On a Sunday I like to roast some vegetables for dinner, I always roast too many so they can be used in other recipes during the week. Especially for week nights where if I did start to roast a vegetable, dinner would be after 8 o’clock.
Tag: vegetables (Page 1 of 2)
I make a lot of soups, they are perfect for me to take into work, reheat in the microwave and are healthier than whatever I would normally buy. Often I get questions from my work mates about the soups I bring in, “What’s in it?” and “Where did you buy it?”. But no soup has had quite the response that this one does.
My usual soup repertoire of basics like Bacon, Tomato and Kale Soup and Carrot and Coriander Soup smell and taste wonderful but in no way elicit the same eye popping response of this purple Sweet Beet Soup.
With the last of my pumpkin I decided to make muffins, as although I love muffins I only have one blog post on them, the eponymous Coffee Muffin Recipe post.
Recently I have been hearing about the US canned pumpkin shortage but American’s don’t know how easy they’ve got it – I can’t find canned pumpkin anywhere! This makes it more difficult to follow the dozens of Pumpkin recipes out there on the interwebs, so I have had to adapt this Pumpkin Muffin Recipe from Smitten Kitchen.
The brown butter adaption is something that has been running about in the back of head for some time, I loved the idea of a nuttier buttery taste. This recipe like most muffin recipes use oil instead of butter, but I figured that substituting melted butter would work just the same.
The links in the recipe below, take you to subsequent pages of this post that explain how to make each ingredient from scratch.
Brown Butter Pumpkin Muffins
~ makes 12.
- 1 cup of pumpkin puree (or 1 cup of canned solid-pack pumpkin)
- 1/4 cup of brown butter (or 1/3 cup vegetable oil)
- 1 teaspoon pumpkin-pie spice or make your own pumpkin-pie spice
- 1 tablespoon of cinnamon sugar
- 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 2 large eggs
- 1 1/4 cups
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
Preheat the oven to 180oC or 350oF. Line a tin with muffin cups, or in my case fairy cake liners.
Add the pumpkin, brown butter, spices, sugar, baking soda and salt (if using), from reading the recipe Smitten Kitchen suggests mixing with a whisk as makes it much harder to over mix.
In another bowl mix the flour and the baking powder. Whisk the flour mixture into the pumpkin batter, until mixed through.
Pour the mixture into the liners making sure each one is around 3/4 full, although I had some extra batter left at the end so I just topped them all up.
Sprinkle on top of each muffin the cinnamon sugar.
Pop the tray into the oven for around 25 to 30 minutes, until they are golden and puffed up. Leave them to cool in the pan for 5 minutes and then allow them to cool further on a wire rack.
When the muffins were ready I was astounded by the wonderful orange colour, so vivid but so natural. It was a beautiful moist muffin, and the spices were just perfect.
I am not sure if on top of the different spices and the pumpkin I could really taste the brown butter in the final muffin, but I could definitely smell it when they were cooking!
This is definitely our favourite muffin recipe in a while, definitely a keeper.
Pumpkin Muffins
I read this recipe on potato crust quiche and something in my head just snapped into place. I love quiche, but I dislike the ones I buy in supermarkets. I’ve made my own quiche once and while it was good, the shortcrust pastry didn’t exactly go to plan.
Seeing the potato crust idea was like aligning the stars, I could have homemade quiche without the extra hassle. It is also generally healthier using potatoes rather than pastry 🙂
Getting up early isn’t one of my strong points, so you know I must be excited about a new recipe when I jump out of bed to get it started. (I have only done this once before, for my ill-fated bba bagels.)
Cooking before work is a strange experience, I always end up in the twinned positions of being rather smug that I have been so productive but also cutting it very very fine for my first meeting of the day. With slow cooking however you have little choice, if you want a slow cooked meal ready for coming home to – you have to make sacrifices.
I always find it hard to decide what to pair with dishes so packed full of vegetables, like the Mexican Vegetable Burgers I made last week. As the burgers were quite filling, potatoes or chips wouldn’t do. So the only other options was a salad or since it was a spicy salad with Mexican burgers – a salsa.
The broad beans, I’ll admit aren’t exactly authentic for a salsa however they worked well, and it turned out a really tasty way to eat them. Plus I liked the colours.
Tomato and Broad Bean Salsa
Going away a lot and meeting up with friends is all good – but it sure mucks with your ability to use up the vegetables in your weekly delivery!
I’ve been taking some long weekends away (in Liverpool last week) and going out for dinner a lot recently, with old high school friends, university friends and family. Since I do most of my cooking on the weekends (The Other Half does week days) being away makes it really difficult to use up all the produce I am sent. Sure I could just cancel the next box – but where’s the fun in that?
So I have been scouring Twitter and FoodBuzz for recipes that use lots of interchangeable vegetables. When I found this recipe for Mexican burgers.
Mexican burger with tomato and broad bean salsa
This week when I peaked inside my organic box and saw another bag of chard I groaned. It’s that small feeling of disappointment knowing of all the vegetables in the world – they keep sending me this. I could just ask them to never send me it again, but that feels like giving up. Admitting that this green and rainbow coloured leafy vegetable has defeated me.
It’s not that the vegetable doesn’t look pretty, it does, its pink, yellow and red stems look beautiful on a plate but it tastes metallic and bitter. Usually I sauté it and have it as a side, but in my vain attempts to make it taste better I over cook it and it becomes a green goo. But oh no, not this time.
A beautiful light colourful lunch
No crazy new vegetables in here. Nope, just plain everyday vegetables in my box this week, so the challenge is how to make them exciting!
This weeks veggies