The Clumsy Cook

DIY Sloppy Joes

jenjen30 — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 01:41:46 +0000

How many of us grew up with Sloppy Joes from a can? Don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed myself a Sloppy Joe made from a canned mix, but seeing as I’ve decided to start making more and more of my dinners ‘from scratch’, I decided to try out a recipe. I decided on Ellie Krieger’s Sloppy Joe recipe from her book The Food You Crave. I chose it not only because it was the first Sloppy Joe recipe that I came across, but also because I figured it might be healthier than some alternatives. It couldn’t be easier to make and really tasted great. Here is the recipe (paraphrased a bit):

1lb ground beef (or turkey)
1 medium onion
4 cloves minced garlic
1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and minced (I left this out since I wanted to try feeding this to my 10 month old)
1 red bell pepper, seeded and diced
One 15.5oz can small red or pinto beans, drained and rinsed (I chose black beans because I like them)
1 1/2 cups no-salt tomato sauce
2 tbls tomato paste
1 tbls red wine vinegar
1 tbls molasses
1 tbls Worcestershire sauce
1 tsp dry mustard
3/4 tsp salt
pepper to taste

Brown the meat and onion in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Pour out any drippings. Add the garlic, jalapeno and red pepper. Cook for five minutes. Add the rest of the ingredients, stir and simmer for five more minutes. Serve on nice toasty buns and enjoy.

This Week at the Farmer’s Market

jenjen30 — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 16:28:22 +0000

Well, it’s that time of year again. The farmer’s market is open for business where I live and there are already some beautiful offerings. Lots of lush greens and the season’s first strawberries. The berries were quite a cause for excitement among the market-goers. My farmer’s market offers a food donation program, so I picked up some eggs, tomatoes and lettuce. I only hope they survived alright until the truck came to pick them up. For myself, I got some lovely looking strawberries, a head of baby bok choy, a dozen eggs and some bread from a local bakery. I also picked up a vegan berry muffin for breakfast.

I realized once I got home that I had absolutely no use for baby bok choy is this week’s meal plan. Fortunately, inspiration struck as I was scrounging around for a quick weekend lunch for myself and the hubby. I whipped up a big omelet with some of the bok choy and leftover feta cheese.

I took the omelet, stuck it on some nice wheat bread from Trader Joe’s and served the sandwich with a few strawberries. It was very tasty and a great way to use up my fresh bok choy.

Getting back to blogging

jenjen30 — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 00:21:29 +0000

I’m not really sure what happened, but I haven’t written since September. I guess I got carried away with other projects.

With the local farmer’s market starting up again a couple of weeks ago, I’m inspired to get back into blogging. I’ve actually done quite a bit of cooking over the last several months. I’ve tried new recipes and ingredients. I’ve developed quite a taste for Indian food, which is great since there are multiple Indian markets in my area to gather supplies.

I’ll be off to the farmer’s market in the morning. Perhaps I’ll write an entry about whatever I find there. I am very excited to see that the farmer’s market is collecting donations of fresh food for shelters around the area. I have been saving money to donate to a food bank, but I think I’ll buy some local, fresh food to donate instead.

Happy cooking!

Meatless Meals: Jalapeno Mac N Cheese

jenjen30 — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 20:22:27 +0000

This week I made a jalapeno macaroni and cheese recipe from Rachael Ray’s magazine as my meatless meal. This is actually the second time that I’ve made this recipe. I gave it a few tweaks this time to improve it a bit. Here’s the original recipe from the website:

Ingredients:

Salt and pepper
1 pound hollow, ridged corkscrew pasta, such as cavatappi
Extra-virgin olive oil (EVOO)
3 jalapeño chiles, seeded and thinly sliced
2 serrano chiles, seeded and thinly sliced
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 1/2 cups whole milk
8 ounces cream cheese
2 tablespoons dried minced onion
2 cups shredded monterey jack cheese

Directions:

Bring a large pot of water to a boil, salt it, add the pasta and cook until al dente. Drain and return to the pot.
In a skillet, heat a drizzle of EVOO over medium heat. Add the jalapeños, serranos and garlic and cook until tender, about 5 minutes. Add to the pasta.
Preheat the broiler. In a saucepan, combine the milk, cream cheese and onion over medium-low heat. Cook, stirring, until smooth, 5 minutes; stir into the pasta. Stir in the jack cheese; season with salt and pepper.
Transfer the pasta to a baking dish and broil until browned, about 3 minutes.

What I like about this recipe is that is stays fairly creamy even when re-heating leftovers in the microwave. I’m guessing this could be due to the addition of the cream cheese. The first time I made the recipe, I used 2% milk, rather than whole. It’s just as good either way. My main complaint the first time around was that the flavor of the spicy jalapenos was not dispersed enough throughout the dish. To rectify that situation, I used a couple of additional peppers and minced them rather than slicing them. I cooked the peppers and garlic in a medium pot rather than a skillet and then added the milk and cheese to the pot. This allowed the peppers to infuse the sauce with flavor, and saved me one extra dish to clean. This recipe is definitely a new favorite in our household.

Quick and Easy: Pan-Fried Tilapia

jenjen30 — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 16:56:31 +0000

I don’t have a whole lot of time to spend in the kitchen these days, so I’m always looking for quick meals that are full of taste. Tilapia was on sale this week at my grocery store, and there’s nothing faster than cooking up a couple of fish fillets.

I coated the fish in a mixture of bread crumbs, parmesan cheese and a few spices. The fish was moist enough on its own to pick up the dry mix without bathing it in any kind of egg wash first. With a little olive oil coating the bottom of my pan, I cooked up the tilapia in a flash, just a couple of minutes on each side.

With the fish, I served the easiest tomato mozzarella salad possible. I cut up a beautiful fresh tomato into chunks and tossed it with pieces of mozzarella cheese. A drizzle of olive oil and a bit of balsamic vinegar finished the whole thing off. I would have added some fresh basil, but I didn’t have any on hand. Unfortunately our two attempts at growing basil in our apartment this year have failed. Both batches ended up diseased and died.

Ingredient of the Week: Garam Masala

jenjen30 — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 22:25:19 +0000

I’ve been out of town, so I’ve got some catching up to do. I’ll start with a short entry on last week’s ingredient.

A couple of months ago I bought a little pouch of garam masala, an Indian spice mix, at a local store. After seeing a recipe in How To Cook Everything for an Indian tomato sauce which uses garam masala, I decided it was finally time to open up that spice pouch. So, last week I made an Indian style chicken dish.

First, I made the tomato sauce. It turned out much spicier, richer and darker than a traditional Italian style tomato sauce. The next day, I cut up boneless, skinless chicken breast into chunks and cooked them in the tomato sauce. I added some cauliflower and some peas and let the whole mixture simmer away until everything was cooked and the sauce thickened. I served the chicken mixture over a bed of leftover couscous that I had in the fridge.

It was pretty tasty, though probably could have used a pinch of salt. I enjoyed my first foray into Indian style cooking. I found a recipe for Chicken Tikka Masala that looks interesting. I’m going to be trying that out later in the week.

Meatless Meals: Mediterranean ‘Pizza’

jenjen30 — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 16:10:10 +0000

Our meatless meal this week was a Mediterranean inspired pita ‘pizza’. I had a tub of hummus in the fridge approaching its expiration date, so I figured I needed to find a good use for it. I’ve done similar pita wraps before, but this time I decided to just pile everything on top, rather than inside of the pita.

I started by cooking up some red onion and banana peppers in some oil with garlic, oregano, parsley, salt, pepper, a bit of lemon zest and a little bit of lemon juice. I put my pitas on a cookie sheet and slathered the hummus on top of them, as if it were pizza sauce. I put a bit of goat cheese on top of that. I would have preferred feta, but I had leftover goat cheese from my fig pizza and I didn’t want it to go to waste. Both cheeses are very tangy, so goat cheese can be a decent substitution for feta. On top of the hummus and cheese, I spread out my onion and pepper mixture. I threw on a few slices of cucumber for good measure and tossed the pitas in the oven at 350 degrees. It only took a few minutes. Nothing really needed to cook, just warm up. I waited until the edges of the pita became a little crunchy and the centers were nice and soft. After taking them out of the oven, I topped them all off with quartered cherry tomatoes.

It was another success. Easy and fresh tasting.

Ingredient of the Week: Figs

jenjen30 — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 00:04:54 +0000

Up until this week I had never cooked with a fig before. Actually, I had never even eaten a fig before, except in a Fig Newton. Subtle in its sweetness, I enjoyed merely munching on a fresh fig at the farmer’s market, though I had bigger plans for my pint of the unassuming looking fruit.

I did a little research to find out what kinds of recipes use figs and what kind of flavors go well with them. I noticed a recurring theme of goat cheese, so I decided to try my figs on a pizza. I wasn’t sure how this little experiment would turn out, but I found the end result surprisingly tasty.

Here’s what I did. I started by slicing up a few shallots and caramelizing them in some oil. Once the shallots were sufficiently softened, I added some sliced figs. I made the assumption that the figs would not require nearly as much cooking time as the shallots. I broke the figs up with my spoon and let them cook until the mixture broke down into a chunky sauce-like consistency. I spread the fig and shallot mix onto the pizza dough and covered it with some grated mozzarella cheese. Next, I crumbled goat cheese onto the pizza and put down a few uncooked slices of fig and broken up pieces of ham. I had wanted to use proscuitto, but I never made it to the store to pick it up. I realized I had a bit of leftover ham still sitting in the freezer from Easter, which seemed like a decent enough substitution. Once I had all the ingredients in place, I baked the pizza until golden.

I didn’t really know what to expect when I took my first bite. The figs lent a very subtle sweetness to the pizza. Of the different flavors, the tangy goat cheese really dominated, with the sweet figs and salty ham rounding out the tastes in the background, complimenting each other very well. Each bite was a bit different from the last, some sweeter than others. I would call this pizza experiment a success and I would definitely make it again.

Sweet Treat: Frozen Watermelon

jenjen30 — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 20:43:39 +0000

My husband and I really enjoy a good watermelon. We picked up one of those little ‘seedless’ ones at the farmer’s market this weekend. Instead of just slicing it up and eating it old-school, we prefer our watermelon frozen. We slice in in half and attack it with a melon-baller. We fill up a bowl with little balls of watermelon and shove it in the freezer. With so much water content, it doesn’t take the melon too long to get frosty. It’s so refreshing in the hot summer and a totally guilt-free dessert. Try it with any melon you like. Just don’t leave it in the freezer too long…it’ll become rock hard.

And don’t waste the juice that’s produced by the balling process. Pour it out of the watermelon and through a strainer. You might not get a lot, but it’s great stuff. I mixed it with a bit of lemonade and a little tequila and had a nice watermelon ‘margarita’.

This Week at the Farmer’s Market

jenjen30 — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 16:36:37 +0000

It was fairly cool and refreshing this morning at the farmer’s market. So much looked appealing. One day I’m actually going to buy some of the fresh caught shrimp that I eye each time, but I had my meals planned for this coming week and a little list of necessities in my head. Even if I don’t have much to get, it’s always nice to take an early morning stroll over there. I enjoy taking in the fresh air and all the beautiful offerings.

This morning, we went to one of our favorite stands and sampled some fresh figs. I had never tried a fig before and was pleasantly surprised. They were so fresh, sweet and soft. I expected them to be tough and require the skin to be removed. We bought a pint which I will use as my ingredient of the week. I also got some banana peppers and cherry tomatoes for another meal I’m planning. Not on our list, but too tempting to pass up, was a small watermelon. Everything I bought at the farmer’s market this week will be featured in upcoming blog entries. Stay tuned.