Calzone

Well, it seems like I use the same combination of ingredients whenever I make anything Italian (tomatoes, mushrooms, onions), but I guess it's just because they are tried and true. I had really been wanting to make calzone, which is typically full of meat and cheese, but I couldn't figure what to put in it instead, so finally I just decided to try the combination Italiano and it turned out pretty good. Anyway, it's fun to eat the same old stuff in a different shape now and then.

All you need for four calzones (four servings-in our case two for dinner and two for lunch) is:

• Pizza dough (I made my own-a slight hassle, and you need eggs which I don't normally have laying around-so next time I will just buy Rhodes)
• 1/2 cup chopped onion
• 1/2 cup chopped mushrooms (3 or 4 medium)
• 8 oz can chopped tomatoes (or a cup of fresh-kinda spendy here)
• 1/4 cup chopped green onion
• 1/2 cup cooked wheat berries
• 2 Tablespoons Italian seasoning
• seasoning salt (to taste)
• pepper (to taste)
  
• spaghetti sauce
• butter
• parsley flakes

Optional:

• 1/4-1/2 cup chopped veggie sausage
• 2-3 tablespoons Parmesan cheese (I consider this more of a flavoring than actual cheese)
  
• chopped green or red pepper
• 1/4 cup corn
• some type of canned white bean, as much as you can fit in
• whatever else you can think of
  

1. Make four 8-inch diameter circles out of the pizza dough (about 1/4 inch thickness) on a greased cookie sheet and spread spaghetti sauce up to 1/2 inch from the edges.
2. Mix all the chopped veggies, wheat and spices (except for parsley) and any optional ingredients and spoon them onto one half of each dough circle.
3. Fold the dough over the filling and press the edges together tightly, so you have a sealed half circle full of filling.
   
4. Butter the tops of each calzone and sprinkle with parsley flakes.
   
5. Bake for 15-20 minutes or until the crusts turn golden.
   

This meal should be relatively easy and quick to assemble (if you cooked and froze your wheat berries ahead of time or boiled them while the pizza dough was rising), even if you make your own pizza dough (but don't forget the time it will take for store-bought or home-made pizza dough to rise). It looks pretty, and the filling has a meat-like consistency. It tastes pretty good the second day too (better than pizza I think).

Tastes Like Chicken

Holy cow, I haven't posted anything since October!! Well, I have been expecting since then and until January I was really sick and completely stayed out of the kitchen. I couldn't even stand to smell the kitchen. And then since January we have been living in hotels where I only cooked two meals total. But now we are in Alaska, mostly out of boxes and I have cooked every meal we have eaten since we moved here (except for one pizza slice at Costco), because I will never eat at a restaurant again. Hotels and restaurants are great once in a while, but every day for 6 weeks is a nightmare. I got food fatigue before dinner on the first day. Ok anyway, back to cooking-in case I have never said it before in these words, Garth and I both agree that the best vegetarian dishes are actually meaty dishes reconstructed with a meat substitute. Most other vegetarian dishes either use cheese or eggs instead of meat, or they are not very substantial and husbands start going to burger king after dinner, or they are overly complicated and require a lot of special fresh ingredients which are difficult to find and expensive in Alaska. (But most vegetarian cookbooks have lots of great side dishes, and other inspiring ideas-although after making a main dish I usually just put some fruit in a bowl next to it and call it a meal-but someday I might make a side dish from one of those vegetarian cookbooks because they look tasty.) My latest attempt to convert a meat dish is this recipe for enchiladas:

1 cup of brown rice (and some cooked wheat berries if you want)
1 packet of fajita, nacho, enchilada or taco seasoning
1 fresh tomato chopped
1 cup of corn
1/2 medium onion chopped
1 green or red bell pepper chopped
about 8 large tortillas
1 can of enchilada sauce
salsa or pico de gallo

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Cook the rice and add the wheatberries if you want after the rice is all cooked. Add all or most of the enchilada, fajita (I think this tastes the most like meat), nacho or taco seasoning packet and mix it into the rice. Add the chopped tomato, onion, bell pepper and corn to the rice and mix it all up uniformly. Get a big casserole dish and pour enchilada sauce until it covers the bottom of the dish. Take a tortilla and lay it flat in the dish so the back gets covered in sauce. Add a spoonful or two of rice mix to the tortilla and roll it up like a burrito so that the whole outside of the tortilla is covered with sauce, and slide it to one end of the casserole. Put another tortilla in the dish so it gets saucy and repeat this process until the pan is full of rolled up tortillas. (Obviously it will get kind of hard to get the last few tortillas completely saucy, so just keep adding sauce on top of the rolled up enchiladas and roll the last few on top of them-it doesn't' matter how you get them covered in sauce, just find a way.) When the pan is full, pour on the remaining enchilada sauce and bake for 15-20 minutes. After taking the enchiladas out of the oven, pour some fresh salsa or pico de gallo on top of the enchiladas and serve. In the picture above, I also cut up and avocado and mixed it with this amazing mango salsa from Costco. I didn't miss the meat at all in this recipe, and I doubt I would have noticed if some ground beef or chicken had been in there somewhere anyway. Ok maybe I would have noticed, but this actually was a very meat like substitute and it was yummy. Have fun.

Mushroom Risotto

This recipe isn't special because it is particularly fast or easy, (although it is not particularly difficult or time consuming either). It's just good, that is, it completely makes up for in taste what it lacks in convenience or ease. It's a good weekend dish if you don't cook everyday- or double it and freeze half.


Serves: 2 people for dinner and 1 lunch the next day

Ingredients:

• one small bag of dried mushrooms (i.e. shittake or porcini) like about 12 oz (can you have too many mushrooms?)
• 3/4 cup fresh mushrooms of any type (portobello, or the little blue box kind, or whatever)
• 3 cups vegetable stock
• 3 tablespoons Smart Balance Buttery Spread
• 1/2 cup chopped onion
• 1 clove garlic, pressed or minced
• 1 teaspoon basil
• a little bit of pepper
• 1/2 cup short grain rice
• 1/2 cup long grain or brown rice (I used the Trader Joe's Brown Rice Medley and it was pretty good)

1. First you have to soak the dried mushrooms in boiling water according to the packaging (somewhere between 15 to 30 minutes) so just put them in a bowl, go do something else and then come back- I don't count that as cooking time. By the way, you can buy these mushrooms somewhere in the grocery store I'm sure, but I always buy them at Asian grocery stores in the dried mushroom section, so I don't know where they are in Safeway.
2. Boil the vegetable broth in one saucepan while melting the "butter" in another (I know, 2 pans!)
3. Chop the mushrooms and onions and cook them with the spices in the "butter" for about 5 minutes.
4. Add the rice to the mushroom/onion/spice/butter mix and cook until the rice is coated with "butter."
5. Add half the stock to the mix and let it boil off (maybe less than 10 minutes-just watch it in between emails or something), then add the rest of the stock and let that boil off until the rice is a normal consistency, stirring occasionally.
6. Eat it right away, or put it in the fridge, but make sure it's really hot when you do eat it because that is just really tasty.

This was a winner, plus it was fun to try using the dried mushrooms.