home cooking – Page 3 – My Urban Pantry

carrot soup

April 2, 2013Leave a comment

True Story. I made a super-secret pinboard of food I wanted to eat while Z was out of town. Yea…hhhh. I did that and am clearly somewhat embarrassed but it’s out there now and I will live with it. Anyway, I figured I could dream a little dream and make myself dinners that Z would likely not want to eat and have super-amazing super-chic non-boy friendly sandwiches for work brown-bag lunches.

Day 1 – I pulled out all the stops. This is really saying something since I got up at 3 AM for an airport run. I made myself a sweet little sandwich of a baguette spread in butter and topped with fresh creamy mozzarella and roasted red peppers. Not too shabby and supremely tasty. I had bought artichoke hearts to put on it and they were forlornly forgotten in the pantry. For dinner I cooked up a little pot of beautifully orange carrot soup. Dense and thick and warmed with the spice of coriander and cumin. I dolloped on a scoop of greek yogurt thinned with a little olive oil, lemon, and garlic (this recipe eyeballed and minus the cuke). Oven roasted chickpeas roasted with cumin on top. Totally amazing and if you like soup I recommend this recipe-kind of vegetarian and fairly healthful. I even had leftovers to take the following day.

Day 2 – I ate my leftover soup as I watched flight tracker and the landing of Z’s plane in Bangkok while lunching with some co-workers and Z’s mom and grandparents. Clearly something existential happened in that moment for me because that landing broke the wheels off my wagon. For dinner? Takeout burger from Outback… I then proceeded to eat comfort foods like eggs and pizza most nights for dinner (with a few notable exceptions.) Oh, that is other than Friday night when I ate bagel chips with cream cheese-for dinner. So, out of the chic and into the pure comfort of fried eggs and toast. You know, I think I’ll make him a pot of that carrot soup one of these days.

apple glazed meatballs

March 10, 20131 Comment

we tried these most amazing meatballs I pinned on pinterest. The original recipe links back to Better Homes and Gardens. We used turkey for the balls which were glazed with apple cider and soy sauce served over mashed potatoes. We’ve now actually made them twice they were so good. Sweet and spicy and topped with green onions. We halved the meatballs and made the same amount of sauce and used it for gravy. Huh-I want these today!

evoo aside

March 7, 20131 Comment

when Z and I were dating, a whirlwind after actually being friends and youth co-workers for 10+ years, we went out for one New Years Eve dinner. It was at a great neighborhood place in Denver called Parisi. Sounds French but is a decidedly Italian trattoria upstairs and fancier dining in the basement. It being five years ago I can only suppose I had my usual pollo con funghi (chicken with cream and mushrooms) and olive oil roasted potatoes. Brian had pasta all’Amatriciana, was blown away and returned to Orlando after the holidays. I suppose on his return he wanted to recreate his wonderful New Years date or that pasta or impress me by deciding to learn to cook it. I can never be sure. But we turned to foodnetwork.com and found a fairly easy recipe by Rachael Ray and Z went to Publix and bought Rachael’s recommended own label, EVOO. Awesome. Ok…that’s where the story begins. Rachael Ray. I have a fair amount of both respect and derision for her. I hate her slogany cheese. Yum-O! EVOO. Sammys. But on the other hand she’s taken her interest in food and parlayed it into something much more-an empire. …..and I get her magazine. There it is. I said it. I got something like five years for $5. And I usually flip through it and leave it on the table as a donation at work to whosoever would like to read it. But recently I spied a recipe that beckoned to me. Sloppy Moussakas. Something of a bastardization of sloppy joe’s and moussaka. A tomato rich ground meat concoction with a pinch of cinnamon and the piece de resistance cheesy bechamel but in this case, loaded on a buttered hamburger bun. I often think Rach’s (can I call her Rach?) recipes call for too many ingredients but I suppose they often combine two separate recipes and look for the best pieces of each. I think it’s an unnamed hallmark of her cooking style. It was an easy recipe and it smelled really great. I added more tomato paste than required and it didn’t suffer for it-probably like 3 tablespoons instead of 2 teaspoons. I also managed to smother both sandwich and french fries with that delicious creamy sauce. As Rach would say, ‘Delish!’

because, well, everything we eat isn’t bad for us…

March 3, 20133 Comments

in my 2013 year of refining we are cleaning out the ‘storage’ room also known as the third bedroom. In the process I have released a few years worth of hoarded UK and Australian food magazines. I have one small pile to go and I am now keeping it on a shelf in the kitchen until such time as I can bear to let them go. As I flipped through I found a fresh salad recipe that looked perfect for mid-winter. It is so easy you wouldn’t need a recipe, but I’ll include one below. I can’t find a link online and it was a pull out card in the magazine courtesy of my favorite euro-chef Jamie Oliver. Carpaccio of apples with bursts of juicy pomegranate seeds. I will say I tried out the fantastic whacking on the pomegranate with a spoon method and I got so many seeds easily-great life hack. I crunched through far more than made it on to the plate. Creamy pine nuts are a new favorite. It was a great weeknight salad – easy and good for you. Happy days!

heyyy muffaletta

March 2, 20132 Comments

this fat Tuesday we tried two new incarnations of the muffaletta that weren’t purely sandwiches. A muffaletta is a strictly New Orleans born sandwich of cured meats, cheese and olive salad that can rightly be called big mouth. The friday night before fat Tuesday we dropped in to one of our favorite restaurants, Tibby’s for a hit of dinner. We don’t usually have apps as we really want a beignet after dinner and apps and dessert are just too much. Our server talked us into trying one though – a muffaletta spring roll. Bizarre right? To me, a spring roll is rice paper and may or may not be fried. This came to the table as two large scale wonton wrapped bombs! The standard meats – capicolla, mortadella and ham, provolone cheese and a vinegar hit olive salad wrapped in a pasta wrapper and deep fried. I didn’t actually expect it to be any good at all. They served it with a kind of mayo based creole mustard dipping sauce. They turned out to be tasty in a bar food kind of way. I might order them again but likely not since I’d rather have a beignet and this put me over the top.

A few days later I shot a skype to Z with a slideshow of Muffaletta inspired foods that included this burger. He thought it sounded pretty good so we added it to the weeks dinner menu. It’s our standard turkey burger but topped with a slightly mod-ed pile of muffaletta toppings – I pan fried the salami to crisp it up, added provolone and a homemade olive salad that include gardiniera I made over the summer, a heaping spoon of capers and red pepper flakes. We didn’t follow the recipe exactly but it tasted perfect.