Are you ready for some football?

ell, the game is in the second half and I could really use a nap, but if I don't post now, it won't happen. You know me. Out of sight, out of mind. Or, in tummy, out of mind! And while I'm not a huge football fan, the Super Bowl is a tradition, and there's food, right? At least, that's the way we roll around here. And from the look of all the food blogs this weekend, we're not alone. This is one big eatin' weekend in the U.S.

I think I cooked more today than in the three weeks prior, combined (which says something about how slack I've been in the kitchen lately). I'm tired like after Thanksgiving dinner, almost. But it was fun, and I got a chance to experiment with a bunch of new and different things, and a couple of tried-and-trues, too.

Here's what was on the Superbowl menu:

* Soft pretzel bites (for Seth). This was the biggest experiment for us, and well worth it. Very fun and easy to make, and yummy right out of the oven. I'm curious how they'll be tomorrow, as a lunch box addition for Seth. I'm sure he'll let me know!

 

Seth cutting up the bites.

  

I've never boiled something prior to baking before... It was pretty cool. Next up, bagels?

 

Golden, salty bites!

* Roasted chickpeas (for husband) and roasted edamame (for me).

 

Chickpeas with cumin and cayenne.

 

Edamame with garlic and salt.

* Jalapeno poppers (For the boys in general, though I got a little more into them than I thought... a bit of heat, but completely doable. And yummy.)

 

Before coating and oven

 

After: ready for poppin'

* Baked onion rings (have been making these for a while now. Love it!)
*  Zucchini sticks (ditto)
Both the onion rings and the zucchini sticks got eaten up before I thought of (remembered!) to take a photo. Alas. It was that kind of day. Food was going out of the kitchen like crazy.

* Salmon, grilled, for something healthy!

* Homemade tartar sauce (for the onion rings. I'm out of The IceBurg tartar and can't really take storebought anymore.)

Tartar sauce
1 cup mayonnaise
2 Tbsp. of lemon juice
1/2 cup dill pickle, minced
3/4 cup of white or yellow onion, minced
2 Tbsp. green onion, minced
1/2 tsp. Tabasco sauce
Salt and pepper to season

Mix all ingredients together and let sit, refrigerated, for an hour or so for the flavors to marry.

I was planning to add capers, but the jar I had on hand was a wee bit old, so I pitched it and decided to go caper-free. I looked around at a lot of different recipes and the variations are vast! We were happy with our mixture, though. It went well with the salmon, the onion rings, the zucchini sticks... well, everything!

If you watched the game, I hope you were pleased with the outcome? For me, it's all about the ads. Did you see the Google ad? I thought it was a new one but when I went to YouTube I discovered it was not. It's still sweet as can be. Since my dear friend Corinne has been working on her Paris plans all day (well, in between Superbowl ad times, from what I could tell from her Twitter and Facebook posts!), I thought I'd share this for her.



Here's my other favorite ad, for Snickers!



Oh, and tomorrow is salad day around here. I noticed, a little late, the lack of fresh and green and leafy in our day... that can always be remedied tomorrow!

When I'm craving the Chang's

This past weekend we were hungry for some lettuce wraps we've had at P.F. Chang's on occasion. OK, so we have them every time we go there... nobody's keeping track, right? But our desire was not strong enough to take the hour trip to TriCities. So I went the rip-off recipe route. I've made these before, and with fairly good success. They aren't quite the Chang's, but they are close... until I get a chance to sneak into the kitchen at the restaurant sometime and watch every little ingredient that gets tossed in the wok, this will have to do. And it did quite nicely.


The rip-off of P.F. Chang's vegetarian lettuce wraps
(Adapted from recipezaar.com)

Cooking sauce
1 tablespoon hoisin sauce
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon dry sherry
2 tablespoons water
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1 teaspoon sugar
2 teaspoons cornstarch

Marinade
1 teaspoon cornstarch
2 teaspoons dry sherry
2 teaspoons soy sauce
1 teaspoon Chinese chili sauce
2 teaspoons water

1 cup baked tofu, diced
2 tablespoons sesame oil
1 teaspoon fresh minced ginger
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 green onions, minced
1/4 large red onion, minced
4 ounces bamboo shoots, diced
4 ounces water chestnuts, diced
1 head iceberg lettuce

You can buy baked tofu or you can make your own. I make my own--easy and cheaper and better flavor. Cut a loaf of tofu into 1 inch slices and place in a baking pan just slightly larger than the tofu. Pour a mixture of soy sauce and rice wine vinegar over the tofu until you have just covered the tofu. Bake at 350 degrees for about an hour and a half. Drain off the liquid and let cool, then cut as needed (diced, for this recipe; 1/2 inch cubes for stirfry, etc.).

Mix the cooking sauce in a bowl and set aside.

In medium bowl, combine sherry, soy sauce, chili sauce, sesame oil, cornstarch, and water. Mix well and stir in tofu. Allow to marinate for 15 minutes.

Heat skillet over medium-high heat. Add the mixed sesame oil and stir fry tofu for 2-3 minutes.

Add the ginger, garlic and onion; stir-fry for about a minute. Add bamboo shoots and water chestnuts; stir-fry for another 2 minutes. Add cooking sauce and cook until thickened (about 2 minutes). Cool slightly and place into serving bowl.

Rinse and dry lettuce, pull apart leaves into whole pieces to wrap around the filling.


A little veggie stirfry to go with the lettuce wraps--broccoli, carrots, colorful peppers, tofu and onions, with a little extra of the cooking sauce (see above) to pull it all together.


With a little brown rice, a complete meal!

Relish the thought

In preparation for the Thanksgiving/Christmas dinner photo shoot on Wednesday, I needed to come up with a couple of different relish/sauce/accompaniments for the turkey. One I knew would be a pretty traditional cranberry sauce, the other took a little more thought, and some creative license!

Cranberry sauce the way Sher likes it:
2 bags of fresh cranberries, picked over and washed
zest of one orange
juice of one orange
1 cup sweetener--you can use sugar, light corn syrup, honey or maple syrup
4 cinnamon sticks
1/2 tsp. cloves
1 T vanilla

Combine all ingredients in a saucepan on the stove and heat slowly over medium-low heat, to avoid popping all the cranberries. Stir occasionally. When simmering and about 3/4 of the cranberries are open and bubbly, turn off and cool. Taste and adjust sweetener as needed.

The photo above is pretty monochromatic--I'm still working on ye olde food photography, and feel extremely limited with my kitchen lighting, especially with zero sunshine when I'm cooking most days. Anyway, all that is to say that when we're shooting the sauce on Wednesday, I think I'll zest some more orange and maybe even thinly strip off some rind to give some more texture and color to it.


For sauce No. 2, I went rummaging online and found a recipe for a pineapple relish that sounded good, and one for an apricot relish, and so I combined them, threw in a little grapefruit juice for an acid and some habaneros for heat and pomegranates for texture and color and, voila!, a pretty zesty little combo.

Pineapple-apricot-pomegranate relish
2 cups chopped fresh pineapple
1 cup chopped dried apricots
2 T grapefruit juice (you could easily use lime or orange instead)
1/2 cup sugar

Simmer over medium heat until apricots are softened and mixture is bubbly. Take off the heat and add:
1/2 cup fiinely diced shallots
2 habaneros, sliced cross-wise
1 cup pomegranate seeds

Stir until blended. Serve warm or cold.

When I was tasting I avoided actually chomping on a habanero since I'm kinda wimpy in the heat department, but the overall flavor of the sauce had been warmed through by the peppers and it had a nice fire to it--nothing radical, just tasty and glow-y! This relish would also work well with "other" white meats... not just Mr. Turkey. You could even pretend it's a salsa and serve with chips, or, dare I say it, a cheesey quesadilla!