Roommate and I decided to renew the lease at our abode so I have been doing some major rearranging to make our small rental feel a little more like our home. Needless to say, my room is total chaos.
A few days ago while baking, I broke down mid-recipe and organized my pantry. It was a crazy whim that I couldn’t ignore. At the end of it all I noticed something that I found hilarious. Can you tell which one is my gluten-free pantry? Ha!
Abigail
This is actually last week’s Current Cravings, that I never got around to linking up and posting… oh well. My fave by far is the Lemongrass Chicken Pizza. Doesn’t it look divine? I’m having some major pizza cravings right now!
clockwise from top right: Vietnamese Lemongrass Chicken Pizza with Cashew Butter Sauce / Blueberry Vanilla Yogurt Popsicles / Dad’s Cheesecake Bars / Chocolate Cake with Almond Cream Filling / Super Easy Ice Cream Sticks
Happy Friday and have a great weekend!
Abigail
Working with a baker and a food broker has its fringe benefits. For example, with the food broker, I find out about great local products (and even get to try some for free). One of the companies Yum Runnerz represents is Pâté Letelier. My boss had been telling me about their vegetable pâtés for weeks, so I finally decided to try some. I chose the White Bean Pâté with Goat Cheese and Roasted Garlic. It had a beautiful creamy texture and the goat cheese and roasted garlic each gave the pâté unique flavor. Very yummy!
With the baker, Karen Morgan, I often get to snack on and bring home some of the goodies left over from recipe testing. We recently made some Baked Alaska that was served over a pool of Creme Anglaise, which of course was to die for. I was lucky enough to snag some of the leftover creme and some of the stewed berries to bring home and make the most decadent ice cream. The final product was creamy and studded with bits of frozen fruit… bliss!
Head over to Blackbird Bakery to find out how we made it. For the ice cream, all I did was throw the Creme Anglaise into the ice cream maker, added about 1/2 cup of berries that had been boiled down with a little bit of sugar, and let it run for about 30 minutes. The best part of this ice cream… aside from the creaminess and berries… was that it didn’t get rock hard when I threw it in the freezer to firm up. It stayed just soft enough to scoop it out.
Does your job have any perks like these?
Abigail
When I told Roommate I was going to make these sandwiches, her response involved some reference to the movie Fried Green Tomatoes, of course, and then she told me she’d never actually eaten fried green tomatoes. Say what?!
Pause… Ok, so maybe that’s reasonable. Not many people have had friend green tomatoes. So, for all you out there that have yet to try fried green tomatoes, here is the most delicious way to eat them next to plunging them in ketchup: make a BLT with fried green tomatoes instead of slices of tomatoes!
First, fry a few slices of bacon to the crispiness that you like best. Bacon crispiness is an art – whenever I cooked breakfast for my 4 roommates in college, I knew just how to cook the bacon for each one. It’s like how the newbies at West Point have to know how many cubes of ice to put in peoples’ drinks. I don’t know if that really happens, but they told us that on the tour…
Sorry… back to the recipe.
Ok. This recipe works best if you have everything ready to assemble as soon as the tomatoes are done. So have your lettuce washed and ready, bacon fried, bread toasted (use you’re fave GF bread here… I used my friend Lou’s bread — you should check out her booth, True Nature’s Child, at the SFC Downtown Market if you live in Austin), and spread ready. Usually I just use some mayonnaise, but this time around I wanted to add a little kick so I mixed some sriracha with the mayo. Try it. I dare ya.
For the green tomatoes: slice ‘em thick like you would a red tomato for burgers. Get two shallow dishes ready (pie plates work great for this). In the first, mix together one slightly beaten egg and about 1/4 cup of milk. In the second, mix together 1/4 cup corn meal (a finer ground would work better here… it’s not fun to bite into a coarse piece of uncooked cornmeal), 2 Tbsp. sorghum flour, 2 Tbsp. glutinous rice flour, salt, pepper, and any other seasonings you’re feeling.
In a frying pan, heat about 1/4 cup of safflower oil over medium heat (or if you have enough bacon grease, you can use that… be careful not to use it for too many batches because you’ll accumulate a lot of burnt remnants after about the second batch). While the oil is heating up, prep the tomatoes. For each slice, dunk it in flour, eggs, and flour again. Got it? Flour, eggs, flour. Once you’ve got 4-5 ready to go, (carefully) throw them in the pan and let them cook for a 1-2 minutes on each side, until it’s a nice golden brown. If the oil gets too hot, you’ll notice the tomatoes brown more quickly and don’t get cooked through enough. So watch it!
Now it’s assembly time. Bread, spread, tomatoes, bacon, lettuce, bread… or whatever your order is.
Enjoy!
Abigail
Quinoa Porridge
Serves 2-4 depending on portion size
1/2 cup quinoa
1 cup water
1/4 cup rice milk (or other milk)
1 Tablespoon honey
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 Tablespoon flax seeds or flax meal
Pumpkin seeds (or other seed of choice)
Hazelnuts (or other nut of choice)
Dried currants
Goji berries… and any other things you have in the pantry that you want to throw in!
Place quinoa and water in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil and then reduce heat and cover. Let it do its thing for 15-20 mins.
While the quinoa is cooking, gather your other ingredients. If your seeds or nuts aren’t toasted, go ahead and toast them in a pan on the stove. Keep an eye on them and don’t let them burn. It’s best to toast the seeds and nuts separately since they will cook at different rates.
When the quinoa has absorbed all the water, add the remaining ingredients, stirring to mix it all in. Cover and remove from heat. Let sit for 10 minutes.
Serve and enjoy!
This recipe is great served hot on a cold day, or in months as hot as we are having right now, make it the night before and eat it cold the next morning.
Abigail
