A homemade PAP Sandwich (better than it sounds)

Take a long look at this sandwich. Notice anything different about it? Eeeew, just cuz I put that in the title? No, PAP stands for Pancetta, Arugula and Parmesan, the ingredients in this tasty morsel. But even better than that, I made it all. I baked the bread for the sandwich last weekend (didn’t post on it, not as good as it ought to be. Will be trying that one again). My co-worker, Lauren over at CheeeseToast and I had cured the pancetta. Either she or I will post the details on that shortly, but it was an extremely fun and scrumptious experiment which we will definetly be repeating. Then I added some arugula from last weeks farmer’s market and a bit of parmesan, and I had my own perfect little homemade sandwich. A PAP Sandwich.

Deconstructed Vietnamese Shrimp Wraps

I was going to make summer rolls. You know, the kind you get at every Vietnamese restaurant. They are like the perfect food–fresh, delicious, healthy. The fact is, though, it takes a fair amount of work to make them for dinner. You have to soak each wrap individually, then quickly make the wrap, store them under a wet towel while you make the other ones and hope they don’t dry out too quickly. So tonight, as I prepared to make them, I felt a bout of laziness waft over me. No, I wasn’t making summer rolls. Now I had to think on my feet. Pretty much all we had were summer roll ingredients (why I had chosen to make them in the first place). Then it hit me, I could make them, just without actually MAKING them. I grilled the shrimp, I made the peanut sauce (3 parts peanut butter, 1 part coconut milk, 1 part soy sauce) and I ripped up the basil and mint leaves. Instead of the work of wrapping them all up individually, though, I just tossed them on a pile of rice noodles. Easy as hell, probably took like 5 minutes total. Swashed the whole thing with sriracha, and there you have it.

Quick n’ Easy Version: Pho

Pho is like a godsend when you are sick. This Vietnamese version of the classic sickie food takes chicken noodle to a new level. If you are at the point of moving, the best thing is to get thee to the nearest Pho restaurant and let them do the work. But I wasn’t there yet. I was still at home, in bed. And that meant I wasn’t making the stock from scratch. Everything was thrown together and it was quick and easy. It wasn’t the best pho ever, but it did the trick.

 For Easy Pho: Chicken Stock (1 can), star anise (2 stars), Cardamom (.5 teaspoon of ground), salt and pepper to taste, 2 tablespoons fish sauce, ginger (a teaspoon minced), garlic (2 cloves, crushed).

Boiled all of these up in a broth and let it reduce to about half, then strained out the spices.

Into a bowl I put cilantro, fresh rice noodles, jalapeno, and chopped baby bok choy. Poured the broth over these ingredients and there it was. A steaming bowl of Pho.

There is no picture. Sick people can’t operate cameras.

The Best Grilled Cheese

“I came home last night to make a sandwich,” B told me last night…”and there was no provolone left?” I finished. Yeah, what happened to that provolone? I made it into my favorite grilled cheese sandwich. Inspired by a dish I ate in Uruguay (I know that people who know me are shocked that I say this, but once, I did eat good food there). The dish involves melting an entire round of provolone with spices and slicing it into pieces to eat with bread. This is just the Americanized verion.

Begin by melting the cheese (2 large slices should do) just enough that some grease slides off. Using a spatula, lift the cheese back off for a minute and toast the bread quickly, til golden, then flip one, piling on top the cheese, and removing the second piece of bread for a sec. Sprinkle the cheese with spices of your choice. I used red pepper flake, rosemary, salt and pepper. Then, with the toasted side toward the cheese, complete your sandwich. When the bottom toast is browned on the outside, flip it over and brown the other outside.

Delicious cheesiness with a bit of an adult flavor.

A Satisfying Soup

Returning from a long day of skiing there is usually just one thing I want to put in my mouth. My thumb. No, just kidding, I stopped sucking my thumb for comfort many years ago, now I eat instead. And what I most want to eat is a warming soup. Miso is my favorite broth for the base of any soup, but unfortunately, the traditional simple miso soups tend to be a little light to be a whole meal after a long day of skiing, so, raiding my fridge, I came up with this tasty solution. So tasty, in fact, that I ate the leftovers this afternoon, despite the lack of skiing today due to a power outage at Snoqualmie Pass. The edamame and peppers add an extremely satisfying crunch that make this soup a standout and something I will certainly add into my recipe rotation this winter. The jalepeno adds my much loved heat to the dish, and the whole thing is quite healthy.JalepenoOnionGreen PepperGingerGarlicMiso PasteEdamameChopping one clove of garlic and mincing a half teaspoon of ginger, I tossed them in a small pot with a bit of no stick cooking spray. I added about half a small onion, and a quarter of the green pepper, and about a tablespoon of jalepeno, all chopped up. I sauteed these for about 5 minutes, then added about 2 cups of water. As this came to a boil, I broke up and added in about a tablespoon and a half of the miso paste and a few handfuls of edamame (I used frozen, pre-shelled). Once the miso broke up, I took it off the heat and ate it with a few of the turkey dumplings still hanging out in the freezer. 

Gourd Tastic: Part 1–Delicata Fettucini

It’s fall here in the northwest and my favorite season to boot. The fun of fall vegetables never fails, as you can see in the previously posted pumpkin soup recipe. I also created a butternut squash ravioli that I unfortuantely didn’t manage to post about. But the fun never ends with gourds, as this weekend I ventured into new territory: Delicata squash and Pumpkin pie.

I don’t want to post the picture of the delicata fettucini I made because the picture does no justice to the tastiness of the meal itself. We came home from the pumkin patch starving and bearing a 2 large delicata squashes. The fun part of delicata is that you can eat the skin, so of course this (and the rush to eat) made me think that I could sautee it. I had never sauteed a squash before, so I tried at first to cut the pieces quite small, but after a taste fry, I realized it was going to be fairly quick to fry up, so I ended up cutting the onion and the squash as close to the width of the fettucini as possible in order to get some textural consistancy. I won’t say this is a top dish of all time, but I did think that it was great for starving squash bearing people who can’t handle waiting for the thing to roast in an oven.

Enough for two people, with leftovers:
1/4 large delicata squash
1/4 large white onion
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
2 tablespoons olive oil
Salt and Pepper
Oregano
Basil
1 package fresh fettucini (I loved how the tenderness of the fresh noodles played with the squash texture–just a touch more al dente, but you could sub out dried if neccesary)

Put the oil in the pan and sautee the squash and onion, adding the vinegar pretty early on to let it caramalize a bit in the pan. Add the herbs to taste at the end. Just as the veggies are getting ready to finish up, toss the pasta in the pot. When you pull it out, put it in to the pan with the veggies and toss them all together–this got the noodles totally coated with the vinegar and herbs, and made them taste terrific.

The whole thing took maybe 20 minutes.