White Bean Dip

This is what dinner looks like when I neglect to plan out recipes ahead of time.  Don't get me wrong, it was delicious but more random than I'm used to.

The fella and I were both hungry and uninspired.  All we had were a couple random vegetables and a bunch of dry beans that no one wanted to put the effort into boiling.  Then while looking through the oddities of my cupboard I found one can of white beans neither of us could remember buying.  Not one to look down upon random dinner providing beans, I whipped them into a dip I remembered seeing in my food blog browsing earlier in the day.  And tada we had protein and an almost balanced meal.

I'm not a fan of raw garlic (it's not a fan of me either I found out in my elimination dieting so at least the feeling is mutual) so I cooked mine before adding it.  But if you're a the garlicky-er the better type and loss in a few cloves raw, this is the easiest dip imaginable.  It's like hummus for when you're all hummus-ed out or not in the mood to plan ahead for soaking chickpeas.  Especially on the forbidden corn chips this dip was extraordinary. 

White Bean Dip

1 tablespoon olive oil

2 cloves garlic, finely chopped

2 cups (or 1 15-ounce can) cooked white beans

1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup vegetable broth
2 sprigs fresh thyme
1/2 a lemon, juiced 
salt and pepper, to taste


If you decide to cook the garlic, saute it briefly in the olive oil over medium heat just until it is no longer raw before tossing in the food processor.


If using canned beans, drain and rinse them, then place in food processor.  If using dried beans, cook 1 cup of white beans of your choice using your preferred method and put in food processor when cooked through.


Put all of the remaining ingredients in the food processor with the garlic and beans and pulse a few times until the mixture is very smooth.  Check the seasoning to see if more salt, pepper or thyme is needed.  Also add additional liquid at this point if you would like the dip to be thinner.  Blend again until well combined. 

Modified from an original recipe at Affairs of Living blog.

Spicy Goat Cheese Dip

Since I'm fessing up to my astronomical failures as a cook allow me to confess to another ridiculous thing I cannot manage to succeed at.  Nachos.  You heard me correctly.  Melted cheese and tasty fixings over chips.  Couldn't be simpler, right?  Anyone can do that.  Yeah anyone except me it would seem.  Having never attempted to make them before I thought the broiler would be the way to go.  30 seconds later I was waving out the fire on my organic blue corn chips.  Another dinner ruined.

In my defense nachos were never something we ate in my house growing up.   And the horrible alien cheese sauce drenched corn chips at the fair or the mall aren't nachos those are just wrong.  So I don't have a food memory of this dish to lead me to create a long forgotten favorite recipe.  All I had was a strange craving for cheesy corn chips after eating a quick meal at the Great Dane (a locally famous brew pub with good beer and a gluten free menu) and being mocked by the monster nacho plate being eating by people at a neighboring table.

Giving up cheese in Wisconsin is like giving up on snow in the Arctic, it just isn't possible.  It is everywhere and it knows where to find you when you least expect it.  Once you stop eating it you suddenly notice how prevalent cheese is.  Where as you once thought phrases like "cheesehead" or "the cheese state" are just cute metaphorical terms of endearment we use to talk about the area, you know now that the place literally is made of dairy and you can't escape seeing it.

I've gotten pretty good at ignoring all the amazing cheese this town has to offer and hardly mind that everyone around me makes yummy noises while nibbling on their latest gourmet cheese discovery at parties.  But everyone once in a while as I happily eat my bunless burger and salad a little rodent somewhere in my head will start screaming "Cheese!"  I try to ignore it but it gets more specific, "Ooey gooey sinful cheese drenched macaroni and cheese hot and fresh out of the oven!"  Then things go down hill into something along the lines of "Nachos! Nachos! Nachos! Nachos! Nachos!"  Until the part of my brain that hasn't been taken over by gerbils riffles my brain to find a solution that will make the cheese obsessed brain animals happy and not make me sick.  Anyone who read my vegan mac and cheese post knows that it is no small order to fill.

Thankfully I have a very understanding fella who is no longer surprised that the woman he lives with occasionally (okay on a very regular basis, shut up) goes crazy and insists that directly after lunch we must go to Whole Foods so I can look into making nachos immediately.  It probably helps that he usually benefits from my moments of madness by being rewarded with delicious food for the low low price of doing my endless dishes.

So the only way I could see this nacho thing going down was to indulge in goat cheese which I allow myself every couple of weeks because it doesn't seem to negatively effect me too much and lets face it I need some sort of cheese or I really will snap in the face of all this temptation.  However the goat cheese dribbled chips burst into flame because nachos under the broiler probably wasn't my greatest idea ever.  The cheese sauce I salvaged off of the wreckage on the other hand was amazing!  So whereas I cannot suggest asking me to ever making you something as simple as nacho I can tell you that this accidental goat cheese creation is a great dip.

Now world please do tell me how in the hell does one make nachos?

Spicy Goat Cheese Dip

1 5-ounce log goat cheese
1/4 cup heavy cream or coconut milk
1-2 chipotle peppers, chopped
1-2 teaspoons adobe sauce from chipotle peppers
1 jalapeno, finely chopped


Place goat cheese in a oven safe bowl.  Heat for 20 seconds or so until it becomes soft and easily mixable.  Add heavy cream or coconut milk until the cheese is the constancy you like, you might not need all the liquid depending on the goat cheese you're using.  Stir in the chipotle, adobe sauce and jalapeno until well combined.  Place in oven at about 375 degrees until cheese begins to brown on top.  Serve warm with good quality corn chips.

Salty Stuffed Tomatoes

These were a lovely and perfectly salty accompaniment to the sweet beef dish that was the main dish of dinner.  Everyone was as shocked as I was at how good these tomatoes were.  Even the fella dug into his, and we all know how he feels about tomatoes.  And the big meaty Chilean Cab from Cousino-Macul Antiguas Reservas that we drank while enjoying dinner was a nice contrast to the acidic and salty stuffing in the tomatoes.

 All the wonderful wines that we paired with dinner.  Full tasting notes of all the wines over at Forkful of News.

I could see making these again with more tuna and less capers to cut down the salt and make them more substantial.  For some reason I've never been a fan of stuffed peppers but these really did it for me.  It could have had something to do with the deeply satisfying and meditative scraping out of the juicy delicate tomato centers.  Not that I'm creepy and sometimes like to de-seed squishy fruits every once in a while or anything. 

I even saved all the juicy bits from the inside of my tomatoes and used them instead of diced tomatoes in a soup later on in the week, so this meal helped out in later recipes.  How can you not love a recipe that leaves you with left overs that hint at what you should cook next?

Also included in this meal:

Sundried Tomato Tapenade

Orange, Olive and Argan Oil Salad

Crockpot Beef Tagine

Red Quinoa with Roasted Vegetables

Rice Crepes and Amlou

Salty Stuffed Tomatoes

6 large tomatoes
4 red peppers

salt, to taste
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 7-ounce can tuna
2 tablespoons capers
4 tablespoons chopped black olives
1 lemon, zested
2 tablespoons, chopped parsley

Cut a small circle around the stalk of each tomato and cut out a cap in the top of each.  Using a grapefruit spoon, scoop out the seeds and flesh inside the tomato.  (Save the insides for later when you have a recipe that calls for a can of diced tomatoes.)

Roast the pepper yourself under the broiler or buy good quality pre-roasted red peppers in a jar.  If roasting them yourself, peel, de-seed and chop into strips.

Put the strips of red pepper in a large mixing bowl along with all the remaining ingredients.  Gently fold everything together.  Fill the cavities of the tomatoes with this filling.

Arrange the tomatoes on a shallow baking dish and bake in a 350 degree oven for about 20 to 30 minutes.  Check on them fairly often so that the tomatoes never get to the point where that explode or fall apart in the pan.  They are done when the filling is warmed through. 

From Claudia Roden's Arabesque. 

Orange, Olive and Argan Oil Salad

Being a non traditionalist instead of planning a romantic Valentine's Day dinner the fella and I had six of our favorite people over for dinner this past weekend.  And to trick us all into forgetting it is still the deepest darkest days of winter I cooked all Moroccan dishes.  The colorful highly spiced dishes and all the amazing wine made it feel like summer for a few wonderful hours around my table. 

And if you've been following my posts at Forkful of News you will already know that my obsession with Moroccan cooking has been going on for a little while.  If nothing else go read my post about argan oil which besides being an amazingly cool oil also plays a huge role in the recipe for the starter course of my meal.  Plus there are hilarious pictures of tree climbing goats so it is just about a requirement that you go find out about argan oil.  It's worth a few minutes of your time I promise, the goats will make your day.

I decided to start dinner out with this simple orange and olive salad.  The thing I love most about Moroccan dishes is so often all it requires is gathering, measuring, cutting the ingredients, adding heat, waiting for amazing food to happen.  It requires very little maintenance.  This salad doesn't even need heat, it just needs tossing and then you instantly have awesome.

The citrus was made somehow more amazing with the hint of cumin and paprika and the nutty argan oil made it even better.  You could just use a high quality olive oil if you're not in the mood to track down and invest in yet another oil with pretty much the same result.  And a crisp not too grassy Bogle Sauvignon Blanc courtesy of my foodie friends Tim and Jess was an excellent compliment to the salad. 

I was super decadent and served this beautiful salad alone in tiny plates so that there was no other food on the table to steal it's glory.  It was that pretty that I was willing to do extra dishes for it.  Also I felt fancy serving dinner in semi-proper courses.  And of course I got to stun all my friends by serving them something with such an exotic ingredient and tell them the story of it.  A very excellent start to a successful dinner.

Also included in this meal:

Sundried Tomato Tapenade

Salty Roasted Tomatoes

Crockpot Beef Tagine

Red Quinoa with Roasted Vegetables

Rice Crepes and Amlou

 

Orange, Olive and Argan Oil Salad

4 oranges, peeled and cut in into bite sized pieces
16 black or kalamata olives
1/ 2 red onion, finely chopped

1 lemon, juiced
2 tablespoons argan oil
1 tablespoon olive oil (you can do all olive oil if investing in argan oil is not in your budget)
salt, to taste
1/ 2 teaspoon cumin
1/ teaspoon paprika
pinch chili powder

2 tablespoons parsley

Put chopped oranges in a serving bowl along with the olives and chopped onion.  Toss well.

Make the dressing by whisking together all the remaining ingredients except for the parsley. 

If making ahead of time store the dressing separately and pour over salad at the very last minute.  If serving right away pour dressing over salad and toss well then sprinkle with the parsley and serve.

Makes enough to serve a party of 8 a starter size portion.

From Claudia Roden's Arabesque: A Taste of Morocco, Turkey, and Lebanon.

Vanilla Panna Cotta Soup with Marinated Strawberries

I have to admit the major inspiration behind blogging this crazy diet experience, failures, insanity, crying jags, and all was reading Julie and Julia. A secretary in New York decides to cook every recipe in Julia Child's Mastering The Art of French Cooking in a year, a huge and difficult undertaking. If you haven't read it you're missing out. There were so many times I was reading it that I broke down in helpless piles of laughter that took me minutes to recover from. The lady can really write.

Julie Powell's book also prepared me for the difficulties that come with pannacotta making. The recipe is deceptively simple and yet oh so easy to ruin. Gelatin is a cruel mistress that requires all of your undivided attention and devotion. And even then the damn pannacotta will only turn out with a lot of luck.

With this is mind I warned all of the people coming to dinner to not be too surprised if the pannacotta was a failure and to try not to laugh too hard at my pannacotta soup. It was still a blow to my fragile fledgling French cooking self esteem when I reached in the fridge for the custards and got pannacotta soup. I took the advice from my friendly peanut gallery and put it in the freezer to ice up during dinner, because anything with that much cream, sweetness, and strawberries would be great regardless of consistency.

That was good thinking.

The balsamic vinegar really gave the strawberries a rich tart edge. I'm going to start keeping a container of vinegared berries around for putting on my yogurt and oatmeal in the mornings. On the soupy half frozen pannacotta the berries were divine. They were a perfect ending for my first dinner, with one really great dish, one demi-failure and one recipe that didn't turn out but ended up perhaps tastier in its new form.

With bellies full and two bottles of wine under our collective belts we retired to the living room to be hypnotized by a warm fire and play silly card games until way past my bed time. It was an evening well worth missing sleep over.


Also included in this menu:
Chicken in Roasted Red Pepper Sauce
Eggplant Pizza

Vanilla Panna Cotta with Marinated Strawberries


1 1/2 teaspoons unflavored powdered gelatin
1 1/4 cups 2% milk
1 3/4 cups half and half
2 tablespoons fructose
1 tablespoon vanilla extract


In a small bowl, soak the gelatin in 1/4 cup of the milk until soft, about five minutes. While waiting for gelatin to soften warm the remaining milk, half and half, and fructose in small pot until fructose dissolves, about five minutes. Leave the milk mixture to cool until barely warm and then add the gelatin mixture to pot, stirring well until gelatin dissolves completely.


Pour the mixture into four 2/3 cup ramekins, cover and chill at least over night.


To unmold pannacotta, fill bowl with boiling water and dip bottom of each mold into water for a couple seconds. Place a plate on top of the mold and flip it over. Carefully lift off the mold. If your pannacotta doesn't set, place ramekins in freezer until the liquid is half frozen and enjoy it as an odd ice creamy dessert.




STRAWBERRY TOPPING:
1 pound of strawberries, halved
1 teaspoon fructose
1 1/4 teaspoon balsamic vinegar


Prepare this at least an hour before you plan to serve the pannacotta. Sprinkle strawberries with fructose and vinegar. Toss to combine in a bowl and chill until ready to serve. Sprinkle a fourth of the strawberries over each pannacotta or serving of failed pannacotta ice cream.


Original recipe from The Big GL Plus Diet Planner.

Eggplant Pizza

This recipe does it's best to drive the person trying to make it crazy with unnecessary steps and the shear amount of time and preparation it requires to make something that will not in any way shape or form turn out correctly unless you are a famous French chef. As of this moment Boulud and I are not speaking for a while.

The day before the party I sautéed the vegetables, roasted a head of garlic and read over the recipe several thousand times. None of this helped things go more smoothly. The eggplant was a greasy disaster and I'm not sure even using the flour that was in the original recipe would have improved things. I just did not have the patience for something like this especially when it didn't turn out.

Thankfully the mess I ended up with was very tasty albeit very, very greasy. If for some reason you are masochistic enough to attempt to make this reduce the oil wherever possible because Boulud's method goes way over board. Or if you're a lucky bread eater the toppings alone would probably make the world's tastiest regular ole pizza. I'll leave it up to one of you to experiment with that and get back to me.

Also included in this menu:
Chicken in Roasted Red Pepper Sauce
Vanilla Panna Cotta

Eggplant “Pizza”




EGGPLANT:
1 or 2 medium eggplants
10 inch cake pan brushed with oil
salt
roll of paper towels


2 cups oil for frying
(original recipe calls for flour to dredge eggplant in, which I couldn't use.)
2 eggs, whisked (to unsuccessfully substitute for the flour)


Peel one eggplant and cut into very thin rounds. Supposedly it is easiest on the mandoline but I couldn't get the eggplant to cooperate on mine so I went at it as best I could with a big knife. You need enough rounds of eggplant to cover the bottom of the pan twice so experiment with placing them on the cake pan to see if you need more. (You might want to even have a few extra if you're as bad at frying as I am.) If so peel the other eggplant and slice thin.


Sprinkle the slices on both sides with salt and place them a couple of layers at a time between layers of paper towel. (The salting is supposed to get rid of some moisture and bitterness as well as help the eggplant not absorb as much oil. It doesn't work, they will still absorb massive amounts of oil.) Set aside for 45 minutes and start working the filling for the “pizza.”


***


To assemble the crust pat the salted eggplant between more paper towels. Place a rack over a baking pan and place it near where you will be frying, this is where you'll put the fried eggplant rounds to rest and drip off some of the oil. (I didn't have a rack so I used paper towel which only worked moderately well.)


Pour the oil into a deep sauce pan (I would use small amounts of oil to lightly pan fry them on each side rather than immersing them in oil because they will absorb too much of it) and put pan over medium high heat.


Dredge eggplant in flour or egg in a vain attempt to bread them, tapping off extra flour/egg. When the oil is hot fry eggplant a couple of rounds at a time until they are just crispy on both sides. Place on baking pan or more paper towels to rest.


Center a rack in the oven and preheat to 400. Line a baking sheet with foil (I have no idea what this does for the cooking at all.) Place the oiled cake pan in center of baking sheet and start constructing “pizza” by arranging fried eggplant slices with the slices slightly overlapping each other. Top with another layer of eggplant, season with salt and pepper and wonder why you spent two hours making a “crust.”




SAUTEED VEGGIES:
4 tablespoons oil
1 green pepper, cut into thin strips
1 small red onion, halved and thinly sliced
1 small zucchini, trimmed and cut into 1/4 inch thick rounds
1 small yellow squash,trimmed and cut into 1/4 inch thick rounds


This step can be done the day ahead of time or while waiting for eggplant to rest after being salted.


Sauté vegetables one at a time in 1 tablespoon of the oil. Warm first tablespoon of oil in small skillet over medium heat. When hot, add green pepper and season with salt and pepper. Cook until the pepper is tender though not browned, about 5 to 10 minutes. Spoon into a dish and set aside.


Place pan back over heat and add more oil if needed. Warm oil, place onion in pan, season with salt and pepper and cook until tender. Set cooked onions aside on another dish. Repeat with zucchini and squash, adding salt and pepper to each, adding oil as needed and cooking until tender. Place each in their own separate dishes. (Cooking each vegetable separately made sure each one was cooked through perfectly but keeping each in separate dishes was unnecessary if you know you will be putting all the veggies on the “pizza” anyway.)




TOPPINGS:
5 basil leaves, torn into pieces (I would double this)
1 roasted red pepper (roast your own or used pre-prepared), cut into thin strips
1 roasted yellow pepper, cut into thin strips (I used two red)
1 tablespoon parsley
12 pieces oil packed sun dried tomatoes, washed or padded dry of all oil then quartered
1 head roasted garlic (do this the day ahead of time), pushed out of peel
12 black or kalamata olives, halved


2 tablespoons fresh grated Parmesan or Romano cheese
2 ounces feta cheese, crumbled


Finish “pizza” with toppings by scattered basil over the eggplant “crust” already in cake pan. Lay red and yellow roasted pepper strips over basil, sprinkle with the parsley. Arrange a layer of zucchini on top of this, then yellow squash, and green pepper. Top with sun dried tomatoes and roasted garlic cloves. Finish with sautéed onions and olives. Dust “pizza” with Parmesan and feta evenly. Drizzle with oil (but only if you somehow feel all the oil already in the veggies isn't quite enough and you're hoping for a heart attack to round out the evening.)


Bake for 20 minutes or until the cheese is melted. The original recipe claims you can them lift “pizza” out of pan and onto cutting board to use pizza cutter to make slices in order to serve. I ended up with a mushy oily mess with no integrity which we dubbed yummy plate o' vegetables casserole. Consoling myself with wine and adding more feta to the “pizza” I vowed to never look at this recipe ever again.


Original recipe minus the snarky commentary from The Cafe Boulud Cookbook.

Chicken in Roasted Red Pepper Sauce

This is the wine carnage that resulted from yesterday evening's dinner party. You know it was a good time when you're too busy cooking and chatting up the company to have a moment to think about taking pictures of the delightful food that was eaten. Ah well, this will have to do.

The fella and I had three delightfully patient friends over to enjoy our first attempt at a genuine dinner party. With all the prep work I had done the day before and the hour head start I was getting before anyone arrived I thought people would walk in the door about the time the “pizza” was coming out of the oven. How wondrously optimistic of me. That just is never going to happen when anything from he Boulud cookbook is involved. Things got super complicated there for a while.

The eggplant refused to be mandolined, cut or salted. Then it burnt and smoked while being fried just in time for the first guests to arrive and help me air out the noxious plume of smoke in the kitchen so no one would asphyxiate.

Then I realized the fresh basil that went in both recipes had gone black and not at all fresh so the fella was sent out for new basil while out to pick up our other friend. Apparently it was an adventure to find it being so out of season so he was gone a lot longer than expected. I had to go on assembling the fakey pizza without the basil and hope it would be okay tossed on top later.

By now all the counters were covered in the wreckage of three half prepared dishes, making butterflying and pounding chicken breast practically an Olympic sport. I didn't allow myself to look at our friends to see how they were handling the now I'm sure very apparent news that the person cooking for them was nuts and they wouldn't be eating for a while.

Thankfully our friends know us well and brought a surplus of wine and the fella returned from the hunt for fresh basil in time to make a cheese plate so that people could snack and be pleasantly distracted as the endless cooking continued. The fella's fellow Mason is a bit of a wine snob himself and was nice enough to bring some really exciting bottles of Cotes du Rhone and a Chilean Sauvignon Blanc.

The Santa Rita Reserva Sauvignon Blanc was my favorite. Some fruit on the nose, light bodied and a super delicious melon and mineral finish. It was pleasantly complex, not one of those New Zealand Sauvignons that are like drinking pure grape fruit juice (which I also love by the way but would not have fit in with this meal.)

The Domaine Oratoire St. Martin was a very basic Cotes du Rhone. Drinkable, light bodied with some unripened red berries early on the tongue, finishing with the typical French mineralistic tannins. Unfortunately the special bottle of Domaine de la Janasse from 2000 that he has been holding on to may have gone past it's prime. The nose was a little too dirty gym sock to be enjoyable and the wine was almost tasteless so the poor Cotes do Rhone was abandoned for the other bottles.

We also opened a bottle of non alcoholic cranberry and cherry spumante from door county for our pregnant guest. A nice gesture but I'm going to agree with her when she said it was like drinking cherries in a sewer. The taste was nice but it was hard to get past the icky smell. Kind of like a durian apparently.

An hour after anticipated we finally sat down to dinner. The fake pizza was yummy but overly oily and very much not worth all the effort, it would have been better just to steam all the vegetables together and add a bit of oil. The chicken dish however was a huge success and it was super hands off and easy. I would make it again but would probably add some sort of addition herb like oregano, rosemary, anything to give a little extra flavor.

Also included in this meal:
Eggplant Pizza
Vanilla Panna Cotta

Chicken in Roasted Red Pepper Sauce

2 tablespoons oil
1 onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, cut finely
1 28-ounce can crushed tomatoes
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1/4 cup white wine
3 ounces black or kalamata olives, halved and pits removed
4 roasted red peppers (I used can ones but you can certainly roast then yourself it you have the time)
4 chicken breast halves (will cook faster if butterflied and pounded thin)
fresh basil

If you're roasting your own red pepper heat the oven to 400, place peppers on cookie sheet and roast about 45 minutes until blackened all over. Transfer to a bag to cool, this will make the skins easier to remove later before chopping.

Heat the oil in a deep pan and cook onion about 5 minutes or until translucent. Add the garlic and cook about 2 minutes longer. Now add tomatoes, tomato paste, wine, and olives then simmer slowly for about 30 minutes. Stir occasionally and add water if sauce becomes too thick. Cut red peppers into bite sized pieces, stir into sauce with some black pepper. Add chicken pieces, then cover and simmer about 20 minutes or until meat is cooked through.

Garnish with fresh basil and serve in shallow pasta bowls with a good ladle of the sauce covering each chicken breast.

Original recipe from The Big GL Plus Diet Planner