Hash, Microwave Style

I am in the middle of moving and up to yesterday didn't have a working stove. I turned out that the gas was shut off. It was turned back on while I was teaching yesterday. So, yesterday morning, I decided to get creative in cooking eggs. I searched the web for creative ways to cook hard-boiled eggs. I didn't have an oven either, so I thought maybe I could use my rice cooker. Believe it or not, it worked!

 Rice Cooker Hard Boiled Eggs

• 4 farm-fresh eggs*

 Line rice cooker bowl with 3-4 moist paper towels. Place eggs on towels. Cook on white rice setting. Depending how you like your yolks, allow to sit up to 2 minutes when cooking is done. Put eggs in cold water for 5 minutes to stop cooking.

 Note: My husband prefers medium-cooked eggs. I don't think that's exactly possible, but next time I will cool the eggs as soon as the timer goes off.

 For carbohydrates, I decided to cook potatoes in the microwave. We had gotten a bag of small potatoes in the last CSA bag. Here's how I cooked them.

 Microwave Potatoes

• 4 small potatoes*
•  salt and pepper, to taste

Large dice the potatoes and place in a microwave-safe cooker. Cover and cook on high 3 minutes. Stir potatoes and cook on high 3 to 5 minutes longer (depending on microwave power). Allow potatoes to sit in closed cooker 2-3 minutes to finish cooking. Check to see if potatoes are fluffy. If not done, cook in intervals of 1 minute until cooked. Be careful to not overcook as potatoes tendto get mushy when overcooked in the microwave.

My husband reminded me late last night that I had a leftover bratwurst in the refrigerator. Since we haven't brought the pan over that I normally use for hard-cooking eggs, I decided to try making hash in the microwave starting with the above microwave potato recipe.

 Microwave Potato Hash

•  5 small farm-fresh potatoes*
•  1 green onion bratwurst*, cooked
• 3 farm-fresh eggs*
•  salt and pepper, to taste

 Large dice potatoes and place in microwave cooker. Cook on high for 3 minutes. Stir eggs and cook an additional 3-5 minutes. In the meantime, slice cooked bratwurst.  Add the bratwurst to the potatoes and stir to combine.  Careful break eggs on top of mixture. Cook an additional 1 minute per egg. Allow to stand in closed cooker 1-3 minutes to finish cooking.

*CSA ingredients

Italian Eggs

As I was refiling emails last night, I came across a recipe idea for Italian eggs. I have this love affair with eggs cooked in sauces and salsas. It started with my brother and has grown as I've experimented over the last year.

This morning, I decided to play with this idea again. Given that I have fresh slow-roasted heirloom tomato sauce, I decided to add Genoa salami and see what we get. This recipe was prepared on stovetop and I am still learning how long you need to cook the egg. Today, it turned out medium. I, personally, prefer a runny yolk, but this was still very tasty.

Italian Egg

• 1/2 cup slow roasted heirloom tomato sauce* (http://csafoodie.blogspot.com/2012/08/italian-eggs.html)
• 2 thin slices Genoa salami
• 1 large egg*

Cut salami into thin strips. Heat a small skillet sprayed with cooking spray over medium heat. Cook salami until translucent.  Add sauce and heat, stirring, until warmed through. Reduce heat to low. Make a hole in the center of the sauce with a spoon. Crack egg onto a small plate. Then carefully pour egg into depression so that the yolk and most of the egg are in the hole (some whites may escape). Cover and 4-6 minutes (for medium egg use 6 min), or to desired doneness.













 

*CSA ingredients

More Heirloom Tomatoes

I don't think I will ever make tomato sause the same way ever again! Roasted tomato sauce is so much better than the sauce I used to make in the stove.

I managed to get ahold of more of the large golden heirloom tomatoes this week. Last night I slow-roasted them again. This morning, I blended them with a can of 365 brand crushed tomatoes into sauce. Oh yeah, I remembered to also roast the garlic this time. All I can say is yum!

By the way, this past week, someone rated the different companies who make crushed tomatoes.  I was surprised to find that Whole Foods 365 Brand tomatoes were very highly rated.  I hadn't tried them at that point in time, but had a can on my shelf.  I have to admit, they are quite good.  Much better than any standard grocery store brand.  I would want to try the San Marzano tomatoes before I declare them the best I've had, but I really like them.

The big milestone this week is finally getting my Makeyourownjeans.com jeans. Oh my goodness! It's amazing what a difference a well-fitting pair of pants will make!  Now I just have to find room in my budget to get a pair of slacks made.

Pizza Cups

I thought about not posting this one because it was a quick, throw-together dish.  However, the more I thought about it, the more I decided I should post it.  Mainly because instead of using whatever jarred sauce I had in my refrigerator, I used the slow-roasted heirloom tomato sauce that I made last week.  And let me tell you, that sauce is just SO good it made these very yummy.  I actually can't wait to make another batch and put it in the freezer so I can enjoy it this winter.

The idea for this recipe came from Pinterest pins that I have seen over and over.  They call them mini-tacos, but I didn't have the ingredients to make those.  I did, however, have everything for pizza cups and thought I would see how well that idea worked.  It worked beautifully!  The base of this recipe is wonton wrappers (which I just happened to purchase last week).  After baking, the edges get this wonderful crispiness that I love.  I wasn't sure how I would handle these because I hadn't tried wontons or egg rolls since the surgery, but the wonton wrappers seemed to settle fine in my stomach without making me over-full.  So I think I will explore more recipes using these as the base!  The best part of this recipe is that each of the cups is about 100 calories and has 5.8g of protein.  So just a few of these gives me a nice meal with almost 18g protein.  That is always a plus!

Quick Pizza Cups

• 12 wonton wrappers
• 12 Tbsp Slow-roasted Heirloom tomato sauce* (http://csafoodie.blogspot.com/2012/08/heirloom-tomatoes.html)
• 24 turkey pepperoni slices
• 1.5 cups sharp cheddar

Preheat oven to 350F.  Press wonton wrappers into cups of muffin tin.  Spoon sauce into base of cups and spread over base.  Place 2 slices pepperoni into each cup and then sprinkle with cheese.  Bake 8 minutes at 350F.

*CSA ingredients

Eggplant Squash Bake

Last week we received ingredients that were for ratatouille.  However, I had made ratatouille just the week before, so I looked for another recipe using mainly the same ingredients.  I stumbled across a recipe that also contained ricotta cheese and two other cheeses.  This was a great discovery for me because it is helpful to find recipes with protein.  While I had used my only white sweet onion yesterday in the fried cabbage, I did have a few small shallots, so I substituted them for the onion.  And now that I have tried the finished casserole, I may have to buy shallots more often.  They are a bit more work because they are best minced, but well worth it!

Eggplant Squash Bake
Adapted from: http://recipes.howstuffworks.com/eggplant-squash-bake-a-recipe.htm

• 3 shallots, minced
• 2 cloves garlic*, minced
• 1 Tbsp olive oil
• 16 oz part-skim ricotta cheese
• 1/2 cup romano cheese, grated
• 2 tsp dried marjoram
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/8 tsp fresh-ground pepper
• 1 medium eggplant*, thinly sliced
• 2 medium zucchini*, thinly sliced
• 2 medium crookneck squash*, thinly sliced
• 4 cups Slow-roasted heirloom tomato sauce*
• 1 1/2 cups part-skim mozzarella, finely shredded

Preheat oven to 350F.  Prepare large baking pan with cooking spray.  Heat olive oil in skillet over medium heat.  Cook shallots and garlic until soft, about 5 minutes. Mix in ricotta cheese, romano cheese, marjoram, nutmeg, salt and pepper.

In prepared pan, spread 1 cup of tomato sauce on bottom.  Layer 1/2 of eggplant, zucchini and squash.  Spread cheese mixture over vegetables; repeat eggplant and squash layers.  Spread remaining tomato sauce on top.  Cover and bake for 50 minutes.  Remove foil and sprinkle with mozzarella.  Cook an additional 10 minutes or until cheese is melted.  Cool for 30 minutes before serving.

*CSA ingredients

Heirloom Tomatoes

We have, over the last couple weeks, gotten some interesting and beautiful heirloom tomatoes in our share.  I have been contemplating what to do with them since I got the first batch, but really needed to use them before they started going bad.  Somewhere in my searching, I saw an article about roasting tomatoes.  In the past, I have always treated tomatoes similar to other vegetables at 400F.  This article, however, suggested that it might be better to roast them at 250F for about 7 hours.  I am not the type to leave my gas oven running (even at 250F) when I am not here, so I decided to roast them while I slept.  From these roasted tomatoes, I made marinara sauce, which has a very unique flavor.

Slow-roasted Heirloom Tomato Sauce

• 5 small to large heirloom tomatoes*
• Olive oil
• Italian herbs
• 1 28-oz can crushed tomatoes
• 1 large clove garlic*
• 3 cups water 

Preheat oven to 250F.  Cut tomatoes in half (quarters if very large) and place on a cookie sheet covered with foil. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with Italian herbs.  

Roast in slow oven for about 7 hours.

Once roasted, place tomatoes into blender along with about half of the crushed tomatoes and garlic.  Puree (adding more crushed tomatoes if necessary. Pour puree into large Dutch oven along with remaining crushed tomatoes and water.  Heat to boil and then simmer for about 10 minutes or until garlic is cooked.

Note: one of the things about cooking on the fly is that you learn lessons as you go.  Since a couple of my tomatoes were quite huge (5" diameter), I decided to cut the tomatoes into wedges.  I found out this morning that wasn't necessarily the best idea.  Some of the wedges were charred almost all the way through.  So, make sure your tomato pieces are fairly large and meaty if you are going to slow roast.  Also, if I had been thinking last night (this is what happens when you start cooking at midnight!), I would have taken 3-4 cloves of the garlic and added them to the tray.  Roasted garlic would have added a sweetness to the sauce.  Instead, I had to cook the sauce this morning to cook the garlic.  I will say, though, that the combination of heirloom tomatoes has given the sauce a unique flavor that will probably come out different every time I make this because of the combination of heirloom tomatoes.  I hope we get more in the next couple weeks!

*CSA ingredients

Chicken

As you've probably noticed, I am partial to cooking my chickens in the crockpot. I like doing this for a several reasons: 1) it always comes out beautifully moist. 2) It's very hands off. I can put it in the crockpot and go on about my day. 3) I can then take the cooking juices and bones and make chicken stock.

I decided to do a different set of seasonings with this chicken.  For some reason, I am all about Italian seasonings this weekend.  I do have to admit, my apartment did smell wonderful when I got back from the movie, so I at least chose a nice fragrant combination.

Crockpot chicken

• 4-5 lb free-range chicken*
• Paprika
• Dried chives
• Italian blend seasoning

Remove neck and giblets from cavity. Dry chicken, inside and out. Place upside-down in the crock and season liberally with paprika, chives and Italian seasoning. Cover and cook on Low for 6-8 hour or until a thermometer inserted into the thickest part of the thigh reads 160.

Chicken Stock

Remove chicken from crockpot and cool. Strip meat from bones and return the bones to the crockpot. Add carrots*, onion* and celery (large chunks) to crockpot and enough water to fill. Cook several hour. Then strain stock and store.

*CSA ingredients

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Cabbage

I always dread when I get cabbage in my CSA share.  Having made stuffed cabbage before, I know how drawn-out the process is.  You basically have to take a whole day to make it.  And getting the balance between meat and rice is such a difficult prospect.  Well, this week, we got one head of cabbage to split between us, so I asked my husband what else I could make with it.  I had thought Kapusta Soup (cabbage, sauerkraut and yellow split peas), but that requires some time as well, and I have a ton of cooking to do this weekend.  I also have to start packing up my apartment and getting things moved. 

My husband, whose family is almost entirely Ukrainian (there is Russian in there as well), has favorite dishes from when he was a child.  I have learned to make many of them, but there are always new ones if I ask.  Today, he asked for Fried Cabbage.  Not only is this a quick, easy dish, but it is also made entirely from CSA products.  It's not often that I actually manage to do that. Oh, and if I didn't mention it, this is probably the tastiest dish I have made in a long while, although it doesn't meet my requirements for protein. It's probably a good thing I cannot eat much of this because of my stomach size (and my guilt over the lack of protein).

Fried Cabbage

•  1/2 large head of cabbage*
• 1 large sweet onion*
• 3/4 lb butter*
• salt, pepper and caraway, to taste

 Remove the big outer leaves of the cabbage.  Wash the cabbage to remove dirt and bugs.  Core the cabbage, removing the big ribs as well. Shred the lettuce.

Just a note here: can you believe this is HALF a head of cabbage?

 Thinly slice the onions.  In a large Dutch oven, melt the butter over medium-High heat.  Add onions and cook until they are limp.  Add all of the cabbage and cook, stirring, until the cabbage is cooked, but not mushy.  Season as desired.

*CSA ingredients

Spelt Berries

As my husband was helping me start packing up my apartment yesterday, he ran across a couple bags of spelt berries that I had received from the CSA.  I hadn't thought about them for a while and John was complaining that I didn't have enough carby things in my apartment.  I suppose that I should explain that I finally came to the conclusion that bread, pasta and rice are dangerous to people who have had gastric surgery.  All of these foods expand in your stomach after you eat them, so it is easy to overeat them.  Not to mention the fact that if you fill your stomach with carbohydrates, you may have difficulty eating enough protein in your day.  So, I just have not been buying things..

I took some time online to get some ideas for spelt berries.  I have only used wheat berries in the past in a dish called Kutya, a wheat dish served on Christmas eve in Ukrainian households.  So, I really was not sure what we could do with them.  There were a lot of suggestions for making breakfast with yogurt and fruit.  So, here is what I made for my husband:

Spelt Berry Breakfast

• 1 cup Fage 0% Greek Yogurt
• 1/2 cup cooked spelt berries*
• 1/2 cup blackberries* 
• honey* (optional)

Layer yogurt, spelt berries and blackberries in a bowl.  If desired, sweeten with honey.

Note: to cook the spelt berries, I rinsed 2 cups berries and placed them in the bowl of my rice cooker.  I added 4 1/2 cups water and cooked, on sprouted setting, until cooked.  My rice cooker has fuzzy logic, so when the spelt berries were cooked, it switched to warm until I was ready to use them.

*CSA ingredients