Cauliflower Soup

Cauliflower is one of those vegetables I enjoy eating, but never think to buy for myself. For some reason, my eyes always move right past them and towards broccoli when I’m meandering in the produce aisle. Embarrassingly, this was the first time I’d ever prepared cauliflower (though I did have some fun hacking away at the core and leaves with my giant kitchen knife).

I ended up trying this recipe because I knew I wasn’t going to want to eat chickpea soup every day of the week for lunch and wanted another option. Given that I had every ingredient save for cauliflower already in my kitchen made this a very attractive option.  

Boller

I am part Swedish, but I tend to ignore Scandinavian cuisine for the most part – I’m not a big herring fan, I can easily pass on turnips, and I don’t even really like potatoes. However, Scandinavian cuisine uses one of my favorite spices of all time. And it uses it really really well.

Cardamom is possibly the most expensive item I have in my cupboard right now, but it was worth every penny. It’s addition to baked goods is almost sublime; when you use it, the whole house just smells warm and inviting. My mother tends to use it in coffee bread with pearled sugar, but when I saw this recipe for raisin buns and cardamom, I knew I had to try it. And it was amazing.

Berry Hand Pies

Does anyone else remember those small handpies you would buy at the convenience store or gas station for a dollar? They’d be wrapped in a wax wrapper and supposedly have a fruit filling, though it always tasted vaguely of cough syrup. Yeah, I loved those things.

This recipe appealed to my gastronomical nostalgia as well as my still-lacking-a-rolling-pin kitchen (I know, I’ve been working for a couple months now, I can totally afford to buy a rolling pin. I’m just lazy at this point). It uses premade puff pastry and a quick fruit filling. While my version was a bit sloppier than the gas station version, I think I’m a convert. No cough syrup taste in sight and a flakey crust. Sold.

Vegetarian Carbonara

I first tried making carbonara when I studied abroad in college. I had a few disadvantages then: a semi-working cook top in place of range, a refrigerator the size of my foot, a kitchen that tripled as a hallway and closet, and a complete lack of understanding how to make carbonara. I had the vague idea that cheese and eggs were involved, so I went to the grocery store and bought a kilo of pasta, some cheese that I hoped read parmesan (my Greek is still not particularly great), and some whole milk. I then mixed all three together.

It wasn’t particularly good (I would even use the word "horrible"), but as it was the second to last weekend I was in the country and was completely broke, I ate it for every meal for three days.

I think you can understand why it’s taken me four years to try again. But I’m glad I did. This is not a low-fat dish. This is not a vegan dish. This isn’t a non-dairy dish. It is, however, perfect for those cold nights when you need comfort food. And now that I kind of know what I’m doing, I’m definitely putting this recipe into rotation.

Emma's Super Delicious Broccoli!

My sister Emma asked me to figure out how to make pork meatballs, which I did in this post. As a thank you she sent me her recipe for Super Delicious Broccoli, which I had to share with everyone (without her permission. Luckily it'll be another two years before she's a lawyer and can sue me for IP infringement). I've included both her pictures and the pictures I took when I made the recipe myself. Hope you all enjoy!

Roasted Eggplant Soup

Sometimes you just feel like soup, even if the weather is conspiring against you. When I made this soup, DC was a bit confused - instead of inching towards fall like most locales in the country, DC had decided it wanted to be a temperate rainforest. It was grey, drizzling, and overall dreary for a good part of the week. It also had 95 percent humidity. 

In a word, gross.

If I couldn't have a lovely fall day, at least I could have a tasty soup (served with awesome cornbread). This recipe combines the last of the available fresh tomatoes with eggplant, onions, and garlic. How could it go wrong?

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cupcakes

You know how sometimes you just really want chocolate and peanut butter? And sometimes a Reese’s just doesn’t cut it? In those cases, you should do what I did when I was craving peanut butter and chocolate and knew that my friend Amber was coming over to help me eat whatever I baked.

This cupcake combines the best of many worlds – a rich, moist chocolate cake, peanut butter cream cheese frosting, and a chocolate peanut butter ganache. All you need are some friends to help you with the extras and a tall glass of milk.

Or just the milk depending on what kind of week it’s been.

Beef and Bean Chili

There’s a constant battle in my house when the topic of chili comes up. No, not the traditional Texan chili (no beans) versus other states’ chili (beans); rather, it’s over how much spice we’re allowed to use. I like my chili spicy – if I can’t taste cumin in every bite it’s not worth it – but my family seems insistent on eating versions that mostly taste like tomatoes (though they would claim they simply like having feeling in their lips, to which I reply, “whimps”).

When I first started cooking on my own after realizing that I could cook anything I wanted to for any meal (I can have quiche for all three meals today!), the second most important culinary realization I had was that I was in control of the spices. I could add cumin, cayenne, chili powder, and jalapenos if I wanted to – and I do.

This recipe is one of my favorite comfort foods; it’s easy to make, relatively cheap, and fills you up. In other words, the perfect antidote for a cold, gray, rainy day. Sorry for the lack of pictures - chili is remarkably tricky to photograph!

Moosewood Cornbread

My first roommate during graduate school had never eaten corn bread. Cue me fainting when I heard the news. Seriously? Cornbread is one step below chocolate in proof that someone up there loves us. You can smother it in butter, you can dunk it into soup or chili, you can eat it with jam. It's amazing food and having a basic cornbread recipe in your back pocket is always handy.

One day I plan to experiment with the different varieties I know exist. I've seen recipes for cornbread with cheese inside it, with aleppo - you name it, I've seen it. However, I keep coming back to this one because it doesn't let me down; it's quick, it's easy, and it tastes good. The holy trifecta of recipes. I think you'll enjoy this one. I recently ate it with roasted eggplant soup (recipe coming soon) and it was perfect smothered in chili.  

Chocolate Peanut Butter Smoothie

My breakfast habits aren't consistent; some days I'm happy with a quick bowl of Cheerios and milk, others only an egg will satisfy, while still others demand cold pad thai (don't knock till you've tried it). But I also tend not to like eating in the first hour I've been awake. It feels too rushed. Unfortunately, this makes eating during the week a bit tricky. I need a meal that can be prepared quickly because I'm generally eating it during the time I should be brushing my teeth before I leave for work.

So when I found this recipe for a chocolate peanut butter smoothie, you can bet I was excited to try it out. Chocolate and peanut butter in the morning? Prep time under five minutes? Chocolate and peanut butter in the morning? (This point needs to be repeated)

Sold.

Pork Meatballs

My sister Emma asked me to explore the wonderful world of meatballs after an experiment of hers went terribly terribly wrong. She mistakenly thought I would have a better idea of how to make them and could walk her step by step through the process. While I really like the recipe seen below, it wasn’t what I would call a crowning moment of cooking glory.

Here’s a sad confession – I don’t like touching raw meat. It’s one of the reasons I don’t have many meat recipes up on the blog (the other being that meat’s really expensive). The full body shudders and the facial expressions I made while rolling the meatballs would have you believe I was elbow deep in tarantulas or something. Luckily, the end result was totally worth subjecting myself to several five minute long hand washings.

Peach and Blueberry Muffins

The temperature dropped suddenly here in DC and I wanted to celebrate one last hurrah of summer while also reveling in the fact that turning on my oven no longer makes people in my kitchen lightheaded. So fruit muffins it was. I never got around to making a peach and blueberry cobbler, so I decided to use both fruits in a muffin.

This is really stretching the definition of a muffin though; it’s fruit bound together by a bit of spongy muffin. Keep your fruit slices large – blueberries whole and peach chunky – to help you stretch summer out for just a few more hours.

Spinach Quiche

Quiche is one of my favorite foods. It sounds fancy but really just involves mixing all the best things in life together in a bowl and pouring it into a pie crust to bake for about half an hour. Seriously, how can anyone not want to eat something whose base involves eggs and cheese?

In the past my quiches were usually made in a pie pan and had fresh vegetables as their base (typically onion, broccoli, and tomatoes). So I was a bit apprehensive about using frozen spinach and cream cheese. It felt almost like cheating. Especially as it only took me about 10 minutes to make, even with a disastrous pie crust (see below). But this quiche is delicious and I really like the use of the tart pan. It gives a more equal ratio of filling to crust, which for a carbofile such as myself is a glorious thing.