I love pudding. Any kind. It's all miraculously delicious in my book. I even tried black pudding not too long ago from a fancy-type restaurant and thought it was SUMPTIOUS! For those of you who aren't aware, Black Pudding is a savory pudding made from cooking blood with a filler and spices. GROSS RIGHT?!! I thought so too and sneered at it disdainfully in Taiwan last summer. It's eaten all over the world and I thought it was about time I tried.
Anyway I digress, I'm not making Black Pudding in this post so don't worry. You're safe. What I am making are two different kinds of pudding. Raw Chocolate Chia Seed and Leftover Rice Pudding.
Okay so you may have noticed that I don't use much milk or dairy in my recipes. That's because it hurts my tummy so in all the recipes when I say milk, I'm using unsweetened almond milk which can easily be swapped out for regular milk.
Chia Seed Pudding
This one is SUPER EASY AND REALLY REALLY GOOD FOR YOU!! Chia seeds contain something like three times the daily necessary omega-3 oils and when you soak them they thicken. You can buy black or white chia seeds at most large grocery stores in the health food section but they tend to be expensive so keep your eyes peeled at bulk food stores and try to buy them like that.
I make a chia seed pudding almost every evening after supper.
I don't know where I got this from (we were NOT a dessert-after-dinner kind of family) but I always always crave something sweet after dinner. Before I sit down to eat, I put two heaping tablespoons chia seeds into a dessert dish (sometimes I do this in a wine glass cause it makes me feel fancy) with 1 cup unsweetened chocolate almond milk and 1 tablespoon maple syrup. And then just let it sit for a minimum of 15 minutes. Stir it a couple times before you eat it.
It get's to be the consistency of tapioca pudding but the seeds are a bit crunchier. Yum!!
Leftover Rice Pudding
You can make this with any kind of rice (hmmmmm or quinoa probably but I haven't tried it). I used leftover basmati rice.
Pre-heat oven to 350.
In a saucepan combine:
1 cup cooked rice
2 cups milk
and bring to a boil. Stir it often so it doesn't burn.
Beat together:
2 eggs
1/4 teaspoon Cinnamon
1 Tablespoon White sugar
3 Tablespoons Maple Sugar or Brown sugar or Maple Syrup (if you use syrup then you have to bake the pudding for an extra 10 minutes or it'll be soupy).
Add the egg mixture to the hot milk. MAKE SURE YOU KEEP STIRRING THE MILK AS YOU'RE POURING OTHERWISE THE EGG WILL COOK UNEVENLY. Pudding needs to be stirred, it's a custard thing.
Let the whole kit and caboodle cook on the stove for about a minute at a low simmer and then pour it into a glass baking dish with a lid. Cook for 20 minutes with the lid on. Take the lid off give it a stir and then cook for 10 minutes, lid off.
It's not the most attractive pudding so I made a maple syrup reduction (boil1/2 cup maple syrup to 112 degrees on your candy thermometer) and put a couple strawberries and mint leaves on top of each bowl. Drizzle it with the reduction and it looks much more presentable!
Thursday 17 May 2012
Thursday 3 May 2012
Soup's up!
Soup soup soup
I have two kinds of delicious soup sitting in my freezer which means that I don't have to cook for the next couple weeks!
I'm moving in two weeks and I don't want to buy more groceries. I'm in "using up what I got" mode and that can make for some interesting meals...
The two kinds of soup sitting my freezer are:
Roasted Garlic Potato Leek
and
Turk-ish Bean
Start by roasting a chicken...
Uuuuuum okay so that's how I started because the local meat guy had a sale on free-range birds.
Roasting a whole chicken is ridiculously easy.
Pre-heat the oven to 375
Rinse your bird and pat her dry.
Stuff the body cavity with an onion and an apple or an onion and whatever other piece of cold weather fruit you have on hand that needs usin'.
Rub the skin with olive oil and salt and pepper. Close her up and stick her in the oven for about and hour, depending on size.
A roasted bird was enough food for 2 chicken salad lunches, one chicken dinner and chicken stock for days. Awesome!!
To make the stock, toss a couple carrots, an onion quartered, some celery with the leafy bits, the chicken bones, and a bay leaf in a pot and cover with water.
Boil till the water has reduced by half. Boom stock.
The stock was the base for both my soups and I used the picked clean chicken bits in the Turk-ish Bean. Both these recipes would be equally delicious with Veg stock and no chicken bits.
ALL soups should be started by sauteing onions in a large pot until they are translucent.
Turk-ish Bean
Add one can of diced tomatoes, one can of chickpeas and one can of whatever other kind of beans you've got to your large pot that contains two onions sauted in oil. Add 2 cups chicken stock and here comes the Turk-ish part:
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon cummin
1/2 cayenne
I don't know if that spice combo is exactly Turkish but there you have it. I would NOT add more cinnamon than that, a little goes a long long way.
Salt your soup to taste. You can add (especially with homemade stock which is NOT as salty as store-bought) quite a bit. I probably, all together, put in about 1 Tablespoon but it's hard to tell cause I add and taste as I go.
Bring to a boil.
Eat. Freeze. Eat.
Roasted Garlic Potato Leek
Cut the top off a head of garlic, just enough so that you can see most of the flesh but you don't lose much meat. Place in the center of a square of tinfoil and drizzle with oil and sprinkle with a pinch of salt. Wrap that sucker up and place in the center of your oven. Turn the oven on and cook for about 40min as your oven heats up.
In that large pot that we talked about earlier that has some onion sauteing in it, add chopped up leek.
A word on cleaning leeks. First time I got one I had no idea how to clean it and well yeah it was gritty. So cut it up before you clean it and put the chopped bits into a colander. Rinse with cold water and use your fingers to separate all the layers so the water gets into all the little crevices. Alternatively, you can chop them and submerge them in water and then spin dry them in a salad spinner (my current kitchen doesn't have a salad spinner... it's off fraternizing with the slotted spoon...)
Saute these puppies up with the onion and then cover with 2 cups of stock and 2 cups of water. Add 4-6 potatoes, depending on their size. Be generous with the salt and pepper. Cook till the potatoes are tender.
Stick the pot outside to cool while the garlic finishes roasting. Once everything is cool enough to not make you swear and jump around after sticking your finger in it, ladle the soup into a blender.
I add all the garlic into the first blended batch cause you're gonna mix all the blender batches together and adjust the seasoning before you're done anyway.
It's a pretty bland looking soup so throw some fresh parsley or dill on top to pretty things up. Remember it's not how tasty it is that matters, it's how good it looks... nah just kidding!
Eat. Freeze. Eat.
I have two kinds of delicious soup sitting in my freezer which means that I don't have to cook for the next couple weeks!
I'm moving in two weeks and I don't want to buy more groceries. I'm in "using up what I got" mode and that can make for some interesting meals...
The two kinds of soup sitting my freezer are:
Roasted Garlic Potato Leek
and
Turk-ish Bean
Start by roasting a chicken...
Uuuuuum okay so that's how I started because the local meat guy had a sale on free-range birds.
Roasting a whole chicken is ridiculously easy.
Pre-heat the oven to 375
Rinse your bird and pat her dry.
Stuff the body cavity with an onion and an apple or an onion and whatever other piece of cold weather fruit you have on hand that needs usin'.
Rub the skin with olive oil and salt and pepper. Close her up and stick her in the oven for about and hour, depending on size.
A roasted bird was enough food for 2 chicken salad lunches, one chicken dinner and chicken stock for days. Awesome!!
To make the stock, toss a couple carrots, an onion quartered, some celery with the leafy bits, the chicken bones, and a bay leaf in a pot and cover with water.
Boil till the water has reduced by half. Boom stock.
The stock was the base for both my soups and I used the picked clean chicken bits in the Turk-ish Bean. Both these recipes would be equally delicious with Veg stock and no chicken bits.
ALL soups should be started by sauteing onions in a large pot until they are translucent.
Turk-ish Bean
Add one can of diced tomatoes, one can of chickpeas and one can of whatever other kind of beans you've got to your large pot that contains two onions sauted in oil. Add 2 cups chicken stock and here comes the Turk-ish part:
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon cummin
1/2 cayenne
I don't know if that spice combo is exactly Turkish but there you have it. I would NOT add more cinnamon than that, a little goes a long long way.
Salt your soup to taste. You can add (especially with homemade stock which is NOT as salty as store-bought) quite a bit. I probably, all together, put in about 1 Tablespoon but it's hard to tell cause I add and taste as I go.
Bring to a boil.
Eat. Freeze. Eat.
Roasted Garlic Potato Leek
Cut the top off a head of garlic, just enough so that you can see most of the flesh but you don't lose much meat. Place in the center of a square of tinfoil and drizzle with oil and sprinkle with a pinch of salt. Wrap that sucker up and place in the center of your oven. Turn the oven on and cook for about 40min as your oven heats up.
In that large pot that we talked about earlier that has some onion sauteing in it, add chopped up leek.
A word on cleaning leeks. First time I got one I had no idea how to clean it and well yeah it was gritty. So cut it up before you clean it and put the chopped bits into a colander. Rinse with cold water and use your fingers to separate all the layers so the water gets into all the little crevices. Alternatively, you can chop them and submerge them in water and then spin dry them in a salad spinner (my current kitchen doesn't have a salad spinner... it's off fraternizing with the slotted spoon...)
Saute these puppies up with the onion and then cover with 2 cups of stock and 2 cups of water. Add 4-6 potatoes, depending on their size. Be generous with the salt and pepper. Cook till the potatoes are tender.
Stick the pot outside to cool while the garlic finishes roasting. Once everything is cool enough to not make you swear and jump around after sticking your finger in it, ladle the soup into a blender.
I add all the garlic into the first blended batch cause you're gonna mix all the blender batches together and adjust the seasoning before you're done anyway.
It's a pretty bland looking soup so throw some fresh parsley or dill on top to pretty things up. Remember it's not how tasty it is that matters, it's how good it looks... nah just kidding!
Eat. Freeze. Eat.
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