Quinoa Potato Cakes

I  was served these simple potato pancakes at Mount Madonna, a retreat center where I attend a biannual yoga retreat. The food is always simple and usually tasty (sorry, I can be a bit of a snob). These pancakes were so delicious and satisfying, I could hardly believe they had only two main ingredients.

I just made a large batch and froze them just the other day, some we had for dinner, some will come with us on our big road trip this week and the rest will await our return as a simple addition to a future dinner.

You can get as fancy or a simple as you like with these cakes. 

Quinoa Potato Cakes

Ingredients

2 cups cooked mashed potatoes

2 cups cooked quinoa

olive oil

salt & pepper to taste

 optional:  1 teaspoon cumin powder or some sauteed leaks or ...whatever strikes your fancy.

1) Preheat the oven to 350 F. Make your favorite mashed potatoes and allow to cool enough to handle or use leftovers from the night before.

2) Same with the quinoa, we often use it in place of rice with a stir fry, in fact I cook it in the rice cookers.

3) Mix equal part in a bowl, add salt, pepper, cumin etc... to taste.

4) Form into patties.

5) Place on a well oiled baking sheet or into a cast iron skillet. I use the spray olive oil, you can brush them with olive oil or melted butter.

6) Bake for 15 minutes then carefully flip them and brush or spray with more olive oil. Bake for another 15 minutes.

7) They should be nicely browned. If you use a skillet, they will take less time, cook on medium heat, flipping them after 5 minutes. Cook for another 5-10 minutes.

8) Serve with as a side dish with  steamed greens, or a big salad, with a pork chop or sausages. They are great by themselves or try any of your favorite condiments, we like them with my tomato chutney.

They are great the next day heated up for breakfast or lunch !!

Coconut Curried Rice

Coconut curried  rice has become a favorite around here...it makes our usual stir fry dinners much more exciting. Don't let the coconut in the title throw you off. My husband claims to dislike coconut in most dishes, when I first served this rice to him, I didn't mention the name or the ingredients. He loved it and was surprised it had any coconut at all. In fact it has coconut oil, coconut milk and unsweetened shredded coconut.

I first had a version of this recipe at a recent yoga retreat, Talya our Ayurvedic chef, served it for one of our dinners. I have made my own modifications, of course, mostly to make it quicker.

Curried Coconut Rice

Ingredients
2 cups white basmati/jasmine rice or 1 cup brown basmati rice
2 tablespoons coconut oil
1 teaspoon brown mustard seeds*
1 teaspoon whole cumin seeds *
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground coriander
1/2 teaspoon ground tumeric
3/4 cup coconut milk
1 1/2 cup water
1 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons unsweetened shredded coconut

* I love having these whole spices in my cupboard, if you don't have them use ground cumin and skip the mustard. I'm sure it will still be tasty.

1) In a small saucepan or caste iron skillet, melt the coconut oil and add the spices, both whole and ground. Cook over medium heat for 2-3 minutes, stirring to keep from burning. Set aside.

Here are all the spices before cooking.

2) I use a rice cooker which is soooo easy. If you cook much rice at all I recommend getting one, they are not that expensive.
If you don't have a rice cooker at this point you will place the water, coconut milk and salt into a pot and bring to a boil.

3) Rinse whatever kind of long grain rice you plan to use, remember 2 cups for white rice and 1 cup for brown rice.

4) Place the rice, coconut, cooked spices into your boiling water/coconut milk. Stir well, cover and simmer for 45 minutes for brown rice and 20-25 minutes for white rice. Remove from heat and allow to sit for 10 minutes before serving. Salt to taste.

OR

 Place the rice, coconut, cooked spices, water and coconut milk into your rice cooker and turn it on. Once it is done, allow to sit for 10 minutes before serving. Salt to taste.

5) Gently mix it around a bit and serve.

Vegetable Wellington, great NYE dinner.

If you hosted both Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner like I did, you may not want to cook for New Year's Eve. I have already made reservations at my favorite country French restaurant, Cafe Sparrow.

However, if you are feeling adventurous, this vegetable Wellington is a show stopper. It is tasty and not too hard to make. A lot of the prep can be done ahead of time. Right now stores should still carry puff pastry. In some places it is considered a holiday item so I stock up. If you want to make it vegan you can use filo dough instead, it is slightly trickier to work with.

I had this dish a number of years ago, prepared by my friend, Laurie. I was so impressed. Recently I asked her for the recipe, by then she had moved on to an entirely plant based diet. She couldn't remember where she got the recipe. Undaunted I looked online but without the benefit of the name of the dish, I searched and searched, finally I just decided to reproduce it from memory. I loved what I came up with, then a month ago she found what she thought was her original recipe.

I still think I like my rendition best ;-)

Laurie's Vegetable Wellington

Ingredients

1 package puff pastry
1 egg
1-2 cups grated cheese, Parmesan or cheddar or jack
2 cups cooked mushrooms
1 cup steamed greens, spinach or chard
2 cups sliced and steamed carrots
1 cup sauteed onions
1 cup sauteed bell peppers

1) I have found that the best way to work with puff pastry is to defrost it in the fridge. That way it takes only minutes out of the fridge to be ready to use.

2) It's important to get all your vegetables ready ahead of time. What vegetables you use is very flexible as long as you cook most of the moisture out of them so your puff pastry doesn't get soggy.

3) Beat one egg with a tablespoon of milk or water. The egg wash also helps to keep the puff pastry from getting soggy.

4) Preheat your oven to 400 F. Line your loaf pan with parchment paper, and spray with cooking oil.

5) Once you remove the puff pastry from the fridge and its packaging, you will want to work fairly quickly. You want to line the pan carefully with puff pastry and brush it with egg wash. You can see it doesn't have to be perfect but do mash the seams together.

6) Now you are ready to layer the vegetables. I suggest putting the carrots on the bottom instead of something wetter like the greens or mushrooms, otherwise I just layer them for nice color contrasts.
I sprinkled the cheese between some of the layers.

7) Now cover  with your last piece of pastry, crimp the edges together and paint with the last of your egg wash and make some slashes across the top.

8) Bake at 400 F for 40-50 minutes until the crust is golden brown. Remove from the oven and then remove from the pan once it cools enough to handle. Allow to rest another 5-10 minutes before slicing. Serve with a large green salad, hearty soup or meat dish. I have to say if you have leftovers, you are lucky, it is great the next day gently warmed in a toaster oven.

French Lentil Salad !!

I discovered French lentils in Paris, no big surprise I guess. I had no idea they were that different from other lentils I have know. They seem to be quite popular in Paris, all sorts of  lentils in fact. I had them as side dishes several times and once as a salad. It is the salad made with these special French lentils that I want to try and recreate.

I went to the bulk section of my local market and found them, French lentils. They are tiny and green. Before you cook them for any recipe, you must sort out any small rocks or other bits that are not lentils.

They cook very quickly, which is a nice feature. I was quite pleased with my first try and will definitely keep making them. Here is what I did and what I would do differently next time.

French Lentil Salad

Ingredients

1 1/4 cup uncooked French lentils
1 bay leaf
2-3 springs fresh thyme
water to cover for cooking

juice of one lemon
I teaspoon Dijon mustard
one clove grated garlic
two small sprigs of thyme, chopped ( or 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme)
1/4-1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup olive oil

1 cup feta cheese in cubes or crumbles
3-4 radishes
2 cups baby greens or lettuce
1-2 tsp olive oil to drizzle
a few grounds of fresh pepper (optional)

1) As mentioned above you should sort the lentils then rinse them.

2) Place them in a large saucepan with plenty of water to cover them plus a couple of inches.

3) Bring to a boil, then allow to simmer for 25-30 minutes. All the recipes I read stressed NOT to over cook them. So check them after 20 minutes, they should be easy to bite, not too tough but still a bit "al dente".

4) While the lentils are cooking make the vinaigrette. In a small bowl add the juice of one lemon, a clove of grated garlic, a teaspoon of Dijon mustard and the chopped fresh thyme.
Mix together.

I took this photo before I added the thyme, oops.

 5) Slowly whisk in the 1/2 cup of olive oil.

6) Once the lentils are cooked, drain them well and add vinaigrette. Mix it in gently.
     At this point you can serve them warm or chill them for later use.

7) When you are ready to serve, thinly slice the radishes, chop or crumble the feta and wash and dry your greens.

8) To plate, I originally made a bed of butter lettuce, which you will see in the photos. It turned out to be hard to serve and eat that way. In the future, I will make a lovely mound of lentils in the middle of the serving plate and surround it with baby greens, the feta cheese and the radishes. Drizzle the greens with olive oil, lightly dust with fresh pepper.

Spaetzle goes American...are you sure ??

Bob is obsessed with spaetzle ever since we discovered it. He wants me to use it in any dish that would normally use pasta.
We did try it with pesto recently, it was OK but not great. I may need to tweak either the spaetzle or the thickness of the pesto.

Mac and cheese is one of Bob's favorite comfort foods, mine too. It seemed worthwhile to replace the mac (macaroni)  with spaetzle.
While the title of this post assumes mac and cheese is an American creation, I would have guessed it probably originated somewhere in Germany.

Nope it's French !! Here's what wiki had to say:

"Pasta and cheese casseroles have been recorded in cookbooks as early as the 14th century's Liber de Coquina, one of the oldest medieval cookbooks. It is a French dish of parmesan and pasta and was brought to England in the 14th century. A cheese and pasta casserole known as makerouns was recorded in the famous medieval French cookbook The Forme of Cury, which was written in the 14th century.^[7] It was made with fresh, hand-cut pasta which was sandwiched between a mixture of melted butter and cheese."

Now that I am thinking about it  I remember watching French chef extraordinaire, Jacques Pepin, make a version of mac and cheese using five different kinds of cheese, he just used whatever cheese "ends" he had around. They included a brie and some blue cheese !!

I did a similar thing in my version, using the last of a white cheddar and Parmesan, as well as a sharp orange cheddar.

 I decided to add roasted cauliflower too, it pairs well with cheesy sauce.

This recipe is similar to my gourmet mac and cheese.

Spaetzle cheese bake

Ingredients
 2-3 cups roasted cauliflower
1 recipe of spaetzle
1-2 cups grated cheese
1 jar Alfredo Sauce
1/2 cup milk
2-3 tablespoons bread crumbs


1) Preheat oven to 350 F, grease a glass baking dish. I chose to have a thinner layer of mac and cheese so I used a 9 by 13, you could also us a square dish.

2) Roast 2-3 cups cauliflower pieces for  30 to 45 minutes at 350 F.

3) Make one recipe of spaetzle, drain and set aside.

4) In a bowl mix together the Alfredo sauce, milk and grated cheese.

5) Stir in the roasted cauliflower and the spaetzle.

6) Pour into your greased baking dish, top with bread crumb.

7) Bake for 30-40 minutes, allow to cool for 5 minutes before serving, because there is nothing worse than burning the roof of you month on melting cheese !!

8) Serve with a large green salad and hope for leftovers !!