Beef Chili and Jalapeno Cheddar Corn Muffins

 

As the cold winds of winter began to roll in in I thought to myself, TIME FOR CHILI.

Seriously, what’s better on a cold winter’s night than a steamy bowl of chili?  Maybe a mug of hot chocolate with  cinnamon and marshmallows… but few other things.

 

Chili is one of those things that get people into a tizzy about whether or not it’s authentic or not.  I’m not one of those people at all.  I don’t care if you use beef chunks, beans or no beans, or put your chili over spaghetti.  To each his own.

With that said I realize that my chili isn’t authentic, but it’s what  works for me.   I don’t normally use beef, I normally go the veggie route but I was making it for my moms as well and she  wanted beef.

 

To start I sauteed carrots, onion and garlic together with the ground beef.  Then I added my spices — cumin, chili powder, coriander, cayenne, oregano, salt and pepper.  I don’t measure at all!  I just throw it in and hope it works out… if it doesn’t I adjust later.

 

I stir the mixture around allowing the spices to toast a bit and then add a big can of whole tomatoes, crushing the tomatoes against the bottom and sides of the pot.  For the record, I use my lovely dutch oven for the task.  I also add tomato sauce and if I have it a chipotle pepper in adobo sauce.  I guess that’s my “secret” ingredient.  It gives the chili some heat and a smoky flavor.  Then I let the whole mess simmer for a while to blend the flavours.

After about half an hour I add the beans.  I use a mix of black and kidney beans just because.  I also add about a cup of frozen corn just to up my veggie intake.   At this  point you could either let the chili simmer for another bit and eat it OR just set it and forget it.  It’s one of  those things that’s hard to overcook but more time gives it more flavour.

 

I don’t normally make cornbread with chili.  I grew up eating chili with garlic bread, but I wanted something different this time around so I decided on corn muffins.  I pretty much just followed a standard cornbread/ corn muffin recipe and then added some minced jalapeno and some grated cheddar.  Totally that easy.  You could even use Jiffy muffin mix if you’re totally lazy.

 

That’s all for now!

Power Bars

I’m a sucker for a granola bar or an AMAZING power bar. The problem is, a lot of the stuff you get at the supermarket is loaded with HFCS (high fructose corn syrup) or there just isn’t enough of the good stuff. I usually end up scanning every box for a healthy-ish brand OR I buy the yummy (although, expensive) Whole Foods in-store bars.

But that is no longer thanks to Super Natural Cooking by Heidi Swanson who also runs the amazing website 101 Cookbooks that features great natural/whole/vegetarian recipes. I totally have a food crush on her and you should for sure check out her cookbook. I got it from the publisher a few months ago and browse it regularly for ideas.

Side note: She has a great recipe for crusty white beans with kale. it’s my fave dish almost ever.

Anyways… power bars. They were super simple to make… kind of like haute rice krispie squares. I’ve pasted the recipe below.

I of course made substitutions… this recipe just cries out for them! I substituted about 1/4 cup of the walnuts for unsalted sunflower seeds and added about 1/4 cup of ground flax seeds. Instead of natural cane sugar I used regular brown sugar (I didn’t feel like going to the other health food store). Finally I skipped the brown crisped rice cereal in favour of regular old Rice Krispies.

They turned out great. At first I was going to swap out the Brown Rice Syrup for something else but I wasn’t sure what that something else would be, so instead I just went with it. Now I want to discover all of the uses for this magical syrup. I love that it’s not overly sweet and has a slight nuttiness to it

Ingredients:
1 tablespoon coconut oil (it’s to grease the pan… I just used cooking spray)
1 1/4 cups rolled oats
1 cup walnuts or nut of your choice(toasted and chopped)
1/2 cup oatbran
1 1/2 cups crisped brown rice cereal
1 cup chopped dried cranberries
3 tablespoons finely chopped crystallized ginger
1 cup brown rice syrup
1/4 cup unrefined cane sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon fine grain sea salt

Method:
- First grease a 9″ x 13″ baking pan with the coconut oil
- In a bowl gather the next seven dry ingredients.
- In a small saucepan stir together the remaining ingredients over a medium heat until they start to bubble and boil and thicken slightly.
- Pour the hot liquid in with the dry ingredients and mix until they are fully coated in the syrup.
- press down the mixture in the baking pan and leave to cool.
- cut into bars before serving

(I borrowed the typed out version of this recipe from this website which of course got it from the book.)

Butternut Squash Pizza

I know, I know, AGAIN with the squash! I just can’t help it. But I must admit that I am beginning to get a bit squashed out so my squash days may be seriously numbered.

This recipe is an OBG (Oldies But Goodie) courtesy of this Cooking Light recipe from about two years ago.  It was one of those things that I immediately noticed while flipping through the magazine.  It’s a pizza with squash AND bacon.  Those are just about my favourite things in the world.  Easily.

Here’s a close-up shot…

 

 

It’s a pretty standard pizza except that you don’t use tomato sauce.  Instead you roast about a pound of cutup squash with onion and then mash about half of it.  That’s your sauce.  In terms of toppings you use fontina cheese, the leftover squash, crumbled bacon and some sage.

This time around I didn’t have ANY sage so I used fresh rosemary, which worked well.  I also had grand visions of sautee a few different types of mushrooms to use as a topping, but that didn’t happen.  But I really think that would be a brilliant addition.  I would also consider using a different type of winter squash… say acorn.  The butternut squash that I used this time around was a tad too sweet for my liking.

 

Oh!  And for the record I didn’t use the pizza dough recipe that they suggest.  Use your fave.  I used to use the whole wheat pizza dough from Whole Foods but that’s just me…

Pad Thai

For the longest time this was one of my favourite recipes. But when I made it this week I wasn’t so into it.

I had a gold so that probably contributed to it. I also made it in the morning in lieu of going to the gym so I was probably a tad cranky as well. It probably boils down to a lack of lovin’ going into the dish… so don’t be deterred!

I love pad thai. It’s one of my standbys when I go out, almost like comfort food. So for YEARS i’ve been looking for a good and somewhat traditional recipes. Of course that is where the problem starts. When you do some research you learn that the goupy, saucy pad thai that you get in restaurants here isn’t so traditional. So then my goal turned into finding a recipe with more depth in flavour and not a ton of sweetness and sauciness.

A LOT of recipes out there call for Ketchup. While I’m not on a crusade against ketchup or anything I don’t really think it has a place in pad thai. Then some recipes call for linguine noodles. Now THAT I can’t get down with at all. You just don’t make pad thai with pasta.

I was reading the New York Times almost two years ago and came across THIS RECIPE it had all of the signs pointing towards goodness.  Rice noodle?  Check!  No ketchup?  Check!  Tamarind paste?  Check!  Perfecto.

 I always  make a few changes to the recipe.  I never use broccoli.  I often add some firm or extra firm tofu towards the end for some extra protein.  One problem is that sometimes it tastes a bit TOO sour from the tamarind paste.  I always forget this until the dish is done but maybe add some extra sugar to the sauce before you add it.  I also think this dish could benefit from some extra heat.  A scoop of some chili/garlic paste may do the trick if you like things a bit spicy.

Please do try this… I really think it was my lack of appetite and generally downtrodden attitude from my cold this week that didn’t really sell me on it!

Butternut Squash Soup

I’ve made no secret of my love for squash in all forms. Butternut Squash Soup is definitely in my top 3 for uses for squash.

I’ve played around with A LOT of recipes. Some calling for apple juice among other random editions. They’d always do the job but I’d always feel like I was missing something in the world of butternut squash soup (or squatternut buash soup as I like to call it).

This recipe is my new favourite Butternut Squash Soup recipe!  It tastes like every super yummy cup of soup I’ve had at Whole Foods or Pax.  And of course it’s easy to make.  The most annoying part is pealing the squash.  But even THAT wasn’t so bad because the recipe says to roast the squash halves in the oven and THEN peel it. So much easier!

The funny thing is that there aren’t any “secret” ingredients in the soup at all.  It pretty much calls for squash, onions, ginger, garlic, cinnamon stick, brown sugar and chicken broth.   Simple, right?

The only change I made to the recipe was that I used a bit of ground cinnamon instead of a cinnamon stick because I didn’t have any on hand.

That’s it!  And sorry the picture is wonky… it’s hard to make soup look amazing.

Spicy Shrimp and Grits

I’m convinced that in a past life I was a Southern grandmother. It’s one of the few ways I can begin to explain my love of Southern food. Now, I haven’t BEEN to the South per se (I’ve been to Florida and Nevada and Texas but they don’t quite march to the beat of the same drum) but I love me some Southern foods. Grits, check! Fried chicken, check! Okra, check! PILE IT ON.

One of my dreams is to take a foodie road trip through the south and trying all of the local food. Granted I don’t so much have a drivers’ license but I’m working on that. I often say that “deep fried” is my favourite food group…. and I’m hardly joking. Sure I eat healthy 8 7% of the time but put a piece of fried chicken and a deep fried oreo in front of me and watch out.

With all that said I’ve been looking for excuses to make more grits. And you know my love of shrimp hence a quest for a good and easy enough recipe for Shrimp and Grits.

This recipe comes courtesy of Epicurious.

First of all I LOVED the preparation of the grits.  They were creamy and delicious thanks to evaporated milk (random, I know) and a ton of grated cheese.  Not so much healthy but definitely yummy.

The shrimp worked out well too.  Any recipe that starts with frying some bacon and reserving the fat gets a gold star in my book (again, not so much healthy but yummy).  Once the bacon is out of the pan you sautee mushrooms, peppers, onions and tomatoes in the bacon fat for a while.  Add the shrimp, some hot sauce and more tomatoes and that’s it!

Quick, easy and delicious.

One note about the recipe.  It says to reserve the bacon and drain it BUT you never hear from the bacon again I snacked on some while cooking and then sprinkled the bacon on the dish when it was done.

Was this dish authentic? No clue.  Was it delicious and easy enough to make?  Sure.  I’m putting this in the “keeper” pile.

Pumpkin Walnut Loaf

And the pumpkin continues…

Last month I bought some pie pumpkins to make pumpkin butter. I underestimated the yield of pumpkins and ended up with A LOT of leftover puree. Rather than see it go to waste I decided to freeze it to use for various uses later. Sure the stuff in the can is OK but it has chemicals and stuff. I kind of want pumpkin. Period.

I absolutely love having something sweet after dinner and decided to whip up a quick loaf of pumpkin bread. I love quick bread s because they’re quick (duh) and because they tend to use fruits and/or vegetables (banana, pumpkin, zucchini) so you can pretend that they’re healthy.

But of course, they’re not.

A lot of quick bread recipes call for ridonkulous (yes, ridonkulous as in beyond ridiculous) amounts of oil and sugar. The sugar doesn’t kill me as much as the copious amounts of oil. Thus began my quest for a decent and healthier pumpkin bread recipe.

I found a number of delicious sounding recipes on epicurious but a lot of them called for 1 cup of oil per loaf! So I headed over to the Cooking Light site and found a number of recipes that suited my desires.

I ended up settling on this recipe from Cooking Light. What drew me to the recipe were a number of interesting twists.  Along with flour the recipe calls for cornmeal.  Cornmeal!  Brilliant.  I love the nuttiness of cornmeal.  It also used a good mixture of spices including cardamom, mace and ginger.  Cardamom!  Great idea.  I didn’t have mace so I used cinnamon.

I also liked that the recipe used whole eggs and not 8 egg whites or egg substitute or some cop out like that.  I hate using a bunch of egg whites because it makes me sad to waste the yolks.

The only changes I made in the recipe were substituting cinnamon for mace, using about 1/2 cup less sugar and NOT using raisins.  I hate hate hate raisins. OH!  And I also made a streusel topping.  I combined some butter, sugar, cinnamon and walnuts and put it on the bread before baking.

And for the record the cornmeal was a great addition.  It gave the bread a nice texture… just a hint of crumbliness and some nutiness too.

This may very well be my new pumpkin bread recipe for life.

Curried Noodles with Rock Shrimp

The other day I discovered this cookbook by Ming Tsai in my collection. I got it from work once upon a time and had never ever used it. I was leafing through and came across this recipe for curried noodles with shrimp and thought it sounded delicious. I was kind of looking for something in my life that would taste like the Curried Pad Thai from Spring Rolls here in Toronto. So I decided to give it a try.

What I liked about it was the idea of making my own curry paste. The ingredients weren’t so crazy so I decided to give it a shot.

GOOD LORD. I made this recipe from start to finish in one shot and it literally took me about 2 hours! I kid you not. It was intense. The results were delicious but was the most time consuming thing I’ve made in ages. The issue is the chopping. There are a lot of things to be cut up. I guess I could have used the mini chopper but I’m a fan of doing things with my hands.

The upside about the sauce is that the recipe makes a TON so I have leftovers to make this dish again or I can use it with shrimp or chicken in a stir fry or something else. So NEXT time I make this it won’t take that long.

Here’s a link to the recipe on the Food Network site.  It’s a simplified version of what’s in the cookbook.   The cookbook wants you to do all sorts of crazy things like using whole spices and grinding them.  Um, no!  No more work than necessary please.

I didn’t make a ton of variations in the recipe.  I used less bok choy and added mushrooms and firm tofu to the mix.  Make it if you don’t mind sacrificing HOURS from your life.  Oh!  And be careful with the salt.  Fish sauce is salt so don’t add more salt until you taste things.

Caramel Corn

 I have this disease where I HAVE to have something sweet after dinner.  If not, I end up grazing all night aimlessly.  It doesn’t even have to be something elaborate… even a mini chocolate bar will do.  Sometimes I’ve been known to eat a spoon of brown sugar and call it a night.  Is that gross of me?

Last night I didn’t have any sweet treats laying around so I decided to whip up a batch of caramel corn.  Strangely enough I had everything on hand to make some.

The first order of business was popping some popcorn.  I have to admit, I’m kind of anti-microwave popcorn.  A lot of the time they have transfat AND once I read something about the coating on the bags being a possible carcinogen.  I’m totally not one of those people who follows those reports but for some reason that really creeped me out.  So in my household we buy the loose kernels and pop them on the stove.  It’s super easy to do and probably healthier since you can use less oil.

I popped about 1/3 cup of kernels and the yield was about 8 cups.  Perfecto.   Then I melted about 1c of brown sugar with 2tbsp butter and 3tbsp corn syrup.  I also added a bit of water and brought the mixture to a boil.  The goal is to dissolve the sugar.  I used a candy thermometer with the idea of getting the temperature up to 300F but got bored at around 260F and gave up.

From there you take the mixture off the stove.  I stirred in about a tsp of vanilla extract and 1/2 tsp each of salt and baking soda.  The effect of the baking soda is totally cool.  It makes the mixture creamy and kind of loosens it up.  Throw in the popcorn and voila!

I spread the popcorn mixture on a greased baking sheet and let it cool for 30mins.

And that’s it!  For some reason this was the best batch I’ve ever made.  Not quite sure why but I’ll go with it.  I think next time I’ll make some super decadent caramel corn with chocolate chunks and nuts.  Yummm.

Scallops Provencal

Scallops! I NEVER make scallops. But something in my head and heart today told me to make scallops. No clue where that came from…

I was in Fort Lauderdale for a long weekend (warm weather = heaven) and got back home at around 6PM. I ate at around 10AM but hadn’t had anything else so I was hungry. Normally I would just get takeout but I’ve been feeling cooking deprived and just had to cook something.

I was originally going to make salmon with lentils but got really hung up on the idea of doing something with scallops. I picked up my copy of “Barefoot In Paris” and as I was looking for the salmon and lentils recipe I came across the recipe for Scallops Provencal. I scanned the ingredient list and realized that I would only have to buy scallops, lemon and shallots and the scallop dish was born!

 I’ve made a few Ina Garten/Barefoot Contessa recipes and have enjoyed them, this was no exception. Her recipes always call for a ton of cream and/or butter which normally grosses me out (despite the deliciousness of butter) but tonight I was like bring on the butter.

Here is a link to the original recipe as it appears on the Food Network website.

The dish was really easy to make and was pretty classy.  I would totally make this for company or something.

Anyway you season the scallops with salt and pepper and then dredge them in flour.  Then you melt some putter in a pan and brown the scallops on each side. Then you add MORE butter to the pan with the scallops and throw in some garlic, shallots and parsley.  Sautee everything for a minute or two and then add some white wine.  Cook for a minute.  Remove from heat and squeeze some lemon juice on top and THAT’s IT.

Literally, that’s it.  It probably took 15 minutes total to make including prep.

I bought sea scallops and used about 4 of them and was sufficiently full.  Only problem was that I wasn’t sure what to serve the scallops with.  I ended up going with garlic sauteed broccoli and steamed carrots.  Any suggestions?

This was definitely a hit AND quick which is always great.  I wouldn’t even modify the recipe which is rare… I ALWAYS want to change things.  This makes me want to take another look at “Barefoot In Paris”…

Anyhoo I’m back from vacation so things should be getting back to normal-ish!