(Almost) Recipe-Free Stir Fry

Hi all!
So this entry is basically recipe-less.  I took a look at everything from my share residing in my refrigerator and decided it was time to use my easy out and make a stir fry!  With one recipe I was able to use my bok choi, peppers and broccoli.  All  had to get at the store was a red onion and some chicken.

I say it was almost recipe free because although making a stir fry isn't complicated (even I can do that!) I had no idea how to actually prepare bok choi.  I had gotten it a few times in my share and had either given it away or sadly let it go to waste.  Now I could absolutely kick myself for not using it sooner.  Bok Choi is CRAZY GOOD.  Lesson learned!!!

I used this recipe to figure out how to cook the bok choi, but everything else I did on my own.  As the recipe mentions, I cooked the cubed chicken up in a skillet and cooked all the way through.  The recipe said to just add the bok choi and broccoli to the chicken in the pan, but there was a lot of juice in the pan and I didn't want to overcook the chicken so I put it in a bowl and set it aside while I cooked the bok choi and other veggies.

One the pan was empty, I added the bok choi and broccoli with a half cup of water, covered and let it cook.  As the bok choi was going, I took the pepper and red onion and sauteed them in another pan until they were cooked, but still had a little bit of crispness.



I added the peppers and onion to the cooked bok choi and broccoli and added some store bought teriyaki sauce and stirred them up.  I added the chicken in with the veggies and stirred some more until everything had sauce on it.

Then I put some white rice in a bowl, added the chicken and veggie mixture and viola - a delicious stir fry!

I got some more bok choi in a recent share and I can't wait to have this simple, yummy dish again!

          

Cabbage and BBQ Sauce? What!?

Hi friends!
Making good on my promise to get some long overdue recipe-based posts up for your enjoyment!  So as you know from a previous share round-up I got an enormous head of napa cabbage and did quite a bit of web surfing to see what I could make with it that wasn't fish tacos or cole slaw.  I finally happened upon this recipe for BBQ Cabbage & Sausage Stuffed Sandwiches that would use up some of it.

First things first, I uncased the sausage, which I did this before with one of my earliest cooking adventures.  Having experienced this before made me feel I actually know how to do something in the kitchen :)  I broke up the sausage and put it in a pan with some olive oil and got it cooking.

As the sausage cooked, I got started on alllllllll of the chopping to do.  I needed to cut up an onion (recipe called for a white, I used a yellow because that's what I had in the house), some garlic and-of course-the cabbage.


When the sausage was browned, I added the chopped cabbage, onion and garlic into the sautee pan and cooked until the cabbage was (as the recipe says) "wilted."  Then I added the BBQ sauce (I used KC Masterpiece...it was on sale).

      

This is where I started to veer off script with the recipe.  Over the summer I made homemade hot pocked with broccoli from my share and pre-made pizza dough from the grocery store.  I thought I could use the same principal with this recipe.  It worked...kind of.

The big "mistake" I made was to try to make smaller versions of the hot pockets and cutting the pizza dough into more squares.  I put mistake in quotation marks because it didn't ruin the dish, but it was a lot harder to work with the smaller dough squares.

The smaller size of the dough caused me to take more time stretching it out to cover the filling (which I added shredded cheddar to, not provolone as suggested) and during that time the BBQ sauce in the mixture caused the dough to get kind of wet and soggy.  The sauce also made it harder to seal the dough because it was already wet.  I was a little concerned that they might open up on the baking sheet in the oven (fortunately, that didn't happen).

I popped the completed mini calzones into the oven and it didn't take long to hear something start to sizzle...uh-oh!  It actually wasn't a big deal...the BBQ sauce started to bubble up out of the cuts in the top of the dough and sizzle on the baking sheet.  It didn't effect the outcome of them at all.

I had little extra filling after using all the dough and I really didn't want to waste it.  I remembered that I had a few empanada dough discs left over from my Beet, Swiss Chard and Goat Cheese Empanadas and decided to use the rest of the filling in those.  I didn't take any pictures of them for the blog because I assumed they wouldn't come out well since the empanada disks were a little stale.  This I guess was a bit of a mistake since the empanadas were SUPER DELICIOUS - even better than the calzones!

At the end of the day, this was a really yummy.  Filling the calzones was a huge mess and kind of a pain in the ass so if I was going to make it again, I'd skip the pizza dough and go with the empanada dough instead.

Happy dining, everyone!

         

Week 16 - It's Fall in Boston!

Hey friends!  I am the laziest these days...well actually the busiest, which is why I am so behind on my posts.  I now have 3 recipe pages I need to write up and post (yikes!), which I am planning on getting together tonight and posting throughout the rest of the week.  A little teaser - BBQ sausage, cabbage and cheddar mini calzones, chicken stir-fry and a double recipe post using my yellow onions from last week featuring cheesy beer bread and my go-to low budget soup!

In the meantime, here's my weekly share round-up!

This week my share included:

• Beets
• Cilantro
• Collard Greens
• Delicata Squash
• Green Tomatoes
• Kale
• Sweet Potato

It's obvious that fall is here with this share!  The squash and sweet potatoes are staples of September and I can't wait to figure out what to make with them.  I wish I had gotten more than one potato since I would have loved to make a sweet potato pie.  Maybe next time!

I am also super excited about the beets since I loved the beet/swiss chard empanadas I made not long ago.  I wish I had chard this week too, but the ReVision Urban Farm manager, Shani, told me that the beet greens would make a perfectly acceptable substitute!

In the early months of the shares there is an emphasis on greens with lots of kale and collards and chard...more than is reasonable for any one person to use.  Seeing the kale and collard in reasonable sized bunches this week was great.  There's enough of both to be able to make something delicious and not having a ton left over, which also means less waste - always a good thing.

I couldn't help but choose  the Delicata Squash for my veggie person this week.  It's colorful and has a really interesting texture that I thought would be a great canvas for a senior citizen veggie person.  I am happy to introduce Doug Delicata Squash!

          

Week 15 - Holy Cabbage!

Hi everyone!  I've got two recipes I need to post, but since I am woefully late with my Wednesday post I figured I'd get that up now and follow up with the other posts in the next few days.  My share this week came with an enormous head of napa cabbage so I had to get creative with how to use it.  I made my first recipe with half of it, but need to use the other half soon!

This week my share included:

• Bok Choi
• Cilantro
• Hakurei Turnips
• Jalapeno Peppers
• Lettuce
• Napa Cabbage
• Sweet Potato Greens
• Tomatoes
• Yellow Onions

It was pretty easy to decide which veggie to make the newest addition to my veggie people family.  The head of cabbage was too perfect.  I present to you - Crabby Carlton Cabbage!

          

Enticing Empanadas

Hey friends!  I am really excited for this post, since I've been holding on to this recipe for Swiss Chard, Beet and Goat Cheese Empanadas for awhile now.  I was waiting for a week when I would have swiss chard and beets from my share, but I haven't gotten beets in weeks so I decided to use the swiss chard I had in the fridge and bite the bullet and pick up some beets at the store.  I had grand designs of going down to the farmers market on Saturday to get some, but truth be told I was way too lazy (and the farmers market makes me totally stressed out).

I wasn't the only one excited for this recipe.  My Pinkerton cat has a major affinity for beet greens and every time I turned around he had his little furry head in the shopping bad eating the greens!  I took him to the vet that afternoon for his annual wellness exam and she thought his love of beet greens was pretty hysterical.  It's a healthy eating choice for a 15.3 lb kitty!!!

The recipe is pretty straight forward and doesn't take a lot of time or effort.  The most time consuming part is cooking the beets, and even that is simple.  Just boil some water (I put a little vinegar in the water, which I read is supposed to keep the beets from bleeding, but it didn't really work for me), drop the beets in and cook until they're tender (about 45 minutes-hour).

In the meantime, cut the middle stems out of the swiss chard, and chop up the leaves.  Toss the greens into a sautee pan with a half of an onion (the recipe calls for a white onion, I used a yellow one since that's what I had in the house) sliced thinly.  Sautee the greens and onion and cool completely.

Once your beets are cooked, peeled (the skins come right off under some running water once they're cooked) and cooled, dice them up into small pieces.  Mix the cooled, diced beets with the cooled swiss chard and onion mixture and the goat cheese in a large bowl.

I was able to find frozen empanada dough at my local grocery store (one of the many benefits of living in a very diverse neighborhood), but they don't carry it everywhere.  In fact another grocery store in the same chain near my office didn't carry it.  If your local store doesn't have them, you can whip up the dough on your own.  I found this empanada dough recipe that makes it sound pretty simple, but I can't vouch for it entirely since I took the lazy route :)  If you use frozen dough, make sure you give it enough time to defrost so the dough is soft and pliable before you start filling the dough disks.

Once your dough is ready, take some heaping spoonfuls of filling and place it in the center of the empanada disk.  Use a pastry brush and pain the edge of the disk with egg white to help seal the edges.  Fold the disk in half, fold the edges of the dough up and press with the tongs of a fork to really seal the dough and keep the filling from spilling out.

Place aluminum foil over a baking sheet and place your empanadas on top.  When they're all stuffed and placed on the baking tray, brush the tops of the empanadas with some egg yolk to give it a lovely brown color when they're done.

VOILA! 

Beautiful, delicious swiss chard, beet and goat cheese empanadas!  I'm not kidding, this might be one of my favorite recipes of this entire blogging exercise!  It was pretty simple and relatively quick to make so I would highly recommend giving it a try!  The recipe calls for using a dipping sauce, but I ate them all alone and there was a TON of flavor that didn't need any assistance from a dip.

 

         

Eggplant Two Ways

A few weeks ago, I got 2 beautiful eggplant in my share.  My initial plan was to make Eggplant Parmesan, but a person who shall go unnamed accidentally took my large glass baking dish and all I had around the apartment to replace it was a glass pie dish.  The dish was too small to fit both eggplants so I just used one and made an Eggplant Pizza with the second one.

Baked Eggplant Parmesan

So I don't have any one recipe that I used for this dish, just a few that I scanned to see how to best prepare the eggplant. It was a pretty simple dish to put together and kind of intuitive, EXCEPT for one important part.

The first step is to slice the eggplant.  I cut my slices about a half inch in thickness.  I didn't want them too thin that you couldn't really taste it, but I wanted it thin enough that it would bake through evenly. 

Here's the crazy part-you're supposed to salt the sliced eggplant, put the slices in a colander and let them sweat for an hour.  Who knew you were supposed to do THAT!?  I had no idea what the point of salting and sweating the eggplant was so I took to Google to find out why it's important.  Little did I know what a divisive issue it was!  There is a "sweat" camp and a "no sweat" camp in the culinary world and evidently this fight can get heated.  I went ahead and did it because, why not?  The theory is that by salting the eggplant it draws out some of the moisture in the eggplant, which makes the breading less soggy AND takes out the bitterness of the vegetable.  Had I know this was such a big deal, I would have sweated half and not sweated the other and see if it made a difference.  Do any of you have a preference?  After sweating the eggplant slices, you wipe the excess moisture off with a paper towel.  Recipes get pretty standard from here one out.

I had two dishes, one with beaten egg and the other with a mix of 1 cup Italian seasoned breadcrumbs and 1/4 cup parmesan cheese mixed together.  You dredge the slices in the egg and then cover with bread crumbs and place on a baking sheet.  Bake both sides of the breaded slices for 5 minutes at 350 degrees.

I took the easy route and used marinara sauce from a jar (Paul Newman brand) and spread a layer of the sauce in the bottom of the glass pie dish.  Then, I layered the baked eggplant slices on top of the sauce.  I covered them with a little more sauce and a whoooooole lot of shredded mozzarella cheese (too much to be truthful).  I popped the whole shebang into the oven and baked for about
25 minutes.

As I mentioned, I put too much cheese on mine, but the meal was really delicious and I quite enjoyed it.

     

Eggplant Pizza

My decision to make eggplant pizza as my second dish was largely inspired by the fact that I had leftover tomato sauce!  Again, I didn't use any one particular recipe, but since I had no idea how to prepare the eggplant so I used this as a guideline!

The recipe calls for brushing both sides of the eggplant with olive oil and adding a little salt and placing the slices on a baking sheet covered in tinfoil.  It then calls for broiling the eggplant for 2-3 minutes on each side.  I have never in my life broiled anything.  It was evident by how poorly I broiled the eggplant. I kind of burned them.  Oops.

I have never made a pizza before, but I did buy a pizza stone so it was fun to take it for a whirl!  I bought pre-made pizza dough from the grocery store (cheater, I know), coated it in a tiny bit of flour and tried my best to turn it into a pizza shaped circle.  This did not go well.  It looked good on first glance, but when it cooked it puffed up like crazy!  Anyway, once I thought I had the dough all taken care of, I spread the remaining marinara sauce on the center of the dough and topped it with shredded mozzarella.

I placed the eggplant on top of the mozzarella and popped it in the oven (on top of the pizza stone of course) and cooked it for about 15 minutes at 500 degrees (seriously...500 degrees).

I cooked the pizza for too long.  Big surprise, right?

So it sounds from my description like this entire experience was a terrible disaster, but it actually wasn't!  Sure the eggplant was a little overcooked, the crust was on the thick side and the cheese was a little overly toasted, but it still actually TASTED pretty darn good.  That, I guess, is all that really matters at the end of the day.  I'm looking forward to trying another pizza soon so I can try to perfect my technique!!!