Roasted Grape Tomato and Garlic Pesto Dip Recipe

Yesterday, I had a 3 pints of grape tomatoes languishing in my refrigerator, basil about to spoil on my window sill, and a party to attend which required the making of a side dish. Out of theses circumstances, a very popular appetizer was born.

I started with roasted tomatoes. I’ve made them this way before when I’ve wanted more of a sun-dried texture, but for this recipe I roasted them a different way so they’d be a bit juicier (see below).

INGREDIENTS:

• 3 Pints grape tomatoes
• Olive oil
• 3/4 C. Fresh parmesan cheese, shredded
• 1 C. Fresh basil leaves, stems removed
• 1/2 C. Toasted pine nuts
• 1 Head Garlic, roasted

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Wash the grape or cherry tomatoes and cut them in half lengthwise. Pour some olive oil and a pinch of salt into a large ziploc bag and add the tomato halves. Shake to cover tomatoes completely. Cover two sheet pans with tinfoil and place tomatoes, face up, onto pans.


Roast the head of garlic with the tomatoes.
Cook tomatoes and garlic for 30 min. Place roasted tomatoes, basil, pine nuts, roasted garlic, and Parmesan cheese into an 11 cup food processor. Drizzle about a tablespoon of olive oil into processor. Pulse until well combined. Add salt and pepper to taste.

* Flavor intensifies if made several hours before it’s eaten.
* Serve as a dip, spread, or sauce, hot or cold.

Oatcakes Revisited: Chocolate Oatcake Recipe

One of my first posts on Seed was a recipe review of Oatcakes from Heidi Swanson’s Super Natural Every Day. I didn’t give you the recipe, however, because I didn’t want to copy it directly from the book. Then I thought, Heidi Swanson’s lovely blog, 101 Cookbooks, is essentially a log of Heidi cooking from other people’s cookbooks and recording what she thought about them and the modifications she made.

Well, I made some modifications to the Oatcake recipe. I added chocolate. Really, what isn’t better with chocolate. Just remember that oatcakes are traditionally a little dry (unless you heat them up), very dense, but very tasty. They will fill you up.

Chocolate Oatcake Recipe
(adapted from Oatcakes in Super Natural Every Day by Heidi Swanson)

Ingredients:

3 C. Old fashioned rolled oats
2 C. Spelt or whole wheat pastry flour*
1/2 t. Baking powder (the original recipe calls for aluminum-free)
2 t. Fine grain sea salt
3 T. Cocoa powder
3/4 C. Chopped pecans or walnuts, lightly toasted
1/3 C. Extra-virgin coconut oil**
1/3 C. Unsalted butter
3/4 C. Maple syrup
1/2 C. Natural cane sugar
2 Eggs, lightly beaten

Instructions:

• Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Prepare a standard 12 cup muffin tin, by generously buttering the cups.
• Combine oats, flour, baking powder, cocoa powder, and pecans in a large mixing bowl.
• Combine coconut oil, butter, maple syrup, and sugar in a saucepan over low heat. Stir until the butter melts and the sugar dissolves. Take care not to get the mixture too hot as the eggs will cook in the next step. This may take 5-10 minutes on low heat.
• Add the warm sugar mixture to the oat mixture and stir a bit.
• Add the eggs and stir until everything is combined into a wet dough.
• Spoon the dough into the muffin cups until almost full.
• Bake for 25-30 minutes until firm.
• Remove the pan from the oven and let cool before tipping them onto a cooling rack. Run a knife along the edges if the cakes don’t pop out on their own.
• Serve warm or at room temperature.

* Spelt flour and whole wheat pastry flour can usually be found at a health food store. Occasionally Publix or another large chain store will stock it in the Greenwise or natural ingredients section.** Coconut oil can also be found in the health food section of Publix and the health food store. It comes as a slightly solid state that melts very easily around room temperature. I have not detected a strong coconut taste when using it and find that it doesn’t burn as easily as olive oil at medium to high temperatures.

Omissions from the original recipe: Heidi’s recipe also calls for 1/4 C. flax seeds. I simply didn’t have them on hand and didn’t use flax seed meal because it makes the cakes too dry.

Burrito Brothers Part I: Sweet Corn and Mango Salsa Recipe

Last week I had the Sweet Potato Black Bean burrito from Burrito Brothers for the first time.  I’ve lived in Gainesville for almost 20 years and I’ve never ordered this burrito? How could that be?  For those of you who don’t know, Burrito Brothers is basically a taco stand that used to be at the busiest corner on the University of Florida’s campus.  It is undoubtably a Gainesville institution popular with students and alum alike.  In fact, they will FedEx frozen burritosA few years back, after the original location was torn down, it moved to the back of a church where it is ridiculously hard to find if you don’t know where to look.

I loved this burrito so much that when I got sweet potatoes and corn in the CSA box this week, I attempted to make my own version which will appear here in two parts:  Part 1 Salsa, Part 2 The Burrito.  In addition to the sweet potatoes and black beans, the burrito also includes a sweet corn salsa.  I figured the first step to replicating my Burrito Brothers’ burrito was to figure out the salsa.  All though it wasn’t exactly the same, I think it works.

Sweet Corn and Mango Salsa Recipe

This recipe is not exact so make it according to your own taste.  I used a food processor to chop the peppers and corn.

Ingredients:

• 3-4 Ears cooked sweet corn stripped from the cob (you can use a can of corn)
• 2 Ripe Mangos (cubed)
• 1 c. Sweet peppers (chopped)(I used mini sweet peppers, but you can use a red pepper)
• 1/2 c. Sweet onion (chopped)
• 4 tsp Fresh chopped mint
• 4 tsp Fresh chopped cilantro
• Juice from about 1 lemon
• Salt to taste
• You could also add a bit of hot pepper to give it a kick.

Directions:

Combine all ingredients into a large bowl.  Stir to combine the ingredients.  Season to taste.  You can eat it right away or let it sit for about an hour in the refrigerator to let the ingredients meld together.  And this is what you get…

Brown Rice Treats with Browned Butter and Sea Salt Recipe

The kids and I went to Sweet Dreams this afternoon to stave off boredom. Sweet Dreams is a locally-owned ice cream shop that makes all sorts of weird flavors like sweet corn, Birds an Bees (local honey and sunflower seeds), guava & cheese (which is one of my new favorites), and salted caramel. I had the salted caramel, which made me crave a recipe I found on Smitten Kitchen this week.

This really is a children’s treat all grown up. The browned butter is so flavorful – and then the little bursts of sea salt throughout. So, so good. The original recipe used white rice crisp cereal. I decided to use brown rice crisps which can be found in the health food sections.

INGREDIENTS:

1 Stick of unsalted butter
10 oz. Bag of marshmallows
6 C. Brown Rice Crisps Cereal
1/4 tspn Course sea salt

DIRECTIONS:

1. Prepare a 8″x8″ square baking pan sprayed with non-stick spray or buttered.
2. Brown the butter: Melt butter in a large saucepan. The butter will foam, get golden and transparent, and eventually turn a toasty brown. It will also smell a bit nutty. Stir frequently throughout.
3. Remove from heat and add marshmallows. Stir until melted and smooth. Heat on low if marshmallows do not melt and become smooth.
4. Add the brown rice crisp cereal and stir until mixed thoroughly. Place in baking pan fairly quickly, before it sets. Pat down with a spatula and let cool and set. Serves 8 – 1″ squares

Lasagna with Zucchini Noodles

If you have a mandolin, you can easily cut vegetables like carrots, eggplant or zucchini into thin ribbons (Cutting ribbons by hand is acceptable too. They’ll just be a bit thicker). I’ve been trying to eat as many vegetables as I can, so I replace lasagna noodles with zucchini ribbons.

Try the following combination in a 9″x9″ pan.

1. Sauce on the bottom of the pan to keep noodles from sticking.
2. Two one-step noodles
3. Ricotta and mozzarella
4. Zucchini noodles
5. Sauce
6. Noodles
7. Sautéed greens
8. Zucchini
9. Sauce
10. Ricotta
11. Mozzarella

Spinach, Zucchini, and Grape Tomato Ravioli Recipe

Spinach, Zucchini, and Cherry Tomato with Cheese Ravioli Recipe

1. Buy fresh or frozen ravioli and cook it as directed.
2. Saute the onions and garlic over medium heat with butter until clear.
3. Add about 1/4 C vegetable broth.  You could also add a splash of dry white wine.
4. Add the spinach and zucchini, sauteing until the spinach is wilted and the zucchini is almost cooked.
5. Add about a 1/4 C. pasta sauce or canned, crushed or diced tomatoes
6. Season with salt and pepper as well as any other herb you’d like.
7. Add cherry tomatoes to the skillet and saute until the tomatoes are warmed through, but not split.
8. Pour the ravioli into the skillet and cook all together until flavors have melded together.

From Super Natural Every Day: Oat Cakes Recipe Review

**Update: I posted my version of Heidi Swanson’s Oatcakes in a new post. I added chocolate. Yum.**

I spent the weekend with Super Natural Everyday: Well-Loved Foods from my Natural Foods Kitchen by Heidi Swanson, keeper of my favorite cooking blog. This is her latest book, released last week. It arrived on my doorstep via Amazon.com on Friday – two days before expected – and just in time for the weekend. It took me about a day and a half to go through this and her other book pictured below.

By mid-morning Sunday, I was ready to cook, choosing the best recipe for a Sunday snack. Oat Cakes. Oat Cakes, indeed! My husband liked them so much he posted a photo of them on Facebook with a status reading “I ate two of these”. These fantastic little treats are the size of a normal muffin, but feel twice as dense and filled me up twice as fast. I ate one for breakfast today and wasn’t hungry for hours! The original recipe calls for walnuts and flax seeds which are both high in Omega Fatty Acids. The whole rolled oats makes for a great texture and the amaranth flour adds an additional nutty taste. I will say that until you are familiar with baking/cooking with grains other than wheat, stick to the recipe. My oat cakes came out a bit dry as soon as they cooled down, but it was my own fault. I didn’t have whole flax seeds and substituted ground flax seed (flax meal) instead, which was like adding a 1/3 C. of something the consistency of flour when it should have been just whole seed. As for the nuts, I substituted pecans where the original called for walnuts just because I have a stockpile in the freezer.

Now that I have you ready to dive into the recipe, I’m not going to post it here because I don’t have permission and its a brand new book. It just didn’t feel right. If I know you and you really want it to make these, I’ll let you borrow my book. That’s pretty fair. Heidi has tons of free recipes on 101 Cookbooks and most of them are not repeats from either book.

Whole Wheat Pumpkin and Chocolate Chip Pancakes Recipe

Pumpkin Pancakes are one of my family’s all-time favorites.  Even in the spring, when autumn is nothing more than a memory, my kids request these.  On a quest to make them a bit healthier, I used whole wheat pastry flour instead of all-purpose flour.  No one suspected a thing.  I added lots of spice, some brown sugar, and a tiny handful of mini chocolate chips just to make sure.  The pumpkin and spices are such a strong flavor that the bitterness associated with some whole wheat flour isn’t noticeable at all.   This recipe makes about 16 pancakes at a 1/4c each.  I’m not completely positive because they are eaten as soon as they are cooked, making a final count a little difficult.

Whole Wheat Pumpkin and Chocolate Chip Pancakes Recipe

• 1.5 c milk
• 1 c pumpkin puree
• 1 egg
• 2 T vegetable oil
• 2 T vinegar
• 1 t vanilla

Mix all of the above ingredients together in a medium bowl.

In a large bowl combine:

• 2 c whole wheat pastry flour
• 3 T brown sugar
• 1 t baking soda
• 2 t baking powder
• 2 t apple pie spice
• 1/2 t cinnimon
• 1/2 t ginger
• 1/2 t salt
• handful of mini-chocolate chips

Gently pour wet mixture into bowl with the dry mixture.  Stir until just combined.  Let the batter sit for a few minutes before you start cooking.  Over medium heat, drop 1/4c batter into a skillet and cook until browned on both sides.