Vegetarian Thanksgiving: Baked Potato Bar

I have been meaning to write this post for forever, but I didn't have the pictures. I still don't but I want to get it up anyway. We threw a baked-potato bar party over the summer, and at the end, I turned to Mr. Barefoot and said, "this would make a great thanksgiving!"

For a baked potato bar party, it's a super-simple concept that is really easy to make potluck and vegetarian or even vegan - we provided potatoes, greek yogurt, sour cream, butter, and spices, and everybody else brought toppings for both regular and sweet potatoes. We had black bean vegetarian chili, pulled pork, candied pecans, cheddar cheese, bacon bits, etc. For Thanksgiving, you could add roasted turkey, cranberry sauce, corn salsa or creamed corn, mac& cheese, green beans, and all manner of vegetables.

I love this as a vegetarian concept because nobody has to bring meat, and you end up with a holiday that doesn't revolve around meat. It's also novel enough that people won't complain as much about there not being a turkey. It's also great for people who are not very experienced cooks, because it's pretty hard to screw up baked potatoes. Just put a bunch on a cookie sheet and bake them for awhile. If you do eat meat, but don't cook very well, I personally would crockpot roast some drumsticks or something, and shred them to be a topping, but you could also provide roasted drumsticks as a side dish to avoid cooking a full bird. It also would be a great idea for a side dish if you do want to host a meal with a beautiful turkey, but don't want to put in the work to do multiple side dishes - a few potatoes go in the oven as soon as the turkey comes out, and while it rests, they bake, and everything is ready to go at once.

It also makes a great Thanksgiving leftovers brunch idea - because what leftovers aren't better on a roasted sweet potato? Minimal work, maximum fun - that's my kind of holiday!

What are you doing for a vegetarian (or carnivorous) thanksgiving?

Passover

Tonight was my annual passover dinner with my friend Boston, and I made dinner and she made apple cake and thumbprint cookies for dessert.  (Plus we had salted caramel matzoh.)  For dinner we had:

Patatas Bravas - and now we have a ton of delicious aioli leftover

Baked Sweet Potato Falafel - this recipe has some serious delicitude going on. 

Matzo Brie, topped with cheese and zucchini
Ingredients
4 sheets matzoh
2 eggs (or one egg and two egg whites, if you also made the aioli.)
salt
pepper
dash of milk (about one tablespoon)
boiling water
cheese
small zucchini, sliced thin

Procedure
1. Heat a skillet on medium heat until pretty hot (I actually baked my cast iron one in the oven at 400 for thirty minutes and then put it on the stove on medium heat). 

2. Break matzoh up into small-ish pieces (no bigger than two inches square), put in a colander, and pour boiling water over matzoh. 

3. Press matzoh dry with paper towel, squeezing water through colander.  Put matzoh in a shallow pan.

4. Combine eggs, milk, salt, pepper, and pour over matzoh. Allow to soak for about 5-10 minutes. 

5. Grease pan.  Be generous.  Pour matzoh and egg mixture into pan into a big pile of eggy-matzoh-ness. 

6. Add zuchinni slices if there is room around the matzoh. 

7. Once matzoh/egg has cooked on one side, flip the whole thing and cook on the other side. 

8. Flip the zucchini. 

9.  Remove matzoh from heat, top with cheese, and then zucchini. 

Smashed Reskins with Kale

I bought a bag of Kale last week, which is another reason you should never grocery shop after a 14 mile run.  I also bought a giant bag of Redskin potatoes.  And a thing of cheese puffs.  Seriously, don't do it.  We had some leftover cream from New Year's that I wanted to use up, so this recipe came from some googling (mostly of the "I wonder if people ever put Kale in mashed potatoes" variety) and also some haphazard "just use it up" testing.

Ingredients:
1 cup kale, washed, de-stemmed, and chopped into small pieces.  The smaller the better. 
4-5 redskin potatoes, cut up into 1 inch pieces
5 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup heavy cream (if you don't have any, just use milk)
1/2 cup milk
salt
pepper
olive oil
Parmesan cheese (optional)

Procedure:
1. Boil a pot of water, toss in potatoes.  Let cook for 20 minutes or until tender and mashable.  Drain.  Mash (you can mash them later, but as I was mashing them later, I thought, "gee, I should have mashed these first.)
2. Heat a big pan (or use the mashed potato pan) with olive oil, saute garlic until slightly golden. 
3. Add kale, saute until bright green. 
4. Add potatoes, heavy cream, and milk.  Stir together until everything is well mixed.  If you did not mash the potatoes before, mash them now. 
5. Add salt and pepper to taste, serve topped with Parmesan and enjoy! 

Meatless Monday: Winter Lager Soup

I'm a big fan of cooking with beer, so when I was looking through a seasonal cookbook (Local Delectables: Seasonal Recipes from the Pioneer Valley) gifted to me by a friend and found a Winter Lager Soup, I was eager to try it. We cooked it in the crockpot even though it's a stovetop recipe, and it came out okay. There are some changes I would make for next time.

Ingredients:

2 tbsp sunflower oil (I used olive oil)

3 ½ cups white onion, diced (I used one small onion - I think next time I would use the full 3.5 cups)

6 large cloves garlic, minced (we only had 2 cloves)

1 tsp dried rosemary

1 tsp dried thyme

1 tsp dried tarragon

1 tsp salt (I needed to add way more than 1 tsp)

3 lbs Russet potatoes, cubed (I think I came out with less than 3 lbs because the potatoes they had at Cross Street Market were lousy and full of eyes. Also, cube them fairly small - bite sized - something like 1/2 inch cubes)

1 ½ cups lager beer (I used Yuengling)

7 cups water (I used 6, because I was crockpotting. I think next time, with the crockpot, I would reduce this even more and use 3-4)

In a large stock pot, heat oil over med-high heat; sauté onions and garlic until lightly browned.

Stir in spices, potatoes, beer, and water.

Bring soup to a boil, then reduce to a steady simmer. Cover and cook for 40 minutes or until potatoes are tender, stirring occasionally. (Or put in your crockpot which cooks on crazy high heat and cook for 2.5-3 hours on high.)

Serve topped with whole wheat toast covered with melted Gruyere cheese. (I used whole wheat toast with melted parmesean cheese, but it added a whole other dimension to what would have been a watery broth. I also covered the soup with parm, which was also a nice addition.)

I also added a box of mushrooms to the soup, which gave it some more stuff, since we were eating the soup for dinner and not as an appetizer.

Verdict: The soup was okay - I think next time I would add more stuff to it, like carrots, celery, and white beans. It did smell amazing, and was nice and warm for the winter.

Breakfast is Delicious

This is actually a recipe from last week, and I'm sorry to be late with it - but it's so delicious you'll forgive me.
Last week, Moose and Squirrel (my future sister-in-law and her boyfriend) came to stay with us, and I decided to throw together a slow cooker breakfast casserole and some pancakes (I had leftover buttermilk from an ill-fated cake I tried to make. I'm not posting the recipe because it was not good.)

(Breakfast casserole - I recommend putting everything in the crockpot and actually mixing it together.)

The breakfast casserole was a poor man's version of this - I only had a half a thing of hash browns, and I only used 6 or 7 eggs. And I had to use bacon, because, um, I don't know how to cook sausage. It always goes poorly. So I don't. Bacon? I can cook. I ate around the bacon in this one, and didn't have a lot anyway. Because I was focusing on the deliciousness that is the AB Pancake.
If you don't own "I'm Just Here For More food"...you might want to, but only if you have enough time to cook. I've tried making some of the stuff in it, and I'm sorry, but some of AB's recipes are just. too. complicated. This one was pretty simple. The only thing it asked of me that I couldn't give it was a food processor for sifting. I sift with a strainer, which works okay. The key to great pancakes, apparently, lies in not overstirring, and in letting the batter rest.
So here is the pancake recipe. (Make ahead version here. Which I'm sorry, will save you about 5 seconds. But if you really need that time, go for it.)
Ingredients:
2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
3 tblsp sugar

2 L. eggs
2 cups buttermilk
4 tbsp unsalted butter, melted and slightly cooled.

Procedure:
1.) Sift dry goods together.
2.) Mix wet goods together in a separate bowl.
3.) Pour wet goods into dry goods. Mix gently. You should not make more than 5 circles around the bowl. I think AB actually wants you to stick to 3. Batter will be lumpy. Do not break up the lumps! Do make sure you have scraped all the flour off the bottom and there are no massive clumps of flour.
4.) Set the batter aside to rest for 5 minutes. This is key. I know you are hungry, but wait.
5.) Heat a frying pan to medium-low, or an electric griddle to 350.
6.) Ladle pancakes into griddle and cook until bubbles have formed. Pay attention: Some of you may be inclined to flip your pancakes when they start to bubble - but you want to wait until they look like this.

See how the edges are cooked and the batter is looking like it set? You should be cooking your pancakes for about 3 minutes on one side, so adjust the heat lower and just be patient!

I think this was the best batch of pancakes I've ever made. I'm going to try it again soon with my usual buttermilk substitute of milk + vinegar.

No Mayo Potato Salad

A few years ago my friend Tess made a potato salad with some kind of Italian dressing or vinaigrette or something. I just remember it didn't have mayonnaise in it, and that was the only way I could be convinced to eat it. For those of you new to the blog: Mayo is Disgusting.
The other night, I decided to make some potato salad for myself and Mr. Barefoot. It came out pretty good - it could probably be spiced up a little bit, and I'll keep tweaking the recipe some. Suggestions for spices are appreciated.
Ingredients:

• 4 yellow potatoes (in Ann Arbor, all the potatoes have a really thin skin). Redskins would probably work well as well. I peeled the potatoes and then diced them, but peeling is definitely optional. I diced them into about 3/4 inch squares.
• Olive Oil
• Salt, pepper, Italian seasonings to taste
• Balsamic vinegar

Procedure:

1. Boil a large pot of water. Add potatoes. Boil for about 10 minutes, until soft.
   
2. Drain in a colander.
3. Put in a bowl with some olive oil (just pour it until it looks wet.) Add some balsamic vinegar, and a lot of spices. I used Italian seasoning, salt, pepper, and anything else I could find on the windowsill that looked edible (I miss our spice rack...). Fresh herbs would probably be even better.
4. Chill for approximately 2 hours.
   

The best part was we fried the leftovers up for breakfast and ate them as home fries. Also, if you took this to a picnic you wouldn't have to worry about food poisioning.

Instinct Mashed Potatoes

I made mashed potatoes this week, but I couldn't find a recipe that used the ingredients I had on hand, so I figured I would make it up.
We had a giant bag of potatoes and are going to England tonight, so I wanted to use them up. Mr. Barefoot was off at his volleyball game so I had to keep them warm, so I baked them.
Ingredients:
-Potatoes. I probably used around 10 small potatoes, scrubbed and chopped up into small pieces - about 1inch cubes.
-Garlic - I used this up too - I think we had like half a bulb.
-Heavy Cream - was using this up too. I used half a container, but I would have preferred to use MUCH less.
-Butter
-Parmesean cheese
-Breadcrumbs
Equipment:
-Le Cruset small casserole dish (or, I suppose, an 8x8 pan - although I wouldn't have had enough to fill that; or a loaf pan.)
-Pot
-Potato masher (the Oxo one is the best!)
-Spatula
-Oven at 350
Procedure:
1. Boil potatoes in water. Dump into colander.
2. Melt butter in same pan used for potatoes, saute garlic until delicious.
3. Add cream. Simmer for about 10 minutes, until reduced.
4. Add potatoes. Allow potatoes to simmer in cream for another 5 minutes.
5. Mash. If the cream is not blended into the potatoes enough, just let it keep cooking. It will reduce. Shred and melt in parmesean.
6. Pour into dish, add breadcrumbs to the top. Bake until bread crumbs are toasty (about 30 minutes).
(salt and pepper to taste)
This was good. A little greasy, because it was so high in fat - in the future, I don't think I would use more than 1/4 cup heavy cream, and then I would have the rest be milk.
Baking gave them a nice crispyness on top.

Fish in Foil

Today I was inspired by the Crock-Pot Blog, but I didn't want to make a fish recipe that involved a mayonnaise sauce. So I followed the commentors and created my own recipe. Do not overthink this recipe - put a mess of stuff in, and food comes out.
Ingredients:

• 2 fillets of tilapia (its fine if they are still frozen, but you will have some excess water when you take them out)
• olive oil
• half a lemon
• vegetables of your choice (I used green beans and red peppers)
• 4 potatoes
  
• Salt
• Pepper
• Garlic powder
• Oregano
• Basil
  
• Thyme

Equipment

• Cutting board & knife
• Crockpot (I used the 6qt)
• Aluminum foil

Procedure

1. Tear off two pieces of aluminum foil, larger than the fillets.
   
2. Chop up the vegetables.
3. Put half the vegetables and one fillet on each piece of foil.
   
4. Drizzle some olive oil and lemon juice on the fish. Add pepper, salt, and spices. Fold foil.
   
5. Chop up potatoes. Throw into crockpot with some olive oil and all spices.
   
6. Add foil packets on top of potatoes.
   
7. Cook on low for 3-4 hours, or, if your crockpot cooks everything on Maximum Hot on low, cook for 2 hours.
   

This was pretty good, but next time I'll make it with more spices and flavor, and less time - the fish was a little dry, and the veggies were a bit soggy. Definitely recommend for anybody looking for an easy way to cook fish.

T-2 Days: Recipes

Here is the tutorial I used to make vegetable stock. Combined with some onions, garlic, and celery and stuffing mix, it'll make great stuffing.
What else is on the table on Thursday?
Mashed Sweet Potatoes
Mashed Potatoes with Rosemary
Ingredients:
2.5-5lbs redskin potatoes
4 cloves garlic, sliced
.75 c. vegetable broth
1/3 cup sour cream
1/4 cup milk
2 tbsp butter
1 tbsp chopped rosemary
pepper
Equipment:
Slow cooker
Procedure:

Place in the slow cooker. Add garlic, broth and rosemary. Stir. Cook and cook on high until potatoes are tender, about 3-4 hours. Pour in milk and sour cream, mash. Serve right away or adjust the setting to low to keep warm until you are ready to serve.

Green beans with Almonds
Eggplant with goat cheese (recipe to come, depending on deliciousness.)