{october daring bakers: stuffed grape leaves}

Our October 2010 hostess, Lori of Lori’s Lipsmacking Goodness, has challenged The Daring Cooks to stuff grape leaves. Lori chose a recipe from Aromas of Aleppo and a recipe from The New Book of Middle Eastern Food.

For this months challenge we had to make a filling and then stuff and roll it into grape leaves. A Mediterranean restaurant is the only place I've ever eaten stuffed grape leaves before and I've always thought they were pretty delicious. Never once did I think to actually try making them so, I was very interested to see how this would turn out.

Work has gotten pretty busy lately (thus my lack of posting) so when it came to be the week before our post date, I began to wonder if I'd even be able to participate in this challenge. When a friend of mine suggested we tackle this one together and have a full blown Mediterranean meal, I jumped on it. We each brought our ingredients together in order to make the Wara Einab or Dolma (cold stuffed grape leaves). The men grilled the lamb while we separated, filled and rolled the dolmas. It definitely was a process and one I'm glad to not have done on my own. The grape leaves were a bit fragile as the slightest poke of a fingernail tore them. Towards the end we were double wrapping the grape leaves in order to make a whole one. They turned out delicious though and went very well with the hummus, pita, roasted veggies and lamb.

Check out the recipe and what other daring cooks did over at The Daring Kitchen.

See more pics after the jump.

{potato, squash and goat cheese gratin}

As more items are becoming available at our local farmers market, I'm having to stretch my imagination further to figure out what to make with it all. Its not that there are no recipes out there, on the contrary, there are too many and I can't choose. The other issue I've been having is in trying to stretch our meat supply since it tends to be the more expensive portion of our weekly food budget. I've been able to successfully make a couple vegetarian dishes a week that John approves of and fills us up adequately. However, since we are not vegetarians and I've never done much vegetarian cooking, I'm having a difficult time knowing where to look and knowing if the dish will be filling enough. Thankfully, the other day as I was surfing around on The Kitchen, I found this delicious looking vegetarian dish using ingredients I had picked up from the market. I decided to add some onions into the mix and only used about one third of the cheese it called for since I was saving the rest for the summer pizza. Served with a salad, the meal ended up being quite filling and we were able to get 3 servings out of it. It would work great as a side dish as well, but we were both pleased with it as the main course. I would add all of the cheese it calls for though as it will only make it taste better.

Recipe and pics after the jump

{summer pizza}

We are a huge fan of pizza. Me even more so because its one of the simplest things to put together for dinner and it usually comes out tasting quite delicious. Also, I can usually make it entirely vegetarian and John doesn't complain. I call this one the summer pizza because it uses delicious ingredients that are in season during the summer (creative, I know): yellow squash, tomatoes + onions. Paired with some fresh basil and goat cheese this pizza will just melt in your mouth. Since I'm more a fan of thin crust I found a recipe that required no yeast and no rising time and adapted it to what I had on hand. The original recipe can be found here. I'm not entirely sure what salad oil is so I used olive oil instead. Below the jump is my version of the pizza crust recipe and pizza.

Pics and recipe after the jump

{daring cooks: pâtés and bread}

Our hostesses this month, Evelyne of Cheap Ethnic Eatz, and Valerie of a The Chocolate Bunny, chose delicious pate with freshly baked bread as their June Daring Cook’s challenge! They’ve provided us with 4 different pate recipes to choose from and are allowing us to go wild with our homemade bread choice.

I've been having so much fun with all of the Daring Bakers challenges that this month I signed up for Daring Cooks. John was particularly happy about this as he prefers the savory over the sweet. hehe Daring Bakers has been my excuse to actually have sweet things around so I figured he deserved a little something too.

Our challenge for this month looked very interesting and was something I've never experienced before. A pâté is basically a meat or veggie based paste that can then be spread onto bread or served with crackers. The meat versions are usually made with liver or gizzards which was just not something that I could stomach making so, I opted for the veggie version. My goal was to create a tricolor vegetable pâté using as many local ingredients as possible.

On a visit to our farmers market this morning we discovered so many more vegetables available! Yellow squash, zucchini, brocoli and garlic were just a few items we were able to pick up. So very happy about the variety being harvested right now! With all of my fresh ingredients in hand I went to figuring out the recipe I'd be able to make for the challenge.

Beans are not something that I can find at my farmers market and peppers are not quite in season so I knew those two layers had to be adapted. Most seasonal ingredients tend to taste good together so I chose to go with a zucchini top layer, carrot and goat cheese middle layer and the basil pesto as my bottom layer. Individually it all tasted pretty good and as as a medley, it was delicious. Since its only John and I, I did a half recipe for the top two layers but a full recipe of the pesto...you can never have too much pesto.

For the bread I used a recipe from my Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day cookbook. The honey whole wheat baguette turned out super delicious and was great with the vegetable pâté. It would also taste great served on crackers or with raw veggies. The taste of the pate was so very refreshing...I think I could eat it simply spread on a sandwich slice as my lunch.

I really enjoyed this challenge and it was relatively simple to adapt and create a completely local and seasonal pâté. It was pretty quick and easy to put together which is great since for the next month, my life will be consumed with watching all of the world cup soccer games! GO USA!! Definitely give the recipe a try, it works great as a snack while watching the matches. For the meat based pâtés, original tricolor veggie pâté and baguette recipes, check them out at the Daring Kitchen.

Recipe and pics after the jump

{dolmas wrap}

recipe source: Eating Well
The dolmas wraps are a delicious meal, but much better for a lunch vs. a dinner. Dolmas are a Middle Eastern food consisting of chopped veggies or ground meat stuffed into grape leaves. You can usually find them prepared in the grocery store's salad bar. The ones I found were veggie stuffed and about two of them fit into the size tortillas that we had. I chose to use flour tortillas instead of the lavash since its what we already had. It was refreshingly delicious and light. I think next time I'd add more lettuce and tomatoes just as slices inside the wrap...it would at least make the picture better looking.