Tag Archives: peppers

The Food Matters Project: Mixed Grill with Chimichurri

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This week’s Food Matters Project is a wild card — we got to pick whatever we had missed in the past 6 months! I knew immediately what I wanted to do. Ever since I started this project, I keep hearing the other bloggers talk about the fantastic chimichurri sauce I missed the week before my first post. I’ve been dying to try it, and thought this would be the perfect opportunity.

chimichurri

The original recipe is Mixed Grill with Chimichurri, but I had to sauté since I don’t have a grill. I made it with green peppers, a baby eggplant, hot banana peppers, onion, and pan cooked white fish. Everyone was right — this was a fantastic recipe! And as a bonus, I finally found out the name for the amazing green sauce that comes with takeout from the El Salvadoran place on 14th St. The hardest part was washing and pulling the leaves off the cilantro, which I opted for over parsley. Here’s how I did the chimichurri sauce.

Chimichurri sauce, from The Food Matters Cookbook

2 cups cilantro leaves (some small stems are okay)
1/2 cup oil
2 cloves of garlic
salt and pepper
2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
red pepper flakes

Put the cilantro, 1/4 cup of the oil and salt and pepper in a food processor and blend. Scrape down the sides of the container and add the rest of the oil, then the vinegar and red pepper flakes, while it runs. Blend a few more seconds until it’s all combined and the cilantro is blended up nicely.

Check out all the other bloggers’ takes on the chimichurri recipe and see what everyone else picked for this week’s wild card here!

Southwestern hash browns

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Sometimes all you need for a weekend breakfast is some good spicy hash browns.

Spicy southwestern hash browns

Ingredients:

3 small white potatoes
1 cup frozen tri-color peppers with onions
2 tbsp olive oil
salt, pepper, garlic powder and Tabasco sauce, to taste

Peel the potatoes, then shred them. Spread the shredded potatoes out on paper towels and pat them dry. Meanwhile, heat the oil in a large skillet over medium-high. Once the oil is hot, add the potatoes and peppers and onions. Cook until everything is browned, stirring occasionally. When it’s almost done (it took about 10-15 minutes for me), add the salt, pepper, garlic powder and Tabasco to taste.

New job, new apartment and roasted veggies

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My apologies for the long hiatus, dear readers. Within the span of three weeks, I started a new job and moved to a new apartment (because what’s the fun in only making one major life change at a time?) and have been trying to cut myself some slack on keeping up with blogging in order to stay focused on learning the ropes of both my new workplace and my new neighborhood. But I’m happy to say that I’m settling in to both at this point, so I’m picking back up some of the things that have fallen by the wayside over the past couple of months.

Anyway, I’m loving both these new parts of my life, so the past few days I’ve been itching to get back to the blogging world to tell you all about it. My boyfriend and I moved in together on the Hill near Eastern Market, and I know many of you have heard me raving about how much I adore this neighborhood. It feels like a small town, with young families pushing strollers down the tree-lined brick sidewalks and saying hello to each other as they pass. Everyone knows everyone at the local bars. I’ve had neighbors actually introduce themselves to me already — when I lived in Bethesda, we were almost moving out before we met any of our neighbors.

And then there’s the market. I’ve mentioned it before — it was always a fun Sunday activity to take a long walk over and pick up some fresh produce for the week — but I always regretted how infrequently I had time to devote to the trip. I only went once when I lived in Bethesda, and maybe four or five times when I lived in Chinatown. But now I can pop over anytime for a couple of things or make a big cup of coffee in the morning and go wander the aisles for something delicious. It’s always been one of my favorite places in DC, but the accessibility and comfortable familiarity I have with it now that I live here takes it to the top of the list.

Yesterday I headed over towards the end of the day when a lot of the booths were closing up shop and grabbed a few things from my two favorite vendors. This cold snap has me craving roasted winter veggies again, so I got parsnips, carrots, onions and butternut squash and roasted them in the oven with olive oil and salt and pepper. There are a couple of things I love about doing this: 1) I’ll have delicious veggies at the ready all week (duh); 2) It’s versatile — you can use whatever veggies are in season or you have on hand or need to use up; 3) The oven warms up the apartment and makes it smell amazing; 4) My boyfriend smells said delicious aromas and demands to know what is producing them, then is flabbergasted to find out it’s just vegetables with olive oil. (We have an ongoing argument about the deliciousness of vegetables, and I savor these small wins.)

Here’s how it’s done:

Roasted vegetables

Ingredients:

olive oil
salt and pepper
Around 3-5 pounds of vegetables of your choice. I used:

  • 1 medium butternut squash
  • 3 carrots
  • 1 parsnip
  • 1 medium onion

In the past, I’ve also used sweet potato, beets and yellow squash, but this could literally include anything — cauliflower and broccoli, potatoes, peppers of any color, cherry tomatoes… use your imagination and what’s in season.

1. Preheat the oven to 375.

2. Peel and chop all the vegetables as you like. Make the chunks uniform in size so they cook evenly. For onions, I like to slice them and try to keep them in their circles or in long spears so they don’t burn right away. And if you’re using beets, roast them whole first and then cut them up — if they go in with everything else, they’ll dye it all purple. (This article has some tips for how to roast the beets whole.)

3. Put all the chopped veggies in a big bowl. I also like to keep a second bowl on the counter to hold the food scraps as I’m peeling and chopping, then I’ll dump it at the end when it’s full for easy cleanup.

4. Drizzle the vegetables with olive oil and sprinkle liberally with salt and fresh ground black pepper. Mix them together to coat them evenly. I recommend adding the oil a little at a time so they’re not overly greasy — you want them coated, but not dripping with oil.

5. Spread them evenly on a large baking sheet and put them in the oven.

6. Roast for 10-15 minutes, then check on them and use a spatula to move them around a bit so they don’t burn on the bottom.

Note: Be very careful when you’re opening the oven and moving them around — they tend to lose water and produce a lot of steam as they cook down, so don’t put your face right next to the open oven door or stick your hand in there until the steam building up has escaped.

7. Keep checking on them every 10 minutes or so to make sure they’re not burning and to move them around. The time it takes to cook will vary depending on how large the chunks were when you cut them, but it usually takes mine at least half an hour to 45 minutes. Take them out when they’re browned and soft.

Serves 4-6, or 1-2 with leftovers for the week.

You can serve these hot with the entree of your choice, or just by themselves, and I actually like just eating them cold out of the fridge as well. I usually make a big pan on the weekends and then heat them up for lunch throughout the week.

Turkey, mushroom and cheddar burger

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I was riding home on the bus Monday night, planning on eating leftovers, when suddenly a craving struck for a thick, juicy burger. I had a bad experience with a McDonald’s hamburger when I was a kid and it took me years until I could even stomach half a hamburger again, so I generally don’t crave that very often, and I decided to go with it. I only had ground turkey in the house, so I ended up with a turkey burger instead. But oh, it was fantastic — and really hit the spot. Ground turkey is obviously a bit less flavorful than ground beef, but I spiced it up with some chopped veggies, red pepper flakes and garlic powder and then threw some cheddar cheese and sauteed mushrooms on top. Stick it on top of a slice of my favorite 6-grain pumpkin seed bread from Trader Joe’s and add a fresh ear of corn and a few slices of tomato, and I was in heaven.

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Here’s the recipe for the burger:

1 tsp olive oil
1/4 pound ground turkey
1/4 cup chopped green peppers
1/4 cup chopped mushrooms, plus a few whole slices
a sprinkle of garlic powder
a sprinkle of red pepper flakes
1 slice extra sharp cheddar cheese

1. Mix together the ground turkey, chopped green peppers, chopped mushrooms, garlic powder and red pepper flakes in a bowl.

2. Heat the olive oil over medium heat in a small pan.

3. Shape the turkey mixture into a patty and cook it in the pan, flipping to cook both sides until cooked through.

4. Sauteé the mushrooms in the same pan until browned.

5. When the burger and mushrooms are done, turn off the heat and put the cheese on top of the burger. Place the mushrooms on top of the cheese so they stick as the cheese melts.

Serves one.

Like I said, I served this open-faced on a single piece of good, thick bread. Two slices would have made it too bready, so I omitted the top piece.

Quesadillas

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I’m known among my family as the quesadilla master, which makes me laugh only because quesadillas are so easy and I never followed a recipe, I just kind of threw things together and called it a quesadilla. They’re pretty much impossible to screw up–unless you burn them, which happens sometimes.

So this week, I’m on vacation with my family, and they begged me on a couple of occasions to make quesadillas. (I think there’s a good chance they all know how easy it is but they fake that I’m the only one who knows how to do it because they don’t want to do it themselves, but hey, I’m not one to turn down any lavish praises they want to toss my way.)

Today we had a quesadilla-fest. We had just walked a couple of miles to and from the end of the island we’re vacationing at, and everyone was starving by the time we got home. So I got to work in the kitchen, churning out quesadillas like crazy, and they were literally disappearing as soon as they were off the stove. I started grabbing random things out of the fridge and my mom was tossing me things that needed to be used up: all different kinds of cheeses, vegetables and meats.

We ended up with chicken and cheddar cheese (for my picky brother and sister), green and red bell peppers sauteed with onions, and–the crowd favorite by far–lump crab meat with veggies and spicy pepperjack jalapeño cheese. Oh boy, were they good.

Just in case you’re wondering, here’s how I make them. Like I said, I just kind of started doing it this way on a whim, but I’ve since found out that it’s sort of a standard way of cooking them.

1. Spray a frying pan with no-stick cooking spray and turn the stove on to medium. Let the pan heat up on the stove until the spray is hot.

2. Lay a whole wheat tortilla in the pan and sprinkle your choice of cheese on one half of the circle.

3. Cover the layer of cheese with the filling of your choice. I like combining all different fillings together and making a mix of choices.

4. Put another layer of cheese on top.

5. Fold the empty half of the tortilla over on top of the side with the fillings. If the cheese on the bottom hasn’t melted yet, allow it a few seconds to get mushy.

6. Flip the quesadilla over by sticking a spatula on the open side and keeping the fold on the bottom to minimize spilling.

7. Let the tortilla brown and the layer of cheese that is now closest to the pan melt before removing from the pan.

These can also be made in the oven by just assembling several at the same time. It’s less work that way, but you lose that on-the-fly creativity. I kind of enjoy the fast-paced stovetop maneuvering, personally.