Risotto with Leeks and Peas

I've always found risotto to be a beautiful dish.  Whether it stands on its own or acts as a bed for some seared scallops or other accompaniment, the creamy risotto is a sight to behold.  I think it is marvelous the way that the starch slowly cooking rice creates the creamy goodness.  Risotto is also very versatile.  You can add several different ingredients to the rice to fit your mood or whatever you are serving it with.

Zucchini Bread

Continuing on my theme of having too much zucchini, this Sunday's brunch was zucchini bread.  I tried four different recipes of zucchini bread, all of which were delicious and asked my friends what they liked and did not like about each.  This resulted in the following recipe, which I then used to make even more zucchini bread.  (How else am I going to use 20 zucchinis?)  But, since the first set didn't even last a full day, I don't think anyone minds me making more.

Pasta with Zucchini

This meal was very much a product of throwing together what was in the fridge.  Last weekend my dorm threw a party and made lots of kebabs.  Of course we bought giant quantities of the vegetables we needed from a restaurant supply store, which means that we have pounds of zucchini left over.  I also needed a fast meal since I had less than an hour to cook and eat dinner.  Consequently, this dish was created.  Despite the ease, the flavors came together very well to make a lovely dinner.

Sourdough Pizzas

My favorite pizza topping combination is a bit unusual.  Ironically, the first time I had it was in an airport, not a location known for its stelar food choices.  Traveling back after a term of college I got stuck in the Phoenix airport for several hours due to a massive storm front in the midwest.  With the extended layover I had time to figure out the best food options in the terminal and stumbled across La Grande Orange.  They have a great pizza called the Avocado Lovers which is topped with avocado, lemon zest, and fresh basil as soon as it comes out of the oven.  This might not exactly sound like the best combination but the slightly warm avocado provides the perfect counter point to the fresh basil leaves while the lemon zest adds a pop of flavor to the cheese.  After leaving the airport, I thought I would never have this wonderful pizza again, but it turns out that there is also a La Grande Orange pizza place in the LA area, and thus I have been able to eat this delicious pizza a few more times while at college.

Snickerdoodles

Snickerdoodles are often overlooked in the cookie family.  They are a simple sugar cookie rolled in cinnamon and sugar.  They are not my favorite cookie (not enough chocolate) but I much prefer them to the frosted sugar cookies.  Someone requested I make a batch, and so two friends and I decided to make them.  My family's recipe comes from my Aunt Linda, a wonderful lady that past away some years ago.  It is very simple to make and results in a lovely buttery and cinnamon cookie.

Artichokes

I love vegetables.  When I am just cooking for myself, I often choose to simply have vegetables for dinner.  One of my favorites is artichokes.  They are a bit of work to eat, but easy enough to prepare.  You can simply steam the artichokes, but I find that the few minutes of extra time that this method takes is worth the effort.  You can eat the artichokes plain or with either of the two dipping sauces below.

French Toast with Strawberry Sauce

This weekend's brunch was French toast.  Growing up, it was never a favorite of mine.  I always thought it was too eggy, and, at the time, I was not a fan of eggs.  Since then I have come to appreciate good french toast.  It is a breakfast classic.  The subtle hint of cinnamon and vanilla compliment the sweetness of the powdered sugar or syrup.  I am particularly fond of french toast with a fruit compote.  There is relatively near my college that sells thick pieces of toast with a wild blueberry compote that is delicious.  I didn't have any blueberries, but I did have a bunch of farmers market strawberries that I needed to use up.  I turned this in to a lovely strawberry sauce to go over my french toast.

Pasta with Leeks and Garlic Bread

I bought leeks for my vegetable soup I cooked last week and completely forgot to include them, which meant I had two leeks sitting in the fridge that I didn't want to go to waste.  That is completely fine thought since I absolutely love leeks.  In my family leeks are most commonly use in potato leek soup.  The dish is a favorite of my families, but, I figured I had been making enough soups and stews for summer.  A light pasta dish was much more fitting for the season.  This also meant that I could make everyone's favorite garlic bread and cook the artichokes that I also had sitting in the fridge.  Together they made an excellent meal.

Hungarian Beef Stew (Goulash) and Spaetzle

At the beginning of the summer, I bought and froze a bunch of beef stew meat.  I didn't realize how many vegetarian meals I would be cooking and thought the meat would be eaten quickly.  However, despite cooking for vegetarians most days, any time I cook meat the food seems to vanish rather quickly.  When presented with stew meat my first inclination is always beef bourguignon, but, since I made that just a couple of weeks ago, I decided to try something new.  I have previously seen recipes for Goulash or Hungarian beef stew and decided to try.  Serving suggestions for the stew often included spaetzle so I decided to make that as well.  This can be a bit time consuming though.  You can just purchase spaetzle from the grocery store if you can find it or serve the stew with egg noodles instead.  But since the meat is in the slow cooker, I had time to prepare the spaetzle

French Vegetable Soup with Quinoa

The idea for this recipe came while trying to decide on a vegetarian dish that would use up some of my copious amounts of vegetable stock that I seem have.  I came across this recipe while browsing one of the food blogs I commonly read and it reminded me of a french chicken soup I had in a restaurant around here.  But, since I am cooking for lots of vegetarians this summer, I decided to stick to the vegetable version of this soup.  This soup can take lots of variation; you can use whatever vegetables you like or happen to have around.  You can also add chicken and chicken stock if you want a more meat friendly version of this soup.

Spinach and Mushroom Lasagna

Lasagna was not a dish commonly made while I was growing up.  It takes a bit of prep work so it isn't exactly ideal if you want dinner on the table in under an hour.  That being said, I made it on a weeknight and it was perfectly doable.  Lasagna is a good dish to have in your repertoire because it is generally well liked; it stores, transports, and reheats well; and it is easily modified to suit anyones tastes.  I made a vegetarian lasagna with spinach and mushrooms but you could easily interchange these for other vegetables or Italian sausage if you prefer a bit more meat.  You could even make a cheese sauce and leave out the tomato sauce.  The possibilities are endless when it comes to lasagna.

Slow Cooker Lentils

Lentils were not a staple in our house growing up though I do remember them being cooked on a few rare occasions.  They are, however, a great vegetarian option, and, since I am mainly feeding vegetarians this summer, they make a nice dinner.  This recipe also has the benefit of being made in a slow cooker, which is something I need on my busy Monday evenings.  This recipe serves at least 6 if not 8 to 10 so feel free to reduce the amounts if you don't want to make that much food. They are good served over rice or with a dollop of plain yogurt.

Buttermilk Pancakes

Pancakes are the quintessential weekend breakfast.  Back home, Sunday brunches were a common occurrence in our family.  I am now continuing the tradition here a college and cooking brunch once a week or so for my friends here.  This week was pancakes.  If you have buttermilk lying around you should definitely use that.  Two weeks ago, after I made the chocolate cake, I had lots of extra buttermilk and thus used that.  This week, however, not wanting to purchase butter milk expressly for this purpose, I just used regular milk.  If you mix a teaspoon of vinegar or lemon juice into a cup of milk, it will work instead.  This generally results in a thinner version of buttermilk so you probably want to add an extra 1/4 cup of flour to the batter if you want thick, fluffy pancakes.

Sofia's Blueberry Muffins

This recipe came from our former neighbor Sofia who is a wonderful cook. Between the ages of 1 and 8, Sofia took on the role of a fun loving "aunt" for our daughter Sophie. As she cleaned out closets, she would always surprise Sophie with a fun little gift of rhinestone jewelry or a funky pair of shoes. This was perfect for a little girl who loved to dress up.  To this day, Sophie is still wearing some vintage 1960's clothing she received from Sofia.

One day after spending a day working hard in the yard putting up a play set for the boys.  Sofia brought us over a plate of warm blueberry muffins.  We had been so engaged in working we had not taken the time to make lunch.  Needless to say, a plate of 18 muffins were devoured in minutes.

Lemon Bread

My daughter Sophie has been encouraging me to post despite my lack of technical skills. With Noah's assistance, here is my first posting. This recipe came from a neighbor named Mrs. Riley about 50 years ago.  I was only a year old, thus given to me by my mother.  We make it both for breakfast and as a sweet snack.  While the original recipe calls for nuts, we tend to omit them.  

Vegetarian Mushroom Risotto

My family is not a huge fan of mushrooms.  My mother and one of my brother's can't stand them.  I'm not sure what Noah's opinion of mushrooms is now but he definitely wouldn't eat them growing up.  We did make risotto with summer vegetables on occasion while I was growing up but it was never a family favorite.  I, however, love the dish.  And, now that I am at college cooking for friends who appreciate mushrooms, I can add them to the risotto.  I have previously made this dish with chicken and chicken stock, but, in the interest of my vegetarian friends, I omitted the chicken and substituted homemade vegetable stock.  However, If you are not vegetarian and want this as your main course, adding some cooked chicken with the mushrooms is a good option.

Slow Cooker Lamb

Greek food is one of my favorite cuisines.  Back home in Chicago, it is readily available, but I haven't found a place I like yet here.  That leaves me to make it on my own.  Lamb is probably my favorite meat in terms of flavor so when one of my friends asked if I wanted to cook a lamb leg with him, I jumped at the chance.  We cut the leg in half and he made a delicious roast out of his half while braised mine.  The recipe that I used is one that I modified from a Greek cookbook my family has had for years.  The recipe calls for lamb shanks but a lamb leg works as well.  The recipe is better, however, with a bone-in cut since the bone adds to the stockiness as it cooks in the slow cooker.  I generally serve this dish over orzo, but my friend made homemade whole wheat bread that also went very well with the dish and was a great way of getting all that wonderful sauce.

Vegetarian Thai Green Curry

In southern California, where I go to college, there is plenty of access to all types of Asian food and I eat it all the time.  Back home, however, we seemed to only eat the occasional Thai take out.  When ordering Thai, the green curry was always my favorite.  I had never had much success making it though.  I remember once following a recipe out of a Curry cookbook and ending up with green curry that seemed weirdly sweet.  I am always a bit weary of making most Asian food as it is never something that was made in my house growing up.  I don't have experience to fall back on when a dish doesn't taste quite right.  And with so much around, I have easy access to the dish.  My friends that I cook for, however, suggested this so I thought I would give it a try.  Luckily it turned out pretty well.

When looking online at green curry recipes, most seem to call for green curry paste.  None of the three grocery stores within walking distance carried it though.  Trader Joe's had a green curry simmering sauce and so I picked up a jar of that just in case, but, since I had an extra jalapeño lying around from the tacos I made a few days ago and some fresh ginger in the fridge, I decided to try my hand a making my own approximation.  It turned out pretty well though I did end up adding a bit of the simmering sauce to the curry, since I didn't quite have enough paste for the amount of curry I ended up making.  I reduced the amounts of everything else though so this should be fine.  If you don't want the vegetarian option, you can always switch out chicken for the tofu and add it in with the rest of the vegetables.

Stuffed Peppers

Last night's dinner was stuffed peppers.  One of the friends that I was cooking for was convinced that most people would be able to eat two so we made a lot.  Needless to say, we have leftovers.  Thats okay though since these reheat rather well.  This recipe is based on one from a Moroccan cook book that I have often made with my family.  I used ground beef (I'm a cheap college student) but I have previously made this with ground lamb (what the original recipe calls for) or ground turkey.  For the vegetarian option I substituted black beans which also turned out pretty well.

Flourless Chocolate Cake with Raspberry Sauce

As my sister pointed out, I have been quite lazy with my posting.  But finally, I came to my senses and baked up a cake.  Several years ago, my sister made a Flourless chocolate cake with raspberry sauce that our entire family loved, but we have not made it in a very long time.  Since I had extra raspberry sauce from the lemon cake I had previously baked, my brother convinced me that I should make the Flourless chocolate cake my sister had made previously.  This extremely rich cake is quite the delicacy, especially served with raspberry sauce and fresh berries.

Vegetable and Tofu Stir Fry

I told Noah that I wouldn't post anything else until he cooked more, but this has been sitting as a draft long enough.  I got tired of waiting so I decided to post something.

When I think easy food made out of what you can find in the fridge, I think stir fry.  It is basically the perfect college food.  It only takes one pan, its relatively fast, and it is much healthier than ramen or easy mac.  Stir fry is probably one of the first dishes I cooked by myself.  The rest of my family wasn't a huge fan but I always liked it growing up.  We would keep cans of bamboo shoots, water chestnuts, and baby corn around and whip up a stir fry with what ever vegetables we had.  A good stir fry is still an excellent meal though.  This stir fry happened to be made with tofu, an assortment of vegetables, and a combination sauces and seasonings that I had around.  It is a good idea to develop the technique and find a sauce and spice combination you enjoy as a method for using up any vegetables you have lying around.