Vegetarian Goulash

Easy, tasty, loaded with starch and protein, and very little measuring required!

Preparation/cook time: 45 minutes; serves 6-ish

Ingredients:

• 4-ish servings of spiral pasta
• Half a package of vegetarian "ground beef" (Quorn, Morning Star, etc.)
• One large can of stewed tomatoes
• One can of corn (or half a package of frozen corn)
• Half a jar of tomato sauce
• Two fistfuls of grated cheese
• Sliced green olives (the more the better)

Preparation:

• Boil the pasta until it's slightly al dente; drain well
• Mix pasta, "ground beef," tomatoes, corn, olives and cheese in a large casserole dish
• Add pasta sauce until everything is sufficiently gooey, but not so much the casserole is floating in it
• Sprinkle with more grated cheese, if desired
• Bake 30 minutes on 350℉

Variations:

• Substituting Italian olive salad for the plain green olives is pretty fantastic.
• If you know something about cooking (or are just feeling adventurous) you can experiment with adding herbs and spices - it's tasty on its own, but it was particularly good when I added "Pasta Sprinkle" (sweet basil, Turkish oregano, thyme and garlic).
• Note: you can make this with gluten-free pasta, but it can't be simultaneously gluten-free and vegetarian - most meat substitutes use some form of gluten to hold it together, so you have to use real meat for the gluten-free variety.

Falafel

Important Note: This recipe is a scaled-down (by half) version of one that feeds about 30 people (which is what I used for the Sunday Night Dinner). By default, this should feed about 15, and so do the math to figure out how much of what things you need for the given size. Mostly, it’s helpful to note that chickpeas get surprisingly large over night, and so when you purchase the dried chickpeas, bear in mind that they will probably feed more than you think. Furthermore, this recipe does not include the recipe for Tahini sauce, which is traditionally used as a topping.

Also, the spices listed here can be messed around with. When I last made falafel it was not as herby as I would have liked, and so these are measures in accordance with more Lebanese tastes. If you like your falafel to taste like nothing, then feel free to toy with spice amounts – particularly cinnamon and coriander, which give it most of its deep flavor.

Ingredients

½ kg dried chickpeas
½ cup fresh parsley, chopped
½ cup fresh cilantro, chopped
1 head garlic, peeled and crushed
2 medium-sized onions, chopped
2 eggs
Lots of olive oil (for frying)

Other Ingredients – To the Taste

½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground cumin
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon paprika
½ teaspoon ground black pepper
1 teaspoon ground, dried coriander

Instructions

Soak chickpeas in water overnight for 24 hours, making sure the pot is plenty big to accommodate the beans as they grow. Drain well. Get a large container and mix chickpeas, chopped parsley, chopped cilantro, chopped onions and spices. Use a food process to grind it to a relatively fine texture (stop every now and then to make sure the blade doesn’t get stuck too long) – don’t worry if it doesn’t seem to hold together quite yet. When this is done and all of the processed mix is in a container, mix eggs into it (to better bind it together). Mash it all together until it is consistent, then begin forming into balls and then slightly flatten them until they are around 2 inches in diameter (no more!). Try to make sure they are well-packed so they don’t fall apart when you plop them into the oil to fry.

Heat oil in a deep pan over high heat, then fry until browned, adding in the same number of patties each time. Lay to rest on a cooling rack covered with paper towels to de-oil them somewhat and let them cool.

Serve with tahini sauce with some form of pita-like bread, with cucumbers, tomatoes and olives.

Kotlets

This is the Iranian food that I've made a couple of the times at the house.  They are the oval-shaped fried pieces of deliciousness.  Recipe as follows:

Ingredients

1 lb ground beef
1.5 lb potatoes, yellow, yukon
4 eggs
2 tsp salt
1 tsp turmeric
0.5 tsp pepper
Oil (olive preferred)
Flour

Instructions

Peel the potatoes, cut into quarters, and boil then in a pot in which you can mash them until they are soft enough that a knife sticks through them easily.  Drain them and mash them (with a ricer, if you have one available - it makes it much easier) until they are very well mashed - you don't want any big chunks, and as few little chunks as possible.

Mix the ground beef, eggs, salt, turmeric, and pepper together in a separate bowl until uniform.  Add the now-mashed potatoes, and mix all together until everything is of one consistency.

Put a fair bit of oil in a frying pan (at least a centimetre of oil, perhaps more - you are basically going to be deep frying these one side at a time) and turn the heat on.  Make smallish-flatish-ovals out of the potatoe-meat mixture.  You can vary the size as you like, but I usually make them somewhat smaller than my palm.  Play around with what you like.  You probably want them ~1.5 centimetres thick (although, that's just a rough estimate).  Bread with flour.  Place in the frying pan with the oil that has now heated up.  You can, and should, fill up the frying pan with these.  Watch the side that is in the oil; once one side is done, you will need to turn it over to fry the other side.  

It's hard for me to describe how to know when one side is done frying.  I know when they're done because I've seen my dad make them and have eaten them a lot and know how brown they should get, but that doesn't particularly help you.  The kotlets will get brown as they fry.  You want them pretty brown, but not charred.  If in doubt, cook a bit longer than you'd like - you'll soon find out if it's too cooked, as things will taste a bit charred, but they still taste pretty good, and you can easily adjust from there.

So yeah, fry on both sides, then take them out of the oil.  As you take kotlets out of the oil, add new ones in, so that you have approximately the same number in the pan and all times (so that the oil does not heat up too fast).  Add more oil as necessary.  When you take the kotelts out, let them sit on a cooling rack for a bit, or at least between some paper towels to get some of the oil off.  

Enjoy!

Baked Mac & Cheese

As seen at Sunday night dinner!

1 lb of pasta
2 tbsp olive oil
1/4 cup flour
2 cups milk
2 tsp salt
2 tsp mustard
2 cups grated cheddar
Ground pepper to taste

- Preheat oven to 400°.
- Bring water to boil and cook the pasta.
- Heat oil over low to medium heat and stir in flour with a whisk. Add in the milk, continuing to stir until the lumps dissolve.
- Remove sauce from heat and stir in the salt, pepper, mustard, and cheese.
- Put the pasta in a casserole dish, mix in the sauce, and bake for about 20 minutes.

Makes about 6 servings. Multiply ingredients as needed for more.

(note: feel no pressure to actually bake, as it will still be delicious if you don't)

Chicken Scallopini

Here's a main course I plan to make for you all in the fall, but if anyone wants to try it out before then, by all means get cooking! The pictured instructions pretty much cover everything, but you might want to include some vegetables and/or rice along with the chicken to make more of a balanced meal.