Farfalle with Asparagus and Smoked Salmon

Ingredients:
1 (8 ounce) package farfalle pasta
1/2 cup fresh steamed asparagus tips
1 ounce smoked salmon, chopped
1 lemon, juiced
1 tablespoon chopped pistachio nuts
1 teaspoon chopped fresh basil
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
Directions:
In a large pot of salted boiling water, cook pasta until al dente, rinse under cold water and drain.

Steam the asparagus over boiling water and cook until tender but still firm. Drain, cool and chop.

In a large bowl, combine the pasta, asparagus, smoked salmon, lemon juice, pistachios, basil, olive oil, and salt and pepper. Mix well and refrigerate for 2 hours. Remove from refrigerator and serve at room temperature

Recipe: RAW TACOS

Raw vegan walnut taco ‘meat’

1 ½ c raw walnuts
1 ½ t ground cumin
¾ t ground coriander
2 t braggs (I just used soy sauce, which is not technically raw)
Pinch of cayenne

Grind walnuts in food processor to a meat like texture add remaining ingredients and mix.

Cashew Cheeze

1 ½ t garlic, about two cloves
½ t sea salt
1 c raw cashews
2 ½ t fresh lemon juice
¼ c filtered water

Place garlic and salt in a food processor; process into small pieces. Add cashews and process into paste. Add lemon juice and water, process well.

Serve on a leafy green (I used romaine) with avocado and homemade pico. Yum!

March 2010: SEX AND THE CITY

“The only thing that I have ever successfully made in the kitchen is a mess. And several little fires. [Carrie]”

Lucky for us we are a lot better in the kitchen than Carrie.

Saturday found Cooking Club a la Sex and the City. Dishes were prepared that boasted aphrodisiac qualities and inspired by S&TC.

Ashley hosted a fun and colorful meeting.

Most of us dressed with character inspiration.

Ashley started the party with pomegranate cosmos garnished with blueberries. Yum.
Michele made Oyster Rockefeller. Amazing! I had four!
Janet prepared a delicious Cream of Asparagus soup.
Christina prepared a Farfalle with Asparagus and Smoked Salmon dish. More yum.
I tried out a Raw Taco recipe inspired by Smith (remember he worked at a raw restaurant). I made ground walnut taco meat and cashew cheeze and garnished the tacos with avocado and homemade cherry tomato pico.
Bonnie concluded the evening with Pistachio and Rose Water Cupcakes. Oh my, these were wonderful. Who needs Magnolia's?
Ashley prepared these wonderfully cute goodie bags filled with all sorts of fun stuff.
It was a fabulous meeting. Conversation as always was very lively and included a very, um, colorful Q&A game. We recalled some of our favorite S&TC moments, discussed our favorite characters and just had a lot of girl fun.

Way to go Ashley. Smashing success.

Note: Pictures were taken with 3 different cameras. Someone's battery went dead. Ooops.

January 2010 - Crock Pot Challenge

Crock Pot Challenge - The speediest Cooking Club ever!

Everything, and I mean everything, needed to be made using a crock pot. Hence the speed and ease of this cooking club. And by speed I mean, the time it took us to eat.

Great fun! Let's go see.
All the different pots. Gotta love Heidi's old school rectangle one.
And leading with Heidi, she prepared a warm and cozy mulled wine.
For our appetizer, Christiana prepared a sweet and savory, sausage, cabbage and apple dish. So good, the indigents really complemented each other.
Tina prepared a wonderful Thai inspired soup. Tina makes wonderful soups. We also discussed how we all need to get a immersion blender.
Ashley made these awesome pulled pork sandwiches, which she marinated in root beer. She also made her own barbecue sauce and a tasty cabbage salad that was added to the sandwiches.

I made a macaroni and cheese inspired by Paula Dean. I wasn't too impressed with how it turned it out-wasn't happy with the texture.
Bonnie made a vegan Jambalaya. She served it over rice and added tofu sausage, which was quite impressive. Very comforting.

In fact, everything was very comforting. Given the rain and cold we have been having this was the perfect theme for the season. Good pickin Bonnie!
And what I believe to be a cardinal sin, there was no dessert. I believe this is the first ever CC without a dessert. Gasp! Unfortunately, Janet bailed the day of, due to a sick kid and Bonnie claimed she didn't have enough time to prepare a proper dessert in a crock pot. We made due with the tasty mulled wine, but I'm sure this will be something we do not soon forget. And I'm sure there will be some continued controversy over this faux pas.

Anyway, we sped through this CC because there was very little prep.

We discussed options for our next meeting and came up with a great theme that Ashley will host - A Sex and The City theme. This is sure to be fabulous.
Also, Bonnie showed off her NKOTB dance. Yes, that would be Jordon there on the TV.
We ended the evening with some of us going to a wine bar in the WC and hearing many "Bonnie" stories.
Good Times!

One less turkey slaughtered

So my family strives to make a (mostly) vegan Thanksgiving every year. We've done the tofurkey thang, stuffed acorn squash, butternut squash risotto, seitan in wine sauce, etc. This year we used some recipes that I obtained from an American Cancer Society presentation that I attended a few weeks ago. The ACA recommends a, 'plant based,' diet-apparently using the term vegan is still a bit taboo. The chef who led the demonstration also works at Millennium (heaven) in SF.

We started with Sopa Verde-a pureed creation of tasty kale, tomatillos, pumpkin seeds, cilantro, parsley, potato, etc.

A close-up of the main course, Gnocchi made of masa, chunks of roasted butternut squash and kidney beans. The brown speckles you see- homemade pecan sausage. You have not lived until you have had this pecan sausage. My mom kept exclaiming, "it tastes just like sausage!" You won't be missing your protein with this dish-nuts, beans, corn, go crazy.

How it all came together. We always have homemade cranberry sauce and added some spinach sauteed with garlic for more color. My mom also made sweet potato ravioli that I passed on because she could not guarantee that the won ton wrappers were egg-free and had thrown out the package. The gnocchi mixture was served on a pool of homemade mole sauce. Unfortunately I did not get a good pic of the mole sauce but it was my first mole ever and I feel like a new woman.

Dessert. Recipes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. These were a hit two years ago so I decided to give them an encore performance and because they are very simple to make but most impressive.

Vegan Potato and Leek Soup

INGREDIENTS

1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
2 leeks, white and light green parts washed and sliced into 1/4-inch slices
2 cups chopped yellow onion
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 large Yukon Gold potatoes (about 1 pound), peeled and cubed into 1/2-inch cubes
4 cups vegetable stock
2-3 teaspoons fresh rosemary leaves

1. Heat a 4-quart soup pot over medium heat and add the oil.
2. Add the leeks, onion, and sea salt and saute for about 5 minutes, stirring often, until the onion begins to turn translucent.
3. Add the garlic and stir well. Cook for 1 minute more.
4. Add the potatoes and vegetable stock, cover, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to simmer. Cook 20 minutes.
5. Remove the soup from the heat and use an immersion/stick blender to blend the soup in the pot or ladle the soup into a blender, 1 cup at a time. Blend the soup with the fresh rosemary leaves until smooth and free of chunks. Pour smooth soup into a heat-proof bowl and continue until all of the soup has been blended.
6. Transfer the blended soup back to the original soup pot and warm over low heat until heated through. Serve hot.

Serves 4 - 6.

November 2009: Dishes Inspired by Books

On Saturday Cooking Club headed to Sacramento to Tina’s fabulously beautiful new home! And what a charming neighborhood. We all loved it!

For this installment of CC everyone choose a favorite book of theirs as inspiration for a dish. And since we all love reading and eating, it was the perfect theme. People were really creative. Let's go take a look……….
I’m first on the block with drinks. My inspiration came from James Frey’s controversial book A Million Little Pieces. I thought adult beverages would be fitting for this book. And after doing some research to find the perfect drink, I (with the help of Bonnie) found something called Donkey Punch. See here for the recipe. I thought the inspiration for this drink was fitting for James. I then took the symbolism a little further and garnished the drinks with rock sugar candy sticks. Get it people? While the drink would be more fitting on a tropical beach, I heard no complaints.
Michele drew inspiration from the book Geek Love and did Chicken Wings and Veggie Toasts as an appetizer. As always Michele did not disappoint, I could have ate 50 of those chicken wings.

Janet, the girl who loves all things ‘wrong’ and reality, went sensitive on us and went with two of her favorite childrens books – Harriet the Spy and The Trumpet of the Swan. I do have to admit that after hearing about this Swan that hangs out in New York and orders watercress sandwiches from his hotel room, sounds like a pretty cool swan. Going to have to read this book soon. Therefore, Janet prepared pretty little Watercress Sandwiches. She also prepared Tomato Sandwiches inspired from the book Harriet the Spy.
Christina went with the ever popular Harry Potter Series and prepared a British inspired Potato and Leek Soup. And it appears that Bonnie is the only Cooking Club member that has never picked up a Harry Potter book.
Bonnie drew inspiration for her Sherpard’s Pie form the hilarioulsy funny book Bridget Jones's Diary. She even quoted two instances where Bridget talks about Sherpard’s Pie in the book. Her vegan friendly dish was a perferct Fall dish. Yum.
Tina prepared a wonderfully rich and hearty Greek Lamb Stew inspired by the Pulitzer Prize winning book Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. Everyone there who read this book agreed that it’s a wonderfully complex book worth the read.
And finishing up with dessert, Heidi prepared an incredible German Style Cheese Cake drawing her inspiration from the book The Other Boleyn Girl. Heidi had read that one of Anne Boleyn’s favorite desserts was cheese cake. Super yum. She also prepared a vegan pumpkin pie. Yum again!
It was a great CC filled with wonderful food and talk about some of our favorite reads. The two mixed really well together. Great theme!