Returning and Comments

Hello, ducklings.

First item of business is that I intend to post again. Go easy on me. I'm rusty.

Second is that I have changed the comments settings for our blog. We have been getting these oh-so-lovely spams about China and Viagra and 20 ways a person can make money real quick. I don't want to read that. I don't want you to have to read that. Lord knows, I don't read Sarah Elisabeth's fish recipes and think, "But what about Russia?"

So going forward, us Leisurely Breakfast kids will be reviewing all comments before they get posted. If you're not a robot, you should have no problem getting your comments through to us. And if you are some kind of Big Brother blog monster, well...we're watching you back.

an apology to the masses

we've been kind of terrible about posting lately. sarah elisabeth has been crazy busy and I've been crazy busy in a different way and gina marie is...busy too? anyway, we have been cooking but there hasn't been the time to post. we're getting back on track now, which mostly involves me getting pictures off of my phone and onto the interwebs. thank you to the folks who have put up with our silence; I'm certain that the void in your life was incredibly difficult to bear and we here at leisurely breakfast respect and appreciate your strength. you are all patriots to us.

apple crisp

I made apple crisp the other day and I forgot to post. That one is pictured above...

Last night I made it again, with some changes. What I learned: change is bad.

Both times I made this I was working with some ingredient constraints. I wanted to use my America's Test Kitchen Classics cookbook recipe (it's the Cook's Illustrated recipe), but it called for six tablespoons of flour, and we had a whopping two! I made do with oatmeal, and it worked well. Here's the recipe I ended up using successfully:


Topping :

2 tablespoons flour
5 tablespoons rolled oats
1/4 cup brown sugar , packed
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon table salt
5 tablespoons unsalted butter , cut into little pieces
3/4 cup slivered almonds, chopped


Bottoming:

6 or 7 apples
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 1/2 tablespoons lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon grated lemon zest from 1 lemon

to make the topping... I mixed all the dry ingredients together with a wooden spoon. Since I don't have a food processor, I did my best to beat and mash the butter, which I had cut into little pieces, into the sugary mix. Then I did my best to mush the almonds in too. It was super lumpy, but that seems to not be a problem. I put it in the fridge, and got on with the filling.

for the filling ... peeled and chopped the apple into 1 inchish pieces, dumped it into the dutch oven I ended up cooking the crisp in, mixed in the sugar, zested the lemon, and then squirted in the juice. I stirred that around, flattened it out, and then spread the topping out over it. I popped it (uncovered, lower middle rack) into a preheated 375 degree oven for 40 minutes, and then pumped it up to 400 degrees for a final five minutes. came out amazing!

Here's what not to do if you are out of lemons: substitute lime juice and grapefruit zest. It tastes.... lime-y. not quite right. edible, but just a little weird.

It looked yummy though! (and was totally edible - just a little citrusy and not a great match for ice cream!

double garlic soup

I put off posting about the soup the night I made it because, frankly, I was disappointed. true, I didn't follow the recipe exactly, but it just didn't have enough garlic. but then I had it for lunch the next day and you know what? there was plenty of garlic flavor that just needed a little time to show up.

below is the recipe as I made it. if you want to follow the new york times' directions, I've already shown you how to do that. this here is the soup as I made it. and while it needs improvement, I think it's pretty damn good.

you need:

• 6 bulbs of garlic chopped
  
• 3 garlic scapes, chopped
  
• 3 + tablespoons earthbalance
• 1.5 teaspoons fresh thyme leaves
• 3/4 teaspoon kosher salt
• black pepper to taste
• 1 large yukon gold potato, peeled and diced
• 1 quart vegetable broth
• 1 cup soy creamer
• the juice of 1/2 lemon
• grated nutmeg

you do:
in a soup pot, melt the earthbalance over medium-high heat. toss in the garlic and saute for about 3 minutes. I think earthbalance may cook faster than butter, so keep an eye on the garlic so that it doesn't burn. add more earthbalance if the garlic is starting to stick to the bottom. add scapes, thyme, salt, and pepper and saute for 5 minutes.

stir in the potato and broth and turn the heat down to medium. simmer for 20 minutes, or until the potatoes are soft. mix in the creamer and turn off heat.

take yer trusty hand blender and puree the soup. (be careful not to splash yourself - the soup is still hot!) stir in the lemon juice and add salt and pepper to taste.

then put it away. the next day, heat yourself a bowl of soup, sprinkle nutmeg and thyme leaves on top, and enjoy. oh! also - this recipe doesn't make a lot of soup. it makes maybe 4-5 servings. mess around with the proportions if you're cooking for the kids.

a call for polenta recipes

my friends, I have a dilemma. I love polenta. I love all kinds of polenta. this is not the dilemma. the dilemma is that all the recipes I have for polenta involve making the polenta, not what to do with the polenta once it has already entered into existence. sometimes I cut rounds of polenta and grill tofu and basil and tomato on top of it. sometimes I cut rounds of polenta and saute it with salt and pepper. but that is it. that's all I've got. and that is what we call a dilemma.


please send polenta recipes. or suggestions. or encouragement. I just need to re-jump my imagination. I need a slap on the back of the head from the polenta fairy.

step up succotash

when I was in high school, one of my friends prepared a dish called 'white trash succotash' it consisted of corn, lima beans, salt, and butter and - despite its offensive name - was ridiculously tasty considering the few ingredients. she simply sauteed the corn and lima beans in butter, sprinkled salt over the whole mess, and scooped it out to eat. tonight I wanted something easy, quick, and not terrible for me. what I came up with is what I'm calling Step Up Succotash, since it's a step up from the succotash I first knew and is also a step up from the days where calling things white trash was acceptable.

• 1 pepper, chopped into small squares
• 1 onion or 2 small scallions, which is what I had lying around
• 1 can of corn
• 1/2 avocado

saute the onion/scallions in oil or butter until they start to get that nice smell. toss the pepper in and saute, followed shortly by the corn. add a pinch of salt and mix every so often, making sure nothing is burning. after about ten minutes, take it out of the pan. I had some brown rice cooking, so I put it on some of that. then chop half an avocado into the bowl and mix everything up. add salt to taste.

it's pretty. also, it was clean-tasting and fresh. I think this is one of those recipes that is going to have variations upon variations. next time I might try lima beans as well. the point for me was not to have something mind-boggling delicious, but something that tasted like the food it was. I feel like there are endless possibilities. I kind of want to look up different succotash recipes and see how they can be revamped.

in other news, I had incredible veggie sushi this weekend. if you're ever in brooklyn and find yourself in park slope, go to mura. stat.

butternut squash & sweet potato soup (vegan)

I have had a bowl full of butternut squashes on the counter for awhile now - ever since mi- december when the last farm share drop-off happened. They were starting to get moldy and rotten in some places, and I decided it was time to take action.

I took them all out of the bowl, tossed the rotten ones, and cut off the bad piece of the only partly gone ones. Then I seeded them and peeled what was left with our new peeler (hallelujah!!) and cubed it up. I ended up with probably about 3-4 cups of cubed butternut squash. I also have a lot of sweet potatoes left - although those are doing much better. I got out 4 of those, peeled them, and cubed them up too. Then I diced an onion (actually half an onion and two big farm share shallots) and about 4 cloves of farm-share garlic. I tossed all of that (squash, potatoes, onions, garlic) into a big soup pot.

Then I got out a box of Imagine No-Chicken broth and dumped that in there.

It didn't quite cover, so I filled the Imagine box with water, shook it up and poured in water until it covered everything in the pot. I turned on the burner, gave it a quick stir, and covered it.
Thinking better of it, I uncovered the pot about 5 minutes in and let it simmer on medium heat for about 40 minutes - stirring every once in awhile, but mostly watching TV.

When the veggies were nice and soft (poking with a fork yielded no resistance) I took out my hand blender and blended the soup nice and smooth. I added a little salt and some pepper during this process as well.

Overall, the soup came out pretty well. It tasted a little too "chicken-y" for my taste. I think next time I might add more water and less broth, maybe put some celery in with the veggies, and stir in some soy yogurt at the end to give it some creamy depth. I also wonder if I'd sauteed the onions and garlic in some oil first, if that would have made a difference.

On the plus side, this soup had a much more liquid feel to it than a lot of the blended soups I've made. I think it's because it has no beans - but it's a nice change! I'll post pictures of the finished product next time I heat some up!

superbowl dip

We had a superbowl party, and in its honor I made a big casserole dish full of many-layer dip. This is pretty infinitely modifiable.

Preheat the oven to about 350 degrees F.

in a casserole dish of some kind:

spread one can of vegetarian refried beans across the bottom

spread a jar of salsa over the beans

tear two corn tortillas into pieces and spread evenly over the salsa

spread a large container of premade guacamole over the salsa

sprinkle a bag of shredded cheese (sharp cheddar is good) over the guac

spread a can of black beans over the cheese

tear two more corn torillas and spread them over the beans

spread a container of sour cream over the tortillas

chop one large tomato and spread over the sour cream

spread another layer of refried beans over the tomatoes

sprinkle another bag of shredded cheese over the top

put it in the oven for about 45 minutes.

take it out and let it stand for about 5-10 minutes so that it solidifies either dip chips right into the dip or use a spatula/cake server to but hunks of dip on plates for mobile chip dipping


This recipe is infinitely modifiable. I think this version could use more cheese maybe more salsa, maybe less sour cream. more black beans and a layer of mango salsa would change it up completely.

Another option is to add the guacamole and sour cream after it has cooked or put them in separate containers. I like them in it though.

minimal minestrone. as in, where's the broth?

I decided that I wanted to make minestrone soup. I was having an unknown number of people over to play games, and I have never made minestrone soup. So I found a recipe, and then didn't follow it. yay! The recipe, like most of them, came from allrecipes. The original is at: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Corrigans-Minestrone/Detail.aspx
It involved a lot of chopping. Luckily, I had help. and lots of potatoes and carrots. yay farmshare!

I chopped 4 big carrots and sarah emily chopped 4 big potatoes. We also chopped a yellow onion and a lot of garlic, I don't remember how much. We put that all in a big pot with some oil oil and started sauteeing.

Then I added a can of tomato paste, a can of red beans (kidney?) and white beans (canellini maybe?) and a can of corn from gina marie's cubpoard. then I stirred. then I added a can of vegetable broth and a 1.5 quarts of water. and then some more water. (another two cups?). This soup ended up suffering from a lack of broth, so I think it would have been appropriate to add even more water at this point. maybe in total 2 cans of broth and 2 quarts of water.




I am trying to remember what spices I added, but since this was 10 days ago, it's hard. I remember that I had fresh oregano, I think, and gina marie chopped that, I think, and we added a lot of that. also salt and lots of pepper, and I bet I put some dried basil in too, because that's yummy. I think probably whatever you like works well. at that point I think it looked like the picture to the left.

I let it simmer for about 45 minutes at this point - I wanted to make sure the potatoes were nice and tender. I added some more water too.

Finally, I added a package of whole wheat elbows and cooked it for another 15 minutes or so. Then Mark stirred.

Then people ate lots of it with crusty bread that Lyssa and Max brought, which was excellent. And then there was very little broth left, and it looked like the picture to the left. Luckily though, people brought more food to the potluck, so the joy did not have to end!

Kristin brought yummy salad with special candied nuts and amazing brusselsprouts, as demonstrated below.


The salad is a little blurry, but it had amazing nuts and was pretty colors and very tasty. and she did not bring it on a pink plate. I just only have pepto pink plates because that's what I got from my grandma when she moved to Cali. the brusselsprouts were seriously to die for. so good. am I spelling brusselsprouts rung? blogger is upet with my spelling.

There was also a serious desert option, which was insane because we were all so full and had played celebrity, mafia, and I think something else too, before we even got to desert. also there was cider and whiskey. obvi. I bought Jim Beam for the occasion even though I'm not supposed to be spending money.

Christopher, in a moment of devious awesomeness, made a blackberry thingy (crisp? buckle? compote with topping?) in the casserole that I made blueberry buckle in to take to his potluck and then left the dish at his house. so we took matching pictures. except we didn't have vegan condoms this time. c'est la vie. it was yummy. but not vegan because he used strawberries and cream instant oatmeal packets for the topping. which I think is hilarious.



There was also leftover pumpkin chocolate chip squares, but you'll have to get that recipe in another post!

onion soup could use some improvement

So I want to start by highly recommending something. It is vegetarian, but not quite vegan, and it tastes yummy, and it comes in a box and all you have to do is heat it up:
Pacific French Onion soup is very yummy, you just heat it up, and, add croutons and some grated hard cheese, and, voila!

It's just broth though, so I thought it would be yummy to saute some onions to put in the soup. This came out pretty well, but could have been better. I put some olive oil in the pan and then chopped a very pungent onion from the farm share and sauteed on low for like 20 minutes. The onions weren't as translucent/brown as I wanted them, but we were hungry, and I figured that I'd add the soup and they would keep getting limper.

sauteeing onions:


It came out perfectly nice to eat, but I think it would have been nice if the onions had been much limper and more caramelized - who wants crispy onions in their french onion soup? next time I think I will put the heat on a little higher and saute the onions a lot longer. c'est la vie.


We ate it with some bumpin' vegan garlic bread though, which sarah emily made and I'm hoping she'll post about it soon :)