Possible words (and recipes!) to follow once I’ve recuperated a bit!

Update 3/02/09:  Yeah, it was a long time coming… sorry about that.

Here’s the recipe for the salmon/scallop roulade, courtesy of Alton Brown (Good Eats).

For the cheesecake brownies, I made a half-batch of Alton Brown’s Cocoa Brownies, then I made a half-batch of the cheesecake filling from this recipe, and spread it on top of the brownies. I also mashed up some fresh raspberries in sugar and water in a saucepan to make the raspberry topping. It took a while due to the double cooking time plus the refrigeration time afterwards. In the future, I may try making up the batters at the same time and refrigerating/freezing them for a short while to make them less runny, then put them in the pan at the same time (and hope the layers stay separated!)
]]> http://www.moore-reel.com/20090215/a-totally-sweet-valentines-day/feed 0 http://www.moore-reel.com/20090207/food-porn http://www.moore-reel.com/20090207/food-porn#comments Sun, 08 Feb 2009 00:04:57 +0000 jess http://www.moore-reel.com/?p=251 One word: YUM.

Ohhhh, yeah. Good enough to photograph from several different angles!

What to do? Well, I start flipping through one of the awesome cookbooks that I got for Christmas (thank you behbeh!) and the word tapenade jumped out at me from the pages. And I thought, “Mmmmm… olives. And a chance to put my new food processor to work! But what to have with it?”

Well, earlier that week, when we were trying to find some hard rolls for our beer brats (see previous entry), we also bought some nice crusty bread in case the other rolls didn’t work out. Perfect bread for tapenade, but also for…. oh yeah… fonduta. If you’ve ever had this at Olive Garden restaurant, you know how yummy it is. I didn’t have quite all the ingredients listed (or all the ingredients for the tapenade), but has that ever stopped me? Of course not!

Well, the first thing I noticed was that the recipe (linked above) serves eight. As there were only two of us, I decided to cut all the ingredients by half. Then I figured that even though I didn’t have smoked mozzarella (or any sort of provolone), I did have a package of shredded “Italian blend” cheese, plus several odd-sized chunks of various varieties of cheese on hand. (We have a serious cheese addiction in our house.)

And so I figured, hey, the recipe (cut by half) calls for 3 cups + 3 tablespoons of cheese. I’ll grate up what I have until I have the correct amount. What’s the worst that could happen, really?

Well, as it turns out… nothing. I completed the cheese recipe with the various bits of what I had (which I’m not even sure what it was… some sort of smoky gouda perhaps, a bit of gruyere maybe?) plus the pre-shredded stuff to complete the necessary amount. And it was awesome!

As for the tapenade… every basic, olive-based recipe I found online mentioned odd things like capers and anchovies, which I don’t really tend to keep around the house. So I fudged it a little and just threw some kalamata olives, fresh tomatoes, olive oil, basalmic vinegar, salt, pepper, garlic, basil, and oregano into my food processor and let ‘er spin. It, too, was quite tasty.

Possibly Related:

• Chop, Chop! I has a food processor now!!! Thanks to my awesome...
• Pizza Mia! Lunch today was some really awesome homemade pizza. We’d found...
• Bleu Shroom Burgers I guess I’m more influenced by mass media marketing than...

The first thing I wanted to post was a replay of our Super Bowl Supper! We’ve recently become sort of addicted to the Food Network (it’s like porn for people who like to eat!) Some of the awesomeness that aired recently included recipes for Beer-basted “Brats” and homemade soft pretzels. We decided on both.

The pretzels were very, very tasty. I was so relieved, since it was my first time working with active yeast in a dough! Definitely something we will be making many more times in the future!

The beer brats were… not bad. Personally, I think that the caramelized peppers and onions on top were the best part. We actually tried two different brands of meat-analogue “brats” to compare: Tofurky brand “Beer Brats” and Yves brand Zesty Italian Brats. We both agreed that the Tofurky brand was a bit better. I think next time we try them, we might have to just pan-sear them — they got a bit soggy in the beer!

Possibly Related:

• Chop, Chop! I has a food processor now!!! Thanks to my awesome...

Thanks to my awesome aunt, Tracy, who graciously let me use her Macy’s employee discount.

First run was this morning and the making of the omelettes. They didn’t turn out quite as expected… I need a bit of practice getting the food processor to “dice” onions, peppers, and mushrooms, rather than “mince” them all together into a veggie-mush. Oh, well — I mixed them with the eggs anyway. The end result didn’t look very appetizing but luckily we had some pita bread. It made a pretty good filling for our “breakfast pita pockets”, topped with salsa, cheese, sour cream, and baby spinach. Yum!

I really hope to get a lot of use out of this food processor. I’ve got visions of homemade salsa… veggie burgers… falafel (or hummus for that matter)… super-easy cole slaw or egg-roll filling… the list goes on!

Possibly Related:

• Bleu Shroom Burgers I guess I’m more influenced by mass media marketing than...
• Pizza Mia! Lunch today was some really awesome homemade pizza. We’d found...
• An Appetizer that Eats like a Meal So, it’s late. I’m tired. Walt is tired. And there’s...

This morning, I wanted to try something a little different, and somehow the idea of white “sausage” gravy popped into my head. A quick Google search turned up this recipe.

It was really, really, really good… so good, in fact, that it was greedily devoured long before I had the idea to take any photos. Maybe next time!

Possibly Related:

• Vegetarian Holiday Feast Probably the one time of the year when being a...

Dinner was a home-cooked Linguini with White Wine Clam Sauce and salad. I took the recipe from this site but also incorporated some of the suggestions from the comments.

Dessert was a “marble” cake, made from a box (I know! The shame!) of vanilla cake mix. I divided the batter in half (for the two cake pans), then took about a cup of batter from each half and mixed it with a generous portion of cocoa powder and Hershey’s chocolate syrup. The vanilla batter was poured into the round cake pans and the chocolate batter was dropped by spoonfuls onto it and mixed just enough to get a “swirly” look. After the cakes had baked and cooled, they were iced with some yummy vanilla frosting and the whole cake was drizzled with more Hershey’s… and then it was time to “Dig In!”

Yum!!!

Happy Birthday Wally Bear! I love you SO bunches!!!

I type this as Jess is passed out after taking a concoction of various cold medicines.  I’ve debated holding a mirror up under her nose to make sure she’s still alive but I’ve just resorted to shaking her until she tosses over in a barely waken daze.

Over this period of deteriorated health I have taken a liking to Rooibos tea.  It’s a little different than most other teas which is something to keep in mind when trying it.  We had gotten it a while ago but my expectations ended up ruining my first sampling because it was so different.

That’s it steeping in the swanky little ingenuiTEA that we got for Christmas (thanks Laura!).  Rooibos is pretty cool because you can steep it forever, it’s good with milk and/or sugar and has a pretty bold flavor.

So, being a gracious guest at a holiday dinner isn’t really that tough (as long as there are plenty of non-meat side dishes to go around!) What’s got me worried is the future, when I’ll likely want to invite family & friends over to our place for a holiday feast. Since Walter & I are the only vegetarians we know, it’s pretty important to me, as a hostess, to design a menu that will appeal to both carnivores and veggie-heads alike. And so, since Walter & I decided to have our own little Christmas Eve celebration as well this year, I figured it would be a good opportunity to try my hand at making a vegetarian holiday dinner.

The Menu:

• One Quorn brand Turk’y Roast
• One pan of made-from-scratch stuffing (with cranberries & walnuts!)
• Two each: mushrooms, bell peppers, and tomatos — all stuffed with the above-mentioned stuffing and roasted!
• One pot of made-from-scratch mushroom gravy
• One Green bean casserole
• One Sweet potato casserole
• Corn on the cob
• and of course, Cranberry sauce!

The fake “Turk’y” roast was mediocre when we ate it (even with the mushroom gravy), but surprisingly, it made really tasty next-day sandwiches! The sweet potato casserole was really sweet and yummy, almost closer to a dessert than a side dish. And I’m particularly proud of the two most complicated items: the stuffing and the gravy both turned out really good!

I found this really useful website of vegetarian Thanksgiving meal ideas during my search for a good mushroom gravy recipe. (I used the one titled Shitake Mushroom Gravy, but substituted baby bello mushrooms.) I think next year I might try the Thanksgiving stuffed squash!

Possibly Related:

• Bleu Shroom Burgers I guess I’m more influenced by mass media marketing than...
• Chop, Chop! I has a food processor now!!! Thanks to my awesome...
• Biscuits & “Sausage” Gravy Yeah, even vegetarians get cravings for typical carnivore fare like...

But we also still had one lonely little pie pumpkin left over. And we had recently visited Starbuck’s and had some pretty good pumpkin bread, and I thought maybe I’d try to find a recipe. Here’s one that turned out really well:

Pumpkin Bread:

• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup canned pumpkin (I made the equivalent from scratch)
• 1/3 cup vegetable oil
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 eggs
• 1½ cups flour
• ½ cup chopped pecans
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice

Preheat oven to 350º F. Grease bottom only of loaf pan. Mix sugar, pumpkin, oil, vanilla, and eggs in large bowl. Stir in the rest of the ingredients. Pour mixture into the loaf pan. Bake for 50-60 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

(Credit: http://www.mommymall.com/recipes/2005/12/pumpkin-bread.html)

Possibly Related:

• Leftover Pie Crust Idea :) Last month I made a pumpkin pie from scratch. (Which...
• Vegetarian Holiday Feast Probably the one time of the year when being a...