Roasted Garlic, Cauliflower and Mushroom Quinoa

I made this the other day to take for lunches.  I didn't take a photo until I was halfway through eating it ... sorry!

I had found this recipe on pinterest.  But ... I was tasting as I went along and I decided that it didn't need the balsalmic dressing and goats cheese ... it was nice just like it was.  And even better the next day after the flavours had developed over night!

Here's what I did:

1 head of cauliflower, broken into small florets

a few cloves of garlic, cut into slivers

mushrooms, button and oyster, quartered

1 cup quinoa

1.5 cups water

1 chicken stock cube 

thyme

salt and pepper

olive oil

Preheat oven to 400F/200C

Toss the cauliflower, garlic and mushrooms in olive oil.  Add salt and pepper and thyme.  Mix.  Bake for about 20 minutes, or until starting to brown.  Don't let them burn!  Stir half way through ...

While the veggies are cooking, make the quinoa.  Place quinoa in a small pot with the water and the chicken stock cube (break it up and stir it in) (or just use ready made chicken stock/broth) Bring to the boil.  Reduce heat, cover and let simmer ... about 15 minutes or until water is absorbed.  Fluff up quinoa with a fork and let sit til veg is ready.

When veg is ready, mix into quinoa.  

Easy.

And like I said, delicious the next day too!

Apple Streusel Muffins

In an effort to make a dent in the
12 kilos of apples that I ordered accidentally,
I made these muffins.
They used ONE APPLE.
Oops.

I'm glad I made them though,

they were tasty.

I combined portions of two recipes to make these.

Cinnamon Suger Donut Muffins

and
Apple Crumble Cheesecake

This made 18 muffins.

For the muffins:

2 cups flour
1 tbsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt

2 large eggs
1 cup plain yogurt, I use greek
2/3 cup packed brown sugar
6 tbsp oil, I use canola

1 tsp vanilla

1 or 2 granny smith apples, chopped

For the streusel topping:
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 cup flour
1/2 cup quick cooking oats
1/2 cup butter, softened
In small bowl combine all ingredients

Position oven rack in the middle position and preheat oven to 200C / 400F. Line a standard muffin pan with paper cups.

Whisk flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a large bowl. In a separate bowl, whisk together eggs, yogurt, sugar, oil, and vanilla. Add flour mixture and mix with light strokes until the dry ingredients are just moistened. Don't over mix; batters should not be smooth.  Add apples.

Divide batter among the muffin cups, top with streusel topping and bake until top in golden and a toothpick inserted in one or two of the muffins come out clean, 12-15 minutes.

Baked Chocolaty Marshmallowy Deliciousness

My parents brought us Graham Crackers, Hershey's Chocolate Bars and American Marshmallows when they came to visit in April.  We decided we'd try baked s'mores ... We'd been to an event where we'd eaten them ... the lady who made them used the recipe over at Wit and Whistle.  

I pretty much did it exactly as she did except that I had to make my own graham cracker crumbs ...

1/2 cup butter,  softened

1/4 cup brown suager

1/2 cup sugar

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

1 and 1/3 cups flour

3/4 cup graham cracker crumbs (or just bash up some graham crackers in a ziplock)

1 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

milk chocolate bars

1 and 1/2 cups marshmallow fluff

Preheat oven - 350F/175C

Cream together butter and sugar until light.  Add egg and vanilla.  Beat. 

In another bowl, mix flour, graham cracker crumbs, baking powder and salt.  Add that to the butter mixture and mix on low until combined.  Put half of this bowl into a prepared 8inch square baking pan.  Press it down.  Cover this with chocolate bars, breaking bars if necessary.  Top that with marshmallow fluff. 

Roll out the remaining dough in small segments and place on top.  

Bake 30/35 minutes or until lightly browned.

She said to let it cool completely before cutting into bars.  Yeah, that didn't happen here.  We cut that sucker up and ate it!  

So good.

Mushroom Quesadilla

This was a great way to use the leftover mushrooms from our burgers the other night ...

I just grabbed a flour tortilla, spread mushrooms on half of it.  Topped the mushrooms with thinly sliced Gruyere cheese.  Threw that all under the grill (broiler) for a couple of minutes til the cheese melted.  Folded over the tortilla and that's it.

I loved every bite of it.

I can't wait til the next time we have those mushroom burgers so that I can make this again!

Anne's Waffles, with or without the butter ...

I've been meaning to post this recipe for some time now.  I've made these waffles a few times now and they are always delicious!  Always a hit!  One time I even forgot to add the butter and they were still good.  That's the butter-less ones you see in the photo above!

You'll need:
2.5 cups self raising flour
1/4 tsp salt
3 TBLS sugar
3 eggs (separated)
1.5 cups milk
125gm (4.5 oz) melted butter

To make them:
Mix flour, sugar and salt in a bowl.  Add egg yolks, milk and butter.  Mix well.  Beat egg whites til stiff and then fold them into the batter.  Let batter sit for at least 30 minutes.  Cook in pre-heated waffle maker.

We top ours with a wide variety of toppings.  Maple syrup and powdered sugar is a favorite.  Jam ... any flavor!  Apple Butter.  Delicious!  I've also tried strawberries and ice cream ... YUM!!

Burgers with Mushrooms and Spicy Ketchup

 

These burgers were fabulous.  

We used our normal burger meat, with an aged white cheddar cheese.
But then we topped it with these delicious mushrooms, 

a chipotle ketchup and kewpie mayo!

Served on turkish buns, spread with butter, sprinkled
with season all and then toasted on the BBQ.

So ... I got the idea from this Food Network recipe .... 

I did my mushrooms like this:
5 punnets of mushrooms.  (I used shitake, button, swiss brown, enoki and shimeji)
fresh parsley and thyme, chopped
1 tablespoon butter
2 tablespoons olive oil
Salt

Slice mushrooms.  Heat the butter and olive oil in a large pan.  Add mushrooms and a pinch of salt.  Saute to desired tenderness.   Stir in parsley and thyme.   They were pretty juicy, but it didn't matter.  We just used a slotted spoon to scoop them out of the pan.

And the chipotle ketchup:
I used the leftover homemade ketchup.  There was about 1 cup of it.  Add to that some chipotle in adobo that I pulled out of the freezer.  Maybe 3 tablespoons ... but it was pretty spicy, I'd maybe only do 2 tablespoons next time.  Salt.  Pepper.  Zoop Zoop with the stick blender and that's it. 

So ... to assemble to burger.

Toasted Turkish bun
Burger Meat with Cheese
Mushrooms
Chipotle Ketchup
Kewpie (Japanese) Mayo

I'm not kidding, this burger was gooooooooooooood!