Weekend recipe: Salsa!

First off, this is something that my friend Hassan Ibrahim of the desert folk inspired me to make. By making it first, and demonstrating to me that making your own salsa is:
-Tasty
-Quick and easy
-Can be modified however you want and pretty much always comes out good
-Cheap

That's right, cheap. I got everything I need to make this recipe, plus a bag of chips, for $6, and nothing was even on sale. I did already have the vinegar, though. It makes something like 4 big jars of salsa. Can't beat that, unless you think that Pace is salsa.

Without further ado:
Hassan's Salsa, as interpreted by yours truly

Put these ingredients in a food processor (preferable) or blender (not as ideal, but usable) and blend the crap out of them:
5 cloves of garlic
2 tbsp apple cider vinegar
3 medium to large jalepenos
1 medium sized habanero
2 tsp salt

The goal here is to have a lot of tiny chunks, or even a sort of chunky paste, of your chiles and garlic, so that it can flavor the salsa nice and evenly when you blend in the other ingredients.

Now add 10-15 medium sized Roma tomatoes, or whatever tomatoes strike your fancy. You don't need expensive or exotic tomatoes, though they can be tasty. If you're using a blender, chop them into large chunks before you throw them in to help speed up the blending process.

Blend in the tomatoes until there aren't any big chunks floating around.

Now chop up one medium sized onion and 1/4 cup of cilantro (you can do as much or as little cilantro as you want, it'll be good no matter what) and throw them in. Blend until there are no big onion chunks, and start eating!

Note that you have to keep this in the fridge, it'll spoil pretty quickly at room temperature. If you like something a little sweeter, you can substitute fresh peaches (or mango) for half of the tomatoes. Go crazy, throw all kinds of different crap in there - it's hard to go wrong. If you've got something especially good, post a comment and I'll try it.

Return of Weekend Recipe

This one's for you, Eszter. Because you were the only person to complain about the lack of recipes over the last few weeks.

Why? Because it's dirt cheap, but looks and tastes like something you'd get at a fancy restaurant (as an aside, I was once thrown out of the Olive Garden, which was at the time my standard for "fancy" for abusing the breadstick/salad all-you-can-eat policy).

Ahem.

Pasta with Spiced Sweet Potato and Yogurt

First up, this will take 45 minutes, but most of the time, you don't have to do anything. So settle in with a beer or a nice glass of zin.

1# sweet potato, diced into 1cm cubes
2 tbsp olive oil
5 cloves of garlic, crushed

Put these first three items in a bowl and swish them around until the potato chunks are oily and garlicy. Now put them on a baking sheet and bake at 400 degrees for 30 minutes. Take them out halfway through and toss them around to make sure they don't burn or stick.

At the same time, cook half a pound or so of pasta (any kind you like). Set it aside.

Next, put the following in a saucepan and cook until they smell nice (and don't burn them):
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp dried chili flakes (steal from a pizza place if needed)
5 garlic cloves, crushed
1 teaspoon coriander (these are cilantro seeds, did you know that?), crushed (you can do this with the flat of a knife on a cutting board, or in a mortar/pestle if you're a cooking geek)
1 teaspoon ground cumin

Now add the pasta, the sweet potato, and a cup of plain yogurt, mix up, and serve. The other ladies at the potluck will be ashamed of their jello salads and you'll be the toast of the town!

Or something like that.

Weekend Recipe: Lasagna ala Walt

This is pretty darn easy, though a little more complex than the butternut squash lasagna, because in this case, you've gotta make the sauce yourself. But it's still pretty darn easy. And (as the folks who had dinner here last night can attest) super tasty, to boot.

Sauce:
3 cans of diced tomatoes or tomato sauce (or equivalent fresh tomatoes)
1/3c oregano
15 cloves of garlic, crushed
1/2 tsp thyme
1 tsp rosemary
1/2 tsp rubbed sage
1/2 tsp crushed red pepper
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp olive oil

-Put everything in a pot, and simmer for an hour or so. Stir occasionally to keep anything from sticking. When the sauce has cooked down a bit, put it in the blender and blend until smooth (be careful about sauce explosions - do a little bit at a time!)

Lasagna:

12 lasagna noodles (don't use the no-boil kind, they suck)
2.5 c shredded mozzarella cheese
1 c shredded romano cheese
6 oz of cheap bleu cheese crumbles
Fresh or frozen spinach

Cook the noodles. Put some sauce in the bottom of a 13x9 baking pan, then layer the noodles, sauce, spinach, and cheese. Save a little sauce and cheese for the top.

Cover with aluminum foil and bake at 400 deg for 35 minutes. Then take the foil off and keep baking (raise the temp to 450) for another 15-20 minutes, or until the cheese browns a bit on the top. Allow to cook for 15 minutes, serve and consume.

Early weekend recipe

I received a grand total of zero emails, phone calls, comments, or messages of any kind bemoaning my decision not to publish a recipe last weekend.

Yet I am not discouraged. I will continue to annoy my bike geek friends with my silly recipes, until they pry this crappy laptop from my cold, flour-covered dead hands.

Ginger Chocolate Cookies

Officially, you should probably mix the wet and dry stuff separately, but I never do, and these come out great. Original recipe (it's been heavily modified by moi) came from Sunset.

So, put all of the following in a bowl and mix:
2c flour
1/2c butter
1/2c water
1/3c chopped up crystallized ginger (you can find this at a health food store, despite the fact that it's pretty much pure sugar and hence not healthy at all) - chop it up into pretty small bits.
1/3 cocoa powder
1 tsp baking soda
1.5 tsp cinnamon
1.5 tsp nutmeg
1c brown sugar
1/3c molasses
1 egg
2 tsp vanilla
1/2c (or more if you like) chocolate chips

Put golf-ball sized chunks of batter/dough on a greased cookie sheet (or parchment paper, preferably) and bake at 350 for about 10 minutes. Boom! A combination of the best attributes of a ginger snap and a chocolate chip cookie. Seriously.

Weekend recipe

We made this for Aaron and Sasha on Friday night. It's a standby of Sarah's. Super, super good, and really easy.

Butternut Squash Lasagna ala Sarah

9-12 (depending on how many layers you want) lasagna noodles
4 c milk
2 tbsp rosemary (dried and crushed)
6-10 cloves of garlic
4 tbsp flour
1 tsp salt
3# of butternut squash, peeled and cut into cubes
Bit of olive oil
2 c shredded parmesan or romano cheese

Take the cubed squash and dump it in a bowl with a splash (2 tbsp?) of olive oil. Mix everything around to coat the cubes and bake on a baking sheet for 25 minutes at 450 (stir everything around a bit to keep it from burning after about 12 minutes).

While you're doing that, cook the lasagna noodles and prepare the sauce.

Sauce is easy: bring the 4c of milk and rosemary to a simmer in a pan. Simmer for about 10 minutes. As you're doing that, cook the garlic (crushed) in a saucepan in some olive oil or butter. Slowly add the 4 tbsp flour to make a nice rue. When the milk is ready, strain it through a sieve or cheesecloth (to keep the rosemary chunks out) into the saucepan. Whisk to mix and simmer until it's nice and thick, also add the tsp of salt.

Add the squash to the sauce when it's done, then make layers of lasagna (put some sauce on the bottom to make sure the noodles don't stick) using the noodles, cheese, and sauce. Save some sauce and cheese for the top. Bake at 375 for 30 minutes, covered with foil, then remove the foil and bake for another 10. Consume.

Belated Weekend Recipe

Ok, this is a two-parter. But it's not very hard, and it will make your friends think you're an absolute badass at cooking Indian food. It's super good, especially if you're not into super-spicy stuff (or cooking for someone who can't handle the heat) - this dish is extremely mild, but has a ton of flavor. Best of all, it's very easy to make. And it doesn't use any of that heart-attack-in-a-can ghee.

First off, the Naan. This is a lot easier than you think it is. Really.

Walt's Ultra-Garlic No-Ghee Naan

Mix up:
2 cups flour
1 tsp yeast
1 small potato, cooked and mashed (leave the skin!)
10 cloves of garlic, minced or crushed through a press (you can cut this back if you want - in fact I recommend cutting it back to 1 or 2 cloves if you don't like garlic or spiciness)
1 tbsp sugar
1 tsp whole cumin seeds
1 tsp salt
1 c warm H20
1 tbsp vegetable oil

Mix/Knead until you have a smooth dough (about 5 minutes), then cover and let rise for 20 minutes. Divide the dough into 6 portions, roll out as thin as you can, and cook on a HOT griddle (with a little bit of butter if you want them a little greasy) until they're lightly browned (they should also puff up) on each side.

Now, you need something to put on the Naan (actually, you should probably cook this while the Naan is rising):

Carmelized Onion Biryani

Simmer the following for 15 minutes, or until the broth is all absorbed:
1 c basmati rice
1/3 c lentils
6 cardamom pods, smashed (optional)
1 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 cinnamon stick, broken in half
1/2# cauliflower, in pieces
1 large carrot, diced
1 c frozen peas
1/3c raisins
2 1/2 c vegetable stock

Carmelize (meaning, cook with some butter and sugar in a frying pan until light brown) one chopped onion. Add to the rice and veggies. Mix. Serve over Naan.

Weekend recipe: Same-Day Pizza Dough

I spent *years* trying to find a good recipe for pizza dough. Especially one that could be made the same day. With no luck.

Well, I've modified a recipe from my "Bread" book (the geekiest baking book of all time) and I think I've got it. They say you have to do a lot of complicated crap and let things rise overnight. Not so - the key is a little sugar to boost the yeast at the start (sort of like "turbo charging your ride" with ceramic bearings!)

Walt's same-day super-good pizza dough

Starter:
1/4c flour
1 tsp yeast
1 tsp sugar
1/3c warm water

Mix the yeast, water, and sugar in a small bowl, and let it sit somewhere warm for 10 minutes or so - you should have a runny, bubbly batter. Now mix in the flour, cover the bowl up, and leave in that same warm spot for 30 minutes. You should end up with a bubbly, goopy mess. But never fear, that's what you want.

Main dough:
3 1/2c flour
1 1/4c warm water
1 tsp yeast
2 tsp salt
1 tbsp olive oil
starter

If you have a stand mixer, throw in every ingredient *except* the olive oil and mix on the lowest speed with a dough hook for 3 minutes. Then add the olive oil and mix for another 6 minutes.

If you don't have a stand mixer, mix everything in a large bowl (including the oil) and knead enthusiastically for 8 minutes. Yes, 8 whole minutes. Yes, enthusiastically. Suddenly that Kitchenaid isn't looking like such a stupid purchase, eh? There's a reason bakers (at least back in the day) had forearms like Popeye...

Cover the bowl with the dough and put it in it's happy warm spot. Leave it for 2 hours or so, then punch it down and leave it for another 30 minutes or so to rest (and let the gluten relax so you can shape/stretch it).

Boom! You're done. Practice your pizza dough throwing technique and put some cornmeal down on the baking sheet, then go to town.

Final tip: I've found that baking the dough (once you've got it stretched/flattened out on the baking sheet) for 5 minutes or so before adding sauce and toppings works out best.

Making Seitan

By (sort of) popular request (all two of you):

Sarah's "Down with Meat, Down with Freedom" hippie Seitan

Step 1: Purchase some wheat gluten. We get ours from Vitamin Cottage (a health food store chain) for about $2/pound. A pound of gluten will make about 2 pounds of seitan (which is a lot).

Step 2: Take 1 cup of gluten, add 3/4c of vegetable broth and 2 TBSP of soy sauce, and mix in a bowl. You'll need to quickly knead the ball of gloppy dough quickly, 10-15 times.

Step 3: Let the dough rest for 5 minutes, then give it a few more kneads. Break it up into 3 or 4 pieces.

Step 4: Put the dough pieces in more veggie broth, with a few chunks of raw onion, crushed garlic, and slices of fresh ginger (or whatever other flavorings you'd like) and bring to a boil, then simmer for 1 hour, covered.

Boom!

You're done. You can eat it right away, refrigerate it for a few days, or freeze it indefinitely (it thaws nicely and doesn't lose any texture or flavor to speak of). Serve it to your hacky-sack friends at the NORML meeting next week.

Wing night!

Well, ok, so I'm one of those America-hating commies who doesn't eat meat and rides a bike to the farmer's market to pick up organic patchouli and play hacky-sack. Or something like that. So I'm not really having wings. I'm having seitan wings. But as most people know, the chicken is not the important part of wings. The *sauce*, man, the sauce!



Thus, Sarah's nuclear wing sauce recipe (yes, it's really that color)

2c dry cayenne peppers (or 3-4 TBSP powder)
1/2c H20
1/3c chopped onion
6 big cloves to 1 head of garlic, crushed (adjust according to your or your SO's garlic tolerance, and whether you feel like you might score that evening)
1/3c canned tomatoes
1c white vinegar
1 stick butter
1 bottle of "Louisiana" hot sauce (surprisingly easy to find)
1/2 lemon worth of lemon juice
1 tsp honey or agave nectar
1/4c ketchup

Roast the peppers in a pan. Run a fan, or risk tearing up and coughing uncontrollably. Don't burn them. Add enough water to cover the peppers and boil for 5 minutes or so.

Drain the water, put the peppers in the blender with the water, vinegar, and a teaspoon of salt. Blend the bastards.

Cook the butter in the pan until it's all melted. Add the onion, garlic, tomato, and hot sauce. Cook for 5 min or so, then add the peppers and cook for 2 more minutes. Pour everything in the blender and blend again, add all the remaining ingredients, and pour back into the pan. Simmer for 20 minutes.



Now get some fine beers (Avery Hog Heaven or Rascal would be fine choices) and go nuts with chicken, or seitan (which is really good - seriously, especially if you make it yourself), or whatever.

My 300th post...

...is bound to disappoint you if you don't like:
-Anasazi beans
-Crock pots
-Recipes that have nothing to do with bicycles


My brother, who is as far from a foodie as you can possibly get, once expounded on the benefits of slow cookers for making beans. Foolishly, I did not listen to him. But then Sarah acquired a crock pot from a coworker who is moving out of town (and in all honesty, had probably never used it). I mocked said crock pot as a waste of precious kitchen storage space, and predicted that it would do nothing but gather dust.

I have never been so happy to be wrong in my life. Except perhaps for that fateful day in 2001 on Green Mountain, when I saw my first 29er and said that it looked "pretty good if you just want to ride the fire road, I guess."

See, a bicycle tidbit. Now you can stop reading. Unless, that is, you want to blow your taste buds away and make some bean burritos tonight!

Ok, maybe not. But seriously, it's wintertime, and this will make your house smell ridiculously good while it cooks. You could probably even do it on the stove if you turn the heating elements *way* down low.

Presenting: The World's Greatest Bean Recipe.

Keep in mind, this is specifically for Anasazi beans. It probably won't work for other kinds. Anasazi beans are my bean of choice of late because they seem to make me, erm, less gassy than ordinary pintos or black beans. Sarah especially appreciates this.

2 cups Dry anasazi beans
4 cups Water
1 tbsp. Minced garlic
1 Small onion, diced
1 tsp. Salt
1/2 tsp. Baking soda

Put everything in crock pot. Cook for 4 hours (or a little less if you like your beans with more texture).

The best ginger cookies ever

Sorry, I'm not going to follow up (or further defend myself from trumped-up charges of oldness or lameness) yesterday's post. That one has gotten the most comments of any post, ever, which I guess goes to show you that not much has changed since junior high: getting made fun of is my greatest skill.

Moreover, as punishment, I'm posting another recipe. A holiday themed one, of sorts. Take that, heartless bike geeks!

I call these "snaps" but they are very moist and soft, actually. Not snap-like at all. But really, really gingery and good. They are very popular at Avery as a post-ride snack, paired with a tall pint of Rascal or IPA. They are about as unhealthy and addictive as any food item could possibly be without being crack cocaine (erm, is crack considered food?), though.

1 stick (1/2 cup) butter, melted
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup molasses
1 egg
1/3 cup vegetable oil
2 1/3 cups flour
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp dry ground ginger
1/2 tsp cloves
3 oz. fresh ginger, grated (you can use more if you want)

Combine all the dry ingredients, then all the wet ingredients. If the dough is too dry, add some more butter or oil.

Roll golf-ball sized balls of dough in sugar, place 4-5" apart on a baking sheet.

Bake for 10-12 min at 350F.

Sunday recipe!

It's been too long since I've done a recipe on the blog. And this is a pretty easy, and freakin' awesome one. Sarah's mom made this cake (it's apparently a family tradition) for our wedding. Now we make it anytime we can find an excuse.

Sarah's Awesome Carrot Cake

3c flour
2c sugar
1c shredded coconut
2c shredded carrot
2ts vanilla
2.5ts cinnamon
2ts baking soda
1ts salt
1.25c oil
3 eggs
1 small can mandarin oranges (fruit & juice)

Mix everything and pour into 13” x 9”, bake at 350° for ~50min until toothpick inserted into center comes out clean. No need to pre-grease the pan.

Frosting

8oz Cream cheese (softened)
3c powdered sugar
1ts vanilla
2tbl melted butter

Mix 'em all together. Smear all over cake. Consume with gusto.