Sun-dried tomato jam

Whenever I use sun-dried tomatoes I only use a handful since they are so flavorful, which means I am often left with most of a bag that I don't know what to do with. This savory jam recipe uses up leftover dry (non-oil packed) sun-dried tomatoes and creates a delicious topping for whipped ricotta crostini or as a flavor-packed sauce for a pan pizza or even as a dipping sauce for arancini. When you start making the jam it might look like the balance of onion to tomato is off, but just remember that the onion will cook down and the tomatoes will plump up.

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 cup sun-dried tomato halves, thinly sliced
1/2 a small sweet onion, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
1/4 cup red wine
1 1/2 tablespoons mild vinegar (rice vinegar or white/red wine vinegar)
3/4 cup veggie stock
1 bay leaf
1 teaspoon honey
salt, as needed
pepper, to taste

Directions:

Heat oil in a medium sauce pot over medium-low heat, then add onion and tomato. Stir to coat everything in oil and cook for about 5 minutes, or until the onion has softened and become translucent and the tomatoes are starting to just barely caramelize. Add the garlic and cook for about 30 seconds, then add the wine and scrape any caramelized bits off the bottom. Add the vinegar and the bay leaf and cook until the wine has reduced a bit, maybe 2 minutes. Add the veggie stock and honey, taste for salt levels and add more if needed then season with pepper. Cover the pot and turn heat down to low. Simmer, covered, for about 30 minutes. Then remove the lid and give everything a good stir. The tomatoes should have softened and plumped. Remove the bay leaf and then either use an immersion blender to pulse a few times to break up large chunks or transfer to a food processor to pulse 2-3 times. Return mixture to pot and allow it to simmer for a few minutes to continue to thicken. Remove from heat when it is the thickness you'd like. Taste and adjust seasonings as needed. Serve warm or cold.

Lentil sloppy joes

Sloppy joes always look so good to me. They just seem so warm and comforting and filling, but rarely do you see them without ground beef so I decided to try making my own with lentils instead of the meat. It turned out really well and came together faster than I expected, especially since I used lentils that I had cooked in advance. If you don't have cooked lentils on hand just boil them for 30 minutes while you're making the sauce.

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon oil
1/4 of an onion, chopped
1/4 of a green pepper, chopped
1 stalk celery, chopped
4-5 baby carrots, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
1/4 cup ketchup
2 teaspoons dijon mustard
3 tablespoons worcestershire sauce (look for a vegetarian one)
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1/4 teaspoon smoked paprika
1 can (15 ounce) tomato sauce
3 tablespoons brown sugar
1-2 dashes of crushed red pepper flakes
salt, to taste
pepper, to taste
1 cup of cooked brown lentils

Directions:

In a medium sauce pot, heat oil over medium-low heat. Saute onion, green pepper, celery, and carrots for about 5 minutes, or until tender. Add garlic and cook for another 30 seconds. Add ketchup, mustard, worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, and paprika and stir to combine everything. Add tomato sauce, brown sugar, and crushed red pepper flakes, then stir to incorporate. Bring everything to a simmer and cook for 10-15 minutes, or until the sauce is nice and thick. Taste the sauce a few times during the cooking process and adjust the seasonings to your liking being careful not to add too much salt to early since the sauce will continue to reduce as it cooks. Put lentils in a separate small sauce pot and turn burner to medium heat, then add some (not all!) of your sauce, stirring frequently until it is as saucy as you'd like. Allow the lentils to warm up in the sauce for a few minutes, then remove from heat and serve on buns with any toppings you'd like (red onion, pickles, mustard, lettuce, etc).

Apple butter

Nothing says Fall to me more than apples and cinnamon. This is the perfect thing to make in early fall when the apples are inexpensive and it is just starting to get cold out. This recipe is so easy it almost shouldn't count as a recipe. The hardest part about this is waiting to eat it while your house smells amazing. Feel free to adjust the seasonings to your liking - I'm not a huge fan of nutmeg so I went really light on it but you could easily add more if you like that flavor.

Ingredients:

Roughly 3 pounds of apples, cored and chopped (I used a mix of honey crisp and green apples)
1/2 rounded teaspoon cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
1/8 teaspoon ground allspice
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup white sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup water
1/4 teaspoon vanilla

Directions:

Add all ingredients except vanilla to a large crock pot and stir to combine. Cover the crock pot and cook on low overnight. In the morning, take the lid off and give it a good stir, making sure to scrape down the sides of the pot. Using an immersion blender, blend the apples until they are completely smooth and thick. Add more water if necessary to get the consistency you like. If it isn't thick enough for you just leave it in the crock pot and let it cook, uncovered, for a few more hours. Add the vanilla when it is finished cooking and stir to combine. Ladle into mason jars and store in the fridge if you'll be eating it within a week or two and freeze the rest of the jars.

Cilantro mint dipping sauce

 

This sauce is really delicious. It is bright and fresh and slightly spicy. This sauce is sort of like the one you get as an appetizer at Indian restaurants. I served this with naan but it would be great with pita bread or pita chips or along side a spicy curry dish. Feel free to adjust the spice according to your preference.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup cilantro leaves
1/4 cup mint leaves
1/2 teaspoon freshly grated ginger
2 tablespoons chopped red onion
1 teaspoon minced jalapeno
1/4 teaspoon cumin
1 tablespoon lemon juice (I used half a lemon)
2 tablespoons water
salt, to taste

Directions:

Combine everything in a food processor and pulse a few times, then turn on until everything is smooth and well combined. Season with salt as necessary and add more water if you would like to change the consistency. Serve with naan.

Hot sauce

Full disclosure: this is absolutely not a recipe I created. This comes from Bon Appetit. I've made this a few times and it is seriously some of the best hot sauce I've had and I really didn't see the need to change it or adapt it at all. It doesn't have the consistency of mass produced hot sauce - it is pretty thin so it pours rather than drips like store bought so just be careful when you're using it.

Ingredients:

1 pound of hot peppers (jalapeno, serrano, cayenne, habenero, etc)*
2 tablespoons of salt
1 1/2 cups white vinegar

Directions:

Throw the peppers and the salt into a food processor and pulse until you have a nice puree going. It won't be smooth yet, but that's ok, you're going to process it again anyway. Transfer the mixture to a non-reactive container (preferably glass) and let it sit, covered, at room temperature for anywhere between 1 and 7 days. I usually let mine go for 3-4, otherwise it gets too intense for me. Put the puree and the vinegar into a food processor and turn it on continuously until you get a nice, smooth consistency. Strain the mixture through a coffee filter, pressing slightly on the solids to extract all the sauce. Store in a glass container and keep in the refrigerator for up to four months. Shake it before using.

*Sometimes I'll add a clove or two of garlic as well. The one pictured is made with 100% serrano peppers. If you don't want it so spicy you could replace some of the hot peppers with a bell pepper of the same color.

Basil pesto pasta

One of the best parts of having my own (small) garden is that I have fresh herbs on hand all summer and into the fall. Fresh herbs, and particularly basil for some reason, are really expensive at the store but can be grown easily, even indoors. Unless you're me. Then it is absolutely impossible to keep an indoor plant alive. One person commented that my house looked like a plant graveyard and a coworker just recently removed the plants from my office to try to revive them. Anyway, outdoor herbs are easy and if you have a bumper crop of basil then pesto should be an obvious next step. The recipe below makes enough pesto to cover two pretty hearty servings of pasta, but you could easily just use this as a sauce and spread it on a grilled cheese or on crostini with goat cheese.

Ingredients:

1 cup basil leaves, loosely packed

1 small clove of garlic, minced

2 tablespoons pine nuts

1/2 a lemon, juiced

1/4 cup parmesan, grated (not the stuff in the can) plus more for the top

olive oil, a few good sized glugs

2 servings of spaghetti, with some of the cooking water reserved

8-10 cherry tomatoes, cut in half

Directions:

Heat a dry skillet over medium heat, when it is warm add the pine nuts and keep shaking the pan until the nuts are golden brown, which should only take about 3 minutes. Transfer the pine nuts to a food processor, add the minced garlic and a small glug of olive oil and pulse a few times to break things down. Add the basil to the nuts and garlic and pulse a few more times. Add the lemon juice and process for about 30 seconds. While the food processor is running, stream a good sized glug of olive oil (maybe like 1/4 cup) into the mixture. Continue to process until a loose paste forms. Mix in the cheese and process a few more times, if it looks dry add a little more oil. The goal is to get the pesto to be bright green and sort of creamy, but not oily and runny. In a medium sauce pan, boil water for your pasta and salt it well - someone once said it should taste like the ocean in order to properly season pasta. Boil your pasta, but when it is done cooking take about 1/3 cup of the cooking water out before you drain it. Drain pasta and transfer it to a large bowl (or back in the pan but don't return it to the heat). Add your pesto and mix well, adding some of the cooking liquid back in as you're stirring to loosen up the sauce and coat the pasta. Stir in cherry tomatoes and grate more parmesan on top.

*If you want to save the pesto you have two options: freeze it or refrigerate it. If you freeze it then don't add the cheese, mix that in the day that you're serving it. If you refrigerate it you can make the whole thing but then coat the top with a nice layer of olive oil to prevent it from browning. If it browns it still tastes fine, it just looks nasty.

Tomatillo salsa

Tomatillos are these really weird looking fruits (veggies?) that grow with this papery stuff covering the outside. They taste like a cross between a green tomato (which is an entirely different thing) and a lemon, and they have the texture of a cross between an unripe tomato and an apple. Growing up, we planted them in our backyard and I didn't realize until moving away that they would be sort of challenging to find. Luckily my grocery store usually has a small amount of fresh tomatillos available and they almost always have canned. I've made this salsa with both fresh and canned before, both of which resulted in really tasty salsa, but I definitely prefer the fresh.

Ingredients:

1 clove garlic

1/4 small red onion, chopped

1 small (or 1/2 a large) jalapeno, or more if you want it spicier

6-8 fresh tomatillos (or 1 can, drained)

1 small lemon, juiced

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 good handful of cilantro

Directions:

Mince your garlic really finely, then sprinkle it with salt and smash/drag it across your cutting board a bunch of times with the back of your knife until it makes a paste. Throw this in the food processor. Chop your onion and your jalapeno and add those to the food processor too. Turn it on a few times so that your pieces become even smaller. Rinse your tomatillos to remove any of the sticky coating and then quarter them. Add the tomatillos, lemon juice, and salt to the food processor. Pulse a few times to break things down, then turn it on and let it run continuously for a while until things are really starting to come together. Turn it off, throw in your cilantro, pulse a few more times, then turn it on again and let it run until it is the consistency you like. I like mine on the smoother side, so I let it go for a while. It tastes best immediately, but it can stay in the refrigerator for 3-4 days. I just  give it a good stir if it has been sitting for more than a day.

Cucumber yogurt sauce

I love middle eastern food and when I get it at a restaurant I always get double the amount of cucumber yogurt sauce. It is so good and so deliciously garlicky and bright. Turns out it is really simple to make as well! This sauce is great with pita, on falafel, or really on anything where you want a bright, garlicky, creamy sauce.

Ingredients:

1/3 cup diced cucumber, diced really finely

2/3 cup plain greek yogurt (or one single serve container)

1 garlic clove

1/2 of a small lemon, juiced

1 good dash of salt

1/2 teaspoon dill weed

Directions:

Chop the garlic as finely as you possibly can. Seriously, run your knife over it until you don't think you can chop it any more. Then sprinkle the garlic pieces with a good amount of salt. Take the flat part of the knife and scrape the garlic and salt mixture against the cutting board 10-15 times, or until the garlic breaks down and turns into a paste. Place the garlic paste into a bowl, add the rest of the ingredients and stir. Season with more salt, if necessary. Refrigerate for while so that the flavors can all mesh together. It is best to leave it for like an hour, but you don't have to. It will just get better the more it sits. 

Spring rolls with dipping sauce

These spring rolls may seem sort of labor intensive, but once you have your ingredients prepped it doesn't take any more time than making a burrito.

Ingredients:

4 rice paper wrappers
1/6 package of rice noodles, cooked according to package
4 baby carrots, julienned
3 inch piece of cucumber, julienned
4 slices avocado
1 handful of cilantro
2 tablespoons mayonnaise
1/2 teaspoon sriracha

Directions:

Prep all of your ingredients first and lay them out so that they are all easily accessible, once you get going you have to work quickly. Squeeze out the extra water from your rice noodles and separate them into four small piles. Mix your mayo and sriracha together in a small bowl and set aside. Fill a large plate (one with rims) with warm water. Soak one rice paper at a time for a few seconds (really just enough to where you can feel it become a little slippery and pliable). Remove paper from water and place on a clean work surface. Place one small pile of rice noodles on top of the rice paper, about an inch from the edge. Next, spread a small amount of sriracha mayo on top of noodles. Top with small piles of carrots, cucumber, and one slice of avocado. Take the one inch edge of the rice paper and fold it over the noodles and veggies, pulling just a little to make it tight. Then fold over the sides, just like you're making a burrito. Add a few cilantro leaves and finish rolling, making sure to squeeze a little bit to make it tight. Place one roll aside and repeat for the others.

Dipping sauce:

1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon rice vinegar
1/4 cup water
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon corn starch
1/2 teaspoon sesame oil

Directions:

Place all ingredients in a saucepan and whisk until it turns a light brown. Cook on medium heat, whisking a few times until it starts to simmer. Simmer 1-2 minutes or until it thickens. Remove from heat and let it cool slightly.

**Obviously you can add anything you like to your spring rolls. I've added slices of red pepper, lettuce, green onion, mango, etc. before. If you're not a vegetarian you could add shrimp or something.