Red Cabbage

Red cabbage, onion, garlic. Seasoned with salt, pepper, balsamic vinegar, olive oil. 

Smells tangy. Tastes like sweet garlic. No meat needed.

Updates

This last week has been quite the rollercoaster of cuisine:

Mirepoix: what started as a practice exercise for knife skills turned into a versatile vegetable topping.
Sauteed carrots, onions, and celery, seasoned with french onion soup mix. It's paired here with a slice of the cheddar bread. Tastes like Thanksgiving stuffing.

Chicken Tikka Masala: basically, a tomato onion sauce with a custom 6 spice blend (literally, blended).
Sautee onions, ginger, and chili peppers. Add your spice mix. Add canned tomatoes (puree and chopped). Liquefy it in the blender. Pour it over the chicken. Stir in cilantro and yogurt.

Cheddar Beer Bread: will require tweaking, possibly a KitchenAid mixer. At least it looked pretty.
Flour, sugar, salt, baking powder. Add a bottle of dark beer. Stir in cheese, onion, dill. Bake.

Thank you to JD for the inspiration.

Avocado Adventures

Avocado with mushroom, onion, salsa, and a burrito.

Halve the avocado, use a knife to twist the pit out, use a spoon to dig the skin off, then slice!

It becomes easy to fan out for presentation.

Works well on an omelet.

Filled with onion, mushroom, pastrami, cheddar cheese.

BACON! Add either maple syrup or ground black pepper. Cold oven, set 400F, 25 min. bacon bacon bacon yeeeee

Frittata

This is my favorite recipe for brunch eggs. It's almost totally technique-free (unlike an omelet), feeds several people at once, stays just as good as it cools (unlike fried or scrambled eggs), requires zero maintenance as it cooks, and it's lighter than a quiche or strata (no buttery crust or carbs). Once you get the basics down, feel free to improvise with the filling.

Preheat the oven to 400. Slice up two shallots and soften them in a oven-safe skillet (no non-stick!) with some butter and olive oil. I bought too many mushrooms earlier this week, so I threw them in along with the shallots. Add a few pinches of salt and pepper.

While the shallots cook down, whisk six eggs with 1/2 cup of milk. Pour over the shallots and evenly distribute your vegetables/cheese/herbs/meat. For this morning, I used a pint of cherry tomatoes that I roasted in the oven the night before, basil, and smoked mozzarella. Without stirring, let the eggs cook over the stovetop until the edges start to set. Move the skillet into the oven.

 

Bake for 10 minutes or so until the center is set. Remove from oven and let the frittata sit for five minutes before serving.

Pan Fried Chinese Dumplings

This is a prep post for cooking your dumplings with a nice crisp and a cool presentation. I used Costco Ling Ling frozen dumplings.

Lay your dumplings in a radial manner on a frying pan.

Add water up to half the side of the dumpling.

Add a tablespoon of oil.

Turn on high heat.

Cover 10 minutes.

 Uncover and evaporate all the liquid.

When the liquid is gone, give it about 2 minutes to crisp the bottom.

Shake up the pan (with love!) to loosen all the dumplings.

Put your serving plate face down, over the pan.

Flip the dumplings onto your serving plate.

Serve with sauces.