Vegetarian Chili

Let me tell you a cautionary tale about the importance of close reading.  I found a delicious-looking recipe for vegetarian chili in March 2011's issue of Triathlete Magazine (aspirational reading, okay?) and stuck it up on my refrigerator.  When I went to the grocery store, I was overly confident that I remembered the correct ingredient proportions, and this confidence spread over into the actual cooking process.  Long story short, I wound up with 12 servings of vegetarian chili instead of six (suspicions arose when I had to break out the stockpot because the normal-sized pot was too small, but at that point the commitment had been made).

So this is a recipe for a massive amount of veggie chili.  You could make less, but I'm not capable of doing that.  It's good though—leave out the bulgur for your gluten-free friends, put the bulgur in for an extra-nice texture.

Autumn Vegetable Kugel

First of all, I'd like to thank the extremely talented Tom Tian for the beautiful new banner.  Everyone should check out his blog for more of his great designs.

It's finally starting to feel like fall, which means that I want to eat only root vegetables (more or less).  I adapted this recipe for carrot, leek, and zucchini kugel from a few different recipes in Marlena Spieler's Jewish Cooking, which is beautifully illustrated and one of my all-time favorite cookbooks.

Canning Party Carrot Salad

My good friend Kirsten invited me along yesterday to a canning party at her sister-in-law's house in Kensington.  At first, I was a little dubious (canning?), but the party was fun, informative, and delicious.  The guests were in charge of all the chopping and prep work for a strawberry jelly, sour cherry and currant jam, and fresh salsa.  I had a little bit of a bad run-in with some jalapeños (I'd never encountered one in real life before), but it was a great chance to meet some lovely, interesting ladies and have a demonstration in case I ever feel the urge to can (I admit this seems unlikely, since I like to eat what I make as soon as I make it, but you never know).

After the food prep, a delicious afternoon tea party spread was set out, including banana bread sandwiches (genius!), brown bread baked in a coffee can (deliciously moist), chicken salad, scones, homemade sangria, and stuffed grape leaves.  My own humble contribution was a cold carrot salad, which was one of the lesser impressive items, but it's the recipe you're going to get.  I also neglected to take a photo (tsk tsk).  But it is tasty, simple, and extremely portable, so let's get cracking:

You'll need:

1 lb. carrots, peeled and cut into 1/4-inch slices
2 tbsp. olive oil
2 tbsp. balsamic vinegar
1/2 cut white onion, finely minced
1 clove garlic, finely minced
2 tbsp. parsley, minced
salt and pepper, to taste

Bring a small pot of salted water to a rolling boil, then add carrots.  Cook in boiling water for about 8 minutes, or until tender.  Be sure not to overcook—mushy carrots are gross.  Drain in the sink and then rinse with cold water for about 4–5 minutes to stop the carrots from cooking with residual heat.

Meanwhile, combine all the rest of the ingredients, except the parsley.  Stir well.  Once the carrots are cool, put them in a bowl and drizzle the marinade over top.  Mix well and stick in the fridge for at least 8 hours.  Right before you're ready to serve, toss in the minced parsley.  This keeps it from wilting and maintains the nice crunch.

And you're ready to go!  You can even walk two miles to the party with your tupperware in your bag and it will still be delicious!  Not that I know about that from experience or anything...

Meanwhile, our sous chef was:

Yeah, big help.

Carrot Cake Cupcakes

Earlier this week, I promised someone carrot cake cupcakes.  Yesterday rolled around and it was time to deliver.  I found it surprisingly difficult to find a recipe that I liked (something that used butter instead of oil, had traditional carrot cake ingredients), so I based my recipe off of this one, but with some pretty serious tweaks.  These are almost "hummingbird" cupcakes, but not quite.  One quick note: I didn't make my own icing, and for that I am sorry.  Next time I make a cake-like item, you can expect an accompanying icing recipe.

You'll need:

1/3 cup butter, room temperature
3/4 cups granulated sugar
1 tbsp. honey
2 eggs
1 cup grated carrot
1 cup flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
3 tbsp. apple juice
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup crushed walnuts

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line a dozen muffin cups with paper liners.

Cream together the butter, sugar, and honey until the mixture is smooth.  Beat in eggs one at a time, then add grated carrot (you can grate right into the bowl—that's what I did).

Stir in flour, baking soda, and baking powder in two parts.  Stir smooth, but don't overbeat.  Add apple juice and stir.  Add walnuts and raisins.  You should have a smooth, moist batter at this point.

Spoon the batter into the twelve muffin cups approximately equally.  Bake until golden and risen, so that when you stick a knife in the middle, it comes out clean.  This takes about 25 minutes.

Cool on a rack, then remove from pan.  Let cool thoroughly before icing (This was a mistake I made because I was in a rush).

When you're done, you'll get some sweet cupcakes like this:

And your friends will be happy and look like this:

I warned you, Alex.  Now it's on the Internet.