Veggie Burgers and Jambalaya

The Food Nanny
March 25/26 2008

Meal 1: Veggie Burgers, Southwest Macaroni Salad, and Blue Moon Spinach with an Orange & Honey Vinaigrette
· Heat the burgers in a baking dish at 350° until hot (10 mins). Toast the rolls and serve with your favorite condiments !
· Toss and dress the salad.
· Serve the macaroni salad at room temp.

Meal 2: Jambalaya, Black Eyed Peas, Braised Greens
· Heat the jambalaya in a sauce pan with enough water or stock to create a stew-like consistency, but not soupy. Adjust the seasoning and add a bit of tomato paste (or even ketchup) and/or hot sauce if you desire it. Allow to simmer 5 minutes or so and serve.
· Heat the peas in a pan or microwave and season with some butter.
· For the Greens there are a few options, just do yourself a favor and cook ‘em bright green, not army green!
1) Sauté briefly in olive oil just to wilt as per spinach.
2) Sauté some onions and garlic, then add the greens and a bit of water and braise the greens to your desired doneness.
3) Sauté some bacon or bacon substitute then the onions and garlic and proceed as above. Imitation bits work well but add them after adding the onions.

Trivia: Leafy greens are a fabulous source of many vital nutrients, and we are coming into their premier season-so expect to see more. How does the calcium, for example, in kale compare to that found in milk?

Poor Man's Pasta

A versatile, easy to make recipe using only eggs: Olive Oil Flourand some water, not pictured.

This recipe was found in Lidia's Italian cookbook at the Urbana Free Library -no that is not the right title, but the gist of what I remember from it. We used it to make the lasgna sheets, the Linguini from a couple weeks back and also for a home experiment involving ricotta and our raviolli cutters- not sure it they were good enough yet to call raviolli, but when we get to that point, you'll be sure to know as we feature it with some yummy spring or summer garden veggies.

Pasta is amazing to make by hand. It is wonderful to combine 4 simple, beautiful ingredients and create something so versatile, so easily taken for granted, and such a staple for so many people. And while yes, pasta is cheap, the packaging is bulky, it travels a far distance, is most likely cheap because of agriculture subsidies, has more ingredients than necessary, and making it from scratch with local ingrediants** really makes it a decadent part of the meal and has the bonus that you know all that went into it, which makes me feel a lot better putting it in front of Asher (who eats it up!)

**eggs (our backyard) flour (tomanous farm in Mahomet) and water (we love the mahomet aquifer!) with organic olive oil from the coop (sorry while we were inspired to grow Olives after visiting New Zealand (that country has everything) we don't have a local source)

Poor Mans Pasta

2 Cups Flour

2 Eggs

1/4 Cup Olive Oil

3 TBSP Water

To eliminate any confusion when you count the number of yolks, I doubled the recipe for the pictures.

How To:

Sift Flour and make a well in the center

Whisk Eggs

Pour Eggs into well of flour

Add the olive oil

Mix gradually with a fork, your goal being to evenly wet all of the flour. Continue until you have a crumb and then knead the crumbs together with your hand within the bowl. Once it is all stuck together, knead on a clean surface (flour shouldn't be necessary), for about 8 minutes, until the dough is shiny and elastic feeling.

At this point, wrap in plastic wrap or throw in a bag and allow to rest for at least 20 minutes. In my minimal experience with this dough I have found out two things that have made it easier to roll out. Make sure you knead it enough and allow it plenty of time to rest, the doughs that have sat for 40+ minutes have been better to work with.

After the much waited anticipation, open up the dough, cut it into three pieces, wrap two back up and start the rolling process. First using your hands to form the dough into a flat patty of sorts, more square (what is a square patty called?) Roll in all directions, pick it up to flip often and don't hesitate to stretch it with your hands, pulling is fine- it is not delicate. Roll it as thin as you can, our dear Lydia says it should be about 10 inches wide and 15 inches long... I don't have the patience to measure and when making lasagna noodles just make sure I could get two noodles to fit the shapes out of each rolling. Another tip: roll on a wooden surface if you have one, I used a cutting board that worked really well.

Cut to the desired shape and cook. For cutting long noodles, flour the to of the dough heavily, fold into thirds (flour between all layers of touching pasta) and cut to the width you like. For lasagna, lay out your dish and cut to size you want to work with (use your imagination). Cook in a pot with enough water, for about 6 minutes. The noodles freeze great, just put them on wax paper on an cookie sheet in small piles and freeze, bag up once they are frozen.

Enjoy! This was a lengthy tutorial, but really it was easy!

The Food Nanny
March 11/12 2008
Meal 1: White Lasagna with Handmade Sheet Noodles, Green Salad, and Blueberry Cobbler
· Heat the lasagna uncovered at 350° until hot and the cheese on top is melted and browned.
· Toss and dress the salad..
· Take the cobblers out of the fridge before dinner to bring them up to room temp. Warm them in the oven until just hot and maybe bubbling a little. Top with the biscuit and serve.
Meal 2: Old World Stuffed Cabbage, Bulgur Salad, Whipped Sweet Potatoes
· Heat the cabbage in the oven at 350°,uncovered, until the sides are bubbly. Allow to cook another 10 minutes.
· Serve the bulgur at room temp.
· To heat the potatoes either use a microwave or bake in an ovenproof dish. Alternately you could warm them in a pan, add some fresh butter and milk and re whip with a fork or whisk.

Trivia: Some of you got Moore Family pasture raised turkey in your stuffed cabbage. What are some of the benefits of pasture to both animals and people ?

Making Tamales

Wow this was a lot of fun this week. I love mass production so getting a system down for wrapping the tamales was right up my alley. Ben, my star ingrediant assembler made all the fillings and then it was my turn. Banana Leaves are beautiful things to work with, tamales can also be wrapped with corn husks, someday maybe we will try those. So after unfolding the banana leaves it was awesome to see how big they are- taller than either of us. They were cut into pieces to wrap the tamales, about five inches across, with the grain of the leaf. Ben roasted off the squash:
We mixed up the masa in our kitchen aid until it was spongy.
Cut ties for the tamales by ripping strips of the parts of the leaves that didn't cooperate with us.
Lay out the leaves and smear some masa on them. I found stationing up 4 at a time to be great help, so leave plenty of counter space for assembly.After smearing on the masa, make a well in it for the sauce (ben made a lovely green mole), set up some squash on the mole and then fold up your tamale by bringing in the sides so that they overlap and folding the top and bottom.
Use a tie to keep them together, and you have yourself a beautiful little package.To cook them, they need to steam for about an hour. We filled our stock pot with some water, balanced a plate on a jar and loaded up the plate with tamales. It worked great. They really stack well on one another.Vegetarian tamales are wonderful and a lot lighter than their typical counterpart that are made with lard- vegetable oil (crysco) is a great substitute.

Tamales and Shepherd's Pie

The Food Nanny
March 4/5 2008

Meal 1: Roasted Squash Tamales, Adobo Black Beans, Wild Rice & Sweet Corn Salad
· Serve the corn salad at room temperature.
· Heat the beans in a pan or microwave.
· To heat the tamales you want to, ideally, steam them. A microwave will work well with a small water dish accompanying the food in the machine. A vegetable steamer insert in a pot will work well too. Steam for about 1 minutes or until a knife point inserted and removed comes out hot. Alternately you can wrap them in foil or a covered baking dish with a bit of water and bake them in the oven for10-15 minutes.


Meal 2: Shepherd’s Pie and Roasted Brussel Sprouts
· Heat the pie in the oven at 350°,uncovered, until the sides are bubbly and the potato has browned a bit.
· Heat the sprouts by tossing into a sauté pan with some hot olive oil. Toss and add a splash of water the steam them through. Serve immediately.


Trivia: What are your tamales wrapped in ? What other material is traditionally used? What influences the choice of wrapper ?