North African Stew

North African Stew

My Aunt Norma, who is a veggie lover, gave me a really awesome cook book for my birthday, Jump Up and Kiss Me: Spicy Vegetarian Cooking, by Jennifer Trainer Thompson. This is a wonderful book for me because 1) Tony and I love spicy foods and 2) Handling raw meat is nasty. A "limited preview", which seems to me to be the entire dang book, is available on GoogleBooks. I am posting a rendition of the recipe, but, of course, all the credit should really go to the author.

Reagents:

2 Tbs. Extra Virgin Olive Oil
2 Tbs. diced jalapenos (i used a refrigerated canned version)
1 medium yellow onion, minced
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1 Tbs. chili powder
1 tsp. cumin
3 cups chicken (or vegetable) stock
1 can diced tomatoes with juice
1 cup lentils (washed and picked over)
1 medium butternut squash, diced
1 bunch of kale, chopped
Salt and Pepper to taste

*If you're really daring you could add in some crushed red pepper for extra heat, but this recipe is pretty spicy as it is*

Procedure:

1. Chop and mince the onion and garlic. If you want to use fresh jalapeno chilies, use about 3 and also dice them finely. I ended up having some jalapenos diced in a jar, so I took the lazy route and just measured out about 2 tablespoons.

2. Heat the olive oil over medium heat in a large stock pot, until the veggies sizzle upon contact. Cook the onions, garlic and jalapenos until tender, about 5 minutes.

3. Add the chili powder and cumin to the pot, allowing them to mix with the chopped veggies for about 1 minute.

4. Add the broth, can of tomatoes and lentils to the pot. Bring the mixture to a boil, and then reduce the heat, cover, and simmer for about 30 minutes, or until the lentils are tender.

5. Meanwhile, chop up the butternut squash. This is actually surprisingly easy, especially if you follow this tutorial from Simply Recipes. Also take this time to wash and chop up the kale.

6. Add in the butternut squash, and simmer on medium-low heat until the squash is tender (about 20-25 minutes). At this point your whole house (or teensy apartment) will smell incredible.

7. As the last step add the kale and allow it to wilt for about 5 minutes in the stock pot. Season the stew with salt and pepper to taste.

This, by far, is now one of my favorite recipes. Tony also enjoyed it (or at least he ate all of it), which I was very happy about. He normally doesn't enjoy going the "vegetarian" route. This stew tastes delicious left over as well, probably because the flavors melded after the stew was ...um...stewing? :)

Enjoy!

A First Attempt

At work, as well as at home, some things require a definite mustering of courage to try something new. In chemistry, this is commonly known as an activation barrier. Basically, in terms of the progress of a reaction, there are some points which require more energy (or in layman's terms, a little more oomph), which when reached, everything else is downhill from that highest energy point. The easiest way to picture this concept is to imagine yourself walking along a path, and up ahead, you see a hill (a really, really big hill). You know that climbing the hill is going to be really awful, but once you get to the top you can 1. Roll down like a little kid to the bottom and 2. at the bottom there is a pool of cookie dough (or marshmallows or whatever else makes you giggle).

Graduate school has been a series of hills for me. Every technique I have learned in the past few months has required me to climb a really big hill, and not only break my back doing so, but also humble myself by constantly asking for help from my peers and labmates. Cooking and baking for me have been no different. I've had to really work up the courage to cook certain things.

This whole "working one's self up" to try a new technique (in the lab or in the kitchen) is ridiculous. My energy has constantly been placed in building courage and trying to harness my fear of failure.

Yesterday, I attempted a *sacred* Ryno family recipe for yeast rolls. Whenever my mother-in-law makes these, I try to eat my weight in them (as does everyone else in the family). They are indescribable. My first attempt was not a total failure, though it was certainly not a stones throw close to Tony's mom's rolls. Mistake 1 was using a glass pan versus a metal pan: the rolls cooked differently on the bottom than on the top. Mistake 2 was kneading the rolls for too long (or with a mixer dough hook versus by hand).

At any rate, these rolls were edible, and my dad ate about 4 within a day. I dare not divulge the recipe without permission, but you can see the fruit of my labor :).

Happy Holidays!

The first of many holiday posts: Homemade Cranberry Sauce

It's Thanksgiving. It's my birthday (basically). I have my mom and dad here in California to celebrate both with me and my hubby. I have a totally amazing new camera to explore a new, and hopefully therapeutic hobby. Life is good.

This means many things: 1. I am now the slowest person in any group whenever I have my 15 pound camera around my neck, mostly because I now take pictures of EVERYTHING. 2. I have a lot of recipes stock piled with cool pictures ready to write up and post, mostly (obviously) of holiday-centric dishes. 3. I am one happy Pookie. I hope that you all enjoy what's to come, as most of the dishes have been in either Tony or my families for generations. Luckily for me, our families both like to follow simple directions (WOO HOO!)

The recipe below is most likely the easiest of them all. My family has always just had the canned cranberry sauce...left in the shape of a can. I opted to make my own tradition by starting making REAL (not can-shaped...) cranberry sauce.

Reagents:

1 12 oz package of fresh cranberries
1 cup sugar
1 cup water

Procedure:

1. Wash cranberries thoroughly, and remove any bad berries and stems.

2. Bring water and sugar to a boil in a saucepan, allowing the sugar to dissolve (supersaturated solution, anyone?).

3. Add cranberries and reduce heat in order for the mixture to simmer for about 10 minutes. The cranberries will burst.

4. Allow the mixture to cool completely first at room temperature and then refigerate.

See...painfully simple...and definitely not can shaped :).

More holiday recipes to come!

Brown Sugar Acorn Squash

This recipe was adapted from one of my favorite websites, and food blog author, The Pioneer Woman, She always has really great recipes, and most of them are fairly simple.

Anyway, it is the fall season, and that means there is an abundance of a lovely variety of squash (squashes, squaesch...I can't pluralize worth a darn). This recipe is painfully simple, and is equally delicious.

Brown Sugar Acorn Squash

Reagents:
1 Acorn Squash
4-5 Tbs Brown Sugar
2 Tbs Butter
Coarse Grain salt
Maple Syrup (optional)

Procedure:

0. Preheat the Oven to 400 F.

1. Cut squash (carefully) in half. Notice the manly hands, these are my husband's. I was afraid that slippery squash + big knife = Lisa fainting and a trip to the ER, so I "allowed" him to do it instead. (Actually, I begged.)

2. Scoop out the seedy, stringy innards of the squash, and discard them. Place the halved (or kinda-halved, like mine) squash in a baking dish. Sprinkle them with a pinch or two of salt, and score them a few times.

3. Place 1 Tbs of butter (or more, if you like your arteries to get a good hardening) in each of the hollowed out insides. Then, place about 2-3 Tbs brown sugar in each of the hollows.

4. In the original recipe, PW drizzles her squash with pure maple syrup. We didn't have that, and I didn't want to destroy the entire recipe, so I delegated a single half to be drizzled with...um...Hungry Jack syrup. Tony liked it, but he's pretty easy to please :).

5. Fill the baking dish with about 1 cup of water, so the acorns have moist heat, and cover the dish with tin foil

.

6. Place them in the oven for about 30 minutes covered. Then, take off the foil and allow them to bake for another 30-40 minutes.

Then, allow them to cool for at least 5-10 mintues, and enjoy!

Tony actually liked the redneck Hungry Jack drizzled squash much better, but I thought the flavor of the brown sugar-only version was much more developed (i.e. not drowned in syrup and without its original, squash-ie flavor).

Either way, I would definitely make this dish again!