mulligatawany

I went to a farmers market at the beginning of the summer. One lady sold some pre-made meals. I decided to take a small container of her mulligatawany soup home. It was made with goat leg meat and it was very tender. The overall taste of the soup was sooo good. After thinking about it for a long time, yesterday was the day I decided to make it.

You can use any kind of meat, but I used Goat Leg Meat. I bought it from another farmer. It wasn't as tender, but it was still good and the soup came out awesome!! I just love the combination of curry and coconut milk. From what I understand this soup is a type of Anglo-Indian soup. There are many variations of the soup. The back of the container I originally bought from the lady listed out her ingredients except the spices were not listed out. I ended up looking up a few recipes - getting an idea of how it was made - combined a few - and made sure I used all the ingredients that was in the actual recipe I tried. You could even serve it over rice or noodles. I might actually try that with some of the left overs (serve it over rice).

It was a winner and my husband really loved it too. The day before I made the soup I seared the pork leg and than braised it in the oven. I just put some red wine, beef broth and water on the bottom. I made sure I saved the broth for the recipe below.

Mulligatawny

* 4 tablespoons unsalted butter
* 2 medium carrots, peeled and chopped (about 1 cup)
* 1-2 medium onions, chopped (about 2-1/2 cups)
* 1-2 medium sweet potatoes, diced (about 2-1/2 cups)
* 2 garlic cloves, pressed
* 6-3/4 cups chicken and/or goat stock
* 1 can (19 oz.) chickpeas, drained
* 1 cup diced cooked meat (I didn't measure - I used wayyy more than a cup of meat)
* 1 cup coconut milk
* 5 teaspoons curry powder
* 1/2 cup chopped cilantro
* 1 apple, chopped or shredded
* 1/2 cup to a cup of raisins
* garlic
* jalapenos

Directions

1. In a large saucepan melt butter over medium heat. Sauté carrots, onions, potatoes, and garlic until the onions are translucent, 10 minutes.

2. Add the chicken stock and simmer over medium-low heat until the vegetables are soft, 20 minutes more.

3. Stir in chickpeas, apple, chicken, coconut milk, and curry powder and simmer until hot.

4. Mix in the cilantro at the end.

Found a great base Veggie Burger recipe

OK, took a little while, but I finally found a good Veggie Burger Base recipe. Here is my Veggie Burger making Story!!!

First I tried to follow a recipe for a Quinoa Veggie burger that I found. I couldn't take two bites from it. : (. It just was not good.

In the past, my friend Galya told me she had some good experience with making veggie burgers. She wrote it up on her blog and even referenced my name. I did patiently wait for her to reveal her veggie burger making secrets. : )

The first round of making these veggie burgers didn't work out to well.
I didn't do a good job getting the water out of the zucchini and it turned out to be a disaster. : (.

Than I took a break and a week or so later, I followed the recipe, except I had eggplant instead of zucchini and I shredded a carrot too. I would of tried zucchini again, I just didn't have it. I noticed after shredding the eggplant - that it was also watery, just not as watery as zucchini. I used my potatoe ricer to help me get rid of the water and I made sure I worked real hard at getting the water out the best I could. After it was pressed down to the point where no water was coming out, I would mix it around a little and run it through the potatoe ricer over and over.

The only real change I made was adding 1/3 cup of oat-bran "uncooked". I did still use crackers. I had a variety pack and I think I used about 4 of them. I cooked mine on a pan on top of the stove.

Yummy Yummy. Here is the link to the recipe: VEGGIE BURGER BLOG

The first night I had one as a side dish. Today, I had one for lunch. I made a wonderful sandwich. I used two garden fresh lettuce leaves and in between was the Veggie Patty, 2 slices of pre made bacon, cut up red peppers, and some blue cheese dressing. I followed the dressing recipe on this blog since I had left over blue cheese. Blue Cheese Dressing Blog

I have enough in the refrigerator to make one more sandwich. I'm hoping to get a picture when I make it.

Vegetable Chili

I told you I had some catching up to do. I recently made some vegetable chili. I got the recipe from my Penzey Spice Magazine that I get every month. This isn't the first time I've posted a recipe from that book. I'm really having some good luck with some of the recipes I'm finding in these magazines. All I did was buy a jar of Penzey spices and every month I get this magazine.

Anyways, here is the recipe. Thanks to Jordan Goldstein who's recipe got posted in the Summer 2010 Penzeys Spices Magazine.

My husband said he liked it a lot better than most meat chili's he's had.

Ingredients

3 tablespoons of olive oil
1 small onion, diced
2 large celery stalks, sliced
1 medium crrot, diced
1 small red or yellow pepper, diced
1 tablespoon ground ancho chili pepper (I just used regular chili powder)
1-2 tablespoons ground cumin
2 tsp oregano
1/2-1 tsp ground chipotle pepper. i used 1-2 peppers from a jar called "chipotle peppers in adobe sauce". Watch out, these are spicy.
1 large or 2 small zucchini's. I used eggplant instead
1 11oz can of corn kernels, rinsed and drained. Or kernels from 3 fresh ears of corn.
1 14 oz can of kidney or black beans, rinsed and drained. I had no corn and I used black beans.
1 14 oz can of chopped tomatoes with juice (or 3-4 large tomatoes, peeled, cored and chopped)
2-5 tablespoons of water or red wine.

In a large frying pan, heat the olive oil over medium high heat. Add the onion, celery, carrot, and bell pepper and saute until cooked through. sprinkle the spices on. Add the zucchini slices, corn, beans and tomatoes. Add water/wine. Cover and simmer about 20-30 minutes.

Serve with grated cheese, sour cream, or yogurt on top if you desire.

Picture didn't come out too great!!!

Garlic Scape Pesto

A few weeks ago, I had some garlic scapes from the farmers market.

My friend Trina was very nice to send me this wonderful recipe called Garlic Scape Pasta. She shared some of her tips as well. : )
I made it and mixed some of it with pasta. As I mentioned before, I love the site this recipe came from.

Note*, A little sauce goes a long way. I froze some of the sauce for later use.

I also took her recommendation and tried the brown rice pasta made from Tinkyada. My husband is watching his grain/gluten intake and these are great. There better than the whole wheat pasta's you find.


Garlic Scape Pesto recipe:


I grilled up some pork chops, cut them into pieces and added that to the dinner. Chicken will go well with it.

Bean, Kale and Flounder soup

I belong to a CSA and picked up some Kale this past week. I tried making Kale chips, but was unsuccessful. I than decided to make this. WOW I am so glad I found this. This was yummy and my husband gave it a huge! thumbs up. I broiled some flounder, broke it into pieces and added it to the entire soup.

I also halved the recipe. I only had cherry tomatoes, so I put a whole bunch of them in the food processor. I had white beans, but decided to use a can of black beans instead. I'm so glad I did. My husband loves black beans.

See original recipe for Bean soup with Kale.

Update: I made this again, since I picked up more Kale. I served it at a Beach Party luncheon that I hosted. I live on a Lake and the beach is across the street, so luckily I didn't have to carry the soup too far "LOL". My friends loved it. I didn't add the fish in this time.

Pulled Pork Sandwiches, Baked Beans and Cole Slaw

I went all out for fathers day. Had the family over and made Pulled Pork sandwiches, baked beans, and coleslaw all homemade. Served that with corn on the cob as well.

The family gave this meal a pretty big thumbs up. LOL. It is well worth posting.

I bought an 8lb boston butt from Hannaford. I made a dry rub. I rubbed it with vegetable oil and than put the dry rub on. It sat in the Refrigerator for about 8 hours. It is recommended that you let it sit over night. Put rubbed shoulder in a roaster with a rack and into the oven it went (uncovered overnight). Start time was 11pm. Total cooking time was 16 hours. The oven was on 225, however I upped it to 275 around noon time, as it was getting closer to eating time. I also loosely covered it with tin foil the last 5 hours or so. Out of the oven it came, and I shredded away. Put some of the juices from the pan on the stove and boil some of it out. Add at least one bottle of bbq sauce and heat up. Mix shredded pork into the sauce.

On fathers day it was served with onion rolls and plain rolls. Today, I decided to make a little bbq ranch sandwich. As you can see in the picture, I used lettuce leaves instead of bread. Very Yummy. I grated a little cheese on it too.


DRY RUB:

Ingredients
3/4 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
3/4 cup white sugar
1/2 cup paprika
1/4 cup kosher salt
1/4 cup garlic powder
2 tablespoons ground black pepper
2 tablespoons ground ginger powder
2 tablespoons onion powder
2 teaspoons rosemary powder

These baked beans came out great. I got rave reviews.
I did follow the advise I read about on some other recipe sources - and continued to cook the beans for a total of 6/7 hours. I continued to add more broth or hot water as needed. I never made baked beans from scratch so it was neat seeing the process.

See recipe here: Click here!

**** If you can wait for the pork to register at 190/200 degrees at a long and low heat - the better the pulled pork is suppose to be. It will still be great shredded pork if you take it out early. I took mine out at at 175. Oven times vary based on different conditions. Estimated time frame would be between 10 and 18 hours.

I got a lot of reviews about the cole slaw too. Click HERE for recipe I used.

A HUGE thanks goes out to discusscooking and allrecipes. I have had a long relationship with allrecipes.com. That is the first site I started using for recipes years ago. Although I haven't used them as often as I used to - I have never been disapointed after choosing a recipe from there site. I love the review system they have. I don't think I've talked about it too much in my blog so I figured I'd give thanks on this one. I get a lot of help from people over at discuss cooking. I can't begin to explain how nice these people are and the amazing knowledge they have about food and cooking. They helped me through a few questions I had about making the fathers day meal.

Mediterranean Meatloaf

This meatloaf recipe is awesome. I really!! enjoyed this tonight. My last few meatloaf attempts have been a little bla. I like to call this Stuffed Mediterranean matloaf.

I did make this once before and remember enjoying it. Of course today I had to experiment and make one change. I added about 2/3 cup of oatbran. The original recipe actually doesn't call for any kind of breadcrumbs or oatbran etc. Personally, I think that is great, especially if your cutting down or not eating grains. I didn't quite have a cup of mushrooms - so I thought it was best to add the oatbran so that it stayed together.

I only used ground turkey for the loaf I made today. For my fillings I peeled some egg plant and threw that in the food processor. To the food processor I also added, a few baby carrots, a boiled egg, and some spanish olives. You can see from the original recipe, you can do what you want for the fillings.

I also put some BBQ sauce on the top before cooking. I'm thinking next time - I might try adding a little bacon and maybe even some cubed cheddar cheese into the mix. Although, more calories when those items are added.

I didn't have 2 lbs of meat - I think I had a little over 1 1/2 lbs. Because of this I only ended up using one egg and less sun-dried tomatoes. I don't think more or less of something in this recipe is that big of a deal.

Once again, Galya has a winner recipe!!! Here is the link to the recipe:

RECIPE HERE