Moqueca de Ovos
My new husband’s originally from Bahia, a state in northeast Brazil. Salvador, his home town, is not unlike New Orleans (and other southern port cities) in that there’s been a huge influence of a variety of cultures, especially African culture (due to slavery centuries ago). Red palm oil (also known as dende), okra, and more are not uncommon in the region.
One of the styles of food that Bahia is infamous for is moqueca – a stew with a coconut-and-tomato based broth – served with rice. Typically, seafood is featured, but my husband’s favorite way to eat it is with eggs. Since I love seafood, we usually make two batches, one for him and one for me (with white flesh fish, shrimp, and/or mussels). If you use it with seafood, add about 1 tablespoon of lemon or lime juice per half pound of meat.
Read MoreSpicy Chicken Schawarma
Flipping through the most recent issue of Cooking Light, I stumbled onto a gorgeous sounding recipe for chicken schawarma. I really enjoy Mediterranean food, but don’t often have a chance to indulge in eating it in a restaurant (the biggest disadvantage of living in a medium-sized city the midwest!).
Read MoreMexican Black Bean Soup
Black bean soups and chilis are great food for the winter, because they’re rich and hearty and the spiciness warms you from the inside out. They also reheat fabulously, for those with smaller households or who like to bring their lunch.
This soup is on the thin side as written on the book (with an extra cup of water), but I like my soups on the thicker side. I’m totally guilty of using up half a package of saltines in thin soups to get it to the consistency I like. The photo above was taken on the third eating of the soup, so it’s really starting to thicken up.
Asian-inspired chicken and noodle soup
I’ve been sick the last week or so, but I’ve moved from the point where I’m not hungry and have no energy to cook to the point where I’m still feeling like crap, dont’ really have energy, but am out of the anything effortless to make (including canned soup).
Did I mention that I really haven’t done much grocery shopping in the last month, beyond one major meat restocking?
Read MoreStuffed Shells
Dinner tonight was pretty simple — pasta shells filled with mushrooms, spinach, ricotta, sun dried tomatoes, and baked with marinara; garlic bread; slacker garden salad. The recipe for the pasta shells (if you want to call it that): 12 (cooked) shells (enough for dinner + a lunch) filled with: 1 C of (skim) ricotta, 4 mushrooms (roughly diced), 5oz chopped spinach (we used previously frozen, so you’d have to wilt it first), 3 sundried tomatoes (minced), 1-2 cloves of garlic (minced), 1/2-1 tsp oregano/basil/parsley, generous pinch of crushed red pepper, pinch of salt, about 1/4tsp onion powder. In theory, you should use an egg to bind it, but I really didn’t think it needed it, so I left it out.
The stuffing was reallly similar to a Greek-y stuffing we use in pork or chicken and it could probably be used for that, too.
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