Chocolate and Fruit and Nuts, Oh My!

Chocolate lovers rejoice!  This is a delicious chocolate treat that is super easy to make, beautiful to look at, and even on the healthier side of dessert (assuming, of course, that you can limit yourself to just one or two pieces).  My aunt introduced her version of chocolate bark to my mom a year or two ago.  Since then, my mom has kept a stash in her freezer at all times, and now it's a regular addition to pretty much every shabbat and holiday meal.  I've followed in my mother's footsteps and am rarely without some chocolate bark in my own freezer.  It’s a great contribution to any potluck dinner, and I recommend always having a stash for a quick, sweet treat. 

What I love about this dessert is that it’s so versatile.  You can swap in milk or even white chocolate (or maybe even do a swirl?  Something to try in the future…), and you can do any combination of nuts and dried fruit you have hanging around.  It’s such an easy, delicious, and beautiful dessert, how can you not make it now that you know how?

Don't you want a freezer full of that?

Quinoa and Roasted Vegetables

A few weeks ago I had an insatiable craving for caramelized onions.  I know, super random, but I really just wanted that delicious sweet flavor.  I had also offered to contribute a side dish to a meal with a gluten-free host and several vegetarians.  My immediate thought of satisfying the vegetarian-protein conundrum and making something that the host could eat as well was quinoa, and since I had to opportunity to cook something up, I knew I was going to make caramelized onions.

Let me just take a moment to talk about quinoa (pronounced keen-wah).  It’s a beautiful food.  Although it looks and acts like a grain, quinoa is actually a seed.  And like many other seeds, it’s pretty high in protein.  It’s a vegetarian’s best friend because it’s a complete protein and it makes a filling base to many dishes (not to mention it has a delicious, nutty flavor).  You can use it in almost any dish you would normally use rice (though quinoa isn’t as starchy as rice, so you can’t really use it to make a true risotto – I’ve tried).  Quinoa is super easy to cook, and the boxes they come in always have instructions.  Quinoa also comes in both red and white varieties.  Honestly, I think they taste the same, so it’s really just a preference of color.

Raw Quinoa

Anyway, back to my side dish.  In my mind I had quinoa and caramelized onions, and I decided to expand on that sweet caramelized flavor.  In other words – time to roast some veggies!  In the end, I roasted garlic, peppers, and cherry tomatoes, tossed it in with the caramelized onions and quinoa, and added some almonds for texture, and rounded it all off with balsamic vinegar (for the record, I love balsamic vinegar) a bit of basil to brighten the dish.  I think I just found a new favorite summer recipe.

Amazing Vegan Cupcakes

I don’t know what’s gotten into me lately, but all I want to do is bake delicious things and make them look pretty.  Now, normally I love cooking and I completely avoid baking.  I love how with cooking you can taste the dish along the way and make adjustments throughout the process or incorporate that brilliant idea that just popped into your head.  Baking, in my mind, goes something like this: measure, mix, pour, wait.  Aka – BORING.  And while I love the result of baking, I’ve never been one to openly seek out new recipes and projects.

Until now.

Suddenly, I find myself trolling the internet for interesting flavor pairings, for something bigger than your standard yellow cake or your average chocolate chip cookies (not that there's anything wrong with either).  Now, I want something different and challenging.  Given my aversion to eggs and milk (on my way to vegan, remember?), almost all non-veganized baked goods recipes are a challenge, as I have to think up the best egg replacement and if it’s really worth all that extra effort.  Then I came across a recipe that caught my eye.  It involved not only making cupcakes (and who doesn’t love a good cupcake), but also making caramel (something I had never done before).  Obviously, I had to try it.  So after some Google searches and some notes, I settled on the recipe below, and boy was it worth the extra effort.  These cupcakes are fantastic (not that I’m biased…).  Oh, and also I got to use my new piping set on the frosting, which made me super happy.

You know you want to eat this

My Shabbat Dinner of Validation

This weekend I hosted my first solo Shabbat dinner (my roomie was out of town).  It was fairly last minute, and very low key, but I figured I had to make a good impression on my guests (and myself) by serving a delicious meal.  I should note that the meal itself was a joint effort.  But the main dish was all mine, and in my head, it would either make me or break me as the best hostess ever.  So obviously I had to try something I’ve never made before, the more complicated the better.

Surfing through the internet and my cookbooks for some ideas, I stumbled across a recipe for a vegan moussaka in my absolute favorite vegan cookbook, Veganomicon (it's amazing, check it out).  Moussaka is a Greek dish that is traditionally made with ground lamb, smothered in béchamel sauce, and baked.  This particular vegan recipe featured a tofu pine nut cream topping, which I’m sure is absolutely delicious, but I didn’t want vegan – I wanted vegetarian.  I was having people over who had never been over before, had never tasted my cooking before, and I didn’t want to scare them away forever with a completely vegan meal (it just worked out that nothing else had dairy in it).  Also, what’s a moussaka without some kind of béchamel sauce topping?  I was already forgoing the meat part of it, better not to go too crazy on my version of this classic.

So then I looked around the internet, visited all my favorite recipe sites, and eventually found an interesting take on béchamel sauce ala Bobby Flay.  This one involving goat cheese, which made me melt a little on the inside because I love goat cheese (who doesn't?).  But it still called for eggs, and at this point on my road to veganism, I don’t eat eggs (long story short, I think they’re gross).  I also don’t drink milk, another key ingredient in béchamel sauce, but that one is easier to substitute.  Then I found a vegan béchamel sauce over at VeganYumYum, and I figured I could use that as a guide for an egg-free sauce.  At this point, I should admit that I really had a little too much fun looking up all these recipes.

Equipped with 3 different, yummy sounding recipes, I sat down to combine them into something that could possibly resemble a delicious vegetarian moussaka (and satisfy some of the weird eating habits that I’ve developed).  I’m just warning you, this recipe is not for the faint of heart.  It's time consuming.  And some people might balk at the béchamel sauce, which isn't the most nutritious thing.  But you see, I don’t really have anything better to do with my Fridays, so I figured, why not try something so time consuming?  Plus, I was serving this with healthy salads, so I allowed myself the decadence of the béchamel sauce.  Above all else, this recipe gave me an excuse to use my mandolin, which is still new enough to be exciting.  

The good news is, the time and effort that you put into this recipe are totally worth it.  The end result has layers of vegetables that manage to retain texture yet still melt in your mouth, and the creamy sauce on top has just a hint of goat cheese flavor.  Excuse me while I go warm up some leftovers.  Just talking about this dish makes me want to eat some (by the way, the leftovers heat up nicely and still taste delicious!)…

Chilled Soup for a Not-So-Chilly Day

So I realize that my second recipe post is a little soon to turn on my original idea for this blog, but I think I'm going to have to do it.  You see, I wanted to create a cooking blog.  That usually involves, you know, cooking.  I don't know what the weather is like in your neck of the woods, but it has just been way too hot down here in DC to even think about turning on the oven or the stove.  Instead, I'd like to share a shockingly simple, ridiculously delicious chilled soup perfect for those hot summer days.

The inspiration (and by that I mean the recipe) for this soup came from my brother-in-law's sister (there has to be a simpler term for that relationship....).  We were enjoying a chilled soup on July 4th this year and began discussing how great cold soups are in the summer.*  Then she offered up this recipe (and yes, this is pretty much word for word her description): "I don't remember the amounts, but blend honeydew, mint, and lime juice until it tastes good.  Then serve it super cold."

So, I played a bit with the measurements, and here it is:

Chilled Honeydew Soup

Serves 8 

Ingredients:

1 honeydew melon
2-4 limes (depending on how sweet you like things, I tend towards the less sweet)
4 sprigs of mint, give or take

Directions:

1.  Cut honeydew in half, scoop out seeds.  Then, cut the honeydew into chunks via your favorite method (I like to make slices, then cut along the rind), and dump into your blender or food processor.

2.  Squeeze the limes into the blender or food processor.  Start with 2.  You can always add more as you adjust to your preferred sweetness.

3.  Wash the mint, then tear the leaves roughly and drop them into the blender or food processor.

4.  Blend until smooth.  Add more mint or lime as needed (this is entirely subjective, so sorry, I really can't be any more specific than that).

5.  Refrigerate.  The colder it is, the better.  When you're ready to serve (or you just can't stand waiting any longer), pour some into a bowl, garnish with a sprig of mint, and enjoy!

I feel refreshed just looking at it

*I know there those of you who hate the idea of cold soups.  I personally don't understand that at all, but that's no reason for me not to share this yummy recipe with you.  Since this is a fruit soup, it's easy enough to pour into a glass, add a straw, and call it a smoothie.  Problem solved.