Jenmenke

Road Warrior

meatless monday

Meatless Monday Twenty Four

Chipotle Style Bean Burritos

I’m not deluding myself to think this is anything special or original. I’ve just promised to chronicle the journey and here we are, two weeks behind the calendar year (I should be on Meatless Monday Twenty Five. Twenty Six if you are counting tonight.)

We’ve eaten those meals, mind you. I just haven’t written about them. And WHY haven’t I written about them? Because I forgot to take any pictures. Maybe I’ll throw up a post about the walleye fish fry. (that sounds sick: to “throw-up” a post. But I actually quite like it, so I’m leaving it.) The fish was amazing. I just gobbled it all down and realized too late, the error of my ways.

This is the meal we ate a week ago today. On a busy soccer night. After a string of days eating out. Fried junk food type places. Well, not really junk food, but regular eat-out food: reuben, fries, burgers, yuck-o. No, not yuck-o. Yummy. But yuck-o when you look back on it.

So it was with wearisome predictability that Dave demanded (no, not demanded. but that’s what it seemed like to me when he asked “what are you making for dinner?” that’s a demand in a passive-aggressive way, isn’t it?) a meal at home.

Good Lord, like I should know what we are having for dinner! And a Meatless Monday dinner, no less.

So it was to be:

Bean Burritos with Fresh Salsa, Cotija and Cilantro-Lime Rice.

For the Cilantro Lime Rice:

Make according to directions, but also add the juice of one lime and 2 teaspoons each of cumin and salt (for 2 ricer-cooker size cups of uncooked rice). After the rice has cooked, immediately fluff and stir in 1/2 cup chopped cilantro.

For the Fresh Salsa:

Chop a large (or a couple small) good tomatoes. (I still had the one from that dead vine a week before). Finely chop about 1 small onion, more or less to taste. Chop 1/2 cup cilantro. Stir together with the juice of 1/2 lime, salt, pepper, a few dashes of hot sauce. A chopped avocado takes it to perfection. I just didn’t happen to have one. A dash of chili powder can be good, too. I didn’t add that this time though.

For the Beans:

Open a can of Kuners Southwestern Black Beans with Cumin and Chili spices. Add some cheese and microwave till hot.

For the Cotija:

Crumble.

Chop some lettuce and assemble burritos.

Try to talk your two kids into trying some fresh salsa.

No? Then I’ll eat it all. Thank you very much.

And while I’m at it, I will have one of these:

Honest to Pete, don’t the makers of Corona (aka Coronita) know their beer looks like insipid pee? Yuck! I chose the Coors Light, the color camouflaged by the brown bottle. But isn’t that Coronita cute?

Meatless Monday Twenty Something

I’m too lazy to go look what number it is.

I just replied to about a months worth of comments. I’ve been so buried here in soccer land I can’t even tell you. But here’s the great thing: it’s almost over! Yes, I do feel a little bad about saying that, but never-the-less, I am happy about it. I am also happy that my kids’ teams have each had 2 wins this year. Never-to-before in all the years of soccer have we won games. No, I’m not kidding about that. We are farm kids playing the big league, affluent suburbs. So any win is a huge win. So that part has been fun. Reffing, rain, rescheduling games, rice-paddy fields, coaching dramas… that stuff? Not so much… ENOUGH!

I think it’s Meatless Monday Twenty Four? Anyway, who cares. Just know that this one contains shrimp. Because even though there are some die-hards out there who don’t consider shrimp meatless, I, in fact, do.

Let me just ask this before going any further: Is it only me, or are enchiladas a real pain in the pooper? So many tedious little steps…

BUT FOR THE GLORY OF THE TASTE I WILL TAKE ON THE TEDIOUS!

These are fabulouso!

Shrimp & Cotija Enchiladas with Salsa Verde

(serves 5, with two enchiladas each) (why 5? Because that’s what fit in the pan) (please, please, please don’t think any of these measurements are holy. Use what you have. Substitute what you don’t.)

  • about 40 uncooked medium shrimp, peeled & deveined
  • 1 t cornstarch
  • 1 t cumin (for marinade)
  • 1 t chili powder
  • 1 pinch ground coriander
  • 1 T sesame oil (yes, this is odd for a mexican dish, but trust me on this)
  • 1 cup — more or less — of salsa verde (I had canned from garden, but also use store bought)
  • 1/2 cup plain yogurt
  • 1 cup chopped cilantro, divided
  • 1 cup chopped green onions divided
  • 1/2 red onion sliced thinly, then cut into quarter rounds
  • 1/2 cup chopped green pepper or poblano.
  • 1 small hot pepper, chopped, use amount to taste
  • 2 T chopped fresh oregano or 1 T dried
  • 1 t cumin (for cooking)
  • 10 corn tortillas (freshly bought, non refrigerated is best)
  • 6 oz crumbled Cotija cheese (about 1/2 a block of it)
  • sour cream, chopped tomatoes, lettuce & avocado for garnish

Preheat oven to 35o.

In a shallow dish combine shrimp with corn starch, cumin, chili powder, coriander & sesame oil. Set aside for 30 minutes to an hour. (mix it up. I hadn’t yet in this photo)

In a shallow dish (pie plate, which I transferred to after this photo was taken), combine the salsa verde with the yogurt, most of the green onions and 1/2 cup of the cilantro.

In a large saute pan, heat about 2 T of oil. When hot, add the onions and saute for about 2 minutes until softened. Then add the peppers (both hot and mild), oregano and cumin. Cook over medium heat until fragrant and softened, about 4 minutes. Add the shrimp and any accumulated juices to pan and cook, stirring constantly, until shrimp just turn pink. Don’t cook any further than that.

*optional: I hate to leave any flavors lying around, only to be washed down the sink. If you are using a cast iron pan like I did, you might have some crusted on deliciousness after cooking the shrimp. Add about 1/4 c water to pan and scrape up browned bits until pan is clean. Add this to the salsa verde.

For the tortillas: this is a constant torment for me. Enchilada recipes ask you to do various things with corn tortillas as a first step to assembling enchiladas. Some say to fry briefly in oil, then to coat with your sauce. Some say to heat briefly in a damp towel in either the microwave or the oven. I don’t know if it is the tortillas we have around here or what, but those processes are both a pain in the butt, and disastrous for me. The tortillas get too soft and fall apart. I have found that if I use the corn tortillas available in on the shelf and not the refrigerator section of the grocery store, and I haven’t refrigerated them for weeks, I don’t have to do anything to them. If, however, I only have refrigerated tortillas in the house, I will grudgingly perform the fry-in-oil step first because otherwise they are too hard and will crack as you roll them.

With that said, do what you need to do in order to be able to roll your tortillas without them cracking.

In a 9×13 pan, spread a thin layer of your salsa verde sauce over the bottom. Take a tortilla and dip both sides into the salsa verde mixture. Then, place 4 shrimp and some of the onion/pepper mix onto the center of a tortilla, top with about 1T of cotija and roll up. Place in pan seam side down. Repeat with the rest of the tortillas.

Top with remaining sauce and any extra shrimp, onions and cheese you have. Bake at 350 for about 20 minutes.

Remove from oven and sprinkle with remaining 1/2 cup of cilantro and green onions, then serve with bowls of sour cream, chopped lettuce, chopped tomatoes, avocados and any other delicious condiment you can think of.

Swoon over your own brilliance.

Check off one more Meatless Monday.

Meatless Monday Twenty One!

Three Cheese Griller with Veggie Salad

This was a surprise Meatless Monday, because I didn’t even know I was doing it until I was almost done.

Dave is out of town, kids are going three different ways. I’m on day four of refinishing my kitchen table in mid ninety degree heat… End of May = crazy times.

Yesterday, inbetween coats of polyurethane, and knowing we were heading out of town for the weekend, I took stock of the “crisper.” Really. What a silly name for a drawer that seems create slime more than it “crisps.” It is always with great trepidation that I dig to the back recess of the “crisper.” You just never know what you’re gonna find.

I was amazed to find some mighty fine looking produce in there!

You see, Dave has been doing a lot of the grocery shopping the last couple months. I’m not sure why. I actually think he might like it. Is that even possible? I quite simply could never walk into another grocery store and be happy. Give me a cow, a garden and a freezer. I’d rather make something from scratch than get in the car and go to the damn grocery store.

But you already knew that about me, didn’t you?

While I love the fact that Dave is doing a lot of the shoppping, it is also very dangerous from a “crisper” perspective. When I shop, I know what’s in there and I try to use it. I don’t like to waste things. Well, except celery which seems to enjoy turning to jelly in my “crisper.” I really enjoy wasting celery.

So it was with shock and awe that I found a beautiful package of haricots verts. You know the ones? They cost like six bucks or something! What the Hell? Doesn’t anyone tell that guy if he’s gonna shop for me he has to act like a MISER?

Actually, he did just say to me the other day, “As long as I’m doing the shopping, you don’t get to complain.” I can’t even remember what it was that he was referring to*, but add the beautiful package of haricots to my list of complaints. Money doesn’t grow on trees, you know!

Beans don’t keep forever, so I thought I better cook ‘em up and use them. Along with a nice little head of broccoli he bought.

And, yes, I also cooked some of that beetle-infested God-forsaken asparagus.

Then I ran out of time and threw it all in the fridge. I forgot about it until tonight. With Dave out of town, two soccer practices and a choir concert, I had to come up with something to eat fast.

So I whipped up some of the salad dressing I made for the Keeping Up with the Beans, last summer:

  • ~ 1/4 c balsamic
  • ~ 1 t dijon mustard
  • ~ 1 t honey
  • salt and pepper
  • wisk in enough olive oil to make a medium thick emulsion (mine was about 1/8 c)

Then add whatever it is you are trying to get rid of. For me it was wrinkly grape tomatoes…

I also added some garbanzo beans and toasted pine nuts. Wished I had cucumbers. Thought about craisins.

I wanted to call that dinner and be done. But I’m not stupid. I know my kids would faint if that’s what I served them. So I cut up the rest of a loaf of ciabatta that was getting hard:

And grated three kinds of cheese

And cooked it on my new griddle set-up (revamped my Thermador cooktop. Very cool. More on that another time.).

I wished I had some butternut squash that a commenter recommended for adding to grilled cheese a while back, but sadly I did not. Still. The sammies were a hit.

That left approximately four minutes to eat before having to leave for the first of the evening’s activities.

Now, I’m off to eat the rest of the salad. It’s my birthday today, so I’m just sitting here waiting for good things to happen.

* I remember what he said I couldn’t complain about now. It was those stupid boxes from Costco. He’s too lazy to use the big bags I bought for that purpose. So he puts everything in the huge corrugated  boxes they have available, then throws them in the recycle area for me to collapse on recycling day! Which was today! And why I suddenly remembered. Funny how that happens…

Meatless Monday Twenty!

So, I had bookclub on Monday this week. Didn’t prepare ahead and have Meatless Monday on Sunday. Didn’t cook meatless for my family before I left. Didn’t do much of anything, really. Except have a rotten, horrible day. I can’t remember everything that happened, but Monday was bad, bad, bad.

I was late to bookclub as usual, but what to my wondering eyes should appear?

But a Sheilabird cooking Meatless Monday for Jennie, so dear!

Yes, it’s true. My friend Sheila cooked a Meatless Monday meal in my honor! Well, I don’t know if it was really in my honor, but she said it was, and I am choosing to believe her. Of course, I didn’t have my camera. And of course everyone was freaking out about me taking pictures with my iphone. So they all stink. The pictures, I mean. Not the guests. But really! What’s so bad about a nasty picture on my blog? No one reads the stupid thing except you guys, and you don’t care, do you?

Anyway. It was lovely. Sheila’s bookclub dinners always are. She served something she made last fall called Indian Relish (Is that right, Sheila? I’m too lazy to call you) over cream cheese with those wafer-thin crackers that remind me of ice cream cones. The relish reminds me of pepper jelly, sort of sweet/onion/hot… So good

And she had an awesome zinfandel.

Which I promptly spilled on her brand-new-not-even-finished-quilted tablecloth.

So uncouth.

The main event was what she calls Green and White Pasta, even though we all know pasta isn’t really white. Maybe the white should be the green onion. Anyway, it’s a recipe that originally called for broccoli that she has morphed into a conflagration of green veggies. Any you have on hand, really. She used asparagus (AND DIDN’T CALL ME FOR ANY!), peas, thin green beans and green onions.

Yuk! I just found a wood tick stuck into my shoulder blade. I saw it in the mirror last night and thought it was a zit. Sorry. I guess I thought you’d want to know that…

This is how you make it:

Green & White Pasta, serves 8

  • 1 lb Pasta. Pick a fun shape. She used Campanelle, but also likes Gemelli.
  • 6-10 cloves garlic minced (to taste)
  • 4 T olive oil, divided
  • 1-2 t red pepper flakes (to taste)
  • 1 small bunch asparagus (figure about 12-16 spears)
  • 1 cup green peas
  • 1 bunch green onion
  • 1 small bunch chives (if you haven’t killed them all with Round-Up yet), chopped/minced.
  • 1 small bunch haricot vert (thin green beans)
  • juice from 2 large lemons
  • 1 cup shredded parmesan cheese, plus more for garnish
  • 1/2 cup pine nuts, toasted. (to toast, spread on cookie sheet and bake at 350 for about 8 minutes. WATCH CLOSELY! better to under-toast than to over-toast.)
  • salt and pepper to taste

Blanch the asparagus and beans till just tender crisp and chill in an ice bath. Drain and cut into approximately 2-3″ pieces. Cook the pasta in well seasoned water until just al dente, drain. In a large heavy bottomed pot, big enough to hold the entire dish, heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil over medium heat and add garlic. Saute until fragrant, about a minute. Add green onions and pepper flakes, saute another minute. Add the beans, asparagus, peas and chives to the pot. Saute until warmed thru. Add the cooked and drained pasta to the mix, gently stirring to combine. Add another 2 tablespoons (or more to taste) of olive oil. Add the lemon juice and parmesan cheese. Stir until everything is hot and combined. Top with toasted pine nuts and serve with more parmesan on the side.

Enjoy!*

* I hate when waiters say “Enjoy!”

Meatless Monday Nineteen!

Steamy Kitchen’s Shrimp Fried Rice

It’s another recipe from The Steamy Kitchen’s cookbook. But in the text, she credits Elise from SimplyRecipes.com for the recipe. It’s all so confusing! Either way, it was easy and delicious.

I got a new rice cooker for Mother’s Day. An expensive Neuro Fuzzy to replace my very old $25 one. The old one worked fine, but the teflon interior was all peeling, which — if you ever read my post about switching to cast iron pans, you’ll know — freaks me out.

So I got the cadillac of rice cookers.

Well, that’s not entirely true. I didn’t get the induction model. Still not real sure what that does for you. This one is complicated enough to keep me busy for a while. (Seriously. It’s insane.). I’m hoping I can eventually do all sorts of stuff in it, like barley and Israeli cous cous, etc. We’ll see.

Anyway, I was keen to try it out, so on Sunday night, I made a big batch of rice to cool in the refrigerator overnight to use for fried rice on Meatless Monday night. I’ve been making fried rice forever. My mom made it way back in the 70’s. And her’s is the recipe I still use for the most part. But I’m always up for something new. And shrimp fried it was, since I actually had shrimp. [but if you must know, it was the shrimp I stole from my Dad a couple Meatless Mondays ago]

I also served the Salmon with Kabayaki sauce that I made a few weeks ago at Dave’s request, but I already shared that recipe. You can click on it if you are interested. (It is quite good!)

Shrimp Fried Rice
  • 4 cups white rice, cooked and cooled at least overnight
  • 1/2 – 1 lb raw, shelled & deveined shrimp
  • 1/2 t salt
  • freshly ground black pepper
  • 1 t cornstarch
  • 1 t sesame oil
  • 2 T vegetable oil, divided
  • 3 eggs, beaten
  • 2 green onions, cut into 1/2″ pieces on diagonal
  • 1 t fish sauce
  • 2 t soy sauce
  • 1/2 – 3/4 cup peas
  • drizzling of sesame oil

Separate the rice grains before starting recipe. Toss the shrimp, cornstarch, salt and pepper and 1 teaspoon sesame oil together and let marinate at least 10 minutes at room temp.

Heat a wok on high. When it is smoking, add 1 tablespoon oil, swirl to coat and add the shrimp, spreading out into a single layer and not moving for 30 seconds. Flip over and let other side cook for 30 seconds, then remove to a plate.

Turn the heat to medium and add the eggs to wok, spread out and scramble. Remove eggs to same plate as shrimp when eggs are just barely, barely cooked.

Wipe wok out and return to high heat. Add remaining tablespoon of oil, swirl to coat and add green onions. Stir fry about 15 seconds, then add the rice, spreading out in an even layer. Cook about a minute. Use a spatula or wooden spoon to toss the rice, spreading out again and cooking for another minute.

Drizzle the fish sauce and soy sauce all around and toss the rice again. Add the peas, the eggs, the shrimp and drizzle with about 1/2 teaspoon of sesame oil. Salt and pepper to taste and serve immediately. Serve with additional soy sauce if desired.

[I used a bit more sesame oil than the recipe calls for. I didn’t use carrots, because I didn’t have any. If you want the recipe exactly as Jaden writes it, you’ll have to buy it for yourself — which I highly recommend!)

Meatless Monday Eighteen!

Morel Mushroom and Asparagus Risotto

If you haven’t read the Morel post from yesterday, please do. It gives background information necessary for truly understanding the nature of this very special Meatless Monday meal.

No, I’m not talking about the asparagus, that I’m ready to plow under. I’m talking, of course, about the two-year wait for morels fresh from our own woods. I liken it to the meals you eat while camping. Nothing tastes better than anything you make to eat when you are camping. And morels that you found yourself, in your own barren forest, taste better than any other.

I also — finally — made my own vegetable stock. I didn’t open any books to guide me on this journey, mind you. I just threw some veggies in a pan.

Roasted them at 450 for about 30 minutes.

Added water and simmered for an hour or two…

And just like that I had vegetable stock that tasted exactly like… water.

It was a beautiful golden brown color. It had a good aroma. But it tasted like water. And so it began, the random dumping of ingredients into the pot. I added tons of garlic, bay leaves, a sprig of rosemary, another onion, another carrot, two more stalks of celery, some wine, a splash of balsamic.

No, I’m not kidding. I really did add all that stuff. And in the end, it tasted like very weak vegetable stock. Which was actually perfect.

Because, have I written about making risotto before? How I love it so much, but when I make it it always seems so cloyingly rich? How I used to use my homemade chicken stock, but have eventually gravitated toward watered down store-bought Swanson’s broth? I think I might have, but if you didn’t read it, now you know.

So, I really was after a weak-tasting stock. Still, I was shocked at how many vegetables you actually have to use in order to get any flavor! I thought the roasting of them would combat that, but it didn’t. It just gave it a deeper color.

Anyway. Enough of that. I made it, it was delicious and I didn’t miss chicken broth one bit in this recipe. In fact, it was so good, I just might make the risotto this way always. Well, when I have the time to be farting around all day, that is.

For the four of us (and this left two servings of leftovers), I used 1 1/2 cups of arborio rice and about … I’m thinking back here…. about 8-9 cups of liquid. I could not believe how much liquid I needed. 3/4 cup of it was white wine, about 6 cups of it was the stock and the rest was water I kept adding at the end to get it the consistency we like — more soupy, less dry.

Due to unforeseen circumstances, I made the risotto to just-short of being done and finished it two hours later. If you don’t know me personally, you will think the unforeseen circumstance was something like : the dog got hurt and had to go to the vet. Or, a friend called and asked for my help with driving her kids around…

But you’d be wrong. The unforeseen circumstance was soccer practice, which has been on the calendar for weeks. It was unforeseen in my own mind only. Dave was looking at me like I had three heads when I told him we were eating before practice. Of course, he was right and I was wrong.

But things happen for a reason, I like to think. And in this case it was the marvelous discovery of risotto being ‘par cooked’, or whatever the hell those Top Chefs call it on TV. I think this is what restaurants must do, as they can’t possibly be making risotto to order from scratch at a restaurant because it would take too long. It suddenly makes risotto a viable dish to make for company if you don’t want to be standing at the stove for an hour while guests stand around saying things like “Isn’t there something I can help you with?” …As you run around like a chicken with your head cut off, plunging your dirty hands into the food they will be eating later. Always a little disconcerting…

Oh my gosh. I talk/write too much. I’m not even at the damn recipe yet… I’ll just get to it. Sorry.

Morel and Asparagus Risotto (vegetarian)
  • 6-8 cups weak or watered down vegetable stock
  • 3/4 cup white wine
  • 1 1/2 cup arborio rice
  • 2T butter or olive oil
  • 1 small onion diced (I used frozen chopped leeks)
  • 1 large clove garlic, pressed
  • large bundle of asparagus cut on the diagonal into 2″ pieces, blanched
  • 2 cups (or whatever you can manage) washed and dried morel mushrooms, cut in half and sauteed in butter till browned
  • 1 cup finely grated pecorino or parmesan cheese

I put much of the prep instructions up there in the ingredient list. I wanted the asparagus to look perfect in the rice and not be overcooked, so I opted to blanch it rather than to cook it in the risotto. I think this is worth the extra dirty pan because with fresh garden asparagus, the tips would look mutilated from the stirring.

I also wanted the morels to have as much flavor as possible. I’m often disappointed when putting morels in with other foods, because you miss them in the other flavors and then they seem wasted. It is why I far more often just saute them in butter and eat them out of the pan. So for this recipe, I sauteed them in butter until the edges started to brown and crisp, salted and peppered, ate a few and saved the rest for stirring into the almost finished risotto. When I realized I needed more liquid than the vegetable stock I had ready, I deglazed the mushroom pan with water and used that for the liquid. It worked great and I would recommend it if you find yourself in a similar situation. OR, if you use dried mushrooms, save the soaking water and add to the risotto. It has a lot of flavor. (see? I’m still talking too much)

Bring the stock to a simmer in a sauce pan. In a separate large dutch oven or pan large enough for the finished risotto, heat the butter or oil over medium heat, and saute the onion until soft and translucent, about 5 minutes. Add the rice, stirring constantly, and saute for another couple minutes. Add the wine, stirring, until mostly absorbed. Add the stock, 1 cup at a time, stirring more often than not, as the stock is absorbed and is mostly absorbed by the rice (when you stir there isn’t liquid sitting on the bottom of the pan anymore), add another cup of stock. Occasionally take a bite of rice to see what stage it is at. Mine took about 25 minutes to get to the point that I ran out of time. At that point, I had added all of my 6 cups of stock and  the mushrooms. I covered it so the cats wouldn’t eat it and left. When I came back two hours later, I heated up 2 more cups of water (I do think that par cooking the rice and finishing later uses more liquid, so if you are making it to eat right away, you will use less), and finished cooking the risotto. Stir the blanched asparagus into the rice. Stir 3/4 cup of the grated cheese into the rice. Put into a big pretty bowl and top with remaining cheese.

In retrospect, I think a squeeze of lemon juice would have been really good, but by this time, it was about 9:20pm at our house and my kids would have stabbed me in the eye with a fork if I had told them to wait. This also explains the rather horrible photo, too, which for me has now become a tradition for Meatless Monday posts.