Recipe for Quick Broccoli Slaw

This is so quick, easy and tasty it should be in everyone's recipe file.  I have a wonderful recipe for a broccoli salad (I'll share next time I make it) but it is a bit labor intensive, not something you can throw together in a hurry.  Like when you have people coming over for dinner in an hour.   And you are driving home and realize you forgot to think about a side dish/salad when you were excitedly throwing the ingredients for slow cooker steak sammies into the crock that morning.  And you don't have anything resembling a vegetable in the fridge.  And you haven't showered yet... Okay, you get the picture.  When this happens to you, run to the nearest store and pick up these four ingredients to throw together a very satisfying Quick Broccoli Slaw.



Time: 5 minutes
Yield: 6 servings


Ingredients:

• 18 oz (1 ½ bags) broccoli cole slaw mix
• ¾ cup light ranch salad dressing
• 1 cup dried cranberries
• ½ cup diced cooked bacon (I bought the already cooked stuff)
• Salt and pepper to taste

Method:

• Combine all ingredients.
• Chill and serve.

What do you throw together when you are short on time?


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Black and White Wednesdays

Cheese, Glorious Cheese-Eataly, NYC

Submitted to Black and White Wednesdays

Recipe for Lamb and Sweet Potato Curry

According to Wikipedia, curry is a dish of meat and vegetables, cooked in an Indian style spicy sauce and served with rice.  And while not what I think of when I think "curry", other than the rice, this full-of-flavor dish meets the definition.  I adapted this dish from Meena's blog "Hooked on Heat", a great spot for Indian recipes that anyone can tackle.  As you know if you've been reading ELEB for a while, I'm trying to cook more Indian recipes.  This one is a winner!

You have to be somewhat committed to cooking Indian flavored food to tackle this recipe.  It has quite a few spice ingredients.  As it turned out, I had all of them in my cupboard and I would encourage you to suck it up go ahead and stock your spice shelf with these flavorful spices. You'll be all ready to whip together a batch of chai concentrate or another Indian dish.  And trust me, when you taste this one, you'll be glad you did. In addition to a great meal, your kitchen will smell amazing.

Whole spices

Recipe for Lamb and Sweet Potato Curry

Yield: 4 servings

Time: 60 minutes

Ingredients: 

• 2 TBSP canola oil


• 5 whole cloves


• 5 whole cardamom pods


• 1 cinnamon stick


• 1 tsp cumin seeds


• 1 large onion, sliced


• 1/2 tsp chili powder


• 1 TBSP coriander powder


• 1 tsp roasted cumin powder


• 1/2 tsp garam masala powder


• 1 TBSP ginger-garlic sauce


• 2 medium tomatoes, finely chopped, about 2 cups


• 1 lb ground lamb


• 1 large sweet potato, cubed, about 3 cups


• 1 cup water


• 4 cups baby spinach, washed and dried


• salt, to taste

Method:

• Sauté cloves, cardamom pods, cinnamon stick, and cumin seeds with onions in hot oil over medium high heat until lightly browned.


• Add in tomatoes, ginger-garlic sauce and remaining spices, and cook over medium heat for 5 minutes until tomatoes soften and begin to break down.


• Crumble in lamb and cook until most of pink is gone, about 5 minutes.


• Add in sweet potatoes and cook covered for 20 minutes over medium-low heat until potatoes are cooked through.


• Stir in spinach and cook uncovered until wilted, about 3-4 minutes


• Taste and season with salt as needed.

Ready to add tomatoes

Ready to add potatoes

Ready to add spinach

I wasn't sure whether to leave the cloves and cardamom pods in the finished dish.  I decided to fish them out, not that it would have been bad to eat one but...


So, thanks to Meena for an inspiring recipe.  I hope you'll give it a try.

What ethnic dishes are you cooking these days?


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Recipe for Vanilla Coffee and Cream Rice Pudding

Rice pudding.   Mmmm, one of my favorite childhood desserts.  There are several ways to make it-stove top, oven baked, and stove top-to-oven.  There are sweet versions, savory versions, versions with raisins.  This one, cooked on the stove top, has both a delicious coffee flavor-from using coffee as some of the cooking liquid-and vanilla flavor-from using a vanilla bean.  Oh, and the real cream that is stirred in at the end doesn't hurt either!

Time: 30 minutes plus cooling time
Yield: 6 servings


Ingredients:

• 1 cup strong coffee (I made mine twice as strong as usual; flavored coffee works well, I used French Vanilla flavor)
• 1 cup milk
• 2/3 cup organic cane sugar (or whatever sugar you prefer)
• 1 vanilla bean
• 1 cup medium grain white rice
• 1/2 cup whipping cream, plus some reserved for topping

Method:

• Bring coffee, milk and sugar to a gentle boil
• Split vanilla bean pod open, scrape out seeds and add seeds to liquid.  
• Stir well and then drop in the empty vanilla bean pod.
• Add rice and simmer, covered, for 25 minutes, stirring occasionally.
• Remove from heat and remove vanilla bean pod.
• Stir in cream.
• Serve warm, room temperature or cold topped with a dollop of whipped cream.

Yes, it's a bit decadent so don't eat the whole pan in one sitting.  If you like rice pudding and like coffee you will really love this!  Have you made over any of your childhood favorites?


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Black and White Wednesdays

Barrel Room

Submitted to Black and White Wednesdays

Greenwich Village Food Tour

As I mentioned a few weeks ago in my post about Eataly, we had some amazing food experiences on a trip to the mainland earlier this year. One wonderful day was spent experiencing all things food related (well, not ALL, but many) in Greenwich Village, New York.

This was an organized food tour, led by an amazing, funny, well-informed guide.  We met up with our friends from Maui and about 8 others at Murray's Cheese Shop on Bleecker St. in The Village.  Waters were distributed and we were quickly on our way. First stop-Pizza!

I'm sure there is a big debate whether this is "the Best of New York" but it was a very simple and delicious slice of pizza-nothing too fancy-thin crust, sauce, cheese, salt.

How good does that look?  Not as good as it looked in person or as it tasted!  At each stop on the tour, our guide gave us the history of the place, the food, the architecture, and the area.  So in addition to feeding our stomachs, we got to feed our minds too.  After a leisurely stop to eat a slice, look around inside and hear about Joe's we were off to our next stop.

At O. and Co. we tasted several olive oils as well as honey.  I love the beautiful cans the oil comes in.

And, I was very taken with this display!

Some of the streets in the Village are just full of little restaurants and historic buildings.  We didn't go in all of them of course, but we were fortunate to get a bit of history of the places we went by like Little Havana...

or Pó,  Mario Batali's first endeavor in NY and home to the first off-off Broadway theater.

Time for more food to nosh on!  Back to Murray's for cheese and olives.  I could have spent the whole day in there looking at all the cheeses and other goodies!

At Faicco's Italian Specialties shop, we were treated to the most wonderful arancini (rice balls).

And they had cases full of house-made sausages. Mmmmm.

On the tour, there is always one sit down course about half way through.  You can get a glass of wine with the course and use the facilities, both most appreciated! Our stop was at Centro Vinoteca, an Italian restaurant and wine bar.  We had a nice mushroom risotto (and glass of wine).

After our stop, we walked around several blocks and different areas of the residential portion of The Village.  Historical buildings were pointed out, architecture discussed, and famous landmarks identified.  Recognize this?

I really enjoyed our stroll through the charming side streets.

As we headed back to the more commercial streets, we passed many small and large restaurants and food shops.  I never realized what a food-centric area this was!

To round out our tour (and ourselves!) we enjoyed a divine chocolate chip cookie from Milk and Cookies.

Boy did it smell good in there.

I was tempted to buy the cookbook but knew that would be trouble!  Here's why:

The tour was just about three hours in length and thank goodness we did a lot of walking!  I would definitely recommend this to anyone visiting NY who would like to experience a neighborhood close up through its food, restaurants and shops.

Oh, that landmark building?  The fascade of the building used in the TV show "Friends".

Food of NY Tours
Murray's Cheese Shop

Joe's Pizza

O. and Co.

Pó

Centro Vinoteca

Milk and Cookies

Recipe for Chicken with Roasted Red Pepper Sauce

Kalyn’s Kitchen was one of the first food blogs I started reading on a regular basis.  Kalyn has great healthy and flavorful recipes which tend to adhere to the South Beach Diet principles.  Even if you aren’t dieting, there are some amazing recipes on the site. 

This chicken recipe uses Kalyn’s recipe for roasted red pepper dip with feta and mint as the sauce for baked chicken thighs (you could also use breasts).  It’s fabulous as a dip and great as a cooking sauce.

From Top Left:  Roasted red pepper Sauce; ready for oven; out of oven.

Yield: 4 servings

Time: 50 minutes

Ingredients:

• 1 ½ lbs boneless, skinless chicken thighs, trimmed of visible fat


• 1 ½ cup roasted red pepper dip (recipe below)


• Cooking spray

Method:

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees and spray a casserole dish with cooking spray.


• Spread a few TBSP of dip across bottom of casserole dish.


• Lay chicken on top of sauce.


• Pour and spread remaining sauce over chicken.


• Bake on 350 for 20 minutes covered and 20 minutes uncovered .

Roasted Red Pepper Dip (modified slightly from Kalyn’s recipe)

Ingredients:

• 1 jar (12 oz.) roasted red bell peppers, drained well


• 1 tsp minced garlic 


• 4 oz low fat cream cheese


• 4 oz low fat feta cheese


• 1/4 cup plain non-fat Greek yogurt 


• 3 TBSP finely chopped fresh mint 


• 1 TBSP fresh lemon juice


• Salt to taste

Method:

• Add all ingredients except salt to food processor and process until smooth.


• Taste and add salt if needed.

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