Summer Wild Rice Salad With Corn {Vegan Optional}

Prep time: Easy

Yield: 4 main dish or 6 side dish servings

1 cup wild rice

2-3 cups chicken stock, vegetable stock, or water

1 cup frozen or canned corn

1-2 scallions, chopped

3 Tbsp EVOO

3 Tbsp lime juice

One bunch fresh parsley, chopped (about 1/4 cup, probably)

Cook wild rice & corn together in broth. (I used my Instant pot and did 3 cups liquid, 25 minutes, with a 10 minute pressure release; when I released it there was still a lot of liquid and the rice was a little overcooked, so I'm going to try decreasing both the liquid and cooking time very slightly next time.) If there's liquid remaining after rice is tender and fluffy—which isn't uncommon with wild rice in my experience—strain it off with a fine mesh sieve. Return to pot with the heat off; add the rest of the ingredients and mix. Can be served warm or (theoretically) cold.

Pressure Cooker Corn Chowder {Vegan-optional}

Source: Adapted from here

Prep time: Very easy

Coconut or olive oil for sauteeing

1 diced medium onion

3 cloves minced garlic

1/4 tsp hot sauce

1/2 tsp cumin

4 cups frozen corn (or 5 ears of corn, kernels removed)

3 large carrots, cut into chunks

3 potatoes, cut into chunks

4 cups broth

1 Tbsp masa or corn starch

1 cup coconut milk

Juice of 1 lime

1 tsp paprika

1 tsp salt

Black pepper, to taste

Set electric pressure cooker to sautee, and cook the onion in oil until it begins to be translucent. Add the garlic and cook for another minute or two. Add everything else except coconut milk and masa/corn starch, then cook at pressure for 6 minutes with a 15 minute natural pressure release afterward. While soup is cooking, whisk together masa, coconut milk, and lime; after releasing pressure from the cooker, add this mixture to the cooking pot. Put the pressure cooker back on sautee and use an immersion blender to puree the soup (or process in batches through a regular blender, just make sure not to let the lid seal), and let the soup boil until it's heated through. Serve.

If not using a pressure cooker, cook for about half an hour on a stovetop until vegetables begin to break down; then add milk mixture, puree, and boil til heated through.

Curried Cauliflower and Potato Soup

Prep time: Easy

Source: My own brain!

When we first got married, the list of vegetables Mahon really liked was pretty short. In the five years since then I've found ways to prepare a lot of veggies so that he shares my love for them, but broccoli and cauliflower are still—at best—tolerated. Several years ago when I mentioned that they were known as "cruciferous vegetables," he misheard me, and ever since then he refers to them as "Lucifer's vegetables"! Since cauliflower is one of my favorite veggies of all time, I decided that I was going to do my best to come up with a cauliflower soup recipe that he liked. I also wanted to make a creamy, comforting soup that was dairy-free, since I am dairy sensitive.

1 head cauliflower, chopped

4 russets, peeled & diced

1/2 medium onion, diced

4 cloves garlic, minced

1 t kosher salt

1/8 t chili powder (optional—my curry powder was VERY mild

1/8 t black pepper

1 t curry powder

EVOO for sauéeing

6 cups broth

Sautee all veggies together 5-10 minutes until starting to brown/tender. Add spices and broth and bring to boil. Simmer at least 30-40 minutes until potatoes and cauliflower are soft (you can leave simmering longer if desired). Puree with immersion blender (or puree in batches through a regular blender), reserving a few veggies for chunks if desired. Serve with crusty bread.

Quinoa Patties

Prep time: Easy-medium

Source: Mel's Kitchen Cafe

I'm always on the lookout for interesting new recipes, but especially right now—the last trimester of pregnancy has brought with it some pretty severe food intolerances to meat and dairy, so we've had to get pretty creative in the kitchen! This is a recipe I pinned to try a few weeks ago. I was initially skeptical—I like quinoa, but would it really be able to hold its own in such an unadorned main dish? Mahon wasn't so sure how he was going to feel about this dinner, either, so both of us approached it with a little hesitation. However, it didn't disappoint! We both loved it and mutually decided it should join our rotation. Mahon tried various toppings on his patties (I think maybe his favorite was BBQ sauce?) but decided he might like them best with gravy, so that the flavor of the patties could shine through a little more. I guess we'll have to try that next time! I halved the original recipe for the two of us, but ended up wishing I hadn't, as it only yielded 1 serving of leftovers and not 2.

In the future, I'd also like to play around with switching up the spices in these to create different flavors.

(Yield: About a dozen patties)

2 1/2 cups quinoa cooked in broth, cool enough to touch*

4 large eggs, lightly beaten

3/4 t salt

1/4 t black pepper

1/4 c chopped fresh parsley (or about 1 T dried)

1/2 cup fresh parmesan cheese

2 cloves minced garlic

1 cup crushed crackers (Ritz or saltine), bread crumbs, or oatmeal

1 T extra-virgin olive oil

Combine eggs, salt, pepper, and quiona in a bowl. Stir in parsley, parmesan, garlic, and bread crumbs. (Go ahead and add a little more crumbs, or a teaspoon or two of water, if your mix seems too wet or dry.) Let stand five minutes. 

Heat olive oil over medium heat in large skillet. Form mixture into patties with hands (about 1" thick) and cook until the bottoms are browned (between 5-10 minutes, depending on how hot your stove is). Flip and cook about 5 minutes on second side. Remove from pan and continue until all the mix is used up (you may need to add more EVOO to your pan in between batches—I did).

Freezer instructions: Flash freeze uncooked patties on cookie sheet; place in ziploc bag when frozen. Cook from frozen (will need to increase cooking time a few minutes).

*Everything I read online says that quinoa quadruples when cooking, but I think that's crazy... mine never expands to that degree. I would say it tends to triple. After experimenting with several different ratios, I typically cook my quinoa with one cup grain to 1 1/4-1 1/2 cups broth.

Pupusas

Prep time: Medium

Source: Inspired by my friend Sacha, who introduced me to them, but the recipe is really my own

For as many recipes as I have on this blog, there is one whole category of meals which we make frequently that is conspicuously missing! My dad served his LDS mission in Mexico, and fell in love with authentic Mexican food while he was there. Because of that, I grew up with him frequently making dishes (like fresh tostados—still one of my absolute favorite meals!) from masa harina, or Mexican corn flour. When I got older, he taught me how to make a good masa dough to be used in recipes like corn tortillas, tostados, and gorditas. However, my dad's method—and now mine—of cooking with masa is very much "a little bit of this, then just enough of that to get the right consistency," so since none of my recipes use actual proportions, I've never typed them up! However, I'm determined to get my favorite masa recipes on this blog.

Because pupusas are El Salvedorean and not Mexican, I'd never heard of them until my friend Sacha asked me to teach her how to work with masa so that she could make some pupusas for her husband. Soon after that, I started making them as well, and Mahon and I were hooked! We now make these frequently, and I've never met anyone who doesn't love them. Since they're an all-in-one kind of dish, they also make exceptionally good picnic or traveling food! In El Salvador, they're often topped with curtido, which is a type of fermented cabbage salad, but if we don't have that we just top them with sour cream.

Like tamales, you can fill these pupusas with just about anything you like—meat, beans, cheese, or a combination of all three! I usually use whatever we happen to have on hand, and will often make them meatless. The recipe I'm including here is one of our favorites.

A note on the yield with this recipe: As I said above, I really don't usually measure any of this! These are all rough guesstimations, so feel free to play around with any of the proportions if they don't feel right to you. I am guessing this recipe, followed closely, would yield 12-16 pupusas, which is normally about how many I try to make (enough for the two of us to have for dinner and lunch the next day—so it essentially serves four).

4 cups masa (you can find this is the Latin aisle of any grocery store)

1/2 t salt (I like using kosher salt—it's a little more of a zing!)

2-3 cups warm water

1 chicken breast, boiled and shredded

1 cup pinto or black beans

1 cup grated mozzarella cheese

1 t salt

A dash of chili powder

1/4 t cumin

Preheat a griddle or ungreased skillet to about 375 degrees. In medium mixing bowl, combine masa and salt. Add warm water and mix with a wooden spoon or your finger (my preference) until the masa dough is roughly the consistency of wet sand. In separate bowl, mix together shredded chicken, beans, cheese, and spices.

There are a few different ways to assemble your pupusas. I actually made a video demonstrating these different ways a few months ago, but for some reason I can't get it to do anything, so I'll have to hope I can describe each method adequately!

The first way is to separate your masa into balls a little smaller than golf balls and roll them out (or smash them with a tortilla press) into small tortillas. Take two of your tortillas and layer them on top of each other, with a generous scoop of filling in between. Pinch the edges of the tortillas together to seal in the filling and cook for a few minutes on each side until done. 

The second way is to take a ball of masa about half the size of your fist and gently flatten it out with your hand until it fills your palm. Cup your hand a little to create a little bowl shape, and then press a spoonful of filling into the crater and gently work the edges of the masa dough up around the filling until the edges meet and you end up with a ball of masa dough with filling encased inside. Gently roll this ball out or smash with a tortilla press (you will be able to see filling through the sides—that's just fine), and then cook on both sides til done.

The third (and most authentic) way, which is actually our favorite way of doing it because it produces by far the best texture (and is kind of fun, too!) is to follow the first few steps of method #2 until you  have your ball of masa with filling encased inside. Then, instead of rolling it out like you would a tortilla, gently "slap" the ball back and forth between your palms, rotating it around as you go to keep it circular. This can take a little practice, but it's really pretty fun once you get the hang of it! (And don't worry—ugly pupusas still taste fantastic!) After a few slaps back and forth, your pupusa should be a disk about 1/4" thick. Press this gently onto your pan or griddle and cook on both sides til done. (This method will take a little longer to cook than others, since it produces thicker pupusas—I let it cook on the first side until the edges of the pupusa start to look dry, and then flip it and cook 3-5 minutes on the second side as well.)

Serve hot with sour cream and salsa or contido.

Black Bean Soup

Prep time: Easy

Source: Adapted from Our Best Bites

You may be able to tell from reading this blog, but I really like soup! This is another favorite we've made a lot over the last year or two.

About 1 T EVOO

4 cloves garlic, diced

2 medium carrots, peeled and diced

1-2 celery ribs, diced

1/2 medium onion, diced

2 cans black beans (or about 6 cups home-cooked beans), drained and rinsed

1 large anaheim pepper or 1/2 bell pepper, diced

4 cups beef or chicken broth (I never seem to have beef on hand so I usually use all or part chicken)

1 t kosher salt

1/8 t black pepper

1/8-1/2 t chili powder, depending on how strong your chili powder is and how spicy you like things

1/4 t cumin

1/2 t dried oregano

1 bay leaf if you have them

In a large saucepan or stock pot, saute onions, carrots, garlic, and celery for a few minutes (until onions are translucent garlic is browning). Add beans, anaheim or bell peppers, broth, and spices. Simmer (without a lid) for 30-60 minutes or until the carrots are tender. Remove bay leaf (if you happened to not have run out of them, which I always do!) and purée soup with stick blender or in batches in regular blender. Squeeze in the juice of one lime (or add about 1 T bottled lime juice). Top with chips, cheese, sour cream, and more lime juice, if desired. 

Cauliflower Soup

Prep time: Easy (about the same as most soups)

Source: Adapted from The Pioneer Woman

Mahon is not a fan of cauliflower and gives me MAJOR grief for making this soup, but even he likes it once it's done! It's especially delicious with a little cheddar cheese mixed in. However, I have been having major problems with large amounts of dairy—especially cheese—lately, and so I ate it without any garnishes and it was still quite yummy. (Because of my dairy issues, I served the soup with the sour cream as a garnish rather than as part of the body of the soup, like the original recipe indicates.) I streamlined the original recipe a bit because I thought it came together in a really odd way, and tweaked a few of the proportions. I also decided after the last time that I made it that it needed a longer simmering time so that the cauliflower was softer and less grainy after the soup was puréed.

1/4 cup butter

1/2 onion, finely chopped

1 whole carrot, finely chopped

1 stalk celery, finely chopped

1 clove garlic, diced

1/4 cup flour

1 head cauliflower, roughly chopped

1 T fresh parsley (or about 1 tsp dried), chopped

4 cups chicken stock

1 cup whole milk

1/2 cup half-and-half (or 1/4 cup each cream and milk)

1-2 tsp salt (or more) to taste

Shake of pepper

In medium saucepan, melt butter and saute onions, carrot, garlic, and celery for a few minutes or until onions begin to look translucent. Add flour and cook until the flour/butter mixture is golden and bubbly. Slowly add chicken stock, stirring as you go until everything is integrated. Add cauliflower, parsley, and salt (err on the lower side for now) and bring to a boil. Once the soup is boiling, reduce heat and simmer for about 20-40 minutes or until cauliflower is fairly tender. Add milk and half-and-half and simmer for another 10-20 minutes (don't allow the soup to boil), until cauliflower is very tender and all ingredients are heated through. Purée soup using a stick blender, or in batches in a regular blender. Add more salt if needed and a shake of black pepper. Serve garnished with sour cream and cheddar cheese, if desired.

Rice And Beans

{Picture coming soon!}

Rating: 5 stars

Prep time: Easy

This spring, I've been trying to incorporate a few meatless meals into our lives for health and budget reasons. So far, this is the only meatless meal (it's not really "vegetarian" since it has chicken stock in it) that my meat-and-potatoes husband approves of. It's a simple dish, but one so packed with flavor that it's hard to stop eating! It would also make a great filler for tacos or stuffed peppers.

1 clove garlic

1 T olive oil

1 cup rice (I always use brown—you can also replace the rice with quinoa, which is delicious!)

2 cups chicken stock

3 cups black beans

1/2 cup corn (cooked)

1 bell pepper, chopped

1/2 medium onion, chopped

1 tsp. chili powder or mexican spice blend (I use a tex-mex blend that has chili powder, cayenne pepper, and other things)

1 T lemon or lime juice

1/2 t dried cilantro

Finely chop garlic. In medium saucepan, sautee garlic in olive oil until garlic is just barely beginning to brown. Add rice and sautee for a minute, then add chicken stock. Allow everything to come to a boil, then cover and reduce heat to medium-low (it should be higher than a simmer, but not a full boil). Cook for about 20 minutes, or until the rice has absorbed the liquid. Add all other ingredients and cook for another two or three minutes. Serve hot.