Last weekend I went on another internet cracker hunt. I found two recipes that had a similar method but completely different ingredient ideas.  One is this parmesan black pepper cracker recipe from Stresscake, elaborated below, and the other is a cheddar thyme cracker to be posted next time. Like short bread cookies these crackers are formed into a log, chilled, sliced and then baked. It was only a few weeks ago that I had made my first shortbread cookie ever and I loved it! I love that you can make it in two parts. Mix the dough today and have fresh crackers or cookies tomorrow. Somehow dividing the work makes the whole – I make my own crackers – concept a little less ridiculous.  But of course there’s nothing wrong with rolling out the crackers either!  My cracker recipe hunt is nowhere near over and I still plan on making the poppy seed crackers regularly as well as expanding with more recipes. It’s just nice to have many snack options! Crackers are awesome alone or with dip or cheese. Snack snack snack. Give these a try…

Parmesan Black Pepper Crackers
this recipe was found on Stresscake

1½ cups all-purpose flower
1 cup grated parmesan
2 tablespoons ground black pepper
1 teaspoon kosher salt
6 tablespoons cold unsalted butter
2/3 cup sour cream

The original recipe suggests using a food processor. I don’t have one. I’m sure the crackers could be mixed by hand but I decided to use the stand mixer instead and it seemed to work just fine. There’s always a way to get around using kitchen equipment you don’t have! Pretty much if you have a knife, spoon, and bowl – you’re set! On to the crackers…

Place flour, parmesan, salt and black pepper into the bowl of your mixer or food processor to combine (pulse or stir).  I used 2 tablespoons of fresh coarsely ground black pepper. Next time I make them I will do the same, however theses crackers are seriously black peppery – it may be a bit strong for some. I happen to love black pepper and thought the flavor was great; it’s probable that fresh ground pepper will make a stronger flavor, so if you’re not a black pepper lover cut back just a little.

Cut the unsalted butter in to ½” cubes and add it to the flour. Pulse or mix. Add sour cream and mix until combined.

Remove mixture from the bowl and turn it out on a clean work surface. Knead a few times to make sure any dry bits are incorporated.

Divide the cracker dough into 2 or 3 parts and shape each into a log. Wrap each well in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least one hour or up to two days. I let mine sit over night.

Preheat oven to 350°F. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.

Remove the first log from the refrigerator and unwrap. With a sharp knife cut into thick rounds. Cut them in to 1/4″ crackers or thinner if possible. Rotate the log as you slice to help maintain the round shape. Continue on and cut through the other logs.  Place cracker rounds onto the prepared baking sheets leaving about 1/4″ of space in between.

Bake for 10-12 minutes until golden brown. Rotate the sheet halfway between. I actually rotated everything half way between and baked them just a little longer. The thickness of the crackers as well as your oven will vary the time. My old oven fluctuates in temperature a bit – cooking time really does vary for me. After about 7 minutes I flipped each cracker in order to get an even golden tone. The cracker side faced the baking sheet browns first.

The crackers came out looking beautiful. My favorite part about their look aside form the coarse cracks of black pepper was how the parmesan somewhat melts out and browns when baked. Parmesan sparkles.

Tightly store for a couple of days at room temperature – but these crackers were best eaten fresh! We ate them with Roasted red pepper and olive cream cheese dip as well as with cottage cheese; any creamy dip would compliment the bite of these nicely.

Thank you Stresscake for sharing this delicious cracker recipe – you simply cannot find anything like it in the average grocery store! So, I guess you’ll have to make your own!

I’ve been making little egg rolls for years now and I’ve never been disappointed. I’ve switched up the ingredients and the proportions many times.  Some things work better than others of course; I’ve made them too garlicky or too peppery before but still… they’re always delicious.  Of course the ones I make are not traditional and don’t even involve egg — just a familiar name for a familiar concept, bite sized fried-up goodness in a hand-rolled form.

Here is a recipe to get you started on making your own.

This recipe is for about 40-50 mini egg rolls:
(sounds like a lot but they go quick!)

1 pack of wanton wrappers, usually 60 sheets
2-3 cups red cabbage (1/2 small head)
3/4 cups shredded carrots (2-4 medium carrots)
1/2 cup mushrooms chopped
1 large clove of garlic minced
1 teaspoon fresh grated ginger (heaping)
1/2 block tofu (1 1/4 cup crumbled)
1 tablespoon soy sauce & 1/2 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper
splash of olive oil & sesame oil

vegetable oil for frying

Be sure to allow enough time before you get started for your wanton wrappers to thaw if necessary.  Press tofu to drain as much excess moisture as possible.  You can pat it dry with some paper towels and set it under a plate while you prepare the other ingredients.

Finely chop cabbage and shred carrots. Cut mushrooms into small bits. Finely mince ginger and garlic, keep separate from other vegetables.

In another bowl, crumble the tofu. Add 1 tablespoon soy sauce & 1/2 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper. Stir.

In a wok or frying pan heat up a splash of olive oil and a drizzle of sesame oil. Add garlic and ginger, saute over medium heat for a moment until garlic is fully cooked.  Add cabbage, mushrooms, and carrots and cook for about 1 minute.  This is a really quick fry, you don’t need to cook it much at all in order to preserve a bit of crunch in the filling. Add the tofu mixture, stir up and add kosher salt to taste.  Remove from heat and transfer in to a bowl. The filling is complete, you should have 4-5 cups worth.

Get ready to fill the wanton wraps. Create a work area fully equipped with a rolling surface, a bowl of water for sealing, and a landing zone for the egg rolls ready to be fried.

Put one wanton skin on your work surface. Place one tablespoon of filling in the middle.  Doesn’t seem like a lot of filling but it’s enough. If you start off packing it with too much it will be very difficult to roll. Once you roll a few you will get a feel for how much filling works best for you, there will be plenty of chances to practice. As you are working through the filling towards the bottom of the bowl you may have extra moisture, try to work around it rather than include it in your rolls. If moisture escapes while frying you may have some spitting oil. Ouch.

Begin rolling by folding one corner of the wanton over the filling. Dip your finger in water and lightly wet the next corner to be folded towards the center. The water will help seal it closed. As you fold the side over be sure to tuck and close any openings on that side. Repeat this step for the other side.

Complete the mini roll by wetting the last edge and folding it over. It’ll look like a cute little package. It might be a little sloppy at first but it won’t take long to get the hang of it. If you happen to rip a wanton or two don’t fret, you’ll have a few left over anyway. Put completed rolls on to a plate, be sure to stack them in such a way that they don’t stick together — give them a chance to dry for a moment before you pile them on top of each other.

Once the all the filling is depleted and rolled into mini egg rolls it’s time to fry! Deep fry! We use a small sauce pot filled with about an inch and a half of vegetable or canola oil and a wire basket utensil to remove them from the oil. Use a utensil that will allow the oil to drain directly over the pot and off of the roll.  I like to use a small pot in order to use less oil and also because we can only fit a couple in the oil at a time, which means it’s easier to handle 2-3 frying egg rolls rather than having the option of dealing with many more at once. Seems safer for a makeshift home deep frying set up, they cook rather quickly once the oil is hot and you don’t want to have too much to deal with at one time. Prepare a landing zone for the freshly fried egg rolls. I usually use a baking sheet lined with Viva paper towels, a plate with a few paper towels works too.

When you’re ready to fry, check if the oil is hot enough by tossing in a small piece of wanton. It should quickly fry up and float to the top. If it sinks or takes awhile to fry continue to heat the oil and test again. Once the oil is ready lower one mini egg roll to start, it’ll float to the top with a beautiful crisp golden color. Transfer onto the baking sheet and carry on. Once you are confident with the cooking time you can decide to fry a few at a time. Best to start slow if you haven’t done this before so there aren’t any accidents. Hot oil is not something worth rushing around.

Be careful and enjoy as is or dip in some sweet & sour, soy, or plum sauce.

Fall is slowly moving in on us and with it comes the urge to bake more bread! Joe and I love making bread. We don’t have much experience or a stand mixer, but we love to try out new bread recipes. While searching for ideas on how to use our fresh sage from the garden I stumbled across this Cheddar Sage Bread recipe.  Cheese, bread, & herbs… Yep- sounds good to me!

We have been growing sage all summer and haven’t done anything special with it (until now). I love the flavor of sage but just don’t know much about using it. I was excited to find this recipe because I have never tasted a sage bread before but it sounded delicious to me. We changed a few small things in the recipe and it turned out great! It wasn’t too much work and the rising time was only a couple of hours.  Sometimes when we make bread it feels like the rising time takes twice as long as it says it should. With this recipe I felt like everything went according to plan.

Cheddar Sage Bread
This recipe was found on thathomesite.com
(we slightly modified it in order to use ingredients on hand)

½ teaspoon dry mustard or 1½ teaspoons yellow mustard
3 tablespoons fresh sage, minced
3-3½ cups flour (we used bread flour, but all purpose will work just fine)
1½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon coarse black pepper
1 cup milk
3 oz shredded sharp cheddar or 3oz of other cheese
1 package active dry yeast
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon oil
1 egg
2 tablespoons butter

Dissolve mustard in 1 teaspoon warm water – we didn’t have any dry mustard so we substituted it with 3 times as much yellow mustard (this recipe calls for ½ teaspoon dry mustard, we used 1½ teaspoons of yellow mustard instead).

Combine 3 cups flour with salt, pepper, and sage. Warm the milk.

In a large mixing bowl combine the milk, yeast, sugar, and oil. Stir or process to combine. Add the egg and mix well. Add mustard and flour mixtures, adding more flour as necessary so mixture forms a stiff dough and comes together in a ball.

Incorporate cheese into the dough — This recipe called for 3oz shredded sharp cheddar cheese; we used what we had on hand instead- which turned out to be about 4oz of a Gruyere & Colby cheese mix.

Turn dough out onto floured work surface and knead until smooth and elastic, add more flour as necessary, about 10 minutes.

Put dough in a lightly buttered bowl and turn to coat top. Cover and let rise until doubled, about an hour. Punch down, shape in a loaf, put in buttered loaf pan. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise until doubled, another hour.

Heat oven to 375°. Melt butter. Brush loaf with melted butter and bake until loaf is golden brown, about 50 minutes  — 50 minutes was just right for us. The bread seemed to turn a golden brown rather quickly and looked like it could be done after about 25 minutes, but we waited until it baked for the suggested amount of time and it turned out perfect. Cool on a rack before cutting into it.

While it was baking the whole house smelled amazing! It tasted just as nice!  We used it all week to eat as a simple toast and for a few breakfast sandwiches as well.

Raw Kale?

I never thought to use raw kale for the base of a salad.  I though it would surely be too tough to eat like that.  Then I saw a post from Vegan Yum Yum, which is a really great vegan food blog (definitely check it out)! The other day her post called “BLT Salad” inspired me to make the first harvest of kale from our garden into a fresh raw salad.  Although I didn’t end up following her recipe exactly, it was definitely not something that I would have put together without her idea.  It was suggested to use a different type of kale than we are growing- Lacinato kale, which I have yet to try.  The variety we are growing is a bit more common curly leaf kale.  I thought i would try the idea out anyway.

Our kale has been growing really well this summer, but it wasn’t until this week that we felt it was time to eat it. Kale grows from the center up so we cut the largest leaves from the bottom first.  I worried that once we trimmed the plant it would look sad and sparse. But we just trimmed what we needed from the bottom and there was plenty left on top to keep growing.  I’m sure it will help the smaller leaves see more more sunlight and grow faster going forward.

So far kale has been relatively easy for us to maintain.  It, like the rest of the potted plants in our garden, needs to be watered a couple of times a day; if it doesn’t get the water it needs it quickly wilts, but luckily perks up quickly when it’s happy.  Other than a few yellow leaves the plant has looked extremely healthy and full throughout- however, once we cut some of the stems, we did notice that there were a few leaves with pesky aphids hanging around. We were definitely surprised to find them and not too pleased, hopefully they haven’t been around for too long and we can get rid of them soon. I guess after we wash down our tomato plants we’re going to have to bathe the kale too.  Oh well, can’t blame the little guys, I bet a kale plant would be a fun place to live.  I think it’s time to invest in some lady bugs…

Ingredients :: 1 bundle of kale, 1/4 cup pine nuts, 1 tablespoon whole grain mustard, 1/4 cup vegan mayonnaise, 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, black pepper, not quite half of a lemon’s juice, & a splash of orange juice- near 2 tablespoons.

To make this salad you’ll need about 1 bundle of kale; because it’s raw kale you’ll need to cut it in thin strips so it’s easier to chew and it can better soften up from the dressing.  Use a knife or scissors to cut the stem from the center; bunch or roll up the stemmed leaves and cut into thin pieces.  Set aside in a bowl large enough to toss with the dressing.

The dressing: I would have never considered using mayonnaise in a dressing.  But the way Lolo from Vegan YumYum used it was appealing to me; the mayonnaise would be a creamy compliment to the kale. The dressing would be essential to this dish as it will lightly coat the kale helping it to soften up a bit and of course it will add more flavor.

To prepare the dressing, combine ingredients into a regular bowl. Add 1/4 cup vegan mayonnaise; we happened to have it on hand but I’m sure regular mayo would be just as fine. 1 tablespoon whole grain (seedy) mustard, the musztardy we use is called Kamis-Francuska, 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt, & fresh ground black pepper. Stir together and add a splash of orange juice and some juice from a half of lemon- this is a pretty tart dressing so don’t add too much lemon. Squeeze a bit in stir it up and adjust flavor to your liking.

Toss salad with the dressing, add as you go and thoroughly mix until all is covered.  Let the salad sit for a bit. Just before serving, dry toast your pine nuts in a pan.  Warm them up without allowing them to burn, shake the pan just over the heat until they are toasted.  Serve kale salad and top with pine nuts.

We made this salad very simple and ate it as our main dish. Including other vegetables would also be delicious, fresh herbs, cucumber, mushrooms, and tomatoes all seem like they would work well.  We wished that our cherry tomatos were ready in time and would have definitely included them,  I suppose that’s for next time- can’t wait to try this again soon!

I very rarely buy potato chips but if I do, I like to take them with cottage cheese.  I don’t remember who revealed this trick to me but I do know that this has been a preferred method of eating both potato chips and cottage cheese for years. Why isn’t everyone already doing this? I forget about this delicious snack often because I never have potato chips and I only buy cottage cheese when I want this snack.  So it has to be an intentional choice. However, we almost always have potatoes and cottage cheese is extremely easy to find! So, we decided to make the chips ourselves and enjoy this snack.  It turned out well and was almost better than a greasy store bought bag of chips.  It was super easy and is near impossible to fail.

ingredients :: potatoes, cottage cheese, oil, kosher salt, pepper

Preheat oven to 350°

I think almost any potato will do, we used an assortment of small waxy potatoes – red, yellow, & purple.  Prepare the potatoes by washing them and slicing them in to thin rounds. We wanted to cut them to be about 1/8 of an inch although most of them turned out to be 1/4 inch instead. The thickness will affect your baking time.

Line a baking sheet with tin foil and use vegetable oil to coat the surface.  Make rows of potato slices overlapping one edge to the other.  Not totally sure if this is necessary but we thought it would help prevent them from sticking to the foil, and I believe we were right.  Though, if they were laying flat on the foil they would brown quicker, perhaps too quick.  Once your potatoes are in nice rows, oil the topsides by brushing or spraying vegetable or olive oil, then salt and pepper. Place in the oven for about 20 minutes before you flip each slice for the first time.

Take them out of the oven and flip each potato chip over, we used a fork because we had one on hand but I bet small tongs would be better.  Oil the fresh side and lightly salt and pepper.  Place back into the oven and heat for another 20 minutes.

Remove the pan from the oven once again and flip, repeat until chips are cooked to desired crispiness.  We flipped the chips a total of 4 times with 15-20 minutes of baking in between, this took a little over an hour. Towards the end you’ll want to keep an eye on them to avoid burning, especially if your human hands cut uneven potato slices like mine did.  You’ll end up with a nice batch of potato chips with some being super crispy and others being a little soft.

Once they are done remove them from the pan and place onto a serving dish with a small bowl of cottage cheese for dipping!