Cobbler, Quiche, Burger, Cabbage, Dumpling

Whole Wheat Peach Cobbler



Adapted from Joy the Baker.

Well, I swapped all-purpose flour for whole wheat (that was all I had), white sugar for coconut sugar (all I had... strange kitchen, indeed), likely decreased the amount of overall sugar and, clearly, substituted the plums for peaches. Ta-da.

This recipe is a keeper - adaptable, delicious, simple.


Bärner Zibelechueche



Swiss (Bernese) onion pie. I would liken it to an onion quiche. November Switzerland in pie form.

German recipe here.


Salmon Burgers



Recipe adapted from Underbaraclara. (Google Translate will provide you with the jist)

Adapted due to lack of ingredients/equipment/motivation. EX: mashed a much smaller quantity of salmon with a fork. Still added a whole egg, so needed some breadcrumbs to soak up the moisture and was unwilling to toast bread, so smashed some stale bread with a rolling pin into entirely too large pieces. Did not even realise that the recipe called for sour cream for the dressing and so used mayonnaise + crushed garlic + lemon juice and that's it.

I suppose I can no longer call this space a "vegetarian" blog. We might get into this another day.


Cream Braised Cabbage and Tomatoes



Something resembling a recipe:

Chopped cabbage, onion, little oil, salt, pan. 10 minutes ish. Veggie bacon, halved cherry tomatoes. Couple minutes. Little cream, even littler white wine, pepper, few minutes.

Sometimes the most humble of meals are the most satisfying.


Apple Dumplings



Recipe from The Pioneer Woman.

Mustard Friend guest appearance! And yes, that is Mountain Dew. Being poured over an entire cup of melted butter with even more sugar on top of very few apples wrapped in two packages of Pilsbury crescent rolls. Eating these literally takes 3 years off one's life. Literally worth it.

I don't think I will make these again (I won't say ever) simply because they are so dangerously easy and gooey and buttery and caramely... I'm in the kitchen cutting up apples and taking out the Mountain Dew right now. Damn it.

Hummous

For you, my dear Polina.



Click to enlarge

Hummous - A Rough Outline

1 can rinsed & drained chick peas
1 heaping T tahini (and no, you may not substitute peanut butter; tahini makes or breaks hummous, period.)
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
3 T extra virgin olive oil
1/4-1/3 C vegetable broth
1-2 t lemon juice
1/2 t cumin
1/2-1 t salt (or to taste)
pepper to taste

Can (and really should be) doubled.

Blend all ingredients in a food processor or blender until smooth. Serve drizzled with extra virgin olive oil and a sprinkle of paprika.

** these are rough guesstimates - tweak things until it tastes right! **

Pizza Secrets

Pizza
Simple? Yes. Boring? Hardly.





My ultimate pizza dough recipe. Dead simple. Dead quick. Dead delicious.

Whole Wheat and Honey Pizza Dough recipe from Allrecipes.com
(If we don't happen to have honey or I just don't feel like dirtying a spoon to scoop some out of the jar (ie, most of the time), we omit the honey, and honestly, I can't taste the difference.)
The Mustards split this recipe in to two pizza pies.

Mr. Mustard is real particular about the order of his pizza toppings.
This is how he does:

In order!

Pizza/tomato sauce
Cheese
Onions
Vegetables etc
Spices

The tastier of the two pizzas pictured featured diced potatoes & pesto!

And now for the real secret to gooood pizza:
HOT OVEN!
Forget 350F or whatever the recipe says.

- Turn your oven to broil with the rack near the top.
- Sprinkle a cookie sheet with cornmeal and place the bedazzled pizza in the centre.
- Now let that baby buuuuurn (not literally) for 7-10 minutes, or until everything is nice and bubbly and lightly browning.

Eggs Benedict

Weekend Eggs Benedict



Eggs Benedict is absolutely my favorite fancy breakfast. If you ever need to suck up to me, this meal is well in order. But it has to be homemade! I've never tried a great, or even really good, Eggs Benedict in a restaurant. Ever. Yet I always try.

Now, this Saturday morning, make this. Then ask for a car. It will probably work.




Eggs Benedict for 2

1 whole wheat english muffin, cut in half
2 slices of veggie ham
2 eggs
1 T vinegar
1 package of "International" brand Hollandaise sauce (such a cheater!)
brussel sprouts

1. Prepare Hollandaise sauce as per directions.
2. Steam washed brussel sprouts.
3. Place English muffin halves, with veggie ham on top, on a baking sheet in a 250 degree oven.
4. Bring a pot half-full of water & 1 T or so vinegar to a steady simmer.
5. Crack one egg into a teacup.
6. Swirl simmering water with a spoon and gently add egg to the swirling water.
7. Remove egg with a slotted spoon after about 3-5 minutes or until the white is cooked but the yolk is still jiggly. (You can test this by taking the egg out, placing it gently on a plate and poking it a bit. Very scientific and precise)
8. Repeat with second egg.
9. Assemble bennies: English muffin, ham, egg, salt & pepper, generous helping of Hollandaise sauce.
10. Serve with brussel sprouts (also drenched in Hollandaise sauce).

If making this for 2, you will have leftover Hollandaise sauce, even with pigish helpings the first round. Store it in the fridge, covered. The next day, heat it on the stove and have Eggs Benedict on Sunday too! Weekend bennies, mmm.

Homemade Pasta with Homemade Pesto

To make up for my (extremely)extended absence, I thought I'd ought to make my (re)debut post a knock-out. And that, it is. It really is.

Homemade Pasta with Homemade Pesto



(I literally had to throw this plant out a few hours ago. Maybe I was feeling nostalgic, hence the surprise posting... but it was just getting too buggy(ew) and those bugs are stubborn and I would not put it past them to mowsy on over to my brand-new herb additions and set up camp there.)











To the last drop.


Recipe for homemade pasta from JoyTheBaker. Get it here!

Recipe for homemade pesto from Das Grosse Betty Bossi Kochbuch:

(Lately we have been adding chopped sundried tomatoes to the basil mixture before pureeing it and it is amazing!)

Basilikum-Pesto

3 bunches basil, coarsely chopped (about 100 g)
3 garlic bulbs, pressed (*we use only 1, though)
2 T pinenuts

Puree in food processor
(do not over-process or basil leaves will become bitter)

1/2 t salt
3 T grated parmesan
small amount of lemon peel (*I think we skip this, but it sounds nice!)

Mix into basil mixture

150 ml olive oil

Add slowly to mixture

Pesto will keep in the fridge for a maximum of 5 days.

Cheese Fondue

Cheese Fondue From a Box

Maybe you can sneak one of these in before it gets well too balmy out to even think of sitting round a hot pot of melted cheese. Sounds good, doesn't it?



I don't have a recipe for this (though I have made it from scratch before) because it's from a box!
We Mustards buy the Safeway brand from, uh, Safeway but add a pinch of paprika and pepper and an even smaller pinch of nutmeg. And about 1/4 C white wine. Which you are required to purchase anyway should you make fondue, so you will inevitably have it on hand.
We sometimes dip drained, canned pineapple in the cheese in addition to bread. But I know Swiss people who would object to this.



I know all this because Mister M is Swiss. A real, live Swiss man.

Blueberry-Lemon Muffins & Banana Muffins

B Muffins


Blueberry muffins.
My mum used to make these often when I was growing up. I will always remember taking them to school in Kindergarten and having this one boy (Ryan?) asking to trade some of his lunch for my muffin. Hands off, boy! These are some good muffins!


Banana muffins.
Last year, in Switzerland, jonesing for some muffins, I made these. Several times. Because they never stayed around long.

Blueberry-Lemon Muffins
From my mother's Betty Crocker cookbook.

1 1/3 C flour (I used whole wheat, but my mum always made white. I think both are tasty)
1/4 C sugar
1 1/2 t baking powder
1 well-beated egg
3/4 C milk
1/3 C cooking oil (I used melted margerine since I didn't have neutral oil)
1 tsp lemon zest
1 C blueberries (fresh or thawed)

Stir together first 3 ingredients and 3/4 t salt; make well in centre.
Combine egg, milk and oil; add all at once to dry mixture. Add in lemon zest and blueberries.
Stir just till moistened.
Fill well-greased muffin tins 2/3 full.
Bake at 400 F for 20-25 minutes.
Once muffins are baked and still slightly warm, dip tops in melted butter (we used margerine) and then in sugar. **

** I suppose you could skip the butter and sugar top, but really, why would you? I like to cut back on fat and sugar just as much as the next girl, but I think you should endulge here.

Banana Muffins
Recipe from muffin-paradies.de
(loosely translated by me)

Ingredients
2 ananas
100 g chocolate
60 g butter
120 g sugar
2 T milk
220 g flour (I use whole wheat)
2 t baking powder
1 pinch salt

Method
Preheat oven to 180 Celsius and grease (or spray) muffin tins.
Mash peeled bananas in a bowl. Cut up chocolate (Europeans don't typically have chocolate chips, but you would obviously use them here. Unless cutting up chocolate is your thang)
Mix butter, bananas, milk and sugar well.
Add flour, baking powder, salt and chocolate and mix only until moistened.
Fill muffin tins and bake for about 20 minutes.

Pasta Salad

What I Have Had On Previous Days
That I Would Have Had Today
Had I Not Had Something Else
(title)



Really cheap (in every sense of the word) beer in my Mason jar.
I did drink out of my Mason jar today, but it was iced coffee, not beer.
And I did drink beer today, just not out of my jar because it was dirty from my coffee.



Pasta salad. Atop a bed of lettuce.
Wanna know the recipe? Here it is:

Pasta Salad a la Missus Mustard

roughly 200 g uncooked whole grain egg noodles
a handful of grape tomatoes
a nice bed of lettuce
2 tbsp olive oil
(vinegar if you want)
1-2 tbsp pesto
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp dried basil
1-2 tsp fresh, chopped basil
salt & pepper
dollop of cottage cheese
sprinkling of parmesan cheese
(mozzarella would work nicely too)

1. Cook pasta in salted water
2. Cut grape tomatoes in half, set aside
3. Drain pasta, put back into the pot (make sure it's not too hot) and add oil (vinegar), pesto and spices. (Add enough oil to coat all pasta quite thoroughly, it should not be at all dry. I suppose you could add a little water too if it's too dry and you don't want to add extra oil.)
(At this point I also stuck a lid on the pot and put it outside to cool down. You don't need to, but Mr M wanted the pasta cold)
4. Plate on top of lettuce with cottage cheese and parmesan.

Mister Mustard put vinegar and sliced black olives on his and he loved it.
I'm sure it would be tasty with a lot of different things thrown in too.

Mock crabcakes & cinnamon buns

Mock Mayland Crabcakes



Recipe from delicioustv.com
I have been watching Toni's podcasts lately and thought this one sounded yummy. I will basically try mock-seafood anything, though, so maybe it's just me. Mister Mustard deeply objected to the making of crabcakes, but I persisted and finally made them.
I didn't like them all that much. Sorry, Toni.
Tartar sauce recipe from allrecipes.com
I added a few chopped capers and spices. It was quite a while ago, so I don't remember. It was good, though.

Cinnamon Buns



Recipe from edible-moments.blogspot.com
Half of the recipe I used straight away and half I put in the freezer. Both batches were tasty, but the freezer batch was even more so.
The author of this recipe didn't specify how thick to roll out the dough and I definitely went overboard with the rolling pin. Next time I will stop myself at about 1 - 1.5 cm to make them more fluffy like her's.

Jogging time, folks. We had roasted potato fries with miso gravy for lunch. Guiiilty.

Strawberry Turmeric Salad & Burritos

Let's start off with something really delicious-looking, so you will stay to read the rest of the post...



The thing with toasted nuts and I, is that, I burn them. All the time.
This is an extreme example, but when I was toasting these pecans and cooking something else on the stove at the same time, I smelled something burning. BURNING = CHECK OVEN. "Oh, it's just a crumb under the burner on the stove". I kept smelling it. "Hm...". "OH #$%*" Oops. Oops, indeed.
And pecans are expensive, people!

Strawberry Turmeric Salad


The second batch of toasting was great, and it turns out this salad really needs the pecans; they add another level of yumminess.

For the salad:
lettuce
a few sliced strawberries
a few small cauliflower florets (though you could use anything you have on hand, really. I actually would use something else next time.)
a handful of toasted pecans

For the dressing:
2-3 tbsp x-virgin olive oil
3 tsp lemon juice
1 tsp liquid honey
2 tsp ground turmeric
salt and pepper

Toss with salad.

*** I feel like I should have a disclaimer for the recipes that I make up myself:
I don't measure!
I throw in whatever I have on hand!
I go by taste!
So please just adjust them to your own taste and use them as more of a guideline.

Leftovers Burritos



We used our leftover guacamole and refried beans (with some whole beans thrown in) from tostads, combined them with some sauteed, spiced onions and green peppers, threw them on a tortilla with cheese, salsa and lettuce. To make it vegan, just cut out the cheese.
Nom nom.

Daily Granola, Dilly Avocados and Oven Baked Fries

These are a few (three) of my favorite things:



Daily Granola

I know I have already talked about this fabulous granola before, but I just have to.
I've made at least three batches of it (and it makes a lot!) and yes, it is that good.
Just in case you did not get the recipe from my not-so-long-ago very first post, it is here from orangette.blogspot.com



Dilly Avocados

I am currently having a love affair with avocados. I could eat them every single day.
Ripe avocados, drizzled with olive oil & vinegar, sprinkled with salt, pepper and dill.



One of my favorite meals ever is: whatever vegetable we happen to have in the fridge, cut up haphazardly, tossed with oil and spices, into the oven. But I got inspired by Joy's recipe (from joythebaker.com/blog) for oven baked fries and decided on this:

Oven Baked Potato and Red Pepper Fries

(I was cooking for just me that night; it gave me a generous plate)

1 potato, washed with skin on
1 red pepper
1/2 medium onion
2 tbsp olive oil
1 1/2 tsp fresh chopped rosmary
1 tsp fresh chopped thyme + 3 small entire sprigs
salt & pepper

- Cut potato and pepper into fry-looking strips. Cut onion into large pieces, separate slightly.
- Toss veggies with oil and spices in a bowl, spread on a baking sheet and cook at 400 F for 30 minutes or so, until potatoes are browned.
- I like to dip mine in mayonnaise and ketchup.
*If it weren't for the mayonnaise, this meal would also be vegan!

*** I had to take the peppers off the tray about 15 minutes before the potatoes were done because the peppers were cooking too much. Next time I will either: boil the potatoes a bit before, or add the peppers later.
Boiling them beforehand would use more energy, but I could mix everything together well before they go into the oven. Hm.
I am still learning!



Besides the mayonnaise, everything in this entry is vegan! Hooray.