Garlicky Green Beans with Soy Sauce

This week's recipe is fairly short and easy to make.  It made a great side dish.  The main part of the meal I have shown above was a chicken and vegetable stir-fry and brown rice.

I used the German Red garlic from Hope Valley Farm again this week.  As I mentioned in the Stuffed Portabella Mushroom post, here is another picture of my dog, Rugby, with the garlic!

Ingredients for this recipe:

• Green Beans
• Green Onions
• 2-3 Cloves Garlic (German Red)
• Crushed Red Pepper
• Black Pepper
• Mushroom Soy Sauce

First, bring some water to boiling.  While waiting for the water to boil, take the stems off of the green beans.  Mice the garlic, and slice the green onions.  For this I used about three cloves of garlic, and three green onions.

Parboil the beans by putting them in the boiling water for 1-2 minutes, then remove.

Next, heat up a skillet with olive oil.  Once heated, add the garlic, and then the green beans. 

Once the green beans start to brown, add crushed red pepper and black pepper to the mix, then enough soy sauce to coat the green beans.  Finally, stir in the green onions, turn off the heat, and it is ready to serve!

Garlic "Fingers" (Halloween Themed)

This week's recipe is Halloween themed!  Halloween has always been one of my favorite holidays.  I have always loved dressing in costume and watching horror movies.  Also with my birthday really near to Halloween, I always had themed parties, which sometimes included themed food.  So, wearing my Halloween socks and earrings, I was ready to embark on the journey of making Garlic Fingers (garlicky bread sticks for the Halloween enthusiast).

Also, a couple of weekends ago I visited some friends in New York City to go to see Clara C in concert (who was SO much fun to watch live, and was the artist who's music I was listening to while baking the fingers).  While I was there, I stopped by the Union Square Farmers Market, and looked for some garlic.  I mean, what else am I going to go shopping for while visiting New York, right?

I purchased White Russian Garlic from Cayuga Pure Organics.  From what I tasted, it wasn't as spicy of a garlic as some of the others I've tried (like Asian Tempest Fire).  With it being milder, it was a great all purpose garlic, and worked wonderfully with this week's recipe!

Ingredients for this recipe:

• 1 Packet Yeast
• 1 Cup Warm Water (around 110 degrees Fahrenheit)
• 2 Tbsp Sugar
• 1 Tsp Salt
• 3-3 1/2 Cups Flour
• Olive Oil
• Oregano
• Basil
• Paprika
• 4 Cloves of Garlic (White Russian)
• Marinara Sauce

First, add the yeast to the water with 1 Tbsp of sugar, and stir.  Let sit for about five minutes until it starts to foam (which means the yeast is activated).  You can pass the time by saying fun things to the yeast like, "You all seem like pretty fungis!" or "You seem to be bubbling with excitement!  Or...CO2..."  Or you can pass the time by looking into how cool yeast really is!!!  Or if Microbiology doesn't excite you as much as me...5 minutes really isn't that long a time.

After the yeast has been activated, in a large bowl add one more Tbsp of sugar and the salt to the yeast mix.  Then, slowly add your flour into the mixture until it is no longer sticky.  This is the part that will get messy when you can no longer stir with a whisk and have to use your hands to work in the flour.

Once the dough is no longer sticky, collect in a ball and put in a bowl coated with olive oil, cover with a damp towel, and leave to rise in a warm place.  Since my house is really cold most of the time, I had set my oven to the lowest I could (about 180 degrees Fahrenheit).  Let your bread rise for about 45 minutes.  After the time has passed, and the dough seems to have doubled, punch down and let it rise for another 15 minutes.

When the dough is rising, it is time to make the "fingernails".  Since the cloves of this garlic were quite large, I only needed to use one for the number I needed (16 bread sticks).  I first sliced the clove, and then cut each of these slices in half.  Mince the rest of the cloves.  Measure half a cup of olive oil, and add the minced garlic to it.

After the dough is done rising, flour a surface to work with the dough.  Knead the dough until it is smooth.  Divide it into 16 pieces, and roll each of these into the shape of a bread stick (or finger).  Now is also a good time to preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

Now comes the fun part, making it look like a finger.  At the top of each finger, take one of your garlic "nails" and press into the dough.  Take a knife, and in the center of the bread stick, mark some lines to make it look like a knuckle.  With a brush, paint on the olive oil with minced garlic.  Season with the oregano, basil, paprika, and salt to your liking.

 

Bake for 10-15 minutes, or until slightly golden brown.

Either prepare your own marinara sauce, or heat up some that is store-bought (I am guilty of that this time).  With this, you can have some fun making your own "gory" but tasty scene.

Bone appetit!

And Now for Something Completely Cheesy (Butternut Squash Gratin)

I needed a little more time to finish my main post for this week, so for today I will be posting something shorter.  Look for my other post around Friday.

A few weeks ago, my dad made a wonderful dinner.  There isn't garlic in this recipe, but I just had to share anyways.  The recipe used was this Butternut Squash Gratin recipe from Culture magazine (a magazine for all things cheesy).  Instead of the cheeses they listed to use, Cooperstown Cheese Company's Jersey Girl and Toma Celena were used.

To be honest, I am not usually the biggest fan of butternut squash, but I loved this!  It was a spicy meal that was nice, warm, and gooey for how cool the evening was when we ate it.  It was definitely a tasty way to clear out your sinuses when you are suffering from a cold.

Stuffed Grilled Portabellas!

Do you like grilled foods?  The weather so far has been really awesome this week so let's grill out!  I absolutely love grilled portabella mushrooms, so this was a real treat to make.

For this recipe, I am using one of my favorite varieties of garlic, German Red.  This was obtained from Hope Valley Farm at the Hudson Valley Garlic Festival in Saugerties, NY.  I myself didn't go to this, but my dad's cheese company (Cooperstown Cheese Company) had a booth with many garlicky cheeses.  Again, this garlic is one of my favorites I have discovered so far.  It has such a robust smell and flavor!

The cute dog above is Rugby!  He was getting in the way of my "Garlic Photo Shoot" so I decided to have some fun with him in these pictures.  I took a bunch, so there may be more in future blog posts using this German Red garlic...

Ingredients for this recipe:

• 3 Portabella Mushrooms
• Toma Torino Cheese (Cooperstown Cheese Company)
• 5 Cloves of Garlic (German Red from Hope Valley Farm)
• Mixed Olives (such as these from Pickle Licious)
• 1 Tbsp Lemon Juice
• Olive Oil
• Bread Crumbs
• 1/2 Tsp Thyme
• 1/2 Tsp Oregano
• 1/2 Tsp Basil
• 1 Tbsp Mustard
• Anaheim Pepper

First, get your grill fired up!  If you are like me, make sure you check it multiple times in case the fire decides to die out.

Next, gently pull the stems off the mushrooms.  Put the stems in a food processor, and save for later.

Roughly cut up the cheese for the food processor as well.  I used about an 1/8th of a pound of Toma Torino from Cooperstown Cheese Company.  This is a very delicious Italian-style, Alpine table cheese that I also used a few weeks ago in my "Chicken ala After Manhattans" post.

Now, add the cheese, peeled garlic cloves, and about a couple dozen olives to the food processor.  Process until there are no more big chunks.

 

Add the herbs (thyme, oregano, basil), mustard, and lemon juice.  Mix these in.  Also add in olive oil and bread crumbs until it starts to look like a paste.  Divide this between the three mushrooms, spreading over the top.

Sprinkle some bread crumbs on top of the mushrooms, and then drizzle olive oil over that.  Finish off by adding sliced anaheim peppers (or peppers of your choice, this was just what was from my garden).

When the coals of your grill are ready, keep them to one side, and start the mushrooms on the side with the coals.  After about 4 minutes (when the mushrooms start to sizzle), move to the side without the coals.  We were also grilling chicken, so at this time we added the chicken to the side with the coals.  Cover the grill, and let it cook.  About halfway through cooking the mushrooms, spin so the side facing away from the coals faces them (around 7 minutes).

When the sides of the mushrooms seem all the way cooked (they are now a darker brown), they can come off the grill.  This would be about 12-15 minutes from first moving them to the side of the grill without coals.

With this meal, we also grilled chicken thighs (with Lawry's Salt), and made a zucchini side (zucchini, tomato,onion, Jersey Girl cheese, and spices).

Fried Tempeh (recipe based on Tahu Goreng Kecap)

The other day I was looking through this great cookbook we have, The Complete Asian Cookbook (Charmaine Soloman), thinking about what to cook next.  While wanting to try every single recipe in the book (as I tend to do when looking through cookbooks), I found an Indonesian recipe called Tahu Goreng Kecap (or Fried Bean Curd with Soy Sauce).  Now for a while I had been wanting to try cooking something with tempeh, so I figured it'd be good to experiment with something based off of this recipe!

I had also gone to the Ithaca Farmer's Market when I returned to Cornell for homecoming weekend (scoring a snazzy alumni wine tumbler, and having no one ask if I was a freshmen all weekend!).  For those of you in the Ithaca area, or who plan on visiting at some point, I highly recommend you check out the farmer's market at some point.  I have always loved going to grab brunch (this time around it being a delicious breakfast burrito) and stock up on local produce.  From this visit I obtained two different varieties of garlic to try, one of which I will be using in this recipe.

The ingredients list for this week:

• Tempeh (8 oz)
• Fresh Bean Sprouts (about a handful)
• 4 Green Onions
•  1/4 Cup Mushroom Soy Sauce
• 1 Tbsp Molasses
• 1 Onion
• 2 Cayenne Peppers
• 1 Head of Garlic (Asian Tempest Fire, 6 Smaller Cloves)
• Red Bell Pepper
• Fish Sauce
• Lemon Juice
• Half & Half
• Brown Rice

First, start your preparations for the rice.  I used 'boil in a bag' rice, so I had water heating for it, but feel free to use what rice you have available.

Now it is time for cutting.  The tempeh I bought came in 4 oz cakes (as shown below), so I cut each cake in half and thinly sliced from there.

Thinly slice the green onions, and cut the red pepper into long strips.  Roughly slice the onion and cayenne peppers (you don't need to worry too much, this will be going in a food processor later).

Also, just make sure your garlic is peeled, because this is also going in the food processor.  This was my first time using the Asian Tempest Fire variety, which was a smaller head than what you normally see in the grocery store.  The cloves were surrounded by a dark husk, and it had a wonderful smell!  I had obtained this at the Ithaca Farmer's Market from Humble Hill Farm's stall, and when I saw it was supposed to be spicy, I knew this was one I had to try.

Add the soy sauce, molasses, cayenne peppers, onion, and garlic to a food processor and blend until it is like a puree.  Set this aside for later.

Add some olive oil to your pan and turn on the heat to medium-high.  Fry the tempeh until it is golden brown.  You may need to add some more oil if it absorbs it.  Once golden brown, remove the tempeh to a plate with a paper towel.

Add more oil to the pan and cook the red peppers.  Once cooked, turn the heat down and add the sauce from the food processor.  Now, add a few 'glugs' of fish sauce, lemon juice, and half and half.  Let the sauce cook for about five minutes once it comes to a boil.

After, add the tempeh back in.  When the sauce thickens, add the green onions and sprouts.  And with that, it is ready to serve!  With this being my first time trying tempeh, I absolutely loved it!  It had a somewhat nutty flavor, and seemed to absorb the sauce nicely.

"Chicken ala After Manhattans"

And now for a second week of cooking with my father!  Drinks of choice for this cooking experience were Manhattan for Dad (hence the title of this dish) and water for myself (normally I'd partake, but wasn't a good week to do so...besides it was fun to observe and assist the master at work).  I have to be honest with you all, I had different plans for what I wanted to make, and with the changes made, I really wasn't sure how it'd turn out.  Even with the initial doubts, the end product was fantastic!

My ingredient list for this week:

• Polish Sausage (from a butcher in Cairo, NY)
• Chicken Thighs (about 3.5 lbs cut into strips)
• 1 Sweet Onion
• 2 Roasted Red Bell Peppers
• Marinated Artichokes (1/2 pint from Pickle Licious)
• 4 Large Cloves of Garlic
• Toma Torino (from Cooperstown Cheese Company)
• Mozzarella
• Whiskey
• Vermouth
• 1/2 Cup Whole Wheat Flour
• 1 Tsp Cayenne
• 3 Tsp Cumin
• Butter 
• Whole Wheat Angel Hair Pasta

 First of all, get water heating for the pasta.

Next, roast the red peppers.  Set your oven to broil, and put your peppers (with the stem cut off) on a baking sheet in the oven.  When one side starts to blacken, flip it to another side, and do so until it has been partially blackened on all sides.  Once out of the oven and cooled down, peel the skin off, slice and cut those slices in half.

Slice the whole onion.  I used the same type of garlic I used in the jambalaya, but instead of mincing it, I thinly sliced each clove.

Take this time to also slice up the cheese you have.  I used Toma Torino from Cooperstown Cheese Company, which is an Italian, Alpine table cheese.  I also used cheese trimmings that we had, so the best equivalent to those would be Mozzarella.
 
Once the veggies and cheese are cut, it's time to cut up the meat.  Cut the chicken thighs into strips, and the sausage into chunks.  The sausage was from a butcher in Cairo, NY, and smelled very garlicky!

Mix the flour, cayenne, and cumin together, and put it into a plastic bag with the chicken to coat it.

Now it is time to start cooking everything.  Put olive oil in your pan, and crank the heat to medium-high.  Cook the sausage until it is brown, and almost cooked all the way through.  Once done, transfer the sausage to a plate with a paper towel to soak up some of the grease.

Next, add 2 Tbsp of butter to the pan, and once melted, cook the chicken (since there is a lot, feel free to cook it in batches).  When the chicken is brown, and no longer pink in the middle, take out of the pan, and turn down the heat.  Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

Add a little bit of whiskey to de-glaze the pan, with the rest being vermouth (being the less expensive of the alcohols).  Once the stuff stuck to the bottom of the pan is scraped up and into the sauce, add the garlic, onions and sausage.  When the onions are soft, add the chicken, cover the pan, and let it simmer to ensure the meat is all the way cooked.

Add the roasted red pepper and marinated artichokes and mix.  Finally add the cheese to the top of everything, and put in the oven.  When the cheese starts to brown, take out and it is ready to eat!