Moroccan-Style Turkey and Chickpeas

The original version of this recipe from Cooking Light called for ground lamb, not turkey.  I'm kind of weird about lamb - every time I try it I'm not really a fan, except when it's ground and covered in spices (usually Indian spices).  I would have made this recipe with ground lamb, if my closest grocery actually had any....that day they did not. So I subbed in ground turkey and it was just fine.  This was a tasty meal - very easy to prepare and great flavors.  I ate it leftover the next day for lunch and it was still great.

Ingredients

1 pound lean ground turkey (or lamb, if your store has it)
2 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 cups sliced onion
1/2 cup (1/4-inch) diagonally cut carrot
3/4 teaspoon ground cumin
3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground coriander
1/4 teaspoon ground red pepper
2 cups fat-free, lower-sodium chicken broth
1/2 cup golden raisins (I left these out.  I hate raisins.)
3 tablespoons tomato paste
1 1/2 tablespoons grated lemon rind
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 (15 1/2-ounce can) chickpeas (garbanzo beans), rinsed and drained
1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

Preparation

1. Heat a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add turkey to the pan; cook 6 minutes, stirring to crumble. Remove turkey from pan with a slotted spoon. Discard drippings. Add oil to pan; swirl to coat.

Add onion and carrot to pan; sauté 4-8 minutes. Add cumin, cinnamon, coriander, and pepper; sauté 30 seconds, stirring constantly. Add reserved turkey, broth, and next 5 ingredients (through chickpeas); bring to a boil. Reduce heat, and simmer until mixture thickens.

Remove from heat. Stir in cilantro and lemon juice.  I served it with a small amount of basmati rice to help soak up the liquid.

Lightened up cheeseburger mac casserole

So back in the day, when I was first starting out cooking, I was a fan of making the Hamburger Helper meals. They were relatively easy, one pot meals and all you needed to add was raw hamburger.  Of course, they are based on sauce partially coming from a powder and they all processed out the wazoo, but hey, a cook's gotta start somewhere.

Because of this, I have a special place in my heart for when someone "fancies up" what could have been a Hamburger or Tuna Helper meal (sometime I'll post my take on Emeril's tuna tetrazini).  

This is another of those recipes.  However!  This particular recipe also shows the importance of always reading the online comments of those who have tried it before you.  Sometimes people's postings just show that they are idiots that don't know how to cook but sometimes they are quite valuable.  This recipe is from Hungry Girl and I actually saw her make it on her show.  On the show, she threw everything in a crock pot and 8 hours later on low/4 on high, it came out looking tasty.  But if you read the reviews of practically everyone who has made it, it comes out as disgusting mush.  This has to do mainly with some slow cookers running hotter than others (I found I couldn't even cook meat in my old one on high without it coming out tough!) but it's good to know.  Other commenters on the FN site mentioned that they had just cooked everything on the stove top and it worked out much better.  So, I took that route.  I also made a few substitutions based on the ingredients I could find/already had available.  And it turned out delicious!!  If you do want to make it her way, be my guest....but don't be surprised if you get mush at the end.

My version of her cheeseburger mac casserole

Ingredients

5 oz. (about 1 1/4 cups) uncooked elbow macaroni (I used a mix of whole grain macaroni and quinoa macaroni)
16 oz. raw lean ground turkey (I used 93% lean)
3 tbsp. ketchup (I have the fancy "unsweetened" ketchup)
1 chopped onion
Two 10 oz. frozen cauliflower and low-fat cheese sauce (like the kind by Green Giant) packages (the original recipe calls for one 24 oz. pack but I searched 2 stores and they didn't have that size)
1 wedge The Laughing Cow Light Creamy Swiss cheese

4 oz shredded Cabot 75% reduced fat sharp cheddar cheese
2 scallions, thinly sliced
salt and black pepper
Hot sauce (optional)

Preheat your oven to 375.

Combine the turkey and onion in a saucepan over medium heat.  Meanwhile, cook your pasta to al dente in another pot.  Stir the turkey and onion until both are cooked through thoroughly.  Take your frozen cauliflower packages out of their boxes, cut a hole in the plastic pouches, and microwave them till heated.

Once the turkey and onion are cooked, add the ketchup to the pan and stir well.  Then carefully stir in your Laughing Cow wedge, green onions, cauliflower and cheese sauce, and pasta.  Add salt and pepper.  Add in all but 1/4 cup of your shredded cheese.  Then, pour the entire mixture into an 8x8 glass baking pan.  Sprinkle the remaining cheese on top and bake until melted and gooey, about 15 minutes (or you can save this step and serve it right then and there).

We ate it with a bit more salt and pepper to taste and some hot sauce!  It was delicious.

Not the prettiest picture ever, but you get the idea.

Stuffed squash

At the moment, all of my squash seems to be coming in at once.  I'll walk out one day to see some cute little 3 inch baby squash and come out the next to see mutant jumbo squash in its place.  So I've been trying different recipes with squash.  I chopped some up with some other veggies and threw them in foil and grilled them. I made some pretty delicious zucchini bread.  And now I've made stuffed squash.  

It all started out by seeing a recipe in my Cooking Light cookbook for cheesy beef and rice casserole. I've had some blocks of cheese in my fridge I've been meaning to use up, so this seemed like the perfect application. And Joe doesn't turn anything down if it has cheese on it.  But the recipe itself sounded more like a filling for something than a meal (in their notes they even say that it would be great inside burritos).  So I thought I'd kill two birds with one stone and use up my cheese and extra squash by making stuffed squash.

One of my zucchini squash had gotten to gargantuan size so I thought that the standard cut zucchini in half, scoop out contents and stuff with filling idea may not work.  Then I saw this super cute alternative to this approach on this blog.  Basically you make little "bowls" out of pieces of squash. Neat!

My massive zucchini.  I named him Bernie.

So I started on the recipe.  Now I change things up sometimes based on what I have already, so I've made some alterations to the original casserole.  My version is below.

Cheesy turkey and rice casserole stuffing 

1/2 pound ground turkey (I use 93% lean) 

1 cup chopped onion 

1 cup chopped green bell pepper 

1/4 cup water 

1 tablespoon chili powder 

1 teaspoon ground cumin 

1/2 teaspoon dried oregano (I had fresh, so I used it instead)

1 (14.5-ounce) can diced tomatoes, undrained  

1 (4.5-ounce) can chopped green chiles, undrained  

1 cup instant brown rice (uncooked)

1/2 cup fat-free sour cream (I used fat free Greek yogurt)

1/2 cup sliced green onions 

Salt (I used about a teaspoon)
Pepper

Dash of red pepper flakes (totally optional - only add if you want some heat)

3/4 cup (3 ounces) reduced-fat sharp cheddar cheese, grated

Preheat oven to 375.

Cook first 3 ingredients in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat until meat is browned, stirring to crumble. Add water and next 6 ingredients (water through rice); bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer 10 minutes. Uncover and simmer an additional 5-6 minutes, or until rice is cooked. Remove from heat. Add the sour cream and sliced green onions and mix well.  Add salt and pepper to taste.

If you have giant squash, cut them into 3-4 inch long pieces and carefully scoop out the filling, being careful to leave some at the bottom to make a bowl.  Here's a picture of what mine looked like.

The yellow guy you see in the back there was part of a fat yellow squash I already had in my fridge, picked a few days prior from my garden.  I have 4 varieties of squash in my garden.

After doing some scooping out, seeing how much filling could actually fit into the zucchini bowls, and seeing how much filling I had made, I decided to use another (smaller) zucchini from the garden to stuff the traditional way.

Once I had them all carved out, I salted and peppered each one, and then added my filling.  I put them all on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.

I let them bake about 20 minutes, when the squash started to soften.  Then, I added the cheddar cheese to each and let it bake until the cheese was melted and the squash was sufficiently cooked through.

Here's the finished product!

I did still have some filling left over though.  So if you make this recipe and don't have 4-5 squash to use up, I would either halve the filling part of the recipe, or resign yourself to have extra filling you'll just have to make into burritos.  :)

Shrimp and turkey pot stickers....and oh yeah, welcome!

So I kept thinking about starting one of these food blogs after finding so many that I really enjoyed reading, but here I am actually doing it. And here is my inaugural post and first recipe. Now, the reason that I enjoy food blogs is that they are written by real folks toiling away in their home kitchen, learning by trial and error.  The authors tend to give a lot of detail as to how they prepared the dish (including when things go horribly wrong and how they fixed the problem!) and they also tend to have beautiful professional looking photographs accompanying their postings.

I do tend to be a wordy person and I do photograph my cooking results but at least for now I'll be lacking in the fancy-pants photograph side of things.  Hey, I'm learning.



So my inspiration for making these pot stickers came from the fact that one of my Cooking Light cookbooks has an Italian-inspired mushroom won ton recipe in it that I need to try.  In looking at this recipe again, I kept thinking that I had seen a more Asian flavored ground turkey won ton recipe somewhere in the book, but of course I couldn't find it, in that book, or in any other place.  So, I turned to my best friend, Google, and saw what I could come up with.  I ended up finding a great shrimp pot sticker recipe on yet another gorgeous food blog (now bookmarked!).  They had in turn found this recipe from Martha Stewart's website. This blog was especially helpful in showing how to properly fold the wonton wrappers for pot stickers.

Well, given that my original goal was to make ground turkey pot stickers and the fact that I had a lot of bok choy in my fridge to use up, I've slightly altered the recipe that they presented.  So, here's my version, fully acknowledging that my inspiration came from here.



Shrimp and turkey pot stickers
1/4 pound small shrimp, shelled, de-tailed, and deveined
1/3 pound ground turkey (I used 93% lean, which I find to be the best kind)
1 large egg white (I used Egg Beaters instead)
1 teaspoon Sriracha 
1 1/2 teaspoons sesame oil
2 teaspoons low-sodium soy sauce
1 medium carrot (I used about 12 baby carrot sticks, as it's what I had. I chopped them into thirds)
1 1/2 cups bok choy, chopped into thirds
1 teaspoon freshly grated ginger (I used jarred fresh ginger cuz I'm lazy)
2 scallions, chopped
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1/2 onion, chopped into quarters
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 package 3-inch round Chinese dumpling wrappers (available at large
supermarkets) (I was unable to find the round ones and just used square won ton wrappers)
2 tablespoons olive oil

For the dipping sauce:
1/4 cup low-sodium soy sauce
1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil
1 teaspoon rice-wine vinegar
1 scallion, sliced
Sriracha, to taste.  I added about 1/2 teaspoon. Add more if you want it spicier.

In the bowl of a food processor, combine shrimp, turkey egg white, carrot, bok choy, onion, garlic, ginger Sriracha, salt, pepper, sesame oil, and soy sauce. Purée until all the chunkier items (like the carrots, shrimp, and onion) are broken down completely and there are no big chunks.

Get out the won ton wrappers you want to use and keep them in between some damp paper towels.  Re-cover the stack as you take each one. 

Place about 1 teaspoon of filling in the middle of the won ton wrapper. Moisten two edges with some egg (I used Egg Beaters).  Fold the wrapper over to make a triangle and seal all the edges.  Then, sit the wrapper upright and start pinching/pleating around where you sealed it.  These pictures helped me out greatly.  Get a great big dinner plate out and moisten some more paper towels.  As you finish shaping each pot sticker, gently place it underneath the moist paper towels on the plate.  The amount of filling you add is very important: if you add too much filling, it oozes out of the seam when you try to pinch it shut, but if you add too little you've got a pot sticker with all this won ton dough and a sad, too-small pocket of tasty filling.

In a small serving bowl, whisk together ingredients for dipping sauce.

Heat 1 tablespoon oil in a non-stick pan over medium heat until hot.  Carefully add half your pot stickers to the pan and cook until the bottoms are golden brown. This took 2-3 minutes for me.  I carefully would lift a pot sticker to see how brown he was. 

Then, add about a cup of hot water to the pan and cover.  Let it cook 5 minutes.  Take the lid off and let it cook about another 5 minutes, or until all the water has evaporated and the pot stickers start to crisp up a bit on the bottom again.  Carefully remove with a spatula and eat with the dipping sauce!  (You can also keep them warm in an oven if you want to eat all batches of the pot stickers at once).  Then, carefully clean out your pan with a paper towel and repeat this process with the other half of your pot stickers.

Here's a photo of the finished product.  Not the highest quality photo, but you get the idea (hopefully).

And this was only half of the pot stickers I made!

I should also add that this recipe makes quite a lot of pot stickers.  After assembling enough pot stickers to fill my pan twice, I was getting tired of the assembly process and figured we had enough anyway.  So, I had enough filling leftover to make 8 "meatballs" that I then baked in the oven at 350 for 20 minutes.  We dipped these into the dipping sauce as well and it was delicious too.  Just an idea if you get tired like me. :)