Raspberry Swirl Cheesecake cupcakes

Sometimes a recipe needs no changing: http://www.annies-eats.com/2010/08/06/raspberry-swirl-cheesecake-cupcakes/

Note to self: 3 tbsp of butter is plenty

Arroz con Pollo

Chicken and rice! As simple and as complex as that. The idea started with making biryani but I didn't want to marinate the meat for hours or bust out all the different spices. 

So I made this Spanish version which is basically chicken and rice with the veggies I had in the fridge. You can add/omit veggies. Here's what I did:

Ingredients:

- Rice - 1.5 cups (I used parboiled because I had it and I find it stands better to long cooking times)

- chicken thighs - 1 pack (abt 4, I trimmed some extra fat, bone in)

- 1.5 medium onions (2 small or 1 large - red or white. I had red)

- 2 ears of corn 

- tomatoes - abt 1 cup (I used cherry tomatoes from my garden) can used canned tomatoes

- 1 jalapeño chopped (de-seeded - substitute with 1/2 of green pepper)

- 1/2 can black beans (drained and rinsed)

- 2 packets Goya sazon

- Chipotle powder abt 1/2-1 tsp (can be skipped or substituted for cayenne or paprika)

- Thyme 2 sprigs from my garden(1 tsp if using dried)

- 2 bay leaves 

- 2-4 cloves garlic (smashed and chopped fine)

- 1/2 inch ginger (smashed and chopped fine - can be skipped)

- 3 cups water (note to self decrease to 2 3/4 next time)  

- cilantro for garnish (can be skipped or use parsley) 

- 1 tablespoon pesto (because I need to use it up. Totally can be skipped)

Here's what I did: 

- Heat about a tablespoon of Olive oil in a large Dutch oven on med-high

- Salt and pepper the chicken on both sides generously 

- Add chicken skin side down. Brown on both sides. Set aside. 

- In the same pan, add onions and sauté for 2-3 mins. 

- Add garlic, ginger, jalapeño and cook for a minute. Umm smells wonderful so take your time to smell it. 

- Add tomatoes and cook for a few minutes. 

- Add seasoning, thyme and bay leaves 

- Add rice and corn and coat everything in mixture. Toast rice for a minute or two

- I had some pesto so I added it now and mixed well. Add water - top with Chicken and all juices (skin side up). Cover and cook for 45 minutes

- After 35 minutes, I took the chicken out, added black beans, chopped the chicken into smaller pieces and mixed in the rice and let cook for last 10 mins. 

- Garnish with chopped cilantro and serve!!!

I can envision topping this with chopped avocado or salsa or sour cream. I didn't do it coz didn't have any of those but next time!!!

Granola

This is so good and customizable to anything you want. Came out of my laziness to go drive to the store and I had all the ingredients at hand. Googled some granola recipe and came up with this. 

Ingredients

1.5 cup rolled oats

3/4 cup nuts (I used walnuts but almonds, cashews anything would work)

1/2 of one egg white 

1 tbsp vanilla (skip this and add the entire egg white)

1 tbsp sesame seeds (skip if you don't like)

1 tbsp flax seed or flaxseed meal (again can be skipped)

2 tbsp brown sugar (packed)

1/8 cup olive oil

1/8 cup agave or honey (I used agave)

1/2- 1 tsp kosher salt

What I did:

Warm oven to 300F. Mix all the ingredients in a bowl. Spread in a parchment lined baking sheet and bake for 30-35 minutes. I baked it for 40-45 so it's a bit more browner but it will be lighter if you take out earlier. The granola will crisp up when it cools down. You can even add raisins or craisins now (abt 3/4 cup). I skipped this. Enjoy with yogurt and fruits! 

Kale and Sausage with Couscous

I just discovered Kale during the growing season in 2015 and it has become one of my favorites. I love it! It's delicious and I discovered that you can eat it raw, add it to pesto, roast it, stew it etc etc. I came up with this very delicious concoction that comes out so good, you'll make it again and again. I know I have. The beauty of this is that you can adapt it easily to be vegetarian or not. 

How did I come about this recipe? Well I made it up. My friend had given me bags of kale this summer and after pesto and kale chips with roasted veggies, I still had tons of it left. So now what? I had seen on TV that kale holds well to cooking and also noticed that sometimes it's a little bitter. 

So I started off by caramelizing some onions. Thought that will balance out the bitterness and looked into the freezer and saw this Jimmy Dean pork sage sausage and I was like that might work and in it went with some veggies. I was also into Israeli couscous at the time so I thought it would be perfect accompaniment and it was. 

This comes out amazing! And is so versatile. The one time I was out of onions and had too much kale (again!) and some sausage in the freezer. Too lazy to go out shopping, I was watching Chopped and drinking some Seagrams. Dinggg! (That's the light bulb in my head going on)...cooked the kale in the sweet alcoholic drink instead of onion. Hah! Worked! 

Ingredients:

Kale 

Onions (2 medium or 1.5 large)

Garlic (ofcourse!)

Jimmy Dean Sage sausage

Veggies (carrots, peppers, mushrooms or combination of your favs)

Chicken broth flavor base

Israeli couscous 

What I did:

- Add oil and tons of onions and caramelize it for 10-15 mins (until it turns Amber/light brown)

- Add Kale and sauté 

- Cover and cook until kale is darker green in color. Add chicken broth or water to prevent it from sticking. 

- Add veggies, sausage and chicken flavor base and cook until sausage is cooked 

- Add couscous (cooked separately according to package instructions). Toss! And YUM!!!

Friendsgiving!

A thanksgiving meal inspired by lots of fall veggies that I got from a friend. Away from home, friends are like family that you choose! You know who you are... This meal is for all my friends near (who got to eat some) and far who can just look at pictures. I am thinking of you guys!

      ...I wish they could tag themselves

So it all started with tons and tons of turnip! Yup apparently no one likes'em but I have always liked them. Called "gyante mula" (small radish) in Nepali, these were not so gyante! Take a looksee...

                       ...whaat?...

Other veggies she gave me were sweet potatoes, cabbage, butternut squash, kale (next post on those) and of course turnips! So my menu for Friendsgiving:

- Sweet potato hash (with turnips and hot Italian style turkey sausage)

- Stuffing

- Stuffed turkey breast

- Rumbledethumps (Scottish cabbage and potato mash)

- Gravy 

- Berry sauce 

 

Most of the recipes are mine except for rumbledethumps. I googled that so please do so too :). And here are the rest:

Sweet Potato Hash

Ingredients:

Sweet potatoes (boiled and cubed fine) 2

Small potatoes (boiled and cubed fine) 3 tiny ones 

Turkey sausage 3

Turnip - 1 small or half of medium. Cubed fine

Salt and pepper

Thyme (2 sprigs) and rosemary (1 sprig chopped finely)

What I did: Add about 1 tsp oil and brown the sausage (casing removed). Remove from pan, add additional oil and add turnip and deglaze pan with wine (I had some in the fridge but use water or stock... Whatever u got) and some water. Turnips take a while to cook so after abt 15 mins when they are soft and water dries, move them to the sides so that there is a well in the middle. Add oil, add thyme and rosemary and add onions and sauté until translucent. Add garlic and cook for 2 mins and then add the boiled veggies and the browned sausage and salt and pepper for taste. Coon for about 10 mins so that flavors merge and done!

Stuffing

Ingredients:

Celery stalks abt 3 finely chopped

1 medium onion finely chopped

1 large carrot finely chopped

5 slices white bread cubed

1 slice wheat or multigrain(coz I did not have enough white but use whatever you have)

Thyme and rosemary 

Poultry seasoning

Italian turkey sausage -3 

Chicken stalk or water (about 1/2-3/4 cup)

Salt and pepper to taste

Garlic finely chopped abt 2-3 cloves

1 small turnip or 1/2 of medium finely chopped 

What I did: Brown sausage with oil in a cast iron skillet. Take out an reserve. Add extra oil + a pat of butter and fry thyme and finely chopped rosemary. Add onion, celery and carrots and cook until onions are tanslucent. Add garlic, poultry seasoning and cook for a minute. Add cubed bread, and add stock. Salt and pepper to taste and the reserved sausage. Cook until a little dry. Done!

Berry sauce: Everything I was making was salty so I thought it needed something sweet. Totally a great decision. I didn't buy any cranberry so now what? 

Fridge to the rescue. Found some frozen berries (raspberry, strawberry and blueberry) so I put about cup and half with juice is 1 lemon + zest + 1/2 lime juice with about 2 cups of sugar.

Taste and adjust sugar and I strained it because the raspberry seeds were not pleasant. Delicious! 

Stuffed turkey: 

Didn't want to do whole turkey so I got 4 piece turkey breast cutlets 

What I did: Preheat oven to 375 F. Pound it thin and salt and pepper both sides. Put in a piled baking dish. Add the stuffing and hash and cover with the other cutlet. Use toothpicks to close and add about tbsp of butter cut into small pieces on both. Bake for about 25-30 mins. 

 

Gravy: Take the turkey out of the baking dish, add a little butter and whisk in about 1-2 tbsp of flour. Add

Stock or water to thin it out. Add to a pot on the stove and cook until thickened. Add salt and pepper to taste if needed. Yum!

 

Next day feast and overstuff yourselves. We found out older it gets, the better!

Quinoa Egg salad with Wasabi dressing

OMG a new friend made this smashing salad recently and it was uhhmazing! So obviously I had to try and replicate it. 

First, boil quinoa and eggs. Well I like my quinoa flavor packed so I added a little salt and cumin in the water. Ratio is 1:1 i.e. Cup water : 1 cup quinoa. Increase or decrease accordingly. 

Eggs, boil in cold water, once it starts boiling 6-9 mins depending on how hard or soft you want 'em.

Sauté veggies of your choice in a little oil. I did spinach, mushrooms, and maybe carrots and green beans when I had it in my fridge. 

Wasabi dressing: now here comes the interesting part. Wasabi dressing was a bit tricky because I didn't have any wasabi handy and didn't want to buy any just for trying a dish, so... Checked what I had in my fridge. Ooh horseradish, wasabi's cousin? Works! So here's what I did:

Stir together - Horseradish mustard+ horseradish sauce to kick it up a bit + soy sauce + some water to thin it out a bit+ some lime juice + Olive oil and a little bit sesame oil for flavor! 

To put together the salad mix all salad ingredients + dressing. Serve topped with avocado which makes it even more delicious. Don't add avocado in the main salad in case there are leftovers! Old squishy and black avocado? So not appetizing! 

Trust me... Try this one!

Pav Bhaji

Pav Bhaji is one of the popular street foods in North India and roughly translates to bread (Pav) and vegetables (bhaji). This past weekend I went to visit some friends and I was really inspired to recreate this treat that friends mom made for us. 

It's a delicious way to use up any leftover vegetables. I used whole wheat burger buns so that's a bit more healthier ;) 

Ingredients:

Any veggies that you have. I used the following:

Potatoes (boiled and mashed) abt 5 small

Tomatoes (boil with potato and then remove and purée) - abt 4 medium

Carrots (grated and pressed to remove excess water) - 3 skinny ones 

Green peppers -1

Green beans - couple 

Frozen peas - 1/2 to 1 cup

Onions -1 medium or half of large

Garlic - 3-4 cloves

Ginger - 1 to 1.5 inches

Pav Bhaji Masala (found in Indian stores) - 2-4 tbsp 

Whole wheat burger buns

Butter 

Oil for cooking

Salt to taste

Note: I can see cauliflower or broccoli also being great in this!

Preparation:

Prep all the veggies and chop beans, pepper, onions into small pieces. 

In some evoo sauté peppers, beans and carrots until they are no longer raw. Take them out and add some oil. Add onions and cook until translucent. Add garlic and cook for about 2 mins. Add the Pav bhaji masala and cook for a few mins. Add some water if it looks too try. 

Then add mashed potatoes and add some puréed tomatoes. Add peas and the carrot/pepper mixture that we sautéed before. Keep mashing the potatoes and add tomato purée and about an inch or so of grated ginger. Let it cook until the spices and veggies mix together and its almost the consistency of mashed potatoes. Keep adding water if as necessary. Top with cilantro. 

To serve:

- Butter the buns and toast in a pan (you ban skip the butter and use oil or even dry roast)

- Serve both and top the hot bhaji (veggies) with a pat of butter

- Can also cut up some red onions and wedge of lime/lemon and serve it on the side.