically, brining, I decided to kick the preserving up a notch and make my own olives. This is at the long end a 6-month process and on the short end a 6-week process. After reading several different recipes and watching a lot of youtube videos like this one:

I decided to go with Apple Crumbles. Her recipe was the most clear to me and I liked that she had pictures most steps of the way. Since I don’t own a pickling kettle I just have the olives in mason jars that I am draining and refilling with brine daily. Apparently, the more you change the brine the quicker the process. My goal is to have these olives ready for Thanksgiving. I am cutting it pretty close.

It being pumpkin season and all, I was pretty excited when I came across Jehan Can Cook’s recipe for Chicken and Pumpkin Stew. What attracted me to the stew was that it was a slightly spicy coconut milk based stew. The recipe pulls together a lot of the flavors that I like, cumin, garlic, ginger, pumpkin (technically calabaza squash), and coconut milk. The recipe does call for chicken bouillon, which I just never have, so I added a little homemade chicken stock instead to bump up the flavor. The recipe says to cook the stew for 20-25 minutes or until the pumpkin is tender, I cooked it for close to 40 minutes, only because my pumpkin was taking bit longer to break down. It was wonderful that this was a one-pot stew and I did end up with a delightfully spiced stew in under an hour that I served over brown rice, but would probably just serve with crusty bread next time.

This week’s final treat was Vietnamese Beef Pho Soup. The two recipes that I found most helpful, and I’m a little chagrined to say this were the recipes at epicurious and at Food Network.  My first try out on this, I had pork stock in my freezer so I went ahead and used that. To give the broth the unique Pho flavor I toasted my star anise, cloves and fennel seeds and then put them into a cheesecloth with chunks of ginger, dropped the spice packet into the broth and simmered for a good 20 minutes allowing the spices to infuse the broth that way. As I am typing this I have a beef broth cooking on the stove to try the recipe again to see if the difference is that huge. Both recipes called for either knuckle or oxtail to make the broth, and my butcher was sympathetic as he told me he was out, but then he suggested that I use the shank instead. What is lovely about Pho is that it is so simple and so delicate in flavor. The cilantro, mung beans, scallions and lime juice keep the soup fresh while the rice noodles and beef fill you up. I will admit that putting the raw sliced flank steak into the soup was a little nerve-racking, until after delivering myself a swift kick in the shins I reminded myself of all of tartares and carpaccios I have eaten in my lifetime with no harm.

If anyone knows of a stunner Pho recipe I would love to hear about it!

Related Articles

• Cooking with Pumpkins (greenandcleanmom.org)
• Weekend Menu Planning: Pumpkin Recipes for Soup, Chili, Stew, and Drinks (blogher.com)

Recipes From Around The Web

He did once set the kitchen on fire

It could have been Hungry Man dinners and Wendy’s every night for me as a kid, but I was a lucky duck and when my father found himself raising a rather rambunctious 5-year-old by himself, he reached for cookbooks and a wok instead of the keys. Two of this week’s great recipes from around the web are dishes that he made often, and recently I found myself wanting to recreate. What I remember most about my father making broccoli and anchovy pasta is that he always added to much parmesean to the sauce and he very roughly chopped the anchovies so there were often big chucks with their little hairs sticking up in the dish. Which was a little overwhelming for the young me. I vowed in my journey of recreation to finely chop the anchovies and go light on the cheese.

The Gourmand Mom has a great recipe for Spaghetti Aglio e Olio and Crazy Englishwoman Cooks! has a great recipe for Broccoli and Anchovy Pasta from Jaime Oliver posted. I combined both of these recipes but either one will give you a pasta that is both light and meaty in flavor. What I liked about Crazy Englishwoman Cooks recipe was that the stem of the broccoli was peeled and chopped and added to the anchovies, garlic and red pepper flakes. I found that the flavor that the stem picked up really enhanced the dish. I also took the advice to cook the broccoli florets in with the pasta for the last 4 minutes of the pasta cooking. I chose a rotini over spaghetti simply because that was what I had in my cabinet. When I make this again and I will because it couldn’t be simpler to make, which I’m sure is why Dad had it so heavily in rotation, I will try it with spaghetti. Not only does this dish have a great smoky flavor with so few ingredients, it is good for you and super cheap to make.

Kung Pao Chicken was always a favorite and a dish that my dad still makes. There are so many variations on this dish, some of them great and some of them awful. Rasa Malaysia has a pretty good recipe. When you read the recipe it does call for a lot of different types of sauce ingredients like light and dark soy sauces and Shaoxing wine, none of them are terribly expensive and to get a great dish with lots of flavor I recommend buying them. The three things that I did change about this recipe was that I use chicken thighs instead of breasts, I doubled the amount of peanuts and I steamed brown rice instead of white, not only because it’s better for you, but the nuttiness of the brown rice goes really well with the sauce.

Last but not least was Spicie Foodie’s Luscious Thai Chicken Pineapple Curry, which was just as easy and fantastic as she said that it was going to be. This dish was creamy, sweet and savory. I did find that the cherry tomatoes were a little weird in it, for me it was a textural issue, but in the end I did learn to like them. The dish without the added chilies is very mild, I added one like she recommended, I will probably add a couple more for next time and there will be next time! I recommend taking a few minutes and touring Spicie Foodie’s website, she is funny as well as a fantastic cook, definitely read her post about mystery canned meat.

Potatoes For Breakfast, Lunch And Dinner!

The web is populated with wonderful pictures of farmers markets and their vibrantly colored stacks of vegetables. I love them just as much as the next person, what’s not to love? But the one blandly colored root that really makes me grin with glee, the one thing that really get me excited when I see them starting to come into season is the potato. Yukon, Idaho, Russet, Fingerling, Red Bliss, White, New, Purple are all good with me and their cousins Sweet, Hannah, Jewel make me giddy too. Apparently, I’m not the only one who feels this way.

Among the many great things about the potato is of course how versatile they are but also how far just a few can go. For this first recipe you only need one good sized Idaho potato. Buying potatoes organic is highly recommended, since they grow in the ground the quality of that soil is especially important.

Breakfast

Turkey Sausage and Sage Hash Browns

Makes 4 Hash browns

1 large Idaho potato shredded (Be sure to cover with cold water so the potato doesn’t turn unpleasant shades of brown then black.)

3 Tablespoons chopped fresh sage

4 ounces turkey sausage

Salt and Pepper to taste

Mix the sage, turkey sausage, salt and pepper together in a bowl. Squeeze the shredded potato dry and add to the sage mixture mixing thoroughly. Form four hash browns and fry in a high heat neutral oil like safflower or sunflower until dark caramel brown on both sides. I always top these with a poached egg.

Sage Hash Browns

Lunch

Sweet and Sour Potato Salad

Serves 6-8

2 pounds small Yukon gold potatoes, not peeled

2 large sweet potatoes, peeled

4 stalks organic celery, chopped (organic because celery is on the dirty dozen list as one of the most contaminated vegetables out there)

1 large onion, minced (doesn’t need to be organic since they have few pests which means less spraying and they have a protective skin)

10 tablespoons mayo

7 tablespoons Dijon mustard

4 tablespoons cumin

2 tablespoon paprika

2 teaspoons salt

1 large handful of cilantro chopped

2 tablespoons cider vinegar (optional)

Cut the Yukon gold potatoes and sweet potatoes into bite-sized chunks and boil until tender. While the potatoes are boiling, mince the onion and chop the celery and put them into a large bowl. In a separate bowl mix the mayo, mustard, cumin, paprika, salt and vinegar until well blended. When the potatoes are done drain them and add them directly to the onion and celery and mix. While the salad is still warm, add the dressing so the potatoes absorb the flavor. Once the potato salad has cooled down put in fridge to chill. Right before serving mix in the cilantro.

Dinner

Twice Baked Potatoes with Broccoli and Crème Fraiche

4 Idaho Potatoes

3 cups chopped broccoli (cut really small)

4 ounces crème fraiche

3 tablespoons butter

2 cups shredded white cheddar cheese

Salt and Pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 350. Bake the potatoes until the skin is a little crispy on the outside, about an hour and a half. Once cooked. Cut a slit in the top of the potato and scoop all of the flesh into a bowl. Mix in the broccoli, crème fraiche, butter and 1 cup of the cheddar cheese. Mix thoroughly, adding more butter or crème fraiche as necessary. Scoop the mixture back into the potato skins and cover with the remaining 1 cup shredded cheddar. Put back into the oven and bake until the cheese is well melted on top, about 10 minutes.

Cheap and Filling!