It's art, duh

This recipe originally ran in Cooking Light Magazine more than a decade ago. I’ve been making it ever since. I no longer refer to the recipe at all, and I continually change it and add too it as I get new ideas over the years.

Ingredients
1 packaged penne pasta
1 quarter cup (or less) sun dried tomatoes, not oil packed
1 cup boiling water
sliced green onions
oregano
broccoli, spinach, kale or other green veggie of choice or mushrooms.
About 1/2 cup goat cheese

Prepare penne according to directions. Submerge sundried tomatoes in hot water and allow to soak while preparing everything. Once the pasta is done, drain and set aside. Add green onions and veggies to pot and cook til crisp. Add in tomatoes (including liquid) and goat cheese. Stir all together. The creamy cheese and tomato liquid will form a smooth sauce. Add salt, pepper and dried or fresh oregano and serve. This is one of my stand by weeknight meals because it is so quick.

I am obsessed with New Mexico cuisine. I make this corn chowder almost every week. I’ve added fresh corn, chipolte peppers and extra potatoes to my version. I also added extra green chiles and I  top it with cheddar on serving.

Mesilla Valley Corn Chowder

2 stalks celery, chopped
1 large potato, peeled and cubed
1 large onion, chopped
1 cup of water
16 oz. can cream style corn
4 oz. green chile, chopped
2 cups milk (unsweetened rice milk works)
2 T. butter (canola oil)
salt and pepper to taste
1 egg, beaten
green onions, chopped

Put celery, potato, onion, and water in a pot and simmer until potatoes are tender, about 15 minutes. Add corn, chile, milk, butter, and salt and pepper. Bring to a boil. Stir some of the chowder into beaten egg and return all of it to the pot, blending well.

Simmer about 1 minute.

Serve and enjoy.

Makes about 4-6 servings.

A recent trip to Santa Fe inspired me to make a goal to learn to cook like a New Mexican. New Mexican cuisine is a Mexican-fusion style, kind of like Tex Mex, but much better. The first recipe I need to master is Green Chile, a salsa-ish, heated topping for basically everything. Before I share the first recipe I tried, which was stellar, I’d like to offer a tip on buying green chiles in Utah. There are a thousand types of chiles, and not all are available to us locally. However, poblano chiles, a large, dark green pepper are available at Smiths and other grocery stores. They aren’t really hot, though my hands were a little burny after working with them, and they work great for chile rellenos as well. Be sure to lay them down on your gas stove top and burn the skin off of them (called roasting) before you start.

Green Chile Tomatila Sauce

• 3 pounds fresh tomatillos
• 1 can (26 ounces) mild green chiles
• 2 onions, quartered
• 6 garlic cloves
• 1 bunch cilantro, chopped
• salt and pepper to taste

I have a new cooking interest. I love the idea of having a freezer full of items I can cook up quickly – kind of like paying $6.99 for a box of hot pockets, but much much better for you.

So, my friend Giuliana Serena decided to teach me her specialty – potstickers. I’d never even had them before. The beauty is that you can make 50 at a time and freeze them for several months, in other words, with a little preparation, a fairly inexpensive dinner is half done.

Potstickers

1 napa cabbage
2 bunches green onions
2 packages extra firm tofu or other protein
1 red pepper
1 bunch cilantro

Soy sauce
Sesame oil
Rice vinegar
Garlic
Ginger
Potsticker wrappers

Dice all the vegetables as small as possible and mix into a bowl. This is the most labor intensive part. Dice the drained, pressed tofu into tiny cubes and saute in peanut oil until brown. Mix tofu into vegetables. Mix soy sauce, grated ginger, grated fresh garlic, rice vinegar and sesame oil together, using mostly soy sauce, about 1/4 vinegar and a spoonful of sesame oil. Pour about 1/2 cup over the vegetables and stir. Visit your Asian market for a dumpling press, a dangerous tool that can crush greedy fingers as needed.

Take a potsticker wrapper and place with the corn starchy side up on the press. Dampen just the edges with water. Add a small spoonful of veggie mix to the center and press. Pressing it is harder than you think, I found that using the counter for leverage helped get a tight seal.

Now the fun part – freezing them. Arrange potstickers on cookie sheets so they do not touch. Place the crease up. Cover with a dish towel and place in freezer overnight or for a few hours. Once firmly frozen, potstickers can be placed in a bag in the freezer and you can remove a dozen at a time for dinner for two with rice and or miso soup.

To cook the potstickers, heat peanut oil in a cast iron pan. When it is hot enough to sizzle, add the potstickers (not touching). Cook for two minutes. Add about 3/4 cup water very carefully to the pan, it will spit at you. Cover and cook for about 8 minutes, until water is gone and potstickers are stuck to pan. Carefully remove with spatula. Serve with remaining soy sauce mixture for dipping.

The part I like best is seeing what a box of frozen potstickers costs at the store, and adding up the fat and sodium grams. I feel like I’m sticking it to the man by making it myself.

I found this recipe on allrecipes.com last night and made it to go with broccoli cheese soup. I ate half the pan almost immediately. It is the best corn bread ever! It’s good cold but great hot!

Ingredients

• 2/3 cup butter or margarine, softened
• 1 cup sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1 2/3 cups milk
• 2 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup cornmeal
• 4 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt

Directions

1. In a mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar. Combine the eggs and milk. Combine flour, cornmeal, baking powder and salt; add to creamed mixture alternately with egg mixture.
2. Pour into a greased 13-in. x 9-in. x 2-in. baking pan. Bake at 400 degrees F for 22-27 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cut into squares; serve warm.

I found a recipe for homemade tater tots on Pinterest the other day. I love to make weird things from scratch so this was right up my alley. They are far more delicious, and contain less fat than the store-bought kind. I thought you might like to make them too, so here’s how:

Homemade tots:

Make mashed potatoes, very lumpy and very dry. Do not boil the potatoes as long as normal.

Use your (clean) hands to grab lumps of potato, dip into flour, then beaten egg, then crushed potato chips

Bake at 400 degrees for 15 min, roll over and bake 15 min on the other side.

Serve with homemade fry sauce, ketchup or top with melted cheddar. Mm mmm good!