13 October, 2010

Three Sisters Lasagna

Look who was stuck to my screen by nothing but a breeze!

It’s fall for sure and this got me thinking about Thanksgiving and gardening and all kinds of stuff. There’s been a lot of talk on the internet lately about “The Three Sisters”: corn, beans, and squash.

I had some leftover lasagna noodles from the Food Not Bombs thing on Sunday, some black beans that I had soaked overnight fro no particular reason, some random vegan cheese, and about 4 pounds of carnival squash from my CSA so I decided to do some kitchen improv.

First a picture, then the recipe:

I'm glad this plate is fianlly appropiate.

Serves . . . . a bunch. . . maybe 8

2 lbs carnival squash (or whatever)
1t pumpkin pie spice
1/4 c milk
salt and pepper
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2 cups black beans (post-soak volume)
6c water
1/2t cayenne
1/2t cumin
1/4t garlic powder
1 bay leaf
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1/4c butter 
1/4c flour
3.5c milk 
2t Emeril's Southwestern Seasoning
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1 package no-boil lasagna noodles
1c frozen corn
appx. 1/2c cheddar cheese
appx. 1/2c mozzarella cheese
appx. 1/4c parmesan (I used my own home-made stuff)

1. Preheat your oven to 375*. Cut the squash in half, seed them and place them, cut side down on a rimmed baking dish lined with parchment paper. Bake for an hour or until tender.

2. At the same time, add the beans, water, cayenne, cumin, garlic powder and bay leaf to a pan. bring to a boil then drop down to a simmer for about an hour or until the beans are tender. add more water as necessary to keep the beans covered (I didn't need to add any).

3. Meanwhile, Melt the butter in a heavy bottomed sauce pan. Sprinkle in the flour and whisk until smooth. Slowly whisk in the milk. Keep whisking until the sauce thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon, about 15 min(?). Once it's thick enough, turn off the heat and add the SW seasoning. Taste it, see if you like it. It should be creamy and just a little spicy.  Set aside to cool.

4. When the squash is done scoop out the flesh and put it in a blender with the pumpkin pie spice, milk, and a little salt and pepper. Blend until smooth, taste, adjust seasonings to your liking. set aside.

5. When the beans are done, drain any excess water and set aside.

6. Now we build: In a 9x13 pan, put 3/4c of the sauce. put on a layer of noodles.
        Spread 1/2 the squash evenly on top
        1/2 cup more sauce.
        another layer of noodles
        spread out the beans and corn next
        1/2 cup more sauce
        cheddar cheese (I found the sliced kind and I used 5 slices)
        noodles
        the rest of the squash
        1/2 cup sauce
        noodles
        remainder of the sauce
        mozzarella and parmesan
7. Cover with foil and bake in a 400* oven for 45 minutes. Uncover and bake 15 more minutes. I like my lasagna kind of crispy on top and dry around the edges which is why the baking time is so long. If you like your lasagna softer just shorten the uncovered time to your liking.

I made this in the morning and stowed it in the fridge for the day and had Mr. Crow throw it in the oven just before I got home from work. The house smelled AMAZING and I got to eat dinner right away! It was spicy and sweet and creamy and so delish! I don't usually pull "real" recipes out of my ear like this so I'm kind of anxious to have someone make this. Give it a try and let me know what you think!

The Great Cider Adventure

With this year’s farm share I’ve been getting apples. Big apples, smal apples, red apples, yellow apples. . . .I’ve been shoving them in drawers, in the fridge in bowls on shelves. . . pretty much anywhere i could put an apple I had one. With a literal bushel of apples squirreled away in my tiny kitchen I was seriously in need of room for, well, everything else.

Mr. Crow had since bottled his beer and, with all the larger equipment free, we decided to make some apple cider; hard apple cider! Here’s what we started with:

I used my apple corer/slicer tool to cut up each apple, tossed it into the Blendtek and made raw apple sauce. We then squeezed out all the juice using a small bag made out of bed sheet type material. Leaving us with 3 gallons of cider, and all this stuff:

ewwww gross

 

 

 

 

 

I pasteurized the cider, added champagne yeast and now it’s in a bucket in my closet.

More to come!

Curry Night

I had a pile of new stuff from the farm share and I had no idea what to do with this stuff.  But with hunger in my belly and a can of curry in my pantry anything is possible!

I got this cool looking curry jar from Whole Foods the other day: This jar remids me Of mt friend Jessica!

So now what? well, I got this bag of swiss chard and I got some sweet potatoes, aaaaaand some TVP. . . That’ll do!

mmmmmmcurry

So, yeah, no recipe here, just sauté everything until it’s almost done, dump in the jar of curry and heat through. I got mine on a pile of jasmine rice. The curry’s mild spice went really well with the sweet potato sweetness. Highly recommended.

Caramelized Onion - Butternut Squash Soup

I’ve decided that, when possible, I’ll separate my posts by dish so that I can find my recipes in the future. I can’t seem to remember to tag my entries so this seems to be the next best option for now. So, obviously, today’s entry will be about the GREAT soup I made for dinner the other night!

Mr. Crow really loves French Onion soup so, when I got a butternut squash from the CSA and i found this recipe it’s as if the stars aligned. I got this book from the library so I’ll post the recipe here. I do want to encourage you to check it out, it’s full of really great ideas and soup is cheap!

Serves 6

1T butter (Earth Balance)
2-3 T olive oil
4 medium onions, halved and thinly sliced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 sm/md butternut squash, peeled and cut into 1/2" cubes
1/3 cup port wine (I used a dry white)
6 cups water (i used Better Than Bullion no beef)
2 parmigiano-reggiano cheese rinds (I used 1/4 c Nooch and 1T awase miso)
salt and pepper

1. over med-high heat, combine the butter and 1 tablespoon of the oil and sauté onions, lowering the heat as the onions start to reduce and lose their liquid, eventually becoming golden brown and caramelized (sweet tasting and no longer crunchy). 20 to 25 minutes. Keep stirring and scraping the pan often to keep the onions from sticking and to incorporate the browned bits that form on the bottom of the pot. You might need a bit more oil as you cook (I didn't). Stir in the garlic and squash and sauté another 5 to 7 minutes, then deglaze with the wine.

2. Add water (broth) and parmesan rinds (don't add the nooch/miso yet). and bring to a boil. Lower heat, partially cover and simmer for 15 minutes.

3. Stir in the nooch and miso. (You have to wait until now! You don't want to kill all those good enzymes, do ya?!). Season with salt and pepper.

4. NOM!

This soup went great with some crusty bread and hard cider!

06 October, 2010

Let’s See What The Card Has For Us Today:

Well, firstly, it looks like a couple dinner recipes from last week. As you know I had a ton of tiny sweet peppers from the CSA. I had NO IDEA what to do with them since I’m not terribly in love with peppers. After poking around the internet for a while I found some bruschetta recipes but, of course, they call for cheese. But that got me thinking. A lot of times in sandwiches I like to substitute hummus for cheese because it satisfies the salty creamy thing that cheese likes to do. So, I ended up with this:

We ate a ton of this!

We took a baguette and sliced it up, brushed it with olive oil and then toasted them in the oven. Meanwhile We sautéed the peppers. then it’s just building them: toast, hummus, peppers, and a dash of paprika. yum-yum!

 

At some point after this I wanted breakfast and I wanted something hearty:

brekky-rito!

Behold The Breakfast Burrito! There’s scrambled tofu, red peppers, Daiya Cheddar, Gimmie Lean sausage, potato cubes, onions, Tofutti sour cream and hot sauce!! Yeah!!

Then there was this little gem:

*DROOL*

This is a “before” picture of the vegan version of Giada’s Classic Lasagna. man I love this lasagna. I use the ricotta recipe from Vegan With a Vengeance and for the “mozzarella” on this one I used Sheese. I like Sheese quite a bit. It’s tangy and salty and, even though it’s not especially melty, it’s still pretty creamy. mmmm. Anyway, here’s an “after” picture:

We ate this lasagna for DAYS!

Next is the farms hare pickup:

Casaba melon, butternut squash, apples, pears, corn, haricot verts, sweet potatoes

So, the melon smelled too much like cantaloupe for me to try it. . . man, I hate cantaloupe. 

Here’s a picture of our Sunday brunch. I wasn’t hungry but Mr. Crow wanted pancakes. . . . he really, really did. He ate the whole batch by himself.

Peaches are the ones we froze earlier!

Typically, when we make pancakes we use the recipe from Vegan Yum Yum. they’re super easy and delicious!

Also, with all these apples lying around and Sunday being Appleween and all I decided to make apple butter and this apple pie:

better luck next time.

Yes, yes, it looks really good, thank you. HOWEVER! I used the wrong kid of apple for sure. The crust came out fab but the apples inside were still crisp and they released so much juice (even after sitting in sugar for 20 minutes before being put in the pie) that I had to dump it out. . . . the juice, not the pie. We still ate that.

The butternut squash got made into risotto:

We found the squash a but underdone in this recipe. i think we should have cut it smaller but it was still great and I’d eat it again. We substituted the parmesan with nooch and about a tablespoon of awase miso. That miso made a great addition and I’ll be adding it to creamy, “cheesy” dishes from now on.

FARM SHARE AGAIN:

peppers, concord grapes, swischard, apples, sweet potatoes, coffee, carnival squash

Here are some close-ups of the cooler elements of Saturday’s share:

Dig those purple peppers, man!

Curly like me!

Sunday we went to Cincinnati to have fun with my mom and her husband! It was great! We went to Ikea and Jungle Jim’s! What a day. Mr. Crow drove there and back so I got to get a TON of knitting done in the car and my life will never be the same. It was amazing to keep myself busy and not get car sick!

Here’s some pictures of some things we got: