Wednesday, March 26, 2008

ginger trick




ginger+ freezer+ microplane grater= no hassle grated ginger

Monday, March 24, 2008

Farmer's Market Dinner


tatsoi, originally uploaded by mysterybridgers.

A larger variety of produce is starting to come back to the farmer's market. We bought some tatsoi at the market because it looked really good and then realized we had no idea what to do with it. There was one recipe in Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone for a tatsoi salad so we decided to make that. The salad had olive oil, vinegar, chives, green onions, toasted sesame oil, and salt and pepper in it. It made for a very tasty salad with a slight peppery taste. We had the salad with rosemary bread topped with goat cheese mixed with green garlic all from the farmer's market too.

Now if only the summer fruit would start coming back!

Thursday, March 20, 2008

Veggie Pasta


Veggie Pasta
Originally uploaded by mysterybridgers

The steam made the picture come out blurry, but oh well. This is a veggie pasta from the Modern Vegetarian Cookbook. Basically this pasta has everything but the kitchen sink in it: artichoke hearts, fennel, chickpeas, shiitake mushrooms, onion, garlic, parsley, thyme, italian tomatoes, and some parmesan on top.

The recipe was much too fussy for a pasta recipe, so we used packaged artichoke hearts and didn't run the tomatoes through a food mill. Believe it or not, this pasta was about 10 times better the next day because all of the flavors melded and became super tasty.

Sunday, March 16, 2008

Shrimp and Mushroom Pasta



Simplicity itself. Make a half-pound of fettuccini. Chop up about a pound of various mushrooms, cook in about a tablespoon of olive oil with herbs, garlic and onion. Don't season them till they've gained some color. Finished with a little of the pasta water (1/4 to 1/2 cup) salt, and lemon juice. Topped off with seared shrimp. (Salt and pepper some cleaned shrimp, set aside for 30 minutes or so, then put them on an extremely hot skillet for two minutes. Turn the shrimp, take the skillet off the heat and cover, set aside for two or three more minutes until the shrimp are done all the way through.)

Monday, March 10, 2008

Wheat Meat Salad


Wheat Meat Salad 2
Originally uploaded by mysterybridgers

This is "wheat-meat and romaine salad with red potatoes" from the Vegetarian Meat and Potatoes Cookbook. The term "wheat-meat" strikes me as a little odd--although when you think about it seitan is a little odd too, it is a little too close to satan--yes I had satan salad the other day and it was quite good.

Well this salad was quite good and very simple and quick like most of the recipes in this book. The seitan was browned first in some olive oil while the potatoes boiled. Then these are mixed into a dressing of shallots, vinegar, olive oil and herbs. I always cut way down on the oil in dressings because I think that the 3 to 1 or 2 to 1 ratio is unnecessary. I usually do 1 to 1 oil to vinegar or even less oil than vinegar and it still tastes just fine. This salad is best at room temperature with cherry tomatoes on top, but we didn't have any tomatoes so we just served it over some very good red leaf lettuce and salad mix. The red leaf lettuce was extremely tasty and crisp.

This salad worked well for leftovers, but only because we kept the lettuce separate from the potato salad--otherwise the lettuce would have gotten soggy.

In other news, I have been messing with the picture layout on this blog. I used to have the pictures set to large, but the right hand side of the picture always got cut off. Now the pictures are smaller, but now I think they are too small. I'll have to think about it and maybe change the layout again. I am not that tech savvy so we'll see what I can do.

Monday, March 3, 2008

Low Key Meal


Broccotofupotato
Originally uploaded by mysterybridgers

This meal reminds me of the simple meals I used to have as a kid. Many a meal consisted of some kind of vegetable, potatoes and tofu (yes, tofu was the staple as opposed to meat in my house).

Here we have broccoli with garlic and lemon, baked potatoes with yogurt and seasoning salt (in this case Morton's), and pan fried tofu. The tofu was marinated in 2 tablespoons of soy sauce, orange juice, sake, and some crushed garlic. After marinating the tofu is pan fried until brown on each side (about 2-3 minutes each side). Then the marinating sauce is added to the pan and cooked down until it almost all cooks away and thickens. And we're done. Once all of the elements are placed on your plate, it is best to just chop everything up and mix it together, cover with a light dusting of freshly grated parmesan cheese, and eat with gusto.

Posting in Error

I usually post pictures to this blog from flickr, and every now and then I post knitting posts on this food blog and food posts on my knitting blog in error. So if you see a knitted sock or something, just assume that it won't be on here for long.

Artichoke Pizza--Again


Artichoke Pizza
Originally uploaded by mysterybridgers

We've both been sick and have been living mostly on soup for a few days, but this pizza was in the mix somewhere. The Grape Crusader did not think that we should post the same dish twice, but am going to post Artichoke Pizza number 2 anyway even though he made it.

This recipe is from Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone and the crust is store bought. We used fresh artichokes the last time we made this pizza, but this time we used jarred artichokes and it was still really good and because the jarred artichokes are more economical we could load up the pizza a little bit. The Crusader made his own tomato paste using some cherry tomatoes that were past their prime and it turned out really good. We ate the pizza with some anchor steam bock, which is an excellent seasonal beer by anchor steam.

The weather has been really nice and warm for the last few days, so spring fever is starting to set in. Hopefully the warmer weather also means some spring vegetables and fruit are around the corner! Meaning more variety in cooking!

Oh, I have been meaning to post a follow up to the Valentine's day pie post--the apple pie was excellent! It really was all about ingredients. The apples were really good this year (I used a blend of granny smith and fuji apples) and we had some stellar honey that the Crusader's parents gave us from a bee keeper in West Virginia. Hopefully the bees will stick around because I sure do love their sweet sweet nectar!