Week 50 - Turmeric

I love adding turmeric to dishes, so my goal for the Week 50 challenge was to just try a new recipe. I pulled up a recipe from BBC Good Food for turmeric ginger coconut fish curry, and it sounded delicious, so went with that.

We adapted the recipe a little bit, skipping the sugar snap peas but adding Japanese sweet potatoes, using tilapia instead of cod, and skipping the spice so that B would be more comfortable eating it. The curry was delicious. A thought it could have used a little salt, but I was okay with the flavors, mostly because we were using a just-opened, fresh bag of garam masala, so the spices were so potent. B skipped everything but the peas, but I still count this recipe as a win!

Week 18 - Lime

Lime was the Week 18 challenge, and while there were many savory options for lime, I was just in the mood for cookies. I found a recipe for vegan coconut lime sugar cookies on Short Girl Tall Order, and they looked so amazing that I knew that was the one to try. I skipped the glaze to make my life easier, but the cookies were so good that I didn't miss it at all.

I mostly followed the recipe, other than skipping the icing and not measuring some of the ingredients, which made our ingredient list look like this:

- 1 stick vegan butter (softened)

- just under 1/2 cup of sugar + about 2 tbsp of sugar for rolling

- a few tbsp of shredded dried coconut

- zest of 1 lime

- pinch of salt

- juice of 2 limes (about 2 tbsp)

- 1 tbsp ground flaxseed

- 1 cup + 3 tbsp all-purpose flour

- 1/4 tsp baking powder

- 1/4 tsp baking soda

When baking, I do usually try to stick more closely to the recipe, so first was creaming the butter together with the sugar, dried coconut, and lime zest.

Next was adding the lime juice and ground flaxseed, and once those were mixed together, adding the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, baking soda, pinch of salt) to form a batter.

That went into the fridge to chill for a bit. It was supposed to be 30-60 minutes, but I exercised and then took a shower, and that whole process took over an hour. It was a bit too cold to work with when I pulled it out, so we let it warm up 10 minutes or so. It was a little crumbly when I started to form the cookie balls, but got easier to work with as time went on.

I made our cookies with a 2 tbsp scoop so we could get more cookies, and ended up with about 15 of them. They all got rolled in sugar before going onto the parchment-lined baking sheet. Our sugar cookies always end up looking brown since the sugar we have on hand is usually turbinado sugar.

They baked for 11 minutes in the oven at 350 degrees, then a quick tap on the counter and sitting on the baking sheet for a little longer before moving to the cooling rack. It was only supposed to be 10 minutes, but I lost track of time since I was making dinner and forgot them for a bit. They were still fine and not overdone!

The cookies were delicious and perfect for the lime challenge. That first bite had a really strong flavor of lime. We all loved them, and I would make these again.

Week 19 - Ecuadorian

As part of the AtWCC, I'm hoping to make some form of bread (or explore bread in some other way if I'm not making it myself for whatever reason) for each location. When the Ecuadorian challenge came up, the recipe I was most interested in at the time was for pan de yuca, a chewy, cheesy bread, so it looked like I found my bread for Ecuador! I found a recipe on Laylita, and the challenge was set. Although we'd never had pan de yuca at an Ecuadorian spot before, it sounded similar to the Brazilian pao de queijo that we love, so I was hoping this would come out well.

For the challenge, I made a full batch and tried to follow the recipe closely, although I did do a couple of ingredient modifications, using a mix of fontina, asiago, and parmesan instead of grated mozzarella, and substituting flax eggs for the "regular" eggs. I chose to prepare it by hand instead of using a food processor, and it was fairly easy. You basically mix all the ingredients together until smooth, adding a little bit of warm water if dry, form the dough into balls, and then chill them in the fridge for about half an hour. I baked them for about 5-8 minutes, and then broiled them.

I pulled them out from the broiler when they started looking more brown than golden, but unfortunately the insides were still a little gummy. I wasn't sure if it was how I made them or an effect of using flax eggs instead, but I was a little disappointed. They were definitely edible and had a nice crunch to the outside, but the inside just didn't feel right texturally to me.

I tried the recipe again a few months later, only making a partial batch this time (quartered most measurements). I tried to make them the exact same way, but with other things going on, I left them baking a little longer before broiling them, and then maybe broiled them a little longer too. They were more golden than the last time, and this time, the insides were just what I was hoping they would be, not gummy at all. Unfortunately, I don't know if I know exactly how long I baked them for, so I'm not sure if I'll be able to replicate it. I kind of just lucked into it because I was doing other things. I guess I'll just have to give them another try and take notes next time!

Week 17 - One Bite

A challenge theme like "one bite" is a bit tough, because what exactly qualifies as one bite? The size of one bite for each member of our family is so different, so I decided that anything small enough for finger food should work, and found a recipe for spicy mini meatloafs on the Impossible Burger website.

I mostly followed the recipe, with the following changes:

- did the vegan variation with flax egg instead of regular egg

- adjusted seasonings using garlic powder, oregano, paprika instead of oregano, thyme, basil, or other fresh herbs

- swapped sambal oelek for sriracha bc I had a lot and didn't (and still don't) know what else to do with it

- used less brown sugar

- used a mini muffin pan

The mini meatloafs were delicious! Not one bite for me, but they could be one bite for someone because they were small enough. We ate them with some green beans and Ritz crackers, and it was a very satisfying meal.

Week 16 - Hunan/Xiang

The theme for Week 16 was Hunan/Xiang, so no surprise, this challenge entry is also doubling as one for the AtWCC for China. This was a hard week for me to pick a dish. Hunan food is known for being spicy - very spicy - and very spicy is not something you can really do with a young toddler. On top of that, there is a particular spice or chili pepper that gives A a bad stomachache, and we haven't yet identified which that is, so another reason to avoid the spice! Thankfully, there were a few non-spicy Hunan dishes to pick from, but really not as many as I was hoping to choose from.

I ended up making pearl meatballs with sticky rice from The Woks of Life, mostly sticking with the recipe but with some modifications like using ground pork instead of hand-chopping it, and leaving out the water chestnuts (because we couldn't find any in the store, even though we think these would have tasted great in it). The ingredients we used were:

- 3/4 cup short grain sweet rice

- 1 lb ground pork

- about 2 tsp minced ginger

- 1 bunch of scallions

- 3 tbsp cold water

- 2 tbsp Shaoxing wine

- 2 tsp cornstarch

- ground white pepper

- 1 tbsp sesame oil

- sea salt

- 1/2 tsp sugar

On the side, we had some baby bok choy and oyster mushroom caps, as well as rice, for a nice, balanced meal. Really wish we could have found those water chestnuts in time though!

I followed the recipe fairly closely for how to make these, because I'd never made anything like them before, and I was very concerned that the rice was still going to be hard and crunchy after steaming. The basic steps were to soak the glutinous rice for a few hours, combine the meatball ingredients, refrigerate the meat mixture, and then after the chilling step, form the meatballs and roll them in the rice. Then they steamed for about 20 minutes. Unlike the original recipe, we used a stainless steel steamer instead of a bamboo steamer, but that seemed to work fine.

The meatballs were really good! The rice was soft and not the least bit crunchy. I did make the meatballs a little too big and would adjust that next time, but they were really flavorful and the rice was an interesting addition that worked. I would definitely make these again.

Week 21 - Eggs

I was not very excited for the Week 21 eggs challenge. We don't cook with eggs anymore because of B's food allergy, so I decided I was just going to do something that would usually contain eggs, and then make it without it.

These carrot coconut pancakes were based on a recipe from Minimalist Baker, and they were really good. A little more work than our usual pancakes because I had to grate some carrots in the morning, but nice to get some vegetables in with our brunch!

Week 11 - Hard to Pronounce

The hard to pronounce challenge week was a difficult one to decide on. I found myself trying to find some of the most complicated to pronounce dishes I could (something like Herrgottsbescheißerle), and hoping that one of them would be something I would want to make. I just kept finding more and more, so I paused and decided to go for a simpler route - how do you pronounce gyro?

Growing up, my family always pronounced it jai-ro (like gyroscope), and it wasn't until adulthood that I heard it pronounced yee-ro. There are so many pronunciations out there, so it definitely qualified for hard to pronounce week! I followed the chicken gyro recipe on Damn Delicious, subbing store-bought tzatziki for homemade for convenience, and we had some delicious sandwiches. We've made it again since then, since it's a great weeknight/school night meal, as a lot of the work can be done in advance.

The first time we went for the full spread - lettuce, tomato, onion, tzatziki, and wraps (they were out of pita). The second time was a little simpler - just pita, tomatoes, and tzatziki - but still very tasty. This is such an easy and tasty way to make grilled chicken, so we'll probably be seeing it in our rotation more.

Week 13 - Stuffed

The stuffed challenge popped up right around the time I had signed up for a cooking class to make Paraguayan empanadas, so it was a perfect fit! I didn't have time to get the pre-packaged empanada discs from the store before making them, so I made my own dough, which was more work but still seemed to come out okay. As usual, I was completely incapable of rolling them into circles or any remotely symmetrical shapes, so A had to take over that task.

I made the filling vegetarian, using black beans, corn, green peppers, red peppers, onions, and scallions, and then put them in the air fryer for about 8-10 minutes at 375 degrees. They turned out pretty well despite not being deep fried, but I think if I made these again, I'd get the pre-made discs to make our lives easier.

Week 12 - Banana

Pineapple is a pretty controversial ingredient on pizza here (we like it), so I can only imagine how people would react if shops started putting bananas on pizza. I was skeptical, but banana curry pizza is so popular on Swedish pizza menus that I felt like we had to give it a try for the banana challenge. I've made banana curry before (for the bananas challenge in 2015 and a few times after that), which was delicious, so I hoped this would be similarly delicious.

I didn't really follow a specific recipe for this, but just read a bunch of different ones (my favorites were these two) and then put together my own version. The ingredients for our version of banana curry pizza were:

- 1 lb of pizza dough

- 1/2 jar (about 7 oz) of pizza sauce

- most of a bag of pizza blend shredded cheese

- 3 slices of black forest ham, torn into pieces [would do more next time]

- 1/2 red onion, thinly sliced

- 2 bananas, sliced

- curry powder

- avocado oil spray

The steps for making the pizza were:

1. Prep - slice onions, slice bananas.

2. Line baking sheet with parchment paper, and spray parchment paper with oil spray.

3. Stretch pizza dough to fit baking sheet. [This was harder than I remembered because it was so elastic and I kept stretching holes in it. I think I need a pizza-making class to learn how to do this properly.]

4. Add toppings in the following order, spreading as evenly as possible over the pizza dough: pizza sauce, pizza cheese (about half of it), ham, red onions, banana, curry powder, rest of the cheese.

5. Bake at 450 degrees for about 20 minutes, until crust is starting to brown and cheese is bubbling.

The pizza was fantastic. We all loved it, and the combination of the bananas, curry, ham, cheese, and sauce just worked. I would definitely make that again. In doing this research, I read that Swedish pizzerias generally have over 50 varieties, so I'm excited to see what other tasty pizzas they've come up with. I can see us making a lot of pizzas for the AtWCC, which I'm sure would be fine with B since he loves pizza so much. I have my eye on a kebab pizza that sounds amazing, so maybe that one will be next!

Week 10 - Foam

Foam in the food context makes me think of two things: modernist cooking (not really my thing) and Top Chef (so many foams), so I had no idea what I was going to do for this challenge. I considered skipping it until I read on Modernist Bread that proofed dough was a closed-cell foam, bread was an open-cell foam, and fully baked bread was a set foam. I didn't know there were so many types of foam, but with that newfound knowledge, it was pretty easy to choose bread for this challenge.

I was doing a cooking class around this time where focaccia was on the menu, so I made focaccia for the foam challenge. Not sharing the recipe since it's not mine or publicly available, but it was a great class where we made focaccia, caprese salad, and wedding soup. A bit of a late night making three dishes at once in our not-very-big kitchen, but it was delicious!

Week 48 - Ketchup

Have you ever heard of banana ketchup? I didn't know much about it until this ketchup theme came up, because apparently a lot of people really dislike tomato ketchup and needed alternatives. (Didn't know that either!) It's very popular in the Philippines, which made it not only a good choice for the ketchup challenge but also for another entry for the Philippines in our AtWCC.

I followed the recipe at Curious Cuisiniere for making the ketchup, and it was super easy. Onion, garlic, ginger, a couple of mashed bananas, tomato paste, brown sugar, white vinegar, water, and cayenne. Some time on the stove to thicken, then a little cooling, and then blend it all up. Banana ketchup! Super easy.

I didn't really know what to use the banana ketchup for, but on Curious Cuisiniere, they suggested tortang giniling, a Filipino beef omelette, which they also had a recipe for. If you've been reading here for a while, you might think that wasn't going to happen since I don't really cook much red meat at home, plus B has an egg allergy, but we made it work with Impossible Burger and Just Egg, two vegan products that I'm incredibly grateful exist.

In addition to those, the omelette included onion, garlic, diced tomatoes, and some vegetables. It was supposed to be peas, but in prepping the meal, I discovered we were actually out of frozen peas (forgot to update our freezer inventory!), so we ended up using a corn, carrot, and asparagus medley, from which I picked out all the stalks of asparagus because they wouldn't have matched texturally. Next time, hopefully we can use peas as intended.

The banana ketchup was delicious. It added similar flavors to tomato ketchup, but much sweeter and less acidic. It was fantastic with the omelettes. The plate usually also contains some garlic fried rice, but I didn't have time to make that. I tried to fake it by putting some minced garlic over rice, but not the same. Hopefully whenever we make this next (and we do intend to make it again), we can not only remember to get some peas, but also make some yummy garlic fried rice. I love discovering new meals from these challenges, and this was something we'd never had before in our visits to Filipino restaurants. I used up the rest of the banana ketchup making Filipino spaghetti, but that's a post for another time!

Week 8 - Comfort Food

When I hear comfort food, one of the first things that comes to mind is soup. This challenge came up back in February, and I remember that we liked this vegan corn chowder. Unfortunately, I didn't write any notes, so I think I'm going to have to make this again to figure out what I did the first time. Definitely felt like comfort food though!

Week 7 - Mardi Gras

The Week 7 challenge theme was Mardi Gras, and although A made a king cake, I wanted to do something else for dinner. I found a recipe on My Cooking Spot for red beans and rice burgers described as "perfect for a Mardi Gras meal," so it sounded like it was worth a try!

The ingredients, slightly modified from the original recipe, were:

- 1/2 green bell pepper

- 1/2 large yellow onion

- 1/2 cup basmati rice

- 1 cup chicken broth with some extra hot water

- 2 cans of kidney beans

- 2 cloves of garlic

- 1 flax egg

- salt & freshly ground black pepper

- garlic powder

- smoked paprika

- dash of cayenne pepper

- a few tbsp olive oil, divided

On the side, we ate some Field Roast apple and sage sausages, and some sautéed vegetables (using the other half of the green bell pepper, the other half of the onion, and a red bell pepper).

I generally followed the steps from the recipe, and our one big change was that the sausage would be on the side instead of in the burgers. (I think it was our first time making this sausage, so we weren't sure how the texture would work with everything else.) I sautéed the green bell pepper and onion until soft, then added rice, cooked it for about 30 seconds, and then added broth. You were supposed to bring it to a boil and then reduce it to a simmer, but for some reason, the water disappeared almost instantly, so I had to add enough water to cover it and then let it simmer until done. [Note: I have no recollection of this happening now, since I made it in February, but when I wrote up my notes in a draft post 10 months ago, this is what I said, so I guess it happened! Really need to finish posts in a more timely manner...]

While that was cooking, I mashed the kidney beans in a mixing bowl. When the rice was done, it was time to add garlic, the flax egg, all the seasonings, and the rice mixture to the beans, and then shape it into patties. I cooked the patties on each side in olive oil until crisp. As you can see from the picture, they weren't really burger patties that you would recognize as burger patties, and they definitely weren't round. They did mostly stick together, but they were kind of more like sautéed rice scoops.

Overall, the dinner was fine. The "burgers" could have used some more seasoning, but they did taste good. I don't think it screamed Mardi Gras as a theme, but A's king cake more than made up for it.

Week 6 - English

We've never really been morning people, so when we visited London a few years ago, we never had a chance to try a full English breakfast. Unless B's egg allergy miraculously disappears before our next trip there or we can find a vegan restaurant making one, the closest thing to a full English breakfast we could have would be whatever we can make at home, so the Week 6 challenge theme, English, seemed like the perfect time to try it out.

The traditional full English breakfast, per Wikipedia, consists of bacon, eggs, fried or grilled tomatoes, mushrooms, toast, and sausages, with some plates including black pudding, baked beans, and bubble and squeak. All of that was doable for us, except the eggs would need to be replaced with vegan eggs (and scrambled instead of fried), bubble and squeak was not happening (if you've seen any of my previous attempts, this would be a no-brainer), and I had no idea where we would even find black pudding here.

Since this was a pretty straightforward breakfast, I didn't follow any recipes. Our fry-up ended up containing:

- bacon

- scrambled Just Egg

- grilled tomatoes

- grilled mushrooms

- toast

- vegan apple and maple breakfast sausages

- baked beans

- roasted red potatoes

There are some sites that list potatoes in the English breakfast (like Serious Eats), but until now, I didn't realize that most of them don't. One site even said they were frowned upon as filler. Oops. I guess I merged some typical American breakfast plate ideas into our English breakfast!

While each component wasn't difficult, dinner did take a while to put together, since it was coordinating eight different components. I would make this again though, as I do enjoy breakfast for dinner, and it has a lot of foods we do like as a family. I've learned, now that I've read the Wikipedia link, about all the different regional variations of a full breakfast, so, especially as we head into the UK section of the AtWCC (whenever that is), I can see us exploring this more!

Brussels Sprouts with Parmesan Cheese

Trader Joe's recently started carrying these roasted seasoned Brussels sprouts with parmesan cheese. Not sure if they're here for good or seasonal, but they were an interesting addition to the frozen section on a recent trip.

Ingredients were fairly straightforward - grilled Brussels sprouts halves, parmesan, olive oil, salt and pepper, and garlic. They were easy to make on the stovetop - less than 10 minutes in a skillet. We were really excited to try them, but our excitement quickly turned to disappointment. They were so, so salty. I didn't look at the nutritional facts when we bought them, but if I had, I would have noticed that the entire package had 1560mg of sodium. That doesn't sound that terrible in the realm of prepared foods, but even portioned out, that's a good amount of your recommended daily intake when you consider that it's not even that many sprouts in the package, so you would be eating other food (and sodium) alongside it. Flavor was okay, some hits of parm here and there, but mostly just salty.

Buy again? No, too salty for us. Prefer just taking the frozen petite Brussels sprouts and seasoning them ourselves, even though it takes more time and effort.

Week 49 - Leftovers

When it comes to food, Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. What better way to use up leftovers than in a Thanksgiving sandwich?

This one has vegan turkey roast (Trader Joe's), stuffing, green bean casserole, and gravy. Mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce would have made it better, but we had a small Thanksgiving dinner this year. (Thanks COVID... again.) Still a delicious sandwich.

Week 40 - A Recipe You've Been Wanting to Try

I did a lot of virtual cooking classes during the pandemic before things started opening up again after vaccines, and even though I attended multiple classes on dumplings, potstickers, and wontons, I was never able to make them. Why? Because every single wrapper I could find either had egg or was made on the same equipment as egg, and it wasn't worth the risk with B's allergy. I knew that there was one wrapper that was completely vegan, made by Nasoya, but it wasn't until this fall that we were finally able to get it. I had a hard time initially trying to figure out what to make for the Week 40 challenge - a recipe you've been wanting to try - because there are so many, but this seemed to fit, since I've been waiting to make wontons/dumplings for so long.

I decided to make pork wontons, but the only instructions I could find at the time from the classes were for shrimp wontons, so I loosely followed a recipe from Bon Appetit instead, with the intention of trying to fold them the same way they did in the class. As is probably obvious, I was terrible at folding the wontons. I tried all different shapes, but most of them came out looking horrible. The folded-over triangle was probably the best one, and the wontons just looked so empty, but that was the most I could stuff them without them breaking. I wasn't great at making them the last time I tried either. This is why I pay for them at restaurants, although I'll keep trying again here and there.

I made some green beans with onions in the air fryer alongside the wontons, based on a recipe from Allrecipes. They were pretty good, although they looked more like Chinese dry-fried green beans than they tasted. We haven't experimented much with making vegetables in the air fryer yet, but since these turned out well, maybe we'll do it more.

Overall, the dumplings were fine, but not great. The sesame sauce from the Bon Appetit recipe was delicious though, and it was good on both the dumplings and the green beans. It'll probably be some time before I attempt dumplings again, but hopefully next time will be better.

Week 41 - German

I love learning about dishes from all over the world (no surprise, given our Around the World Cooking Challenge), and when I was watching one of Beryl Shereshewsky's videos about sandwiches a while back (love the whole series - video link), I heard of something called toast Hawaii for the first time. Apparently it's ham, cheese, and pineapple on toast (sometimes with a maraschino cherry on top), and it was made popular in West Germany in the 1950s by a TV chef there. It sounds a lot like our (very controversial) Hawaiian pizza, but based on German commenters, it still seems decently popular now (although it seems most skip the cherry, which was fine by me, since I did not plan on buying maraschino cherries just for this). I marked it down on my list for the German part of the AtWCC, and with the Week 41 challenge being German, it sounded like a great brunch!

Although the dish seemed straightforward enough to make without a recipe, I used the one at Daring Gourmet as a guide for oven temperature and cook time. Basically, toast the slices of bread (I did 6, two for each of us), melt the butter, and then to each slice, add a layer of butter, a slice of ham, a pineapple ring, and a slice of Swiss cheese. I baked it at 425 degrees for 10 minutes, and the cheese was melted, so this was pretty quick and easy.

The one complication I did have was that we had no cans of pineapple rings, and when we went grocery shopping the day before, they had no cans of pineapple rings. I'm actually not sure if Whole Foods even sells pineapple rings. So I took the pineapple chunks we did have, halved them, and made my own rings, and it worked out just fine.

The toast was really tasty and a great breakfast! If I made this again, I think I would use a little extra butter (did 1/2 tbsp for each slice of bread) and add garlic powder and some pepper to the melted butter before spreading it. I also think that, if I use the same ham that I did this time, I would use two slices instead of one for some extra ham flavor, as this one was sliced fairly thin. This toast is similar to some I've made in the past, but with pineapple added, and although I'm not a huge sweet-savory person, I do think it was good with the pineapple. Then again, we also like Hawaiian pizza, so it's no surprise this worked for us.

Week 42 - One Pot

There are many dishes that can be made in just one pot, but the easiest, in my opinion, are soups and chili, which are also perfect for the cold weather. I did this challenge back at the end of October, so I decided on chili, and then upgraded it to pumpkin chili since it was Halloween week. Also, I'm not Texan, so this chili had lots and lots of beans.

The final ingredient list for the chili was beefless beef (from Trader Joe's), onion, peppers, garlic, kidney beans, white beans, black beans, tomatoes, pumpkin puree, corn, vegetable broth, and taco seasoning. We ate it alongside a pumpkin bagel, and it was a great fall dinner!

Week 43 - Single Use Gadgets

It's been a while (again). I thought it had only been a few weeks, but apparently the last post was in September. This year is really flying by. I hope I manage to post about the whole challenge before the year is over, even if they're just super short posts to remind me that, yes, I did do that challenge week!

Week 43's theme was single use gadgets. We generally try to avoid single use gadgets because we have such limited kitchen storage space, but I was reminded of one that we definitely use for cooking - our waffle iron! Before that, I was just going to post a photo of the Oxo grape cutter, a single use gadget (although not entirely, because it works for grape tomatoes too) that has changed our lives for the better over the past few months. How did we not know this existed before I saw it on Instagram?

For the challenge, I decided on the bacon cheese scallion waffle from Serious Eats, taking advantage of one of B's sick days to make something new for brunch. I stuck fairly close to the original recipe, but with substitutions of flax eggs and vegan DIY buttermilk. My proportions of the bacon and scallions were probably a little off, but I wanted to use up our scallions (and get more veggies in the dish) and I didn't feel like searching the freezer for where we put the rest of our frozen bacon.

The waffles were delicious! Definitely needed more bacon though. They were also a little too salty, so next time I think I would use much less salt, especially if adding in more bacon. Maybe more cheese, more scallions too, but I think we just like extra fillings. The whole thing came out to about $6 for the same number of very large waffles, so even if the cost got pushed up from using more bacon, it would still be a very affordable brunch for three. I would make this again.