Sauteed Bok Choy

Easy to make and relatively healthy.
Ingredients

• 1 head of bok choy, bruised bits removed / cut off, cut to 2" lengths, and washed.
  
• 1 lobe ginger, minced
  
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
  
• 1/2c chicken stock
  
• 2tbsp black vinegar
  
• 2tbsp soy sauce
  
• 1/2tsp sugar
  
• 1-2tsp cornstarch
  
• neutral oil
  

Mix together the stock, vinegar, soy sauce, sugar, and corn starch and set aside. Heat some oil in a wide pot, wok, or saute pan. Once it's pretty good and hot, add the ginger and garlic and stir around for 30 seconds or so. Add the bok choy and toss to coat with the oil, then cover and let it wilt on medium heat, shaking around occasionally. Once it's all wilted, continue to cook, covered, until the bok choy is just tender, or, anyway, soft enough that you'll be willing to eat it. Uncover and add the mixture from earlier, tossing to coat. Turn up the heat and bring the liquid to a boil until it thickens. Serve over rice or just eat it straight. Thoughts: this is easy to make, healthy, and delicious. What's not to like? We had to add more corn starch after the first amount because it wasn't thickening sufficiently. Like many Chinese dishes, this is really all about the prep work - the cooking is done really quickly and it's not too difficult. Disaster Index: 1/10

Bean and Chorizo Soup

I hate it when you have a recipe, and you don't have one of the ingredients, so you go buy it and then it turns out that you don't have several other ingredients. That's when you improvise.
Ingredients

• 12oz chorizo sausage, chopped or crumbled
  
• 1 large red onion, chopped finely
  
• 4 stalks of celery, chopped
  
• ~3c kale, washed and chopped roughly
  
• 6 cloves garlic, mashed
  
• 1 scant tbsp dried thyme
  
• 1 can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
  
• 1 can great northern beans, drained and rinsed
  
• 4c chicken broth
  
• 1/2c extra dry vermouth
  
• dried parsley, olive oil, salt, pepper
  

In a large pot, start the chorizo cooking. When it starts to get a little brown, add the vegetables (except the garlic). Cook over medium-high heat until the veg are starting to get a little tender, about 10 minutes. Add the garlic and thyme and cook for another minute or so, until the garlic is "fragrant". Whatever. Add everything else plus some parsley and, yes, even some olive oil. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 30 minutes. Serve! Thoughts: Claire and I both felt that this was missing something. We couldn't quite tell what it was, though. When we reheated the soup the following day, the flavor had improved - it was much richer. Even so, I think that this soup would benefit from, I don't know, mushrooms or something? I mean, this soup was good AND it was easy - don't get me wrong - but it doesn't have the depth of flavor I had hoped for. Disaster Index: 2/10

Spinach Avgolemono

A twist on the classic.
Ingredients

• 1 large white onion, chopped
  
• 4 cloves garlic
  
• 1tsp red pepper flakes
  
• 1 package frozen spinach, at least mostly thawed
  
• 1.5c orzo (dry)
  
• 8c chicken broth
  
• 4 eggs
  
• The juice of 1.5 lemons
  
• basil, dill, parsley to taste
  

Heat the onion in some olive oil until it begins to look translucent. Then add the garlic, red pepper flakes, spinach, and orzo. Cook for a minute, tossing everything around, and then add the broth. Bring to a simmer, then reduce heat and simmer for 15 minutes. In the mean time, in a large bowl, crack the four eggs and add the juice of ~1.5 large lemons. Whisk thoroughly until the egg mixture is frothy and yellow and completely mixed. When the orzo is just al dente, take the soup off the heat. Let it sit for a few minutes, then, taking a ladle of broth at a time (and blowing on the soup to make sure it isn't TOO hot), pour the soup into the eggs while whisking furiously. Basically, you're trying to temper the eggs. Do this with about 4 ladles-full of soup. When they're whisked into the eggs, dump the egg mixture back into the rest of the soup, stirring constantly. When everything is mixed in, serve! Thoughts: Claire and I are a little divided on this: I felt like this was the best avgolemono we've ever made, but she liked the old avgolemono better. Even so, I would say that this was just fantastic. I don't think I'd do anything differently next time. You can add more red pepper flakes if you like - I think we eventually did. It gives the soup an interesting kick. Disaster Index: 1/10

Oat Applesauce Muffins

Ingredients

• 1 cup rolled oats
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 cup wheat germ
  
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup applesauce
• 1/2 cup raisins
  
• 1 egg

Combine the rolled oats with the buttermilk and let sit on the kitchen counter for 2 hours (we did it for and hour and 15 minutes, but it really should be for the whole time).
Preheat oven to 375.
In a small bowl, cover the raisins with boiling water and let them hydrate for about 5 minutes. Drain.
In a separate bowl, combine whole wheat flour, baking powder, baking soda, wheat germ, and brown sugar.
Stir in the oat/buttermilk mixture. Add the applesauce, the egg, and the raisins. Stir to combine.
Put the batter in 12 greased muffin cups or a muffin tin. Bake for 30 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Thoughts: While we were preparing this recipe, we were like "huh, there's no salt here. I wonder if we should add salt?" and "huh, there are no spices included. Maybe we should add spices." Despite thinking both of these things aloud, we did neither, and that was a huge mistake. The muffins came out chewier than we wanted (probably because the oats hadn't been thoroughly soaked in the buttermilk (because we're too impatient)), and furthermore, they were pretty tasteless. They badly needed both spices and salt. Thank god we added raisins (they weren't in the original recipe) because they added some flavor.

In the future, we would:
1) add probably 1/2 tsp salt
2) add cardamom or cinnamon or something -- maybe generic Baking Spice? Maybe 1/2-1 tsp
3) soak the oats for the whole time

On the other hand, this recipe is ridiculously healthy. The muffins didn't taste bad, they just didn't taste like anything. If you ate them with lemon curd, that would probably help. We might actually have a recipe for lemon curd. Hm.

Disaster Index: 4/10 - needs improvement

Eggnog

Ingredients

• 1 egg
  
• 1.5tbsp sugar
  
• 3tbsp good dark rum (I used Meyers)
  
• 1/8tsp vanilla extract (eyeball it)
  
• pinch of nutmeg
  
• 1/3c cream
  
• 1/3c skim milk
  

In a pitcher, whisk together all the non-dairy ingredients until thoroughly combined. Then add the cream and skim milk and whisk together. Serve! Thoughts: Claire did not much care for this, but she isn't a big eggnog drinker. I used to love eggnog, but stopped drinking it at some point. This stuff is great. I would definitely drink this again, though sparingly - it DOES have quite a bit of cream in it. This recipe makes exactly 1 volumetric cup - about enough for 2 people. Multiply as needed. In the future, I might add some cinnamon or other spices, just to see. Hey, I might go do that right now. Disaster Index: 1/10

Kumquat Marmelade

Very minorly modified version of a recipe we found on Serious Eats, written by Robin Bellinger, apparently based on a recipe adapted from 'wichcraft.

Ingredients

• 1/4c + 1tbsp sugar
  
• 1/4c + 1tbsp water
  
• 1 dry pint kumquats, sliced thinly, seeds removed.
  
• 1/4tsp dry rosemary
  
• 1/2tsp ground black pepper
  

slicing the kumquats is the most time consuming part of this. Put the water and sugar in a small sauce pan and heat, stirring until the sugar is dissolved. Add all the other ingredients and stir around. Bring to a simmer and simmer for about 10-15 minutes, until most of the liquid is evaporated and the kumquats are more or less translucent. Transfer to a heat-safe container and cool, then put them in the fridge to chill. Thoughts: The kumquats we started with weren't all universally ripe - some were still a little green - but it didn't really matter once we boiled them with sugar. The result was pretty phenomenal. Next time I would slice the kumquats more thinly - this time we sliced them into 1/8" rounds, but next time I would just finely chop them and not leave them as rounds. That said, this was our first real time trying to make jam (or something similar, anyway) and I was really pleased with the result. Disaster Index: 1/10

Leek and Lemon Soup

This is based on a recipe found on the kitchn blog. We modified it, though, and I think we made a good choice. The original recipe BARELY made two servings, probably because it cooks down so much, so I have written the recipe so you can scale it up or down.

Ingredients

• 1 to 1.5 leeks per serving (we used 1 leek plus 2 scallions per serving)
  
• 2 cloves smashed garlic per serving
  
• 2tbsp butter (total - not per person, though you might adjust this down if cooking for just one?)
  
• 2c chicken stock per serving (or 1.5c chicken stock and .5c water - it cooks down so much that you want it to not be too salty)
  
• 1/8c vermouth per serving
  
• the zest of half a lemon per serving
  
• Wedges of lemon to squeeze into individual servings
  

Chop up the leeks and wash off all the sand. Heat the butter in a pan until it gets all frothy, then add the leeks and garlic and cook about 10 minutes over medium-high heat, until the leeks are starting to soften. Now add the vermouth and chicken stock. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer uncovered for an hour to reduce. That's right, an hour. When that's done, turn off the heat and add the lemon zest. Stir to combine, and then toss everything into a blender and blend until smooth. Return the mixture to the pot and season with salt and pepper to taste. Serve with wedges of lemon to squeeze into individual servings - depending on how juicy the lemon is, you can squeeze about 1/8 of a lemon into each serving (or maybe a little less) to improve the flavor without overpowering it.

Thoughts: This soup is REALLY delicious. It has a unique flavor that's somewhat reminiscent of avgolemono but the leeks give it a sweeter flavor that matches the lemon nicely. The texture is weirdly velvety. And you know what? Aside from the huge amount of salt in this, it's pretty healthy.

Disaster Index: 1/10