Aromatic Noodles with Lime-Peanut Sauce

In honor of St. Paddy's Day, it's Green Eating week at I Heart Cooking Clubs.  For this Irish holiday, I chose a dish featuring Asian flavors. Lots of green veggies and pasta are flavored with peanut sauce.  Originally, I was going to make this dish in February for our pasta themed week, but the snow peas and sugar snaps looked rather sad. 
So I waited. One month later, the veggies are green and crisp.  Ellie describes the vegetables as a "refreshing yin to the yang of the rich, spicy peanut sauce." Very true.

I've made many versions of peanut noodles, but this version is really good. The use of natural peanut butter and roasted peanuts give the sauce a deep, nutty flavor that is not too sweet. The addition of veggies make this a meal in a bowl.

 

The recipe can be found in The Food You Crave by Ellie Krieger or on the Food Network website.  You can also find more green eating at IHCC.  

Basic Cheese Quiche

It's December Potluck at I Heart Cooking Clubs. I've picked a quiche recipe and a flaky pie crust recipe from Mark Bittman's  How to Cook Everything. This is my basic "go to" book when I'm looking for a basic recipe. I love the instructions and explanations that make the recipes almost full proof.  There is still room for human error as I will explain.
 
The pie crust is made with the help of a food processor, but realizing that not everyone owns one, Bittman suggests alternative methods. In the past, I've used a pastry cutter or two knives to mix the flour and butter. Bittman describes a mixing method using your hands, "...cut cold butter into bits and rub it and the flour very quickly between your fingers, picking it up, rubbing it and dropping it."  He further explains the basic principal of making a flaky crust. Of the methods I've tried, using your hands is the most fun and this will probably be the method I use in the future.
 
For the filling, you have a choice of milk, cream or half & half. You also have your choice of cheeses. I added some  pre-cooked broccoli to the filling for added color and nutrition. Even though I used a deep dish 9" pie pan, I had too much filling. You would have thought that I would have respected the law of physics, but alas, I didn't want to waste a bit of the rich cheese filling. I soon realized my mistake as the filling spilled over the edge of the crust.

Oh well. I wiped up the mess. I still had a full quiche. It was delicious. My older daughter said it was the best quiche I had ever made and the only one she ever liked. (Gee, I always thought she like the dish. Who Knew?)

 You can find the recipes in How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman, page 743 and 686. I couldn't find a link to the recipe on-line, but this is a worthwhile book to own or borrow. Check out what other delicious dishes other cooks made for the December potluck at IHCC.  

Two Side Dishes

Thanksgiving is approaching. I know which main dish I'm making and Thanksgiving is not Thanksgiving without my mother's dressing.  A friend is bringing the veggie main dish and homemade cranberry sauce. My husband will make pies (I hope, I hope.)  But we're still short a couple of side dishes.  Luckily,  I Heart Cooking Clubs  is featuring side dishes by our current chef, Ellie Krieger.

I have long wanted to try making oven baked onion rings. I love onion rings, but dread deep fat frying.  The recipe is from The Food You Crave or you can find it here.  It's quite easy to make. It's not the same as eating traditional onion rings, but it's a satisfying dish all the same.  I might add a little more salt and I wonder what it would be like if I used regular potato chips instead of baked potato chips.    

There is one other thing I will do differently next time.  Onion slices are dusted with flour, dipped into buttermilk and then covered with potato chip crumbs.  The crumbs got soggy after a few of the onion slices were dipped in them.  After that, it was hard to get the crumbs to adhere to the onion slices. Next time, I will divide the crumbs into smaller portions, so the crumbs stay drier.

I also made broccoli toasted with garlic, from the same book.  The recipe is available here as well.  Basically, you sauté the garlic, sauté the broccoli, pour the garlic on the broccoli and voila, a very tasty, healthy side dish. 

Visit IHCC to see what other wonderful sides people cooked up.