We closed out the Olympics last night with a veggie Wellington that I dug out of the deep freeze. We call it an Artie Wellington in honor of my Dad who I made it with and was suspicious of a vegetarian Wellington to begin with…
The potatoes, Yorkshire Puddings, and brussel sprouts all came from the deep freeze too. I think it was semi-fitting to have leftovers for what was left of the Olympics, don’t you?
And of course a Guinness was involved too.
Looks nice doesn’t it?
Hmm. Don’t trust it.
But why? It looks like a lovely lemon pesto with whole wheat linguine and a salad.
All I have to say is thank the Cooking Gods for the salad.
What went wrong?
Lynley was visiting for the weekend, so of course we needed to cook together. We made a pesto recipe (Linda McCartney’s, whom I love but I have found out has some, Paul forgive me, questionable recipes).
Granted, I don’t make pesto very often, maybe once or twice a year, so neither of us realized what was going wrong.
What might that be, you ask? Oh. Let’s just say the recipe called for 8-10 cloves of garlic.
Yeah, that first bite was a doozy.
NOW I know that normal pesto only has about 2-4 cloves of garlic AND that is plenty.
The taste was just heat and no flavor at all. I laughed at the delicate, gentle squeeze of lemon I had added to the sauce thinking about the citrus flavors. HA!
We both tired to fix the situation. I added tomato sauce, olive oil and more cheese.
Lynley went for more cheese and a heck of a lot more olive oil.
Nothing worked. It tasted awful. And the worst part was that the taste wouldn’t go away.
Frozen custard Sundaes with homemade whipped cream for dessert couldn’t even put out the garlic fire in our bellies.
The next step for me- Tums.
The next step for Lyn- a shot of whiskey.
Needless to say when we got up in the morning, Linda’s pesto was still with us.
Even good cooks have bad days. Did we laugh? Oh, yes we did.
I’m just glad we cooked our worst meal ever together.
(Lynley grinning and whipping up a hopeful antidote).
I’ve officially crossed a line…I am now a baker. You might say, yes, but you don’t have a degree and you’ve never worked in a bakery.
All true – however,I now buy all baking supplies in the largest size possible or in bulk because I am baking so much. To me this means only one thing- I am a baker.
There is no going back my foodie friends and I couldn’t be happier about it.
Our dad loves hot dogs. I think it’s beyond love actually and more like simple total devotion. So of course we had a hot dog dinner for him for Fathers’s Day…what else would we do?
Happy Dad.
Veggie dog and tots…that’s living people.
Beer.
Need I say more?
This is a little habit I inherited from our Auntie Linda. Nothing like a strong tea, the paper and lovely morning sunshine.
Ah! Here’s to our long weekend!
I posted about this family habit two years ago on my other blog, thepiesthatbind on wordpress. Check it out if you want to see video footage of this family tradition!
We celebrated our favorite Beatle Paul’s 70th birthday Monday night by listening to his 2010 concert and, of course, eating veggie for the Meatless Monday founder.
On the menu: a Young/Farris Family favorite, Matzo eggs, lemon roasted potatoes, fruit and English muffins with homemade peach jam ( thank you mom).
Here’s to you Sir Paul! Cheers to your music, veggie spirit, and just being you.
un-fish and chips- Southbank London
John with his veggie fish and chips in London. We were there on his birthday last year.
For our homemade un-fish and chips, I choose to coat the slow melt cheese with egg, crushed Ritz crackers and a little flour. Yeah, I know it’s not deep-fried, but with melted butter in the pan that helped make up the difference.
I tried to make mushy peas again, but learned a hard lesson– don’t take a walk around the block and leave mushy peas simmering away with too little water in the pan. We had to quickly substitute non-mushy peas (they were fresh English peas though).
I also oven baked my chips– I know how “un” can you get, but it was a week night, what can I say.
The next night we had leftover Will and Kate Beer and Barley Mushroom pie with boiled potatoes and corn. It freezes and reheats so well.
Another Great Britain Jamie Oliver (Stephy tweaked veggie) recipe. Check out the original blog post for the how-tos!
One more meal to go and the celebrations eating ends– parting is such sweet sorrow.
Even Paul thinks so.
For our second night of celebration dining I decided to make Jamie Oliver’s ER Diamond Jubilee Chicken, but without the chicken. Since I’ve never had the classic coronation chicken I had no idea what to expect (and then I substituted garlic tofu on top of that!)
I was worried it was going to be more of a mystery jubilee than a regal jewel, but as all of Jamie’s recipes turn out (even with my American-Vegetarian finagling) it was really good!
First I cut the tofu and marinated it juice from one lemon, some fresh pineapple chunks, a thumb-sized piece of diced fresh ginger, 4 diced garlic cloves, and some olive oil. I only let it sit for around 30 minutes. Keep the marinade! You’ll need it later.
Then I sautéed the tofu until golden and crispy in more olive oil.
Then added all the spices. Hang on to your crowns: 1 tsp of coriander, 1/2 TBSP of garam masala, 1/2 a tsp of turmeric, 1/4 a tsp of chili powder, 1/4 of a tsp of red chili flakes (add more if you want it spicier- we’re mild people at our house). Wow, it seemed like a lot more when I was making it.
After cooking in the spices ( 5 minutes or so) I added a cup of chopped fresh pineapple, a handful of cashews, 1/2 a tsp of cumin seeds, 1 TBSP of sesame seeds, and 3 or 4 sliced green onions.
I also added back in my marinating mix.
The last steps- squeeze juice from one lime and lightly stir in a TBSP of plain yogurt (don’t skip the yogurt, it adds a richness you won’t want to miss!)
Oh! And I almost forgot the mini yorkies! I made Yorkshire puddings for the first time. Jamie recommended a mini muffin pan and that’s what I went with.
They’re basically like popovers, but a little denser. The smoking hot oil in the muffin pan freaked me out a little, but it turned out to be pretty easy and yummy.
The whole meal included: the jubilee tofu on top of cucumber slices, butter onion sweet rice, salad and the Yorkshire puddings.
Ta until tomorrow!
To celebrate Queen Elizabeth’s time on the throne, I decided we should eat British all week! We usually only eat British on occasional Sundays, but celebrations and chance to dream about our home away from home don’t come as often as we would like.
Fridays are pizza nights for us, so I decided to try and recreate the pizza with a salad in the middle that I’ve had twice at Pizza Express (once in Liverpool and once on Baker Street in London). Pizza Express is a chain restaurants that have become our trusty fallback favorite for 4 reasons: 1) they are everywhere 2) the food is pretty good 3) they give you a choice when it comes to wine glass size- regular and large (God bless’em) and 4) they serve dough balls instead of breadsticks.
I made the dough balls first.
Before:
After:
Ok- so I had to make a pizza with a hole in the center. I settled on using an oven safe bowl and cut a circle around the bowl with my knife, remove the middle dough, grease up the bowl and put it back in the center.
I used a Cabernet pizza sauce I created and froze two weeks ago. You will noticed I added a rim of dough to keep my toppings from running all over the place.
And then added my toppings: 3 cheese for John and marinated olives, mozzerella, fava beans and fresh grape tomatoes. Why not go a little exotic when you’re making a pizza with a hole in the middle anyway.
In the oven it goes!
When I took it out I had a momentary panic that I wouldn’t be able to remove the bowl without hurting the pizza.
But, no worries, it came out with a little wiggling. Without the salad it kind of looks like a pizza donut.
Then all you do is add the salad to the middle and you have a Pizza Express creation right in your kitchen.
Oh, and my wineglasses weren’t “large” enough so I had to drink two of these to keep the experience real!
Mom is smitten with my true love chocolate mousse pie. I think when she ate it she actually said, “Why would anyone want any other kind of chocolate pie?” That’s true love for you! Check out my post from Gretel’s Oven.
Hearty Eaters 