Shiitake and Pumpkin Ravioli

I'm cleaning out my cabinets (as well as the freezer and fridge) this week because.. wait for it... Tim and I are moving to Bangkok, Thailand.  Woo!  More details to come soon over at the other blog.  For purposes of this blog, moving means cooking and eating through the substantial pantry I have built up over the past couple years here in Jakarta.  This meal made a dent, taking care of: a can of pumpkin, half a container of walnuts, parmesan cheese, and a pack of gyoza wrappers from the freezer.

I used this recipe for shiitake and pumpkin ravioli, although I changed it up a teeny bit, using regular soy sauce in lieu of tamari and rosemary in lieu of sage.  Also, for the sauce, I browned the butter with a handful of chopped walnuts and minced rosemary.  Awesomesauce.  Literally.

I highly recommend this recipe- it's super easy and quite a tasty delight.  The sweetness from the pumpkin is great with the savory/umami of the mushrooms and soy.  Perfect!

Coconut Energy Bars

I keep seeing all of these copycat energy bar recipes floating around the internet lately... many different variations on the same theme: 

nuts + dried fruit (usually dates) + extra flavorings x a quick zip in the food processor = 

raw energy bars similar to Larabars

I thought these might be a good grab-and-go breakfast option for me and Tim.  We've been exercising in the mornings before he heads to work and I start my work-from-home routine, but since we're not very good at getting up early, there's not a lot of time in between for a sit down breakfast of any sort.

I decided to use this recipe for chocolate and coconut flavored energy bars.  Unfortunately, it was a bit of a bust and required much troubleshooting to achieve the ultimate product.  The recipe calls for dates (Medjool, but I used Deglet Noor, which perhaps was part of the problem), nuts (almonds and walnuts), dried unsweetened coconut and cocoa powder.   The ratios (dry to wet) seemed to be off for me, though, as my final product was much too dry and very crumbly:

I had to almost double the amount of dates in order to get a sticky enough consistency to form the bars.  Plus a couple tablespoons of honey, just in case:

In the end, we liked them ok, but we want to try one of the other recipes for a different flavor combination.  I think I was hoping for a little more chocolate flavor myself.  I'll definitely give it another try.  Perhaps chocolate chip?  Or peanut butter chocolate?

Pesto Pizza

Easy weeknight dinner:
pesto (basil, garlic, Parmesan, nuts, olive oil, salt, pepper)
mozzarella
fresh tomato slices
whole wheat pizza doughLoad up pizza dough with toppings, cook on super high heat for 10 minutes, devour, done.

Pasta with Arugula Pesto, Toasted Walnuts, Goat Cheese and Beets

This was another "cleaning out the fridge" recipe, or "mixed grill" if you're the Real Martha. Sick of the usual arugula salad with beets, nuts and goat cheese, I decided to look up pasta recipes incorporating those ingredients.Thank you, Google Machine. You have delivered. Yet again.
Hearty, sweet, salty, garlicky. Mmm.

Horovatz in Mer Nation's Capital

As I said last week, Tim hosted a mini Peace Corps Armenia reunion this weekend in mer nation's capital (i.e. DC)... having practiced some Armenian-style cooking last week, we were pretty well prepared to host the metz kev (big party) for a horovatz (BBQ).

Still using "Simply Armenian" by Barbara Ghazarian as the basis for our meal, we repeated the beet salad and minted cucumber and yogurt soup, improved upon the lamehjun by cooking it on a pre-heated baking stone at 500 degrees for about 10 minutes so it crisped up evenly all around, and made a couple new dishes to make sure everybody got enough to eat: grilled lamb skewers and pilaf. Recipes after the jump!

Sunday Dinner: Armenian Meal

Tim's friends from Peace Corps Armenia are coming into town next weekend, so he wanted to cook an Armenian meal for them. But he wanted to practice first, which is where we came in. This week's Sunday dinner was an Armenian feast: minted cucumber and yogurt soup, beet and walnut salad, lahmahjoon/lamejun (basically Armenian lamb pizzas), and apricot cake. We based all of the recipes off of a cookbook Andrea gave Tim for Christmas: Simply Armenian, by Barbara Ghazarian. Recipes after the jump!

Arugula Pesto

One of the veggies that keeps coming through the CSA despite super cold temperatures is arugula. We've been eating a lot of it recently, and I was looking for a different way to use it.

Simply Recipes had a recipe for arugula pesto with walnuts, and I had some 3-cheese tortellini from Costco, so we gave it a try. Pretty good! Not as sweet as your typical basil pesto-it has the peppery bite of arugula. I really liked the garlic roasting methodology (in the skillet!), too. I think I'll take advantage of that for other recipes calling for roasted garlic.

The pesto was tasty on the tortellini, and also tasty mixed with some mayo on chicken sandwiches the next day. Mmm.

Spicy Lentil Walnut Burgers

Last year, in an attempt to eat healthier, I bought several different types of dried lentils (brown, red, yellow). A short time later, I inherited even more lentils from Amy when she moved across the world to Australia. Since I came into this wealth of lentils, I think I have cooked lentils ZERO times. This needed to change...

Enter the Other Martha's Spicy Lentil-Walnut Burgers... perfect! Spicy, earthy, easy... plus the burgers help me get over one of my main consistency hang-ups with lentils- they get super crispy on the outside if you cook them slow-and-low. The burgers are pretty big, so be sure to get the larger sized pitas. They also fall apart a little bit, which isn't the end of the world, but not very picturesque (sorry!). The leftovers were great the next day heated up in the toaster oven and served over a green salad with feta, olives, and a vinaigrette.

Whole Wheat Apple Muffins

I still had apple bobbing apples (Macintoshes) left, but they weren't crisp enough for straight eating, so I had to come up with some more apple recipes. This King Arthur Flour recipe got the seal of approval from Smitten Kitchen as well as some other bloggers, and I had all the ingredients, so whole wheat apple muffins it was.

These are pretty good! Lots of apples, the muffins were moist. I added some chopped walnuts for texture. I also ended up making mini muffins- I cooked them at 450 for 5 minutes, then turned the heat down to 400 and cooked them for 8 more minutes. It made about 3 dozen mini muffins.

Butternut Squash Lasagna: Partial FAIL

Ug... I was trying this butternut squash lasagna recipe out, hoping that I could possibly serve it to the vegetarians this Thanksgiving, but it didn't quite work out. I made a half recipe, and made individual lasagnas for me and Chuck.

The flavors were really good, but I had some major noodle cooking issues- I think due to a lack of sauce, but I'm not sure. The bottom noodle wasn't fully cooked, and the sauce was sorta burnt onto the bottom of it, and the top noodle wasn't cooked on the edges.

I think my bechamel sauce got too thick maybe? I don't know- there just didn't seem to be enough of it. Also, cooking the diced squash in the frying pan on high heat was kinda odd, too. It burnt the squash and onions. I think next time I would dice it and then roast it.

Squash and Ricotta Tortellini with Brown Butter Sage Sauce

I made these squash and ricotta tortellini with some delicata squash I had from the CSA. Pretty tasty, although I find working with the wonton skins to be kinda a pain in the butt... they stick, they rip. I'm not sure I have enough patience for them! The sauce is nice, though: browned butter, crispy sage, dried cranberries and toasted walnuts.

Beet and Potato Fritter/Latke

I had a bunch of leftover roasted beets from this salad, and also needed to use up some of the plethora of purple potatoes I've gotten from the CSA recently, so I thought this beet and potato latke/pancake/fritter thing would be a good idea.

It's hard to see from the photo, but I made one large frying pan size fritter, and cut it into fourths.

This was pretty good- it toned down the super sweetness of the beets and gave them a nice crispy outside. I added some herbs to the fritter: parsley and cilantro, based on the flavors from Eileen's famous beet dip. I served it with a lime cilantro sour cream to brighten it up, and sprinkled it all with toasted walnuts.

Beet, Walnut, Goat Cheese, Arugula Salad

As a starter for our tortellini-stuffed squash, I made this other fall favorite: a roasted beet salad with toasted walnuts, crumbled goat cheese and arugula. Lots of different textures and complimentary flavors!

Served with a shallot/red wine vinegar dressing (to which I added a little bit of dijon mustard, to help keep it emulsified).

Goat Cheese, Watercress, Apricot and Walnut Sandwich

This is a complete Frankenrecipe... I got a small bag of watercress from my CSA this week, and, as with the horseradish, wasn't sure what to do with it. It's not something I would ever think to buy, but this is why I like the CSA. It makes us try new things. Did you know watercress actually grows in flowing streams? I didn't. But now I know. And knowing is half the battle.

Anyway, back to the cobbling together of this Frankensandwich. Randy, the farmer from Star Hollow farms, suggested the watercress could be used in a little tea sandwich with cream cheese and lemon. Well, I didn't have any cream cheese. But I did have goat cheese! An Epicurious search returned this recipe for goat cheese and watercress sandwiches... I messed with the recipe a little: instead of raisin bread, I used the croissants we had lying around, but added diced dried apricots to make up for the missing raisins. I also put toasted walnuts in the sandwich, rather than on it (to simplify taking it to work for lunch).

We'll see how the sandwiches go over... Tim, Chuck and I are taking them to work tomorrow.