greg cooks

nourishing the body

greg

More Pizza

What pizza did we have last Friday? A darn good one. The pie shown above has a standard pizza sauce base topped with diced summer sausage, chopped garlic-stuffed green olives, and sliced pepperoncini peppers. On top of the cheese was some pepperoni slices.

How about something completely different? How about a cheeseless Asian-style pizza. I used hoisin sauce as the base along with some sriracha hot sauce. This proved a sweet and spicy underlay for the ingredients on top. A layer of fresh mung bean sprouts, some sliced leftover Asian meatballs, and fresh pineapple finished off this healthy lowfat pizza.

See how nice it cooked up? The only drawback was the amount of moisture in the pizza. I think that comes largely from the bean sprouts and maybe the pineapple. It was a little bit drippy and hard to eat. But it tasted really good.

Meatballs with an Asian influence

No, it’s not spaghetti and meatballs with a tomato sauce. It’s better! This dish has flavors of Vietnam and Thailand. The noodles are Japanese udon noodles. I love their silky texture. The meatballs were made using sirloin roast and pork loin ground together with garlic and green onions. The meat was seasoned with some soy sauce as well and bound together with an egg and bread crumbs. The meatballs were cooked on a sheet pan in a 375 oven just until cooked through. I had plenty leftover that I used for a pizza. I’ll post more on that tomorrow.

To create the sauce, I started with garlic and ginger in a hot wok and stir fried some finely julienned carrots. To the pan I added a teaspoon of Vietnamese sour soup paste. This is a blend of spices that gives a tangy kick to the dish. More soy sauce went in along with some milk that had a little bit of corn starch stirred in for thickening. To give it a bit of Thai nuance, I added a tablespoon of creamy peanut butter. Yes, this is a spicy, tangy peanut sauce. I added enough water to keep it liquid as it cooked. I added the cooked meatballs to the sauce and simmered them for a few minutes. Meanwhile my udon was boiling. Once it was cooked to almost done I threw the noodles into the sauce and cooked them for another minute or two and coated everything with the sauce. I finished it off with some lemon juice at the last minute to give it even more tang.

Empanadas Argentinas

I’m heading out to a wine tasting this evening where we will be sampling some torrontés and malbec wines from Argentina. So I threw together this appetizer to take along. Searching the web I found a really nice recipe from the Cooking with Teresita blog for empanadas. I pretty much followed the recipe on her web page so I won’t repeat it here.

I started by cooking the onions and meat together. Then cooked the spices in. I allowed that to cool and added chopped green onion, chopped boiled egg and chopped green olives.

I didn’t have the time to make a dough so I went to my freezer and pulled out a package of pot sticker wraps. These were perfect for making appetizer sized empanadas.

Here they are all stuffed and sealed. I brushed them liberally with olive oil and baked them in a 350 °F oven for 35 minutes, until the turned golden brown.

Ah, the smell is heavenly. I can’t wait to bite into them.

Good old midwestern chili to cure the blizzard blues

Last Tuesday was quite the day for our region. After receiving 5 inches of new snow on Monday, Mother Nature decided to wallop us with a full out, horizontal snow, 30 below zero, batten down the hatches blizzard. Now, I love a good blizzard – in December or January. But it’s March! It’s time for all of this snow to melt! The whole region was shut down and we had to deal with another almost foot of snow that had been blown up into huge drifts aftermath.

What better on a cold spring winter’s day than a big steaming bowl of midwestern hamburger soup chili. Mine is pretty typical but I do like to add a few things that make it a bit more interesting. I started with ground beef and onions, of course. But I added chopped carrots as well. I use more than just kidney beans if I have them on hand. In this chili you might see some garbanzo beans in there as well as some black eyed peas. I like corn in my chili. Frozen corn tastes fresher than canned corn. For spices I don’t just reach for chili powder. I make my own mix. I ground my own blend in my trusty coffee spice grinder made from cumin seeds, coriander seeds, red chili flakes, a touch of oregano and, the secret ingredient, a cinnamon stick. This blend of spices went in near the beginning just after the meat was browned. Some canned crushed tomato and tomato sauce were added and the whole thing simmered up until good and cooked. I added a splash of sriracha hot sauce near the end. That’s at least one version of my midwestern chili.



Written by · Categorized: Uncategorized · Tagged:

Hummus

This middle eastern garbanzo bean dip goes great with fresh made pita bread. And, it is so easy to make. I start with two cans of drained garbanzo beans. You can certainly cook them yourself but a can is so easy. I add a couple of cloves of garlic, juice of one lemon, 2 tbsp of tahini, salt and pepper. I place everything into the food processor and turn it on. I drizzle in olive oil until it is the right creamy consistency. You can add some water or some of the water from the bean can of you want to cut down on the amount of fat. This is garnished with kalamata olives and a sprinkle of ground sumac.