Braised Black-Eyed Peas & Sauteed Corn with Chili Lime Butter

I'm so sorry my dear blog for neglecting you for the past two months! Between working dinner shifts at the restaurant and nannying during the day, carefully prepared meals were exchanged for a bowl of cereal in the car, or a sandwich on the go. Now that i am free of the restaurant i have a little more time to spend in the kitchen :)

I was away for the past week and left my garden in the care of my housemates and neighbors. When i came back my garden was a rainbow of all sorts of colorful vegetables that needed to be picked. I picked a full basket of squash, black-eyed peas, big tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, purple peppers, sweet peppers, cucumbers and my favorite, corn. Conveniently enough, i just received in the mail my long awaited new cookbook, which i am now obsessed with. Its called "Serving Up the Harvest: Celebrating the Goodness of Fresh Vegetables" by Andrea Chesman. Its wonderful, she organizes her recipes according to what should be blooming in your garden at the time. There is a section for every vegetable that you could imagine, complete with growing and harvesting instructions; kitchen notes specific to that vegetable; and "veggie math" for example: 1 pound of corn= 5-6 ears, etc.

Anyway Kirsten and I had the afternoon off work today which we were planning to spend watching "A Walk to Remember", oh how i love that movie! I also made us a garden fresh lunch. I began by opening up the new cookbook and while snacking on some cherry tomatoes, searched for a good recipe. And this is what i found...

BRAISED SHELL BEANS
You can use any kind of shell bean, the recipe particularly recommended fava beans, but seeing as i had an excess of black-eyed peas, that is what i used.

INGREDIENTS:
2 pounds fresh shell beans in pods (about 2-2 1/2 cups of beans with shells removed)
2 Tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 garlic cloves, minced
2 Tablespoons white wine
2 Tablespoons of water
2 Tablespoons chopped fresh herbs (basil, oregano, thyme, parsley, alone or in any combination)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Shell the beans, again you should have 2 to 2 1/2 cups of shelled beans. Place beans in a medium saucepan and cover with lightly salted water. Cover the pot and bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce the heat and boil gently until the beans are barely tender: 5-25 minutes. Drain

Heat the oil in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Add the garlic and saute until limp: about 2 minutes. Add the beans, wine, water, and herbs. Season with salt and pepper. Simmer, covered, until the beans are completely tender: about 5 minutes. Serve hot

*the recipe above is how i made it, you could also use 2 shallots instead of the garlic, and/or 1/4 cup vegetable/chicken broth instead of the white wine and water.

I loved this recipe, but if i made it again i would have added more garlic, and more white wine.

SAUTEED CORN WITH CHILI LIME BUTTER

This recipe i owe to my sister, she made it for my family years ago and it has been a favorite of mine ever since. Because i learned this recipe by just watching her, i don't know the exact proportions of ingredients but i will do my best to guesstimate. Otherwise i would suggest just throwing the ingredients together, starting small and adding more until it tastes the way you like. Just be easy on the cayenne pepper, a little bit goes a long way.

INGREDIENTS:
4 ears of sweet corn, kernels cut off the cob
1 1/2-2 Tablespoons of butter
a couple of dashes of cayenne pepper
1 Tablespoon of lime juice
Salt to taste

Cut corn off the cob. Heat butter in saute pan over medium heat until melted. Add corn kernels to the pan and stir until butter is evenly distributed. Season with salt and cayenne pepper. Saute for about 3-5 minutes until tender but with a slight crisp. 1 minute before it is done sautéing add lime juice and stir. Serve hot.

Well i hope this is the beginning of my being more diligent about posting on this blog. Until next time

Braised Swiss Chard, Currants & Feta

I came home yesterday!!! Its so nice to be back and eat my mom's food, snuggle with kelly, spend the day at the farmer's market, get the best haircut of my life, and spend time with my older sis. I began the day yesterday with my new friends at Rocklands Farm, helping them harvest some of the crop, and then selling the produce at the farmer's market. It was such a fun day...I may be reconsidering my career as a nurse. Anyway that night i came home baring all sorts of fresh fruits and vegetables (thanks Rocklands Farm!) and made a delicious dinner with my mom. So this is what was on the menu: (the original recipe i found on epicurious)

INGREDIENTS:

1 (1-pound) bunch Swiss chard

1 large garlic clove, finely chopped

2 tablespoons olive oil

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon black pepper

3 tablespoon dried currants

1/3 cup water

1 1/2 ounces feta, crumbled (1/3 cup)

* I added some garlic salt, and a little extra pepper to taste

Cut stems and center ribs from chard, discarding any tough parts near base, then cut stems and ribs crosswise into 3/4-inch-thick slices. Coarsely chop leaves. 

 Cook garlic in oil in a 4-quart heavy pot over moderately low heat, stirring occasionally, until pale golden, 1 to 2 minutes. Add chard stems and ribs, salt, and pepper and cook, stirring occasionally, 4 minutes. 

 Add currants and cook, stirring, until plump, about 1 minute. 

Add chard leaves and water and increase heat to moderate, then cook, covered, stirring occasionally, until leaves are tender, about 5 minutes

 Remove from heat and stir in feta.

This was our whole meal, complete with spinach, strawberry, walnut, and goat cheese salad with balsamic vinaigrette dressing (another idea i picked up from the farmers market)

Italian Sausage Lasagna

Tonight we decided to do a house dinner to welcome our two new housemates for the summer, who.... had better plans and couldn't make it. Alicia, Isabelle and Sally and I enjoyed the meal nonetheless. So what did we make? LASAGNA (l -zän -yə) Originally i was planning on using Richard Sterling Mehring II's (my daddy's) famous recipe, one that he taught to my mom while they were dating. But that recipe was a bit too complicated so i settled for my mom's adaptation of that recipe, aka the recipe on the back of the San Giorgio lasagna noodle box. So here it is: 


Servings: Serves 10-12 people
Total Time: 1 hour

Ingredients:
Prego traditional tomato sauce (26 oz. jar)
1.5 lb of Italian sweet sausage
1 pkg of Lasagna noodles (1lb)
4 cups (2 lb.) ricotta cheese
2 cups (8 oz.) shredded mozzarella cheese, divided 
1/4 cup parmesan cheese
4 eggs
1 Tbsp. chopped fresh parsley
1 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. ground black pepper




1. Saute sausage links in a few tablespoons of oil until browned, and slice into 1/2" circles

2. Cook pasta according to package directions

3. Combine cheeses, eggs, parsley, salt and pepper for filling

4. Spread about 1/2 cup sauce on bottom of 13x9x2-inch baking dish
5. Arrange 4 pasta pieces lengthwise over sauce, overlapping edges
6. Spread 1/3 cheese mixture over pasta and cover with about 1 cup of tomato sauce.
7. Dot surface with sausage circles
8. Repeat layers of pasta, cheese, sauce, and sausage twice.

9. Finally top with a layer of pasta and remaining tomato sauce, and sprinkle with additional mozzarella cheese

10. Cover with foil. Bake 30 minutes or until hot and bubbly
11. Remove foil; bake about 10 minutes longer, or until lightly browned
12. Let stand 10 minutes before cutting

I asked my housemate, and indentured servant, Alicia if she would like to help me with my blog entry and this is what she came up with (hence the translation above)....

1. Saute sausage links in a lightly oiled pan until browned. Then pretend you are a butcher and slash sausage into disks the length of your point finger's finger nail. 
2. Cook pasta following directions on cardboard parcel that once contained a bouquet of hard noodlesPrior-heat firebox to the degree of 350 (not celsius)
3. Combine the cheeses, eggs, the parsley, salt and the pepper para construir the cheesy filling layer.
4. spread about 1/2 cup of tomatoish pastey on the lower limit of a thirteen by nine by 2 inch baking capsule
5. Arrange lasagna noodles overlapping one another (like dominoes fallen upon each other) 
6. Spread one-third cheesy mixture over dominoed noodles, as if one were to frost a cake
7. Ditto #6, the above instruction, x 2
8. to finish it off apply one more layer of dominoed noodles, douce with remaining sauce and smother with parmesan cheese. 
9. Cover with foil of the tin nature
10. Place in firebox 
11. Bake for thirty revolutions of the slender arm of an anologue timepiece, until hot and bubblin'
12. Remove tin upper-limit (Alicia says "this makes sense if you think of it in terms of a box-and-whiskers plot") and allow lasagna to bake/roast/heat/simmer/cook until resembling a toasted marshmallow

Let it be... just let it be... for at least 1/6 of an hour before slashing it into square like portions

Avocado, Caper & Pickled-Onion Toast

I just  couldn't wait to post the first recipe, so i decided to share what i had for lunch today. Anyone who knows me, knows that i idolize Martha Stewart, I found this recipe in one of her WholeLiving magazines. Its a really fresh, light meal for a summer afternoon. The proportions are only slightly adapted. Technically this recipe is supposed to serve 2, but i think dividing the avocado mixture between two slices of bread doesn't leave enough on each slice. So i pile it all on one piece of toast.


Ingredients:
1/4 small red onion, thinly sliced
1/2 tsp. fresh lemon juice
1 tsp. capers 
1 tsp. extra-virgin olive oil
Kosher salt and ground black pepper
2 tsp. lemon zest
1 avocado, pitted
1 slice of whole-grain bread, toasted




1. Combine the onion, lemon juice, capers, oil and 1/4 tsp. salt and pepper in a bowl. Let stand until the onions soften slightly, about 10 minutes.

2. In another bowl, mash the lemon zest and avocado with 1/8 tsp of salt

3. Spread avocado mixture on a slice of toasted bread and top with onion and caper mixture

Enjoy!

Post #1

Well i finally got around to creating this blog. After several months of thinking a cooking blog would be a fun past-time, and weeks of putting it off until my schedule cleared up, its finally on the web! Thank you to Laura Landry for providing the creative title, she graciously saved us from a number of stupid blog name ideas.

For a little background: Isabelle and I are both seniors at James Madison University. Soon after moving into our house in downtown Harrisonburg last fall, Isabelle and I quickly bonded over our shared love for cooking and eating. We would spend our time pouring through magazines and cookbooks in search of new recipes.  We had plans of cooking together weekly but the reality of classes, tests, papers, and other such distractions soon set in and we found ourselves spending less and less time in the kitchen. I was so looking forward to the summer when i would finally have time to enjoy the simple things in life like reading a book for fun; painting my nails; digging in the dirt, excavating 30lb rocks, hauling buckets of clay, sweating out of every pore in my body (I will share more about my gardening adventures later) and of course cooking! Now that summer "vacation" has arrived Isabelle and I find ourselves as busy as ever. So i decided i was going to buckle down and publish this blog, darn it,  before the summer ends and we haven't cooked diddly-squat!

The main purpose of "Two Peas in a Pot" is to motivate us to spend more time in the kitchen, to keep a record of our favorite recipes and share them with our family and friends, to learn more about cooking, but mainly just because it gives us an excuse to eat!

We have plans to make dinner sometime this coming week, so hopefully we will have our first recipe up by this time next week!