Hello Chompers!
Remember those hand-rolled canneloni I made a while ago? I liked them a lot, so I experimented with a different filling. This time, I used eggplant for the center filling and grilled red peppers and mascarpone for the outer filling. The canneloni were baked in a batch of D.I.Y. tomato sauce made with cherry tomatoes and a few dried chili peppers for spice. (more…)
While I promised you all this recipe a long time ago, I am only just now am getting around to posting the recipe. I actually have a massive backlog of recipes to post, but this poll winner gets top priority!
I’ve spent quite some time working on this recipe, and I really hope you like it! I’ve gotta say: while it involves a little work and a lot of time, boeuf bourguignon is the perfect comfort food for cold wintery nights. And it’s nearly impossible to have too many leftovers. Below the recipe I’ll explain how to turn boeuf bourguignon into little pies!
Convenience foods are not for me, obviously. Why make things easy if you can make them unnecessarily complicated? If I had my way, I would actually roll my own pasta, make my own ricotta, and grow my own vegetables. Sadly, the circumstances of my life (such as, you know, people at work insisting that I actually produce something that isn’t edible) are kind of prohibitive.
In order to fulfill my need for D.I.Y cooking endeavors, I made these canneloni. And while I kept dreaming about owning a pasta machine, a goat farm, and a flourishing allotment full of home-grown spinach leaves, I had lots of fun AND produced a meal that elicited clearly audible CHOMPS! (more…)
As you may have noticed, I’m a big fan of simple, rustic foods. I really believe that the best food doesn’t result from mixing lots of complicated flavors or using complicated techniques. That is not to say that it isn’t warranted sometimes to go all out. I enjoy being surprised by the culinary artistry of great chefs. I have been thoroughly tickled by little dainty towers of beetroot crisps and home-smoked trout, by the molecular magic of fried ice cream with melon caviar, and I love a complex sauce as much as the next person.
But let’s face it: I’m a home cook. A competent one, no doubt, but I’m no chef and I won’t pretend that I am. So what do I do when I want to impress with a dinner? I turn to a chef for a really good, unpretentious recipe. And this is one of those recipes. (more…)
There is absolutely nothing authentically Moroccan about this stew beyond the fact that I invented it in order to use this fantastic new thing I discovered: Harissa! I got it at a Moroccan grocery store, so now I associate this stew with Morocco, despite never having been in or near Morocco (YET!). If you were to serve this stew to your friends I would highly recommend using air quotes when referring to it as “Moroccan.”
Because of the harissa, this stew is on the spicy side. However, the addition of sweet butternut squash and juicy raisins tones down the spice level considerably. The first time we had this we ate it straight from a bowl, but the second time I served pita’s and some home made tzatziki alongside. This was a good call, as the stew had become noticeably spicier overnight in the fridge. It also became tastier, so I highly recommend making enough to have leftovers.
I think this stew is the perfect summer food. It’s filling and flavorful but not too heavy or greasy. It also includes most of my favorite foods and none of my non-favorite foods, which of course is a huge benefit of inventing your own recipes. It’s also one of those “accidentally vegan” recipes that I seem to come up with a lot. And it’s accidentally gluten free as well. Actually, the whole thing was one big happy accident. An accident which landed me a girlfriend by the way, so take that as a warning or as a recommendation, depending on your situation.