Sloppy Bozzies

Good evening! I would like to share with you tonight, or today, depending on your time zone, a childhood favorite of mine adapted for the particular circumstance of Iain and I being both under pacts of vegeterianism and, for him, an abstinence from high fructose corn syrup. Thuswise, this dish became an experiment for me in slow-cooking a hearty and manly all-vegetable dish. For these were the days of the MAN HOUSE, when Emily had left and we had yet to reconvene the Boshenke household in Chicago.

Iain taking over the keyboard for a minute here. This dish was a really fun collaboration, and I might actually say I enjoy it more than the original! My main contribution aside from sous chef/consultant was the pan-fried french fries, which is a lovely side I recommend coupling many-a-dish with. These are pretty different from the chips of my fish and chips recipe, so ready your taste buds!

Sloppy Bozzies

Ingredients
3 Tablespoons veggie oil
2 celery ribs
1 onion
1 bell pepper
6 garlic cloves
4 cups red and black beans
1 teaspoon thyme
1 teaspoon cumin
salt and pepper
1 Thai pepper
1/2 cup beer
1/2 cup ketchup (OH NO!! Iain had lenten vows of no high fructose corn syrup, and our ketchup had it in it. Here's what we substituted: 1 tomato diced, 1-2 tsp cider vinegar, several glubs Worchester, 2 Tablespoons corn meal, 1 Tablespoon tomato paste)

Music: Green Day, hehe

Procedure.


1. Finely dice celery, onion, and bell pepper, and garlic.
2. Cook over medium heat in an oiled wok or large skillet: onion, peppers, garlic, celery, beans, and salt and pepper! Have this going for 10-15 minutes, until onions are softened and nicely translucent.
3. Add beer, Worchester, and ketchup (or ketchup substitute mixture). Partially cover and simmer for 15 or so minutes, but if you have longer, let the heat be lower and cook it for longer. I think this dish would be even nicer if it had more time to soak in the flavor.

Pan-fried Garlicky Fries
Ingredients
About 1 1/2 russet potatoes per devourer (or 2 if the devourers are bottomless pits)
About as many cloves of garlic as there are potatoes
A couple sprigs worth of rosemary
About 3/4 cup canola oil (for 4 potatoes)
salt

Procedure:

1. Alright ladies and gents, the key to making these fries with maximum deliciousity is to properly season your oil first. About 1-2 hours before you begin frying, put your oil in a jar and add the garlic (minced) and rosemary (broken if fresh) and let it sit. Once in a while it helps to stir it, but the main idea is to let the oil soak up the garlicky and rosemary-y juices.

2. Proper fries procedure! This step is nearly identical to the chips of my fish and chips recipe. Cut up your potatoes into whatever shape you want and let them soak in a bowl of cold water for about ten minutes. Once the time is up, drain em and dry em!

3. Skillet time! Pour about a half cup of your oil into your skillet and set it to high heat. Make sure NOT to put in your garlic and rosemary with the oil - you do yourself no favors by burning these tasty morsels to a crisp! Add about 2 potatoes worth of the fries to the oil and let them sizzle! Keep a close eye on them, and check their undersides frequently. Once they're starting to turn a crispy golden brown, flip them using a spatula or your preferred flipping utensil. Let them go another few minutes, adding some garlic and rosemary right before you're ready to take them out.


4. THEY'RE BROWNED! TAKE THEM OUT!! TAKE THEM OUT!! Phew, that was close - that one looks a little blackened. Good thing you have me to keep an eye on you. Place them in a bowl or on a plate with a paper towel to absorb the runoff oil. Put the place somewhere warm, like inside an oven set to warm, perhaps. Add the rest of your oil and fry up the second batch. These will go faster than the first, so be ready to flip them faster, but still follow the same general procedure as above.


5. Aaaannd, that's it! You're done! Serve them up with some sloppy bozzies and enjoy!


I hope you enjoyed our joint post this evening (it was afternoon when we started it) as much as we enjoyed cooking it. Well, I guess that'll only happen if you cook it. So cook it! Tada! I'm hungry - I'm going to go make food now. Tata!

Beans & Rice

Hello everybody,

So, I (Iain) just flipped through the recent Yummies! posts and found that the last time I posted an actual recipe was in... February. Sad. Although I did participate in cooking many of the recent featured dishes. But still, the most recent post I did was a collaborative April fools dada extravaganza, so I'm here to fix that, by posting an EXTREMELY MINDBLOWINGLY DIFFICULT DISH TO MAKE.

So, ladies and gentlefolk, I give to you...

Beans and Rice - Boshenke Style


Ingredients
Beans
Rice

Procedure
Make beans and rice.

Tada!

Okay, for real this time...

Ingredients
1 cup uncooked brown rice (white works too)
2 14.5 oz cans of beans (I like to go with one black, one red)
1 can diced tomatoes
3 or 4 cloves garlic
garlic powder
cumin
chili powder
salt
black pepper
1 tbs olive oil

Optional Ingredients
1/4 to 1/2 white onion, diced
1 red chili, diced
ground coriander
a pinch of oregano
1 green pepper, diced
cheese

Music Listened To
Good lord this was long ago. I'm going to guess... Rodrigo y Gabriela

Procedure

1. Cook the rice (if you don't know how, you boil the 1 cup of rice in just over 2 cups of water in a covered pot).

2. Heat the olive oil in the skillet. If you're using onions, toss them in first to let them soften. Once that's done (or if you're skipping that), put in the beans, preferably drained. The main idea is just to let them heat through, so you don't need to heat them alone for long. Add the garlic and other seasonings and stir them in (choose your own proportions!). Let it simmer to let the flavors meld.

3. If you're using green pepper, go ahead and add it now. Once it's absorbed the water, add the rice and stir it in. Lastly add the tomatoes and let the whole thing heat through. Adjust seasonings as necessary.

4. Serve up in a big bowl and top with grated cheese (right now we have some habanero jack from the coop - intense!)


And that's really all there is to it. You can make this dish super simple, or actually kind of extravagant. It's cheap, delicious and very filling, and usually you get at least one or two good lunches out of the leftovers. Perfect Americorps food, in fact...

Thanks, and see you in like a month and a half!

(Joking)

(I hope)

Granola!

Is it possible to be a blog hog when none of the other blog contributors are posting? Discuss.

In the meantime, I'm (Emily) home sick for the second day running and bored, so, blog hog or not, here's a recipe for you folks.

Homemade granola is one of those things that might look complicated but is in fact super easy to make at home and, often, much cheaper than buying in the store. Well, not if you're like me and buy apple juice-sweetened dried cranberries, but then, if I bought granola in a store with apple juice-sweetened dried cranberries, that would be more expensive than me making it. The best part about making your own granola is that you can customize it completely. You get to pick what goes in it, how sweet to make it, how much oil it's gonna have, and whether it's gonna be crunchier or chewier. Bozzie and I made a double batch a couple weeks back. We started with the same base, and then he added stuff to his (a little) and I added stuff to mine (a lot).

No pictures of the process here, because it's super simple, but here's a recipe. I'm putting down the proportions I used, but, seriously, make it your own. Oats are important and you need a lot of them, but basically everything else can be altered. You can easily make it wheat-free, you can add different fruits and nuts, you can take out anything you don't like from my recipe and replace it with, well, almost anything. Basically, you just need crunchy stuff, sweetener of some kind, a bit of oil, and you're all set.


Homemade Granola a la Emily and Bozzie

Ingredients
Dry

• about 4 cups oats-- not instant!
• 1 cup wheat bran (or oat bran)
• 1 cup sliced almonds (or whatever nuts you like)
• 2/3 cup flax seeds
  
• 3/4 cup sunflower seeds
• 1/4 cup sesame seeds
  
• dash cinnamon
  

Wet

• 1/3 cup vegetable oil (or more--you can add less too, I think, but I think 1/3 cup helps it crisp up nicely)
• 1/3 cup water (or less, if you're going for really crispy)
• 1/2 cup honey (this is the sweetener-- you can sub maple syrup, agave, molasses, brown sugar, etc)
• drizzle molasses
• generous drizzle agave extract
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract

Bozzie Addition:

• 1/2 cup currants

Emily Additions:

• 2/3 cup pumpkin seeds
• 1/2 cup dried, unsweetened coconut
• 1/3 cup dried apricots, chopped small
• 1/2 cup dried cranberries

Procedure

• Combine the dry ingredients and pour the wet ingredients over the top, mixing well. I find that it's easiest to do this with your hands. The granola should be sticky but not at all liquidy.
• Spread in as thin a layer as possible onto a lightly greased baking sheet
  
• Bake at 250°F for 20-40 minutes, stirring every 10. Add the dried fruit during the last ten minutes. The granola will crisp up more as it cools.
• Alternatively, you can bake it for 10-15 minutes at a higher temperature of 350-400°F. This should give you even crispier granola.
• Let the granola cool (snagging handfuls to munch as necessary), then transfer to airtight containers. Yogurt containers work very well for this. This makes a lot of granola, so you might need 2 yogurt containers. But don't worry. It keeps quite well.

Curried Eggplant-Lentil Soup

I know I (Emily) just posted, but I have to get this online quickly before I forget how I made it. Anyway, the day before departing for my spring break travels, I realized that I had an eggplant. Now, this is never a bad thing. I love eggplant and rank it among my at least top three favorite vegetables. However, since I was about to leave for over a week, I didn't trust the eggplant's chances of survival. Eggplant pasta and stuffed eggplant are always nice, but I was in a soupy mood so I decided to experiment. The surprisingly delicious results follow.

Curried Eggplant-Lentil Soup

Ingredients

• 1 eggplant, diced, salted, and roasted, with olive oil, salt, and pepper, for 10 minutes at 500°F. (For further instruction on how to do all that, look at this.)
• 2 c. dry lentils
  
• 5-7 cups water, broth, or a mixture
• 2 tsp. hot curry powder-- (if you don't have this, add regular curry powder plus cayenne or another pepper)
  
• dash canola or olive oil
  
• 1 onion, thinly sliced
• 1 large carrot, chopped
• 1/2 green pepper, sliced (we had half a pepper. If you have a whole one, put it in)
  
• 4 cloves garlic, thinly sliced or minced
• 1/2 tsp. salt (or to taste)
  
• 1/2 tsp. cumin seeds, plus powder for later
• 3 TBS sesame seeds
• handful fresh spinach, chopped
• dash lemon juice
• ground pepper and feta cheese (optional) to serve
  

Procedure

• Boil the lentils for about 20 minutes in water and/or broth.
• Meanwhile, heat the oil in a skillet over medium heat and saute the cumin seed, sesame seed, salt, and onion. Add the carrot a few minutes later, then stir in the pepper, garlic and hot curry powder. Saute until the onions are translucent and the veggies are beginning to soften.
  
• Pour the vegetable mixture into the lentil mixture, adding the rest of the stock/broth.
• Allow to simmer for at least half an hour, until the veggies and lentils are soft. Add the spinach, roasted eggplant, and lemon juice about twenty-five minutes in.
  
• Adjust spice as needed, ladle, and serve--preferably with some homemade bread.
  

Passover Panorama!

Well, on behalf of my rather odd housemates, I apologize (I think?) for that little April Fool's post. If you found it entertaining rather than odd/undesired, good for you.

Anyway, running right alongside April Fool's this year was pesach, the Jewish Holiday celebrating the exodus from Egypt and the 40-year journey across the desert to the promised land. The Israelites (in the Biblical sense of the word) had to run from pharaoh in a hurry and, as such, didn't have time for their bread to rise, so during the eight days of Passover Jews avoid all leavened products and basically grain in general. No bread, pasta, cereal, oatmeal, barley, etc. The exception is matzo. Now, matzo is not exactly what one would consider the pinnacle of fine food, but matzo, like tofu, can be combined with other ingredients to produce excellent results.

Iain, Bozzie, and I spent much of last week in Chicago with Iain's family, and while there I got to (re)introduce some fun foods from my childhood Passovers. Although the holiday ended last night (yay pasta!!), for those of you not currently sick of matzo these recipes should still be fun to try. And the macaroons are, of course, good year-round. This'll be a long post, because it involves several recipes (simple though they may be), so pick and choose as you like.

Matzo Brei Two Ways
Matzo Brei is a traditional passover breakfast dish, although it would also make a good lunch/dinner. Depending on how it's made (and the possibilities really are endless) it can be more like a scramble or french toast (in a liberal sense of the term), sweet or savory. My favorite varieties are savory scrambles and sweet french toast. I'm giving both recipes in proportionate rather than set measurements, since I was cooking for a crowd at Iain's house.

Savory Scrambled Matzo Brei
Ingredients

• 1 egg per piece of matzo
• a dash of milk (or glug, depending on how big the recipe)
• salt and pepper to taste
• scallions, chopped (optional)

Procedure

• break the matzot into small pieces and run them under cold water for a few moments before placing into a bowl
• In a separate bowl, whisk the eggs, milk, salt and pepper together. Pour over the matzot
  
• Heat a skillet to medium with a little butter and pour the matzo-egg mixture in. Cook like scrambled eggs until the matzo is starting to brown a bit, seasoning with additional salt and pepper (and scallions, if desired). The matzot and eggs will cluster together deliciously.
• Eat!

Sweet French-Toast-Like Matzo Brei
Ingredients

• 1 egg for every 2 matzot
• about 1/8 cup milk per egg
• dash-glug orange juice (optional-- add it if you have it)
• pinch-3 of sugar
  
• 1 tsp.ish vanilla extract (or try almond or whatever)
  
• dash cinnamon
• dash nutmeg
• knob of butter for the pan
• maple syrup or powdered sugar, for serving
  

Procedure

• Run the matzot under cool water for a moment and break each matzo into several large pieces (maybe 4. If they crumble into smaller pieces, don't worry too much)
• Whisk the eggs and add the other ingredients (except the matzot)
• Pour some of the egg mixture into a wide, shallow dish of some sort (this can be a big plate if nothing better presents itself).
  
• Place matzot in a single layer into the egg dish (this will need to be done in shifts). After 30 seconds or so, flip the matzot over so the other side is equally immersed.
  
• Heat a pan to medium heat, melting some of the butter.
  
• Carefully move the eggy matzot to the skillet, frying as in french toast until the bottom side is crispy. Flip so the other side gets equally crispy. Meanwhile, get the next batch of matzo soaking.
• Continue cooking in batches until done, replenishing egg mix as needed, and serve drizzled with maple syrup or sprinkled with powdered sugar.

(Vegetarian) Matzo Ball Soup!
So this is basically one of if not the most amazing passover dish in existence. I'm not sure what it is--the comfort of matzo balls, the simplicity of the broth--but somehow nothing else can quite match it. Most of the time matzo ball soup is chicken based, but obviously I wasn't going to do that. The vegetarian option, in my opinion, works just about as well. The soup itself is super simple, the matzo balls simple enough once one gets the hang of them.

Matzo Balls
Ingredients

• 1 cup matzo meal
• 4 eggs
• 1-2 tsp salt (ish--to taste, as always)
• 1/4 c. vegetable oil
• 1/4 c. water
  
• pepper to taste

Procedure

• Beat the eggs in a bowl, mixing in the matzo meal, salt and pepper, and oil.
• Add the water and mix well
• Cover the bowl and put it in the freezer for 20-30 minutes (Don't skip this step. It's important.)
• Pour water into a large saucepan and get it boiling.
  
• Gently, break off small pieces of batter (1- 1 1/4 inches in diameter) and pat them (again, gently!) into balls. The less you handle these things, the better. Stick 'em on a plate until they're all formed.
• Reduce the heat on the water to medium-low and drop in the matzo balls
• Let the matzo balls simmer, covered, for at least 40 minutes. Check them by cutting one in half and tasting. They should be firm and lightly chewy but not about to fall apart. Mmm.
  

Soup
Ingredients

• slug vegetable or olive oil
  
• 3 medium carrots, chopped
• 2-3 celery stalks, chopped
• 1 large onion (or two small), diced
• dash dill
• dash oregano
• dash thyme
• salt and pepper to taste
  
• 1-2 quarts veggie broth (if using less broth, add water to make up the difference and increase the herbs)

Procedure

• heat the oil in a large soup pot over medium heat.
• add the carrots, celery and onion and saute for a few minutes, mixing in the herbs
• pour the broth and water in and bring to a boil, then simmer, covered, for at least half an hour until the veggies are softened as you like them and the broth is flavorful, adding more herbs as desired.
• add additional salt and pepper before serving.
  
• Serve by placing 1-2 matzo balls in each bowl, then ladling soup over the top.
• 

Chocolate Chip Coconut Macaroons!
This is without a doubt one of my favorite pesach treats. It is also ridiculously easy to make. Don't believe me? Just read.

Ingredients

• 1 14 oz bag sweetened coconut flakes (or half a bag sweetened and half a bag unsweetened)
• 1 14 oz can sweetened condensed milk (fat free works equally well)
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• about 2/3 bag chocolate chips (or mini chocolate chips)

Procedure

• Mix all ingredients together, stirring well.
• Drop bits of dough onto a baking sheet (maybe 1 TBSish?)
• Bake on a greased cookie sheet at 350°F for 10-15 minutes, until lightly browned
• Remove immediately to a plate to cool, or they will get very sticky very fast.

See? That simple. Even my kitchen-fearing grandpa can make them.

Hdaapdpay Adpardial Fdoaodla's Ddaayda

Hello apricots.

Make good awesome weasels today. We wish you multi-colored immortality!

Ingredients
several handfuls of fresh basil, chopped into small pieces
1 large, SHARP knife
1-2 manly turnips or rutabegas
5-10 apples, peeled (or not-- I usually do half and half), cored, and chopped into thin slices or small chunks
1 cup pumpkin puree (I am lazy and use the canned stuff, but I'm sure if you use your own it'd be even better!)
Pincers
The heart, lungs and liver of a sheep (kidding! kidding!)
1 cup crushed heath bars or other toffee bits (if they're coated in chocolate that's fine)
93.7 The Current

Procedure
1. Give them plenty of water to start with, but if they dry up halfway through, submerge them again.


2.Add the sugar and baking powder and salt, then the eggs and vanilla, then the spices.
Part One: The Crust
3. Dump the spinach and mushrooms into the pasta and suace. Stir together with tongs and serve!


4. Oh darnit, we don't have any applesauce!
5. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.



Serve and enjoy!