Last year around the holidays, I made homemade cheese spreads for the first time - a basic Cheddar Cheese Spread and then a fantastic nutty cheese spread that was inspired by French Onion soup and the store bought Swiss Almond spreads - my Swiss-Almond Cheese Spread with Caramelized Onions. We ate the hell out of them.
This year, I was thinking about a southern classic, Pimiento Cheese Spread...but traditionally, the spread is simply made with cheese, mayo and pimientos. I really like using cream cheese because I wanted it more like a cracker dip than a sandwich spread. I also wanted to boost it up a little with flavour, so I added a lot more than what the traditional spread has - garlic, Worcestershire, jalapeño, wine, etc. It's not hot or spicy at all... so even if you shy away from jalapeños, I say add 'em to this recipe. It just adds a little depth to the spread - more layers of flavour.
So if you're trying to come up with some appetizers to make and/or take to a New Year's party, this is a pretty easy and great one!
I think the Descendents said what we were all thinking. -jen
*I recommend at least half of your shredded cheese being sharp cheddar, and the other half could be any combination of Monterey Jack, Havarti, Gruyere, Gouda, Parmesan, etc. I used what I had, which was some Gouda, Havarti Dill, and Pecorino Romano.
Combine all ingredients in food processor and blend until smooth and combined. Refrigerate (but I always have to eat some immediately. The flavours marry nicely if you give it a little time to refrigerate though.)
Serve with crackers or raw veggies, make a grilled cheese with some spread inside, use as a sandwich spread - eat it how you want! It'd probably be good mixed in with some pasta (though I've not tried that!)
This recipe is vegan/vegetarian, gluten-free, and low-carb! Oh yeah, and it tastes amazing. We try to eat low-carb most of the time and jumping on the cauliflower bandwagon the other day, I was making some pizza crust out of cauliflower, cheese and eggs. I was supposed to "rice" the cauliflower in the food processor, but I did it a little too long and the pieces came out more like couscous than rice. Then I mixed in some minced garlic and dried oregano as part of the crust recipe, and decided to give it a taste. Totally gave me the idea to do a couscous salad out of it.
I can't actually tell you how incredibly stoked I am at how good this came out. I really enjoy Mediterranean-style cold salads. I used to do them with rice, but I don't eat rice anymore. So we started doing them with barley and couscous... but they're still pretty high-carb. This solved the problem and I foresee us having this salad in the fridge on a frequent basis for lunches during the work week and quick dinners.
I decided to go with Lagwagon's "I Must Be Hateful". I was feeling pretty hateful tonight towards a medical issue I'm having. Seemed apropos. -jen
Place large-diced cauliflower in food processor and process until it looks like cooked couscous. Place in a large, microwave-safe bowl and cover tightly with plastic wrap (I recommend using glass so the plastic wrap sticks). Microwave on high for 10 minutes. Fluff with fork.
Add all remaining ingredients and stir until mixed. At this point, you can serve it while it's still warm, or refrigerate and serve chilled.
Per 1 Cup Serving: Calories-130, Fat-9g, Carbs-11.5, Fiber-4, Protein-3g
We've been making soup about once a week. Throughout the week, we often have roasted vegetables several times and will often make a salad of some sort. So when we're preparing vegetables, we've taken to saving things like the ends of carrots and onions, the stems of herbs, all of our vegetable "scraps", and storing them in a Ziploc bag in the freezer. Then Justin makes stock out of them and we make a delicious vegetable soup. Usually they're broth-based soups, but we felt like going with a cream style this week, packed full of vegetables (and bacon, which is totally optional). Came out so rich and delicious! We make large batches at a time so that we have lunches for work. You can cut the recipe in half if you're not looking for quite so much.
The awesome thing about soups like this, is that you can customize the vegetables to whatever you like. Don't like mushrooms? Axe 'em and add cauliflower instead. Don't like bell peppers? Axe 'em and add potato instead. I think most of our soups end up created just using whatever we have leftover in the fridge.
To go with our soup, for no particular reason except to rock, is The Marked Men doing "All In Your Head". -jen
CREAM OF VEGETABLE SOUP Prep Time: 20 minutes (35 if using bacon) Cook Time: 20 minutes Difficulty: Easy Makes: about 14 cups
5 tablespoons butter (6 tbsp if not using bacon fat)
3 tablespoons olive oil (4 tbsp if not using bacon fat)
2 cups crimini or button mushrooms, diced fine
2 cups broccoli florets (about 1 medium crown)
1.5 cups yellow onion, diced fine (about 1 medium onion)
1.5 cups carrots, diced fine (about 3 medium carrots)
1 cup celery, diced fine (about 3 large stalks)
1/2 cup red bell pepper, diced fine (about 1/2 medium pepper)
1/2 cup poblano pepper, diced fine (about 1 medium poblano)
1/2 teaspoon dried rosemary, chopped
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme, chopped
1/2 teaspoon dried marjoram
2/3 cup flour
6 cups chicken broth
2 cups heavy cream
1/2 teaspoon white pepper
1/2 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper
salt, to taste (bacon adds a lot of salt on its own, as do most chicken stocks, so taste your soup before adding salt!)
Place diced bacon into a cold stock pot. Turn heat to medium-high, and cook until crisped, about 10-15 minutes, stirring occasionally to keep from sticking to the bottom of the pan. Using a slotted spoon, spoon out the crisped bacon and drain over paper towels. Set aside. Drain all but 2 tablespoons of the bacon fat from the stock pot.
Add olive oil and butter to stock pot (still over medium-high heat). Add all vegetables and saute until tender, 10-12 minutes. Add the rosemary, thyme and marjoram to the vegetables and cook 1 more minute. Sprinkle the flour over the vegetables and stir until flour absorbs oil and is no longer white. Cook for 2 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Whisk in the stock and turn the heat to high. Whisk continuously until soup begins to thicken a little. Once it begins to thicken, add heavy cream, white pepper, black pepper and the crisped bacon. Stir continuously until soup comes to a boil, then remove from heat. Add salt to taste and serve.
This soup came out a little like a cross between tortilla soup and a Mexican minestrone... way tasty! I was pleased with it. Just enough heat to hit, but not enough that you break a sweat because your tongue is on fire. I made mine tonight with the beef broth leftover from our Slow Cooker Chile Colorado. But if you don't want to do two nights of awesomeness, well... I guess you can just add some store-bought beef broth. I did, however, also use the leftover chile sauce from that recipe... so really, why not just make the Chile Colorado first, freeze your broth, and make this soup when you run out of Colorado!?
I chose a little ska in Spanish for my recipe with Sublime singing "Chica Mi Tipo". -jen
*If you're trying to watch carbs, you can totally eliminate the masa harina and the soup will just less like a tortilla soup and more like a minestrone.
In a large stock pot, heat oil over medium-high. Add diced onion, Anaheim, poblano, jalapeño, carrots, mushrooms and garlic. Cook for 7-10 minutes, stirring frequently, until vegetables are tender and onions are translucent. Add corn and tomatoes and cook another 2 minutes. Add the beef stock, beans, cumin, oregano, salt and pepper, lime juice, chile sauce and cilantro. Bring to a boil.
While soup is heating to boil, mix masa herina and hot water in a medium-sized mixing bowl with a wire whisk until masa harina is fully incorporated. With the wire whisk, whisk into soup and bring back to a boil. Turn heat to low and simmer for 20 minutes.
Awww yeah! I just made these bad boys a few minutes ago! They're like reverse chile rellenos - the eggs are on the inside instead of the outside. My fingers are still burning from the pasillas (which were spicier than expected, maybe I didn't de-vain them well enough!) - I never wear gloves when I handle chiles and then I regret it. Wear gloves!!! But really, these are only a little spicy, not really "hot".
I was thinking these stuffed chiles are pretty versatile. I used green onion and bacon. You could use jalapeños, cilantro (wish I'd had some!), sausage, chorizo, salsa. Someone gave a shout for more vegetarian recipes - well here's one you can make vegetarian any way you want. I love recipes like this where you can change it over and over and over again and just keep coming up with different combinations. And... low-carb, if you're watching that kind of thing.
What goes with breakfast? Well, naturally, I went straight to crack and dope... so Choking Victim was my only option, singing "500 Channels". Get your skank on. -jen
Wash and dry chiles. Spray a baking sheet with non-stick cooking spray (I like to line the pan with foil for easy clean-up). Place chiles on baking sheet and broil on one side for 4-5 minutes until charred, then flip and broil on the other side 4-5 minutes until charred.
Immediately place charred chiles in a large bowl and cover with plastic wrap or place in a large plastic zip bag and seal. Let rest for 10-15 minutes so that the chiles sweat. Then remove and peel off the charred skins. Cut stem ends off chiles and slice down one side to open them up so that they lay flat. Remove all seeds and ribs from inside of chile. Re-spray the same baking sheet with more non-stick spray and lay chiles flayed open on baking sheet.
While chiles are roasting, you can dice up your bacon and cook in a skillet over medium-high heat until crisp and crumbled, 10-15 minutes. Line a plate with paper towels and place the bacon onto the paper towel to absorb the grease. In the same skillet, saute the diced green onion for 1-2 minutes, just until tender. Mix in with the crumbled bacon on the paper towel plate.
When chiles are done roasting, turn oven down to 350 degrees F.
In a medium-sized bowl, whisk together the eggs, salt and pepper, Tabasco, and dash of milk. (We always have some homemade "taco seasoning", and I used some of that to season my eggs, too!) Using the same skillet again (I left a little bit of the bacon grease in it, or you can drain the grease out and use non-stick spray) over medium heat, scramble the eggs. After 2-3 minutes of cooking, add the crumbled bacon and onion into the eggs and cook until just barely wet still. Turn off heat.
On the open-faced chiles, add a layer of shredded cheese, then 1/4 of the egg mixture, then another layer of cheddar cheese. Carefully fold the chile together and use a toothpick to secure it, leaving it seam-side up. Bake at 350 degrees F for 10-12 minutes, until cheese is melted. Remove toothpicks and serve immediately.
The lentil soup was really new for me. I'm sure I'd had lentils in soup before, but I have no immediate memory of it. I know we didn't grow up eating lentils. Believe it or not, we DO try to eat healthy at home most the time. And in an effort to better our carb intake (which means cut out the bad carbs and add in the good ones that are low on the glycemic index - ooh, science!), we picked up some green lentils. They sat in our pantry for a couple of months before I pulled them out and just decided to throw together a random soup... which was deliciously successful. I'm not even sure it's fair to call this a "soup". I wanted something a little thicker and hardier, so I suppose it's almost stew-like. Whatever it is, it's good. And that's what counts.
We rocked out with our friend Betsy's excellent Boston choice - The Unseen, singing "False Hope". -jen
ITALIAN SAUSAGE & LENTIL SOUP
1 pound Italian sausage (I used 1/2 mild, 1/2 hot)
2 tablespoons butter
1 medium onion, chopped
4 ribs celery, chopped
3 large carrots, chopped
1 bell pepper, chopped
2 Anaheim peppers, chopped
1 jalapeño, chopped
5 cloves of garlic, chopped fine
1/4 cup fresh basil, chopped
1.5 teaspoons dried thyme
1 teaspoon dried rosemary
1/4 cup flour
1 can (14.5oz) peeled tomatoes
8 cups chicken broth
2 cups lentils
1/4 cup sherry
dash of hot sauce
dash of Worcestershire
salt and pepper to taste
In a stock pot over medium-high heat, brown sausage. When nearly cooked through, add 2 tablespoons of butter. Then add onion, celery, carrots, bell pepper, Anaheim peppers, and jalapeño. Cook until onions are just becoming translucent. Add garlic basil, thyme and rosemary, cooking for another 2 minutes. Sprinkle flour over vegetable and sausage mixture, stirring to mix in and cook 5 more minutes. Then add tomatoes, chicken broth, lentils, sherry, hot sauce and Worcestershire. Bring to a boil, then turn down heat and simmer for 30 minutes until lentils are tender. Add salt and pepper to taste.
Giardiniera is a pickled, spiced vegetable mix, often used as a condiment for food in the Midwestern U.S. Jennifer grew up in the Chicago area and was very familiar with this mix as a topping for Italian Beef sandwiches so we decided to try some here at home. This is not an authentic Italian giardiniera as it has some jalapeños, olives, fennel, etc and the Italian variety, as I understand it, is more spartan with onion, zucchini, carrots, celery, and cauliflower in vinegar.
We just went to the farmer's market, decided what looked good, and went with that for veggies. I suggest that if you like something specific, use it. If you don't like something I used, leave it out or substitute something else. This really is just a pickles veggie condiment so get creative. Do green beans if you like. Get nuts!
While giardiniera is usually pretty hot, I don't like to make mine burn-the-taste-buds-off hot. Add Serrano peppers or more red pepper flake if you like the scorching, mouth-blistering heat.
I know I'll probably hear from 15 different people how this isn't authentic or whatever but you know what? It's not the end of the world. This is: -justin
1 cup distilled white vinegar or white wine vinegar
1 cup olive oil
1 tbsp oregano
1 tsp crushed red pepper flake
1/2 tsp ground black pepper
1/2 tsp thyme
Place all the veggies in a bowl, add the salt, add enough water to submerge the veggies, cover with plastic wrap and leave in fridge over night.
The next day, drain and rinse veggies under cold water. Add the green olives and minced garlic to the drained veggies. In a large bowl, whisk together the vinegar, olive oil, oregano, red pepper flake, black pepper and thyme. Place the vegetables in your storage container of choice (I recommend glass jars), add the whisked liquid. Store in fridge for 2 days before serving.
Note: Storing it in the fridge, the oil will separate and congeal on top. Either take the jar out of the fridge a half hour before you know you'll need to use it. Or if you need it immediately, because it's so awesome you can't wait a half hour, just remove the lid and microwave for 30 seconds and stir.
It's great on salads, sandwiches, soups, as a side dish for a heavy or greasy meal, mixed in rice dishes or casseroles, etc.
This batch was made with broccoli instead of cauliflower. (We prefer cauliflower.)
We also sometimes cut the vegetables smaller for a small relish!
So Jen and I like doing meatballs for dinner every so often and last time we had done a nice marinara we happened to be discussing ways to vary them and thought that a Mexican style meatball would be awesome and easy to pull off. Here is my attempt at this meal and I believe it worked excellently, if I do say so myself.
This can be varied with any type of salsa that you want or if you were feeling extra adventurous you could cover it in a delicious mole. I went with a fairly straightforward salsa that would work warm or cold and be good with anything. Feel free to try a salsa verde or maybe a chipotle salsa if you dig the heat!
To accompany this dish I'm going with some Pulley, specifically "Crawl" because that tune has been stuck in my head and maybe this act will appease whatever gods are responsible for that sort of situation. - justin
1 tsp Caldo de Pollo (Mexican chicken bouillon with some herbs and spices)
Preheat oven to 425. Arrange your halved tomatoes (cut side up) on a, oiled baking sheet along with the halved and cleaned peppers (cut side down). Lightly brush peppers and tomatoes with 2 of the tbsp of olive oil. Place in the preheated oven and roast for 40-50 minutes. Cover with foil when they are done and let them sit for 10 minutes to cool. This will steam the skins and make them easier to remove. When the veggies have rested the skins should simply pull off of the peppers and tomatoes. Roughly chop them and set aside.
In a saucepan, add the remaining 2 tbsp of olive oil and set burner to medium heat. When hot, add the diced yellow onion and salt and let the onions sweat until translucent, roughly 7 minutes or so. Add the chopped, roasted peppers and tomatoes, the lime zest and juice, the cilantro, the epazote, the Mexican oregano and the cumin. Stir together thoroughly, and allow to simmer for 5 minutes. Disolve the caldo de pollo in the cup of water and add to the saucepan. Stir to incorporate. The salsa should be very chunky and a little watery at this point. Simmer the water off to thicken it to your desired consistency. If you would like a very silky, smooth salsa, use a blender to puree the mixture. I prefer mine to be a little chunkier so I just gave it a couple quick pulses and called it good after simmering it for an hour or so while I made the rest of the meal.
Meatballs:
2 lbs ground beef (80/20 lean to fat ratio is best for these)
1 tbsp minced garlic (about 1 large clove)
1/4 cup bread crumbs
1/4 cup milk
1/2 cup fresh cilantro, chopped
2 whole green onions, chopped
2 tsp ancho chili powder
1 tsp dried epazote
1 tsp Mexican oregano
2 tsp seasoned salt
1 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 egg
Preheat oven to 425. I find that while the veggies for the salsa are roasting, it's a perfect time to make the meatball mixture and then the oven is already hot and ready to bake meatballs when the veggies come out and you are finishing the salsa.
Mix the breadcrumbs and the milk and let sit for five minutes to absorb. Add all ingredients to a large mixing bowl and use your hands to mix together. Roll into golfball sized balls and place equidistantly from each other on a lightly oiled sheet pan. It should make roughly 30-35 balls. Place in the preheated oven and bake for 20-30 minutes. Meatball diameter will determine your total time but check one of the bigger ones after 20 minutes and use that as a judge for how much longer you'll need. You want medium, not well done.
Tostones:
Frying set up, either a deep fryer or a skillet and a enough frying oil to be a couple inches deep
2 large plantains, peeled and sliced into 2 inch rounds
Heat oil to 350 degrees. Fry enough of your plantains so as to not crowd your oil. Do a couple of batches if you need to or your oil will cool and they will turn out greasier than you want. Fry them for 2 minutes per side (or 2 minutes total if you have them completely immersed in oil). Remove from oil and allow to cool for a couple minutes. Set them upright and smash them with your hand or a spoon so that they squish into a sort of disk. Fry again for 2 more minutes per side and remove to drain excess oil. Salt immediately and set aside.
Completion:
At this point I placed the salsa on the bottom of a plate, set the
tostones in the salsa like little boats and served the meatballs resting
on top of the tostones, like so:
However, you could do the salsa over the meatballs or tostones on the side or whatever you like.
