Recipe Roundup 6/2016

It's been a while since a 'recipe roundup,' and we've had several delicious dinners (and lunches) lately that I want to brag about, oops, I mean share.

Recipes are listed left to right, top to bottom.

Curry Chickpea Salad - We kicked off summer with this versatile recipe during a picnic dinner date at the park. The chickpeas taste just as good in pitas as they do over greens.

Spiced Pork Chops with Mashed Potatoes - This is a repeat Blue Apron recipe that happened to fit well with the contents of our CSA box last week: sweet potatoes, chard and snap peas. As more of a "one-pot wonder" type of cook myself, Blue Apron recipes can sometimes seem a bit fancy. Sometimes the little bit of extra effort and dirtied cooking vessels are worth it, sometimes not. All of the recipes here are definitely worth it.

Turkey Meatballs with Parsley Pesto (similar meatball recipe) - Another recipe featuring a CSA ingredient: parsley (and no small amount of it either!) The pesto recipe was from the newsletter that comes in our box every week and made enough to cover an entire box of pasta. The turkey meatballs were good too, and had some extra veggies thrown as well.

Nepalese Chicken Tarkari - Another Blue Apron repeat recipe featuring spinach from the CSA box.

General Tso's Chicken - Yet another Blue Apron recipe featuring CSA ingredients: snap peas and green onions. One of the best things about making these recipes again, aside from the fact that they are delicious, is that they can easily be doubled and the leftovers taken into work for lunch the next day. While none of my co-workers actually asked me if this was take-out, I like to think I could have easily convinced them that it was.  

In addition to the ingredients above, our CSA has featured a lot of lettuce and other leafy greens. Salads are a no brainer, but does anyone have other ideas? We've made summer rolls, and added lettuce to stir fries, but we get a huge bag of it every week and it's definitely a challenge to keep up.

Thanks for reading!

"Wrapping" up Feburary

This is the last post I have planned about Keizo's visit back in February.  Seeing as life has totally moved on, I would like to as well--but the following was one of the best things "we" made.

I arrived home from class one Monday evening to the aromas of garlic and ginger and found Keizo in the kitchen with a big bowl of minced pork, cabbage, and green onions a.k.a. the filling for gyoza (potstickers).

We had bought won-ton wrappers at the grocery store, and worked together to get them filled and ready to pan fry.  I cheated and used a little handheld crimper, but Keizo relived his childhood and folded them expertly by hand.

He then put the gyoza in the oiled frying pan, about 8-10 at a time, added some water and covered them to cook.  The filling made a ton of gyoza!  My memory is a bit fuzzy, but I think we had about 60 won-ton wrappers, which we divided over two meals, making about 30 gyoza at a time.  

The first time we used vegetable oil in the pan; the second time we tried coconut oil and I thought the difference was incredible.  The coconut oil tasted slightly sweet and much lighter than the regular vegetable oil.

I probably could have made a meal out of the gyoza alone, but even when he isn't exercising twice a day, Keizo's appetite is much larger than mine, so we made some pad thai on the side for our first meal, and whipped up some tasty okonomiyaki for the second.

These meals reminded me I don't cook nearly enough Japanese food on my own!  Perhaps I should get a copy of this book for inspiration...

Meals of March

Well, selected meals from the crazy month of March.  Note the two place settings!

Welcome to Charlottesville, VA, a medium sized town with enough restaurants to seat the entire population at once! Let's stay in and eat some chili...

with some gorgeous corn muffins on the side!

Keizo and I ate a lot of kale chips while he was here.  Wash kale, tear from stems, place on baking sheet, drizzle with 1 Tbsp olive oil, coarse salt and pepper.  Bake/broil for about 10 minutes, mixing once until saku saku (light and crispy).

Homemade pizza on no-rise whole wheat dough.  This stuff sticks to your ribs.

Banana/coconut/PB chip pancakes.  Difficult to flip over, unbelievably easy to eat.

Teriyaki fish, buttered rice, leftover pasta and spinach salad with yogurt-y dressing, broccoli, nectarine and Craisins.

Poorly photographed fried egg sandwich, one of several that were consumed.  One of the Saturdays I had to be at school, Keizo and my housemate drove out to Polyface Farm and returned with eggs and breakfast sausages.  The eggs did seem "firmer" than the ones from the grocery store, but were the same pale yellow color.  Taste also seemed about the same.

*****

Since he was in C-ville for goodness sakes, we did have to eat out occasionally.

The gelato sampler at Splendora's.  I will have to show immense restraint not to order this just for myself the next time I go there.  Clockwise from top: mint, coconut, mango, tiramisu, and hazelnut, with a scoop of Guiness in the middle (it was St. Patrick's Day after all!)

Blue Mountain Brewery's nine beer sampler, enjoyed on the patio at sunset after an afternoon of hiking.  It was as amazing as it sounds.  I hope to repeat several times this summer.

Historic Michie Tavern's endless Southern buffet!  The stewed tomatoes were my favorite part, although that isn't to say didn't also get seconds of the BBQ pork and buttery biscuits.  If you go, I highly recommend fasting both before and after.

As you wish

One of my favorite foods from my first stint in Japan was okonomiyaki, a thick pancake like concoction with a variety of different add ons. The name itself loosely translates to "as you like grill" and fillings range from pork and seafood to kim-chi, mochi and cheese. It's most popular in the Kansai region of Japan, but you can find okonomiyaki restaurants down here in Fukuoka, and the mix is sold in just about every grocery store.

In an effort to use up the last of the now sort of wilted cabbage, we brought out the table top gas burner and grilled up some okonomiyaki for dinner. I admit that it doesn't look like much in the photos; it's one of those foods you have to eat to understand.

Cooking right at the table! You can sit down and prepare dinner at the same time!

Hot off the grill with all the necessary condiments: okonomiyaki sauce (brown), nori flakes (green) dried fish flakes (light brown) and some mayonaise (do I really need to say what color that is?)

Up close, ready to dig in.

While the mix made four pancakes, Keizo and I were uncharacteristically reserved and only ate one each. This left room for dessert, so we tried a recipe for baked apples from the tajine cooker recipe book. Sliced apples, butter and sugar cooked over medium heat, then topped with ice cream and some cinnamon. An excellent way to end the meal.