Tag Archives: food

Leek Rice

1 Jun

My friends, Ana Yolanda and Angie, have a new found appreciation for cooking. Maybe a little bit inspired by me, who knows.

Lately they’ve invited me a few times to taste a few of the new learnings they’ve had in their weekly cooking class. However, something I have noticed every time they invite me over to taste these recipes is the amounts of butter and calories these recipes have.

This Leek Rice was something they created for me one night… it was the ONLY THING I could eat that night, but I get it. They’re not vegetarians and the menus they learn aren’t either. When I asked how the rice was made, I’ll be honest I can’t fully remember the amount of rice in the recipe, but I do remember that they “needed” to cook the leeks in 2 sticks of butter. WHAT???? 2 sticks of butter!!!!!!

I told them I could certainly be able to replicate this recipe and make it in a much healthier manner – without sacrificing flavor or texture in any way.

You be the judge…

LEEK RICE

3 cups of cooked brown rice, I use Texmati
2 medium leeks, washed and sliced finely, both the white and light green parts
1 tbs olive oil
2 ½ tbs of butter
Salt and Black Pepper to taste
½ cup toasted walnuts
  1. I cooked the rice in a rice cooker… I only seasoned lightly with a little bit of olive oil and salt. When the rice finished, I started on the rest of the dish.
  2. In a large skillet with high sides over medium heat, add the oil and butter. When the butter is melted, add the leeks and season with salt and pepper to taste. Cook, moving them occasionally, until they’re soft. .
  3. Add the rice to the pot where you’re cooking the leeks. Toss well for the rice to be well coated with the leeks and butter. Add the walnuts and mix one more time really well.

That’s it… In my opinion, the rice still has that silky unctuous sensation in the mouth without having to melt 2 full sticks of butter. About ¼ of a stick will do, IMHO.

My mom never had the original version and she loved this one.    What’s your verdict???

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Asian Salad

25 May

What makes this salad Asian??   The vinegar…

Ume Plum Vinegar is something I learned to use in a cooking class I took with Diane Carlson, from the Conscious Gourmet. This vinegar is made from umeboshi plums, which are fermented and therefore salty and sour all at the same time. The vinegar made from these plums is also salty and sour.

When in a rush, I dress salads using this vinegar and I do not need to add nothing else but olive oil for a delicious, exotic salad dressing.

ASIAN SALAD

Your favorite mix of salad greens – lettuces, baby spinach, sprouts
Chopped tomatoes
Sliced cucumbers
Drizzle of ume plum vinegar
Drizzle of olive oil
  1. In a salad bowl or even in your own dinner plate, mix together the salad components.
  2. Drizzle a bit of olive oil and ume plum vinegar over the salad. Toss to combine and dress well.

 

That’s it… enjoy.

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Korean Seasoned Tofu

23 May

I am a lucky girl… I’ve been invited to travel to many places around the world – the most recent invitation, to Seoul, Korea. Or maybe not that lucky, because I didn’t get to go in the end. Long story… but maybe it was just better for me to stay put in my lovely Puerto Rico.

The cool thing… you can travel thru food. And coincidentally I found this recipe for a Korean-style Seasoned Tofu on Serious Eats. It just seemed so simple and easy I had to try it.

You see, I do not need to get on that $2,000 flight to eat great vegetarian Korean food!!!

 

KOREAN SEASONED TOFU

One package firm tofu
2 green onions, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tbs soy sauce
2 tbs water
1 tbs sesame oil
1 tbs toasted sesame seeds
A pinch of red pepper flakes
1 tbs vegetable oil for frying the tofu
  1. Remove the tofu from its package. Cut into ½” pieces and let them drain in between paper towels.
  2. Combine the soy sauce, sesame oil and water in a small bowl. Add the green onions, garlic, sesame seeds, and red pepper flakes. Mix well and set aside.
  4. Heat the vegetable oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Carefully place the tofu slices onto the skillet. Use a splatter guard if you have one… because the tofu slices are only slightly drained and still have plenty of water in them, the oil will splatter A LOT when you fry these tofu slices.
  5. Cook until the tofu is slightly browned on the bottom and getting a bit crispy on the edges, 4 to 5 minutes. Turn the slices over and brown the other side.
  7. Reduce the heat to low and add the soy sauce/sesame seed seasoning over the tofu. Cover the skillet and let steam for 2 to 3 minutes. I usually turn off the stove about 1 minute after covering and continue cooking with the residual heat from the stove and skillet.

Transfer to a plate and serve immediately.

Serve over steamed brown rice…

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Spinach Polenta

20 May

What to eat next to some Creamy Stuffed Mushrooms??    Well Spinach Polenta, of course…

It’s so easy to make. This was the first time my mom ate polenta… at least called polenta. – because she told me that when she was little they would serve something similar but with another complicated name in Spanish.

This is a great way to repurpose creamed spinach or cooked spinach you may have made for crepes…

SPINACH POLENTA

1 cup vegetable broth
½ cup milk
5 tbs quick cooking polenta – but make sure to read and make it according to your package suggested measurements
½ cup of creamy spinach mix – like the one I use to stuff crepes…
2 handfuls of shredded 5 cheese blend
Salt and Pepper to taste
  1. Pour vegetable broth and milk into a medium pot over medium-hi heat and bring to a boil.
  2. Add the polenta slowly while whisking the liquid to avoid any lumps. Stir occasionally until the mixture reaches your desired consistency. I like it smooth for this preparation.
  3. Turn off the heat and add the creamy spinach mix and the shredded cheese. Mix well using a spoon until it’s all well combined. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
  4. Leave covered until ready to serve.

If you’d like, you could also add about ¼ cup of Parmesan cheese to add more flavor to it…

 

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Vegetarian Vegas – Other Notables and Pending Places…

18 May

Last month we went to Las Vegas… it was the first time for me, the second one for my Mom. Because we’re not that into gambling, we decided to spend our time visiting the fabulous hotels and casinos, lunching at delicious restaurants and at night, enjoy the extraordinary nightlife and shows.

Let’s do this chronologically…

New York New York Hotel – Il Fornaio

We started most of our days with stops at the New York New York hotel – the hotel so nice they had to name it twice 🙂  Our hotel shuttle would leave us to start our daily Vegas adventures. It is also the home for Zumanity, the first of the Cirque du Soleil shows we went to. Nice place to start… it’s a small theater in comparison to the others we saw and the theme is very risqué and very apropos to the image I had in my head of Vegas.

Afterwards we had dinner at Il Fornaio, an Italian restaurant right next to the Zumanity Theater. I’ll be honest – I was for a while confused with this restaurant thinking that it was a Vegas arm of the Rhode Island restaurant Al Forno, famous for developing baked pastas like my favorite Baked Pasta with 4 Cheeses… The names are soooo similar, no? I was disappointed there were no baked pastas suitable for vegetarians, but was glad they had a VEGETARIAN vegetable soup, meaning made with vegetable broth and not chicken broth. It was comforting on a chilly Vegas night.

MGM Grand Resort

The next night we went to see Ka from Cirque du Soleil. SPECTACULAR!!!!! Simply superb… I was so taken by surprise. I did not expect at all the visual overload we experienced. Fully recommend it.

Ka is shown at the MGM Grand Resort. We tried to eat at two places at the MGM Grand – The Wolfgang Puck Bar & Grill and ‘wichcraft, Tom Colicchio’s sandwich place. We checked out the menu at Wolfgang Puck’s place and it seemed super nice… I loved the ambiance too. It’s an open restaurant that you can see straight from the casino floor, but the day we decided to eat there, CLOSED. Apparently some filming or something… and the sandwich place, we looked for it, but never saw it. Could someone please tell us where it is???

 

Vegetarian Picnic @ The Grand Canyon

The next day… Grand Canyon Trip. We opted to travel with Grand-Adventures.com because they offered a sunset walking trip. How nice!!! Start with breakfast, followed by a stop at Hoover Dam, another stop somewhere along Route 66, a picnic overlooking the Grand Canyon, some walking thru the Grand Canyon Southern Rim trails and a drive back to Las Vegas.

I was a bit skeptical of the breakfast and lunch options – McDonald’s Breakfast and Arby’s Lunch, WHAT?!?!?!  Lucky for us online menus and ingredient lists exist. We could order ANYTHING we wanted at MacDonald’s, but I had not stepped inside a McD in over 10 years. I used to love their fries and chocolate shakes until I learned all their potato products are generously sprinkled with beef broth. Yep!!! But we maneuvered thru the menu and got a Brown Sugar Oatmeal with Apples and Raisins, Apple Pie and Orange Juices. Surprisingly satisfying for a fast-food joint… 

And lunch… we could pick among all the Market Fresh sandwich menu at Arby’s, a fast food chain that was very short-lived in Puerto Rico, mostly known for their roast beef sandwiches. Well… because LV is so close to the West Coast, they do not offer them openly in their menu, but you could order a vegetarian sandwich – just imagine any of these sandwiches here, but without the meat filling – 2 kinds of cheese, lettuce, tomato, red onions, mustard… you could even order it w/o the mayo. The view was spectacular, so the food, to be honest took second billing.

You work up an appetite when climbing the Grand Canyon...

Sunset at the Grand Canyon South Rim

The Bellagio

The next day we went to see O at The Bellagio, the logest-running of the Cirque du Soleil Vegas shows. It’s AMAZING!!! I was afraid people had hyped it so much for me that I would not enjoy it. But it is everything people told me and MORE… I hope I am not overhyping it for you…

But O is not the only spectacular show at The Belaggio… the décor inside the front desk with Chihuly’s glass sculptures on the ceiling, the wonderful interior gardens and the Fountains in front are just sublime. We got to watch a few shows there – some in the afternoons, and a few at night. I got some video, but it does not do them justice.  I would definitely stay at this hotel if given the opportunity… lovely, just lovely and elegant.

We went to the later 10PM show for O. We were not hungry before and by the time the show ends at 11:30PM, it was too late to have dinner at Olives by Todd English. I was so much looking forward to eat here because one of the first recipes I did when I discovered online recipes was their marinated olives recipe… We were eating olives for almost a month. I went overboard with the measures, as if I was really doing them for a restaurant crowd. Now Olives is in my TO EAT list on my next Vegas or NYC trip.

Another place we wanted to try was the Mandalay Bay… we visited there one morning and of course all the restaurants were closed still. There we wanted to try several places – Fleur by Hubert Keller, Aureole by Charlie Palmer, with their impressive wine tower where the “Wine Angels” suspend in wires to get your favorite bottle of wine. Amazing, even when they’re just taking inventory in the morning hours…

My mom really was taken by the menu from China Grill, she really wanted some Asian food. Unfortunately, China Grill is only open for dinner and our theater options were not close to Mandalay. I promise her we will eat here on our next trip. And we also wanted to try Border Grill from Top Chef Masters Mary Sue Milliken and Susan Feniger. Unfortunately for us, the menu is not very vegetarian-friendly. Although the quinoa fritters Mary Sue made last week on Top Chef Masters seemed interesting enough to consider again.

I hope if you’re vegetarian like us you also get to experience Las Vegas as deliciously was we did… and until the next trip, Ta ta!!!

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