Turkey and Quinoa Pitas

Wow, it's been a while, eh? Well, that's because March has been quite the crazy month for me. Not only is this the time of year when tons of conference and research award proposals are due, but we also visited Arkansas over Spring Break to visit the university I'll be heading to for my new position in the fall (and for some vacationing). As soon as that was all wrapped up, I was home for a whole two days before I headed back to Georgia to defend my dissertation!

That's right, I'm -Doctor- Domesticated Professor now. Oh yeah.

Two tasty pitas, about to meet their fate as lunch for my mother and I.

Anyway, I'm finally back in the kitchen, and it feels good to be back! I've made a few things in the past week - a killer turtle cheesecake, for starters - but nothing that I really wanted to post about, until today. The budgetfood challenge for this week was for quinoa, something that I'd only had once in the past but liked. I was't even certain that I could find it in Alabama, but I did luck out at Publix last night and found some in its overpriced gluten-free, health-food section. After some thinking, I came up with what my mother and I agree was a very good lunch, and a nice grain that we'll be using from time to time. I will definitely be buying more of this at the Farmer's Market next time I'm Atlanta!

The sandwiches came to a total of only $2.15 apiece to make if you purchase the stock, which isn't bad at all considering how filling they are. Vegetarians can replace the turkey with some roasted butternut squash for an equally tasty and less expensive meal - something I meant to do as well, but I spaced, stared directly at the butternut squash at Publix, but didn't get one to take home. Ah, well.

Turkey and Quinoa Pitas
For the quinoa:
2/3 cup uncooked quinoa
1-1/3 cup vegetable or chicken stock
1 oz dried cranberries
salt and pepper to taste
For the sandwiches:
Oat bran pita bread, cut into half pockets
Sliced muenster cheese (about .65 ozs per half-pita)
Sliced deli turkey breast (3 slices, or about 1.85 ozs)
Sliced avocado (1/4 per half-pita)
Diced red onion (about 1/3 oz per half-pita)
Romaine lettuce (about 1/4 oz per half-pita)


Add quinoa and stock to a pot and bring to a boil, then stir in cranberries. Reduce heat to low and cook 15-20 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste, then let cool. Stuff a pita pocket with cheese, lettuce, and turkey. Scoop in quinoa, then sprinkle on chopped red onion and top with avocado slices.

Total prep/cook time: 30 minutes
Happiness Rating: 8/10

Tonight's Noms: Sweet Soy Pork and Risotto-Stuffed Tomatoes

Wow, this was a really good dinner. I had initially planned to try and make this earlier in the week, but life intervened, as it always does. The budget challenge this week a vegetarian theme with tomatoes as the main ingredient, and I'd calculated everything out perfectly such that the tomato would be a good, filling meal on its own. Sadly, it's winter, and tomatoes aren't in season, so the fruit I ended up with was both overpriced and small - still well within the allocated budget at just $1.75 apiece, but even with the risotto piled up high, the tomatoes didn't seem big enough to suit my fattie appetite. So, I entered my vegetarian roasted tomato soup recipe instead, and ate this as a side dish.

I found my cool plates! Also, an in-focus picture!

I even started out the day making some chicken stock from the salvaged carcass of the other night's chicken and dumplings (yes, you can still make stock from the remains of a boiled chicken). This stock went into the risotto, but it could just as easily be made with vegetable broth or diluted bullion. The pork chops were marinated with a mixture of sweet soy, worchestershire, salt, pepper, garlic powder, and the handy-dandy steakhouse seasoning grinder, which is a mixture of peppercorns, garlic, and a couple of other spices.

The recipe for the tomatoes is below, and the risotto mixture is written up for the amount I made - which would have been perfectly fine for a large, ripe summer beefsteak tomato, but these winter vine-ripened globes were smaller and more dense than I'd really hoped for. I'll definitely be making this again once our tomatoes start to come in this summer.

Ready to be topped with parmesan cheese and popped in the oven.

Risotto-Stuffed Tomatoes

• 1 cup short grain rice (valencia is cheaper than arborio and works well)
• 4 tbsp olive oil
• 1-2 tbsp garlic powder, or 1-2 cloves garlic, minced
• 3 large mushrooms, roughly chopped
• 2-3 cups heated vegetable or chicken broth
• 1 tbsp basil
• salt and pepper to taste
• 4 large beefsteak tomatoes
• about 1 ounce grated parmesan cheese

Heat oil in a small pot over medium heat, and add rice, mushrooms, and garlic, stirring to coat the rice. Continue to heat and stir the mixture until the rice becomes clear. Ladle in about a cup of broth, stir, and bring to a boil for 2-3 minutes, then reduce heat to low. Once all the liquid has been absorbed into the rice, add basil and stir in additional broth one ladle-full at a time. Continue to cook and stir broth until the rice is cooked through, stirring occasionally to break up the starches on the rice. Add salt and pepper conservatively throughout the cooking process; if desired, additional parmesan can be added to the rice to add salt and additional flavor. The risotto should have a creamy texture when finished. Allow to cool for at least 20 minutes before filling tomatoes.

Slice the tops off of the tomatoes and hollow them out, stirring the inner bits of the tomato into the risotto. Spoon risotto into the tomatoes and top with parmesan cheese. Bake at 350 for 20-30 minutes, or until the skin of the tomatoes has split and the rice throughout the tomato is warm.

Total prep/cook time: 75 minutes
Happiness rating: 8/10 - this needs to be done again during tomato season

52 weeks of baking, Week 4: Flower cupcakes, plus banana and blueberry fillings!

BB is having a tea party tomorrow. She's been excited about it for weeks, and has gone to a great deal of trouble to make up invitations for her friend who lives a few doors down from here. A couple of weeks ago, I found a flower-shaped cupcake pan at Hobby Lobby, which I'd intended to use for this tea party. Unfortunately, I didn't manage to hide it before BB showed up at the house, so the surprise was ruined, and she's been asking me about the flower cupcakes every single day since.

The pan itself is a neat thing - you put cupcake liners into it, fill the liners all the way up, and bake for five minutes. After the five minutes is up, you add another big spoonful or so of batter in, and make sure it gets into the corners of the mold. Once they're done, you let them cool for a minute, and out come super-cute flower-ish cupcakes!

Why didn't they have fun shapes for cupcakes when I was a kid?!

Of course, I couldn't -just- do cupcakes, since this is frosting/filling week. BB's favorite fruit is banana, and her friend's favorite fruit is blueberry, so I decided to make filling for their cupcakes (the adults get plain ones, because they're fuddy-duddies). It really wasn't difficult at all - fruit, a little liquid, a little sugar, and some xanthan gum to thicken them up to be the right consistency for filling.

Xanthan gum: a true victory of food science

For the cake itself, I used this recipe, which turned out to be delightful. A petal from one of the cupcakes was a bit cracked, and my sister grabbed it. I managed to get a few bites, and was very impressed - this recipe is a keeper! For the icing, I took my mom's advice and used a mixture of cream cheese and shortening, plus over a pound of powdered sugar and some almond and butter flavoring. The result was a good consistency, and the almond and butter flavorings definitely helped balance out the flavor. It tastes like buttercream, but with a little something more.

Now, as a disclaimer, I have to say that this is my first time actually decorating a cake. Icing a cake, in my experience, has involved slathering cream cheese or caramel-coconut-pecan icing all over a couple of layers and hoping that they aren't too lopsided once I'm done. Sometimes I might sprinkle nuts across the top, but that's about it. The only time I've ever used a piping bag has been to fill doughnuts. So, around 7:30 PM I decided that the cupcakes were cool enough, and was ready to settle down and practice my icing techniques.

Except that isn't what happened. What did happen was my mother and I coming to the realization that her decorating kit, tips, couplers, colors, and all, had mysteriously vanished, most likely to my sister's house. So, I found myself on a last-minute run to Wal-mart, where I managed to pick up the tips, colors, and bags that I needed. Finally, around 9:00 PM, I was finally able to get started on my very first cupcake. It turned out well, I think, and so I kept on going. There are still a few more plain ones to ice in the morning, but I managed to get enough finished for the tea party even if I oversleep. Not too shabby, I say.

The pink flower is plain, the yellow has banana filling, and the purple has blueberry. I'm sure you guessed that already.

Banana Cupcake and Doughnut Filling

• 1 very ripe banana
• 1 splash (about 2 tbsp) half and half
• 3/8 tsp xanthan gum
• 1/2 tsp banana extract
• 1 tsp sugar

Using small food processor, puree bananas, add half and half. Add small amounts of xanthan gum at a time (about 1/8 tsp), pulsing until the filling obtains desired thickness. If filling becomes too thick after setting, stir or whisk in additional half and half.

Blueberry Cupcake and Doughnut Filling

• 1 c frozen blueberries, rinsed
• 1/2 c water
• 1/2 c sugar
• 1/2 tsp xanthan gum

Simmer blueberries over low heat until soft. Stir in sugar and continue to simmer another 15 minutes. Puree mixture and process through a food mill, allowing to cool to room temperature. If filling becomes too thick after setting, stir or whisk in additional water.

Decorator's Icing

• 1 8oz brick cream cheese, room temperature
• 1 lb, 3 ozs powdered sugar
• 1 cup white shortening
• 1 1/2 tsp clear butter flavoring
• 1 tsp almond extract

Cream all ingredients together in mixer, adding powdered sugar until at the desired consistency. Separate into individual bowls and add coloring, then pipe onto cakes as desired.

Total prep/cook time: 3ish hours, including decorating

Family happiness rating: 9/10. Mom thought the banana filling tasted too ripe, but BB was over the moon about it, and that's what matters.

See the full album here.

52 weeks of cooking, Week 3: A trio of soups!

First of all, in the interest of full disclosure, I want to admit that I did -not- make the minestrone soup; my mom did. She had been craving minestrone for a while and decided to make some, and followed the copycat recipe for Olive Garden's soup pretty much to the letter. We discovered that it needed a bit more salt and more tomatoes, so we adjusted it and had a pretty nice dinner on both Friday and Saturday, and we still have plenty left.

Just because there was soup around the house didn't mean that I could skip out on this week's challenge, and so once Mom said that she wanted to make minestrone, we decided that I could make my own take on the zuppa toscana and my favorite roasted tomato soup to round out a trio of Italian soups, better-than-Olive-Garden's.

We played with plating this time around. Of course, Mom found a mini, flexi-tripod -after- I took all the pictures.

Completely forgetting that there was still some store-bought vegetable stock in the fridge, I got started with homemade stock by using up some asparagus ends that I'd been holding on to, as well as some carrot, onion, celery, and garlic. I then opened up a quart and a half of canned tomatoes from last summer's garden and put the tomatoes onto a baking sheet, tossed with salt and pepper, and roasted them in the oven to bring out their natural sweetness. Also, for some reason I decided to use the pre-ground pepper instead of cracking it fresh, like I usually do; of course, this meant that the shaker guard on the pepper would get stuck in the lid and that my tomatoes would end up getting a LOT of pepper on them.

Once the tomatoes were roasted, I put them in a pot and strained the seeds out of the reserved liquid, took the boat motor to it, then added just enough veggie stock to thin it down a touch. Since it's winter and I didn't have any fresh basil on hand, I had to go with a much higher proportion of dried basil.

For the potato and sausage soup (I really hate the name 'zuppa toscana'), I didn't do anything too spectacularly different from what you might find in any given knockoff recipe, except that I stuck to what greens were available in the garden. I grabbed some collard greens and some arugula, and decided to go with the arugula. Collards, having already sacrificed their place in the garden, were kept for some fun with photography and went back into the stock pot for more veggie stock. The soup itself is easy - just throw the vegetables into some chicken broth and simmer until the potatoes are almost cooked through, then add in the meat, then add in the greens toward the end and finish it off with a splash of half and half or cream.

I'm getting slightly better at this picture-taking thing, but this one is just so... white!

It was a good lunch, and there is now plenty of soup to keep us warm with all of the nasty weather that's going around.

Vegetarian Roasted Tomato Soup

• 1.5 quarts (or one large can) whole or quartered tomatoes
• 2 tbsp Olive oil
• 2 cups vegetable stock
• 2 tbsp fresh basil
• 2 tbsp dried oregano
• 2 tbsp fresh thyme
• Salt and pepper to taste

Place the tomatoes on a baking sheet, reserving the liquid for later use. Coat with olive oil, salt, and pepper, and roast in the oven at 325 for 55 minutes. Transfer the roasted tomatoes into a pot, and strain in reserved liquid. Puree, then add vegetable stock and herbs. Simmer 30 minutes, adding additional herbs as desired.

Italian Potato and Sausage Soup

• 2 big russet potatoes, diced
• 1/2 large onion, diced
• 3 cloves garlic
• 2 cups chicken broth
• 2 cups water
• 1 pound Italian sausage
• 4 slices bacon, chopped
• 4-5 handfuls arugula, kale, or deveined collards
• 1/2 cup half and half
• Pepper to taste

Place the potatoes, onion, and garlic in a pot and cover with chicken broth. In a separate pan, cook sausage and bacon. When potatoes are nearly fork-tender, add the meat to the pot, draining off some excess fat if necessary. Taste broth, and add water until the salt and meat flavors are diluted to taste, add pepper if desired. Add greens and simmer at least 10 minutes more, longer if using collards. Stir in half and half before serving.

Total Prep/Cook time: 1.5 hours for vegetable stock and two soups
Family happiness rating: 7/10 - quality standard fare, but nothing we haven't eaten before.

See the full tomato soup album here.
See the full potato and sausage soup album here.