Golden Vegetable Empanadas with Jalepeno Aji

Jesse’s mom gave me the recipe for these delicious savory empanadas!  They are pretty labor-intensive but trust me they are worth it; each one is a little pocket of delicious goodness.   These are Columbian style– they are like little arepas stuffed with filling and fried, as opposed to other styles of empanadas that have more of a bready or doughy crust.

Easy Spinach Latkes

These are so easy they barely count as cooking, but they taste really good and for one of those days where you don’t feel like spending a ton of time in the kitchen, why not make make some quick comfort food from scratch?  You can cook these in about 15 minutes, and they have a really great homemade taste and texture to them.

Polenta Triangles with Fried Olive Sauce

I always struggled with polenta; when I tried to pan fry it it was always too thin, or I had too much oil and it would totally disintegrate. I experimented this time and came up with a great recipe that is easy to make and tastes great! It takes a bit of prep, but it’s not hard, you just have to be patient!

Parsley Potato Breakfast Hash

Breakfast potatoes are one of those things that you think are a no-brainer until you try to fry a raw potato for the first time. With a few simple steps, you can make a delicious and easy breakfast that’s a healthy update to traditional fried potatoes.

Arancini- Italian Rice Balls

This was one of my favorite recipes when I was a kid; my parents would buy them from the Italian store! We would eat them with our hands as a snack. These are also great with tomato sauce on top as part of a larger meal, or you can make them small and serve them as an appetizer. They are so delicious and are both kid friendly and impressive for an adult dinner!

Spicy Lemongrass Thai Rice

Jesse requested a rice recipe last weekend. He is away for a few weeks this summer working on his masters and has been subject to bad college cafeteria food; I told him when he came back to visit I would make him whatever he wanted. Apparently the dining hall doesn’t have any “fresh food” or “vegetarian options” and “all their salad dressings are nasty.” Lucky for him I made a ton of food as usual and sent him back with leftovers!

Roasted Pepper Risotto

Here’s an easy risotto recipe that has a lot of flavor and color! We roasted the peppers ourselves, but you could easily use roasted red peppers from a jar or can to cut down on preparation time. It takes about an hour to cook, but most of that time is just the rice sitting on the stove top, so you can spend time doing other things while the meal is cooking! We made a lot of risotto so we would have leftovers to make rice balls with. For two people you would want half of this recipe.

Tofu Satay with Peanut Sauce and Pickled Vegetables

We’ve been wanting to make this FOREVER and I finally got the stuff together to do it the other day. It’s a great complete meal but it’s not an authentic Southeast-Asian satay seeing as how we didn’t grill it or even use skewers. We did marinade the tofu in a pretty typical marinade and serve with the sauces and accompaniments you would see in a Thai restaurant. This makes plenty of food and the prep can be done ahead of time; I did the pickled vegetables the night before so they could really soak up the flavor, and you could do the same with the tofu!

Lemon Vanilla Cupcakes with Whipped Cream Cheese Icing

We meant to make strawberry cupcakes, but I procrastinated a little bit and the strawberries started to go bad– oops. I still wanted to make cupcakes, though, so I improvised big time and decided to use some lemons we had kicking around. These came out great– they are dense but moist, and the lemon gives them a great kick. The frosting, though, is the best part; it has the consistency of whipped cream but it tastes like cream cheese. I really heaped on the frosting because it’s so good; this recipe will give you the right proportions to give each cupcake a generous amount of frosting!

Tempeh Salad Flatbreads

We made these in the style of a chicken or tuna salad; the juxtaposition of warm flatbread and cold salad is really great. These are perfect for summer and really easy to pack for a picnic lunch. As usual, the recipe makes a ton, so we brought some to Herbie while he was working at Beaux Arts down the street.