Recent Foodie Adventures

We’ve been having some fun with food lately, and not just when Josh wants to help me cook!  One fun aspect of being on a much tighter budget now than we have been the past few years is that we buy things when they’re on sale and then we figure out a good way to use them instead of our traditional route of picking a recipe we want to try and shopping specifically for that.  This has led to some surprisingly successful dishes.

I invented a pear-squash dessert wonton a while back that was amazing.  It had acorn squash (or any non-stringy fleshed squash) roasted with butter, brown sugar, and salt.  I mashed that up with cream cheese, nutmeg, cinnamon, and brown sugar and then mixed in peeled, diced, very ripe pears and a dash of lemon juice.  I loaded my filling into wonton wrappers and deep fried them to a golden brown.  We ate them dipped in homemade caramel sauce.  They disappeared too quickly to get a picture of, unfortunately, but they will definitely be making an appearance next fall and for many falls after that!  

Roasted tomato soup

The soup before pureeing

When the weather started turning cold and tomatoes went on sale, we made tomato soup.  We used this recipe by Tyler Florence and it was unspeakably good.  We just used run-of-the-mill tomatoes on the vine (or whatever is on sale) and it turned out amazing.  The roasting gives the veggies just the right amount of sweetness.  If you’ve never met a tomato soup you liked, you really should give this a shot!  We added grated parmesan to our bowls and served the soup with extra sharp cheddar grilled cheese sandwiches (Tillamook cheese was on sale too!) and parmesan-garlic toast.  

Mario’s been enjoying his pasta maker and has tried his hand at a homemade fettuccini carbonara with lots of bacon and caramelized onions, a lovely invention with leftover roasted chicken, sautéed veggies and a simple parmesan white sauce, and straight up homemade spaghetti marinara.

 

Baked rigatoni with sausage and eggplant

Although it’s not with homemade pasta, one of our new favorite dishes is baked rigatoni with sausage and eggplant.  We always double the eggplant because it’s just so darn good!  Be sure to cut the eggplant into pretty big pieces and pan-fry in small batches.  

Back in the fall when peaches were on sale, I discovered a recipe (see below) for cornmeal pancakes in my much-loved Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook. I substituted diced peaches for the blueberries (although they’re also delicious with blueberries!), used a bit more sugar than the recipe calls for as well as adding nutmeg, and served them with fresh peaches, vanilla nonfat yogurt, and lemon simple syrup.   We had these every weekend while our peaches held out!  

We love to make ethnic food for three reasons: it’s delicious; we don’t have a budget to support eating out at the moment so our only option is to make it ourselves; and there aren’t a lot of dining options in Fairbanks anyway so it we’d have to make it ourselves anyway!  I had tried a few sub-standard recipes for naan (an Indian yeast bread) to go with our dishes at home and was unimpressed with the results.  Then I found this recipe.  Now I always make at least a double batch (using my stand mixer since the dough is unusually wet for a yeast dough and is difficult to knead by hand) and freeze some (after baking) so we always have it on hand.  It’s delicious brushed with butter hot out of the oven, or you can make a compound butter with garlic or any kind of Indian spices you like to brush on top.  I bake mine on my pizza stone and it always turns out beautiful.

Cornmeal Blueberry Pancakes (from Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook)

1 cup all-purpose flour

2 tablespoons cornmeal

1 tablespoon sugar

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 beaten egg

1 cup buttermilk or sour milk

2 tablespoons cooking oil

1 cup fresh or frozen blueberries

1. In a bowl combine flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon. Make a well in center of flour mixture; set aside.

2. In another bowl stir together the egg, buttermilk, and oil. Add egg mixture all at once to flour mixture. Stir just until moistened (batter should be lumpy). Gently fold in blueberries.

3. For each pancake, pour or spread about 1/4 cup of the batter into a 4-inch circle onto a hot, lightly greased griddle or heavy skillet. Cook over medium heat about 2 minutes on each side or until pancakes are golden brown, turning to second sides when pancakes have bubbly surfaces and edges are slightly dry. Serve warm. If desired, top with syrup.