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Dill Carrot Couscous

February 23, 2011 by Leave a Comment

For some reason, my husband and I decided to buy a giant container of couscous when we were grocery shopping last month. It’s not that we dislike couscous, it’s more that I’m wondering what the hell I’m going to do with 2lbs of it. I mean, couscous is pretty small, right? And 2lbs is not an insignificant amount. So… we’ll see, I guess.

This is a very quick side dish and I almost feel guilty posting about it because it was so easy. It was just something I threw together to go alongside some steak tips and it all came together in less than 20 minutes.

Dill Carrot Couscous

1 cup couscous
1 3/4 cup vegetable stock
1 large carrot, diced
1/2 small onion, diced
1 teaspoon dill weed
1/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan (optional)
1 tablespoon olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

In a small, heavy bottomed pot, heat the oil. Add onions and carrots and saute until tender, then remove from pan and keep warm. Add in the vegetable stock and bring to a boil. Add in couscous, dill and Parmesan cheese if using. Cover and let sit for 5 minutes until all of the stock is absorbed and couscous is light and fluffy when run through with a fork. Add salt and pepper as needed.

This is good; it’s simple and satisfying. It’s also very versatile since there are so many options for seasonings and vegetables that can be used. It’s a nice vegetarian dish and can also very easily be made vegan without sacrificing any of the taste.

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Fried Rice: Why did it take me so long to make this?

February 16, 2011 by 1 Comment

There was a whole two week span last month wherein I kept trying to make fried rice and kept failing. They key is in the preparation: rice must be cooked the day before in order to be used effectively in making fried rice and I just couldn’t manage to do that. Sad, I know. For some reason I’d always intend upon making the rice and then.. I wouldn’t. I’m not even sure I can tell you why other than the day/evening would get away from me? It’s a pretty paltry excuse but it’s all I have.

Finally, I remembered to cook some brown rice and then I let it cool and dry out so I could make fried rice the next day. Except I didn’t, because I think we ended up ordering take out. Oops. But the next night, I totally made fried rice and it was completely worth it.

Fried Rice

2 cups day old rice, white or brown [I prefer brown]
2 medium carrots, diced
1 cup frozen peas, thawed
2 eggs, beaten
2 tablespoons oil, divided
1/2 tablespoon soy sauce
handful of bean sprouts

Heat one tablespoon of oil in your wok or large skillet. Once the oil is shimmering, add the carrots and quickly saute. Remove the carrots, leaving as much oil as possible in the wok, and add in the eggs. Quickly scramble the eggs until mostly done, then remove from pan. Remove any egg residue from the pan and add in the remaining oil.

fried rice

Once the remaining oil has been heated, add in your rice in one flat layer across the surface of the wok. Let it heat for about two minutes before turning it or attempting to stir it. After two minutes, stir and flip the rice over to fry the other side. Let this sit for another 1 – 2 minutes, then stir again. At this point, add in the soy sauce, carrots and peas to heat through. Next, add in the eggs and mix those thoroughly into the mixture. Finally, top with bean sprouts and remove from the pan.

The key to making this is to make sure the wok isn’t too crowded; if it is, you’re not frying things, you’re just really steaming them. Make sure all of your ingredients can touch the cooking surface at all times to ensure even cooking. This recipe is very much adaptable to whatever you have on hand in your kitchen: you can add in more vegetables, meat, take out the eggs – the options are endless.

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Muesli: No one knows how to pronounce it.

June 23, 2010 by Leave a Comment

I can’t believe I didn’t mention this in my last post, as it’s something I’m so fond of bemoaning to anyone listening at home and work, but I DON’T HAVE A STOVE RIGHT NOW. I mean, I own one; it’s so pretty with its cast iron grates and a griddle in the center, and the shiny stainless steel. But it’s not hooked up due to circumstances beyond my control, so I instead complain about it. Up until this weekend, I had been cooking only with a microwave (yuck) and a tiny toaster oven. This weekend, however, I set up my new convection/rotisserie oven and now I’m back in action! I’ve already cooked up some salmon and chocolate chip cookies, so it’s ON.

Of course, today’s post is actually about something I didn’t “cook” …. and I made it two weeks ago. Oops.

Have you ever gone into Au Bon Pain, absolutely starving in the morning? Because I totally have, and one of those times, I picked up a 4oz container of muesli for about $3. I brought it up to the office to eat and it was delicious. It was sweet, healthy, filling: all the things breakfast should be. However, I couldn’t keep paying $3 for those tiny cups, it was driving me crazy knowing how much I was overpaying for it. I looked at the ingredient list on the Au Bon Pain website and went to work.

This type of muesli is actually considered “Bircher” muesli; it was created by a Swiss doctor who did stuff that I can’t remember back in the late 19th century/early 20th century, but I’m sure you’ll be fascinated by it when you read the Wikipedia page about him. He soaked the oats overnight in juice [which I did not do] and added some fresh grated apples [nope] and nuts [yup]. Modern recipes for muesli are slightly different, although most still soak the oats in juice overnight.

Bircher Muesli
1 cup of rolled oats
3/4 – 1 cup of skim milk
1 tablespoon honey [or to taste]
1 apple, diced
1 banana, sliced thin
2 tablespoons greek yogurt
1/4 cup dried cranberries
1/8 cup toasted, sliced almonds

Soak the oats overnight in enough milk to cover them. In the morning, most of the milk will have been absorbed by the oats. Stir, then add in the yogurt, honey, and fresh fruit. Mix to combine. Add dried fruit and nuts. Taste the muesli and add more honey if necessary. Serves 2.

This is really good, but it’s definitely not for everyone. By the time it got to work with me, it looked gross. But it tasted delish; the fruit had sweetened everything up and the apple and nuts added a nice crunch that I would have otherwise missed. It’s exactly the sort of breakfast I’d like to have every day, if I weren’t the type of person that stayed in bed as long as possible as the morning, thus negating the ability to do the last steps of prep on this.

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Jambalaya is fun to say and eat!

August 6, 2009 by Leave a Comment

Man, what is it about certain foods? That no matter what you do with them, they’re just not pretty. Jambalaya is one of those foods; I’m not even sure why, really – you’d think with the chunks of tasty meat, the way the rice takes on the color of the cooking liquid and how it becomes all glossy and fat, it’d be something nice to look at. But it’s not. And why am I going on about this? Because I’m not going to force you to look at lots of pictures of unattractive food. You’ll get the necessary pictures and that’s it.

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In my quest to stop making so much damn Mexican food for poker, I looked online for a good slow cooker recipe. As previously mentioned, my kitchen is like the seventh circle of hell in the summer, so I really do prefer not to use the stove on poker night when there are 12 people in my apartment. I finally came across a few recipes for jambalaya, but none of them seemed exactly what I wanted. I also realized that jambalaya is pretty much just a bunch of tomatoes, meat, and spices – even I can’t mess that up. So I went with what I figured would work out best, and as it turns out, I WAS RIGHT. This was so good.

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You know what I don’t like about slow cookers? Is that they inevitably [or at least for me] create a ring of goo on the top, wherever the food you’re cooking doesn’t touch. Why does it do that? Is it just to mock me and my food blogging? Is it secretly laughing at me as I try to get a picture that doesn’t have its ring of shame prominently featured? Ugh. Screw you, slow cooker. If you weren’t so helpful, you’d be sitting somewhere with the husband’s griddle.

But I digress.

The recipe I came up with went something like this:

1.25 pounds chicken thighs, diced
1 pound chicken breast, whole [frozen!]
1 pound sausage [you can use andouille or any other hot sausage]
1 onion, diced
2 cans of diced tomatoes, 28 oz each
2 cups chicken broth
4 teaspoons Cajun seasoning
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon oregano
1 box of instant rice

Throw everything except the rice into the slow cooker. Mix. Cook on low for 8 hours. Come home, dig out the chicken breast and shred it, then toss it back into the slow cooker. Mix some more. Throw box of instant rice into mixture and continue cooking with the lid off. Once all the liquid is absorbed, the jambalaya is ready.

Now, some of you may be saying, “but Michelle! Why should the chicken breast be frozen? You make no sense!” And while part of that is true, I’ve realized that my biggest problem with the slow cooker is that [boneless] chicken breasts tend to taste … not so great when cooked for long periods of time. I thought I’d try throwing full, frozen breasts in there and see how that turned out. It actually worked really well, as the chicken was tender, but not mushy, and had a good taste to it still.

Overall, I was really happy with how the jambalaya turned out; it had some good heat to it and was really comforting and filling. Everyone seemed to really like it, and even though I had a billion gallons of food in the slow cooker, it was literally scraped dry by the end of the night.

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