February Recipe: Baba Ghanoush

Ever sine I discovered a place called Oren's in my neighborhood, I've been absolutely obsessed with the place. When I asked the waiter for a recommendation for a side, he recommended their baba ghanoush. I had never had eggplant in this form before, but I ended up loving it and craving it all the time. 

So when I got home, I looked up a recipe for baba ghanoush and found a pretty simple one on epicurious. I knew that it looked like a pretty simple recipe that would not have as nuanced flavors as the one at Oren's, but I gave it a shot!

I tried to put the eggplant through a sieve to get out the seeds as suggested by many comments, but the eggplant just wasn't getting through. So I scooped out as much of the seeds as I could and threw it into the mix.

Overall, I'd say it turned out pretty well. I think grilling the eggplant would give it more flavor than oven roasting. Also, maybe it could have done with some spices. Now that I think I've got the basics down, I may try a little more complicated recipe for baba ghanoush!

-jennkay

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More January Cooking: Quinoa Patties

There aren't too many upsides to being unemployed, but one of them is definitely that I have plenty of time to practice and learn more about cooking. So here is my second new recipe of the month! Last year, I became obsessed with quinoa after being reluctant for a while. I bookmarked a bunch of quinoa recipes, one of which was quinoa patties. This recipe is so simple and flexible, that I had to use some leftover quinoa to make it.

First off, I didn't really follow the recipe to a tee, but rather took inspiration from its ingredients. I also replaced chives with green onions. Yay for improvisation! Sort of. I also cooked them for much less than 7-10 minutes on each side because they were getting a little too burnt and dry for my liking. The ones pictured above were probably closer to 4-5 minutes on the first side, 3 on the flip side. 

Pictured above are the patties from my first try. A little too crispy on one side, and then a little too not crispy on the lighter side as seen on the flipped patty in front.

It took a little bit of experimentation, and I'm sure there's more experimenting to do, but they were still delicious! The recipe says that they are good "hot or cold," but I much preferred when they were still warm from the pan rather than after they had cooled down. It just seemed more flavorful and a little softer in texture. 

I will definitely be trying these again in the near future. I may even add some broccoli bits or some other veggies that I have lying around because this recipe turned out to be so flexible and easy.

-jennkay

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January Recipe: Parmesan Roasted Broccoli & Cauliflower

I grew up as a veggie hater, for the most part. I only actually really started eating more vegetables a few years ago in college. And then I discovered roasted vegetables, and a whole new world opened up to me. With some simple olive oil and salt, any vegetable seemed to transform into a delicious side in the oven. While I still love the simplicity of oil and salt, I wanted to mix it up a little this time around. 

My inspiration, of course, was Ina Garten on Barefoot Contessa. She made these delicious roasted broccoli with parmesan and other goodies. I followed this recipe very loosely, omitting and substituting based on what I already had in my pantry. The changes I made were: adding cauliflower, omitting pine nuts (love them, but didn't have them on hand), and substituting basil with thyme (the only fresh herb I had). 

I think I sprinkled the cheese on a tad late because it didn't melt completely, but that sharp flavor was still there. This recipe was truly so easy and so delicious. I will be making it again. And again and again and again...

-jennkay

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Drink More Water! (My Newest Favorite App)

I've known forever that people are supposed to drink 8 glasses of water per day. For some reason, however, I really don't like drinking any kind of liquids all that much. Many times, when I get on a "health kick," one of the first things I try to do is drink more water. I've tried putting notes on my mirror, keeping glasses of water by my desk and bedside, and some other methods, I'm sure. None of them really worked beyond a few days. Anyway, I met up with a friend back in October or November who told me about a free water drinking app she downloaded called Plant Nanny. 

Basically, every time you drink a glass of water, you water your plant. It starts off as a little things and then grows every once in a while. If you don't drink enough water, it starts to wilt and die. I've never had one die on me, but I'm sure it happens because I've gotten close.

It seems like a really cheesy app, but I've actually noticed that I've been drinking much more water since I downloaded it months ago. I even turned off the reminder notifications to drink water, but I still use it constantly because I'm the paranoid type that doesn't want her fake plants to die. Anyway, it's fun because there are many customizable aspects like pots, backgrounds, and types of plants. 

Look how festive the ivy looks in the little present box! Haha. At any rate, it's been an entertaining and effective app thus far, so I thought I'd share it here. I've actually told many of my friends and family about it, and some of them even went on to download the app themselves! I should earn a commission or something. So, if one of your New Years Resolutions was to get healthy, I recommend this app to get you drinking more water!

-jennkay

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My First Completed New Years' Resolution! (& extra Dec recipes)

I know that New Years' Resolutions are notorious for never getting accomplished. I have to say that for most of my life, I would try really hard for about a month or two and then give up or forget completely. I'm sure everyone has similar stories. So I decided to have a relatively simple and achievable resolution for 2014: to try (at least) one new recipe per month. And I did it! Well, one month did bleed a little into the other, but I tried well over 12 new recipes overall.

Before I compile all the recipes and reflect a bit, I thought I'd sneak in two other new recipes I tried in December. While watching Food Network, I saw Trisha Yearwood making essentially mini pecan pies and thought that I had to try it right away. I found the recipe online and made them the very next day! The only difference was that I used regular muffin tins rather than mini muffin tins, so I did double the filling amount. I think I prefer them my way. They were so incredibly easy and delicious that I've already made them twice and plan on making them again soon.

By the way, that's my brother's manly, knobbly-looking hand, not mine! Haha.

I also love watching Barefoot Contessa nowadays since I have so much free time. I saw Ina make this super simple roasted chicken. Even though it looked easy enough, I was intimidated by the idea of roasting a chicken. So I had it bookmarked for a while and finally decided to go for it. I used two small Cornish hens rather than one bigger chicken, but it seemed to be okay. While it was pretty simple and very tasty, I realized that I'm more squeamish than I expected to be with whole, raw chicken. Plus, the house smelled like chicken for a loong time afterward. So I think that it's going to be a while before I try any sort of roasted bird again. I'm definitely glad that I did it, though!

Also, bonus points for this particular recipe were the roasted halved garlic heads. I just squeezed out that goodness and spread it on some bread or onto the chicken and it was delicious! Though, I am a crazy garlic lover, so of course I would like that :)

I realize that this post is getting crazy long, but I'm just going to end with a nice little summary of my (blogged) new recipes this year. Of course there were some other recipe attempts, but they were either too much of a failure or just not very interesting to write about.

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JANUARY
Pizza from scratch & roasted brussel sprouts

FEBRUARY made up for in April!

MARCH
Double chocolate banana muffins

APRIL
Zucchini fries
Bacon & corn pizza on whole wheat crust

MAY
Protein pancakes
Chocolate avocado pancakes

JUNE
Pan con tomate

JULY
Chocolate chip shortbread bars

AUGUST
Lemon cookies

SEPTEMBER
Baked avocados
Chicken with quinoa and veggies

OCTOBER
Leftover quinoa and veggies

NOVEMBER
Mimi's Cafe carrot bread
Warm brussel sprout salad

DECEMBER
Rugelach pinwheels
Bacon jalapeno poppers
Mini pecan pies
Roasted chicken with lemon and garlic

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Even though most of these recipes were super simple and fast, I learned a lot! I especially love discovering the no knead pizza dough. I have made so many pizzas this year that my brother bought me a pizza stone for Christmas! I'll be breaking that in quite soon. I also jumped onto the quinoa band wagon. I'm not a fan of brown rice, so I was pleasantly surprised by how much I actually liked quinoa.

In conclusion, I am definitely making the same resolution for this year. This time around, however, I'm going to try to lean less on baking (my comfort zone) and do more cooking. Barring some sort of horrible disaster, I think I can do it! Here we go again, I guess!

-jennkay

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December Recipe: Bacon Jalapeño Poppers

I did have big plans for my December recipe, but I have had to put them on the back burner. My relatives are visiting, and as soon as they leave, I'm leaving for my own vacation! So in the meantime, I decided to try out a little recipe that I saw on Pioneer Woman on Food Network. I dug up the recipe from her website and added some of my own modifications to whip up this tasty appetizer.

The recipe I used is here. My first modification was to add some shredded cheddar cheese to the cream cheese (about a 3:1 ratio of cream cheese to cheddar). I also added a clove of minced garlic just for some flavor and an extra little kick (but mostly because I'm a garlic-loving monster). Lastly, I did not use toothpicks purely because I did not have toothpicks and did not want to make a trip out in the storm just for them. For the most part, the bacon stayed wrapped pretty well, though I guess it could have been neater (as you can see in the picture above).

Surprisingly, the hardest part for me was just cleaning out the insides of the jalapeños. After that, it was smooth sailing. 

Stuffing them was quite a messy endeavor as well because I was wearing gloves.

Oh, and one more modification was that I cut the strips of bacon in half rather than thirds because it just seemed right. Who really is going to complain about having more bacon per jalapeño anyway? 

The finished products!

Mmm, bacon. I think some of the jalapeños still had a teensy bit of seeds left in them because eating these was like playing spicy roulette. One would be moderately spicy and the next would be on fire. Oops! Next time, I'll probably be more careful. Maybe.

And with that, I have successfully completed my new year's resolution! I've never actually followed through on any of my resolutions, so I am quite proud of myself (though I did kind of cheat one month, but I made up for it!). I'm still aiming for another couple recipes this month, just as extra credit, so I'll post those as I go. I think that one new recipe per month was a completely achievable goal, yet motivating enough to get stuff done. I'm probably going to do it again for next year. And maybe even increase it to two per month if I'm being ambitious? That kind of scares me, so we'll see about that.

-jennkay

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Eggless Baking: Rugelach Pinwheels

Yes, yes, I am obsessed with Smitten Kitchen. I think that's pretty clear from my track record. Anyway, after refreshing constantly for new recipes, I had the brilliant idea of going back through her older recipes for inspiration. Specifically, I went through the cookie list because I was tired of making the same old cookies over and over for friends and family. One recipe that immediately caught my attention was for rugelach pinwheels. I didn't even know what they were much less tasted them before, but the pictures were enticing and the recipe seemed straightforward enough. 

For my first time making an unknown cookie, I think they turned out pretty well:

And some process pictures I snapped along the way:

Some lessons that I learned during the process:

1. Rugelach, which I had for the first time, reminded me a bit of Pepperidge Farm Verona cookies but with walnuts and raisins added to the mix. I'm not sure if that's how they're traditionally supposed to taste, but I liked it. It also went well with a nice, strong black tea. I unintentionally had a little tea party with the family serving a delicious Assam alongside these cookies. 

2. The filling didn't look like much when I spread it across the sheet of dough, but after it's all sliced up, there was clearly enough in there. Good thing that I trusted the recipe!

3. When slicing rolls of dough into individual cookies, I noticed the dough warming up to room temp pretty quickly. As that happened, it became progressively harder to cut them neatly because they squished and lost shape. So I suppose the lesson is to cut them fast while they're still cold. 

4. Jam is sticky. When you combine it with sugar and melt it in the oven, it gets stickier. Even with my silicone baking mats, I had to be careful when prying the cookies off. It's not a deal breaker by any means, but something to be mindful of.

5. Eggless cookies can be awesome! I was worried when I noticed the absence of egg in this cookie recipe, but they turned out just fine without them. I have already forwarded this recipe to a friend who doesn't really buy eggs. Some of my other tried and true eggless cookie recipes are pecan sandies, chocolate chip shortbread cookies, and jam thumbprint cookies.

Anyway, I'm not going to count this as my December recipe because I actually did this in November. Plus, I have grand plans for my December recipe. We'll see if I can follow through on that.

-jennkay

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