Roasted Cauliflower & Cilantro Pesto Cous-cous

First roast some cauliflower for 50 minutes in a 375 degree oven. Separate the head of cauliflower into its natural large florets, arrange on a baking sheet, drizzle in olive oil and sprinkle with salt. Turn once about halfway through. I love this and make it all the time. You can use this in soups, mash it up, or eat it plain.

When there is 10 minutes of time left on the cauliflower, boil some water. In a bowl put 1C cous-cous, 1 heaping tablespoon cilantro pesto and a bit of salt. Add 1 1/4C boiling water and cover bowl for 5 minutes. Fluff with a fork and add 1/4C seeded sundried kalamata olives. Serve with cauliflour for a, simple, easy, tasty and pretty much monotonic meal.

Not quite Jewish latkes

Today's recipe will be mostly in picture form. Also, awkwardly formatted.

Grate potatoes, carrots and onions and drain for a while, pressing to remove as much juice as possible. This is a great way to make a mess of your kitchen. I used an ancient box grater. Two hours later and I'm still tearing up from the onions.

Run the piece of stale bread through the food processor. I tried the box grater but it didn't work at all. Mix everything up in a bowl, adding lots of salt and pepper. I ended up doubling up the thyme showing.

Pan fry large spoonfuls in a mixture of butter and olive oil. The oil prevents butter from burning while keeping the great taste of butter. One thing I learned about pan frying on an electric stove top is to give them a half turn, halfway through the fry time. This ensures even browning. Also, be sure to pat down the patties firmly to keep them together better.

Serve them up with loads of sour cream, fresh cracked black pepper immediately; eat; and enjoy. Grating the root veggies ensures maximal crispy bits on the outside. The thyme really came through and grating the onion helped boost the flavour level significantly without having any big pieces. This would also be great served on a bed of spinach, and or, with bacon. Garlic would have been a good addition too.

Pass on the Pasta Nicoise

Don't make this recipe because it wasn't that great, apart from the noodles. It was quick and I wanted quick. Look at my new thing in the kitchen. Cupboard chalkboard!

 And the resulting dish:

Spinach egg rolls

Looks like it's time to do groceries again. Still have to eat, so I'm making something with what I have.

1 package frozen spinach
1 portabella mushroom cap, sliced
1 small yellow onion, quartered and sliced
1 carrot, batons
cilantro leaves
olive oil
orange ponzu (flavoured soy sauce)
parmesan
9 Egg roll wraps
oyster sauce
asian hot pickled red pepper

Preheat oven to 350F. Defrost spinach in half of skillet while sauteing onions and carrots in the other half. Saute mushrooms in orange ponzu. Mix all together and saute for a bit. Roll into egg rolls like this:

Bake seam side down in oven for 20 min in olive oil, flipping half way to brown both sides.

Serve with a dipping sauce made of oyster sauce, ponzu and asian pickled crushed hot peppers, eat, and enjoy.

The egg roll wrappers got so crispy. It was seriously amazing how crispy they got, and they stayed that way for however long it took me to eat them. No soggy spots even though they were piled on top of each other. Not enough mushrooms and the onions should have been caramelized before sauteing with other ingredients. Cheese probably wasn't necessary. The dipping sauce was way too salty. I'll try mixing the oyster sauce with mustard and lemon (or lime) juice next time. I couldn't taste the cilantro at all.

Leftover Trout Quesadilla

3 whole wheat tortillas
2 C grated old cheddar, grated
1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and minced
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tomato, seeded and chopped

Preheat oven to 350 degrees with the pizza stone inside and prepare ingredients for assembly.

Once heated, remove pizza stone and assemble first layer with half the cheese, all the garlic and peppers.

Put second tortilla on top and assemble second layer with tomatoes, shredded fish and rest of the cheese. Be sure to put some cheese below and on top of ingredients in both layers to be sure it all sticks together.

Put final layer on top and put a pan on top to stop it from curling upwards. Bake for 10 minutes, remove pan and broil until golden brown and crispy on top.

Slice, eat immediately, and enjoy.

This came out pretty well, certainly better than previous efforts. The pizza stone kept the bottom really crispy and the middle tortilla gave some much needed stability to support all the toppings. I could pick up the slice and it held horizontal without anything falling out. It's a cheese miracle!

Normally I wouldn't put fish with cheese, but I liked this. The mustard atop the fish really came through. I would have kept the seeds in the jalapeno because it wasn't spicy at all. The tomato was a welcome burst of juices. I didn't taste much garlic, so I'd add a second clove next time. Cilantro is a must next time because I found it a bit heavy tasting.

Mustard crusted trout

This is an extremely simple and delicious way to prepare fish. Probably my shortest recipe:

Take some fish, I like rainbow trout. Put a thin layer of crushed whole grain mustard on top of it. Broil until opaque in the middle. I had a thin filet, so it took about 6 minutes. Eat and enjoy.

I served mine with some leftover curry brown rice with vegetables. The mustard highly complements the curry flavour of the rice. For a light lunch, a salad will work too.