Lasagna Soup -- In the Crock Pot.

If you are anything like me, the idea of making a pasta sauce or a tomato sauce or a red sauce from scratch is beyond possible. You can do everything right, find the freshest produce, use the best quality seasoning, let it simmer and simmer ... and simmer. Then....

Nothing but disappointment. Bland tomato-flavoured glop. Booo.

If you aren't like me, then I'm sure your sauce is delightful. But like I said, ages ago, this is for the people that are like me.

Anyway, here it is Lasagna Soup. I pulled this recipe off of Facebook some time ago, sadly I didn't catch where it came from or who originally posted it. I wish it was mine, perhaps I'll make some changes to it, 'cause why wouldn't I? Plus, it's in the crock pot. 15 minutes of my time in the morning and dinner is ready for that evening. Win-win.

Here's what you need:

• 1-2 lbs raw ground beef, thawed
• 1 onion, chopped (totally optional, you can replace with onion powder if you don't have an onion)
• 10 3/4oz can tomato soup
• 14 1/2oz canned tomatoes, chopped or diced
• 15 oz can tomato sauce
• 2 chicken bouillon cubes
• 2 beef bouillon cubes
• 4 cups water
• 1 1/2 tsp oregano
• 1 1/2 tsp basil
• 1 tsp parsley
• 2 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp pepper
• 8 oz Ricotta Cheese (I always forget this, and it's just as good without it)
• 8 lasagna noodles, uncooked broken into pieces *
• Shredded Mozzarella Cheese

* Be sure that your lasagna noodles are not the oven ready type. I used those and they turned to mush. Super sad face.

Here's what to do:

• Combine onions, tomato soup, canned tomatoes and tomato sauce and put in the crock pot.
• Add all of the spices, water and bouillon cubes.
• Give it a good mix.

Everything but the noodles and meat.

• Spread the broken uncooked lasagna noodle pieces all over.
• Crumble raw ground beef over top.
• Cover. Cook on low for 7-8 hours or High for 4-5 hours. 
• Depending on your pot, it may not even take that long.

With the meat, ready to be covered.

• About half an hour before the soup is done, stir in the Ricotta Cheese.
• Serve with shredded Mozzarella Cheese on top.

Try with ground turkey or replace the meat with tofu for a vegetarian option.

So the pictures are less than amazing, but I assure you the soup is fabulous.

I'm glad to be back and happy to be posting!

That's my Taste on it. I'd love to hear yours.

The Great Onion Journey

I have never really been able to grow plants. Or keep them alive. I don't know why. I can grow a cactus from a seed, but if you give me an actual plant it'll be dead within a week.

Maybe because cacti require very little attention. If you forget to water them for a month, that's okay! You just give them a whole bunch of water and you forget about them. Probably for another month. They are like snakes, flora snakes. Prickly flora snakes.

Anyway, I was told that if you cut green onions down to the white, then let them sit in water, they'll just grow. That seemed pretty low maintenance, so I figured I'd give it a go.

The results were actually quite surprising. So much so, that I wanted to share this with you. No recipe today, today is more about the journey.

So here it is, a photographic journey of my green onions.

July 2

July 3

July 4 

July 5

July 6

July 7

July 8

July 9

July 10

July 11

July 12

To cut them down, I held the greens together and using a sharp knife sliced through the bunch all at once. Then I just put the pot back in the window and let them grow again. And I made biscuits.

July 14

July 16

July 17

July 18

July 19

Surprising results indeed; especially the part where I didn't kill them.

Each picture was taken as close to the same time, around noon(ish). I couldn't believe how much they grew each day. I recommend you try it for yourself. As you can see it only takes a week.

I didn't really need to put them into a pot with soil, but I felt kinda bad for them; considering my track record, I thought that the one plant that actually grew deserved a pot.

The onion taste (in my opinion) became stronger. I just cut them down again, and found that they had a much more prominent taste. I have also noticed that they are growing much slower. Unless I'm making the biscuits or stuffed potatoes, I don't really use green onions all that often, so this rate seems to be suiting me nicely.

Here it is mid-August and I am on my third cut down of the onions. I have a second set growing in a small baby food jar. Y'know, just in case.

It is important to note, that I have these in a south-east facing window, and perhaps because of that they do require water almost every day.

That's my taste on it.

Pizza Muffins

I was at a friend's house earlier this week, and we were making a bunch of muffins for her to take camping for the kids, one of the pages she had marked off was Pizza Muffins.

I couldn't believe it. Not pizza buns, or pizza sticks, but pizza muffins. I gotta say, I was pretty skeptical. It had never occurred to me that a muffin could be savory. The original recipe came from one of those Company's Coming books, I just don't know which one. I suspect it had something to do with muffins.

Anyway, here's what happened in my kitchen:

• 2 cups Flour
• 1 Tbsp Baking Powder
• 1/2 tsp Baking Soda
• 1/2 tsp Salt
• 1/2 tsp Dried Basil
• 1/2 tsp Dried Oregano
• 1/2 tsp Garlic Powder
• 1 Egg
• 1 cup Milk
• 1/4 cup Oil
• 2 Tbsp White Sugar
• 1 Tomato, seeded and finely diced
• 2/3 cup Cheese, grated; plus extra for topping if desired
• 1/4 cup Green Onion, finely sliced
• 1/2 cup Pepperoni, finely sliced

Combine the first 7 ingredients in a large bowl. In another bowl combine the next 4 ingredients. Fold the wet ingredients into the large bowl of dry, mixing well. 

Stir in the remaining ingredients, if you want to have extra cheese on top (and really, who wouldn't?) set that aside for later. 

Preheat oven to 450F, grease your muffin tin. We tried using papers when we made these the first time, and they just stuck to the paper and didn't turn out that well. So I greased the tins the second time and they came out very nicely.

Fill each tin about 3/4 of the way, sprinkle the extra cheese on top.

Bake for about 20 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.

 

These are shots from the third batch. The first batch was at my friend's house and I didn't have my camera.

I completely forgot to take pictures of the second batch, because frankly, they are that good and by the time I had realized I needed pictures the muffins were all gone.

So these are the third batch. I used a lot of extra cheese in this batch, because everyone loves cheese. I also didn't have any onions left in the house, so these ones were sans onion. Personally, I prefer them with the onion.

For future batches there are a few things I'm going to try. Basically if it's good on pizza it'll be good in these muffins. Also, simply given the nature of the tomato, it makes the muffin kind of soggy, so I may attempt to replace the tomato with an equal portion of already dried tomato. Like sun-dried tomato, which I'm told actually involves drying tomatoes in the sun.

When baking, I will generally substitute applesauce for any oil that is called for. I didn't do that in this one. You probably could, but I didn't. I am considering replacing the oil with an equal amount of tomato paste, but I think it might make them too tomato-ey. And pink.

That's my taste on it.

Country Chicken Sausage Patties

As you all know, I received a new mixer for my birthday this year. There are about a dozen little attachments that are available to buy for this wonderful machine.

With the gift cards I received, I purchased the Food Grinder attachment. It can grind veggies, cheese and meat. Today I used it to grind chicken thighs into a wonderful sausage meat.

I had no idea that there were so many different types of sausage out there. I just assumed sausage was sausage. Apparently that is not so. I don't have casing, so I wasn't able to make actual sausages, instead I made them into patties.

Here's what happened:

• 3 pounds Chicken Thighs, bone out, skin on (or 3 pounds preground chicken)
• 3 tsp Kosher salt
• 1 1/2 tsp Pepper, freshly cracked
• 3/4 tsp Cayenne Pepper
• 3/4 tsp Ground Ginger
• 3/4 tsp Dried Sage
• 3/4 tsp Onion Powder
• 3/4 tsp Dried Thyme

If you are grinding your own meat, cut the chicken into pieces that will fit your grinder and grind though on the course setting. 

Add remaining ingredients to ground meat and mix well.

Run mixture through grinder a second time on the finer setting. (At this point, you can freeze the ground mixture, provided you are working with fresh meat. If your meat was pre-frozen, you'll have to cook it through before freezing it again.)

Form meat into patties, this should get you 12 - 14 medium sized patties. Put the patties on a parchment covered sheet, cover and place in the fridge for about 20 minutes; this will help them firm up and keep their shape while handling.

Heat a bit of oil in a pan over medium heat, add the patties and cook through. Cooking time will depend on how thick your patties are.

That's my taste on it.

Crisp Zucchini Potato Patties

I don't really feel all that funny today, so this post will have a lot less of the usual wit. Maybe it's the weather. Here it is, middle of April, and we are in the depths of a snow storm. The weather for tomorrow? More snow. Saturday? Snow. Sunday? Snow. I hate winter. It dampens my humor.

Anyway, I've had a craving for zucchini lately, but I just didn't know what to do with it. It's not easy to get kids to eat it. It isn't exactly the funnest vegetable. It's certainly not celery. Or carrots (still working through that ten pound bag.)

So I decided to disguise it. Because I'm clever. And sneaky.

After much searching and googling and cookbook flipping, here's what happened in my kitchen.

• 2 medium-large Baking Potatoes, peeled
• 1 medium Zucchini
• 2 Eggs
• 1/3 cup Flour
• 1 Green Onion, finely chopped
• 1/2 Red Bell Pepper, finely diced
• 1/4 tsp Sea Salt
• 1/2 tsp Pepper, freshly cracked is best. I used a mixture of pink and white peppercorns
• Vegetable Oil

Using a regular cheese grater, shred your potatoes and zucchini. You'll want to get as much moisture as possible out. I used paper towel and scrunched it up.

Once your shreddings are pretty dry, add the eggs, flour, onion, bell pepper, salt and pepper. Stir until well blended, or use your hands to make sure it is mixed really well.

Heat enough oil for frying in a large skillet over medium high heat. Form patties with the mixture, about 1/2 inch thick. Fry them in the oil, you may have to do them in batches so they don't crowd together, for 2-3 minutes per side, until they are nicely browned. 

Remove from pan and place on paper towel to absorb excess oil.

I served mine with a warm corn salsa and a chipotle mayo. The mayo was actually just Miracle Whip with some Chipotle spice mixed in. But it was fantastic.

That's my taste on it.

Roasted Herb Potatoes

When I was younger we ate potatoes a lot. My Dad was pretty old school so we had meat, potatoes and veggies everyday. I didn't know any different, from what I remember the potatoes were always boiled.

A giant pot of boiled potatoes, if there were left overs Mom would slice them and fry them up the next night; but then it was boiled potatoes again. We lived on a farm, and I still remember my Mom making a big plate of dinner (mostly potatoes) and then covering it with foil and then packing the kids up, and bringing it out to him in the field while it was still hot.

After I moved out on my own, I never bought potatoes. Even now, I can only think of a couple instances that potatoes even made it into the house.

When they do, I never boil them. Ever.

Unless I'm making gnocchi. And even then only if I'm being really lazy.

Anyway, when I purchased a 2lb bag of "gems", the only water they saw was to wash them off.

Roasted Herb Potatoes are one of the easiest things in the world to make. The amount of attention they require fully depends on how large the pieces are.

For this recipe, you'll need:

• 1 bag Yellow Gem Potatoes (about 2lbs)
• 1 Shallot, finely diced
• Olive Oil
• 2-3 cloves Garlic, smashed
• Salt
• Pepper
• 1 small handful Fresh Thyme 

Preheat oven to 375F.

Wash and quarter all the potatoes, leaving the peel on. For the super little ones, you can just cut them in half, because quartering them would be overkill.

Toss the potatoes and shallots with some oil, making sure they are all nicely coated. Season with salt and pepper (I used equal parts pink and white peppercorns, smashed up). Stir in the garlic. If you really like garlic, feel free to add more.

Spread the potatoes out on a large baking sheet. If you feel it's necessary, add a bit more oil. 

Take half your Thyme and remove the stems, sprinkling the herb over the potatoes. Lay remaining sprigs of Thyme in and about the potatoes. It'll look really pretty.

Cover with foil and bake for 10-15 minutes. At this point you are going to want to start checking them regularly. Depending on the amount of oil you used, you may need to give them a bit of a toss, so they don't stick to the sheet. As soon as they are soft, remove from the oven. 

For me, I remove the foil after 12 minutes, then start to check them every 2 or 3 minutes. I don't mind if they start to get crispy on the outside.

You can remove the sprigs before serving, or advise everyone at the table to do so.

Tired of Thyme? Use Rosemary, or Dill, or Basil, or any combination you want. Just have fun.

That's my taste on it.

Pretzel Rolls

There is nothing in the world like freshly baked bread or rolls for dinner. Really, it's freshly baked anything. Bread, muffins, cupcakes, you name it.

Soft pretzels are a wonderful little treat, especially when you get them from the street carts while you are out and about, but it has escaped me for years on how to duplicate that flavour. They always turned out more like buns with salt on them. Which is not the same at all.

Having the new mixer in the house has forced me to bake more. I'm not much of a baker, because if I bake stuff, then I'm going to eat it. My interest still lies in cooking, but until I save up some money for the attachments I want, I'll be baking.

In the case of the pretzel rolls, this works out pretty well.

You'll need:

• 1 1/4 cup Non-Alcoholic Beer, flat 
• 3 Tbsp Light Brown Sugar
• 2 Tbsp Milk
• 2 Tbsp Butter, melted
• 1 pk (1 Tbsp) Yeast, (quick rise is best)
• 3-4 cups Flour
• 2 tsp Salt

• 4 litres Water
• 1/2 cup Baking Soda
• Kosher Salt

Mix together the beer, brown sugar, milk, butter and yeast. Add the salt and gradually add the flour one cup at a time, blend together until a stiff dough forms. 

If you are using a mixer, switch to the dough hooks and mix until dough is smooth, about 8-10 minutes. If you are kneading the dough by hand, turn out onto a floured surface and knead well, 15-18 minutes. If the dough is too sticky in either case, add small amounts of flour.

Place dough into a greased bowl, cover and let rise for an hour or until it has doubled in size.

Punch down, turn out dough onto lightly floured surface and knead for about a minute. Divide into 12 equal sized pieces, shape into smooth balls, place on ungreased baking sheet, cover and allow to rise for half an hour.

Bring the water and baking soda to a boil in a large pot.  Pre-heat oven to 425F.

Add rolls to the water in batches of 2 or 3, cook until they puff up turning them over once. When you remove the rolls from the water, place them on paper towel to soak up the excess water.  

Arrange the rolls on a baking sheet with parchment paper. Cut an X into the top and sprinkle with kosher salt.

Bake for 15-18 minutes or until browned.

If you want to make smaller rolls, adjust the cooking time as required.

That's my taste on it.