Sunday, August 15, 2010

Vegetarian "beef" and bean enchiladas

Vegetarian faux beef and bean enchiladas
In a pan over medium heat, mix up half a can of low fat black beans with half a package of Quorn soy crumbles. Add a small amount of low sodium tomato sauce, taco seasoning, and homemade salsa.

Warm corn shells in the oven, fill with bean mixture, roll up and place in glass dish. Cover with enchiladas sauce and a sprinkling of shredded cheese. Cover and bake at 350 until bubbly. Remove foil and broil for the last couple minutes.


Sunday, August 8, 2010

Homemade bread

Dh and I have been making fresh bread all week with the book: Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day So far we've made baguettes for bruschetta and roasted vegetable sandwiches. Olive bread which we had with salmon, garlic green beans, and salad ( I had Quorns breaded faux chicken instead of the fish, it's pretty darn yummy for soy). We made pizza dough with the olive oil bread recipe yesterday and tonight we're making calzones with the leftovers.

Turns out making bread is pretty easy! At least with the no starter method used in the book. It doesn't exactly take 5 minutes, more like 15 minutes for the initial dough and then another 15 minutes on baking day. After you mix up the flour, water, and yeast, you just leave your dough in a plastic tub in the fridge until you need it. They say you can leave it for up to 10 days... or more? But we usually go through it in about 3. The longer you leave it in the fridge the more sour dough it will become.

The breads we've made have been tasty but they lack the depth of a fine bakery. The quick method is a great starting point though and I think we will begin moving into more complicated traditional methods once we're done with this book.

The only problem we've had, is that our bread stone broke in half, already!




Have you ever made bread?

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

French bistro

Tonight brings me back to our cafe dinners in Paris


Roasted eggplant, roasted red pepper, goat cheese, and arugula on a home baked baguette. Veggie side salad with berries and a balsamic vinegar dressing.


Creme brulee, surprisingly easy using Alton recipe. I subbed vanilla extract for the bean and just used regular sugar

Recipe: Bruschetta

This one is Dh's recipe and it is tdf

This recipe uses 3 or 4 olives per slice of bread. For 10 slices...


Ingredients:
40 Kalamata olives
Sweet roasted red peppers
1/8 to 1/4 teaspoon Garlic
1/2 teaspoon Red pepper flake
3 Basil leaves. 2 for pepper mixture and 1 for garnish, more if your using small leaves
Goat cheese
Olive Oil
Thinnish loaf of bread, like a baguette

Note on ingredients: Buy your olives from an olive bar if you can. They are much better than those in a jar. If you do need to buy jarred, look for Kalamata with a K, not with a C. The Calamata seem to be even more vinegary. For any jarred olive: pit, rinse, and let the olives sit in a strainer to try and remove some of the excess vinegar
We do use jarred roasted red peppers and jarred minced garlic in this recipe.

Dice olives and set aside. Dice an equal amount of roasted peppers. Add garlic, red pepper flake, and basil to peppers.

Heat up your broiler. Cut your bread into 1/2 slices. Butter one side and broil until brown around the edges. Flip, butter, and broil the other side.

Spread goat cheese on each slice of bread. Top with olives, then pepper mixture. Drizzle with a little olive oil and garnish with remaining basil.


For dinner we serve the bruschetta with cheese ravioli and marinara.