Recipes and the Kitchen – Page 3

Spinach and Caramelized Onion Frittata

It’s egg season. We are currently getting 10 chicken eggs a day. Duck eggs depend on whether we beat the pigs to them or not. We waste a lot of these eggs. A lot are fed back to the dogs or pigs. So, I’m making an effort to learn egg heavy recipes and I’m going to share them with you.

This recipe is a big hit. Delicious and easy, it requires 9 eggs.

I also love this recipe because it reheats extremely well. Husband and I are the only real big egg eaters so we had a lot of this left over. We were able to eat it for breakfast another day and it tasted almost as good as fresh made.

Spinach and Caramelized Onion Frittata

Ingredients:

9 eggs

1 handful spinach, chopped

½ large onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, minced

1tsp Paprika

Salt and Pepper to taste

Green onions (optional garnish)

Directions:

In a large cast iron skillet add the onions and cook on low about 5-10 minutes. Add fresh chopped spinach and garlic. Stir until the spinach has wilted.

Meanwhile in a small bowl beat the 9 eggs with the paprika and salt and pepper. Add to the onion and spinach and use your spatula to make sure the mixture is flat. Cook on the stove top until the edges are beginning to stiffen. Then transfer to the onion and broil on low an additional 10-15 minutes.

Prepping onions and spinach

Adding the eggs to the pan. I didn’t realize before this picture just how colored our eggs are.

Cooking the edges

Enjoy!

It’s beautiful!

Weird cooking experiments I’ve been up to.

I’ve been wanting to make and can my own broth. Unfortunately I have too many projects and too little time. However, I do cook dinner every day. Some of the dinner prep parts are wasted. Some main parts of dinner are wasted on certain household members as well.

I love making soup with our old hens, or mean roosters. They make some delicious soup. My husband has never been much a fan of soup broth and usually a lot of it is wasted. It’s broth though. Healthy broth as I make my soup with mushrooms and vegetables. So I canned it. Well I put it in jars and froze it, but I’m still considering it canning.

Oh, I filtered it before putting it in the jars.

I also made chicken enchiladas. You boil the chicken and then shred it, throwing out the broth. Well usually I do but not this time. The freezer is loaded with frozen broth that would normally get trashed.

Tastes great in meals so far. Better than store bought for sure!

Not a lot gets wasted at our house. We have the big dogs and the birds and now the pigs. Chocolate is officially our only food waste product. Yay!

Juicing facts, why we started and why we’ll never stop

Last year I began watching TED talks. Too many TED talks. Many pointed to the nutritional benefits of whole foods, which I absolutely believe in. The problem is that getting my kids to eat a green bean is extremely unpleasant. You may have seen then gobbling peas out of the shell but if you cook those peas, then it’s as good as poison. They certainly did not get their dislike for vegetables from me. So how to get the good stuff into them? Another TED talk turned my attention to juicing. So we got a green juice recipe and began.

Of course the kids wouldn’t drink it. It actually took months before the kids would try it. They’ll drink my whole glass now (so about 3/4 cup per kid), so persistence is key!

Straws are necessary to the process though. They only get straws when they drink their green juice.

We did alter the recipe for palatability though. We add pineapple, which is a great source of vitamin C so an obvious addition anyway.

I’m not going to lie here, I thought green juice was hideous. I’d drink it all in one gulp so I didn’t have to taste it. The pineapple helped and you do grow to appreciate the flavor, so I like it now. Stick with it through that first week!

The effect has been pretty amazing though. We are healthy. Really healthy. Before green juice we’d end up at the ER with incredible fevers. We got every sickness you could possibly get. Don’t even tell me you have the flu over the phone because I swear I could catch it that way.

I don’t mean to mislead you, we have been sick. We all caught a cold around Christmas. We were over it within a few days and it was never that severe. We rarely go to the doctor anymore. I haven’t had to buy any medication for anyone for a year now. It’s mind blowing the difference juicing has made for all of us.

The kids share a glass. It helps encourage them to drink it when it’s a race.

Our recipe is for 4 people, 2 of them being very small children. This recipe makes a quart of juice.

1/3 pineapple
3 medium apples
2-3 kale leaves
1/3 head of romaine (5-6 leaves)
1 cucumber
1 lime
3-4 stalks of celery

We purchase our juicing stuff weekly. The average cost is $30 per week.

As far as health stats. Our green juice recipe should have the following vitamins and minerals:

green juice

That link is a pdf document.

How to grow and use lemongrass with a recipe

Lemongrass is such a wonderful plant. It can be used in cooking, to deter bugs, to make tea and medicinally. WebMD even has a page on it:

Lemongrass is a plant. The leaves and the oil are used to make medicine.

Lemongrass is used for treating digestive tract spasms, stomachache, high blood pressure, convulsions, pain, vomiting, cough, achy joints (rheumatism), fever, the common cold, and exhaustion. It is also used to kill germs and as a mild astringent.

Some people apply lemongrass and its essential oil directly to the skin for headache, stomachache, abdominal pain, and muscle pain.

By inhalation, the essential oil of lemongrass is used as aromatherapy for muscle pain.

In food and beverages, lemongrass is used as a flavoring. For example, lemongrass leaves are commonly used as “lemon” flavoring in herbal teas.

In manufacturing, lemongrass is used as a fragrance in soaps and cosmetics. Lemongrass is also used in making vitamin A and natural citral.

How does it work?

Lemongrass might help prevent the growth of some bacteria and yeast. Lemongrass also contains substances that are thought to relieve pain, reduce fever, stimulate the uterus and menstrual flow, and have antioxidant properties.

Source

I wanted to grow lemongrass for a different reason, the oil attracts bees. As you know we built our own beehives. I do not want to buy a package of bees, I’d rather attract a swarm. To do that I needed lemongrass essential oil. Husband has been wanting to try his hand at making essential oil, so I just needed the lemongrass. I went to our local oriental market and bought all the lemongrass they had. I put them in a jar of water until they’d sprouted roots, then I planted them out to the kitchen herb garden. They have really taken off. I’ve harvested some for lemongrass chicken and loved it.

Lemongrass

Thai Basil

Here is Daughter helping me prep the lemongrass. Ok, she’s just chewing on it. She informed me she didn’t like eating grass.

Such a cute face!

Stripped of stalk.

All I did to prep the lemongrass was strip off the base leaves, cut the white base of the stalk off, wash it and chop it up to be added to dinner. The recipe I gathered inspiration from is this one. As usual, I didn’t follow the directions and modified as I saw fit. I used bean noodles, sliced chicken breasts, carrots, and green onions. I did not use fish sauce, cuz yuck! O let me just tell you my recipe:

Lemongrass Chicken with Bean Noodles

Ingredients

1 serving bean noodles
Olive Oil- enough to coat bottom of pan
2 large lemongrass stalks or 5 small ones.
1 clove garlic, minced
1 teaspoon dried ginger
10 leaves fresh thai basil
1 carrot sliced thinly
2 Tablespoons lemon juice
1 TB brown sugar

Directions

Cook bean noodles as directed on the package.

Add lemongrass, ginger, oil and garlic to a medium skillet and sauté until fragrant. Add the sliced chicken and cook through. Add lemon juice, basil and brown sugar and coat chicken. Next add the noodles and warm through. Remove and serve in a bowl with carrot curls and green onions.

Add spice, to taste with sriracha or red pepper flakes. My children do not like spice and so we kept it optional.

I think bean sprouts would be great in this dish but I didn’t have any when I first made it and it was still great.

Cooking noodles

Cooking the lemongrass, garlic and ginger.

Browning the chicken.

Delicious!

Crock Pot Beef Bourguignon with updated review of Chateau Maine D’Arman 2010 wine

One very energetic winter day I looked up Julia Child’s recipe for beef bourguignon. It was a very labor intensive meal taking a long period of time to complete. It was also out of this world delicious! I couldn’t see doing it often though, a shame since it is so tasty. I decided to attempt to modify the recipe. I’ve done so twice, both worked very well. The first was simply taking out some of the prep steps, using only a single pan; the second was using my previous modified version and doing the cooking in the crock pot.

Crock Pot Beef Bourguignon

Ingredients:

1 beef roast of desired size and cut (I prefer tri-tip)
4 slices bacon- cut into 1” pieces
1 medium onion- sliced, or 1 lb broiler onions
2 cloves garlic- minced
8 oz bella crimini mushrooms- sliced
2 large carrots- cut into large pieces
6 potatoes- halved
1 cup red wine (I like to use Chateau Maine D’Arman 2010)
3 cups beef broth
2 sticks butter
3 bay leaves
Flour for dusting

Seasoning mix:

1 tsp sea salt
¼ tsp black pepper
¼ tsp white pepper
¼ tsp ground coriander
¼ tsp caraway
1 tsp rosemary
1 tsp thyme

Directions:

In a medium skillet heat 1 stick of butter over low heat. Add the onion and garlic and saute until the onion is caramelized, about 40 minutes. Add the mushrooms and cook until golden brown.

While the onion is cooking add the potatoes to the bottom of your crock pot, then add the carrots.

Add the caramelized onion and mushroom mixture to the crock pot. Do not mix up. You want the potatoes to remain on the bottom.

Slice the beef roast into large chunks, pat each chunk dry with a towel. Coat the beef in a mixture of flour and the seasoning mix, set aside.

In the same skillet you caramelized the onions in, brown the bacon. Remove the bacon pieces to the crock pot but leave the fat in the bottom of the pan. Add the beef and brown on each side. If needed add more butter to the pan.

When the beef is browned move it to the crock pot and de-glaze the skillet with ½ a cup of wine and add to the crock pot with the rest of the wine and the broth. At this time also add the bay leaves and any remaining butter.

Cook on low 8 hours.

To serve remove the potatoes and mash them with some garlic, onion powder and sour cream. If you prefer you do not have to mash the potatoes. You can also take some of the liquid from the crock pot and make a thicker gravy with it at this time. I do this by adding butter and flour to a saucepan and then adding the liquid, whisking until the proper thickness.

If you do not want to do the cooking in a crock pot I would advise getting a pan like This. Then you can do all the steps in the same pan and cook it in the oven for 5 hours at 325 degrees.

I get a lot of hits for This wine review. It seems a lot of people want to know if this is a good wine and I do not know if my previous review covered it all. So I am going to give a few more thoughts after having tried this wine a few more times.

The wine does have good flavor. We had a glass while eating this dinner and it went very well, quite enjoyable. What I did not like, and I’m not sure it was like this last time, was that it was grainy. You could see little bits of red stuff floating around in the wine and they had an awful texture in our mouths. It was really bad at the bottom of the bottle and I actually just threw that out. I don’t want to have to try to chew my wine. If our previous bottle had been like that I am not sure we would have purchased a second. I am unsure if we will give this wine another try after this experience or not. It’s still amazing in this recipe but, that graininess…..yuck!

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How to ripen green tomatoes

We grew approximately 100lbs of tomatoes this year. I was VERY happy. However, we don’t tend to eat raw tomatoes. I use a lot of tomato sauce, however, so when I picked all of our tomatoes before they’d ripened I had to figure out how to ripen them indoors.

Why did I pick them early, you may ask. Well, two reasons. First, the turkeys figured out how to jump the fence and were eating all the ripe ones. Secondly, our great pyr got mad at us when we went on vacation and destroyed my tomato bushes with his big furry body. /sigh

I originally laid all the tomatoes out on our dinning room table. Unfortunately it took the entire table and we do eat there, so I acquired some brown paper grocery bags from my wonderful mother-in-law and started loading the tomatoes into it. My husband wanted to see which would ripen the tomatoes better, an apple or a banana. So some bags had apples and some bananas. I can now safely say apples do a better job. The banana bag still had a lot of green tomatoes in it.

I wanted to ripen the tomatoes quickly because of space constraints and because I knew I wanted to can all of them. I didn’t want to be doing small cannings for the foreseeable future so I sped up the ripening and canned a massive batch of sauce over an entire Sunday.

I used the roasted tomato sauce recipe I posted about Here.

It took about 2 weeks to get 90% of the tomatoes ripe using the bags. I did check them and remove any ripe tomatoes and put them on the table to wait. I also removed any tomatoes that were rotting at that time. I did not have that many tomatoes rot in the bags and it wasn’t a big issue for me to check them. I will use this method again in the future.

Now, I have 10% of the tomatoes left in a bag and I guess that means I have to do another canning at some point. Save me!