Lime and Coconut White Chocolate Bark

I've never really good at baking. I'm one of those people that likes to throw things in a pot and hope for the best. For regular cooking that's perfect. That's typically where I get my best ideas. For baking it leaves me with tons of sunken dense cakes and salty cookies. The only thing I can bake well without measuring is cornbread. And that's only because you really can't go wrong with cornbread. Just put enough baking powder in it to rise and there you go.

I went on a tangent.


So I don't bake. But I do like sweets so I decided to try some bark which is ridiculously easy to make and such a great base to really get creative. I wanted something that reminded me of the tropics (because I really need a vacation from this life of mine right about now). Consider this my ode to the summer past and sorely missed on this cool October Saturday.

Lime and Coconut White Chocolate Bark

Ingredients
-1/2 bag of white chocolate chips
-Unsweetened coconut flakes
-Sliced Almonds
-1 lime juiced
-Zest from one lime


Directions
Melt the white chocolate chips in a double boiler (or a bowl over a pot of boiling water) until completely melted.

Take off of the heat and stir in the lime juice and lemon zest until completely mixed. Your mixture might look a little pasty and no longer smooth and creamy. I'm sure it has something to do with the lime juice mixing with the milk solids and cocoa butter. But it'll be fine.

After, mix in the almonds and coconut.

Pour the mixture into a shallow pan covered with wax or parchment paper. Leave in refrigerator for at least one hour before cutting and serving.

Get creative with your mixtures. Try some pumpkin or chai-spiced bark for a more fall flavor. Use milk or dark chocolate instead of white. I'll put up more bark combos in the next week since it is so easy to make and really great to have on hand. But please don't wait on me to do some experimenting of your own!

I've been gone for a minute.

If you've been wondering what's been keeping me from posting I'll tell you. Life has been keeping me from posting. Not to say that this somehow isn't a part of my life. I've just been so distracted with everything that doesn't seem to quite be going right that I haven't given this blog as much thought as I should. But I'm back now. I'll also try to blog once a week. So yeah. Sorry for the absence if you've been reading.

Peach BBQ Seitan Sandwiches

   I grew up making seitan (we called it "kalebone" which is English phonetics for the Hebrew word protein) and let me tell you making this stuff is a long and arduous process. So any chance I get, I go out and buy ready-made seitan to avoid wasting 3 hours of my life preparing the stuff some scratch. Whole Foods has these packages of plain seitan in their stores but I'm more a fan of the Chinese brands because they come already seasoned and processed in different ways to imitate different types of meat like pork, chicken, and my personal favorite duck. The seitan at Whole Foods may be easier to find though.

If you can find this stuff, I'm telling you it will change your life.

   What makes this stuff so great is its versatility. Like tofu, it can take on any flavor; unlike tofu though, I've found that it is even more palatable to non-vegetarians. They just seem to like the texture better I guess.

Peach BBQ Seitan Sandwiches

Ingredients

10 ounces of seitan
Hamburger buns or kaiser rolls
Vegetable oil

For the BBQ Sauce:
2 peaches, skinned and diced
1 small onion, roughly chopped
about 1 tbsp. of garlic powder
about 1 cup of ketchup
about 2 tsp. of the following:
Dijon mustard
Cider vinegar
Vegan Worcestershire sauce
Blackstrap molasses (or one tsp. of pomegranate molasses. I used pomegranate molasses. You need to use less of it because it is much tangier than the blackstrap version because of the pomegranate juice)
A few splashes of Liquid Smoke

Black pepper

If you can't find vegan Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce would work just fine for this recipe.

 

For the Cabbage Slaw:
1/4 of a head of Savoy or Napa cabbage
1/2 a small red onion
about 1 tsp of celery seed
Vegenaise or mayonnaise
1 tbsp. of Dijon mustard
a pinch of salt



Directions
Slice the red onion thinly for the cabbage slaw and set aside in a bowl of cold water. This takes some of the bite of the onion flavor which is essential since you will be eating these raw.

Foodie tip #9480: Putting onions in cold water also lowers the chance of crying while slicing into it. I always ice my onions first before getting into them because I'm such a baby.

Heat a pan and stir fry the chopped onions for the sauce until the onions just begin to caramelize. Add the rest of the ingredients and simmer on low for about 15 minutes or until the peaches are tender. Transfer the sauce into a blender and blend until smooth. Place BBQ sauce back in the pot and simmer on low for ten minutes.

While the sauce simmers, remove seitan from packaging and slice thinly. In a non-stick or cast iron skillet, brown the seitan. Once the sauce is finished, combine with the seitan and continue to cook on low for another 3-4 minutes (you may only want to use about half of the sauce since this recipe makes a sizable portion of BBQ sauce. But this sauce is so great, I'm sure you'll be able to use it in another dish). Set aside.

Thinly slice the cabbage and place in a bowl. Combine all of the other ingredients, including the red onion, in the bowl and mix together.

Toast your buns slightly and begin to make your sandwich. I suggest using more of the slaw than the seitan to have a balance of flavors on your sandwich.

The Rosemary Post

The thing about fresh herbs sometimes is that yeah you may have great plans to cook something with them but if you don't use those herbs quickly you could end up throwing 90 percent of it away (because I mean really. A little goes a long way in this case).

Case in point: I bought a ton of rosemary for really cheap and was really excited to use it. But three days after I bought and it was still sitting in the fridge longing to be used. Even now I have four long stalks (sprigs? I'm bad on herb lingo) of the stuff in the freezer. But it will be used. This is my vow to you.

So, here are a couple of the things I made with rosemary. I hope you'll enjoy them both.

Black Pepper Tofu

There are probably as many versions of black pepper tofu as there are people who cook it so my version is just one of many. Unlike many versions I've seen though, I've added green veggies in mine. Can never miss an opportunity to get your green vegetables in your meals. This version I made with green beans but I have made this with broccoli and it tasted just as great. I'm sure even a more Asian choice (like bok choy?) would be great as well. 

Black Pepper Tofu

Ingredients:
1/2 Block of frozen extra firm tofu, thawed
about 3 tbsp. crushed black peppercorns (or coarse-ground black pepper)
cornstarch or all purpose flour
about 1/2 cup of soy sauce
about 1/4 cup of sugar
about 2 teaspoons of ground ginger
1/2 small onion chopped fine
2 cloves of garlic, minced
a splash of balsamic vinegar*
a splash of chili oil (purely optional)
green beans, rinsed and chopped in thirds
oil for frying

Freezing tofu changes the texture making it more spongy.

Directions:
Cover the bottom of a shallow pan with oil and place over medium high heat.
Combine the cornstarch and black pepper.
Cut the tofu in 1/2" cubes. Dredge the tofu in the cornstarch mixture and fry in the heated oil.
Do not crowd the pan with the tofu (but even I don't follow this rule in a rush so don't take it as gospel).
Cook the tofu until golden brown. Drain and set aside.
Combine the soy sauce, sugar, ground ginger, and balsamic vinegar in a bowl and mix thoroughly.
Heat a small amount of oil over high heat in a non-stick or cast iron skillet.
Combine the garlic and onions and fry in the pan. Cook for 2 minutes or until the onions just begin to caramelize.
Add green beans and cook for about 5 minutes.
Add the chili oil and cook for 30 more seconds
Add the soy sauce mixture. When the soy sauce mixture reduces a little (shouldn't take more than 2 minutes), turn off the heat.
Combine the cooled tofu and serve with rice.

*Foodie Trick #2930: If ever you over-salt your food, adding a little vinegar will trick your taste buds and your food will taste less salty (though your sodium content will still be high. Too much salt is still a bad thing). Because the sauce for this recipe is made majorly of soy sauce, I thought adding a splash of balsamic would add depth of flavor and take some of the saltiness of the soy sauce away as well. If you'd like, you could use less soy sauce and add water but then your sauce might be a little runny and thin. And runny sauce is just tragic.









 

How I Cook Okra [for Cajun Rice]

I tend to get a little overzealous when I go to the store sometimes.

I saw prepackaged fresh okra for $2.12 at this great international market and I couldn't not buy it.

But it sat in my fridge for about a week before I put it to good use.

Now okra isn't for everyone. And cooking it isn't necessarily hard particularly if you're using it in a stew (a la gumbo). However, if you're particular about the amount of slime that may secrete from your okra in your dish then I say follow my simple method of cooking it.

Now I'm sure someone with a more sciencey background will refute my method but this has worked for me for years so I'll just stick to my method if you don't mind.

The key to reducing okra to minimal slimeyness is to keep it as dry as possible the whole time you handle it.

After washing okra, allow it to dry on a paper towel before cutting into it.

When you are cutting it, make sure your knife and your cutting board is as dry as you can get it. When cutting your okra, slice the tops off and discard them. That's the slime source. You don't want that.

Even with all the precautions there's still a little slime on the knife.

Finally, cook all of your other vegetables before you are ready to cook your okra. This is important because the vegetables you cook will release their moisture and if the okra's in there those veggies will trigger its need to secrete. Trust me on this one.

If you follow all of this you should have relatively slime-free okra for dishes such as the one I will talk about now!


Cajun Rice

Ingredients
Rice, cooked and allowed to cool
Okra, sliced (follow directions above on how to prepare the okra)
1/2 Red bell pepper, diced
Frozen corn kernels
1/2 onion, finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
Cajun seasoning and/or Old Bay (I used a little bit of both)
Oil

Directions
Cook the rice (How to cook rice tutorial will come soon. I have gotten lazy at the ripe old age of 26 so I just use a rice cooker) and set aside to cool.

Heat a non-stick or cast-iron skillet to medium high heat and add a little oil in the pan. Once heated, add onion, pepper, and garlic to the pan.

Once the  vegetables caramelize,  add the frozen corn kernels and cook for 3 minutes or until the corn is thawed.

Add the okra and cook for 7-10 minutes stirring frequently to prevent burning. Add the cajun seasoning and Old Bay.

Turn off the heat and fold the rice gently into the vegetable mix.

Broccoli Fritters

It was a blah Saturday morning.

I didn't want to get out of bed. So for the past few hours I've been lying in bed watching Wild China on Netflix (add it to your queue if you like NatGeo anything).

Then the inevitable happened.

Grumbles from my stomach would not allow me to stay in bed for the next 6 hours learning about rubber plantations and pandas. Had to get up and forage for food.

I haven't gone shopping yet so my protein stash is depleted but I remembered looking at a Smitten Kitchen entry on broccoli fritters and I knew I had some broccoli left so I decided to give it a shot (Smitten Kitchen is a pretty amazing blog definitely worth checking out).

Of course the recipe is adjusted to fit my insane flavor requirements ("Just one clove of garlic?? No I need at least three to make this work!!") so I would suggest tweaking certain things to make it fit your flavor buds as always.

I would've added the whole thing, but at some point I have to interact with people and not smell like I just came back from a vampire hunt.

Broccoli Fritters

Ingredients:
-1 head of broccoli
-3 cloves of garlic finely minced
-1/4 cup of sharp cheddar cheese
-about 1/4 cup of flour
-egg (optional for those into that sort of thing)
-salt
-a pinch of cayenne pepper
-oil (I used vegetable but olive oil would work well too)


Directions

Cut the broccoli in small pieces and boil in a very small amount of water for about 5 minutes. Set aside to cool slightly. Broccoli, like many other vegetables makes its own water when it's cooking. It just needs a boost at the beginning.

While the broccoli cooks combine all of the other ingredients in a bowl. If you're using the egg, put this i the bowl first and whisk it. Then combine the other ingredients.

Mash the broccoli lightly with a fork (or a potato masher if you have one) and fold the broccoli in with the other ingredients.

Heat the oil in a non-stick or cast iron skillet over medium heat. There should be just enough oil to cover the bottom of the pan.

Test the oil by putting a pea-sized amount of the batter in the pan. If it begins to bubble the oil is ready.

Scoop a spoon of the mixture and drop it in the pan. You may need to flatten it slightly with the back of the spoon for an even cooking. Also, try to cook only 2-3 at a time in the skillet to not crowd the pan. 

Brown the fritters on both sides and drain on a few paper towels.

Serve by themselves or with a yogurt sauce or sour cream.