couscous and carrot salad

first of all...
YAY GIANTS!!! WORLD SERIES CHAMPIONS!!!!!!!!!!!


almost as exciting?
my lunch the other day(not really actually. giants winning their first world series in san fran was much more exciting. but i really was quite excited about this lunch).
observe:


couscous and carrot salad
for the carrots:
mix shredded carrots with cinnamon, olive oil, and lightly chopped parsley. stir (or shake in a tupperware) until combined. taste and adjust seasonings if desired.

for the couscous:
cook couscous according to package directions (i use whole wheat couscous, 1/4 cup per serving). i added a sprinkle of Penzey's rogan josh seasoning, which is paprika, garlic, ginger, cumin, coriander, black pepper, cayenne pepper, cinnamon, cloves, and saffron. i love spice mixes because its not practical to buy a whole bunch of different spices when you live in a dorm.

saute some onion slices in olive oil and rinse and drain a can of chickpeas. stir onions and chickpeas into cooked couscous (i use about 1/3 to 1/2 of an onion and 1/3 a can of chickpeas for one serving). add some crumbled feta too.

top with sriracha or other hot sauce, a handful of carrot salad, and a spoonful of plain yogurt.

et voila! a delicious, nutritious meal!
-Lola

migas

i have no idea if how i made my migas is authentically mexican [edit: just wikipedia-ed it. migas are tex mex, not mexican]. in fact, i don't really know much about migas at all. i learned to make them at the jewish community center when i was in 3rd grade, and this is the first time i've made them since. somewhere, i have a notebook from then, with the recipe written out in pink gel pen and titled "hella good chip things". whatever you want to call these, they're delicious.for one serving, i used:
*2 corn tortillas
*2 stalks (is that what they're called?) green onions, sliced
*2 eggs
*1 handful shredded cheddar and jack cheese
*1/2 an avocado, chopped
and some canola oil.
first, heat your oil in a pan. use enough oil to cover the bottom of the pan. cut your tortillas into sixths, and place the pieces in the pan. fry until tortillas are just starting to get crispy.
next, add your eggs and green onions. stir occasionally until eggs are scrambled. at the end, stir in cheese and cook for about 30 seconds more. top with avocado and serve with hot sauce or salsa (i used sriracha, of course).
-Lola

quinoa with roasted vegetables and cashews

sorry to have abandoned you for a week! in my defense, i have been super busy. this week i:

*got a new job

*had about 50 million pages of reading to do for classes

*joined an irish folk group (despite the fact that i have no musical talent what-so-ever)

*ran 3.92 miles in 50 minutes. the farthest i've ever run! i credit all the flo rida on my ipod. (also, i know this is not impressive if you are a serious runner, but i'm not. before this january, the most i'd ever run was the mile run we did in PE class every year. and by "run", i mean jogged for 5 minutes and walked the rest. the only person with a worse time than me was this weird kid who never showered.)
and because i just figured out how to embed videos into posts, here's the aforementioned flo rida:


*had my first food lab, in which we get long lists of tasks, recipes, and experiments to do in groups. basically it is very intense and involves running around the kitchen for 3 hours. we made apple sauce, caramelized onions, roasted vegetables, sauteed mustard greens, steamed vegetables, and cabbage.

so now that you've patiently read through all my excuses, here's some healthy and tasty food for you:

cauliflower and eggplant, tossed with canola oil and roasted at 475 for about half an hour. added to quinoa cooked with curry powder (i believe our curry powder is the sweet kind, but you could use whatever you like) and topped with cashews. and then topped with un-pictured sriracha.

-Lola

israeli couscous with quinoa and roasted carrots

one of our staple meals here at chez twin is what i usually refer to as "couscous and stuff" aka couscous with whatever veggies we have thrown in, and some beans for protein. its easy, healthy, and a great way to use up leftovers. this particular incarnation used trader joe's harvest grains blend, which is mostly israeli couscous, with some quinoa and a little bit of orzo and dried garbanzo beans (the yellow things in the picture).
israeli couscous with quinoa and roasted carrots
i'm writing ingredients without amounts because you can adjust every ingredient depending on what you want. its also a great recipe to make a big batch of and save for the rest of the week.
carrots
olive oil
cinnamon
cumin
curry powder
cayenne pepper
canned garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed
peas, frozen or fresh
trader joe's harvest grains blend, or israeli couscous and quinoa (and orzo if desired)
1. preheat oven to 400 degrees fahrenheit. spread carrots on a baking sheet and drizzle with olive oil. toss. there should be enough olive oil to evenly cover the carrots, but not too much excess oil. sprinkle with a medium amount of cinnamon, cumin, and curry powder, and a smaller amount of cayenne. mix so that each carrot has some spices, but is not covered in spices. i think i used about 2 tsp of most of the spices and 1 tsp of cayenne for about 10 carrots. bake for about 45 minutes. carrots should be just starting to blacken on the bottom.
2. when carrots have 10-15 minutes left, cook grains according to package directions. if using different grains, mix them together after cooking. if using frozen peas, cook them with your grains (when your water is boiling, add both grains and peas).
3. stir in carrots and beans (and peas if you haven't yet) with grain mixture. top with sriracha or other hot sauce if desired.
-Lola

lunch time!

rita and i both had delicious lunches yesterday during half time of the spain vs. germany game (viva espana!). unfortunately, we did not photograph either of them. because the camera was all the way upstairs. you understand.
i do have this photo from a few weeks ago, of rita's super simple lunch of black and blue steak. i didn't taste it, but according to rita, it was quite yummy (i was eating apple cinnamon oatmeal. true story: i would eat breakfast foods for every meal if i could). all she did for the steak was take some leftover slices of cooked steak, heat them up, then added onion, sliced and cooked in a little olive oil for about 10 minutes, and topped with crumbled blue cheese.
our lunches yesterday were...
me: 2 egg omelette with sun-dried tomatoes and gorgonzola plus 1 slice toasted multigrain bread spread with 1/4 of an avocado and topped with sriracha (see what i mean about the breakfast foods?)
she: grilled cheese on multigrain bread with manchego cheese, prosciutto and avocado (we love being at home with a fridge filled with gourmet ingredients!) plus trader joe's tomato and roasted red pepper soup (so good! you should buy it).
-Lola

Super Taste Restaurant

On a cold day, there are few things better than a giant bowl of warm noodle soup. Especially when those noodles come from a tiny, crowded restaurant in Chinatown. And when they are only $3.45. Rita and I both got the hand pulled noodles with vegetables and a fried egg. A few minutes later, we were presented with ridiculously ginormous bowls of deliciousness. You can also get many other toppings, such as beef, or fish balls (my favorite at most places...but it was slightly more expensive and was being cheap that day so i didn't try it at Super Taste), with the most expensive bowl coming to $6. And, like any good restaurant, they have big bottles of sriracha at every table. They also had dried mustard greens to add to your soup. At the restaurant, we each ate half our noodles, plus the fried egg and the vegetables (leafy greens) that came in the soup. At home, we added spinach, shiitakes, and more sriracha (this is what's pictured above).
Super Taste Restaurant
26N Eldridge St., New York, NY 10002
nr. Canal St

oat-stravaganza!

happy halloween everyone! eat lots of candy... ...and even more oats!
(oatmeal is unphotogenic, so you get a photo of the magical land that is economy candy instead.)
so we now have mass quantities of oatmeal, and we've been experimenting with different recipes. our new favorites:
-nutella and strawberry: oats cooked in milk + handful frozen strawberries + spoonful nutella
-pumpkin and peanut butter: oats cooked in milk + big scoop of pumpkin + big spoonful of cinnamon, topped with spoonful of pb and 1/2 a square of dark chocolate, chopped into small pieces
-banana pumpkin: oats cooked in milk + 1 banana, sliced and added to milk at the same time as the oats + spoonful cinnamon + small handful cashew pieces
p.s. i just saw a guy dressed as a bottle of sriracha on my way home. he's my hero/future husband.

coconut milk and tomato curry

every monday night, rita and i have dinner with the hare krishnas. in addition to providing weekly free vegan food to broke college students, our local hare krishnas are just generally kick ass guys, who tell random and hilarious stories about climbing mountains and becoming the pope. i guess you have to be there. (side note: last week we joined the sikhs for dinner instead. they had better food, although the wait was long and it was a one time thing so we can't go every week. i don't know anything about india or its religions, so i hope the sikhs and the hare krishnas aren't bitter rivals or anything).
on hare krishna night, dinner always consists of a vegetable curry, white rice, green salad with this really tasty almond dressing, and halavah, a desert made with flour, sugar, and water, and flavored with fruits, carob, or peanut butter. recently, they made a curry with coconut milk, so we decided we'd try our own version.
coconut milk and tomato curryonce again, i fail as a food blogger because i rarely measure anything. sorry! but quantity of the veggies is up to you and not that important. we made about 4 servings, but it was very saucy, so you could probably make it more servings with more veggies but the same amount of coconut milk and tomatoes
*cauliflower
*peas
*chickpeas
*oil
*1 14 oz can diced tomatoes with juices
*1 14 oz can coconut milk (we used light)
*curry powder
*couscous, to serve (ours had tomatoes and lentils in it...yum!)
*sriracha, or other hot sauce, to taste (definitely needed the hot sauce, at least for me)
1. break off whatever amount of cauliflower heads you want. saute in oil with a big pinch of curry powder for 10-15 minutes, until the cauliflower is a little soft.
2. add however many peas and chickpeas you want(we used about a cup [?] of each). stir.
3. add coconut milk and tomatoes (including juices).stir in pot until thoroughly heated.
4. served over cooked couscous with hot sauce.
now we just need to learn to make halavah...it is tasty stuff, seriously.

soba with five spice tofu and acorn squash

i know what you're thinking. "soba again? and another not so good picture? boring." but i promise you, this post contains both excitement AND thrills (not to mention fun and games). see:
(coney island, which has been revived and is worth the hour and a half subway ride from manhattan).
anyway, we decided we needed some vegetables in our lives, so i picked up an acorn squash (for just 90 cents!) at the union square farmers' market and we made some soba.
soba with five spice tofu and acorn squash serves 2
*120 grams soba
*about 6 ounces tofu (our package said "medium firm" and "regular")
*1 small to medium acorn squash
*half a yellow onion, chopped
*soy sauce, to taste
*about 1 1/2 TBSP five spice powder
1. pierce skin of squash several times with a fork. put in the oven in a baking pan at 350 degrees F. cook for 1-2 hours, until it yields to a gentle touch (ours took an hour and 15 minutes).
2. cook soba according to package directions.
3. cut tofu into bite sized squares. saute with onion, five spice powder and 2 TBSP soy sauce. saute, stirring for about 3 minutes.
4. cut squash in half and scoop out seeds and pulp (you can save the seeds and toast them for a tasty snack). chop squash into bite-sized, but on the large side, pieces.
5. mix all ingredients. add more soy sauce, if desired, to coat noodles. add sriracha to taste (we don't have any yet, and this deficiency needs to be fixed immediately. sriracha would definitely be great with this recipe).

edamame and corn salad

this is based on this recipe, which i found in self a while ago. i made my version using the ingredients we had on hand, which were mostly leftovers from other recipes. with some multigrain crackers, it makes a great light lunch on a hot day. because i am a bad food blogger and made this like 3 weeks ago without writing down what i did, this isn't really a recipe, just a list of ingredients.
corn and edamame salad serves 1 as a main dish, 2 or 3 as a side
*1 ear of corn
*a handful of shelled edamame (3/4 cup, maybe?)
*about 1 tablespoon of mayonnaise (i used cholesterol free because that's what we had. i don't like mayonnaise that much, but this salad needs a little to hold it together. if you like it, add more.)
*lemon juice (sorry, i have absolutely no idea how much i added. to taste, i guess)
*about 1/4 cup cilantro, chopped
*salt and pepper
*sriracha, or other hot sauce
1. fill a large pot with water, heat over the stove, and add corn once water is boiling. cook for about 3-5 minutes, until corn is tender. remove from heat.
2. while corn is cooling, put the rest of the ingredients in a medium bowl and mix together.
3. shell corn, add kernels to your salad, mix and season with salt and pepper to taste. top with sriracha, also to taste

goat cheese ravioli with bell peppers and brown butter + spicy fried pb wontons

the first recipe in this post is very classy and gourmet, not something we would likely make in a tiny dorm room kitchen or on a college student's budget. the second recipe is somewhat ridiculous and would probably make good drunk food, except that it would be a very very bad idea to shallow fry anything while drunk. don't do it.

from bon appetite,the ravioli

because we did not have the time to make our own ravioli, we used wonton wrappers this time. definitely worked, but next time i would go all out and use homemade pasta.

seriously, make this. it was delicious and family members proclaimed it "one of the best dinners you've ever made."
we served it with a salad of lettuce, blackberries, and our sweet lemony dressing.

while we were cooking, we contemplated what to do with the extra wonton wrappers. for some reason, we decided that we had to put peanut butter (homemade--just throw a bunch of peanuts in the blender or food processor and blend until you get the right texture) and sriracha (asian chili hot sauce/best condiment ever) in the wonton wrappers and deep fry them. except we both have a fear of large amounts of hot oil, so it was really shallow frying.

we are culinary geniuses

the photo caption does not lie. epically delicious.

spicy fried pb wontons
makes 1 wonton

* 1 (square, not round) wonton wrapper
* 2 teaspoons peanut butter
* 1/4 teaspoon sriracha
* oil for frying
* warm water

1. put peanut butter in center of wonton wrapper.
2. top peanut butter with sriracha
3. pour oil in frying pan to a height of about 2 inches
4. gather wonton wrapper around peanut butter. dip fingers in water and use wet hands to seal top of wrapper.
5. when oil is hot, put wonton in pan.
6. fry until golden brown, about 2 minutes. using slotted spoon, carefully remove wonton from pan and place on a paper towel.
7. let cool about 15-30 seconds and enjoy!

kitchen staples + soba with peanut sauce

If you cook a lot, it's important to always have certain things around that you can use to throw together a quick, delicious meal. Here's a list of what we consider to be kitchen staples:

* couscous
* pasta
* Asian noodles of some sort, could be soba, udon, or cellophane noodles
* jarred sauces. some of my favorites are peanut sauce, thai green curry, and pesto sauce (or whatever pasta sauce you like best)
* sriracha
* canned beans or chickpeas
* canned stewed tomatoes. these are good for making quick soups, since you can use the tomato liquid as a broth
* jarred veggies, such as artichoke hearts and roasted red peppers
* peanut butter
* spices and dried herbs. I find we use cumin, chili powder, basil and oregano the most, but it depends what kind of food you like most.

Using some of our staples, we made some soba noodles with peanut sauce (as you may have gathered from the title), various left over veggies, and sriracha sauce, which is amazing and pretty much makes everything better. I have heard that peanut butter and sriracha sandwiches are delicous, although I have never personally tried one. I guess this is a less odd version of that. It was great, and included 3 of our "kitchen staples", asian noodles, sriracha, and jarred sauce. This is also a good recipe for using up leftovers, since you can just throw in whatever leftover veggies you have.


anybody want a peanut?


Soba Noodles with Peanut Sauce (Serves 2)

Ingredients:

* about 2 cups soba noodles
* sriracha sauce to taste
* about 1/4 cup peanut sauce
* 1 cup green onions, chopped
* 1/4 cup roasted peanuts
* 1/2 onion, diced
* 1 cup carrots, sliced
* about 2 tablespoons olive oil

1. cook soba noodles according to package directions. meanwhile, heat olive oil in a large nonstick skillet
2. saute onions, 3/4 cup green onions, and carrots in olive oil until onions are soft and translucent
3. Remove soba from heat, drain, return to pot, and stir in onions, green onions, and carrots
4. Add peanut sauce and stir until coated, adding more if neccesary
5. Add siracha to taste and stir
6. Put in 2 seperate bowls. Sprinkle with peanuts and remaining green onions