Tempeh Salad

Packed for eating on the run tonight.

After the richness of Thanksgiving, I need some vegetables that aren't covered in cheese sauce or deep-fried onions.  This recipe is just the ticket, plus it goes together fast and can be made entirely in advance for a chilled salad. 

Tempeh is a soy-and-grain based food product that has a sturdy texture (unlike tofu) and a robust flavor (also unlike tofu). I'm not going to say that when you eat it, you'll think you're eating a steak but it hits the same textural and flavor points that a lot of meat products do. In fact, as I was cooking this one day, I had a delivery person at the door who commented that dinner smelled really good and he thought he might make some sausage for dinner, too LOL

I like wilted salads, so I top the greens with the hot tempeh mixture.  I get a little crunch by leaving the bell pepper and celery in this recipe raw.  You could saute the pepper and celery as well, though and wait for the whole mixture to cool before adding to the salad for a different effect.

Pin It

Lemon Sweet Rolls

That sounds contradictory, doesn't it?  The lemon filling on these sweet yeast rolls is tartly sweet, and the yeast roll is just delicious.  Sort of like a grown-up cinnamon bun.  The recipe is originally from the Argo Cornstarch recipe book and calls for a gooey sweet cream cheese frosting which I left off, but feel free to make it as instructed or use a store-bought cream cheese frosting.

This recipe requires some planning as the dough is a yeast-leavened dough.  However, you can do all the raising over a period of several hours in the refrigerator if that works better.  You can also make this up to the point of slicing the rolled dough and freeze the slices!!  Just arrange them in a pan to freeze, take it out at night and put it in the fridge to thaw/raise overnight, then bake in the morning.  Or make them totally ahead the night before for instant yummy breakfast in the morning.

This is also a handy way to use up a bit more of your Thanksgiving leftovers...1 pan of the rolls needs 1/2 cup of spuds.  Just be sure to use pretty plain cream-and-butter mashed potatoes (or bake a medium potato in the microwave to mash) rather than a heavily herbed or garlicked version.

Pin It

Dim Sum

If you've ever had an appetizer and said "I could make a meal of that", this is the post for you!  We've got names for this concept from a variety of culinary cultures...Spanish tapas, Italian antipasti, Chinese dim sum...making a meal of several small plates of varying foods. 

These recipes are adapted from the Frugal Gourmet's Three Ancient Cuisines.  In spite of being a meal composed of multiple attention-needing dishes (I don't usually plan to give significant attention to more than 1 dish in a meal), it came together pretty quickly and with a lot fewer swear words than I expected.

Steamer basket workaround

One of the beauties of dim sum is how easily the recipes lend themselves to prepping or making ahead.  I prepped all the sauces the night before (chopped/measured/combined ingredients), made the dumpling dough the night before, formed the dumplings right before dinner (but could have prepped them earlier if the dough was ready) and was able to cook everything in 15 inattentive minutes at the last minute.  All these dishes could have been prepped and frozen ahead as well, or fully cooked ahead and reheated in a steamer.

Speaking of steamers, the stacked bamboo steamer is apparently a staple in a Chinese kitchen.  I don't have one.  I do have a variety of metal steaming baskets, cooling racks, and ceramic ramekins that I assembled into a 3-tier arrangement inside of a large stock pot.  Work with what you've got!

The squid/calamari recipe originally calls for plain, cleaned squid to be stirfried with aromatics and sauce.  My grocery store only had pre-breaded calamari, so I decided to oven-bake the calamari and toss it with the sauce which I prepared using the microwave. 

Calamari, dumplings and meatballs

The dumpling filling calls for using leftover Chinese BBQ pork and a bit of napa cabbage, but you could use any combination of cooked meat and vegetable you want (or go totally vegetarian and skip the meat).  If you've got a small serving of leftover steamed veg of any type, I'd use that rather than cooking additional vegetables for the filling.  Also, if you have a premade stirfry sauce, you can use about 3 tbsp of that rather than measuring half-teaspoons of all the ingredients listed below.  Just add a bit of cornstarch if necessary to thicken the mixture.  Again, I made use of the microwave to deal with what is really a small bit of filling.

Pin It

Lower Carb Pumpkin Cheesecake Pie

I say "lower" carb b/c pumpkin naturally has a LOT of sugar, so it's hardly a sugar-free recipe.  But in making a couple of simple and tasty swaps, I got the total number of grams of carb from about 50g per slice to 14g per slice.



No deep dish pie plate?
Use a cake pan!

I haven't done anything really extraordinary here...just started with this delicious recipe from King Arthur Flour, made my State Fair Show-worthy nut crust and subbed in Splenda for sugar.  I did however learn a few interesting things in paying close attention to my ingredients. 

First of all, nuts are not carb-free.  They're not like double chocolate cake or anything, but there's enough there to pay attention to.  Pecans and walnuts contain about 3 or 4g of carb per 1/4 cup serving and almonds have twice that much, so I chose pecans for this pie. 

Also, if you get lower fat dairy products (like fat-free evaporated milk and 1/3 less fat cream cheese), they tend to have slighter higher amounts of carb than their full fat counterparts...no extra sugar is added to these products but the part of the milk they are made from naturally contains more sugar.


Pin It

Chinese BBQ Pork

Oh.My.Goodness.Delicious.

My kids are sick and therefore on a hunger strike against snot, but they demolished this pork (while leaving everything else on their plates untouched).  You can make this in advance to serve cold or reheat or just plan to use it in something else (recipe for THAT to come!)

This is adapted from the Frugal Gourmet (who else?) and his recommended cooking set-up is to put the marinated meat directly on your oven racks with a water-filled drip tray underneath.  My oven racks aren't clean enough for that ::blush:: and really, who wants to scrub honey-marinated pork bits off your whole flapping oven rack?  I devised a good work-around in using a cooling rack positioned over a 13x9 pan filled with water placed on a baking tray for transportability.

If you don't have red miso or black bean sauce on hand, you can sub in Marmite or just leave this out.

Pin It

Chicken Biscuits

What doesn't taste better in a biscuit, I ask you?  This is a fabulous upcycle recipe for chicken (or turkey) leftovers.  You can tweak it to suit your palate...add Italian seasoning if you want a Mediterranean flavor, taco seasoning for Mexican, Cajun seasoning for a little Creole flavor, or leave it pretty plain with just salt and pepper.  Any type of cheese will do, though I prefer a cheese in the "melting" family...mozzarella, provolone, gruyere, fontina....rather than the "shape-retaining" family...goat, cheddar, jack, swiss.

You don't want the filling to be soupy, so be sure to drain canned tomatoes well or squish the seedy innards out of fresh tomatoes.  I use dry minced onion to help absorb any extra liquid from the tomatoes, though you can choose to use a bit of fresh onion instead. 

I usually use refrigerated "whomp" biscuits (as the Sweet Potato Queen calls them, cuz you "whomp" them on your kitchen counter to open the tube) for this recipe.  Nota bene: you'll want to get "regular" size biscuits, not "jumbo" biscuits (I screw up so you don't have to!)  When I do make homemade biscuits though, I use a recipe from a fundraiser-type cookbook called All Maine Cooking.  It is *the* best biscuit recipe I've made...not too heavy, not too wet, not too salty, not too sweet, and easy to put together and roll out.  I give the recipe halved as you'll only need half to go with the Chicken Biscuit recipe.

Nerd Note of the Day...did you know cream of tartar is a by-product of winemaking?  Tartaric acid (which is what CoT is) comes from the leftover grape bits.  You could use about 3 tsp of baking powder instead of the baking soda and cream of tartar if you don't keep cream of tartar on hand, though there are other uses for it like stabilizing whipped egg whites and making your own playdoh.
 
Pin It

Saffron Chili

Dratnabbit, I made this chili the other night and forgot to take any pictures!  It *looks* like regular ol' chili, so you're really not missing much in the visual aid department, but what really sets it apart is the flavor and aroma that the saffron brings and we don't have smell-o-blog technology any way.

This is an adaptation of another Frugal Gourmet recipe.  I halve the recipe b/c I'm only feeding a small army, not a huge one, and do a lot of the steps differently to keep from making every single pot I own dirty. 

The recipe calls for 2 spendy ingredients...shallots and saffron.  They really are worth it here.  If you don't want to splurge on both, substitute red onion for the shallots, but you must, must, must have saffron for this recipe to be anything but plain ol' chili.  A small pinch goes a long way and really does shine through.  Other ideas for using saffron include: Saffron cornbread, Scalloped Potatoes and Saffron Griddlecakes. 

For prep-ahead/make-ahead instructions...to prep ahead, chop the shallots/onion and garlic and combine.  Stir saffron into broth.  Measure out spices.  That's about all you need to do.  You can ofc make this entirely ahead to reheat (in a crockpot, perhaps) or freeze.  I served this chili same-day and froze the leftovers for another meal of chili stroganoff (2 cups chili melted with 8 oz. cream cheese and served with bread and veggies for dipping). 

Pin It