Paneer – Vegetable Whole Wheat Enchiladas

A word of caution: these are not super authentic Mexican enchiladas. Not that I don’t love me some good, authentic Mexican (or even Tex-Mex) dishes. Let’s just say this is merely my homage to the enchilada!

Here’s what you need:

• 1 chopped large onion
• 2 chopped green peppers
• 2 chopped red peppers
• 2 chopped squashes
• 5 chopped tomatoes
• 400 grams of paneer
• Shredded cheddar (or any other cheese you like. Queso blanco?)
• 8-10 whole wheat tortillas
• 1 ½ teaspoons garlic paste
• 4-5 bay leaves
• Fresh cilantro leaves
• 1 ½ teaspoon cumin powder
• 1 teaspoon coriander powder
• ¼ teaspoon red chili powder
• ¼ teaspoon black pepper
• Olive oil

Here’s how I do it:

1. Sauté the onion on high then medium heat.
2. As onions turn translucent, add the garlic paste and the bay leaves and cook in.
3. Add the tomatoes, cook to a mush.
4. Remove the bay leaves.
5. In a different pot, sauté the vegetables.
6. Add the vegetables to the onion-tomato mixture.
7. Add about 400g bite sized chopped paneer and the spices (Cumin powder, coriander powder,red chili powder, black pepper and salt).
8. Now we need to cook the paneer, vegetables and spices in together. Stir the spices and paneer in gently, cook on high heat, then medium till the paneer is cooked through and the spices are ‘infused’ through the paneer and vegetables. Add water if there isn’t enough.
9. (Tip: If the spice mix seems a tad dull, add ½ or so teaspoon sugar).
10. The cooking should have evaporated the excess liquid.
11. Cook 8-10 medium whole wheat tortillas on a skillet in olive oil, browning them lightly. Ensure they don’t harden.
12. Put some paneer-vegetable mix into each cooked tortilla and roll it up. Place the tortillas side by side into a lightly greased oven-safe pan.
13. Top with shredded cheddar (or any other cheese of choice) and cook in an oven heated to 300 F for 5-10 minutes or till the cheese is just melted. Serve immediately, garnish with fresh cilantro leaves.
    
14. An epilogue of sorts: it’s fun to replace the paneer with ground, cooked turkey too if you want to go the carnivorous way.

 

Honey-Glazed Pear Upside-Down Cake

Here’s one from Sarandipitea. She’s usually in charge of the dessert section around here.

The flavors of this cake are sophisticated and it sounds very fancy, but it is very easy to put together.  We’ve also served it at potlucks, where it earned the less-than-appetizing name “raw chicken cake,” due to the orange-pink, translucent appearance of roasted pears.  (It tastes sophisticated, but might not look sophisticated!)  The taste, however, is totally worth it. Keep vanilla gelato ready on the side!

Ingredients:

• ¼ Cup Honey (honey with a strong flavor works best)
• 3-4 Bosc pears, peeled, cored, and quartered
• A handful of thyme sprigs (dried thyme would probably work too – maybe a use a teaspoon)
• 1 cup sugar
• Zest of 1 lemon
• 1 egg
• 1 tblsp vanilla
• 1 cup flour
• ¼ tsp salt
• ½ cup plus 1 tblsp melted butter
• Sliced almonds (optional)

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. In a 9-inch ovenproof skillet (not nonstick), simmer the honey on medium-high heat until it begins to reduce, caramelize and darken in color, 6 to 10 minutes. Do not let honey burn; if it starts to smell burned, turn off heat.
3. Arrange the pears in a circular pattern in skillet, close together and cut-side down , stem ends pointing toward center. Simmer over medium heat until they begin to turn golden, flipping from side to side, about 10 minutes.
4. Flip pears over to their curved side and scatter with thyme sprigs. Transfer skillet to oven and bake uncovered, until very tender, about 25 minutes.
5. Meanwhile, in a large bowl, whisk together the sugar and the lemon zest.  Whisk in the egg and the vanilla. Fold in flour and salt; stir in the ½ cup of melted butter.
6.  When pears are soft, remove skillet from oven. (careful! The pan is hot!!)  Discard thyme sprigs and brush edges of pears with the remaining butter. Pour batter on roasted pears and scatter sliced almonds over batter if using.
7. Bake until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean, 25 to 30 minutes. Let cake cool for 30 minutes in pan. Run an offset spatula along edges of pan to loosen cake; carefully invert cake onto a serving platter. Serve warm or cooled.

 

Panna Cotte

This is yet another all time favorite. It is also supremely easy to make, comforting and delicious.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups of navy/white kidney beans
• 1 bunch of escarole
• 1 chopped onion
• 1 1/2 teaspoon garlic paste/crushed garlic
• 1/2 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 1/2 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese.
• Black pepper
• Salt
• Pieces of crusty bread

Here’s how we do it:

1. Soak the beans overnight (at least 6 hours). Drain and wash.
2. Chop and sauté the onion.
3. Add the sautéed onion, 3-4 cups of water, 1 teaspoon salt (or to taste) to the beans and cook this mixture. The easiest way is to pressure cook the beans/water/salt/onion mixture.
4. Separately, wash 1 bunch escarole, remove the core, tear up the leaves and sauté them (in a different pot) in olive oil along with 1 ½ teaspoon of garlic paste/crushed garlic. When sautéing, start at high heat then lower it so escarole wilts and the garlic does not burn.
5. Add the cooked beans to the cooked wilted escarole/garlic mix.
6. Add black pepper, freshly squeezed lemon juice to taste. Mix it all in gently. Cook 4-5 minutes at low-medium heat to evaporate some liquid.
7. Add some crusty bread pieces and mix them in.
8. Place the soup in oven safe bowls, top with freshly grated parmesan cheese and heat in the oven at 250F to melt the the cheese. 
9. All done!
   

 

Quinoa Kale Salad

I am writing a post after several months. I certainly have not, not been cooking (Ah, the wonders of double negatives). In other words, I’ve been cooking but not writing about it. In fact, I’ve managed to stick to my resolution of making new dishes and/or making previously made dishes in a new way as well! So, there’s lots of recipes and posts to catch up on, which I will, slowly!

To re-start, I am back with one of my favorite recipes ever. Hopefully that will make up for the long absence! You can think of this as a salad: it has tons of kale (green stuff!). You can think of this as a cold pilaf – since basically, that’s what it is. It has quinoa, greens, dried fruit and nut. What can go wrong?

Also, it is a perfect summer/fall dish. It works perfectly as lunch, all on its own or as a small plate at dinner.

Ingredients:

1 bunch of kale

2 cups of quinoa

Anything else now is completely your choice:

1 cup of dried cranberries

A handful of (roasted) cashewnuts

Ghee

Salt to taste

Black pepper to taste

Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Freshly squeezed lemon juice

1/2 cup of freshly grated parmesan or romano cheese

How to put it together:

1. Prepare Quinoa: Soak the quinoa for half an hour. Then rinse and thoroughly wash it. Cook it as you would cook white basmati rice: typically takes the same amount of time. Add twice the amount of water, let it come to boil. Let it boil for a few minutes (4-5 minutes), lower the heat and cover the pot most of the way. I like it not covered all the way so the steam can escape. By 16 minutes or so, the lovely strings on the quinoa would have come loose – that’s how you know it’s done. Drain excess water (carefully!).
2. Prepare kale: Thoroughly but gently clean the kale. Now you have to shred it –  remove the stems. (This is a matter of preference, but I even remove the stems from the smaller leaves if I find them too woody). This takes me a while to do: best sit down and open the chilled bottle of white wine that you know you’ll want to drink with this! (Or chilled wheat Belgian beers: Grimbergen? Leffe Blonde?). Anyhow, remove the stems, shred it – perhaps the photo can show you how small you have to shred it?
3. Prepare other ingredients: roast the cashew nuts in ghee or the extra virgin olive oil. Grate that cheese. Squeeze the lemon. Grate the black pepper.
4. Put it all together: wait a little for the quinoa to cool down somewhat. Then, mix the kale gently into the quinoa. Add in cranberries, black pepper, lemon juice, salt, the cheese and mix it all up with a generous dab of EVOO: extra virgin olive oil.

All done! You have a bright salad/pilaf ready. Quinoa has a lot of protein, so it’s pretty filling too – and healthy! I love the fact that this dish has several taste components to it: slightly citrus, the gentle sweetness of the cranberries, the quinoa, the nuttiness of the cashews and the quinoa and light saltiness of the cheese that somehow completes the taste palette. It comes out nicely subtle and balanced!

Enjoy – and don’t forget that glass of pinot grigio, or even a dry riesling. And those folks that will try a Grimbergen or Leffe Blonde for the first time, you’re welcome!

And oh, one more thing: this was inspired by something I had at one of my favorite pizza places (ever) – Fat Cat Pie Co in Norwalk, CT.

 

Sweet Onion Sandwiches from the Fall

I am a fan of flat breads and pizzas that have sweetened, cooked onions on their base. It adds this mellow, lightly sweet taste to the dish which can then be complemented by a large variety of meats, vegetables and cheeses on the flat bread/pizza.

Two of my favorite places in CT are Arugula in West Hartford (great flatbread) and Fat Cat Pie‘s (Norwalk) caramelized onion topping on their delicious thing crust pizzas.

Inspired by that, combined with having just picked some yellow squash and zucchinis from a nearby farm, I decided to make some sandwiches which would be very Fall-inspired, warm and showcase the vegetables. We had some fresh ciabatta from the very good, local (!) Chabaso bakery: in fact, I was pretty pleased to note most of this dish was pretty local!

Here’s what I used this time around:

• 1 loaf whole wheat ciabatta, sliced
• Gruyere, sliced
• 2 large onions, chopped to get long strands
• Cream sherry
• Brown Sugar
• 2 small – medium zucchinis, chopped into thin slices
• 2 small – medium yellow squashes, chopped into thin slices
• 1 small butternut squash
• Salt
• Freshly ground black pepper
• Cherry tomatoes
• Butter
• Extra virgin olive oil
• Basil leaves
• Rosemary

Here is what I did:

• Prepare the butter nut squash

1. Split the butternut squash into half (along the length) and scoop out the seeds
2. Smear each open face with 1/2 tablespoon butter, sprinkle brown sugar generously on each face and then season with salt and the freshly ground pepper.
3. Pre-heat the oven to 400F and roast the two halves face up for 30 minutes or until it has softened (You should be able to pierce easily with a fork)
4. Take it out of the oven, and carefully (It’s going to be hot!) peel off the skin.
5. Chop into slices that you can use on top of the sandwiches
6. After you take the butternut squash of the over, lower the heat in it to 250F – we’ll use it for preparing the sandwiches (last step)

Note: one can also add garlic – but since this time I knew I was going to make open face sandwiches, I did not want garlic.

• Prepare the onions: you can start this while the butternut squash is roasting in the oven

1. Saute the onion ‘strips’ in the olive oil on high heat and then on low heat.
2. As the onions start turning translucent, add sherry and cook slowly on low heat. Keep stirring
3. Taste once a while, and add brown sugar and stir it in if you’d like to make it sweeter.
4. At the end, you should be left with slightly browned, soft, translucent onion strips in a thickened sherry sauce (Not too thick)

• Saute the squash and zucchini

• Prepare the sandwiches:

1. Lightly butter one side of the sliced ciabatta bread
2. Top with onions, and add a little of the remaining sherry-sauce on top (Not too much, it will soak the bread!)
3. Sprinkle rosemary and if you like, some freshly ground black pepper
4. Add the sliced cheese
5. Put this in the oven for 5 minutes, or until the cheese has melted and the bread has toasted
6. Take the slices out of the oven, reduce the heat to 175F
7. Top the slices with the basil leaves and your choice of topping: sliced cherry tomatoes, sauteed squash or sliced, roasted butternut squash
8. Return to the oven for a few more minutes to keep warm

Serve immediately!

Note to self: I have to figure out a way to perhaps cook the butternut squash a bit more. Sarandipitea’s mother suggested broiling the sandwiches in the last step (after adding the vegetable topping, rather than using the oven at 250F). I could have also sauteed the butternut squash lightly  (Although I can see that can be messy!)

 

Chocolate Peanut Butter Oatmeal Rounds

For a change, here’s a recipe from Sarandipitea. She got this from one of her many recipe books.

Ingredients:

3 ounces unsweetened chocolate
3/4 cups butter
1/2 cup peanut butter
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 and (1/4) cups flour
2 cups oats
nuts or peanuts if desired.

Method:

1. Melt the chocolate
2. In a large bowl, beat together butter and peanut butter (best to use an electric mixer) until evenly combined.
3. Then add the sugars, baking powder and baking soda.  Beat that until combined.
4. Then add eggs and vanilla and beat until they are combined (I found that I ended up beating the eggs too much before the batter was ready to go in the oven, which gave the cookies a lot of structure and made them very airy.  Not sure if this is a bad thing, or if it is, how to fix it.)
5. Then stir in the chocolate  and add the flour bit by bit and stir until combined.
6. Finally stir in the oats.
7. Drop dough by the teaspoon full onto a cookie sheet and bake in a 350 degree (F) oven for approximately 10 min or until the edges are set.

You can leave out the chocolate if you don’t want to use it.  I thought it was odd that the recipe does not call for salt, maybe the writers assumed that there would be salt in the peanut butter.  Next time I make the cookies, I might add a pinch of salt.  I also completely stirred in the chocolate so the cookies came out brown, but I think it might be fun to try not completely stirring in the chocolate and seeing if cookies would come out swirled or marbled.  Also, I made a note to try it with more chocolate next time, because I like chocolate.

 

Red Risotto

This risotto came about from a ‘clean up the fridge’ and a ‘let me not waste this beet from the farmer’s market’ and a ‘what’s for dinner?’ I did put a little thought into it and was very happy with how it came out.

Ingredients:

1. 1 large beet
2. 1 lb chopped (bite sized) carrots
3. 1/2 lb peas
4. 1 1/2 cup arborio rice
5. 1 1/2 cup white wine (Dry pinot grigio?)
6. 1 1/2 cup water
7. A little sherry
8. Salt to taste
9. Fresh basil leaves (About 20 or so)
10. Thyme
11. Rosemary
12. Black pepper
13. Freshly grated parmesan
14. 2 tablespoon butter

Method:

1. Cook the beet: gently snip off the tail/ greens off the beet. Make sure it’s a clean cut and you don’t cut off the skin from the beet.  (It’s not a disaster if you do, but it’ll bleed red color for the time you boil it!)  Boil the beet for half hour or till it softens up in a pot after fully covering it with water. After it’s cooked, place it under cold water and peel the skin carefully (The beet itself may still be warm).

2. Chop the beet (keep away from your clothes!), carrots and saute them in 1 tablespoon butter. Keep the heat on high for a couple of minutes and then lower the heat and cook in lower heat, stirring occasionally.

3.  As they get soft, add the peas in as well and saute them in. When you add the peas, get heat back up high for a few minutes and then lower it again and cook all three vegetables in. Stir occasionally so nothing burns but take off the heat once everything is softened up. On this occasion, I even added a bit of sherry. What this does is the liquid helps cook the vegetables quicker. I chose sherry because carrots, beets and peas are naturally sweet, and adding the sherry would enhance the sweetness as well, as sherry would get infused with the softened, cooked vegetables.

4. Remove the vegetables from the pot, add the second tablespoon of butter and raise the heat to high. Add and coat in butter the arborio rice. Keep stirring so it does not burn. After the rice is fully coated and has been on heat for say, a minute or two, add in 3/4 cup of wine and 3/4 cup of water. Continue to cook on high for about 3 minutes, till the liquid has been bubbling for about a minute and then lower the heat.

5. Add the vegetables back in, mix them in. Slowly add the rest of the water and the wine an occasionally stir gently as the rice cooks to that lovely al dente texture. Once in a while stir up from the bottom of the pot to make sure nothing burns.

6. Add in the herbs and spices as it cooks, reserve the basil leaves and parmesan for last. Keep stirring gently.

 

The Fuji Melt

Just before you put the two sides together and gobble it up!

I never thought I’d blog about a sandwich, but I am. I thought this one up while we were driving back home from Boston and I was getting increasingly hungry. I decided I was craving apples (Fuji apples are absolutely my favorite) and cheese at the same time. So we stopped off at the grocery store on the way back and picked up some good cheddar, Gruyere and of course: Fuji apples.

To keep it short: we sliced up some ciabatta. Layered up a few apple slices which we covered (generously!) with cheddar and/or Gruyere. Into the toaster oven this went. Don’t make it too hot – these cheeses melt easy and that’s really all you want. We dabbed on some basil-pesto mustard from Stonewall Kitchen (It really is quite tasty, try it!) and added some leafy greens.

We loved this so much for Sunday lunch, we made this for lunch for the rest of the week, till we ran out of apples!

The apple then stays the star of the show, while good cheddar/Gruyere has that wonderful texture and salty taste to balance the juiciness and sweet taste of the apple.  The greens add well, some more character here while the mustard adds in the right tangy element to complement everything else in here. It helped that we used ciabatta – the heartiness helps keep everything together while adding depth to the sandwich.