fresh chickpeas

Hello, all! My goal for 2011 is to stop eating total crap all the time and watch my diet. In conjunction with exercise, I am hoping this will help me get my butt in shape. Anyway, I went to my local awesome-tastic Asian grocery to take advantage of their preposterous amount of produce and saw these: FRESH CHICKPEAS

Not knowing what I was going to do with them but knowing it would be an adventure, I bought some :) The internets told me that you can treat them like edamame but nowhere was I reading that you should steam them. So I did two things:

1/2 the batch got sauteed in olive oil until slightly charred (pods on!) and then salted. They were very delicious and like fresh, nutty-veggie tasting edamame with oil

1/2 the batch got baked on 400 degrees for about 20 min with a little drizzle of olive oil and salt.

The oven-method was better I think but both were good. If you see any in your grocery store, I would recommend them! They are very easy to deal with, you can eat them raw if you want (I believe), and they taste yummy,

THE END

Big Biscuit

For this, my first posting to the family food blog, I am going to keep it very, very simple. A friend recently reminded me of something I invented in graduate school: the "big biscuit." It was born of puzzlement and necessity, as are all truly great inventions. I think it's especially appropriate for kids to try.

Recipe:
1. Follow the directions on the yellow Bisquick box for a single batch of biscuits.
2. Instead of making lots of regular sized biscuits, use all the dough and form a single, "big biscuit" in the middle of your cookie sheet.
3. Bake until slightly golden brown on top.


The fun of the "big biscuit" is in its preposterous size. It's easily eaten by breaking it by hand and adding butter and jam. Enjoy!

Sausage and Sauerkraut Stew

Made this in the crock pot last weekend, and it was goood. It's basically this recipe here, but with a couple of slight modifications.

Ingredients:
1 lb kielbasa sausage*
1.5 pounds sauerkraut**
2 Granny Smith apples
2 pounds small red potatoes
1 medium-size white onion
1.5 cups chicken broth
1/2 teaspoon caraway seeds

*The original recipe calls for 2 pounds, but I cut it to just under 1 lb and it was plenty, plus another pound of sausage wouldn't have fit in our slow cooker.
**User comments on allrecipe say you can use Bavarian sauerkraut if you want a milder taste, but I used regular and it was fine.

1. Cut your sausage into one-inch pieces, your potatoes into quarters, your onion into thin rings, and your apples into half wedges or smaller. Don't peel the potatoes or the apples unless you want them to disintegrate.

2. Put the potato in the crock pot first, followed by the sausage, sauerkraut, onion, and apple in that order.

3. Add the broth, then sprinkle the caraway seeds on top.

4. Cook on high for 4 hours.

The apples probably sound like the weirdest ingredient, but they add a welcome touch of sweetness that goes surprisingly well with the sauerkraut. The red potatoes are amazing - I wouldn't use any other kind. The original recipe recommended sprinkling shredded swiss cheese over when you serve it, but we liked it better without. Instead, serve with a good sourdough bread for dipping.

Pesto-Potato Soup

I made this soup today and it was the easiest tasty soup I've ever made. It's a crock pot dish but you could do it stove top pretty easy, too.

2 Tbs olive oil
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 1/2 pounds Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and diced
6 cups vegetable stock
enough pesto to put dollops in your bowl
1/4 toasted pine nuts (optional)

Set your cooker to high and add oil and garlic. Peel and chop the potatoes while the garlic softens up. When the garlic smells nice, add your potatoes and broth and set the crock pot to low for 6 to 8 hours. When you're ready to eat, puree the potatoes with an immersion blender or run it in batches through a regular blender or food processor until smooth (it shouldn't take long).

After you pour your soup into bowls, swirl in a spoonful of pesto and sprinkle some pine nuts on it.

Notes: your broth is a major flavor here, so pick a good one that you really like. You can make your own pesto, of course, but I just used a pre-made one that I like.

Butternut squash pizza

The idea for this just came to me out of the blue over breakfast this morning. I did a little research on-line for ideas, but basically I just made it up. It came out surprisingly well. I'll definitely do it again. It could be done a lot more seriously (you could make the crust from scratch, which I've never done, or roast and puree the squash yourself), but this was about all I was up for after work. It took an hour start to finish.

Ingredients:
1 readymade sourdough pizza crust
1 can butternut squash puree
1 hunk smoked gouda cheese
1 green bell pepper
1 red onion
1/2 cup frozen corn
ground chicken (optional)
ground sage
cream
fine-grated parmesan cheese
lemon juice

1. In a small saucepan over low-medium heat, mix the butternut squash puree together with a little bit of cream, maybe a couple of tablespoons. (All the measurements are really approximate.)

2. Add two or three tablespoons of parmesan cheese and maybe a tablespoon or so of ground sage and a squirt of lemon juice. To taste. When everything's mixed and tastes right, turn off the heat and set aside.

3. Slice the onion in very thin rings. Slice the pepper in very thin crescents (or rings).

4. Grate the gouda, coarsely. Since I was using gouda instead of mozzarella I used a cheaper American smoked gouda, kind of soft and oily, instead of the hoity-toity Dutch import we get for snacking on. It worked well. I think a real hard gouda wouldn't have worked on pizza. Grate as much as you need, which will obviously depend on how much cheese you like on your pizza. A cup? Two cups?

5. If you're using meat, brown the ground chicken, seasoning it as you do with your choice of seasonings.

6. Thaw the frozen corn kernels in the microwave. Putting corn on pizza is, as some of you will remember, a Japanese thing, but in this case it really makes the pie: don't skip this ingredient. Be generous.

7. Preheat your oven to 450.

8. Ladle the squash mixture onto the pizza crust, spreading it evenly.

9. Arrange the onion and green pepper on the pizza all purty-like. Then put on your ground chicken, and then the corn. Finally, top it all with the gouda.

10. Bake for about 10 minutes, or until everything's melted and bubbly and the crust is starting to get crisp at the edges.

The sourness of the sourdough, the sweetness of the squash and the corn, and the smokiness of the sage and the gouda combine really well, and the fresh pepper and onion, while they're standard pizza things, really stand out against this background. This was a really good pizza, if I do say so myself.

Updated 4/23/11:
You'd think that using straight squash puree and cream like in the recipe above would be purer=better. But we tried it the other day with a readymade pasta sauce (Dave's Gourmet Butternut Squash Pasta Sauce - real good on ravioli), which had tomato and spices mixed in, and it was real good. Used browned ground beef, liberally seasoned with mesquite, and some chopped olives I had left over from another recipe. It came out even better than the first time.

Vinegar

Lorien gave me some vinegar in my stocking this year and I just wanted to share its awesomeness with everyone:

Pompeiian Pommegranate Red Wine Vinegar.

So far I have only eaten this on veggies but it is just awesome. Scott and I enjoyed it over canned green beans (We share a profound love of canned green beans. Don't ask, I can't explain it.) with a little salt. I tried it by myself on a big bowl of frozen peas and it was such a good match that I had a whole second bowl :)

So yes, pommegranate red wine vinegar is the bee's knees.

Apple Cinnamon Waffles

A neighbor gave us some apple juice for Christmas, which has been going fast, but not fast enough to miss the day that I got around to making waffles. (There was a tantrum over the confusion between "waffle" and "falafel" but even that didn't stop me.) That made this recipe, which came with the waffle iron, even more appealing.

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 2½ tsp. baking powder
• ¼ tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. cinnamon
• 3 Tbsp. brown sugar
• 2 large eggs
• ½ cup butter, melted
• 1 cup apple sauce
• 1 cup apple juice
• 1 medium apple, peeled and diced
• 1 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

The recipe calls for separating the eggs, beating the whites stiff and saving them to fold in at the end. I was using egg replacer, though, so I used a simple muffin method: Mix the dry ingredients (flour through sugar) in a large bowl, mix the wet ingredients (eggs through apple) in a medium bowl, and stir together just until moistened. Bake in a lightly greased waffle iron to desired crispness. Makes several large servings.

This batter was very thick and sticky, almost doughy; it came out in large clumps instead of pouring, and the waffle iron had trouble closing over it. However, it spread well while baking, and plenty of steam poured out. Having so much moisture trapped in the diced apple would account for that.

The cinnamon smells wonderful during cooking. The apple flavor is more subtle; a berry syrup highlights it well.