Morsels – recipes

K. Pinella’s recipes

Beef-flavored Vegetable Pot Pie

/ Karina Pinella / 4 Comments

Thinking of meat pie,
Couldn’t decide how to make,
Tried to be healthy.

Topped with fried onion,
Beef-flavored veggie pot pie,
Makes good comfort food.

Recipe

  1. Line an oil-sprayed pie plate with a 9” pie crust either pre-made or homemade. Note: I stretched out my dough a bit to fit the oval glass dish I used.

Easy homemade single pie crust: 1 cup flour, intermittently pour and stir in ¼ cup oil; continue stirring while adding ¼ cup water until dough clings together. Knead lightly and roll out. (from The Tassajara Bread Book by Edward Espe Brown)

  1. Sauté 1 sliced onion and 3 minced garlic.
  2. Add 2 chopped carrots, 4 cubed potatoes, and 1 cup beef broth. Simmer on low heat for 15-20 minutes until vegetables are tender.
  3. Add 1 cup cubed zucchini and 2 cups sliced mushrooms. Add ½ cup beef broth. Simmer on medium- low heat for 5 minutes.
  4. Add 10 oz. frozen peas, ¼ cup raisins, and ¼ cup beef broth. Lightly sprinkle with Tamari sauce; simmer for 4 minutes on low heat.
  5. Add ¼ lb. cooked ground beef; turn off after meat is heated through with vegetable mixture.
  6. Pour beef and vegetable mixture in pie plate. (If any extra filling, use it the next day to make fried rice; add mung bean sprouts and chopped scallions and scrambled or fried egg.)
  7. Fully cover top with fried onion pieces; I used the Trader Joe’s brand. Sprinkle with shredded cheddar cheese.
  8. Put dish in preheated oven set at 350 degrees F. Take out after 18 minutes. Let it set for 5-10 minutes, depending how patient you are.

Happy devouring!

A Fruitful Affair

/ Karina Pinella / 6 Comments

A banana fare
With strawberries and nuts flair,
Add yogurt and pear.

Recipe
Mix together:
1 ¼ – ½ cups flour
1 tbsp. baking powder
4 packets of coconut sugar (or your choice of sweetener and amount)
1 egg
3 mashed ripe bananas
3 tbsp. olive oil (or your choice of oil)
Enough cups of almond milk (or your choice of milk) to make a batter with texture of your preference

  1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F while mixing batter
  2. Pour batter in warmed, butter- or olive-oiled cast iron skillet
  3. Time for 15 minutes, at which time take out skillet and press/mix in sliced strawberries and return skillet to oven
  4. Time for 25 minutes and check to see if done, stick toothpick in and see if it comes out clean
  5. Serve and have a great morning or evening, if you want this to be a dinner fare

Bánh Mi Wannabe

/ Karina Pinella / 9 Comments

Planned to make bánh mi,
But too many substitutes
No bánh mi for me.

Just a stacked sandwich,
So ban me for no bánh mi,
Though not a bad sub.

I had no baguette,
I used pain de campagne,
A pseudo-bánh mi.

My bánh mi wannabe ingredients for this classic Vietnamese sandwich:

  1. Sautéed Swiss chard, onions, and fresh basil sprinkled with tamari sauce
  2. Thinly sliced cucumbers
  3. Fresh mint
  4. Sweet pickle relish
  5. Leftover roasted chicken
  6. Mayo mixed with sriracha sauce spread on two slices of pain de campagne (aka “French sourdough”)

Eggplant Pizza

/ Karina Pinella / 27 Comments


Gluten-free pizza
Use eggplant as pizza crust,
Top with favorites.

 Stack or lay them flat
Either way won’t make you fat,
A mean aubergine.

(The cheese doesn’t look fully melted because I used alternative cheese — coconut-based with pea protein isolate)

Ingredients:

  • Italian or Indian (aka baby) eggplants
  • Shredded cheese
  • Sun-dried tomatoes
  • Green onions
  • Olive oil mixed with garlic powder
  • Fresh basil

Instructions:

  1. Preheat oven at 400 degrees F
  2. Cut the eggplants in round slices
  3. Coat both sides of the slices with olive oil mixed with garlic powder
  4. Place slices on a baking sheet sprayed with olive oil
  5. Place baking sheet in oven with eggplant slices and time for 15 minutes
  6. After 15 minutes, turn slices over and time for another 15 minutes
  7. After second round of 15 minutes, take out baking sheet
  8. Turn slices over again and put on your favorite toppings and put back in oven for 5 minutes

Chocolate Strawbs Forever

/ Karina Pinella / 9 Comments

Image by Hymn

Tucked between pancakes,
Chocolate-chipped strawberries,
Coconut sprinkled.

****************

Pancake ingredients all mixed in a bowl:

1 ¼ cups pastry flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1 tbsp raw sugar
1-2 tbsp flaxseed meal
¾-1 cup leftover cooked oatmeal
1-2 cups homemade tapioca pudding
1 egg
3 tbsps cooking oil (I used safflower oil)
Enough cups of almond milk (or flaxseed milk or any milk) to make your batter not too thick or thin, whichever you prefer

Bean and Corn Vegetarian Casserole

/ Karina Pinella / 9 Comments

This dish was originally going to be called Refrigerator Quesadilla because I thought I’d top ten 6-inch corn tortillas with whatever I had in my refrigerator and put them in the oven and that’s it. But, I had food in the pantry and half-empty sauces in the fridge I wanted to use because their respective expiration dates were nearing. I don’t like wasting food, but at the same time, I don’t want to store unopened, expired food in my pantry indefinitely either.

To start, chop 1 large onion and mince 3 cloves of garlic. Setting them aside, take out a medium or large skillet and over medium heat, put in enough olive oil to sauté the chopped onion and garlic. After a minute, pour in a 26.46- oz. carton of chopped tomatoes. After a minute, add a 16-oz. carton of refried black beans. Turn down the heat a little so they don’t stick to the skillet and keep mixing them all together. After 2 minutes, add 16 ozs. of frozen corn, and 1 cup of brown mixed with wild rice (these were my leftovers). If you have other leftovers in your fridge that you think would go well with a Mexican-themed dish, then add those in now. Stir them altogether for about 3 minutes and then turn off the stove and set the skillet aside.

Use an 8” x 13” Pyrex dish and spray inside with olive oil. I had 1 jar of black bean and corn salsa, so I spooned some of that into the Pyrex dish, just enough to cover the bottom. Then take five of the 6-inch corn tortillas and lay one in each corner, placing two in the middle. You can layer these any way you like, as you can see by now what will be happening.

Before layering the mixture from the skillet into the Pyrex dish, take out a 16-oz. block of white cheddar cheese and grate all of it, setting this aside as one of the layers.

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F. Now the layering begins. Spread half of the mixture from the skillet over the tortillas, sprinkling some of the cheddar cheese over it and saving the last layer for an all-cheese topping.  Next, layer the last five 6-inch corn tortillas and spread the remaining jar of salsa over the tortillas. Follow this up with the remaining skillet contents, spreading them all around as evenly as you can. The last layer is the rest of the shredded cheese.

 Once you’re done and the oven is preheated, put the uncovered dish inside and time for 20 minutes. You can turn off the oven when the cheese is melted. Leave it in the oven for 5-10 minutes. Then, take it out and let it set for another 5 minutes. Complement the dish with a bowl of salad greens.

¡Comér bién!

Mung Beans with Quinoa Stew Topped with Pork Rinds

/ Karina Pinella / 11 Comments

stew

Here’s a fairly quick and easy stew, which you can eat as a vegetarian one-dish meal, or non-vegetarian if you wish to have a taste of pork rinds blended in.

Start by mincing 4 cloves of garlic, chopping 1 onion, and slicing 6 Roma tomatoes. Set them aside. Rinse in a mesh colander 1 ¼ lb. dry mung beans. Set aside. Rinse ¼ cup quinoa in a fine mesh colander and set aside.

Put 3 tbsp of coconut oil in a stock pot, and then place it on a stove burner over medium heat. Sauté the minced garlic, follow up with the chopped onion. After a minute, add in the sliced tomatoes.

After the tomatoes look tender, put in the mung beans and pour in one 32-oz. low sodium vegetable broth. Cover and continue cooking over medium heat. After about 15 minutes, put in the quinoa and cover. After another 10 minutes, pour in one 32-oz coconut milk and 2-3 cups water. Stir. Cover and time for 15 minutes. When the timer goes off, stir and time again for 20 minutes. While that continues to cook, chop a bunch of Swiss chard, which you will add when the timer goes off.

Add a few drops of fish sauce; you can always add more later when it’s cooked and you’ve tasted it. Continue cooking for 6 more minutes. When the timer goes off, turn the stove off and let the food settle for 5 minutes.

Serve in big bowls and drop a handful of pork rinds into each one, if you are so inclined. Just press them down into the stew with a spoon so they soften. Garnish with one sliced garden tomato.

Happy  dining!