"Cream" of Roasted Potato Leek Soup

I made roasted potato leek soup today for one of the Shavuos meals. I have actually blogged about this a while ago here, but I updated it a tad, and of course I had to incorporate some CHEESE into it. The "cream" is soy milk, so it is more forgiving...


"Cream" of Roasted Potato Leek Soup

-3 leeks, cut the hairy end off, as well as the dark green tops
-2 tbsp. Earth Balance, & 1 tbsp. of olive oil
-1 tbsp. sugar-6 cloves garlic
-8 medium-large Yukon gold potatoes (or 2 lb. bag)
-Salt & pepper
-1.5 cups packed spinach or kale
-Freshly chopped flat-leaf parsley-Roughly 6 cups of liquid: vegetable broth + water
-Skim milk
-Preheat oven to 450. Cube the potatoes, peel & halve the garlic, toss all with olive oil, garlic salt, and pepper and roast for about 30 minutes. That extra step really makes the soup taste better, but you can do without if on a time crunch.
-In the meantime, slice the leeks down the center, and then chop up into half moons. Soak in water and a little vinegar (helps release the sand- leeks are notoriously sandy/dirty) & swish 
-Once drained, saute the leeks in the EB & olive oil in a pot, season with salt and pepper. After 5 minutes add the sugar. This helps caramelize the leeks.

-Once the leeks are softened, add the roasted potatoes, & season more with salt & pepper
-Add the liquid- low-sodium vegetable broth / water. Better to add less now & more later as opposed to having it be too thin in the end.
-Bring to boil & then lower heat to medium-low
-Cook about 30 minutes, until the vegis are all soft enough to puree
-Add the spinach or kale, and the parsley. Puree with a hand blender & then season more if needed, and add more broth or water if you want it thinner. Stream in some soy milk to give the soup a "creamy" effect.


I snuck a bowl for lunch, and served it for myself with a garnish of parsley, a goat cheese medallion (which slowly melts into the soup- so yumm) & FRESH potato chips! When I was cleaning up I noticed one lone potato on the counter that I forgot to roast for the soup, what was I gonna do with one potato??? Potato chips! I cut them very thin & fried them in batches (for the first time ever- I always make baked potato chips) in canola.. They were a heavenly indulgence & very easy- heat a 1/4 cup of oil [not olive] in a small saucepan, drop around 3 thin slices at a time and move them around. Lay on a paper towel lined plate and sprinkle with Jane's Krazy Mixed-Up Salt or Lawry's garlic salt. Avi kindly left me 2 chips for my soup :-)

Even though it's practically summer, I couldn't resist making an excellent soup!


E

It's here-- MAC AND CHEESE!!

Yes- mac and cheese IS the most typical dairy meal, but nevertheless, you can never go wrong with a delicious mac and cheese. Definitely a comfort food, but it doesn't need to have that heavy cheesy "I'll regret this in the morning" feeling. I make this when I'm really in the mood, with whatever shape pasta I have on hand (it doesn't have to be only elbow macaroni!!). The pasta I usually use is Barilla Plus. White pasta is useless, and I find 100% whole wheat pasta really mealy and heavy tasting. The Plus pasta is a good balance, tastes great & good for you. Usually I use N&K shredded cheese, but to mix it up I decided to use the N&K cubed cheddar cheese (I couldn't think of any other use for it), and it came out great! I didn't use the entire box of pasta for this recipe, rather just one round tin's worth, and saved some pasta.

-1 box of Barilla Plus penne or preferred shape short pasta
-2 tbsp. flour
-2 tbsp. Earth Balance
-1 cup lowfat milk (plus a few more tbsp. if needed)
-2 cups of cheddar cubes, cut in half to speed the melting process (if you use shredded cheese, use about 1.5 cups, more if you like it more cheesy)
-1 tsp. dijon mustard (preferred brand: Grey Poupon)
-Garlic salt & pepper to taste
-Chopped parsley
-Panko breadcrumbs

-Preheat the oven to 375
-Make the pasta according to package directions. Don't cook until mushy, it'll cook more in the oven
-Melt the butter in a small pot, add the flour and whisk over medium heat
-Slowly pour in the milk, continuing to whisk
-Add the cheese and mix until all melted. Add a tbsp. more or milk while melting the cheese if it is too thick. You can also reserve some pasta water to add to the sauce if you don't want to add the extra milk.
-Add the dijon, 1/2 tsp. of garlic salt, and 1/4 tsp. pepper
-Add the pasta to the cheese sauce, and mix. Stir in the parsley
-Spray a round tin or dish and add the pasta, sprinkle panko crumbs on top, and more chopped parsley and spray with Pam.
-Bake until desired doneness (I usually keep it in covered for 30 minutes and uncovered for 10- I like when the top gets crispy).
-My favorite side to mac and cheese is salty kale chips

Who would resist that??

Mother & Daughter Lunches

For Rosie's lunch today, I simply made her butternut squash pizza. She doesn't react well to tomato sauce, so I wanted to substitute it with something else. I had butternut squash puree that I give her aside basically any protein I make her for dinner. So I spread some on a whole wheat sandwich thin (I also buy the Trader Joe's brand), and topped each round with a slice of N&K Muenster Cheese & baked it in the toaster at 400 until the cheese melted- my kitchen really smelled like a pizza store, & she loved it! It was her first encounter with "pizza," & I think I'll do it more often. I used a pizza cutter to cut it into squares, and let her go at it on her own. She was in heaven, I think. (sorry for the poor quality picture because I used my phone). This is a fantastic way to hide a vegi in your kids pizza! You can do the same with sweet potato, even pea puree...

 My lunch was an apple cheddar panini. Apple in a panini, you ask? I told you I like sweet+savory together! In an attempt to make room for summer fruit, I decided to make an apple cheddar panini, using granny smith apple & the N&K sliced orange cheddar cheese from my basket. I've actually been making this kind of a panini for a while now & I love the combination. Even though you can theoretically get apples all year round, for some reason they remind me of fall/winter, and I love having peaches/nectarines, & blueberries stocked in my fridge for summer, so let's just say this is an homage to the granny smith, in an effort to get rid of them! Cheddar & apple go great together!

-2 slices of multigrain seeded bread, or any bread of your choice
-Honey Mustard (i.e. French's)
-Light Mayonnaise
-4 slices of a Granny Smith apple
-Sliced avocado
-Arugula
-Orange cheddar cheese

-Preheat a panini press, or grill pan on medium high, spray with nonstick cooking spray. If you use the panini grill pan, preheat the press as well on a separate flame on low, sprayed with cooking spray as well.
-Spread the honey mustard on one slice of bread, and the mayo on the other slice
-Layer the arugula, avocado, apple, & cheese on one slice, starting with the cheese, & ending with a piece of cheese if you want 2. Place in the grill pan, & top it with the 2nd piece of bread.
-Press with the cover a few minutes until the cheese is slightly melted (it will melt better if the cheese is slightly at room temperature). Flip & repeat.
-Cut in half & serve with salad of your choice (the one pictured is arugula, terra chip sticks, artichoke hearts, & a creamy balsamic vinaigrette

You can DEFINITELY eat this sandwich cold, if you don't have a panini press or grill pan (if you don't have a panini pan you can use a plate or a frying pan to press it).

Muenster... orange cheddar... check!

Until next meal...
E

Make Over Your Breakfast

I'm always trying to come up with fast and easy breakfast fixes, as I don't usually have so much time to think in the morning, with Rosie running around. So as soon as I saw the cranberry pecan goat cheese, I knew I just wanted to spread it on a toasted english muffin and be ready to sit down to eat it in less than 5 minutes. I LOVE goat cheese. However, I rarely buy it being that we are cholov yisroel it tends to be one of the very expensive CY cheeses, for a very little amount that I could easily use it up myself in 2 meals, that is how much I like it! Costco has gotten on board with a really cheap Kosher dairy Chevre but has yet to carry an industrial size log of N&K!! Come on!

I wasn't sure what to expect out of the goat cheese, as I never tried one like this. If you've never tried goat cheese at all, you must. The most typical use of goat cheese that I can think of is warm breaded goat cheese served over salad (I'll get there, it's one of my favorites), but I've also had it shredded over salad at Cafe Muscat in Queens ("Farmers Salad") which was a delicious way to serve it as well. Goat cheese is one of those cheeses that you can either love  or hate. It has a very distinct savory flavor (you can find many varieties in the supermarket, I've seen herb, olive chevre, etc.), which is why I was excited to try this sweet variety asap, something I've never seen before. I'm a huge fan of mixing sweet and savory (i.e. fruits in salad, and on chicken), and this cheese is just that- the pieces of cranberry and pecan give the cheese a hint of sweetness, but the savory flavor of the cheese itself is still very much there. The log is also dusted on the outside with cinnamon. I toasted the english muffin, & spread the cheese on top. I know this is not much of a "recipe" but I think it's the perfect way to showcase this cheese without butchering it up. I think it's a fashionable update to the familiar yet boring cinnamon raisin bagel with cream cheese..

Old boring breakfast: cinnamon-raisin bagel with cream cheese (photo credits: Google!)

New exciting breakfast: whole wheat english muffin with N&K cranberry pecan goat cheese

So cheesy...

I've been given a mission... to test drive some of Natural & Kosher's best cheeses! Check out Sincerely Brigitte on Facebook, Brigitte Mizrahi who is the creator of 4 top lines of Kosher cheeses. If you don't have Facebook, you can check out her blog here and the overall site here (Anderson International Foods). Anyways, the basket was dropped off here yesterday afternoon and let me tell you I am definitely in for a challenge! I was not expecting such an abundance but needless to say, my fridge is now stocked with cheese that could easily last me a lifetime! Thank God N&K cheese freezes amazingly! Here is the basket. It consisted of 4 bags of shredded mozzarella (Chef's Blend and Pizza Cheese), 4 small logs of 2 varieties of goat cheese, 13 packages of sliced cheese, 2 packages of American slices, around 7 blocks of cheese, a sliced cheese variety pack, and a package of cubed cheddar. I feel like an Iron Chef! I wonder what the secret ingredient is...Anyways, I didn't come from a lasagna baked ziti kind of family. We rarely had it for dinner. Our dairy dinners were usually homemade pizza. However, when it comes to the holidays, we usually go all out dairy for lunches, and my mom makes a mean eggplant parmesan. So I'm going to try and pull out all the stops to create creative cheesy dishes that I hope you will all enjoy! Some will definitely be simple, as you don't always have to melt cheese with 100 other ingredients to make it good! I personally enjoy cheese best with tomato and avocado on a sandwich while others may hear cheese and immediately think of mac & cheese! I'll try to cover all bases.

So stay tuned as I embark on this challenge, and hopefully I'll provide you with some yummy cheesy recipes that will hopefully be healthy as well!

Fish Tacos with Mango Black Bean Salsa

Hi! First and foremost I want to apologize for being m.i.a. though I find myself apologizing every post! I have been focusing on school & Rosie, which just means that I have an archive full of pictures for the next few weeks being off from school :-). Anyways, I wanted to make some kind of fish tacos after seeing a Bobby Flay version of them on the Food Network on "Cinco de Mayo Week" (obviously he uses every spicy ingredient in the book which I am totally not a fan of). Anyways, I kept pushing it off. This past week in my FN magazine, there was a simple recipe for fish tacos as well (June pg. 100), which seemed blah. Then in talking with my cousin (shout out to Em!), she mentioned that she was going for fish tacos last weekend. There were too many signs to get the ball rolling on my fish tacos so here goes. It was surprisingly extremely easy, and took all of 30 minutes from prep to cleanup (dishes courtesy of Avi).

Any white fish can theoretically work (i.e. cod, flounder, scrod, sole). When I was at the fish counter, I was looking for wild scrod but I didn't think the filets that they had available would work well (they were square in shape and very thick). That's why I chose tilapia, because of their long slender shape, as my plan was to make "fish sticks."

Fish Tacos
-2 tilapia fillets
-cornstarch
-1 egg, beaten with a tsp. of water
-cornmeal
-Garlic salt
-Canola oil
-Soft flour tortillas
-Thinly sliced romaine lettuce
-Prepared tartar sauce (preferred brand: Trader Joe's)
-Mango Black Bean Salsa (recipe to follow)

-Cut the tilapia into strips (make sure all the pieces are more or less the same size in thickness, to ensure even cooking)
-Make a "dredging station"=
1: cornstarch
2: egg + tsp. water
3: cornmeal, seasoned with garlic salt

-Heat a thin layer of canola oil in a large dark saute pan over medium heat (you don't want to use olive oil for frying as it burns much quicker - recommended frying oils: peanut, safflower, sunflower, canola, vegetable). I prefer to heat the oil before dredging so that by the time I am ready to pan fry the strips, the oil is hot enough. If you're not sure if the oil is hot enough, take a piece of the dredged fish and lightly touch it to the oil, if you hear a light sizzle, then you know it's ready. If not, take it away & wait. You can dredge first and then heat the oil, just make sure you don't overheat the pan- it will BURN your fish.
-Dredge the tilapia strips in the cornstarch (rub off the excess), then the egg, & finally the seasoned cornmeal
-Add immediately to the oil (if you'd rather bake the fish, bake at a high temperature [450] on a rack layered atop a sheet pan for ~10 minutes)
-Fry 3-4 minutes per side until crispy
-Lay in a single layer on a paper towel lined plate

I decided to warm/brown the tortillas over an open (medium-low) flame. I saw Marcella Valladolid do it and she's the queen of tacos so I thought it was cool & I had to try it- just be careful & use tongs. 

(how much do they look like Matzah!? They are regular flour tortillas I promise!)

Mango Black Bean Salsa
-Half a mango, cut into small cubes
-1 peeled kirby cucumber, cut into small cubes
-1/2 cup diced daikon or jicama (delicious & crunchy, radish-like)
-1/2 can black beans, rinsed
-1 avocado, diced
-1.5 tbsp. finely chopped purple onion
-Chopped parsley
-Lime juice, salt, and pepper to taste

-Combine all the ingredients in a bowl, and season to taste.
(Feel free to add jalapenos, chiles, cayenne, or whatever spicy ingredient you enjoy. I can't seem to get my palette around spice, or heat, oh well... however, my version was delicious just the same!)

-To assemble the tacos, spread prepared tartar sauce onto the tortilla (as odd as this sounds, I can't live without Trader Joe's [rather itty bitty] jar of tartar sauce. I should really give them Costco's #- it's that good)
-Place the lettuce in the middle of the tortilla, top with however many pieces of fish you'd like, and then top with the salsa - fold and eat - - - YUMMMMMMM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Happy belated Cinco De Mayo!!!!!!! ;-)

E

P.S. if you're short on time, or don't have fresh fish readily available, this is a great way to elevate plain frozen boxed fish sticks (Dr. Praegers- yum!)

Watermelon Mint Sorbet

We decided to make a figure friendly (I guess) dessert for the 2nd part of Pesach considering all the fattening eating that was non-stop (does this ever get old???)

Anyways, we had a huge amount of seedless watermelon cut up so decided to put the leftovers to good use. We also had a huge bag of fresh mint that my father bought for hot tea, so I used a bunch without making a dent in the bag! As long as you have patience & good fresh fruit, you can do this with just about anything. It is WELL worth it. I kind of made up what I did as I was going along so just bear with me and experiment with the proportions if you feel the need. Erev first days my brother made fresh lemonade so we saved the lemon halves and froze them in the hopes of future use... success!

Everyone go make this and maybe it will send a message above that WE WANT SPRING NOW!!!!!

Watermelon Mint Sorbet
-BIG bowl of cut watermelon (I'd say we had about 6-8 cups??)
-Juice of 1 lemon
-Juice of 1 orange
-Mint/citrus simple syrup: 1 cup water, 1.5 cup sugar, zest of a lemon & zest of an orange, couple sprigs of mint leaves. Bring to a boil & then let simmer for 10 minutes till slightly syrupy. Let cool.

-Puree the watermelon in a food processor, & add the citrus juices (DON'T strain the watermelon)
-When syrup is semi-cooled, discard the mint leaves, & freeze it in an airtight container. Freeze the watermelon puree in a separate container as well.
-Freeze for a few hours (until its lightly frozen, not a hard block) & then add the watermelon puree back into the food processor, & stream the simple syrup in until combined. Put back into the big container & refreeze. After a couple more hours (4-5), put it BACK into the food processor and process it for a good 5 minutes until it resembles a creamy sorbet-like consistency. It is WELL WORTH THE EFFORT!
-It is now ready to enjoy!!! The key is the numerous food processing.
-Serve in frozen lemon cups (cut off the bottoms so that it stands on its own but don't go through the whole lemon otherwise the sorbet will leak out)- since this sorbet isn't as good as would be in an ice cream maker (though the consistency is still impressive for a food processor, an old Pesach one for that matter!!!) it melts quicker, so the frozen lemon is a great way to keep it cold & frosty.
-Garnish with a fresh mint leaf!

Chag Sameach!