Creamy tropical green smoothie

This is my first green smoothie with coconut milk in it. I used all the tropical fruits I had, plus some kale, and it was pretty darn good. Not too much to say about it, really. This would probably be good with mint or cilantro, or maybe even Thai basil, but I didn't think of it until after I drank it. Maybe next time.

Creamy tropical green smoothie

1 banana
1/2 cup orange juice
3/4 cup frozen mango
1/2 cup frozen pineapple
1/4 cup coconut milk
2 kale leaves

Blend.

Farro cakes on a bed of kale

I've been wanting to make a farro-based main dish for a while, but usually I just use it in salad, and it's been too chilly for me to get excited about a cold dinner. I played around with the idea of this farro cake for a while before going for it. I've made grain cakes before, and I just kind of made this one up. It's awesome, if I do say so myself. The farro is nice and chewy, and the liberal use of parmesan gives them a really nice deep cheesy flavor. It took me a little fiddling to get them to hold together. First, I just added one egg, but it was kind of just a dry-ish mash. I added a second egg, and it was too wet, but then I threw in some Panko crumbs, which absorbed just enough egg to get the cakes to hold together well. The kale complements the cakes nicely, but I have a pro-kale bias.

Farro cakes on a bed of kale

Makes about 10 cakes. I had 2 at dinner, and Jon had 5. So it serves 2-5 people, I guess.

1 cup farro (or a little less; you want 2 cups cooked in the end)

2 cups vegetable stock

1 tbsp vegetable oil

1/2 cup onion, diced

1 garlic clove, minced

8 grape tomatoes, quartered

1/2 tsp ground marjoram

1/2 tsp dried thyme

.65 oz grated parmesan or asiago cheese (I just got an electronic kitchen scale! If you don't have one, it's probably 1/3 cup grated by a microplane.)

2 eggs, well beaten

1/4 cup Panko or bread crumbs

4 kale leaves

Cook farro by combining farro with broth in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil, lower heat to a simmer, and cook for about 25 minutes, or until water is absorbed and farro is tender. Set aside.

Heat oil in a medium frying pan. Add onion, then a few minutes later, garlic, tomatoes, marjoram, and thyme. Saute until everything is soft. Set aside.

Place 2 cups farro in a medium mixing bowl. Add vegetable mixture and cheese. Stir in eggs and Panko or bread crumbs.

To cook the cakes, heat a crepe or nonstick pan over medium heat until it is very hot. (Add a little oil if your pan needs it; ours doesn't.) Take a big spoonful of farro mixture, plop it on the pan, and mash it down with the back of the spoon so it's even and fairly flat. Cook for 3-5 minutes, or until the bottom is golden brown. Carefully flip it and cook on the other side until that side is done as well. The cakes didn't seem very liable to burn, so you don't need to be too worried about them getting overcooked.

In the leftover oil from the vegetable pan, saute the kale. Serve farro cakes on top of a bed of kale.

Reuben

I like Rubens and Flemish painting in general. I also love the Reuben sandwich. I have my own ideas on it which I will now share. I like to make my Reubens on the skinny side. This makes it easier to balance ratios, not get super messy and reasonable for an any day lunch. I am trying to find the best reuben in our neighborhood, and so far mine wins. (Salonica is the best restaurant reuben we've found so far.)

For this recipe I do not heat the sauerkraut or corned beef ahead of time. It improves the sandwich a bit if you do, but I usually don't want to take the time (I am often already hungry). As usual measurements are approximate.

Best Reuben in Hyde Park

4 slices of Corned beef

2 slices seeded rye (a pumpernickel rye might be even better)

2 oz or so sauerkraut

3 slices swiss cheese

Thousand island dressing (1/2 oz?)

a little mustard

butter

Put the mustard on one slice of bread and top with the corned beef. Put the cheese on the other. (This will insulate the bread from the liquids.) On top of the corned beef put the sauerkraut and top that with the dressing. Close the sandwich.

Melt butter in a pan over medium heat. Put the sandwich on. Put a weight on the sandwich (like a heavy pot). After a couple of minutes remove the sandwich and melt some more butter in the pan. Put the other side of the sandwich down. Put a weight on the sandwich. Cook for a couple of minutes and then serve. I like to serve it with a pickle spear (Hyde Park Produce's deli section has good pickles) and chips.

Deconstructed guacamole quesa-jitas

I have been threatening to make deconstructed guacamole for a while, and on Saturday I finally followed through. I used it as the key ingredient in dinner, which was something between a quesadilla and fajita. I used up some leftover tofu in it too.

For fellow southsiders, Hyde Park Produce tends to have good avocados at a reasonable (maybe even cheap) price.

Deconstructed guacamole

2 firm avocados, chopped

1/2 tomato, chopped

Corn, optional

Cilantro, optional

Juice of 1/2 lime

1 healthy shake arizona dreaming or other chili powder

1 shake chipotle powder

1 shake cajun seasoning or seasoned salt

2 pinches cumin

1 pinch coriander

1 shake tabasco

Combine ingredients.

I served this on tortillas with sautéed onions, dry fried tofu, tomato slices, cheese, sour cream and jalapenos. 

Pineapple matcha smoothie

This is a green smoothie, but the green is from matcha (powdered green tea) instead of bona fide greens. It's a delicious way to start the morning, mostly sweet with some bitterness from the tea.

Pineapple matcha smoothie

1/2 banana

1/2 cup orange or pineapple juice

3/4 cup frozen pineapple pieces

1 tsp matcha

Rice-stuffed peppers

I made some stuffed peppers. The stuffing is basically risotto, but made less fussily than we usually do. The measurements below are approximate, but they should give you an idea of what we did. When I make them again I will cook them with plenty of space and rotate occasionally so the whole pepper gets roasted and not just the top. And I'll add some fresh herbs.

Rice-stuffed peppers

Green peppers cored, with seeds removed

1/2 tbsp butter

1 cup Arborio rice

3 cups broth

1/2 large onion

1 garlic clove, minced

1 tomato, chopped

2 leaves swiss chard, chopped

1/2 ball mozzarella

Heat the broth. In another pot put in the rice with some butter over a low heat. Add one cup of broth to rice, stir and simmer. As the broth gets absorbed add about 1/2 cup of broth at a time to the rice to keep it just submerged. Stir occasionally.

Saute onions about 8 minutes. Add garlic and cook about two more. Add tomato and cook until done, about 5 more minutes.

When the rice is done mix with the chard to help wilt the chard slightly. Mix in the sauteed vegetables and mozzarella.

Stuff the peppers.

Cook on 400 for about 30 minutes.

Crepe envelopes with mushroom-chard filling

Jon was away last weekend, so I wanted to make something special for him when he came back last night. (I'm like Ina Garten that way.) I decided on these stuffed crepes. We had made them one other time when a friend came over for dinner, but I tweaked and improved the recipe a bit this time. These are buckwheat crepes with a yummy, creamy filling. I decided to go with a crepe recipe that had some wheat flour as well instead of the all-buckwheat version I often make because I thought the wheat would help the crepes stay pliable for folding. Next time I might try with the all-buckwheat ones.

I based the filling on a caramelized leek and mushroom filling I saw in a cookbook, but I used onions instead of leeks because I am not sophisticated enough to care about leeks, and I added chard because I don't like mushrooms that much, and the chard takes some of the focus away from the mushrooms. If I do say so myself, it's a pretty darn good filling: creamy, flavorful, and rich-tasting. Jon is insane and adds Tabasco sauce to his.

This dinner was a bit time-consuming and involved, but I think it's a really nice, elegant looking meal. Jon was very appreciative. Of course, I served it with a salad as well. (And a ginger cake that will appear on the blog soon.)

Crepe envelopes with mushroom-chard filling

Crepes:

2/3 cup all-purpose flour

2/3 cup buckwheat flour

1/4 tsp salt

1 egg

1 cup milk

1/3 cup water, plus extra if necessary

2 tbsp butter, melted

Filling:

2 tbsp olive or vegetable oil

1 medium onion, diced

1/2 lb assorted mushrooms, sliced (I used a mix of shiitake and crimini, but that's just because the store was low on mushroom variety)

5 leaves Swiss chard, stems separated, both stems and leaves chopped

1/2 tsp salt, divided (1/4 tsp and 1/4 tsp)

zest of 1 lemon

5 leaves sage, julienned

3/4 cup yogurt

1 egg

1/2 cup grated cheese (we used Gruyere, but any hard cheese would probably be good)

To make the crepes: Mix dry ingredients in one bowl and whisk the egg, milk, and 1/3 cup water together in another bowl. Whisk the wet ingredients into the dry. Whisk in melted butter. Cover bowl and refrigerate for at least an hour. Remove from refrigerator, whisk in a little more water if necessary to make an easy-to-pour batter. Make crepes by heating a crepe or nonstick pan with a flat bottom over medium heat. Pour 1/4 cup batter onto pan and turn to spread as evenly as possible. Cook until bottom is golden brown. Turn and cook a little more on the other side, so it has brown flecks as well. Repeat, and set crepes aside in a warm oven or microwave to keep them warm and pliable. (I actually made the filling first and then the crepes, so they wouldn't get too cool.)

To make filling: Saute onions in oil until very soft. Add mushrooms, chard stems, and 1/4 tsp salt, and cook until mushrooms are very soft and have given off their water. Add leaves and lemon zest, and cook until leaves are just wilted. Turn off heat and stir in sage leaves.

In a medium mixing bowl, combine yogurt, and egg. Whisk until smooth, and then stir in cheese, remaining 1/4 tsp salt, and vegetable mixture.

To assemble crepes: Spray a baking pan with nonstick spray, and preheat the oven to 350 F. Place one crepe "face"-side down (the face is the first side you cook; it's a little more attractive than the other side). Spoon some filling in the middle. Fold top and bottom over filling, then left and right sides, to make a little pouch. Place seam-side down in your baking pan. Repeat with the rest of the crepes. Bonus points if you have exactly the right amount of filling for the crepes. If you have extra crepes, you can eat them with butter and a little salt.

Bake crepes for 15 minutes or so. I'm not really sure how to tell if they're done visually, but 15 minutes worked for me.