Fast and Furious Black Bean Empanadas

Just when I was beginning to think chipotle peppers were so two years ago, I pulled some out of the freezer. Once opened, canned chipotle peppers can be frozen. When ready to use, just remove them and chop them into the dish you're preparing. These are spicy empanadas, use 1 pepper or 1/2 if you don't like spicy foods. The chipotle lends a subtle smokiness. Ready-made pastry dough and canned black beans make this a fast dish. These are easy to put together once you have all the ingredients ready.

Fast and Furious Black Bean Empanadas

Serves: 4 Yield: 1 large empanada

1 ready-made refrigerated pastry dough

1 cup dried black beans, soaked and cooked, or 1, 14 oz can black beans, rinsed and drained

4 spring onions, chopped

1/2 cup or more cream cheese

2 chipotle peppers, chopped. Handle peppers with gloves.

1/3 cup tomato chunks, from canned tomato chunks

1/2 cup shredded cheese or queso quesadilla

Preheat oven to 400 °F on the broiler setting. Move the racks to the lowest setting. You will broil for the first 10 minutes, then turn the heat down to 350 °F and bake for another 30 minutes.

Directions:

1. Add chopped green onions to a large mixing bowl. Add in cream cheese and chopped chipotle peppers. Stir to combine.

2. Add in black beans and continue to stir together until combined. The beans should be coated. Adjust for taste. I didn't add any salt, and found that the chipotle gave it enough smoke and salt.

3. Roll out the pastry on a large baking sheet or cold pizza stone. You should be able to unroll the pastry directly onto the baking sheet or stone. Add half of the prepared filling to one-half of the pastry. You'll fold it over on one side like a calzone, or the way you'd fold a sheet of paper in half. Spread the black beans in an even layer. Leave a 3/4" border.

4. Fold the pastry on top of the black bean mixture and fold up the edges slightly. Take the tines of a fork and push the rolled edges down to seal in the stuffing.

5. Bake at 400 °F on broil for the first 8-10 minutes. Turn heat down to 350 °F and bake another 30 minutes.  

Garden Fridays: June 24

Belgian weather has been rainy and cool, but the garden continues to grow.


Pots of tomatoes, eggplants, red bell peppers, pear melons, pole beans, cucumbers, basil, red cabbage, sugar snap peas, broccoli, lettuce, mint, strawberries, and swiss chard.


Ida gold tomatoes, Siberian tomatoes, eggplant and red bell pepper


Trellis, the pole beans have already moved beyond the trellis. Oops.


Ida gold tomatoes in a pot with basil


Spring goods, sugar snaps are giving up, broccoli is ready to be eaten, and red cabbages are growing painfully slow.


C'mon cukes!


Trellis and pots with patio

Rhubarb Cake

Trust me you want to try this. This is one of the best cakes ever, and it's simple to prepare. Recipe and instructions are from my friend, Kyle. I think, I'd make her proud.

Pretty watermelon colors

Rhubarb impresses, even the peels are gorgeous

Peeled 

and chopped

Batter resembles cookie dough more than cake batter

Set in a pie plate

Sifted flour and sugar on top

Rhubarb cake out of the oven

Rhubarb Cake

Rabarberstaart by Kyle M. 

Yield: 1, 9" cake or tart

Ingredients:

approx 1/2 cup butter, at room temperature (100 g)
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 brown sugar (together 200 g sugars)
4 tbsp milk
2 eggs

1.5 tsp vanilla (or 2 packs vanilla sugar)

approx 1 and 1/4 cups self-rising flour (200 g)

3-4 rhubarb stocks, peeled and diced

2 tbsp flour and sugar sifted on top, or omit and serve dusted with a bit of powdered sugar.

1 tsp fresh grated ginger, optional

Special tools: mixing bowl, hand mixer, vegetable peeler.

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 °F (180 °C) and grease a 9" pie plate or cake pan.

2. Prep the rhubarb. If it is young you won't need to peel it much. 

3. In a large mixing bowl, cream together the room temperature butter, when it gets light and fluffy, add the sugars and beat together until combined and fluffy. Scrape down the sides of the bowl as you go. 
4. Add in 4 tbsp milk, and continue to mix. Add the eggs one and a time, incorporating them into the batter. When you add the second egg, also add the vanilla extract, and grated ginger if using. Beat until everything is incorporated. 
5. Add the flour and mix until combined. The batter will resemble a slightly wetter cookie dough batter (it will not look like cake batter).
6. Stir in the chopped rhubarb, and remove the batter to a greased pie plate or cake pan. Smooth the top, and lightly sift 2 tbsp flour and sugar on top.

7. Bake 30-40 minutes, until golden on top, or a fork or toothpick inserted comes out clean.


This recipe was updated on March 23, 2012 to reflect steps that made the preparation much easier. 

Veg Biscuits and Gravy

I had forgotten how deliciously divine biscuits and gravy can be. Now I came to this dish late in life, as a vegetarian, I never really got lard biscuits and sausage gravy, until a dietitian friend of mine made biscuits and vegetarian soysage gravy. Then I got the whole appeal of biscuits and gravy. I got the recipe from her, and have never looked back.

When a friend of mine posted this on FB the other day, I couldn't help but look, and it was a good thing it was in the morning, because this made an excellent brunch. I watched the video instructions and quickly got to work. If you don't have buttermilk, thin some yogurt with water, or add 1 tsp to 1 cup milk; as for all-purpose, you could use pastry whole wheat flour, but any healthier and you'll end up with tough biscuits. 

Here's the video link from Food Wishes; the ingredients are listed below the video on the site, but I'll add them here as well:

Biscuits (video and recipe here) 

Yield: 12 plus extra cut outs

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt (I would recommend half a tsp if you use salted butter, they turned out too salty for me)

7 tbsp cold butter, cut into thin chunks or slices, chilled in freezer

3/4 cup buttermilk (I used a little bit extra)

When ready to bake, set biscuits on a ungreased cookie sheet and bake at 425 °F (218 °C) for 15 minutes or until golden on top.

Mushroom and Chickpea Gravy

Serves 4

1 cup whole mushrooms, such as white button, wiped clean

oil or butter to saute mushrooms

white wine vinegar

2 tbsp butter

2 tbsp flour

2 cups milk

(basic white roux ratio: 1 tbsp butter: 1 tbsp flour: 1 cup milk)

salt and pepper to taste

1 tsp oregano (optional)

1/2 cup cooked chickpeas (optional)

Note: For a plain white gravy, omit mushrooms and chickpeas, and season with salt and pepper; for soysage gravy, heat up some veggie soysage and crumble them in right before serving.

Directions:

1. In a wide skillet, heat up a little oil or butter for the mushrooms. Medium-high is good. Add in the mushrooms whole and stir around. Continue to cook on medium-high heat until water/moisture starts releasing from the mushrooms (5-7 minutes). Turn heat to medium. Continue cooking for 5 more minutes. Drizzle 1 tsp or so white wine vinegar on top and stir around to make a nice sizzling sound (it will look impressive for brunch) then turn the heat off, and allow mushrooms to cool.
2. In a medium sauce pan, melt 2 tbsp butter over medium heat. Now, take a whisk and start stirring. Slowly add the flour to the pan while simultaneously whisking. This will ensure that no lumps form. Keep whisking. Now, if using all-purpose flour the mixture will darken slightly, and give off a cooked pleasant smell. Once this happens, pour in the milk slowly, while whisking.
3. Making gravy is simple, it just requires patience and attention. Keep whisking! This movement will keep flour from sticking to the bottom, and will prevent the sheeny skin (in Guju, malai) that hot or boiled milk gets when heated and allowed to cool. Whisk another 10 or 20 minutes, or until thickened. Yep, keep whisking.
4. At this point season with salt and pepper, if serving a simple gravy it's ready. If adding mushrooms and chickpeas, chop the mushrooms coarsely and add them to the pan, along with 1/2 cup cooked chickpeas. To make a soysage gravy just add cooked soysage crumbles to the white gravy.
5. Serve over or alongside biscuits. Eet smakelijk!

Flemish-style white asparagus

First off, I am in love with the Belgian cooking show Dagelijkse Kost. In love! The online videos are useful in language learning, it focuses heavily on Belgian sourced ingredients, and the recipes are a great way to learn more about modernized Belgian cuisine. Take for instance, asperges op Vlaamse wijze, white asparagus lightly poached then topped with a parsley-egg-butter sauce. The show has weekly menus accompanied with videos, recipes, shopping tips, and price estimates.

My friend, Nico, was impressed with my ability to understand Chef Jeroen Meus's Leuvense dialect, but this is precisely the kind of Dutch I'm learning. I attempt to speak Belgian Dutch - er - Flemish. Plus, 3 minute video segments on cooking are perfect. The context is largely understandable, I can hear and listen to the way the ingredients and methods are supposed to sound like (trust me onion, ui, felt like a god-awful tongue twister). 

One quick thing on dialects. While all Belgian Flemish schoolchildren learn standard Dutch/Nederlands, one will find that dialects are the form of spoken language. They vary from town to town, and by region. So, if you are from West Flanders the dialect there (although they still speak Dutch/Flemish) tends to skip a lot of sounds, and if you are from Limburg, you tend to make the rolling "rrrr" sound in the back of your throat, but somehow not a guttural "rrrrr." Whereas in Leuven, it's a mixture of geographical placement (being so close to Brussels) that the Flemish in a way sounds like a cross between the soft intonations of French together with an English person speaking very softly (totally not accurate). It has a wave-like rhythm, and I do realize, I'm beating this whole thing into the ground, but basically as a language learner, I'm learning standard proper Dutch at the university, but no one understands me here - and I'm sure if I were placed in Holland, no one would understand me there either. I speak most efficiently among other non-native language learners, and if you try speaking Flemish/Dutch with locals they'll often have difficulty understanding you, realize you are a foreigner, and automatically switch to English. This is frustrating to language learners, but is truly a Belgian Flemish trait. They never expect you to fully converse, always appreciate the attempt to speak, and because they know and speak English completely fluently, will do this to accommodate you. 

Anyways, learning the language here has been fun. I've just completed exams for Level 2, and feel like I've gotten everything I wanted out of the courses. I'm able to make simple appointments or requests over the phone, can buy international tickets at the train station, and with a little help of cooking shows, can now pronounce most of the fruits and vegetables I buy at the city markets.

I made this recipe from Dagelijkse Kost, a cooking show on the Belgian TV channel Eén.  I won't lie, I had to watch the video several times, and maybe hit Google Translate once. Enjoy or as they say here, eet smakelijk!

Asperges op Vlaamse wijze

Flemish-style Asparagus

Serves 2

Ingredients:

1 dozen or more fresh white asparagus

3 eggs, hard-boiled (1 tsp vinegar if hard boiling them)

1/2 cup chopped curly parsley

salt and pepper to taste

fresh nutmeg (probably less than 1/8 tsp)

1/2 cup butter or 100 g butter

Directions

1. Add the eggs, vinegar, and enough water to a small saucepan. Bring it to a light boil and cook the eggs 10 minutes. Add the eggs to a cold water bath to cool. Peel when cool enough to handle.
2. Lightly wash the asparagus and set aside. Take a vegetable peeler, and while holding the tip, peel all the way around.
3. Set the peeled asparagus in a pot filled with cold lightly-salted water. Heat the pot over medium, being careful not to boil. Once the water simmers, turn it off, and let the asparagus sit in the warm water for 5-10 minutes. Then set the asparagus on a plate until ready to use.
4. Place the butter in a small saucepan, and heat it until it simmers. You'll be clarifying the butter, so skim off the white milk solids on the top and set aside. Meanwhile, peel the eggs.
5. Mash the eggs coarsely with a potato masher. Add in parsley, butter, salt and pepper, and nutmeg. If too thick add in a 1-2 tbsp of water until the sauce has a nice consistency.
6. Set the asparagus on plates and top each with half of the sauce.

Since I served this for dinner, I used up the discarded buttery milk solids by frying up some veggie sausages, and although definitely not part of the cuisine, it rounded out the dish nicely.  

Eet smakelijk!

Garden Fridays: June 3

The only garden-related activity that I’ve got going on is watering and eating. Snow peas have filled out nicely and are producing many beautiful pods. I’ve been picking handfuls everyday for the past week.



Check this out: the raised/elongated make-shift bed before:


and after:


Spring pots before:


and spring pots now:



New garden goods: beans


Cukes:


Tomatoes:


And a snapshot of the pots with their trellis:

Seitan Tikka Masala

This dish is similar to the tofu tikka masala kebabs, but uses seitan instead. While it comes together very quickly, let the seitan marinade for at least 30 minutes. Use the time it's resting to prep the salads and papads. Serve the seitan tikka over a salad garnished with lemon wedges and papads. The seitan looks kind of funny, but has a chewy meaty taste. I would recommend trying it. 

Tikka marinade/sauce

Naked seitan (looks like brown sponge chunks without the sauce) 

Dressed up seitan 

For the marinade/sauce:

½" piece of ginger, chopped fine (optional)
2 cloves garlic, chopped fine
¼ tsp red chili powder
½ tsp coriander seeds and 1/4 tsp fenugreek seeds toasted and ground together (omit fenugreek if you can’t find it)
¼ tsp salt
1 tsp cumin
1 tbsp paprika (smoked paprika, if you have it)
3 tbsp yogurt (or heavy cream)

For the tikka:

1 package seitan rinsed and patted dry, cut into chunks

1 red bell pepper, cut into strips about 1" thick

1 green bell pepper, cut into strips about 1" thick

Olive oil or peanut oil for stir-frying

For the salad:

Any lettuce or salad mix greens will do. Can also serve with grated carrots, corn, tomatoes, onions, lettuce. Garnish with lemon wedges and papads.

Directions:

1. Mix all ingredients for the marinade, taste, and adjust seasonings if necessary. Add in seitan to the marinade sauce, coat well, and let marinade for at least 30 minutes.

When ready to cook:

2. Cook bell peppers in 1 tsp of oil (e.g. olive oil or peanut oil) over high heat until they are sauteed and cooked. Stir frequently. Once done, remove from pan. Should take 4-5 minutes.

3. Turn heat down to medium and add 1 tsp of oil to the pan. Add in marinaded seitan along with the tikka sauce. Cook on each side 3-4 minutes. The bottom of the pan will start to dry up and will stick.

4. Add the peppers back into the pan along with ¼ cup of water. Stir together. The sauce will thicken up in less than a minute. Remove from heat and serve immediately.