Peanut Sesame Noodles with Chicken

This recipe is another one of my go-to's, I make it just about every time I host a Shabbat lunch. Because as I've mentioned before, it's much easier to eat dishes meant to be served cold when you don't have a hot plate (basically the only Shabbat-approved way to heat things up). I've always enjoyed peanut sesame noodles and this recipe is a great way to stretch a buck; it can feed up to 6 people as a main dish and last week I served it (with several other dishes) to 13 people. And it only uses about a pound of chicken, if I was going to serve 6 people a chicken dish, I'd need about 3 pounds. You also can make it without the chicken, I don't think it adds too much other than making the dish a more "complete" meal. I don't know if cucumber is a common ingredient in cold sesame noodles, but my mom used to use a recipe that called for finely chopped cucumber, I like grating it right into the sauce; I think it really lightens up the flavor and adds freshness to the flavor. The pasta and chicken can be cooked in advance (I usually do it Thursday night in preparation for Saturday lunch), and the sauce can be made and mixed in right before serving. I apologize for the lack of exact measurements in the sauce, it's something I'm working on, but have failed at this juncture. I think that the measurements are really to taste, when I make the sauce it isn't super peanut-buttery, but that's the way my guests and I like it, you can make it however you want, you don't even need to use all the ingredients.





Ingredients
1+ lb boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into very small strips before cooking
vegetable oil
1 lb bucatini (spaghetti with holes in it)
~5 scallions, thinly sliced
sesame seeds

Yummy Asian sauce (I got this idea from the Garlic Noodles recipe)
2 T brown sugar
2 t soy sauce
1.5 T hoisin
1 t sesame oil

Peanut Sesame Sauce
1/2 c Peanut Butter
1 T Sesame Oil
1 t Rice Vinegar
2-4 T Soy Sauce
~1 T honey
~1 t hot sauce
1-2 T brown sugar
1 T hoisin
1-4 T veg oil
1 small cucumber shredded



Directions
Bring a pot of water to boil, generously salt it, and break the bucatini (pasta) in half before dropping it in to cook; it is nearly impossible to handle if you don't break it in half, so don't forget this step. In my experience the bucatini just needs to be watched for readiness, needing at least 10 minutes, it's kind of a fickle pasta but I'm usually already at the stove cooking the chicken in the meantime, and I think the straw shape is cool. You can use any long pasta, I think thick spaghetti or thicker would be best because I'm not confident angel hair or regular spaghetti would hold up to the sauce.

While the pasta is cooking, heat some oil in a pan to prevent sticking and cook up the small pieces of chicken breast. When the chicken is just about done cooking, add in the Yummy asian sauce and let it cook down a little to coat the chicken. The sauce isn't necessary, but why not give the chicken it's own flavoring. Once you're confident the chicken is cooked and coated, put it into your serving/storage dish with the cooked pasta. If you used too much oil like I occasionally do, just take the chicken out with a slotted spoon.

I usually drizzle a little sesame oil and/or vegetable oil over the pasta so it doesn't become a solid mass in the refrigerator. The noodles and chicken should be cool for this dish, but it does not need to be refrigerated overnight. I store the noodles and chicken in the same dish (in my case, a disposable aluminum pan) I plan on serving them in, it's just easier that way.

To make the sauce: Put all ingredients (except oil and cucumber) in a bowl and mix, if you are mixing with a spoon, just be patient, eventually it will all come together. When the sauce looks fairly homogeneous, it probably won't look like it will be easy to distribute over that much pasta. This is where the oil comes in, vegetable oil is flavorless, but oily (duh), so add just enough to make the sauce tossable. Then grate in the cucumber, this will probably make the sauce less attractive, but go with it.

Add the scallions and some toasted sesame seeds to the pasta and chicken, then toss it all with the sauce. Enjoy!

Shepherd's Quiche

I'm not in the most talkative of moods this evening, but I do have one word of advice: before pouring (or worse, squeezing) a condiment/dressing/bottled food product, be WELL aware of the dispenser top that said bottle has. On TWO occasions this evening I overdosed because I thought my soy sauce and my ranch dressing had that kind of top with the little hole that you have to shake and/or squeeze the bottle to dispense out of.

As you can probably tell from the name of this post, this quiche is inspired by Shepherd's pie, a well-known, delicious, all-in-one food. Unlike classic shepherd's pie, however, it is vegetarian and lacks potatoes (because I didn't have any). I filled a pie crust with a "meaty" mixture of mushrooms, onions, and Morningstar Farms meat-like crumble, included some corn, and rounded it all out with an egg/milk mixture and some cheese. I like both eating and making quiche, except for the few issues of filling leakage (solved by baking on a cookie sheet) and the edge of the crust breaking off (let me know if you've solved that one). I served this one with a(n unfortunately overdressed) salad. I used bottled ranch dressing because I was in the mood for something creamy and my fridge lacked the goods for a homemade one as it is still a post-passover wasteland.

Ingredients
1 premade pie crust
1/2-3/4 cup shredded cheese
2 TBSP butter
1 cube frozen chopped garlic
8 cremini mushrooms, chopped
1/2 white onion, chopped
3/4 cup meat-free crumbles
1/2 can corn
3 eggs
1/4 cup milk
splash soy sauce
S+P

Directions
Saute garlic, mushrooms, and onions in butter until soft. Add frozen "meat" and heat through. Sprinkle some cheese on the bottom of the pie crust, then spread the "meat" mixture on top. In a separate bowl, mix eggs, milk, soy sauce, S+P, corn and some more cheese (reserve some for the top). Pour egg mixture over the pie contents, you want the corn to sit on top of the meat like it does in shepherd's pie. Sprinkle remaining cheese on top. Bake at 400 F for 30 minutes. Let sit for 5-10 minutes before slicing and serving.

French Toast Bread Pudding Cups

This poor challah had had a long journey. I bought it a few months ago and then froze it when it was rendered unnecessary. It was defrosted this weekend, and still not used. At this point it was too stale to eat as bread, so something had to be done. I was going to make French Toast and freeze it to be used as weekday breakfasts. But I changed my mind last minute and decided to make something resembling Bread Pudding. I can't honestly say I know how to make Bread Pudding but I can make yummy bready muffiny breakfast treats.
I froze almost all of them and took one to work for breakfast a few times. I just defrosted in in the microwave and then got the soggy out by finishing the reheat in the toaster oven.


Ingredients
1 large challah, at least a few days stale
4 eggs
1/4 cup half and half
3/4-1 cup skim milk
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp almond extract
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 TBSP sugar
2 4 oz. cans of diced peaches in light syrup
butter
turbinado sugar


Directions
Preheat oven to 350 F. Cut challah into 1-inch cubes. Whisk together remaining ingredients (including syrup from peaches). Pour custard mixture over bread cubes in a large bowl. Bread should absorb the custard like a sponge, so mix it as well as you can. Let bread soak for about an hour, mixing a few times throughout. Your end product will be very soggy bread with few discernible chunks. Butter each cup of a muffin tin. Fill cups with mixture and top with a little melted butter and a sprinkle of turbinado sugar. Bake for 30-35 minutes until edges are brown and muffins feel spongy but not wet and squishy to the touch.

Lemon Coconut Cake

Another meat Shabbat meal, another parve dessert conundrum. This time I wanted to use my new(ish) bundt pan. As we know, I'm not generally a cake-from-scratch kind of girl, so the challenge was what to do with a box of cake mix and some imagination. I decided to revisit the lemon-coconut flavor combination of a previous post. I took a chance and combined the coconut with non-dairy cream cheese and made a tunnel/swirl in the middle of my lemon cake. This tunnel ended up being a crown which suited me just fine. I think my guests liked the cake and didn't mind one bit that it was dairy-free.

Ingredients
Lemon Cake mix plus water, oil, and eggs
~7 oz Coconut
~6 oz Tofutti (non-dairy) Cream Cheese
3 TBSP Powdered Sugar
1 TBSP Margarine
2 TBSP Soy Milk

Prepare cake mix according to package directions.
Soften cream cheese and margarine.
Cream together cream cheese, margarine, soy milk, and powdered sugar, add coconut.
Mix in a little batter.
Pour half of cake batter into a prepared bundt pan, pour coconut/cheese mixture on top then add rest of cake batter.
Bake at 350 F for 38-43 minutes.
Let Cool and glaze.


Frosting/Glaze
1/2 a can Whipped Vanilla Frosting
1 tsp Lemon Extract

Put frosting in a bowl and microwave for 15-20 seconds until it is a little thinned, then mix in extract. Pour or spoon over the cake so it looks pretty, drippy, and glazed.
Serve cake with Strawberry Sauce.


Strawberry Sauce
1/2 lb. cut-up strawberries
zest of 1 lemon
juice of 1/2 a lemon
1-2 TBSP sugar






Mix together and let macerate for at least 1 hour. I filled the center cavity of the bundt cake with it, looked pretty.



Cake storage tip: I am not married and therefore have not been privy to the extreme awesomeness that is a registry, so I don't have a fancy covered cake plate. But I still need to store cakes, so I use the lid of a large plastic bowl as the plate, and the bowl as it's cover. Weird, but it works; just make sure your cake pan fits in the bowl so you don't mess up your work of art.

Nunu Cookies

Nunu is one of my dearest friends, and she absolutely LOVES peppermint. So for her birthday I chose to honor her obsession with some home baked goodies. The only other catch is that Nunu does not like cake, so that was out. I've already mentioned my love for cake mix in other applications so I decided to go with it. With a chocolate cookie, I was looking for visual and flavor contrast with the white morsels because I personally can have too much chocolate. In addition to the peppermint extract, I wanted to add a candy element. I've read some baking blogs that advise against baking with candy pieces because they essentially melt and dissolve into the batter, but why wouldn't you want that? The candy pieces I used were not necessarily visible, but they melted a little while baking and created chewy to crunchy pockets of yum in my cookies. For the candy I used I couldn't find starlight mints (the white and red stripy hard candies), but I did have some boring-looking red peppermint sucking candies that I had actually bought with Nunu in mind months ago, they did the trick. The cookies will be VERY soft when they first come out of the oven, especially if you add the extra water. I even left mine in the off oven for about 10-15 minutes, but they do get at least handle-able when they cool. There are a lot of recipes for cake mix cookies out there, and I think using butter instead of all or some of the oil may help the cookies set up more solidly. I brought the cookies to her birthday party and they were a hit! But I kinda knew they would be because I may or may not have been snacking on them for the few days between baking and gifting.

Ingredients
1 box devil's food cake mix
2 eggs
1/3+ cup vegetable oil
2-4 Tbsp water
1 tsp peppermint extract
~8 peppermint candies, crushed with a hammer
~1 cup white morsels (white chocolate chips)

Directions
Mix together cake mix, eggs, oil, and peppermint extract. If the batter looks wet enough to hold onto the morsels and candy chunks, go ahead and add them. If it's too dry, add some water 1-2 TBSP at a time, then add the mix-ins. Roll little balls and place on a lined baking sheet (or 2). I got about 3 dozen cookies out of the recipe.

Bake at 350 F for 8-9 minutes

Remove from oven and let cool.

Feta Lime Salad

So on Shabbat after services, it's traditional to have a nice lunch, but the catch is you can't cook on Shabbat, so unless you prepare something before sundown Friday you're stuck with raw food for lunch. I was cranky and busy last week so after services on Saturday morning, I brought my friend home with me (she was going to have cereal for lunch, I had to save her), woke up my roommate from her deep weekend slumber and threw together a salad. Now, I wasn't planning on blogging about a stupid salad I threw together; but it is with this salad that I have unearthed one of my new favorite flavor combinations: FETA and LIME!!!!! I am that excited about it, don't judge. So excited, in fact, that I decided to attempt a recreation of it for dinner tonight. I say attempt because I knowingly added a few salad ingredients, but because I make my dressings from scratch and fairly haphazardly, it is sometimes hard to recreate them. But the reason I make them from scratch is not a grandstand against bottled dressings, because we know I love processed foods that make things easier. I just like my dressings better; plus, I don't want to commit to a big bottle of same flavored salad forever because I'm rarely in the mood for the same thing for more then a few days. The original salad had everything but the apples, but they seemed like a good idea to add. I also had to use up the tofu that I didn't use in yesterday's dinner, so I made some Crispy Coconut Tofu Nuggets that I found on Cara's Cravings via my fave "food porn" site, tastespotting.com. All in all delicious. And now that we've had tofu two nights in a row, we're super super proud of ourselves. "You did good with the tofu"- Ruby, thanks Cara!

I don't like giving directions for salads, because salad recipes are really just flavor concepts. I think these things taste good together, I hope you do too, but you can chop and mix the ingredients however you choose. For the dressing just whisk it all together to taste.


Salad Ingredients:
Lettuce (Romaine and Green Leaf blend)
Apples
Avocado
Feta , crumbled
Lime Zest
Red Onion
Craisins
La CHoy Noodles


Dressing Ingredients:
Lime Juice
Red Wine Vinegar
Veg Oil
cumin
Honey
S+P
Hot Sauce



And an additional picture because I took it. Tuna Salad with capers, sundried tomatoes, and feta. And some Teeny Weeny potatoes roasted with garlic, rosemary, and onions.

Garlic Noodles

I (Jenna)** adapted this recipe from Budget Bytes, and I'm pretty happy with the results. This recipe for noodles or a side dish is now a full meal complete with protein (tofu) and my favorite food (mushrooms). I also had to substitute hoisin for oyster sauce because oysters aren't kosher, but both sauces are sweet and Asian-y tasting. I was super hungry and found this recipe as I was compiling my shopping list on the way out of the office. I buy mushrooms more or less every time I go shopping (ya know, the whole favorite food thing) and had bought tofu last week and wasn't sure what I was going to do with it, so I threw them both in. It was pretty good, I would maybe add more sauce to compensate for the added tofu and I would have liked a little more flavor regardless. Also, we're super proud of us for eating tofu and not complaining a.bout it, you should be too

Ingredients
1/2 lb angel hair pasta
4 T butter
4 cloves minced garlic*
4 scallions, chopped
6 cremini mushrooms, halved and thinly sliced
1/2 package extra firm tofu, pressed and cut into 1/2 inch cubes
2 t soy sauce
2 T brown sugar
1 t sesame oil
1 1/2 T hoisin sauce
toasted sesame seeds

Directions
Cook pasta according to package directions.
Saute garlic, scallions, and mushrooms in butter until soft, add tofu and continue to cook over very low heat.
In a separate bowl, stir together soy sauce, sesame oil, hoisin sauce, and brown sugar.
Add pasta to sauteed mixture and then mix in sauce.
Top each serving with sesame seeds.

*I used a variety of minced garlic sources because I was in the mood to switch it up and diversify my garlic flavor. I used one large clove of fresh garlic, one frozen cube of minced garlic, and 2 cloves equivalent of jarred minced garlic. I don't know if it made a difference, but I'm gonna keep thinking it did.
**I'm specifying who wrote the post early on, because Becca has thankfully rejoined the blogging world, but it has created some confusion among our followers