July 5th--One Pot Paprikash

Dave: We are pretty tired tonight after a weekend celebrating (and exercising) our freedoms with some of our friends. We were lucky to host some friends from Oxford, MS and we had the chance to meet up with some of my fellow Huskies at the fireworks downtown. As much fun as we had, the last thing we want to do tonight is mess around with a complicated recipe...or dishes.

Lauren: Only problem with that idea - we're also hungry. REALLY hungry. As in make-and-eat-buckets-of-food hungry.

Dave: This weekend involved a lot of eating out (notably the Taste of Chicago, Wow Bao! and the fabulous Panang Thai in the loop), so price range is also a consideration. For this recipe, I focused on keeping everything down to one pot, ingredients that cost less than $20 total (with a guarantee of leftovers for lunch tomorrow) and super-hearty comfort food. Looking to my heritage, I thought that some nice spicy Paprikash would do the trick.

Lauren: When you're hungry, why not cook Hungarian? (cue groans)

Dave: The only challenge is transforming notoriously meat-based Hungarian cuisine into a veg dish. The first issue was how to get the proper consistency in my sour cream sauce without any rendered fat in the dish. I decided to try using Cultural Revolution yogurt because it is so thick and creamy. It helped, but we may go all the way to Greek yogurt next time we try this out.

The other big issue is what to put in the Paprikash. I've done everything from all-mushrooms (cooked in bacon fat so I didn't have to worry about sauce thickening) to all-beef and the sauce has always stood up for itself, so I wasn't worried about balance as much as I was worried about health (we also didn't eat that healthily this weekend). I decided to go with button mushrooms, Yukon gold potatoes (skin on) and red cabbage. I also used a shallot because they were on sale for a good price at Whole Foods and we like how potatoes taste when they are cooked with shallots.

Lauren: Given the temperature outside and the stick-to-your-ribs quality of the dish, we served it up by itself. In the colder months, it would be nice to serve it over some egg noodles or hearty wild rice.

Ingredients:

12 oz Cultural Revolution Plain Yogurt

2 Yukon Gold Potatoes cleaned and cut into batons

16 oz Button Mushrooms cleaned and sliced

1 Head Red Cabbage

1 Shallot

1/2 Cup Earth Balance Margarine in two 1/4 cup portions

3 Tbsp Hot Hungarian Paprika

2 Tbsp Hungarian Paprika

1 Tbsp Ground Black Pepper

1 Tsp Salt

Procedure:

Melt 1/4 cup Earth Balance in sautee pan with lid. Cook potatoes until the start to brown. Add shallot and salt and pepper. Continue cooking until the potatoes are uniformly brown and the shallots are cooked through.

Add mushrooms and cover the pot entirely with cabbage. Place other 1/4 cup of Earth Balance on top of the cabbage and cover the pan. Cook on medium low until cabbage has wilted significantly.

In a separate container (I used the yogurt container to cut down on dishes) mix yogurt and paprika. Add more black pepper and salt if you think that would taste good.

Mix together the ingredients in the pan and let cool for 10 minutes. Add the yogurt sauce and heat slowly to avoid curdling. Serve hot in bowls.

June 28--Savory Crepes, Sweet Crepes

Dave: I love making crepes! I think crepes get the most mileage for the "you're a man who cooks!?" cool factor. I also love sea food...and white wine...and just about everything else in these recipes.

Lauren: One our first non-work roommate interactions was the day that Dave made Nutella and banana crepes for everybody. Until this point, he'd seemed pretty all-business, but what says "fun" more than crepes and Nutella? I think it's safe to say he won my friendship that day.

Dave: See what I mean? From stodgy "I read post-modern fiction Dave" to "fun loving crepe guy" in seconds. Here's a secret for all of those men out there who want to be able to say "Not only am I a man who cooks, I am a man who cooks....crepes," crepes are incredibly easy to make. Everything that is hard about pancakes is easy in crepe land, my man. Pancakes have a lot of ingredients; way more than seem necessary, right? You never know when to flip a pancake, unless you belong to the Lion's Club. You're constantly adding extra butter to your pan. The list goes on! In crepe land, you have four ingredients: flour, eggs, milk, butter. Crepes tell you exactly when they're done, and when they are done they prepare themselves for flipping by pulling away from the pan. Also, because of the butter in the batter, if you go "non-stick" you don't need to add any oil to your cooking apparatus.

Lauren: I think I can make a pretty good case for easy-peasy pancakes, but we'll save that for a future breakfast-for-dinner entry.

Dave: Be that as it may, crepes have gotten a bad rap as far as being high maintenance.

Tonight we decided to make a low-maintenance meal that feels high-maintenance. Two kinds of crepes with two kinds of very easy fillings that taste absolutely gourmet.

Lauren: For dinner, a seafood crepe in a white wine sauce; for dessert, strawberry crepes. Total time of prep + cooking? 90 minutes. And not just because we've made crepes before - you can do it, too!

Recipes:

Crepes

2 Cups All Purpose Flour

2 Cups Soy Milk (or cow's milk)

4 Eggs

4 Tablespoons Butter (Melted)

Mix flour, eggs and 8 Tablespoons of the milk in a bowl and mix well. Add the rest of the milk and the melted butter and whisk well. Put the batter in a spouted container (like a liquid measure.)

Preheat a nonstick skillet. Pour enough batter into the skillet to completely coat it. Wait until the edges of the crepe pull up and the crepe slides freely when the skillet is shaken. Flip the crepe and cook the other side until set (I guess you could use a spatula, but it is so much cooler when you flip it in the skillet.)

Seafood Filling:

1/2 pound of seafood (we just use the Trader Joe's seafood mix of scallops, shrimp and squid)

3 Tablespoons butter

3/4 cup Chardonnay (We used Winnefred California Chardonnay - $4.99 at Trader Joe's)

2 Tablespoons vital wheat gluten (you can use corn starch if you really want)

2 Scallions sliced to the middle of the dark green part

1 Tbsp minced Garlic

Melt the butter and add the scallions and garlic. Simmer very low for 3 minutes. Add the wine. Add the seafood mix and cook until seafood is just shy of cooked through. Take the filling off the range and mix the liquid with the vital wheat gluten and a few of the pieces of seafood in a food processor. Return the liquid to the seafood and continue cooking on low. When the sauce is sufficiently thick, spoon the sauce onto crepes and roll. Spoon a bit of sauce on top of each crepe and serve hot.

Strawberry Filling:

1 lb. strawberries, sliced (reserve 2 for garnish, if desired)

1/4 cup sugar

scant 1/2 cup water

2 tablespoons lemon juice

In a double-boiler or saucepan, bring water to a boil and add sugar. Reduce heat to medium; stir sugar for 8-10 minutes or until dissolved. Add strawberries to saucepan and stir at intervals until slightly mushy, then add lemon juice. Cook for additional 2 minutes, then remove from heat. Drain liquid, spoon onto crepes and roll. Serve with a spoonful of thick, plain yogurt with a drizzle of honey.

Optional strawberry garnish: Pull up greenery and cut into strawberry at 1/8-inch intervals, from where the strawberry lightens in color near greenery through towards point of strawberry (sort of as if you were cutting it into slices, but not going all the way through near the top). Holding top of strawberry, press out into a fan shape. (There are also lots of videos that demonstrate this, if these instructions are unclear.)

July 22th--Improvised Tajine Curry

Lauren: So, as it turns out, we were a little more tired than expected on Monday after Sunday's Warrior Dash (which was awesome, by the way), and decided to eat some leftover ragout my father had sent us home with from his self-catered Father's Day dinner. He also sent us home with a present - a tajine.

Dave: To put the tajine through its paces, we decided to make a modification of a super easy curry recipe we've developed (because we are lazy and like curry). The tajine is a traditional Moroccan cooking vessel with a tall domed cover, so that when liquid evaporates from your food it condenses and self-marinates. To take advantage of these features we used traditional Moroccan spices in place of curry powder and used potatoes as the basis for the curry, to replicate the tough cuts of meat the tajine is so good at tenderizing. I know that getting potatoes good and soft isn't nearly as difficult a task as tenderizing mutton, but until Morningstar Farms makes a mutton substitute, it's what we've got.

Lauren: We also added paneer cubes to the mix - again, more common in South Asian cuisine than Moroccan, but we had half a bag of it in the freezer (and it's delicious).

Incidentally, tajine is the name for both the cooking vessel as well as the dishes made in it. Traditional tajine also tends to have more fruits and nuts than ours had, so this might be fun to do differently in the fall with root vegetables, dates and nuts.

Dave: Absolutely! It's a great vessel for all sorts of long-cooking foods.

I want to give a shout out to The Spice House (www.thespicehouse.com 1941 Central St. Evanston). We used their Moroccan Spice Mix and their Chili Powder in this recipe. They have some of the best and freshest spices in the Chicagoland area and their staff is always so pleasant and helpful.

Tajine:

1/2 cup Soy Milk

4 Red Potatoes (Diced)

2 Roma Tomatoes (Seeded and diced)

1/2 Red Onion (Peeled and, you guessed it, diced)

1 Cup frozen peas (We used Trader Joe's Brand)

1 Cup frozen paneer cubes

4 Tablespoons Extra Virgin Olive Oil

3 Tsps Moroccan Spice Blend http://www.thespicehouse.com/spices/moroccan-spice-mixture

2 Tsps Chili Powder http://www.thespicehouse.com/spices/mild-medium-or-hot-chili-powder

Sauce:

1 cup Greek yogurt

1-2 Tbsp soy milk

1 1/2 Tbsp Moroccan Spice Blend http://www.thespicehouse.com/spices/moroccan-spice-mixture

2 dashes ground cloves

In a medium-sized bowl, whisk Greek yogurt and soy milk together (sauce should have a fairly thick consistency). Add in Moroccan spices until fully combined. Mix in cloves and set aside.

Pour soy milk into tajine and set over low heat. Gradually increase the heat to medium (you should never expose your tajine to quick temp changes.) When the milk has boiled, let the tajine cool and hand wash without soap. You can do this at any time the day you are making the recipe.

Heat olive oil in the tajine. Slowly increase the temperature from low to medium. Put the potatoes and red onions into the tajine and stir slowly, ensuring that they are coated in oil. Cover the tajine and let simmer for 10 minutes.

Open the tajine and add peas, chili powder, Moroccan spice blend and paneer. Stir well and cover. Reduce heat slightly and let simmer 10 minutes.

Turn off the burner of the stove and let the tajine sit (covered) 15 minutes.

Slowly add sauce to the vegetable and spice mixture. If the sauce curdles when added, allow more time for the oil to cool.

Stir well and serve immediately with flatbread.