vegetarian – Page 5 – KellyintheKitchen

Celery Root and Sweet Potato Soup.

Published on March 10, 2013February 3, 2014 by KellyInTheKitchen9 Comments

I’ve been wanting to try this type of thing for a while. Have you ever noticed, while you wander through the grocery store, a really knobby, homely-looking reject vegetable? One that looks like something went wrong when a normal vegetable was growing and it came out all messed-up? That’s celery root, also called celeriac. It’s notorious in the culinary world as one of those foods that many home cooks tend to shy away from, never knowing its versatility and great flavor. I hope to learn a lot more about celery root and to have some more recipes up here in the near future! For now, this warming, pale orange soup is just lovely, despite celeriac’s homeliness. Thank you to Frugal Feeding for the inspiration.

INGREDIENTS

2 tbsp butter, divided (or skip the butter and just stick with oil)
olive oil (any oil really will work – I used sunflower oil. Because I felt like it.)
2 small onions, diced
2 stalks celery, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 small celery root, peeled and diced
1 large sweet potato, peeled and diced
4-5 cups vegetable or chicken stock
thyme, paprika, salt, pepper to taste (I used a small palmful of each)
bay leaf
1/2 – 1 cup half and half
fresh parsley for garnish

Just the Recipe link: Celery Root and Sweet Potato Soup

DIRECTIONS

Heat oil and, if using, 1 tbs if butter in a large soup pot, and add onion and celery. Cook until translucent, stirring occasionally. When the onions are nearly there, stir in the garlic.

Add the celery root and sweet potato and cook 5 minutes.

Next, pour in the stock and add your thyme, paprika, salt, pepper, and bay leaf. If you’re using butter, add the second tbsp here and stir in to melt. Simmer, stirring occasionally, until the sweet potato and celery root are totally soft.

Remove from heat and puree in batches, either using a blender or food processor, or, if you’re lucky enough to have one (I do not!) use an immersion blender.

Pour in the half and half and stir, and you’re ready to serve! Garnish with fresh chopped parsley. I had a nice little lunch of this soup with a butternut squash and green onion quesadilla.

Egg in the Pepper.

Published on March 4, 2013December 1, 2013 by KellyInTheKitchen8 Comments

Red Pepper Egg in the Hole? Egg in the Red Pepper Hole? Actually it’s more like Egg in and Around the Hole. I wasn’t sure what to call these. Basically it’s your standard egg in the hole, only instead of being in a hole, they’re in slices of red pepper. I love the shape of red pepper slices, and I was just struck with the idea to do this while I was making breakfast over the weekend. Eggs in the Pepper are really good for breakfast, and here’s why: They’re easy. They don’t have a lot of ingredients. They’re fast. And they feel fancy. Happy eating.

INGREDIENTS

1 red pepper
olive oil
2 slices of ham (or use some baby spinach instead, if you like)
6 eggs
cheese, for sprinkling (I used cheddar and mozzarella)
salt and pepper to taste

Just the Recipe link: Egg in the Pepper

DIRECTIONS

Lay the red pepper down horizontally and cut into 6 slices, cleaning out all the seeds and stuff inside.

Heat oil in a pan and fry the peppers a few minutes on eat side, until tender and lightly browned. Work in two batches until they’re all cooked.

Then fry up the ham (or spinach instead, if you like). Just give it a minute or two on each side, and remove it to a plate. This will be the base for the peppers and eggs.

Now put 3 of the cooked pepper slices back into the pan with some more oil. Crack 3 of the eggs into the middle of the peppers – no worries if some of the egg spills out the sides; it probably won’t be perfect. Cover the pan with a lid.

When the eggs are almost done, sprinkle some cheese on top and cover again to melt.

Remove from heat and plate on top of ham or spinach. Repeat with the last 3 red pepper slices and eggs. We served these with hash browns – such a great breakfast!

Rosemary Lemon Roasted Brussels Sprouts.

Published on February 24, 2013January 14, 2019 by KellyInTheKitchen11 Comments

Let’s keep this simple: I love Nigella Lawson.

I love her recipes. I love her witticisms. I love her energy.

My approach to cooking is strongly influenced by something she once said: “Don’t worry if bits of eggshell get into the bowl. It proves it’s homemade.”

So when I made her recipe for roasted brussels sprouts and discovered that a few lemon seeds had made their way into my final product, I wasn’t bothered in the least.

All is right with the world. Try these Rosemary Lemon Roasted Brussels Sprouts a la Nigellissima yourself, and just be sure to mind the pips!

INGREDIENTS

olive oil
1 lemon, zested to taste (I go lighter on lemon zest but Nigella’s recipe calls for the zest of a whole lemon)
1 clove garlic, grated or finely minced
1 sprig rosemary
a few handfuls of brussels sprouts, trimmed and halved (you want enough to form a single layer on the bottom of a standard sized cast iron skillet)
1-2 tbsp parmesan cheese (to taste)
salt and pepper
NOTE: this recipe doubles and triples easily if you’re cooking for a bigger group!

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 425 F.

Drizzle olive oil on the bottom of a pan (I used my cast-iron skillet). Grate the garlic and lemons zest into the pan and, tearing the rosemary leaves apart roughly, strew them about the pan. You can leave them large enough to remove at the end if you like. Add the brussels sprouts and toss to coat.

Roast for about 15 minutes, until starting to become tender. Drizzle with lemon juice and sprinkle with parmesan and salt and pepper at pop back in the oven for another 5 minutes. They’re ready when they’re tender but still have a little bit of bite in them.

Pull out the rosemary leaves and serve ’em up! These make a fantastic side dish to an herby roasted chicken, but we ate almost all of them straight out with our fingers. Yeah, they’re that good!

Chocolate Crepes with Berry Yogurt Filling.

Published on February 19, 2013February 6, 2022 by KellyInTheKitchen6 Comments

INGREDIENTS

1 tbsp butter
1/3 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 cup milk
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
scant 1/4 cup sugar
1 cup flour, sifted
1 cup frozen berries (of course, fresh would be great, too – your filling will just be chunkier)
1 cup Greek yogurt
squeeze of honey
water
cooking spray or butter
lemon juice

Just the Recipe link: Chocolate Crepes with Berry Yogurt Filling

DIRECTIONS

Put the butter, chocolate, and milk in a pot over medium low heat and bring to a simmer, stirring to start the chocolate melting. Remove from heat and continue to stir until everything is dissolved.

Crack the eggs into a bowl with the sugar and vanilla and whisk together. Then switch to a big spoon and stir in the flour. You’ll get an annoyingly-sticky paste that is hard to stir. Pour in the milk mixture and stir to combine. Let this batter sit for 30 minutes.

To make the berry filling, put the frozen berries in a bowl with warm water to thaw out. I usually change the water once, just to move the thawing along a little faster.

Then drain the berries and mix with the yogurt and honey. Set aside.

After 30 minutes have passed, pour the crepe batter through a mesh strainer to get some of the lumps out. This step isn’t absolutely necessary, but I find that no matter how careful I am about lumps, I always have some in my crepe batter, so I like to strain it.

At this point, check your batter for consistency. We’re going for a pretty watery consistency, almost like whole milk. So add water, one tablespoon at a time, until your batter is the right consistency.

To cook, butter or spray a pan with cooking spray and heat over medium. Using a ladle or measuring cup, pour in a small amount of batter into the center of the pan and immediately swirl around to the edges of the pan. The first crepe is notoriously a failure, so don’t feel bad if your first one looks like this:

The French say to give the reject first crepe to the dog. Since these have chocolate in them, I figured Penny’s little tummy wouldn’t appreciate it, so I ate the ugly one, because my tummy does appreciate it. Regardless, the next few should work out better.

Once all the crepes are cooked, fill them. The two usual ways are to dollop the filling down the center of the crepe (the diameter, if we want to get geometric), and fold each side over to the center, like this:

Or to spread the filling over one quadrant of the crepe (can breakfast foods have quadrants?), fold it in half, and spread over the crepe layer that sits on top of the filled quadrant and fold again (that sounds confusing….just look at my picture):

To finish, drizzle with a squeeze of lemon. Dust with powdered sugar if you like – we were too hungry and ate them up before I could go rustling through the baking cabinet.

Roasted Spiced Chickpeas.

Published on January 22, 2013December 1, 2013 by KellyInTheKitchen6 Comments

Lately at work, I’ve been hanging around a lot of talk about snack foods. Normally I’m not really much of a snacker; I never buy chips or pretzels or anything like that, because I generally don’t crave them. But for the past week, I’ve been taking a lot of notes about people’s snacking habits, and as a result, I found myself really craving salty snack foods. This led me to two thoughts: 1) I have a reaffirmed belief in the power of advertising to get people interested in products they never would have cared about before (i.e., me craving snack foods), and 2) I wanted to give these roasted chickpeas a go, after having seen them on a handful of blogs over the past month or so. Roasted chickpeas make a fantastic replacement for chips. They’re crunchy, salty, spicy, and come in any flavor you can make. So make some!

INGREDIENTS

1 can chickpeas
olive oil
salt
extra virgin olive oil
seasonings of your choice (I used Ukrainian Village Seasoning from the Spice House)

Just the Recipe link: Roasted Spiced Chickpeas

DIRECTIONS

Preheat oven to 350 F.

The chickpeas require quite a bit of prep: Drain them. Rinse them off. Remove the skin from each little bean, pretending you’re a rabbi conducting a hundred brises. Lay them out on a towel and gently pat them dry. In a bowl, toss them with a drizzle of olive oil and a good sprinkling of salt.

Lay the salted, oiled chickpeas out on a baking sheet.

Bake about 50 minutes, until they’re crunchy and browned.

Now, the seasoning part. There are so many flavor combos that I want to try! Paprika and cumin, parsley and granulated garlic, honey and cayenne pepper, and good old salt and pepper – all yummy pairings. For this batch, I used one of the Spice House‘s awesome Chicago neighborhoods spice blends – the Ukrainian Village seasoning – which has a great blend of onion and pepper flavors. I topped it off with a little sprinkle of truffle salt, just because I was feelin’ fancy.

That’s it! I love these. They’re a great, substantial snack to munch on when you need a crunch but don’t want to go the chips or nuts route. Enjoy! And be sure to let them cool completely before you put them in any kind of container, or else the heat/condensation will make the chickpeas soggy.

Souffled Omelet with Sweet Peppers and Asparagus.

Published on January 14, 2013December 1, 2013 by KellyInTheKitchen4 Comments

Introducing my new favorite breakfast item: the souffled omelet. So light it melts in your mouth, with a surprising textural contrast of the almost crispy bottom and the airy inner egginess. It’s a perfect example of how a simple change in technique can transform a dish. Rather than beating the eggs with a whisk (or even a fork) as you would for a standard omelet, this one is made by separating the yolks and the whites and fluffing them up pretty much as far as they can go—much like in a souffle. It’s a fun way to prep eggs and it makes them go so much further than they would in a regular omelet; just look at the photo, that big fluffy thing is a two egg omelet! And of course, you can stuff it with whatever fillings you like. I had some leftover grilled asparagus and mini sweet peppers, so I chopped them up and sprinkled them over along with the cheese. Thanks to Laura Calder for the recipe, who (as usual) inspired me to try something new, and (as usual) it turned out pretty groovy! Also pretty groovy: the truffle salt I used to finish the dish. Optional, but recommended.

DIRECTIONS

2 eggs, whites and yolks separated
salt and pepper to taste
1/2 cup shredded cheese (I used Parmesan)
grilled veggies, like asparagus and sweet peppers, chopped
1 pat butter
truffle salt (optional)

Just the Recipe link: Souffled Omelet with Sweet Peppers and Asparagus

INGREDIENTS

Eggs first. Put the yolks in a glass or metal bowl (they’re going over a double boiler). Season them with salt and pepper.

Bring a small pot of water to a low boil in the stove, and set the yolk bowl over it (but don’t let the bottom of the bowl touch the water, or they’ll cook too fast.) Using a whisk, beat the yolks over the double boiler until they’re ribbony, pale yellow, and just about tripled in size. Scrape into the center of the bowl and set yolks aside.

Next, use your whisk to beat the whites until they’re fluffy and stiff.

Pour the whites into the bowl with the yolks. Using a spatula, gently fold them together.

Heat a pan over medium high and melt the butter. Pour the fluffy eggs into the pan and cover with a lid.

When the bottom is starting to turn golden brown and the foaminess on top is starting to firm up a bit, spread your veggies and cheese over the whole surface of the omelet.

When the bottom is browned to your liking, gently loosen the sides of the omelet from the bottom of the pan and carefully slide it out. As you do so, fold one half of the omelet over the other. Sprinkle with pepper and truffle salt, if you’ve got it, or else regular salt. Then just float away on this cloud of a breakfast (or lunch, or dinner….).

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