Food: Favorite Recipes

I love cooking, and I've given away enough food that I need to post some recipes!  Most recipes I find online and then add to or tailor as needed or necessary, so here goes nothing.

Granola: My Pride and Joy. 

1. Granola. 

I tried a few different recipes, and the one that finally worked for me was a mixture of different oils and oats and nuts.  It started from the Smitten Kitchen recipe, and I went with the following to make it more my style.  Also, I use grams so I can more effectively utilize my kitchen scale.

100 grams each hazelnuts, pumpkin sees, sunflower seeds (or just 300 grams any nuts you like)

150 grams cashews (because I love cashews)

300 grams oats (the normal ones, nothing cut or fancy)

Handful flax seeds, chia seeds, and bran

200 ml coconut oil

3 Tablespoons olive oil

Drip of honey

2 egg whites (whisked until frothy)

Cinnamon. I put a lot in, sometimes during, sometimes after I spread it out.

(Note: this original recipe called for maple syrup, which I wasn't keen on.  I use my glass measuring cup, measure the coconut oil, add the olive oil, then add honey until I get to 220 mL of fluid, not including the eggs)

Oven is at 300 degrees.  All nuts are crushed, and ingredients combined.

Spread all on parchment sheet in a tight layer. 

Bake 45-55 minutes, turning over carefully half way through.

When browned and dry the way you like, remove.

Add some dried fruit (I like cranberries) and keep in airtight container. 

Second recipe you may like is here. I found this one a bit like crack, and couldn't stop eating it. So, I stopped making it.

Ingredients in Wait. 

I make many soups.
Carrot Ginger and Lemon is my favorite.
This Pumpkin soup is incredible.

I've tried a lot of green soups (spinach, broccoli, etc) and found them wanting.  My yellow and orange blends are far more satisfying.  Peas didn't blend so well for me.  I prefer the spinach cooked. Etc, etc.

A friend also told me she puts red curry paste into her soups sometimes.  And that news made me put red curry in my pumpkin soup.  I've more often made butternut squash soup with a similar method.  And it is amazingly easy with a bit of coconut milk.

An average K dinner. 

A few things here.
I eat this spinach daily.  I saute it in some garlic (that I prepare every week or two in a hand blender) and it takes about 2 minutes.  Usually, I heat up whatever I'm eating for leftovers and while it cooks, I make spinach.

Here is also some salmon, which came from this recipe. This one also does salmon well. Salmon is easy to buy here, and easy to cook in the oven.  In fact, it is the only meat in my kitchen ever.

The squash is another variation on the soup that I love.  Here's a recipe for squash with golden beets (which I've never been able to find) and tahini.

Prep, and Prep, and Prep, and Prep.

Another soup, the ingredients of which you see here, is Mexican Vegetable Soup.  Chop up a bunch of peppers and onion (and I replace the corn and beans with zucchini and mushrooms) and you have yourselves some soup that tastes like taco night.  (Not really, but there is a hint of Mexico in the cayenne and the spices).  Also, it is relaxing to cook this when I need to zen out in prep for a few hours.

Cook all the things!

This shows a few things on the stove. The back pot is tomato sauce.  That's coming up next.  The side is pumpkin soup (I would guess).  The pan with all the eggplant and zucchini is a green curry in the making.

I don't have a recipe for this, but I chop up these things I love (zucchini, eggplant, onion), and put them in the skillet with some olive oil until they are brown and I want to eat them.  Then, I put the curry paste in the skillet, get it warm, and add some coconut milk until it looks good.  I can elaborate more if necessary, but that's the basics.

Tomato sauce in the making. 

Finally, one of my favorites.  Homemade tomato sauce.  Spicy tomato sauce, to be exact.  I remember I tried to make spaghetti sauce once in Cambodia (for my family) and failed so miserably, so this is a nice success to have.  The answer does seem to be "give it more time to simmer" and "add some spices" and that's what I figured out how to do.

This can be used for a variety of things:
- I put it with fried eggs and spinach sometimes, as one of my favorite comfort foods.
- I made this baked eggplant and mushroom dish that tasted amazing.
- I made a version of this shakshuka with it that was also quite good.
- These spicy mushrooms would have worked well with it.

Next up in the cooking this week:
Butternut squash: Roasted whole (saw that in a magazine), Steamed (also magazine) and roasted (perhaps for a soup).
I made this warm eggplant salad with hemp seeds and kvass because it seemed Russian-esque and was pretty good.  That recipe needs tailored some though, so I'll play with the rest of the ingredients.
And very little else. School's almost out and it's time to think about travel.

Dessert!

I made this two ingredient sorbet with a pound of raspberries and strawberries, since it is the season.  Please enjoy the recipe, which is a pound of fruit, frozen, and a quarter cup of honey.  Beautiful.

Happy Cooking!