Recipe #14: Rice Noodles with Broccoli Pesto

Fresh back from the west coast and it is safe to say they have some of the best vegetarian food that I have tried to date. Vegetarian breakfast sausage, vegetarian pulled pork (tofu) sandwiches, it was hard to beat and satiated my cravings for meat that arise from time to all-the-time.

As we returned, Ms. Boyardee wanted me to write this blog as we made this recipe before we left and I was told I get less funny the longer I wait in between making the recipe and writing it...so this one might be pretty bland.

This isn't your average pesto. There is no parmesan and the pesto is made up completely of broccoli, almond, basil, garlic, and lemon juice. All you do is blanch the broccoli, and then cook the rice noodles in the leftover water from the broccoli blanching, something I would never think to do. You then add the pesto, top with more broccoli and some almonds and voila, easy recipe.

Now, like every other time she cooks, Ms. Boyardee put in about 4-5 times the garlic that the recipe calls for. This time however, I think it mayyyy have overpowered the dish a little bit. Most of the bites were great but you would get an occasional raw garlic and it brought water to your eyes. Hindsight, don't add 5 times the garlic if its raw. I usually pack up all the meals we make and take them in for lunch the next couple of days. I decided against bringing this dish or my clients would think I gargled with shawarma sauce every morning. We save it for dinners so both Ms. Boyardee and I can have terrible garlic breath....it goes down well with wine :)

Just a side note...over 2000 views now.......crazy to think that Ms. Boyardee and I have hit refresh that many times.

Recipe #13: Chickpea-Brown Rice Burgers

Our first recipe was a burger made with quinoa and mushrooms and it was an easy transition for my newly meatless palate.  Now that I've become accustomed to the veggie ways we figured we should try another veggie burger recipe.

A veggie burger has now been my go-to meal when I go out with some of my friends to watch hockey games. As they chow down on their chicken wings (As I stare) I get the veggie burger with a side of deep fried pickles. Not a very healthy meal I know but I've become a veggie burger connoisseur of sorts. 

Although I now enjoy the veggie burgers, one of my biggest temptations is the BigMac. Ms. Boyardee's family sends me pictures of BigMacs and I am always tempted to go to the closest Mcdonalds and binge out. Luckily, I got a large bag of BigMac sauce for christmas this year and have been putting it on pretty much everything to crush my cravings...even cereal. The day before we made this recipe we got a Mcdonalds coupon book in the mail...2 for 1 BigMac meals...I told Ms. Boyardee we needed to make burgers the next night and buy a shredder or I was gonna give in. 

The recipe is simple enough, cook some brown rice, add some cooked chick peas, and mash them both together until they have the consistency of ground meat. We then add an egg, shallots, garlic and parsley. We then make tiny little "meat" patties and cook them on stovetop in some olive oil until golden brown. 

The recipe calls for lettuce leaf bus to make it healthier and I did't mind them but I think I would have much preferred a bun...more BigMac-like. We topped the burgers with red onion, roasted peppers and dijon mustard. The burgers were good but what made them GREAT was an addition of the BigMac sauce....even Ms. Boyardee was sold. The pictures are again magnificent, and I plan on smuggling in BigMac sauce wherever I go from this point on. 

A: 7/10

J: 7/10...8.5/10 with BigMac sauce

Recipe #12: [Big Quoty] Summer Rolls with Carrot-Ginger Dipping Sauce

What's better to make in the dead of winter than some nice summer rolls...probably anything...but Ms. Boyardee was feeling particularly asian-ish so we chose to make this simple recipe for all my viewers from the east. This website says I have FIVE views from South Korea....which is kind of ridiculous to me...but I am now 99% certain this blog would go viral in North Korea if Kim-Jong-Un wasn't blocking it from the viewers....nevertheless, we purchased some rice papers from the asian-pantry at the supermarket and went to work on our summer rolls.

Just a side note, I always thought these things were called spring rolls...and I am kind of confused as to which season I am eating.

The recipe is pretty easy and all it requires is rice paper, beats, carrots, bell peppers, radishes, and cucumber. The sauce is a mix of carrots, shallots, ginger, rice vinegar, soy sauce, and sesame oil (we added peanut butter which was possibly the greatest idea ever).

The recipes says to cut all the vegetables into "matchsticks" which sounds way easier than it actually is. Maybe I was just really poor at it because Ms. Boyardee had all the cucumbers and beets done while I was widling away at my third baby carrot. What felt like forever later, all the matchsticks were complete (they look more like lighter consistency) and it was time for the rolling of the rice paper.

Unlike some of my friends and hippie's from the 70s, I don't have very much experience with rolling any type of paper, and rice paper is pretty much the worst material imaginable because it sticks to everything and rips if you breathe on it. Ms. Boyardee was rolling like a Cuban cigar factory worker and I finally finished one roll and placed it on the finished plate....it didn't make the cut. Ms. Boyardee told me it looked like a wet used condom.....how appetizing. I decided to put my efforts towards the sauce.

Compared to rolling, the sauce was a piece of cake. I just had to be careful not to use to much sesame oil as one drop to much pretty much ruined everything. We made one batch of sauce without peanut butter and one batch with peanut butter. We added what Ms. Boyardee calls my "icing sugar peanut butter" which is just a plain jar of skippy. The peanut butter really made the sauce unbelievable and we pretty much threw out the other sauce.

I hated eating these things because as soon as you dipped the roll in the sauce all the "matchsticks" would fall out and if you ate one of the ones that I rolled it would just fall apart in your hands. All in all, not a bad meal but next time I'll save it for summer.

Ms. B: 6.5/10
J: 5/10

Recipe #11: Poached Egg Tomato Soup

Ms. Boyardee has already informed our readers of this post even before I wrote it so there's some pressure from the chef to keep this blog going more consistently and I love her and her food so I'll do that and you can expect some more recipes over the holiday season.

This recipe is the EASIEST recipe that we have had on the blog thus far...at least the soup portion. The soup has less ingredient than a PB & J sandwich and for all you culinary experts out there....that's three. Number One: Large can of crushed tomatoes (I skillfully completed the opening of this can without cutting myself-- hint: use can opener ), Number two: Garlic ( we added 300% more than recommended garlic intake as per usual), Number 3: Water (abundantly available via your tap). Bring all those ingredients to a boil and voila, tomato soup.

Ms. Boyardee and I added some spices like black pepper, salt, crushed red chilies because with thought it would be a little bland. The recipe then calls for toasted baguette bread with raw garlic rubbed onto it which surprisingly adds a lot of flavour.  Then the hard part comes along... the poached egg.

Now I knew we had to tread lightly with these poached eggs. Ms. Boyardee and eggs don't get along too well sometimes. She refers to over-easy eggs as "dippy toast eggs" as do all the Boyardees and I have become accustomed to this lingo. If the eggs she's preparing become over-hard or "un-dippyable", it is then un-edible in her mind. Most times she gets it on her first try, if not, the second try, and if not, I PRAY the third try before the eggs start hitting walls. 

All this to be said, I started cracking the eggs to be poached and I cracked three of them in a row, all "un-dippyable"  as I broke the yolk so I dismissed myself from this job (I'll stick to opening tomato cans). I then sat back and watched the master at work, four perfect eggs in row. The key is to bring the soup down from boiling to a medium heat and carefully insert the eggs (ideally all at almost the same time) beneath the liquid. The eggs cook in a couple minutes to a perfect "dippable" consistency and then when you eat the soup, the yolk adds a ton of flavour. The garlic covered bread is also put into the soup and both the yolk and the bread add  a lot to the flavour so even the bland tomato soup would have tasted amazing. 

We topped the plate with some fresh basil and of course washed it down with some vino. All in all the recipe was over(ly) easy (Ha...egg jokes) and will meet your egg-spectations ( Ok...I'll stop). You can tell which picture is ours below by the insertion of wine for water (always a good trade). 

J: 7/10 "eggs-eptional"

A: 6/10 "Could have been dippy-er"

Recipe #10- Vegetarian Chili

It's getting colder every week and nothing is better than some hot spicy chili in the cold weather. The idea came from when Ms. Boyardee and I went to the Wine & Food show in the Ottawa area. I was surprised by how much of the food there was vegetarian, but I was also a little distracted.

Now maybe it was the ridiculous amount of wine, beer or liquor but in one clear moment I recall getting a glass of wine with Ms. Boyardee and almost being left behind. As she looked back, I was just staring at a large vat of meat-filled chili like it was a swimsuit model. Ms. Boyardee called over the janitor the wipe off the drool on the floor and it was decided that we'd try the vegetarian chili from the book.

Now the book has a fairly simple, bean and veggie based, chili but it also talks about ways to spice up the recipe with "the fixings". Obviously Ms. Boayrdee and I had to have ALL the fixings which included yogurt, toasted pumpkin seeds, green onions, toasted tortilla, cilantro, sweet onion, tomato, cheese, corn, lime wedges, and avocado. This chili was going to be as loaded as I was at the Wine & Food show.

I got home from work, and Ms. Boyardee and I realized that we had no wine, so we took a trip to the local depanneur for some cheap wine. The wine we chose was called "Fucquet" which I am assuming is pronounced " Fuck-it" so obviously we had to buy it based on the name alone.

The hardest part of this recipe was preparing all the fixings. At one point I was getting the corn ready and had to shuck it while drinking fucquet and then clearly had to include that comment in this blog because I'm immature. While I got the fixings  ready, Ms. Boyardee browned some onions, garlic, poblano peppers and a crap load of wicked spices that I really can't distinguish between. Once they were browned we added all the beans and some tomatoes and vegetable stock and voila, veggie chili.

As you can see there were a lot of fixings. We skimped out on the limes but I think my picasso-esque drawing more than makes up for that omission.

The picture is yet again an exact replica. Just so you readers know, the real one is the closest one, it's hard to tell but what gives it away is the lack of beer in the glass. Ms. Boyardee took too long with the fixings and I couldn't help myself.

Ms. B: 7.0
J: 7.5

Recipe #9: Green Vegetable Curry

So again its been a little while since my last post and now Ms. Boyardi told me I wasn't allowed to eat any more of her cooking until I wrote a blog….and here we are. She knows how to motivate me. One of the maybe 20 fans of the blog gave us an idea to have a rating system for each recipe. I discussed this with Ms. Boyardi and obviously…she chose garlic cloves as a means of rating the recipes. The more garlic cloves out of 10, the better. Feel free to go back on all the recipes and look at how each of us rated them. Ms. Boyardi may just be the most intense food critic out there.

As for this recipe, I am a sucker for curry, anything with curry in it, I am a fan of. Thai and indian food have to be some of my favs and for me this one was great. For Ms. Boyardi on the other hand, this recipe rivalled that of the infamous potato gallette that nearly cost the Boyardi family an oven and three pans.  The recipe is simple, shitake mushrooms, green beans, red bell pepper and baby bok choy in a green curry sauce over rice topped with fresh basil.

We cooked up all of the vegetables, started cooking the rice and then finally added the coconut green curry sauce.  To be fair, the recipe calls for green curry paste and coconut milk, but we couldn't find paste at the grocery store and settled for a pre-made sauce, that may be why Ms. Boyardi disliked it.
She compared the taste to "toothpaste and cleaner"  ( she's apparently tried that mixture before I guess) and apparently immediately gave her " the mouth waters" when she took a bite. I only get the "mouth waters" when shooting Jack Daniels ( or any alcohol some would say), and it means A. I'm going to soon puke,  and or B. I'm going to swallow an obscene amount of times and look retarded for 10-15 minutes. This green vegetable curry apparently had the same affect on Ms. Boyardi which meant I got the leftovers for my lunch the next day. I assure you, it tastes just fine.

Rating:

Ms. B: 0.5/10 " Pretty much inedible"
J:  6.5 10 " Delish"

Recipe #8: Thirty Clove Garlic Soup

Annnnnnnd we're back. There was a couple weeks hiatus with no blog posts as both Ms. Boyardee's and I's computer went on the fritz....probably TOO many views in this blog...that's gotta be it. Now I am attempting to write this blog on my tablet, and I feel like I'm back on dial-up internet but as Ms. Boyardee reported the fans cannot wait any longer.

This recipe was entirely if my own doing, meaning Ms. Boyardee wasn't even there, and I survived it for the most part. Garlic is one ingredient that in my mind can make any recipe better. When the recipe calls for no garlic, its a safe bet Ms. Boyardee will only put about a full clove or two, just to be sure. Annually she probably consumes enough garlic to warn off Dracula, and all of team Edward ( he's the vampire one, I looked it up). Little did I know, garlic has natural immunity boosting powers and, if consumed in the quantities that Ms. Boyardee cooks with, can be a natural laxative and/or gas producer. Fun stuff for someone who never regularly consumed  garlic and was meeting the Boyardee family for one of the first times. I remember we made a similar recipe to this one, and like clockwork, gas started building up until the point I thought we'd have a Hindenburg-like explosion. I politely excused myself, let one go in the washroom and decided at that point...it was time to go. I made up an excuse of late night hockey, and left before I fumigated the place. I was Mario Andretti all the way home.

Over the years with Ms. Boyardee I have built up somewhat of a garlic tolerance and in true Ms. Boyardee fashion, I decided to up the stakes on the garlic quota. The recipe called for two heads of garlic, I added the two heads of garlic, and raised two ELEPHANT garlic heads. Elephant garlic heads are about the size of a big grapefruit and each clove can be the size of a lemon, I added a picture just so you can visualize how stupid I was in adding this much garlic to one dish.

The recipe itself is easy as pie. Actually its easier than pie, pie is hard to make. All you have to do is boil the insane amount of garlic with some potatoes, add pepper and olive oil, and puree it. Then you add copious amounts of Parmesan cheese to it with some bread and it's absolutely delicious.  What you don't want to do. is add that much garlic and then it eat, for 2-3 days in a row for lunch at work. Every step I took I almost farted and would DEFINITELY get fired for the resultant fumes. Proceed with caution. 

Ms. Boyardee also tried the soup and confirmed my original hypothesis. The taste however is worth it and the picture, is Ms. Boyardee-esque if I do say so myself.

Rating:

Ms. B: 4/10 ( I think this would be lower if she wasn't trying to spare my feelings)
J: 6.5/10 -1( for the ensuing flatulence) = 5.5/10